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Nano-Scale Robot Arm Moves Atoms With 100% Accuracy
destinyland writes "A New York professor has built a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them. The nano-scopic device is just 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size — over a million could fit inside a single red blood cell. But because of its size, it's able to build nanoscale structures and machines — including a nanoscale walking biped and even sequence-dependent molecular switch arrays!"
So, the first one builds a friend, then each builds a friend, and each of those builds a friend. Soon enough there will be millions, and they will be able to invade your blood cells!
I for one welcome our nano sized robot overlords
-EL
If it can move and place particles with 100% accuracy then at least at some point we know both where it is and how fast it's moving...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
over a million could fit inside a single red blood cell.
And it's just a matter of time until someone does. Let's hope by then software engineering will be in a better state than it is now, or we may be scrambling to kill artificial viruses along with the real ones. As if the world wasn't deadly enough...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
does this mean someone can artificially alter their DNA using the nanobots?
Yeah, just keep Westley away from them.
Now it is possible to build the perfect woman! Of course, it'll take a few thousand years to get her fully assembled.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Exactly. Moving individual atoms and placing them where we want them is about as fine grained as we can get before we run into the Uncertainty Principle.
That narrows it down.
If we go to the referenced Nature article abstract we see that the development "yields programmed targets in all cases."
The correct terminology then would be "100% Success Rate" not "100% Accuracy".
P.S. Presumably "success" is defined by something like "90% Accuracy", to put an ironic spin on it. But it makes no sense to speak of accuracy in terms of percentage without a reference, such as "a single atom". So the criteria was probably something like X nanometers accuracy.
Oooops! Dropped one. For what period of time did it achieve 100%?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The Assembler Breakthrough that we all read about in Engines of Creation?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Watch where you are going with that thing, Mr, or you are going to find my Nano Fist in your face!
This is my sig.
The Nature Nanotechnology article is almost a year old. There are lots of people working on similar stuff, here's a review which mentions the Seeman work among many others (you probably need a library subscription to see the article, but the abstract should be accessible at least):
http://journals2.scholarsportal.info/details-sfx.xqy?uri=/14394227/v10i0015/2420_catdn.xml
I've not yet read Diamond Age, but I am looking forward to shouting unpleasantries at my neighbor's Library grapes when he isn't around.
The atoms will always be placed on a lattice site on a surface which is a kind of groove, or they are attempting to bond/touch it to another specific atom. Once in that site, the atom will stick there. Thus you essentially are placing the atom with 100% accuracy, unless you entirely miss the lattice site.
Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle has nothing to do with this. Stop trying to sound smart.
Imagine its other uses, such as in surgery! This is amazing!
I don't know a heck of a lot about nanorobots and such, so I don't know whether it's possible or not, but if placing atoms with 100% accuracy is possible, shouldn't it also be possible to _remove_ atoms with 100% accuracy?
In that case, would it be possible to build something that disassembles atmospheric carbon dioxide, and build pencil lead and release oxygen in the process?
Of course, then you get into the problem of the energy stored in chemical bonds, and the energy required to overcome that. I have no idea if/how that applies to nanoscale robots, since they're mechanically working on individual atoms, rather than a bulk chemical reaction.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
But it's about *momentum* versus position. The more mass something has, the smaller the minimum product of the uncertainty in the *velocity* & position.
h >= dp * dx / 2 * pi
where dp is uncertainty in momentum; momentum is mass times velocity.
The good doctor was able to revolutionize materials science, but he failed statistics.
The article is about protein folding and manipulating DNA. It has nothing to do with a robot that picks up atoms and places them somewhere else.
Can they make gold?
This device manipulates atoms and molecules, not individual protons and neutrons within the nucleus of an atom. So no, it can't make gold out of another element. You can do that with nuclear reactions if you want to live the alchemists' dream.
It's still really amazing. I wish Feynman had lived to see it.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
They started the test, and it failed. Then they started the test again, and it failed again. A few days later, they started the test, and it succeeded to move one particle correctly. At this point, they instructed it to stay still and wait for 8 hours, at which point they concluded the test. It therefor worked 100% of the time for a span of 8 hours.
Duh.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them
yes, but where the scientists want them and where the scientists have told its programs to put them are two different things!
Who said anything about subatomic particles?...
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Gold?
Can they make HP ink?
And that's what you're gonna get, lad. The strongest robot arm in these lands.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
OK, so the subatomic components are probably another order of magnitude smaller again, which will take another 50 years of research... Thanks for the explanation!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
This reminded me of the joke (can't find it now - if you know it please link to it!). Some scientists in a lab though it was funny because they made a large molecule 30% larger than the other molecules like it. Everyone looking at the image of it though it was the funniest thing ever. I thought it was one of those intel commercials, but I couldn't find it.
Anyway, this reminded me of that. Also when you are talking about something that small, how do you prove that they are doing what they are saying they are doing? It is so specialized that hardly anybody else has the equipment to do what they are doing so how does anyone prove or disprove it?
Can they make gold?
If they can place atoms with 100% accuracy, could they not then assemble molecules into any chosen configuration?
That wouldn't help you make gold, since gold is an atom, not a compound.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Here comes the first wave attack of the replicators...lucky I am a close friend of Thor!
no, they can't make gold, because they don't move elementary particles, they move atoms. gold is an atom, hence they'd need gold to make gold, which isn't a very impressive feat. what would be cool is if they could take simple graphite (pencil lead), and assemble it into diamonds, and make the whole process significantly cheaper than diamonds are today. it could be a real game-changer, and i'd really enjoy seeing diamonds that now cost millions of dollars lose almost all their value, thus screwing over anyone who has made large investments into diamond jewelery. something like this happened with aluminium - it used to be a very expensive metal, because it was difficult to extract it from the ore, so there was a lot of aluminium jewelery. then some guy came up with a new way to extract it, and it became the cheap-ass metal we all know and love today.
weinersmith
Is the server being powered by a tiny nanobot that responds to the on and off states of the transistors via direct manipulation? Maybe the 'nanoscale walking biped' is powering the server by running on a nanoscale hamster wheel to generate electricity? These are all questions I wouldn't have to post if only I could RTFA...
Resistance is futile.
Ack!! Thank you!
h <= dp * dx / 2 * pi
is of course the correct equation. Note that the text was correct; I just fat-fingered the inequality.
I only hope the nanobots will be able to turn my grey hairs back to their original color.
And let my eyes focus to short distances again. Get my blood pressure back to normal. Let me drink at will and still have all my sexual prowess left...
You can know exactly where something is as long as you are completely uncertain about its momentum. So they can place something it an exact location just as long as they don't expect it to still be there when they come back for it. So either the submitter got the title completely wrong or they are in for a nasty surprise...
In a 2009 article in Nature Nanotechnology, Dr. Seeman shared the results of experiments performed by his lab,
So in the history books of the future, we can read: “The first generation of our glorious overlords, were conceived with the power of the giant intelligent Seemæn. All hail the Hypnobot!”
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
It could probably make a nice Rolex though.
Not a nanobot, but perhaps another tiny incremental step toward positionally controlled chemistry. I can't get to the core Nature article, but it looks like they make a DNA tile cassette, which they can insert a variety of DNA tooltips into. They probably get ~1-10 nm positional accuracy between tooltips. Not precise enough or controlled enough to do diamond mechanosynthesis, but possibly an interesting route to bootstrapping into that kind of technology. As per usual, the biggest problem is that DNA isn't particularly stiff, making it hard to apply the kinds of forces at picometer precision that seems necessary for the sci-fi nanotech visions. Variations of this technology may prove useful in designing and building/folding artificial proteins or biomolecules. With biomineralization, that might eventually provide the stiffness and strength necessary to start beating nature at this mechanosynthetic game.
Maybe I'm just cynical....but this thing is so small couldn't he could just be claiming he made it.
Professor - "Ah ha! Look, I've created a two armed nano robot that can move atoms and molecules!"
Assistant - "Huh? Where?"
Professor - "Here see, right here....Aren't you looking?"
Assistant - "Yeah I'm looking where you're pointing....but ahh.....I don't quite.....errr....?"
Professor - "What? You don't WHAT!!??"
Assistant - "Oh no you misunderstand...I meant...that's great....does it come in red?"
With all the misinformation in this thread, Schroedinger's cat is rolling over in its grave... with probability one half.
A little OT, but aluminum is not loved in my household; it is a toxic poison. Replace aluminum cookware with stainless steel, and buy your beer in bottles, not cans.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
First, the researchers made a nanodevice with two slots that could accommodate so-called "DNA cassettes" in a programmable way. The DNA cassettes themselves have free ends that can only bond with complementary DNA. Each of the DNA cassettes has an 'A' end (that can only bond with other A-type molecules) and a 'B' end (I'm simplifying this greatly; 'A' has nothing to do with adenine). The cassettes can be inserted into the two slots with either the 'A' end up or the 'B' end up. So this means there are a total of four states for the device: (1) first slot: A up, B down; second slot: A up, B down; (2) first slot: A down, B up; second slot: A up, B down, etc. The researchers were then able to take four target molecules (one for each of the four programmable states) and show that they bonded to their complementary state. Further, by developing an error-correcting scheme, they were able to get the fidelity of the bonding to 'apparently flawless' levels (quoting FTA, more on this in a sec).
A little more explanation is in order. All of the target molecules have an 'A' and 'B' marker on both ends of their strand. Now, say for example the nanodevice is in state 2: 1A down, 1B up, 2A up, 2B down. The complementary molecule to bind this state would have four markers with 'A' oriented downward and 'B' oriented upward on one end of the strand, and 'A' orented upward and 'B' oriented downward on the other end of the strand. The problem with this is that other target molecules which aren't complementary can still bind. For example, the target for the 1A up, 1B down, 2A down, 2B up would fit equally well into this binding pocket upside down. Also, any of the target molecules can bind with half of the binding pocket, leaving the non-complementary end either dangling or only loosely bound. The researchers get around these two problems using their error-correction scheme. It turns out that the correct target molecules bind more tightly to their complements than the incorrect ones. By heating the devices slightly, the researchers can dissociate the incorrect binding while keeping the correct binding intact. This is, I believe, what was meant by the phrase '100% accuracy.' So, in short, it's still exciting research, at least from my point of view, but no one's moving individual atoms with 100% accuracy or any of the hyper-exaggerated nonsense that I've been reading here.
I, for one, salute our new nanobot overlords.
Can they make gold?
Given a bunch of gold atoms, the arms can make a larger shape of gold out of them, yes.
We can do that today too, in our crude large macro scale ways.
Just take some gold, melt it down to liquid form, and fill a mold.
That wouldn't be atomically accurate of course.
Any structure of gold you want that needs to be atomically accurate, you will still need to supply the arms with gold atoms to move around and position.
You were probably jesting. But whether you were or not, the radius of a nucleus is over four orders of magnitude smaller than the radius of an atom. Unfortunately, the real problem is that the only things we can construct on that scale are spheres (nuclei) and the only tools we have are also spheres (other nuclei) and the only technique we have is banging them together and watching what comes out (a bunch of short lived stuff (probably spheroidal) and ... you guessed it, spheres). We can already make gold using these crude tools but it is probably at least a billion more times expensive than simply mining existing gold from the ground.
I think it is extremely unlikely we will ever be able to manipulate nuclei like this robot can manipulate atoms. On the other hand, it is much more cool/useful to be able to manipulate atoms and molecules. For example the novel The Diamond Age postulates a future where almost all things humans use are manufactured with nanotechnology on the atomic (not nuclear) scale.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Can they make HP ink?
Yes.
But they haven't figured out how to reset the chip in the ink cartridge to accept that it's been refilled.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
i'd really enjoy seeing diamonds that now cost millions of dollars lose almost all their value, thus screwing over anyone who has made large investments into diamond jewelery
for the most part this is the case now. diamonds by themselves have very little resale value. there are synthetic diamonds, but the whole diamond jewelry business is propped up by clever marketing campaigns and the (almost) invisible hand of De Beers.
When you consider manufacturing nanotechnology, what is required? Nanotechnology is already used today to make very efficient energy nanopanels to produce the energy needed for these plants.
Then, with the end product of manufacturing(one of many examples: nanorobots designed to extract carbon from our atmosphere filled with it) and voila: you have the resource(carbon) and energy needed to power the manufacturing. The energy is created by panels, and used to manufacture more panels/nanobots, and also create nanopanels on nanobots to allow the nanobots to operate and break bonds such as carbon and oxygen.
These plants are already very efficient, and breakthroughs like this are catapulting us into a new age of technology.
Wesley, put those nannites back.
I don't believe that there's such a thing as "100%" of anything happening at atomic scale. "100%" is what "99.9999999999999%" looks like when things are big enough that you have to drop the precision due to statistical balancing.
--
make install -not war
These nano-bots are just going to get us in trouble.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
.. would you need to build a car? :-)
Insert
Not a Feynman prize candidate (yet)
They haven't built an 8-bit adder, and the single linkage requirement for sliding or rotating to do the switching is obviously intended to be a hard requirement to allow thermodynamically reversible computing (otherwise, waste heat would limit the rate at which it would be able to switch without breaking down from its own waste heat, seriously limiting its utility).
It's somewhat hardware also because of the 50nm cubic sweep requirement for the arm; the device demonstrated doesn't fulfill that requirement either, but I suppose it could, if it incorporated more degrees of freedom (i.e. the arm was made longer in order to increase its sweep). The prize also requires 32 copies of each device for destructive testing by the judges (I imagine the panel will include Freitas, Merkle, and Drexler, at least). This lets out the C60 transistor based adder done by R Stadler, S Ami, M Forshaw and C Joachim in 2001, which I guess was more or less the point of specifying the dimensions they did.
-- Terry
I did the unthinkable and read the fine article. Turns out that this machine hasn't build the biped and the switch arrays, the bloke did it, using the same tech he used to build this robot.
Nothing whatsoever in the article about what the robot has managed to do, except move and place individual atoms.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
I want Doctors to tell patients in the future "We are going to pump you full of Seeman" with a straight face.
Ok then... Along the other person's idea...
Can they re-arrange carbon atoms to make diamonds? (I know there are other probably much more cost efficient means of doing this, I'm just trying to get some points of reference about what's possible.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
If you could set up these little buggers to find the bacteria that causes cancer and kill it, wow, that would be cool. Also would be great for repairing damaged tissue (ACL or other injuries) without conventional surgery. These things could rewrite DNA, therefore, potentially turn the "bad genes off" which will cause disease down the road. Also, could use them to rebuld the skin cells subcutaneously, and increase collagen without "Botox". You could also use these things to create essentially what "wolverine" is in Marvel Comics (now Disney). Reorganize the materials already present in bone and connective tissue in such a way as to make it stronger, perhaps by incorporating other synthetic materials or metal into the bone itself. I could also see applications for microsurgery int he brain where neurons are damaged, or perhaps even those with Parkinsons, Alzheimers, maybe even M.S. Obviously the fact that these can be assembled is great, it is the programming and or the learnign ability of the individual or collective nanobots that is most significant. Depending on the source of power, heat, bioelectricity, or whatever, these things could remain in the body indefinitely, continuously repairing cells and DNA. Anything from Radiation poisoning, to Mesothelioma (from Asbestos or other irritants in the Lungs) could be treated with these things. Optimization of silicon crystals to provide near perfect and higher yield semi conductors, On the other hand, they could be used for other purposes as well, perhaps not so positive. Restructuring of nuclear material on an atomic level to improve purity. Creation of Adaptive Molecular explosives in which the nanobots reconfigure a "harmless substance" into something with more lethality. This would be tough to detect). It would be hard to environmentally filter these little rascals too. At roughly atomic size, the filtration would have to be very much improved to "Catch them". The implications for purification of chemical (at least organic) substances are pretty interesting as well.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
How about a personal health NanoBot, doing routine maintenance tasks and performing health improvement actions with the guidance of a specialist. Seems far fetched but really? how far?
Or four if you happen to be from the US.
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