next »

[perkiset]

This is pretty cool: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/video-mirage-effect-enables-demand-underwater-invisibility

Using carbon nanotubes, the inventors managed to use the mirage effect to hide something in plain site. Works best underwater, but the concept is still pretty cool.

[Bompa]

Holy shitski!

It's only a matter of time now.

Their name is derived from their long, hollow structure with the
walls formed by one-atom-thick sheets of carbon, called graphene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube

There's that word again: graphene.  I was just reading about a recent Nobel prize and
the article mentioned that last year's recipient was the dude that "invented" graphene, the
thinnest and strongest material know to man.

HTF, do they work with something that is just one atom thick?

How do they know it's only one atom thick?



"Stronger than steel and have electrical properties that rival the of the best semiconductors."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQAK4xxPGfM

It's out of this world!

Bomps

[perkiset]

I'm right with you Bomps. Thinking that small just makes my head hurt. I have no idea how they do that stuff, but remember an article I read probably 10-15 years ago about how IBM had coaxed individual atoms into the letters, I B M on a one-atom thick layer of something or other. Or perhaps it was a whole molecule, don't remember - but questions about that stuff are just way beyond me.

It's interesting to me as well, how a bulge in the thinking of certain topics seems to come about. It seems like every other week an invisibility SOMETHING has been coming out. So I'm with you - it's only a matter of time until some *really* wicked shit gets out.

[nop_90]

HTF, do they work with something that is just one atom thick?

How do they know it's only one atom thick?

Now they have actual instruments that can measure how thick something is, even if it is on the atomic scale.

But it can be done with "theory".
Basically get a bunch of marbles.
Figure out all the ways the marbles can touch each other, and the packing of the marbles remains the same through out the box.
If I remember correctly there are something like 40+ packing arrangements.

When you "shear" something like steel,a piece of rock etc. It will always "sheer" in the same way, no matter how small it is.
From that you can figure out what the "packing" arrangement of the atoms are.
From that you can calculate the size of each atom.

For molecules same idea, but more complex.

[perkiset]

Dood. I'm still trying to grok how most things I touch are actually made up of lots of empty space. Styrofoam? no problem. Steel? Not so much.

It's weird. In a graphical model in my head I can see it all. And in the the world around it makes a semblance of sense. It's the bridge between my theoretical head models and the feeling of steel in my hands that really messes me up.

[Bompa]

Dood. I'm still trying to grok how most things I touch are actually made up of lots of empty space. Styrofoam? no problem. Steel? Not so much.

lol I think about the "empty space" almost everyday. Seriously, it's a big part
of my meditations.  For me, it explains how everything can be in perfect
harmony at that level, while at our human level, we see all the human drama,
some of it good and some of it horrible.  It's just our limited vision. It's easy to
see that love can be in harmony, but what about murder, rape, and war?  Well,
at the level of atoms and all that empty space, all that stuff is in perfect
harmony no matter how we judge it.

 


Of course, it's not really empty space, there is something there or rather somenothing
there.  I think it's one of the nothings that the 18 mile long electron accelerator under
Europe is working on: to discover dark matter or is it called dark energy, I forget.

Most folks have little respect for "nothing", but everything is made mostly of nothing,
as perks mentioned.

When they figure out what the nothing (no-thing) is, they will really have some-thing to talk about.

[nop_90]

Most folks have little respect for "nothing", but everything is made mostly of nothing,
as perks mentioned.

The "balls" I described above, originally it was thought they where hard like "marbles".
But it is more like a basketball. Except its insides are filled with "nothing".

It is the linkages between "nothing" that is important.