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Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer!
DeviceGuru writes "For the past few years, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has been sponsoring nanosoccer — a new team sport for universities with programs in micro-electro-mechanical systems. The soccer nanobots, operated by human players via remote-controlled magnetic fields and electrical signals, slide tiny discs around on a 30mm x 30mm playing field. Two demonstration competitions have already been held, and a third one is slated to take place next summer in Austria at RoboCup 2009."
In a time when we are bailing out our greatest financial institutions with $700 billion just to get them to give out mortgages to millions of low-paid workers again, is this really the time to be investing in "science" and "technology"?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer:
The LHC, which is the most expensive science experiment ever cost about $10 billion. I.e. a drop in the bucket compared to things like the proposed bailout or the Iraq war.
On the long term science and tech have consequences that can benefit the whole human race. Apart from the main and direct benefits there are also often other unforeseen benefits that you get for free. E.g. The World Wide Web that you are using right now was developed as a side project CERN.
To butcher an old saying: The NYSE bailout is the equivalent of giving someone enough food to survive another day. Money invested in science and technology might teach you how to fish, farm, build, cure ... hell, just about every single thing that keeps you alive on a day to day basis.
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I'm really fed up with the nano hype, from the article "the players [cut] measure from a few tens of micrometers to a few hundred micrometers", so this should be named micro-soccer, not nano-soccer!
From what I understand the engineering challenges of the 'true' nano domain are quite different from those encountered at the micrometer scale. None of these are 'trivial' or 'intuitive', it takes a great deal of ingenuity to overcome the hurdles on the way to true nano scale mechanics.
Forces that you can ignore or fairly simply overcome at other scales start to dominate. Friction? no lubrication possible. Energy source? Contamination and so on, all of these pose serious difficulties.
It's stuff like this that makes you truly appreciate the beauty of the machinery of life, such as a ribosome.
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I disagree.
He'll be warm for at least a few hours after he's dead, too.
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