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[Sergarr]

Carborgs when?

More like androids... with DBZ-level durability (carbon stronger than steel) and reflexes.

I can only assume that in the future scientists will discover the way to use carbon to shoot frikking laser beams.

[MonkeyHead]

Carborgs when?

More like androids... with DBZ-level durability (carbon stronger than steel) and reflexes.

I can only assume that in the future scientists will discover the way to use carbon to shoot frikking laser beams.

Done it already here and here.

[Angle]

Carborgs when?

SOON

[Sergarr]

Carborgs when?

More like androids... with DBZ-level durability (carbon stronger than steel) and reflexes.

I can only assume that in the future scientists will discover the way to use carbon to shoot frikking laser beams.

Done it already here and here.

...Carbon is bullshit.

Does it have any weakness at all?

[andrea]

Oxygen and a spark?

[Sergarr]

In fact, as I've recently learned, carbon by itself has the HIGHEST melting temperature out of ALL materials (even higher than tungsten!).

[scrdest]

Oxygen and a spark?

Diamonds can beat that. Need to heat them up quite a lot to get them to burn because of the bonds being so stable.

Not just diamonds - just look at your hand (although probably you, specifically, shouldn't, GO, if only because you have a flipper instead) - skin doesn't ignite - you get burns, but that's something qualitatively different from burning wood.

In fact, as I've recently learned, carbon by itself has the HIGHEST melting temperature out of ALL materials (even higher than tungsten!).

Melting =/= burning, though, of course.

[Sergarr]

Oxygen and a spark?

Diamonds can beat that. Need to heat them up quite a lot to get them to burn because of the bonds being so stable.

Not just diamonds - just look at your hand (although probably you, specifically, shouldn't, GO, if only because you have a flipper instead) - skin doesn't ignite - you get burns, but that's something qualitatively different from burning wood.

In fact, as I've recently learned, carbon by itself has the HIGHEST melting temperature out of ALL materials (even higher than tungsten!).

Melting =/= burning, though, of course.

Carbon burns because oxygen is hilariously overpowered. The only element stronger than oxygen is fluorine, and that element is so strong it never stays in it's pure form.

Well, then there's nitrogen, which is also hilariously overpowered, but in the opposite way (it's insanely chemically neutral and barely reacts with anything et all unless you use gigantic temperatures or cheat by using catalysts). But when you use it as a part of some other compound... it gets serious in its attempts to become a neutral gas SO MUCH that it BLOWS UP the molecule and then BLOWS UP everything around it.

Material science is fun.

[i2amroy]

Really the only big weaknesses with current carbon nanotubes are:
1) Difficult to manufacture.
2) Even small defects can cause serious issues in them, so your manufacturing tolerances need to be extremely tight.
3) It's really, really bad for you if you breathe them in. Like, one of the worst things for you to breathe in. Think like asbestos + coal dust fused into one unholy particle of lung destruction bad.

[hops]

I'd imagine that breathing in carbon nanotubes is like breathing in diamond dust.

Yer gon' get fucked.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I never even thought of there being carbon nanotube dust when manufacturing them, I'm now horrified of them

[Frumple]

Really cryx, you just have to remember that rule 1 of material science is that if it's useful, there's some point in the manufacturing process that will royally mess your day up if you handle it wrong. This is more or less a unilateral truth -- somewhere in the process, something involved is thoroughly inimical to human life.

This is why we have safety standards. And robots. And I guess the underclass if you're being particularly dystopian that day.

[wierd]

Black lung disease for the win alex.

Ordinary soot (like the old 1900s industrial pollutant) contains a fairly significant number of carbon nanotubes, as well as other allotropes of carbon.
Such ordinary soot was one of the primary causes of black lung disease of urban dwellers in the 1900s.

The manufacture of nanotubes is not hard per se-- it is the creation of LONG, DEFECT-FREE, SINGLE WALL nanotubes that is hard.

I doubt that any other element will ever be found that is as versatile, and at such ideal balances of bond energy, bond angle, atomic weight (and thus commonality), and thermostability as carbon.

Sadly, many of those features are also what make carbon nanotubes so dangerous once in your lungs.  Your body simply has no mechanism to remove them, they are completely indigestible by your body, and it cant break them down to eliminate them. They are thin, lightweight, and very strong-- and so they disrupt cellular processes by mechanical agitation. (Like a stirring stick stuck in there churning things up.) Their chemical stability means you are going to denaturate the cell you are trying to help before you will denaturate the nanotube.  The best you could hope to do would be to create a specialized, heavy protein that can stick to the end of the nanotube where there could possibly (maybe) be some unfilled electrons, and then eliminate it that way.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Didn't that soot also have lead and mercury and other such things in it?

A bit coincidental we are talking about industry/soot. I have to write a short story for English where we are given three things to build our story around, I got a girl with a postcard collection, an orange, and steampunk. So I am writing about a schizophrenic princess who is locked away for safety and collects postcards because she can't go anywhere, she also starts talking to fruit (namely the orange) and I try to fill the setting with clock towers, steam powered things, and soot from the industrial cities.


Speaking of steampunk, is there any way to make a steam engine that is more efficient than a gas engine and is more enviromentaly friendly?

[wierd]

A better, more dark angle:

The girl is a ragpicker, who stumbles upon the post card, which features beautiful imagery of a far away place she could never hope to go to, along with the orange in a parcel addressed to a little sickly but rich girl her own age, who lives down the lane.

The postcard is a reply from her father, who is sending her the exotic fruit (the orange) along with his reply, as he is overseas on business. The subject matter of the postcard is about how he wishes he could help her more in seeing other children her own age, but he is afraid of her getting sick by leaving the house, and wishes for her to remain in the care of her stuardess/governess until his return.

The ragpicker girl wonders about meeting this mysterious girl, and is resolute in returning her letter to her, but must elude the stuardess/governess to do so. (Being a rag picker girl, she is considered street filth, unfit for association with higher society.)  The two meet, and become fast friends, each having something the other dreams of. (The rag picker girl can go ANYWHERE in the city, and be completely ignored-- and thus has complete freedom; the sickly rich girl has money, reliable food and housing, and "good breeding". (This IS steampunk setting, after all.)  They both have a natural dislike for the stuardess/governess.


I think that's a better story that could be done with those elements. ;P


The most efficient thermal engine is the stirling engine.  It is right next to the ideal maximum that a heat engine could ever possibly be due to the carnot efficiency limitation.

Many stirling engine designs look VERY steampunky.