Aussie Brains Move Chip Design to Quantum Realm: The law of the land is Ohm's Law -- even when the land is really, really small. Contradicting what was previously thought, researchers at the University of New South Wales have announced that the law governing electrical resistivity -- how readily electrical current flows through a material -- extends into the quantum realm. This has major significance for chipmakers, who are starting to wrestle with the forces of quantum physics as transistors and interconnect sizes shrink down to a few dozen nanometers. These forces are among the barriers threatening to bring another famous law to a halt. Moore's Law holds that number of transistors you can fit on a chip doubles about every 18 months.