Over the past 50 years, computers have been getting faster and faster which means also we can make them smaller and smaller. Now parts of computers chips are around 30 nanometers---take a hair cut it across its length 1000 times, take one of those pieces and cut it another 3 times and you have it. Pretty small. Some of the ways that scientists hope to make computers even faster is by replacing parts that use electrons and instead use photons. Scientists at Cornell University have made light emitting diodes (LEDs) that produce infrared light and think that they might be a way to have computer parts talk faster than they can with electrons. These tiny LEDs are made using solutions of different metals and are a lot less expensive to make than current methods.
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