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Science

Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film 160

Posted by timothy from the recognition-at-last dept.
buzzlightyear writes: "The Sept. 12 Chicago Tribune has an article headlined "Sparkling discovery for science" , about the development of ultrananocrystalline diamond film. The scientist who developed this, Dieter Gruen, started by experimenting with fragmented buckyballs, and had proven its properties in 1994, but he is only now receiving recognition and an award from the Materials Research Society. Preliminary tests show that ultrananodiamonds are 1,000 more wear-resistant than silicon, and 1 million times denser than conventional crystals. This makes them a practical base material for micromachines and other devices that had only been theoretically possible before. Maybe this will mark the real beginning of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age."
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ultrananocrystalline diamond film developed at Arg More

ultrananocrystalline diamond film developed at Arg

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  • here is a link (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:44AM (#785353) Journal
    You can find an abstract [annualreviews.org], with other links on that page

    - - - - - - - -
    "Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."

  • Sure it's wear resistant, but the electronic properties are poor because it is polycrystalline.

    If someone would develope a technique for cheap, easy to produce, single crystal films, then you'd have a huge break through.

  • maybe you're reading some of your own subconscious into those texts because I didn't pick up the incest part, nor did I think that there was a racist problem in Cryptonomicon.

    and btw, socialogical is sociological, from socio- logia (latin)

    oh, and Heinlin wrote non-perverted sci-fi? what about the sexual explots of Lazarus Long [amazon.com], who had sex with his mother as well as all of his sisters?

    If I remember correctly, Stranger in a Strange Land was about 40% sex, 90% of which was out of marriage, 50% of which was between blood relatives.

  • Pretty exciting stuff, until you get halfway down the article and discover that they made it with buckyballs. Doen't eople realize that there is no large scale (ie greater than a few hundred molecule at a time) process for making these things, after more than 15 years! Sure they're amazing, but at thousands of dollars a milligram, there isn't much use. When we can either a) find a large scale production method for either fullerenes or nanotubes, or b) make a proper nanoassembler, that will be one thing. Until then, all this talk is even less meaning full than those 1950s Popular Mechanics articles that proclaimed flying cars for all within the decade...
  • I know an ex-special, special forces guy who has told me about some of the of mind-numbing sci-fi bits of technology he was equipped and trained with a number of years back. One of his ex-team mates who remains in the military was visiting, and he described some of the Star-Trek shit currently in use.

    If what I heard is worth taking at face value, then I think the sad little info releases about 'recent' technological advances we see available for public consumption are the result of an orchestrated control over the time line on which the general public is kept in regard to scientific advancement. As far as I can figure, we're at LEAST thirty five years away from having access, (both physical and psychological), to the kind of tech a select few currently take for granted.

    Kinda sucks.

    One of the main applications in the instance of this fine crystaline stuff, (which was not even mentioned either in the article or on Slashdot), was in the area of battery architecture.

    If any of this is true, then most of us here at Slashdot are playing in tune like a bunch of damned lemmings to a timed beat metered out by others. Feel the joy.

    -Garund

    "I'll see it when I believe it."

  • It's to use when fabricating little tiny gears and components. For actual physical work at very small scales.
  • Why do you say "obviously"? I didn't think it was that clear from that paragraph in the article...

    After rereading the article's paragraph (several times), I'll agree that it is talking about the size of crystal produced, rather than density.... but saying "fits inside" is a rather confusing phrase when talking about things at the atomic level. (Whereas talking about suns or planets "fitting inside" is much more clear, to me at least.)

  • It must be that I haven't had enough caffeine today if I can't decide whether to moderate this up or down.

    Off to get some joe, then... Need to wake up my sense of humour.

    Still, for another example of Stephenson getting things frighteningly right, check out the Wired article on immense cargo airships. I have actually visited the company, and it looks for all the world that they know what they are doing (if the size of the hangar is anything to go by).

  • Re:Auspicious, but (Score:3)

    by Happy Monkey ( 183927 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:46AM (#785361) Homepage
    Ah yes, Werner Von Braun. He aimed for the stars... and often hit London.

    But did he hit any of the stars in London? They've always had good theater there. (Or would that be theatre?)
    ___

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by sips ( 212702 )
    Well from what I gather from other posters supposedly with nanites you can create almost anything you want. One of the reasons that the British wanted colonies was for the economics and raw materials. So in a society that can create anything at all what would be the use of irritating a large mass of people who would just wish you harm?
  • sorry, not Stranger in a Strange Land, but "To Sail Beyond the Sunset"

    Stranger was the last one I read... kinda had it on the brain
  • That's a big part of the book I don't understand, either.
  • ...is certainly going to be a helluva lot more than one third your salary.

    --SpookComix

  • For grinding anything.

    Fancy glitter material for expensive clothes and
    houses?

    New electronics substrate (Carbon has same valence
    as Silicon).
  • I love Heinlein. His books changed my life. I idolize him. But you do seem somewhat deluded.

    Early in his career he wrote very wholesome books - which were Juvenile Fiction (include Starship Troopers, which movie really depressed me) meaning they were written for kids. Which is great, especially considering the reading level is above most adult books these days. Maybe you only read his little kids books.

    Later on he wrote fewer juvenile books, and more adult ones. (There is some cronological overlap between the categories. But the books are usually labeled.) These were not "wholesome" in any way. Juvenile or not was based largely on the applied themes.

    I'd agree he had issues. Almost every adult contained orgies of some sort, usually with all the protagonists, and many contained various other "free thinking" sexual practices. I doubt he ever had anyone punished for incest. People who were abusive were likely to get punished, although his books were realistic enough that this didn't always happen.

    But I love him. He was smart and experienced. He was dead-on about most people, imho. And he was honest about things. And I agree that he hit to the heart of a lot of people by being honest.

    Another recommendation: The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, by Dr. A (Issac Asimov) I was very surpised when I read this book. I've since decided that good science fiction writers are smart and have few delusions, and that only delusions can keep you from being a sick bastard.
  • But wait, don't get too confused, at the end of 2033(isn't that the last of the trilogy?)

    The four books were: 2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001.
    ___

  • I concede the point regarding an incorrect interpretation in the summary, and I agree Gruen didn't increase the density by 10^6. To quote [slashdot.org] myself:

    After rereading the article's paragraph (several times), I'll agree that it is talking about the size of crystal produced, rather than density.... but saying "fits inside" is a rather confusing phrase when talking about things at the atomic level. (Whereas talking about suns or planets "fitting inside" is much more clear, to me at least.)

    However, I do wonder why you believe that having some quantity of carbon at a higher density than some other density would immediately change the effects of gravity on it... thus plumetting it through the planet.

  • Actually a couple years ago, I was reading about somebody who wanted to coat the blades of various tools with some sort of vaccuum deposited diamond film (possibly this... I don't know too much about this process, the think i was reading also involved vaccuum chambers and heavy hydrogen and bombarding stuff with microwaves... didn't sound like too practical a process on an industrial scale).. That was in 93 or so, so it was probably something different... This sounds cool though =:-)
    If I am not mistaken, the process involved some CO2 atmosphere in an oven, and bombarding a plate glass with carefully phased ultrasonic waves. Within hours, the glass was coated in a very thin but scratch-proof diamond film.
  • Say that fives times fast...

    "Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film",
    "Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film",
    "Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film",
    "Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film",
    "Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film",

    Whew!

  • Use this process to coat the rings and cylinder wall for my trucks engine. While there at it, coat everything that rubs or has water running through it. With its low coefficient of friction, and long wear, the engine will double in horsepower, get twice the mileage and practically never wear out (with proper maintenance).

    My car has a truck engine in it (I have an '89 240SX, which has the KA24E motor. It's the same as the Nissan pickup from the same year) and it DOES get twice the mileage. Well, maybe not twice, but I pick up 30 mpg freeway. No joke.

    You'd get a better increase in performance at a cheaper cost by just using buckyballs as lubricant.

    Also, where do you think cars go when you get rid of them? Someone else buys them. If they're totalled, they get crushed, and recycled, and made into - Yep, you guessed it - cars, among other things.

    If you're really worried about using this technology to improve your environment, figure out some way to use it to improve battery life, so we can all drive electrics. While you're at it, figure out a way to use it to make high-power photovoltaic cells...

  • is Neal Stephenson so goddamn good at predicting things that happen to show up later on? (more or less, and stuff)
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • Don't forget Judge Fange from Diamond Age. He's a savvy Confucian hipster if there ever was one.

    -schussat

  • Who's smoking what? There was actually more plantlife during various phases of the earth's lifetime. The most notable being shortly before the dinosaurs died out about 60 million years ago.
  • What is the time from prototype to production? I get the feeling this is like the first rocket made by Von Braun and we are waiting to go to the moon.
  • We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.

    Off-topic, but this reminded me of a great bumper-sticker I recently saw:

    Knowledge is Power
    Power Corrupts
    Study Hard
    Be Evil

  • The NanoDiamond Engagement Ring (Score:3)

    by bguilliams ( 68934 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:28AM (#785378)
    I thought it was a great breakthrough in technology, but my girlfriend didn't see it that way.
  • Probably in their niche predicting things like this is like two years ago saying "someday we will have a computer running at 1Gz." It's a combination of being in the know and seeing the invevitable - but when it happens (is discovered, refine, produced, etc...) we are no less excited having heard someone's predictions.
  • ...and diamonds are the compressed carbon remains of....oh! that's just too creepy!

  • Important uses. (Score:5)

    by Matt2000 ( 29624 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:29AM (#785381) Homepage

    "Preliminary tests show that ultrananodiamonds are 1,000 more wear-resistant than silicon, and 1 million times denser than conventional crystals." The new material will immediately go into use as packaging for products such as cassette tapes, finally fulfilling science's dream of "the most irritating fuckin' thing to open of all time."

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Just thought up another one....
    UNCLE
    Ultra Nano CrystalLinE
    (Cue theme from "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.")

    (offtopic) I'm surprised they haven't done an "U.N.C.L.E." movie yet - what with MI:2 and so forth.... I guess, that with the Cold War over, the novelty of having a Russian and an American agent working together doesn't really mean that much anymore, though.

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

  • how are carbon MEMS any better than silicon? (Score:4)

    by crgrace ( 220738 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:57AM (#785384)
    Which gets at the real beauty of Gruen's work. Now these astounding, tiny machines are much closer to reality than ever before, at a time when there is an intense international push to develop these microscopic machines--known as MEMS.

    MEMS, Microelectromechanical systems, could very well be a revolutionary technology with such applications ranging from tiny actuators for robots or satellites to small, efficient inductors in radio-frequency integrated circuits. While this article implies carbon-diamond MEMS could be revolutionary, it gives no indication they'd be practical.

    Remember, silicon (and all semiconductors, including carbon) has a diamond structure, so presumably using these buckyball carbon diamonds would be better. The problem is, how would we fabricate them cheaply?

    The key reason silicon micromachines dominate the market for things such as automobile airbag sensors is because they are able to leverage already highly advanced silicon fabrication technologies originally developed for integrated circuits. No such technology exists for pure carbon and developing one would cost an unbelieveably large amount of money and take many years. There had better be some compelling reason for us to do so.

    Many times technologies "better" than silicon have come out only to remain niche technologies. A good example is III-V semiconductors such as Gallium Arsenide. While they are indispensible for lasers and such, they are not used for integrated circuits nearly as much as silicon, because they are so damn expensive. Their current main use, RF power amps and fiber-optic receivers, is quickly being impinged upon by advanced silicon CMOS technologies.

    My point is that this discovery is pretty interesting, but it is far from "revolutionary". Until someone comes up with a killer app that provides a compelling reason to justify the expense to develop this further, I'm going to keep my money on silicon-based micromachines.

  • Hmm. Read the last paragraph.
    IHBT. IHL. IWHAND.
  • in the book, windows are made of diamond. imagine anything that needs to be clear and hard being made of diamond! also diamond edged sharp stuff (besides drills ... like a microscopic diamond edged buzzsaw on a knife sized blade). diamond imacs instead of lucite? ;) (:christian:)

  • This makes them a practical base material for micromachines...
    Cool. My little brother kept stepping on all his little cars and planes; it'll be nice to see them made from something other than plastic.

    I don't know if he's gonna be thrilled with the '5 million dollars per set' pricetag, though...
    ---

  • Re:It's a book by Neil Stephenson (Score:4)

    by smartin ( 942 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @07:01AM (#785388)
    Somehow I think you (and severaly other posters) completely missed the point on the Neo-Victorian society. One of the common themes (if you can count two books) in Stephensons work is the idea that organized goverments will ultimately break down in the face of technology. In both Snow Crash and Diamond Age, the result is a large number of smaller goverments formed around some sort of shared ideal or commercial culture. In Diamond Age, it just so happens that one of the main groups in the book are a set of people organized around a shared ideal based on a Victorian society. This is not a prediction that nano technology will morph americans into neo Victorians, it is just an example of one possible group that may form in a world where large governments based on geographical borders no longer make sense.
  • Unless I'm misremembering, the scary Asian general in Cryptonomicon is Japanese, not Chinese.
    While most generals may be scary madmen (:-), WW2 Japan certainly had some.
    General Wing was Chinese.
  • Ever since I first heard about viruses in elementary school 20 years ago, how they're dead and yet reproduce, I figured they were leftover remnants of some ancient technology, like something created by the Egyptians during their pyramid-designing years 10,000 years ago. Now look! We have the ability to manufacture them as well. Don't think it won't happen, either: we already have inferior biological weapons in stockpiles bigger than Rhode Island, I saw some once driving through Montana, a vast valley full of small bunkers full of biological weapons, separated into caches so they're less dangerous...

    Anyway the point is, we have the ability to create biological viruses with nanotechnology, and someone will do it. Perhaps the next war will not be in outer space, but in little microships zooming around in a human body.

    -Water Paradox

  • This ties in with the story done a day or two ago about the space elevator. Perhaps these nanodiamonds? could be used to coat some or all of the elevator to better protect it from the wear and tear of space. Just a suggestion. Does this mean that this material is stronger than a diamond?
  • Nob... I hope you're just kidding. Nary a bloody thing is cribbed from Gibson. Not the tone, feel, pace, setting, tech, details, NOTHING... Such nobbery...
  • But they would be killed by my nano-tech pet dragonfly or wasp. Better yet a minnie stealth or tomcat fighter plane shooting down all the bugs in my apartment or around me when I go outside in the summer.

    "House, can you send the stealth bomber into my room - there's a mosquito in here."

    [RODGER, WILCO......TARGET ACQUIRED....DESTROYED.....ANALYZING....99.98% CONFIDENCE TARGET WAS BIOLOGICAL....RETURNING TO BASE]

    "Thanks house, lights out and G'night!"

  • Portland or Bust (Score:3)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @12:53PM (#785394) Homepage Journal
    The total market, now estimated at $5-6 billion, is forecast to reach $14 to $40 billion by 2002 by various studies" (R&D Magazine, July 1999).

    With growth rates like 40% to 50%, and present market at %5-6 billion, the portland Portland/Eugene's silicon foundry industry may spawn mass-production machine tools taking in mechanical CAD drawings from the Internet and delivering you a box full of complex semicustom electromechanical devices for only a few thousand of dollars.

    Porland/Eugene already has the highest growth rate in the world of any major high tech area. [milkeninstitute.org]

  • Conspiracy buff, eh? I don't blame you.

    Of course, this "innovation" has been around for a while, but has been ruthlessly suppressed by a secret cabal of Razor Blade Manufacturing Industries. It could ruin their whole marketing model.

  • Stephenson's nano world wasn't a nice place where a boy and his nanite played in green fields and chased butterflies. It was a world crappier by far because of the destruction rendered by nanites so thick they filled the air, killed by chaning your blood chemistry, and shut down your nervous system in moments. I'm not saying this isn't a great discovery, but Stepenson's tale of caution should be used to highlight a darker potential...
  • It's not really about diamonds; the title simply refers to the age of mankind as 'the diamond age', as mankind can produce, at will, diamond materials effortlessly. These days, such a feat would be considered impossible. So.. diamond instead of glass. It basically is a reference to the mastery of nanotech.
  • Another interesting application of diamond films is their use in constructing gamma ray lasers.

    It's hard to make such a device, based on the fact that there is not enough energy in an electronic transition to make gamma frequency emmisions. So, instead of electonic transitions, you rely on *nuclear* transitions. You have to pump the nucleus of an unstable isotope with x-rays to acheive population inversion inside the nucleus.

    Anyways, you also have to imbed the radionucleide in a matrix, namely thin film diamond. I think the gamma ray laser project was one of the last SDI funded research projects in the 90's. I think they got the whole concept to work, but I'm not sure if it got developed further.

    -->OBQT
  • Several posts have pointed out the foreshadowing of this technology in the fictional works of Stephenson and others.

    While there are certain similarities, no one has yet mentioned the book Go At Secopholix by Donald Kunch.

    Actually, I'm not too surprised. It was an utterly forgettable book. Where it not the only thing I had in the lab during a long summer internship, I would have never bothered with it. Kunch is respectable physicist but, quite frankly, a horrible story teller.

    Nevertheless, this exact technology played a pivotal role in the storyline. Now that it is quickly becoming science fact instead of science fiction, I'm interested in re-reading the book. Perhaps old Don knew more than it seemed at the time.

    I've checked FatBrain but can't find it. I'd hate to use Amazon.... Does anybody know somewhere else I might look?

  • a million times desnser? (Score:5)

    by Demi-Guod! ( 228213 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @07:08AM (#785400)
    ultrananodiamonds are 1,000 more wear-resistant than silicon, and 1 million times denser than conventional crystals.

    A million times denser would give one cubic centimeter of the stuff a mass of several metric tons. What the article actually says is:

    1 million crystals in Gruen's diamond film can fit inside the crystal produced by conventional methods

    Which means that the crystals are a million times SMALLER, not denser.

    D
  • when am I going to see my transmetta powered pda watch using this stuff.

  • Here's a way to fix global warming (Score:4)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @07:10AM (#785402)
    Use this process to coat the rings and cylinder wall for my trucks engine. While there at it, coat everything that rubs or has water running through it. With its low coefficient of friction, and long wear, the engine will double in horsepower, get twice the mileage and practically never wear out (with proper maintenance).

    The long life will mean that the most environmentally damaging the vehicles do in their lifespan (other than crushing small woodland critters), being made, will be done less often.

  • Actually a couple years ago, I was reading about somebody who wanted to coat the blades of various tools with some sort of vaccuum deposited diamond film (possibly this... I don't know too much about this process, the think i was reading also involved vaccuum chambers and heavy hydrogen and bombarding stuff with microwaves... didn't sound like too practical a process on an industrial scale).. That was in 93 or so, so it was probably something different... This sounds cool though =:-)

  • hmm (Score:3)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @07:11AM (#785404)
    Does anybody else hear that low T2 background music?...

    ...
    At the turn of the century, experimental quantum computers had been successfully demonstrated in scientific labs

    Bill Joy, founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, writes an article warning against the potential dangers of ubiquitous nanotechnology

    In the year 2000 Argonne National Laboratory researchers develop a process for growing diamond film that promises to bring the superior mechanical, tribological, and thermal properties of diamond to the rapidly expanding field of micro- electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology.
    ...

    Dum-da-dum ta-dum
    Dum-da-dum ta-dum
    Dum da dum
    Dum-da-dum ta-dum
    Dum-da-dum ta-dum
  • Don't you mean 'ShadowRunner'?

    Sorry, couldn't resist the opportunity. I'm not a Katz-basher, I swear, I'm not.

  • Hmm. Actually, diamond age rips basically nothing off of Gibson.

    Snow crash and Diamond Age are not even remotely similar in setting, or in theme.

    Not a trace of Gibson in it.

    Gibson barely touches on nanotech in his latest books...

  • Jules Verne predicted submarines and fax machines, among other things...
  • Leonardo Da Vinci predicted the submarine by making a crude sketch of one in his notebooks.
  • diamond is in the same group on the perodic table as silicon, so there is no reason why it shouldn't also be a semiconductor. this would be good because diamond is 12x times more small than silicon atoms - thus giving us at least a 12x factor in speed increase.

    but diamond is also transparent, so I wander if it couldn't in some way for optical semiconducting. very exciting thought imho.

  • Oh come on!

    Everybody knows these is no such thing as a phantom Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film. Saying its name five times in front of the mirror will never result in U.D.F. appearing behind you with a diamond hook on its hand. That's just another urban legend. A myth.

    Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film! Yeah, right!

  • Called sarcasm, maybe you've heard of it?
  • actually, what about something so simple as cd-rom's that are scratch-proof?
    Great idea! As useful as coating eyeglasses and contacts lenses.

  • ...each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds
    Uh... so a meter of dark matter would be how long exactly?

  • However, I do wonder why you believe that having some quantity of carbon at a higher density than some other density would immediately change the effects of gravity on it... thus plumetting it through the planet.

    THat's easy. You get the same weight but in a lower volume, and assuming the shape remains the same, a lower area of contact (is that the right term? or is it point of contact? or something else?) with anything underneath. So a spectacular increase of density would mean that the same area would have to sustain a really, really bigger weigth. Therefore punching a hole in whatever material it may be.

    It's like resting a knife on its side over a balloon instead of on its point. Same mass, but reduce the area of contact and blammo, no more balloon.

  • Not often enough to matter!
  • . . . like ultrananocrystalline, it's gotta be good!

    appologies to Schmuckers.

  • If this film is transparent, wouldn't it be possible to use it as protective coating for teeth? If it's opaque, perhaps it could be used as a two-in-one cavity-stopper/teeth-whitener coating, assuming it could be artificially colored if it isn't naturally white.

    Anyone have any ideas for applications of this?

    -G. Waters
    "sigs cause cancer"
  • actually, what about something so simple as cd-rom's that are scratch-proof?

  • because he rips off everything from William Gibson, thats why.

    Okay, so I've only read Snow Crash. But what a derivative piece of generic "cyberpunk" tripe! I couldn't figure out why anyone got excited over that piece of crap. "Lets see: two parts Neuromancer; one part Shadowrun; mix until lumpy and stale." - Neal Stephenson.

    this is not a troll. i repeat: this is not a troll. this is actually my opinion.

    /bluesninja

  • ********PRESS RELEASE***********

    MicroMachines is proud to announce its most durable line of toy vehicles ever! Made of space-age Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Film, these little cars and trucks are virtually indestructible and now weigh as much as the full sized vehicle!

    CAUTION: Do not drop Ultrananocrystalline MicroMachines on your little brother's head. Placing Ultrananocrystalline MicroMachines on railroad tracks may cause derailment and death.

    -------------

  • Re:a million times desnser? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The point is that there is an error in the slashdot summary.

    The poster above was trying to point out that it's not possible to have a material that dense. Unless you are inside of a star or black hole or something.

  • they had those commercials where the dude would talk really fast. one of those made of diamond would be pretty sweet if you ask me.
    --------------------------------------------- -----
  • But did [von Braun's rockets] hit any of the stars in London? They've always had good theater there. (Or would that be theatre?)

    Well, I've been told that the best way to analyze the distribution of rocket-bomb hits is to take a map of London and put a sticky star on the site of each hit, color coded for how you're feeling that day....
  • This has apparently already been in use for years on all TDK VHS cassettes wrappers. :-)
  • I'm no scientist, but I can think of quite a few ways in which inert objects are bound together. It seems this new process will make it easier to fabricate a 'sheet' of diamond in place. So why not fashion the tip of the blade with a small groove that the diamond envelopes, and when it hardens it would cleave to the blade. The only way you could get it off would be to snap the blade.

    I don't know enough about the process to be certain, but the mechanics of the idea would work.

  • >Think about it.

    Man, whatever you're smokin' today must be primo, eh?

    You know, you have a point though. Before the advent of mass-produced internal combustion engines, there wasn't nearly as much plant life on the planet. :-p
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Neal Stephenson is one of the most brilliant writers I have had the pleasure of reading. The Diamond Age is becoming more and more possible as our technology advances. The advances in nanotechnology are leading towards being able to link different elements on the atomic level. If you haven't read any of Stephenson's books, go buy them now. Cryptonomicon is his latest and it deals with cryptography and crypto analysis. All of his work as proved very thought provoking for me. - Khaotix Brevis ipsa vita est sed malis fit longior - Publilus Syrus
  • Im not sure about the normal wear and tear of space, but they could be used for wear and tear down here closer to the ground.

    I guess out there the danger comes not quite from wear but from collisions with debris...

    I don't know if a thin coat of ultrananocrystalline watchamacallits would help. I mean, they could be made strong enough to withstand such an impact, I guess, but then the stuff they're protecting would shatter from the shock or something.

    That would be funny. Kind of like Daffy Duck's Anti-disintegrating Vest, which wont disintegrate (or protect the owner from disintergating, either!)

  • But what a derivative piece of generic "cyberpunk" tripe! I couldn't figure out why anyone got excited over that piece of crap. "Lets see: two parts Neuromancer; one part Shadowrun; mix until lumpy and stale."

    At what point does this copy Neuromancer? I've read both of these books several times and I can't see your point. Neuromancer was dark and brooding. Snow Crash was actually rather upbeat. There stories weren't even really similar except for them both falling into the Quest theme of stories (if that's your point then Neuromancer is ripping off the Lord of the Rings triology). In respects to Shadowrun, it is itself a mix of several different styles and is meant to be, it's a game. As for lumpy and stale? This was the book that many critics give credit for breathing life into what was seen as a dying genre. And it flowed quite well, except for the ending but I'm willing to forgive it due to the rest of the book. And I hardly see how it was generic. The Shadowrun books... that's generic tripe.

    As for the rest of his work, go read Cryptonomicon (it's finally in paperback) or Zodiac (really good and one of his first if a bit hard to find). Read Diamond Age but be prepared to be confused. It's pretty dense with the language at points and the plot jerk a little every now and then.

    To sum up, I must say that I've never read a Stephenson book that I disliked. And Diamond Age is worth it just for the line near the end about the barbarian princess... I still get shivery reading it.

  • I'd hardly call such novels as Revolt in 2100, Starship Trooper and The Puppet Masters juveniles.

    I don't know about Revolt in 2100 or Puppet Masters but Starship Troopers was intended to be a juvenille, albiet for older children (10 and above). Kinda hard to believe when today's juvenille literature is (for the most part) one step above moronic.

  • Assuming that you are referring to the General who started out life in the book as a Japanese prisoner digging a place to toss a planetary mass of gold, his name is Wing, and he is quite definitely Chinese.
  • Bic! You're right! It IS all Bic's fault! All the pieces are coming together!

    I knew those stupid pens were evil.

    Did you ever notice back in school when one of their pens, 'accidentally' exploded and bled ink, that the student it stained would get kinda glassy eyed and highly receptive?

    Extra curricular activities, my ass. I wonder what we've REALLY been trained for?

    -Garund

    (Conspiracy buff? Hm. Maybe. I do avoid things like air-miles, and I do distrust large corps because they keep doing morally objectionable things, like ignoring safety standards and employing children in third world nations, etc. And in the case of my previous post, I'm just relaying what I've heard from sources I know personally, which seem to me more reliable than the average newspaper article, which comes from who-knows-where).

  • No, Heinlein had an imagination, unlike the current crop of anime-lovin' brain damaged "sci-fi" fans of today.

    He took issue with Conservative America's prudism, and apparently irks people to this day. Not bad for a octagenarian Naval officer.
  • ...is certainly going to be a helluva lot more than one third your salary.

    Yes, but at least that money would be going to some nano-technology buckyball-growing cool-ass research group, instead of going to bankroll more civil wars in Africa. How many people died for that jewel on your honey's finger?

    How else can two months' salary last forever? By keeping corrupt diamond-friendly regimes in power.
    -- DeBeers, Corrupting Africa since 1870.

    see http://people.ne.mediaone.net/ben_inker/DeBeers.ht m [mediaone.net]

    Off Topic: when the hell did it become "one third your salary"? I remember when it was one month! Now we're supposed to spend four months working to artificially inflate the value of a rather common mineral for the benefit of the DeBeers cartel and to the detriment of the third world. No thanks.
    --
  • Ideas like this have been kicking around for years. The real problem isn't getting the carbon/diamond on the blade edge, it's keeping it there. Diamond is inert, so it doesn't like sticking to things, so it usually "rubs off" the substrate (metal, in your case) quickly.
  • His books suck!

    They have little plot. Underutilize characters that he sets up as main characters, overutilizes background characters. Follows no coherent pattern in the storyline.

    He may do his research, but I would wish to God (not Stephenson) that he would read the other God's book --Sol Stein's Stein on Writing. Maybe that would help him out.

    --I could go on like the energizer bunny, but my battery died.
  • if volume [decreases], density increases.

    ...if the mass is being held constant, which it obviously isn't. The crystals are smaller because they contain a million times fewer atoms, not because they contain the same number of atoms packed a million times tighter.

    --------

  • Re:why (Score:3)

    by (void*) ( 113680 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:30AM (#785452)
    Theory 1: Neal Stephenson is God.

    Theory 2: Neal Stephenson reads and talks to researchers on the forefront of research, assumes they achieve their goals and asks "then what"?

    I'm betting on 1.

  • Yes! "Growing Diamonds". Excellent.

    "Uh...honey, look what I grew ..I mean bought you today. Cost me a lot of moneeeeyyy!"

  • ...with advanced degrees in physics, chemistry, and hyperspace geometry. Froin-glaven!

    In all seriousness, obvious when you know what regular diamond crystals are like because the increased density version would involve collapsing the electron shells, which is frowned upon among civilized chemists (only those boorish astrophysicists would dare such an offense against the proper state of matter).

    --------
  • I think we need a new name for it. Perhaps "buckysheet" would do.

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • "Maybe this will mark the real beginning of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age."

    I'm a big fan of Neal Stephenson, but a bigger fan of Sir Arthur C Clarke. He should get some credit for predicting that we are entering (have entered?) a "Carbon Age" [bbc.co.uk]. Diamond-based materials are going to be a minor material of the future, and will not be as important as the major advances in other carbon-based materials. We've already seen buckyballs and carbon-fiber... I don't think anybody will disagree that we're on the verge of some exciting times as far as Carbon is concerned...

  • 1 million crystals in Gruen's diamond film can fit inside the crystal produced by conventional methods

    Which means that the crystals are a million times SMALLER, not denser.

    Well, a million times smaller by volume, but a hundred times smaller by linear measure, which is a more rational measure of this sort of thing. For example one of the things that is interesting for this sort of stuff is flatness, which is a (very crudely) related to the size (and size distribution) of the crystals.

    Of course "One hundred times..." doesn't sound as good as "one million times...".

  • while that may be possible, I would have to wonder what would happen if it is a fully sealed tooth decay preventative device -- if the teeth need air from the outside, this could cause weird decay.
  • What a troll. Don't get me wrong, I love Heinlein, but if you read his later work (the Lazarus Long stuff especially), he gets a lot more perverted than just implied incest. Like a literal rendition (through time travel and paradoxes) of the comedy bluegrass ditty "I'm My Own Grandpaw".... I could go on, but I won't.

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • My car has a truck engine in it (I have an '89 240SX, which has the KA24E motor. It's the same as the Nissan pickup from the same year) and it DOES get twice the mileage. Well, maybe not twice, but I pick up 30 mpg freeway. No joke.

    Bzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing. I owned an '85 Nissan Pickup up until just a few months ago. I got around 20mpg highway, even though the engine was so worn that it had gotten tight to the point that the starter wasn't strong enough to turn it over (had to assist the starter by popping the clutch on a downhill grade. A real bitch when it's raining.) So you get 50% more mpg from the same engine in a sleek, low-slung sports car than I get running it in a high-riding, blocky, 4x4 pickup. I'll give you that, but it doesn't negate my point that the same engine would have improve performance, wear longer an use less gas with harder/slicker bearings and rings. All you've said is that a small sports car requires less energy to push than a larger truck.

    You'd get a better increase in performance at a cheaper cost by just using buckyballs as lubricant.

    Bzzt. Wrong again. You have to periodically replace combustion engine oil, not because it is worn out as most people seem to think, but because it gets full of trash from the combustion process. Most modern oils would last for 20,000 miles in a contemporary engine, but since it's second calling is to carry soot and grit away from the rubbing parts , you have to replace it when it gets saturated. Synthetic oils are already very expensive. Who could afford to replace oil ever 3k to 7k miles with an exotic lubricant like buckyballs? You may get better performance, but you definitely won't get it cheaper unless you devise a manufacturing process less complicated than "1)pump crude out of the ground, 2)crack it, 3)put it in bottles."

    Also, where do you think cars go when you get rid of them? Someone else buys them. If they're totalled, they get crushed, and recycled, and made into - Yep, you guessed it - cars, among other things.

    I'm sure you have a point hidden in there somewhere. My point is that the car must eventually die. My wife's Volvo died two weeks ago (threw a rod). Yes, it'll be recycled, but the process of doing that is very energy intensive. Wouldn't it be better for the environment and her wallet if the car just worked for several more years.

    If you're really worried about using this technology to improve your environment, figure out some way to use it to improve battery life, so we can all drive electrics. While you're at it, figure out a way to use it to make high-power photovoltaic cells...

    How the hell would technology that improves the mechanical properties of sliding or rolling surfaces be used the improve the electrical characteristics of batteries or PV cells? Use the tech to coat the bearing of an electric car and it will get more miles on a charge, but that is about the only use and that would apply to any engine technology used. Coating the bearing in the power plants generator would drop the friction there, thus lowering emissions at the power plant.

  • Maybe
    this will mark the real beginning of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age."

    Well, maybe yes and maybe no. We have to wait until next year for the 2001: A Space Oddessy prediction to come true, then in 2010 Jupiter explodes and becomes a star.

    But wait, don't get too confused, at the end of 2033(isn't that the last of the trilogy?) we discover that DeBeers has been keeping all of the diamond matter a big secret.

    Anyway, we have to wait until we have enough diamond to build all the stuff Clark wrote about first and then Stephenson piled on.

    Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]

  • Re:Auspicious, but (Score:3)

    by SpyceQube ( 224045 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:40AM (#785508)
    Ah yes, Werner Von Braun. He aimed for the stars... and often hit London.

  • hmmm... (Score:5)

    by Vorro ( 124142 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @06:43AM (#785510) Homepage
    "This makes them a practical base material for micro machines..."

    What was wrong with good old die-cast metal?

    Besides, I don't really see how some useless upgrade to miniature cars actually affects science. After all, all Micro Machines are nowadays are a crappy standover of the 80's, somehow still alive today... though I'm glad we don't have to listen to that dude in the Micro Machines commercials talk at 300 kilometres per hour anymore...

    The Micro Machines Nintendo game was pretty fun, though... I enjoyed racing around on a pool table.

    Ah well.

    -Vorro
    ---------------------------
    A wise man speaks because he has something to say.
    A foolish man speaks because he has to say something.

  • Using the crystals he produces, I could see making a diamond fractal blade, ala Gibson. It wouldn't have infinite recursion, but it could recurse from an inches-long visible outer pattern down to the nano-scale of his crystals. It would be far sharper than any conventional blade.

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