As a nano engineer, youre 100% right - with the added slowdowns of safety research. Many of these particles are entirely different beasts on a nanoscale, an example commonly used is microscopic copper is just copper, nanoscopic will have you dead within the hour if inhaled (dont quote my timeframe on that one).
That being said many cool materials are still coming out, just aren’t yet at that commercialized availability level yet.
For example graphene has the potential to replace copper -at least in high performance applications- cause its got some fucked levels of conductivity
Edit for some more examples cause I’m a nerd about this stuff:
Carbon nanotubes make vantablack, the material that can absorb 99.9% of visible light (not that exciting beyond a party trick commercially, but in areas trying to minimize electromagnetic noise this is revolutionary).
Silver nanoparticles have been shown to have passive disinfectant properties, leading to the possibility of a cloth that you could run dirty water through and make it drinkable.
And my favorite being we’ve already created the carbon based structures (can’t recall if it was nanotubes specifically) with theoretically high enough tensile strength that if made a couple kilometers long could be used to lasso an asteroid and create a space elavator
About the space elevator thing, even with mystical materials, it’d need to be 110.5km long with a counterweight. Assuming it could work at all on Earth (it can’t, but let’s assume it can) the amount of material required would be insane. I can’t find where anyone has calculated the mass of carbon nanotubes needed, but I’m sure it’s out there.
Assuming the material issue is solved somehow though, it’s still going through the atmosphere. How does it handle those forces? It’s untenable to have on Earth. It’s possible on the moon, which would also require much less material since it has less mass.
For sure, and thats generally the goal of any engieering - the biggest question is what error are we measuring? Something like vesting a fully autonomous drone, not even close; tubes in a funny shape that trap all light, were already there 99.9%
As a nano engineer, youre 100% right - with the added slowdowns of safety research. Many of these particles are entirely different beasts on a nanoscale, an example commonly used is microscopic copper is just copper, nanoscopic will have you dead within the hour if inhaled (dont quote my timeframe on that one).
That being said many cool materials are still coming out, just aren’t yet at that commercialized availability level yet.
For example graphene has the potential to replace copper -at least in high performance applications- cause its got some fucked levels of conductivity
Edit for some more examples cause I’m a nerd about this stuff:
Carbon nanotubes make vantablack, the material that can absorb 99.9% of visible light (not that exciting beyond a party trick commercially, but in areas trying to minimize electromagnetic noise this is revolutionary).
Silver nanoparticles have been shown to have passive disinfectant properties, leading to the possibility of a cloth that you could run dirty water through and make it drinkable.
And my favorite being we’ve already created the carbon based structures (can’t recall if it was nanotubes specifically) with theoretically high enough tensile strength that if made a couple kilometers long could be used to lasso an asteroid and create a space elavator
About the space elevator thing, even with mystical materials, it’d need to be 110.5km long with a counterweight. Assuming it could work at all on Earth (it can’t, but let’s assume it can) the amount of material required would be insane. I can’t find where anyone has calculated the mass of carbon nanotubes needed, but I’m sure it’s out there.
Assuming the material issue is solved somehow though, it’s still going through the atmosphere. How does it handle those forces? It’s untenable to have on Earth. It’s possible on the moon, which would also require much less material since it has less mass.
So what about APM? That’s the thing I’m waiting for :-)
What’s apm?
Shit you and us all.
Worst part of nano is that error is intristic, how much error is where the fun comes in
In the maths in Engines of creation, the errors were supposedly so small they were negligible.
For sure, and thats generally the goal of any engieering - the biggest question is what error are we measuring? Something like vesting a fully autonomous drone, not even close; tubes in a funny shape that trap all light, were already there 99.9%
IIRC it was around one misplaced atom every century for some throughput. It’s like digital vs analog or so I understood it.