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Creating Designer Isotopes
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to a Michigan State University (MSU) news release, 'Made-to-order isotopes hold promise on science's frontier,' nuclear physicists can now start a new career as isotope designers. These scientists can build specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies. The lead researcher says this approach has already given us the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan technology. He's now going further, saying that he wants to build objects 100,000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus. He calls this 'femtotechnology.' Also available are additional details and pictures of the tools used for this kind of research, picked from a 415-page design paper." Update: 05/11 14:30 GMT by SS: Readers have noted that the summary inaccurately portrays the scale of the 'femtotechnology.' The MSU researcher refers to "the capacity to construct objects on an even more minute scale, that of the atomic nucleus 100,000 times smaller."
The term femtotechnology to describe technology built from subatomic particles, as nanotechnology describes technology is not new. The first occurrence of it I've seen was in Pushing Ice. Can anyone provide an earlier reference?
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The size of the atomic nucleus, not 100,000 times smaller. One femtometer is roughly the radius of one atomic nucleus. And unlike the atom as a whole, the nucleus is very compact, about the size of its constituent particles. I don't think any kind of structure 100,000 times smaller than a nucleus has been detected experimentally.
So when I mentioned this to my wife the first thing she said was 'Does that mean we can get working kryptonite?'. Which leads to the question has he now put Superman in danger from every 2 bit criminal with enough money to order atrificial Kriptonite?
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Why does the "ohnoitsroland" and similar tags ALWAYS disappear? It is probably the ONLY reason I do anything with tags. I DON'T want to read anything submitted by this guy.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Slashdot summary inaccurate and misleading! News at 11!
I notice the Slashdot editor calls himself "Souls Kill". Is that what he is doing when he posts stories by Roland Piquepaille, killing our souls? Does that name mean he is the devil?
I bet that once they have these cool custom isotopes, they still give them that standard, gag-a-maggot, fake medical cherry flavor.
"Of course it will save you from cancer, but you have to choke it down first."
Invenio via vel creo
Great, another meaningless scientific buzzword people use to get their work published.
I really wish they would find people who ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND SCIENCE to report on science. Not to mention the wording of the summary. One does not "design" an isotope -- what's there to design? All one can do is find ways to create these isotopes in quantities that would actually be useful.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Scientist : "Greetings again Mr. businessman, here is the isotope you requested.
Businessman : "Where?"
> Atoms of the same element that have the same number of protons
Otherwise they would not be of the same element.
> but different numbers of neutrons (different atomic masses).
I didn't RTFA, but "isotopes are the different versions of an element" translates nicely into "isotopes are the versions of a single element [note the constant number of protons here] with different masses/different numbers of neutrons". You see: element = element, version = same number of protons.
While "different versions" is a somewhat unspecific term, I don't see no misunderstanding of the subject here. If TFA was written for a highly professional audience, I would ask why there was an explanation of isotopes given, anyway, because everybody knows what isotopes are. If not, this somewhat unspecific explanation is more than sufficient and accurate.
I really don't know what your point is.
The chemical changes that brought about the formation of the elements in the bellies of stars...
If you're changing elements from one to another, it's not a chemical change. It's nuclear! That's one of the definitions of a nuclear change. What kind of science journalism is this?
It is not that I am sick of reading stories by Roland Piquepaille. After all, I can choose not to read them. The problem here is that each time one of his stories appears, Slahsdot readers are brought to question the trust they put into the stories selection process. For me personally, you can add to this the discomfort to think that his stories take the place of an intelligent science posting.
I don't see how Sue Nichols is wrong.
:).
She said: "Isotopes are the different versions of an element. Their nuclei have different numbers of neutrons, and thus give them different properties".
It is fairly accurate to say that isotopes are different versions of an element.
As for your remark: "Maybe she was in a hurry to go shopping", maybe you should slow down a bit?
You cannot build structures with electrons and positrons which are this small. The reason being that the binding energy for EM processes (the strongest force which an e+/- feels) is far too weak to confine the particles to a region as small as 1 fm. For example positronium has a binding energy of 6.8eV, roughly half that of a hydrogen atom and hence it will be slighly larger.
The misconception comes about because the electron is not a particle but a wave. You can trap the wave in a potential but it is still a wave. The smaller the space you want to confine it to the shorter the wavelength required and as the wavelength decreases the energy increases (deBroglie wavelength lambda=Planck's constant/momentum [lambda=h/p]). This means that energies O(10^6) times larger than EM binding energies to confine an electron to such a small area.
The only force we know of that is strong enough to do this is the strong nuclear force which is only felt by quarks. Hence, given our current knowledge, the only thing you could build such a tiny structure out of is quarks...which is why the nucleus is made of these!
This is not an example femtotechnology any more than chemistry is is an example of nanotechnology. All they are doing is sticking protons and neutrons together in ways allowed by nature. This is not "designing" an isotope since there are only a few thousand combinations allowed. That's not to say it isn't useful technology but, if you look at the size of mchines required, the scale of the tech is anything but femto.
yee haw! Denser materials == better weapons for punching through armor - oh wait, also means denser armor!
meh
This is called nuclear physics (and radiochemistry, to label molecules with the new element isotopes). This has been done for a looong time with PET tracers. Professors at various institutions have made hundreds of different compounds labeled with radioactive isotopes to observe all sorts of biological processes. Although new accelerators will be able to create a wide variety of elemental isotopes, its by no means "new" or "breakthrough" in my opinion.
Robert A. Heinlein got there first. Tailored isotopes, novella "Blowups Happen". 1930's.
One step closer to replicators!
Poor Roland. He's like the Uwe Boll of story posting.