Free Republic

Physicists of the University of Bonn have taken one more important hurdle on the path to what is known as a quantum computer: by using 'laser tweezers' they have succeeded in sorting up to seven atoms and lining them up. The researchers filmed this process and report on their breakthrough in the next issue of the prestigious journal Nature (13th July 2006). In the experiment the research team headed by Dr. Arno Rauschenbeutel and Professor Dieter Meschede decelerated several caesium atoms for a period of several seconds so that they were hardly moving, then loaded them onto a 'conveyor belt'...

Scientists Pick Up Pieces of Space Capsule 1 hour, 47 minutes ago By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah - Scientists with tweezers picked through the twisted wreckage of a space capsule that crash-landed on Earth, hoping that microscopic clues to the evolution of the solar system weren't completely lost in Utah's salt flats. NASA engineers were stunned Wednesday when neither parachute deployed aboard the Genesis capsule and the craft plummeted to the ground at 193 mph, breaking open like a clamshell and exposing its collection of solar atoms to contamination. "There was a big pit in...

A man sleeping on a beach ended up with a barnacle stuck to his penis. The 23-year-old had been lying in shallow water to escape the heat in Bor, Yugoslavia. He had to go to the accident and emergency department of the local hospital after being unable to get rid of the crustacean himself. Hospital sources say a nurse initially failed to remove it with tweezers. Daily newspaper Glas Javnosti reports medics only managed to free the barnacle when the embarrassed man got an unplanned erection. A hospital spokesman said: "We are not allowed to comment on the patients we...