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Information theory dictates that a logical operation in a computer must consume a minimum amount of energy. Today’s computers consume a million times more energy per operation than this limit, but magnetic computers with no moving electrons could theoretically operate at the minimum energy, called the Landauer limit, according to UC Berkeley electrical engineers.
Tag: magnetic field
Four UC Berkeley scientists elected to National Academy of Sciences
May 1, 2012:
Four University of California, Berkeley, faculty members – physicists John Clarke and Bernard Sadoulet, chemist John Hartwig and ecologist Mary Power – have been elected members or foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences, bringing UC Berkeley’s total NAS membership to 141.
Ground-based lasers vie with satellites to map Earth’s magnetic field
February 14, 2011:
Oil and mineral companies, climatologists and geophysicists all rely on expensive satellites to measure the Earth’s magnetic field, but there may be a cheaper option. UC Berkeley physicist Dmitry Budker proposes shining a pulsed orange laser on the layer of sodium atoms 90 km above the Earth to directly read the local magnetic field.
First measurement of magnetic field in Earth’s core
December 16, 2010:
Measurements of the magnetic field at the earth’s surface can tell only so much about the dynamo producing the field in the planet’s core. UC Berkeley geophysicist Bruce Buffett has now used precise astronomical position data to calculate tidal damping in the core and determine for the first time the magnetic field in the center of the planet. The measurement, 25 Gauss, is in the middle of what various scientists have predicted.
NASA mission asks why Mars has no atmosphere
October 7, 2010:
NASA has approved a mission to Mars called MAVEN that will collect data to understand why and how Mars lost its atmosphere. Half the instruments will be built at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory under the direction of physicist Robert Lin.
