Then they carefully injected into the mix individual water droplets that had been infused with tiny magnetic nanoparticles. Next, they turned on the magnetic field.

Every rotation of the field counted as one clock cycle and every drop marched exactly one step forward with each cycle. A camera recorded the interactions between individual droplets, allowing observation of computation as it occurs in real time.

According to Prakash, the most immediate application might involve turning the computer into a high-throughput chemistry and biology laboratory.

Instead of running reactions in bulk test tubes, each droplet can carry some chemicals and become its own test tube, and the droplet computer offers unprecedented control over these interactions.

Prakash and his colleagues, however, have a more ambitious application in mind. Their goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter.

"Imagine, when you run a set of computations wherein not only information is processed but also the physical matter is algorithmically manipulated. We have just made this possible at the mesoscale," Prakash said.

The results were published in the journal Nature Physics.

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