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Science

Killing Friction: Nanotube Springs And Bearings 69

Posted by timothy from the boing-and-sloopie- dept.
leb writes: "Physicists at U.C Berkeley have 'peeled the tips off carbon nanotubes to make seemingly frictionless bearings so small that some 10,000 would stretch across the diameter of a human hair. The minuscule bearings are actually telescoping nanotubes with the inner tube spinning about its long axis. When sliding in and out, however, they act as nanosprings. Both the springs and bearings, which appear to move with no wear and tear, could be important components of the microscopic and eventually nanoscale machines under development around the world.' Based on the principles of Vander Waal's forces this breakthrough, they state that, 'Our results demonstrate that multiwall carbon nanotubes hold great promise for nanomechanical or nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) applications,' they conclude in their paper. 'Low-friction, low-wear nanobearings and nanosprings are essential ingredients in general NEMS technologies.' Read the news release and visit the lab Web page."
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Killing Friction: Nanotube Springs And Bearings More

Killing Friction: Nanotube Springs And Bearings

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  • Re:Robots (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Didn't Hans Moravec get a big lump of money from DARPA to explore bush robot navigation algorithms? Not the same but at least in the same domain - very large numbers of things that need to be co-ordinated.
  • Yep, they're talking about the carbon tubes discovered at the same time as spherical Buckminsterfullerene. But this is different from the previous methods predicted of using the tubes or buckyballs as microbearings to lubricate larger mechanisms.

    Here they're talking about using a large nanotube with the ends removed with a small one inside it. Apparently the smaller can be rotated within or pulled in and out without friction, and will also act like a spring or shock absorber.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • Um, wouldn't that make him wrong about being wrong?

    -David T. C.
  • You could build a bunch of these frictionless springy gates to filter out low energy atoms/molecules and use the momentum imparted to the gate to hit the trapped higher energy atoms inside your gate, giving them back SOME of their lost energy.
    For those who don't know Maxwell (18th cent Scott. physicist/thermodynamicist? did he also do the electromagnetic wave thingy too -sorry it' been about 15 years since I took p chem/quantum chem)
  • Every yr 12 physics momentum problem started off as...
    2 cars crash on an icey road...

    because friction was too advanced to take into the equation.
    Now finally my equations will be able to get something in the real world right.
  • It's expensive now because they have to use scanning tunnelling microscopes to manipulate the molecules.
    But once they build a few nanomachines in this expensive way, they can use those machines to build more machines really really cheaply for just the cost of materials (graphite isn't expensive at all).

    So in the end, it's going to be super-small AND super-cheap.
  • Basically, physics doesn't necessarily work the same way on the nano-scale!

    Not quite. Physics works the way it always does. That was the point of Feynman's lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and Drexler's The Engines of Creation.

    The catch is that the "rules of thumb" that we have used at larger scales don't apply any more. Those will have to be rederived from basic quantum mechanics. (E.g. the quick-and-dirty equation for friction generally used in engineering laughably over-simplifies what happens at the molecular level.)

    It's a bit ironic that, in this world of massively accelerating computer development, we are going back to our roots in mechanical engineering to solve the problems of the future.

    Yup. All kinds of fun is a' coming. It makes me want to go back and read some Golden Age science fiction full of steely-jawed heroes and heroines, driving their massive engines of destruction forward at 110% of the rated maximum. Something by E. E. "Doc" Smith should do... ;-)
    --

  • If we heated them up a bit we could have miniture hot grits!!
    Or we could use them for Proper Scientific applictations(TM) like Nanotechnology for the up coming Nano Portman.
  • With too /little/ friction, the point would kinda be gone, because while you would certainly be aware of whats going on, you wouldn't feel it, and orgasm would be almost impossible.
  • Is it just me or does anyone else think about Civilization Call to Power when they read these type of postings. It is hard to imagine something sooooo small. I am glad that there is steady progress here, it sounds very promising.
  • Those units are not nano-scale. There is a big difference. It's a lot easier to manipulate something on the macro level. Plus, those dye dots (made of a "secret" material) work by being polarized magnetically, not through any kind of spring action.
  • Morovac's system was conceptualized as a branching collection of autonomous feeler units which could do all kinds of fun stuff - fly, detatch, explore, record, come back, reassemble, disassemble into a million micro -sized units, go through air vents, reassemble on the other side, swim, etc.

    I don't know how many people took him seriously.
  • Why would you use it to make a fan?

    What's great about nano-assemblers (read more at foresight.org) is the fact that, once you make a few, they are self-replicating. As long as you keep them under control, you can use a single replicator to create thousands, use those thousands to make an object, and then have them self-destruct when finished, all for the same price as building a single one. Oh, and, of course, keep them in a box in hibernation state until you need to feed them the next blueprints. As they use basic molecular building blocks, you can just dump some grass in the box and that will be enough to rearrange the atoms into a nice, steaming hot steak or something.
  • Besides nano machines, this allows for the creation of unique compounds by caging atoms or molecules within such closed structures. The endless trillions of possible combinations are going to yield exotic things that should be really exciting.
  • And just how do you think these nano machines are going to know what to fix? Hmmmmm? The genome project will be very useful in understand what's wrong from the ground up instead of the top down.
  • The spring action is very cool, as is their means of testing it and monitoring wear and tear (though
    not sor sure 20 times is enough to be sure).

    They did not invent the bearing idea. Because nanoscale fabrication is still in its beginnings, commercial concerns are busy engineering films of nanoscale particles. One big player is Sharp. A nanoengineering scientist who has his own startup described nanoscale bearing manufacture as a grail many have been seeking, of course he had his own angle on it. The first profitable use is expected to be in lubrication of disk drive surfaces, so that the head actually rests on the disk. I understood the idea to be rolling tubes rather than round spheres as bearings.

    There is also a big danger, in that these particles will get into anything including you and me, apparently being quite lethal.

    I also know a company which makes machines to sinter fine powder into 3d objects with lasers. The powder is very fine on microscale (steel and soon titanium, but best quality is achieved with less conductive nylon). These guys were pulling so many all nighters, on such a small budget, that in developing the next material they often did not use breathing masks but this is probably the limit to how small a particle you want to have around you without major protection.
  • Another thing. I meant mod up the post above mine, because the poster made a good point.
  • Haven't the carbon nanotubes of this article been around for a while? I seem to remember the exact same things being called Bucky Balls (Buckminsterfullerene).

    Buckminsterfullerene came in two flavors: ball shape and tube shape. The balls were carbon-60, so they were "big". However, they rolled with nearly zero friction because they were shaped like soccer balls. One idea for using them was nanopills, made putting a medicine into the center of the ball. PIlls would be somewhat less unpleasant to swallow.

    The other form of Buckminsterfullerene was a tube. Short tubes could be used as nanobearings, and longer ones could be used for nano-pipes. Can you imagine how cool microprocessors would run if they had a system of nanotubes running through them carrying water? Your chip would have a builtin intercooler.

    Of course, I don't think much of this (any?) made it past the theory stage. Perhaps this is just the next step?

    --Jeff
  • We live in a very specialized society. Scientists do the research then writes a journal article (sometimes I wish they would stick to doing the research and let techinical writers document it all). Then a journalist comes along and paraphase the journal for the general public. Application engineers and other scientists read the journal article and goes, "huh, I bet I could expand on this research or I could use this research." They talk to the bean counters about getting some funding. The cycle repeat. In conclusion, its not the scientists responsiblity to find applications for their research.
  • TEMs use electron beams to take pictures at resolutions down to a few nanometers, at a speed of several frames a second - enough to construct a video.

    I love to see this video. Then need to release an MPEG of it.
  • He didn't say just "modern" philosophers. He said philosophers, which presumably includes those who do allow for such things as objective truth.

    (Pluswhich, depending on how you define it, science might not deal in "objective" truths, but rather in "we believe that this truth has been shown to be more true than other explanations of the same phenomena". Or something like that.)
  • that seems to be missing the whole point... :)

  • Hmmmmm, yes, you're right. Advances in genetic engineering, specifically the genome project, will help nanobots to pinpoint the foreign cells in order for them to attack. See my earlier reply (#99) for the link for Bill Joy's article.
  • Well, yes, that's possible too...considering the advances in three of the most important branches of science, namely, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and robotics. Future Man is predicted to be able to live to an average of a 100 years and longer. See Bill Joy's Wired article at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
  • Wait a second!

    First we get miniature balls, then miniature springs... Now all we need are miniature flippers and quarter slots and we got ourselves a pinball game!

    Forgive me Mods - Its Early...
  • Back in the 50s, how many folk would have thought that being able to dope silicon with phosphorus was useful? Just another chem. eng. project, no? Fast-forward 50 years, and look at the effects! Pure scientists work with pure science, and don't bother with the consequences. Maybe you could criticise them for living in their 'ivory towers', but we do need ultra-genius guys working on this stuff otherwise we'll never get any new tech. Lesser mortals can work on applications for it.

    Anyway, these releases are designed for other scientists and engineers to read, who know how this stuff works. If you can't figure what it means and the implications, chances are you're not the target audience, and they don't give a crap about you. Think of a software company who just puts out a release saying "We've written a new utility which guarantees low ping times to Q3 servers". Show that to Joe Bloggs in the street, and he'll say, "What the **** does that mean?" But post it on /. and the site will be jammed with gamers within seconds!

    Oh, and if you can't figure out applications for frictionless bearings, you need to work on your RL engineering a bit! ;-)

    Grab.
  • I mean, these things can be used as bearings and springs. Everything mechanical is made up of a number of relatively simple objects (much like a good programming language), and these are two of the important ones.

    If they can find ways to make more of the mechanical structures, and arrange them into complex structures, I may well own those SF writers an apology.
    Well, it isn't so much that things are made of springs as that everything can act as a spring. The traditional coil-of-wire spring is just one very compact way to produce high spring-rates from common materials.

    One very common way of doing stress analysis is to use spring constant formulas to determine the deflection the structure undergoes after you know the force applied.

    A spring is anything which deflects under force, ie, everything. The armed services studied the approximate spring constant of a human neck when a pilot is ejected from his airplane. (A professor participated in that one.) So, efforts will have to be made to find out how each nano-structure (tube, sphere, concentric tubes, etc) reacts to forces in all directions, not just linear.

    When the spring-rate characteristics are more precisely known, more engineering will be possible. Sign me up!

    Louis Wu

    "Where do you want to go ...

  • Oddly enough I recently had an intresting discussion with a scientist who had worked on the team that discover buckminsterfullierines (buckyballs). He seems to be intrested in using them as some sort of chemical delivery system.

    Jainith

  • Some philosophers wouldn't like your characterization. Some philosophers speak out AGAINST science.

    Many philosophers speak out against other philosophers as well. It doesn't make either party less of a philosopher.

  • I was always under the impression that the main reason we couldn't make a true perpetual motion machine (one that wasn't constantly being fed electricity) was that friction kept converting the kinetic energy to heat and sound. Does this mean that science will finally prove my 6th grade science project wrong?

  • I wonder how long will it take for someone to design a nano-Carnivore that, after a suitable time-delay, wanders across a document and "eats" (or rearranges) certain KEY words.

    Some day, there could be a lot more to that used-car-dealer's handshake than meets the eye!

  • I've been thinking of something simillar for a while, what if we had nanotech machines replace the cells in our bodies? Could have the outside nanotechs create skin or whatnot, and couldnt basically these machines create just about anything, well theoretically in some far off future. I dont know how they would replace your brain or even be able to keep your conciousness, but wouldnt it be nifty to have a body that you could create anything with. Hell if you still wanted to be human and have sex and what not well it could create that too, and hell if you wanted to have kids well couldnt the machines use your dna, or when you were still organic anyways, to grow sperm or something?
  • YEah in about 15 years or so this will replace astroglide, it will be called Nanoglide.
  • It will only be expensive until they get the details worked out. When we have functional nanobots it will be possible for them to reproduce anything we can imagine for no cost at all. What will happen to society when the actual cost of manufacturing everything we have to buy today is essentially free? Making a car (or any physical object) will be just like creating software. After the design is completed, it costs nothing to reproduce. With nanotechnology, everything becomes software.

  • Y'know, I always thought all that nanotechnology stuff I saw in Star Trek and so many books I read as a teenager was a loud of bollocks. I mean, I seemed like one of the stupider ideas that SF was fond of.

    Maybe I was wrong.

    I mean, these things can be used as bearings and springs. Everything mechanical is made up of a number of relatively simple objects (much like a good programming language), and these are two of the important ones.

    If they can find ways to make more of the mechanical structures, and arrange them into complex structures, I may well own those SF writers an apology.

    Nanotech here we come!

  • It also means that robots could be able to perform extremely delicate tasks.
    The muscles in your hands could perhaps be duplicated.
    But I don't envy the guy who will write the program to control those muscles.... -John.
  • Well, Thank you for your kind piece of info Leb,

    I for one find nanotechnology very interesting. The fact that we will be capable of making "something out of nothing" by manipulating molecules is very exciting. I for one am sick and tired of all the polution caused in the process of making simple items such as plastic cups and spoons. What if we could actually grow plastic cups and spoons? what if we didnt need to distroy thousands of hectars of rain forests to build houses? what if we could grow them??

    Think about it. For once we could actually 'produce' something from scratch ,without disrupting our natural ecosystem or burning up reasources.

    My friends, nanotechnology simpely is the dawn of a techonological revolution. The purpose is to invent a way to over come our current obsticals; lack of natural reasources, economical problems, increase in consumer demands. And hopefully reverse some of our stupid mistakes; holes in the ozone layer, forest fires, oil spills (I could go on forever), by providing a way to 'produce' our needs from the molecules up. Not only will this discontinue our need for reasources, it will also make more things cheaper with out any reduction in quality; as a matter of fact, if things were designed from the molecules up, products will be 100% flawless!

    Well, don't take my word for it, visit The Forsite Institute [foresight.org] for the bare details of what I'm talking about. There you can find an electronic book to download that will give you a broader understanding of the subject matter.

    I hope you find this subject as interesting as I did. Implementing this technology means major changes in the way we live. Positive changes...

  • Nanotubes were first discovered in the black residue of a carbon arc, the same place scientists discovered buckyballs

    Does this mean that I was creating buckyballs and nanotubes when I used to run a carbon-arc theatre spotlight ?

    - j a c r -

  • Same as with the first lasers, the first robots, and the first of many developments.

    These will probably be the motivators for nanorobots that can be used medically and in a host of other applications. A zillion of smart little nanorobots fitted with tiny zap-o-lasers could destroy cancer cells or infections if they have the capability to distinguish between native and non native cells. Give or take a few decades these are "my tiny friend, our bodies they mend". The borg have practical uses for these bugs too :)

  • It's totally fascinating! When I read those articles about tiny components showing incredible wear and tear under a microscope after just a few motions I thougth we'd be decades away from these kinds of development. And I never thought buckyballs could be used to do anything with anytime soon. But they got a 'nanotube' moving within another one! Already! These guys are doing some amazing things [berkeley.edu].

    Looks like it that at these levels of size you find normal mechanical properties and semi-quantum properties such as the van der waals force combine and actually improve the function of these tubes, a van der waals bearing instead of a ball bearing.

  • It seems to me that we won't really see anything tangible coming out of this research until t+5 years, with t being the date that the military figures out how to use it. My guess is that the first application of all the nanotube technology will be in the high tensile substrates used in airplane wings and other military applications where strength and weight are critical. Changing topic, does anyone know if there is has been any progress on a way to mass produce the material yet?
  • I, for one, was not surprised when I read that article. I'm not a physicist of that calibre (yet), but already knew of the existence of buckyballs, and carbon nano-tubes.

    But what interests me the most about that article was that when the tip of the inner-tube broke off the tip of the probe, it "sprung" back in the outer tube.

    I would assume that the same van der Waal forces that reduce the friction to negligible levels are also strong enough to break the bond between the probe and the tube.

    Just wait 'till we can mass produce these things! It may be possible to make a nano-filament of extreme strength. When we get that, we may be able to make a space elevator as suggested in Red Mars. (We won't discuss that book. Author trying to be too technical, and getting the facts wrong.... Sounds like NASA :)
  • Could do that, but do you remember the ST:TNG episode when nanites got loose?

    Oooh, the memories.... I don't think we want that happening. Might lend some truth to the "theory" (which was actually pitched to me by a friend yesterday) that the internet has developped a consciousness.
  • I think that one of the use is an electronical paper : a paper which is in fact a flat screen. You can print many times on it. I don't remember who the first introduced this concept.
  • How they can spend 10 paragraphs saying how it works and not 1 paragraph explaining how it will actually help us or what the development means for practical use. The one thing I hate about scientists is they do-diddle around the fact that their experiments have some far-off (in terms of technology progress or time) implications or don't really help us at all at the present, and they often fail to rationalize it with laymans so their discoveries/invention don't get the recognition they deserve. But maybe these ultra small barings can help robots walk on two legs. [msnbc.com]
  • No, you forget Edison, Telsa, Westinghouse, Babbage, and countless other scientists who were purely in it for the MONEY. Science, like religion, is based on greed. These scientists made it their business to make some affordable, practical, and most importantly - PROFITABLE.

    As far as science being a philosophy, I don't believe that's true. I think scientific findings can lead to new philosophies or the development of one's own look on life, but there are no real SCIENCE PHILOSOPHIES. Scientific reasoning and logic, the Socratic methods are ways of thinking, but by themselves are a 3 legged chair in terms of supporting its own philosophical beliefs. Oh well, just my 2 cents =)
  • I speak of a four legged chair with only 3 legs. Like a dog with only 3 legs that you have to carry around on a cart. They, like old people, are not stable. Sorry for the confusion.
  • Guess what?

    You couldn't make steel at a reasonable price for train rails in 1840. Sure, it would have made railroad tracks able to carry more weight and wear far longer, but it just couldn't be made at a reasonable price for train rails. Then a guy named Bessemer came along with a new way of making steel, and by 1870 steel was more cost-effective than iron for train rails.

    Sos how are we going to get nano down to a reasonable price? Good question, and if I knew, I'd have already patented it.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • psst... van der Waal's
  • (forget who said this)

    Sometimes you get something useful from it, but, that's not why we're doing it.

    Also, If you know what your doing, or what you're going to get, it's not research.
  • I think the point is that the tubes can rotate around one another, without contact, due to the fact that we're at a molecular level. THere are molecular forces, Vand-der Waals forces or whatever, but essentially, they won't 'wear'.
  • Richard Feynman, of course.

    ...who, in a completely unexpected return to topic, is gennerally considered father of nanotechnology.

  • When we have functional nanobots it will be possible for them to reproduce anything we can imagine for no cost at all. What will happen to society when the actual cost of manufacturing everything we have to buy today is essentially free?

    It won't change. Robotics has reduced the cost of building products, but we haven't often seen those reduced costs passed along to the public. No, instead it goes to increased corporate profits and executive bonuses. Nanaotechnology will mean that things will cost the same, but with 24 year old corporate vice presidents getting billion dollar bonuses. And the creation of an underclass of unemployables who used to work machines to build things.

    Imagine Flint, Michigan...everywhere.

  • Richard Feynman, [amasci.com] of course.

  • Anything titled "MOD THIS UP" should inherantly not be modded up, so says me, the quasi-philosopher engineer. So ha!

    There is a difference between "pure" science and practical science. Both have their place. However, calling those that practice practical or applied sciences engineers exclusively and NOT scientists is a disservice.

    American Heritage Dictionary calls a scientist, "A person having expert knowledge of one or more sciences, especially a natural or physical science." But perhaps semantics is not the correct fight here - rather it is perspective.

    Some philosophers wouldn't like your characterization. Some philosophers speak out AGAINST science.

    Sometimes, fringe engineers, in addition to implementing ideas, also invent things that are unique. There is a big difference between having some great though and actually working out how to make it work.

    Saying that someone who invents, creates, experiments, and discovers is not a "true" scientist is doing them a disservice. Does that mean that anyone who works in a laboratory is not a true scientist? Anyone who does an experiment? Who uses the scientific method?

    In other words, scientists are only those who sit around and think all day.

    Hmm.
  • I find it fascinating that on the nano-scale all fundamental engineering principles must be revisited. Basically, physics doesn't necessarily work the same way on the nano-scale!

    It's a bit ironic that, in this world of massively accelerating computer development, we are going back to our roots in mechanical engineering to solve the problems of the future.
  • That's my point. Edison was not a scientist. He did no fundamental research on ANYTHING. He took modern scientific theories and ideas and applied them, _making things_ with them. The same goes for Westinghouse and Babbage.

    You included Tesla. Tesla was in it for the money, but he didn't have his mind much on science. He, too, did little more than tinker with gadgets and come up with theories on why his things worked.

    It's funny that you say 3-legged chair. A three legged chair would be perfectly stable, even if all the legs are of different lengths. Now, where the center of gravity is when you sit on this chair may make the difference between falling and sitting, but a 3 legged chair can be absolutely stable. It's gauranteed not to wobble. Ever.

    Anyway, science is a philosophy as much as, say, Plato's world of form. He had no real reasoning method..he started with his own, personal, basic assumptions and carried them out to their logical conclusions, just like pure science. Think of all the famous ancient Greek philosophers. Chances are, a good many of them are scientists - Aristotle? Socrates? Xeno? They all did quite a bit of basic scientific work.

    You are missing the distinction between science and engineering. All the people you named were essentially engineers. The fact that they were in it for the money both has nothing to do with this and proves that they weren't scientists.

    Scientists aren't out to make money on something. Show me an astronomer or theroetical physicist who's in it for the money. Hawking? Penrose? I don't think so. But....some guys running a biotech firm? Nuclear physicists? These guys build nanobots and reactors that are used in submarines. They're in it for the money, even if they are "doing good science."

    That does NOT make the scientsits.

    scientist \Sci"en*tist\, n. One learned in science; a scientific investigator; one devoted to scientific study

    engineer n 1: a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems

    That's right from dictionary.com. A scientist seeks truth and knowledge by experimentation. An engineer seeks money, fame, or something else by creating things to perform certain tasks.

    Einstein never made a damn thing worth noting. Neither did Bell, or Faraday, or Hawking, or anyone else (yes, I am biased toward physics). Scientists are few and far between, just as are philosophers. Engineers are quite common - we even have schools devoted to nothing but training them, a la my very own RPI. They're very well paid, too.

    Science != engineering. Show me someone who has come up with a new way of looking at the world, oran important basic theory just for the hell of it, and I will show you someone who _thinks_ and doesn't make pretty little gadgets trying to get rich, like Edison.
  • No no. Thinking is part of it, but just like Newton, Bohr, and all the rest of them, experimenting and observing is an integral part of science. See my reply to the post below to kinda see more of my distinction between scientists (Bell, Hawking) and engineers/inventors (Edison, Babbage).

    Philosophers do often speak out against science, and for good reason. Their basic assumptions are generally without any basis whatsoever. I classify a scientist as someone who does basic research for its own sake, not to make money off of it by creating some machine. An engineer may do good science, but he is not a scientist. An experiment designed to reveal something the world to the experimenter is a trait of a good scientist. An experiment designed to find out whether something will work or is feasible practically is a trait of a good engineer.

  • Hey, isn't it in the right direction where science is heading? In a few years, we will have all these nanobots in our arteries and veins, cleaning our cholesterol levels and fighting viruses. Now who needs the human genome project huh?
  • Well, I myself persoanlly think about Civlization (not any of the new fangled variants, strictly I and II) not only when I hear about these things, but all the time. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night thinking how to get my catapults into position to take the enemy capital, or whether to convert to a democracy and wait a few thousand years before doing it the easy way with Stealth Bombers.

    Now that you mention it, thinking about Civ all the fscking time is really getting to be not very good for my health...

  • Fun Fun Fun, Get your new cars, and toys, and computers, and fans all at super high prices and super low size. Yes eveyrthing you see here is made from NANOTECHNOLOGY which ihenables us to make everything super smaall, with super high prices. Get a million of these fans, to fit in 1 inch, only 2 mil for it. Or have a robot that can do super complex tasks.. like BUILD ATOMS this and that is part of everything you can do with NANOTECHNOLOGY ... seriously, it's pretty cool, just it sounds really expensive, how are you going to get a fan out of this for a reasonable price :)?

  • MOD THIS UP (and a little offtopic rant) (Score:3)

    by jonnythan ( 79727 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @04:33AM (#878272)
    The greatest scientists in history - Newton, Galileo, Bohr, Einstein, etc. - have _all_ been scientist philosophers, not engineers. It is the engineers' job to try and adapt what we know about the world through pure scientific research to practical applications.

    It is the job of the true scientist to constantly evaluate how we think about the world and what we know about it. Pure science is nothing more than another school of philosophy - the sophists believe what they did, Kant believed in the impracticality of pure reason, and Bohr believed that it was impossible to fully understand the world through any amount of research. It is a system of beliefs based on reason, just like any other modern philosophy.

    The above poster is absolutely right - people expect scientists to make their world better by doing practical research. The people who give us new advances in technology are called engineers - lasers, microwaves, washing machines, and transistors were created by engineers. However, every one of these engineers turned some seemingly useless, impractical research done by some scientist somewhere into something practical and useful.

    Bottom line, science != engineering.
    Science and philosophy are in the same realm - engineering does not belong there.

  • Re:I don't understand (Score:3)

    by Electric Angst ( 138229 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @02:56AM (#878273)
    You're looking at this in the wrong way. You should really reconsider how you think about science. It's much closer to the etherial realms of philosophy than the practical realms of engineering. In fact, when you boil it all down, science is mearly a way of thinking. It it science's ability to rationally comtemplate and understand the world that allows others to take the understanding that science has brought and apply it to practical, material gains. In fact, if it wasn't for simple, purely scientific research like this, engineers probably wouldn't have gotten the human race out of the hunt and gather phase.

    So, if you don't enjoy science, why not try turning to other methods of thought. Occultism [otohq.org] is ready and waiting for you.

    (Side note, I'm not meaning to put down occultism, I'm simply saying that the scientific thought process is much more likely to lend results that can be used towards practical applications.)
    --

  • Re:Ya but... (Score:3)

    by Sapien__ ( 156881 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @02:08AM (#878274)
    New Scientist have a very interesting article [newscientist.com] on just this, though in this particular case the ink particles are actually tiny little capsules containing black dye and white particles rather than carbon nanotubes.

    Imagine a computer on a touch-sensitive piece of paper you could fold up and stick in your pocket...

  • I wonder if they're going to get that fast talking guy to be in the commericals, like with the old Micro Machines.

  • Re:I don't understand (Score:3)

    by hollo32 ( 213966 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @03:19AM (#878276)
    If you are interested then there is more info on the general ideas of nanotechnology at the foresight institute's web site. In particular Engines of Creation [foresight.org] - the book that started the whole thing - is online there, and might be worth a read/skim if you are interested. It is a bit dated though, but it is amusing when he mentions this wonderful new idea called "hypertext".

    They also have a book that gives more of a "what it means" or "what would it be like" viewpoint here [foresight.org].

    The announcement in this story is obviously a long way off being what is described in the books, but even if what is described never comes to pass it is still an interesting read.

  • Nanofriction (Score:4)

    by sniggly ( 216454 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @02:35AM (#878277) Journal
    The problem is that "friction" in the nanotech world means chunks of machinery breaking off and components overheating and swelling up to where everything melts together. So the lifecycle of nanomachines was as long as the components were small.

    This time they got the components to move by attaching the tip of their scanning microscope to the inner bearning and simply pulling it out and pushing it in. I guess if you can logde a few condictive metal atomss inside the inner bearing you can do the same with electromagnetical forces. And then you can have computer controlled frictionless nano motion after working out quite a few complicated details.

  • Re:I don't understand (Score:5)

    by GearheadShemTov ( 208950 ) on Saturday August 05, 2000 @07:17AM (#878278)
    It is true that researchers--both pure and applied, "scientists" and "engineers"--sometimes present their discoveries so dryly and with so many qualifications that you can't be sure exactly what the heck they've actually done or what it might conceivably be useful for. In this case what they've done is basic and essential to nanotechnology, and it's important to get past the "so what?" reflex. (For a quick intro on the basics of molecular nanotechnology, take a look at http://www.zyvex.com/nano/)

    Consider what they've demonstrated here: nano-scale springs and linear bearings. Presumably these bearings will also work rotationally, but that hasn't been tested yet, so I'll concentrate on the former. If you want to move molecules around one at a time with enough positional accuracy that you can place individual molecules where you want them to chemical react with other specific molecules--and no others--then you must position your molecule to within about 1/10th nanometer of the desired position.

    In the face of thermal vibrations--and thermal vibrations dominate at this scale, not quantum mechanical effects--you must have a very stiff positioner to do this. Buckytubes are among the stiffest known structures, so it's very useful that we can make linear bearings and springs from them. If a way can be found to attach the ends of these telescoping buckytubes to spherical joints and, further, to provide a means to actuate them, then it would be possible to combine a minimum of six such telescoping tubes into a nano-scale Stewart platform.

    A Stewart platform is a parallel linkage resembling a space frame of connected variable-length struts. The linkages form an octahedron in which one triangular face is the "platform" and the opposing triangular face is the "base." By varying the lengths of each strut, the position and orientation of the platform with respect to the base will vary in six degrees of freedom (translation in X,Y, and Z, and rotation in pitch, roll, and yaw). Stewart platforms are much stiffer than ordinary serial linkages (what we normally think of when we talk about robot arms), and thus they are commonly used for flight motion simulators. (Check here http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/6dof.html for more details.)

    OK, now you may rightly say, "So what?" again. Being able to build Stewart platforms from buckytubes means that we can then make robotic nanosystems conceptually capable of assembling anything else given the proper raw materials, energy, and software. And that means they can assemble copies of themselves, replicating exponentially. Even if it costs a billion dollars to build the first one,it takes just a few generations before the cost of each assembler/replicator drops to the cost of the raw materials, and since carbon atoms are plentiful and cheap, that cost can be very, very low.

    To get all the details, consult Drexler's Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation, http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/nanosystems.html

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