Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
A research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing has developed a fibre they say is so strong it could even be used to build an elevator to space.
They say just 1 cubic centimetre of the fibre – made from carbon nanotube – would not break under the weight of 160 elephants, or more than 800 tonnes. And that tiny piece of cable would weigh just 1.6 grams.
"This is a breakthrough," said Wang Changqing, a scientist at a key space elevator research centre at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian who was not involved in the Tsinghua study.
The Chinese team has developed a new "ultralong" fibre from carbon nanotube that they say is stronger than anything seen before, patenting the technology and publishing part of their research in the journal Nature Nanotechnology earlier this year.
"It is evident that the tensile strength of carbon nanotube bundles is at least 9 to 45 times that of other materials," the team said in the paper.
But hey, it's China, please consume with a medium-sized boulder of salt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 26 2018, @04:54PM (3 children)
Look at this: "Using carbon nanotube flywheels, the mechanical battery would have 40 times the energy density of a lithium battery, according to Wei. That would mean a car like a Tesla Model S could travel for 16,000km in one charge – the distance from London to Sydney."
But if that nanotube did break could be deadly
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 26 2018, @05:40PM (2 children)
Thatsa nice car bomb, though.
It's possible that a newer battery technology won't be more flammable [sciencefriday.com] than today's Li-Ions. But a magnetically levitated flywheel in a vacuum chamber in a car? I guess you just need to make the chamber strong... make it out of carbon nanotube steel?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @09:56AM (1 child)
My thought when thinking about any slope above 2%. Good luck with the massive gyroscopic forces, because unless triaxial flywheels are used these would tip over the car and boom!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 27 2018, @10:23AM
There's an easy way around gyroscopic forces: Have two flywheels rotating at the same speed in opposite directions. You still have internal forces in the flywheels, of course, but no net force on the system as a whole.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by linkdude64 on Friday October 26 2018, @05:05PM (15 children)
Is to just take it, flat out, plain and simple. When they complain to our courts that it's intellectual property infringement, we can reply that we've outsourced our legal department to China, so expect Chinese levels of service in that regard.
I'd bet a hundred bucks it was stolen from US aerospace tech who wished to keep it proprietary, anyway.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday October 26 2018, @05:32PM (2 children)
We gave China preferential trade treatment so they could catch up with the modern world, we trained and educated all of their elite so they could be just as smart as us, we looked the other way when they took our ideas/intellectual property so they could produce everything the same as us, now they have more trained people with newer and better equipment and they can outpace us in discoveries. We handed them the century on a silver platter.
Now the chickens are going to come home to roost and we will need to deal with the Chinese century and whatever comes with it. Genocide/sterilization/subjugation of the peoples of Africa, SE Asia, the Pacific Islands just like they did to Tibet and Muslims in China. Extreme surveillance and personal credit scores to shut down dissidents and threats to the oligarchy. We created the greatest totalitarian powerhouse in human history, and they are just hitting their stride.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Troll) by linkdude64 on Friday October 26 2018, @10:07PM (1 child)
The next few years will certainly be definitive for the future of humanity. Either China will be suppressed now, or become a much more difficult force to deal with, later. I personally think someone like Trump is the only sort of leader we can have if we want to stand a chance - not just him, personally, but whom he is appointing to positions dealing with trade policy. Another Obama will simply capitulate at every opportunity as happened for 8 years. I am not sure how closely you have followed this administration's trade dealings, but even if you disagree with Trump for logical or illogical reasons, the oncoming trade war with China, and the people who he has put into the positions to orchestrate it, are nothing short of competent and capable Americans acting in their own best interests, which are the best interests of the country. It is more heartening than anything I have seen come out of mainstream politics in years. It is not too late for them to be effectively neutered - they have no military might to speak of, and until they completely secure Africa, which they have yet to, proxy wars would still be the likely way of routing them from the continent. If only Europe were not committing cultural, political, and economic suicide, they would be more useful in working toward that objective. I pray the EU is destroyed and each individual country can begin realizing again that self-interest is healthy.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday October 26 2018, @11:01PM
I have been trying to follow it pretty close. Peter Nevaro seems to be on top of things, he's also a Democrat, not that it matters as long as the job gets done. I follow several of the guys who write about Chinese foreign policy, and they say that the trade wars so far have already ruined China's plan of being self-sufficient by 2030.
Have any good sources, I would like to read more but hard finding sources these days.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday October 26 2018, @06:12PM
You know they published their materials and methods and if you had the ability to synthesize the individual nanotubes they as inputs use you could make this kind of bundle yourself, right?
Unless I'm misunderstanding the jargon, when you look at what the researchers are doing here it's:
1. tying a bundle by "traditional" means
2. pulling it taut
3. cutting it with fucking scissors, which somehow releases the weaker connections inside
4. Stretching and slacking the strand repeatedly
Again, I could easily have misunderstood, I'm no nanotechnologist, but if you really wanted to steal this you could right fucking now
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 26 2018, @08:22PM (1 child)
Why would they bother complaining? If it's any good, the US would just end up outsourcing it to them anyhow.
Then you'd be $100 poorer. Those guys been publishing papers working towards this for years: https://www.natureindex.com/institution-outputs/china/tsinghua-university/513906ba34d6b65e6a000049/Chemistry/Nature%20Nanotechnology [natureindex.com] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-018-0141-z [nature.com]
Fact of the matter is, the Chinese been doing well in the materiel sciences for at least a good decade now. Look up the Nature's Acknowledgment section and the grants. Their government is clearly pouring public money into this. When was the last time you've seen a US government grant for anything of the sort? There's just no helping it: If you don't invest in progress you're left behind.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Friday October 26 2018, @10:11PM
I sit corrected.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday October 27 2018, @12:33AM (7 children)
Japan did the same during '60-'70 - took western technology, reversed engineered it, then optimised the crap out of it and brought the quality and reliability of the product well above the ones they started with.
Leting aside color TVes and cars and industrial robots, take Seiko watches [wikipedia.org]:
See also the Quartz crisis [wikipedia.org]
---
On another line: wake up, guys.
There used to be a video of Neil deGrasse Tyson presenting the state of scientific research in America [openculture.com]. It showed that the published science discoveries in America per capita started to decline around 2000 It also showed that the rate of growth in new discoveries was much higher in other countries.
China spent $279 billion on R&D in 2017 [cnbc.com] and is poised to overtake US soon [eos.org] (some reports indicating end of 2018 [thehindubusinessline.com]).
.
Meanwhile Neil deGrasse Tyson can still do nothing but to decry the "progress" brought in by antivaxers and climate change "skeptics" and "teach the controversy" [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday October 27 2018, @01:33AM (6 children)
How about this solution. The US has more livable territory than China and more resources. Open free immigration and accept say a billion people. Living standards will drastically drop which will make folks work harder again. In a generation or two we will be back ruling the world. Yes, a police dictatorship would be needed, but we are almost there anyway.
Perhaps this is what they plan?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday October 27 2018, @01:53AM (5 children)
"They" who?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @02:53AM (1 child)
> "They" who?
Hey, get with the program, conspiracy theory doesn't require any basis in reality, so "they" is a perfectly good name for "them".
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Saturday October 27 2018, @04:23AM
Sorry, I'm still lingering in the "The Man" stage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday October 27 2018, @05:12AM (1 child)
What's the difference? I mean do you have a better proposal? Short of nuking China, of course. One can't seriously propose to have 5 times higher productivity; not for long anyway.
There is a third way - the old British idea - to split China into a number of coastal republics and poor interior, but my gut feeling they - Chinese commies I mean - would resist.
So, which conspiracy theory sounds better?
My personal opinion is that the US should stop "solving this problem" as well as "other problems" out there and quit being an empire and become a normal country. Great, but not the first. We are too small to be the first.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday October 27 2018, @06:54AM
The difference is the crocodiles are more green?
I just asked the question. Let me rephrase: who are "they" in "Perhaps this is what they plan?".
And all I got a wall of text that doesn't makes sense to me in the context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 27 2018, @06:49AM
Well, They of course. You don't know Them? Of course you don't; that's the point of a conspiracy, right? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday October 27 2018, @01:18AM
China currently files more patent applications than the US. Some statistics can be found here http://www.wipo.int/ipstats/en/statistics/country_profile/profile.jsp?code=CN [wipo.int]
American residents still file more international patents. However, patents that are filed by Chinese nationals worldwide beat even this number.
We play the role of England when the US totally screwed it; accept it and move on.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 26 2018, @05:13PM
My Fake News sense is tingling...
(Score: 2) by CZB on Friday October 26 2018, @05:20PM (9 children)
I like how at the end of the article the mention a separate nanotube experiment where they made the world's longest so far: 70 cm.
Theoretical advances are great, but manufacturing is where its at.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 26 2018, @05:30PM (7 children)
Agreed. Just how manyy 70 cm tubes does it take to reach LEO? Of course, LEO isn't where you need to be, either. The tubes have to reach beyond that, to wherever the counterweight is positioned. That's a helluva lot of 70 cm tubes, placed end to end.
When they can spin a tube miles long, then we can talk. At that point, we can consider just how many parallel tubes it's going to take to bear the weight. 160 tonnes, or 160 tons, isn't even a decent start.
How do you join fibers at the ends, anyway? Superglue? Do we need each individual fiber to reach all the way out to our counterweight? Or, do we weave many boatloads into some kind of mat? Questions, questions, questions - and no one is offering very many answers.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday October 26 2018, @06:17PM (5 children)
As far as I understand, you simply don't - not at that level anyway. Once a bunch of strands are together in the form of a rope, you can join the ropes using knots, but doing that at the level of monofilament isn't such a great plan. One of the advantages of synthetic fibres over natural ones is the relative ease of producing extremely long filaments.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 26 2018, @06:31PM (4 children)
With most knots, you lower the breaking point of your rope anyway.
https://scoutpioneering.com/tag/how-much-knots-weaken-rope/ [scoutpioneering.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday October 26 2018, @09:27PM (3 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @01:24AM (2 children)
In composite materials where large parts have to take tension, it's common for fibers to be bonded side-by-side (in shear) with a minimum of the adhesive (epoxy, or other).
Nothing says that the space elevator needs a flexible tether.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 27 2018, @06:55AM (1 child)
If it isn't flexible, how do you store it in a launch vehicle in order to get it up to space, in order to start building the space elevator?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 27 2018, @11:56AM
To answer *only* the question you asked: Make the fiber in space, and lower it to the ground. Thus, a rigid fiber cable need never be packed into a launch vehicle. Note that I have not attempted to explain where the materials for the fiber come from, or when or how the fiber fabrication plant came into being.
I suspect though, that the more rigid the elevator is, the more susceptible to damage it would be. It's going to have to flex. The far end, at the counterweight, won't be absolutely motionless, after all. The moon will influence it's orbit, as well as the sun, and to a far lesser degree, each of the nearer planets.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 27 2018, @04:25PM
Perhaps what you need to do is braid the nanotubes with lots of overlap in the bundle. I'm not sure what the inter-nanotube friction would be, though. Still, bundles of braided nanotubes, with each braid several miles long should work. This would need to be tested, of course. If you need to embed the stuff in a matrix you'll impair the strength vs. weight. But perhaps the outside of the nanotubes could have some molecules attached that would create sufficient friction to avoid the need for a matrix.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday October 26 2018, @06:22PM
Yeah, but this team is making bundles of nanotubes. Which, as they note in their paper, are typically far weaker than individual nanotubes due to fragmentation and van der waals interaction, but they've found a way to mitigate that weakness somewhat.
If this technique can be replicated and proven, then scaling it should be a much easier problem than scaling the nanotubes themselves.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday October 26 2018, @05:34PM
I suggest for the next book club we read Pillar to the Sky by William R. Forstchen.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday October 27 2018, @12:20AM (1 child)
For a functioning space elevator you need a cable that reaches from Beijing to Argentina, and ideally you'll manufacture it in space and lower it down instead of trying to haul it up.
Ignoring that, it's still an awesome achievement. Way to go China!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @03:03AM
For anyone stuck thinking in US Customary and comparing with more conventional materials:
Down inside tfl it gets past the hype and quotes this new fiber as 80 gigapascal material
1 gigapascal is close to 140,000 psi (pounds/inch^2)
140,000 psi is the nominal yield strength of 4130 "chrome-moly" alloy steel, commonly used in welded steel tubing structures
Thus, on a cross section area basis the nanotube material is ~80 times stronger than a good (but not great) quality steel. On a strength/mass basis it is much better, since it will be lighter for a given volume of material.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @02:07PM (1 child)
How are those elevators are supposed to be repaired, though?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 28 2018, @12:08AM
nanotube-doped duct tape.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2018, @09:03PM (1 child)
You either publish (scientific journal) or patent it. Either it is free knowledge for all or not.
You want to patent it? Fine. But you will not have the prestige to have a publication in nature.
But of course this is typical communistic behavior. Communism: the opposite to democracy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 28 2018, @05:46PM
Rather than casting this as a conflict between communism and democracy, I would describe the act of publication as an act of community - not communism, rather COMMUNITY.
Democracy, socialism, communism all spring from a desire to create and maintain a sense of community. They differ in how to handle the power that accrues. We're still figuring that out, as a species. There may be no right answer - so much derives from the characteristics of the specific individuals in any given circumstance.
We get lost in the emotional reactions inflicted by the sequences of vowels and consonants we utter at one another and lose sight of the underlying concepts. Many of us never even see the underlying concepts in the first place, for lack of education or opportunities to reflect.
And so I repeat: what you see is a sense of responsibility to and participation in the world scientific community. The exchange of ideas, in reputable journals, in pursuit of eternal and objectively verifiable truths.
The Chinese have an excellent grasp of world society's needs and they are creating the future. We watch entertainment; they study how to improve themselves and their society.
The Chinese have their own problems. They have learned from our mistakes because they cannot afford to repeat them; it would be catastrophic to inflict some of the things humans have done, using a population of billions - and the Chinese are seeing this, today, and working to develop better solutions.
They have bigots. They have nationalists. They have prejudice, and class struggles, and obscene wealth, and poverty, and corruption.
These things - bigotry, prejudice, class, corruption, poverty - are the real enemies.
We should all be working together to address poverty and illiteracy.
No rocket science is required to see this obvious and eternal truth.
My $0.02; YMMV; etc.
~childo