This event was recorded on April 1, 2026 at Flug Forum, produced by Aspen Center for Physics, in partnership with Aspen Public Radio.
We live in a hyper-connected information age where technology shapes how we live and interact. Yet this revolution comes at a cost: global data centers now consume more energy than many medium-sized nations, and the rise of AI is accelerating this demand exponentially.
Information technology relies on the electrons of atoms—using their charge for computing and their magnetic spin for storing data. The digital era was enabled by ferromagnets in hard drives, but these materials are limited to gigahertz speeds, preventing them from connecting efficiently to the much faster THz optical communication network and the Internet of Things. Antiferromagnets, though a thousand times faster, produce signals too weak to detect.
This changed in 2022 with the discovery of a third fundamental form of magnetism—altermagnetism—that unites the strengths of both. Altermagnets combine terahertz-speed with robust spin-polarized signals, providing a new foundation for information technologies.
We have, for the first time, a physical path to storing information in the most efficient and fastest way allowed by nature. It can save the environment and accelerate AI and its connectivity to unprecedented speeds. There lies our salvation, but also our possible doom.
About Jairo Sinova
Sinova is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz and director of the Spin Phenomenal Interdisciplinary Center (SPICE), and a Senior Professor at the Texas A&M University. He has received the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship Award, the Johannes Gutenberg Research Fellowship, the ERC Advance Synergy Grant, National Science Foundation’s Career Award, the Cottrell Scholar Award, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Research highlights include the discovery of intrinsic spin Hall effect and development of a complete theory of anomalous Hall transport, prediction of the Néel spin-orbit torque for the electrical manipulation of antiferromagnets, and the discovery of altermagnetism (even-parity wave collinear magnetism), and unconventional odd-parity wave magnetism.