what is the next big thing?

sniffer

if someone wants to starts PhD in physics from scratch, what is the sexiest research?

i mean what is the next BIG thing in physics, something that leads to both intense development and BIG money!!!!. . ..

no body wants to be a poor physicist . what do think guys?

Nusc

Rethink your intentions before stepping into the void. Otherwise you will never see the light of day unless you are able to strip your materialistic views.
Those who choose the theoretical part of the natural sciences do not do it for the monetary award.

Pengwuino

Sexiest? electron stripping

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.
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anyone get it?

Nusc

That made my day

sniffer

ok. money aside.

what is the next big thing?

Nusc

I see strings that lead to a path of no return.

marlon

nanotechnology, more specifically high k dielectrics (read my journal for moe info on the phd students life in the nanotech world) and spintronics : the application of General Relativity in semi conductor physics. You know that Einstein proved that if you take two observers and one electric field, the observer that is standing still wrt the E field sees the actual E field but the moving observer sees a B field in stead of an E field.

When you wanna manipulate the spin of conduction electrons, you need to apply a B field but realizing this relativity effect, you can manipulate the spin without using a B field. The moving electrons will see the electrical field as a B field and thus you can use electrical quantities to change the spin. You also know that if the B field is perpendicular to the spin direction and if it is strong enough, you can change the spins over direction 180 degrees. This technique can be used to manipulate the info stored in a certain spin-polarized sample...

Here is where i do my phd : http://www.imec.be/ and we have a prof here that has published an article in NATURE on this spintronics stuff.

marlon

sniffer

a good website. interesting.
which country is at the moment the leader in nano-technology?
any specific institutions?

i heard about the impending oil crisis. we will soon leave our carbon economy.

maybe energy sector is going to be very the next big thing?
such as nuclear power, or revolutionary solar cells etc.
ITER? thermonuclear?

technology which are crisis-driven tend to break new grounds.

??? maybe.


thanks.

sniffer

hmmh.... sorry. it takes me sometime to contemplate what you said in the 2nd paragraph there, marlon.

this part on your web solar cells: http://www.imec.be/ovinter/static_re...larcells.shtml
related to what i said in previous post.


For Nusc: yes, what you said is correct. i agree in a sense that for physicist, some how we need to think in more idealistic way. often good physicist only ends up teaching. if we don't appreciate what we have, we cannot "see the light of day" as you said.

thanks.

marlon

what exactly do you mean ?

marlon

MalleusScientiarum

There's a lot of really hot research in computational physics, particularly with condensed matter systems, out there right now. Particle physics I guess is always "sexy", but it's an extremely difficult field to break into, and a lot of the physics community has some issues with the way high energy theory is conducted right now.

ludi_srbin

Something related to the new technologies for cheaper and cleaner energy. Oil is gonna run out so we need something new. If I was a genious I would go for Nuclear Fussion.

cronxeh

controlled fusion, biological nanoblocks

in computing, by some estimates (http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/pet.../siardmap.html) in 2014 the CPUs will have a 34 nm feature size, 19.3 Ghz internal clock, 664 million logic transistors/cm^2, 4308 million transistors per chip, 48 GB dram, and 0.5 voltage core. And by other estimates the size will shrink down to 22 nm (0.022 microns)

Pengwuino

All that for Microsoft Word 2014

zeronem

Einstein proved that? I thought that arose naturally from Maxwell's study of Electromagnetic Phenomena.

Lyuokdea

Yeah, but with a graphics engine that powerful behind Word we now know what the sexiest thing will be...

the worlds sexiest paperclip.

~Lyuokdea

Pengwuino

ahahaha

Itd be 3d and would read your mind