From: Darin Sunley (rsunley@escape.ca)
Date: Thu Jun 17 1999 - 12:16:54 MDT
Here's a link to an aritcle in New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990619/theengineo.html
The article discusses how an ability to make fragments of microtubules
move more or less precisely along teflon "tracks" may, with refinement
be the first nanotechnological solution to theproblem of positioning
nanomachine components.
When I first heard of it, though, another application sprang to mind.
The article doesn's discuss switching trains from track to track.
Indeed, a significant part of the article is spent discussing the
problems of keeping these things ON track.
However, if a technique is worked out for creating switches that can
switch these trains from track to track, that would be significant to
build a working computer from this technology, as I've heard some people
were able to do with macro-scale model trains. (Any references on this
anybody?)
Now granted the trains move along at only 1 micrometer per second, but
depending on the scale that memory elements etc. could be made at, this
could still be a viable technology for not particularly fast, but
highly, highly minaturized computers.
Comments anybody?
Darin Sunley
rsunley@escape.ca
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:13 MST