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no longer a "noob" i hope

P

polarisTO

Guest
no longer a "noob" i hope

Hello. Didn't know where to post this one, so I decided here was best. (you can delete it after you make my requested modification...unless this actually becomes a useful thread).

So I was thinking that I've actually been around this forum basically since it started...and the tagline "Newbie" is getting positively annoying.

So here are my two suggestions for what an enterprising admin could change it to:

1. "Resident Physicist"

Hey...that's what I am.

2. "Resident Nanotechnologist"

nanotechnology still feels wonky to me (I don't know if "real" physicists would even admit to working on nano). But it sounds cool...and I actually do some work in the field.
 
LOL - are we taking about Merkle/Drexler style nanotech? Most physicists won't admit to working on that, for sure :)

GB
 
Gawd no.

Don't mention Drexler in my presence. I read a lot of his stuff in high school...I look back on it as hours spent reading goofy science fiction. While nanobots, assemblers (not the x86 MOV AX variety), and molecular engineering are all interesting concepts...they are still WAY outside the realm of real science. Stuff you can dream about...but not stuff that you would ever want to write a funding proposal about.

I've done work on electron-beam lithography, micro-photonics, micro-fluidics, and nanotubes. Electron-beam lithography is a well-used tool for creating devices on the nanometer scale (still much bigger than molecules though). Microfluidics already has a lot of applications in biological analysis...although I would classify it as an extension of MEMs (micro-electro-mechanical) technology, than as "nanotechnology." Nanotubes...people have real hopes that nanotubes will become the new wires and transistors of the next 50 years. "Molecular electronics" as it is called.
 
polaris:

LOL - I thought I might elicit such a reaction by mentioning Drexler/Merkle :) Mind you, I still read a lot of that goofy science fiction - and irregardless of the feasibility of the designs in Nanosystems, it's great food for thought.

hehehe, I am familiar with (ie. at a semi-technical level) with all those you've mentioned :) As great as nanoelectronics might sound, I am not sure if it is necessarily the way to go - especially with current developments in photonics and gawd forbid, Quantum and DNA computation... Granted, the latter two is not for every type of problems...

GB
 
It depends on what you are trying to do. The infrastructure is already there for semiconductor-based electronics. The attraction of nanotube-based electronics...often shorted to "nanoelectronics" or "molecular electronics" is that it can build on this existing technology base. And I think it is a lot further along than other ideas (particularly quantum computing)...because there are already electrical engineers working on this problem.

Quantum computing (which is actually another of my interests) is still mainly an investigation by physicists and theoretical computer scientists.

I'm not really sure about the potentialities of photonics. Right now most of photonic development is strongly linked to the lightwave communications industry (think JDS Uniphase, Nortel, Lucent). If optics is to become a real alternative to electronics then I think there will have to be major new developments that just aren't happening. People haven't even figured out how to make good optical switches for communications...much less the optical analog of a transistor. So optical computing is far far away...and it is not even known to be all that powerful. In summary, I think photonics is cool...but I don't know that it can do anything particularly interesting that can't be done more easily by other methods. Asides from communications of course, where lasers are big players.
 
No point working on nanotechnology... just get Seven of Nine to replicate some... wait a minute... that isn't real. Crap! Our technology really sucks.
 
polaris:

The beef I have with nanoelectronics is that it is merely an extension of Turing computation - which is fine, but in a way, it limits ourselves to conventionalism...

BTW, there are two articles on quantum computation in today's issue of Science - and a paper on synthesis of SWNT.

One thing came to my mind - are you familiar with the concept of the "Oracle"? Isn't the human brain a manifestation of such?

Enviro:

You'd wish ;)

GB
 
Polaris:

Citation info...

Manipulating the Quantum State of an Electrical Circuit
D. Vion, A. Aassime, A. Cottet, P. Joyez, H. Pothier, C. Urbina, D. Esteve, and M. H. Devoret
Science May 3 2002: 886-889

Coherent Temporal Oscillations of Macroscopic Quantum States in a Josephson Junction
Yang Yu, Siyuan Han, Xi Chu, Shih-I Chu, and Zhen Wang
Science May 3 2002: 889-892

Direct Synthesis of Long Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Strands
H. W. Zhu, C. L. Xu, D. H. Wu, B. Q. Wei, R. Vajtai, and P. M. Ajayan
Science May 3 2002: 884-886

GB
 
GB -

Of course right now nanoelectronics is just being developed as a further miniturization of semiconductor based electronics. And all of these are designed for "classical" computers (classical Turing machines as you mentioned). But there is the possibility with nanotubes and other materials with molecular structure to have interesting quantum effect with electronics that are not possible in bulk materials. So the move from bulk materials (Si, SiO2, GaAs, etc) into "molecular" materials is important. The new technology seems like it would naturally evolve towards computations with single electrons...and eventual computation involving entangled states -> quantum computation. The older technology is not quite as amenable.

With regards to the current state of quantum computation - the only demonstrated quantum computations have been with NMR. And these do not represent "true" quantum computation because they involve ensemble-averaging over ~10^23 atoms. Real quantum computation must be done with measurements on individual quantum states...and measurements that are not just ensemble averages but ones that preserve phase information.

I haven't had a chance to read the Science articles that you mentioned...but I'll definitely take a look the next time I drop by the library. Thanks for mentioning them. I didn't know that you followed scientific developments so closely!
 
Nanotechnology? Come on!! Next you'll try to tell about voices that go down glass tubes of light! I know that people live in my radio.
Whatever.
 
Don't bother being too skeptical about nanotechnology. Even if it doesn't live up to everything enthusiasts hope, it will still change society in drastic ways.
 
bc:

"GEEK"?! Are you surprised? ;)

polaris:

Yeah, I call myself GeekyBoy for a reason lol

Are you familiar with SF author Greg Egan? If you aren't - get hold of his works (I would recommend every one of his novels); given your interests in quantum technologies - try "Quarantine"

GB
 
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