There is actually a way to mass produce BN nanotubes: http://wwwrsphysse.anu.edu.au/nanotube/pdf/171896. pdf and CNT mass production shouldn't be far behind: http://wwwrsphysse.anu.edu.au/nanotube/pdf/cntapa0 3.pdf

FP: Fuck Piquepaille. I see he's infested this place too, not just Slashdot, with his blog spamming. Go away Trolland!

I wonder how stable such an oscillator would be. In a vacuum environment there is nothing to obstruct the tube's motion, so it is likely that the oscillations would be uniform. A small, accurate clock would have a large market, from watches to computer clocks. A good clock is also a requirement for a timed nanoplague. Imagine being able to create a nanoscale, self-replicating timebomb, that can be seeded into the target population. With only a few seeds in the victum's body, the immune system will not even notice anything, allowing for maximum infection potential. Then the simultaneous "detonation", which can simply consist of synthesizing some poison, like HCN in the blood, would kill off a great number of people, perhaps even the entire world. Such a perfect weapon this would be; undetectable until it strikes (the reason we don't all die from plague is that the victums know they are sick and try to avoid infecting others), completely untraceable (regular diseases are often easy to trace to an index case, and thus, to whoever infected him, read Robin Cook's "Outbreak" for an example of the technique), easily vaccinated against (like Anthrax, which happens to be the only biological weapon the terrorists have used, possibly for this very reason), impossible to treat (because everyone is sick simultaneously, there is no one to be a doctor), and 100% lethal (even Ebola only kills ~95% of the victums). Science gives us such exciting things…