Superconducting DNA 70
Mr_Dyqik writes "Alik Kasumov of the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in France and co-workers have shown that DNA molecules act as ohmic conductors above 1K and that below this temperature they can superconduct. This could allow the creation of self assembling superconducting circuits. (A Y Kasumov et al 2001 Science 291 280). The story is on PhysicsWeb."
background information (Score:1)
Nanotechnology (Score:1)
Re:FP (Score:1)
Re:not simultaneously (Score:1)
Re:Below 1K - but in a small area (Score:1)
I wasn't aware that the complete workings of the human brain had been cracked as yet. As far as I know, whether the human brain is a quantum device is undecided as yet, and if it is, I bet it will take a lot more than a few CC's.
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
By the way, PHYS 317 was a great course (I was a physics major myself). Is LePage still teaching it?
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
Most low-temperature superconductors are pure metals, alloys, or oxides (like Nb, NbTi, or NbO2). Most high-temperature superconductors are, as Maurice said, cuprates. For example, YBCO (Yttrium Barium Copper Oxide). It appears that the actual "supercurrents" flow in the 2-dimensional copper-oxide sheets.
Now for the actual correction (to eliminate a bit of confusion). There are type-1 and type-2 superconductors, although those terms refer exclusively to classes of LOW-temperature superconductors. The difference lies in how their conductivity is affected by a magnetic field. Basically, type-1 superconductors have a sharp transition between superconductivity at low magnetic fields, and normal conductivity above a critical field (at constant temperature). Type-2's have a much more gradual transition. Of course, that's only a functional definition, and it isn't the whole story.
Basically, HIGH-temperature superconductors were what was discovered in the 1980's, and type-1 and type-2 refer to types of conventional superconductors.
Re:how many other materials... (Score:1)
Talk about Buzzword-Compliant! (Score:1)
I predict this technology won't really take off until we develop Compassionate 64-bit Superconducting DNA Extreme.
Re:More Information (Score:1)
In fact, one of the methods in the laboratory used to split long segments of dna into more managable parts is to stir it. (Basically, getting to 0K without breakage isn't the real problem, it's geting past 273K without having freezing going on...[dehydration may be a possibility])
Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"
human conductivity (Score:1)
Obligatory (Score:1)
Re:Too bloody cold! (Score:1)
Re:They'll harvest us! (Score:1)
Also excellent (and entirely irrelevant to the discussion) is the set of assorted short stories by Niven that, as a whole, chronicle the devleopment of an instantaneous transport technology (transfer booths). The man's good, real good.
-J
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
Buzzwords galore! (Score:1)
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
That having been done (Score:1)
Re:Buzzwords galore! (Score:1)
Doubt it (Score:1)
Skreech
Re:OC !! (Score:1)
--Sam L-L
Re:They'll harvest us! (Score:1)
--
Re:Below 1K (Score:1)
Re:perhaps ship(water-bourne) engines? (Score:1)
Re:OC !! (Score:1)
Re:how many other materials... (Score:1)
Re:COOL! (Score:1)
--
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
being able to suspend bits of metal in the air over some stove burner looking thingy
The things they were suspending were actually magnets. If you drop a magnet on top of a superconductor, it won't get any closer than a certain distance due to the fact that if you move a conductor through a magnetic field (or move a magnetic field "through" a conductor) it generates electricity. Since there is no resistance to electricity - and thus, no way for the superconductor to eliminate the potential energy, the magnet will essentially float above the superconductor.
The stove burner was really some sort of cooler with a superconducting wafer on top.
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
One of my acquantances up here services the things. It's really fun when he tries to sell a zero volt 1000 amp power supply to someone else and they say that it is impossible to have current without voltage. But since you can have current in a conductor with no resistance, you can also have lots of current and no voltage.
There are some other real applications for this stuff. The revolution was being able to do this at a much higher temperature than say the 1 degree above absolute zero discussed above.
From the article... I disagree... (Score:1)
Inconclusive? Ever since I stuck my hand in a light socket, I KNEW my DNA was conducting a HELL of a lot of electricity!
You all thought that I was crazy.... (Score:1)
Re:not simultaneously (Score:1)
Too bloody cold! (Score:1)
IANAB (I am not a biologist), but wouldn't DNA stop acting like DNA usually does at 1K?
I though the whole point was it had to be in the 290K kind of range (around room temp/blood temp) to do much at all.
But hey, I just encourage
</drunk>
Re:Too bloody cold! (Score:1)
I think I found something self-replicating in a coffee cup under my bed. I bet it superconducts...
"graphite atoms"? I don't think so (Score:1)
-Mike-
Re:They'll harvest us! (Score:1)
Niven felt strongly that our fate w.r.t. replacement organs rested on which technology matured first: artifical organs or transplantation from humans. If the latter, he thought it was pretty inevitable that, um, our correctional institutions and our medical institutions would begin to collaborate.
--Timboy
Superconducters (Score:1)
And trust me, cooling stuff with icecubes won't get the temperature down to 1 Kelvin. you'll have to think a tad harder for that Nobel prize :o)
I don't think it was a Niven story... (Score:1)
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Re:Superconductors in a nutshell. (Score:1)
Just slap some molecular-sized heat transfer goop on a heat sink, combine it with a thermal transfer plate, (don't remember the name of the things..) and it'll work... Or my name isn't Bill Clinton.
(which it isn't.)
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
Superconducting vs. optical? (Score:1)
As far as I can tell, there are two things hyped up as the next generation's CPU circuitry: fiber optics and superconductors.
I'll venture a guess that fiber optics will take home base, but here are som pros and cons that I've thought of:
Superconductors
(srry about the length of the list...Couldn't figure out how to clear out any more whitespace...)
Re:They'll harvest us! (Score:1)
What do I win?
The Web is a horrible place to find pr0n... (Score:1)
How do you get this job? Morally upstanding, my ass...
Y'know... what's really great about filtering software is that it attempts to filter 'The Internet' for naughtiness and subversiveness, yet rarely filters anything other than HTTP. I mean... anyone who knows *anything* about porn, warez, mp3's, texts, etc... realizes that the best place to find them without having to look is Usenet and IRC.
Re:When can you get your own superconductor? (Score:1)
OK, someone brief me on this (Score:1)
Anyway, it's two decades later, and I still don't have any damn superconductors. Who *does* have them, what are they doing with them, and when can I get my own superconductive nonferrous magnets?
Re:DNA does not mean genetic - Read before ranting (Score:1)
Actually, no, as it turns out the experiementers tried garbage DNA first, and many other sequences, without success. It turns out that the only DNA that would superconduct was Hitler's.
Sources of superconductors. (Score:2)
Below 1K (Score:2)
Re:Below 1K - but in a small area (Score:2)
We don't need to worry about specialist areas like quantum computing - I'm only setting an upper limit on size here, based on the AI section in Drexler's "Engines of Creation"
Vik :v)
Re:DNA does not mean genetic - Read before ranting (Score:2)
Vik
More Information (Score:2)
As far as self assembling superconducting circuits, DNA is probably not the right way to go. Currently the rules of DNA superhelix assembly are way to complex to easily predict. Plus, at super conducting temperatures, there is no way that the DNA is going to be capable of self assembly. (the experiment was conducted with DNA molecules of length 2-3, 10sh and 20-30 bases.)
Furthermore, just the process of supercooling DNA will probably denature molecules of any interesting length and structure. Finally, once all this is done, how in the world do you compute with just a string of DNA at that cold of a tempurature? I wouldn't think that it would be any more interesting in ability to compute than a bucky tube.
Don Armstrong -".naidnE elttiL etah I"
Re:The Web is a horrible place to find pr0n... (Score:2)
But you're posting to the wrong article bud.
You meant to post to the article about the worst jobs on the net and this about cooling your body to within 1 degree of absolute zero to create a self assembling super computer. In fact you and some linuxchix could get together and create a beowulf cluster out of yourselves.
Science is great huh?
how many other materials... (Score:2)
Coming to a hospital near you... (Score:2)
*passes out cigars*
When can you get your own superconductor? (Score:2)
First measure out the proper stoichiometric amounts of chemicals to satisfy the final Y BA2 Cu3 O7-X formula. Your amounts could be: Yttrium Oxide, Y2O3 11.29 grams, Barium Carbonate, BaCO3 39.47 grams, and Cupric Oxide, CuO 23.86 grams for one example.
Then grind together and heat the mix to 950 degrees Celsius for about a day. After you let it cool grind it again and heat back up to about 1000C if you can, pass pure oxygen over the sample and now cool it very slowly at no more than 100C/hour. If you like press the final powder into a pellet.
Voila, your very own superconductor. I did it over a weekend once it's really easy and kinda fun once you get it to work. Get some liquid nitrogen from your local welding shop and nab one of the superstrong samarium cobalt magnets from an old pair of headphones to do the meissener demo.
Re:That having been done (Score:2)
Re:Superconductors in a nutshell. (Score:2)
The actual advance is that it could become easier to create superconducting circuits that can do a job that normal silicon can't. e.g superconducting circuits can operate quite easily in the 100 GHz region, where all silicon circuits have to laid out as waveguides etc.
Most of the useful effects in superconducting circuits come from the presence of Shapiro steps and other microwave resonances in Josephson junctions and their ilk.
Names (Score:2)
COOL! (Score:2)
No more laptops and dead batteries! (Just don't forget to eat...)
My karma's bigger than yours!
Re:Superconductors in a nutshell. (Score:2)
While interesting in an academic sense, such a discovery is rather trivial in a practical sense. Superconductivity itself has a number of astonishing uses that can sometimes look like magic, but they're only useful when we can get them to occur at useful temperatures. Unfortunately, cooling something to 1K will require something along the lines of laser cooling in order to achieve, and this turns out to not be very practical. Superconductors with a very low critical temperature cannot conduct much current before they exceed their critical energy level and "go normal".
Laser cooling only works for gases. 1K is usually achieved by first cooling using liquid Helium, then using various tricks to go a few degrees lower. Releasing pressure, or realignment of magnetic fields can all cause temperature drops sufficient to reach 1K, or even lower. Laser cooling is used to reach temperatures far lower than 1K.
Useful superconductors are more in the line of HTC's, high temperature superconductors. The simplest of these are the superconductors that work when cooled to the order of 70 degrees Kelvin (-200C) by liquid nitrogen (which is cheaper than beer). If I recall correctly, the highest published HTC was around 175K, which is only 100 degrees below freezing. I've heard rumors of higher temperature superconductors, but haven't seen any referreed publications of results yet. Keep your eyes peeled, we'll see room-temperature superconductors within the lifetimes of most slashdotters.
That might not be possible. Many physicists now question if RTSCs are possible, because the thermal energy of the lattice might break apart the delicate electron-electron pairing. Certainly, there is a lot of territory to cover, like strained crystal lattices, doped bucky tubes and the like, but don't get your hopes up. Also, most HTSCs are brittle, difficult to manufacture, very expensive, and often toxic.
To be fair to lower temperature superconductors, I believe the maglev train in Japan uses a lower temperature superconductor cooled by liquid helium, which is somewhere down on the order of 10K.
Most modern experiments involve liquid Nitrogen temperatures, or no superconductors at all. It's just cheaper. Liquid Helium is expensive, and requires complex insulation systems.
Superconductors aren't too useful for their property of not conducting current, since they have a critical maximum current level anyway. They are mostly used for their diamagnetic properties (they repel magnetic flux lines). This is the basis for how an MRI works, or for how super-fast magnetic trains work.
Their maximum current capacity is huge, but unlike copper, if you stay under the maximum, superconductors can transfer the current with zero loss, even at lower voltages. They are already in use at several powerplants for short-haul, high-current lines, etc... I've heard of at least one powerplant that uses a superconducting ring (inductor) to smooth out demand surges.
They'll harvest us! (Score:2)
They'll do that to DNA now! they're going to need our nuclei to copy their DNA strands, and they'll make it so if we breathe wrong, badmouth someone, or use Macintoshes we'll be convicted and they'll take our nuclei!
Join the "Save the Nuclei" movement now, before it's too late for humanity!!!
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Meisner Effect (Score:2)
not simultaneously (Score:3)
While this is fascinating stuff, it'd be even cooler (if you'll excuse the pun)if we could make variant DNA that superconducts at higher temperatures :-)
Anyway, one slightly offtopic question about superconductivity and the high-temperature superconductors that caused all the fuss back in the 1980's: what happened? Did we reach another temperature plateau? Was it still at liquid-nitrogen-required temperatures?
DNA does not mean genetic - Read before ranting (Score:3)
The concept of using DNA for structural purposes is about as different from genetics as using mortar is to building seashells.
The DNA is only sequenced to stick to itself, not to create or emulate any gene. It is quite likely that the "genetic" content of DNA used in this manner is garbage in the genetic context. The prime requirement in fact is that the DNA used for structural purposes will not interact with anything other than the target it is to join to.
Vik :v)
Re:Below 1K - but in a small area (Score:3)
But to do the same to a volume less than 1 cubic millimetre? That could be done inside a desktop case. 1 cubic mm of DNA is a hell of a lot of circuitry. At a molecular scale you can reproduce the functionality of the human brain in a few cc's - if you can keep it cold.
Vik
Re:OK, someone brief me on this (Score:3)
Re:Below 1K (Score:3)
OC !! (Score:3)
________
Superconductors in a nutshell. (Score:5)
Useful superconductors are more in the line of HTC's, high temperature superconductors. The simplest of these are the superconductors that work when cooled to the order of 70 degrees Kelvin (-200C) by liquid nitrogen (which is cheaper than beer). If I recall correctly, the highest published HTC was around 175K, which is only 100 degrees below freezing. I've heard rumors of higher temperature superconductors, but haven't seen any referreed publications of results yet. Keep your eyes peeled, we'll see room-temperature superconductors within the lifetimes of most slashdotters.
To be fair to lower temperature superconductors, I believe the maglev train in Japan uses a lower temperature superconductor cooled by liquid helium, which is somewhere down on the order of 10K.
Superconductors aren't too useful for their property of not conducting current, since they have a critical maximum current level anyway. They are mostly used for their diamagnetic properties (they repel magnetic flux lines). This is the basis for how an MRI works, or for how super-fast magnetic trains work.