Free The Future by Al Gore Page B

could have significant commercialimpact. For example, the development of graphene—a form of graphite only one atom thick—has created excitement about its unusual interaction with electrons,which opens a variety of useful applications.
    Considerable research is under way on potential hazards of nanoparticles. Most experts now minimize the possibility of “self-replicating nanobots,” which gave rise to serious concerns andmuch debate in the first years of the twenty-first century, but other risks—such as the accumulation of nanoparticles in human beings and the possibility ofconsequent cell damage—are taken more seriously. According to David Rejeski, director of the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, “We know very little about the health and environmental impacts [of nanomaterials] and virtuallynothing about their synergistic impacts.”
    In a sense, nanoscience has been around at least since the work of Louis Pasteur, andcertainly since the discovery of the double helix in 1953. The work of Richard Smalley on buckminsterfullerene molecules (“buckyballs”) in 1985 triggered a renewed surge of interest in theapplication of nanotechnology to the development of new materials. Six years later, the first carbon nanotubes offered the promise of electrical conductivity exceeding that of copper and the possibility of creatingfibers with 100 times the strength and one sixth the weight of steel.
    The dividing line between nanotechnology and new materials sciences is partly an arbitrary one. What both have in common is the recent development of new more powerful microscopes, new tools for guiding the manipulation of matter at nanoscales, the development of new more powerful supercomputer programs for modeling and studying new materials at the atomic level, and a continuing stream of new basic research breakthroughs on the specialized properties of nanoscale molecular creations, including quantum properties.
THE RISE OF 3D PRINTING
    Humankind’s new ability to manipulate atoms and molecules is also leading toward the disruptive revolution in manufacturing known as 3D printing. Also known as additive manufacturing, this new process builds objects from a three-dimensional digital file by laying down an ultrathin layer of whatever material or materials the object is to be made of, and then adds each additional ultrathin layer—one by one—until the objectis formed in three-dimensional space. More than onedifferent kind of material can be used. Although this new technology is still early in its development period, the advantages it brings to manufacturing are difficult to overstate. Already, some of the results are startling.
    Since 1908, when Henry Ford first used identical interchangeable parts that were fitted together on a moving assembly line to produce theModel T, manufacturing has been dominated by mass production. The efficiencies, speed, and cost savings in the process revolutionized industry and commerce. But many experts now predict that the rapid development of 3D printing will changemanufacturing as profoundly as mass production did more than 100 years ago.
    The process has actually been used for several decades in a technique known as rapid prototyping—a specialized niche in which manufacturers could produce an initial model of what they wouldlater produce en masse in more traditional processes. For example, the designs for new aircraft are oftenprototyped as 3D models for wind tunnel testing. This niche is itself being disrupted by the new 3D printers; one Colorado firm, LGM, that prototypes buildings for architects, has already made dramatic changes. The company’s founder, Charles Overy, told
The New York Times
, “We used to take two months to build $100,000 models.” Instead, he nowbuilds $2,000 models and completes them overnight.
    The emerging potential for using 3D printing is illuminating some of the inefficiencies in mass production: