h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've heard of Buckminster-Fullerene-molecules as "football" molecules, because the surfaces of a football and the surfaces of a single B-F molecule exactly match each other. You make a nanotube by taking the top and bottom off several B-F molecules and stack them on top of each other.... not so easy to explain but easy to see if you have some of these molecular lego thingys. Make a ring of 5 carbon atoms, make another that shares two atoms, build around and you'll soon have a ball. Make two balls, remove their tops and stick them togheter. Congratulations, you now got a nanotube.

I remember hearing that, if there was a way, you could run nanotubes (AKA Buckytubes) through your body and fill them with, say, oxygen molocules. If this was possible, then you would be able to breath in a room filled with smoke, or water, or pretty much anything except a hard vaccum or acid. Now, if you factor in nanotechnology, then things would get a bit more complex.

I'm going to shut up before I take up several pages of forum space.
--
Kiz

Don't shut up, please.

At worst go off and write a new entry and flag it from here.

A nitpicking point: would you be breathing, or just oxygenating your body without breathing?

Or an easier, not so nitpickingypoint: you wouldn't have any need to breathe, but would you feel asphyxated?

Stragbasher, I think that you would be just oxygenating your body. Cybernard, since breathing is regulated by the need for oxygen, then I don't think that you would feel the need to breathe.

Oh, and I'm going to write a short introduction to nanotechnology now. Thanks for the tip Stragbasher.

Short update before I head off for school: No, the intro is not done yet (I'm famous for procrastinating). I'll try and get a rough draft written out during the course of the day, but that's not saying that I will. When I do get that entry up, I'll set up a link to it.

In short, it's not done yet.

In the meantime, you can entertain yourself by going to http://members.boardhost.com/jharpjr and leaving a message there.

Oh, what the heck, I'll just point you somewhere.

http://www.forsight.org

There, now you have a link to somewhere that expains nanotechnology in a bit more detail than I ever could.

That's a cop-out.

Your assignments for this weekend are:

1. to write a guide entry on nanotechnology
2. to write a guide entry on how important it is for guide researchers to write guide entries for there to be a guide at all.
3. to have a really good time, drink lots, and make-up an outrageous (and undisprovable) story to tell your mates.

After my encounter with the DLA I've decided it's easier to start from the bottom up.

You sound like my teacher!

Besides, I have too much homework to do anyway. Math, science, reading, an essay... -rambles on like that for the next half hour-

Do your teachers tell you to "have a really good time, drink lots, and make-up an outrageous (and undisprovable) story to tell your mates."?

WOW, aren't you the lucky one?

Personally I think school's over-rated, so why not sacrifice your education and write a guide entry - then the people at tdv can make their fortunes out of your hard work?

But...but...I'm nothing but a lazy teenager who refuses to do anything but eat, compute, and relieve himself!

Really though, I may know a thing or two about nanotechnology, but in no way does that mean that I have to write a guide entry about it.

Maybe if I get really bored and/or inspired...

Nothing yet.

Yes, I know I'm lazy. Isn't every teen?

Wait, I just got some insperation. I'm gonna type it out before I forget. Damn, I like this laptop .

Nanotechnology. Really tiny machines.

To expand on that, nanotechnology is the word for microscopic robots that can manipulate matter at the atomic level. Having a squad of properly programmed nanites injected (or, hell, just spread on your skin) would mean effective immortality and perfect health. No cancer. No AIDS. A few thousand years added to your life without noticable aging.

"Sounds fun."

Well, after this stuff gets introduced, expect a serious drop in the value of gems when someone hacks out a program to assemble them. Yes, you read right. Assemble. Gems are crystalline conglomerations of atoms, and if someone could place the atoms the right way, they'd get an emerald or diamond, or pretty much anything once they get the right blueprints.
Take those replicators in Star Trek, for example. Something like that would be possible with nanotech. No more starvation.
AIDS is a virus, from what I remember. You can program nanites to eliminate any virus that enters your system. No more AIDS.
You can change the very structure of your DNA. No more cancer, hereditary diseases, or the like. Hell, you could change the color of your eyes if you wanted.
Exra small supercomputers, anyone? With nanotech, you could have a computer more powerful than everything out today all hooked into one huge Beowulf cluster on a chip that would fit on the head of a pin. I'm not kidding.
If you took a pin and used it's material to make a nanocomputer or storage device for said computer, then you'd get something along the lines of 100 petabytes of storage, or several dozen gigahertz for processing power.
Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but it will be possible. How soon? I don't know. Maybe in the next 30 years, maybe the next 300. We'll never know until it happens. Until then, you tech-heads can depend on the one nanocomputer you already have. Your brain.

(Disclamer: I am not a nanotechnology researcher, computer programmer, or stock market analyst. Any implied promises are not. IANAL.)

Oh, the above post is MINE, but please redistribute and give credit where credit is due. Copyleft Steve Vaningan, 2000.

Woohoo! My second Guide entry!

http://www.h2g2.com/A304679

Now to submit and hope for the best...

Re: breathing oxygen from a nanotube.

The limitation would be weight. The weight of oxygen breathed in a day is about 70kg - the average weight of an adult.