Carbon Nanotube Hyper Muscle Uber Name GO!

TAE has long argued to his peers that if you want to sell a technology product, insert "nano" in front of the actual product name, and it instantly gets a lot cooler. Why sell pans coated in Teflon when you could sell pans coated in a non-stick nano-polymer? Why sell graphite pencils when you can sell pencils...now with nanocarbon!

So when I hear (and I hear often) about carbon nanotubes doing everything from fight cancer to provide structure for a space elevator to work in tennis rackets to shrink under electric charge, you can understand I get a little skeptical.

Last week, it was reported that the Air Force has developed a "carbon nanotube bionic muscle" that acts like a muscle, but better. Contracts faster, is thousands of times stronger, and has a cool name. Not to mention a neat graphic that looks like Stan Lee drew it.

I can only hope that the following things are true, because if they are, the world is about to change. But let me just collage the quotes here and we'll see what we get.

The nano-based muscles, which are 30 times stronger than natural muscles are made of very thin sheets of nanotubes (1/10,000th of the diameter of a human hair) that on a weight basis are "strong as steel" in one direction and as elastic as rubber in two other directions.

"The carbon nanotube aerogel sheets are a remarkable state of matter that show rubber elasticity, and they are lighter than air. The sheets rise in the air like smoke," said Baughman who remains amazed by their properties.

"Natural muscles contract at about 20 percent per second, but the artificial muscles' rate can exceed 30,000% per second," he said.

These non-electro chemical carbon nanotube artificial muscles can operate at extreme temperatures, which makes them especially attractive for space applications. They are also being viewed as a means for endowing soldiers with super-human strength through the use of exoskeletons, which would be advantageous in battlefield emergencies. Artificial muscles may also be used to actuate "smart skins," which would give Air Force aircraft the ability to change their appearances in situations of danger.

Let me get this straight. These artificial muscles are stronger than steel, lighter than air, faster than human muscle, give the wearer superhuman strength, can turn airplanes into shapeshifters, and are elastic as rubber.

I have one question: how did Nature not already think of this material. Evolutionists (and roboticists) have long argued that muscle tissue is (and probably always will be) the most fantastically clever self-contained engine/drive in existence. It is a standard idea that roboticists, no matter how hard they try, will never come up with a method more clever than what Nature has devised with muscle. Nature has had 4 billion years to develop muscle, these Air Force scientists have had about 20 years.

Believe me, I truly, honestly, wish that the scientists at the NanoTech Institute really have the product they are claiming they have. I really would like to see the myriad of applications these could have. But no matter how hard they try to make their new product look like the solution to all of humanity's tech problems, you always end up with the disclaimer phrase:

"To use our muscles of this type to generate large forces, we must learn how to assemble hundreds of the individual sheet strip muscles to make ones having large cross-sectional areas," he said.

Which means they basically don't have any practical applications for this.

I am not dubious because I am jealous, my own linear actuator design is still a prototype and will never behave as effectively as muscle, I would love to be able to buy quantities of NanoTech Institute's carbon muscle. I am dubious because this technology represents a preposterous leap forward in technology, seemingly overnight. I am dubious because the promises of this technology seem suspiciously far-fetched.

(This should explain the strange blog post title)
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