Yoctonewton Detector Smashes Force Sensing Record 214
KentuckyFC writes "A team of physicists has measured the smallest force ever recorded, at 174 yoctonewtons (yocto=10^-24), beating the previous best by three orders of magnitude. Their measurement device consists of a few dozen beryllium ions trapped in magnetic and electric fields using a device called a Penning trap. These ions vibrate at between a few mega and kilohertz, frequencies that can be accurately measured by bouncing laser light off the ions and measuring any Doppler shift they cause. Being charged, the ions are highly susceptible to the tiny forces associated with stray magnetic and electric fields, which change the frequency at which the ions vibrate. Hence the super-sensitive measurements. They team says that straightforward modifications should allow them to measure single yoctonewtons in the near future. This sudden leap in sensitivity could cause a problem for the system of SI prefixes, which don't yet come any smaller than yocto."
It's 10E-24 (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an accepted mathematical (and computer) notation for it. Please use that - there is no need to resort to the equivalent of emoticons.
As an aside, why does every possible potential fraction of a unit need it's own prefix? Unless it is widely used to warrant a prefix, using a numeric power is just fine. Somehow I doubt these units will be common enough for anyone to even remember. SI is really going overboard on this, taking an idea to absurdity.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even without reverting to scientific notation or a new SI-prefix they can go down to 0.001 yN before anyone starts to complain. That's 3 orders of magnitude beyond what they claim to be able to measure "soon" and 5 beyond what they did.
And besides that, popular press doesn't seem to have problems with reverting to "100 million billions of bytes or kilometers", so why not "millionths of yN". It's not as if anyone still has a feel for these numbers beyond "peta" or "femto"... except for the scientists that run into them.
Re:Look at last fiew SI prefixes (Score:5, Insightful)
What will we do after Apple makes the iPod Yocto?
Isn't it obvious? We'll bitch about how useless and locked-down it is whilst simultaneously posting at least two stories a day that say how it is changing the world.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So what does this mean? (Score:3, Insightful)
In laymans terms, they can now detect the force emanating from a single midichlorian.