Editor's Blog
At the recent Humanity Plus Summit, John Smart, who follows these things more closely than I do, affirmed my sense that there have been many incredible breakouts in nanotechnology in the last half year or so.
Here comes yet another sign of the coming of the one technology that can definitively (in theory) bring about abundance, and possibly immortality and space travel within the century, perhaps — in the case of abundance — within a decade or less from the time when we get a complete grasp on its use as a production technology.
So… another likely big bump. As h+ contributor AINEKO emailed me: Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) have now been made that are long enough to be woven into fibers and thus capable of being used for a vast number of commercial applications – this article predicts a revolution in materials coming out of this technology.
3 Comments
“Vast number of commercial applications”: Like dangling a quarter from a… something…? Very nice piece of scotch tape there though.
“Vast number of commercial applications” as in vast number of commercial applications. Dangling the quarter from a bar of metal (as it seems) is just a demo. The scotch looks like drafting tape.
Besides, the idea behind invention and innovation is, first of all, coming up with solutions for current problems and making a bunch of useless ones, from which, at least one, will be, at least, an inspiration for a ground-braking invention.
The link to the article is at the bottom of the post: “Better Nanotubes May Be on the Way”
It says “Success at building large amounts of inexpensive nanotubes opens the door for lighter, faster car frames; affordable space vehicles; and ultralightweight armor. Or on a smaller level, BNNTs could be used with pinpoint precision to attack cancer cells by sticking to tumors, absorbing neutrons from a targeted beam, and generating localized alpha radiation to kill the cancer.”
Hanging a quarter is significant when, previously, no one had been able to make enough of the stuff to even be seen, let alone woven into a fiber. Try to imagine you’re a caveman, and this is the first time you’ve ever seen a rope.