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Nanocar Wins Top Science Award
Lucas123 writes "A researcher who built a car slightly larger than a strand of DNA won the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for experimental nanotechnology. James Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice Univ. built a car only 4 nanometers in width in order to demonstrate that nanovehicles could be controlled enough to deliver payloads to build larger objects, such as memory chips and, someday, even buildings, like a self-assembling machine. Tour and a team of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers constructed a car with chassis, working suspension, wheels and a motor. 'You shine light on it and the motor spins in one direction and pushes the car like a paddle wheel on the surface,' Tour said. The team also built a truck that can carry a payload."
The researchers will be asking for a bailout instead of a grant?
Bubba tells me these Nanonascar stuff is better than wrestling, but I just bodyslam him and tell him he's wrong.
Where is 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong', 'terminator', and 't2000'?
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
No cup holders? Worthless. Even Nanites need somewhere to put their Nano-Dr Pepper.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Oh hell no, please.
My wife has enough trouble finding the regular sized car when she has been shopping.
How the hell will she find a nano-car?
liqbase
I think we are nearing some sort of "singularity" as the number of stories about real science invading what was until recently only Science fiction becomes common place. (http://inttech.blogspot.com/2008/11/sci-fi-and-real-science-collide.html)
Read this article, listen to the Futures in Biotech (http://twit.tv/FIB) podcast, we are progressing technology at a fantastic rate. It feels me with equal parts hope and dread.
Think Deeply.
...when we discover the dump trucks in our series of tubes.
Let me know when they come out with the nano-porsche.
welcome our Replicator Overlords.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)
I for one look forward to the day when the physical world is reduced to being as fluid as intellectual Property is today.
Have a Nano factory in your garage(call it a replicator for you Star Trek fans) where you can download the latest gadget and it is produced before your eyes.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
it was even a bit smaller than a Corbin Sparrow.
Shiny New Australia.
THE car for the man with an incredibly long penis.
Self constructing machines and buildings? The unions will never allow it.
OK, jokes aside, that's effing cool. Starting in the new year, I'll be joining a nano research team so things like this are incredibly exciting. As I see it, the ultimate hurdle with nanoscience won't be on the engineering side. The great challenge will be theoretical, determining what microscopic abilities/properties the nanobots/cars/things will need to have in order for the swarm to exhibit the macroscopic behaviour that's desired. So for example, with these nanocars delivering particles in a ground-up assembly. Each car could be completely autonomous and somehow programmed to bring its payload exactly where it's supposed to go, but that would be completely unfeasible: if you're producing 10^23 vehicles, each needs to be exactly the same, not a custom build like this prototype. So instead you need to figure out exactly what properties and initial conditions the swarm has to have so that, collectively, it does what you want. Sort of like reverse engineering an ant colony. It sounds pretty straight forward, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done in the mathematics of this sort of thing. Anyways, very exciting!
Remember, the Terminator started as a chess-playing computer.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I thought the most important point in the FA was the shift in thinking which this kind of technology could one day produce:
But in the future, things will be built not from the top down, but the bottom up -- as in nature.
Nature has always pushed it's own tech forward via lots of small things working together. Lots of small things working together also creates redundancy.
Absolute statements are never true
The inventor, Dr. James Tour, states that he did this "so that we can someday construct buildings and other large objects with molecular-size vehicles."
I'm curious to find out how long it would take for nanovehicles to construct large-sized objects. However, an even greater usage for this invention would be to repair and strengthen structurally unstable buildings, dams, levees, etc.
Best "String" Ever!
4 nanometers is 1/3,657,600,000 of a Volkswagen.
That's nothing, you should see my flea circus.
From the article, this looks interesting "Until now, engineers have built things by taking larger objects and cutting them down to make smaller ones [...] But in the future, things will be built not from the top down, but the bottom up -- as in nature."
All I can think about is nano-malware.
Proverbs 21:19
When are they going to test it on Top Gear?
Squirrel!
Does the car get gas, or does the gas get it?
So with 10^23 vehicles each bringing it's tiny payload to the assembly point, and presumably a swarm of builders at the assembly point, how the frack do you do traffic control? I would see that as a much larger obstacle than the actual construction of the vehicles and builders. Hell, we've only got 10^6 highly complex autonomous devices attempting to arrive at their destinations here in the Seattle/Tacoma area every weekday, and it's a freaking mess!
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Call me when someone finds a way to mount 22" rims on it.
Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
And to think that if I had taken my dad's advice on majors, I'd have had Dr. Tour as my intro organic chemistry prof...
The good news is that when the Nano car industry goes belly up... thier bailout will not cost nearly as much!
Can I be the nanocar in Nanopoly!?
Just have a metric boatload of these circumambulating on the 22" rims, and have them move instead of the engine. In fact, you won't need an engine.
Why am I suddenly thinking of the crabs under the Black Pearl on POTC:AWE?
A scientist says he's built a working car 4 nanometers across. There's no picture of the thing in operation, obviously, because you can't make optically images of anything that small. So you have to ask, how does even the scientist know what he's built, if anything? How do we know this isn't just some guy standing pantless before the world?
I think the scientist's and my definition of "car" is significantly different. I wonder what exactly they mean by "car" and why they chose that term. Self-powered vehicle? Does it need gas? How does one drive it, or does it drive itself? How is it programmed to do this or that? etc...
Nonetheless, it's cool.
The Fantastic Voyages of NanoKnight Rider. Drag racing and nano-car chases in people's bloodstreams everywhere. And you thought that voice inside your head was imaginary? It's your bloodstream chatting you up, and it sounds just like William Daniels.
Here it is --> .
(couldn't help myself)
Am I the only one that finds it funny, and rather apt, that RICE University is working on nano-cars?
I read "even buildings" in the summary and the first thing I thought of was Python's "El Mystico (and Janet)" who erected buildings by hypnosis.
Now why was that the first thing that occurred to me?
Oh, I remember. I'm a total dork.
Does nobody here see where this is going? We're going to create the borg before we ever even figure out how to travel at warp speed...we're so screwed.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You know, the new MINIs are really not all that narrow. A Toyota Prius is only one fifth of an inch wider, for example. A Mercedes C-Class is only 3.2 inches wider, FFS. BMW 335 => 3.7 inches wider.
Sooooo yeah. They ain't that small.
Tour seems to only mention construction applications. Can this technology not be used for medicinal purposes to deliver payloads to say infections, cancer etc. Think of how awesome it would be to have an army of anti-cancer nanovehicles that search and destroy cancerous cells. Like having a tiny A-Team.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
Good god... the Lilliputians are invading.
# man tar
Ad one of those sound systems that rattles windows at 100 meters distance?
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
There's some scanning electron micrographs of the car in action.
After you run out of your first tank of Gas, you have to ship it back to get new tank of Gas. Moreover, safety ratings are not available from the insurance institute - do you really want to risk your life in this untested car?
As Nader said "Unsafe at any speed"
How many nm to the photon?
It has a little "foot" that pushes it along from the middle. Too funny.
You could make a movie where some guy is shrunk down to nano-size and has to navigate nano-mechanical environment. Among the hazards would be cars running everywhere, moving carpets, big switching molecules hanging down from above, assembly factories, photon trigger streams...it'd be pretty sweet, actually.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
I can't wait to go to the local Nano Truck and Tracker Pull!!!
"I mean, a couple of centuries ago, they could've only imagined "horseless carriages"."
Two centuries ago = late 1808
Nicholas Cugnot produced a working steam-driven horseless carriage in 1769.
Okay. 2.39 centuries ago. So could you remind us all what the significant digits are for "a couple" again?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...clowns can it carry?
Have gnu, will travel.
Christ, doesn't anyone have a piece of brain in their skull anymore? How about "undesirable effect"?
WAY too far? Like a millimeter?
It's enough that they can't do affordable performance (read: more than an I-4 in a car that is under $20k new and isn't a compact) - this makes the Smartcar look huge. No thanks, but I'll take mine with a bit more muscle and metal per dollar, from the Big Three. The other problem with a nanocar - you don't scrape the ice off of it - it's already coated the whole car.
According to the wikipedia article:
This was invented in 2005, has no motor (easy to miss that point in TFA), and no way to control axle orientation. Images we see are "artists depictions", the scanning tunneling microscope can acheive little more than identifying the fullerine wheels as it travels.
So the car itself is technically "old news". It's winning of science awards, depiction in art museums, and grandizing as an active instead of passive "machine" all represent the new coat of paint we see today.
It still appears to be a great step forward, I just prefer seeing things clearly over allowing people to be dazzled by embellishment.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
some urban wanna-be gangsta will figure out a way to put a 40" sub-woofer in it and park just outside my house...
...for those who are compensating for their small nano-penis?
an army of hair-cutting and bathing nanobots and sics them on RMS. Then post the video on YouTube.
http://se.youtube.com/watch?v=dJfSS0ZXYdo
FRA: STFU GTFO
Guess what - the price of a barrel of oil collapsed faster than it skyrocketed. Now driving your Armada is affordable again. That's what those diaper-heads, Russians, and tin-pot South American dictators get for trying to squeeze our balls. Now look at them - facing economic ruin far greater than we are, having based their economies largely around such a volatile commodity. It's called diversification. Fucking smelly douchebags.
I meant the car! The car!!!
Oh crap...
Since he's a researcher at Rice uni, I'm wondering if his nanocar has a nonfunctional spoiler that looks like a picnic-table on the roof, and a can-of-beans exhaust
I must not have known that... even though I had obviously read the article.
Something can be cool and still have a funny side. Lighten up.