Researchers at the Peking and Tsinghua Universities have adapted carbon nanotubes into a sponge-like material which can be squeezed dry, which sounds like extremely exciting news for the infomercial cleaning product industry. One minor detail:

since carbon nanotubes are hydrophobic, there’s no modification required to make them not absorb water.

For the record, that includes mysteriously blue infomercial demo water, so there goes that. If not ABSORBING 20 TIMES AS MUCH WATER AS ITS LEADING COMPETITOR, what exactly is this new type of sponge good for? Environmental clean-up, evidently. See, instead of just dropping dispersants into the middle of an oil or chemical spill — which forces the spill to simply absorb into the water — these nanosponges could be used to sop up the spill, after which they could theoretically be wrung dry and reused, like so:

It’s an amazing idea, but I get the feeling that carbon nanotube sponges, riskily abbreviated as CNT sponges, aren’t exactly cheap. [Materials View via Treehugger]

A replicator was a device that used transporter technology to dematerialise quantities of matter and then rematerialise that matter in another form. It was also capable of inverting its function, thus disposing of leftovers and dishes and storing the bulk material again. [Memory Alpha]

Yes, I know it’s not real. We got that bit out of the way right up there in the lead. Now we can have some fun hypothesising and waxing all futuristic like about how these fantastical infinite buffets could (stress could) be possible some day.

In fact, in the most primitive sense possible, there’s a form of replication happening in manufacturing shops around the world. Called 3D printing, the technique isn’t even that new, with roots extending back to the 1990s. They were really expensive then, of course, but today they’re relatively ubiquitous in companies large and small. The technique is pretty simple. In layman’s terms, a user creates or downloads a 3D model of real world object on their workstation, and then a special printer works to recreate that object using resin or plaster or plastic or whatever the material may be. Voila. Instant prototype, and you can have all the tchotchke trinkets your heart desires, on demand, beamed to you from anywhere in the world.

But you can’t eat a resin hamburger. And you can’t drive the mockup that just got spit out of your rapid prototyping rig. The replicator could do both these things.

What we need is something that physically assembles atoms and molecules into tasty shapes so we can tell some uber supercomputer with a soothing female voice to get us some Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Oh, and it has to create a little glass cup for us to drink it in too (Quick trivia: What did Picard do with all those dirty dishes? Answer above!).

This is where things get a bit sticky (food!), exciting (recent discoveries!) and depressing (its a LONG way off!) all at once. Theoretically, people are debating and thinking about “molecular assemblers” right this instant. In fact, these hypothetical machines would implement some form of nanotechnology, which is already used in everyday items like batteries, fuel technologies and even bikinis. Hell, there’s a Wikipedia page for molecular assemblers up right this instant—our replicator must be right around the corner, right?

Unfortunately, current nanotech implementations are almost what I’d call “dumb” deployments of the technology. We’re just coating a material with some nano bits to repel liquid; or we’re placing nanorods in a battery to improve efficiency… nothing, in other words, that would have Geordi doing a double take. Certainly not that Wesley Crusher kid either, for that matter (More asides: Wes, my man. Your replicators could produce anything you wanted—what the hell was up with that rainbow jumper?!).

But there is some hope. As recently as November, scientists had silver nanoparticles self-assembling into specific structures. Now, Guinan can’t serve us up a plate of silver, so that doesn’t really count as a replicator just yet, but it does drive our research in the right direction. The same direction that saw IBM scientists imaging molecular bonds for the first time ever on Thursday:

By “seeing” these bonds scientists think they can better understand how to manipulate them. For IBM scientists that means quantum processors and such in the far future. For guys and gals like you and me, it might mean snacks on demand as we start to understand why snacks look and feel the way they do on the molecular level.

While we’re down at the molecular level, I’d be remiss not to mention the nano pinhole camera some enterprising Russian scientists created in June:

In their atom pinhole camera, the atoms act like photons in an optical pinhole camera, but instead of light travelling through a lens, it travels through a pinhole on a mask and creates a high-res inverted image on a silicon substrate. This camera is capable of resizing nanostructures down to 30 nm-10,000 times smaller than the original. So, a camera with say 10 million pinholes could produce large numbers of identical (or diverse) nanostructures simultaneously.

It’s the most promising “replicator related” discovery in recent memory, but even so we joked that the Giz crew would probably be slurping pureed baby food and soiling our adult undergarments by the time it came to fruition. Still, the research is there, and every month IBM or the CERN folks or someone much smarter than I am is firing off a new research paper about manipulating the world of the very, very small.

The replicator, in short, would be a paradigm shift the likes of which the world has never seen. Famine? Potentially gone forever. Shortages? See ya. Alinea? Probably the first place to get one. You and I? Optimistically speaking, we’ll probably need some Depends by the time one comes along. Silver lining is we can crap to our hearts content and dispose of the mess in our replicator. Then it’s lunch time!

Taste Test is our weeklong tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl-Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.

Now, the picture above is pretty unremarkable, right? Black and white (trivia: molecules have no colour), grainy, shot in the kind of out-of-focus manner you expect from a guy like me, who can’t seem to venture out beyond the Auto setting on his entry-level Nikon D40 DSLR. But wait a second. Doesn’t the image kind of seem, well, familiar? Like high school chem class familiar? Balls and sticks familiar?

Here’s another image; a computer generate image that’s much more at home for anyone who studied atoms and molecules in the dead and gone days of 1997:

Make sense now? That B&W structure is an actual image of a molecule and its atomic bonds. The first of its kind, in fact, and a breakthrough for the crazy IBM scientists in Zurich who spent 20 straight hours staring at the “specimen”—which in this case was a 1.4 nanometre-long pentacene molecule comprised of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.

You can actually make out each of those atoms and their bonds, and it’s thanks to this: an atomic force microscope.

Like the venerable electron microscope, but more powerful and with an eye for the third dimension, the AFM is able to make the nano world something we humans can appreciate visually. Using a silicon microscale cantilever coated in carbon dioxide (tiny, tiny needle), lasers, an “ultrahigh vacuum” and temperatures that hovered around 5 Kelvin, the AFM imaged the pentacene in nanometres. It did this while sitting a mere 0.5 nanometres above the surface and its previously invisible bonds for 20 long, unmoving hours. The length of time is noteworthy, said IBM scientist Leo Goss in statement from IBM, because any movement whatsoever would have disrupted the delicate atomic bonds and ruined the image.

And that’s the real beauty of this image. For the first time ever we can see where each of those carbon and hydrogen atoms line up, and the overall symmetrical shape they create. In 3D.

Quirky, Quarky, Quantum Computing That IBM, a hardware company, was the entity to accomplish this feat should be fairly obvious, given what we know (and don’t yet know) about quantum computing. Said an IBM representative in an email to me this morning, “This pioneering achievement and the new insights gained from the experiments extend the ability of scientists to study matter with atomic resolution and open up exciting new possibilities for exploring electronic building blocks and devices at the ultimate atomic and molecular scale-devices that might be vastly smaller, faster and more energy-efficient than today’s processors and memory devices.”

In a quarkshell, that means this discovery might help future engineers manipulate atoms and their bonds, as well as create powerful, energy-sipping quantum computers for their cryptography needs, space travel or maybe even large black and yellow rooms that make our fantasies come true (or at the very least allow androids to play Sherlock Holmes).

But not so fast, Einstein. I see that tabletop subspace communicator you’ve imagined on your desktop. It’s a great idea, and while I understand your enthusiasm for such things, as Matt explained earlier this month quantum computing, entangled desktops and Star Trek holodecks are all decades away, if not more.

What this discovery does do however is advance our primitive understanding of the Way Things Are. It’s a small, nanometre-sized piece in a puzzle that doesn’t even have all the pieces on the table yet. Hell, we don’t even know where all the pieces are yet. From the looks of these images though, we will someday soon. [Images: IBM]

Researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences are developing a technology that could lead to a real-life Star Trek replicator. They have demonstrated that it is possible to manufacture an array of identical atomic nanostructures in controlled shapes and sizes.

In their atom pinhole camera, the atoms act like photons in an optical pinhole camera, but instead of light travelling through a lens, it travels through a pinhole on a mask and creates a high-res inverted image on a silicon substrate. This camera is capable of resizing nanostructures down to 30 nm—10,000 times smaller than the original. So, a camera with say 10 million pinholes could produce large numbers of identical (or diverse) nanostructures simultaneously.

It all sounds very promising, but the real question is will I be getting instant food, clothing and gadgets in my lifetime? Maybe—but chances are the “gadgets” will be a Rascal and the “clothing” will be Depends. [Physorg via KurzweilAI]

Worse still, these malignant Micro Machines are armed with tiny pincers that open and close when they are heated by, wait for it, a laser.

The researchers claim this discovery will lead to better toxic waste cleanup:

“Since there is no wiring, and the robot freely floats in air, it can operate in an enclosed chamber while the whole setup is outside,” wrote U of W professor Mir Behrad Khamesee. “It can work in hazardous environments, toxic chambers, and it can be used to conduct bio-hazardous experiments. Also, since there is no mechanical linkage, it has a dust-free operation, suitable for clean room applications.”

Right, until these little critters spawn some artificial intelligence, take a look at the planet, and decide “toxic waste” means “mankind.” [ZDNet]

From Japan chemical company Teijin, the underwear is woven from 700-nanometer ultra fine polyester that the company calls Nanofront. Originally used for industrial polishing, the fabric is soft to the skin but apparently causes enough friction in daily tasks that, when worn as an undergarment for 40 days, can successfully lower body fat by “several percent.”

Maybe it works, forcing your body to burn more calories by putting forth more effort for every movement, but I have a feeling that it feels like corduroy raping velcro every time you take a step. Seriously, your thighs will start a fire faster than Bear Grylls. [Nikkei via CrunchGear]

Apparently, the fancy suits are also resistant to fading from UV rays, act as a sun repellant and aren’t harmful to your skin, which is an important aspect of any piece of clothing. You’ll pay dearly for the suits, however, with a men’s suit or bikini running you $US80 and a woman’s one-piece costing $US90. But hey, I guess you’ll save money on towels, right? [Sun Dry Swim]

Woven from zinc oxide nanowires (strands that are 1/50th the width of a human hair), Georgia Tech’s hamster jacket is the first nanopiezoelectric device to successfully harvest energy from animals. How much energy could those hamsters produce in real world application? Right now, it would take 1,000 hamsters to charge a mobile phone. A human-sized jacket could power an iPod.

Since the theory has been proven to work in a lab setting, there’s nothing stopping the technology from being scaled to fit humans—other than the obvious engineering hurdles that must be crossed to make a giant nanotech jacket. Such large scale testing should commence in about three years, according to researchers. [msnbc via Geekologie]

This isn’t to say Starbucks is going to start churning out overpriced TVs tomorrow alongside their overpriced Caffè machiatos.

Instead, let’s focus on the transparent conductive coatings that currently reside on today’s LCD TV screens. Still awake? Good. As New Scientist explains, this coating forms an electrode on the screen surface. In plasmas, the coating serves as a shield that prevents electromagnetic fields from straying away from the TV and into your dog’s sleeping head, or something. Anyway, creating this coating is expensive and time-consuming, kind of like what it takes to make a really nice camera lens.

Enter the coffee stain and Mr. Ivan here. When coffee spills, the liquid begins to evaporate, and that process pushes the remaining coffee towards the edge of the spill (hence, the circular stain). Inspired by this process, Vakarelski and company created a conductive coating for TV screens that mimics the coffee stain’s behaviour. And the whole thing involves gold particles and nanotechnology (doesn’t everything?).

The benefit to you, I and Joe Consumer is a more conductive, cheaper, and easier to produce LCD television set, as Vakarelski plans to increase the size of his coffee stains—er, “gold nanonets”— by a factor of ten (big screen!). Scalability isn’t an issue either, as it would be for more traditional TV tech, so expect this stuff to start invading boob tubes sooner, rather than later. Oh, and we’ll have even more nanotech in our daily lives. Triple Word Score. [New Scientist]

When the water balls have finished their journey through the maze, they are sucked back into the water tank to be reborn once again (haha…innuendo). So, it’s kind of like a water fountain, only way more sciency. The device should be available in March for roughly $US40. [Bandai via C Scout Japan via DVICE]