| Aerozord |
09-09-2011 12:23 PM |
So you say you want nanobots?
I'll give you nanobots!
ok technically someone else will, but that doesn't sound as dramatic.
Now normally I am very pessimistic about nanotechnology. Pretty much all examples I have seen of it are machines only in the most literal sense, you know machines in the same sense that an incline plane is a machine. What makes this different is this bit here
Quote:
To turn the spheres into motors, the group attached a Grubbs catalyst – a molecule that builds long chains of smaller molecules – to the silica side. When Sen drops his spheres into a solvent containing the chemical norbornene, the catalyst spins a polymer from molecules of the chemical. Eventually there are far more unpolymerised single molecules of norbornene around the gold side of the sphere than the silica side , creating an osmotic gradient, as fluids will always move from a region with lots of particles to a region with fewer particles. The solvent rushes toward the gold side of the sphere, causing the whole sphere to move.
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It is a functioning propulsion system with navigation. Now they still need to prove they can get it to run on different fuels and scientists will need to work on the device this thing moves.
But it does show that not only is the technology possible, but possible in our lifetime
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