A very funny video taken from Futurama. It's a little bit nerdy, 'cause it's for a connoisseur of quantum physics, namely The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If you don't get it, check out the wiki page for it! Enjoy!

The new devices can operate at 30 degrees above zero, rather than less than 70. This is the characteristic of the new generation of semiconductors, researched at the Italian Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM-CNR), and in the Ludwig Maximilian University in Monaco of Bavaria and the ETH Zurich (the study). Today there are two ways to record information on a medium: the electronic format, in which the binary language is the passage of electrons (the transistors) and magnetic (MRAM memory), more recently, in which the binary language is given by state of magnetization. To communicate these two systems could boost significantly the computational schemes, pending the distant quantum computer. Doubling the processing power and memory of a chip while maintaining the size, without the need to go in nano-scale (a scale, that is, a billionth of a meter) are just two of the technology that promises magnetic semiconductors suggest a near future. These devices were made over ten years ago, but so far required temperatures far below zero to work. The problem now seems outdated as the known semiconductors gallium arsenide containing traces of manganese, a metal which has ferromagnetic properties at around 200 degrees below zero. To increase the temperature threshold, above which the ferromagnetic behavior disappears, the researchers deposited on a semiconductor film of iron - metal known for its magnetic properties - the thickness of a few nanometers. Iron and manganese interacted so effectively that the new material, has a ferromagnetic behavior up to 30 degrees above zero, a jump of over a hundred degrees above the starting temperature. This result is a technological response parallel to that of the race to miniaturization and the research was selected the American Physical Society as one of the most important published in Physical Review Letters

Particles in a confined microscopic space, move in a coordinated manner and can be manipulated and observed with a precision never achieved. A nano-trap can be imagined as a tube the size of a billionth of a meter in which electrons are closed to study their behavior. Thus, scientists from the centers of the Italian Institute for physics of matter of Cnr "S3", Modena and "Nest" of Pisa in collaboration with Columbia University in New York, were able to observe with great precision the behavior of a quartet of electrons confined in one of these structures. Result: the particles move in a coordinated manner and with precise frequencies and can be manipulated. The study was published in Nature Phisics. As it is known, the physics of the matter the size of an atom or less follows different laws than those of classical physics. According to these principles, which fall in quantum physics, the behavior of particles such as electrons can not be described as we are used to (for larger bjects),but it is outlined mainly in terms of probabilistic forecasts. The technique developed by Cnr made it possible to determine the frequency of vibrations of particles through the use of a beam of laser light. The electrons in a nano-trap can only move in a coordinated manner and in accordance with the laws of quantum mechanics, vibrate at frequencies well defined that, thanks to this method, was possible to measure with unprecedented precision.

For the first time there was a negative charge exactly equal to 25 percent of that unit. Research in Nature magazine. Since the electricity comes from the transport of electrons, it is logical to expect that the smallest load that can be transported is equal to the charge of a single electron. Under specific conditions, it is possible to observe portions of this fundamental unit. Even in these conditions, however, there have been observed only odd fractions of charge: third, fifth, seventh. In the last issue of Nature it was published the existence of a quasi-particle with a charge corresponding exactly a quarter of that of an electron. In particular, these unique elementary particles, which have been precisely called "quasi-particles" to their particular nature, are formed when electrons are confined in a two-dimensional system, which forces them to interact strongly with each other. It is known that when a flow of electrons is confined in a two-dimensional plan of a semiconductor and it is applied simultaneously in a strong magnetic field perpendicular to this plane, the electrons have unusual quantum properties. In a research just published in Nature, in an electron gas, two-dimensional and ultra-pure, were detected within the fluid vortexes charges carrying exactly one quarter of the charge of an electron.