One of the major problems for micromachines, much less nanomachines, is wear. The phenomenon of stiction combines the two worst aspects of surface-to-surface interaction — a high coefficient of friction and a locally-generated high applied force — to cause enormous problems. At the very smallest scale, once we gain complete control over atomic configuration, superlubricity… Continue reading Nanoscale Wear
Here at Foresight our main focus is on longer-term technologies such as molecular manufacturing, but we keep an eye on what’s arriving along the nearer-term pathways as well. In 2007 I attended a workshop on “Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense” and the proceedings volume of that meeting, with the same name, is now available.… Continue reading Nanotechnology for chemical and biological defense: the book
cute video from nokia about what a nanotech phone might be like…
There’s a post on Technology Review’s blog about a paper on arXiv about a theoretical result in magnetic memories. Current-day magnetic memory is already “nanotechnology” under the loose definition, involving 5-nanometer particles of cobalt (having about 50,000 atoms). The authors have shown that a single molecule consisting of a cobalt dimer sitting on top of… Continue reading Super-dense magnetic memory
The nominations for Foresight’s 2009 Feynman Prize will be closing soon, so if you know someone who has done outstanding work to advance the goal of molecular nanotechnology, please visit the Instructions Page to nominate them. Research areas considered relevant to MNT (e.g., productive nanosystems and molecular machine systems) include but are not limited to:… Continue reading Feynman Prize nominations: last chance
Suppose there were a class of technologies called millitech: science and engineering that could be measured in millimeters, from say about a tenth of a millimeter to 100 millimeters — in any dimension. That includes hairs, paper, pebbles, marbles, anything you can hold in the palm of your hand, anything less than 4 inches thick… Continue reading Regulation of millitechnology
An article this past weekend on Nanowerk reports on a study about attitudes toward regulation of nanotechnology among nanoscientists and the general public: As reported in the online version of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research today (June 19), Scheufele and Corley found that the public tends to focus on the benefits — rather than potential… Continue reading Attitudes to nanotech regulation
Jamais Cascio has an article in the current Atlantic about how humans are getting smarter. This is the best article on the subject I’ve seen in the mainstream press, and better than most in the transhumanist corner of the web. Cascio’s main point is that, as we’ve always done, we build our technology to make… Continue reading Smart Cascio article in Atlantic
One of the constraints laid down by DARPA at the recent Physical Intelligence proposers workshop was that the model of intelligence that was to be proposed had to have a physical implementation. It seemed odd to some of the attendees that this should be a hard constraint, since many models of intelligence have a perfectly… Continue reading A cautionary note
Brian Wang over at Next Big Future has an article about improving the properties of aluminum as a structural material by filling with buckytubes, the way plastics are made stronger by filling by fiberglass. This isn’t particularly new: what’s new is that Bayer appears to be able to make nanotubes in enough quantity to make… Continue reading Buckytube-filled aluminum
