The internet is a series of nanotubes

[zz_tophat]

...or it soon will be.

Behold Nanoscale badassery!

I mentioned in another thread the awesomeness of nanotubes but i think they deserve a thread of their own.


Imagine a material so strong that a strand of it the width of a human hair can lift a 2 ton truck.

It's 311 times stronger than carbon steel and as stuff that we make goes, carbon steel is about as strong as it gets. Diamonds? hard, yes (not nearly as hard as carbon nanotubes) but brittle, you can break them with a plain ol' steel hammer.

Imagine if you will: keyboards with keys that never wear out, frictionless pants that can stop bullets, a PSP battery that lasts longer than a PSP, a quad-core 8ghz processor in your cell phone, A knife that never gets dull! Cool stuff right?

As nanotube materials can and will be used in just about everything, our world going to be filled with neigh-unbreakable everyday objects and super efficient electronics, the sky is the limit ...no wait not even that, space elevator anyone?

Now imagine paper thin reinforcements for your bones and tendons, wolverine much? of course that itself with hardly make you indestructible:

My skin has seen better days but my bones is fine!


Want more cool stuff? OK, fine, we'll throw in Spider-man powers for everyone. That's right, nanotubes can be used to mimic a spider's ability to wall crawl. Just don these special gloves and you'll stick to surfaces like a gecko. Want to shoot webs with the tensile strength greater than steel? sure you can have that too.




Nanotubes. You want them.

[Ad Bot]

[Azimuth]

holy stuff

thats awesome

[Sandvich]

I want them

[Packer]

The technology, its not invented yet :O! Say how hard is to create such a thing? I'd assume pretty god damn hard. Japanese have been bragging about about Nano-everything for years now and haven't really created anything.

Until they release a showing of this stuff in action, I'm convinced its bullstuff.

[Inv3rted]

Nanotubes have been discussed for a long time.

In other words, old news. They can not yet be manufactured on a wide scale, but they have already been created.

[pixl]

Oh, I saw "the Internet is a s..."

I thought the title was "the Internet is a sesspool"

[Azimuth]

a good interneter would have though a series of tubes

[zz_tophat]

recently a New Hampshire based company made a man-sized blanket out of nanotubes

Edit: Another Quote this time from Wikipedia:

Solar cells

Solar cells developed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology use a carbon nanotube complex, formed by a mixture of carbon nanotubes and carbon buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to form snake-like structures. Buckyballs trap electrons, although they can't make electrons flow. Add sunlight to excite the polymers, and the buckyballs will grab the electrons. Nanotubes, behaving like copper wires, will then be able to make the electrons or current flow.[77]

Ultracapacitors

MIT Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems uses nanotubes to improve ultracapacitors. The activated charcoal used in conventional ultracapacitors has many small hollow spaces of various size, which create together a large surface to store electric charge. But as charge is quantized into elementary charges, i.e. electrons, and each such elementary charge needs a minimum space, a significant fraction of the electrode surface is not available for storage because the hollow spaces are not compatible with the charge's requirements. With a nanotube electrode the spaces may be tailored to size—few too large or too small—and consequently the capacity should be increased considerably.[78]

Other applications

Carbon nanotubes have been implemented in nanoelectromechanical systems, including mechanical memory elements (NRAM being developed by Nantero Inc.) and nanoscale electric motors (see Nanomotor).

Carbon nanotubes have been proposed as a possible gene delivery vehicle and for use in combination with radiofrequency fields to destroy cancer cells.[79][80]

In May 2005, Nanomix Inc placed on the market a hydrogen sensor which integrated carbon nanotubes on a silicon platform. Since then Nanomix has been patenting many such sensor applications such as in the field of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, glucose, DNA detection etc.

Eikos Inc of Franklin, Massachusetts and Unidym Inc. of Silicon Valley, California are developing transparent, electrically conductive films of carbon nanotubes to replace indium tin oxide (ITO). Carbon nanotube films are substantially more mechanically robust than ITO films, making them ideal for high-reliability touchscreens and flexible displays. Printable water-based inks of carbon nanotubes are desired to enable the production of these films to replace ITO.[81] Nanotube films show promise for use in displays for computers, cell phones, PDAs, and ATMs.

A nanoradio, a radio receiver consisting of a single nanotube, was demonstrated in 2007.

In 2008 it was shown that a sheet of nanotubes can operate as a loudspeaker if an alternating current is applied. The sound is not produced through vibration but thermoacoustically.[82]

Carbon nanotubes are said to have the strength of diamond, and research is being made into weaving them into clothes to create stab-proof and bulletproof clothing. The nanotubes would effectively stop the bullet from penetrating the body, although the bullet's kinetic energy would likely cause broken bones and internal bleeding.[83]

A flywheel made of carbon nanotubes could be spun at extremely high velocity on a floating magnetic axis, and potentially store energy at a density approaching that of conventional fossil fuels. Since energy can be added to and removed from flywheels very efficiently in the form of electricity, this might offer a way of storing electricity, making the electrical grid more efficient and variable power suppliers (like wind turbines) more useful in meeting energy needs. The practicality of this depends heavily upon the cost of making massive, unbroken nanotube structures, and their failure rate under stress.

Rheological properties can also be shown very effectively by carbon nanotubes.

Nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes may replace platinum catalysts used to reduce oxygen in fuel cells. A forest of vertically-aligned nanotubes can reduce oxygen in alkaline solution more effectively than platinum, which has been used in such applications since the 1960s. The nanotubes have the added benefit of not being subject to carbon monoxide poisoning.

EDIT #2: As some people don't trust wikipedia I found a more reputable source:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/subject/article/nanotubes

Ah, the many uses of Nanotubes.

[zz_tophat]

Bump because not enough people are appreciating teh toobs.

[Menen]

WOLVERINE IS A ROBOT?

[oromis]

nanotube condom :O

RAW FIREFOX SAYS NANOTUBE IS MISPELLED THAT MEANS IT DOESNT EXIST RAWWW

[zz_tophat]

WOLVERINE IS A ROBOT?

metal bones ido...


I mean: yes! a mutant robot. that's why he's so cool.

[Otis Da HousKat]

Nanotubes are better conductors than regular metals in electronics.

[DaSord213]

I'm gunna get a patent on nanotubes then when someone makes them, SUE THEM FOR BILLIONS :D

Just like microsoft and xbox live

[zz_tophat]

I'm gunna get a patent on nanotubes then when someone makes them, SUE THEM FOR BILLIONS :D

Just like microsoft and xbox live

They already exist, they are already in use.


...but if you are Microsoft you may think of a reason to sue.