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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: 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.