We're not going to front like we understand exactly how it works, but two IBM researchers in California have announced that they've gotten closer to controlling the orientation and magnetic spin of individual iron atoms on a copper surface, which would have huge implications for nanotech storage -- imagine the basic tech in your hard drive shrunk down the molecular level.

ENGADGET: IBM researchers get closer to nanotech hard drives

MRI, first developed 30 years ago, is based on a well established scientific technique, nuclear magnetic resonance, which uses the interaction of magnetic fields with the spin of the nuclei of atoms to provide detailed information on the constituents of chemicals and biological materials.

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If you're a frequent reader you're surely well aware of the potential of spin torque transfer memory, or STT-MRAM, and how spin-polarized magnetic currents (and the electrons they love to caress) might hold the potential to revolutionize storage as we know it.

ENGADGET: IBM's prototype STT MRAM device spins your bits right round, baby, right round

In particular, every electron has its own magnetic field aligned with the axis of its spin.

ECONOMIST: How to record a memory on a wire

These are superpositions of ones and zeros and are represented by, for example, the direction of spin (with respect to a magnetic field) of a particle such as an electron.

ECONOMIST: Quantum computing

For the logic operations, electrons move through the graphene and use its spin state to compare the information held in the individual magnetic electrodes.

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These discoveries have given birth to a field of endeavour that is known as spintronics, because the magnetic properties of a material depend on a quantum-mechanical property of electrons called spin.

ECONOMIST: Spintronics

To search for a target molecule, then, all that would be needed would be to sprinkle a sample thought to contain it with magnetic nanoparticles coated with the appropriate antibody or DNA and then run it over a spin valve.

ECONOMIST: Labs on a chip

They've shown that a synthetically grown sample of herbertsmithite crystal (what you see above) behaves as a quantum spin liquid: a material where fractional quantum states produce a liquid-like flux in magnetic orientations, even if the material is solid.

ENGADGET: MIT demos new form of magnetism that could lead to quantum communication, storage

Normally, the spin of each photon would rotate by a certain amount, thanks to its interactions with the magnetic field of the atoms.

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