Comments on: Russia: $1 billion from oil into nanotechnology

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Fri, 15 May 2009 18:24:15 +0000

By: Siberian Light - the Russia Blog

Siberian Light - the Russia Blog — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:20:36 +0000

Another question that springs to mind is – if Russia does develop nanotech for military use, will its poorly trained mostly conscript army be able to make good use of it?

By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Wed, 02 May 2007 19:32:38 +0000

Is that structurally sound?

By: Adrian Wilkins

Adrian Wilkins — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:51:41 +0000

Regardless of what opinion you might have of the ethics involved, military research has some advantages over pure and industrial science. Enormous budgets and a strongly results-oriented culture.

The advantages of full-scale MNT are so compelling that there cannot help but be a great deal of espionage in both corporate and governmental spheres targeted at liberating the latest innovation from the “enemy”.

The nation who hits the assembler first will be incapable of hiding it for long. It will reveal itself eventually as they start to produce unprecedented volumes of exotic high-tech products, either for military or commercial gain. Unlike nuclear weapons, the point of having MNT is not to scare others away from using it, but to use it for the benefit of your people.

Hopefully that nation will be enlightened enough to realise that once they have that new source of wealth, there is really very little point squabbling over who gets to use it. When the goose lays golden eggs that can hatch out into more geese, everyone can sleep in a house made of gold.

By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 01:12:56 +0000

To clarify, my previous post wasn’t to say rah-rah Russia. Their male population is afflicted by rampart alcoholism and their recent cultural anti-immigration practises (beatings, killings) and neo-nazism make the USA’s Homeland Security agenda look downright welcoming by comparison. It’s just, the world lost out by USSR’s CNT descovery being kept behind the Iron Curtain. CNT experimental techniques may not be presently at a 2037 level if USSR’s CNT discovery had been published in a Western journal, but it is hard to fathom CNT research that researchers like Zettl and Tomanek will make in 2010 wouldn’t be made now in 2007, had USSR published her 1950s results.

The parallels today include Israel and the Saudis facing a *shared* water crisis (desalination nanomembranes), and South Korea’s looming dominance of CNT production versus other regional players seeking to upgrade their own CNT manufacturing techniques.

It is only aerospace and particle beam weapons where I see a reflexive attitude of secrecy in nanotech being potentially a good thing.

By: Phillip Huggan

Phillip Huggan — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:51:29 +0000

I’m impressed with Russia’s surface science community. After all, behind the Iron Curtain they discovered Carbon Nanotubes in the 1950′s, fully three decades before the West!

Russia and China will be the last bastions of dirty coal powerplants. It would be reasonable to assume
their conversion to clean energy would be expediated by home-grown solutions. It would be in Russia’s best interest to make this conversion before their Taiga turns to mush.

By: Nanoman

Nanoman — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 01:22:41 +0000

Is Russia dedicating this money to actual molecular manufacturing, or, nano particle/nanomaterial research?

What happens if Russia builds the first true molecular assemblers? Will they come out with it or keep it secret?

I know the Russians have been willing to research areas of science and engineering that America and others (except for China) have refused, such as advanced exotic electromagnetics (torsion fields, scalar electromagnetics, vacuum energy, etc) and have born some fascinating fruit in these areas. Controlled torsion fields have been found to effect molecular structures, such as hardening metal and rearranging molecules.

I believe one area that American nanotechnologists have overlooked, is how energy/electromagnetism and subatomic electrostatics deal with nanotech and molecular manipulation. What if we could do mechanosynthesis with controlled EM wave patterns instead of mechanical machines? Or, a combination? Think on it guys and gals.