Nanosecrets of Everyday Things
prostoalex writes "A recent issue of Berkeley Lab Research Review discusses the nanosecrets of everyday things. The article talks about common everyday applications of nanotechnology advances, as well as takes a look at tools used to manipulate itty-bitty widgets."
We keep hearing how nanobots, nanoprobes, nanometer devices, are going to revolutionize our lives. When can we actually start using this cool technology? To understand the article better I should have payed better attention in science.
Perhaps some day nanotechnology can help me aim better with a railgun like the friggin bots? But in all seriousness, nanotechnology I forsee being used for malicious means much, much, much more often then for good. The splendid benifits have to weighted against the possible problems of abuse. If I understand my science fiction correctly, it would be quite simple to carry these little buggers in your lungs, exhale them in a crowd of important people, then once you leave the proximity, they go rampaging through someones body until they destroy something vital. A silent assasin much easier to disperse than any poison, and practically untraceable.
My ignorance is a perfect shield against your logic.
I never got very far here, I went much more twords digitial circuit vlsi than materials but from what I do know is once they find a way to beat/get around the quantum behavior of electrons you will see a parade of innovations here.
Is that the super-technical scientific use of the word blob, or do they just mean, you know, blob?
Can I bum a sig?
So now we'll have to put up with Nano-porn and Nano-Spam?
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Uh, yeah, that's what nanotechnology means. Or what it used to mean anyway, before it started getting watered down by lame science fiction and people using it for buzzword effect.
"'If you're going to manipulate small things, you need small tools,' says Keith Jackson....Jackson, a physicist in the Materials Sciences Division's Center for X-Ray Optics"
It took a Physicist to figure that out? I thought little kids can figure that out. I am glad to learn the obvious from a physicist.
Meg Ryan in the film Innerspace(1987)started the nano-craze for me!
It should be called 1/2147483648th-of-an-inch-technology.
imagine ants with PDAs and this nano-gui! fantastic stuff!
Perhaps I am missing something here, but on the second page, it says: "NCEM's One-Ångstrom Microscope (OÅM) has achieved the country's highest resolution-better than 0.8 angstrom" Then, three paragraphs later, they are suddenly locating columns of silicon atoms with 1/100 angstrom precision. Does this imply that there is some mechanical resolution in the microscope at the 1/100 angstrom level? Is this possible?
We'll make great improvements when I can get these electrodes to stay in the brain of the dust mites...
Reading this what-probably-is-a-very-informative article reminds me of the very interesting-looking articles in Scientific American. The first page and about a half of each article is very readable and understandable. Then, all of a sudden, like a Harold LLoyd character (the guy hanging from the way-high-up clock face) stepping from a 3" mudpuddle into a 7' mudpuddle, I find myself so far in over my head so fast that I read another half page before I even realize I have no clue what the fsck I have reading. Like the chicken running around after it has been relieved of its head (another childhood image I will never get out of my head. :P ), I have been reading just because my eyes are still moving. My brain disengaged paragraphs earlier. Whew. I want to be able to understand this sort of stuff in my next life, if there is such a thing... Go, team!
In other news, scientists have discovered the many difficulties of rematerialization as seen in science fiction works such as Star Trek ("Beam me up, Scotti!"). However, they realized the basics of the technology are already applied in our daily activities, ie: when we drive our cars from point A to point B.
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
Did the poster or the editor NOT notice the '2001' in both URL's?
What is wrong with you? Real men don't post that kind of stupidity -- especially not as an AC...
Not all foresee nanotech as something good. Just take a look at this page where some half nutty, half sensible people want to build lifeboats/arks in space so that they can escape from the 'gray goo.'
Look a monkey!
Hey, I think that it's pretty good that Keith Jackson decided to broaden his horizons ....
Great article, but if fails to address the question that on everyone's mind...
Can nanoprobes from a borg drone (specifically 7 of 9) be transmitted during sexual relations as a STD?
Here are my questions about nanotech:
Where do all the obsolete nanites go? Will they be biodegradable, if so at what rate?
How tightly would medical nanites be controlled, sold?
How can we detect nanomachines to protect against potential dangers to ourselves or our nations?
If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?
I realize a lot of these questions are unanswerable, but I'm still curious.
crazy dynamite monkey
I have traveled back from the future to enlighten you, my ancestors, and bring about the new era of technological utopia so that you can save the earth, our home, from it's terrible destruction in the year 4572. It is my hope that by bringing about the new dawn centuries earlier that future generations will be able to avert the great cataclysm
.
Included below is all of the information you'll need
For 15 years, ever since K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation launched the nanocraze, the field has been plagued by sci-fi notions of tiny robotic "molecular assemblers" running around shoving atoms together. But as buckyball pioneer Richard Smalley remarks, molecular assemblers have long existed: "We call them catalysts."
It doesn't surprise me that a physical chemist like Smalley sees what a lot of nanotech enthusiasts seem to forget: there is a branch of science that's dealt with atomic level materials for a long time, and it goes by the name of chemistry. The really interesting element in the new nanotech is that with the range of visualization tools we have, things that were once a kind of black magic (noble metal catalysts) can go from an art to a science and go from being pulled out of the blue to being intelligently designed.
Gray
We need the old ways. We need more churches, more baseball, and more emphasis on mom. The old ways work best. Just look at the stock market. Technology is dead and will never come back. This is reality. OP.
All about control again.... who will control... It seems that the human greed gene still works... egos drive it all ... so sad... really...
mnf@chemical-engineering.com
Hey, when you don't know what it is... .call it a thingermabob.... Check out websters.
Blah...
mnf@chemical-engineering.com
Did anyone catch that little tidbit at the end? Not a device for creating a material, not even a process, but the material itself?
I'm hoping this is just a jurnalistic fuck-up... But I'm having trouble imagining that these guys know how to actually make their new alloy, or have designed some gizmo to create it.
Quick, somebody patent neurons. You'll make a fortune, especially if you can get a "derivative works" clause into the license... everything everyone has ever thought of.
Shoot me now.
Fooz Meister
I was of the understanding that nanotechnology was already in common use in all manner of devices powered by electricity.
I'm sure my PC uses trillions of them. Whenever something goes wrong, a cloud of the little buggers swarm out of it and float around the room. I belive that the nano-devices must be attracted to radioactive materials as well, 'cos they go for my smoke detector every time!
Sorry, I saw you leave and head back here. You know you are not supposed to do this. I'm removing the information from your message (before you write it) and I hope you don't try to repeat this futile effort again.
If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?
Drinking and crying is what worked in the film. (Don't know about the book). It seems easy, as well.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu