How it is possible to store reams of data on ever-shrinking hard drives. How is billions of bits of information stored on something the size of a dime. The miniature your device (specially the hard disk) gets – Blame it on nanotech!

Blame it on a very specific discovery called ‘Giant Magnet-o-resistance’.

The MP3 and iPod industry would not have existed without this discovery.

In 1988 the scientists, Frenchman Albert Fert and the German Peter Grünberg each independently discovered a totally new physical effect called- Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR.

The first real application of the promising field of nanotechnology was ushered in by using GMR effect, the technology that is used to read data on hard disks. In this effect, very weak changes in magnetism generate larger changes in electrical resistance. If GMR is to work, structures consisting of layers that are only a few atoms thick have to be produced. So the nanotech owes it real application to these two scientists who has won the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics only minutes ago!

(nano art images via northwestern edu.)