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flashgordon

Member

Registered: 2003-01-21

Posts: 314

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

i've actually said a few years ago that we have dna-assemblers, but this has to pretty much make it official.

http://www.physorg.com/news9322.html

I remember a nanotech magazine which had an article argueing that the first assembler won't lead to future shock because it will be back in the shop for repairs; well, consider the first dna-assembly as going back in the shop a few years ago, and now the new better functioning dna-nanotech is out; before the next year is out, you'll see this technology go on an exponential growth pattern imo.

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

I literally gulped my coffe over my keyboard this time, I swear.

Interesting, to say the least. I thought you linked to the mass-manufacturing of those nano-pyramids...
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20051210/fob3.asp

Again, the powah of computers making all this possible, yay!
... But if it takes 300 computers 2 weeks to figure out 4x4 lattices... I wonder how much work say 8x8's will be... The interesting stuff will also be interconnecting them, some more number-crunching...

Heehee, exciting times!

fast forward to the futuuuuure: buy your Intel nannoo-nannoo-XPPOWERUBEROVERCLOCK instant chip-in-a-bag.

Just add water and stir, heehee!

While kidding, it struck me...

Boy, oh boy... it happened! it happened, you're right!

The researchers have not yet produced a functional circuit on a grid. However, in future studies, they plan to generate grids larger than four tiles by four tiles and to populate the grids with molecules that can conduct electrons or light waves to form simple circuits. Based on the characteristics those circuits would have, Dwyer and colleagues have drawn up designs for computer chips.

Hmmm... Those guys will get some BIG R&D budget, I bet.

Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

*Rik, perhaps you should consider drinking decaffeinated coffee?   :shock:  

--Cindy

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

DE caffeinated coffee?
<TWITCH>
why?

That'd be like de-nicotinized cigarettes, ugh!

<TWITCH>

Besides, coffee <TWITCH> just keeps me alert, abso <TWITCHTWITCH> lutely no side-effects

<TWITCH>

(Seriously, this accomplishment is stuff for the historybooks, IMHO...)

flashgordon

Member

Registered: 2003-01-21

Posts: 314

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

as I forgot to say,

this is the biggest news you'll ever hear that doesn't make the national news of any country.

Rxke

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2003-11-03

Posts: 3,669

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

... From the anarchy thread....

Josh sez...

Rxke, have any links on these nanomanufacturing technologies? Most things I read about seem to be relatively simple experiments in a lab somewhere, nothing really production quality, or even plausibly production quality, in my opinion

re: nanomanufacturing.

The 'best' site is down, I bet Chris Phoenix was a tad too enthousiastic with experimenting on the underlying wiki-engine, but it should be back up in a couple of days
http://wise-nano.org/w/Main_Page esp. his paper concerning a 'primitive nanofactory' using diamontoid lattices (Carbon structures in other words) is lenghty but interesting.) and available here: http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/Nanofactory.htm
He's currently working under a grant from NIAC, I guess we'll hear more reports soon. (Edit: he finished it, and NASA put up a summary in their typical Joe-Sixpac style, argh, worthless drivel as usual...)

I would really appreciate some links of mass manufacturing on the nano scale.

Wouldn't we all, I initially thought, but..

This guys "leftfield" idea http://www.physorg.com/news9537.html sounds promising, eh?

End of the article says : so far only theory... Darn.

But... You want something similar, demonstrated? Say, mass produced predetermined molecular patterns, able to function as building-blocks? http://www.physorg.com/news9322.html (that's the same link as Flashgordon's, BTW)

and this, http://www.nano.pitt.edu/event.html#Pitt_prize  in he article above the one linked (scroll up) says next year he'll have applications made with this technology...

etc. These are so-called enabling technologies, so not the real thing, but it's going fast.

Josh Cryer

Moderator

Registered: 2001-09-29

Posts: 3,830

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

Hehe, I hate to spoil the fun. But think about what those structures are all about, they're DNA strands, they're not metal, they're not carbon nanotubes, they're basic DNA strands that have been manipulated to do a very simple task, and that is to form geometric shapes. Now I agree that this is some seriously amazing stuff going on here.

But how does it help me make bricks?

That's one thing about Drexlers paper, in it he posits nanomachines making pure steel or whatever in plants, and then those bits get moved and bonded together to make huge buildings. This makes, to me, the process of merely smelting steel significantly more complex. Consider the geometries required to bond together two peices of metal; you'd have to program the nanomachines to bond, move outward, bond, move outward, and so on. And then I think that it is unlikely that they'd be able to function outside of a contained environment. How well does DNA fare outside of the human body? I mean, sure it can be used to clone someone or something, but all in all it deteriorates very fast.

I think I need to see a serious breakthrough, like silicon based DNA or the creation of carbon nanotubes using nanotechnology.

---

Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.

flashgordon

Member

Registered: 2003-01-21

Posts: 314

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

they've positioned nanotubes using dna awhile ago; i'd have to find a reference, but if you can do that, you can use these dna technologies to make thousands of stm's at the nanoscale.

RedStreak

Banned

From: Illinois

Registered: 2006-05-12

Posts: 541

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

I wouldn't put us in the nano age just yet.  They had the equations for the nuclear bomb back in the late 1890s and learned of radiation but it wasn't until the first nuclear bomb detonated that we were put in "The Atomic Age".

Personally I'd wait until the first working nanite is created before proclaiming "Nano Age".

Still I agree this is an advancement.  DNA isn't a bad choice since it is a self-replicating molecule.  If this self-replication can be harnessed we'll be making nanites more naturally than artificially.  A ways off from nanites but still...

That also brings up an interesting question...if a nanite made of DNA is created, reproduces, is self-aware...does it count as life?

flashgordon

Member

Registered: 2003-01-21

Posts: 314

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13463422/

flashgordon

Member

Registered: 2003-01-21

Posts: 314

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

"Today, non-experts can design and create shapes in at least two molecular systems: DNA--which can be "stapled" together according to very simple procedures--and Christian Schafmeister's polymers, which take a rigid form without even needing to fold. But building these molecules takes significant time, because they are still built using large tools that take a relatively long time to do each step. Molecule-scale manufacturing tools (Ned Seeman's polymer builder is a step in the right direction) should eventually speed up the process thousands or millions of times per molecule, as well as parallelizing it."

http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2006/ … n_the.html

flashgordon

Member

Registered: 2003-01-21

Posts: 314

Re: humanity officially in the nano-era

http://www.physorg.com/news72072721.html

sounds to me that dna nanotech can be the enabling tool for the real daimondoid nanotech; not to mention! it is already going on!