The holy grail of nano technology, assemble structures from the atom up!!!

[JoeRoccoCassara]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLSds-PaZLI&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLSds-PaZLI&feature=related

 

In my mind, nothing screams unlimited energy like this sort of ability!!!!

 

Imagine drilling and taking a billion tons of rock, or even dirt, and reducing it into molecules, and then reducing those molecules into atoms, and then building a billion tons of helium 3!!!!

 

Oh ****, right?

[Moontanman]

YouTube - Visions of the Future:The Quantum Revolution 5

 

In my mind, nothing screams unlimited energy like this sort of ability!!!!

 

Imagine drilling and taking a billion tons of rock, or even dirt, and reducing it into molecules, and then reducing those molecules into atoms, and then building a billion tons of antimatter from the atom up!!!!

 

Oh ****, right?

 

Do you have any non video links to this information? I would be interested in reading about it.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

No sorry.

[CraigD]

Do you have any non video links to this information? I would be interested in reading about it.

Summaries of the BBC’s 3-part “Visions of the Future” documentary can be read here.

 

BBC doesn’t appear to have put up a transcript, which makes sense, as the series is mainly a visual treat, with physicist and science popularizer superstar Michio Kaku interviewing lots of researchers on very basic, introductory nanotech subjects. I’d outline the program as having these main themes:

• The dreadful “grey goo” scenario: a cautionary tale
  
• The dreadful supertechnology in the hands of evil weaponmakers scenario: a very old, recurring, cautionary tale
  
• Viva wet nanotech (AKA synthetic biology): given that all the complex nanotech we currently see in the world is biological, artificial complex nanotech is likely to be wet and meaty than hard and robot-y
  
• Personal fabricators would be very cool (as anyone who’s seen a few episodes of Star Trek would likely agree)
  
• How long until? Some say within 20 years – Michio (who’s a very bright guy with a superb education) thinks more like the end of the century, because of “significant problems”.
  

Each of these and other subjects touched on in the program is worthy of discussion.

 

I suspect that most serious students of technology could put together their own “state of the art of nanotech” summaries, and that most would devote time to dispelling misconceptions and separating fact from fiction. Here’s a random-ish spattering of my own:

• We’ve had the practical ability to manipulate individual atoms under special conditions for about 20 years. The earliest example of this was, AFAIK, Don Eigler writing “IBM” using 35 super-cold xenon atoms on a flat nickel surface, with a SFM, in 1989.
  
• The laws of physics aren’t different for nanomachines than for big ones. They still need energy to do work. Getting energy to very small machines is one of the major challenges of nanotech, as a machine made of only a few thousand atoms can’t really have much of a conventional energy storage system, or even much of a power receiving system.
  
• While the common problem with big machines if getting and keeping them moving, the problem with nanomachine is getting them to stay in one place. Unless cooled to near absolute zero or latching onto big things with strong mechanical or chemical bonds, random forces from heat will constantly knock a nanomachine across distances many times its own length, making having it do much of anything difficult.
  
• As the BBC program notes, biology has been doing nanotech really well for billions of years. A deep understanding of DNA and the cell is, IMHO, likely to give us all the medical nanotech we need.
  
• Technology, nano or otherwise, involves society, economics, and business as much as engineering. As with many technologies, a “personal fabricator” would run afoul a pricing conundrum I like to call “‘The Man In The White Suit’ problem” – since it has the potential to eliminate the need for any future thing you might buy, for the collective commercial world to profit from it, they must somehow sell it for as much as the total price of everything it will ever make. This problem becomes really vexing for a fabricator that can fabricate copies of itself.
  

If my vision of the future of nanotech has anything unique and original to offer, it’s my suspicion that “free floating” nanotech may be less valuable than the sort currently seen in devices like SFMs, where the nanoscopic part is attached to a bigger part which is attached to a bigger part, etc, ultimately attached to a big, fairly ordinary machine.

[Moontanman]

I really wish I could have seen that show, I really like, Michio Kaku his ideas are just the right mesh of what might be possible and what is right now.

[Kayra]

Technology, nano or otherwise, involves society, economics, and business as much as engineering. As with many technologies, a “personal fabricator” would run afoul a pricing conundrum I like to call “‘The Man In The White Suit’ problem” – since it has the potential to eliminate the need for any future thing you might buy, for the collective commercial world to profit from it, they must somehow sell it for as much as the total price of everything it will ever make. This problem becomes really vexing for a fabricator that can fabricate copies of itself.

QUOTE]

 

Excellent comparison... I have only vague recollections of that show.

 

What about selling the raw materials for that “personal fabricator”. It would certainly pay to have people able to replicate a machine for you, using materials you sell them, in order for them to allow their friends to also consume raw materials that you sell them. Sounds like a corporations wet dream as the device is not really capable of creating the raw materials used by the device (or care should be taken to engineer a system in that manner)

 

Perhaps you could use the device to construct a device that would make the raw materials for your device.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

Summaries of the BBC’s 3-part “Visions of the Future” documentary can be read here.

 

BBC doesn’t appear to have put up a transcript, which makes sense, as the series is mainly a visual treat, with physicist and science popularizer superstar Michio Kaku interviewing lots of researchers on very basic, introductory nanotech subjects. I’d outline the program as having these main themes:

• The dreadful “grey goo” scenario: a cautionary tale
  
• The dreadful supertechnology in the hands of evil weaponmakers scenario: a very old, recurring, cautionary tale
  
• Viva wet nanotech (AKA synthetic biology): given that all the complex nanotech we currently see in the world is biological, artificial complex nanotech is likely to be wet and meaty than hard and robot-y
  
• Personal fabricators would be very cool (as anyone who’s seen a few episodes of Star Trek would likely agree)
  
• How long until? Some say within 20 years – Michio (who’s a very bright guy with a superb education) thinks more like the end of the century, because of “significant problems”.
  

Each of these and other subjects touched on in the program is worthy of discussion.

 

I suspect that most serious students of technology could put together their own “state of the art of nanotech” summaries, and that most would devote time to dispelling misconceptions and separating fact from fiction. Here’s a random-ish spattering of my own:

• We’ve had the practical ability to manipulate individual atoms under special conditions for about 20 years. The earliest example of this was, AFAIK, Don Eigler writing “IBM” using 35 super-cold xenon atoms on a flat nickel surface, with a SFM, in 1989.
  
• The laws of physics aren’t different for nanomachines than for big ones. They still need energy to do work. Getting energy to very small machines is one of the major challenges of nanotech, as a machine made of only a few thousand atoms can’t really have much of a conventional energy storage system, or even much of a power receiving system.
  
• While the common problem with big machines if getting and keeping them moving, the problem with nanomachine is getting them to stay in one place. Unless cooled to near absolute zero or latching onto big things with strong mechanical or chemical bonds, random forces from heat will constantly knock a nanomachine across distances many times its own length, making having it do much of anything difficult.
  
• As the BBC program notes, biology has been doing nanotech really well for billions of years. A deep understanding of DNA and the cell is, IMHO, likely to give us all the medical nanotech we need.
  
• Technology, nano or otherwise, involves society, economics, and business as much as engineering. As with many technologies, a “personal fabricator” would run afoul a pricing conundrum I like to call “‘The Man In The White Suit’ problem” – since it has the potential to eliminate the need for any future thing you might buy, for the collective commercial world to profit from it, they must somehow sell it for as much as the total price of everything it will ever make. This problem becomes really vexing for a fabricator that can fabricate copies of itself.
  

If my vision of the future of nanotech has anything unique and original to offer, it’s my suspicion that “free floating” nanotech may be less valuable than the sort currently seen in devices like SFMs, where the nanoscopic part is attached to a bigger part which is attached to a bigger part, etc, ultimately attached to a big, fairly ordinary machine.

 

I think your just a def critic who believes we will never have enough energy for anything, and you also believe we can't advance because we don't have the patience or cooperation.

 

You and many other members on this forum believe in a def rant of, 'There's no energy! There's no energy!"

 

I think you are mistaken.

 

Seriously, everything I pull out you pull out a shitload of flaws no one really cares about.

 

But I suppose, that if we don't care about these flaws, than it will never happen. But the thing is we do, do you see?

[Moontanman]

I think your just a def critic who believes we will never have enough energy for anything, and you also believe we can't advance because we don't have the patience or cooperation.

 

You and many other members on this forum believe in a def rant of, 'There's no energy! There's no energy!"

 

I think you are mistaken.

 

Seriously, everything I pull out you pull out a shitload of flaws no one really cares about.

 

But I suppose, that if we don't care about these flaws, than it will never happen. But the thing is we do, do you see?

 

Not caring about flaws Gardamorg doesn't make them go away. Most flaws are indications that more work needs to be done, a few flaws are fatal like trying to violate a law of the universe. I am a firm believer that eventually we will be able to get around at least some of these laws but until we have reason to see a way to do this it's a pretty good bet that some flaws are simply impossible to get around. Don't simply dismiss things because you disagree with them, it's ok to try to figure a way around them but don't get stuck trying to do something that is beyond our current understanding with out first challenging that understanding, don't just assume that if you want to do something you can if you try hard enough. For instance getting around the speed of light is going to take quite a bit more than brute force and wishes, if it ever happens it will be with knowledge we currently do not have.

[kanuck]

I'm curious about how this may affect the world. I think a replicator will still need particles to be of some use, but where will it take them from? Will it use the gases of our atmosphere? You can't create something from nothing, can you?

[Moontanman]

I'm curious about how this may affect the world. I think a replicator will still need particles to be of some use, but where will it take them from? Will it use the gases of our atmosphere? You can't create something from nothing, can you?

 

A replicator will have to have a supply of raw materials, at the very least in the form of the basic elements comprising the object to replicated. In the "Star Trek" universe the replicator made things out of raw energy from the matter antimatter reactor, I guess in form of photons. I doubt anything approaching this well ever be built.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

A replicator will have to have a supply of raw materials, at the very least in the form of the basic elements comprising the object to replicated. In the "Star Trek" universe the replicator made things out of raw energy from the matter antimatter reactor, I guess in form of photons. I doubt anything approaching this well ever be built.

 

 

No......you could change a stick of iron into a microscopic stick of dwarf matter that has the same mass as that iron, but is a million times denser.

 

You could turn a stick of hafnium into a microscopic stick of hafnium with the same mass to fit more fuel into less space.

 

The convenience of building from the atom up is basically unlimited because they don't just mean from the 'atom' up, from the electron up, from the proton up, from the neutron up and from the quark up. You could take a thousand protons and neutrons and bunch them together with another thousand protons and neutrons into an atom, and take thousands of quarks from other atoms and make them surround these protons and neutrons so they don't fly apart, and you got a denser atom!!!

 

Imagine a hundred tons of chemical rocket fuel inside a glass container!!!!

 

I'm not making this up, just watch the video closer next time.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

Further more you could take a large block of titanium and turn it into a mountain sized block of titanium that weighs the exact same, but takes up, much, much, much more space. Although it probably wouldn't hold together unless you made it's foundations stronger than titanium, take it's atoms forming very short covalent bonds for example.

 

This means you could make an orion shuttle that weighs 50 lbs, and is just as strong using nano bots and nano technology.

 

It would be propelled many many many many many many many times faster, with half as much fuel.

 

The combination of condensing say 30 tons of chemical rocket fuel into 30 tons of rocket fuel that can fit inside a tea spoon, making a 50 pound orion shuttle that's just as strong and large as the original, and then putting a billion tons of this condensed chemical rocket fuel inside the shuttle's fuel tanks, you got a ship that can take you to another solar system in the same time it would take a regular shuttle to travel to Venus.

[Moontanman]

No......you could change a stick of iron into a microscopic stick of dwarf matter that has the same mass as that iron, but is a million times denser.

 

You could turn a stick of hafnium into a microscopic stick of hafnium with the same mass to fit more fuel into less space.

 

The convenience of building from the atom up is basically unlimited because they don't just mean from the 'atom' up, from the electron up, from the proton up, from the neutron up and from the quark up. You could take a thousand protons and neutrons and bunch them together with another thousand protons and neutrons into an atom, and take thousands of quarks from other atoms and make them surround these protons and neutrons so they don't fly apart, and you got a denser atom!!!

 

Imagine a hundred tons of chemical rocket fuel inside a glass container!!!!

 

I'm not making this up, just watch the video closer next time.

 

No you can't, how do you manipulate something as small as a proton or electron? How do you overcome their mutual repulsion? Dwarf matter? a million times denser? Such a thing would simply sink into the earth nothing could hold it. A denser atom? You are making stuff up now.

[Moontanman]

Further more you could take a large block of titanium and turn it into a mountain sized block of titanium that weighs the exact same, but takes up, much, much, much more space. Although it probably wouldn't hold together unless you made it's foundations stronger than titanium, take it's atoms forming very short covalent bonds for example.

 

This means you could make an orion shuttle that weighs 50 lbs, and is just as strong using nano bots and nano technology.

 

It would be propelled many many many many many many many times faster, with half as much fuel.

 

The combination of condensing say 30 tons of chemical rocket fuel into 30 tons of rocket fuel that can fit inside a tea spoon, making a 50 pound orion shuttle that's just as strong and large as the original, and then putting a billion tons of this condensed chemical rocket fuel inside the shuttle's fuel tanks, you got a ship that can take you to another solar system in the same time it would take a regular shuttle to travel to Venus.

 

I really and truly honestly hope you are correct but then again I hope the Star Ship Enterprise will pull into orbit one day as a gift from an advanced civilazation that likes to watch Star Trek, it could happen but I'm not holding my breath.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

No you can't, how do you manipulate something as small as a proton or electron?

 

Have nano bots make smaller nano bots, and have those smaller nano bots make smaller yet nano bots.

 

How do you overcome their mutual repulsion?

 

With quarks!!!

 

Dwarf matter?

 

Dwarf matter.

 

a million times denser? Such a thing would simply sink into the earth nothing could hold it.

 

Do you have to be so frickin literal? How bout 30 times denser? No? 12 times denser, shoot a random number!! It still helps hold more stuff into less space!!!!

 

A denser atom? You are making stuff up now.

 

Almost as dense as your non believing head.

[JoeRoccoCassara]

I apologize for using frickin in such a way, but please, don't be SOOOOO literal.

 

Saying a million is one of those 'you know what I mean' statements. I apologize if you expected me to say a number that took years to calculate.

[Moontanman]

Have nano bots make smaller nano bots, and have those smaller nano bots make smaller yet nano bots.

Ok but what will the nano bots be made of?

 

With quarks!!!

 

No such thing as free quarks.

 

 

Dwarf matter.

 

Meaningless term. Try Degenerate matter, still won't work but at least it's accurate.

 

 

Do you have to be so frickin literal? How bout 30 times denser? No? 12 times denser, shoot a random number!! It still helps hold more stuff into less space!!!!

 

Still weighs or masses the same, no help there at all.

 

Almost as dense as your non believing head.

 

Thank you, I'll take that as a complement.