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The Nanotech Nose: Towards A Smaller Future
Farrax writes "One of the first steps to nanotechnology, either strong or weak, is the ability to even talk about materials on this scale with precision. Thursday, with the successful test of a nano-tech "nose," that step was achieved: weight fluctuations of 5.5 femtograms were detected on a bar of gold. The dream of nano-technology moves forward: maybe we'll see it by 2020 after all."
unless we use a microscope...
i just can't wait till everything is super dense and super fast. One of the things i'd like to see is how they stabalize stuff like that. stuff so small i'd imagine it can get very weak easy to break. then again it can't build up very much momentum to cause breaking away from something that's holding it.
I need to get my hands on one of these sensors...itl finally prove that we can smell CowboyNeal from across the atlantic.
I hope nanotech doesn't eventuate for at least another century. The regulations to ensure it doesn't get out of control aren't in place and I don't see anyone beginning to care much about this for a long time. Read information here When people are injured by normal technology, they are just injured or killed and the rest of the world moves on. When people will be injured by nanotech, the changes will be small perhaps undetectable even, but could involve controlled changes to things as basic to us as humans as our DNA, the food we eat, and our brain systems Government rewiring of our brains some day? Can't be too far in the future.
RST
... last one to turn to grey goo please turn off the lights.
Or green goo.
Too tired to (attempt to) make any more jokes. Check here and I'm sure you can come up with some of your own.
It's difficult te feel excited, or indeed surprised, by announcements such as this thanks to the unending stream of similar stories. How many articles on nanotechnology have you read in the past year, all showing how it was just around the corner? More than you care to remember, no doubt.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
is Here
magine a world where microscopic biomechanical devices are used to cure diseases, control our computers, and power the vehicles we drive. In this brave new world, minuscule techno-agents would have incredible computational power--power that is completely imperceptible to the human eye. Devices like these could become commonplace over the next fifty years as new innovations in molecular engineering--also known as nanotechnology--may help establish a new molecular age.
I'm not Seth.
Nano-nose sniffs out smallest particles
By Rupert Goodwins
Special to CNET News.com
June 12, 2003, 4:11 PM PT
Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have claimed a new world record for weighing tiny amounts of stuff.
At the U.S. Department of Energy lab, they were able to measure variations in the resonant frequency of tiny gold-coated silicon bars just two microns long and fifty nanometers thick by vibrating them with the heat of a solid-state laser at a speed of about two million times a second.
Those variations reflected any extra weight that was loaded onto the bars--in this case, masses as low as 5.5 femtograms could be detected. A femtogram is a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or roughly the mass of 122 gold atoms.
The experiments are among the latest in the field of nanotechnology, which has captured the imagination of the computing industry. Nanotechnology involves working with materials at the atomic or molecular level, often with the goal of making products out of components measuring 100 nanometers or less. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
By coating the silicon bars with different substances, they can be made to absorb particles of different natures--DNA, proteins, cells or trace amounts of chemical contaminants. This is the basis of an exceptionally sensitive detector for airborne substances: Researcher Panos Datskos expects the technology to be able to detect single molecules in the near future, once the vibration frequency is raised to 50 MHz by fabricating smaller, stiffer bars.
"We can control very precisely the effect of the laser, and not only did we detect this small mass, but we did so under ambient conditions," Datskos told industry publication EE Times. "People can probably do this very easily in a vacuum, but to do it in air and in the presence of friction--because the cantilevers have to displace air to vibrate...friction increases--people have had great difficultly so far trying to achieve that."
Datskos also said that his team was working on a handheld "universal" device that could detect any substance by an array of ten different lengths of sensor. Power consumption would be very low: The most energy-demanding part of the device--the laser--is the same kind as those used to shine in the eyes of fags like you.
I imagined from the moment I heard of nanotech, that we could have devices implanted in ourselves that, when we're in the sun, could bring chlorophyll to the surface of our skins and create food from it. That way we can all use up CO2 from the atmosphere to offset the CO2 emissions of industry, and help industry along all the more!
We get the benefits of industry, with free food, and a way to combat one of the current downfalls of industry!
My other nanotech dream is that nanobots in my body could change me into a lesbian and I could go have hot lesbian sex each night, but I don't mention that one much
Government rewiring of our brains some day? Can't be too far in the future.
It's probably already happened. Best fit your foil helmet V3.1
i wonder if things will eventually reach a point where it's no longer beneficial to get any smaller?
for instance, mobile phones nowadays are a great improvement from a 1-foot long cellphone our grandparents used, but if things get too small for human-beings to use it properly, then we won't use it.
so with all these nano techonologies going on, even if we can build all the components for a mobile phone so small, don't we still need something reasonable sized to use it?
And I'll be a bad slashdotter and not look for them (I'm tired!) but I do believe that a couple years back, a professor in England released a tech timeline that would document the progression of technology for the next century and beyond. He was something like 80% correct in his predictions up till that point, so they sort of carried weight. Anyhow... sure nanotech will be a great thing, but I quiver to think of the applications of this in war... which I believe in that timeline came quickly after the devlopment of the tech. Links, anyone, anyone?
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Can it measure how much I care? Maybe once it can detect one trillionth of a billionth of care..
this is boring, should at least have been about michael jackson's new nanotech nose or something.
to a degree i am sure you are right, traditional robotics have put some people out of work in factories. Increased automation for assembly & production lead to a more service based economy which has generally been bad for blue collar labor... lower pay, worse benefits, low job security. Of course nafta has probably done far more to the manufacturing job base than robotics have.
You have to remember that nanotech is hardly what sci-fi books tell you about though. It won't be like you will be buying a big can of nano workers and kick back at the pool while you watch them swarm and build your house. They will be situational just like a lot of regular automation has been... And open up a number of markets where humans cant do the work, creating jobs in the process.
I thought that was Humpty from Digital Underground...
Those variations reflected any extra weight that was loaded onto the bars--in this case, masses as low as 5.5 femtograms could be detected. A femtogram is a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or roughly the mass of 122 gold atoms.
Or to put it another way... "Extremely Small".
Nancy the Nanobot sez:
P.U. You smell fat.
Maybe it's the fact that I am reading this at 0330 (MST). However, I think a lot of the /.ers commenting on this article are reading into the potential just a little bit too far. People are talking about stuff anywhere from losing their jobs to nanotechnology all the way to robots taking over the world. This article is about a nano-scale being able to weigh ~122 atoms of gold. This article is not talking about a nano-scale that was able sense the weight, then reflect about it in its /. journal or develop a mastermind scheme on how it will take over the world.
/.ers, save your conspiracy theories; they have no weight in comments about being able to measure gold.
And unless this ity-bity scale was merely crafted by engineers and never programmed (thus being able to program itself), then I think the human race has nothing to worry about. That's right,
She can detect weight fluctuations of 2.5 femtograms!
Curious term - considering changes of weight in a gold bar was measured using lasers and the changing vibration of silicon (to condense things badly)
I don't know about anyone else, but when weighing, lasering, or vibrating things... using my nose is one of the last options I'd consider
Maybe it's just me.
nt
From the article about grey goo:
"-- Space itself, an invisible froth of subatomic forces and short-lived particles, might undergo a "phase transition" like water molecules that freeze into ice. Such an event could "rip the fabric of space itself. The boundary of the new-style vacuum would spread like an expanding bubble," devouring Earth and, eventually, the entire universe beyond it."
Greg Egan's latest book, Schild's Ladder is a great story penned from this premise.
Ya gotta love nanotech. It's the only competition where the goal is to exclaim "Mine is smaller than yours!"
make world, not war
I attended a lecture the other day by an expert on nanoscience. One interesting thing he noted is that while nanoscience is making rapid progress, real successes in the field we should call nanotechnology are still far away. We can `see' and `feel' atoms now, but it will take a while before mass-production of molecule-sized devices will be feasible.
Yeah, I was kinda disappointed when it didn't talk about small robots curing my allergies...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Just like the automobile put horse and buggy drivers out of jobs. Just like automation put all those fine craftsmen out of jobs.
For as long as there has been progress, there have been Luddites who whine about people losing jobs because of it - failing to see the forest through the trees. It's so easy to see the horse and buggy driver who can't find work now that Ford is in business. It's a bit harder to understand that the Automobile makes it cheaper for people to commute (and for businesses to locate and operate), freeing up capital which will be used to create entirely new industries.
Same goes for Nanotech, but on a scale that will ultimately make the automobile and every other human advance pale in comparison.
is the removal of the need for all human intervention. Every last job is on the line, it just depends on how far down the line. I think that's partly what is behind the article's mentions of social and ethical change. I suppose they expect that freedom from work as we currently understand it would free us for higher minded things, much like the Grecian philosophers, except that our slaves will be nanobots.
Successful test of a nano-tech "nose"... should be... Towards A Smellier Future
Was I the only person who immediately thought of Michael Jackson?
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
it will become a way to kill people quickly and efficently!!!! just let them loose on a population and they all die in a week!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I am the only one who sees nanotech + stem cells as a way to stop ageing ? If this could be achieved, then I think its worth taking the risks.
You know, atomic bombs could extinct humanity too, but they haven't.
I want to detect small differences in left and right breasts via nano-touch.
You weren't the only one.
Now someone's going to have to invent a nanofart for it.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This goes hand in hand with another nanotech announcement about a year back, where I beleive a group at MIT successfully created a transistor from a couple of atoms.
As we all (should) know, a processor is quite dependent on transistors, so if we can create atomic transistors, can you imagine how many of those little suckers can fit on a 1" square piece of silicon.
Even if this means waiting until 2020, it's worth it. Imagine fitting what today's super computers do, in a PDA.
That's where nanotech benifits many.
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I thought that should be...
The Nanotech Nose: Towards a Smaller Smeller
I remember reading that NASA is funding a space elevator program. www.highliftsystems.com are the guys who are using nano tubes for the cable for the elevator. Also you can read about a report by Dr Edward Bradley for NASA at http://www.niac.usra.edu/studies/ on the space elevator program. Interesting use of ultra strong and light nano tubes.
And night-time crime would go down. It's such a great idea in fact, I'm going to sue everyone for negligence until it's the law and everyone must glow.
from the zdnet article:
:) the tricorder's in star trek. I must say that gene rodenberry was certainly a futurist and visionary. His world slowly is coming to be.
Datskos also said that his team was working on a handheld "universal" device that could detect any substance by an array of ten different lengths of sensor.
now what does that sound like to me?