Nanotech discovery could have radical implications

Physorg.com | Princeton University ^ | November 30, 2005

[grey_whiskers]

But I call it, " Schroedinger's Wife "..

Schrödinger's Cat, I've heard of.
But I draw the line at Schrödinger's P*ssy...

(And if you throw in Heisenberg, you get the famous
"Does she or doesn't she?" which depends on if you get into the box.)

Full disclosure: Talk about superposition of states :-P

[grey_whiskers]

A ceramic research lab in Dresden, Germany, has developed transparent Alumina

Yes, but you can't use it to make protective hats...the enemy can literally see your thoughts ;-)

[grey_whiskers]

This could be a crude sort of fusion reactor.. The fission reactor providing an energy source as a "starter" much like a diesel engine.. A physicist could probably tear this idea apart in a couple of minutes..(seconds) but I will revel in my genius for the moment.. ;o)

Try looking up the temperature needed for hydrogen fusion to occur...then consider if the nanotubes would endure those temperatures for long...

Cheers!

[Prodigal Son]

Hmmm. I think if we get to the point where we can build large structures using nanotech we could probably figure out a way to do without so much gasoline.

But it would be cool to just skip the whole exploring, drilling, pumping, shipping and refining process and just put it straight into my gas tank.

[grey_whiskers]

Good exposition for the lay person, but when working with computers, it is easy to redefine the parameters describing the Born-Oppenheimer hypersurface describing the 3-D interaction potential in any way you see fit, to "define" molecules which will pack in any particular lattice you want. But in the real world, the molecules have only one specific way of interacting with their fellow building blocks, and if that doesn't lead to the structure you want to build, you're SOL.

Another practical problem here is that the deep narrow wells are energetically (and entropically) favored.

Getting the molecules to choose the wide shallow wells could be done in principle with some work, but the effective yield of the synthetic process would be low.

Furthermore the structures would be sensitive to heat and vibration or shock...

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

I wonder how expensive it would be, on a large scale, to simulate the atomic structure of pure gasoline?

In the bulk, $$$$. Ask ExxonMobil, they have molecular dynamics folks on staff, and the money. :-)

[Paul C. Jesup]

Try looking up the temperature needed for hydrogen fusion to occur...then consider if the nanotubes would endure those temperatures for long...

Well considering carbon graphite rods are used to control the chain reaction in a nuclear reactor, in theory it would be possible. You would just need a way to bleed/ground the energy absorbed by the carbon nanotubes from the radiation so the carbon nanotubes don't break apart.

[grey_whiskers]

I meant the temperatures necessary for appreciable *FUSION* (the hydrogen that the nanotubes are holding, remember?), not *FISSION* (the jumpstart). :-)

Cheers!

[Walkingfeather]

If this is true, these guys have jumped this field into hyperspace, regarding advancement in this field.

[grey_whiskers]

Torquato and colleagues have published a paper in the Nov. 25 issue of Physical Review Letters, the leading physics journal, outlining a mathematical approach that would enable them to produce desired configurations of nanoparticles by manipulating the manner in which the particles interact with one another.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. (Richard Feynman) Even though Feynman predicted nanotechnology elsewhere, my money is against the form described in this article. :-)

Cheers!

[Paul C. Jesup]

It all depends on the type of nuclear reactor used.

[ßuddaßudd]

Imagine if we could grow our own fuel.

[BlazingArizona]

Bumper sticker: HEISENBERG MAY HAVE BEEN HERE

[SunkenCiv]

"futurist Eric Drexler daringly predicted a new world where miniaturized robots would build things one molecule at a time"

Really puts the whole "illegal aliens are stealing all our jobs" thing into perspective. ;')

[BlueMondaySkipper]

"The honeycomb lattice is a simple example but it illustrates the power of our approach," Torquato said. "We envision assembling even more useful and unusual structures in the future."

[Phsstpok]

John Ringo uses this thinking in his "Legacy of the Aldenata" series of SF books (that's both Sci Fi and special forces). It was a logical extension of the work already being done, at least to him.

(T)heir method of manufacture involved using swarms of nannites to build products atom by atom in vats. This gave them the capacity to build materials that violated many "known facts" of materials science; the nannites could make atoms do things that occurred only as low probabilities in any other method.

So that ability to intentionally create basic materials that are highly unlikely hopefully allows the production of building blocks that will be useful. I think these are the "bricks" in his house/architecture analogy, not the whole house. Once you have the capability to "design" the basic materials you should be able to preset them for certain interactions with other basic materials. Straining the analogy, you design "bricks" that adhere to other "bricks" automatically (or some intermediate brick to brick morter), then a layer of "bricks" that connect from bricks to some other material, say a "roof."

Clarke's Magician would be pleased

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

(Bonus, there are two corollaries to Clarke's law - can anyone name them?)

[Phsstpok]

I've already posted one quote from a John Ringo book series to TigerLikesRooster on this thread. As it happens there's another part of the same book that quote came from that applies to your scenario about enclosing nuclear material in Fullerene nanotubes. In his novel (Hell's Faire) Ringo introduces a UT researcher working at Oak Ridge that uses bucky-balls to microencapsulate not nuclear material but anti-matter.

It has been established (in reality) that material inserted inside a bucky-ball molecule will be suspended and not interact with the carbon or other normal matter, thus if you can manufacture antimatter and insert it within a bucky-ball without having it blow up prematurely the antimatter will be held in place safely until you "crack open" the bucky-ball.

He ends up creating a 2 megaton yield micro bomb suitable for packing into an artillery cluster round for firing from a Bull Gun.

"The system consists of fifty-five sub-projectiles with an Indowy initiator in each," Dr. Castanuelo said, pointing at the diagram on the screen. "After firing, the system reaches its target point and begins to spread projectiles. It doesn't just drop them, which would cause massive overlap, but lays them down during its flight. Each projectile has slowing fins. These have been shown to not "trip" Posleen defensive systems. This system lets all the projectiles attain complimentary altitudes. At a preprogrammed height above ground, which is determined by radar altimeters in each sub-projectile, the Indowy containment field releases a burst of anti-protons into the fullerene matrix which then sustains a rapid chain reaction."

Jack looked at the presentation as the projectiles fell out of the back of an imaginary artillery shell and scattered across a wide area. The effect looked similar to a cluster bomb until you realized that what looked like gullies and small hills in the background was a backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.

“What's the footprint?" Horner asked. He had commandeered a shuttle and flown down to the university as soon as he got the word. He still didn't know if he had the answer to a maiden's prayer or the worst nightmare since the word of the invasion.

Dr. Castanuelo cleared his throat nervously. "Thirty-five miles deep, fifteen miles across. It's the equivalent of a one hundred and ten megaton bomb, but with significantly different gross effects. For example the thermal pulse is equivalent to a two megaton."

"And you built this on your own?" Jack asked quietly. "Without authorization? Or even mentioning it? One hundred and ten megatons?"

"Well, I had the hyperfullerene and the initiators just sitting there," Dr. Castanuelo said hotly. "I thought it might come in handy."

"You thought it might come in handy. Just how much of this . . . hyperfullerene did you make?"

"Well, once we got the production model worked out it seemed reasonable to continue production," Dr. Castanuelo said defensively. "I mean, we had the power plant and the materials. After that it was easy."

"How much?" the general asked smiling faintly. The question was nearly a whisper.

"Well, as of yesterday, excepting the material in the bomb, approximately one hundred and forty kilos."

"Of hyperfullerene?" Jack asked, taking a deep breath.

"No, we generally refer to it in terms of anti-hydrogen atomic mass rather than the . . ."

"You have one hundred and forty kilos of antimatter sitting around on my planet????"

"I thought it would come in handy," the doctor said lamely.

"Sure, for fueling Ninth Fleet!" Jack shouted. "Tell me about the radioactive effects of this bomb."

"Very hot, unfortunately," the scientist sighed. "It's one of the reasons it's useless for an energy source. But very short-lived as well. In a day or two the area is down to high background and in a month it would require sophisticated sensors to tell it has been hit. But not the sort of thing you want running your car. Fortunately, it's readily detectable."

"Sure, with a Geiger counter!" President Carson said.

"Oh, no, there's a visual chemical cue," the professor said. "It was the suggestion of one of my grad students and it made sense. The truly 'hot' areas will be readily detectable visually and the cue will fade as the radiation does."

"But the entire system has not been tested," Carson pointed out with the sort of quiet calm used when an emergency happens during brain surgery.

"We fired a mockup with transmitters in duplicate Indowy containment fields," the scientist said. "They all survived. If they survived, the containment works. And hyperfullerene has been tested against every kind of shock imaginable. Unfortunately, the problem is not it detonating prematurely but getting it to detonate at all."

"And it is armed," Carson said, accusingly.

"Well, yes, that follows."

"Positive action locks?" Jack asked.

"Not yet," Castanuelo admitted. In other words, the bomb could be detonated by anyone with rudimentary technical skills.

"Guards? Electronic security? Vault safety?" the general asked furiously.

"Well, we've got it in one of our mines," the professor said with a shrug. "And I've got a couple of students watching it. Look, it was a crash project!"

Jack glanced at his wrist where his AID used to be and then at his aide. "Jackson, get on the phone. I want an outside expert in here, one on antimatter, one on Indowy containment systems and one on guns and submunitions. I want a company of regular troops around wherever this thing is in no more than an hour and I want them replaced by special operations guard units by the end of the day."

He looked at the scientist and nodded. "Dr. Castanuelo, you're right, we did need it. I'm pretty sure that that is going to keep your bacon out of the fire. As long as it works. If it doesn't . . ."

"Sir, if it doesn't, I'll never know it," Castanuelo said. "If it, for example, detonates on launch, there won't be a Knoxville left."

"And if the rest of your material sympathetically detonates, say goodbye to Tennessee!"

The "visual chemical cue" that one of his grad students suggests will "die" the country side with a bright fluorescent color that will fade as the radiation becomes safe. Being from UT they, of course, choose orange as the color to paint the dangerous countryside. They fire the round at North Georgia, where else?

The line from the book is:

"That's what you get for letting rednecks play with antimatter."

[takebackaustin]

People, please put on your reading glasses.

Alumina ( not aluminum ) is Al₂O₃. Transparent alumina is no more transparent aluminum than rock salt is transparent sodium. Ruby and sapphire are transparent alumina.

As to the original article: micro hat, pico cattle.

[BipolarBob]

But of course man sprang from nothingness via the big bang which itself was a physical anomaly since the galaxies or universe is and always was.

I hope you were being facetious. The universe could not have been here "forever" because entropically all energy would have decayed to a state of balance.

[Reaganesque]

What if we could create our own oil at the molecular level? Or even discover new ways of generating power at the nano-level. I certainly hope I'm around to see the day when we tell the Saudis and the rest of OPEC to stick it. Given the speed of recent discoveries in nano-tech, I may well be.