Nanotech Advances Forward 70
dar writes "Scientists have built a transistor a single molecule wide that works at room temperature. " Nanotech continues to move forward - while each step is interesting in itself, we've still got a long ways to go before I can have my can of nanobots.
Re:New-New-Nano Economy (Score:1)
Re:low power - imagine the battery life! (Score:1)
Re:Sheesh (Score:1)
rated as redundant (Score:1)
Re:Idea of the day (Score:1)
mefus
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um, er... eh -- *click*
Re:long way to go (Score:1)
But here goes anyway. Basically, a transistor only allows you to use one signal to switch on and off a current. One transistor isn't enough for computations. There's a certain minimal number, but I'm not into hardware so I don't know what that would be.
department of redundancy department (Score:1)
Just let us know when it starts advancing backwards, OK?
Advancing forward !? (Score:1)
Wow !
I thought because they were so small they would advance backwards !!
How Will This Make My Life Better? (Score:1)
low power - imagine the battery life! (Score:1)
Of course, we'll have to wait 15-20 years to find out
Re:Nanotech a load of B.S. (Score:1)
"And our backyards aren't filled with antibodies and other same-sized life forms looking to kill stuff. "
What is influenza? It may not be intentially looking to kill stuff. But the end result is that is does, based on the directives it follows.
Logic is powerful - no matter how simple. Apply logic and a map for a device to follow and complex tasks can be carried out.
Think outside the norm for a little while and apply some general knowledge. Of course a backhoe will have difficulty building another backhoe, but imagine an enzyme which when combined with correct substrates creates devices capable of performing tasks of verying nature (kinetic, chemical, electrical, magnetic etc.) and the enzyme is not destroyed during the process.
Why bother trying to split the atom. It is a known fact that an atom cannot be split.
To answer your question "Is it just me, or are hopes for nano-tech out of whack with any actual possible reality? "
Who knows until you try? People who achieve the impossible either are too ignorant to know it can't be done, or they watched a lot of the Muppet Babies as a kid and applied a little imagination and lateral thinking.
Re:low power - imagine the battery life! (Score:1)
Implications... (Score:1)
Deal with the issues *before* nanotech is real? (Score:1)
Makes the smallest web server [umass.edu] seem pretty huge, hunh?
But seriously, the ramifications of nanotechnology are pretty scary. I thought the Foresight Institute [foresight.org] was supposed to be about becoming aware of them, and keeping the scary ones from becoming reality. Now it seems like they just push the science forward as fast as possible. Did they get so much resistance to the idea of nanotechnology being real that they got permanently distracted into proving that it is?
This is one technology which might not let us clean up the mess afterwards (like what's happening now with genetic modification).
Re:long way to go (Score:1)
No troll. The idea of some "minimum number" is I guess what I was wondering about. I didn't mean a single transistor. Only that 100 or 1000 of them -- or whatever the number -- is really all that appears to be needed for useful application. While I'm sure research is needed on how to assemble even two of these things on a chip, it just seemed to me that the performance characteristics of the invention meant that manufacture could be simplified more than the parent post implied.
As I mentioned, though, I'm not entirely sure if these things actually are the fabled 0-time quantum chips or if they're just really small, or what they are. Sorry to be unclear.
Re:X-treme Toast (Score:1)
Re:Idea of the day (Score:1)
Re:Nanotech a load of B.S. (Score:1)
Nanotechnology is going to change everything: It will destroy all governments, the money system, and perhaps maybe even religion (I'm hoping).
You say the public won't be in favor of Nanotech - and my response to that is 'Who Cares?' - the 'public' is nothing more than a bunch of worthless Neanderthals anyway. If war ensues over Nanotech, all someone has to do is sick the 'The Gray Goo' on the 'public' and it's game over from there.
Re:Micromachines (Score:1)
Re:Sheesh (Score:1)
Re:New-New-Nano Economy- Crash (Score:1)
Re:I'd rather have (Score:1)
Re:Idea of the day (Score:1)
That's actually part of the idea.. When all the nanobots that are maintaining your internal organs and making you immortal start to fail, the ones that are still working will cannibalize the dead ones (and get whatever other materials they need... if this comes true people will probably have to take vitamins to feed their nanobots) and build replacements.
Tim
Re:Nanotech a load of B.S. (Score:1)
these are 3 completely different things with completely different reasons for lack of success:
"artificial inteligence" is a general term for a wide range of problems: from those completely ill-defined (a software that has the mental flexibility of a human) to very specific , well defined problems (chess
"nanotechnology" also has a wide range of problems, and some of them appear to be very close to sollution: e.g. replacing usuall building material with CNTs or INTs is not that far fetched. However building a "nanobot" - something with the functionality of a cell, or at least a virus - seems very much in the future.
"cold fusion" , by contrast , is a very well defined problem: "produce energy from fusion reactions in an economic fashion", it is still unsuccessful because the plasmas in question are very much in non-linear domains , and physicists still cannot really deal very well with non-linear (and non-equilibrium) phenomena, despite many efforts, we haven't develloped satisfactory theoretic tools (yet ?).
put in other words, these are completely different issues : theoretically, experimentally and even socially.
Re:New-New-Nano Economy (Score:1)
As for realestate.....well, I plan on moving offworld, inside the first O'Neil Cylinder. There, I can design my own waterfront property (or dissapear into a fantasy reality of utility fog just as real). :-)
Re:Sheesh (Score:1)
Is this like.. (Score:1)
"Press any key to begin."
Re:I'd rather have (Score:1)
Re:suckerbot (Score:1)
Late (GREAT) breaking news (Score:2)
"With these new Advances Forward moving forward ahead into the future our country will be the first before anybody to capitalize, and take advantave of those new little robot thingies. We no longer need a missile defense system America, we need little robots, and we're confident, and secure that someone will create the next step in the future of advanced technology to push ahead forward into the future." stated the Resident.
"At this point in time right now, we are looking into purchasing the next model nanospy, H4NSS3N, which will work to our advantage for our gain in the fight to secure our country's great land of our country." stated Mr. Bush.
Many are looking ahead into nanotechnology as the cure for cancers, and other medical woes. We just hope someday in the future, we don't become reverse engineered by our own technology.
© 2001 Disassociated Press ®
more info and views (Score:2)
can of nanobots (Score:2)
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Re:Room temperature? (Score:2)
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Re:Pet Peeve (Score:2)
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Re:Carbon nanotube (Score:2)
Given that's particularly unhelpful to most people, let me start by pointing out that these beast vary in size.
The molecular size aspect relates to the width, not length of the device, and that width is not dissimilar from a single strand of a polymer (such as polystyrene), but it varies a lot. They mean around the 10's of Angstroms sort of size.
As a side point, atom size is illdefined, and the only reasonable measure is the covalent radii, which are defined in terms of bond length.
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Re:Sheesh (Score:2)
What happened to those? Are they being made but covered up by NDAs? Did they jump ahead too far, then had to go back to do more basic research on the properties of materials at that? Surely SOMEONE on Slashdot works at a materials lab and can clue me in.
Nope. The Visual Quantum Mechanics Asst [ksu.edu] brought all the tiny pieces to my High School where a student inadvertantly knocked them from the tech's hand. The entire class has spent the last 6 years picking them up. Sorry about that, we'll return them to the science community real soon.
check these links (Score:2)
http://www.foresight.org/SciAmDebate/Round3.html [foresight.org]
http://www.tcom.co.uk/hpnet/jt4.htm [tcom.co.uk]
Nanotech Advances Backward (Score:2)
In a remarkable feat of linguistobatics Hemos has outdone hisself in bringing "bushonics" to the popular press table.
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Problems (Score:2)
Smart ant powder. (Score:2)
Hardware is constructed inside a sugar cube.
Software...
Bill, hates ants. Really hates ants.
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Ants deserve death, death, death, death, and more death, until they are dead!
Re:Sheesh (Score:2)
A company called Zyvex plans to build such micro-scaled machines. Check out their website [zyvex.com] for details
Well, that's a relief (Score:2)
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There's a difference b/w mechanics and organics! (Score:2)
Ugh. I was hoping nobody would waste band-width with that lame logic, but I guess I'll deal with it:
Nanotech is massively inferior to the living micro-organisms which already populate the world.
Nanotech is all about micro-robotics; manipulating the world through kinetics. KINETICS. Little motors running little legs and pincers. Not. . , I repeat, NOT molecule modifying enzymes and chemicals. I seriously doubt that tiny metalic bugs with microscopic CanadaArms are going to to be able to unlock atoms which have been covalently bonded to other atoms. If you can't pull apart a diamond with your fingers, then how can you expect a robotic bug to have any better luck?
Now, Bio-engineering. . , that's a whole other ball of wax. Biotech is powerful. Nanotech is just the retarded younger brother which will never catch up to the millions of years of evolution which brought us living things.
All I'm saying is that little tiny robots are going to be far more limited in their power and application than popular fiction suggests. -Sorry to dash the hopes and dreams, (saccharine delusions), of a wonder/terror-world future based on nano-tech, cuz it's just plain dumb and misdirected. There are far more important things going on!
Why the heck can't geeks just get over their inferiority complexes and face the fact that the world around us right now is already massively complex and that it is the one we ought to concentrate on living in? Digital is a powerful tool at best and a hallucinogenic false hope at worst.
Remember your Star Wars: The Dark Path is always easier.
Learn to manipulate reality; not a bunch of ones and zeros, or you'll end up looking all pasty like the Emperor.
-Fantastic Lad
Re:long way to go (Score:2)
Okay, this may sound like a troll, but it's honest ignorance.
Isn't one of the huge advantages of quantum computing supposed to be to zero or near zero switching time? And if that's the case, couldn't you just take a couple of these things and architect around "as if parallel" rather than today's "as if serial"?
IANACD, and my knowledge of chip design could probably fit on one of these quantum transistors, but my understanding is that the high transistor count of today's processors goes to supporting parallelism rather than preserving state. Insofar as that is true, a chip cycling a million times faster could use one-millionth of the transistors to achieve the same performance -- you'd wind up with the same number of logical operations per second. Manufacturing problem...if not solved, enormously simplified.
BTW, I'd love it if someone could post some "intermediate level" links on quantum chips. Between the gee whiz popular press and page-length equations, there has to be some good stuff.
My whole life I've scoffed at those simpletons who can't tell the difference between science and science fiction. Now I'm one of them.
Re:Idea of the day (Score:2)
I would appreciate it if anyone else could give the title/issue that it appeared in. I've always wanted to dig it up and read it again.
Re:Nanotech a load of B.S. (Score:2)
If you think that people are eagerly researching "self-reproduction," you are wrong. Most robots are created to assist humans in a specific function. There's simply no money in "self-reproduction," even of a limited sort-- hence few people, if any, are working on it. It took nature millions of years to design even primitive self-reproducing chemicals, yet you believe we will do it in a thousand or a hundred thousand?
Moreover, nature's "motivation" is a lot different from ours. We create machines for specific tasks, but in nature things exist only to propogate themselves. Why should we want to duplicate the waste, the inaccuracy, and the general sloppiness of nature? Aren't a million forms of bacteria enough for you?
What the future will bring, nobody can say, but I believe that "gray goo" fantasies are as far removed from reality as artificial intelligence or cold fusion. They've never been proved impossible, but damn near close. We already have sciences that deal with matter on a small scale. They're called chemistry and physics, and the engineering disciplines for these are chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. Stop living in a fantasy world and do something that will matter in 50 years.
Hemos... (Score:2)
-nyersaK
Re:Pet Peeve (Score:2)
Yeah, this story should have been:
from the dept.-of-redundancy dept.
Re:Sheesh (Score:2)
The only advances that we will ever see is if we begin to manipulate protien structures w/different bonds so that they form the shape that we want them to, and do the work required of them. That will solve the whole friction problem, as well as release their own energy, and all we have to do is give them a couple of pre fabricated weak phosphate chains!
Once we use the hydrogen chain and proton pumps to "shoot" hydorgen atoms across the membrane potential, we will be doing the same work as micromachines in a completely organic solution, and we will have created the beginnings of sentient life in one step.
I've heard about these micro/nano machines for years. They just don't do the job they're supposed to.
Protien is the way to go.
Single Molecule... Bah (Score:2)
Re:Nanobots remind me of: (Score:2)
Re:Carbon nanotube (Score:2)
Speaking of molecular level, when this story refers to molecule-sized transistors, is there a specific molecule size they are talking about? If I'm not sadly mistaken, different molecules have different sizes (e.g. a molecule of C6H12O6 is larger than a molecule of H2O). The same is true from atoms -- Si > H, etc. Not that it'd make that much of a difference, though.
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MSFT merges with AOLTW:
Re:Is that a mistake? (Score:2)
Re:Is that a mistake? (Score:3)
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MEMS (Score:3)
In large part, though, MEMS is still a solution in search of a problem.
Also, "micro" is a rather different scale than "nano".
foog
Re:Nanotech a load of B.S. (Score:3)
Or like suggesting that one bacterium could build another bacterium. Ridiculous! That could never happen.
Nanobots remind me of: (Score:3)
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jeweled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweat-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.
The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapor, and at that very moment the words "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style" drifted across the table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
Eventually, of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."
The end. Courtesy of the late Douglas Adams. Keep small dogs out of the nanobot lab.
Sheesh (Score:3)
Ok! We got it already! It's possible to make computational devises very small! Considering that how small the traces are on new chips, this doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
Back in 1990 I did a paper on micro machines for college. I was excited. Pictures of gears made with a tunneling microscope, engines being made in labs. Really, really, small screws.
What happened to those? Are they being made but covered up by NDAs? Did they jump ahead too far, then had to go back to do more basic research on the properties of materials at that scale? Surely SOMEONE on Slashdot works at a materials lab and can clue me in.
Please?
Idea of the day (Score:3)
Someone contact the makers of all these nanobots, as well as "The Learning Channel" staff and create "Nanobot Wars"
Is that a mistake? (Score:3)
It's been some time since I did any real electronics but I thought I remembered that a transistors' function is to amplify signal. And I also thought that the whole basis for the binary machine (aka computer)was that logic gate on/off process, hence the "digital" concept. Does this mean that nanotech actually allows us to reduce complexity at the same time as we increase the capability of this "circuit"
More reasons to legalize marijuana. (Score:3)
Not that we really need to have it legalized, since obviously the people who need it can get access to it, as evidenced by the fact that we have ice cream cookie sandwhiches, and transisters one molecule wide, dude .
I can only imagine the brainstorming sessions.
Dude, what if we had a transister so small, you could fit a million of them into, like, a screen, and they would know how to let only the primo molecules through?
No way, man... I got even better idea. How 'bout we make a single molecule into a transister, and it would be all bio-enhanced to go right to the pre-frontal stonal gyrus?
dude, that is an awesome idea...and we could run the whole thing off a nine volt...er, 9 millivolt, er...pico, er...
Man, we could run it off of the breath of a spirit butterfly!
Re:There's a difference b/w mechanics and organics (Score:3)
While I doubt we'll have nanobots flying around and patroling the world in the next decade, your view is quite short-sighted. No shit Bio-tech seems wonderful to you - it already has major results... DNA recombination in bacteria as one huge example. Somehow I doubt nanotech will stagnate at its current state of buckyballs/tubes with theoretical applications. Biotech certainly went beyond Watson/Crick theorizing the structure of DNA. Sure, people are going a bit crazy with nanotech prophecies (thanks in no small part to The Diamond Age), but to flat out deny any possible impact of nanotechnology is insanity. I can guarantee you we'll be able to make a microrobot that can do a complex job before we can engineer a microbe to do the same thing (unless that job is intrinsically biological like most other biotech applications). Biotech is undoubtedly impressive, but it, like nanotech, has limits.
Re:Sheesh (Score:3)
Micromachines are currently in practical use, at least very simple ones. The most common application (to my limited knowledge) is airbag acceleration sensors. A small silicon cantilever bends under acceleration and a resulting electrical signal sets off the air bag. I very simple micromachine.
Other applications are in the works, but progress on complex machines is difficult since most devices are built with lithography, and lithography naturally produces two-dimensional structures, not three. For example, microfluidics is a potential application, where small tubes and pumps analyze microscopic amounts of fluid for various e.g. chemical/biological assays, etc.
It's a long way from "I can build a gear" to "I can build a gear and a motor and a shaft and connect them to a couple hundred other parts with minimal frictional losses, a power supply, etc. in three dimensions." Interesting things will be coming, but it'll be very incremental as researchers built up a toolset.
Re:Idea of the day (Score:4)
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long way to go (Score:4)
Best way to go, I would think, is to build microbots that build nanobots, that build nanochips. We won't be able to halndle nano-manufacturing directly I think.
Nanotech a load of B.S. (Score:4)
I mean. . . Building a car out of a pile of rocks? Don't think so. Cars are made from certain elements which a pile of rocks just can't provide no matter how smart your nanotech is. Plus. . . I haven't read, 'Diamond Age', (Snow Crash was more than enough lousy, nihilistic story telling B.S. for me.), but I understand one of the main principles Neal was pushing was that things in the future would be built primarily out of diamond.
Please. Nanites will be able to stuff on the molecular level? I mean, stacking all those carbon atoms one at a time just so. . . Give me a break. That would require robot pincers FAR smaller than the scale nanites are projected to be constructed at. Think about it! If the smallest transistor you can get is one molecule big, and you need several thousand just to make a nanite brain, then the nanite itself is going to be a behemoth by comparison to a single carbon atom.
Plus, nanites will still have to navigate around the treacherous micro terrain. We can barely build robots today that can handle a stupid backyard 'Mars Terrain' without some serious human assistance. And our backyards aren't filled with antibodies and other same-sized life forms looking to kill stuff.
Argh! And another thing. . ! One nanite Will Not be able to build another nanite. -That's like suggesting that a backhoe can build another backhoe. Retarded. Maybe a bunch of different nanites all working together, being fed all the right elements and micro lego bricks, will be able build a machine which can build nanites. Maybe. But that's a whole other proposition.
The basis of most Nanotech dreams/nightmares is that the technology will prove to be self-sustaining and unstoppable. Nonsense! (See above.) Sure, nanotech will probably work, but I doubt it will instantly transform humanity into something utterly unrecognizable. Nanites are just going to be another dumb technology which costs too much and won't work reliably without a ton of tech support. --Like every other stupid high-tech product or service in the world. (Cars. Phones. Airplanes. You name it. Pull people out of the equation, and everything grinds to a halt.)
Nanotech is not a panacea. Plus, if it works right, guaranteed, it won't work in the favor of the public.
Fantastic Lad
--Stephenson started out as a bloody Mac-user. Think about it! Mac-users are the least creative & intuitive people on the planet. --I mean, they drive the new Volkswagon Bugs and think they're being cool. Yeesh!
New-New-Nano Economy (Score:4)
Will Foresight [foresight.org] succeed in educating people, or will the public inflate nanotech companies with their hopes and dreams, in the same way as biotech/internet companies, expecting another [stock appreciation] revolution in a "new-new economy?" Of course, we'll get the revolution [of abundance], but I wonder how long it will take people to figure out that there will be even more FuckedCompany's [fuckedcompany.com] when it finally sinks in what it means to be able to manipulate matter with the same ease as bits of data.
Give me some molecules, some sunlight, a molecular blueprint, the magic nano bootstrap process, and I'm in business!.........unless someone claims a monopoly on atoms or sunlight that is. :)
Carbon nanotube (Score:5)
The system involves cabon nanotubes (hence why it got into Science [0]). These devices, sometimes called buckytubes, are semiconductors. Production of a Y junction, which was seen as a prerequisite to transistor like behaviour, was achived about 6 months to a year ago, in various groups (exact time depends on pwhich group and precise nature of the tube).
It's nice to see the somone's made a transistor from this stuff, but it won't replace silicon in the near future.
These are independant devices, and do not lend themselves to lithographic techniques. At least, not by any method thus far discovered.
To make a circuit from these would be like assembuiling it from discrete transistors, but at a near molecular level.
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stickiness problems (Score:5)
They turned out to be far more problematic than anticipated, like most new technologies. Gears stick together, levers bend, everything wears out. It turns out that microsurfaces are different enough from macrosurfaces that the basic mechanisms that work on the macroscale fail on the microscale.
Unfortunately, it's not online except for subscribers, but the always interesting Science News [sciencenews.org] did an article [sciencenews.org] on the problem last year:
There are micromachines that work, as other posters have noted, but the idea that larger-scale mechanical engineering could be easily projected into the microworld has now been discredited. Nanotechnology will present even greater challenges.
Tim Maroney
Room temperature? (Score:5)
I don't see why these scientists insist on making everything function at room temperature. At this rate liquid nitrogen will never gain household acceptance. Potentially very useful; you can use it to inflate tires, turn bananas into hammers, and cryogenically store your goldfish when you go on vacation. If this is the future, I'm not sure I want to be here.