Carbon Nanotube Ribbons Could Give Superman a Run for His Money

So, I read the article, and two thoughts strike me particularly.

One, the article mentions properties of superstiffness in one dimension, and rubbery-ness in the other, and repeatedly mentions the avidity with which it expands in width. That sounds like it doesn't extend and contract in length, meaning a 25 cm long piece remains 25 cms long no matter how you expand it widthwise. Doesn't sound like a terribly useful property as, say, an actuator rod, but maybe as an expansion device to "unfurl" a solar array (for example), if you lay a swarm of these strands side by side, and somehow make sure they stay "side by side" (in a frame of some sort, maybe), so that as the innermost one expands, it doesn't slide up and over, to overlap, the next ones over. I choose the innermost strands to exhibit this idea, because they will have to push all the other strands in the frame aside, even as they, too, are trying to expand. Hmm, interesting problem. Maybe lay them into a rolled blanket, that expands unevenly through its thickness (does it have that specific directional expansion capability?), and unrolls as it expands. (Sort of, the tube of tubes unrolls itself into a blanket of threads concept). Or maybe a sort of "macadam road" of short lengths of the material, layed in a long row of short pieces, and somehow secured to each other, forms a superstiff, fairly narrow (how narrow? usefully so, or does it wind up having to be some ratio of width to length that makes useful lengths hugely wide?) ribbon that then can become a flat "push-pull" actuator?

Two, it's conductive. How conductive, and how does it react to electrical signals? It seems that most of the nanotube conductivity patterns we run into (no research here to check this, maybe I'm all wet on this idea. Someone else want tot follow with a statistical analysis of articles published?) have to do with "whatever it does, it does when we zap it". Useful only if it does what we want it to do when we zap in ways we want to zap it, with what we want to zap it with. I wish there was a little more information, so we'd have a better idea whether the "muscle material" ideas were just some editors pipe-dream, or if they are really exhibited properties already.

Ah, well, watch that space. This is pretty interesting stuff, as is all of the nano-science field. It leads me to wonder, at this level of size, how much of this follows Newtonian, and how much Non-Newtonian physics. And how do the special and (non-special) theories of relativity react with all of it?

Micah