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Rice Contracted to Provide NASA's Quantum Wire
geekman writes "NASA is paying Rice University $11 million to build a prototype quantum wire that can conduct electricity 10 times better than traditional copper cables at one-sixth the weight. Rice has four years to build a one-meter-long quantum wire, which will be made out of carbon nanotubes. Seems like a lot of money for a little wire, but then again, all the rocket scientists at Los Alamos have only ever been able to put together a four-centimeter nanotube."
Is that they never seem to be where you left them. Although on a good day you'll end up with more than you started with depending on what universe you're in.
Seems like a lot of money for a little wire,
;^)
Yeah, but it's still cheaper than Monster Cable.
How long until some eccentric billionaire pays Rice to wire his entire house with that stuff?
"My house is iced out with quantam wiring, biatch. Or something. Bling bling."
Condi Rice can build anything, she is one of the jewels in Bush's hat.
Don't tell me you didn't misread the title at first either!
carbon nanotubes...that's awfully similar to the Inanimate Carbon Rod.
They're nuclear scientists, not rocket scientists, dammit. Give'em a break!
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Sure, but most universities won't have the experience to do it. Smalley won the Nobel Prize for his work with buckyballs (carbon-60, buckminsterfullerene, fullerene); carbon nanotubes are rods with essentially the same structure as buckyballs (the capped ends are two halves of a fullerene, iirc). Rice is obviously a leading pioneer in the field, nanotubes are Rice's specialty, and there's no reason to have a bounty when you have a Nobel Prize winner working on it.
Yes, they are.
A metallic carbon nanotube carries 4 quanta of current (4 charge carriers at a time): 2 conducting channels, 2 spins per channel. That's what NASA is referring to as a quantum wire.
Most of the resistance in such a wire is due to the fact that only a very few number of charge carriers can be transmitted at any time. The electrons going through the wire do not lose any energy in the wire, as there are no available lower energy states for them scatter into, and only two possible directions of motion (foward and backward). Thus, a perfect nanotube can be thought of as a "ballistic" conductor. There is some resistance to putting current into it and getting it back out, but in between, there is no resistance in the normal sense. (Although this sounds a little like superconductivity, it is definitely not.)
In a real nanotube, there are defects, contact resistances, impurities and environmental factors which act as transmission barriers, raising the probablility that an injected electron will reflect back to the source and not make it all the way through. It will be interesting to see how the Rice guys plan on annealing or growing their meter long wire to maintain the desired properties (and that's where the money comes in). Simply weaving a bunch of small nanotubes together is not going to cut it.
Carbon nanotubules, when properly, manufactured could also have very high tensile strength. Many times stronger than stranded steel cable and weighing less as well. This is the technology people what it use to build the space elevator.
Of course, after proof of concept there are still many challenges to cost effective manufacturing.
There are a dozen revolutionary uses for super wires. But first we need a proof of concept. FYI - I'm looking for a job at a well-funded nanotech startup. Many qualificiations, inquire within!
Any money for this would come from the government through the grant writing process. The number of labs who have a C-60 reactor, and have good control over it, are still reletively small. Not to mention the ability to characterize and sort.
This is not like, say, the space plane, in which most technology is 5-10 years old and all that was required was a bit of money for engineering. These are molecules that really do not yet exist in huge quanities, and putting them together is not well understood. Hell, even the theory of how they conduct electricity is younger that superconductors, and just see how many of those we have around.
Rice and NASA have a very good working relationship. Rice has some of the best people to deal this type of Nanotechnology, plus enough other funding to leverage this small amount of money into a working product.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Hell, even the theory of how they conduct electricity is younger that superconductors, and just see how many of those we have around.
As an aside, superconductivity is now very well understood. It's just that the race for a room-temperature superconductor has stalled out. In those fields where they can afford to keep the superconductors below critical temperature (e.g. NMR/MRI machines), superconductors are very widely used.
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