Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
Speaker 1: with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
Speaker 1: gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
Speaker 1: unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
Speaker 1: slumber under the night sky.
Speaker 2: So on the second of this month, when those artimists
Speaker 2: two engines ignited, I mean, if you think about it,
Speaker 2: the astronauts strapped inside were protected by aerospace tech that
Speaker 2: on a fundamental level hasn't really evolved all that much
Speaker 2: since the Apollo missions.
Speaker 3: No, it really hasn't. It's surprisingly old school.
Speaker 2: Right, because when you look at the schematics for shielding
Speaker 2: critical avionics from just the sheer hostility of deep space,
Speaker 2: the solution has almost always been brute force. You know,
Speaker 2: you use thick plates of aluminum or layers of polyethylene.
Speaker 3: Here, water jackets, things like that.
Speaker 2: We're taking these incredible twenty first century subanimeter computing architectures
Speaker 2: and like burying them behind twentieth century dead weight. And
Speaker 2: if you know anything about orbital mechanics, dead weight is
Speaker 2: the ultimate enemy.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, every single ounce of mass we push past
Speaker 3: Earth's gravity well costs, you know, thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2: We're paying this massive payload penalty just to build dumb walls.
Speaker 2: But so what happens when that wall is completely reimagined,
Speaker 2: Like what if you could achieve the exact same protection,
Speaker 2: the same attenuation of all that cosmic hostility with a
Speaker 2: material that is thinner than a single strand of human hair.
Speaker 3: Which sounds like science fiction, right, But the mass penalty
Speaker 3: isn't just an economic issue anymore. I mean it is
Speaker 3: the absolute physical bottleneck for human expansion into the Solar.
Speaker 2: System right now, because rockets can only carry so much.
Speaker 3: Exactly the Walcket equation is just completely unforgiving. If half
Speaker 3: of your available payload is dedicated to structural shielding just
Speaker 3: to you know, prevent your on board computers from getting
Speaker 3: fried by cosmic radiation. While you've severely restricted the scientific
Speaker 3: instruments you can.
Speaker 2: Carry, they're leaving behind life support redundancy.
Speaker 3: You're leaving behind actual human crew members. The traditional paradigm
Speaker 3: relies on macroscopic, really dense materials to block these high
Speaker 3: energy threats. But when you hit the absolute limit of
Speaker 3: how much mass you can launch. You just can't build
Speaker 3: thicker walls.
Speaker 2: You literally can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, you are forced to look the other way.
Speaker 3: You have to manipulate matter at the molecular level to
Speaker 3: completely change how the material interacts with those threats in
Speaker 3: the first place.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to this incredible breakthrough from the
Speaker 2: Korea Institute of Science and Technology or KISSED. They've developed
Speaker 2: this highly flexible, ultra thin nanomaterial that handles two very
Speaker 2: different and visible threats simultaneously.
Speaker 3: Electromagnetic interference and neutron radiation.
Speaker 2: Right, and before we get into the actual physical chemistry
Speaker 2: of how they built this stuff, which is mind blowing
Speaker 2: by the way, we really need to establish why these
Speaker 2: two specific forces are so destructive to modern technology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that context is crucial.
Speaker 2: So let's look at electromagnetic waves first, because we aren't
Speaker 2: just talking about static electricity here.
Speaker 3: Far from deep space, and honestly, even low Earth orbit
Speaker 3: is just saccurated with these highly energetic, constantly fluctuating electric
Speaker 3: and magnetic fields. And to really understand why that is
Speaker 3: lethal to a spacecraft, you have to look at how
Speaker 3: modern semiconductors are built. I mean, we're currently manufacturing silicon
Speaker 3: chips with transistor gates that are just a few nanometers.
Speaker 2: Wide, which is microscopic, right.
Speaker 3: And they operate on incredibly tiny voltage margins. So when
Speaker 3: an energetic electromagnetic wave sweeps through an unshielded avionics bay,
Speaker 3: it induces parasitic currents in those microscopic circuits.
Speaker 2: It's essentially pushing electrons around exactly.
Speaker 3: It forces electrons to move where they aren't supposed to,
Speaker 3: So it's.
Speaker 2: Basically introducing noise into a system that requires like absolute
Speaker 2: silence to operate correctly.
Speaker 3: That's a great way to put it.
Speaker 2: If a stray voltage spike hits a memory register, it
Speaker 2: can literally flip a binary zero to a one, and
Speaker 2: you end up with what engineers call a single event.
Speaker 3: Upset, which can be terrifying in space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, best case scenario, it's a minor sensor glitch.
Speaker 2: Worst case it's a catastrophic navigation failure right in the
Speaker 2: middle of a critical orbital insertion burn.
Speaker 3: And that is just the electromagnetic side of the equation.
Speaker 3: That's just a wave of energy flipping logic states. The
Speaker 3: other half of this dual thread environment is neutron.
Speaker 2: Radiation, which behaves completely differently completely.
Speaker 3: Neutrons actually possess mass, but as the name implies, they
Speaker 3: carry in neutral electrical.
Speaker 2: Charge, meaning they don't care about electronics. Right.
Speaker 3: They do not interact with the electromagnetic fields of the
Speaker 3: atoms they pass through. They completely ignore the electron cloud.
Speaker 2: Which means they fly right through the typical conductive metals
Speaker 2: that we would normally use to block electromagnetic interference, like
Speaker 2: a copper shield. It might stop a radio frequency wave
Speaker 2: dead in its tracks, but a neutron doesn't even notice
Speaker 2: the copper is there.
Speaker 3: It passes straight through until it makes a direct physical
Speaker 3: collision with an atomic nucleus. So when a high velocity
Speaker 3: neutron slams into the silicon lattice of a semiconductor, it
Speaker 3: is a kinetic event.
Speaker 2: It's physical damage.
Speaker 3: Yes, physicists call this displacement damage. The neutron acts like
Speaker 3: a microscopic billiard ball, you know, transferring its kinetic energy
Speaker 3: to a silicon atom and literally knocking it completely out
Speaker 3: of its precise crystalline structure.
Speaker 2: It leaves behind a physical hole, basically.
Speaker 3: Exactly a vacancy in the lattice. It creates what's known
Speaker 3: as a frinkal defect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so okay. An electromagnetic wave is an energy fluctuation
Speaker 2: that causes electrical chaos and logic errors, while a neutron
Speaker 2: is a mass bearing projectile causing permanent physical structural degradation
Speaker 2: of the hardware itself.
Speaker 3: And this duality is the core engineering nightmare.
Speaker 2: Right because to block the electrical chaos, you need highly
Speaker 2: conductive matierials, but to block the physical wrecking ball of
Speaker 2: the neutron, you need something entirely different.
Speaker 3: You need materials rich in low atomic number elements like hydrogen,
Speaker 3: dense polymers, or very specialized isotopes that can actually capture
Speaker 3: the particle.
Speaker 2: So historically, if you want to stop both, you're stuck
Speaker 2: trying to bond these disparate materials together, which creates these rigid, bulky,
Speaker 2: incredibly heavy composite.
Speaker 3: Panels which are prone to delamination under the extreme thermal
Speaker 3: cycling of space. By the way, and going back to
Speaker 3: our first point, they consume an enormous amount of your mass.
Speaker 2: Budget, which brings us back to kiss because this forces
Speaker 2: the researchers there to just abandon the macroscopic approach altogether.
Speaker 2: If you can't stack distinct layers of heavy materials you
Speaker 2: have to find a way to engineer a single material
Speaker 2: that possesses both conductivity for the em waves and absorption
Speaker 2: capabilities for the neutrons.
Speaker 3: And they found that synergy using two very specific nanoscale structures,
Speaker 3: carbon nanotubes or CNTs and boron nitride nanotubes BNNTs.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, a nanotube, for those trying to picture this
Speaker 2: is essentially a single atom thick sheet of material that's
Speaker 2: been rolled into a seamless cylinder. Right.
Speaker 3: And because they are governed by quantum mechanical properties rather
Speaker 3: than you know, classical bulk physics, their characteristics are vastly amplified.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the carbon ones. First.
Speaker 3: Carbon nanotubes are renowned for their electron mobility. The electrons
Speaker 3: can travel along the tube almost without scattering it all,
Speaker 3: making them incredibly conductive, which.
Speaker 2: Totally solves the electromagnetic problem. The CNTs basically form this
Speaker 2: highly conductive network, creating a nanoscale Faraday cage exactly. So
Speaker 2: when an EM wave hits this network, the energy is
Speaker 2: coupled into those conductive paths. It's absorbed and then safely
Speaker 2: dissipated as just a negligible amount of heat rather than
Speaker 2: passing through to the sense of electronics behind it.
Speaker 3: So the conductivity handles the wave, but to handle the
Speaker 3: neutron we turn to the boron nitride nanotubes.
Speaker 2: The bnnt's right.
Speaker 3: Structurally, a BNNT looks very similar to a carbon nanotube.
Speaker 3: It's that same cylinder shape, but instead of carbon, the
Speaker 3: cylinder is composed of alternating boron and nitrogen atoms.
Speaker 2: And the really critical component here is the boron right,
Speaker 2: specifically the isotope boron ten.
Speaker 3: Yes, boron ten is special because it has an unusually
Speaker 3: high cross section for thermal neutrons.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack cross section for a second, because it's
Speaker 2: such a vital concept in nuclear physics and it can
Speaker 2: be a little counterintuitive. It isn't a physical measurement of
Speaker 2: the atom.
Speaker 3: Size, right, No, it's not physical size at all. It
Speaker 3: is a measurement of probability, like shooting a basketball exactly
Speaker 3: if you don't eedgine shooting a basketball. The nucleus is
Speaker 3: the hoop. Most elements have incredibly tiny hoops. A neutron
Speaker 3: will just sail right past them without interacting.
Speaker 2: But boron ten has a massive hoop.
Speaker 3: A massively disproportionate hoop. Yeah, the probability of it actually
Speaker 3: capturing a passing neutron is thousands of times higher than
Speaker 3: most other elements.
Speaker 2: And what happens when it captures it.
Speaker 3: When that boron ten nucleus captures the neutron, it undergoes
Speaker 3: a nuclear reaction. It absorbs the kinetic energy of the
Speaker 3: neutron and transmutates. It actually decays into a stable lithium
Speaker 3: ion and an alpha particle.
Speaker 2: Wow, so the thread is completely neutralized at the subatomic
Speaker 2: level exactly. The theoretical physics of these two materials together
Speaker 2: is just beautiful. I mean, you have the CNTs for
Speaker 2: conductivity and the BNNTs for neutron capture. Yeah, but here
Speaker 2: is the major hurdle in material science, right, Yeah. You
Speaker 2: cannot just dump carbon nanotubes and boron nitride nanotubes into
Speaker 2: a vat, stir them up and expect them to work together. No.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not. At the nanoscale, these materials are incredibly cohesive.
Speaker 3: They desperately want to clump together. They iglomerate r they
Speaker 3: agglomerate into these totally useless bundles because of Vanderol's forces.
Speaker 2: And overcoming that agglomeration is where the Kiss team achieved
Speaker 2: something really remarkable. They didn't just mix the two materials together.
Speaker 2: They engineered a core shell structure at the individual nanoparticle level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this part is brilliant. Through highly controlled chemical processing,
Speaker 3: they managed to sheathe the boron nitride nanotubes within a
Speaker 3: layer of carbon nanotubes.
Speaker 2: So it's essentially a microscopic coaxial cable. That is the.
Speaker 3: Perfect mechanistic analogy. In a coaxial cable, you have an
Speaker 3: inner conductor surrounded by an outer shielding.
Speaker 2: Layer like the TV cables we used to have.
Speaker 3: Exactly here, the outer sheath is the highly conductive carbon
Speaker 3: nanotube network and the innercore is the neutron absorbing boron nitride.
Speaker 2: So the carbon exterior immediately engages and attenuates the electromagnetic waves,
Speaker 2: while that boron core sits inside protected, just waiting to
Speaker 2: capture any neutrons that happened to penetrate the outer lattice.
Speaker 3: They integrated a dual threat defense mechanism into a single
Speaker 3: cohesive architectural unit.
Speaker 2: It's so elegant.
Speaker 3: But even with this coaxial nanoparticle, you are still dealing
Speaker 3: with a fine powder basically, and you cannot coat an
Speaker 3: avionics bay or like a lunar habitat with powder.
Speaker 2: No, you definitely can't. It has to be suspended in
Speaker 2: the matrix, and that matre has to be able to
Speaker 2: survive the sheer mechanical violence of a rocket launch plus
Speaker 2: the extreme temperature swings of orbit.
Speaker 3: The vibrations alone would shake a powder right off exactly.
Speaker 2: So the matrix they chose is a polymer known as
Speaker 2: PDMS polydimethyl siloxine okay. It is a silicon based organic
Speaker 2: polymer that gets heavily utilized in advanced engineering because of
Speaker 2: its siloxane backbone. Basically, it's made of alternating silicon and
Speaker 2: oxygen atoms.
Speaker 3: And what does that specific chemical structure do.
Speaker 2: It gives PDMS an incredibly low glass transition temperature, which
Speaker 2: means it remains remarkably flexible and elastic even in cryogenic conditions,
Speaker 2: which leads to the really astonishing physical specifications of the
Speaker 2: final composite. Because the Kiss team took their core shell
Speaker 2: nanotubes and embedded them into this PDMS matrix, and the
Speaker 2: resulting material is thinner than a human hair, yet it
Speaker 2: can strutch to more than twice its original length without tearing, but.
Speaker 3: More Importantly, it stretches without breaking the conductive network of
Speaker 3: the nanotubes inside it.
Speaker 2: Wait, how does it do that? Usually if you stretch
Speaker 2: something conductive, it breaks the connection, right.
Speaker 3: That's the percolation threshold at work in most conductive elastomers.
Speaker 3: If you stretch the material, the conductive particles get pulled apart,
Speaker 3: the resistance spikes, and your electromagnetic shielding just completely fails.
Speaker 2: But the nanotubes are different.
Speaker 3: They are because nanotubes have extremely high aspect ratios, meaning
Speaker 3: they are very very long compared to their width, so
Speaker 3: they can actually slide and telescope past one another within
Speaker 3: the polymer matrix as it stretches.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so they maintain continuous electrical pathways even while
Speaker 2: the material is being pulled.
Speaker 3: Apart exactly, which means the shielding remains totally viable even
Speaker 3: when subjected to severe mechanical deformation.
Speaker 2: That is incredible, and we should really look closely at
Speaker 2: the performance metrics they achieved with this, because the numbers
Speaker 2: are staggering. The material successfully blocks ninety nine point nine
Speaker 2: nine nine percent of electromagnetic waves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in signal processing terms, that is an attenuation of
Speaker 3: roughly fifty decibels. For a material thinner than a hair,
Speaker 3: reducing the transmitted wave energy by a factor of one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand is practically total isolation.
Speaker 2: It just completely eliminates the threat of induced currents in
Speaker 2: the underlying circuitry. It does so the electromagnetic attenuation is
Speaker 2: virtually perfect. However, looking at the data on the neutron shielding,
Speaker 2: it shows a reduction of seventy two percent. And I
Speaker 2: want to focus on this for a second, because if
Speaker 2: I am an engineer and I'm designing a redundant life
Speaker 2: support system for a deep space habitat, a seventy two
Speaker 2: percent reduction implies that over a quarter of the neutron
Speaker 2: radiation is still impacting my hardware. That's true. So in
Speaker 2: a highly radioactive environment, isn't allowing twenty eight percent of
Speaker 2: the threat through considered a pretty catastrophic vulnerability.
Speaker 3: Well, you have to look at how it's being used.
Speaker 3: If you are evaluating a primary structural shield like the
Speaker 3: outer hull of a nuclear reactor, then yes, seventy two
Speaker 3: percent is completely insufficient. But we have to look at
Speaker 3: the mass attenuation coefficient. Traditional high density poly ethylene shielding
Speaker 3: requires several centimeters of thickness and significant mass to achieve
Speaker 3: a similar reduction, Kist achieved seventy two percent attenuation with
Speaker 3: a layer measured in micrometers.
Speaker 2: So it weighs practically nothing.
Speaker 3: Its mass is practically negligible.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the context is really the application. You wouldn't
Speaker 2: use this as the primary outer bulkhead of the space
Speaker 2: craft exactly.
Speaker 3: You use it as a conformal coating because it is
Speaker 3: so incredibly light and flexible. You can apply it directly
Speaker 3: to the semiconductor packaging itself, or you wrap it tightly
Speaker 3: around the internal wiring iarnesses. Ah. It serves as this
Speaker 3: highly efficient localized defense layer that stacks with the broader
Speaker 3: structural shielding of the spacecraft. So it allows the engineers
Speaker 3: to drastically thin out those heavy outer bulkheads.
Speaker 2: You are buying an immense amount of localized protection without
Speaker 2: paying the mass of payload penalty precisely. And it does
Speaker 2: all of this while remaining thermally stable from what minus
Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety six degrees celsius.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the temperature of liquid nitrogen all the.
Speaker 2: Way up to two hundred fifty degree celsius. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: the chemistry of that PDMS polymer matrix is really doing
Speaker 2: a lot of heavy lifting to keep those nanotubes functional
Speaker 2: in those extremes.
Speaker 3: It is, but chemistry alone doesn't solve the integration problem.
Speaker 3: You have to be able to manufacture this material into
Speaker 3: precise geometries that fit complex.
Speaker 2: Hardware, right, because wrapping a wire is one thing, but
Speaker 2: coding an intricate sensor array is another.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and the transition from a bulk material to a
Speaker 3: targeted application relies entirely on the manufacturing methodology. The Kissed
Speaker 3: researchers didn't just cast this material into flat sheets. They
Speaker 3: actually developed an ink formulation using the nanotube PDMS composite
Speaker 3: an ink, yes, and they deployed it using direct ink
Speaker 3: writing or DIIW.
Speaker 2: Okay, So DIIW is essentially a highly sophisticated form.
Speaker 3: Of three D printing, right it is, But it relies
Speaker 3: on the precise reeology of the ink. The material has
Speaker 3: to be sheer thinning.
Speaker 2: Okay, sheer thinning like how ketchup is thick until you
Speaker 2: shake the bottle.
Speaker 3: That is actually the perfect example. The fluid dynamics are fascinating.
Speaker 3: When the composite ink is at rest in the syringe,
Speaker 3: it is highly viscous. It acts almost like a solid.
Speaker 2: But the moment mechanical pressure is applied to force it
Speaker 2: through the microscopic nozzle of the three D printer.
Speaker 3: The sheer forces align the polymer chains and the nanotubes,
Speaker 3: dropping the viscosity dramatically. It flows smoothly right out of
Speaker 3: the nozzle.
Speaker 2: But then the second it leaves the nozzle and the
Speaker 2: sheer stress is removed, the viscosity instantly recovers.
Speaker 3: Right It locks its shape in three dimensional space without
Speaker 3: slumping or spreading at all.
Speaker 2: And this specific regiological behavior is what allowed the researchers
Speaker 2: to print the material into a highly specific architectural geometry,
Speaker 2: namely a honeycomb lattice.
Speaker 3: Which is where things get really interesting, because they discovered
Speaker 3: that engineering the material into a hexagonal honeycomb structure yielded
Speaker 3: up to fifteen percent better shielding performance against both em
Speaker 3: waves and neutrons compared to a solid flat sheet of
Speaker 3: the exact same thickness.
Speaker 2: That is wild, a structure that consists largely of empty
Speaker 2: space is actually superior at blocking radiation than a solid
Speaker 2: wall of dense material.
Speaker 3: It's because the geometry is actively doing the work. It
Speaker 3: operates on the same physical principles. As an anacoic chamber
Speaker 3: the kind they use in acoustic or radio frequency testing,
Speaker 3: oh like.
Speaker 2: Those rooms with the foam spikes all over.
Speaker 3: The walls, Exactly, an anacoic chamber is lined with geometric wedges.
Speaker 3: When a wave hits those wedges, instead of bouncing straight
Speaker 3: back or pushing straight through, it is forced into a
Speaker 3: series of multiple internal reflections. It bounces back and forth
Speaker 3: between the walls of the wedge.
Speaker 2: So every single time the wave impacts the surface of
Speaker 2: the honeycomb cell in this material, a fraction of its
Speaker 2: energy is absorbed by the carbon nanotubes and dissipated as heat.
Speaker 3: Right by forcing the wave to navigate a three dimensional maze,
Speaker 3: you artificially elongate its path length through the lossy material.
Speaker 2: You literally drain its energy through geometric impedance.
Speaker 3: And that geometric advantage applies to the neutron radio as well.
Speaker 3: Fast neutrons entering the honeycomb structure are forced into scattering events.
Speaker 3: As they bounce off the walls of the hexagonal lattice,
Speaker 3: they lose kinetic energy through moderations.
Speaker 2: They slow down, they slow.
Speaker 3: Down, and as they enter the thermal energy regime, that's
Speaker 3: where the Boron ten cross section is the most effective because.
Speaker 2: It drastically increases the probability of capture. The geometry serves
Speaker 2: as a mechanism to slow the threat down so the
Speaker 2: chemistry can actually neutralize it.
Speaker 3: It is a brilliant synergy of material science and mechanical engineering.
Speaker 2: It really is. And because it relies on direct ink writing,
Speaker 2: the shielding is entirely bespoke. I mean, an aerospace engineer
Speaker 2: doesn't have to design their avionics around flat panels of
Speaker 2: shielding anymore.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. If they have a highly irregular
Speaker 3: optical sensor array, they can just three D print a
Speaker 3: customized conformal honeycomb structure that perfectly encapsulates the device.
Speaker 2: And they could even modify the density of the honeycumb
Speaker 2: cells based on the specific radiation vectors that dive will encounter.
Speaker 3: The optimization of mass and geometry is total. It's a
Speaker 3: complete game changer. But you know, the implications of this
Speaker 3: core shell nanotube architecture extend far beyond translunar injection trajectories
Speaker 3: and orbital habitats.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, because the extreme environments we are trying to
Speaker 2: master are increasingly terrestrial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Doctor Joe Junghoe of Kissed, who led the research team,
Speaker 3: explicitly outlined the terrestrial roadmap for this right.
Speaker 2: He categorized this development as a fundamentally new concept in
Speaker 2: shielding technology, one that sure establishes critical domestic production infrastructure
Speaker 2: for the space age, but also immediately translates to the semiconductor, nuclear,
Speaker 2: and medical sectors right here on Earth.
Speaker 3: The semiconductor manufacturing industry is perhaps the most immediate beneficiary
Speaker 3: of this. The fabrication plants that produce the three and
Speaker 3: animator chips we rely on are incredibly noisy electromagnetic environments, right.
Speaker 2: Because extreme ultraviolet lithography machines require immense amounts of power,
Speaker 2: and they generate massive electric magnetic fields.
Speaker 3: And shielding the metrology equipment and the laser alignment sensors
Speaker 3: from this interference currently requires massive rigid isolation chambers inside the.
Speaker 2: Clean rooms, which take up so much space.
Speaker 3: Exactly. A flexible three D printable shield allows for much
Speaker 3: tighter integration and significantly smaller clean room footprints.
Speaker 2: And the economic implications there are just massive, especially considering
Speaker 2: the billions of dollars required to build a single modern fat.
Speaker 3: It's a huge cost saver.
Speaker 2: But you know, I look at the medical applications and
Speaker 2: I see a much more vitual human impact. Like an
Speaker 2: interventional radiology or fluoroscopy. Medical professionals are working in close
Speaker 2: proximity to actively emitting X ray and radiation sources for
Speaker 2: hours at a time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the current standard of care for occupational safety in
Speaker 3: those environments relies.
Speaker 2: On lead a prints right, the heavy vests.
Speaker 3: Lead is highly effective at stopping ionizing radiation because of
Speaker 3: its immense density, but that density comes at a severe
Speaker 3: ergonomic cost. A standard lead ape bring can weigh upwards
Speaker 3: of fifteen pounds. Wearing that constantly leads to chronic fatigue,
Speaker 3: severe musculoskeletal issues, and debilitating spinal strain for surgeons and
Speaker 3: technicians over the course of their careers.
Speaker 2: It's a huge problem. But now imagine taking the physical
Speaker 2: principles kissed utilized here. While medical equipment often deals with
Speaker 2: X rays rather than neutron radiation, the concept of a flexible,
Speaker 2: ultra thin polymer matrix embedded with high Z nanoparticles could
Speaker 2: completely replace the bulk mass of lead.
Speaker 3: It absolutely could. You could weave radiation protection into garments
Speaker 3: that weigh no more than a standard neoprene wetsuit.
Speaker 2: They would stretch with the surgeon's movements while actively dissipating
Speaker 2: electromagnetic interference from the surrounding monitors and neutralizing the ionizing radiation.
Speaker 3: It completely alters occupational health and high risk medical field.
Speaker 2: It really does. And that same logic applies to the
Speaker 2: energy sector right specifically the deployment of small modular reactors
Speaker 2: or SMRs.
Speaker 3: Yes, the future of nuclear energy really relies on shrinking
Speaker 3: the footprint of the reactor, but the instrumentation and control systems,
Speaker 3: basically the digital brains monitoring the core, they still must
Speaker 3: be positioned very close to the high radiation zones.
Speaker 2: Right now, those sensors are shielded by inches of lead
Speaker 2: and borated polyethylene. But if you can conformally coat the
Speaker 2: sensor packages in a millimeter thick three D printed BNNT honeycomb.
Speaker 3: You drastically reduce the physical volume required for the sensor array.
Speaker 3: It simplifies the reactor design, it lowers material costs, and
Speaker 3: it actually increases the thermal efficiency of the entire module.
Speaker 2: So we are really seeing a convergence here, whether it's
Speaker 2: an SMR and a remote grid, a lithography machine in
Speaker 2: a clean room, or a communication satellite in lower Earth orbit.
Speaker 2: The density of our electronic infrastructures is increasing exponentially.
Speaker 3: It is we're deploying highly sensitive subnanometer lodging gates into
Speaker 3: environments that are completely saturated with intersecting electromagnetic waves and
Speaker 3: high energy particles.
Speaker 2: And the era of relying on bulk mass to protect
Speaker 2: those systems is over.
Speaker 3: The physics simply do not scale anymore. Kist has demonstrated
Speaker 3: that the solution lies in atomic architecture. By leveraging the
Speaker 3: quantum conductivity of carbon nanotubes and the vast nuclear cross
Speaker 3: section of boron ten, they created a single composite that
Speaker 3: handles both the energy wave and the mass bearing particle.
Speaker 2: They embedded that cor shell nanoparticle into a highly flexible
Speaker 2: seloxiane polymer, ensuring the conductive network remains completely intact even
Speaker 2: under severe mechanical stress and cryogenic temperatures.
Speaker 3: And finally, they bypass traditional manufacturing constraints by utilizing sheer
Speaker 3: thinning fluid dynamics to three D print the material into
Speaker 3: an anacoic honeycomb.
Speaker 2: Lattice, utilizing empty space and geometry to artificially elongate the
Speaker 2: path of the.
Speaker 3: Radiation, multiplying the material's attenuation capabilities without adding a single
Speaker 3: milligram of mass.
Speaker 2: It's honestly a masterclass in interdisciplinary engineering. It proves that
Speaker 2: when we manipulate matter at the nanoscale, we can fundamentally
Speaker 2: rewrite the rules of how macroscopic objects interact with the universe.
Speaker 2: It's going to change everything, which leads this fascinating, almost
Speaker 2: philosophical implication regarding our future in these extreme environments. I mean,
Speaker 2: for the last sixty years, the primary limitation to deep
Speaker 2: space exploration has been the fragility of our machines, Like
Speaker 2: how to keep the computers from degrading under the cosmic
Speaker 2: bombardment without weighing down the rocket.
Speaker 3: Right, That's always been the bottleneck.
Speaker 2: But as material science advances, producing these ultra thin, stretchable
Speaker 2: armors that render our digital hardware virtually invincible, well, the
Speaker 2: technological bottlenecks will inevitably fall away, and when the machinery
Speaker 2: is no longer the weakest link, the true limiting factor
Speaker 2: for our expansion into the Solar System will shift entirely.
Speaker 2: It won't be about how we shield the spacecraft anymore.
Speaker 2: It will be about how we manage the psychological fragility
Speaker 2: of the human beings isolated within it,