In other news:

THE 2007 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS WILL BE AWARDED TO Albert Fert
(Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France) and Peter Grünberg
(Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany) for the discovery of giant
magnetoresistance, or GMR for short. GMR is the process whereby a
tiny magnetic field, such as that of an oriented domain on the
surface of a computer hard drive can, when the proper read head is
brought nearby, trigger a large change in electrical resistance,
thus *reading* the data vested in the magnetic orientation. This
is the heart of modern hard drive technology and makes possible the
immense hard-drive data storage industry. Fert and Grünberg
pioneered the making of stacks consisting of alternating thin layers
of magnetic and non-magnetic atoms needed to produce the GMR
effect. GMR is a prominent example of how quantum effects (a large
electrical response to a tiny magnetic input) come about through
confinement (the atomic layers being so thin.); that is, atoms
interact differently with each other when they are confined to a
tiny volume or a thin plane.


Aren't we glad and grateful to these men?