Bopping with Niall JP O'Leary

Niall O'Leary insists on sharing his hare-brained notions and hysterical emotions. Personal obsessions with cinema, literature, food and alcohol feature regularly.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

What can't Carbon Nanotubes do?

BBC Image of nanotubes
A short while ago scientists revealed that they had perfected the blackest material known to man (99.99% non-reflective, I think they said). What was this mysterious substance? Bush's heart? Bertie's underwear? No, a new development of the high-strength, tiny girth carbon nanotubes. On that 'Visions of the Future' programme a few months back these tubes were going to be the basis for an elevator into space. Here they were making blackness. Well, now scientists have truly excelled themselves. Harnessing the full power of the tube, they have brought it together with a quartz wafer to produce the world's first fully functional FM/AM carbon nanotube radio! With a nanotube 10000 times smaller than a human hair it's the smallest radio ever, so small in fact that apparently "you can put a tracking collar on a bacterium". I have seen the future and it is now and it is black!

Now if only they'd make them into curtain hooks.

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