Heat sink you say....or heat bridge?
This as a heatsink would be very very nice indeed, though it is in effect a passive peltier and just shows that the magic carbon nanotubes as well as conducting electricity, also conduct heat very effeciently. So effeciently that they end up heating the surrounds and what is supprising is that they will pass that heat on to the extent that the surrounds will become hotter than the nano-tubes and it is this that does not make sence with the current version of science events.
One way to think of them is like a water pipe, that when turned off empties all it's water into the surrounds. Another way is to think of it as heat having it's own form of polarity and that carbon nanotubes are more neutral than other matriels so the heat gets attracted to them as apposed to all other materials that have the same polarity/charge and as such all things become equal.
Now whilst this may raise a lot of questions and future diplomer course's I have one real simple, answearable one. That is the question of feedback and in that I mean is the heat once the heat source is turned off balancing all around or is the flow of heat directional. This is a important question as it will effect things like it being used as a heatsink. If it is as I suspect by the design of the tubes omni-directional, then the need to passivily cool the large block metal the nanotubes are disapating in after the system has stopped producing heat for a fair while. Reason being that the heat in the disapation heatsink will feedback into the nanotubes and back onto the CPU. Thus potentualy overheating the CPU and damaging it after the system is shutdown. This is based upon them being heatpumps and needing somewere to pump that heat and disapate it greater than the amount of heat being generated by the CPU. Now if there directional - happier day's and I look forward to the day when they vent plasma :-).
Also if these nanotubes are non-directional then perhaps they could try carbon nano-cones. Also what are carbon-triangles like compared to nano-tubes. Could have tube that tapers to a larger square end; That I'm sure would induce some form of directional heat transfer and if it doesn't then it will only fill in some of those many blanks about this old-new field of science.
But good news, a material that conducts electricity has been found to also conduct heat and as it was realy effecient at conducting electricity, it also conducted heat realy effeceintly beyond what was expected.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
