Nanotech or Nano-Not? 179
LabRat007 writes "CNN has a story on the current status and future of nanotechnology. This infromative overview on the technology talks about current research and when we can expect nano-parts for our geek gear."
Possible dangers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of Universities had all sorts of problems getting these things used in the lab, now they're commonly used in beginning level biology classes.
I'm not saying there's NO danger from nanotechnology, I'm just saying a lot of what people are doing is keying into insanely low probability risks which could really be associated with any item if you put enough thought into it.
Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not get me wrong - I'm all for new technology, and I know how implausible grey-goo really happening is. But then again, there is enough malevolence (and stupidity) in this world for it to happen, and the fact that it may actually happen (as highly improbable as an all out nuclear war is) is the reason its prudent to be careful.
Its like genetic engineering - its awesome, you will enough benefits and unless we get down to studying it, we will never really know. But all it takes is one slight mistake to cause a whole lot of bullshit and set us back really bad.
The point is, you do not need an all out destruction - even a small accident will scare the public enough to bring about legislations which will put back genuine research and badly affect progress - this is what we should be careful of.
Re:Possible dangers (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway if you ever meet someone who's affraid of nanotech, just inform them that there are already nanobots that can construct new nanobots and all sorts of complex chemical products.
Tell them there are millions just in the room he's in. Tell him running away is pointless, because they are already in his body, millions of them, every cell of his body is already infested by them.
And if he doesn't believe it, let him ask his doctor what ribosomes are.
Re:Possible dangers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Possible dangers (Score:1, Insightful)
However, when you know you can grow it, sell it and bank the cash in six months, it's difficult to justify to shareholders that you wait five to ten years to do so. It's another symptom of the structure of the company/coporation. I'm not taking sides, just explaining why it has to be done in a hurry.
Now I'm taking sides -- thi
Nanodamage (Score:4, Funny)
That's why some people are opposed to nanotechnology.
So blame Matt Groening; it's his fault.
Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Insightful)
The micro-organisms you're talking about are natural and have evolved slowly. The organisms in which they residehave had a chance to evolve with them. The larger organisms either aren't harmed by them, or depend on them for their very existence. If they had been harmful and widespread the two would not have co-existed, with one or both species dying off or becoming rare.
In comes mankind. Able to make multiple gigantic changes to ecological environments large and small in an evolutionary blink of an eye... changing balances here and there for reasons that are far removed from that natural system. Yeah sure the systems might establish a new equlibrium...but do you want to risk your life or the life of the species on it. That's exactly what we do when we allow profit to come before saftey with new fundamental technologies.
Faster simply isn't always better. Taking the time to study the effects of what we're doing to ourselves and our environment is worthwhile.
Re:Possible dangers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Possible dangers (Score:2)
Actually the precise words were:
- Uga uga, bum bum
Re:Possible dangers (Score:3, Interesting)
"It's unfortunate that the Pugwash meetings started only well after the nuclear genie was out of the bottle - roughly 15 years too late. We are also getting a belated start on seriously addressing the issues around 21st-century technologies - the prevention of knowledge-ena
Re:Possible dangers (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider freon - it works great and is non-toxic, and replaced horribly toxic ammonia as a refrigerant.
Re:Possible dangers (Score:2)
Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Insightful)
"People" are afraid of anything that's new, that's different, or that they just plain don't understand. They are also not above fear-mongering to destroy a new development that doesn't support their particular agenda.
"Nano"-anything is a buzzword, often applied to supposedly "new" technologies in order to garner funding. Most of the stuff that your link discusses is not nanotechnology in the classical (i.e. Drexler) sense, but rather nifty atomic constructs (various kinds of fullerenes) that are essentially just neat new molecules, not atom-scale machines. The "dangers" associated with them are the same as those associated with any newly synthesized molecule. But the "nano" buzzword makes them sound "more dangerous".
The biggest possible danger... (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it. Right now the objective value of music, movies and software is nil. After all, you can get an exact copy for the mere cost of its material substrate (ie at under $1 per Gb, not much).
(now if you really like an artist and are willing to buy the original CD and go to her/his concert to support her/him, this is another matter. But I'm talking about objective value, not subjective value here. Nothing prevents me but morals from do
Is it a danger, or an opportunity? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it a danger, or an opportunity? (Score:2)
Re:Possible dangers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Possible dangers (Score:2)
And lots of people are still afraid of them such as http://www.whale.to/vaccines.html [whale.to] and http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/18/vaccine_myths.h tm [mercola.com] for what they claim are very good reasons, including claims such as conflict-of-interest with vaccine manufacturers personel on regulatory boards, using children as guinea pigs without proper informed consent, supplying misleading information about historical disease patterns and whether vaccines really had a significant i
Videogame References (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Videogame References (Score:1)
Re:Videogame References (Score:1, Interesting)
That's all speculative and still in the domain of science fiction as for now. Drexlerian self-replicating nanobots are an untested theory.
btw, to Asimov, Ben Bova and a lot of other older sci-fi authors, that stuff was old hat before the first NES was sold, let alone the first copy of Metal Gear.
Re:Videogame References (Score:3, Insightful)
Seeing how I and all known living matter is composed of such nanobots, I'd say the theory is quite well tested...
I want a... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I want a... (Score:2)
-calyxa
topical references (Score:2)
and by the way - the reference is hardly "obscure" -- _A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer_ was the subtitle of the book!
-calyxa
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Re:I want a... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I want a... (Score:2, Interesting)
While you are waiting, try this instead: (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole field at risk (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole "nano" buzzword has been so prostituted that unless companies start getting serious about it and stop treating it like another sales pitch, it's going to go the way of the "dot com" or "nuclear", where the mere use of the word will condemn the technology.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
true nanotech == molecular manufacturing (Score:5, Interesting)
It's gotten so bad that true nanotech had to rename itself "molecular manufacturing" in order to avoid confusion with the nifty materials science stuff.
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Re:The whole field at risk (Score:2)
Star Trek says not to trust them (Score:3, Funny)
The only nanos I'm okay with are nanoseconds.
Re:Star Trek says not to trust them (Score:2)
The only nano [nano-editor.org] I'm okay with is the editor that real men use
ONLY my editor is tiny, mind you!
Re:Star Trek says not to trust them (Score:2, Funny)
Editor is a euphemism for it I've never heard before....
Re:Star Trek says not to trust them (Score:5, Funny)
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
grey goo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:grey goo (Score:5, Informative)
overbelief? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:overbelief? (Score:2)
Second, we still have nuclear pow
Re:overbelief? (Score:2)
First of all, people are not optimistic at all - the general public is scared, misinformed and just doesn't care. Two last Future Stidies university Master programs were closed recently in the US due to the lack of interest. Groups opposing cloning, stem cells, genetic engineering, nanotech, just pretty much every advanced technology can gather strong support among general pub
found another interesting nanotech site here (Score:3, Interesting)
infromative (Score:5, Funny)
maybe some nanotech spell bots for our keyboards would be more handy...
Re:infromative (Score:3)
Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, Nanotech can be seen from two different points, one, where the individual nano-structures are built atom by atom, and the other (where biotech comes into play), where nano structures build, replicate and repair themselves.
A gross example are the structures of "Self Assembled Monolayers", where lots of alkanethiols create a carpet of lipids on a gold surface (all by themselves).
By crossing these self assembling structures with advanced artifically designed amino acids to create complex nano-structures, the need to actually "build" anything is removed. You merely design lego blocks that assemble together in a certain way, and then mix them in a test tube and stand back.
Re:Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:3, Interesting)
The immense changes in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery would be incredible. Have a massive facial scar from an accident when you were 12? Have it fixed in weeks, to a point where your physiology is no different than if you'd never been scarred (well, ok, admittedly it may be part guesswork, but you'd have an unscarred face)
Re:Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:2)
Re:Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps before you attempt anything as difficult as PhD-level research you should work on something simpler, such as the use of a dictionary.
Re:Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:3, Funny)
Heh. Mr Coward you are either a master of irony, or you are also in need of a dictionary.
Re:Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:2)
Re:Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:5, Insightful)
For disclosure, I'm no longer a chemist, and haven't kept abreast of the state of the art in this field. However, in ten years since I left the field I'm not aware of any great strides or breakthrough products. I really believe it will be 20-25 years before consumer applications are readily available.
Caveat, it's been at least 25 years since I heard a physicist claim it would be 20 years before fusion reactors came online!
My thoughts... (Score:5, Interesting)
-Don.
Re:My thoughts... (Score:4, Informative)
Nature has already solved that problem: ribosomes in your cells are actually natures nanobots. They receive a RNA string and based on this information, they contruct all sorts of macromolecules. They don't have any computational power or anything, it's purely chemistry.
Re:My thoughts... (Score:2)
In my oppinion it isn't real computation, just like a BCD to 7-segments encoder hasn't any computational power. It doesn't change the input, just translates it (the value 4 in binary or in 7-segments code means the same thing).
Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Informative)
At lthat level we are talking about manipulating things base don their fundamental (and eventually quantum) characteristics such as positive/negative charge attraction/repulsion, chemical links, etc... No "processing power" is needed to do this, thus no CPU.
Emergent physics tells us that a small specific set of rules can build "complex" results.This is how it is done. err I mean will be done.
Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They don't need alot of cpu power (Score:2)
Anyone else excited? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Moving Planets (Score:2)
So far, humanity can manage the first step, just barely.
I'd be much
Re:Moving Planets (Score:2)
To the martians, that would be terrorforming!
Re:Anyone else excited? (Score:2)
See, all you need is a really long pole and a good support point, and then it's just a question of pulling the short end of the pole.
Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:5, Informative)
All the emphasis on the "potential dangers" of nanobots or "gray goo" just drives me nuts. Sure, the image of a nanobot doing manufacturing or curing cancer can be compelling, and also frightening. But not only are we no where near such technology, the fear of it stigmatizes genuine nanotech being done right now, which often has no relation to tiny robots.
Nanotechnology now means any process for determining structure or composition at a molecular scale. It means creating fuels or drugs with carefully selected chemical compositions. It means creating self-healing structure in which tears tend to seal simply because the material is made that way. It means making computer chips faster and smaller by growing very small features directly onto the chip, using molecular carbon or silicon.
These applications are much more real than self-replicating nanobots which can take over the world, and some of them could easily be on all our desks in five years. Do a Google search on Field emission displays [google.com]: new flat panel displays, as bright as a CRT display at a fraction of the power usage, with a better image and wider field of view than an LCD.
Could there be environmental dangers even in these applications? Sure, any new material has potential problems, and nanomaterials should be studied all the more closely because of our limited experience with them. But we're a long, long way from nanobots which can self-replicate and take over the world, and the nanotech industry as it stands now is no more dangerous than any other advanced materials.
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:3, Insightful)
When anyone drives you nuts with "gray goo" type things, just ask them a few questions:
Can man create machines that can fly: Yes
Can man create machines that transport disease and infect organisms: Yes
Can man create machines that can stick to almost any solid surface: Umm.. probably
Can man combine all this into something that can stand on the head of a pin: No
Nature can, it's called the mosquito, and by transporting malaria it's probably killed more humans than anything else.
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:5, Interesting)
From a condensed-matter physics grad student who's researching some aspects of 'nanotechnology' - Thank You!!!
It's ridiculous, how so many people on /. think of nanotechnology as nothing less than self-assembling nano-robots. This association is utterly naive, and is no more realistic than the standard 'Hollywoodification' of computer technology used in movies (eg, Hackers).
Sure, nanotechnology is a buzzword, and people in the field prefer to refer to it as research at the nanoscale, or self-assembling nanosctructures, etc. Just like spintronics is usually called magnetoelectronics by the researchers amongst themselves, and spintronics in the popular science media.
Basically, nanotechnology deals with anything at nanometer scale, which is in the realms of molecules. I'm studying carbon nanotubes, and superconducting nanowires of about the same size. I guess it's boring from a slashdot perspective because there's no robotics or selective biological processes going on. But for us physicists there's tons of interesting processes happening here. The systems really behave as one-dimensional (large superconducting wires would be three-dimensional), the standard statiscial-mechnanics starts to break down because of small system size, and there's other interesting quantum effects that manifest themselves. These factors make things act really weird and/or cool, and there's alot to discover. [If anybody thinks this research is pointless, concepts like GMR, which is now implemented in all new hard disk read heads, started the same way.]
Other nanotech researchers are looking at DNA (another guy in my lab is studying conductivity of various DNA systems). DNA is interesting because it can assemble itself, and some groups have made interesting self-assembling structures.
But this is nothing at all like the grey-goo concepts that are ever so popular and cliche here at slashdot. Every time 'nanotech' is mentioned on /. there's immediate posts about grey-goo and bio-enhancement nanites, yada yada yada. I'm actually relieved to hear of at least one other person here that gets past the hollywoodification of it all.
The real ideas don't get out (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that the work that actually gets done, in materials or computing or other fields, isn't as "exciting" to the media as the fanciful ideas presented in Hollywood and science fiction. Why talk about a new kind of flat-panel display or the technology that will create your next computer, when you can shock the public into fearing tiny robots that will disassemble the world? I'm a big fan of science fiction, but I must admit that I'm incredibly disappointed in their portrayal of the field.
I'm a physics student myself, an undergrad doing some research which makes limited use of carbon nanotubes, and both of us probably got our real knowledge of nanotechnology from our classes and work in the field. With more applications in general use, the situation may improve, but the media definitely has to stop portraying fantasy as fact. Otherwise, real research could easily get a bad rep--there are already people calling for a ban on all nano research, including a lot of work which they don't understand is relatively harmless.
Re:The real ideas don't get out (Score:2)
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:2)
That might be comforting for you to think, but the truth is that the new "long-term" future isn't really that far away thanks to the exponentially accelerating rate of technological progress [kurzweilai.net].
It's time to update your overly conservative view of the future... (if you can bear to throw out your but-wheres-my-flying-car-cynicism).
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Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:2)
And then from this article you imply that world-destroying self-assembling nanobots are almost here (even though flying cars are not) because Ray Kurzweil claims technology grows exponentially.
Anyway, his article is too simp
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:2)
2) Kurzweil isn't alone in predicting the nearness of Singularity [singinst.org]. Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec, Marvin Minksy, Michio Kaku, Yudkowsky, and a host of other "credible" thinkers all see the same exponential acceleration, and put the Singularity anywhere between NOW() and ~2080 at the far end.
3) I'm sorry you had to read that "POS" article. I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance you must
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:2)
aah shit, i'm mixing up my inventors again... I play keyboards, so that's where my interest in Kurzweil stems from.
Anyway, see my reply to the parent of your post, that's kind of why i replied to your post in the first place.
Regarding 'the singularity', it's not the concept about it that i'm arguing against, but the way it's presented in Kurzweil's article. [in my opinion, based on m
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:2)
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:1)
*Genuine* nanotech *is* the stuff of gray goo (Score:4, Insightful)
It didn't used to. The problem isn't that the public doesn't understand what nanotech is. The problem is that the chemist have redefined it and are catching flack because public conciousness hasn't caught up.
Nanotech, as originally defined, really does mean nanoscale universal assemblers. Grey goo, of course, is universal assemblers gone amock. Neither is of great concern right now as actuall implimentation is far, far off and may always be.
Researchers started labling physical chemistry "nanotech", probably because it sounded cool and got people excited. That helps for getting funding, recognition, etc but it also creates fear in the public.
If the "new nanotech" community is concerned about negative publiciy, then I really have no sympathy. If you co-opt a pre-existing sci-fi'esc term, you take the good with the bad.
Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:2)
Which, of course, is itself a poor definition. Biochemists have been determining stucture and and composition of proteins (at the moleculare scale) and DNA (agian, moleculare scale) for quite some time now. But we do not consider this to be nanotechnology. People have been creating drugs AND fules this way too. For quite some time. Drug companies do not call thenselves nanotech either.
I think a much
Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:2)
I had always understood that a scanning eletron microscope made an image by acanning an electron beam a bit like a CRT.
A tunneling electron microscope uses a probe on a piezo base. You increase the tension on the probe until....pop.....an electron jumps the gap. You move the probe around with varying the voltage on the piezo base, and plunk....you can drop the electron down again. A tunneling electron microscope is what I would have been expected to be a
Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:2)
A scanning electron microscope works by projecting an electron beam at the target, and measuring what gets diffracted. It's main disadvantage is the requirement of a high vacuum to function.
Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:2)
Why the exclamation marks? Sounds like quite a bit of current to me. If you measure 100mV with a typical cheap DVM the input current is 10 nano Amps.
I have worked with off the shelf devices from Analog which have offset currents of 75 falto amps.
Not trying to be cynical, but 1 AMP is 1 Coulomb per second, and a coulomb, IIRC is somthing like 10^18 electrons. So measuring the odd electron jumping across a gap must require very small currents.....unless of
Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:2)
high T_c. Just curious, do you really get to 10^-12?
Most people would say that even 10^-10 is UHV.
Also, why maglev? Most people went away from that
because it is apparently a bitch to get working and
doesn't buy you anyhting over springs.
Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:2)
cond-mat/0402320
Does your lab have money? There are these guys like
minus-k which give you "1/2 Hz in a box" for mucho
dinero. What's unprecedented (sic) resolution?
As far as I know, anything on silicon is cake.
You can do VTSTM, moleclar imaging and spectroscopy
and all that with no issues.
A friend of my is now a professor at Northwestern
http://www.hersam-group.northwester
though I am sure you are well aware of his work.
Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:2)
on organics (d^2 I/ dV^2), a technique pioneered by
Wilson Ho on simpler stuff. We use his microscope
design and it works well. I assume it would work
for what you are trying to do. It is a simple
spring suspension though. I still wonder what maglev
buys you. Is there any theoretical reason to expect
better performance from that vs. springs.
nanotech center (Score:1)
Re:nanotech center (Score:1, Funny)
I just dont get it
Re:nanotech center = no big deal really (Score:3, Insightful)
Green Goo (Score:3, Interesting)
CNN article says nothing new or of value (Score:5, Insightful)
Going to happen eventually... (Score:4, Insightful)
Still a long way off... (Score:5, Informative)
Temperature issues.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Temperature issues.... (Score:2, Insightful)
By this I mean that there is a thermodynamic drive to make particles of a certain size: anything smaller than this size, which varies from one material to another, and you get instability. For those of you that like fancy catch phrases, think in terms of Brownian Motion, and in Quantum Confinemen
Relation of nanometer to atoms/hair. (Score:5, Insightful)
More pics of STM (Score:4, Interesting)
archaeological dig (Score:2, Funny)
Re:archaeological dig (Score:2)
I'm moving ahead to picotechnology (Score:2, Funny)
Now I'm missing out on the nanotech money.
As of today, I am jumping the gun and writing proposals to study areas which will give insight into the upcoming picotech field. If things go well. I will be pulling in femptotech money by the end of the decade.
I wrote this with Nano-tech. (Score:2, Interesting)