This is only partially related, but Michael Crichton's Prey was an entertaining, quick read about nanotechnology. He puts enough factual stuff in there to get you in the game, and then you can follow up if you want to learn more. Fascinating stuff.

I thought Prey was fairly entertaining also, although just about everything in that book is still really in the realm of science fiction. Most things 'nano' are really not that interesting except from an academic standpoint at the moment, althought speculation is rampant.

And, really, calling that structure a 'nanoguitar' is not accurate (at least by more rigorous definitions). In order for something to be 'nano' it should really exhibit some properties that are size scale dependent. In other words, a nanoguitar should behave significantly different from a regular guitar, but all they have really demonstrated is miniaturization. Just because the strings are 150nm wide, doesn't make them nano, thats just a publicity stunt to capitalize on all the nano buzz. For most physical properties, materials don't exhibit 'nano' behavior until you get below 100nm and for some things (like magnetic properties) it doesn't happen until around 10nm or so.

for those who are interested in what's going on with nanotechnology...

http://www.darpa.mil/mto/mems/summaries ... index.html

granted, it says it's current as of 2001, but at the same time, it *is* DARPA.

Actually, MEMS aren't really nano either. Although it is definitely cool stuff, most MEMS technology is still really micro-scale miniaturization (hence the name Micro ElectroMechanical Systems).

This link might be more helpful for real nano stuff:
http://www.nano.gov/
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justinc wrote:http://discover.com/web-exclusives/nanoguitar0101/

Oh, man. I can just see that thing at the 2005 NAMM. Guitar-show geeks huddled around microscopes and such ...

hey ebeam, thanks. good stuff. have you heard the paranoiac stories about the floating camera/transmitter the size of a dust particle (MOEMS)? my friend who sent me the link to the proper page on the DARPA site (which i can't find now) was like "imagine somebody dropping a handful of these things into your HVAC system!". do you work in some kinda nano field? research or something?

At nano.gov, one of the applications they list is magnetic tape: it's probably too early, but has anyone had any experience with this? I'm all jazzed about micro-surgery, but I guess stain-free pants are okay, too.

Actually, you can follow the nano link I posted and get to the lab I work in (http://www.nuance.northwestern.edu) since we are related to their network, although not directly. I do electron microscopy, so a lot of nano research goes on in our lab. My thesis research will likely be related to using the scanning electron microscope to fabricate nanoscale structures. We actually have an electron beam lithography setup similar to what was used in creating that nanoguitar. Maybe I can make a nano twelve string or something....

Dylan, I didn't see the stuff about magnetic tape on that site. But a lot of work is going into making very small magnetic domains for use in digital storage, encription, etc. I'm not sure how you would really apply this to analog tape. Part of my research group is trying to figure out how to use magnetic nanoparticles to do site-specific drug delivery. With this technique, you can attach drugs to these particles and use magnetic fields to move them to the specific place in the body where you want the drug to go. This is particularly interesting for treating cancerous tumors and such since you can deliver a lot less of the drug, but to a much smaller area, so the toxicity to the cancer cells is high, but the effect on the rest of the body is minimal.

Thank you for the link. I wish I still lived in Chicago so I could come and see the lab. I'm coming at this from a totally ignorant standpoint, but I find it one of the most fascinating things in the technology field going on today. I can see media storage to be an interesting application, if nanoparticles can imitate properties of tape on a smaller scale. I know Crichton definitely stretches the truth, but he does seem to do his homework, and so: is the idea of a "cloud" of nanoparticles sharing elements of their programming just fiction at this point? How much data can one particle hold on to?