[extropy-chat] Casimir Torque Project

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.its.caltech.edu/~nano/papers/buks-NATURE-sep2002.pdf
> 
> Just spotted this article on the Casimir Force in a CalTech
> newsletter.
> Wasn't sure that Adrian was aware of its contents or not. It appears
> that the force is a serious problem with nanomachinery, causing parts
> to collapse into each other through 'stiction'.

Hadn't read that particular article, but it doesn't seem to say
anything I haven't seen elsewhere.  In particular:

> Another outcome of these quantum
> fluctuations is the van der Waals force, which,
> in essence, can be considered as the Casimir
> force at especially small separations.

The potential for various pieces of the system to pass too close and
become stuck - not possible in the idealized diagram I posted, but
again, the limits of nanotechnology mean what I'm actually building is
a lot more, shall we say, pixellized - was one of my concerns when
coming up with my designs.  Although I do have measures to deal with
it, it is quite possible that those measures may prove insufficient.
We'll see...