Will Graphene Revolutionize the 21st Century? 345
An anonymous reader writes "Much has been made of graphene's potential. It can be used for anything from composite materials — like how carbon-fiber is used currently — to electronics. 'Our research establishes Graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel,' mechanical engineering professor James Hone, of Columbia University, said in a statement. If graphene can be compared to the way plastic is used today, everything from crisp packets to clothing could be digitized once the technology is established. The future could see credit cards contain as much processing power as your current smartphone."
Wolverine? (Score:5, Funny)
How does that compare to Adamantium?
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General products hull material has everything beat.
Handles anything but anti-matter.
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General products hull material has everything beat.
Handles anything but anti-matter.
And, really, it was only defeated by a *planet* of anti-matter.
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Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:3, Interesting)
Its probably got lots of other great uses, but the one I think of most is that its strong enough to make cables for a space elevator. That alone would be revolutionary.
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There is merit in this, as the Space Elevator concept would allow a low cost per pound into space, once the first cost is paid off. There has been a lot of chatter about this in the past, but until now, no material was ever up to the task. One problem was the inability of strong fine filaments to be bound into bundles and still keep their strength - a problem graphene may also encounter. A more down to earth application is unopenable crisp(potato chip) packets to be used as a diet aid for fatties, providing
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:4, Funny)
That's cruel.
The packets don't have to be unopenable, it just has to take more energy to open them than you'll get from eating the contents.
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The space elevator has merit for getting into equatorial and escape orbits. While that would be a boon for the large communications and observation satellites in geostationary, LEO satellites are largely at high inclinations. It would cost more in delta-v to take a satellite up on a space elevator and attempt a plane transfer into polar orbit, than it would be to simply launch directly from Earth. Your best bet might be to travel well out past geostationary, using the elevator as a whip to launch you int
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:5, Informative)
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Where did you learn your orbital mechanics? No one in their right mind would even consider doing that directly unless time was very very precious, and fuel delivered to orbit was $3.899/gallon. By using the elevator we've been talking about for a decade or more to get to a lunar circumnavigation launch when the cable is released, that 90 degree plane change can be done with only enough delta-V to take you above or below the moon, and enough to fiddle it to perfect your polar orbit once you have used the moon for a slingshot.
I did mention that as a possibility up here [slashdot.org]
Your best bet might be to travel well out past geostationary, using the elevator as a whip to launch you into a lunar transfer orbit, and then using the Moon to facilitate the plane transfer, combined with a heat shield and aerocapture to dump you into the desired orbit.
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I suspect that the underlying error is failing to recognize that the top of a space elevator is in geosynchronous orbit. Moving at orbital velocity, at an altitude of 22,000 miles.
If I'm going to be corrected, I'm going to get pedantic. The center of mass (not the top) of a space elevator is in geostationary orbit. Geosynchronous is a type of orbit, but geostationary is one specific geosynchronous orbit. The difference is important here.
All that is needed to launch another satellite from there into a low Earth orbit of 300 to 1500 miles is a short burn to put the bird into an orbit that grazes the atmosphere, some heat shielding, and some atmospheric control surfaces. And a good computer program that will handle multiple dips into the atmosphere to both shed excess velocity and use the control surfaces to alter direction.
That would be foolish. Forget the initial transfer burn. Just detach at some point below geostationary, where your periapsis grazes the atmosphere.
At an orbit of 22,000 miles altitude, there is more than enough potential energy to move a bird into any LEO. The general problem is one of shedding excess energy in a very controlled way.
You're completely missing the whole point I was trying to make. Changing altitude is trivial. Eve
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh get over it. We do not have anything near the capabilities or even materials for such a structure. And even if we did, space is still empty. All that work for what? Better access to emptiness? You have a very poor understanding of reality.
And you have a very poor imagination and sense of exploration. If nothing else, it would make maintaining our orbital space much cheaper. Combined with solar sails and asteroid mining, this could make space exploration drop to almost free in terms of the cost to our planet.
Then we could finally get off this rock so if we don't figure out how to make it work here, at least we have some options to start over with. Then again, from a moral perspective, I continue to wonder if we need to make it work here, before we start fucking up the rest of the galaxy.
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And you have a very poor imagination and sense of "exploration."
Or he has a stronger sense of reality than you.
"If nothing else, it would make maintaining our orbital space much cheaper."
Or not. You talked about imagination, let's test yours: can you imagine what could happen when you put a space elevator sweeping out a full of space debris low orbit at some few thousands miles per hour?
"Then we could finally get off this rock so if we don't figure out how to make it work here, at least we have some option
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:5, Informative)
A space elevator here would allow us to have daily launches to Mars, the asteroids, and beyond, using basically no fuel (using the Earth's angular momentum). SImilar space elevators could be built on the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter's moons, meaning we could then use them to fling material back to Earth. Multiple elevators==dozens or hundreds of launches per day, and with a properly designed elevator, literally no fuel expended (ie one that unfurls continuously from the ground--this will be possible with new methods of mass production of graphene coming online now that are controlled by air flow, and can thus be made continuously).
Christ, you sound like a Jester in the court of Isabella making fun of Columbus for wanting to go to an empty continent. Even empty, it is a giant virgin mine waiting to be tapped. Colonies will form there quickly enough with regular travel established.
And debris at LEO are no problem, any more than they are for current ships. You will need to maneuver the ribbon around the debris while a lifter is going up. The rest of the time, they can just be allowed to impact the ribbon, as it is basically bulletproof.
HURP, DERES NUTTIN OUT DERE!
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:5, Insightful)
For the exact reasons we've been talking about, and things like graphene have been hinting at; we don't have the materials to make a space elevator. We have the know how, and the imagination and opportunities with the sorts of things we could do if we had one, but so far have been unable to build one since the strongest material we have is just not strong enough to be useful (at least, not without it being absurdly heavy and impractical).
Seems sort of obvious, really. We launch things into space right now at huge cost that modern society has come to rely on and at the very least expect - satellites (GPS, communications, TV, weather, science), and we're limited in what else we can send up there due to the huge cost of working against the Earth's gravity well by brute forcing it. Even if we don't decide to go out and mine asteroids, or mine helium from the moon, launching satellites that we use right now every single day for hundreds of reasons would be considerably cheaper with an elevator that exploited the angular momentum of the Earth... if you can find a material that is strong enough to built it out of.
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"Asteroids, you fucking moron."
Do you *really* mean stablishing a self-suficient colony on an asteroid? Because that's what we were talking about.
And then again, what do you expect to get from an asteroid that would mean such a big difference for us down here on Earth? And if you talk about mining asteroids for our outer colonies you go back to square one again: it'll take a bit more than graphene to stablish a self-sufficient colony anywhere in the Solar system. And as long as you are not talking about
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:5, Interesting)
And you don't NEED to "break ties" with Earth. It's called trade, and it built the world we know out of a world or primitive barbarism..
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Alchemy works? What is all the silver getting transmuted to?
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"How about silver, which projections have shown that we will be OUT OF in twenty years?"
What will it be transmuted into?
"How about any number of other raw materials"
Like uhhh... And remeber they not only need to be there, they need to be cheaper too.
"where we can put the environmental disaster out into space where it won't do any damage"
Like... how? A big graphene chimney from industrial complexes out to space?
"How about rather than trying to centrally plan a colony on an asteroid before we get there, we
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes me sad that you were modded interesting. Your argument is shortsighted blather with a whiff of ad hominem.
We all know what space is (huge, mostly empty, dangerous) but only you fail to acknowledge what it isn't. (an unsurmountable obstacle) People like you tried to stopped people from flying. The fact that technology isn't advanced enough to conquer space* without unacceptable sacrifice proves nothing about tomorrow.
*Yes I said "conquer space". There are tremendous resources to be exploited and a universe of possibilities and I'm sorry you're too stuck in your pessimism to see that.
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh get over it. We do not have anything near the capabilities or even materials for such a structure. And even if we did, space is still empty. All that work for what? Better access to emptiness? You have a very poor understanding of reality.
And you have a very poor imagination and sense of exploration. If nothing else, it would make maintaining our orbital space much cheaper. Combined with solar sails and asteroid mining, this could make space exploration drop to almost free in terms of the cost to our planet.
Then we could finally get off this rock so if we don't figure out how to make it work here, at least we have some options to start over with. Then again, from a moral perspective, I continue to wonder if we need to make it work here, before we start fucking up the rest of the galaxy.
Is that the same way that nuclear power was going to make electricity almost free? I've seen industry claims from the 50s that nuclear power would be so cheap they would stop putting meters on houses.
A space elevator would be cool, but it would still be the most expensive thing to build and maintain ever.
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Heres the thing: If it wasn't for anti-nuclear nutjobs, which they couldn't predict, those promises would probably be a reality by now. We're about 15-20 years behind in nuclear power research due to anti-nuclear nutjobs preventing funding of new more efficient, less dangerous nuclear plants.
Funny part is, those same nutjobs are the ones that are also responsible for keeping the old, less-safe designs going, as there is nothing to replace them.
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:5, Interesting)
something can be expensive to build and maintain and still be worth the money many times over.
the US rail and road networks are incredibly expensive to build and maintain yet they're worth the cost.
Now I couldn't even take a guess as whether it could be worth the cost since we don't even know what a space elevator might cost so I'm going to stick to fairly safe and general statements and simply argue that there are a lot of possibilities unless a space elevator would cost trillions.
there's a hell of a lot of possibly very valuable applications if you could ship things to orbit for a very low price.
orbital power arrays would be fairly sensible and could even be cheaper long term than some of the current energy production methods: get even a fraction of the world energy market and you'd be able to make/save a lot of money.
There's some added advantages with zero pollution etc
If it's one country building the elevator they could almost monopolize the market for a fair amount of time and rake in money building arrays for other countries.
Once you build one elevator any more become far cheaper to build so much of the construction costs of the first could be spread out over multiple such elevators.
any country which can ship lots of hardware into space for a low cost would also gain a significant military advantage: it's hard to build a bunker which can survive a thick tungsten bar dropped from orbit.
There's pretty much the whole current worldwide market for launching satellites for communication and anything else which you'd pretty much take over.
So you've got the energy market, the military market, the current space market and probably quite a few I've not thought of for income and those are big big markets.
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Then again, from a moral perspective, I continue to wonder if we need to make it work here, before we start fucking up the rest of the galaxy.
Hmm. Unfortunately, the more I learn about the scale of the Universe - or even the Milky Way - the less confident I am about human stellar travel in the near future. Or the remote future.
There are lots of resources about this but here's one : http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347 [newgrounds.com]
Actually, I hadn't realised the range of sizes of stars. Including the one that would take "1,200 years to travel round in a plane". This is still massively smaller than the distance to the Oort cloud, itself a fraction (1/4
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Once you have cheap access to space, it's no longer necessary (or really possible) to 'fuck up' in the sense that you mean. You can, for example, cheaply toss your undesired fusion power byproducts / other toxic sludges in the nearest star without consequence. The notion of conservation becomes meaningless.
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Sounds like you were in Queen Isabella's court. "That fool Columbus wants to sail west, when everything in the world is east of us? He'll just fall off the edge of the world, and good riddance!"
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually they said something along the lines of,"Your estimates make the world too small, there's no way you can sail west and reach Asia in the short period of time you are proposing."
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:5, Insightful)
In space, there are resources. Lots of them. There are places where you can stick a 4000 square mile array of solar panels that will be lit for all but a few minutes each year. There are infinite amounts of metals, and fissile materials. There is SPACE to establish a new home for those sick of the Earth and her decadent ways.
But thanks for deciding what is best for everyone, and what is even possible. We really appreciate it.
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Who the fuck are you to tell me what is for me and what isn't? You are a good example of the decadence of Western
Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator (Score:4, Informative)
Technically, that would be two-stage to orbit, with the first stage being the 'jettisoned' launch rail. You can't just 'pull back' once you hit the end of the rail. At hypersonic speeds, you would spend tens of seconds in low, dense atmosphere doing so, and would bleed off much of your initial launch energy. If you instead use a vertical rail, you would need depths of tens of miles in order to achieve the speeds needed for a a scramjet to operate without imposing too high acceleration on the crew.
Mass driver/scramjet launches are a possibility for cargo loads, but unless we come up with some form of artificial gravity, they could never be used for manned launches.
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Yes. 50 miles or more in what direction? Our deepest mines only go a few miles down, and even if you build up the side of a mountain, and down well below it, you're going to run into increasing temperature and eventually break through the mantle. As I mentioned, it must be an inclined track, because if you try to launch horizontally, you're just going to end up wasting gobs of energy in huge aerodynamic losses over the hundred or so miles it takes to pull up out of the atmosphere. You would be lucky to
I'd sure hope so (Score:3)
Personally I think there's a lot of potential with it. However, I'm curious if it's going to end up being something like asbestos that makes it a bittersweet kind of substance.
I do think we need something to propel our sciences forward to "the next level (tm)" and graphene just may help get us there.
Re:I'd sure hope so (Score:5, Funny)
asbestos isn't bittersweet, it doesn't taste like much of anything.
The future (Score:5, Funny)
"The future could see credit cards contain as much processing power as your current smartphone."
So I'll have to wait 5 minutes before my credit card finally has booted?
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I see smartphones becoming the size of a credit card within the next 10 years, graphene or no graphene.
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Is that credit card-sized smartphone going to come with microscopic vision enhancement and more compact finger-tips? I hope the advances are in power life and lower cost rather than making them teeny-tiny.
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Is that credit card-sized smartphone going to come with microscopic vision enhancement and more compact finger-tips? I hope the advances are in power life and lower cost rather than making them teeny-tiny.
At that point, why not just build the phone into the headset and do it all by voice control, with possibly a laser keypad as an alternate.
I could see that doing most communications and even driving directions. If you had bluetooth receivers in cars, it could play music most times you want it to.
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Yeah, and the technology roapmap is generally built around the needs of people who think computing reached its nadir in the 70s.
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Yeah, and the technology roapmap is generally built around the needs of people who think computing reached its nadir in the 70s.
Yeah, anybody who thinks that technology was at it's lowest point in the 70s, clearly does not understand the history of technology and is unlikely to to be able to predict the future of technology.
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2177076&cid=36210934 [slashdot.org] :)
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SUDDENLY a voice comes out of your pocket. It's your credit card shouting at you!
HEY YOU!! People who bought that e-book also bought that other e-book. What do you think you're doing here? Go back to that site and buy that other e-book as well!!!
Nope (Score:3, Interesting)
Well said, Dr. Avouris (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the article: "But the main thing is to be truthful and not exaggerate because we actually have to deliver." When there are some real-world examples, then graphene will be worth reading about.
For those too lazy to RTFA (Score:3)
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: Graphene.
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in graphene. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.
Processing power in credit card (Score:5, Insightful)
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Basically yes.
The battery and the screen eat up the most space. The antenna is, thanks to Nokia, folded into a much smaller space (AFAIK they have a patent on this).
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Graphene will never be used for strong materials.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, if graphene is the material of the 21st century, it will be entirely because of its electronic properties, not the mechanical.
Re:Graphene will never be used for strong material (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Graphene will never be used for strong material (Score:4, Informative)
Can't you roll up graphene sheets like rolling up a sheet of paper, or multiple sheets of paper?
Yes, that would be carbon nano-tubes. However last time [youtube.com] we played around with tiny incredible strong tubes that didn't turn out to well. Have to wait and see how things work out for carbon nanotubes.
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There's also this: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020429072519.htm [sciencedaily.com]
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--
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
--
Abalone shells manage to be incredibly tough by bonding layers of hard plates between flexible ones. A composite of sheets of graphene and noncarbon atomic layers binding them sounds interesting. I wouldn't be astonished if someone made a superconductor that way.
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Current carbon fiber gets its strength from carbon "lamellae" which are a micostructural feature of the fiber itself. That is, inside the fiber are regions that are amorphous carbon and regions that are organized into sheets. If you wanted to make a structural material using graphene sheets this might be what you would do. But we already have it. So why isn't it taking over the world?
Beware of grandiose claims about strength. You could accurately say current carbon fiber is 10 times stronger than steel, b
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Only if you get it from Monster Cables!
Ultracapacitors (Score:5, Informative)
I personally can't wait for graphene based ultracapacitors. They're reaching capacitances of 100,000 farads/kg in the lab which is just absolutely insane for a capacitor.
Re:Ultracapacitors (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what I love so much about graphene. It was just sitting there all those years and nobody thought of it. I remember being in electronics class years ago when we calculated the size of a capacitor that could power an electric car for a certain distance. It was HUGE. Yet we all knew the formula for capacitance and nobody came up with even ultracapacitors. Finally with graphene capacitors are going to get an incredible leap in what they can do... and all that time it was right under our noses.
right under our noses (Score:3)
Literally. Pencil lead!
8)
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That's what I love so much about graphene. It was just sitting there all those years and nobody thought of it. I remember being in electronics class years ago when we calculated the size of a capacitor that could power an electric car for a certain distance. It was HUGE. Yet we all knew the formula for capacitance and nobody came up with even ultracapacitors. Finally with graphene capacitors are going to get an incredible leap in what they can do... and all that time it was right under our noses.
The power of the Universe is right under our noses. We're not so much as inventing technology as we are inventing our first awareness that it has been there all along.
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ultracapacitors can beat batteries in speed, but not in capacity. They are inherently inferior to batteries in charge storage because the batteries actually change a bulk material through a chemical state to store/release electrons, and since you cannot release the ones on the bottom before the top ones are changed = a practical limit. You can make batteries with huge surface areas but they suffer from dendritic grown that penetrates the insulation on repeated charge/discharge cycles. Preventing dendritic
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Well, it's per kilogram of the material. So I'd think it would be something like your typical over-sized soda-can style ultracapacitor
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perfect for a fast charging power source for a car.
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100k farads? Just how big are these things!?
Too big to touch to your tong I'm afraid...
Cautiously Optimistic (Score:5, Insightful)
I think graphene will probably fulfill some promises and fall flat with others. Since carbon (which graphene is) is a semiconductor I am more hopeful for it to become an efficient electronic resource. Because it is a semiconductor, I am less hopeful that it will become a better battery (carbon has been used in batteries for years but it's electrical leakage eventually drains an unused battery). As a material I expect that it will have the same shortcomings that carbon fiber has - in order to be strongest it needs to be pure which has proven difficult to achieve and therefore expensive. Graphene itself is expensive to manufacture. Is it even possible to chain it together to make long chains of it? I don't know but do know it is hard to do it with carbon fiber. What are the health consequences of making it, using it, or wearing it? So many things seem promising but end up being very bad (asbestos, lead, VOC's) that I am not sure it will launch. Seems like a submicroscopic sharp hard item may cause problems in the lungs.
Wait, graphene is a semi conductor? (Score:2)
Re:Wait, graphene is a semi conductor? (Score:4, Informative)
Original Slashdot article? (Score:2)
Do I remember correctly if I remember a a Slashdot article with a link to a short film of a man pulling graphene from a solid carbon piece, like Scotch tape? At the time I thought it was fake, but as time went I realized it was for real. Graphene is way cool, and would be nice to find and see that clip again!
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http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Making_Stuff_Nova_Making_Stuff_Cleaner/70171398?trkid=2429429 [netflix.com]
How to make Graphene with a piece of scotch tape.
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I did and I didn't find it. I looked at all 611 thumbnails but didn't see one that matched.
Wait for the patent trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait for the patent trolls to join the party and tell me which century this will revolutionize.
Remember carbon nanotubes? (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago all the rage was about carbon nanotubes. An entire generation of phd students was raised on this material. Carbon nanotubes were the material of the future, enabling the space elevator, nanoscale transistors, near-superconductor conductivity and so on. What is left today?
Even before that there were C60 buckyballs, another previously unnoticed carbon allotrope. Buckyballs were set to revolutionize chemistry and were (are) part of n-type organic semicunductors. What is left today?
A fad is a fad, even in science. Of all the imagined applications a few will remain, and will be turned into real applications by technologists and engineers. The scientists will move on to the next fad - well at least those who are quick enough.
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Orrrrrr......you are just not involved in the field so you are completely unaware of what is going on post sensationalist-journalist phase.
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I'm not involved but would like to know more. Care to enlighten me?
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all of this is relatively new, but having a way to
I'm guessing more fiberoptics (Score:2)
Within say 10-20 years most of Norway will have fiber everywhere - 12% had it last year and they're wiring all over the place, I heard some claim 35% by 2015 though that sounded a bit optimistic. No more last mile problems, you could send gigabits to every house. HDTV streaming to every room in the building @ BluRay quality? Can do. Webcams the quality of full HD video cameras? Can do. High quality multi-channel video conferencing? Can do. The future is a world where bandwidth is truly approaching almost fr
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Cringley comes to mind (Score:3)
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. -- Robert X. Cringley
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And that would be ok
Re:Cringley comes to mind (Score:5, Funny)
Send my love to spouse_02!
Michio thinks so (Score:2)
Dr Michio Kaku raves about graphene a lot.. He did mention using it to make a Dyson phere (of the capture all the energy of the sun kind, not necessarily the live on like Shaw's Orbitsville kind.
"Potential" = Speculation (Score:3)
The article cited a lot of facts, theory and experimental work being done, but not one item about a physical product used in production.
"Will Graphene Revolutionize the 21st Century?": The answer is cost effective applications of graphene will be the sole determinant.
I propose a game: (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Obtain an outline map of the world, preferably black and white.
2. Select four colors. 1, 2, 3, and 4.
3. Fill all areas of the world that you expect to be nigh-unimaginably futuristic(routine occurrence of transhumans, strong AIs, kilometer high metamaterial structures, etc.) in 2061 with color 1.
4. Fill all areas of the world that you expect to be surprisingly mundane in 2061, except for a few of those wacky details that futurists never get right(everybody is still working in cubicles and flying aging 787s; but something as unexpected as facebook would have been in 1950 occupies 30% of the cube-dweller's time), with color 2.
5. Fill all areas of the world that will still be "developing" in 2061(the local elites will have access to everything from the color 2 zones, and color 1s, if present; but the bulk of the populace will still be mired in such classics as mud farming, Kalashnikovs, and nokias) with color 3.
6. Fill all areas of the world that will be radically dystopian and/or uninhabitable for cool reasons(radical climate shifts/flooding, nanite plague, biotech advances make new strains of smallpox and anthrax and friends as common as new malware is today, etc.) with color 4.
7. Argue at length about one another's maps.
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OK, lets play
1. Barcelona (I like Barcelona), Camden (it thinks it's there already), my house, Japan
2. Isle of Wight, Hollywood, Antarctica
3. New Jersey, Middle East
4. 30 Millbank (I'm an optimist)
What do I win?
Graphene's True Potential - Cat Hammocks (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad that someone is addressing the need for invisible cat hammocks. FINALLY!
Conductor issues (Score:3, Interesting)
The article makes a rudimentary statement about graphene and fails to acknowledge that it is a conductor and not a semiconductor. That limits some of its use without using it in a complex composite to create a limited semiconductor material. As it stands now though graphene would be excellent for power transfer and screen technology. I think it will certainly establish a change in the way technology is used as chips grow smaller and screens grow larger and more flexible. We could see folding screens in a few years which would be an amazing improvement over our current systems. Laptops could be equipped with unfolding screens. Smartphones could so the same. Home theaters could become portable in a quite interesting and unique way.
In other words, it will revolutionize the 21st century as our viewing technology makes a giant leap forward but silicon is going to be the dominant semiconductor for atleast the next decade or so while they work out a graphene composite that can cut some of its conductor properties. But graphene could be the answer to the wall viewers, curved displays, and other super-sized designs.
That's the last thing we need (Score:3)
"The future could see credit cards contain as much processing power as your current smartphone."
Heaven help us. Then literally nothing will work anymore. I shudder every time I use a "smart" appliance. To me, a "smart" appliance - one with an embedded computer - is something that needs occasional reboots, contains concurrency bugs and therefore gets into undefined states ("frozen"), second guess incorrectly about what I want it to do, needs to be recharged and have its batteries replaced, is vulnerable to hacking, needs continual updates, needs to be "managed" in various ways, and is generally not reliable enough to trust. Smart appliances make life miserable. Unless we can radically change the way that we program these things, to alleviate these ills, a world in which everything is a "smart" appliance is a frustrating world in which nothing works anymore.
Re: (Score:3)
But companies like IBM and Nokia have also been involved in research. IBM has created a 150 gigahertz (Ghz) transistor - the quickest comparable silicon device runs at about 40 Ghz.
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http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009Natur.459..820Z [harvard.edu]
GIYF
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Except, of course.... (Score:4, Interesting)
...that most of the technologies used in your "self-sustainable" lifestyle are the result of recent developments and investments in new technologies, most of which have been about pushing down the costs of the tech involved.
Your solar array? Only became feasible at the individual installation level in the last five years (and is improving rapidly) due to heavy R&D investment. Ditto that windmill (arguably, that's more about moving the industrial base to China and the associated cost savings - unless you have carbon fiber blades).
And that's ignoring the effect of cheap and powerful computers on design - affordable solid form CAD, FEA, CFD, and ubiquitous CAM means that anybody can buy Solidworks, MasterCAM, and a HAAS 3-axis mill and start making chips at a startup cost that is a tiny fraction of what that capability cost even 10 years ago.
Unless you are mining your own ore, smelting your own raw materials, logging your own trees, growing your own seed (and your own fertilizer) your are as much a part of "the system" as the rest of us; a couple of solar panels be dammed.
DG
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Tomorrow is today's future past.
Or, as Kathryn Janeway would say: The past is the future, the future is the past... it all gives me a headache.
Re:Largest sheet yet produced? (Score:4, Interesting)