News NASA Funds 'Miracle Polymer'

So how long before we see a trickle down into consumer based applications, eh? "Announcing the new and improved 2015 model year X-Connect PSU! Now with added Quantum Wire! (tm)"

This from Wired:

NASA will pay Rice University $11 million over the next four years to develop an experimental power cable made from carbon nanotubes, the agency announced Tuesday.

The cable, also known as a quantum wire, would theoretically conduct electricity up to 10 times better than traditional copper wire and weigh one-sixth as much.

Scientists believe quantum wires could make spacecraft much lighter and more powerful, and may lead to faster computers and other commercial applications.

Under the agreement with NASA, Rice's Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory is to produce a 1-meter-long prototype of quantum wire by 2010. To date, scientists have been able to produce wires no longer than several centimeters.​

More here

 

Having read the article I am intrigued...

Can anyone explain how a faster transfer of electricity be beneficial?

 

Having read the article, I'm not sure you understood it fully. I can't find where it says "transfer electricity faster" anywhere. I can see "faster processors" tho, which is always a good thing....

 

i suspect faster transfer (although i think the article means "conducts better" meaning with less resistance, rather than faster) of electricity is a cool side-effect, nasa would be mainly interested for strength and weight (all that copper in the wires on the shuttle sure do add up to a lot of weight, less weight == less fuel, so cheaper launches)

as for faster electricity conduction being good . i can see a theory here. if computing devices continue to get faster and faster, sooner or later that speed will reach an upper limit, namely, how fast the electricity can travel down the copper/silicon to get from one component to another. if you can increase the speed at which electrical signals are passed from one device to another, the devices can continue to get faster. from the article, it seems that carbon nanotubes are also more resistant to heat than traditional copper and silicon conductors. considering the massice heat output od processors (and other devices), a little extra heat-capacity can only be a good thing.

just a theory, before anyone flames it. a bit of idle conjecture.

 

well less resistance and a lighter wire is all good.

but for speed we will jut turn to optical rather than speed up the transfer of electrisity. As the speed of light is much faster than speed of electricity through wire.

 

whilst its true, light is faster than everything else, i havent yet seen a transistor that can run on light.... optical components are still in their infancy when compared to electrical components. electricity will be here for a long time to come.

 

Indeed that is true

But in due time we will have something relativly useful from optical

 

Can you even put electricity through fiber optics?

 

And that would be the problem is project is looking to address

 

no.

(and before some pedantic *insert word of choice* mentions that light can be used to generate electricity, yes, i know this, dont even go there.)

not in my lifetime.

 

whilst this is all fine and dandy using the nanotubes to make computers faster (which i see how it could be done), i have been informed that they are inherently expenisve to produce....like supidly expensive (why do you think buckminster fullerines have never been used as super conductors?)

 

Because buckminster fullerines arent super conductors at room temperature just like every other super conductor its just another allotrope of carbon

 

like... this expensive....

at $11 million a metre, and with a 4 year pre-order date, thats pretty expensive, almost equalling Dell PC's. but then, silicon based transistors used to be expensive, and now we can buy a gazillion on a chip for a few quid. the problem is currently with low yeilds, they are extremely difficult to produce. this grant is more of a "find a way to make them cheap and plentiful" rather than a "we want this, go make it" grant. if Nasa get what they want, at the end of the four years Rice will have made a nanotube production technology, tht can chrun them out fast and cheaply, with acceptable yeilds.

 

We already have teeny-tiny silicon chip based laser emittors, and atomic-scale photon driven logic gates (we handily copied some molecular structures from chlorophyl for some of those), and crystal latices that can slow down, speed up or "trap" and release laser-emitted photons depending on how their state is changed by another laser. I'll have to search some links but trust me Zidane, we are a lot further down this road than people think.

 

dont get me wrong, i know there is tremendous research going on the this feild, but i doubt we will see any practical applications of it soon. i suspect there will be applications for it, i recall reading recently that one of the biggest applications for it will be in routing technology (i.e., the big fibre backbone links, and having true optical routing systems to enable exponentially faster traffic flow, compared to the sluggish electrical systems we use today), but i doubt that we will see any "light-based desktop pc's" for a great many years to come. i know work is being done on it, but i dont expect to see the results of that work on my desk anytime soon. i think it will be "easier" to exchange the copper for carbon using existing technology, rather than exchanging the existing copper/silicon based technology to a light-transmition based technology. one is a relatively easy case of swapping one wire for another (i know, its an oversimplification), the other represents a pradigm shift in the fundemental system.