Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes are one of those building block kind of disruptive inventions. They can be used in so many ways and they are so much of an improvement over current materials that commercial applications will change a great deal from medicine to the military, space travel to subways. The problem is manufacturing them cheaply, efficiently, and abundantly. Some researchers at Rice University seem to have made a breakthrough that, for the first time, would allow industrial scale applications to occur.
The consequences are profound. Everything from stronger armor for the military, a practical space elevator that would make a whole host of science fiction into science reality, superhard tools, the list goes on and on.
It could take decades for the ripples to die down on this one. Let's hope that the research pans out and we've finally come to the era of cheap, plentiful nanotubes.
Hat tip to Slashdot
Posted by TMLutas at December 9, 2003 08:08 PM