So I know this is not SQL Server specific information but these are a couple of the things I have read recently that I have found interesting.
There was an incredible discovery at the Sandia National Lab that could mean a great deal, potentially, for our world. Sandia recently reported being able to heat steel and tungsten to 2 billion degrees Kelvin for 10 billionths of a second (Wow, I wonder how they accomplish measuring something in billionths of a second, much less measuring something that is 2 billion degrees). The process that the metal goes through was interesting too.
They took a spool of steel threads, the spool was about the size of a coffee cup and the threads of steel were thinner than a human hair. Then they pumped 20 million amps of current through the core (spool), and the current vaporizes the core into a cloud of ions (plasma). There is a magnetic field from the current that takes the ions and squishes (that's right I said it, squishes) the plasma to a thickness about the size of a pencil lead with a velocity that could travel a plane from New York to San Fran in just a few seconds. Then for a short period of time (no doubt measured in 10s of billionths of a second), the plasma ions, once squished (yup, there's that word again and I'm sure the appropriate word is squashed but I like squished better), has no place to travel because it has been condensed to it's most compact form, therefore keeping the ions from traveling and should have kept the ions from producing energy. But the ions continued to produce energy and during this period is when the temperatures became super charged and produced the 2 billion degree heat. I read from one source (and there are many out there) that they may have discovered a new state of matter.
One thing that I think was pretty significant was " the radiated x-ray output was as much as four times the expected kinetic energy input", that was interesting in itself, check it out if your interested. Anyway, I thought that one at the very least, blog worthy.
The second interesting find was on the future of CPU's. This was an article I found on ZDNet, and it refers to Moore's Law as coming to end of life with current processor technology. The article stated that "Simply put, today's devices, which are based on complementary metal oxide semiconductor standards, can't get much smaller and still function properly and effectively. That's where spintronics comes in," said UCLA engineering professor Kang Wang, who will act as director of the institute."
Spintronics is a technology that is being invested in by the big chip manufacturers. The spintronics technology has something to do with (I'm no engineer) the spin of electrons as they are charged and passed from one point to another (I can picture engineering geeks everywhere just elated with the possibilities). Anyway, short but interesting read.
Enjoy,
Zach