Eric Drexler must be a happy chap
Apr. 7th, 2007 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysWe were supposed to be getting a guest speaker for the Phoenix meeting this coming Wednesday. A nanotechnology specialist from GNS was going to chat to us about the latest developments in the field. There has been a big international conference on the subject recently so he was going to be able to report developments from that. The problem is that the guy has cancelled on us. With only a few days to find something else and with the meeting notice already out there, we are going to try to fill the gap ourselves.
I have therefore been trawling the popular science sites for recent articles on nanotechnology. There are really a lot of them. Despite getting regular feeds from some of these sites, I was still surprised by just how many important pieces of work have been published recently. A lot of these are about some of the fundamental building blocks. There are things like nano-tubes that can be altered in size, single layer acoustic drum skins that could "weigh" a single atom, nano wheels with an axle that is just 4 atoms long and which actually roll, a nanowire based power source that derives power from ultrasound vibrations, microscopes that can discern different elements, 30nm wide sensors that can detect specific proteins and nano scale structures that can use light for computing.
These were all announced in the last couple of months. I have this feeling that the ground work for another fundamental change in the world is being laid. Interesting that all this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the accidental discovery of fullerenes - the basic building blocks of pretty much all this work. Lets hear it for serendipity.
I have therefore been trawling the popular science sites for recent articles on nanotechnology. There are really a lot of them. Despite getting regular feeds from some of these sites, I was still surprised by just how many important pieces of work have been published recently. A lot of these are about some of the fundamental building blocks. There are things like nano-tubes that can be altered in size, single layer acoustic drum skins that could "weigh" a single atom, nano wheels with an axle that is just 4 atoms long and which actually roll, a nanowire based power source that derives power from ultrasound vibrations, microscopes that can discern different elements, 30nm wide sensors that can detect specific proteins and nano scale structures that can use light for computing.
These were all announced in the last couple of months. I have this feeling that the ground work for another fundamental change in the world is being laid. Interesting that all this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the accidental discovery of fullerenes - the basic building blocks of pretty much all this work. Lets hear it for serendipity.