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BASF Shows Off Some Tantalizing Nanotech
Dan B. writes "The Technology section in The Age today is running a story on the current 'Next Generation' nanotech coming to a store near you from BASF. Interesting read, but I'd like some more info on the 10 hour batteries the size of a cigarette lighter."
This is a serious issue in science and technology alike, and shouldn't be avoided as an issue.
A lot of people don't understand the kind of thinking that goes into the scientific process these days. There are many cases of Physicists, Chemists, Bio-chemists who spend many years testing a single hyposthesis.
Sitting in a lab all day looking at spreadsheets for 5 years will challenge anyone's sanity. Often times these scientists, who are very pressured by the "publish or perish" dogma of academia, are very anxious about thier results. So much so that many of them begin to have fantasies in thier minds about the results...they literally build a play-world in thier minds.
Almost any scientist who's worked on a new theory can attest to this, it's like thinking you're holding the $100Billion lotto ticket in your hand, it's very exciting...you want to believe, the lust for fame, the recognition you always deserved but never recieved, fantasies of being promoted, going to a better university...it sounds like something a very disturbed individual would think...but believe me, it's very very common place.
My point here is this; these scientists who release bad results are not neccesarily "evil" or trying to "dupe" the scientific community. They have simply lost touch with reality...and want thier fantasy world to come true so badly...that they really do believe in the validity of what they publish. So ultimately the "fault" should rest in the rigor of the editors who publish these results. That's where the check and balance between fantasy and science should be.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
If mere words are so harmful to your children, then I fear for their future.
My children have been taught not to fear words or thoughts. I hope they're not too progressive for your world.
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I guess it depends upon the load, eh?
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Imagine never having to polish your shoes again, having glistening white teeth without visiting a dentist, or owning a mobile phone powered by a miniature battery. These are not just idle fantasies, but a reality where small things could make your wildest dreams come true.
wow! this guy's pretty darn wild! I bet for a big night out he turns on the TV and drinks a whole light beer. I mean, c'mon - with all the possibilities for nanotechnology, having self-polishing shoes is the best he could come up with?
it looks that just as with other technologies (www, e-commerce, ...) we're gonna have to wait for the pron industry to break new ground and lead the way ... oh, the possiblities!!! Wait a minute, don't. Eughh!
This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
Who's got the whiteout?
I thought the same thing when I read the article. Prey was a pretty cool book.
This is a bit OT, but does anyone else think Crichton is a shill for some conservative/religious organization? Almost all his books are about how new technology can go catastrophically wrong and kill people in gory, fascinating ways. Jurassic Park (and sequel), The Andromeda Strain, Airframe (to an extent), and now Prey.
I smell conspiracy.
~D:
Hour is not a measure of power. How many amp- hours is this battery capable of? What terminal voltage?
A standard size D Alkaline battery is 17 amp-hours at 1.5 volts. That sounds a lot more impressive than a 10 hour battery, and it's using 30 year old technology.
Jason
ProfQuotes
A battery the size of a cigarette lighter that lasts for 10 hours? I've got those. They're these little sticks with two "A"'s marked on them and they run my GBA for a good 15 hours
Miniature batteries for my mobile phone? Gee I think I've got that too. It lasts about 10 hours. And I can replentish it by using this other magical device on my wall called a socket.
Seriously... fuel cells will need to run a phone for a month at least to be worth it. A laptop better run for a couple weeks. Recharging them isn't a simple matter of plugging them in the wall as it is now... you've got to replace the hydrogen (or other fuel, most people seem focused on hydrogen for some inane reason, even though it's hard to make and doesn't have much energy content).
This article, like many other nanotech articles, is mostly hype and handwaving (and most of these things aren't even what you typically consider nanotech). So who won buzzword bingo? ;-)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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And I gotta agree with someone who posted above. When it comes to nanotechnology, which probably will be a cornerstone on science in years to come, and these are the applications the writer busts a hard on over, god help the man if he ever sees a porno. I mean come on, at least write about something I can't do by myself. I want tiny robots damn it! And flying F'in cars!
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
my aunt is a patent law attorney (and her father was a partner at one of the best patent law firms in the country) and I can recall her talking about BASF one day.
She said that their ads are amusing to her because they "make it better" by paying a lot of money to keep track of new patents that are made by smaller people (not big companies), then steal them and use them to generate money for themselves and other companies that employ them.
They then just absorb the lawsuits and tie them up in the courts until the person or small company fighting them runs out of money.
but that is a lot harder to describe in a catchy way in an ad.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Manufactured products are made from atoms.
No shit, Sherlock...
If I hate something more than a buzzword (remember Blast Processing and the Sega Genesis?), is an article that is just about a buzzword.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
ok...most of us know all of this already. we all know that nano tech can be a great service...longer battery life, clothes that clean themselves, etc...
what they don't mention are the possible negitive effects. it's like atomic power...great benifit, possibly nasty applications. to apply nano tech to consumer goods is one thing, but to use it to make weapons is quite another (on a morality scale). this technology is more highly adaptive than anything else we have seen before.
governments the world over have been toying with nano tech to make weapons that kill more efficently, are more easily hidden, etc. what happens when common street thugs can "make" their own weapons with nano tech? what happens when countries that have firearms bans (uk, australia, others) have people running arround with nanotech weapons that are small and more leathal than the standard lead slug fired by a gun today? how do you track things like this? what happens when the government/corperation/etc decides to make a nanotech listening device out of the paint in your home?
this is a tech that is to be truly feared and respected. remember...technology is only as good as those who use it.
-frozen
I'm not always the brightest pixel in the stream
These outrageous claims remind me of the old AT&T commercials:
... ... ...
"Ever had a robot that did all your household chores, cooked your meals, ran your errands, and looked like it came from http://www.realdoll.com?...
No?
You will!
And the company that will bring it to you is AT&T."
Of course, nothing they promised ever got delivered, and certainly not by AT&T.
-Michael
Threshold RPG
Here's the link to the article on the BASF website.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
I'm still waiting for my mediatronic chopsticks.
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
This is a recap of press releases issued from 1999-2002. Seriously! They're even ordered chronologically in the thesis paragraph. I realize this because I've been keeping a local archive of every mnt-related press release that I've come across since 1998.
It's a well-written piece, a good article for the site it's on, and I wouldn't think it out of place in "USA Today" or "Popular Science," but why does a pointer to it belong on Slashdot? The newest piece of information in the article is about the "lotus effect cling", which was 'news' in 2001!
No conspiracy necessary. If you look around, you'll notice that market-driven media entities are constantly fearmongering. And they love this president, because his popularity too is positively correlated with popular fears. Boogymen abound. The end result is going to be (already is getting) ugly.
Why are handguns (for personal protection, obviously) so popular in America? Too many people watching their local evening news. We're a bunch of irrational sissies.
Bill Joy warned about. BASF makes a lot of the killer nanotech Bill Joy warned about better.
"But I do know that I can't stand the 'Crichton formula'."
Sphere and The Terminal Man can be summed up the same way as your examples. You forgot to mention "ten-page dissertations on aformentioned promising technology, placed in the middle of the story" in your list of cliches.
Airframe and Eaters of the Dead didn't follow his normal methods. I don't think EotD sold very well (for Crichton), although Airframe was a moderate success (and wasn't it supposed to be made into a movie? Or did I miss it?)
~D:
The general reason my shoes look crusty is from scuffing NOT dirt.
The wax coating for the "Lotus-Effekt" (from the BASF Article, 9 paragraphs down, under the heading "Nanotechnology means learning from nature") will still be susceptible to this.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Ah...but you forget it's not just for shoes...it's for jackets, !paper!, construction materials...do you have any idea whatsoever how much cleaning stuff (like buildings) costs? Or what about applying it to bridges, over the paint coat: goodbye dirt-errosion. Or what about those mirrored skyscrapers?
But, geek that I am, I'm really waiting for that tooth whitening stuff to come out.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Recharging them isn't a simple matter of plugging them in the wall as it is now... you've got to replace the hydrogen (or other fuel, most people seem focused on hydrogen for some inane reason, even though it's hard to make and doesn't have much energy content).
;-)
True. "Recharging" a fuel cell will not just involve plugging them into the wall (unless someone makes a *MAJOR* breakthrough in both electrolysis techniques and hydrogen storage).
Most likely, it would work more like a cross between "normal" batteries, and the sort of propane tanks people use for BBQ grills. You would buy a 6-pack of methanol cartridges, roughly the size and shape of an AA battery (as a hypothetical example, of course... I have no more knowledge of future fuel-cell-form-factors than anyone else ). You'd pop them into your electricity-consuming device, just like normal batteries. The actual functional bits of the fuel cell would form a part of the electricity consuming device (or some sort of hip-pack to support legacy devices until everything takes the standard size fuel cell cartridges), and it would simply "drink" from the cartridges you plug in.
When you have a pile of empty cartridges, you'd take them back to the store for a rebate, a lot like recycling an aluminum can. Except, to reuse them, we wouldn't need to melt them down and make a whole new fuel cell, we'd simply refill them. The stores themselves might have some means of doing this, or they might just send them on to some sort of regional refilling center, but the whole process would (could, anyway) involve very little waste.
Of course, I only describe the *SENSIBLE* way to do it. More likely we'd actually build the entire functional fuel cell as a single encapsulated unit, complete with fuel *and* nasty chemistry for the catalyst; ship them across country both ways in a hideously polluting diesel 18-wheeler; and we'd make them out of a plastic that for reasons no one understands, we can't reuse, so they go to the landfill and we waste even *more* petroleum making more plastic.
But hey, what do I know. I need to stop acting so optimistic all the time.
After WWII, most of the assets of the IG were transferred to Agfa, Hoechst, Bayer, and of course BASF. If I recall correctly though, the IG is actually going to be dissolved some time in 2003, though I am not sure when. Anyone know when this is scheduled to happen?
I'm definitely looking forward to some of the products that BASF is developing, especially the hydrogen gas battery. That is going to nice if/when it ever reaches the masses.
At the last Foresight Conference Eric Drexler expressed his frustration at the amount of hype and effort going into research and development on this psuedo nanotechnology. Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and getting "nano" into their products.
Real nanotechnology, often called molecular nanotechnology, consists of actual manipulation of atoms into molecules and structures with useful properties, and will make most of the current claims of nano products look extremely weak. But no-one knows exactly how to do it just yet!
Lots of progress is being made on the research front, and they will get there, but anyone who tells you they have nanotechnology products available now or in the near future are talking about the weak versions of nanotechnology that have been around for thousands of years. See here for a better description of the distinction between weak and strong nanotechnology.
So are almost all of James Cameron's movies.
Fear of the unknown is a strong literary theme, it's not surprising at all that people in the 20th and 21st centuries eat it up.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
fruit juices get their rainbow of colours from tiny particles that dissolve in liquid and disappear without a trace.
Yes, it's called "Kool-Aid powder"...
My children have been taught not to fear words or thoughts. I hope they're not too progressive for your world.
I don't mean to be a troll, but that statement makes you seem like the kind of person that gets an ego trip from raising kids the right way.
IMHO, most children aren't able to fully grasp all ideas and words. The simple truth is that most kids won't be able to understand consenting sexual agression the first time they encounter it on the Internet. The original poster had a valid point. Just because you're obviously super intelligent and a great parent, doesn't mean everyone else can be as perfect.
The imaginary "molecular nanotechnology" is like having a fully automatic 3-axis CNC mill, while the current "nanotech" is like a blacksmith hammering away. Its all a matter of sophistication.