All wire the Same? Maybe not in future.
 

NASA is funding a new type of wire that can transmit power 10 times
better than normal wire. Will this make a difference in Audio?

http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,67350,00.html
--
I.Care
Address fake
until the SPAM goes away

I.Care wrote:

NASA is funding a new type of wire that can transmit power 10 times
better than normal wire.

http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,67350,00.html


hmm. We'd better define better! And with that hard to define effect
"mobility", I wouldn't bet the house on it.

It looks like the major advantage is the light weight.

Of course that may be somewhat negated by the other promise of carbon -
the carbon ribbon that will allow us to build a space elevator!

Will this make a difference in Audio?

The audio geeks will be able to make up stuff for years about this......


- Mike KB3EIA -

"I.Care" wrote in message
.net...
NASA is funding a new type of wire that can transmit power 10 times
better than normal wire. Will this make a difference in Audio?

Does this mean that the resistance per ft for nanotubes is 1/10th that of
copper?
Are they comparing this performance by weight or by volume of wire
("pound-for-pound", or "cross-sectional-area" )
Then we have to talk about tensile strength of this stuff for
supporting its own weight between trees to use as an antenna
Then ya gotta conjure up a way to solder the feedline to it. (or make
feedline out of it)

"Hal Rosser" wrote in message
...

"I.Care" wrote in message
.net...
NASA is funding a new type of wire that can transmit power 10 times
better than normal wire. Will this make a difference in Audio?

Does this mean that the resistance per ft for nanotubes is 1/10th that of
copper?
Are they comparing this performance by weight or by volume of wire
("pound-for-pound", or "cross-sectional-area" )
Then we have to talk about tensile strength of this stuff for
supporting its own weight between trees to use as an antenna
Then ya gotta conjure up a way to solder the feedline to it. (or make
feedline out of it)

If the resistance is 1/10th that of copper then it should be possible to
manufacture helical inductors with Qs approaching 10,000. Not only that,
but open wire transmission lines would have very low loss, therefore making
it feasable to feed antennas with very small electrical dimensions. How to
handle the votages involved would be something else!

Frank

You know--this almost sounds like science fiction to me--if I had not
already been witness to truth being stranger than fiction--I'd think, "FAT
CHANCE!"
However, my audio is fine, it does not need any improvement to please me
more... BUT, antennas are a different story, it will revolutionize them!!!
And, how about PC boards, your traces would only need to be 1/10 the size!
And, how about semi-conductors themselves???
etc, etc, etc....
The future only gets better and brighter....

Regards,
John

What evidence is there that they've defeated skin effect? If they
haven't, the advantage drops to the square root of the DC advantage
(e.g., a little more than 3:1 if the DC advantage is 10:1). Also, I
wonder if the bulk resistivity of these gadgets remains constant with
frequency like solid copper, or rises with frequency like
superconductors. If it rises with frequency, then the advantage becomes
less yet, potentially even becoming worse than copper at some frequency.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Frank wrote:
"Hal Rosser" wrote in message
...

"I.Care" wrote in message
st.net...

NASA is funding a new type of wire that can transmit power 10 times
better than normal wire. Will this make a difference in Audio?

Does this mean that the resistance per ft for nanotubes is 1/10th that of
copper?
Are they comparing this performance by weight or by volume of wire
("pound-for-pound", or "cross-sectional-area" )
Then we have to talk about tensile strength of this stuff for
supporting its own weight between trees to use as an antenna
Then ya gotta conjure up a way to solder the feedline to it. (or make
feedline out of it)


If the resistance is 1/10th that of copper then it should be possible to
manufacture helical inductors with Qs approaching 10,000. Not only that,
but open wire transmission lines would have very low loss, therefore making
it feasable to feed antennas with very small electrical dimensions. How to
handle the votages involved would be something else!

Frank

Roy, you are a pessimist.

================================

"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message
...
What evidence is there that they've defeated skin effect? If they
haven't, the advantage drops to the square root of the DC advantage
(e.g., a little more than 3:1 if the DC advantage is 10:1). Also, I
wonder if the bulk resistivity of these gadgets remains constant
with
frequency like solid copper, or rises with frequency like
superconductors. If it rises with frequency, then the advantage
becomes
less yet, potentially even becoming worse than copper at some
frequency.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Frank wrote:
"Hal Rosser" wrote in message
...

"I.Care" wrote in message
st.net...

NASA is funding a new type of wire that can transmit power 10
times
better than normal wire. Will this make a difference in Audio?

Does this mean that the resistance per ft for nanotubes is 1/10th
that of
copper?
Are they comparing this performance by weight or by volume of wire
("pound-for-pound", or "cross-sectional-area" )
Then we have to talk about tensile strength of this stuff for
supporting its own weight between trees to use as an antenna
Then ya gotta conjure up a way to solder the feedline to it. (or
make
feedline out of it)


If the resistance is 1/10th that of copper then it should be
possible to
manufacture helical inductors with Qs approaching 10,000. Not
only that,
but open wire transmission lines would have very low loss,
therefore making
it feasable to feed antennas with very small electrical
dimensions. How to
handle the votages involved would be something else!

Frank

ONLY if his caution in accepting this notion is proven wrong is it
pessimism... otherwise it is wisdom!!! grin

Warmest regards,
John

Reg Edwards wrote:
Roy, you are a pessimist.

In my career doing electronic instrumentation product development, I
learned to look for all the potential problems I could think of, as
early as possible. A lot of them turned out to be non-problems, and
could then be ignored. But the ones which were real had to be overcome,
or at least had to have a good probility of being overcome, before the
project could proceed. If it couldn't be, another approach usually had
to be found or the project abandoned -- or at the very least an
alternative approach had to be identified in case the problem couldn't
be overcome. Too often, a naive ("optimistic") project manager wouldn't
do this, and would run into a project-killing problem 90% of the way
into the project. That can be a disaster, and I've seen it happen many
times. Of course, it's ok to go into a project knowing there's a
potential program-stopper, as long as you know it up front and are
willing to accept the consequences if it can't be overcome. This is the
approach often taken by startup companies, but the high risk of failure
is too often conceled from the suckers, um, investors. A great number of
announcements of revolutionary technology tend to ignore, deny, or
minimize potential problems, limitations, and risks. So I don't consider
it pessimistic at all to assume they exist. Once in a while, the serious
problems are overcome and a new and useful technology emerges. More
often, nothing emerges but a lot of investors with thinner wallets and
more critical outlooks.

I really hope the nano-tubes will bring us amazingly high Q coils. Then
all we'll have to do is figure out how to keep them far away from
anything else. Gee, maybe some new magical field-masking technology will
emerge in the nick of time to solve that problem. There, was that better?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...
Roy, you are a pessimist.

Roy has a point.The article was very sparse with real fact, but rich in
speculation and totally void of specifications.
They were working on a 3 ft piece of this conductor for testing - so they
didn't have their eye on making a dipole for 160m - more than likely. :-)