The Little Engine

摘要

Batteries are too big. And they don't last long enough—just ask any sol- dier, laptop user, or TV cameraman. But Alan Epstein, a professor of aero-nautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hopes to change all that with a gas turbine engine made of silicon. It's no larger than a quarter and can be stamped out a hundred at a time. Epstein and his colleagues have been working on the little engine for more than a decade now, and they may currently be just months away from an actual working model. It's hard to tell exactly, because, unlike the fixes that might be needed to nudge a full-size turbine to readiness, every change Epstein's team makes means starting over and building the engine again.