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Science Technology

Nanotech or Nano-Not? 179

Posted by michael from the itty-bitty dept.
LabRat007 writes "CNN has a story on the current status and future of nanotechnology. This infromative overview on the technology talks about current research and when we can expect nano-parts for our geek gear."
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Nanotech or Nano-Not? More

Nanotech or Nano-Not?

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  • Possible dangers (Score:5, Informative)

    by c0dedude ( 587568 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:25PM (#8899383)
    While some are all go for nanotechnology, others [etcgroup.org] see potential for danger. Remember, people were afraid of vaccines, but they were also afraid of CFC's.

    • Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:30PM (#8899418) Homepage Journal
      I would say the best possible example of the last "grey goo is bad!" technology was the advent of restriction enzymes, which cut the DNA chain at specific intervals and are used to study microbiology.

      Lots of Universities had all sorts of problems getting these things used in the lab, now they're commonly used in beginning level biology classes.

      I'm not saying there's NO danger from nanotechnology, I'm just saying a lot of what people are doing is keying into insanely low probability risks which could really be associated with any item if you put enough thought into it.

      • Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Insightful)

        by metlin ( 258108 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:40PM (#8899457) Journal
        The probability of an all out nuclear catastrophe happening and wiping us all out is quite minimal - but the consequences make it far less desirable, immaterial of how improbable it is.

        Do not get me wrong - I'm all for new technology, and I know how implausible grey-goo really happening is. But then again, there is enough malevolence (and stupidity) in this world for it to happen, and the fact that it may actually happen (as highly improbable as an all out nuclear war is) is the reason its prudent to be careful.

        Its like genetic engineering - its awesome, you will enough benefits and unless we get down to studying it, we will never really know. But all it takes is one slight mistake to cause a whole lot of bullshit and set us back really bad.

        The point is, you do not need an all out destruction - even a small accident will scare the public enough to bring about legislations which will put back genuine research and badly affect progress - this is what we should be careful of.

        • Re:Possible dangers (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Patrik_AKA_RedX ( 624423 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:52PM (#8899519) Journal
          I do expect someday to read an article about someone having his lungs ruined by nanoparticles. Not because they turned them into a VCR or anything, but in the same way working with paint can damage them.

          Anyway if you ever meet someone who's affraid of nanotech, just inform them that there are already nanobots that can construct new nanobots and all sorts of complex chemical products.
          Tell them there are millions just in the room he's in. Tell him running away is pointless, because they are already in his body, millions of them, every cell of his body is already infested by them.
          And if he doesn't believe it, let him ask his doctor what ribosomes are.

          • Re:Possible dangers (Score:4, Interesting)

            by rzbx ( 236929 ) <slashdot@rzb x . o rg> on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:45PM (#8899812) Homepage
            Yes, there are nano particles that have existed naturally for a very long time, but now we are in the age of creating our very own man made nano particles. There is a problem though. That is that there is a possibility that we may cause unwanted damage to people, various organisms, and the environment. Nano particles are not well understood and some substances that are completely non-toxic can cause serious damage to a person who comes into contact with the nano sized version of the same substance. Where did this attitude come from that people are either against something or not? Why this attitude that we should completely stop with this technology or go head on with it? Can we not work with nanotech, but at the same work on preventing the industry from causing harm? Do not look for the black and white answers, there are far too few of those. Instead, understand the subject at hand. We will not accomplish much with the all or nothing attitude. Progress does not happen in an instant.

            • Re:Possible dangers (Score:1, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward
              It's about the coporate mentality. What you're saying that with this (and indeed all radical new technology, see GM food) the key is to move slowly and softly -- first do no harm.

              However, when you know you can grow it, sell it and bank the cash in six months, it's difficult to justify to shareholders that you wait five to ten years to do so. It's another symptom of the structure of the company/coporation. I'm not taking sides, just explaining why it has to be done in a hurry.

              Now I'm taking sides -- thi

            • Nanodamage (Score:4, Funny)

              by some guy I know ( 229718 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @01:23AM (#8901659) Homepage
              there is a possibility that we may cause unwanted damage to people
              Did you see the episode of Itchy and Scratchy where Scratchy chopped Itchy up into tiny pieces and each piece became a nano-sized Itchy like the brooms in The Sorcerers Apprentice in Fantasia and then Scratchy inhaled the nano-Itchys and they chopped up his cells and he withered away?
              That's why some people are opposed to nanotechnology.
              So blame Matt Groening; it's his fault.

          • Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Insightful)

            by syousef ( 465911 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @08:15PM (#8900281) Journal
            Its not the same.

            The micro-organisms you're talking about are natural and have evolved slowly. The organisms in which they residehave had a chance to evolve with them. The larger organisms either aren't harmed by them, or depend on them for their very existence. If they had been harmful and widespread the two would not have co-existed, with one or both species dying off or becoming rare.

            In comes mankind. Able to make multiple gigantic changes to ecological environments large and small in an evolutionary blink of an eye... changing balances here and there for reasons that are far removed from that natural system. Yeah sure the systems might establish a new equlibrium...but do you want to risk your life or the life of the species on it. That's exactly what we do when we allow profit to come before saftey with new fundamental technologies.

            Faster simply isn't always better. Taking the time to study the effects of what we're doing to ourselves and our environment is worthwhile.
        • its awesome, you will enough benefits and unless we get down to studying it, we will never really know. But all it takes is one slight mistake to cause a whole lot of bullshit and set us back really bad.
          I'm sure that was the sort of thing they were saying the first time a caveman snatched a burning stick from a lightning-blasted tree.
          • I'm sure that was the sort of thing they were saying the first time a caveman snatched a burning stick from a lightning-blasted tree.

            Actually the precise words were:
            - Uga uga, bum bum

    • A relevant (a bit old though) article that I read by bill joy [wired.com]. He calls the threat by self-multiplying nano-tech etc Knowledge of Mass Destruction :). But still the bottom line about looking before we leap still holds pretty damn true.
      "It's unfortunate that the Pugwash meetings started only well after the nuclear genie was out of the bottle - roughly 15 years too late. We are also getting a belated start on seriously addressing the issues around 21st-century technologies - the prevention of knowledge-ena

    • Re:Possible dangers (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Afraid of CFCs? I think not - except for the nasty habit of destroying the ozone layer, CFCs are/were practically miracle compounds.

      Consider freon - it works great and is non-toxic, and replaced horribly toxic ammonia as a refrigerant.
    • To follow up further, this article [nanotechwire.com] suggests that the accumulation of buckyballs can cause brain damage in juvenile fish. If such turns out to be the case, it will be interesting to understand the mechanism by which carbon, which is fairly non-reactive, and buckballs in particular, which are quite stable once formed, cause the damage.

    • Re:Possible dangers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GileadGreene ( 539584 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:19PM (#8899645) Homepage
      Remember, people were afraid of vaccines, but they were also afraid of CFC's.

      "People" are afraid of anything that's new, that's different, or that they just plain don't understand. They are also not above fear-mongering to destroy a new development that doesn't support their particular agenda.

      "Nano"-anything is a buzzword, often applied to supposedly "new" technologies in order to garner funding. Most of the stuff that your link discusses is not nanotechnology in the classical (i.e. Drexler) sense, but rather nifty atomic constructs (various kinds of fullerenes) that are essentially just neat new molecules, not atom-scale machines. The "dangers" associated with them are the same as those associated with any newly synthesized molecule. But the "nano" buzzword makes them sound "more dangerous".

    • ... is not "gray goo", but the collapse of our economic system.

      Think about it. Right now the objective value of music, movies and software is nil. After all, you can get an exact copy for the mere cost of its material substrate (ie at under $1 per Gb, not much).
      (now if you really like an artist and are willing to buy the original CD and go to her/his concert to support her/him, this is another matter. But I'm talking about objective value, not subjective value here. Nothing prevents me but morals from do
      • If we somehow do manage to get home "makers" (as they're sometimes called in SF), it's true that the economy will go to Hell in a handbasket. However, everyone's dependence on that economy will follow. In effect, everyone will be able to make their own food, CD players, etc, etc. It will be the beginning of the Real Information Age. People will trade nanorecipes for fridges, stoves, ovens, photovoltaic arrays, computers, and cars over the internet. Just about anything you buy right now will be "downloadable
        • Sounds like the biggest commodity that would be left after such an economic shift would be power. Of course we would still need raw materials from which to build stuff (landfill mining anyone?) and we'd still have things like automotive assembly lines for quite a while (large scale manufacturing would probably still be more efficent than nano-assembly, which will likely be both the most versatile and most inefficent manufacturing method ever created).
    • This is very true, don't forget that building nano structures is just like a form of programming. For example if I write a program to draw a line for me, that is the same concept. It is also very similar to gene manipulation. Once we learn how to program using atoms, it will open up things such as the ability to replicate *i.e generate* a substance. where as genetic programming allows us to manipulate behaviour. To make it very simple, if I was to create a nano bot that performs a specific task, it would be
    • Remember, people were afraid of vaccines

      And lots of people are still afraid of them such as http://www.whale.to/vaccines.html [whale.to] and http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/18/vaccine_myths.h tm [mercola.com] for what they claim are very good reasons, including claims such as conflict-of-interest with vaccine manufacturers personel on regulatory boards, using children as guinea pigs without proper informed consent, supplying misleading information about historical disease patterns and whether vaccines really had a significant i

  • Would this involve the sort of things in Metal Gear Solid? Such as nanocommunication, via thoughts, and controlling of medication amoung other things?
    • Nanocommunications via thought would be a rather dangerous way to communicate, you would always have dangers of exploitation out there, but there are methods like it that probably could be implemented if the technology was produced

    • Re:Videogame References (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Would this involve the sort of things in Metal Gear Solid? Such as nanocommunication, via thoughts, and controlling of medication amoung other things?

      That's all speculative and still in the domain of science fiction as for now. Drexlerian self-replicating nanobots are an untested theory.

      btw, to Asimov, Ben Bova and a lot of other older sci-fi authors, that stuff was old hat before the first NES was sold, let alone the first copy of Metal Gear.
      • Drexlerian self-replicating nanobots are an untested theory.

        Seeing how I and all known living matter is composed of such nanobots, I'd say the theory is quite well tested...

  • I want a... (Score:5, Funny)

    by No Such Agency ( 136681 ) <abmackay@@@gmail...com> on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:27PM (#8899396)
    ... "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" for any female children I may someday have. That's all I ask.

  • The whole field at risk (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Docrates ( 148350 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:27PM (#8899401) Homepage
    The whole "industry" or "line of research" is at risk from reckless advertising/marketing and unending vaporwear.

    The whole "nano" buzzword has been so prostituted that unless companies start getting serious about it and stop treating it like another sales pitch, it's going to go the way of the "dot com" or "nuclear", where the mere use of the word will condemn the technology.

  • Star Trek says not to trust them (Score:3, Funny)

    by DakotaSandstone ( 638375 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:29PM (#8899410)
    Pfft... Ever dince Wesley Crusher's nanobot project went awry and nearly destoryed the ship, I've never trusted nanotech.

    The only nanos I'm okay with are nanoseconds.

  • grey goo (Score:5, Informative)

    by niktesla ( 761443 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:32PM (#8899427) Homepage
    Drexler wrote Engines of Creation [foresight.org] back in 1986. This is where a lot of the ideas of world destruction by a mass of self assembling nanobots - aka "grey goo" - came from. It is a rather scary thought, but its rather unlikely, IMHO. Btw, we are already using nanotechnology in PC's [sciam.com], according to Scientific American.

  • overbelief? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nxcho ( 754392 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:40PM (#8899461)
    I can sense some similarities between the belief in nanotechnology (and why not biotech.) and the belief in nuclear power in the fifties.
    • Scientists can make all sorts of nifty stuff, but they can't guarantee it will be exciting. Let's look at nuclear power. First, let's realise that a lot of unrealised progress is because of idiots who were so scared as to put an end to all and any controversial research in certain areas (and because of those idiots who started a nuclear weapons race). That's why we don't have Orion spaceship or nuclear engines in cars (even though it might be more feasible than combustion).

      Second, we still have nuclear pow

  • infromative (Score:5, Funny)

    by byrd77 ( 171150 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:47PM (#8899494) Homepage
    This infromative...

    maybe some nanotech spell bots for our keyboards would be more handy...

  • Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Biotech9 ( 704202 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:59PM (#8899554) Homepage
    I am hoping to persue a Ph.D. in the cross over point between nano and bio technologies.

    Basically, Nanotech can be seen from two different points, one, where the individual nano-structures are built atom by atom, and the other (where biotech comes into play), where nano structures build, replicate and repair themselves.

    A gross example are the structures of "Self Assembled Monolayers", where lots of alkanethiols create a carpet of lipids on a gold surface (all by themselves).

    By crossing these self assembling structures with advanced artifically designed amino acids to create complex nano-structures, the need to actually "build" anything is removed. You merely design lego blocks that assemble together in a certain way, and then mix them in a test tube and stand back.
    • That's where I also see benefits. Repair of human bodies on a scale not seen before. Repair of DNA. Repair of existing cells on a large scale. Something like Red/Green/Blue mars has.

      The immense changes in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery would be incredible. Have a massive facial scar from an accident when you were 12? Have it fixed in weeks, to a point where your physiology is no different than if you'd never been scarred (well, ok, admittedly it may be part guesswork, but you'd have an unscarred face)
      • If it was cheap, we'd probably see some interesting changes in human society. Imagine all the safety equipment, medial services, insurance and associated costs we could get rid of if everone were essentially immune to most accidents and desease. Only the most traumatic of injuries would kill (severe damage to the head would be about the only fatal problem), and minor injuries would be repaired without doctors. No aging, no one fat, heck, not even anyone who is unhappy with their appearance. We could pro
    • I am hoping to persue a Ph.D.

      Perhaps before you attempt anything as difficult as PhD-level research you should work on something simpler, such as the use of a dictionary.

    • Re:Nanotech and Biotech... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 18, 2004 @10:35PM (#8900902)
      I worked in this field 12 years ago doing a Ph.D. in chemistry. My project was self-assembling monomers that could be polymerized to make electrically conducting polymers.

      For disclosure, I'm no longer a chemist, and haven't kept abreast of the state of the art in this field. However, in ten years since I left the field I'm not aware of any great strides or breakthrough products. I really believe it will be 20-25 years before consumer applications are readily available.

      Caveat, it's been at least 25 years since I heard a physicist claim it would be 20 years before fusion reactors came online!

  • My thoughts... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @05:59PM (#8899556) Homepage
    I'm not soo concerned about potential dangers, I just wonder if it's actually feasible at all. If you're creating little machines at the atomic scale, then what is the size of a processor required to manage this device? I've seen little motors and joints and so forth being developed, but how much easy is it to say "Grip gold atom, place it next to the other one, let go, repeat"? Wouldn't even the smallest nano-processor be thousands of times larger than the size of the nano-bots people envision? Perhaps they'd be better named "nano-blimps". ;-) But seriously how much processing power do they need to work in a 3-D environment? And how small could that amount of processing power actually get?

    -Don.

    • Re:My thoughts... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Patrik_AKA_RedX ( 624423 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:20PM (#8899656) Journal
      Actually, nanotech is more related to chemistry than electronics.
      Nature has already solved that problem: ribosomes in your cells are actually natures nanobots. They receive a RNA string and based on this information, they contruct all sorts of macromolecules. They don't have any computational power or anything, it's purely chemistry.

    • Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Shadowlore ( 10860 )
      Actually very little if you look at the biological construction aspect as well as the filed of Emergent Physics.

      At lthat level we are talking about manipulating things base don their fundamental (and eventually quantum) characteristics such as positive/negative charge attraction/repulsion, chemical links, etc... No "processing power" is needed to do this, thus no CPU.

      Emergent physics tells us that a small specific set of rules can build "complex" results.This is how it is done. err I mean will be done.

    • Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Informative)

      by memmel2 ( 660484 )
      We do it all day long its called chemistry. Nanotech is for all intents and purposes simply the ability to do position depenedent chemistry in a homogenous enviroment. Now its a huge leap forward don't get me wrong but we have be suffering and enjoying nanotech since we sythesised the first chemicals over 5000 years ago. Whats actually intresting is that this huge base of chemical knowledge will allow nanotech to advance very rapidly once we understand more about it. What it does is allow us to produce m

    • Re:My thoughts... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mdielmann ( 514750 )
      The trick is to make the nanobots really stupid. This might sound funny, but look how successful (and useful) bacteria are. They certainly aren't one-size-fits-all, but each is remarkably suited for it's task. Ultimately, there are only two ways nanotechnology will work: very stupid, autonomous, specific-use nanobots; or very stupid, externally controlled, general-use nanobots. Keep in mind, even a nanoscale cube, packed with transistors of 1 nm cude, will only have 1 million transistors, and nothing e

  • Anyone else excited? (Score:3, Funny)

    by doombob ( 717921 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:03PM (#8899579) Homepage
    I don't know about you, but the prospect of moving a planet out of its orbit and into another sounds like a fun thing to try. I know this is an article about nanotech, but after hearing that example written in there, we should put more research into moving around planets. I think that would be awesome.
      1. Get a robotic probe out of Earth's gravity well.
      2. Get the probe to refuel itself with material avaiable in the solar system that can be accessed without entering a significant gravity well.
      3. Get the probe to push a decent-sized asteroid VERY close to a planet along a trajectory that causes them to trade energy and alter the planet's orbit an infintesimal amount.
      4. Return to the second step unless the planet is in the desired new orbit.

      So far, humanity can manage the first step, just barely.

      I'd be much

      • >I'd be much more interested in knocking asteroids and comets into Mars until it has the same mass and average chemical content as Earth.

        To the martians, that would be terrorforming!
    • That's already been solved.

      See, all you need is a really long pole and a good support point, and then it's just a question of pulling the short end of the pole.

  • Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:5, Informative)

    by ajdecon ( 233641 ) <ajdecon@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:06PM (#8899591)

    All the emphasis on the "potential dangers" of nanobots or "gray goo" just drives me nuts. Sure, the image of a nanobot doing manufacturing or curing cancer can be compelling, and also frightening. But not only are we no where near such technology, the fear of it stigmatizes genuine nanotech being done right now, which often has no relation to tiny robots.

    Nanotechnology now means any process for determining structure or composition at a molecular scale. It means creating fuels or drugs with carefully selected chemical compositions. It means creating self-healing structure in which tears tend to seal simply because the material is made that way. It means making computer chips faster and smaller by growing very small features directly onto the chip, using molecular carbon or silicon.

    These applications are much more real than self-replicating nanobots which can take over the world, and some of them could easily be on all our desks in five years. Do a Google search on Field emission displays [google.com]: new flat panel displays, as bright as a CRT display at a fraction of the power usage, with a better image and wider field of view than an LCD.

    Could there be environmental dangers even in these applications? Sure, any new material has potential problems, and nanomaterials should be studied all the more closely because of our limited experience with them. But we're a long, long way from nanobots which can self-replicate and take over the world, and the nanotech industry as it stands now is no more dangerous than any other advanced materials.

    • When anyone drives you nuts with "gray goo" type things, just ask them a few questions:

      Can man create machines that can fly: Yes

      Can man create machines that transport disease and infect organisms: Yes

      Can man create machines that can stick to almost any solid surface: Umm.. probably

      Can man combine all this into something that can stand on the head of a pin: No

      Nature can, it's called the mosquito, and by transporting malaria it's probably killed more humans than anything else.

    • Re:Nanotech does NOT mean just nanobots (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:28PM (#8899700)
      Nanotechnology now means any process for determining structure or composition at a molecular scale.

      From a condensed-matter physics grad student who's researching some aspects of 'nanotechnology' - Thank You!!!

      It's ridiculous, how so many people on /. think of nanotechnology as nothing less than self-assembling nano-robots. This association is utterly naive, and is no more realistic than the standard 'Hollywoodification' of computer technology used in movies (eg, Hackers).

      Sure, nanotechnology is a buzzword, and people in the field prefer to refer to it as research at the nanoscale, or self-assembling nanosctructures, etc. Just like spintronics is usually called magnetoelectronics by the researchers amongst themselves, and spintronics in the popular science media.

      Basically, nanotechnology deals with anything at nanometer scale, which is in the realms of molecules. I'm studying carbon nanotubes, and superconducting nanowires of about the same size. I guess it's boring from a slashdot perspective because there's no robotics or selective biological processes going on. But for us physicists there's tons of interesting processes happening here. The systems really behave as one-dimensional (large superconducting wires would be three-dimensional), the standard statiscial-mechnanics starts to break down because of small system size, and there's other interesting quantum effects that manifest themselves. These factors make things act really weird and/or cool, and there's alot to discover. [If anybody thinks this research is pointless, concepts like GMR, which is now implemented in all new hard disk read heads, started the same way.]

      Other nanotech researchers are looking at DNA (another guy in my lab is studying conductivity of various DNA systems). DNA is interesting because it can assemble itself, and some groups have made interesting self-assembling structures.

      But this is nothing at all like the grey-goo concepts that are ever so popular and cliche here at slashdot. Every time 'nanotech' is mentioned on /. there's immediate posts about grey-goo and bio-enhancement nanites, yada yada yada. I'm actually relieved to hear of at least one other person here that gets past the hollywoodification of it all.

      • The real ideas don't get out (Score:4, Informative)

        by ajdecon ( 233641 ) <ajdecon@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday April 18, 2004 @07:56PM (#8900180)

        The problem is that the work that actually gets done, in materials or computing or other fields, isn't as "exciting" to the media as the fanciful ideas presented in Hollywood and science fiction. Why talk about a new kind of flat-panel display or the technology that will create your next computer, when you can shock the public into fearing tiny robots that will disassemble the world? I'm a big fan of science fiction, but I must admit that I'm incredibly disappointed in their portrayal of the field.

        I'm a physics student myself, an undergrad doing some research which makes limited use of carbon nanotubes, and both of us probably got our real knowledge of nanotechnology from our classes and work in the field. With more applications in general use, the situation may improve, but the media definitely has to stop portraying fantasy as fact. Otherwise, real research could easily get a bad rep--there are already people calling for a ban on all nano research, including a lot of work which they don't understand is relatively harmless.

        • Actually I don't like talks about flat-panel displays either. It seems that no article about advanced technology is complete without either a note on curing cancer or fighting terrorism. I don't like the fact that journalists have to dumb everything down that much... Why not explain the material properties, chemistry, physics, etc. beside new materials, show how they can be used in research to further advance our knowledge? Why everything must be immediately useful in order to be relevant?
    • we're a long, long way from nanobots which can self-replicate

      That might be comforting for you to think, but the truth is that the new "long-term" future isn't really that far away thanks to the exponentially accelerating rate of technological progress [kurzweilai.net].

      It's time to update your overly conservative view of the future... (if you can bear to throw out your but-wheres-my-flying-car-cynicism).

      --

      • That's great. Your argument is based off of a single article written 3 years ago by the guy who created the 'Segway'. That article was so pretentious and ridiculous, many of the plots are not well-defined, he constantly refers to 'rate of paradigm shift' and 'THE singularity', etc.

        And then from this article you imply that world-destroying self-assembling nanobots are almost here (even though flying cars are not) because Ray Kurzweil claims technology grows exponentially.

        Anyway, his article is too simp

        • 1) Dean Kamen's the Segway guy; not Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil's more known for bringing speech recognition to the market.

          2) Kurzweil isn't alone in predicting the nearness of Singularity [singinst.org]. Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec, Marvin Minksy, Michio Kaku, Yudkowsky, and a host of other "credible" thinkers all see the same exponential acceleration, and put the Singularity anywhere between NOW() and ~2080 at the far end.

          3) I'm sorry you had to read that "POS" article. I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance you must

          • 1) Dean Kamen's the Segway guy; not Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil's more known for bringing speech recognition to the market.

            aah shit, i'm mixing up my inventors again... I play keyboards, so that's where my interest in Kurzweil stems from.

            Anyway, see my reply to the parent of your post, that's kind of why i replied to your post in the first place.

            Regarding 'the singularity', it's not the concept about it that i'm arguing against, but the way it's presented in Kurzweil's article. [in my opinion, based on m

          • there were previously "credible" thinkers who saw it as happening before the year 2000. Too bad for them, eh?
        • Hard to respect someone when you don't even know who they are. Dean Kamen is not Ray Kurweil.

    • *Genuine* nanotech *is* the stuff of gray goo (Score:4, Insightful)

      by erice ( 13380 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @10:14PM (#8900833) Homepage
      Nanotechnology *now* means any process for determining structure or composition at a molecular scale.

      It didn't used to. The problem isn't that the public doesn't understand what nanotech is. The problem is that the chemist have redefined it and are catching flack because public conciousness hasn't caught up.

      Nanotech, as originally defined, really does mean nanoscale universal assemblers. Grey goo, of course, is universal assemblers gone amock. Neither is of great concern right now as actuall implimentation is far, far off and may always be.

      Researchers started labling physical chemistry "nanotech", probably because it sounded cool and got people excited. That helps for getting funding, recognition, etc but it also creates fear in the public.

      If the "new nanotech" community is concerned about negative publiciy, then I really have no sympathy. If you co-opt a pre-existing sci-fi'esc term, you take the good with the bad.
    • "Nanotechnology now means any process for determining structure or composition at a molecular scale."

      Which, of course, is itself a poor definition. Biochemists have been determining stucture and and composition of proteins (at the moleculare scale) and DNA (agian, moleculare scale) for quite some time now. But we do not consider this to be nanotechnology. People have been creating drugs AND fules this way too. For quite some time. Drug companies do not call thenselves nanotech either.

      I think a much
  • "a device called a scanning tunneling microscope."

    I had always understood that a scanning eletron microscope made an image by acanning an electron beam a bit like a CRT.

    A tunneling electron microscope uses a probe on a piezo base. You increase the tension on the probe until....pop.....an electron jumps the gap. You move the probe around with varying the voltage on the piezo base, and plunk....you can drop the electron down again. A tunneling electron microscope is what I would have been expected to be a

    • Close... A scanning tunelling microscope uses piezo elements to move the detector over the surface of the sample; The distance is measures by the nanoamperes of current flowing between it and the sample.

      A scanning electron microscope works by projecting an electron beam at the target, and measuring what gets diffracted. It's main disadvantage is the requirement of a high vacuum to function.

    • Re:Wot.......a new hybrid device? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Teclis ( 772299 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @07:09PM (#8899959) Homepage
      I'm a Masters student working with a UHVVTSTM that is... an Ultra High Vacuum ( 10^-12 Torr) Variable Temperature (works from 3K-300K) Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope. Here's a quick lesson for those of you who are a little brighter than the audience the article is targeted for. If you study Quantum Mechanics, you probually studied an effect called Barrier Tunneling, in which a particle can exist in a forbidden region in a high potential and there is the probability of measuring that particle on the other side of the barrier. This is the basis for STM. Consider the vacuum in the chamber as a barrier. Now, take a very sharp needle (Say Tungsten) that is nearly atomically sharp. Now, if you bring the tip very close to a surface (Say Silicon) then even though there is a gap between the Tungsten tip and Silicon surface, electrons orbiting atoms in the tungsten can "tunnel" across into orbits of Silicon atoms. This tunneling of electrons is what is the tunneling current and is a purely Quantum Mechanical effect. By measuring this current (nano - pico Amps!!) and varying the gap to make the current constant, we can now move this tip over this atomic surface. My monitoring the changing current and moving the tip in or out as the tip is scanned (much like a CRT scans electrons on your TV screen) we can see an image of the electron configuration of the silicon surface! From this we can infer what the structure is. It's reall quite neat. If course, I am not going into many details here, but if you are interested in learning more, contact me: steven.horn at stevenhorn.kicks-ass.net My thesis title is atomic manipulation using a scanning tunneling microscope. I study organic molecules on silicon surfaces hoping to develop new nano-devices. I also study it because it's really cool.
      • "By measuring this current (nano - pico Amps!!)"

        Why the exclamation marks? Sounds like quite a bit of current to me. If you measure 100mV with a typical cheap DVM the input current is 10 nano Amps.

        I have worked with off the shelf devices from Analog which have offset currents of 75 falto amps.

        Not trying to be cynical, but 1 AMP is 1 Coulomb per second, and a coulomb, IIRC is somthing like 10^18 electrons. So measuring the odd electron jumping across a gap must require very small currents.....unless of

        • A DVM is a high impedance device. Measuring voltage is not the same as measuring current. Theoretically, the ideal voltmeter will have ZERO amps through it. Now think about an ammeter. What is the lowest amperage you can read on a hand held ammeter? The problem should now become apparant. Also remember, 1 AMP is ALOT of electrons. It's an absolutely HUGE number! so you are right in a sense in believing that a nano amp isn't really that small. New ammeters are now capable of measuring currents of
      • Lethbridge, eh? I am in Urbana IL doing VTSTM on
        high T_c. Just curious, do you really get to 10^-12?
        Most people would say that even 10^-10 is UHV.
        Also, why maglev? Most people went away from that
        because it is apparently a bitch to get working and
        doesn't buy you anyhting over springs.
  • here at purdue they are currently constructing a nanotechnology building, should be done in a few years. Nanotechnology is coming around, dont think they woulda built an entire building dedicated to it without thinking about where its going.
    • What is the advantage of having a building measuring but a few nanometers in height?

      I just dont get it ...
    • The truth is, while many new academic centers are going up because the research funding is there, little or no real nanotech is being done. The grant-writers know what to go after. Noble speeches are given at groundbreaking. But the core of the federally funded "nanotechnology" movement is allergic to the concepts put forth first by Richard Feynman, and developed by Drexler and others since. The movement is owned and the vision scripted by chemists beholden to their own particular culture and party line

  • Green Goo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mpn14tech ( 716482 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:51PM (#8899853)
    I think we will have a ways to go before the any grey goo manages to endanger the green goo that already infests the planet. Actually the scenario that seems more theatening than grey goo is a grey fog. We already do a pretty good job of producing that already. Imagine if something airborne were released that could replicate and either obscure the sun or create a greenhouse problem.

  • CNN article says nothing new or of value (Score:5, Insightful)

    by seven of five ( 578993 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:52PM (#8899866)
    The CNN article is pure filler. What I get out of it is 'don't go to CNN for science news'. "Nanotech turns some long-held principles of physics upside down" uh huh.

  • Going to happen eventually... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sonic_ak ( 692982 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @06:55PM (#8899886) Homepage
    When you look at it, it is much like cryptography. Sure, people like terrorists can use it, but then again, we can as well. If, on the other hand, someone other than us developed it (because we weren't allowed, for example), who is to say that we would have access at it. So when you look at it, either way its going to eventually be used for something bad, its just a matter of weather or not we get a chance to use it for something good as well.

  • Still a long way off... (Score:5, Informative)

    by FreakyControl ( 751781 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @07:25PM (#8900038)
    "Georgia Tech physics professor Uzi Landman said he expects it will be five to 10 years before nanoscale "parts" are common in electronic devices; perhaps five to eight years for medical uses. " This prediction seems similar to the claims made by the MEMS (Micro-electrical Mechanical Systems) researchs a few years ago. There is a huge jump between something working in a laboratory, and placing it on the manufacturing line. The two major obstacles facing the manufacturing end (facing the researchers as well, for that matter)for nano-tech are similar to MEMS, as they are the precurser for nano-tech. For one thing, assembling things at the "nano", or even the "micro" level, is that unless you are making a crystal, things move around quite a bit from where you want them. Even with crystals, it must either be a single crystal or defect free - rather difficult to do. The other major problem is testing and debugging a design. The MEMS researchers both at my current university and where I went for undergrad were consistently plauged by the fact that there is no feasible way to debug thier designs. This is why they're still working out basic gears and motors. On the subject of nano-probes, while this does seem likely to occur in a couple of years given its relative simplicity, the search for a bio-compatible crystalline substance that does not dissolve and can be easily manipulated at the atomic level I don't believe has been accomplished. One final point, while they may be assembled at -455 degrees F, they will be operating at room temperature where atomic vibrations, movements, and the like will be highly prevalent. I'm curious to see how this is dealt with. All in all, while I think that this technology will be introduced into the mainstream well within our lifetime, 5-10 years seems rather short term.

    • Temperature issues.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Teclis ( 772299 )
      Actually, temperature isn't that big of an issue. A bigger issue is mechanical vibrations. The world we live in is very very noisy. Too noisy to do STM in. These vibrations must be filtered out in an atomic-resolution microscope. There are several methods to do this including Springs and Mecanical tables. I am working on a maglev method which is highly experimental. Temperature is somewhat of an issue still as if it gets HOT (like anything... think of melting your CPU) then the nano-structure will be
      • There is another issue that I am not sure was touched upon, either in the article, or in any of the posts I was patient enough to read up until now. This issue is that of the 'surface tension' of the bulk product.
        By this I mean that there is a thermodynamic drive to make particles of a certain size: anything smaller than this size, which varies from one material to another, and you get instability. For those of you that like fancy catch phrases, think in terms of Brownian Motion, and in Quantum Confinemen

  • Relation of nanometer to atoms/hair. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AnonymousNot ( 772444 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @08:19PM (#8900303)
    From the article:
    A nanometer, one of the measures often used by scientists doing research in the field, is one-billionth of a meter. It takes about 400,000 atoms stacked together to form the width of a human hair.
    How do those sentences relate? That paragraph is terrible if it is trying to give someone an idea what a nanometer is the measurement of. The width of hair in nanometers is not given, nor how many atoms are stacked up to measure 1 nanometer, or the height of an atom in nanometers.

  • More pics of STM (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Teclis ( 772299 ) on Sunday April 18, 2004 @08:29PM (#8900357) Homepage
    Hi.. I work on an STM for my Masters, if you are interested, I have pictures of the STM and a SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) from the lab. (Two totally different things) http://stevenhorn.kicks-ass.net/cpg/index.php?cat= 7 Enjoy... please don't leech them without sourcing.
  • I don't know what country this article comes from, but 'minus 455 degrees fahrenheit'? What third world country still uses that scale?
  • 10 years ago I missed the bandwagon on microtechnology.

    Now I'm missing out on the nanotech money.

    As of today, I am jumping the gun and writing proposals to study areas which will give insight into the upcoming picotech field. If things go well. I will be pulling in femptotech money by the end of the decade.
  • The Intel Pentium 4 processor uses a 90nm-process to put the features onto a wafer of silicon, and by some definitions, technology with features smaller than 100 nm are "nanotechnology." The amount of engineering that is required to go into modern day processors is absolutely amazing, and even more so when you consider they are making patterns that are smaller than the wavelength of the light used to imprint them (diffraction!)

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