It is a really cool discovery, but it is still not room temperature superconductivity...
Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
91–100 of 111 posts
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#92Does anybody know if the environmental impact of graphene is supposed to be any better than that of plastic? Does it break down more easily as it is so thin? I’m worried we may outdo ourselves with the magic compound of the century...
Another major 'environmental' impact that may be very nefarious is the health effect of such nano-materials. We don't want to re-create all the mess that we have today form asbestos -- which was also a wonder-material at the time.
The problem with asbestos wasn’t really the toxicity per se, it’s that the companies using it hid the toxicity to avoid having to do all the expensive safety steps that would let them use asbestos without killing people. We can avoid this with carbon nanotubes and similar if we’re honest about the risks and careful with how we handle them.
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
A superconducting power network could be built today - it would consist of a pair of ceramic superconductors suspended in a liquid helium pipe, wrapped with 3 feet of insulation. Every few kilometers, one would need liquid helium pumping and chilling plants. Total helium losses to leakage wouldn't be too big. Electricity transmission efficiency would be reduced by all the chilling gear running, but still better than…
> The only real barrier is cost. I feel like this could almost be a slogan for the human race at this point. Our grasp of science and engineering has reached a level where's there's very few things we might want to build where we couldn't conceivably do it. We could build the most outlandish megastructures, infrastructure and space bases if we really had to, but it all just costs too much.
"It's expensive and we couldn't find investors" really means "It's a lot of work, and nobody thinks it'll be worth it".
We might be able to anything, but the capitalist system stops us doing things that don't look profitable.
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another major 'environmental' impact that may be very nefarious is the health effect of such nano-materials. We don't want to re-create all the mess that we have today form asbestos -- which was also a wonder-material at the time.
The problem with asbestos wasn’t really the toxicity per se, it’s that the companies using it hid the toxicity to avoid having to do all the expensive safety steps that would let them use asbestos without killing people. We can avoid this with carbon nanotubes and similar if we’re honest about the risks and careful with how we handle them.
This will probably happen again given all the money that's on the line.
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
A huge amount of energy is wasted distributing electricity for 10s of thousands km. I am not sure how it can help storage though, even if you theoretically can let the electricity spin in a closed loop forever the energy density seems way too low to me.
A standard 380 kV power line has a loss on the order of 1% per 100 km. Unless you want to span large continents, this doesn't seem like a big limitation at all.
Power Lines are several hundreds of km and even only 1% of the global electric production seems a huge amount to me...
But in reality it is much more, in US is 5%: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty typical of academia. Grad students also don't normally get Nobels
And for good reason. A responsible supervisor will typically give PhD students tasks that he has already "kind-of / sort-of" worked out as feasible. I once read the following recommendation for how to set dissertation subjects, I can't recall by whom. - BSc thesis: what I can do over lunch - Master thesis: what I could do in an afternoon - PhD thesis: what I could do in a week (Here the figures don't mean typing, pro…
What field are you in? This applicability of this strikes me as wildly different depending on the field and the standards of the university.
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only real barrier is cost. I feel like this could almost be a slogan for the human race at this point. Our grasp of science and engineering has reached a level where's there's very few things we might want to build where we couldn't conceivably do it. We could build the most outlandish megastructures, infrastructure and space bases if we really had to, but it all just costs too much.
"It's expensive and we couldn't find investors" really means "It's a lot of work, and nobody thinks it'll be worth it". We might be able to anything, but the capitalist system stops us doing things that don't look profitable.
Profitability at time X is a pretty decent heuristic for whether something is worth doing at time X.
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
A standard 380 kV power line has a loss on the order of 1% per 100 km. Unless you want to span large continents, this doesn't seem like a big limitation at all.
Power Lines are several hundreds of km and even only 1% of the global electric production seems a huge amount to me... But in reality it is much more, in US is 5%: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
These numbers show that the grid is already 95% efficient! It makes much more sense to improve the really inefficient parts, such as power plants and electricity consumers.
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's expensive and we couldn't find investors" really means "It's a lot of work, and nobody thinks it'll be worth it". We might be able to anything, but the capitalist system stops us doing things that don't look profitable.
Profitability at time X is a pretty decent heuristic for whether something is worth doing at time X.
How do you know that? Unknown unknowns.
Re: Twisted graphene has become the big thing in physics
#100Pardon my interruption but I searched for 'use' or 'usage' and came up empty. Anyone can tell a regular guy why it's a big deal and what are the applications? ta
Buckyballs have mass, yet exhibit wave interference. We can make them bigger and bigger, and focus them as if they classically popped into existence. I wonder if it holds up on very large scales, like if we can cover an atmosphere, or a star in one. What would that mean? Elements now are just variations of carbon structures? And could we at that level build a virtual one? Develop some exotic particle in the atmospher…
Another thought is medical applications. Imagine if we get good enough to shoot a beam of them like a chest x-ray or a mri.
The wave collapses everywhere except inside artery blockages or tumors, and you have non-invasive treatments and therapeutic imaging.