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Single Nanotube Becomes World's Smallest Radio
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "Researchers at the National Science Foundation have utilized a single carbon nanotube to perform all the functions of a standard radio, acting as an antenna, tunable filter, amplifier, and demodulator. They were then able to tune in a radio signal generated in the room and play it back through an attached speaker. The device is functional across a bandwidth widely used for commercial radio. From the NSF: 'The source content for the first laboratory test of the radio was "Layla," by Derek and the Dominos, followed soon after by "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys.'"
At that scale, you can actually see the radio waves...
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
We're gonna need a bigger tin-foil hat.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...on people losing these things. "Damnit, where's my radio? Did I lose it again!? Oh wait here it is... no... that's pocket lint."
I really do love the analogies we use to describe quantum-mechanical or relativistic behavior. Even the best ones start off comprehensible but rapidly morph into the deranged land of our most cheese-fuelled nightmares.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Perfoming rights organizations, BMI and ASCAP, want a fee for every carbon nanotube sold.
Their project page has videos, simulations, and audio playback samples: NSF Nanotube Radio
Here is their journal abstract:
"We have constructed a fully functional, fully integrated radio receiver from a single carbon nanotube. The nanotube serves simultaneously as all essential components of a radio: antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier, and demodulator. A direct current voltage source, as supplied by a battery, powers the radio. Using carrier waves in the commercially relevant 40-400 MHz range and both frequency and amplitude modulation techniques, we demonstrate successful music and voice reception."
....Inanimate Carbon Rod!
I can't believe we've overlooked this week's winner for so very, very long.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
This is actually smaller than the iPod Zepto: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2005/11/28fitch.html
I don't mind hearing advertising with my music, but nearly 20 minutes per hour (as during drive time) is a little excessive, don't you think? I'm not prepared to start having bake sales for industries that got so greedy that it has driven them to near extinction.
I'm pretty sick of corporations, whole industries, that believed they could treat their customers badly while attempting to drive every possible penny into their pockets, then start crying and whining when something better comes along and those customers turn their backs. It does seem, though, that killing the golden goose through greed is a defining characteristic of all corporations in this age of slash and burn profitism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In the 19th century they had pocket watches. Then watches got small enough to strap on your wrist. Then we got cell phones, threw away our wristwatches and put the phone in a pocket.
In the 19 century we had vacuum tubes. In the mid 20th century these were replaced by semiconductors, which were smaller and less bulky. Now we're back to tubes again, and the TFA sounds like these are kind of nano vacuum tubes, only without the vacuum.
The nanotube radio is likely like these geek toys nerds have been building since the early 1900s. All you need to build one is a diode, some wire, a piece of wood, and headphones to listen to it with. They used to call these things "catwhisker radios", the "cat whisker" being the diode.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Several patent trolls have threatened to sue, claiming the work violates over 200 of their top-secret patents ("Just because the device functions on a quantum scale is not enough to avoid licensing costs" one source was quoted.) The trolls have claimed that research like this, if allowed to continue, will stifle true innovation by their exclusive licensees.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Reading more closely, we discover that:
.6 cm nanotube structure.
It's not really a complete radio...It's just a tiny tuning fork.
Demos like these make me ask: what the hell happened to research in America?
They left out the fact that they were using a specially tuned PWM transmitter... and a high powered one at that... to vibrate the
They left out (as well) the fact that they were using another specially tuned receiver to detect the movement and turn it back into audio.
They could have done the same thing with almost any material, including a grain of salt, a slice of stale pizza or a drop of water. This is essentially the same as attaching an earphone to a crystal, and then tuning the transmitter to the crystal and making it vibrate by hitting it with a high powered modulated wave. I guess it's cool that they got a huge nsf grant to recreate an incomplete crystal radio.
Using an external process to convert the vibration back into audio is cool and all, but I wish I could win big grants for such elementary application of well-known processes. Hey, maybe I could bounce a laser-beam off the carbon nano-tube and call it a "secure" nano-communications device! Who wants to help me write the NSF research request?
A rerun of the hype surrounding MIT's shocking rediscovery of tesla's magic coil trick.
I predict an NSF funded rebirth of spark gap transmitters.