Carbon nanotubes are sure to become a very important part of our technology over the next 50 years or so. I recall someone bringing up carbon nanotubes as a superior material for the creation of capacitors due to the extreme surface area that is necessary for a good capacitor. There is a similar eletrical principle that electricity (or more appropriately the electrons that move in an electrical wire) are all located on the surface of the wire, and that the center of the wire plays a relatively negligible role in the overall capacity of the wire. That got me to thinking that if you could plate carbon nanotubes with a highly conductive material, such as copper, prior to forming the nanotubes into any sort of shape, that you could then form the nanotubes into a wire form and the extreme amount of surface area to conduct electricity along with the absolutely insane strength of carbon nanotube based materials might make for seemingly superconductive wiring that is able to handle more current in a wire the size of a human hair than you can today in wiring 1000 times larger. In addition, for high voltage wiring that runs from power plants to cities, the extremely small diameter and amazingly high strength of the carbon nanotube based wiring would mean that high voltage power lines would be A) able to carry a much higher capacity than before and B) be immune to things like ice buildup causing power lines to snap in winter. In addition, the amperage carrying capacity of the extremely small wires would totally revolutionize the state of electric motors, enabling nano-sized electric motors and increasing the power output of normal electric motors to entirely new levels of power output. Think of a 100 horsepower electric motor that is the size of an alternator and weighs about 3 pounds and the impact that would have on the feasibility of electric vehicles. A motor’s power is mostly limited by the amperage you can put through the windings in the electric motor and the number of windings in the electric motor. By making super high capacity wiring that is extremely small, the amperage and number of windings in a motor increases exponentially and so does the resulting power.