Researchers have created the first diamond nanothreads — which are basically like carbon nanotubes, but stronger and stiffer. Mathematically, these diamond nanothreads are possibly the strongest and stiffest material that can be constructed in the known universe. As interest in space elevators and other international megaprojects swell, these diamond nanothreads might be exactly what we need to get crazy seemingly impossible constructions off the whiteboard and into reality.
Imagine a ribbon roughly one hundred million times as long as it is wide. If it were a meter long, it would be 10 nanometers wide, or just a few times thicker than a DNA double helix. Scaled up to the length of a football field, it would still be less than a micrometer across — smaller than a red blood cell. Would you trust your life to that thread? What about a tether 100,000 kilometers long, one stretching from the surface of the Earth to well past geostationary orbit (GEO, 22,236 miles up), but which was still somehow narrower than your own wingspan?
If women can do everything men can, how come they've never successfully oppressed an entire gender?
For those unaware, nuclear fusion is all about getting atoms to come together, cuddle up to each other and fuse. More precisely, it's about figuring out a way to compel two light atomic nuclei to get together and birth a heavier one.
As explained by scientists, such a reaction – which, by the way, is the same one that fuels our Sun – releases massive amounts of energy. It doesn't, however, produce any radioactive waste or greenhouse gases.
Because of this, there are some people who very much like talking about nuclear fusion as if it were no more and no less than the holy grail of energy production.
If women can do everything men can, how come they've never successfully oppressed an entire gender?
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22-07-2014 14:00 PM
