Credit: Tom Bear Photography.
Christoph Boehme, a University of Utah physicist, led a study in the Dec. 17, 2010, issue of the journal Science in which information was stored for an average of 112 seconds in the magnetic spins of the nuclei inside phosphorus atoms, and then the data was read out again electrically. While hurdles remain, the study brings society a step closer to new "spin memory"
for use in conventional computers and in so-called quantum computers that would be superfast.