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Does this look like a flagellum, or is it just me?

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Nanotube bundles could be used as motors for nanodevices from PhysOrg.com
Even the smallest devices, assembled at the molecular level, need motors and oscillators. UC Riverside Mechanical Engineering Professor Qing Jiang thinks bundling groups of carbon nanotubes together could make an ultra-efficient and accurate nano-oscillator.
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http://www.physorg.com/news67008504.html

Comments
I'd like to be around long enough to do something about it! If you think there was an (un)directed big bag once - maybe there can be one again. And provided all those little dimensions roll up in ways that don't / can't create a 'sterile' universe, we can sidestep 'first cause' and *really* have turtles all the way down. Wonder if we'll still be arguing ID at that point?richie
May 18, 2006
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I think Vinge's fiction work "Marooned in Realtime" provides my favourite solution to the Fermi paradox - a disenfranchisement with the physical universe.

I don't know about you but I personally plan to witness the heat death of the universe. I'm still trying to save up enough money to buy a decent bobble. -ds richie
May 18, 2006
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Nanofabs are well documented by futurists such as Kurtzweil. I think the possibility of a Vingian singularity in the next 30 years will have several orders of magnitude more impact.

We might already be in a Vingian singularity. By its own definition we can't even speculate about what happens inside a Vingian singularity. Singularities are like that. Engines of Creation on the other hand spends a good deal of time defining the limits of the physically possible and exploring how that will change the way we work and live. I must concede however that technological singularities are my favorite answer to the Fermi paradox. My least favorite answer to the Fermi paradox is that technological civilizations all destroy themselves in short order after reaching the radio stage. EoC also spends a good deal of time on how we might avoid the dark conclusion to the Fermi Paradox. -ds richie
May 17, 2006
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I just read in SciAm that nanotubes of titanium dioxide split water into hydrogen and oxygen when light is shined on them. Researchers have them up to about 12% energy efficiency with UV light and are working on additives to TiO2 to make it work with visible light instead which is a much greater percentage of sunlight. When true nanoscale technology is harnessed so that anything can be built to specification one atom at a time with perfect precision by armies of nanoscale assemblers there will be an abundance of material wealth like nothing the world has ever known and also the greatest danger from weapons of mass destruction the world has ever known. The time is quickly approaching. I encourage everyone to read the seminal work on nanotechnology http://www.foresight.org/EOC/ so they understand what lies ahead. It's inevitable.DaveScot
May 17, 2006
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It just appears to look like a flagellum, but you must force yourself to remember it doesn't really look like a flagellum...for the obvious reasonscarbon14atom
May 16, 2006
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I think those are pistons.

You are a piston. :razz: -ds Tiax
May 16, 2006
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