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The World's Smallest Car
starexplorer writes "Start your Nano-engines? LiveScience.com is reporting that researchers at Rice University have designed the world's smallest car that is no more than 4 nanometers across. It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The wheels are buckyballs. Why do it? The team wants to build a fleet of nanotrucks to carry atoms and molecules around minature factories." So it's not exactly self-powered, but it rolls. It's a start!
Sorry I'm late coming home, honey. I lost the car again.
And yet it still holds 10 clowns! Go figure.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
is this a perfect solution for men that have really large reproductive organs?
So how does this redefine the phrase COMPACT CAR?
Ignore Alien Orders
Can anyone else admit they feel humbled when they read things like this?
for the small people that helped make such a thing possible
Speaking of rice, where can you get Type-R stickers and spinning rims that small?
...making a really small Midas muffler shop.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
How many microns/nanogram does it get?
Burn Hollywood Burn
Till they add an SUV to the lineup.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Could this be used to make materials that have significantly less friction going in one direction and more going the other. The possibilities are endless. Like Bar tables that when drinks are shifted across it can move around corners. and stop right at the customer. Cool
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I can see the science team going to the board of directors:
BoD: What's the problem?
Scientists: Well, we need to be able to move atoms and molecules around in precise ways.
BoD: How can we help?
Scientists: We need some funding to build little, tiny trucks to carry them around in.
[long pause]
BoD: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No really guys, what did you need?
You know, there's a word for a vehicle that doesn't have an engine, or a bed, and is smaller than a car.
It's called a wagon.
Doesn't sound as cool, does it? But that's what it is, isn't it?
Rechargable nanomotors that don't break - that's what we need for this kind of thing. Its the holy grail for nanotech right now.
If you don't avoid all references to objects that move under their own power (and you're talking about nanotech), then you're sensationalizing the news. Its like saying "Fusion done in cold!" when you mean that someone built a fusion laser system in Anarctica. Obviously cold means something specific when its that close to the word "Fusion."
Keep up the sensationalism, and you can't get the point across when you come across something that's actually fantastic.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Pimp my nano car.
Here's a pic:
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I hope they don't make the same mistake Ford made, and only offer it in black.
-AC
With less cookies and better pictures at Nanotechnology Now
What is a nano-toxin? How does it differ from a toxin? In what way does the creation of a small macromolecule in the shape of a car contribute to toxicity?
This is phobia and panic, started in the realm of GE food, and spreading, through ignorance, into the world of nanotech. Nanotech is ill defined, and literally means anything over the nano-scale. Scaremongers try to use new scary words (hence their profession), like nano-toxin, and site that nanoparticles are in things like sunscreen, aerosols...etc. Of course they are, for without TiO4 in sunscreen, it wouldn't block ultraviolet rays, and it wouldn't work. I fail to see the difference between a nano-toxin and a toxin, but regardless of what I fail to see, this kind of irrational skepticism and 'but it could be NANO-toxic!' are unhelpful, and only serve to further the divide between scientists and society. Likewise, scientists dismissing the concerns of the public also furthers this divide.
Inform yourself, ask questions of the scientists, but don't say sarcastic unhelpful things like 'it's perfect for producing nano-toxins', without explaining how this might occur.
M.
The obligatory joke to make here would be that if they think they've made this truck small, wait 'til they see what happens when the Japanese get their hands on it.
Or maybe, because the researchers are in Texas, I could suggest that they are now embarking on a program to make the biggest nano-car in the 50 states. Or that maybe they didn't insist on sticking a pickup bed on the back. Or "wow, have we discovered the only Texans who are secure about their penis size?"
But I'm not going to make any of those jokes. I'm not even going to make any potentially +1 insightful comments about how the real-world applications of this in terms of actual trucks in little tiny factories are clearly pretty silly from where I'm sitting, because things work totally differently on the nano scale, and that's just clearly grasping at some sort of relevance (though obviously, the construction methods are important).
Know why I'm not going to make any of those comments? Because I just don't care anymore. I try so hard to be interested sometimes, studying toward a Ph. D in physics and engaging in interesting slashdot debate day after day, and sometimes I sit here and realize that I don't really care about any of it. I want to go outside. I hate this damn computer, this damn internet, all you moderators, and myself for posting here seeking approval for these stupid, inane remarks and pseudointellectual commentary I barf up, seeing it moderated to +5 by people who don't know any better. Deliver me from this, merciful God. My soul is devoid of humor, and my life is an empty, broken shell.
Anyone want to go out for a drink?
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
It is so typical that when developing the industrial nano-cities of the future they chose to develop nano-cars instead of a sensible atomic mass transit system. If this policy continues the consumption of nano-gas will raise nano-oil prices so high that soon we will have to invade nano-arabia. I for one will continue to endorse nano-carpooling and the use of nano-bikes whenever possible,
I'm too lazy to google for it, but there's a company selling a nanomotor coated window glass for office buildings. You can buy it today.
The idea is that the tiny motors rotate when powered by the sun. When the glass is dirty (spots from the rain, mineral deposits, bird "deposits", spider webs, etc.,) in a few hours the rotation will sweep the dirt from the glass. It's supposed to pay for itself by avoiding window-cleanings, especially on high-rise buildings.
And I believe someone is using something similar to make a nanotech-based fog-free snowmobile visor. If you've ever ridden a snowmobile for more than a few hundred yards, you're probably familiar with the fogging problem. The first guy to market with this will have a solid lock on a big pile of money.
And let's not forget our old buddy, DLP. While it's not technically "nanotech", it's still "microtech."
What I think is neatest about the glass treatments is that they have nothing to do with computers or even technology! Some creative person just came up with a damn clever idea. There will undoubtedly be more.
John
Bah, that's nothing. Wake me up when they make a little blue dune buggy.