Sidewinder77
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2015–2023
4:56 · 146K views · Jul 30, 2006
A short animation illustrating the proposed nanofactory concept, where nanomachines assemble atomically precise parts into larger products. It depicts how such a system might build macroscopic goods from raw materials and energy.
Shared as a visualization of Ralph Merkle's theoretical work on molecular manufacturing.
3 comments from Hacker News
Yes, gigahertz operation speeds. This is a straightforward result from mechanical scaling laws. A machine scaled down by 1/10th in each linear dimension is able to operate at 10x speed. So a machine operating at 10Hz in ~1m regime (perfectly reasonable in an industrial setting) will be able to operate at 1GHz speeds when scaled down to be ~10nm in size. Biology operates by means of Brownian motion. Enzymes randomly jiggle around as they are bombarded in solution, until by totally random chance one of the reactants they catalyze hits in the right spot and sticks, then waits until the other reactant hits the other spot. This can take a very, very long time to happen. Animations you might watch showing their operation are lies: they show reactants sliding into place, reactions happening, and products being ejected. This is not what happens. If you actually watched a molecular dynamics simulation of a typical enzymatic reaction, and slowed it down just enough that you could see molecules moving around, it would take YEARS to watch typical reactions happen. For the fastest reactions, the ones you mention, maybe weeks or months. Biology works by molecules just randomly jostling around, sometimes moving forward and sometimes moving backward, but a small set of one-way reactions driving things forward over extended time. Kinesin, for example, has no process that drives its motion forward. It relies on random jostling to move its "feet" into the next position, at which point it can re
Man. They are all corrupted or just too ignorant. J.R.Nyquist can tell you even more : ) Have you ever heard of thista? For any engineering problem one can make a "brute-force" algorithm, which theoretically finds its solution, describe that algorithm as a logical scheme (a directed graph with logic gates as nodes) and then one can use an AI agent to make that logical scheme easier to compute, by simplifying (through transformation rules like the De Morgan rule) unnecessary computation steps, input variables, etc. The solution to the problem can be found by calculation of that simplified version of the logical scheme. The AI agent may be built from Neural Nets, or from the algorithm, which I call Evolution of Neural Graphs [0]. Some of interesting engineering problems are: - to find a machine code for a controller of a bipedal robot [1], which makes it able to work in warehouses and factories; - to find a machine code for a multiprocessor system [2], which behaves as an AI agent purposed for a given work to be done; - to find a CAD file [3], which describes the design of a spheromak working with MHD generators; - to find a file [4], which describes the manufacturing steps to produce the first molecular nanofactory in the world; - etc… Officials of what country would take it seriously, can you guess? [0] [LINK] [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] this video I have a reddit account, you may discuss it there too.
Drexler's name is synonymous with the idea of a nano-robots and self-replication. I think he also coined the term "clanking replicator" to describe a traditional robotic approach to replication (eg. RepRaps, robot arms, etc.) Ralph Merkle (of public key cryptograpy fame) has done some recent theoretical work, eg. his on "nanofactory", which consists of exponentially-smaller gantry-like systems (a bit like the print head on a cartesian 3D printer). He's also looked at "mechanochemistry" (forming molecules by moving specific atoms together in the right ways) and concrete studies of particular molecules, the energy levels and forces required, etc. His most recent work I can find on Google Scholar are patents from a few years ago. Some links: [LINK] [LINK] this video [LINK] [LINK] Those are all "grey goo" ideas, ie. 'real' machines. There's also the "green goo" approach, repurposing biological systems like DNA, proteins and ribosomes, eg. [LINK]