Hey everyone.
So as I’ve mentioned, I love thinking about the future.
We’ve accomplished so much as a species in the past century, and I’m excited to
see what we’re going to do with the rest of this one.
That’s why I’ve partnered up once again with Cosmos: Possible Worlds, which premieres
on FOX September 22nd, to discuss hope for humanity.
Much of our success as a species has relied on our ability to manipulate the materials
we find in our surroundings to make tools that are useful to us.
The Cosmos FutureFair Presentation Day, airing September 21st on the FOXTV YouTube Channel,
will present some demonstrations that celebrate the spirit of this endeavor, but let’s go
ahead and get some additional context for ourselves.
One of the most incredible things that we’ve done with a scientific worldview is to learn
about the fundamental components of matter.
It was only a little over 2,000 years ago that Aristotle was lecturing about matter
being comprised of earth, water, air, and fire.
As brilliant a philosopher as he was, this idea seems ridiculous today, since we know
about atoms and the periodic table of the elements.
But we don’t just know about the existence of these elements, we’ve also figured out
how to manipulate matter on the molecular level to design completely new materials for
a variety of purposes.
The field of materials science is an interdisciplinary field.
It brings together experts in chemistry, physics, and engineering to test the limits of the
properties of matter.
In doing so, we are continuing a thread of inquiry that started thousands of years ago,
with practices like metallurgy.
Early civilizations figured out how to process ores and extract metals from them, melt them
down, and combine them to form alloys, thereby enhancing their strength.
These include bronze, which is copper with tin and sometimes other impurities, a material
which defined the bronze age, and more recently, steel, which is iron with carbon impurities,
the material that made industrialization possible.
In addition to this, once the ancient practice of alchemy was replaced with modern chemistry,
the stage was set for a more sophisticated approach to generating new materials.
With the ability to synthesize molecules came the ability to invent new materials that had
never existed in nature before, including certain types of rubbers and plastics, as
well as semiconductors, which set the stage for computing and the information revolution.
So where are we today with this practice?
The most exciting work in materials science is being done with nanomaterials.
Nano is a prefix that means one one-billionth, so we are talking about building tiny structures
the size of molecules.
Many of these are carbon-based structures, meaning they involve different ways of arranging
carbon atoms, which we call allotropes of carbon.
For example, we can make fullerenes.
These things look like little molecular soccer balls, consisting of carbon rings fused together
to form a spherical mesh.
If the rings were to form a cylindrical structure instead, we would call this a carbon nanotube.
These have astounding properties because they are about as strong as diamond, another allotrope
of carbon, but they are so incredibly tiny, so we can use them to produce materials with
an absurd amount of tensile strength while remaining less than paper thin.
Then there is graphene, which follows the same concept, but exists as a sheet of carbon
in a honeycomb lattice, essentially a single sheet of graphite, the stuff found in pencils.
This has unusual electronic properties, conducting heat and electricity with great efficiency,
and is 100 times stronger than steel.
The applications of nanomaterials are endless.
We are already using bulk nanotubes to create polymers with interesting thermal and electrical
properties.
But as our ability to manipulate these tubes becomes more sophisticated, many other applications
will soon unfold.
This spills into the field of nanotechnology.
We may soon be able to build tiny robots, called nanobots, which may one day live inside
of us, patrolling our systems for pathogens and cancer cells.
We may use nanomaterials to build components of spacecraft, or even an elevator to space.
This would be an ultra-thin and ultra-light nanotube of some kind that acts as a cable,
with a counterweight that would sit all the way beyond geostationary orbit, keeping the
center of mass for the system far up in space.
Then vehicles could travel along this cable to bring raw materials up to orbit, such that
spacecraft could be assembled in space rather than having to launch from earth.
There is almost no area of scientific inquiry that is not influenced in some way by our
growing ability to manufacture new materials with astounding properties, so it’s just
a matter of time before we see some of these dreams become a reality, thereby providing
some additional hope for humanity.
Once again, if you want to learn more about these bold new ideas, tune in to the Cosmos
FutureFair Presentation Day, September 21st on the FOXTV YouTube channel, and don’t
miss Cosmos: Possible Worlds, premiering on FOX September 22nd.
I’ll see you there.