Scientists crafted tiny silica "dumbbells" that are too small to be seen with the naked eye, spinning them faster than any other human-made object on Earth.
Credit: Tongcang Li/Purdue University
Spinning objects are hypnotic and fascinating, as last year's fidget-spinner craze overwhelmingly demonstrated. But even the fastest fidget spinner trails the new reigning champion of fast-whirling objects: a tiny dumbbell that can rotate 60 billion times per minute.
It's enough to make your head spin.
Spin doctors — er, researchers — recently created the nanoscale rotor and levitated it in a vacuum, blasting it with lasers to set it spinning. Their research, described in a new study, could help reveal how different substances respond under extreme conditions and how friction behaves in a vacuum, Tongcang Li, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, as well as electrical and computer engineering, at Purdue University, said in a statement. [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]
Over the past decade, researchers have tested the limits — and broken records — for how fast human-made things can spin. In 2008, a motor the size of a matchbook clocked 1 million rotations per minute, Live Science previously reported. Then, in 2010, scientists set a new rotation record when they spun a slice of graphene at a dizzying 60 million spins per minute, Popular Science reported that year.
Ref-https://www.livescience.com/63139-fastest-spinner-nanodumbbell.html