Nanotechnology

[Clonus]

"Nanotechnology" in these days is what "radiation" was the fifties and sixties. "Radiation" would create Godzilla, give geeks superpowers, create post apocalyptic wonderlands of talking animals.

 

No it wouldn't.

 

Nanotechnology will create gray goo apocalypses which eat the entire planet, give geeks superpowers, create post-singularity wonderlands in which everything is free.

 

No it won't.

 

OK, ok, in fiction sometime you just want to chuck reality to the side and have your wonderland of talking animals with a pseudo-scientific explanation. And really one of these days, I'd get a kick out of seeing a talking animal universe explained by them having been infected with nanotechnology that communicates by radio waves and adds its intelligence to that of the host.

 

But suppose that you have a situation where you only want nanotechnology to persuade your players that you aren't some old fogey stuck in the 60s with your Traveller-Hero space opera. You really have no reason to expand nanotechnology vastly beyond the bounds of reality. What would more or less plausible nanotechnology look like?

 

Well of course, to some degree any vastly superior cybernetic technology is going to be nanotechnology in the sense that it will be the product of a microscopically fine manufacturing processes. To which the response is a big "whatever dude". When science fiction talks about nanotechnology they're talking about that initial idea. The microscopic robots. That's the stuff.

 

But the first question we have to ask when defining their capability is "what's the power source?". Do they have little flecks of radioactive material? Do they eat and produce chemical energy? Do they run on sunlight? Well if they operate on power sources like that, then what they can do at most, won't be much more than what other things that operate on those power sources can do. Additionally, no matter how good our cybernetics are, a microscopic computer is going to be only able to understand the simplest orders. And they'd only be able to communicate over very short distances due to power and size limits. In short, they'll be nearly as limited as single celled biological organisms if they operate as single cells.

 

Thus, "gray goo" will spread about as fast as any living organisms with no predators in the environment. At least until we make some predators for it. We will not have free floating nanotechnology that can whip up any manufactured good with the right command. Essentially unicellular nanotech will produce micro-organisms that we can target to specific functions and turn off when done.

 

So the biggest application for them apart from extremely fine manufacturing to tight tolerances, would be medical applications. They could be used to remove fat from circulatory systems, to artificially boost immune systems, to do microsurgery on brains...that sort of thing.

 

We could do a bit more though with actual nanotech cellular organisms. Then we could hook them up to a macroscopic power source with specialized nanocells transmitting the power to the rest of the organism. Androids. Note that cellular structure would make them more flexible but also more easily damaged than solid metal. But they'd be machines that heal, given time and raw materials.

[austenandrews]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

I'm fascinated by the potential applications in high-tech materials. We could have ubiquitous lightweight, durable, superstrong materials and video monitors on every surface and so on, but even cooler to me are materials that can manipulate themselves. Imagine clothes that can change their shape (say, fitting themselves to an arbitrary wearer) and color/pattern (there's those video screens again) and "heal" their rips and tears. Furniture that can collapse into a small container, then expand and become rigid again when called upon. A building that produces and removes ornamentation (or even doors and walls) as needed. Beyond that, you could theoretically eliminate much of the need for conventional motors and servos in machines. Think of a winch or an automatic door that operates by contracting its "muscles." We already see the use of memory metals in miniaturized robotics; imagine if you could build large-scale robots on similar (but much more flexible) principles. When you ditch the need for heavy frames and motors, suddenly humanoid robots become much more feasible.

 

And these are all naive "World Of Tomorrow" applications. The reality will probably be much different and cooler in its own way. Maybe this is "whatever dude" stuff, but I find it highly interesting.

[yukonhorror]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

Skipped ahead a bit. There is a lot of current "nanotechnology" that has some neat properties. Some applications are on the micron scale (1000 nm) and some are on the nano scale. One example of nanotechnology is a "tricorder" device like in Star Trek. Using colloidal particles and magnets, you'll be able to isolate and fully examine any liquid sample (especially blood). If this was biocompatible, this could be used as a way to remove disease from the blood stream (like AIDS).

 

The accelerometers in Wii remotes and iPhones are considered MEMS devices (micro-electromechanical systems). But they are just mirrors on a small pivot. Research is being conducted for other MEMS and NEMS devices built with silicon etching (like microchips but better), but lubrication is a serious problem. I am not exactly sure how it is powered, but maybe a microscopic battery (tapped into a larger power source to recharge).

 

As for solar, in a pseudoscience manner, this could be sufficient. In an ideal world, the solar cells would be so efficient that they would generate enough power to not only power the devices, but would generate a lot of excess. This excess goes into a capacitor or battery of sorts to "store" the excess for later use when the sun isn't out.

 

Finally for a Grey Goo, I don't see it is as tiny robots. More like large molecules. Molecules that respond to changing electric currents and normal forces and pH levels. If embedded in the molecular matrix, you had controllers for these things (excrete a small amount of acid or current) you could have a big goo ball that could be manipulated. As for "eating" things, give it cell-like factories (proteins and such) that will "digest" materials and excrete more "goo" material.

 

In short, nanotechnology like what was seen for radiation in the 50's for super powers and such is not impossible. In theory (which is what gives any good Sci-Fi its roots in real science) these things are "possible." Improbable, but possible.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

I think, once personal computer semiconductor fabrication gets down to its anticipated lower bound, an 11 nanometer "fab"(currently it's in the ballpark of 32-45nm), a lot of money will be pumped into "nanotechnology", to see what the extent of what we can actually do with it will be. At that point, due to the need for tools to fabricate 11 nanometer chipsets, we'll likely have the tech and tools to fabricate nano-machinery, and we can see what's actually possible.

[yukonhorror]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

In terms of computing, they are trying for quantum computing. Based on the spin direction of an electron you'll either have a 1 or 0 for binary.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

Well, yes. There are 4 or 5 different approaches to future computing advances: quantum computing; "3-D" chip stacking(i.e., building chips in 3 dimensions, not 2, and layering chips on top of each other while interconnecting them); organic/DNA computing, using the biochemical interactions for complex calculations; optical computing, replacing standard wiring with light, using data-carrying lasers or somesuch; and some form of cloud computing, interconnecting computers all over to use as much processing as the task requires. I think Kurzweil is dead wrong(in part), and that we will hit a more or less impassable wall at some point later this century or early next century. But that wall is likely to be well beyond the level we're at right now.

 

But I digress

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

"Nanotechnology" in these days is what "radiation" was the fifties and sixties. "Radiation" would create Godzilla, give geeks superpowers, create post apocalyptic wonderlands of talking animals.

 

No it wouldn't.

 

Nanotechnology will create gray goo apocalypses which eat the entire planet, give geeks superpowers, create post-singularity wonderlands in which everything is free.

 

No it won't.

 

Repped for Truth.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

Additionally, no matter how good our cybernetics are, a microscopic computer is going to be only able to understand the simplest orders. And they'd only be able to communicate over very short distances due to power and size limits. In short, they'll be nearly as limited as single celled biological organisms if they operate as single cells.

 

In much the same way that human beings are no smarter than amoebas because our brains are made of single cells which can only process the simplest information.

[Yansuf]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

In much the same way that human beings are no smarter than amoebas because our brains are made of single cells which can only process the simplest information.

 

That explains those people!

[dmjalund]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

the human brain acquires its intelligence by a process that required the cells to remain relatively static in comparison to each other for the long haul. Thus only becomes intelligent as a unit. For nanotechnology to do similar, it has to glom as a group while the group "learns" and if it is ever to come apart, it will have to remember its previous state (which item links to what item, and how strong the link was) to have a chance of regaining its intelligence

[austenandrews]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

Personally I never bought into the idea of nanoscale computers. Certainly we can engineer and/or evolve collective/emergent behavior, and simple decisions on a microscopic level could produce results that would require tons of conventional computing power. But complex, pseudo-intelligent behavior from micromachines? I don't see it, not in the near future anyway. It would have to be driven by something larger that's directing the little ones.

[Markdoc]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

Personally I never bought into the idea of nanoscale computers. Certainly we can engineer and/or evolve collective/emergent behavior' date=' and simple decisions on a microscopic level could produce results that would require tons of conventional computing power. But complex, pseudo-intelligent behavior from micromachines? I don't see it, not in the near future anyway. It would have to be driven by something larger that's directing the little ones.[/quote']

 

Yes - what - in nanotechnology - is called an emergent property. One of the things which is intriguing about nanotechnology is that at very small scales, things behave differently. We don't - as yet - understand a lot of the physics/chemistry that controls these properties. We do, however, know enough to say that those who think "It'll just be like machines, only smaller" are wrong.

 

As an example, our group are working with what are called "nanovaccines" - in fact we got a few million bucks this year to set up a centre to investigate them and I'm going to ask for another few million to recruit 8 more PhDs next year. What we've found - and the basis for the grant - is that when you move down to things which are smaller than bacteria, the actual physico-chemistry changes. We've been able to take advantage of this by making "nanofluids" - fluids which flow, but which don't behave like fluids - more like subcelluar silly-putty. These can be used to put things into people's bodies, which don't cause irritation like a solid would, but which hang together exactly like a liquid doesn't. Even better, you can use these to trap chemicals or release them and you can tailor them to do either/both by changing their composition at the molecular level. We're some way off it yet, but it is possible that you could trigger changes in behavior remotely (for example, by a targetted pulse of IR light, or in response to a change in the environment or - more excitingly - by a change in the recipient).

 

We're a way off that as yet - all we are looking to do is use these things are drug/vaccine delivery tools - but none of the possibilities I have indicated are far out.

 

So when you think about "nanotechnology" don't think of machines as small as bacteria. Think of machines as small as viruses, so that you can pack thousands or even tens of thousands of them into a bacteria. At that scale the normal laws - including things like use of energy - start to bend a little. Viruses, to take that example, are cunning little machines, capable of identifying a specific target out of literally millions of targets, penetrating it, seeking out a specific target within that target, performing gene splicing, and then assembly of more little biological machines, creating their component entirely from scratch, which are then released to repeat the process. They're "smart" enough to also change target if their environment changes. And all of this without any source of energy on board. They get their required energy from incidental energy loss in their environment.

 

In other words, even if you can't evade the law of thermodynamics, if you are small enough, you can get away with a warning.

 

I don't pretend to know what nanotechnology could evolve into in the future - but I do know enough to predict that it'll look really weird to our eyes.

 

cheers, Mark

[dmjalund]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

So can you use this to have a drinkable liquid that contains salt but doesn't taste salty (and releases the salt to the digestive system) - cause if you can, I've got an idea for a drink

[Markdoc]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

So can you use this to have a drinkable liquid that contains salt but doesn't taste salty (and releases the salt to the digestive system) - cause if you can' date=' I've got an idea for a drink [/quote']

 

Sure, that could be done, easily.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Clonus]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

In much the same way that human beings are no smarter than amoebas because our brains are made of single cells which can only process the simplest information.

 

Our brains are not in fact made of single cells. Our braincells are quite interconnected.

[dmjalund]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

Sure, that could be done, easily.

 

Cheers, Mark

So lets approach a drinks company (Coke or Pepsi) with the possibility of a sport drink that doesn't taste like one

[Markdoc]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

So lets approach a drinks company (Coke or Pepsi) with the possibility of a sport drink that doesn't taste like one

 

I suspect the cost and appearance might put them off. Nanofluids have unusual light scattering properties - they're opaque and sort of off-white, more or less regardless of what they're made out of (despite the name, they are not actually fluids at all, but suspensions of small vesicles, - they are so small that the electric surface charge holds them together, at the same time as it allows them to move freely in suspension). I am curious though - what would they taste of? I suspect they'd have no taste at all, which might be a bit off-putting - even water has a taste.

 

cheers, Mark

[Susano]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

I suspect the cost and appearance might put them off. Nanofluids have unusual light scattering properties - they're opaque and sort of off-white, more or less regardless of what they're made out of (despite the name, they are not actually fluids at all, but suspensions of small vesicles, - they are so small that the electric surface charge holds them together, at the same time as it allows them to move freely in suspension). I am curious though - what would they taste of? I suspect they'd have no taste at all, which might be a bit off-putting - even water has a taste.

 

cheers, Mark

 

An off-white fluid that tastes salty? That's not a sports drink thats... uhm... yeah, I'll stop right there.

[Narf the Mouse]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

Afterlife Blues - Jon Kilganon and Mark Sachs do good sci-fi. Forget about webcomic bias; their stuff is deep.

[brokefang]

Re: Nanotechnology

 

I did a small amount of research into nanoscale (-100nm diameter) materials as part of my BEng at university. They really are a new area of work, different even to sub-micron (100nm+) scale interactions.

If the research in other areas supports the things I looked at, nanoscale developments could make some really interesting things happen. Transparent metals due to nanoscopic arrangement of crystalline boundaries to change the refractions and make it basically a fibre optic sheet. At sufficiently small scales (totally pulling this out of the air based on some interesting surface interactions) conductivity bands may be sufficiently different to allow for far superior efficiency in power transmission - helping those pesky little power hungry micro-machines do their thing.

 

Again, a guess, theory and possibly total bull. I didn't look into all the possibilities of it, and my research was quite narrowly focused.