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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."
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 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
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))))
You're forgetting that it's a lot easier to put a small thing *INTO* a larger container, rather than trying to squeeze something big into a smaller space.
It's true that you'll never see a standard cell phone the size of a postage stamp, but if you can make a single chip with all the functionality of a cell phone, you can then build it into any form factor you choose -- why not build an entire phone INSIDE an ear bud (Uhura-style)? Suddenly you no longer need to have any big bulky parts extending all the way to your mouth.
And if all the functionality of a cell phone fits into something the size of your fingernail, that makes it easier to incorporate it into a more complex device, like a PDA or wristwatch or whatever.
Functionally, the latest-and-greatest Ford Compensator is no different than a Geo Miniscule with a lot of empty space added to it.
Similarly, there's nothing stopping you from integrating a PDA-on-a-chip into a 17" tablet format to get a considerable savings in power consumption, etc.
Just because it's small doesn't mean it can't still be used effectively.[*]
* - "At least that's what I tell my girlfriend..." Ba-da-BING!
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.