Carbon nanotubes are incredibly useful and revolutionary stuff. Rapid enough progress on them could do magical things, even make President Bush's space initiative actually come within budget. So, it's always worthwhile to keep an eye on carbon nanofiber progress. But keeping an eye on the actual process of making these structures has been impossible up to now. They are so small that the actual process of their construction was something of a mystery, until now.
Hat's off to the Danes for figuring out how to observe the creation of carbon nanofibers in real time and in detail, allowing researchers in the field to no longer work blind but see what's going on in their experimental process.
This is the kind of enabling research that is likely to kick up the rate of future progress in this field, and in nanotechnology in general.
HT: Slashdot (warning, some material in comments may be adult)
Posted by TMLutas at February 9, 2004 10:16 PM