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Viruses Tapped To Create Spray-On Batteries
disco_tracy writes "Two different viruses have been used to create the cathode and anode for a lithium-ion battery. If research pans out, the parts could be grown in and harvested from tobacco plants and then woven into or sprayed onto clothing to power a wide range of electronic devices."
Is that really such a good idea for the military? What if the enemy comes up with a vaccine?
The only reason tobacco is illegal is cause back in the early 21st century the battery industry stepped in to prevent competition. They ran smear campaigns to try to make tobacco use look immoral and -fffffffff- unhealthy.
Maybe I'd just like to be able to run my laptop off my...POWER TIE...badump TSSS
I'll be here all night!
There's always more money in finding efficient ways to kill people than to find efficient ways to make everyone's lives better.
Luckily some of that stuff trickles down and we use it for the latter anyway.
you mean like sony batteries?
I'm more excited about the 10 fold increase in capacity of this new silicon cathode than I am of the fact that it's sprayable, etc...
Probably just spray a patch of anode and a patch of cathode somewhere else and run some wires. It might be useful for charging very low power devices like aimpoint sights.
You bet they're dangerous! Just wait until they hook up the Red Wire and the NeoVirus learns Kung Fu.
It's a pity that there's no video of the process... then it could go *viral*.
How many movies predict mass deaths from some virus gone rogue? I'm sure these viri are safe now, but later?
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Those both seem to me as if they would be rather uncomfortable. But what do I know?
What has been your experience?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Wow, what could possibly go wrong?
Clothing? CLOTHING?
How about putting a whole bunch of them in a box. Then put this box in a car. Hook up electric motor in car to box.
Maybe? Please? Fucking marketing dweebs.
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What happens when you do laundry?
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Read Malthus. Fewer people with the same resources, more resources per person. It may not be completely right, but it makes sense. It's understandable people think that way, although it'd probably be better if we figured out how to better manage and reuse the resources more often.
I agree with your post title. I used to be one of those soldiers, too. And I never got to benefit from much of the tech that was 'for me' in the end --- come to find out much of the spending is just a cash handout to Gov contractors that reinvest part of it to political campaigns... who knew? lol.
Yeah, but that black mana isn't going to do them much good even after they've got spray-on batteries on the field. I'll just use my Greater Sony Instant and completely disrupt the combo.
Wow, I can just see how easy it would be to market a spray-on tobbacco battery. I mean it only has two historically epic "toxin" connotations to it (tobbacco and spraying chemicals on yourself) and just sounds horribly dangerous. Did anyone even study what happens when you constantly pass current through material that close to your nervous system like with these amazing new battery clothes? Why do I even want a battery that's thin and has a large surface area? I distinctly remember asking for a small, light, high capacity battery. This has dumb written all over it.
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Not only does the Dell computer burst into flames, BUT SO DOES THE USER!!! I know some politicians to send these clothes to ...
I want my batteries nicotine free to avoid supporting the tobacco lobby.
This idea has an issue: purity. Lithium ion batteries require high purity, as far as I know, less than parts per million impurity content. With most lithium-ions, the case prevents the diffusion of crap (like water) into the battery. When the crud makes it through, the battery quits. With this system, there's no casing, and thus nothing to stop crap from getting in. I wonder how stable it will be with respect to soda spills, sweat, etc. on the clothing?
Also, how are you going to wire up the battery? What decides which is the anode and which is the cathode?
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Batteries made of disease and tobacco?
You only need to add alcohol to have a trifecta of sins. The power I imagine comes straight from the Devil?
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Why must every technology always be for soldiers? Because who else would pay $500 for a hi-tech toilet seat.
And you should be glad of that. For instance, if it weren't for military applications civilian jet transport would have come much later than it did. The very first jet plane designed primarily for civilian service was a failure suffering from severe design flaws.
If you are going to spend a shitload of money on the military, at least let them iron out the flaws in new technology.
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MIT have been spouting this virus based litihium battery bs for years. ill believe it when i can buy it in the shop.
I worked (briefly) in military research. Back then, they considered 20 years to be a good length of time from original idea to battlefield deployment. The problem was that this applied universally. For a new design of jet engine, it made sense - you need a lot of testing to even get to the prototype stage, and then mass production takes even longer. Unfortunately, for integrated circuits, it's insane. It means that you had state of the art mechanical systems controlled by a Z80. You get the next-generation battlefield communication system that ends up having less bandwidth, less interference robustness, and worse encryption than cheap off-the-shelf solutions by the time that it's actually deployed.
Defence contractors are allowed to license a lot of their designs to third parties before they produce a shipping product for the military. Consumer products have much bigger economies of scale (because most people aren't soldiers) and can go through half a dozen incremental iterations by the time the military variant finally ships. The first consumer-grade version is often much worse than the military-spec version, but by the time the military version is released the consumer version often catches up. For other things, there is no real civilian market (one of the things I was looking at, for example, was the applicability of a number of head-up display technologies for gaming - mostly they were too bulky for civilian use and cheaper alternative already existed). This means that military tech ends up being a weird mix of stuff that's miles ahead of anything you can get elsewhere and stuff that is painfully obsolete, often in the same machine.
The adage about the military fighting the last war is doubly applicable when it comes to technology. Funding is given to projects that would produce something at the end that is useful now. Unfortunately, they produce something in twenty years time when, even if it is a great bit of tech, it is no longer useful to the military. Sometimes this stuff gets licensed for civilian use, but quite often it just gets ignored.
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There's a lot more to worry about here - viruses that produce electronic components? That grow in crops? What happens if these things get out and infect other plants? What happens when (not if) they mutate?
I hope this whole thing is thought all the way through before it goes to production. Although the chances are this is pretty much pie in the sky anyway.
A ten-fold increase in efficiency, and all they can think of for applications is clothing? A ten-fold increase in automotive battery efficiency would push electric cars into the realm of "practical-for-everyday-use-and-beyond".
I don't think adding more range to electric cars is going to solve people's range anxiety. I was speaking with a guy who lives on a tiny island about electric cars, he said he wouldn't buy one, because what do you do if you run out of charge? Call a tow truck? I pointed out that he could drive across the entire island over 10 times on a single charge and that it would fully recharge overnight, so if he only sleeps at home once a week he'll still never run out of charge. But no, it's still too risky he says. So it seems that range anxiety may have little to do with range and a lot to do with anxiety.
I'd like someone in the US to find a person with range anxiety and ask them if they'd buy an electric car if it could drive across their state 10 times on a single charge and could recharge fully overnight. If they say no, ask if they'd buy one that could drive from New York to LA 10 times on a single charge.
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I for one welcome our new overcharged virus overlords.
I can see why your work was brief.
Off thr shefl solution almost never work under military conditions.
They have a goal to fill. You fill it and it serves it's purpose. The fact that ti isn't the latest chip does not matter.
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Are they harmless to other plants? Will they continue to be harmless when they mutate? Not to be Chicken Little here, but I hope they've thought this through.