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Enlarge Image Flipping brilliant! Using only light, scientists can switch this little bridge of silicon between its "bowed up" configuration (top) and its "bowed down" configuration. Credit: M. Bagheri et al., Nature Nanotechnology, Advance Online Publication (2011) The feeble force of light alone can flip a nanometer-sized mechanical switch one way or the other, a team of electrical engineers reports. The little gizmo holds its position without power and at room temperature, so it might someday make a memory bit for an optical computer. Other researchers say it also introduces a promising new twist into the hot field of...

Building upon recent studies on optomechanical entanglement with lasers and mirrors, a group of scientists has developed a theoretical model using entanglement swapping in order to entangle two micromechanical oscillators. This ability could lead to advances in information processing, as well as other applications that use micromechanical resonators, such as electrometers, displacement detectors, and radio frequency signal processors, wrote scientists Stefano Pirandola et al. in a recent Physical Review Letters. "Until now, entanglement has been observed only for optical modes, i.e., photons (which are massless particles)," Pirandola told PhysOrg.com. "The significance of purely mechanical entanglement would be that it involves...