2005-06-09 13:28:44.058754+00 by ziffle 1 comments
Three dimensional recreations composed of self assembling 'catoms'... Getting Closer!
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=632012005
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/skeckler/wild04/Paper12.pdf
Dr mowry: "Your claytronic mobile phone could turn into a hammer for a spot of DIY and then a pair of shoes to go jogging."
Sorry batteries not included.
Ziffle
[ related topics: Current Events Mathematics Shoes ]
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#Comment Re: made: 2005-06-09 16:43:05.3763+00 by: petronius
Nanotech is, I'm afraid, one of these wonderful "do-everything" technologies like stem-cells, where the promise has more shine than the reality. While I can visualize a lump of this stuff turning from a hammer to a cellphone, would either form be useful? Would the hammer be hard enough and would the cellphone actually make calls? that seems to be one of the details to work out.
Nano is here, as a steadily devleoping branch of material science, and various devices like biochips and MEMS are in use or on the way. However, the jump from materials to organization and Drexler's Assemblers is way, way off. In the meantime, bad SF about grey-goo is already getting the Luddites stirred up.
Although I hate to say it, I'm almost comfortable with a news blackout on nano to keep the Greens asleep while we get an established bash of knowlege and equipment. i remember back in the early 80s when a new medical scanner called a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance device was invented. In the age of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the radiologists changed its name to MRI to hide it. Might we need to do that with Nano?