It seems that Graphene is about to be joined by two or three others, I am trying to remember the third, that is going to revolutionise things.
The first of these is metallic hydrogen. Something that has long puzzled me about hydrogen and its relationships, or rather place, on the periodic table.
Under extreme pressures someone now claims to have … coerced hydrogen into its shiny metal state for the first time. The rather impressive claims are that metallic hydrogen could conduct electricity over long distances without dissipation. Plus high powered magnets like those used in MRI machines would not require liquid helium to cool them down to a temperature where they become operational because they would actually operate at room temperature.
Also they could use this metallic hydrogen to produce humongous amounts of energy and it will be extremely interesting to hear just how this pans out down the road.
Though being held at these extreme pressures there exists a theory that if they release the pressure they hydrogen will remain in its metal like state? Stunning. Revolutionary if true.
Quite how they will go about trying to gain stability is something of a puzzle and one that I am keen on finding out, hopefully in the not too distant future?
Considering that this could revolutionise the way we explore space this alone stands to make very,, very big changes in what we can achieve and along with single atom thick carbon being stronger then steel … the mind truly boggles at what both of these things can do in the way of changes to science?
But how about a third?
Hmm … this ones is Berkeley?
OK so they have produced a metal with some very strange properties and, would you believe, abilities?
Anyone seen and remember Star Trek IV The Voyage Home? Do you recall what they needed to fit the Klingon ship with to take the whales into the future with them? Do you remember what Scotty provided the company with to acquire the plates? Transparent aluminium. Yeah … it kinda goes something like that … with a twist. Yes this metal is transparent and yet that is at a certain temperature otherwise it looks like … well, metal?!
What kind of alchemy and voodoo magic is this?
It gets better as this metal has the strange ability to conduct electricity without heat?! Alchemists I tell yah!
In one single day I read about metallic hydrogen that conducts electricity without dissipation and vanadium oxide that conducts electricity without heat? Just … HOW?! How in the world am I reading about two breakthroughs in the same day?!
Ahh … but there is that name again … Berkeley. Were they not the university that was behind that … Waterseer … thingey? The device that collects water that is not there to begin with that acquired many thousands in funding? Debunked very easily by the man with the loud feet?
If true my mind races with the possibilities of combining these to metals for various functions previously impossible of even combine them with Graphene for other tricks previously impossible.
Since Graphene exploded into the scientific community my mind has wondered how this could be implemented in the creation of computer chips like Central Processing Units or Graphic Processing Units.
The lithography, or width of the pipelines and, supposedly, transistors in computer chips have reached a … kind if brick wall or are not very far away from it. I have watched as they have shrunk down from sizes way bigger than 130 nanometres to now just 14 nanometres in size. It was predicted that getting below 10 nanometres would be tricky to impossible due to the impurities of silicon. The chips would just fracture with any current running through them.
I fact I have expected to start hearing of people’s chips frying through even the lightest over-cocking of the chips after a time and for this to start becoming a common thing. Time will tell on that one.
It is interesting reading about both AMD and Intel claiming to have chips with a lithography of just 7 nanometres in a little over a year from now at some point during 2018. I strongly believe now that Graphene and maybe some other newly discovered material in combination with Graphene with CPUs and GPUs at smaller than 7 nanometres in size. Or maybe they already are but I just have not read about it yet?
I think about the possibilities of creating a much more efficient way of converting the suns light into electricity and how this along with the previous three things combined would just change the very face of the scientific landscape along with what we could do and achieve in just 5 to 10 years?!
You know the more I think about these things and the more things that seem to materialise I am wondering of there is some reason behind this explosion of scientific discoveries and wonder what things will be like in the next decade?!
Exciting times ahead, me thinks.
Once the largest companies along with those that are at the cutting edge of technologies and their associated industries get their own rights to work with these things I bet there are people beavering away with theories they are putting to the test? Thinking of ways they can combine all of these three things with anything else discovered in recent times.
Huge leap forward like this leading to technologies and machines that are a huge leap forward also leads to even more discoveries.
I wonder how long it will be before companies have light weight be strong mining ships that start going out to the asteroid belt and in time even the Kuiper Belt mining for things to bring back to Earth?
Just look at each thing in turn logically …
You can build both much stronger along with much lighter craft
You now have something that produces far more energy than anything we have had previously
We can now conduct electricity far more efficiently and so need less energy, except we can now produce far more energy that we have before, see above bullet point
Go farther, faster while being stronger and not being taken down by micro meteors and such like
These are just points off the top of my head without sitting down and trying to apply these new materials and technologies to other things! I cannot wait to see what people come up with!
Independent Report I dug up on Metallic Hydrogen …
Berkeley Lab and Vanadium dioxide …