The future of blade technology

[fearn]

Originally Posted by M ELEY

The knife has always been around as a tool and back-up weapon to the soldier even to this day. Superior gunfire or not, the blade will go on. Whether it be for the silent kill or when the gun runs out of ammo...
OK, variable sword, light saber... How about the ultimate in folded steel. Like the Japanese katana of old, only this steel is compacted impossibly dense in a portable black hole and the blade can cut through anything-

Yup. That blade would truly suck. Black hole joke

Any black hole you could swing as a blade would probably be smaller than an atom in diameter--good luck intercepting anything with it. It would also probably evaporate in a haze of Hawking radiation while you were holding it, to the tune of a couple of pounds of e=mc2 goodness.

Otherwise, it's a neat idea.

As for folded steel, one legitimate thing might be fine control of the folds to maximize toughness on the body and hardness on the edge. One could even visualize making the steel "felted"--having a tangled crystal structure something like jade, with an amorphous metal-glass edge that would be ridiculously hard. We don't have that kind of metallurgical control yet, but when we do, I'm sure someone's going to try to make a sword with it.

As for a wire one molecule thick, has anyone ever thought that wonderful statement through? I always wanted a variable knife as a kid, but you know, there's lots of monomolecular things that are really blunt and fragile. DNA comes to mind. Glass, the sharpest macro-solid, is amorphous. Go figure.

Atlantia, I agree that someone's going to do something interesting with molecular materials. I always look at nature, though, since it's our best example of room temperature nanotechnology, and it's been around for a few hundred million years. Anyway, not a lot of animals sharpen their teeth. Rather more of them shed and regrow teeth. I suspect there's a reason for this, and I'll bet that reason would cause trouble for any edge regenerating sheath. On the other hand, bones are fairly fragile, and when you're working out, a lot of micro-cracks develop, and are fixed almost instantly by bone cells. For a nanotech sword, I'd expect something that could heal of itself of stress fractures before the blade chipped or broke. Of course, such a blade would take energy, and probably the regenerative cells would eventually wear out, but it would be neat.

Best,

F