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Science

Nanosecrets of Everyday Things 90

Posted by michael from the attention-to-detail dept.
prostoalex writes "A recent issue of Berkeley Lab Research Review discusses the nanosecrets of everyday things. The article talks about common everyday applications of nanotechnology advances, as well as takes a look at tools used to manipulate itty-bitty widgets."
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Nanosecrets of Everyday Things More

Nanosecrets of Everyday Things

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  • Perhaps some day nanotechnology can help me aim better with a railgun like the friggin bots? But in all seriousness, nanotechnology I forsee being used for malicious means much, much, much more often then for good. The splendid benifits have to weighted against the possible problems of abuse. If I understand my science fiction correctly, it would be quite simple to carry these little buggers in your lungs, exhale them in a crowd of important people, then once you leave the proximity, they go rampaging through someones body until they destroy something vital. A silent assasin much easier to disperse than any poison, and practically untraceable.
    • is your glass always half empty ;)

      But in the short term youre probably right, now in the long term I think you will see far more good comeout of nano tech than bad. Many of the supercomputers we use today for medical study (like the one they just put in [buffalonews.com] at UB [buffalo.edu] would not exist if not for the military and its initial interest in computing for crypto/artillery calculation 50 years ago.

      For the same reason I think money should be pured into NASA, somehting which may be developed and be way too expensive for people to use today will be the personal computers, velcro, felt tip pens of tommorow.

    • For a novel with a remarkably similar premise, please check out my sig.
    • There's probably a general name for the argument I'm about to use here.

      It's futile to try to ban research of anything. You can warn about the dangers of such-and-such (which you did here, so this isn't a slam on you), you can discourage manufacture of certain products with a specific nefarious purpose, and you can withhold funding. But as for research, sooner or later someone's going to take the effort to figure out anything, as long as it "feels" useful enough, and sometimes it'll get researched just because it's there.

      In other words, "it's dangerous" isn't sufficient reason to stay away from learning about something. Rather, it's an incentive to do even more research, on finding a cure for the secondary problem(s).
    • The thing with nanotech is that while there are lots of new and different things you can do with it theoretically, there are developable countermeasures as well. Its just a whole new set of issues to deal with, even things like Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer brings up tech and counter-tech issues.
    • That's not nanotechnology...that's a virus. We manufacture those now, too.

  • Great Field (Score:1, Interesting)

    by N3WBI3 ( 595976 )
    This is one of the coolest field of studies to date. and the applications are nearly endless, from fuel cells, to devices to help build bone in older people.

    I never got very far here, I went much more twords digitial circuit vlsi than materials but from what I do know is once they find a way to beat/get around the quantum behavior of electrons you will see a parade of innovations here.

    • once they find a way to beat/get around the quantum behavior of electrons

      surely that's more of an if than a once?
      • I dont think so (thats why I qualified it with get around).
      • I certainly hope it's an "if." You think nuclear radiation is bad? This guy wants to "get around" the basic principle that allows matter to exist as conglomerations of elements. Talk about pollution you can't get rid of. There are real molecules your liver can't deal with. What happens when it gets a hold of some nanotech substance that doesn't even have an atomic structure? Deliver me from folks who think nature is something to be defeated.
        • I did not so much mean defeat, as find another solution, obviously changing the quantum properties of an electron is not deseriable, but you "if" you can 1) find a way to compensate, or 2) find another solution which is not effected by the quantum nature of subatomic particles you can do things on the nano level.

          Much of what man has thought was impossible happens every day.. When we run into a wall we either break it or go around it.

          • Much of what man has thought was impossible happens every day.. ..Of course

            When we run into a wall we either break it or go around it. ..Not always, there are things that may be actually impossible. Often we just go off in anouther direction. Space travel, anti-gravity platforms, room temperature fusion etc etc spring to mind.
            I'm not saying we can't or won't do any of these things, just that we very well may not. Technology may just progress in another direction.

  • Blob? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by YanceyAI ( 192279 ) <IAMYANCEY@yahoo.com> on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @12:30PM (#4195546)
    Often these transmission electron microscope images have a "bubble-raft" appearance, in which ordered arrays of little round blobs encounter other arrays oriented differently. Each blob represents a column of atoms; seen from a different angle, the spacing and orientation of the columns gives a different picture, although at some angles the atoms are too close together to resolve. (Emphasis mine)

    Is that the super-technical scientific use of the word blob, or do they just mean, you know, blob?

  • So now we'll have to put up with Nano-porn and Nano-Spam?

  • Firm grasp of the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bearpaw ( 13080 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @12:32PM (#4195554)
    "If we are going to achieve real nanotechnology, we are going to have to learn how to put atoms together one at a time." (Miquel Salmeron)

    Uh, yeah, that's what nanotechnology means. Or what it used to mean anyway, before it started getting watered down by lame science fiction and people using it for buzzword effect.

    • Re:Firm grasp of the obvious (Score:4, Informative)

      by jacoberrol ( 561252 ) <jacoberrol@NOSPAm.hotmail.com> on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @12:56PM (#4195678)
      You are confusing nanotechnology [techtarget.com] with positional assembly [techtarget.com]

      Assembling things one atom at a time is one way to accomplish nanotechnology, but it would be incorrect to assume it is the only way.

    • Re:Firm grasp of the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)

      by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @01:04PM (#4195727) Homepage Journal
      That's not entirely true; the ideal way to do nanotechnology might be to probabilistically arrange groups of atoms into a limited set of arrangements and filter out the undesired ones.

      For some applications, you probably actually do want to build your structures exactly and atom-by-atom. But other applications are best suited to a set of catalysts that will construct a random variant of the structure, so long as it has the property you want, or which will only sometimes construct the right thing, but everything else will be destroyed by another catalyst. For that matter, the most successful method has been to put together reasonably large molecules which are built separately.

      For that matter, depending on what you're making, you may be perfectly happy with a couple of the desired molecules and a lot of innocuous failures. The failures then are basically packing material (you're not going to deliver someone a single molecule; you're going to deliver a manageable volume of uninteresting solution with an interesting molecule in it).
    • learn how to put atoms together one at a time.

      Putting atoms together eh? So nanotech covers transmutation now too? :)

      Guess that could have been worded better.

      --

  • I didn't know.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by I_am_Rambi ( 536614 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @12:32PM (#4195559) Homepage
    "'If you're going to manipulate small things, you need small tools,' says Keith Jackson....Jackson, a physicist in the Materials Sciences Division's Center for X-Ray Optics"

    It took a Physicist to figure that out? I thought little kids can figure that out. I am glad to learn the obvious from a physicist.
    • Remember that Keith Jackson is having a conversation with some reporter. From my own experience, reporters are usually less aware of both obvious and non-obvious things than little kids. Unfortunately, Jackson was mistakenly addressing his local audience (the reporter) rather than attempt to address the audience of readers--"I don't care whether you understand, this is big-people talk so just write down exactly what I say: ..."
    • "If you're going to manipulate small things, you need small tools," says Keith Jackson

      And I bet you that if you ask his wife, she has a completely different opinion on the size of the tools!

      ---
      Yes, it's early. I need my coffee.. oh yeah, it's humor too!
    • I am glad to learn the obvious from a physicist
      I think this [slashdot.org]sadly under moderated reader comment provides a fine rebuttal, if you were being serious. Physicists also like to describe other obvious things like how if you drop something it falls to the ground. I think that Newton guy said something like that.
    • Hey, I think that it's pretty good that Keith Jackson [americansp...asters.com] decided to broaden his horizons ....
    • Except that it's not really that obvious, particularly to a physicist.

      The linked article provides discussion of all the nanomanipulation being performed using extremely large tools. The Advanced Light Source (ALS), for instance, has a storage ring about 200 meters in circumference. It can be used for advanced microscopy and nanolithography, among other atom-scale tasks.

      If you want to study something smaller--say, quarks--then you need even bigger tools. CERN, for example. It is 27 kilometers around and straddles the border between two countries.

  • Eric Drexler ??? (Score:4, Funny)

    by zebadee ( 551743 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @12:33PM (#4195562) Homepage

    Meg Ryan in the film Innerspace(1987)started the nano-craze for me!

  • Resolution ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jetlag11235 ( 605532 )
    Perhaps I am missing something here, but on the second page, it says: "NCEM's One-Ångstrom Microscope (OÅM) has achieved the country's highest resolution-better than 0.8 angstrom" Then, three paragraphs later, they are suddenly locating columns of silicon atoms with 1/100 angstrom precision. Does this imply that there is some mechanical resolution in the microscope at the 1/100 angstrom level? Is this possible?
    • No, it doesn't imply that. You have to keep in mind that resolution is not the same thing as being able to locate something. Resolution means that you can distinguish two closely spaced objects, rather than seeing just one broad fuzzy spot. Locating refers to a single object: It's easy to determine the location of a fuzzy spot by just determining where the center of that spot is. Now imagine two fuzzy spots 4 Angstroms apart (see here [omicron-instruments.com] for an example). If one of them moves by 1/100 Angstrom you will see the corresponding fuzzy spot move a little bit to the side. Obviously that doesn't meant that you could distinguish two fuzzy spots just 1/100 Angstrom apart - they would appear as one slightly broadened fuzzy spot.
    • I just noticed that I misunderstood your question a little bit. The microscope mentioned above is an electron microscope - as such it has no mechanical moving parts. You can see pictures taken with that microscope in this [lbl.gov] paper (2MB). You were probably thinking of scanning tunneling microscopes that have a tip scanning over the surface of a sample. These microscopes would indeed need mechanical positioning at the mentioned level to measure such small distances.

  • the slippery slope of scientific serials. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by budalite ( 454527 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @01:14PM (#4195768)
    Reading this what-probably-is-a-very-informative article reminds me of the very interesting-looking articles in Scientific American. The first page and about a half of each article is very readable and understandable. Then, all of a sudden, like a Harold LLoyd character (the guy hanging from the way-high-up clock face) stepping from a 3" mudpuddle into a 7' mudpuddle, I find myself so far in over my head so fast that I read another half page before I even realize I have no clue what the fsck I have reading. Like the chicken running around after it has been relieved of its head (another childhood image I will never get out of my head. :P ), I have been reading just because my eyes are still moving. My brain disengaged paragraphs earlier. Whew. I want to be able to understand this sort of stuff in my next life, if there is such a thing... Go, team!
    • The things is, reading a scientific paper, even a simple one, is not like reading a novel, a popular magazine, or a newspaper. For one thing, the audience for a science paper is generally considered to be educated, while the audience for other popular media is considered to be less educated, perhaps able to comprehend at an early high school level. Also, the vocabulary used tends to be obscure. This is necessary to allow precise speech. IN addition, science writers sometimes are writers second, which can also cause probles.

      It is possible to slowly get used to reading science, at least in the popular medium such as Scientific American, if not Nature. I remember reading Discover in Jr. High School because I could not understand SA. In time, I was able to read SA. I think I was frustrated because it was so hard to understand, and I was not able to quickly skim the text as I would for other magazines. Even now I have trouble understanding some of the biological science articles.

      So don't worry if comprehension is not what you expect. Look up words if you cannot glean at least some meaning from context. Reading is a skill, and is not neccesarily transferable between genre.

    • Then, all of a sudden, like a Harold LLoyd character (the guy hanging from the way-high-up clock face)
      I think you mean Christopher Lloyd? [imdb.com]
    • If you get out of your depth reading Scientific American then I suggest you avoid any scientific material - that would REALLY be over your head.

      SciAm, New Scientist etc... all seem to have dumbed down so much over the past 10 years that they now hold little real value. Time was that you could keep up pretty well if you read NS regularly - and have the latest cosmology, cancer and AIDS breakthroughs, computing advances, etc... straight in your head in enough detail to bore people at dinner parties.

      Now its all 'blobs' and 'kind of like spagetti'.

  • In other news, scientists have discovered the many difficulties of rematerialization as seen in science fiction works such as Star Trek ("Beam me up, Scotti!"). However, they realized the basics of the technology are already applied in our daily activities, ie: when we drive our cars from point A to point B.

    • Yes, think of it. "Beaming", This would eliminate cars, pollution, roads, etc. Everything could just be beamed someplace. I'm still working on the power source for it though and little more government funding would be nice too.

  • Gray goo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by halftrack ( 454203 ) <jonkje@gmailLION.com minus cat> on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @01:25PM (#4195844) Homepage
    Not all foresee nanotech as something good. Just take a look at this [lifeboat.com] page where some half nutty, half sensible people want to build lifeboats/arks in space so that they can escape from the 'gray goo.'
    • I see nano tech as the next Atomic bomb. Once everyone has it, we'll all be huddling in our nano shelters waiting for nano-Iraq to borgify us.

    • Re:Gray goo (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dirtside ( 91468 )
      If you're feeling a little too paranoid, check out this link [foresight.org], where the threat of gray (or black) goo is analyzed a bit. It's not as bad as you think; blue goo should be able to protect us ;)

      (Quick reference:

      gray goo = accidentally released nanobots that eat everything
      black goo = deliberately released nanobots that eat everything
      blue goo = counter-nanobots that prevent gray/black goo from eating everything)
    • I thought all we have to do is engage the gray goo in conversation through telepathy or the meditation and convince it to stop... doesn't anyone watch gargoyles (cartoon)?

  • Great, tinier junk! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Wednesday September 04, 2002 @01:46PM (#4195967)
    Here are my questions about nanotech:

    Where do all the obsolete nanites go? Will they be biodegradable, if so at what rate?

    How tightly would medical nanites be controlled, sold?

    How can we detect nanomachines to protect against potential dangers to ourselves or our nations?

    If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?

    I realize a lot of these questions are unanswerable, but I'm still curious.
    • If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?

      Okay, it's an interesting post. But I must nitpick. The Andromeda Strain (in its namesake science fiction novel) was not the product of nanotechnology. Rather, it was a rapidly mutating organism returned from space aboard an unmanned military spacecraft.

      That said, I haven't the damndest idea how we would deal with it if it happened--that is, if a virus as deadly as ebola appeared, was highly communicable (airborne spread) and it looked like nothing medical science had ever seen before. I'm thinking that panic, inappropriate and clumsy use of military force, followed by the collapse of civilization would all be part of a likely scenario.

    • Where do all the obsolete nanites go?
      Obsolete nanites will be dust and picked up by a vacuum cleaner. it will biodegrade at the same rate as dust.

      How tightly would medical nanites be controlled, sold?
      tightly .. think beter copy protection then the Entertainment industry currently wants(At least I hope so)

      How can we detect nanomachines to protect against potential dangers to ourselves or our nations?
      only with a bath of police nanomachines could any object be declaired free of renegade nanomachines.

      If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?
      with other nanomachines.

      Also The following limitations will be inharently part of any nanomachine:
      1) It will need a energy source. And if we are smart it will be something we can turn off. (ie radio powered)
      2) It will need to be remote controlled (the processing needed to do anything would take up more space then the nano scale provides with ease). And if we are smart this will be encrypted to hell and the nanomachine does not do anything without a command.

      things we can regulate to be done:
      3) Limit number of generations. A human cell can only devide around 60 times up from a one celled egg, this is the mechanizim that prevents cancer.
      4) Require Trace compounds to turned new machine on and other common compunds to turn it off. 5) require other trace compounds to allow new nanomachine to be made.
      6) limit all nanomachines to only function in a medium other then air. liquides such as specificly your blood or some industrial soup.
    • okay, let me take a shot at these:

      1) I think we can spare the landfill space for these molecular junkpiles. Heck, i'll donate a bucket. Since we haven't perfected the perpetual motion machine, I'm guessing they won't run forever, so dumpting the dead little beasties won't be a big deal.

      2) I would assume medical nanites would be controlled the same way perscription drugs are controlled... approved by the FDA after medical trials, manufactured at high prices by drug companies, and sold through official channels.

      3) Look how long it has taken nuke technology to filter down to "The bad guys". This is something far off to worry about. What are you implying anyway? That we shouldn't develop this technology because one of the possable future uses is bad? never mind that it could also do a lot of good...

      4) And if godzilla attacked, what would we do? It's just a book/movie. Sure, it's something to think about... but such trouble is still a long way off... Don't let fear of the unknown stop future development.

      --T
      • I'll bite.

        but such trouble is still a long way off...

        In your post you continue to elude to the "long way off" as a saving grace to the fact that it is not something to be worried about. That is about as wise as only washing the clothes you will wear tomorrow everyday but no more. Just because things are a long way off does not mean we should not consider the possible negative effects of it and consider possible solutions, technologically, psychologically, or otherwise. It is bad enough that it takes a decade or so for the public to really *grasp* the dangers that are possibly involved in a new technology without whipping everyone into a freakish paranoia, let alone a thorough understanding its impact on the society and earth as a whole. Take AIDS as an example of "a bad effect", it's been around for a while now (decades), and guess what, people out there are STILL having unprotected sex, STILL sharing dirty needles, STILL saying dumb things like "oh it won't happen to me." If it takes this long for people to really understand the true meaning of a 100% bad thing, how long do you think it will take people to sort out ethnical issues of things with mixed results (like cloning, etc?).

        What are you implying anyway? That we shouldn't develop this technology because one of the possable future uses is bad? never mind that it could also do a lot of good...

        No i do not think that is what the original post had in mind at all, in fact far from it. There is a stark difference between blindly pursueing technology and cautiously proceed and master technology. Whilst I agree that unfortunately there have been things which have been strangled for the wrong fears (most nuclear stuff) in the past, but that is no excuse to just "research it and worry about it later." It's like going out to catch a gorilla, for example. If I know the thing can bend quarter inch steel bars, do I bring a cage made of wood? It's not the fear of the unknown, its the fear of what we know it will probabbly be capable of. and jutifiably so, to a certain degree.

        while I have belief in the human capabilityes and all that -- I do not really think that a nano-scale "universal constructor" can be realistically created. it took billions of years for nature to come up with self-replicable stuff (single-cell organisms) and they are more than a battery and micro-gears. but that's a fundamentally different platform. If we assume nano-tech (in the classical sense) is possible, grey-goo is very much of a danger, as they will inevitably mutate and go awry.

    • If something like the "Andromeda Strain" did occur, how would we combat it?

      Drinking and crying is what worked in the film. (Don't know about the book). It seems easy, as well.
  • I have traveled back from the future to enlighten you, my ancestors, and bring about the new era of technological utopia so that you can save the earth, our home, from it's terrible destruction in the year 4572. It is my hope that by bringing about the new dawn centuries earlier that future generations will be able to avert the great cataclysm

    Included below is all of the information you'll need

    .

    • Sorry, I saw you leave and head back here. You know you are not supposed to do this. I'm removing the information from your message (before you write it) and I hope you don't try to repeat this futile effort again.
  • For 15 years, ever since K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation launched the nanocraze, the field has been plagued by sci-fi notions of tiny robotic "molecular assemblers" running around shoving atoms together. But as buckyball pioneer Richard Smalley remarks, molecular assemblers have long existed: "We call them catalysts."

    It doesn't surprise me that a physical chemist like Smalley sees what a lot of nanotech enthusiasts seem to forget: there is a branch of science that's dealt with atomic level materials for a long time, and it goes by the name of chemistry. The really interesting element in the new nanotech is that with the range of visualization tools we have, things that were once a kind of black magic (noble metal catalysts) can go from an art to a science and go from being pulled out of the blue to being intelligently designed.

    Gray
  • Did anyone catch that little tidbit at the end? Not a device for creating a material, not even a process, but the material itself?

    I'm hoping this is just a jurnalistic fuck-up... But I'm having trouble imagining that these guys know how to actually make their new alloy, or have designed some gizmo to create it.

    Quick, somebody patent neurons. You'll make a fortune, especially if you can get a "derivative works" clause into the license... everything everyone has ever thought of.

    Shoot me now.

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