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Nanotube Applications Grow And Grow
HobbySpacer writes "Carbon nanotubes are starting to transition from interesting laboratory curiosities into interesting technological applications. These apps include non-volatile RAM, flat screen displays, high strength fabrics, and smart skin for structures in aerospace and elsewhere. Perhaps if The Graduate was being made today, the one word for Benjamin Braddock's future would not be "plastics" but "nanotubes"."
What happens when someone starts to create viruses with these Nanotubes ? It'll be a brave new world then :-P
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SciAm has run several articles on nanotubes over the years, several are indexed here, along with more general nanotech articles:
http://www.sciam.com/nanotech_directory.cfm
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Space elevator.
Variable sword.
Shadow-square wire.
Don't write these off as goofy SF ideas. These are well-thought-out designs with only one "If Only". When the final engineering solution for the "if only" part of the design appears (and it will), the prediction is realized.
Ever heard of geostationary satellites?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I notice similaraties with Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age'... You say Carbon Nanotube based memory chip... He calls it rod logic, but it's clearly the same thing
Just wait until we get some vacuum-filled buckyballs and some useful nano-power sourde.
The diamond age is about to begin.
Another potential use for nanotubes are the traces on semiconductors:
I've seen a presentation from Infineon about using carbon nanotubes instead of copper for the vias in copper - time frame for production 3-5 years.
http://www.eurosime.com/bgnd.htm#es03
Exactly! I wish someone would explain that to Tolkien, or perhaps Peter Jackson too! I don't care how hard mithril is, if it's flexible and light enough to wear hidden under your clothes then it's flexible and light enough to be forced (without tearing either) into a gaping hole in your chest when an 18 foot cave troll skewers you full force with a spear. You can't tell me there was enough impact absorbancy in Frodo's shirt to dissipate the energy from that impact enough so as to prevent chronic pierced lung syndrome.
Am I still on topic? Ummm... "Mithril Nanotubes". (There that should fix it.)
BEEP wrong. The plates are only to reinforce target areas, like the heart.
The kevlar itself absorbs the kinetic energy of the bullet. When you fire the bullet into the vest, the layers rub against each other and tear, dissapating the energy in the form of heat.
And, they have come a long way with regular bullet proof vests. They now weight as little as 1 lb.
It seems Nantero has taken a "hint" from IBM by trying to beat them to the punch.
Wired had an article in April of 2000 on a technology called MRAM being developed by Stuart Parkin at IBM. Very interesting stuff, and they had working prototypes before this Nantero thing. From what I can tell, Nantero probably read the same article I did, as the similarities are quite remarkable.
Check it out: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/mram.html
How would the bullet drag the cloth into the hole without the cloth tearing somewhere? The projectile would have to either pierce the fabric or cause it to tear somewhere for your scenario to be realized. If this cloth is just as resistant to tearing as it is to piercing, then it would work fine. Not to say that you still wouldn't have one mother of a bruise, though.
Do not read this sig.
There's an article on the Register outlining the UK Governments proposed investment of £90m (GBP) in nanotechnology over the next six years here. With links to the announcement on the Government News Network. A very little too late perhaps.
http://www.colossalstorage.net/eloy_3c.gif
ferroelectric nanotubes
> WTF are you on mate? Nanotubes are made of carbon, not of metal
:)
I believe what he is referring to, quoted from the link he posted in that same comment:
"We have shown that there are ways of making single-walled nanotubes without the use of metals," Avouris said.
(Check the link, 2nd non-bold paragraph down)
Also, compare your reply (of carbon, not of metal)
It appears you just made that up.
The parents post says:
"And as far as commercial entities go, don't forget IBM's find back in September of 2002, which was making nanotubes with carbon instead of metal."
With.. Not of.. With metal.
The parent posters argument was correct.
Your 'correction' was flawed, even if correct.
Hopefully the moderators wont be as hard on you for being wrong as you were on the parent poster even though he was not wrong at all
Just on a side note, polyethylene is a fairly common material used in fibres to reinforce concrete, especially when the wieght of rebar isn't wanted.
The very point of chainmail - even your average real kind - is to transform piercing/slashing damage into like bludgeoning damage. Without a really incredible amount of force, the spear would never pierce chainmail (not counting the pinning to the wall) and minimally cut the skin.
The real fiction, however, is how Frodo manages to remain unharmed. The spear wouldn't pierce the flesh, but you're right in that the force wouldn't be dissipated. It would have probably broken every bone in his chest.
Despite not actually stopping blows, chainmail was still a very good piece of armor. A broken arm is better than a severed one, and with deaths from disease so high in that era, you wanted to prevent all the exposed insides you could. Stopped arrows pretty well, too.
Excellent read - although I have now decided to freeze myself for thawing in about 200 years.
What happens when the technology for laying the nanotubes onto substrates becomes so good that we
p yramidcity/interactive/interactive.html
are able to build car frames or house frames from it(think 3D substrates of nanotubes) ?
Automobile frames will probably be made of carbon fiber in the next few years, I think that will be "good enough". Check Discovery channel's "Extreme Engineering" for how nanotubes could really be used, on that gigantic pyramid thing.
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/
(Score:-1, Wrong)
Maybe it's a piezo-electric device, stiffening through means of generating electricity upon kinetic stimulus. There are tennis rackets (look down a bit, under the heading "Power Surge") that do this. Of course, it would have to be pretty damn efficient in this particular case, but the elves and dwarves might know something we don't.
*duck*
#o#
O Moo.
Remember the old slashdot story that said that carbon nanotubes could absorb UV incredably efficiently (so much so that a camera flash would cause single-walled nanotubes to overheat and combust)? I am wondering why we aren't hearing about super efficient solar cells based on carbon nanotubes. ~90% efficiency would be pretty darn kool! :P The only problem I can think of is that they are still hard/expensive to make, but you would think that some people would be experimenting with this anyway.
The standard army issue vest of the Bosnia era had no "impact absorbing plates".
Granted, they weren't meant to stop rifle bullets, but they were reasonably light and flexible.
The ceramic plates for the 'Special forces' vests didn't weigh very much either.
I think the point is that this new material could make a better vest, not a perfect one.
Standard issue vest + nanotube outer layer = rifle stopping, standard issue vest for the masses.
Current offensive frag grenades use a winding of fine brittle wire to make the fragments. On hard ground these tiny staple like projectiles can shred a man three meters away and wound him at ten.
What would a grenade made with a carbon nanotube casing with roving which would shatter into billions of tiny X-ray invisible fragments do? and would the carbon fragments even raise an immune response from the body? or would they be allowed to sit there with no symptoms until they moved one day years later to puncture an artery?