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Real Nanotechnology Getting Closer, Says Drexler
destinyland writes "Sun Microsystems has helped fund a 198-page nanotechnology roadmap — but how
close are we to real nanotechnology? A science writer asked four nano pioneers, including
K. Eric Dexler ('progress is accelerating') and Ralph Merkle ('the exponential trends continue to be exponential') Though we don't have Star Trek replicators yet, the article lists some surprising recent nano developments (artificial tissue, nanoparticle sheets, ultrathin diamond nanorods).
And the roadmap's scientists are envisioning targeted cancer therapies, super-efficient solar cells, high-density computer memory chips and even responsive 'smart' materials."
Wouldn't most of the microchips be considered nanotechnology?
I'm looking forward to JavaNE. :)
In short, 5 to 10 years.
"Mites, like viruses, can infect or inoculate people."
At birth you will be infected with government approved nanomites to help regulate your body. I'm betting there will be a built in kill switch in case you become disruptive to the common good.
Ahh... Nanotechnology.
The next big thing.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
weren't the replicators from stargate and not from star trek? don't mind me if I'm wrong, I've just memorized every single stargate episode...
Onda Technology Institute
(... And circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works.)
We've seen this with so many things, including solar cells - Constant assurance that they are getting cheaper easier to make, more efficient, etc; people ranting about how it is finally feasible and will be seen in mass quantities soon... yet we still don't.
IMHO, it's vaporware until the common Joe is purchasing and holding it in their hands.
That _DOESNT_ mean I don't acknowledge the advances, just that I don't get my hopes up.
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
This is a cross section of the pmos transistors in one of Intels 45nm high-k metal gate CPUs. As you can see there are many layers with a horizontal and lateral extend far below 10 nm. In fact the thinnest layers are in the order of 1-2nm - The gate stack itself consists of a multilayer stack of SiO2/HfO2/TiN, where each of the layers is only 1-3 nm thick.
How is this not nanotechnology?
Most of the known bottom up approaches that are hyped and studied at universities, such as nanoparticles and nanowires, lead to significantly larger structures.
Top down beat bottom up years ago. Sorry guys, it's a nice phd topic but the industry is already there.
that, unlike all other fields of technological innovation, when one speaks of vaporware, one might actually be talking about some sort of useful hardware that literally is a vapor
so nanotechnology has at least that going for it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can't wait for that fantastic grey goo I'm always hearing about!
Bring it on, Mr. Ellison!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Star Trek has the "cool" sci-fi thing, whereas a lot of people rip Star Gate, but I think the nano-tech future given by the likes of the Replicators are where this nano stuff is headed.
The single greatest shortcoming in human science is its failure to understand outcomes of complex, dynamic systems, and here we are going to make exactly that.
Doesn't get any dumber than that!
This is my sig.
Surely the technology inside of this baby qualifies as Nano(TM) technology.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
All this and they still can't make a coffee pot that can brew an entire 12 cup pot in under 60 seconds without burning the coffee.
Seriously can we get some important technology invented to make our lives easier.
For instance can I get a roomba retrofitted to water my lawn for me? For under $200 bucks?
How about some color changing siding that doesn't bust every time a golf-ball sized piece of hail hits it for less then cement siding.
Self cleaning ceiling fan blades would be nice too...
Self milking cows?
A dog poop scooper that gets under the poop without ripping up the grass...
Yeah! super hard mini-rods. That will make my toast toast faster....
ZZzzz...
Where is my poorly done art-deco nuclear powered car that conspicuously blows up after being abandoned for over 200 years and subsequently shot. Oddly this car will also smoke and burst into flames before blowing up... What the hell is burning in it? After 200 years there isn't going to be any upolhstry left....
Where was I? Who the hell are you people and how did you get on my series of tubes!?!?
Deborah where are my pills?!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
We've seen this with so many things, including solar cells - Constant assurance that they are getting cheaper easier to make, more efficient, etc; people ranting about how it is finally feasible and will be seen in mass quantities soon... yet we still don't.
Maybe you should take a look at these graphs: http://www.frozennorth.org/C197109377/E20080427143258/index.html and http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2008/12/387-world-photovoltaic-pv-production.html
What's next after nano materials? Radical shifts in government and society. Comments welcome.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Maybe you should take a look at these graphs: http://www.frozennorth.org/C197109377/E20080427143258/index.html
Interesting graph, that little hook back up starting around 2003 suggests that the drastic increase in oil prices over the last 5 years or so which 'magically' made solar more competitive was enough to actually reduce the rate of efficiency improvements.
I would like to see a graph that also included price per watt for oil too, although I doubt that information (versus watts from the generic "grid" which includes non-oil sources) is easy to get.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"the exponential trends continue to be exponential"
They didn't say that the exponent was necessarily > 1.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
We've seen this with so many things, including solar cells - Constant assurance that they are getting cheaper easier to make, more efficient, etc; people ranting about how it is finally feasible and will be seen in mass quantities soon
Have you been living under a rock? Solar cells are flying off the shelves as soon as the manufactures can make them. They are putting them on top of cars (have you seen that Prius commercial?) and cramming them into every other device possible.
It sort of like SSDs as well which are rapidly changing.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
His point is valid, as solar power is still a very small minority in the production of electricity. I think the parent's point was that we should have nearly free electricity by now, as predicted by "solar innovators" in the past. However, it is encouraging that the price continues to drop and production continues to increase. I'd personally love to use it, but it is still and will continue to be far too expensive for many years to come for someone like me who lives in the upper north.
What I'd really like to see is PV efficiency in the 20-30% range. Then not only would it be viable for home use, but it would mean the solar panel roof of the new Prius could drive the whole car, instead of just the AC.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Science is always changing, always evolving, because we are always learning (some of us anyway). If you expect science to be exactly the same in 10 years, you have a fundamental misconception of how science works. In fact, science not only does change, it must, otherwise it becomes more dogmatic garbage the world has too much of anyway. Don't mistake your lack of comprehension for the fallibility of science.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Feynman's "Plenty of Room at the Bottom" drew specific distinctions between chemistry and nanotechnology. The embarrassing lack of advancement in nanotechnology has been filled in by redefining it to include chemistry.
Seastead this.
If you define nanotech as technology of scale closer to a nanometer than a micrometer, ie less than 30 nm, then we are one chip fabrication generation away from it at the moment.
As was pointed out above, the thickness of some semiconductor layers already is down in the couple of nm range, the 30nm I refer to is the length and width of features.
If we are going to be so gayly pedantic about it, I should point out that replicators were an offshoot of an energy to matter conversion via a complex wave generator managed by a pattern buffer!
Replication had nothing to do with nano-technology. There was no self assembly and that is the essence of nano-technology. The only real nano-tech in trek was 7 of 9's "nano probes"... and boy would I'd have liked to have given her a "mano probe.."
But of course Star Trek had replicators. Replicators were alluded to in the first Star Trek TOS and were made explicit in the TNG, although the TOS movies did have a kitchen scene and I think the TOS alluded to a galley every now and then. In any case, by TNG, the replicator as we know it was here to stay and it was more of a plot problem than breathtaking sci-fi...every time they had an episode where the Enterprise needed something, you always were left wondering.... uh, what about the replicators.
For example, the episode where Worf gets paralyzed was just terrible. I mean, yeah they played the Alex heart strings pretty well, but, if you kept your wits about you, you would ask, why couldn't they just replicate a new Worf spine and pop it in? If the replicator is capable of making real food, like something as organically complex as tea, earl grey, then, it ought to be able to crank out some walking for Worf. Or, look at Data... there was always something goofy or unique about Data, but, why couldn't they replicate him? You could just have an away team where Data gets beamed down, killed, and then you make another Data... For that matter, you could do that with people too.
But I digress.
The real point is that Star Trek always espoused a happy view of technology, particularly when it comes to nanotech. When I ripped Star Trek in the original post, the deal was that I was lamenting that so many people want to make the world like Star Trek... I have to admit, I'm caught up in it. But I think that one thing that is cool about Stargate is that it did have a pretty dark vision of evil nanodudes running around. I know that Star Trek's Borg bugged people, but man, the Stargate Replicators just really gave me the heebie jeebies. Self assembling molecular dudes coming to blow up your planet, that's some rough stuff. Let's not build those Replicators, that's what I'm saying.
This is my sig.
Why do people who've never seen Star Trek assume that the summary is wrong? Are we REALLY that disillusioned by the editors or is this just classic /. troll behaviour?
You need to check your pattern buffers!
Replicators in Star Trek had absolutely nothing to do with nano technology. Replicated things did not self assemble from molecular machines as much as they were broadcast into existence via a huge energy to matter transmitter.
My real point though, was that everyone is building stuff for the future because Star Trek is so wonderful, but, of all ironies, Stargate actually had the best example of nano-tech going wrong, in its Replicators. The Replicators were nano-beings that were created to fight some other bad guys... anyway, it didn't work out the way the nano-inventors had planned and the Replicators were actually some of the worst, most evil, villians in the universe of sci-fi.
Unlike Galactica's Cylons, the Replicators never sissied out... "Nice Centurions" at the end of Galactica. The Replicators would have NONE of that!
This is my sig.
What I'd really like to see is PV efficiency in the 20-30% range. Then not only would it be viable for home use, but it would mean the solar panel roof of the new Prius could drive the whole car, instead of just the AC.
Er, well, no, not really.
Cars use tens of kilowatt hours to get around over the course of a few days. Even with 100% efficiency, the upper surface area of a (normal) (street legal) (meets all US federal safety standards) car isn't big enough to soak up that much sunlight. Now what high(er) efficiency does allow is for the roof of the typical suburban home to power both the entire house underneath it (including overnight, with batteries) plus a car. That's something worth wishing for.
But while we're wishing, you're aiming too low. Let's wish for the 40% to 70% efficient cells we've heard about in labs but that never saw the light of day afterwards. Whatever happened to multi-bandgap or quantum dot solar cells, anyway?
Whatever things people may like to call "nanotechnology," there is really only one important distinction. Can we assemble atoms in any desired configuration? That is what is commonly termed molecular nanotechnology, and it is what most people originally meant.
Once this and fusion are out of the way, life will start to get very interesting; the foundation of our economic systems will become irrelevant as scarcity will cease to be a useful concept.
Clearly, you've yet to fathom the mysteries of log-scale plots.
The goals they're putting out for nanotechnology are generally real and reasonable (more efficient energy conversion, more targeted drug delivery, better chemical sensors, integration of biological and electronic systems). What is unreasonable is that they're essentially getting credit in the media (and in form of investments) for work which they have not done.
None of these guys has worked in a nanotechnology lab. None of these guys has tried to build something starting from atoms. I'm doing both. I work at an Ivy League University in a leading lab for some of the technologies prominently mentioned in that article, but I barely have funding just for this summer. The guy who invented the DNA origami work they're so excited about was recently fired by his University (did not get tenure). A little more support, both in the media and by the companies funding the Forsight Institute, would be really, really welcomed by those of us actually doing the work.
The MIT Media lab is great, but they're not known in the field for being experts on nanotechnology. Not mentioned is the world's best collection of nanotechnology researchers, which happens to also be at MIT, in the physics and engineering departments. If you're at MIT and you want to have a future in nanotechnology, forget the Media Lab, and find one of the professors working with Gene and Mildred Dresselhaus.
Forget nano, my 4 year old processor was created using a 9000 femtometer process!
Is it really necessary to prefix "diamond nanorods" with "ultrathin"? Is this to differentiate them from superfat diamond nanorods?
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
What's interesting is that you wish for 40-70% efficient cells with a view to small scale self sufficient energy generation but even with current solar technology the entire current electricity and energy needs of the planet could be met with solar power covering a surprisingly small amount of the worlds deserts. Personally I think roof solar panels and other methods of lowering the 'carbon footprint' of typical homes and people are a good thing but it's also important to realise that we do not need to wait for a scientific break through to make green/renewable energy a reality.
"None of these guys has worked in a nanotechnology lab. None of these guys has tried to build something starting from atoms. "
I call shenanigans. Every one of these guys has substantial nanotech street cred going back 20 years or more. Every single one of them has "worked in a nanotech lab". Most of them FOUNDED the discipline of Molecular Nanotechnology.
Drexler did the first substantial theoretical work on precision mechanosynthesis of molecules, the limits and restrictions on carbon-carbon mechanosythesis, charted possible paths to research and development, and so on. Oh and besides providing the theoretical underpinnings for molecular manufacturing (a new term that had to be created because opportunists like Dr. Richard Smalley successfully co-opted the term "nanotechnology" all the while trying to kill the credibility of Drexler and mechanosythesis approaches), Drexler is one of the strongest voices promoting thinking ahead about the risks and ethical implications of widespread use of molecular machines. The Foresight Institute was set up in large part to think ahead of nanotech development and be prepared with ethical and legal guidelines for the development and use of molecular nanotechnology. Oh, and he got the first EVER PhD in Nanotechnology.
Hall, besides being the founding chief scientist of Nanorex (who are developing open-source computational tools to support research in structural DNA nanotechnology), he's published a trunkload of papers on various aspects of nanotechnology. You can find a list here
Merkle did some of the first work on computational modeling of carbon-carbon nanostructures for mechanosynthesis. He worked as a research scientist at Zyvex, the first commercial nanotech research company, for several years. He's apparently still actively researching. His list of recent research papers, along with Freitas's, are here
Freitas is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. He's published a raft of papers (see link above) and did the first practical research on the theoretical underpinnings of nanomedicine, which he published in his book NANOMEDICINE.
They may not be pushing atoms around with an AFM (or whatever you are doing), but they are laying the foundations for the science and engineering of molecular manufacturing.
Show some respect.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
We're getting there, but very few people have a Prius. I also recall a fair amount of hype about those too.
I work in a decent-sized city, exactly what I would consider "average", and so far, on my treks to and from work, I have seen only ONE house that has solar panels on the roof. Furthermore, this house isn't even in the city- it's out in the country. My point was that once a good percentage of people (10, 5%, hell, even 1% in any given area) have solar power, THEN we can talk.
I do realize part of it is subjective, and also proportional to the area you live in - but based on my observations, the hype is still overrated.
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
I'm most interested in the individual home PV setup for a variety of reasons. The big-plant-in-the-desert method has some downsides, like significant to substantial transmission losses, reduced reliability through dependency on those transmission lines, high single-source financing requirements, and continued consumer-oriented pay-your-whole-life dependency on a power company.
When every home has solar panels powering it, transmission losses drop to practically nil, everything in the house has power as long as the house itself hasn't taken major damage, each individual homeowner can buy their own system when they make the decision to do it, instead of depending on some massive utility or government purchase decision to be made, and eventually the entire system potentially pays for itself by eliminating utility payments. Once the system has paid for itself, power is essentially free. Yes poly-silicon panels do degrade over time, but they keep working quite a long time at reduced but still usable efficiencies, if the system is oversized to begin with. We can reasonably speculate that such things as multi-bandgap silicon cells would degrade similarly. What quantum dot panels might do, I don't know, but it's probably reasonable to assume they'll degrade as well.
Plus, if roof-top PV systems achieve saturation in an area, the power company could sell off their transmission lines, freeing up megatons of recyclable copper and getting rid of an unsightly maintenance headache. I wouldn't mind seeing fewer mangled trees in people's yards.
Even if solar goes through some technological leaps, and you get 100% of your neighbors to cover their roof, you can't get rid of transmission lines. Not until we get energy storage systems to go through similar tech leaps.
Sorry, you're wrong. Drexler didn't come up with "nanotechnology." Smalley's Nobel prize winning nanotechnology work was done 6 years before Drexler got his PhD and published his famous book, and neither of them came up with the original definition of nanotechnology (which was not molecular machining). There are plenty of people who got PhDs in "nanotechnology" before Drexler did, but they were all content for the piece of paper to say physics, chemistry or engineering. I don't think they're bad guys, and I don't think molecular manufacturing is crazy (pay attention to the changes Drexler made in his theories after his discussions with Smalley, they were useful, and as a good scientist he has adjusted his thinking to take into account new data). You'll notice I didn't complain about their goals! I'm complaining that these guys are not being good members of the community in this interview, that those of us who are working in the hands-on side of nanotechnology could use some help, and that these guys need to be sure to mention some of us when they're out talking with Congress and the press about our work. It always pisses me off to see theorists talking about experimental results as if it's trivial to do, and as if there's not even any point to mentioning who managed to do it.
This attitude that you just get an AFM and "push" atoms around (or whatever I'm doing) and it's a piece of cake is typical of what is left in the wake of such absent-minded theorists. I mentioned that I'm working on some of the technologies they talked about. I guess it's good enough for them to be excited about, but I'm some schmuck for actually doing it? Imagine now you're involved in funding nanotechnology research. Do you feel that someone just "pushing atoms around" should get funded? Do you wonder why they're having trouble getting experimentalists to work on molecular manufacturing?
Ah, but once again, we're talking about houses, not cars. The two realms are barely related. Cars have weight and volume problems on an entirely different scale from houses. As I said originally, the upper surface of a car simply isn't big enough, even with 100% efficiency, to power the car, but a house roof is big enough, given high enough efficiency. With batteries, you're fairly limited by what will fit in the space currently occupied by an internal combustion engine (more or less).
In a house, the limits are ridiculous by car standards. Really old battery technology is entirely feasible for use in a house, and maybe even recommended. Nickel iron batteries have energy densities much too low to be useful in cars where people expect 300 miles on a charge, but they're very tolerant of operating conditions that ruin higher density batteries. They also use potassium hydroxide as the electrolyte, which is a strong base, rather than using sulfuric acid as in lead-acid batteries. The concentration of potassium hydroxide used is notably less dangerous than the concentration of sulfuric acid required.
So in a house, a battery bank of nickel iron batteries is cheap, safe, easy to maintain, and yes, big. If somebody were to manufacture an all-in-one home battery night time supply, it might be the size of a large upright refrigerator/freezer. A large home might require two or even three units that size, side by side. And who cares? It's a house. In much of the country, we'd just line them up in our basements next to our circuit breaker panel. Plenty of room. In parts of the country that don't usually have basements, a small shed would do. Such a large bulky piece of equipment is infeasible in mobile applications, but there's nothing at all wrong with it in a fixed emplacement. Nobody suggests cramming 2 or 3 refrigerators worth of batteries into a Ford Focus, but I'm definitely suggesting precisely that in tandem with a whole-house solar panel installation.
All of the anxiety surrounding battery energy densities is for the batteries that go inside cars. In a house, you can use practically anything.
Another factor you may have overlooked here is very high population density of modern cities. When you have a large number of tall buildings close together you could have an order of magnitude more people with higher power needs (lifts, pumping water etc) living in a space with the same area and same available solar power.
The space available for batteries could also be limited. I think cities will in general require large scale power distribution and generation to feed the high populations. Transmission losses could also be minimised using high voltage direct current lines.
Personally I think self sufficiency should be the aim both at an individual and also community level. However larger scale cooperation and supply of power, water etc will still be required in areas that can't sustain the population density there.
An Australian company named Starpharma seems to be well out in front. go here to read what they have in the market and whats about to be released http://www.starpharma.com/ I always tell my friends imaging life before plastic then imaging the same changes will occur when nano products are readily available in the market Starpharma already has products in the market and one interesting anti viral gel for herpes, AIDS, HPV, just about to be released Disclaimer: i own shares in the company - SPL
Again, shenanigans. I never claimed Drexler came up with Nanotechnology. I said he did the first substantial work on machine-phase nanotechnology... something Smalley spent well over a decade trying to discredit. I remember the arguments and counter arguments back in the early 90s. Of course lots of scientists have been working at the nano-level before and since. My point was that for that specific type of proposed nanotechnology (mechanosynthesis, assemblers, dissassemblers, etc) that these guys did the first serious theoretical work. I still stand by that based on the evidence.
The reason you got attitude from me was that your dismissive attitude towards them and their achievements. I certainly respect both theoretical and experimental research in this or any other scientific field. However, it looked like you were minimizing the importance of the necessary theoretical portions and elevating the experimental. THAT is what I was pushing back against.
I certainly wish you and your compatriots great luck and success in your efforts. I fully understand that without guys like you, its just equations on a page or simulations in a computer ... worthless unless applied.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon