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3D Crystal Grown On a DNA Lattice
An anonymous reader suggests an article over at ScienceDaily about the achievement of the holy grail of nanoscience: "[R]esearchers at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have for the first time used DNA to guide the creation of three-dimensional, ordered, crystalline structures of nanoparticles. The ability to engineer such 3-D structures is essential to producing functional materials that take advantage of the unique properties that may exist at the nanoscale — for example, enhanced magnetism, improved catalytic activity, or new optical properties."
We're built from information contained in DNA, is it so far a stretch to think that one day we will grow the items we need on a day to day basis? Perhaps this is the basis for replicator technology.
Synthehol anyone?
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DNA structure deduced from crystallography, now crystals formed in DNA lattice. Kind of fun how that worked out.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
I though the holy grail was self replicating fabricators effectively killing the economy when people can print diamonds, gold, oil, electric cars, monster trucks, food, medical supplies, platinum, titanium, nanotubes, cake, solar panels, computers (to the point that it becomes a computing power vs mass and probably quantum), mp3 players, replacement organs, replacement people, guns, nukes, space elevator materials, self sustaining spaceships/stations, replacement cells to reverse the aging process, green eggs and ham, money, billions of tiny wireless internet routers, man machine interfaces, an actual holy grail (probably many verities, including those from the Indiana Jones movies), mind uploading systems.
A 3D crystal might be cool and could help lead to that but I wouldn't describing it as the 'holy grail' is a bit much
cat