Pouring silver nitrate on tiny copper spheres, they could cause the growth of microscopically

Pouring silver nitrate on tiny copper spheres, they could cause the growth of microscopically thin intersecting silver wires. Then they could pass sulfur gas through this grid to create a silvery sulfide layer between the silver wires, as in the original atomic switch of the Aono command. Self-organized criticality When Gimzhevski and Stig told others about their project, no one believed that it would work. Some said the device will demonstrate one type of static activity and settle on it, Stig recalls. Others suggested the opposite: "They said that switching would be cascaded and the whole structure would just burn out," says Gimzewski. But the device did not melt. On the contrary, when Gimzhevski and Stig watched him through an infrared camera, the input current continued to change the paths that passed through the device - proving that the activity in the network was not localized, but rather distributed, as in the brain. One autumn day in 2010, when Avicenis and his colleague Henry Sillin increased the input voltage in the device, they suddenly noticed that the output voltage began to randomly oscillate, as if the wire grid had come alive. "We sat down and looked at it, we were in shock," says Sillin.