There’s technology around us that wouldn’t be possible without magnets and their forces. One of the most common examples — memory.  Thanks to magnetism, and the spinning of electrons in one direction or the other, most of the information in the world can be encoded in hard disks or stored in memory drives. Recently, scientists have discovered a new breakthrough that will make digital memory technology faster and more efficient—it’s called nutation.  Italian physicist Stefano Bonetti and his team of international scientists are responsible for the first observation of nutation in magnetic materials, which we’re discussing below. What is Nutation and Why is it Important?  Nutation is a periodic variation in the inclination of the axis of a rotating object. The discovery, recently published in Nature Physics by Bonetti and his team, measured a nutation period that was one picosecond (one-thousandth of a billionth of a second). Any object that spins like this, including planets, has an axis that performs both nutation and precession. However, this new research has shown that the nutation of the magnetic spin axis is 1000 times faster than precession. This discovery is significant as this is a very similar ratio to that of Earth — meaning, These new findings on the characteristics of spins are fundamental in making digital technology faster, smaller, and more efficient. Bonetti says of his research, “with implications that affect, for example, data centres that store almost all of humanity’s digital information in bits with the north pole up or down, thus encoding the computer 0s and 1s. When these spins are reversed to write information, precession, and nutation also come into play. Knowing the nutation period becomes essential as the rotation speed increases. This first observation of these movements paves the way for new technologies to improve the efficiency of our digital activities, which, among all human activities, are recording the highest increase in energy consumption.” Stay Up To Date With Apex Magnets Bonetti’s research on nutation is crucial in paving the way for further improvements in technology. Keep up to date with the latest in magnetic research and innovation with our blog.