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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."
Water molecules could move light, so it was only a matter of time to reverse the process
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
what's wrong with water hoses?
It probably wouldn't be that practical, but it could be effective to dehydrate certain parts of someone's body by moving the water around inside. Maybe the military could find use for that.
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Would this mark the first step into the evolution of hydrocomputing, just light and water in miniature pipes, feasable to use under water or in environments with a high risk of explosion ?
Would this make any sense to have?
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
I ,for one, welcome this floorless-elevator technology.
wait... welcome? I--*
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
please visit his adverts he means, not an overview that he has cut and pasted with zero added insight
as he would say with his boilerplate article submission template
you can find more details in this overview of Roland Piquepaille's spamming activities here
If the mathematics gets too hard, try a simpler physical model. Use your imagination!
Nothing is impossible, if you can imagine it!
back in my day we moved our water molecules by hand. Both ways, UP HILL! You kids and your newfangled technology. What ever happened to old fashioned elbow grease?
Joking aside, it seems this actually does have some practical uses such as reducing the time and resources required performing tests during drug development.
water displacement by feces?
You kids and your newfangled technologies....
Einstein agonized over the ramifications of his research into the atom far too late. We can already see the writing on the wall with nanotech -- perhaps it should be considered that the threat is greater than the promise?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
If you add a bunch of nanofibers to a wax coated surface, the water will "ball up" and move around more easily. If you make the nanofibers sensitive to light, you can control the speed with which the water moves over the surface by changing the light level.
I have to ask myself why. We can already move liquids quite simplely and from the sounds of it, this will use huge amounts of energy just to get the light to that state.
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... you assume a "horse" is a "sphere" to make the math easier.
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I am so frightened (and by frightened I mean extremely excited) at how fast we are evolving technologically, I can't even get a vague picture of where we'll be 5 years from now let alone 50.
I'd really like to hear some practical non-research based applications for this technology if any knowledgeable person might be able to help out. One of the first things I thought of was that this might be useful for creating cybernetics, since light is a lot less harmful than electricity, and I'm guessing that cybernetics of the future will involve some sort of liquid transfer on a nano scale.
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You know what, this could make for a good water cooler for your cpu. Instead of having a noisy pump, you could just shine a fancy light down your water tubes.
"Now for the small price of $999.00 you too can part the Red Sea."
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Looks like you didn't RTFA.
It's about changing the hydrophobic/hydrophilic (water repellent/attractive) properties of a _special_ surface using light. This doesn't work on just any surface.
I dare say the military would prefer to dehydrate parts of your body by vapourizing bits of it e.g. zap you directly with a powerful beam of light. Or ionizing air between a thundercloud and you so that a lightning bolt zaps you ( that's to make it look like an "Act of God").
Ummm... maybe someone should tell them that light consists of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. :)
Just imagine moving a particular protein or DNA promoter or enzyme, which will be programed to implement certain procedures, into certain place in situ. And perhaps one day this tech can be used in the repairing of a effete cell...
They just moved a few molecules of water with light? My girlfriend's dad once got me moving a lot faster and further by turning on the lights.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Cool - laser pinball!
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I guess you wont be raising the speed of light in then
Hemos seems to usually be the culprit posting the Piquepaille stories. I don't mind if Hemos wants to post stories submitted by this guy (though often even the submissions are inaccurate summaries of the original articles), but it would be appropriate to edit out his links to poorly written, uninformative summaries that he posts on his blog before posting the story. I don't mind somebody occasionally using a Slashdot submission to let the community know about some new product they or their company has developed or interesting article or book they've written, but this blatant traffic farming is way over the top.
Please elaborate on the 'goo problem'. Ie, with explicit details on how it would work, not just some qualitative description, which is all that anybody seems to have at the moment.
So somebody said that maybe all life COULD be devoured by a properly-designed nanotech robot that would reproduce quickly and break up organic matter into component monomers, etc etc etc.
I'll say a self-aware self-replicating AI program COULD be created that would spread through the net independent of host operating system, and crash all airplanes, screw up everybody's bank accounts, erase all data, etc etc etc.
Similarly, a 'battlebot' with enough memory COULD somehow be programmed properly that it also attains self-awareness intelligence, reproduces and builds an army of subservient battlebots, and wreaks havoc across the planet.
So, if you are trying to claim we should stop research into nanotechnology, then we should also stop research into computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.
There is NO field where there isn't any risk that something bad could happen. Nanotech is the 'new' field, so this is where the fear-mongering comes in. You're not alone, look at comics, for instance. Most old-school Marvel superheroes got their superpowers, for better or worse, through radioactive effects, back in the fearful decades after the atom bomb. Nowadays the current fear is nanotech, and even the first Spiderman movie changed the story from a radioactive spider to a genetically-modified spider. You're doing the same thing, really.
I work with nanotech. Just 30 minutes ago I was putting carbon nanotubes onto a substrate, and I'll eventually do some electronic transport measurements. Currently I'm scanning the substrate with an atomic-force microscope. There are TONS of amazing uses that nanotubes might have, so we're studying many of their properties. Why is my study of carbon nanotubes different from somebody determining which binary tree search algorithms are most efficient, or what shape sawblade cuts through plastic the best?
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This technology has implications for cancer research. If we can see how molecules can be moved by light, it will only be a matter of time before we see how it causes them to mutate and become cancerous.
As the body is mostly water could we use this as some weird transportation device ? Would it just move the water and leave the non-water bits behind - could be amusing to watch if it was done on someone you don't like. Instant dick-head, just add water !
Art Makers Just an excuse to show photos of naked women !!
This might be an interesting story. Unfortunately I stopped reading the minute I noticed the submitter thinks this method of moving water might be better than "currnet methods such as damaging electric fields." Is the submitter serious? Here's a free clue Mr. Piqupaille: LIGHT IS AN ELECTRIC FIELD. Another thing: did I miss something with electric fields being "damaging" somewhere? I wonder where this guy is getting his information from.
I happen to know that Piquepaille is just a karmawhore whose aim is to make money for anti-slash with his ad-links.
Devious, isn't it?
Light is not an electric field, it is a propagating electromagnetic wave particle duality.
To address your other point, electric fields can be very damaging when they are sufficiently high intensity. Also, electromagnetic fields can be damaging too.
Not damaging to the water molecules, which are robust, but damaging to the materials disolved or suspended in the water, which may be delicate bio-active organic molecules. For example, there are various cell sorting systems that currently use electric fields. They might better use a system like this.
However, light can be damaging in its own right. Red and infrared light can be heating. Violet and UV light can be energetic and penetrating (think sunburn radiation damage).
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This technology has implications for cancer research. If we can see how molecules can be moved by light, it will only be a matter of time before we see how it causes them to mutate and become cancerous.
And about 30 seconds more for some huckster in Florida to make fantastic claims for it!
I wasn't aware that water molecules could mutate and become cancerous, by the way. (Of course we know that Di-Hydrogen Mon-Oxide *is* dangerous.)
The article does not describe Optical tweezers.. but I just wanted to note that Optical Tweezers are cool, and you can move nano particles around in cells and solutions with light using this device. We used them to measure the binding force of cell surface receptors.
(Receptors are springs... horse is sphere)
So somebody said that maybe all life COULD be devoured by a properly-designed nanotech robot that would reproduce quickly and break up organic matter into component monomers, etc etc etc.
I keep reading about the grey goo, and I've yet to see an argument that it is possible from someone who demonstrates an understanding of the complex tradeoffs that limit our currently existing biological self-replicating machines. Problems like:
1: Oxygen is both a nutrient, and a poison.
2: The lack of a universal catalyst. A machine that catalyzes the transformation of one amino acid will be less than optimal for catalyzing a different amino acid.
3: Energy and trace elements severely limit growth at a microscopic level.
That does seem to be the more pressing problem.
This is my sig.
The novel effect here acutally has nothing to do with light. The 'breakthrough' is in the use of a specially formulated surfaced nano-wire that repels water better. This wire thus has a lower hysteresis, allowing the strenth of a beam of light to move a water droplet.
A better articel title may have been "New nanotech surface allows light to manipulate water"
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-shpoffo
Hi, Roland!