466 replies to this topic

[Reno]

I don't really care about the cell phones. With the broadband limitations the telecoms are putting on the new g4 mobiles the faster speeds won't really mean much. Sure you can handle multiple downloads and huge programs which require tons of processing power, but what does it matter when you can only download 100mgs of data a month before you get kneecapped by AT&T.

[valkyrie_ice]

I don't really care about the cell phones. With the broadband limitations the telecoms are putting on the new g4 mobiles the faster speeds won't really mean much. Sure you can handle multiple downloads and huge programs which require tons of processing power, but what does it matter when you can only download 100mgs of data a month before you get kneecapped by AT&T.

Remember what I said about corporations desperately trying to hold on to obsolete business models? MIT is already working on a way for phones to act as independent nodes in an ad hoc network that will bypass the telecoms entirely, using ultrafast wireless with ranges of several kilometers. So buh bye towers. All it needs is to jump phone to phone till it reaches a wireless access point. G4's lifespan is limited, as is the teleco's restrictions.


REPRESSION DOESN'T WORK. Period. If the teleco's succeed in limiting the US, it doesn't stop someother country developing the Next Big Thing, and then selling it. The harder the status quo tries to force stagnation, the faster they turn the public against them. If they limit access, hacking will become the US's biggest hobby.


Study The Prohibition. Study the Drug War. All prohibiting did was take a minor problem, and turn it into the most popular pastime. Alcohol was not a household item prior to the Prohibition. You might have had wine, but never whiskey. Prohibition put alcohol into every home, and did more to empower the liquor industry than it did to stop drinking. The same holds true of drugs, and everything else "prohibited"

[Luna]

Can't people just use skype and small compatible computers instead of paying for silly phones anymore? ^^ My bf has skype phone, we speak free from anywhere.

[Reno]

That may be so val, but they will completely screw people in the short term. Those companies will drag out their own agenda's as long as they can keep it profitable. That means months if not years.

Can't people just use skype and small compatible computers instead of paying for silly phones anymore? ^^ My bf has skype phone, we speak free from anywhere.

Skype phones need the internet to work. If it's a mobile with just internet and skype your paying for the internet service. If you ever decide you want to start downloading music on that phone, and you just happen to break your carrier's limit by accident you'll get a fat bill in the mail.

[valkyrie_ice]

That may be so val, but they will completely screw people in the short term. Those companies will drag out their own agenda's as long as they can keep it profitable. That means months if not years.

Yes. Indeed it does. With the result that it will push development of competing technologies even faster and harder. Which speeds up the "obsolescence" of whatever tech is being "milked for every last drop"

I read a long time ago a book intended to be read by Business Execs. It had one enormous piece of advice for them, and it was written over 30 years ago.

"You have to be willing to kill your own cash cow."

When your cow's time is up, kill it and move on. Failure to do so means someone else will come along and do it for you. The harder you try to milk that cow past it's prime, the faster you ensure it's demise.

Yes, people will suffer. It can't be helped. And the more they suffer, the quicker the end of that "cash cow" being milked at the publics expense.

Same goes with the MPAA, the RIAA and all other anti-priracy groups trying to prevent the move to a new paradigm in content delivery. The nastier they get, the more draconian, the more they turn the public against them and the sooner we will be rid of them.

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 30 June 2010 - 06:09 PM.

[valkyrie_ice]

A couple of interesting videos:


How we perceive time as individuals and as a culture has enormous impact on our lives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg&feature=player_embedded



And this on the psychology of motivation, which explains why so many of us not only hate our jobs, but why so many companies are falling to pieces around us.

http://fora.tv/2010/01/27/Daniel_Pink_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us


when you watch them both together they do a great job of explaining how we are ALREADY in the process of adapting to the new informational age in which we will become individual knowledge creators instead of passive knowledge users.

[valkyrie_ice]

In the "I told you this was coming" department:

http://www.physorg.c...s197224539.html

Enlarge

Four different colours of quantum dots (photo: Raffaella Signorini, Padova University)

Imagine printing your own room lighting, lasers, or solar cells from inks you buy at the local newsagent. Jacek Jasieniak and his colleagues at CSIRO, the University of Melbourne and the University of Padua in Italy, have moved a step closer to such a future, by developing liquid inks based on quantum dots that can be used to print devices.

The first laser, invented 50 years ago in May 1960, was described as a solution looking for a problem. Today dozens of lasers are built into our computers, cars and homes. Soon, thanks to Jacek's work, we may have millions of tiny lasers working in our homes lighting our rooms and even acting as pixels in printable TV screens. The lasers could also be used as components in optical computers, electronics, sensors, as cheap laser pointers in a range of colours or even fashion accessories.



A schematic of a quantum dot lasing device (photo: Raffaella Signorini, Padova University)

Jacek's work is being presented for the first time in public through Fresh Science, a communication boot camp for early-career scientists held at the Melbourne Museum. Jacek was one of 16 winners from across Australia.

"Creating cheaper lasers relies heavily on progress in materials science," Jacek says. "At present, lasers are manufactured using expensive materials and production techniques. To make them more cost effective, we have focused on developing materials that are cheap, function well as lasers, and can be printed. Quantum dots meet all these requirements."

Quantum dots are made of semiconductor material grown as nanometre-sized crystals, around a millionth of a millimetre in diameter. The laser colour they produce can be selectively tuned by varying their size. To build a laser using quantum dots, you need to place them within a structure known as an optical cavity. This structure acts to amplify the light that is produced by the quantum dots to produce the laser. <br style="clear: both; ">

"Conventional lasers use large optical cavities which make them impossible to use for printable lasers. To develop true nanometre-sized lasers we have employed a special type of optical cavity that consists of a repeating nano-structured pattern on the surface of the material onto which the quantum dotsare printed. A major benefit of this nano-structured optical cavity is that it can be produced during the printing process by controlled indentation or scratching of the material's surface," Jacek says.



A prototype quantum lasing device (photo: Raffaella Signorini, Padova University)

"The tiny lasers generated using such an approach are highly efficient and can be adapted for numerous applications."

In addition to lasers, this research has significant implications for many other future technologies which use liquid inks to develop printable components. One highly promising example is the production of thin-film solar cells, a research area that Jacek is also currently involved in at CSIRO.

Can we say video wallpaper? Yes we can!

[Reno]

It'll be stuck in the patent doldrums for 10-20 years. When it does become available to the public it'll be super expensive. But, the implications are incredible. I definitely see this as one of the precursors to diamondoid assemblers.

Edited by Reno, 03 July 2010 - 09:57 AM.

[Luna]

Why will it be stuck in patenting for 10-20 years? (also, why 10-20? why not 8-12 or 10-14? 2 decades is like saying "I dunno")

[Reno]

source

Under current US law, the term of patent is 20 years from the earliest claimed filing date (which can be extended via Patent Term Adjustment and Patent Term Extension). For applications filed before June 8, 1995, the term is 17 years from the issue date or 20 years from the earliest claimed domestic priority date, the longer term applying.

I dunno, but........

I say 10-20 because it will be too expensive for the first 10 years for most companies to buy. Because of this proprietary nature of the technology very few will get the opportunity to use it. A lot of the time by the second decade of availability enough companies or individuals buy it at its original high price to lower the overall price to a level that smaller companies can handle. Low supply with high demand on a product only produced from one company means the price will be super high for the duration of the patent. After all the original creator needs to recoup their research and development cost.

All this means for you and me is that we won't have one in our basement for a couple of decades, that is; unless we work in a big corporation.

Edited by Reno, 03 July 2010 - 07:53 PM.

[valkyrie_ice]

source

Under current US law, the term of patent is 20 years from the earliest claimed filing date (which can be extended via Patent Term Adjustment and Patent Term Extension). For applications filed before June 8, 1995, the term is 17 years from the issue date or 20 years from the earliest claimed domestic priority date, the longer term applying.

I dunno, but........

I say 10-20 because it will be too expensive for the first 10 years for most companies to buy. Because of this proprietary nature of the technology very few will get the opportunity to use it. A lot of the time by the second decade of availability enough companies or individuals buy it at its original high price to lower the overall price to a level that smaller companies can handle. Low supply with high demand on a product only produced from one company means the price will be super high for the duration of the patent. After all the original creator needs to recoup their research and development cost.

All this means for you and me is that we won't have one in our basement for a couple of decades, that is; unless we work in a big corporation.

Were this the 1980's I would agree with you.

But this is a computer related advance. This is using a well known electronic device in a new way, not a radical new technological innovation. In five years there will be five dozen ways of doing the same thing, only different enough to have a different "patent"

Why? Because electronics firms WANT THIS TECH. It means an ADVANTAGE over the competition in any number of ways. From screens with a resolution so high it is higher rez than the human eye's, to screens as visible in full daylight as darkness, to monitors as thick as a sheet of paper, and eventually to VR contact lenses, they will pay to either buy it, or to duplicate it, and they will drive those costs down as fast as possible. The worse the economy gets, the harder they will strive to make products cheaper, both by shifting to printing based electronics, graphene based electronics, and QW based electronics and by driving manufacturers towards on demand customization for nearly all products.

This will either make it to market ASAP, or it will be leapfrogged past to another tech which can be marketed faster and cheaper.

[Luna]

There was just an announcement on imminst half a year ago (or a bit more?) about the 3D TV without glasses and it's on the market already.. I think sometimes being super expensive isn't worth it because it doesn't sell well.

[valkyrie_ice]

And three stories I find on NextBigFuture after the holiday:

http://nextbigfuture...conductive.html

Arxiv - A soft and flexible conductive polymer fiber has been made with a capacitance some 1000 times greater than an equivalent co-axial cable.

A novel, highly flexible, conductive polymer-based fiber with high electric capacitance is reported. In its crossection the fiber features a periodic sequence of hundreds of conductive and isolating plastic layers positioned around metallic electrodes. The fiber is fabricated using fiber drawing method, where a multi-material macroscopic preform is drawn into a sub-millimeter capacitor fiber in a single fabrication step. Several kilometres of fibers can be obtained from a single preform with fiber diameters ranging between 500um -1000um. A typical measured capacitance of our fibers is 60-100 nF/m and it is independent of the fiber diameter. For comparison, a coaxial cable of the comparable dimensions would have only ~0.06nF/m capacitance. Analysis of the fiber frequency response shows that in its simplest interrogation mode the capacitor fiber has a transverse resistance of 5 kOhm/L, which is inversely proportional to the fiber length L and is independent of the fiber diameter. Softness of the fiber materials, absence of liquid electrolyte in the fiber structure, ease of scalability to large production volumes, and high capacitance of our fibers make them interesting for various smart textile applications ranging from distributed sensing to energy storage

That's ELECTRONIC THREAD capable of being a variety of electronic devices from batteries to sensors.

http://nextbigfuture...r-graphene.html

Sub-5-nm Graphene Nanoribbons (GNRs) are desirable for high on/off ratio field-effect transistors at room temperature.

Nature Chemistry - Etching and narrowing of graphene from the edges

Large-scale graphene electronics requires lithographic patterning of narrow graphene nanoribbons for device integration. However, conventional lithography can only reliably pattern ∼20-nm-wide GNR arrays limited by lithography resolution, while sub-5-nm GNRs are desirable for high on/off ratio field-effect transistors at room temperature. Here, we devised a gas phase chemical approach to etch graphene from the edges without damaging its basal plane. The reaction involved high temperature oxidation of graphene in a slightly reducing environment in the presence of ammonia to afford controlled etch rate (≲ 1 nm min^−1). We fabricated ∼20–30-nm-wide graphene nanoribbon arrays lithographically, and used the gas phase etching chemistry to narrow the ribbons down to <10 nm. For the first time, a high on/off ratio up to ∼10^4 was achieved at room temperature for field-effect transistors built with sub-5-nm-wide graphene nanoribbon semiconductors derived from lithographic patterning and narrowing. Our controlled etching method opens up a chemical way to control the size of various graphene nano-structures beyond the capability of top-down lithography.

If you missed it, this describes how to make sub 5nm wide nanoribbons in graphene circuits using current lithographic technology and an additional gas phase step that carbon atoms to self connect to the graphene in a manner which narrows the resulting 20 to 30 nm sized etching down in a controllable manner.

In other words, the difference between a prototype graphene component chip, and a first gen commercially producible graphene computer chip.

And now for http://nextbigfuture...essures-to.html

Using super-high pressures Washington State University researchers have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy. It is the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy.

The researchers increased the pressure to more than a million atmospheres and forced the molecules to make tightly bound three-dimensional metallic "network structures." In the process, the huge amount of mechanical energy of compression was stored as chemical energy in the molecules' bonds.

Nature Chemistry - Two- and three-dimensional extended solids and metallization of compressed XeF2

If I understand this right, this is basically saying that in using such massive pressures, the structure that results is a massive source of stored electrical potential. A "Super" battery with a power density near that of a nuclear reaction.

[Luna]

But can you recharge it?

[valkyrie_ice]

@ Luna, No idea not discussed in the article.

But for further news on the Nanopower newsfront: http://nextbigfuture...nic-motors.html

Nature Nanotechnology - Light-driven nanoscale plasmonic motors

A plasmonic motor only 100 nanometers in size when illuminated with linearly polarized light can generate a torque sufficient to drive a micrometre-sized silica disk 4,000 times larger in volume.

In addition to easily being able to control the rotational speed and direction of this motor, we can create coherent arrays of such motors, which results in greater torque and faster rotation of the microdisk

"When multiple motors are integrated into one silica microdisk, the torques applied on the disk from the individual motors accumulate and the overall torque is increased," Liu says. "For example, a silica disk embedded with four plasmonic nanomotors attains the same rotation speed with only half of the laser power applied as a disk embedded with a single motor." The nanoscale size of this new light mill makes it ideal for powering NEMS, where the premium is on size rather than efficiency. Generating relatively powerful torque in a nanosized light mill also has numerous potential biological applications, including the controlled unwinding and rewinding of the DNA double helix. When these light mill motors are structurally optimized for efficiency, they could be useful for harvesting solar energy in nanoscopic systems.

They are tiny and yes, they look like Swastikas. Get over it. They take light rays and convert them directly to usable mechanical energy.

For nanobots, this is a viable powersource using long wavelength penetrating light. For the solar power industry, this could be the answer to cheap high efficiency solar, with layers of rotors absorbing specific lengths of light based on penetration depth into the cell. This could be the answer to "batteries" with the creation of items whose entire surface can be made as a solar cell without compromising other electronic functions.

This could be a game changer.

[niner]

And now for http://nextbigfuture...essures-to.html

Using super-high pressures Washington State University researchers have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy. It is the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy.

The researchers increased the pressure to more than a million atmospheres and forced the molecules to make tightly bound three-dimensional metallic "network structures." In the process, the huge amount of mechanical energy of compression was stored as chemical energy in the molecules' bonds.

Nature Chemistry - Two- and three-dimensional extended solids and metallization of compressed XeF2

If I understand this right, this is basically saying that in using such massive pressures, the structure that results is a massive source of stored electrical potential. A "Super" battery with a power density near that of a nuclear reaction.[/size]

I don't see how it could be a battery. How would the energy stored in this metallized XeF2 get converted to electricity? I could see it maybe being a high explosive, if it's stable enough at normal pressure. I suspect it's more likely to revert to its low energy form as soon as the pressure is removed.

[valkyrie_ice]

I don't see how it could be a battery. How would the energy stored in this metallized XeF2 get converted to electricity? I could see it maybe being a high explosive, if it's stable enough at normal pressure. I suspect it's more likely to revert to its low energy form as soon as the pressure is removed.

I'm curious as well, but it's described as a "battery"

[Elus]

A spring can be considered a battery. In fact, anything that stores potential energy can be considered a battery. If there is a way to increase (Recharge) and release (discharge) the potential energy efficiently in such a nanoscale device, it might be commercially viable.

[valkyrie_ice]

http://www.physorg.c...s198752426.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have created a new, relatively low-cost virtual reality device that allows users not only to see a 3D image, but 'feel' it, too.

The Heads-Up Virtual Reality device (or HUVR, pronounced 'hover') couples a consumer 3D HDTV panel with a half-silvered mirror to project any graphic image onto the user's hands and/or into the space surrounding them. With his or her head position tracked to generate the correct perspective view, the user maneuvers a touch-feedback (haptic) device to interact with the generated image, literally 'touching' the image's angles and contours as if it was a tangible three-dimensional object.

HUVR is ideal for tasks that require hand-eye coordination and is well-suited to training and education in structural and mechanical engineering, archaeology and medicine. The device could be used, for example, to visualize and manipulate a 3-D image of a person's brain taken from an MRI, or an artifact too fragile or precious to be physically handled.

3d display, reflected in a semi transparent mirror to enable you to see through the image. Imagine how much simpler this will be with a transparent screen.

[valkyrie_ice]

http://www.nanowerk....potid=17198.php

New solar-powered process removes CO₂ from the air and stores it as solid carbon(Nanowerk Spotlight)

The alarming rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led a numerous proposals on how to capture and store CO₂ in order to mitigate the damaging emissions from fossil fuels. Popular proposals, some already being tested on a large scale, involve carbon sequestration and subsequent storage in geological formations (geo-sequestration). Other ideas revolve around recycling captured carbon dioxide, for instance by converting it into hydrocarbons that can be re-used to make fuel or plastics. While these solutions would result in removing some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, their disadvantages are that most of them are expensive, technologically challenging, or energy-intensive.Researchers have now presented the first experimental evidence of a new solar conversion process, combining electronic and chemical pathways, for carbon dioxide capture in what could become a revolutionary approach to remove and recycle CO₂ from the atmosphere on a large scale. Rather than trying to sequester or hide away excess carbon dioxide, this new method allows it to be stored as solid carbon or converted in useful products ranging from plastics to synthetic jet fuel.

and here you have why I have NEVER been worried about the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. I predicted this sort of "carbon mining of the atmosphere" the moment I read about "diamonoid nanotechnology", and long before AGW became the "in thing" in protest movements. I remember all too well that back then the "man made horror" was "acid rain" and I saw then that the atmosphere made a perfect "mine" for carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and numerous other "elements" which were released as various forms of pollution. Almost every "pollutant" contains elements that are useful in different ways, even if in their "current" forms they are useless. CFCs might harm the ozone, but broken apart into individual atoms, it's a "goldmine" of useful atoms.

I can't recall how often I have said the fastest way to eliminate "pollution" and it's negative environmental effects is to speed up technological development, not slow it down. The "pollution" of today is the "valuable resource" of tomorrow's technology, and Carbon is the A#1 component of the majority of pollution over the last century, and the A#1 component of the upcoming "carbon revolution" in technology. Almost every form of "ecological damage" we have done over the last hundred years is reversible with the control of matter on the atomic level.

So, if you REALLY want to save the planet, encourage technological innovation. You'll get a lot farther, a lot faster, than you will protesting current technology.

[valkyrie_ice]

http://www.physorg.c...s198933750.html

In the issue of Nature published on 22 July 2010, scientists led by Roman Fasel, Senior Scientist at Empa and Professor for Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bern, and Klaus Müllen, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, describe a simple surface-based chemical method for creating such narrow ribbons without the need for cutting, in a bottom-up approach, i.e. from the basic building blocks. To achieve this, they spread specifically designed halogen-substituted monomers on gold and silver surfaces under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. These are linked to form polyphenylene chains in a first reaction step. <br style="clear: both; ">

In a second reaction step, initiated by slightly higher heating, hydrogen atoms are removed and the chains interconnected to form a planar, aromatic graphene system. This results in graphene ribbons of the thickness of a single atom that are one nanometre wide and up to 50 nm in length. The graphene ribbons are thus so narrow that they exhibit an electronic band gap and therefore, as is the case with silicon, possess switching properties - a first and important step for the shift from silicon microelectronics to graphene nanoelectronics. And if this wasn't enough, graphene ribbons with different spatial structures (either straight lines or with zig-zag shapes) are created, depending on which molecular monomers the scientists used.

And yet another step towards THz graphene computers. How many does that make just this year alone?

[Reno]

Even the first Graphene based consumer computers will blow the current speed standards out of the water. I mean, talk about a computer revolution. The current snapdragon processor running these motorola droids runs at 1Ghz. Graphene is suppose to conduct 10,000x better then copper. We're talking about smart phones in the hundred ghz range if not more. That instantly breaks the first world's grip on education.

Just about everyone in the world now has a cell phone. Imagine the world in 10 years when everyone has a 100ghz cellphone with a sunglasses HUD display. Children in Africa can be getting their education alongside children anywhere in the world in an online classroom. Even now kids use their cellphones more than their computers. They text more than they talk.

[valkyrie_ice]

If you haven't read them, I recommend going back a few pages in the thread to where I reposted the articles I wrote on VR for H+ magazine. I discussed exactly that XDDD


I have a new article coming up soon on the H+ magazine reboot, on Quantum Dots being used as combination camera/displays, giving us the ability to control the visual appearance of any item covered in them.


So imagine that HUD display being a thin sheet of Quantum Dots, the entire surface as much a camera as a display with lidar environment mapping capabilities, as well as low light, IR/UV, Magnification, telescopic zoom, as well as AR/VR overlays. All in a resolution far higher than the human eye could detect individual pixels.

[Reno]

I'm sorry if I tend to repeat you or myself. I've read everything in this thread, but there's so much information all of which tends to come back around to the same conclusion. e.g. -- There are going to be a truck load of changes coming real soon.

http://www.nanowerk....potid=17198.php

While these solutions would result in removing some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, their disadvantages are that most of them are expensive, technologically challenging, or energy-intensive.

and here you have why I have NEVER been worried about the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. I predicted this sort of "carbon mining of the atmosphere" the moment I read about "diamonoid nanotechnology", and long before AGW became the "in thing" in protest movements. I remember all too well that back then the "man made horror" was "acid rain" and I saw then that the atmosphere made a perfect "mine" for carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and numerous other "elements" which were released as various forms of pollution. Almost every "pollutant" contains elements that are useful in different ways, even if in their "current" forms they are useless. CFCs might harm the ozone, but broken apart into individual atoms, it's a "goldmine" of useful atoms.

I know what you mean. Acid rain though is one of those car emission problems. You get enough tourist buzzing around in their rented cars and you'll get smog, which will end up as acid rain. You really use to see it in places like Rome where everything is made of marble. Before they brought all the big sculptures inside the acid rain was literally turning the sculptures to chalk. It was really a pretty sad situation.

I got really excited when I saw the use of allege bio reactors being installed in power plant facilities. They're taking that CO2 produced from the refining procedure and letting the allege eat it up and then refining the allege right into diesel. Keeps all those thousands of tons of carbon from floating up into the atmosphere.

Edited by Reno, 21 July 2010 - 09:05 PM.

[niner]

Even the first Graphene based consumer computers will blow the current speed standards out of the water. I mean, talk about a computer revolution. The current snapdragon processor running these motorola droids runs at 1Ghz. Graphene is suppose to conduct 10,000x better then copper. We're talking about smart phones in the hundred ghz range if not more. That instantly breaks the first world's grip on education.

Just about everyone in the world now has a cell phone. Imagine the world in 10 years when everyone has a 100ghz cellphone with a sunglasses HUD display. Children in Africa can be getting their education alongside children anywhere in the world in an online classroom. Even now kids use their cellphones more than their computers. They text more than they talk.

Graphene phones will be great, but I don't see how they break the first world's grip, such that it is, on education. Is online education limited by handset processing speed? I'd think it was limited mainly by lack of content, cost of transmission, and small size of handheld devices. Along with the cost of transmission, think what the cost of the newest handheld technology will be. Children in Africa probably won't be the first people getting these. I don't yet see anything about graphene that will push its cost wildly below that of silicon, except perhaps in a dollar per GHz sense, which while not yet quantified, is admittedly important.

[niner]

and here you have why I have NEVER been worried about the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. I predicted this sort of "carbon mining of the atmosphere" the moment I read about "diamonoid nanotechnology", and long before AGW became the "in thing" in protest movements. I remember all too well that back then the "man made horror" was "acid rain" and I saw then that the atmosphere made a perfect "mine" for carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, and numerous other "elements" which were released as various forms of pollution. Almost every "pollutant" contains elements that are useful in different ways, even if in their "current" forms they are useless. CFCs might harm the ozone, but broken apart into individual atoms, it's a "goldmine" of useful atoms.

I can't recall how often I have said the fastest way to eliminate "pollution" and it's negative environmental effects is to speed up technological development, not slow it down. The "pollution" of today is the "valuable resource" of tomorrow's technology, and Carbon is the A#1 component of the majority of pollution over the last century, and the A#1 component of the upcoming "carbon revolution" in technology. Almost every form of "ecological damage" we have done over the last hundred years is reversible with the control of matter on the atomic level.

So, if you REALLY want to save the planet, encourage technological innovation. You'll get a lot farther, a lot faster, than you will protesting current technology.

I agree that technological innovation will do more to improve the environment than anything else, long term. It doesn't always come about quick enough that we can let the coal industry completely off the hook, though. Acid rain and CFCs, both of which were serious problems, were not cured by mining the pollutants back out of the air. They were cured by installing scrubbers in coal burning plants, with the coal industry kicking and screaming all the way, and in the case of CFCs, by world agreement (The Montreal Protocol) to stop using them. We already have proven solar powered devices that extract CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to useful products, and these devices are free. They are called green plants. Plants are pretty efficient at doing this, too. Yet we would have to cover substantial amounts of land with them if they are to have a significant impact on CO2 concentrations. Because plants are already running at a high fraction of theoretical max efficiency, it will not be possible to come up with the orders of magnitude improvement in efficiency that would be needed to make artificial devices like this be cost effective. Once CO2 is dispersed in the atmosphere, not only are you paying a huge energetic (enthalpy) cost to chemically reduce it, but you are also fighting a gigantic entropy term. Nature is conspiring against you in two different ways here. It will always be cheaper to just put less junk in the air in the first place. This could involve capturing it at the source, though the cost of carbon capture schemes has made them prohibitive to date. Better to just stop using coal, which is a horrible, toxic, 19th century fuel.

[Reno]

Graphene phones will be great, but I don't see how they break the first world's grip, such that it is, on education. Is online education limited by handset processing speed? I'd think it was limited mainly by lack of content, cost of transmission, and small size of handheld devices. Along with the cost of transmission, think what the cost of the newest handheld technology will be. Children in Africa probably won't be the first people getting these. I don't yet see anything about graphene that will push its cost wildly below that of silicon, except perhaps in a dollar per GHz sense, which while not yet quantified, is admittedly important.

It's processed carbon... --- cheap

The cost of transmission is limited by the cost and lack of transoceanic communication cables going to africa. I imagine there will only be more cables laid down in the next 10 years when CNT based cables becomes the new cheap nexgen communications medium. The same thing goes for graphine phones. Like all things electronic, it'll be expensive at first and come down in price rather quickly. The $300 smart phones of today will be in some teenager's hands tomorrow. Don't be surprised when they're in the hands of an african bushmen the day after.

[niner]

It's processed carbon... --- cheap

Have you priced carbon fiber lately?

Silicon processors are just processed sand.

[valkyrie_ice]

It's processed carbon... --- cheap

Have you priced carbon fiber lately?

Silicon processors are just processed sand.

Have you been following any of the numerous posts I've made which are indicating that graphene can not only be made as easily as silicon chips, but since they DO NOT REQUIRE RARE EARTH ELEMENTS, can be produced more cheaply?


Unlike silicon, which for many uses requires various rare elements, like silver, gold, indium tin oxide, etc. Graphene circuits can be made with ONE element, carbon.

[niner]

It's processed carbon... --- cheap

Have you priced carbon fiber lately?

Silicon processors are just processed sand.

Have you been following any of the numerous posts I've made which are indicating that graphene can not only be made as easily as silicon chips, but since they DO NOT REQUIRE RARE EARTH ELEMENTS, can be produced more cheaply?


Unlike silicon, which for many uses requires various rare elements, like silver, gold, indium tin oxide, etc. Graphene circuits can be made with ONE element, carbon.

The rarity of the elements doesn't really contribute that much to the cost of a chip, because one chip contains such a nanoscopic amount of the expensive elements. The cost comes from all the complex processing steps and expensive machinery that makes up a modern chip fab. If it turns out to be the case that graphene does away with a lot of that complexity, that would be great. It might well get rid of some of it, but it might bring in a few new ones of its own. Are we far enough along in the development of graphene electronics to really make price predictions?