The high velocity at the muzzle is an advantage if you add a scram jet to the launch vehicle. Plus you can always build the thing on top of a big mountain for extra credit.
The idea is feasible. The real problem is that it's so simple that every two bit dictator in the world could build one in a jiffy if the technology was well developed.
As a materials chemist the benefits of this design compared to existing programmable gate arrays is beyond my knowledge.
However, I can say that this is exciting because several of it's design elements are made with simple processing techniques that don't require the amazingly complex (and expensive) equipment used in traditional microfabrication.
The design (transistors made in arrays of crossed lines) is very interesting to material scientists because it is so simple compared to a traditional transitor array (or FPGA for that matter) that it is possible to imagine building it using self assembly techniques at very low cost.
As someone who works in nanotechnology, I can tell you that bottom-up transistors arrays is one of the coolest things that might actually be possible and that this is a good step in that direction. Essentially this research is a step towards being able to grow a computer chip instead of build one.
This a two dimensional array of transistors that can be turned on or off individually.
It's like the screen on your monitor except that each pixel is a variable transistor. So you can imagine that one "image" in the two dimensional array would be perfect for compiling code or something and another image would be best for graphics rendering. Essentially the promise of this design is that you could change your hardware as fast as you refresh your TV screen.
These are made with germanium and silicon. No gallium involved.
The expense of GaAs comes from the incredible cost of the wafers. Experiments like this which use individually grown nano-wires use an incredibly small amount of material for the semiconductor layer. If you could actually make these devices at a large scale with good enough properties for commercial use they would be incredibly cheap and you could make them on just about any substrate (glass.. paper?... skin!??... ) no wafer required.
1) because it uses self assembled nano-wires as the semiconducting element of the transistor. This is an example of bottom-up processing. 2) because it uses a three layer gate oxide which can be altered by applying a high voltage, turning transistors on and off.
Bottom-up processing is extremely cool because it offers the future promise of being able to make electronics using the fundamental chemical properties of materials. The idea is that under the right conditions you can grow electronics without using super expensive top-down processing like deep-UV interference lithography.
The programmable nature of the transistor, which comes from the long lasting and reversible electrochemical changes that 6-9V applied between the gate and source generates (kinda like a memristor), means that if you make a square array of transistors and then you can address each transistor in the array individually, turning it on or off. This allows you to change the chip "hardware" on the fly. Which could be cool for programmers i guess....
As someone who works in this industry, I still remain on the record saying that the current plan is the best one NASA has had since the Shuttle was a dream given form*.
* Not quite the form it should have been, though.
You may be right but why do you feel the shuttle was any good?
Isn't the cost of launching a shuttle payload 5000$ a pound?
If you think of it that way a launch vehicle which costs 1000$ a pound would have allowed 5 times more equipment to be launched for the same amount of money.
As someone who works in the industry why do you feel that nobody besides Sadaam Hussein ever tried to build a low cost launch system like a super-gun?
This view is expressed in the book Eaarth (spelled wrong to indicate that the planet is no longer the Earth we once knew!).
I find the idea of halting growth to be abhorrent.
What is growth? Growth is an either an increase in population or an increase in wealth.
Population increase is problematic but that is not a problem in the western world where population is basically stable, our real problem is increasing wealth. The problem with our increasing wealth is not that it is necessarily harmful to the environment and usustainable and thus destined to end in a catastrophic collapse (see Jared Diamond's book Collapse). The problem with our growth is that it is poorly defined.
A private company that borrows money from the bank cannot report that money as profit, if they did their shareholders would eat them alive. Similarly if a company borrowed money from the bank and spent it on things other than infrastructure that allowed them to make more money (like new equipment) they would be in big big trouble.
If borrowing money that you later need to pay back is not "growth" then depleting the resources of the planet without increasing the long term value of those resources is not growth it is just borrowing value without a plan to pay it back. Our version of growth is just doing the same stupid thing only doing it more. The skills and technology exist for us to increase our wealth in a real sense. If the incentives were correct we would be motivated to develop technologies that utilize resources in a more and more efficient manner such that we never end up running out of resources.
We are no where near efficient enough at the moment to talk about living within our means we need to grow out of this wasteful local minimum and continue to progress towards a world were every individual is free to pursue life to it's maximum potential.
Here is an example of what I would consider growth: A plant that grows steak (at this point I would be a vegetarian).
The real problem with the practice of science today is that it is dependant on funding from non-scientists.
The result of this is that research is inefficent and corrupted by outside influence.
My solution to this problem is this:
If we assume that the wealth generated by scientific research is greater (perhaps much greater) than the money used to fund the research in the first place, then a good solution to corruption and inefficiency in science research is to begin funding it ourselves. Imagine if there was an enormous investment fund that was administered by scientists for science. We could invest in research of practical and academic value of our choosing and reinvest the gains in further research, taking control of our own destinies.
Imagine if this Science Association had existed when the microchip was invented for instance. How much cash would a company like Intel or IBM generate for researchers instead of shareholders. Where would the motive for fudging data come from if all you were doing was wasting what would effectively be your own money and what would the consequences be if you were found out by other scientists who held a real financial stake in what you were doing?
The holy grail of nanotechnology is the regular arrangement of clusters of atoms. This is the basis of future technologies like quantum computing, light based computing, and efficient solar power to name a few. Currently there is no way to make regular patterns of nanocrystals in arrays that is economically feasable, easy, or quick.
The discovery of this self assembled arrangement is significant because it suggests that people are getting close to figuring out how to make a scaffolding for the production of such regular arrays. If people can figure out how to fill the in the holes in the "chicken wire" pattern with different types of materials or figure out how to vary the size of the holes this discover could lead to some very cool stuff.
If you read the article they specifically reference IIb VIa and Ib IIIa VIa semiconductors. This refers to stuff like CdS, CdSe, ZnS, CuS.. etc.
The cool thing about nanoparticles of semiconductors like these is that when they absorb light the generated exciton (electron and hole) are constrained and thus have a higher excitation energy giving better efficiency.
Patterning nano particles is big money research. If they actually perfected the process they describe it's worth mucho $$.
However I think US run into a brick wall sooner than 2011.
Given that the growth of the US money supply has outstripped the growth of GDP by something like 4 times over the past 10 years, it is my personal belief that we are already in a depression that is being masked by printed dollars. When the massive amounts of money that have been and are being created finally hit consumer prices look for that 20$ cup of coffee to send the economy into the toilet.
Considering that the average north american produces 5 tons of CO2 a year (that is approximately 1.6 billion tons for canada and the US alone) the influence of humanity on green house gasses is obviously significant.
It may well be that more CO2 is produced by natural oxidation of organic material, such as occurs in tropical waterways, and from volcanic outgassing, but those CO2 sources are part of the carbon cycle that has existed for an extremely long time. The data you posted is useless without similar data showing how much carbon is sequestered by those same mechanisms.
There is no question of destroying wilderness to limit carbon dioxide emissions since wilderness has a close to zero influence on the net levels of greenhouse gasses.
The real question is how many lives will be lost if a rise in temperature is not prevented. The amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of the world by 1degree C is equivalent to the energy put out by hundreds of thousands of nuclear reactors running at maximum output for an entire year. This qualitative description is a useful measure when one considers that that added energy finds it's way into wind and rain. How many lives will be lost due to the increased intensity of weather? How much property damage will result? Weather damage is not a one time charge, it will continue as long as the temperatures are elevated. How many years till the cost of rebuilding damaged infrastructure and homes outpaces the costs of implementing renewable energy programs?
By adopting efficient and far sighted energy practices now we build productive infrastucture that benefits ourselves and spurs economic growth by usefully expanding our energy capacity. The status quo leads to more violent weather, widespread destruction, and rebuilding costs, which do nothing to increase our economic output and only lead to inflation and wasteful spending.
It is impossible to convice laypeople of the truth about global warming and many other scientific issues of relevance today, because they cannot distinguish good scientific information from bad.
It is my personal belief that scientists must take greater responsibility for their surroundings and engage in the "real world". For instance, I can think of several strategies for implementing renewable energy production processes that promise incredible profitability.
Why not get together in a scientific association that exploits the technological and scientific knowledge that we currently "sell" to corporations for a miniscule fraction of what they are potentially worth. If as a group scientists engage in free market capitalist endevours we could slaughter the competition by producing cheap, efficient, useful products and, on a large enough scale, we could control the development of new technology.
This may sound far fetched to you, but it has already been done by the American Medical association (for doctors) and by the Bar Association (for layers). Those two professions protect their intellectual knowledge why don't we?
CuS is very cheap to make and many examples of quantum dot sulphides and selenides exist in literature.
The quantum dots are made by mixing copper ions and sulfide ions together in a way that promotes instantaneous nucleation followed by autocatalytic growth of the particles. This results in highly uniform particle size distribution.
This experiment utilizes the quantum size effect of low band gap semi-conductors (CuS) in conjunction with attatched organics to harness low energy photons.
The quantum dots would be very resistant to the environmental extremes typical of the outdoors but the organics might be a little less robust. However at low wavelengths even organics can have very long lifetimes (like forever).
Compared to the cost of the patterning and processing of the substrates that would be required for such a devices the quantum dots would be very cheap.
One thing I have noticed about/.ers is that most of them are programmers and engineers and few are physical scientists.
It occurs to me that because programmers are able to sit behind a desk and create vast virtual worlds they sometimes forget that in the world of "bricks" as opposed to "clicks" it is very much more difficult to make things.
As a chemist involved in photonic materials research (nanotechnology). I can attest to the fact that the reality of a nano assembler is vastly more complex than a macro sized universal assembler (which doesn't even exist). The rational design of a nanotech assembler, if it were based on silicon, would require the development of what would essentially amount to a new life form from scratch (no DNA, no Protein etc.) Chemistry is so far removed from this possiblity that it's not even worth seriously talking about the ramifications of such technology.
We are at the level of childrens building blocks, when it comes to nanotech, and everyone is talking about devices 20 times more complicated than the space shuttle.
It is easy to imagine cold fusion experiments in solids generating massive temperatures and pressures. Constructive interference patterns of the myriad of large and small scale vibrations generated inside some lattices may result the same sort of "imposions" wich characterize so-called "bubble" fusion.
A cursory search reveals that several recent peer-reviewed papers show nuclear reactions inside solids under conditions similar to those of traditional cold fusion. Including changes is the isotopic ratios of nickel atoms in electrodes before and after experimentation.
Also, from a chemical perspective, it is easy to image the possiblity of lowering the activation energy of certain fusion reactions to generate results which differ from traditional fusion product ratios. In chemistry such catalyst mediated reactions are everywhere. Is it so outlandish to think that heavy nuclei brought together with light ones in the proper geometry could result in catalysis of fusion?
Do yourself a favor, read up on the subject! It's actually real.
Slashdot Mirror
The high velocity at the muzzle is an advantage if you add a scram jet to the launch vehicle. Plus you can always build the thing on top of a big mountain for extra credit.
The idea is feasible. The real problem is that it's so simple that every two bit dictator in the world could build one in a jiffy if the technology was well developed.
Elon Musk disagrees.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/rockets/elon-musk-on-spacexs-reusable-rocket-plans-6653023
As a materials chemist the benefits of this design compared to existing programmable gate arrays is beyond my knowledge.
However, I can say that this is exciting because several of it's design elements are made with simple processing techniques that don't require the amazingly complex (and expensive) equipment used in traditional microfabrication.
The design (transistors made in arrays of crossed lines) is very interesting to material scientists because it is so simple compared to a traditional transitor array (or FPGA for that matter) that it is possible to imagine building it using self assembly techniques at very low cost.
As someone who works in nanotechnology, I can tell you that bottom-up transistors arrays is one of the coolest things that might actually be possible and that this is a good step in that direction. Essentially this research is a step towards being able to grow a computer chip instead of build one.
This is cooler than that.
This a two dimensional array of transistors that can be turned on or off individually.
It's like the screen on your monitor except that each pixel is a variable transistor. So you can imagine that one "image" in the two dimensional array would be perfect for compiling code or something and another image would be best for graphics rendering. Essentially the promise of this design is that you could change your hardware as fast as you refresh your TV screen.
These are made with germanium and silicon. No gallium involved.
The expense of GaAs comes from the incredible cost of the wafers. Experiments like this which use individually grown nano-wires use an incredibly small amount of material for the semiconductor layer. If you could actually make these devices at a large scale with good enough properties for commercial use they would be incredibly cheap and you could make them on just about any substrate (glass.. paper?... skin!??... ) no wafer required.
This work is significant for two reasons
1) because it uses self assembled nano-wires as the semiconducting element of the transistor. This is an example of bottom-up processing.
2) because it uses a three layer gate oxide which can be altered by applying a high voltage, turning transistors on and off.
Bottom-up processing is extremely cool because it offers the future promise of being able to make electronics using the fundamental chemical properties of materials. The idea is that under the right conditions you can grow electronics without using super expensive top-down processing like deep-UV interference lithography.
The programmable nature of the transistor, which comes from the long lasting and reversible electrochemical changes that 6-9V applied between the gate and source generates (kinda like a memristor), means that if you make a square array of transistors and then you can address each transistor in the array individually, turning it on or off. This allows you to change the chip "hardware" on the fly. Which could be cool for programmers i guess....
Basically this is amazing work.
As someone who works in this industry, I still remain on the record saying that the current plan is the best one NASA has had since the Shuttle was a dream given form*.
* Not quite the form it should have been, though.
You may be right but why do you feel the shuttle was any good?
Isn't the cost of launching a shuttle payload 5000$ a pound?
If you think of it that way a launch vehicle which costs 1000$ a pound would have allowed 5 times more equipment to be launched for the same amount of money.
As someone who works in the industry why do you feel that nobody besides Sadaam Hussein ever tried to build a low cost launch system like a super-gun?
This view is expressed in the book Eaarth (spelled wrong to indicate that the planet is no longer the Earth we once knew!).
I find the idea of halting growth to be abhorrent.
What is growth? Growth is an either an increase in population or an increase in wealth.
Population increase is problematic but that is not a problem in the western world where population is basically stable, our real problem is increasing wealth. The problem with our increasing wealth is not that it is necessarily harmful to the environment and usustainable and thus destined to end in a catastrophic collapse (see Jared Diamond's book Collapse). The problem with our growth is that it is poorly defined.
A private company that borrows money from the bank cannot report that money as profit, if they did their shareholders would eat them alive. Similarly if a company borrowed money from the bank and spent it on things other than infrastructure that allowed them to make more money (like new equipment) they would be in big big trouble.
If borrowing money that you later need to pay back is not "growth" then depleting the resources of the planet without increasing the long term value of those resources is not growth it is just borrowing value without a plan to pay it back. Our version of growth is just doing the same stupid thing only doing it more. The skills and technology exist for us to increase our wealth in a real sense. If the incentives were correct we would be motivated to develop technologies that utilize resources in a more and more efficient manner such that we never end up running out of resources.
We are no where near efficient enough at the moment to talk about living within our means we need to grow out of this wasteful local minimum and continue to progress towards a world were every individual is free to pursue life to it's maximum potential.
Here is an example of what I would consider growth: A plant that grows steak (at this point I would be a vegetarian).
If you clicked on some of the links you would find some quantitative data hotshot.
Ethics have no place in science.
The real problem with the practice of science today is that it is dependant on funding from non-scientists.
The result of this is that research is inefficent and corrupted by outside influence.
My solution to this problem is this:
If we assume that the wealth generated by scientific research is greater (perhaps much greater) than the money used to fund the research in the first place, then a good solution to corruption and inefficiency in science research is to begin funding it ourselves. Imagine if there was an enormous investment fund that was administered by scientists for science. We could invest in research of practical and academic value of our choosing and reinvest the gains in further research, taking control of our own destinies.
Imagine if this Science Association had existed when the microchip was invented for instance. How much cash would a company like Intel or IBM generate for researchers instead of shareholders. Where would the motive for fudging data come from if all you were doing was wasting what would effectively be your own money and what would the consequences be if you were found out by other scientists who held a real financial stake in what you were doing?
This is very cool and here's why:
The holy grail of nanotechnology is the regular arrangement of clusters of atoms. This is the basis of future technologies like quantum computing, light based computing, and efficient solar power to name a few. Currently there is no way to make regular patterns of nanocrystals in arrays that is economically feasable, easy, or quick.
The discovery of this self assembled arrangement is significant because it suggests that people are getting close to figuring out how to make a scaffolding for the production of such regular arrays. If people can figure out how to fill the in the holes in the "chicken wire" pattern with different types of materials or figure out how to vary the size of the holes this discover could lead to some very cool stuff.
If you read the article they specifically reference IIb VIa and Ib IIIa VIa semiconductors. This refers to stuff like CdS, CdSe, ZnS, CuS.. etc.
The cool thing about nanoparticles of semiconductors like these is that when they absorb light the generated exciton (electron and hole) are constrained and thus have a higher excitation energy giving better efficiency.
Patterning nano particles is big money research. If they actually perfected the process they describe it's worth mucho $$.
I am with you man.
However I think US run into a brick wall sooner than 2011.
Given that the growth of the US money supply has outstripped the growth of GDP by something like 4 times over the past 10 years, it is my personal belief that we are already in a depression that is being masked by printed dollars. When the massive amounts of money that have been and are being created finally hit consumer prices look for that 20$ cup of coffee to send the economy into the toilet.
Considering that the average north american produces 5 tons of CO2 a year (that is approximately 1.6 billion tons for canada and the US alone) the influence of humanity on green house gasses is obviously significant.
It may well be that more CO2 is produced by natural oxidation of organic material, such as occurs in tropical waterways, and from volcanic outgassing, but those CO2 sources are part of the carbon cycle that has existed for an extremely long time. The data you posted is useless without similar data showing how much carbon is sequestered by those same mechanisms.
There is no question of destroying wilderness to limit carbon dioxide emissions since wilderness has a close to zero influence on the net levels of greenhouse gasses.
The real question is how many lives will be lost if a rise in temperature is not prevented. The amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of the world by 1degree C is equivalent to the energy put out by hundreds of thousands of nuclear reactors running at maximum output for an entire year. This qualitative description is a useful measure when one considers that that added energy finds it's way into wind and rain. How many lives will be lost due to the increased intensity of weather? How much property damage will result? Weather damage is not a one time charge, it will continue as long as the temperatures are elevated. How many years till the cost of rebuilding damaged infrastructure and homes outpaces the costs of implementing renewable energy programs?
By adopting efficient and far sighted energy practices now we build productive infrastucture that benefits ourselves and spurs economic growth by usefully expanding our energy capacity. The status quo leads to more violent weather, widespread destruction, and rebuilding costs, which do nothing to increase our economic output and only lead to inflation and wasteful spending.
Pay now or pay more later.
It is impossible to convice laypeople of the truth about global warming and many other scientific issues of relevance today, because they cannot distinguish good scientific information from bad.
It is my personal belief that scientists must take greater responsibility for their surroundings and engage in the "real world". For instance, I can think of several strategies for implementing renewable energy production processes that promise incredible profitability.
Why not get together in a scientific association that exploits the technological and scientific knowledge that we currently "sell" to corporations for a miniscule fraction of what they are potentially worth. If as a group scientists engage in free market capitalist endevours we could slaughter the competition by producing cheap, efficient, useful products and, on a large enough scale, we could control the development of new technology.
This may sound far fetched to you, but it has already been done by the American Medical association (for doctors) and by the Bar Association (for layers). Those two professions protect their intellectual knowledge why don't we?
CuS is very cheap to make and many examples of quantum dot sulphides and selenides exist in literature. The quantum dots are made by mixing copper ions and sulfide ions together in a way that promotes instantaneous nucleation followed by autocatalytic growth of the particles. This results in highly uniform particle size distribution. This experiment utilizes the quantum size effect of low band gap semi-conductors (CuS) in conjunction with attatched organics to harness low energy photons. The quantum dots would be very resistant to the environmental extremes typical of the outdoors but the organics might be a little less robust. However at low wavelengths even organics can have very long lifetimes (like forever). Compared to the cost of the patterning and processing of the substrates that would be required for such a devices the quantum dots would be very cheap.
Ummm that is the total world consumption over one year ... divide by 365.
A single 1000^2 km solar power plant could supply the world 2-5 times over.
Not to sound trollish but...
/.ers is that most of them are programmers and engineers and few are physical scientists.
One thing I have noticed about
It occurs to me that because programmers are able to sit behind a desk and create vast virtual worlds they sometimes forget that in the world of "bricks" as opposed to "clicks" it is very much more difficult to make things.
As a chemist involved in photonic materials research (nanotechnology). I can attest to the fact that the reality of a nano assembler is vastly more complex than a macro sized universal assembler (which doesn't even exist). The rational design of a nanotech assembler, if it were based on silicon, would require the development of what would essentially amount to a new life form from scratch (no DNA, no Protein etc.) Chemistry is so far removed from this possiblity that it's not even worth seriously talking about the ramifications of such technology.
We are at the level of childrens building blocks, when it comes to nanotech, and everyone is talking about devices 20 times more complicated than the space shuttle.
It is easy to imagine cold fusion experiments in solids generating massive temperatures and pressures. Constructive interference patterns of the myriad of large and small scale vibrations generated inside some lattices may result the same sort of "imposions" wich characterize so-called "bubble" fusion. A cursory search reveals that several recent peer-reviewed papers show nuclear reactions inside solids under conditions similar to those of traditional cold fusion. Including changes is the isotopic ratios of nickel atoms in electrodes before and after experimentation. Also, from a chemical perspective, it is easy to image the possiblity of lowering the activation energy of certain fusion reactions to generate results which differ from traditional fusion product ratios. In chemistry such catalyst mediated reactions are everywhere. Is it so outlandish to think that heavy nuclei brought together with light ones in the proper geometry could result in catalysis of fusion? Do yourself a favor, read up on the subject! It's actually real.