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Science

Australian Overturns 15 Years of Nano-Science Doctrine 79

Roland Piquepaille writes "Dr John Sader, from the University of Melbourne, discovered a design flaw in a key component of the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). He 'used established mechanical principles to prove that the popular V-shaped cantilever inadvertently degrades the performance of the instrument, and delivers none of its intended benefits.' This finding may reshape the industry by proposing a single new standard and because the AFM 'has been the instrument of choice for three dimensional measurements at the atomic scale, since its invention in 1986.' Check this column for more details and an AFM diagram or read the original University of Melbourne's article. You also can visit the 'How AFM works' page."
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Australian Overturns 15 Years of Nano-Science Doctrine

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  • Ahh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Saturday March 08, 2003 @02:19PM (#5467738)
    But if an Australian overturns something does that not mean its actually the right way up ?
  • Godamnit :/ (Score:4, Funny)

    by dark-br ( 473115 ) on Saturday March 08, 2003 @02:25PM (#5467767) Homepage
    Ill be sending my refund form right now!
  • Good thing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by JohnnyKlunk ( 568221 ) on Saturday March 08, 2003 @02:27PM (#5467777)
    Since the Aussie police have raided all the Universities and removed MP3/DivX collections they've had to turn their attention to work.
    Hope noone at my company realises this.
  • by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Saturday March 08, 2003 @02:34PM (#5467809) Homepage
    If modern string theory is true then most nano science applications will fail to work.
    Recall that standard supersymmetry work with strings in 11 space dimensions on Yang-Calbai manifolds. At sizes below 15 angstroem you'll effects from these 11 dimensions. Especially has the wave equation non-trivial, non-analytic solutions and Hygens' principle fails (due to the topology of the Yang-Calbai manifolds, recall that the 5th deRham cohomology group is non-trivial).
    So you'll get the effect of string resonance - strings are coupled together the 3rd order Laplace equation which overrules strong and weak interaction. This means that control of dynamical systems below the 15 angstroem barrier is impossible - you'll always get 5th order resonance which collapses the control Lie-algebra.
    So all these nifty little nano-machines won't work, they'll be just little protein blob wiggling around and doing nothing useful.
    As an example see this example [arxiv.org].
  • woosh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Saturday March 08, 2003 @02:44PM (#5467859) Homepage
    *passes hand over head*

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