Niocorp Developments Ltd (NB)

[inversor86]

Niobium is used to make NASA's ground breaking amplifier. Just a small excerpt.

" One of the important features of the parametric amplifier, as described recently in the journal Nature Physics is that it uses superconductor materials. These materials enable an electric current flow with zero resistance when lowered to certain temperatures. For their new amplifier, the researchers are using titanium nitride (TiN) and niobium titanium nitride (NbTiN), which have the ideal properties to allow the pump signal to amplify the weak signal.

Even though the device has a range of possible applications, the researchers built the device specifically to boost astronomy microwave signals. The design could also be used to build amplifiers that help astronomers observe in a broad range of wavelengths, from radio waves to ultraviolet waves to X rays.

For example, the researchers say, the device can amplify radio signals from faint sources like distant galaxies, black holes, or other far away cosmic objects. Boosting signals in millimeter to submillimeter wavelengths, between radio and infrared, will enable astronomers to study the cosmic microwave background (the afterglow of the big bang), as well as to gaze beyond the clouds of galactic dust to study the births of stars, or investigate ancient galaxies.

Since the instrument is so responsive and brings in minimal levels of noise, it could also be used to explore the quantum world. As one example, Caltech applied physics professor Keith Schwab is planning to use the new amplifier in measuring the behavior of tiny mechanical devices that run in the region between classical physics and the exotic world of quantum mechanics. The amplifier could also be used in the development quantum computers. Still beyond our technological reach, these computers of the future would be able to solve some of science’s hardest problems much more quickly than any regular computer.

What I wonder, is if some undergrad lab tech is going to borrow the blueprints, build one of these in his basement, and hook it up to the sub-woofers in his 2005 Acura. Could be an earth-shaking event."

[url] http://www.techfragments.com/1157/niobium-titanium-nitride-parametric-amplifier/[url][tag]insert-text-here[/tag]