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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."
does this mean someone can artificially alter their DNA using the nanobots?
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.
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......
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
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!
Gold?
Can they make HP ink?
Actually, the article is about using a DNA strand to place individual atoms where you want with a 100% success rate. Basically, its using the DNA strand as a robotic arm, in that it does exactly what you would expect a robotic arm to do.
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
h >= dp * dx / 2 * pi
Modded informative? This equation is backwards.
h is a lower bound on certainty, not an upper bound.
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.
Just be sure to consult your molecular biologist if you experience a nanotechnological enhancement lasting more than four hours.