Tiny buckyballs squeeze hydrogen like giant Jupiter (3/21/2008) Carbon cages can hold super-dense volumes of nearly metallic hydrogen Hydrogen could be a clean, abundant energy source, but it's difficult to store in bulk. In new research, materials scientists at Rice University have made the surprising discovery that tiny carbon capsules called buckyballs are so strong they can hold volumes of hydrogen nearly as dense as those at the center of Jupiter. The research appears on the March 2008 cover of the American Chemical Society's journal Nano Letters. "Based on our calculations, it appears that some buckyballs are capable of holding volumes of hydrogen so dense as to be almost metallic," said lead researcher Boris Yakobson, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice. The Department of Energy has devoted more than $1 billion to developing technologies for hydrogen-powered automobiles, including technologies to cost-effectively store hydrogen for use in cars. Comments: Leave a Reply:
Science News: Nanoguitar Photo by D. Carr and H. Craighead, Cornell. The world's smallest guitar is 10 micrometers long -- about the size of a single cell -- with six strings each about 50 nanometers, or 100 atoms, wide. Made by Cornell University researchers from crystalline silicon, it demonstrates a new technology for a new generation of electromechanical devices. The world's smallest guitar -- carved out of crystalline silicon and no larger than a single cell -- has been made at Cornell University to demonstrate a new technology that could have a variety of uses in fiber optics, displays, sensors and electronics. The "nanoguitar" -- made for fun to illustrate the technology -- is just one of several structures that Cornell researchers believe are the world's smallest silicon mechanical devices. "We have a new technology for building the smallest mechanical devices," said Harold G. The guitar has six strings, each string about 50 nanometers wide, the width of about 100 atoms. Photo by D. Photo by D.
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I, For One, Welcome Our New Computer Overlords Last night, IBM’s Watson computer won the final round of the three-day Man V. Machine Jeopardy! competition. At the beginning of the show, the humans were fierce, proving that they could buzz in faster than Watson, even though the machine knew the answer. Both human competitors, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, got it correct as well. Rutter: $21,600Jennings: $24,000Watson: $77,147 But although Watson won the competition, humans still prevailed. On Jeopardy! In this video from IBM, project researchers describe how a computer system like Watson could be capable of reading an unlimited number of documents, understanding the information and completely retaining it. Financial companies could use a computer like Watson to read and analyze news reports, market reports, trade publications, world events, blogs — you name it — and extract meaningful information for investors or business owners. I think Watson is agreat achievement of our time.
Institute of Nanotechnology thermodynamics - Cooling a cup of coffee with help of a spoon Stirring will win, hands down, every time. This is why physicists need to talk to chemists once in a while. As Georg correctly remarks, the latent heat of vaporization of water is enormous - but he's wrong about waving the spoon; stirring is the champion here. Why? It's similar to stirring iced tea. This kind of thing has a lot of applications to laboratory and industrial chemical processes, surface catalysis, petroleum cracking, yadda yadda. If you want an even faster way to cool a cup of coffee, here's a tip from my Granddad Parker: forget the spoon and saucer your coffee.
Small world by Ralph C. Merkle Xerox PARC 3333 Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto, CA 94304 merkle@xerox.com This is an extended web version of the article published in the Feb/Mar 1997 issue of MIT Technology Review. This version has greater technical detail and embedded links. Introduction Manufactured products are made from atoms. Since we first made stone tools and flint knives we have been arranging atoms in great thundering statistical heards by casting, milling, grinding, chipping and the like. That's changing. Build products with almost every atom in the right place. One warning: in contrast to the useage in this article some researchers use the word "nanotechnology" to refer to high resolution lithographic technology while others use it to refer to almost any research where some critical size is less than a micron (1,000 nanometers). There are two main issues in nanotechnology: What might molecular manufacturing systems look like? The advantages ofnanotechnology The advantages of positional control
The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World Let's face it, we really trust science. In fact, studies suggest that the vast majority of people will murder another human being, if a guy in a lab coat tells them it's OK. But surely in their insatiable curiosity and desire to put knowledge above all things, science would never, say, inadvertently set off a chain of events that lead to some sort of disaster that ended the world. Right? Well, here's five experiments that may prove us wrong. Recreating the Big Bang Scientists are kind of pissed that they weren't around when the Big Bang happened. The solution, science says, is to make it happen again. God, 1. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Well, first imagine an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust. So, Basically It's Like... Imagine you have a huge tanker truck parked outside a children's hospital. How Long Have We Got? Meet the Large Hadron Collider. This is not only the largest particle accelerator ever built, it's the largest anything ever built. Risk Level: 3 The Quantum Zeno Effect Risk Level: 5
How Nanotechnology Works There's an unprecedented multidisciplinary convergence of scientists dedicated to the study of a world so small, we can't see it -- even with a light microscope. That world is the field of nanotechnology, the realm of atoms and nanostructures. Nanotechnology is so new, no one is really sure what will come of it. Even so, predictions range from the ability to reproduce things like diamonds and food to the world being devoured by self-replicating nanorobots. In order to understand the unusual world of nanotechnology, we need to get an idea of the units of measure involved. A centimeter is one-hundredth of a meter, a millimeter is one-thousandth of a meter, and a micrometer is one-millionth of a meter, but all of these are still huge compared to the nanoscale. As small as a nanometer is, it's still large compared to the atomic scale. In a lecture called "Small Wonders:The World of Nanoscience," Nobel Prize winner Dr. In the next section, we'll learn more about our world on the nanoscale.
Human observation of dark energy may shorten the life span of the universe Could humanity's observation of dark energy have shortened the life span of the universe? The answer is "yes" according to the author of a new scientific paper that has recently come to light. Featured in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine, the subscriber-only story, "Has observing the universe hastened its end?", discusses the paper and its claims. Now, before I go further, I must point out that this work has not yet appeared in any peer-reviewed journal. Their official paper, titled "The Late Time Behavior of False Vacuum Decay: Possible Implications for Cosmology and Metastable Inflating States," is far from grandiose. To understand the potential implications of the calculations in the paper, one must start at the beginning—the Big Bang, and even before. This idea was challenged in the late 1990's by the discovery of dark energy. How does this relate to the work in the research article? How could something like this possibly happen?