Actually, Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors AND CPUs have been made - the older Cray Supercomputers at the NSA are nothing but GaAs computer architechure.
The biggest problem with these devices was the heat output. To cool these systems, Cray had to put a recirculating ethylene glycol system into the computer, which ran the ethylene glycol OVER the computer chips and circuit boards to cool them. Since ethylene glycol is an electrical insulator there was no worry about short circuit with this system, provided it was kept absolutely dry. Filters were put into the recirculating unit to ensure dryness. It was such a neat visual effect, that Cray put in windows on the side of the casing so you could see the liquid cascade over the chips and boards and fall over the edge like a waterfall.
Obviously, the semiconductor industry is especially interested in this are. IBM has done some work on "streching" the silicon domains in semiconductor devices to get them to behave differently. By doing this, they can get around some of the size limits that chip/device fabrication is currently running up against. I wish I could find the article I saw on this, but I think it was about a month ago..
What strikes me as really neat about this technology is the possibility for optical computing, rather than electron transport through semiconductors. With chemical and nanoscale design applied together, one could perhaps get different materials to emit different wavelenghts of light, opening up not just optical storage applications, but optical CPUs, memory, etc. I want to say that researchers have found some silicon/germanium crystals that do just this, based on the ratio of silicon to germanium. I think I read it in Science or Applied Physics Letters, but again, I'm not completely sure where I read this, but I know I've seen it somewhere.
As a nitpicking aside, there is no such thing as microscopic nanocrystals. Nanocrystals are called such because one or more of their dimensions are on the nanoscale. For nanocrystalline silicon, all of its dimensions are nanoscale, and not microscale.
Lets not forget the advances in Chemistry provided by the Islamic world. The names of two common functional groups in organic chemistry,alcohol and aldehyde, come from Islam.
Come to think of it, its rather ironic that Islamic scholars, studying chemistry, identified alcohols as a group of chemicals, only to later have the religious scholars ban the stuff.
What makes something worth watching and getting televised would be its entertainment value....in which case bring on the drugs!
If you've ever watched ESPN2's "World's Stongest Man Competitions", you know that these mutants are taking performance enhancing drugs. Watching it makes me laugh and reminds me of Saturday Night Live's "Steroid Olympics". Why do I watch these brutes lobbing around concrete filled barrels and hauling semis with their bare hands? Because it's entertaining.
So if we had performance enhancing drugs in the olympics - I'd pay money for someone doped up to Mentat level playing another Mentat-level olympian - or better yet, telepathics moving the pieces with their minds via telekinesis and then using other mental disciplines to block their thoughts.
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Actually, Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors AND CPUs have been made - the older Cray Supercomputers at the NSA are nothing but GaAs computer architechure. The biggest problem with these devices was the heat output. To cool these systems, Cray had to put a recirculating ethylene glycol system into the computer, which ran the ethylene glycol OVER the computer chips and circuit boards to cool them. Since ethylene glycol is an electrical insulator there was no worry about short circuit with this system, provided it was kept absolutely dry. Filters were put into the recirculating unit to ensure dryness. It was such a neat visual effect, that Cray put in windows on the side of the casing so you could see the liquid cascade over the chips and boards and fall over the edge like a waterfall.
Obviously, the semiconductor industry is especially interested in this are. IBM has done some work on "streching" the silicon domains in semiconductor devices to get them to behave differently. By doing this, they can get around some of the size limits that chip/device fabrication is currently running up against. I wish I could find the article I saw on this, but I think it was about a month ago.. What strikes me as really neat about this technology is the possibility for optical computing, rather than electron transport through semiconductors. With chemical and nanoscale design applied together, one could perhaps get different materials to emit different wavelenghts of light, opening up not just optical storage applications, but optical CPUs, memory, etc. I want to say that researchers have found some silicon/germanium crystals that do just this, based on the ratio of silicon to germanium. I think I read it in Science or Applied Physics Letters, but again, I'm not completely sure where I read this, but I know I've seen it somewhere. As a nitpicking aside, there is no such thing as microscopic nanocrystals. Nanocrystals are called such because one or more of their dimensions are on the nanoscale. For nanocrystalline silicon, all of its dimensions are nanoscale, and not microscale.
Lets not forget the advances in Chemistry provided by the Islamic world. The names of two common functional groups in organic chemistry ,alcohol and aldehyde, come from Islam.
Come to think of it, its rather ironic that Islamic scholars, studying chemistry, identified alcohols as a group of chemicals, only to later have the religious scholars ban the stuff.
What makes something worth watching and getting televised would be its entertainment value....in which case bring on the drugs! If you've ever watched ESPN2's "World's Stongest Man Competitions", you know that these mutants are taking performance enhancing drugs. Watching it makes me laugh and reminds me of Saturday Night Live's "Steroid Olympics". Why do I watch these brutes lobbing around concrete filled barrels and hauling semis with their bare hands? Because it's entertaining. So if we had performance enhancing drugs in the olympics - I'd pay money for someone doped up to Mentat level playing another Mentat-level olympian - or better yet, telepathics moving the pieces with their minds via telekinesis and then using other mental disciplines to block their thoughts.
Not to mention the possible problem of getting this wet and frying the wearer.