3-D Printing: Technology May Bring New Industrial Revolution

3-D printing technology, used industrially for the last few decades, is poised to break into the mass market. Its endless and swiftly developing possibilities -- from entrepreneurial manufacturing to the potential sculpting of human organs -- could become the next industrial revolution.

An electron microscope photo showing a nano-scale Formula 1 racing car.

When the TV series Star Trek first brought the starship Enterprise into our living rooms, the concept of a replicator was pure science fiction, a fantastical utopian vision we might experience one day centuries in the future. Replicators, something of a mixture between computer and miniature factory, were capable of creating food and replacement parts from next to nothing. They were highly practical devices, since Captain Kirk couldn't exactly take along a lot of supplies for his journeys through outer space. That futuristic vision, though, has receded far into the past -- overtaken by the present.

The real-world replicator-like technology poised to revolutionize the world is known as 3-D printing, though that term is misleading, since the process has little to do with printing. Three-dimensional printers can be as small as a suitcase or as large as a telephone booth, depending on the object they are meant to faithfully replicate from a 3-D computer blueprint. Inside the machine, the product is assembled by stacking extremely thin layers of material on top of one another, sort of like reassembling an apple that has been cut into super-fine slices.

Many different technological routes can be taken to reach the same goal. In one variation, nozzles spray liquid material into layers. Another method, which produces even better results, aims laser beams at finely powdered material, causing the grains to fuse together at precisely the spot where the beam hits. All 3-D printing techniques, however, follow the same principle: The object grows layer by layer, each one just a few hundredths of a millimeter thick, until it acquires the desired shape. This technique can be applied to steel, plastic, titanium, aluminum and many other metals.

Assembling, screwing together, adhering, welding -- all these processes are rendered obsolete when even the most complex shapes can be produced by a single machine using this casting technique. The end result can be an artificial hip, a hearing aid, a cell phone case, customized footwear or even the Urbee, a prototype car that has been making a splash.

Engineers at the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) have used this technique to print out an entire bicycle that only needs added tires and a chain to be fully functional. British researchers, meanwhile, have printed a maneuverable drone with a rear-engine drive. Printed components are also used in Formula 1 racing and at NASA. Dental laboratories use 3-D printers to produce crowns, while doctors experiment with artificial heart tissue. Filmmakers also print animation models and automotive parts suppliers create replacement parts.

Three-dimensional printing technology, used industrially for the last few decades, is poised to break into the mass market. Its endless and swiftly developing possibilities -- from entrepreneurial manufacturing to the potential creation of human organs -- are likely to create a new industrial revolution. Here, a graphic of the 3-D printing technique known as "sintering."

A Slow Process

The printing of electronic components is even in the works. American corporation Xerox, for example, has developed a silver ink that functions as an electrical conductor and can be printed directly onto plastic or other materials, making it possible to integrate simple circuits into printed objects.

3D printing powered by thought

Imagine if you could print objects just by thinking about them. In this article it is investigated whether this is far-fetched dream or a real possibility.

Image: Thinker Thing, a start-up based in Santiago, Chile, says it has developed a way of printing 3D objects from people’s thoughts. 

It’s definitely not a bird. Nor is it a plane. The garish orange piece of plastic, small enough to hold in the palm of a hand, could pass for a missing limb of a toy tyrannosaurus. It may not look all that impressive, but it’s notable for two reasons. One is that the monster arm has emerged from a 3D printer. The other is that it is, in fact, the first ever object made from thought.

This milestone was reached with little fanfare last month at the Santiago MakerSpace, a technology and design studio in the Chilean capital. The toy limb’s shape was determined according to the wishes of its designer, as gleaned from a headset picking up his brainwaves. The man in question was George Laskowsky, Chief Technical Officer of Thinker Thing, the Chilean start-up developing the mind-controlled 3D printing system.

Image: This toy arm is the first object from thought successfully created by the start-up.

Engineers and designers have been using 3D printers for more than two decades. More recently, prices have tumbled and desk-top devices are increasingly being pitched at consumers. The touted possibilities appear to be endless – from bones to buildings to burritos – making some observers predict revolutionary consequences like the eventual demise of the factory. Because 3D printers build objects layer by layer from materials such as plastic or metal dust, a key advantage is the comparative freedom they give designers. Yet the design software is not easy to master, especially if you are four-years-old and haven’t yet learnt to hold a pencil properly.

Mars Sample Return: Bringing the Red Planet to Earth

Meet the scientists planning the next step in Martian exploration.

A space probe crashes in the desert. Something deadly on board wipes out almost the entire population of a small town. The government instigates an emergency protocol and top scientists gather at a secret underground quarantine facility to contain this killer germ from outer space.

Will they be able to save the planet from disaster?

To find out, read Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain – an adventure with heroic scientists. This terrifying tale of alien microbes, bringing instantaneous death to (almost) every living creature they come into contact with, was published weeks before the first Apollo lunar landing. But Nasa had already predicted this worst-case scenario of bringing back material from another world.

On their return to Earth, the Apollo 11 astronauts were locked away in a converted Airstream caravan - the Mobile Quarantine Facility. Lunar rocks and soil were sealed in bags and only opened in airtight laboratories. Even the Apollo capsule was wiped with bleach to destroy any stray Moon bugs. In retrospect, these precautions look rather quaint and the whole rigmarole was abandoned after Apollo 14, when scientists concluded that the Moon was completely devoid of life.

But now, 40 years on, Nasa is dusting down those quarantine procedures for a new challenge: returning rocks from Mars.

A so-called Mars sample return mission is the next step in the exploration of the red planet, coming between the existing rover missions, such as Curiosity, and future human exploration. It may also, finally, answer one of the biggest questions about Mars: is there life?

“The Curiosity rover does not have the instruments to answer the ‘are we alone’ question by itself,” says David Beaty, chief scientist for Nasa’s Mars Exploration Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “All it can do is understand the environment. Testing for ‘is there evidence of life?’ requires another mission and the best way to do that is by collecting samples and returning them to Earth.”

Buzz Aldrin Points Out Inaccuracies in "After Earth"

Nearly a week after its release, M. Night Shyamalan’s “After Earth” has garnered a wide range of critics, including Buzz Aldrin who, despite calling it a great family drama, criticized it as unrealistic. And while the retired astronaut could go after a myriad of points, his main point of contention is the noise. (Photo : Reuters)

Nearly a week after its release, M. Night Shyamalan’s “After Earth” has garnered a wide range of critics, including Buzz Aldrin who, despite calling it a great family drama, criticized it as unrealistic. And while the retired astronaut could go after a myriad of points, his main point of contention is the noise.

“There was a lot of noise,” he told the Associated Press. “In space, you don’t get that much noise.”

The second man to step on the surface of the Moon further explained that even with his fellow astronaut beside him during that historic experience, the two communicated via headsets because “noise doesn’t propagate in a vacuum.”

Nonprofit group Mars One seeks astronauts to colonize Mars in 2023

A nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands is making plans to establish a human settlement on Mars in 2023 and is in need of astronauts to train and prepare for the mission.

Anyone on Earth can apply if basic requirements are met. Mars One released its application criteria on Tuesday, which includes, among other virtues, "a deep sense of purpose, willingness to build and maintain healthy relationships, the capacity for self-reflection and ability to trust. Candidates must also be adaptable, curious, creative, resilient, and resourceful. Also, they must be at least 18-years-old. No maximum age has been set.

The selection process will commence during the first half of 2013. Mars One experts and viewers of a "global, televised program" will choose from the applications. Those selected will be assembled into teams of four. At least six teams are supposed to be ready to launch in September 2022.

100 Year Starship: An interstellar leap for mankind?

Science and techno world topic: Future

Is a Pentagon plan for a spaceship travel outside our solar system a crackpot idea, or a visionary blueprint for reaching the stars?

When Jack Sarfatti was 13 years old, he began receiving phone calls from a strange metallic voice that told him he would someday become part of an elite group of scientists exploring uncharted territory. Those calls, which he believes may have come from a computer on a spacecraft, proved a seminal influence on his life and led him to pursue a career that combined mainstream physics with an enduring interest in UFOs and the far-out reaches of science.

For those who might dismiss Sarfatti as a crank, he is quick to point out that he is not interested in debating the reality of little green men, but rather whether the existence of UFOs might prove that the technology required for interstellar travel is possible. “It’s the physics that interests me,” says Sarfatti, who received his PhD in the subject from the University of California.

Higgs: What was left unsaid

Science and techno world topic: Future, Physics.

Everybody was wowed by the recent discovery of a Higgs-like particle, but how many people really understand what was discovered.

So that’s it, search over, Higgs boson found. Almost 50 years after physicist Peter Higgs first theorised it was out there, public elementary number one has finally been captured in the data from two detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern. Case closed. Champagne popped. Boson nova danced.

If only. That handily simplified and heavily fictionalised telling of the tale has helped transform a spectacular scientific success story into one that is also global front page news. Without it the 4 July announcement might not have generated such a frenzy of coverage and so many claims about it being a historic milestone for our species. One particle physicist only half jokingly told me that in future the date may come to be celebrated as Higgs Day, rather than anything to do with American independence.       

Don’t get me wrong. What has happened at Cern represents a magnificent accomplishment; big science at its biggest and boldest. And it’s fantastic that it has been perceived and received as being of such importance. It’s just that there is more to the story from the very beginning right through to the, probably false, ending. 

For starters, as Peter Higgs himself acknowledges, he was just one of several scientists who came up with the mechanism which predicted the particle which bears his name, but the others rarely get a mention*. As to the finish – well, as small children are fond of saying, are we there yet? There is very strong evidence that the LHC teams have found a new elementary particle, but while this is exciting it is far less clear that what they’ve detected is the fabled Higgs.   If it is, it seems curiously lighter than expected and more work is needed to explain away the discrepancy. If it’s not, then the experimentalists and theorists are going to be even busier trying to see if it can be shoehorned into the current Standard Model of particle physics. Either way, it’s not exactly conclusive.

What is the future of food? Will there be high rise farms?

Science and techno world topic: Future

Salads of the future may still be served in bowls, but their ingredients might be grown in skyscrapers.

That's the hope of scientists and architects who are erecting a unique strategy to feed a swelling population on a planet with finite farmland.

"In another 40 years, there'll be another three billion people. That's the problem," said Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University in New York. "We have to find another way to feed them."

Photo: The Pyramid Farm may be one way to address the needs of a swelling population on a planet with finite farmland, according to designers Dickson Despommier at New York's Columbia University and Eric Ellingsen of the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Design teams around the world have been rolling out concepts for futuristic skyscrapers that house farms instead of—or in addition to—people as a means of feeding city dwellers with locally-grown crops.

One solution, Despommier believes, is to grow everything from salad greens to staple grains year-round in high-rise buildings at the hearts of urban centers.

This so-called vertical farming could put food within easy reach for billions of people while reducing carbon emissions from shipping crops across continents and oceans, he notes.

"[The concept] is based on technologies already in use throughout the world, mainly high-tech greenhouses," Despommier said.

For example, many existing greenhouses use hydroponics, a technique for growing crops in smaller spaces using nutrient-enriched water instead of soil.

Will we ever… run 100m in under nine seconds?

Science and techno world topic: Future

To understand how fast a human can ultimately run, we need to go beyond the record books and understand how Usain Bolt's legs work.

To understand how fast a human can ultimately run, we need to go beyond the record books and understand how Usain Bolt's legs work.

In 2008, at the Beijing Olympic Games, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt ran the 100m in just 9.69 seconds, setting a new world record. A year later, Bolt surpassed his own feat with an astonishing 9.58-second run at the 2009 Berlin World Championships. With the 2012 Olympic Games set to begin in London, the sporting world hopes Bolt will overcome his recent hamstring problems and lead yet another victorious attack on the sprinting record. He is arguably the fastest man in history, but just how fast could be possibly go?

That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer, and ploughing through the record books is of little help. “People have played with the statistical data so much and made so many predictions. I don’t think people who work on mechanics take them very seriously,” says John Hutchinson, who studies how animals move at the Royal Veterinary College in London, UK.

The problem is that the progression of sprinting records is characterised by tortoise-like lulls and hare-like… well… sprints. People are getting faster, but in an unpredictable way. From 1991 to 2007, eight athletes chipped 0.16 seconds off the record. Bolt did the same in just over one year. Before 2008, mathematician Reza Noubary calculated that “the ultimate time for [the] 100 meter dash is 9.44 seconds.” Following Bolt’s Beijing performance, he told Wired that the prediction “would probably go down a little bit”.

John Barrow from the University of Cambridge – another mathematician – has identified three ways in which Bolt could improve his speed: being quicker off the mark; running with a stronger tailwind; and running at higher altitudes where thinner air would exert less drag upon him. These tricks may work, but they’re also somewhat unsatisfying. We really want to know whether flexing muscles and bending joints could send a sprinter over the finish line in 9 seconds, without relying on environmental providence.

To answer that, we have to look at the physics of a sprinting leg. And that means running headfirst into a wall of ignorance. “It’s tougher to get a handle on sprinting mechanics than on feats of strength or endurance,” says Peter Weyand from Southern Methodist University, who has been studying the science of running for decades. By comparison, Weyand says that we can tweak a cyclist’s weight, position and aerodynamic shape, and predict how that will affect their performance in the Tour de France. “We know down to 1%, or maybe even smaller, what sort of performance bumps you’ll get,” he says. “In sprinting, it’s a black hole. You don’t have those sorts of predictive relationships.”

Our ignorance is understandable. By their nature, sprints are very short, so scientists can only make measurements in a limited window of time. On top of that, the factors that govern running speed are anything but intuitive.

Robot swarms aim to bring buildings to life

Science and techno world topic: Future

Meet the man who wants to create architecture that understands everything about us – down to our emotional states – and learns from its mistakes

It doesn’t take much to be considered smart if you’re a building. Add some lights that turn themselves off when nobody is around or install an “intelligent” air conditioning system to regulate the ambient temperature and you’re well on your way. But compared to the living buildings proposed by Akira Mita, today’s smart buildings are the architectural equivalent of single-celled organisms.

Mita is an engineer, not an architect, and it shows in both the sophistication of his designs and the scale of his ambition. Using swarms of robotic sensors that “chase” a structure's human occupants, he wants buildings to understand everything about us, down to our emotional state. These robot sensors will learn from their mistakes, self-regulate using digital “hormones”, and record information over the course of years, building up a record of experiences to be used as “DNA” to program future versions of themselves, or even other buildings.

The Brave New World Of Tomorrow's Tablets

Science and techno world topic: Future

Tablets with paper-thin screens that can be folded and tucked into your back pocket, artificial intelligence and augmented reality -- the stuff of science fiction may be coming to a store near you.

                                                 

It's been two years since Apple Inc launched the iPad and spawned rival tablets from the likes of Samsung Electronics Co, Amazon.com Inc, Sony Corp, and now Google Inc and Microsoft Corp.

Much of the competition so far has centered on making smartphone and tablets lighter, slimmer, faster and longer-running than their predecessors, and the trend shows no signs of slowing. The increasingly crowded marketplace is also galvanizing hardware designers and software engineers to explore new technologies that may revolutionize the look and feel of mobile devices in coming years.

"We should think beyond just the touch-screen device," said Lin Zhong, a professor at Rice University who does research on mobile systems. "Why do we have to hold tablets, carry many displays? We should think about wearable computers."

Will we ever... live on the Moon?

Science and techno world topic: Future

Four decades after the Apollo missions, the idea of colonising the Moon is still the stuff of science fiction. But astronomer Phil Plait argues that it is not an issue of whether we can live there, but how and why we want to.

Will mankind once again walk on the lunar surface? I wouldn’t even hesitate to say “yes”, because the future is long, and who in the early 1950s would have dared to predict that we would even land a craft on the Moon within 20 years? But in this case, the answer probably isn’t as interesting as the question itself – more specifically, when, and why, and how will we do it?

I can think of many possible scenarios that could lead to us colonising the Moon: an extended economic boom that allows us to fund ambitious space exploration; a breakthrough in launch costs which makes them drastically cheaper; or the discovery of some vital natural resource on the Moon. But I don’t like betting on breakthroughs.

A better question is then: “What is a likely way we’ll end up with a human presence on the Moon?” Given what we know today and extrapolating from there, I have a thought on how this could happen.

Mind control moves into battle

Science and techno world topic: Future

Technology that taps into a soldier’s thought patterns could soon see action on the battlefield. But some worry about its future applications.

In Afghanistan, some soldiers are said to possess a sixth sense.

They hone their skills at the head of convoys that trundle along the dusty roads of remote mountainous provinces. As they drive, these soldiers scan ahead for signs of roadside bombs: disturbed earth, a glint of metal, or just something that seems out of place. Spotting them can mean the difference between life and death. Those who are half-jokingly said to possess the “sixth sense” are the ones that seem to have an uncanny ability to spot these almost imperceptible signs of danger.

Now, military scientists are beginning to build technologies that would give every soldier this ability, pushing the field of neuroscience from the lab and on to the battlefield.

These devices exploit what neuroscientists call the P300, a wave of brain activity that signifies an unconscious recognition of a visual object, and is so-named because it occurred about 300 milliseconds after stimulation. The P300 can be thought of as the biological basis of the sixth sense.

The problem is that it may take several seconds for the brain to become conscious of what it’s seen, and in Afghanistan, that brief time can mean the difference between spotting a bomb, and driving over it and setting it off.

The knowledge of the future

Science and techno world topic: Future

Seniors: The average life span could increase to 125 years

Only one thing in life is really sure that we all will die. But why we do not outwit death easy, asks the physicist Marcelo Gleiser. If it were up to him, technological advances will make this possible in the future - for example, by cloning.

[Marcelo Gleiser is a professor of physics at Dartmouth College in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. He explores the processes in the very early universe and attempts to unify the physics of elementary particles to cosmology. Gleiser is the author of the book "The Dancing Universe - Creation myths and the Big Bang."]

For us there is no more fundamental question than that after our death. We die and we know that. It is a terrifying, inexorable truth, one of the few absolute truths on which we can rely on. Other noteworthy absolute truths are more mathematical in nature, such as 2 +2 = 4 Nothing horrified the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal more than "the silence of infinite spaces", the nothingness that surrounds the end of time, and our ignorance of it.