While it is exceedingly difficult to test properties in tiny chips themselves, physicist John Lipa and a team of scientists at Stanford and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed an easier model for studying what lies ahead. Their experiment aboard the space shuttle Columbia uses helium atoms as stand-ins for electrons, and measures their properties as the conditions of confinement change. Helium is easy to manipulate at extremely low temperatures. The device itself sure doesn't look like a microscope. Around 400 silicon wafers are stacked in a cage.
Heat is added.
The microgravity environment of the space shuttle, meanwhile, eliminates pressure variations so that thermometers can measure the temperature change accurately to a billionth of a degree. They are going to have to find out some other way to discover just how much confinement a family can stand during a hot summer outing.