Aerogel

[Kage]

Has anyone of you seen this:

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/aerogel.html

Look at that, those pics...

Imagine if this was encorporated into computer chips?! Would you need any coolant at all because it would cool down your pc more effectivley?

 

[setishock]

Your tax dollars at work...

Aerogel is currently used as a capture device for incredibley small and fast particules in deep space. It is so expensive to make it has no practicule purpose for mainstream public as of yet.
All most wieghtless and ghostly in appearance it has served NASA/JPL rather well. They were able to salvage some deep space particules from the return capsule when the first crash landed in the desert. I bet the parachute rigger is unemployed as of now and labeled a total idiot. The pyro devices to release the parachutes was wired wrong resulting in the capsule screaming by the pickup helocopters.
Now let's hope the flight through the comet's tail goes better.
Speaking of comets, the comet smasher it supposed to arrive on July 4th at about 1:58am or so eastern daylight time. It will be carried live on the NASA channel for those that have cable or dish.
These are two seperate projects JPL has going on at the same time.

 

[Kage]

Yeah, I heard about that, should be kewl

Yeah, I did think it might be expensive...though there is something I read about which is rather cheap which does almost the same thing, I'm sure (though maybe not as good). You know what it is?

I meant the thread though as a joke really about the computer thing, though you never know about the future. Its true it would cool everything down though isn't it? Or does it act like a heatflask, keeps the heat in (though in this case, out) and doesn't absorb it?

 

[Steven11]

kewl that is wicked. lol

 

[Techy Geek]

Imagine if this was encorporated into computer chips?! Would you need any coolant at all because it would cool down your pc more effectivley?

that stuff is amazing, gotta get me some of that
thats not the best coolant
Apparently in the first cray supercomputer, they had this liquid that was electronically inert, and they basically dipped the boards in this stuff with a massive cooler, taking water cooling to the extreme eh

 

[setishock]

Hey Kage...

I was off on those times. Here's the link to the JPL site with news on the comet smasher. The little video is good. Errie but good.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html

 

[MarxSoccer]

To me it seems this is more of just an insulator, not a cooling device?

 

[setishock]

To me it seems this is more of just an insulator, not a cooling device?

You're right. If you were to sit a block of this stuff on a cpu chip it would act as a blanket. Now maybe one of those shuttle blocks would do the job.

 

[alvino]

I'm not suprised that it's so expensive...incredible...O.O

 

[Kage]

hmm yea, I thought that it might be the case that it would just insulate the heat...opps That'd be a shame for a new processor then.

Does anyone know how this stuff could be used to cool a system down then? Maybe if it was encorporated into a fan system as well? Anyone have any ideas?