
Water found to be an ideal lubricant for nanomachines - jonbaer
http://phys.org/news/2013-08-ideal-lubricant-nanomachines.html
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toufka
Which is why 'nanotechnology' of the future will be (and of the past was) done
with proteins & nucleic acids packed by lipids. Want to build a nanobot? Build
it out of organic material. The rocks we build iPhones out of do not maintain
their useful properties at the nanometer scale.

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cheesylard
The computers of the future will just be blobs of flesh.

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tjic
Most of the computers of the present are.

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jloughry
The number of electronic computers in the world probably exceeded human
population around 1992--3, and currently has a 'birthrate' of 10^10 per year,
counting μcontrollers.

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jloughry
> '...the researchers noticed that the molecular motors moved with slightly
> different speeds, dependent on the bottle of solvent used in the
> experiment.'

This is why reproducibility is crucial in science. _Always look for
confounding factors._

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jmount
Cells found to be ideal nanomachines and field gets renamed to biology.

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Sharlin
Cells are probably just as ideal nanomachines as birds are ideal flying
machines. Yes, quite nicely optimized to do what they do, but for our purposes
787s, F-22s and S-92s are much more useful.

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schiffern
>787s, F-22s and S-92s are much more useful.

Well, we can say that _we 're using them_. Whether systems that consume
thousands of years of fossilized sunlight remain beneficial to society in the
long term remains to be seen. Personally I think our systems should be steady-
state instead of depletionary.

Just because we're doing it doesn't mean it's ideal.

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Dylan16807
Considering how much fighters cost we could renewably synthesize fuel for them
just fine.

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rolfvandekrol
Am I the only one that is irritated by the way the molecule is displayed in
the image? The 'nanomachine' is displayed at a vastly larger scale than the
water.

