New Structural Diamondoid!
I recently blogged a video of a device unveiled last month that prints ribbons of carbon nanotubes at high speed. The article is here. Now there's another breakthrough. Today in New Scientist there is breaking news about a revolutionary development in nanomaterials that can make possible an elevator cable from the surface of the earth into space. This is not one of the forms of structured carbon you're used to, buckyballs or buckytubes which have hardness approaching that of diamond. Those were superheated and compressed to create a new form of structured carbon called aggregated carbon nanorods, with a hardness exceeding that of diamond, previously the hardest known material. This is the only way which is postulated as strong enough to hold together as a strand hanging from a satellite in earth orbit to a point on the equator. K. Eric Drexler told us this would happen. Graphite in a pencil is formed from sheets of carbon atoms. The sheets are only loosely connected, so they slide off onto the paper when you write. In ordinary diamond, carbon atoms are connected in every direction in a perfectly regular 3D lattice. For a drawing of this, scroll halfway down this chapter from K. Eric Drexler's "Unbounding The Future", a free online introduction by the father of nanotechnology, which I encourage you to read. Structured carbon is no ordinary diamond. The connections between carbon atoms can potentially be arranged like the engineering in a suspension bridge, acheiving qualities never before seen, making possible feats of micro- and mega-engineering never before seen. As Neil Stephenson once called it, we are entering The Diamond Age.