US Nuclear Weapons Lab Discovers How To Suppress the Casimir Force

KentuckyFC writes "One of the frustrating problems with microelectromechanical (MEM) devices is that the machinery can sometimes stick fast, causing them to stop working. One of the culprits is the Casimir effect — an exotic force that pushes metallic sheets together when they are separated by tiny distances. Now physicists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have worked out and demonstrated how to suppress the Casimir force. The trick is to create a set of deep grooves and ridges in the surface of one sheet so that the other only comes close to the tips of the ridges. These tips have a much smaller surface area than the flat sheet and so generate much less force. That could help prevent stiction in future MEMs devices. But why would a nuclear weapons lab be interested? MEM devices are invulnerable to electromagnetic pulse weapons that fry transistor-based switches, and so could be used as on-off switches for nuclear devices."

Comments

Re:brilliant!

[NettiWelho]

reduction of surface area leads to reduction of effect. imagine that. duh. why didn't they try that sooner? that woulda been top on my list.

Then it is most unfortunate you didn't share this information with them years ago, asshole.

Not Nuclear Weapons Lab

[goombah99]

Los Alamos is a National Laboratory. It's not a "Nuclear Weapons Laboratory". It sequences Genomes, it works on carbon nanotubes, it develops remote sensing, it does particle physics, it works on biofuels, and proteins, and medicine. You might as well say Stanford University is a place where they develop internet search engines, and General electric makes nuclear reactors.

Re:Not Nuclear Weapons Lab

[Anonymous Coward]

Los Alamos is a National Laboratory. It's not a "Nuclear Weapons Laboratory". It sequences Genomes...

Los Alamos is very much a nuclear weapons laboratory, one of three in the US. Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore are responsible for the (about a dozen) nuclear parts of nuclear weapons whereas Sandia, considered an engineering rather than physics laboratory, is responsible for the (thousands of) non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons. All three are national laboratories and work on all sorts of other things, but they are the only ones responsible for designing the US nuclear arsenal.

Re:Invulnerable? Really?

[wagnerrp]

An isolated MEMS is immune to electromagnetic pulses as the atmospheric saturation voltage is too low to produce sufficient potential in a system that small to damage it. If the MEMS is electrically connected to larger external systems, the potential across the contact points could be sufficient to cause damage.

Re:Thermionic valves also work

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Totally immune to EMP. Besides, we need people to magnify the Casimir effect if we're to ever get wormhole technology. And, trust me on this, you do NOT want an evil general on the other side to go around suppressing it when you're half-way through.

Plus, ICBMs controlled by valves just have a 'warmer' trajectory. It's hard to describe; but the flight path just isn't nearly as 'harsh' as semiconductor ICBMs.

Re:Prior Technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if I agree. I think the research is interesting. (Also, the Casimir force is _not_ like friction: it appears in conductive materials only.)

1. They've managed to make the super-tiny grooves needed at an unheard of precision. Sub-100 nm features have little in common with grooved surfaces.
2. The grating they've developed confirms the prediction that Casimir force is proportional to area.
3. The grating has effects going beyond existing theory:

Replacing a flat surface with a deep metallic lamellar grating with sub-100 nm features strongly suppresses the Casimir force and for large inter-surfaces separations reduces it beyond what would be expected by any existing theoretical prediction. (Abstract)

If only Los alamos were as smart as slashdot, eh?

[taylorius]

So, to paraphrase quite a few comments on this article:

"Duh, Los alamos are so stupid - less material in contact, less force, just like friction. I can't believe they only just worked that out. I mean DUH, they could've asked me THAT. Oh, and they make nukes. Eurgh, I hate them!"

Really? You seriously think that's all there is to it? I only read the abstract, and it states that the decrease in the Casimir force is far beyond theoretical predictions. But pffth, they probably got that wrong too, right?

I dunno, the misplaced arrogance I read on here sometimes really depresses me.