Not to be used for your PC …
If you watched Back to the Future over the holiday weekend and wished the flux capacitor was a real thing so you could travel through time, we have sorta good news. Scientists from Australia and Switzerland have proposed a real-life flux capacitor — but you won’t be able to travel back to a high school dance in the ’50s with it.
The device is a new type of electronic circulator, which can control the directional movement of microwave signals. The scientists, who published their research in Physical Review Letters, have proposed two different potential circuits — one of them borrows the design of the three-pointed flux capacitor Doc Brown and Marty McFly used to travel to 1955 and 2015in their DeLorean.
The circulator, according to the Center for Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (which was involved in the study), “uses the quantum tunneling of magnetic flux around a capacitor, breaking time-reversal symmetry.” This means “signals circulate around the circuit in only one direction, much like cars on a roundabout,” Professor Tom Stace of the University of Queensland said. As such, the proposed device will be a boon for quantum computing, where researchers need to direct signals with precision.
Source: Engadget
