A self-healing, transparent, highly stretchable material | Hacker News Reader

A self-healing, transparent, highly stretchable material

sciencebulletin.org

68 pointsmanojr18 comments

And very importantly -- it can contract and expand with electric current. It can be used as an artificial "muscle" and if it is cut in half it will re-attach and be usable within 5 minutes and almost fully re-connected in 24 hours.

Am I crazy (or naive) for immediately thinking about the robotics potential?

Not at all crazy or naive. That is one of the applications listed in the subtitle of the article. Efficiency and longevity of the properties are going to make a big difference in that area. E.g. muscle wire -- cool but very inefficient. Also, does it maintain these properties for a long period of time or will the properties (self-healing and current response) wane after a year or so.

Another important dimension of longevity is how well it behaves in real life. What happens when it gets hot, cold, dry or wet, when it gets exposed to UV from the sun, etc?

This link might be better for you.

http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v8/n6/full/nchem.2492.ht...

This professor's research looks pretty fucking cool http://www.chaowanggroup.com/publications.html.

We can dream of a future where our computers' processors are biological or organic, where the distinction between life and machine dwindles.

This says nothing about the durability or strength of the material. How much force can it impart when retracted?

This might help you:

http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v8/n6/full/nchem.2492.ht...

Also this:

http://www.chaowanggroup.com/publications.html

I wonder how self healing properties affect maintaining original shape. Would it form a blob after being folded and compressed? Does it stretch out if it self heals while stretched?

self healing properties would be a labor savor in outside-facing building materials (e.g. roof and stucco patching compounds, window sealants, elastomeric paints, wood putty)

probably too expensive for such mundane uses though.

maybe this stuff can extend the working lifetime of the equipment on NASA space probes

I've been reading about these "self-healing" materials for years. They have always been overhyped and never made it out of the lab. The only way to have truly a "self-healing" material, it to make it with nano technology that has self-organizing, swarm properties. All these other "breakthroughs” are just gimmicks with limited use potential.

> As a result, the iron–ligand bonds can readily break and re-form while the iron centres still remain attached to the ligands through the stronger interaction with the pyridyl ring, which enables reversible unfolding and refolding of the chains.

"Self-organizing" and "swarm" are buzzwords in your usage. Do you consider a proton and an electron self-organizing because there exists a bound state? What do those words even mean?

Self-organizing has a very clear definition. Wikipedia has an entire article on it. I suggest you look it up. None of the many self-healing claims of the past, including this one have ever been self-organizing. As a result, have no programmable group memory. The amount of damage that can be repaired, stress fractures that can be repaired, etc is an incredible small range compared to any biological system. This is no different.

As far a swarm being a meaningless buzz word, again I beg to differ. From biological to robotic swarms, very simple instructions can achieve amazingly complex results. I have a high confidence that when we actually do have a real self-healing technology, swarm will be an apt description of its nano tech.

> Self-organizing has a very clear definition.

Not true. The "definition" in Wikipedia is essentially saying that a complex system exhibits self-organization if there is order observed at various scales. I didn't read the paper -- but based on the abstract, it looks like there is some sort of structural phase transition at T_c = 253K (please correct me if this is wrong) which allows these molecules to energetically favor reassembly. This would classify, according to Wikipedia, as self-organization at a microscopic scale. Self-organization can be evident at some scales (but not others) in systems which are not self-similar, but you already know this, since you read the Wikipedia article.

> From biological to robotic swarms, very simple instructions can achieve amazingly complex results.

No one is denying the beauty of complex systems. That said, the versatility of the word "swarm" word is precisely what makes it trivial! One can only beg for more words. What kind of swarm? At what scale? A physicist will find behavior that can be poetically described as "swarm" in one place, and a chemist will find it in another place, and a biologist will find it in still another place, and at a different scale!

> I have a high confidence that when we actually do have a real self-healing technology, swarm will be an apt description of its nano tech.

This is meaningless! It's trivially true. Let me try it: "I have high confidence that when we actually do have a real self-healing technology, sinusoidal will be an apt description of its nano tech." You can't use those terms to describe what self-healing "should look like" since those terms are vague and non-mathematical (self-organization could be defined more mathematically).

In reality, I think you have an idea or imagination or intuition of what you think "real" self-healing technology should be, and you just aren't satisfied with what we're at right now. This -- I can accept, and I might even agree with you. But don't go around hand-waving buzzwords about what technology should look like, because there's no content there.

I think a really good example of this is boson gasses versus fully connected neural networks (phase only). A cold enough boson gas will undergo a phase transition where each particle falls into the ground state. A fully-connected strongly coupled random phase network will lead to each neuron having the same phase (i.e. same state). You would readily call a neuron matrix "self-organizing" or "swarmy", since it leads the EEG signals we measure, but how is that any more self-organizing or swarmy than the Bose-Einstein condensate if the math is the same?

The premise is that it isn't. That's why it seems silly to claim that this paper's statistical system is not self-organizingy or swarmy enough, and that "real" self-healing systems are "more" self-organizingy and swarmy.

The way biological neurons self-organize into a neural network could correctly be described as swarm behavior. In fact there is quite a bit of research into this and it's amazing how during development you can move a neuron from one part of the brain into another area, and it will self-correct and take up the proper role in the new region. There are complex emergent properties here, which your Bose-Einstein condensate lacks. Which is also why it has not practical use beyond theoretical research.

I subscribe to the cellular automaton interpretation of quantum mechanics, that our most fundamental laws work like the game of life. A basic part of their program is to increase entropy. This results in homogenous and lack of complexity. These is where your counter point falls apart. Your Bose-Einstein condensate is less complex. Unless we could change the laws of our universe, we have no way to program its behavior and is therefore not useful. So if you must, I will quality my original assertion that it will be a programmable swarm-like behavior. Although whether it be from computer code or DNA, this is a characteristic than any traditional swarm behavior possesses.

Honestly mate, I appreciate the conversation and your response, but this is starting to reek of quantum spirituality, which is fine, but you're presenting ideas which I can't argue against.

Regarding interpretations of quantum mechanics, the interpretation is unimportant -- the math is the same is the same is the same. If you want to think about particles as being controlled by fairies who are locked up in hidden dimensions, that's kinky and totally fine -- as long as we use the same math, I don't really care.

If your fairies end up predicting new phenomenon that exist, which are not predicted by the Born/Copenhagen interpretations, sign me up -- I'll go to wonderland. Until then, let's leave interpretations out of our conversation.

My point in bringing up boson gasses and neural networks was to show that two vastly different systems at different scales can both exhibit self-organization described by similar mathematics. I am not saying those systems are equivalent, but I am saying that self-organization is a very versatile term and that throwing it around with no context warrants more content.

> reek of quantum spirituality... particles as being controlled by fairies who are locked up in hidden dimensions

With the cellular automaton interpretation everything could be calculated and is deterministic. More importantly, there are no silly paradoxes like cat's being both alive and dead at the same time until it is observed. The universe at its most fundamental level are bits of information, or automaton. The speed of light is the speed of causality. It's the clock-rate of our reality. No need for fairies, multiple worlds, or collapsing probability waves that lead to paradoxes.

> that self-organization is a very versatile term and that throwing it around with no context warrants more content.

No argument that you could "cheat" by going low enough to claim anything is a result of self-organization. But it's not cheating if the actual mechanism is. For example, saying that cells in a neural network are self-organizing is not cheating. Say that a neural network is self-organizing because of some fundamental laws of physics that’s many layers down is cheating.

> how that two vastly different systems at different scales can both exhibit self-organization described by similar mathematics.

That is the unreasonable beauty of mathematics

Finally, yes a hammer is not very useful if you have no way to control its behavior. While your magical hammer might provide a plethora of data for people who study it. You need to control what the hammer hits to use it do useful work.

There might be some use from this self-healing tech or any of the past claims. It's the hype that I object to. Then again, I also object to people calling Telsa's cars "self-driving".

> There are complex emergent properties here, which your Bose-Einstein condensate lacks. Which is also why it has not practical use beyond theoretical research.

I'm sure someone said that "doping insulators has no practical use beyond theoretical research", too.

> Unless we could change the laws of our universe, we have no way to program its behavior and is therefore not useful.

Something is useful if and only if we can "program" its behavior. Do you think this assertion is true? Would you consider an iron hammer useful? What about bone tools?

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