The World's Longest Carbon Nanotube

Roland Piquepaille writes "As you probably know, carbon nanotubes have very interesting mechanical, electrical and optical properties. The problem, currently, is that they're too small (relatively speaking) to be of much use. Now, researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have developed a process to build extremely long aligned carbon nanotube arrays. They've been able to produce 18-mm-long carbon nanotubes which might be spun into nanofibers. Such electrically conductive fibers could one day replace copper wires. The researchers say their nanofibers could be used for applications such as nanomedicine, aerospace and electronics."

Comments

Carbon fibre

[TapeCutter]

Apart from more tubes for the interwebs, I would imagine that 18mm is also long enough to make carbon fibre products that are lighter and stronger than what is currently available. I wonder if an America's Cup or F1 winner will one day be built from nanotubes?

Re:Wow

[Reality Master 101]

Ted Stevens actually being prophetic, rather than just wrong.

You know, Stevens gets a totally bad rap on that whole thing. Exactly what is wrong with that analogy? Even UNIX uses the analogy with pipes; Ritchie* could have just easily called them tubes rather than pipes. And yes, the "tubes" of the Internet CAN get clogged up if there's too much flowing through them.

I've never understood why he took such a beating about it. I guess some people are just determined to believe the worst about people, as though the guy though the Internet was literally air-filled tubes.

Re:One more step toward a space elevator?

[camperdave]

Might we not make single-stage-to-orbit vehicles which so drastically reduce the price of launch costs that building a space elevator is not only possible, but unnecessary?

The problem with rockets has never been the mass of the rocket, but the mass of the fuel. There's only so much oomph you can get out of a million litres of hydrogen and oxygen chemically, and it's only marginally more than the power it takes to lift a million litres off the surface and into space. Sure, a lighter fuel tank, and lighter payload will help, but not significantly.

No, if we want cheap access to space, we either go nuclear, or build some sort of space elevator. While we may just be at the threshold of being able to make materials with the tensile strength needed for a beanstalk, we have the tech to make gas core nuclear rockets right now.