Image: Shelter Productions (photo); Kursten Bracchi (prop styling); Anthony Isambert for Halley Resources (grooming)
In Brief
- Nanotechnology has demonstrated more hyperbole than substance for many years—and the “nano” label has been applied to items ranging from motor oil to lipstick.
- One of the first true nanoscale machines is a radio that can play songs such as Eric Clapton’s “Layla” and the theme from Star Wars.
- A single nanotube in this device performs the function of multiple components in larger radios. The nanoapparatus may ultimately find uses in drug delivery devices, prosthetics or explosives detectors.
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Slide Show: How a Nano Radio Works
Nanotechnology is arguably one of the most overhyped “next big things” in the recent history of applied science. According to its most radical advocates, nanotechnology is a molecular manufacturing system that will allow us to fabricate objects of practically any arbitrary complexity by mechanically joining molecule to molecule, one after another, until the final, atomically correct product emerges before our eyes.
The reality has been somewhat different: today the word “nano” has been diluted to the point that it applies to essentially anything small, even down to the “nanoparticles” in commodities as diverse as motor oil, sunscreen, lipstick and ski wax. Who, then, would have expected that one of the first truly functional nanoscale devices—one that would have a measurable effect on the larger, macroscale world—would prove to be ... a radio? But the nanotube radio, invented in 2007 by physicist Alex Zettl and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, performs a set of amazing feats: a single carbon nanotube tunes in a broadcast signal, amplifies it, converts it to an audio signal and then sends it to an external speaker in a form that the human ear can readily recognize. If you have any doubts about this assertion, just visit www.sciam.com/nanoradio and listen to the song “Layla.”
This article was originally published with the title The World's Smallest Radio.
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9 Comments
Add CommentNow the tinfoil hat battalions have something new to worry about; never mind the "implant that the ___ put in to control my brain", they can now fantasize about receiving nanoradio control devices from every vaccination or blood test! But seriously, this is a remarkable new form of technology. Reminds me of the Star Trek Borgs, in a way. Let us each pray to our respective deities that it is only used for good (if we can agree on what "good" is).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you can make nanoscale radios, why not use them to generate electricity? We all know that radios transform electromagnetic radiation (radio waves) into electricity that is then turned into sound. Why not use that simple concept to build an array that generates electricity from static? The universe is saturated with radio waves and all manner of radiation. I think it would be amazing if we where to harness this energy into something useful. I've heard that it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light because any fuel used to power the craft wouldn't be enough because the fuel must also move and has mass which would increase as the speed of the craft increases. However, if you consider that we're practically swimming in potential fuel in the form of cosmic radiation, why not use that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGranted, it's a very small amount of energy so traveling faster than the speed of light might be a bit much. However, powering satellites or deep-space probes might be well within reason.
Not even close, Nathaniel. Save for light from our sun, there's not enough power left in cosmic radio waves by the time they hit here, even if you took all of them hitting the surface of the planet at once, to move a piece of paper. There's a steep, curved falloff in the power loss over distance. But then, if you want, consider that the thrust of a charged xenon ion engine is about the same, so for long-haul intragalactic spacecraft, maybe not a bad idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, fuel has nothing to do with why we can't travel faster than light. It's something of a universal ceiling on speed. If it were physically possible for anything to go faster, light would be doing it. Light simply goes as fast as the universe allows things to go. Instead, we look at reducing distances (for instance via wormholes) to make cosmic distances traversable.
In reading the article I wondered about the wavelength involved. For convenience I picked 1000 Khz which has a wavelength of 300 meters. The nanotube must be looking at a very tiny fraction of that. It would seem that fractions of wavelengths of other frequencies would be picked up too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am curious about how much the amplification would be, say in comparison with commercially available Low Noise Broadband amplifiers (LNB) which currently provide 60 dB of gain up to 20 GHz or more. I am asking this in the hope that we may some day be able to use this technology to amplify the thermally emitted natural radiation from the atmosphere and surface as is currently done with microwave and infrared radiometers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow can a minute nanotube smaller than a virus be resonant with a 160 meter long AM radio wave? It would be equivalent to having an ocean wave cause a needle to vibrate if it was stuck in a wharf piling. Some other effect is at work here that is not well explained by the author or by conventional antenna theory. It can't be that a photon particle is causing the vibration because the photon's length itself would have to be meters long.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does listening to a scratchy audio playback of 'Layla' prove anything at all??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe answer : It Proves Nothing At All, other than that audio files can be played on the internet. Bravo.
Implant chip in the human brain.Synthetic telepathy is communication systems built on thoughts, not speech. Multimedia communication network is based. Brain copying is performed around the clock, largely by learning computer, copying is nothing short of serious torture. No one would voluntarily give informed consent to this serious research abuse. It takes years of learning and program development to develop the new computer-brain interfaces and multimedia language between man and computer. Subjects are now against their will has been online for five years on Man-Brain-Computer-Interface.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeurological research has progressed so far that you can hack the neural system is wireless, which means that a computer can communicate with your brain and store all your sensory experiences, and then studying your kognetiva behavior, ie, the ultimate human study. The commercial user fields are endless and it feels no need to explain the far-reaching consequences when abused. This technology brain-computer interaction has happened during the 2000s and will revoltion our way of life.
Implant chip in the human brain.Synthetic telepathy is communication systems built on thoughts, not speech. Multimedia communication network is based. Brain copying is performed around the clock, largely by learning computer, copying is nothing short of serious torture. No one would voluntarily give informed consent to this serious research abuse. It takes years of learning and program development to develop the new computer-brain interfaces and multimedia language between man and computer. Subjects are now against their will has been online for five years on Man-Brain-Computer-Interface.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeurological research has progressed so far that you can hack the neural system is wireless, which means that a computer can communicate with your brain and store all your sensory experiences, and then studying your kognetiva behavior, ie, the ultimate human study. The commercial user fields are endless and it feels no need to explain the far-reaching consequences when abused. This technology brain-computer interaction has happened during the 2000’s and will revoltion our way of life.