In the November 1 1996 issue of Science is an article about The Scanning
Probe Microscope. These machines can not only see individual atoms they can
manipulate them too. The trouble is, a one tip microscope, the only kind made
up to now, is much too slow to build anything of practical value. Researchers
reasoned that they could speed things up if they had lots of tips running in
parallel. Calvin Quate of Stanford University has just made a 16 tip
microscope and has greatly impressed people with the high quality images it
produces. Others are working on a 144 tip microscope that should be finished
soon.
What really struck me is something Quate said at the end of the article, he
predicted that by this time next year "we'll be writing 1-cm by 1-mm areas
and we'll be doing it very fast". On the atomic scale 1-cm by 1-mm is a HUGE
piece of real-estate! Singularity speculation anyone?
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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