3D PDF

Here is a fun 3D pdf of a connector I'm planning to use in a design. In a year this will be nothing. Right now it is a lot of free fun.

And here is the page it came from, in case you want a more conventional view.

Research

Six months in the lab can save you an afternoon in the library.

Cell Phone Technology - Doubling Capacity Without More Towers

Researchers at Rice are exploring a new technology that allows wireless devices to "talk" and "listen" on the same frequency could pave the way for 4.5G and 5G networks and could allow wireless phone companies to double throughput on their networks without adding a single cell tower.

H/T ECN Magazine

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Project Update 16 August 2011

After putting hundreds of hours in on the project (still a secret - for now) I figured out a much better way to do things. So I'm in the middle of a redesign. Maybe another week or two. Provided I don't get any more bright ideas. ;-)

It Amazes Me

I have been an Internet fiend for over 16 years. And yet when I have something interesting to do (my current project) I lose all interest in keeping up with the latest news. I got the news bug when I first worked in radio. I was a little over 18 (the minimum age for engineers) and used to love reading the AP wire off the teletype. Especially the stories that never made the media.

In any case, the project is going well and I'm finishing the board layouts. Maybe another few days, maybe a week or more. Depending.

And another note. The Internet makes it very easy and very quick to get part information. This is very important when not every integrated circuit comes in a DIP package.

A Technical Solution To A Political Problem

My blogging output has been pitiful lately. That is because I am working on a technical solution to a political problem. It may take me some weeks to work this out which includes designing boards and writing software. I will make an announcement when the design phase is done. Then on to testing and hopefully production.

Catching The Wave

Sounds pretty amazing to me. According to Carnot the efficiency of an ideal engine is 1 - Tc/Th. Where Tc is the exhaust temperature and Th is the burning temperature (this is somewhat simplified). The temperatures are absolute (i.e. Kelvin scale in the metric system). The Wave Engine according to some designs operates at a peak temperature of 1070°K with an exhaust at 300°K (room temperature roughly). So what is the ideal efficiency for such an engine? 1 - (300/1070) multiplied by 100 to get percent. And the answer is almost 72%. So a practical realization giving 60% efficiency is not unreasonable. That is about 83% of ideal. Not bad. In fact very good.

Some geeks (not as geeky as me) have a few words to say.

Mueller envisions his wave disc motor powering a generator, making it an ultra-light ultra-efficient hybrid electric vehicle. That’s a lot of ultras, but Mueller says he has the numbers to back it up. The wave disc apparently uses 60% of its fuel for propulsion, compared to 15% of fuel used for propulsion in conventional engines. And because the wave disc powered cars would be much lighter — perhaps 20% lighter — the fuel efficiency is even greater.

This all might seem very pie-in-the-sky, and that’s quite understandable. However, Mueller’s team has received $2.5 million in federal dollars from the Advanced Research Projects Administration – Energy (ARPA-E), which will be put towards creating a 25kw engine perhaps as early as next year. According to Mueller, that’s enough power to run an SUV.

I’m hoping Mueller’s checked his math on this, because I am very excited to have a car running on something as efficient as it is elegant.

Well I checked the math and it doesn't look out of the question. Some folks from Warsaw, Poland and Zurich, Switzerland [pdf] have checked the math with computerized flow simulations and think it looks pretty good. The concept goes back to at least 1906. So it is not a new idea. What is new is this particular realization. And of course we have computers for simulation and automated milling machines to make prototypes and small production volumes. Things not available in 1906.

Of course the engine is just the beginning. Once that is proved you have to design the whole hybrid drive train. And then you have to wrap an automobile around it. I don't expect to see them on the market as a production vehicle for about ten years. Unless some really big money (or the Japanese) get behind it.

Some more places to visit to get a handle on the technology:

Daily Tech

Green Cars

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Buying And Selling

In a comment on a post about why we need more oil production in the USA a commenter said:

PROTECTIONISM IS BAD BUT OUTSOURCING IS WORSE AND WE MUST PROTECT AGAINST SUCH.

OUTSOURCING IS WORSE?

Because buy high and sell higher is a viable economic strategy?

The world economy is rationalizing. Yeah. It sucks. The wages of some are rising and that of others is falling. Think farm labor post 1929. Machines had ruined a whole way of life in what amounts to a blink of an eye.

We are hitting another of those walls. Back then it was gasoline engines, electricity, and radio (free music? the record business will never be the same).

Now it is computers, telecommunications (terabit pipes), and industrial controls. And free music. And we have added the fillip of free porn. The prices of things are changing. The value of things is changing. It will take a while to get things sorted. The worst thing we can do is to implement policies to avoid the pain now. Because when the pain has to be faced (it always does) it will be worse.

H/T Instapundit

Sharing The Data

The video is a survey from the advent of man to the invention of the computer mouse and what it all means. Highly entertaining and well worth your time.

And just today Instapundit linked to an article exactly illustrates the concepts discussed in the video: Progress on Alzheimer’s.

And should you wish to delve further Matt Ridley has written a book:

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

H/T to Bishop Hill for the video.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Scientist Quits

“Physicists dream of Nobel prizes, engineers dream of mishaps.” Hendrik Tennekes

Science is in a sorry state these days. It is so bad that a Dutch scientist has resigned from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Henk Tennekes is well known to the visitors of our website. A few days ago, he told me that he submitted a letter of resignation to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences on Saturday, January 23. He wrote to me “I don’t want to remain a member of an organization that, like AMS and NAS, screws up science that badly.” The Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad apparently got hold of a copy of the resignation letter and ran a News Flash on Saturday, January 30. In the letter to the Academy, Henk complains that he submitted the manuscript of his essay on Hermetic Jargon (which I am happy to reproduce here below, with his permission) to the Academy President at that time, Frits van Oostrom. The President, however, did not bother to respond. The NRC news flash, translated by Henk himself at my request, reads:

You can read the rest by following the link.

What bothers me is the attitude (not a new one) that we know it all. And what is unknown will just be a few minor corrections and additions to current theory.

American and British history is riddled with examples of valid research and inventions which have been suppressed and derogated by the conventional science community. This has been of great cost to society and to individual scientists. Rather than furthering the pursuit of new scientific frontiers, the structure of British and American scientific institutions leads to conformity and furthers consensus-seeking. Scientists are generally like other people when it comes to the biases and self-justifications that cause them to make bad decisions and evade the truth. Some topics in science are 'taboo' subjects.

The author of the paper goes on to describe how it works. He does sometimes fall in with the cranks (well who knows - maybe some day they won't be cranks) but he makes a lot of good points along the way.

Here is one I especially like.

Other innovators who were described by Milton (Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment 1996) as victims of the insults of the skeptical scientific power elite, were such men as John Logie Baird, inventor of television. Baird had been described by the British Royal Society as "a swindler" (p. 19). Likewise, Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays was decried as an "elaborate hoax" (p.22) by Lord Kelvin, the most influential scientist of Europe in 1895. Scientists of Roentgen's day produced film fogging X-rays on a substantial scale but were unwilling to consider the wide ranging implications of Roentgen's work for 10 years after his discovery (Milton, 1996).

Another example of such victimization, presented by Dean Radin (1996) in his book The Conscious Universe, involved the theory of German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener. This theory which Wegener developed in 1915, contended that the earth's continents had once been a single mass of land which later drifted apart. Although Wegener carefully cataloged geological evidence, his American and British colleagues ridiculed both him and his idea (Radin, 1996). Although Wegener died an intellectual outcast in 1930, every schoolchild is currently taught his theory which is known as continental drift.

I'm not actually comfortable with Radin's book. The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. I don't think we actually have any scientific truth in the field. However, people do report things which, if valid, are weakly explained. Or explained away. I'm personally of the opinion that it is an emergent behavior of the way our brains work. I believe it is related to the fact that not all the signals the brain sends out rise to the level of consciousness (I have a feeling).

In any case I think this list is instructive.

Hans Alfven (galaxy-scale plasma dynamics)

Astronomers thought that gravity alone is important in solar systems, in galaxies, etc. Alfven's idea that plasma physics is of equal or greater importance to gravity was derided for decades.

John L. Baird (television camera)

When the first television system was demonstrated to the Royal Society (British scientists,) they scoffed and ridiculed it.

Robert Bakker (fast, warm-blooded dinosaurs)

Everyone knows that dinosaurs are like Gila monsters or big tortoises: large, slow, and intolerant of the cold. And they're all colored olive drab too! :)

Bardeen & Brattain (transistor)

Not ridiculed, but their boss W. Shockley nixed their idea, and when they started investigating it, he made them stop. They assembled their point-contact experiment on a wheeled cart and continued. They could shove it into a closet whenever the boss came by.

J Harlen Bretz

Endured decades of scorn as the laughingstock of the geology world. His crime was to insist that enormous amounts of evidence showed that the "scabland" desert landscape of Eastern Washington state had endured an ancient catastrophy: a flood of staggering proportions. This was outright heresy, since the geology community of the time had dogmatic belief in a "uniformitarian" position, where all changes must take place incrementally over vast time scales. Bretz was vindicated by the 1950s. Quote: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over."

One of the fields I'm currently exploring, fusion power, makes extensive use of ideas such as Alfven Waves in an effort to make tokamak devices (such as ITER) work.

Here is another good site on Geniuses derided. I speaks to something I am personally familiar with.

Some ridiculed ideas which had no supporters:

* Ball lightning - lacking a theory, it was long dismissed as retinal afterimages
* Catastrophism - ridicule of rapid Earth changes, asteroid mass extinctions
* Child abuse - before 1950, doctors were mystified by "spontaneous" childhood bruising
* Cooperation or altruism between animals - versus Evolution's required competition
* Instantaneous meteor noises - evidence rejected because sound should be delayed by distance
* Mind-body connection - psychoneuroimmunology, doctors ridiculed psychological basis for disease
* Perceptrons - later vindicated as Neural Networks

I once had a personal experience with ball lightning which I describe here.

I once had a personal experience with ball lightning. About 3/4 of a m across glowing green. Moving slowly. Scared the hell out of me.

It happened inside a geodesic dome that had a long wire antenna connected. (Ham radio stuff).

I watched it while slowly backing away. It dissipated in about 10 seconds more or less.

Let me add that it seems to have been triggered by a near by lightning strike. More discussion of ball lightning.

When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift

So true. The problem is in separating the cranks from the geniuses. I did a post on some "cranks" that seem to be coming up with some interesting results. The people "in the know" said it was all foolishness.

I did a post not too long back on the origins of inertia that I called Maching Einstein. And there is a very long thread at NASA Spaceflight on the subject. You would think that a fundamental concept like inertia might warrant a closer look. Maybe a few millions a year for experiments. But you would be wrong.

I remember what an uphill fight I had to get people interested in Polywell fusion. I got comments like, "They blew up their experiment? Proof positive of incompetence". Or "If this is such a good idea why was funding cut?" Or "There is a paper out there (Todd Rider) that proves it can't work." And much more along those lines. Now is it a sure thing? No. But the odds are good enough and the rewards so large that it is worth a few million (which the US Navy put up in August of 2007) to find some answers. There is way too much in science that the scientific establishment does not want answers too - you know - the science is settled.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Oil Supply And Demand

Julian Murdoch thinks oil supply and demand are out of whack.

OPEC has publicly stated that they believe inventories in developed OECD countries to be equal to roughly 61 days of demand—a number OPEC is none too happy about. They'd prefer the world to be constantly on the brink of running out (that is, 55 days or less). So with all of this supply, you'd expect to see OPEC talking production cuts—or at least a drop in the price of oil.

Instead, last week the group discussed the need to increase production, so as to keep oil under $80—it seems even OPEC thinks prices are still too high. As OPEC Secretary General Abdalla El-Badri told Bloomberg:

"Anything above $80 will really hamper economic growth. Watch the floating storage, if that is eliminated, and watch the stocks, if they are at 52, 54 days, then OPEC will take action."

Of course, if the floating stocks (that is, oil stored at sea) remain at current levels and inventories stay full, then apparently OPEC will just sit back and rake in the money.

He does not say we have an oil bubble. But if you consider that supply is high and yet prices keep rising it seems obvious that there is a bubble.

And it may be more of a bubble than people think. There are a lot of new technologies becoming available sooner or later that will cut the cost of drilling wells. One of them is laser drilling of wells.

Laser drilling, Graves said, would have several advantages over conventional drilling:

-- Costs could be at least 10 times lower and up to several hundred times less than wells drilled with rotary rigs. For example, a typical, 10,000-foot gas well in Wyoming's Wind River Basin costs about $ 350,000 to drill. Laser drilling would drop that cost to $ 35,000 or lower, Graves said.

-- A laser drill's "footprint" -- the amount of surface space it occupies -- could be as little as 100 square feet, or even less with some models.

-- The laser rigs could be transported to drilling sites in one semi-trailer load. Conventional rigs take up several thousand square feet of space and require numerous truck trips to haul equipment.

-- Lasers could drill a typical natural-gas well in about 10 days, compared with 100 days for some conventional wells.
"You're looking at three months of disruption versus a week or so of disruption with a laser drill," Graves said.

-- Lasers could be programmed for precise well diameters and depths. In addition, they could alternately drill coarsely to deliver mineral samples, finely to vaporize rock and leave no waste materials, or with intense heat to melt the walls of well bores, thus eliminating the need to place steel casing in wells.

He goes on to say:

Compare this with the peak oiler theory:

So, as we slide down the Hubbert's Curve, not only will the rate of production decrease, but the cost of that production will increase.

Laser drilling may actually make production of the "hard to get" oil and gas easier than production of the stuff which was "easy to get". This would cause a lot of havoc with reserve numbers because commercially unfeasible small/deep deposits would suddenly become "proven" (i.e. exploitable with current technology).

Well OK! That article was from 2005 and so far the laser technology is not commercial despite advances in high power solid state lasers. Here a nice video about solid state lasers. However, the technology is advancing rapidly so it is only a matter of time.

But that is not all there is going on in the field. Exxon-Mobile announced in 2005 some very simple ways that it could reduce the cost of drilling substantially.

Exxon Mobil Corporation announced today that its drilling organization has developed an optimization process that consistently reduces the time required to drill oil and gas wells by up to 35 percent. ExxonMobil's Fast Drill Process (FDP) achieves this breakthrough performance by using real-time, computer analysis of the drilling system's energy consumption. This analysis, in turn, helps improve the management of the factors that determine drilling rate, such as weight on the drill bit, rotary speed and torque.

The result is significantly faster drilling rates and reduced downtime.

The company has used FDP in many of its operating areas, and the process improves performance in a broad range of conditions: hard and soft rock, deep and shallow wells, high- and low-angle wells in a variety of mud weights. It has shown comparable success in exploration, delineation and production wells.

So that technology is probably already being deployed. It may explain in part the recent reduction in costs for drilling natural gas wells.

There are other techniques that are coming to fruition. Here is another one from 2005.

Expectations are that widespread adoption of microhole technology could spawn a wave of “infill development”—drilling wells spaced between existing wells—that could tap potentially billions of barrels of bypassed oil at shallow depths in mature producing areas.

At the same time, microhole and related micro-instrumentation technologies offer the opportunity to dramatically cut producers’ exploration risk to a level comparable to that of drilling development wells.

Together, such efforts hold great promise for economically recovering a sizeable portion of the estimated remaining shallow (less than 5,000 feet subsurface) oil resource in the United States. The Energy Department estimates this targeted shallow resource at 218 billion barrels. Recovering just 10 percent of this targeted resource would mean a volume equivalent to 10 years of OPEC oil imports at current rates.

In addition, the smaller “footprint” of the lightweight rigs utilized for microhole drilling and the accompanying reduced drilling waste disposal volumes offer the bonus of added environmental benefits.

The microhole initiative is in line with the Bush Administration’s goal, set forth in the National Energy Policy, of promoting “dependable, affordable, and environmentally sound” energy production.

I knew it. That evil Bush was in cahoots with the oil companies to increase American oil supplies and reduce American dependence on the terrorist supporting nations of the Middle East. How evil can you get?

How about another Exxon project to lower the costs of drilling for natural gas?

"We're about 15 minutes away from a new frac being born," Randy Tolman, Exxon's project coordinator for the Piceance Basin, shouts over the noise. He invented this faster method of fracturing, or "fracing," the underground layers of rock and sand to unlock natural gas.

Exxon aims to export the new process to the unconventional natural gas reserves it is accumulating around the world. Drilling for more natural gas could make Exxon a lot of money as Americans demand cleaner fuel because natural gas doesn't emit as much pollution or greenhouse gases as oil and coal when burned.

Do you suppose the Greenhouse gas hysteria is a plot by the oil/natural gas companies to get government to shut down their competition? I wouldn't put it past them. Thomas Edison used similar methods to get his competition, the George Westinghouse Company's Tesla invented AC electricity system, shut down. Fortunately it didn't work. Will the CO2 hysteria work against the coal companies? So far the answer is no. It all depends on the ability of the interested parties (Al Gore will make tens of millions) to get the Senate to pass the Cap Coal and Tax the People Bill. They appear to be stymied. Good.

Ah but we are not done yet. Jared Potter is working on a water/flame drill in order to tap deep geothermal energy sources. Obviously it might also be useful for oil and natural gas.

Conventional geothermal power plants draw upon underground aquifers of hot water relatively close to the surface to create steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. The problem is that underground water currently tapped for geothermal is found mainly in the western United States. But the technology Potter is developing could drill much deeper, meaning geothermal energy could be generated nationwide.

According to a 2006 MIT study, so-called Enhanced Geothermal Systems could potentially supply 2,500 times the country’s current energy consumption. That grabbed Google’s attention, and last August the Internet giant’s philanthropic arm agreed to invest $4 million in Potter Drilling as part of its green energy initiative.

The tech twist: Potter drills not with hard-as-diamonds bits but with water—extremely hot water. (More on that in a bit.) The goal is to radically cut the cost of EGS to spread the technology to regions that rely too much on coal for generating electricity but are not suited for solar, wind and other renewable energy generation.

You can watch a video of the drill in operation. Here is some of what the people who posted the video have to say:

Inspired by designs created by his father decades ago, Jared Potter is building an arsenal of ultra-powerful flame-jet drills. As seen in the NatGeo video above, one prototype directs a jet of burning hydrogen at 3200°F against a slab of solid granite. The rock doesn't melt, as one might expect under such a blast of heat; instead, the high temperature causes the rock to fracture as it expands along existing micro-cracks in the material. After a short exposure to the flame-jet drill, a gaping, perfectly smooth borehole has been created in the granite.

For deeper drilling jobs, in wet, high-pressure conditions where traditional bits jam and break, Potter has another prototype. This one burns at a toasty 7200°F, but the flame is used indirectly, to superheat a jet of water, which in turn bores through the rock and simultaneously flushes the fragments out of the borehole.

The drill could drill at up to 100 ft an hour. Not as fast as conventional drilling, however there would be no need to lift mile long strings of pipe out of the well to replace drill bits. Or at least it wouldn't have to be done as often. And when you are replacing a drill bit you aren't drilling.

And that is not the only place such work is being done. The Swiss are working on it too.

Heated oxygen, ethanol and water are pumped into the reactor burner through various pipelines and valves and mix under temperature and pressure conditions, which correspond to the supercritical state of water (see box). The auto-ignition of the mixture is being observed through small sapphire-glass windows by means of a camera. A newly developed sensor plate measures the heat flux from the flame to the plate and records the temperature distribution on the surface for different distances between the burner outlet and the plate.

Based on these experimental results, conclusions are drawn concerning the heat transfer from the flame to the rock. “The heat flux is the crucial parameter for the characterization of this alternative drilling method”, explains Philipp Rudolf von Rohr, professor at the Institute of Process Engineering of the ETH Zurich and supervisor of the three PhD students.

During the experiment, the flame reaches a maximal temperature of about 2000°C. Rapid heating of the upper rock layer induces a steep temperature gradient in it. “The heat from the flame causes the rock to crack due to the induced temperature difference and the resulting linear thermal expansion”, explains Tobias Rothenfluh. The expansion of the upper rock layer causes natural flaws, already existing in the rock, act as origin points for cracks. Disc - like rock fragments in the millimeter scale are formed in the spallation zone. These particles are transported upwards with the ascending fluid stream of the surrounding medium. “One of the main challenges of the spallation process is to prevent the rock from melting, whilst it’s being rapidly heated”, says Tobias Rothenfluh. “The lager the temperature gradient in the rock, the faster you can drill.”

The method is particularly suitable for hard, dry rock, normally encountered at depths greater than three kilometers. In such depths conventional drilling bits wear out much faster, and their frequent replacement, renders the conventional drilling techniques uneconomic: a 10 km borehole costs around 60 million US dollars.

And that is just what we know publicly. Who knows what is going on in labs all around the world that is currently being kept secret for commercial advantage?

Bottom line? We may be running out of oil. Or not. But I do think fears of a near term peak oil limit on production are greatly exaggerated. Near term our limits are political not geological or technological. But isn't it always that way? And you know what they call a system where businessmen are in cahoots with the government to restrict the competition? National Socialism.

H/T pbelter at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Modern Technology

Foreign Policy Magazine looks at modern technology in Africa. They have an interesting take.

"Conditions in Africa Are Medieval."

Not in the slightest. It's true that some countries in the region are as poor as England under William the Conqueror, but that doesn't mean Africa's on the verge of doomsday. How many serfs had a cellphone? More than 63 million Nigerians do. Millions travel on buses and trucks across the continent each year, even if the average African road is still fairly bumpy. The list of modern technologies now ubiquitous in the region also includes cement, corrugated iron, steel wire, piping, plastic sheeting and containers, synthetic and cheap cotton clothing, rubber-soled shoes, bicycles, butane, paraffin candles, pens, paper, books, radios, televisions, vaccines, antibiotics, and bed nets.

The spread of these technologies has helped expand economies, improve quality of life, and extend health. About 10 percent of infants die in their first year of life in Africa -- still shockingly high, but considerably lower than the European average less than 100 years ago, let alone 800 years past. And about two thirds of Africans are literate -- a level achieved in Spain only in the 1920s.

Now who in America thinks of cement as modern technology? Cement was known in Roman times. And yet it is modern technology.

Modern hydraulic cements began to be developed from the start of the Industrial Revolution (around 1800), driven by three main needs:

* Hydraulic renders for finishing brick buildings in wet climates
* Hydraulic mortars for masonry construction of harbor works etc, in contact with sea water.
* Development of strong concretes.

In Britain particularly, good quality building stone became ever more expensive during a period of rapid growth, and it became a common practice to construct prestige buildings from the new industrial bricks, and to finish them with a stucco to imitate stone. Hydraulic limes were favored for this, but the need for a fast set time encouraged the development of new cements. Most famous among these was Parker's "Roman cement." This was developed by James Parker in the 1780s, and finally patented in 1796. It was, in fact, nothing like any material used by the Romans, but was a "Natural cement" made by burning septaria - nodules that are found in certain clay deposits, and that contain both clay minerals and calcium carbonate. The burnt nodules were ground to a fine powder. This product, made into a mortar with sand, set in 5-15 minutes. The success of "Roman Cement" led other manufacturers to develop rival products by burning artificial mixtures of clay and chalk.

An now when we need a building or a road we can set up forms and just pour it. At one time I was very interested in cement construction and studied it extensively. How to calculate the forces a finished structure could handle. Where to put the rebar. Pretensioning and a whole lot of other stuff. My friends laughed at me when I told them i was studying cement. Why would a guy who could do advanced electronics be studying an "old" technology like cement? And yet, without cement the world as we know it would not exist. Currently in my area, high quality cement is available for under $100 a cubic yard delivered if you buy a moderate amount (a few truck loads).

Speaking of high tech, there is something the inventors of cement never thought of but is very handy these days: it makes good shielding material for land based nuclear reactors. And the price is right.

Room Temperature Superconductors One Step Closer

We are one step closer to room temperature superconductors.

Menlo Park, Calif.—Move over, silicon—it may be time to give the Valley a new name. Physicists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have confirmed the existence of a type of material that could one day provide dramatically faster, more efficient computer chips.

Recently-predicted and much-sought, the material allows electrons on its surface to travel with no loss of energy at room temperatures and can be fabricated using existing semiconductor technologies. Such material could provide a leap in microchip speeds, and even become the bedrock of an entirely new kind of computing industry based on spintronics, the next evolution of electronics.

Physicists Yulin Chen, Zhi-Xun Shen and their colleagues tested the behavior of electrons in the compound bismuth telluride. The results, published online June 11 in Science Express, show a clear signature of what is called a topological insulator, a material that enables the free flow of electrons across its surface with no loss of energy.

Pretty darn exciting. It all depends on something called topological insulation. The article gives some details on how that works. Which gets a bit heavy on the physics. I'm going to skip that here. However, if you have heard of the Pauli exclusion principle it is worth a read.

There are some limitations. For now.

Topological insulators aren't conventional superconductors nor fodder for super-efficient power lines, as they can only carry small currents, but they could pave the way for a paradigm shift in microchip development. "This could lead to new applications of spintronics, or using the electron spin to carry information," Qi said. "Whether or not it can build better wires, I'm optimistic it can lead to new devices, transistors, and spintronics devices."

Fortunately for real-world applications, bismuth telluride is fairly simple to grow and work with. Chen said, "It's a three-dimensional material, so it's easy to fabricate with the current mature semiconductor technology. It's also easy to dope—you can tune the properties relatively easily."

"This is already a very exciting thing," he said, adding that the material "could let us make a device with new operating principles."

Bismuth Telluride is a semiconductor that is currently used for solid state refrigerators. It is also used to generate electricity from small temperature differences. That means the semiconductor industry has more than a little experience in fabricating the material.

If the lab boys have developed a repeatable formula it is possible we might see useful devices using this superconducting property in as little as three years. One use of such properties might be to make a super low noise microwave filter that doesn't require cooling to Liquid Nitrogen temperatures (77° Kelvin). That could be very helpful.

I will be keeping an eye on this one.

If "normal" superconductivity interests you this book is a good place to start:
Introduction to Superconductivity

And if you are a little further along and contemplate building a fusion reactor in your garage, this book could help:
Case Studies in Superconducting Magnets: Design and Operational Issues

Cross Posted at Classical Values

A New Hope

There is new hope for incandescent light bulbs. Shooting them with lasers can raise their efficiency dramatically.

An ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers, say optics researchers at the University of Rochester. The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can.

The laser process creates a unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament—the tiny wire inside a light bulb—and theses structures make the tungsten become far more effective at radiating light.

The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

"We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament," says Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester. "We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament. When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament, but there was no change in the bulb's energy usage."

Now that is promising. But wait. There is more.

In addition to increasing the brightness of a bulb, Guo's process can be used to tune the color of the light as well. In 2008, his team used a similar process to change the color of nearly any metal to blue, golden, and gray, in addition to the black he'd already accomplished. Guo and Vorobyev used that knowledge of how to control the size and shape of the nanostructures—and thus what colors of light those structures absorb and radiate—to change the amount of each wavelength of light the tungsten filament radiates. Though Guo cannot yet make a simple bulb shine pure blue, for instance, he can change the overall radiated spectrum so that the tungsten, which normally radiates a yellowish light, could radiate a more purely white light.

Guo's team has even been able to make a filament radiate partially polarized light, which until now has been impossible to do without special filters that reduce the bulb's efficiency. By creating nanostructures in tight, parallel rows, some light that emits from the filament becomes polarized.

The team is now working to discover what other aspects of a common light bulb they might be able to control. Fortunately, despite the incredible intensity involved, the femtosecond laser can be powered by a simple wall outlet, meaning that when the process is refined, implementing it to augment regular light bulbs should be relatively simple.

Guo is also announcing this month in Applied Physics Letters a technique using a similar femtosecond laser process to make a piece of metal automatically move liquid around its surface, even lifting a liquid up against gravity.

Let a guy loose with a laser and some spare time and you never know what might happen.

And to think it all started with Edison. Did you know that you can buy a replica 1890 Edison 40 Watt Light Bulb? Me either. You can read some history on how we got where we are today in terms of light and electricity in: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. Did you know that Tesla started us on the path to fluorescent bulb technology? And the wonders are still coming.

H/T jgarry at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Really Good Welders

I was perusing some of my favorite technical haunts and found this comment about good welders.

I got welders available who can weld up the crack of dawn.

Well it amused me.

H/T Billy Catringer Talk Polywell

Science Toys - 3

I have done a couple of recent posts on code and cipher breaking, SIGINT on signals intelligence and A Crypto Problem about Edgar Alan Poe's The Gold-Bug.And so I thought what better science kit for this week than Spy Science,which has materials for sending secret messages a number of different ways including codes, invisible ink, a cypher wheel, encryption sheets, and a Spy International ID card. And if you are found with the secret spy ID card I'm afraid it will give the whole game away. But no matter. Kids will no doubt love being an official secret spy.

Want to make your own invisible ink at home? Lemon juice is good as is milk and both develop with heat. Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writingshould have even more examples.

So on to more codes and cyphers. Codes, Ciphers and Other Cryptic and Clandestine Communication: 400 Ways to Send Secret Messages from Hieroglyphs to the Internetis a beginners guide to all kinds of codes, cyphers and signaling methods. It covers everything from flag codes to World War Two code breakers. It is not very detailed, but it does give an excellent overview.

United States Diplomatic Codes and Ciphers: 1775-1938should be of interest to those who like American History. Did you know that Thomas Jefferson, our smartest President ever, invented a cipher system that used code wheels? Well you know it now.

American Black Chamberby Yardley details American code breaking efforts in World War One. It caused quite a scandal when it came out because it gave away a lot of secrets that our government would have preferred to remain secret, including how breaking the codes of other nations gave Americans a serious advantage in post war diplomacy. You can read more about Yardley in the book The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreakingby David Kahn. Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaedais as up to date as the headlines in your newspaper. Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies & Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century.Yes they did, frequently. Did you know that the breaking of a diplomatic code by the British helped get the USA into WW1? The Zimmermann Telegramis a classic telling of the tale by Barbra Tuchman. And it is just one example of how spying shaped the history of the world.

The Spycraft Manual: The Insider's Guide to Espionage Techniquescovers how to do it for your budding spy. International Spy Museum's Handbook of Practical SpyingHas practical tips on how to apply spying in your daly life. Such as:

Learn how to apply spy knowledge to situations in your own life, from how to hide valuables in your home, to how to shake a tail if you are being followed on a dark street. Learn how to avoid carjacking, pickpockets, and how to protect yourself from identity theft. The same tactics used by CIA and KGB agents can also be used in less serious situations-and these techniques can work in surprising ways. Planning a surprise birthday party for someone special? Learn how to create a cover story. Real spies know the tricks and what can give your cover away. A spy must master many skills, and is only as good as what he or she sees and understands. Observe and Analyze, Avoid Capture, Use Disguises, and Analyze Threats. These are all things that can help you in daily applications.The book is presented by International Spy Museum director and ex-CIA operative Peter Earnest, and filled with useful information gathered by the Spy Museum's team of experts.

I can think of uses for this information that would eventually lead to divorce court. So be careful out there.

So you want to break codes and ciphers? Here is a set of three books that will help:
Secret Code Breaker: A Cryptanalyst's Handbook (Codebreaker Series, Number 1)
Secret Code Breaker II: A Cryptanalyst's Handbook (Codebreaker Series, Number 3)
Secret Code Breaker III: A Cryptanalyst's Handbook (Codebreaker Series, Number 3)

And if you want to try your hand at deciphering here are a few puzzle books:
Mind Boggling Code Breaker Puzzles for Kids
The Cryptogram Challenge: Over 150 Codes to Crack and Ciphers to Break
The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms: Over 600 Mystery Codes to Be Cracked!
The Six Unsolved Ciphers: Inside the Mysterious Codes That Have Confounded the World's Greatest Cryptographers
Lubos Motl's Reference Frame links to an online cryptogram that you can try to crack.

And to kind of wrap this all up I want to cover the breaking of the German and Japanese Machine codes in WW2. Let me start with a book I am currently reading The American Magicwhich deals with the breaking of the Japanese codes and how that information was used to defeat Japan and had an influence on the decision to atomic bomb Japan.


Here is the book that got me interested in WW2 code breaking: The Ultra Secret: The Inside Story of Operation Ultra, Bletchley Park and EnigmaThere are lots of books on the subject for those interested in the origins of the modern computer is: Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Code-breaking Computers (Popular Science)YouTube has a couple of videos on the subject: Colossus 1 and Colossus 2. I also liked the PBS video series described here in excellent detail Mind of A Codebreaker. Unfortunately the video does not seem to be available any more.

There are lots more books on the subject of WW2 code breaking. Here is a list:
Enigma: The Battle for the Code
Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II
The German Enigma Cipher Machine: Beginnings, Success, and Ultimate Failure
The Secret War: The Inside Story of the Codemakers and Codebreakers of World War II
Codes and Ciphers: Julius Caesar, the Enigma, and the Internet

And for those of you who mouse around your computer: Lorenz Cipher Machine Mouse PadIf you want to watch a DVD about spying may I suggest: Secrets of War - Intelligence (The Ultra Enigma, Women Spies in World War II)narrated by Charlton Heston.

That should be enough to keep your junior spy and the rest of you into the clandestine arts busy for a while.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Israel Has Clout At UN

Now there is a headline I bet you thought you would never see. And I bet you can't guess who is supporting them at the UN. It is not just the USA.

The United Nations Security Council met overnight Thursday on a resolution designed to bring a speedy halt to Israel's 13-day-old offensive against Hamas in Gaza. The vote over a resolution was apparently postponed due to Israeli pressure.

Key Arab nations and Western powers reached agreement on the main elements of a resolution, the head of the Arab League said.

The resolution was supported by the United States and Arab nations that have close ties to Hamas. But it will be up to Israel and Hamas to decide to stop their military activities.

"Peace will be made in the region, not in New York, but actions in New York can support the search for peace in the region," a senior British official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

That is diplo speak by the Ababs for "Thump Hamas as hard as you want. We don't mind. In fact we encourage it."

The "deal" starts out with the usual boilerplate.

The latest draft "stresses the urgency of and calls for an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza." It "condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism."

And then it gets to the good stuff.

The draft also calls on UN member states "to intensify efforts to provide arrangements and guarantees in Gaza in order to sustain a durable cease-fire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the sustained re-opening" of border crossings.

It is well known that the border crossings will not be permanently re-opened until the Philistines stop their attacks through the crossings. Which means Gaza needs a new government because Hamas is committed irrevocably to the destruction of Israel.

This is a sea change in Middle East politics. One that actually happened in 2006. And why are the Arabs so inclined? Rather simple really. They fear Iran more than they fear Israel. This fact has been obvious since the Hizballah war of 2006 when Saudi Arabia came out at the beginning of the war supporting Israel at the expense of Hizballah/Iran. At least at first until hastily retracted in solidarity with their Philistine "brothers". That would be the brothers Saudi Arabia kicked out of its territory when they started getting all militant and such. Bunch of trouble makers those Philistines.

And what about the strategic defeat Israel suffered in 2006 against Hizballah? It looks like Hizballah is in no hurry to defeat Israel again.

"Lebanon denounces and condemns the firing of rockets and the retaliatory action and believes that such action is in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701," Siniora said in a statement, according to Lebanese press reports.

"We have asked the competent authorities in cooperation with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to investigate," he said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the rocket firing, which lightly wounded two elderly residents of a retirement home in Nahariya.

Of course the government of Lebanon wants no part of a repeat of 2006. But what about the "real winners" Hizballah?

Lebanese Information Minister Tarek Mitri told AFP that Hizbullah had assured the cabinet that it "remains committed to stability and Resolution 1701," which brought an end to the Second Lebanon War.

Followed by the usual Hizballah chest thumping.

A Damascus-based leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Ahmed Jibril, threatened Saturday to open up new military fronts against Israel if the conflict in Gaza were to escalate.

What exactly does if the conflict in Gaza were to escalate mean? I'd say it was already fairly well escalated.

I think it may fairly well be assumed that the players in the Middle East think that Hamas deserved a thumping. And that includes their main supporter Iran. Now why the sea change? The oil is running out. Not soon. Maybe not for fifty or a hundred years. But the end is in sight. And if not the actual supply of oil then the demand. The world has gotten serious about getting off the oil standard. How serious? So serious that even China is producing a plug in hybrid.

BYD Auto's plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the F3DM, is now on sale in China, the company announced this week at a press conference in Shenzhen, China.

The F3DM, which will retail for 149,800 yuan ($21,200), can travel 100 km (63 miles) on its battery before needing to be recharged, according to BYD Auto.

The car can be plugged in to any average Chinese 220-volt wall outlet to be recharged.

While there are other plug-in electric hybrid cars available for sale, BYD Auto's F3DM is the first one in China to be mass-produced and, therefore, widely available to the general public, according to both BYD and The Wall Street Journal.

BYD Auto told reporters at the press conference that it expects to sell 350,000 F3DM cars in 2009. It also plans to launch an all-electric vehicle in 2009.

And who is behind BYD? Now there is an interesting story. but I will give you a hint. Who would guess that the center of the automotive world is no longer Detroit (well that is obvious) but in Omaha, Nebraska? Omaha, Nebraska? That is not so obvious.

In September, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet announced that MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, had bought $230 million worth of stock in BYD, giving it a 10 percent interest in the company.

Average Americans may also soon have a chance to buy a piece of BYD. The company also announced that it plans to begin exporting the F3DM to the U.S. in 2010.

Many automakers, including General Motors and Toyota, have been working on plug-in electric vehicles for mass production. All have said that the battery technology for this type of vehicle has been the most challenging aspect of the development process.

It should be no surprise then, that the Shenzhen, China-based company which is now a major player in the Chinese auto industry, started out in 1995 as a cell phone battery manufacturer.

The plans for an American roll out in 2010 have been delayed to at least 2011. In any case the hand writing is on the wall. The dominance of oil will come to an end. Not soon. But the end is in sight.

And how about those geniuses in Detroit? GM has put the Chevy Volt factory on hold.

General Motors is suspending work on the $370 million factory slated to build engines for the Chevrolet Volt, but says the plug-in hybrid will appear in showrooms by the end of 2010 as promised.

The decision comes as GM frantically slashes costs in a desperate bid to survive while the White House dithers on a bailout. GM and Chrysler have said they could be out of money by the end of the year, but Congress failed to approve $14 billion in short-term loans to the Big Three and the Bush administration appears to be in no hurry to act.

With cash dwindling fast, GM says it has no choice but to postpone work on the the factory in Flint, Michigan, where 300 people would build the 1.4-liter engines slated for the Volt hybrid and Chevrolet Cruze compact.

"It's temporarily on hold as we assess our cash situation," GM spokeswoman Sharon Basel told the Detroit Free Press. "I don't think it's any surprise that we're studying and reviewing everything, given the position we're in."

GM is doing everything short of searching for coins under the couch cushions in Rick Wagoner's office, but the Volt program has until now been sacrosanct. Rightfully so, because the range-extended electric car is the centerpiece of GM's campaign to recast itself as a company that builds fuel-efficient vehicles. It's the one thing GM can point to and say "See? We get it. We finally get it." But things have gotten so bad even the Volt is taking a hit.

Idiots.

In any case new car companies will step into the breech. And some old companies like Toyota are hustling their butts to get a plug in hybrid on the market. And if you can't wait there are plug in hybrid conversion kits.

Not content to be a potential supplier of lithium ion batteries for GM's plug-in hybrid programs, A123 Systems will start selling battery packs that conversion companies can use to transform current hybrid vehicles to plug-in capability. The company has already been working with Hymotion on plug-in kits and they have a contract to convert ten Prius for the California South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The kits will be completely integrated and designed to be installed in under two hours. The installed price of the 5kWh kit for a Prius is $10,000 and gives a range of 14 miles on battery. A123 CEO David Vieau testified at a recent US Senate hearing in support of tax breaks for customers buying plug-in conversions. Fleet testing of the systems is ongoing and sales are expected to start in 2008.

And if not 2008 then soon.

The lithium ion batteries are the stumbling block as evidenced by comments #30, #34, and others at the link. However, the problems will get solved. There is a lot of money at stake.

Well we are kind of far afield from the Gaza 2009 war. Which just goes to show you that everything in this world is interconnected. Some obscure guy in a lab is even now working on something that will change the world for the better in a big way. Hamas should have been paying attention. Fools. Peace in the Middle East through better battery technology.

So now you know why Israel has clout among the Arabs at the UN. Batteries.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Growthbusters

I just came across a particularly dumb site called Growthbusters. They claim that a growing economy is a bad thing and that if we can just get our situation static or reduced even, the general situation of humans will improve.

"The first commandment of economics is: Grow. Grow forever. Companies get bigger. National economies need to swell by a certain percent each year. People should want more, make more, earn more, spend more - ever more.

The first commandment of the Earth is: enough. Just so much and no more. Just so much soil. Just so much water. Just so much sunshine. Everything born of the Earth grows to its appropriate size and then stops." - Donella Meadows Co-Author, Limits to Growth

Of course Donna isn't too smart. Are there really enough computers in the world? Wouldn't it be good to increase those numbers? Do we really have enough accessible bandwidth? Or would it be good to increase the amount of bandwidth? Is everyone on the planet well fed? Or would it be a good idea to continue to increase the food supply? Is everyone on earth well housed or would it be a good idea to deploy more housing? Does every one in the world have access to enough energy supplies? Or would it be good to improve it?

What we know empirically is that population increases fastest in places that are the most economically deprived. That very fact was brought up in the comments to this Democratic Underground post.

One thing not brought up by the Enough! folks is that we can make more by making things smaller. Nanotechnology to the rescue. We can also make more with what we have by translating ideas into technology. For instance we can get more out of a pound of iron by making it stronger with various alloys. We can make plastics stronger by strengthening them with carbon nanotubes instead of glass. Concrete can be strengthened by reinforcing it with steel. We can make more food with the land we have by improving the productivity of our crops. Biotechnology to the rescue.

So what commodity are we really shortest of? What is our most glaring lack? Knowledge. We need to be doing more to grow our knowledge base. There is a place where growth can continue unhindered for centuries if not millennia. The results should support humans quite nicely.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Next Big Thing

In Secular Decline I looked at where we are in the business cycle. What I said basically was that semiconductors and the microprocessor advance were no longer providing excess profits. To a pretty fair extent the world has been computerized. Profit opportunities are declining.

So then comes the question: What will be the next big thing? The The Online Investing AI Blog linked has a nice graph of the business cycle. But let me cut to the chase.

Solar power. Fusion power. Mind-Machine interfaces. Nano-technology. Personalized medicine. Rapid prototyping.

They also mention "Smart AI-powered investing for the masses". Now I don't see how that can work. If they can identify above average opportunities reliably, the masses will all invest and there goes your above average opportunity.

As to the others. There are lots of opportunities in nano-technology. Which one? And yes, solar is probably one or ten breakthroughs away from being low cost enough to start capturing a lot of the electrical energy market. Except wind is currently lower cost and the cost reduction curve is more reliable. I can tell you, almost certain, that wind will become lower cost than coal fired electrical plants when wind turbines reach the 8 to 12 MW (peak) size. Right now the 5 MW (peak) size is just going into series production. That means that at the best wind sites the cost is below coal and at the worst it is above coal.

There are two problems with wind. All the best sites are in places (like North Dakota) where grid connections are sparse. And wind is intermittent. Which means that without storage its contribution is limited to about 10% of grid power.

Which points to two investment opportunities. The first company (GE? Westinghouse? Siemens?) to come out with 2 MV DC transmission equipment and 2 MV DC to AC conversion equipment (AC to DC is easy) will help bring wind from the upper Mid-West to the loads in the more populous states. It also gives rise to the possibility of wind going above 10% to perhaps 20% of grid power because of both wider generation averaging and load averaging.

So what is the second opportunity? Low cost very high power energy storage. Will it be batteries? Fuel cells? Flywheels? No one knows. What we know is that the technology will have low turn around losses (generation - storage - generation), very high energy capacity, reasonably long life (5 to 20 years), low losses over 24 to 72 hours of storage, and low cost per KWh stored (below 2¢ per KWh with the possibility of getting below .5¢ per KWh). A pretty tall order.

As for solar - because it is better matched to grid demands (high in the day low at night), and because of its greater predictability (when the sun shines) it can probably go to 20% to 30% of grid power before storage is a necessity.

In addition wind peaks during the low demand season of winter and sun peaks during the high demand season of summer. So the two forms of production are to a certain extent complimentary. However, solar peaks at noon and the load (air conditioning mostly) peaks at 3 PM. So economical 4 to 6 hour storage would be good. However, that storage would be mostly idle in the winter except for load leveling.

So what else will be needed? Smart grid equipment which can turn on and off loads like electric water heaters, refrigerators, and air conditioners to match supply and demand better over short intervals (say 15 to 30 minutes). If plug in hybrids become big they could be used for load leveling over short intervals as well allowing motor fuels (cellulostic ethanol?) to be used to arbitrage the high cost of day time electricity with the low cost of night time electricity. Everybody will become demand metered. And that is another opportunity.

Fusion power? There is no working prototype yet. Personalized medicine? Another 100 to 500 breakthroughs are needed. One of which is much lower cost genetic sequencing and the ability to produce required molecules in mass quantities (1 to 5 grams - which is a lot if you are making them a molecule at a time). Rapid prototyping? I saw a machine for sale a month or two ago that fits on a desktop that costs $5,000. A little pricey for a home that might only need 5 to 50 custom parts a month. And only good for small plastic parts in any case. To make such a system work you also need to be able to make metal parts too. Which means a small milling machine and a small lathe. Each of those is going to run another $5,000 or so with current technology and auxiliary equipment like clamps measuring tools etc.

Mind machine interfaces? Another 1,000 to 5,000 breakthroughs required.

Now what can we say about all these things? Progress is being made and some day in the next 5 to 20 years each will cross the 2% penetration threshold where they take off rapidly. OTOH there is danger too. If you can make your own molecules in a well stocked home lab, virus making is just a few computer codes away.

How will man, with his hunter gatherer brain, with all his passions, survive such access to power? That is the $640 trillion dollar question.

Some Really Slick S****

Scientist at DOE's Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, have found a material that is very hard and slicker than teflon by a factor of 2.5X.

A superhard substance that is more slippery than Teflon could protect mechanical parts from wear and tear, and boost energy efficiency by reducing friction.

The "ceramic alloy" is created by combining a metal alloy of boron, aluminium and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2). It is the hardest material after diamond and cubic boron nitride.

BAM, as the material is called, was discovered at the US Department of Energy Ames Laboratory in Iowa in 199, during attempts to develop a substance to generate electricity when heated.

I think they mean 1999.

Those chance findings have now developed into a $3-million programme at the Ames Lab to develop the BAM into a kind of eternal lubricant, a coating for moving parts to boost energy efficiency and longevity by reducing friction.

BAM is much slipperier than Teflon, with a coefficient of friction of .02 compared to .05. Lubricated steel has a friction coefficient of 0.16.

One way to exploit this slipperiness is to coat the rotor blades in everyday pumps used in everything from heating systems to aircraft, says Russel. A slick BAM coating of just 2 microns could reduce friction between the blades and their housing, meaning less power is needed to produce the same pumping power.

Bruce Cook, lead investigator on the Ames Lab project, estimates that merely coating rotors with the material could save US industry alone 330 trillion kilojoules (9 billion kilowatt hours) every year by 2030 - about $179 million a year.

BAM is also potentially attractive as a hard coating for drill bits and other cutting tools. Diamond is commonly used for this, and is harder, but it reacts chemically with steel and so degrades relatively quickly when used to cut the metal.

Ultimately it would mean multi-billion dollar savings per year. Think of what it would mean to reduce friction in automotive bearings by a factor of 8 and in addition eliminate the need for oil changes. Obviously there is a lot of work that needs to be done to get us from here to there.

One of the things this article points out is that you never know what you will find when you start looking - if you are paying attention.

Cross Posted at Classical Values