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."

Comments

Firm grasp of the obvious

[Bearpaw]

"If we are going to achieve real nanotechnology, we are going to have to learn how to put atoms together one at a time." (Miquel Salmeron)

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.

Re:Firm grasp of the obvious

[iabervon]

That's not entirely true; the ideal way to do nanotechnology might be to probabilistically arrange groups of atoms into a limited set of arrangements and filter out the undesired ones.

For some applications, you probably actually do want to build your structures exactly and atom-by-atom. But other applications are best suited to a set of catalysts that will construct a random variant of the structure, so long as it has the property you want, or which will only sometimes construct the right thing, but everything else will be destroyed by another catalyst. For that matter, the most successful method has been to put together reasonably large molecules which are built separately.

For that matter, depending on what you're making, you may be perfectly happy with a couple of the desired molecules and a lot of innocuous failures. The failures then are basically packing material (you're not going to deliver someone a single molecule; you're going to deliver a manageable volume of uninteresting solution with an interesting molecule in it).

Great, tinier junk!

[decipher_saint]

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.

Re:Great, tinier junk!

[BloodSprite]

Where do all the obsolete nanites go?
Obsolete nanites will be dust and picked up by a vacuum cleaner. it will biodegrade at the same rate as dust.

How tightly would medical nanites be controlled, sold?
tightly .. think beter copy protection then the Entertainment industry currently wants(At least I hope so)

How can we detect nanomachines to protect against potential dangers to ourselves or our nations?
only with a bath of police nanomachines could any object be declaired free of renegade nanomachines.

If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?
with other nanomachines.

Also The following limitations will be inharently part of any nanomachine:
1) It will need a energy source. And if we are smart it will be something we can turn off. (ie radio powered)
2) It will need to be remote controlled (the processing needed to do anything would take up more space then the nano scale provides with ease). And if we are smart this will be encrypted to hell and the nanomachine does not do anything without a command.

things we can regulate to be done:
3) Limit number of generations. A human cell can only devide around 60 times up from a one celled egg, this is the mechanizim that prevents cancer.
4) Require Trace compounds to turned new machine on and other common compunds to turn it off. 5) require other trace compounds to allow new nanomachine to be made.
6) limit all nanomachines to only function in a medium other then air. liquides such as specificly your blood or some industrial soup.

Re:the slippery slope of scientific serials.

[fermion]

The things is, reading a scientific paper, even a simple one, is not like reading a novel, a popular magazine, or a newspaper. For one thing, the audience for a science paper is generally considered to be educated, while the audience for other popular media is considered to be less educated, perhaps able to comprehend at an early high school level. Also, the vocabulary used tends to be obscure. This is necessary to allow precise speech. IN addition, science writers sometimes are writers second, which can also cause probles.

It is possible to slowly get used to reading science, at least in the popular medium such as Scientific American, if not Nature. I remember reading Discover in Jr. High School because I could not understand SA. In time, I was able to read SA. I think I was frustrated because it was so hard to understand, and I was not able to quickly skim the text as I would for other magazines. Even now I have trouble understanding some of the biological science articles.

So don't worry if comprehension is not what you expect. Look up words if you cannot glean at least some meaning from context. Reading is a skill, and is not neccesarily transferable between genre.