BLACKSBURG, Va., June 3 -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University issued the following news release:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What goes up, must come down. Physical laws like these govern all of the natural world - except for the tiny internal components of today's microprocessors, which operate according to the unique and complicated rules of quantum physics.
As the microprocessors that power computers, medical equipment, sensors, and more continue to shrink in size, engineers face challenges controlling quantum-scale systems. But in a step forward for the technology, researchers at Virginia Tech have developed an "acoustic atom" - a chip-scale device that traps and controls sound waves in w...