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MIT Secretly Built Mega-Efficient Nano Batteries
mattnyc99 writes "There was plenty of chatter last week about an MIT announcement that researcher Angela Belcher had developed a way to create virus-based nanoscale batteries to power mini gadgets of the future. In a fascinating followup at Popular Mechanics, Belcher now says that her unpublished work includes full-scale models of the batteries themselves, and that they could power everything from cars and laptops to medical devices and wearable armor. Quoting: 'We haven't ruled out cars. That's a lot of amplification. But right now the thing is trying to make the best material possible, and if we get a really great material, then we have to think about how do you scale it.'"
I see nothing in those articles about these batteries being "mega efficient", as the title of this Slashdot post screams. The novelty seems to be the fact that they're grown using viruses and can be applied in thin films.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I'm not sick. Just recharging my battery.
Good thing bacteria can't infect anything...
Of course, now I'll have to worry about my batteries getting a Staph infection:
"Doctor, I need some Vancomycin for my laptop."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
lemme explain why they haven't yet in case you missed how they phrased it. They built a "model" of the battery. They still haven't nailed down how to make the inside part work or how to build a real one. I could take out my legos and build a car battery sized box and say it's a "model" of what a magic battery would look like and say I haven't quite figured out how to make it generate electricity. This isn't news, this is like someone drawing a picture of a flying car and having no idea how to build it or make it fly but releasing a press release anyway.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Come on. It's not THAT bad. They did do this in secret.
Well, until they went to the press...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Bring product to market.
Stop blabbering on and do it already.
Think about what you're saying here.
Is MIT, a university, going to bring this technology to market?
We always hear about research because the people doing it need to show it off so that they can find business & manufacturing partners to bring it to market. Quitely shopping it around isn't the way its done.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
No.
For one, your lego battery wouldn't even work in theory. An actual scientific model is supposed to represent what would work as well as possible.
For two, they aren't just using a model. They've actual built components of this.
"
A much-buzzed-about paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month details the team's success in creating two of the three parts of a working battery--the positively charged anode and the electrolyte. But team leader Angela Belcher told PM Wednesday that the team has been seriously working on cathode technology for the past year, creating several complete prototypes. "
"
The M13 viruses used by the team can't reproduce by themselves and are only capable of infecting bacteria. At just 880 nanometers long--500 times smaller than a grain of salt--the bugs allow researchers to work at room temperatures and pressures with molecular precision, using and wasting fewer hazardous materials in the process. Now that they've demonstrated the construction of such tiny electronic components is possible, the challenge facing researchers is how to make them practical."
As in the virus "inside part" is actually done. They've also got the anode construction done. They're working on the cathode.
This is a practical engineering project at this point. This is news. Who knows if it will end up "practical", but nevertheless it is real whether you rtfa or not.
The enemies of Democracy are
The last 6 or 7 paragraphs explain what progress they've made on these things. Seems to be a bit farther along than a "model". So far they've got 2 out of their 3 bits created already. It'll be nice to see an update on this when they get a bit further along, though.
plop
Heh, that's exactly how it's done. You recognize that the research has commercial application, ask for spin-off rights, found a startup company, build a prototype, then get investors. The result is a whole lot of secrecy, and, eventually, an actual product.
On the other hand, if all you're trying to do is create buzz and get more government grant money, you make press releases.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Wasn't it Popular Mechanics that predicted in the 1970's that by the year 2000, robots would be doing all of the work, and we could all be sitting by the pool, sipping on Daiquiris? Unfortunately, they forgot about how people were going to get a paycheck. I can't believe even Slashdot would mention anything from Popular Mechanics.
"A much-buzzed-about paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month details the team's success in creating two of the three parts of a working battery--the positively charged anode and the electrolyte. But team leader Angela Belcher told PM Wednesday that the team has been seriously working on cathode technology for the past year, creating several complete prototypes. "
"The cathode material has been a little more difficult, but we have several different candidates, and we have made full, working batteries."
They've actually built things, that work, though the 3rd component the cathode is still apparently a work in progress. The summary says "models", which of course means something specific to /.ers, but that isn't the reality reflected in the articles.
The enemies of Democracy are
Huh? - You must have missed the death of western manufacturing in the 80's-90's.
Robotic factories, robotic warehouses and Chinese peasants ARE doing all the work! The rest of us are sitting around in office blocks posting to slashdot.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What's next? Adware Batteries? Free power, only you get to watch adds on your portable tv, or listen to ads on your radio... oh wait... never mind...
WAIT!... Let's call Eveready and Duracell say we are consultants from Symantec, Mcafee or Sophos and we are here to create a strategy to help them win in this market space. A virus based battery... let's push out a pattern for that one boys...
PROFIT!
We also hear about research because this is Slashdot: News for Nerds. If you only want to hear about ready-to-use products, go to Best Buy.
01110010 01101111 01100010 01101111 01110100 01110011 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110011
01110100 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110011 01101100 01100001 01110011 01101000
01100100 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111
EOF
Slashdot is a poor substitute for Daiquiris, but the combination is a good idea. Cheers!
Blank until
It's obvious that weaving these batteries into fibre (for example) or just the fact that they can create such tiny batteries is hugely advantageous from an engineering perspective. Now clothes can be powered, etc.
What isn't clear is why would you want these batteries to power your car? I don't really see any discussion on whether these pack more power than a 50lb car battery would. From the description it sounds like they're just regular batteries which expire, but are tiny. So by my no-math-involved logic, 50lbs of these nano-batteries should pack about the same punch as a regular 50lb car battery.
Am I wrong about this? Do the infected bacteria constantly replenish the components of the battery making them more like a generator that runs on raw materials ? Because it doesn't look like that, it looks like they create the components, stop the process and put them together.
Very very cool, but it sounds like the same technology we've always had is the end product. Please tell me I'm wrong, I want this to be the mini nuclear generator powering our cars we were all promised in the 1950's.
"Can we stick it on the head of a pin? People love it when we do that"
Ace
Publish it, get peer reviews and THEN post on Slashdot if reviewers don't tear it apart completely.
Isn't Popular Mechanics the rag where half-baked technologies go to die? Right after the part where they will revolutionize All Life As We Know It? And right before the part where The Idea is killed by an Evil Conspiracy?
They are usually late with the important news and way too early with stuff that will eventually crash and burn. Not that they can't build a raging headline and a totally misleading cover out of it.
I stopped going to Popular Mechanics for my cutting edge technology news when I was about nine years old. They are long on hype and short on details - not to mention short on discrimination in their editorial department.
Excuse me, but the nuclear battery in my flying car is running low. Gotta run...
"They built a "model" of the battery. They still haven't nailed down how to make the inside part work or how to build a real one. I could take out my legos and build a car battery sized box and say it's a "model" of what a magic battery would look like and say I haven't quite figured out how to make it generate electricity."
This shows why analogies can be so bad. The two situations - despite sounding convincingly similar - are extremely different, as other people have pointed out.
Mind you, it's not quite as bad as an anology I heard on the TV news the other day, that almost had me throwing something at it, the analogy was so misleading.
Actually, I'm curious how this is supposed to work. Aside from people always finding something to do, I really can't see why we couldn't be sitting by the pool. I mean, obviously, work still needs to be done. But if we get more efficient at that (e.g. by building machines that then do the work with fewer human hours involved), we _should_, on average, have more free time for a given level of prosperity, right?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It's VIRUSES, not virii, or viri, or any other variation of that word!
There is just no pleasing some people. These guys have been consistently working away on a hard problem, making progress along the way, published their work, so others can run their own experiments, and worked towards a product.
Meanwhile, what exactly have you been doing?
Like somebody else said, if you only want final products, go to Best Buy.
The approach they're taking makes complete sense.
If they have a way of significantly improving batteries, they're holding the key to enabling a lot of technologies that have been waiting on better batteries....
I think it's fair that Angela Belcher has us by the balls...
But if we get more efficient at that (e.g. by building machines that then do the work with fewer human hours involved), we _should_, on average, have more free time for a given level of prosperity, right?
The Law of Diminishing Returns is universal. We can't ALL sit by the pool. Someone has to clean it.
As you increase a "level of prosperity" the TYPE of work may change - from picking berries in a field 14 hours a day to analyzing power-point presentations in teleconferences over the internet 7 hours a day - but you still have to work. There can only be one or two really really rich guys per 100 population, it's a time-honored scale. You may be far "richer" than the berry picker, but only the really really rich guy gets to sit by the pool. And not even that (or he won't be rich for long - snooze and you lose).
The pool is for weekends.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Paraphrasing the original:
"Make a product or it never happened"
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I see them all the time, and generally they're followed by a few dozen posts complaining about slashvertisements....
your lego battery wouldn't even work in theory.
I thought it was possible to make ANYTHING out of lego.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
How is the fact that they can only infect bacteria relevant? I have plenty of essential bacteria that I consider more or less my organs. That is not any better than saying it can only infect kidney cells.
If they cannot reproduce (even after infecting a bacterium) it shouldn't matter, as there should not be a sufficient amount of these to stop anything.
However, if these things are being mass produced, it seems to me the odds are that pretty soon at least one virus will show up that can reproduce itself. The question is: how many mistakes in transcribing the virus' genome in the lab would be required to allow it to reproduce?
Copying errors are the heart of evolution, and they will happen even on the production line.
You don't get Daiquiris where you work either, huh? Your job must suck as bad as mine. They want to stick us with kegs of Guiness here.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
But if we get more efficient at that (e.g. by building machines that then do the work with fewer human hours involved), we _should_, on average, have more free time for a given level of prosperity, right?
And you most certainly could RIGHT NOW. You would just have to scale back your standard of living to the time when humans were doing all the work. Back to a family of 4 in a 1000sq.ft. home, with no AC and a max of one car per family. Going to see a movie would be an event. Most people prefer their McMansion with constant entertainment. "Stuff" cost money, and the level of spending generally outpaces the increases in pay scales.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
1) What could possibly go wrong?
2) Grow virus, Stir in cobalt oxide and gold, Add electrolyte, Invent cathode, ...,
PROFIT!
3) I for one welcome our new secretly developed, Army-funded, virus-based, electricity producing overlords.
4) But will it run Natalie Portman's vibrator?
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
YOU may be in an office block, but *I* am in my parent's basement, with the rest of /.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
They HAVE made working models. They are just trying to perfect the process.
"Prototypes" mean something specific to us too.. and it isn't "2 out of 3 critical components, not even integrated yet".
Actually, it can, because they can be prototypes of the components. Two of which have been integrated. And they've made full, working batteries, just not using their cathode technology yet.
Why don't you just RTFA instead of continuing to poo-poo their accomplishment based on a single word taken out of context, the first one you latched onto not even existing in the article? Right, right, I must be new here.
The enemies of Democracy are
What would be awesome is if there was a Wiki site for new technology claims like this where you could go and see what the current state of the technology is. For example, if you're curious about whatever happened to bla bla that you heard about 5 years ago, you can go look it up and find out why nothing ever came of it (instead of assuming the power industry bought it up and killed it).
Some projects require nano legos apparently.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
post to remove accidental troll mod.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Apparently you have never observed legos under an electron microscope.
They are MADE of nano-legos.