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Researchers craft all-electric spintronics, vie for guest spot on Mindfreak

Unfortunately for us, we've no certified rocket scientist on staff. That said, we're absolutely convinced that the whiz-kids over at the University of Cincinnati are more than up to the task of improving a science that may or may not actually be useful in real things before 3028. As we continue to hear more about spintronics (described as "transistors that function by controlling an electron's spin instead of its charge"), a team of UC researchers have stumbled upon a novel way to control an electron's spin orientation using purely electrical means. In fact, one member calls this discovery the "holy grail of semiconductor spintronics," though we're guessing it'll still be a few years centuries before our hard drives are fetching data 100,000x faster and our batteries last longer than our desire to use them.