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Moving Water Molecules By Light
Roland Piquepaille writes "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) has discovered a new nanotechnology effect, the ability of moving water molecules by light. This is a far better way than current methods such as damaging electric fields and opens the way to a new class of microfluidic devices used in analytical chemistry and for pharmaceutical research. For example, this makes possible to design a device that can move drugs dissolved in water, or droplets of water and samples that need to be tested for environmental or biochemical analyses. Please read this overview for more details and references, plus an image of two water drops illuminated with a fluorescent dye and sitting respectively on a nanowire surface and on a flat surface."
The problem of this is that;
1. It will eventually get discovered. Could we have ignored radar/gunpowder/pointy sticks inventions for this long?
2. No matter how long you think of something or plan something out, there will be someone who comes up with a flaw in your plans. Think bugs in software or man tampering with nature.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
>However, your first point sounds eerily fallacious to me. "It will eventually get discovered"
The atomic race was based entirely on this. Who will get the bomb first? Those in charge on either side did not have the luxury of sitting back and saying "Maybe we shouldn't" because the other side might succeed before them.
Look at today and how many countries can produce the bomb. Most of them got the know-how independently from each other. And the US is running around trying to control it from getting out of hand.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I'll second that motion. The sheer quantity of Piquepaille articles is astounding - something like 1 every 2-3 days (does he give kickbacks to the /. eds?). And as you say, every single one includes links to his blog. At least Google has the courtesy to place the ads in a separate screen location, instead of embedding them directly in their "product".
That does seem to be the more pressing problem.
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