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Scientists Discover Diamond Nanothreads
First time accepted submitter sokol815 writes Penn State University scientists discovered diamond nanothreads can be created from benzene when compressed. The compression brings the benzene molecules into a highly reactive state. It was expected that the molecules would create a non-ordered glass-like material, but due to the slow speed of decompression used, the benzene molecules ordered themselves into a naturally repeating crystal. The experiment took place at room-temperature. Early results indicate that these nanothreads are stronger than previously produced carbon nanotubes, and may have applications throughout the engineering industry.
Should it be called Diamondium or Diamondillium?
Microsoft Kinect Spy System
THIS ARTICLE IS BEING SCRUBBED FROM THE NET. THE SITE IT WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED TO YANKED THE PLUG ON THEIR WHOLE SITE!!! COPY/PASTE THIS ARTICLE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE TO DISCUSSION FORUMS, BLOGS, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND ARCHIVE AND MIRROR THIS DOCUMENT SO IT DOES NOT VANISH FOREVER!
"So you just got the Kinect/Xbox360 gaming system and you're having fun, hanging out in your underwear, plopped down in your favorite lounge chair, and playing games with your buddies. Yeah, it's great to have a microphone and camera in your game system so you can "Kinect" to your pals while you play, but did you read that Terms of Service Agreement that came with your Kinect thingy? No? Here, let me point out an important part of that service agreement.
If you accept the agreement, you "expressly authorize and consent to us accessing or disclosing information about you, including the content of your communications, in order to: (a) comply with the law or respond to lawful requests or legal process; (b) protect the rights or property of Microsoft, our partners, or our customers, including the enforcement of our agreements or policies governing your use of the Service; or (c) act on a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees, customers, or the public."
Did you catch that? Here, let me print the important part in really big letters.
"If you accept the agreement, you expressly authorize and consent to us accessing or disclosing information about you, including the content of your communications⦠on a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees, customers, or the public."
OK, is that clear enough for ya? When you use the Kinect system, you agree to allow Microsoft (and any branch of law enforcement or government they care to share information with) to use your Kinect system to spy on you. Maybe run that facial recognition software to check you out, listen to your conversations, and keep track of who you are communicating with.
I know this is probably old news to some, but I thought I would mention it because it pertains to almost all of these home game systems that are interactive. You have to remember, the camera and microphone contained in your game system have the ability to be hacked by anyone the game company gives that ability to, and that includes government snoops and law enforcement agents.
Hey, it's MICROSOFT. What did you expect?
And the same concerns apply to all interactive game systems. Just something to think about if you're having a "Naked Wii party" or doing something illegal while you're gaming with your buddies. Or maybe you say something suspicious and it triggers the DHS software to start tracking your every word. Hey, this is not paranoia. It's spelled out for you, right there in that Service Agreement. Read it! Here's one more part of the agreement you should be aware of.
"You should not expect any level of privacy concerning your use of the live communication features (for example, voice chat, video and communications in live-hosted gameplay sessions) offered through the Service."
Did you catch it that time? YOU SHOULD NOT EXPECT ANY LEVEL OF PRIVACY concerning your voice chat and video features on your Kinect box."
###
"Listen up, you ignorant sheep. Your government is spending more money than ever to spy on its own citizens. That's YOU, my friend. And if you're one of these people who say, "Well I ain't ever done nothing wrong so why should I worry about it?' - you are dead wrong. Our civil liberties are being taken away faster than you can spit. The NSA is working away on its new "First Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center' to keep track of every last one of us. This thing will be the size of 17 football stadiums. One million square feet, all to be fille
How about "not diamond"?
Diamond is characterized by each carbon bonding with 4 other carbons. You can't get a thread out of it. You might claim that you have, but all along that thread there will be carbons not bonded to four others. Those are called defects.
From a diamond point-of-view, this stuff would be considered defect-laden pseudo-'diamond', or just simply not diamond.
Still, sexy headline.
I come here for the love
You wouldn't guess from the summary that the article title is "Going up! Cosmic elevator could reach space on a cable made of diamonds".
Not a long time ago, I was just a normal internet user that surfed various news sites like Sladshdot, reddit, or wsj.com. I read a story, perhaps clicked onto some links it contained, and I was mostly happy with my life.
Then, one day, I surfed Slashdot. It was one of those days you will remember for the rest of your life. So, as I surfed Sladshdot, the title of a story got my attention. I read the summary. The topic seemed interesting, so I decided to read further. I read:
Read on below for the rest what Bennett has to say.
Usually I don't read first line of a story which contains the user who has submitted it. On that day, I didn't neither. As I've only read that bottom line, I asked myself: who is this misterious Bennett? I decided to click onto the "Read the comments" link to read more of the story that was, as it seems, written by some Bennett. During reading, I was already impressed by the clear and detailed but still concise structure of the text. As I finished reading, I was convinced it was the best story I've ever read on Sladshdot, or any comparable news site. I asked myself: perhaps this misterious Bennett has contributed more frequently than just once?
To find that out, I went to Sladshdot's search bar and searched for "Bennett". I clicked the second entry, and it began with:
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes
I searched for the "Read on" line, and I was happy when I found it. As it seemed, he was a frequent contributor. However the story was on a topic completely unrelated to the topic of my article. Would the other article still be as insightful as the first? And the other stories in the search result? Would they be also by Bennett? Or someone else? I decided first to be happy to have found such an insightful article, and decided to make a photograph of me, before I read the second story.
I still have that photograph of me and I can see the hope and the satisfaction in my eyes, the hope that the other stories are also written by this brilliant author called Bennett, and the satisfaction of having read such an insightful article. As I've read the first couple of stories by Bennett, I couldn't believe what my eyes saw: all the stories were as insightful or even more insightful than the original story I read. I asked myself whether the spectators in the Globe theatre would have felt the same way when they watched a piece by shakespeare: Witnessing history of writing. I realized Bennett is one of histories great writers.
As I've finished reading all contributions by Bennett Haselton on Sladshdot, I went back to the first Bennett story, and read them a second time. I sat three days straight, missing all social events during that span, only reading Bennett's stories, and reading them again and again. During that time my eyes opened to the fact that my whole life, I've known nothing. Bennett's stories explained every aspect of very complicated things in such detail, that I formed something in my mind. First, I couldn't describe it what it was, but years later I know that, for the first time of my life, I formed something called "opinion" on a topic. Previously, I've only adopted opinions from others, but Bennett's stories enable people to make their opinions for themselfes, to form them. With his stories, Bennett gives you the material to form your own opinion on your own. I know you will say that you can form your opinion on your own, and that you don't need Bennett for that. I
disagree with you. What you call opinion, is in reality just ideology you imitate from others. You don't form your opinions, you don't have them.
Every time Bennett writes a new story on Sladshdot, I take a free day and spend it reading the story
Now all we need is a manwich.
This is great and all, but the real question is does this new method allow them to produce it in large quantities while maintaining its strength?
Space Elevator!
or not...
The public and the press underestimate and understate the difficulty in mass-producing new materials. Just because we can make a little, enough to study, doesn't mean we can efficiently make more or that developing those methods will be trivial or guaranteed to succeed.
Carbon nanotube production is still a tangled mixed mess 25+ years after their discovery and study. Graphene production is improving but still not good enough for commercial use 10 years after its discovery and study. These diamond nanothreads look to require 25 GPa of pressure to create. That's not a trivial amount of pressure - it's several times that required to make synthetic diamond gems. Using this materials is going to depend on someone inventing a much easier method of production, probably some form of chemical vapor deposition, which is already used for diamond films, graphene and nanotubes.
The long work of developing those methods is less sexy than the initial discovery of a material or effect, and usually a gradual improvement rather than a single "eureka" moment. It's just now starting to be recognized as a scientific achievement (e.g. the invention of reliable, efficient blue LEDs just won the Nobel prize although the physical principles were clearly understood by others decades earlier).
If it's a nuclear fusion reactor, why not call it the Sun? Because it's not.
Chemicals can have the same molecular formula without being the same thing. Further the state of the chemical can also dictate its structure.
Diamond have a face-centered cubic crystal structure. It this carbon nanothread FCC? No. The threads are "carbon in a tetrahedral formation with a carbon hanging off" (John Badding, PSU). Essentially it's non-crystalline, almost amorphous, whereas diamonds are crystalline.
Basically it needs a new name. Something to the effect of Carbon Nanothreads, similar but different from Carbon Nanotubes.
Now I'm naming my daughter Lucy and making her wear a shirt made of it. That way I can say: Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
If you make a whole bunch of this stuff, you'll use up more of the carbon that could otherwise be used for CO/2.
Carbon sinks!
On the minus side, with all the extra oxygen, the planet will suddenly explode when some unhealthy sap lights his cigarette.
Can I have my beanstalk now? Please?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Diamond Nanothreads are forever.
Yeah but the 'D' is a girls best friend
Using this for a space elevator isn't the best use for this. If these fibers are flexible enough, you could weave them into flexible body armor. Imagine light weight "kitchen" gloves that you can't cut through even with the sharpest knife. Shark protection (but not against lasers...yet). These fibers could replace carbon fiber in high strength areas. Have short enough fibers and use them for 3D printing. They are already using carbon fiber in 3D printers, this could replace it for extreme strength parts. If cheap enough, this could replace carbon fiber in safety situations (racing, boating, aircraft). Now imagine a crash at a race, except this time, the body deforms, but does not disintegrate. I think this is a major announcement in materials science, and I'm curious just how many other areas this could advance.
and the nerves of the AI we born.
one step closer
A "D" are a guy's best friends aswell...
I hope that the process of creating this stuff is inexpensive. Maybe one day instead of a carbon fiber fishing rod I will be able to own a diamond thread woven fabric shaped into a hollow fishing rod.
But seriously this new material will likely open up numerous serious products. We might even see computer chips wired with this material.
each to their own, I prefer a pair of them to a single D.
I think I have a machine that makes this stuff all the time as a waste product. Unfortunately, it is likely to be quite difficult to extract the nanothreads as they are a tiny part of the residue in the diesel particulate filter in the exhaust of my car's diesel engine!
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=930
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=4301
Not sure why we'd want to post to a CNN article. Here's the scientific american link:
http://www.scientificamerican....
This is quite old news, but here's a link with some scientific information: Diamond Thread.
So would my mom. The cancer had other ideas.
At least she's alive and doing well.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Nanothread and the Benzenes.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Hence the plural 'friends' ;)
But push come to shove, a C or a nice looking B will do just fine :D
time to start growing those diamond spaceships :P