Science Forums 2

[Gardamorg]

Originally Posted by CraigD

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?