Nano-switches and Self-Assembling Nanostructures

emc3 writes "Those wacky scientists are getting small again. Some folks at Yale have come up with a reversible molecular switch. And at Princeton, they've discovered a method of getting a sheet of resin to assemble ordered arrays of nano-pillars. They say that this process could lead to a new generation of flat-panel displays or DRAM. " Nanites. It's what's for dinner.

Comments

Dinner?

[PantherX]

Yum! Not very filling though...

Something not so Nano!

[Wiggins]

...if it's what's for dinner, we better increase spending in the "Fighting Hunger" campaigns.....there has been a lot of talk of Nano this and that lately though.....Want to see something not so Nano? check out Have-a-brew.com (sorry for the shameless plug)

Nanites, et al

[entropylurker]

Let's get small. (homage to Steve Martin) -

Self assembling nanostructures

[synthetic]

...it's The Diamond Age come true

Re:Self assembling nanostructures

[doom]

Just once, I would like to read a discussion about nanotech on Slashdot without someone bringing Neal Stephenson into it.

Try reading Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler. Then you'll know where Neal Stephenson got his material.

Or take a look at the website for Zyvex, "the first molecular nanotechnology development company".

Re:Self assembling nanostructures

[Anonymous Coward]

> Just once, I would like to read a discussion > about nanotech on Slashdot without someone >bringing Neal Stephenson into it. Hear, hear. It seems like the only thing anybody on this board knows about biophysics or nanotechnology is what they've read in The Diamond Age. For what it's worth, "Self Assembly" is a hip buzz-word in the mesoscopic condensed matter world, but has little actual content. There are a few structures known to self assemble, like lipid bilayers, but it's not a "technique" by any stretch of the imagination.

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Inducing growth of small pilars through sheer proximity of specific masked materials?

Sounds like kinky sex games on a nanoscopic scale to me...

But ...

[Troed]

... shrinking everything down to molecular/atomic/quark level will indeed bring new challenges for us software engineers!

Just think about it:

• A bit that previously was next to another bit will remember the value of that bit even long after they were separated
  
• Quantum fluctuations brings a whole new level of randomness for Quake 4 levels
  
• A virus will now finally be a _virus_
  
• Upgrading a computer is now done by feeding it junk food - rich in minerals
  
• Since top quarks are much heavier than other quarks some applications will require careful programming (like, don't used bit 6 in a byte)
  

... not to mention the problem with attaching a fan to your overclocked AMD Genethlon - anyone seen a 5000 rpm fan 10 nanometers in diameter? :)

Re:But ...

[ranton]

Everything will still be in the molecular level, so you dont have to worry about quarks or anything. I dont even think quantum physics will be an issue right now. Im sure some day computer will get to the sub-atomic level, but that wont be for a long time.

Nano's

[whatsit]

While I can see how this stuff may be cool, how far away are we from actually putting it to use in real life? 25 years? 50 years?
By the way, does Hemos have a nano-fetish?

DRAM? Oh oh.

[dman123]

Last time someone gave nanites some additional brainpower and allowed them to work together, the little buggers took over the Enterprise. I would think that using them as DRAM would only increase the rate in which they take over the world.

Caution is needed here before throwing all this technology together 'in the name of research science.' I can't begin to understand what all this means for the future, and I can guarantee that there are scientists out there who just don't consider the ramifications of what they are doing. No joke, I am serious.

--

Re:DRAM? Oh oh.

[Industrial Disease]

Yeesh, this is almost as bad as the time everybody wigged out over the story about using bacterial proteins in thin displays. "Oh no! I'm gonna catch a disease from my laptop!" As far as I can tell, these guys are talking about using nanotech principles in the manufacturing pricess, not putting active nanomachines in the finished process.
As much as I like Star Trek for stirring people to take an interest in the sciences, I could cry when they start taking Trek's rubber physics too seriously.

Death of the "standard" microprocessor?

[Miou]

My question is, as we improve nanotechnology, eventually we hit a point where we can no longer go any smaller (the use of single molecules as gates, for example). After we reach the point where it is impossible to shrink circuits any smaller, where will we go from there? So far, the only work I've heard of in this direction is the "quantum computer," and that is still in the theoretical stage. Does anyone know of any other technologies that we may switch to when our current methods of chip design simply can not become any smaller?

Re:Death of the "standard" microprocessor?

[AngryMob]

My guess would be that you don't try to defeat the size requirement.. you just use different computational methods. The human brain works quite well, and that's just a big parallel/threshold logic gate setup. Computationally the brain does things that would bog down the best of machines today (like visual processing) just using massive parallelism. I'd guess processors, once they hit the ultimate limit, will basically have to change to more parallel models (this doesn't mean Beowulf) in order to perform faster computation.

You have to wonder how suitable current circuit design (i mean in terms of the basic building blocks, i.e., binary logic gates and binary states) is for pushing speed barriers - I mean you lend yourself to easy duplication and brute-force speed, but I don't think it's the best schema in terms of fast computing - as maybe evidenced by the necessity for hardware specialization. But who knows, not like I know what i'm talking about.

SA

Re:Death of the "standard" microprocessor?

[Lord Kano]

IMO, we will then go in the proper direction. Instead of trivial increases like FSB speed and MHZ increases we can do things which will truly revolutionize CPU design. True paralel computing. Imagine a million CPUs in the space of a modern PIII chip. Not just a million transistors, but a million CPUs each with it's own transistors.

When your PC is ready to be upgraded, you just add more CPUs to it. Not just doubling the MIPS or FLOPS a machine can perform but increasing it a thousand fold at a time. That is where I hope and think this will head.

LK

Re:Death of the "standard" microprocessor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Massive parrallelism. Think not two, four, eight or even eight thousand; think 1E21 proccessors. Cool huh. Imagine the Beowulf :-)Just kidding.

Re:Death of the "standard" microprocessor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, one could just have a set of chip with nanoassemblers around it, so that upgrading would be basically free. (Just need the raw materials) I can imagine automatic upgrades based on CPU usage/stress. Whenever the system's CPUs are stressed for a given amount of time, or on user request, the computer could just take some raw material, build some chips and attach them. Hmmm, my framerate at 1.60E10 x 1.60E10 x 36 isn't quite smooth enough...

hmmm

[jdube]

Very, very interesting I must say... but I wish good ole slashdot mould follow up on these articles. Remember the one a couple weeks ago about a proffessor installing a computer chip into his arm? What ever happened with that? Successful? If anyone has details please email me. I love slashdot but the fact that no follow ups are posted gets annoying sometimes. Sorry for that slightly off-topic comment.


If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.

FUD what you don't understand.

[xant]

Nanotechnology is just the science of making very small things. Do you know how many very small things are in that CPU you take for granted? These are just a little smaller.

Do you really think that just because they're going to be very small, they're dangerous? The "ramifications" are that electrical engineering can be done cheaper and smaller.

Re:FUD what you don't understand.

[dman123]

No, I do not think small things are automatically dangerous. But the following from the article is what worries me.

In addition to shrinking the size of the switch to atomic dimensions, the researchers also used a fabrication method called "self assembly," where the device actually self-forms, in comparison to conventional methods of transistor fabrication using lithography.

I am not an EE (I'm a ChemE), so I don't know exactly what goes into the "self assembly" process. I assume it a lot more complicated than simple crystallization that I have to worry about at work. I mean, the assembly has to be done with a certain precision and intelligence, right? Some sort of formation instruction needs to be added to the initial 'starter molecule.' If not, would it be possible to control how this molecule forms itself?

Hey, if I'm way off base on how these little guys are formed, then I would feel better knowing that. I won't hesitate to admit my limit of knowledge in this area. I just don't think that everyone who works in this area of research knows 100% exactly what they are doing either. If they did, it wouldn't really be research.

--

Re:FUD what you don't understand.

[S_hane]

Nanotechnology is a subject that has had a lot of FUD and a lot of misconceptions floating around.

Everything I'm going to say here I got from Eric K. Drexler's "Engines of Creation" (A very good book IMHO), and my undergraduate biochemistry degree. Nothing is particularly inaccessible to "the general public", in fact Engines of Creation is VERY readable indeed. Yet the majority of people that say things about nanotechnology seem not to have even read this book (and EKD is _THE_ guy who thought up the whole nanotech field!!!)

OK. Enough bull$hit, etc.

Self-Assembly is almost _exactly_ like crystallisation. Essentially, you have a number of components that are complicated enough to only fit together in one configuration - and set things up so that the crystallised configuration has better energy characteristics than the uncrystallised configuration. I suppose one difference is that you don't end up with a single crystal with conceptually infinite dimensions, but instead with a number of discrete entities.

Some simple (and _NATURAL_) examples of self-assembly:

(1) Bilipid layers will spontaneously self-assemble from phospholipids. The reason is this: Phospholipids have a highly hydrophilic (water-attracted) "heads" at one end, and a highly hydrophobic (water-repellant) "tail" at the other (this is actually a fatty acid tail). When a sufficient concentration of these phospholipids are brought together, they tend to clump with the tails pointing inwards and the heads pointing outwards, towards the water. In this manner, they form little spheres. Occasionally, they will also clump in a double layer, with one layer consisting of phospholipids oriented with the heads pointing outwards, and the other layer oriented with the heads pointing INWARDS - you then get a flat sheet which often folds into a hollow sphere, that contains water in the middle.

This process can be made to occur quite easily - yet each and every one of our cells contains a phospholipid bilayer that keeps it as a discrete entity!

(2) Macrophages. These are viruses that prey on bacteria (I suppose as such we should be happy about them!). They are also very cool - after infecting a bacteria, they get it to produce a whole bunch of protein components (as well as a nucleic acid strand). These components SPONTANEOUSLY self-assemble into new macrophages - and these macrophages have quite a complicated structure (they look like eye-droppers with legs).

In both cases, there is absolutely no intelligence and/or control in the actual assembly process. The components naturally assemble by virtue of their shape.

I'm assuming that it's a similar process that is occuring in the case of the switch - each component is fabricated so as to assemble in a particular way. When they are mixed together, they just - assemble!

Another thing that a lot of people seem to be talking about / worried about is the concept of grey goo. I'm not sure whether this concept was invented by EKD or not, but he certainly talks about it.

The concept arose in the context of Von-Neumann machines (sorry if I spelt it wrongly!). These conceptual machines were designed to repclicate themselves. Possible applications of such machines would be as miners on remote planets -send out a Von-Neumann machine, which finds a particular quantity of Iron, replicates itself twice, then comes back to Earth. Each child machine does the same thing, ad infinatum....

The problem here is that such machines could replicate incorrectly (hey, it happens on Earth - we're Von-Neumann machines, and mutations occur quite frequently....it's part of a process called Evolution). Say a Von-Neumann machine was created that "forgot" that Earth was the mother planet, and began finding Iron and replicating ON EARTH....These machines would have been designed to find Iron anywhere they could....I'm sure you begin to see the possible problems here.

Nanomachines could potentially be made as Von-Neumann machines. I won't go into the whole purpose-of-nanomachines-as-Von-Neumann-machines thing, because EKD covers this _VERY_ well.

Grey goo is what happens when self-replicating nanomachines go "out of control", and chew up every available food source (like we're doing on Earth at the moment). Remember that, just as animals on Earth have evolved to get the most of just about any Carbon source, so too (potentially) could sufficiently complicated Von-Neumann machines. We (among other things) are Carbon sources.

So, yes, Grey goo is a BIG potential problem that needs to be addressed very carefully before we start to make self-replicating nanomachines.

Self-assembly, though, is an entirely different thing, one with a lot less inherent danger mainly because machines assemble out of materials that WE provide, and then can not replicate themselves.

I also don't want to sound too much like a scare-mongerer. Nanotechnology in a sufficiently advanced form could provide many benefits to humans - from feeding the world's masses, to space travel, to rapid assembly of products, to extension of life span (possibly indefinitely). Again, these topics are very well covered in EKD's book so I won't go into them too much.

-Shane Stephens

Re:FUD what you don't understand.

[helfire57]

Great reply Shane! In summary, for those of you who didn't (and SHOULD) read it. You are made atom by atom into a melocular machine. If nature can do it, why can't we? BTW, as a Senior Associate of Drexler's Foresight Institute I'd be remiss not to point you all to the website at http://foresight.org I would agree with Shane that Engines is a great book but Drexler also wrote an engineering text (which I have also read) named Nanosystems. He steps through the theoretical design and development of nanostructures. It's heavy but good. Give it a shot before you claim that nano isn't possible. John Bryan

Nano-technology in computers, what could it mean?

[TheFitz]

I'm sitting here contemplating this. With AMD and Intel fighting so much to get faster chips, how quickly will we see this process being used in the chips? Think about it, everyone started to feel that familiar warm fealing when they introduced .18 micron design, now we can do that on a molecular scale! I never thought I would feal my P3-550 was so SLOW! Whatever happened to jumping on a BBS with your good ol 2400 baud modem on your 386 machine? LONG LIVE FIDO!

undergrad courses?

[nido]

I'm currently a first-semester freshman in college. Right now I'm a compsci major, but all this nano-tech stuff sounds really interesting, and I might want to switch. What classes should I be taking for work/research in nano-tech, courses in the chemical engineering tract? Or should I just buy Nanosystems, the book that was reviewed on /. recently? Do any institutions (I'm guessing Yale and Princeton might) have courses which focus on these technologies at the undergrad level? See as how this technology will probably be the next big thing, I'd like to get in now...

Re:undergrad courses?

[Anonymous Coward]

My advice to you would be to remain a comp-sci major, and take all of the undergrad physics and chemistry courses your college offers. Then, when you've graduated, switch to a dual CompSci/Phys major for grad school and focus more narrowly on nanotechnology. There might be nanotech-specific courses within the physics or compsci curriculum by the time you graduate. Also, there's a chance that as you chew your way through college, new courses might appear which are targeted towards nanotechnology.

Talk to your professors and tell them you are interested in nanotech. Someone will know who else on the faculty is interested in nanotech, and they may be instrumental in getting new classes offered which cover nanotechnology issues. They're also likely to have a thing or two of their own to say about the technology, and really that's what the college experience is for -- to pull useful information out of the faculty's brains and graft it onto your own.

Your compsci courses are very important; everything you learn will be applicable to nanotech, and even if you end up not getting into nanotech after all, nanotechnology will create IMMENSE demand for engineers with a strong computer sience / information science background. The recent history of the computer industry has been one of exponentially increasing opportunity. The kinds of things you can do with computers increases apace with the processing power and increased availability of computers (ie, more powerful servers, smaller embedded processors), which results in an increasing diversity in computer applications, and hence in computer companies producing those applications. Five or six years from now, you will be able to pick a job in whatever you're interested in; the supply of well-educated engineers is not keeping apace with the demand.

We live in an interesting age, and they're just getting more interesting every day. Good luck! :-)

-- Guges --

Gray Goo

[retep]

Today we may have harmless, no, make that highly benificial, self-construction pillars. But in a few hundred years or so we may have not so harmless gray goo that can reproduce it'self in most substances. Such a substance could have the potential to turn our world into a big mass of gray goo.

We must make sure we stop before our nanomachines can reproduce themselves in anything but highly exotic enviornments.

Re:Gray Goo

[Jim Morash]

As has been mentioned before, there are problems with the gray goo scenario.
You said: "We must make sure we stop before our nanomachines can reproduce themselves in anything but highly exotic enviornments." What does that mean? I require a highly exotic environment to reproduce: enormous inputs of raw materials, some way to get rid of waste products, a certain temperature range, etc. etc.; it seems extremely unlikely that nanomachines could reproduce out of control, simply because they'd eventually run out of some limiting reagent. I suppose some things are readily available in large supply, but you can't make much from just seawater or just silicon (two very abundant substances, here on Earth).

Besides, how are all those nanites going to power themselves?

Re:Gray Goo

[dman123]

Thank you, retep, for having the courage to say what I said in post #9. I forgot to say something on the order of 'reproduce themselves' and I got semi-reamed. I gotta think that through next time. I'm sure you read the Princeton article link and agree that what scares you is the fact that the scientists had no idea that these pillars would line up on their own without contact. They of course admitted to not knowing what the future would bring with this new technology. (What was the name of the 'Terminator' intelligence? SkyNet?)

You can't be too paranoid about discoveries that are really only serendipity. I'll admit that most turn out ok, but it only takes one mistake to unleash a new genie.

--

Re:Gray Goo

[retep]

As has been mentioned before, there are problems with the gray goo scenario. You said: "We must make sure we stop before our nanomachines can reproduce themselves in anything but highly exotic enviornments." What does that mean? I require a highly exotic environment to reproduce: enormous inputs of raw materials, some way to get rid of waste products, a certain temperature range, etc. etc.; it seems extremely unlikely that nanomachines could reproduce out of control, simply because they'd eventually run out of some limiting reagent. I suppose some things are readily available in large supply, but you can't make much from just seawater or just silicon (two very abundant substances, here on Earth).

In exotic I mean anything that you don't find very often. This could mean a place with lots of honest politicians for all I care. :-) The point is if nanomachines can reproduce in any enviornment there is a possibility of that enviornment being completely taken over untill no resources are left. Ouch!

Remember what happened to rabbits in Austrailia? They ate everything in sight at first untill they starved themselves. That virus that was released into the wild has kept them in check. But they still caused huge amounts of damage. Just imagine what havoc something that could "ate" carbon could cause... It would kill it'self eventually, but it would cause havoc in the proccess.

Besides, how are all those nanites going to power themselves?

Most likly by some sort of chemical reaction. Just like your average bacteria does. And bacteria sure do thrive don't they...

Re:Gray Goo

[retep]

Actually I'm quite happy that our scientists found something that lined up on it's own like that. It sounds like a usefull proccess. Heck, I'd go send those scientists some congradulations on their discovery.

A few pillars lining up is harmless and probably usefull. The type of danger I'm warning about is completely different in nature. And something that is very far down the road.

I should have been more clear in my first post.

In case you're wondering I support nuclear power, genetic engineering and the research of artificial intelligence.

Nanotech is the key to immortality.

[Lord Kano]

Imagine having millions of molecule sized robots in your body that repair any and all damage 1000 times faster than your body can naturally heal. Imagine robots which actively patrole your coronary arteries and destroy any plaque that they encounter.

Imagine robots what can manually alter the synapses in your brain to code knowledge while you sleep. Or remove unpleasant memories from your mind.

Imagine never losing muscle mass because all of your muscles are stimulated into growth while you watch TV.

Remember the movie "Silent Rage"? Imagine healing as fast a John Kirby did. This is the promise of nanotech. I just hope I live long enough to see it.

This is only a tiny step in that direction, but it is a step nonetheless.

LK

Re:Nanotech is the key to immortality.

[exergetic]

Imagine having millions of molecule sized robots in your body that DESTROY tissue 1000 times faster than your body can heal.

Imagine robots that destroy the the circuits in your cpu rather than build them.

The possible misuse of nano-tech is as frightening as the possible benefits are exciting.

Re:Nanotech is the key to immortality.

[Anonymous Coward]

The right direction? Personally, I think the 'right direction' is to accept the fact that you are mortal, and will age and die. Don't let the desire to be more than you are (immortal, superimtelligent) blind you to the gifts you already have, and prevent you from making the most of your life. Have nanobots remove my unpleasent memories?? No thanks, I'll pass on the soma.

Re:Nanotech is the key to immortality.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine all the new and bizarre diseases that will evolve when confronted by this new medicine.

Re:Nanotech is the key to immortality.

[factotum]

Imagine robots what can manually alter the synapses in your brain to code knowledge while you sleep. Or remove unpleasant memories from your mind.

Interesting as this is I wouldn't want it to happen. Imagine if this were all really to happen: if something bad were to happen to you, you'd simply forget it; if you wanted to learn something you could do it overnight; what you do to your body would have little consequence, because it would repair itself very quickly.

When does all this get boring? What becomes of all the challenges? Life this way is too easy and would certainly spawn nihilism like we've never known it before, but then there'd probably also be nanites to keep us artificially sane. Ease of life is not the ultimate goal, if you ask me. We will always need to fight a few battles, because that is what brings a meaning to our lives. Take Bill Gates, for instance; he could just sit there in his mountains of money and despair, because now he can have anything he wants without having to work for it... but he doesn't, no, he is still fighting, because that's what defines him and that's a very large part of human nature in general.

You may have your Brave New World but I shall pass. Lobotomy has more than one form.

Re:Nanotech is the key to immortality.

[Lord Kano]

>> if something bad were to happen to you, you'd simply forget it

As I said before, I'm talking about truly traumatic experiences. A women can forget enough of the gruesome details of a rape to be able to enjoy making love again. Someone could forget the images of watching his friend or family member decapitated in a car accident so that s/he can live an otherwise normal life.

>>When does all this get boring? What becomes of all the challenges?

We then find OTHER challenges. Even though we can all obtain knowledge that we as a species have, there is always something more to learn. We must find THAT knowledge. There will always be more to learn and explore. This would free us to do so.

Need a liver transplant? No problem, go to sleep and have your rebuilt. Congenital heart defect? No problem when you're baby is a week old it will be repaired.

>>Take Bill Gates, for instance; he could just sit there in his mountains of money and despair, because now he can have anything he wants without having to work for it.

He has already "worked" for it. He was smart, he was ruthless, he was greedy and he was lucky. As much as I despise him, he has earned the money he should be able to get anything he can afford.

>>You may have your Brave New World but I shall pass. Lobotomy has more than one form.

You apparantly never read Brave New World. What I am talking about is the possibility for true equality for all people.

This is the next step in our evolution. We've reached the point where we no longer need to adapt to the environment to survive. We just hit an evolutionary brick wall, this is the way to break through it. I just hope that I live long enough to see it.

LK

Nano-logic synthesis

[mOdQuArK!]

Ye Gods (& Goddesses :) - imagine what the synthesis system is going to look like to be able to create a circuit using nano-sized logic gates.

I don't think today's tools are up to it - at the very least, for modeling purposes, there will have to be a quantum-model-simulator like [H]SPICE (QSPICE anyone? :).

Place & route will be on a massive scale for random logic. Not only will the interconnect dwarf the effects of the nano-gates, but you'll have to model effects like quantum-tunneling & other bizarre features.

Tools will have to automatically provide circuitry with fault tolerance, since a cosmic ray blasting through a molecule-sized switch is going to be a catastrophic event...

I suspect that for large arrays of nano-components, there will be a lot of borrowing from the computations that crystallographers do, since they are used to deriving the gross characteristics of substances by mathematically extending "unit cells" ad infinitum.

A lot of the work of the tools will be to just figure out the "self-assembly" steps - do this to make THIS layer self-assemble, then do this to make THAT layer self-assemble, etc., w/o them interfering with each other.

If all the self-assembly steps are low-power, I wonder if it will be possible to finally make these logic circuits in a cube form? (Building up the cube layer-by-layer, instead of starting w/raw silicon wafer & eating layers away like we currently do).

There are so many things that become possible when this technology reaches some threshholds, that I suspect a lot of people "overload" and start tuning out the potential issues because their brains don't want to deal w/all the possible changes which might occur :)

Re:Nano-logic synthesis

[chadmulligan]

They will probably use a combination of two techniques, namely, using a standard logic block ringed with interconnect patterns, and evolution.

The self-assembly process isn't understood yet, from what I gather from the article, and it may not be possible to adapt it to patterns more complicated than an array of round pillars - but if it is, you'll get something like a huge matrix of standard blocks. If you figure out the interconnects correctly so they'll self-align, you'll get something which can be programmed by an extension of today's FPGA techniques... either permanently with a laser probe or by injecting serial data streams into the array.

There have been some interesting papers published (sorry, can't find the URL now) about evolutionary programming of FPGA's... that may also be applicable.

Finally, they recently figured out how to make vertical transistors (unlike the horizontal ones used today) which can be stacked in 3 dimensions. So I think we'll see logic and memory chips using these principles in a relatively short time - 5 or 10 years is my guess.

Re:Nano-logic synthesis

[mOdQuArK!]

Finally, they recently figured out how to make vertical transistors (unlike the horizontal ones used today) which can be stacked in 3 dimensions. So I think we'll see logic and memory chips using these principles in a relatively short time - 5 or 10 years is my guess.

Cool - do you have a reference with a general description of the technique they used to make these vertical transistors?

Re:Nano-logic synthesis

[ralphclark]

If all the self-assembly steps are low-power, I wonder if it will be possible to finally make these logic circuits in a cube form? (Building up the cube layer-by-layer, instead of starting w/raw silicon wafer & eating layers away like we currently do).

It would be very difficult to disperse the heat released during computation if the surface area to volume ratio were that of a cube. The whole thing would need to be permeated with fine capillaries carrying fluid coolant off to a heat exchanger. If miniaturisation is really an issue, I expect it would still be easier to manufacture separate wafers and assemble them around some sort of cooling scaffold.



Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

An Explanation for Homeopathy?

[Andy_R]

Scientific understanding process involved seems to boil down to "we put this close to that and it copied it for some reason, cool huh?". Maybe this mechanism is employed by the seemingly ridiculous medical hokum called "Homeopathy" - where dilutions to the billionth part of an active substance in water appear to have a benficial effect? Maybe someone's patents will fall through because of prior invention? - Andy R

Re:An Explanation for Homeopathy?

[doom]

I think the most likely explanation for Homeopathy is that it really is hokum, and just doesn't work. See: Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake. My fave quote:

Since many homeopathic remedies contain no detectable amount of active ingredient, it is impossible to test whether they contain what their label says.

I guess you're suggesting that the reason that an absurdly low concentration of a substance can supposedly have some sort of medical effect is that the molecules of the substance are breeding more of themselves through some sort of "self-assembly" process. Don't you think that a chemist would notice if this was going on? "Huh, I mixed in a small amount of X into Y, but now the concentration of X has gone up." This kind of thing is pretty easy to measure these days.

Re:Nanotech is the key to a living hell

[Sir Timothy]

If all unpleasant memories are removed from my mind, I will keep making the mistakes that led to those unpleasant memories over and over. If I live forever, my life will become meaningless..how can one appreciate the wonders and miracles of life if they're all handed out on a silver platter..without having to work for them.

Sure, one could say, I've earned the money to have nanobots put into my body, and it's my right to do so. I'm not going to argue that. But I don't think immortality should be for sale at any cost..I believe it upsets the balance of life and death, of renewal and decay..I don't want to live forever, anyway.."Death is not an end, but only a transition.." The body sleeps, the soul lives on.

peace,

Nano stuff

[GodOfHellfire]

ok, maybe its just me, but articles like this are so annoying. they don't really _say_ anything about the technology. yes, yes, i know about grants, and secrecy, etc etc, but they could at least tell us the composition, structure, or theory behind the 'switch'. for all we know, this was a cute theoretical thing they discovered in the lab that will only work when X, Y, and Z are present, and Jupiter is in line with Mars. it may have absolutely no practical application.

Re:Nano stuff

[swordgeek]

Fair enough. There are a few reasons why they don't go into huge details, though. Your 'grants, secrecy, etc.' point is vaid. Also, consider just how long the article would have had to be to explain things acceptably. Three times as long? Five times? Maybe more. Good science is generally pretty cryptic to those outside of the specific field. Regardless, the linked article simply isn't geared at the hardcore nanotech reader.

If you really want to know the whys and hows of this (or any) research technology, the unfortunate solution is to dig through the literature and read read read.

Hit your local library and check out this week's issue of Science--it's not only one of the most prestigious journals out there, it's one of the most readable and interesting.

Re:Nano stuff

[GodOfHellfire]

i guess i forgot to mention that i'm trained as a scientist. that's the real reason why these articles bother me - i am one of those who will understand all the hardcore science. unfortunately, i'm now a sysadmin, who has a serious love for beer, and who also refinishes furniture in her spare time, so i don't have too much free time to poke around for all the heavy articles. i've become scientifically lazy, and i want all my news from the net, in detail. i really get bothered how these short articles are presented to the general masses. i just don't think they tell enough of the story.

Re:Nano stuff

[nihilogos]

A book I read and enjoyed recently is
Nanosystems : Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation
by E. Drexler
It should be technical enough.
And the UNSWs Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility has a nice site.

Re:Nano stuff

[AlphaHelix]

> guess i forgot to mention that i'm trained as a scientist
If you're a trained scientist, go and read the journal article. There really isn't any point in having more detail in what's effectively a press release. You either get the 30,000 feet overview, or you go and read the journal.

If, as you say, you only get your news from the web, go to the professor's web site. They'll usually have something there about what they're working on in much greater detail than the article you just read, and will often have journal references to what they've published. The reason that these things are so short are almost never grant/secrecy related. They're because the press media has a very short attention span for technical articles that don't have the words "black hole," "genetically modified," or "Y2K" in them.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *

Re:Nano stuff

[swordgeek]

A former scientist turned sysadmin geek? A beer lover? HELLO!!! It's a good thing I'm engaged, or I'd probably be asking for your phone number. :-)

Seriously, I can relate--I somehow fell into sysadmin after many years of organic chemistry. Seeing stuff like this whets my interest, and I wish I could get more details, but I've accepted that online information is generally crap. (exceptions, of course, abound)

On that beer note, now I have to go figure out a recipe for a Steam beer. I'm having definite flashbacks to a certain User Friendly cartoon here...

Re:Nanotech is the key to a living hell

[Lord Kano]

>>If all unpleasant memories are removed from my mind, I will keep making the mistakes that led to those unpleasant memories over and over.

I'm talking about allowing a rape victim to forget all of the horrible details and give her enough peace of mind to be able to enjoy making love again.

I'm talking about giving someone the ability to forget watching his mother get beheaded in a car accident.

>>Sure, one could say, I've earned the money to have nanobots put into my body, and it's my right to do so. I'm not going to argue that. But I don't think immortality should be for sale at any cost..I believe it upsets the balance of life and death, of renewal and decay..I don't want to live forever, anyway.."Death is not an end, but only a transition.." The body sleeps, the soul lives on.

Those are your beliefs, and I respect them, but maybe not everyone shares those beliefs. Maybe I don't think that 70 years here is enough for me. What if I want to make it 500 or so? Why should YOU or anyone else for that matter have the authority to tell me that I can't?

I too believe that there is a life after life, but I'd rather live this one to the maximum before I go on to the next one.

Why do people insist on romanticizing death? I've seen more dead people than I care to remember. I watched my mother die from a brain tumor, I saw the bullet hole in my father's head, I've seen dead children, I've seen dead adults, I've lost many friends and family members. Death isn't some great release from the horror of this world. Death is grim, death is bad, death is a horror itself. I don't know about you, but I'd like to delay that horror as long as possible.

LK

Re:Mortality [was: '... a living hell']

[Jim Morash]

You wrote: "The body sleeps, the soul lives on."

For any number of reasons that don't need to be brought up yet again, I disagree. As far as I can tell, when we die, we end.

But isn't that ok?
Why are we so afraid of death? People have a beginning and an end, and should be aware of that. I think that knowledge and acceptance of your own mortality makes you a better person. It makes you more appreciative of the time you have to live. It makes you care more about what is happening in the world, because it affects you, and you've only got so much time. It encourages you to go after your dreams rather than go for traditional "success", because if you only have a limited amount of time, why waste it on something you don't like doing?

I think the idea that the soul goes on is detrimental because it encourages people to dismiss reality in favor of an imagined reward that is cut off from our lives by the sharp division of death. Why live life to the fullest when what you "really" should be doing is preparing for eternal life once you're outta here?

On the other hand, maybe people would relax a bit more if our lifespans were extended to, say, 200 healthy years. Maybe things would slow down and people would think about the consequences of their actions more, and feel less pressure.
Maybe not. Hmmm.

The new Nano-Picutre

[Haven]

instead of grouping NanoTech w/ science we should make its own group. I have also made a picture for the headline on slashdot. Its in between the quotes:

" . "

Re:The new Nano-Picutre

[mistabobdobalina]

this would be cool

Re:Nanotech is the key to a living hell

[Sir Timothy]

Concerning how long you want to live, go ahead and live 500, 1,000, 5,000 years..you'll literally have to live with it..I just know I won't and don't want to be around to see it. And as for unpleasant memories of the kinds you describe, they are horrible, yes, but I don't think just snuffing that memory is going to do good in the long run. Just ponder the implications of being able to directly modify/"implant" memories..it's bad enough when propoganda and rewriting history causes events to be "forgotten", imagine actually forgetting the event, did it even happen, then?

And as for death..I don't see a natural death as horrible (of course, what constitutes a "natural" death is a debate considerably out of the scope of this thread)..I think it'd be more horrible to watch your friends and lovers age and die while you stay perfectly healthy..and how long could a body last until it became totally dependent on nanotech for survival, to the point where death would be instant should the nanobots be partially or totally removed?

peace,

Pin head comparisons

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear this sort of thing a lot, but what are the dimensions of a standard head of a pin. I would think even a gross approximation wouldn't be forthcoming, since some pins have heads half the size of others.

From Braveheart:
"We'll make stakes twice as tall as a man."
"Ah, some men are taller than others."

Pin head comparisons

[Anonymous Coward]

Viewing one of these pillars next to the head of a pin is like looking at a stack of about 15 quarters next to the dome of the U.S. Capitol.

I hear this sort of thing a lot, but what are the dimensions of a standard head of a pin. I would think even a gross approximation wouldn't be forthcoming, since some pins have heads half the size of others.

From Braveheart:
"We'll make stakes twice as tall as a man."
"Ah, some men are taller than others."

Use Bose-Einstein condensation and superposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Bode-Einstein condensation allows many atoms to occupy the same place at the same time. Quantum superposition allows you to compute the calculation simultaneously in multiple dimensions, and then colllapse to a single dimesntion with the answer (e.g. "the cat is dead"). It is the basis for most recent quantum computing efforts.

Re:Mortality [was: '... a living hell']

[Sir Timothy]

What I meant by "the soul lives on" is that I believe the soul moves on to another life, a new life that's based on what they've done in their previous life (karma, yes)..not an eternal life.

I do see your point about "Why live life to the fullest,", that's one of my arguments against "cheap" immortality.

Peace,

cash in nano economy

[mistabobdobalina]

what happens when/if nanotech comes to fruition??? if anyone can make anything (food, cars, etc.), how will it impact economies? will money still have value if anyone can make it? will intellectual property become even MORE important? will greenspan cut rates then? will taxes matter? will world wars erupt? will extremists go to war with one another? will we live on uranus? or europa? will marijuana be legalized? what will happpen to drug wars when anyone can make it? how about beanie babies? will jvm's be easier to port? and how about dave winer? will he finally get a chance at world domination?

Re:cash in nano economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Money will become a moot point, and cease to exist. What would someone do with it? They have every physical thing that they could ever need or want. Of course there are, as you pointed out, information services - but hey - open source. If we have all of our physical needs taken care of (including space, if we can get the nanobots to operate under the conditions of a foreign planet to resurrect it), then we will be content. Info will be something to share, not restrict. That leaves us all to create and explore the universe. That is, considering this all goes well.

Re:cash in nano economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, let's look at the principles. Cash is a promise by an individual or organisation printed on an intricate piece of metal, paper, or email, that they owe the bearer X amount of goods or services, where X is some mutually agreed value. In order for cash to be meaningful, the issuing party must be able to back up all their issued cash with real goods and services of intrinsic value, the nature of which has always changed with the maturing of technology. All modern governments have far more cash in circulation than they have the resources to honour even today, thus all of today's cash suffers from 'inflation', becoming more and more worthless year by year. So, assuming mature, pervasive nanotechnology, what still has economic value? Pure energy and the matter that contains it. Basic atomic elements. Creative services and information. Energy itself is likely to become the new 'Gold Standard' as it can be easily measured in any form and is unlikely to ever decrease in value, the more energy we can store and use, the more uses we will find for it. Petrol, Hydrogen, spinning flywheels and charged superconductors are money in the bank. Start collecting now. An interesting question is wether money will remain in the control of huge organisations like governments, banks and multinationals, or wether it might decentralise almost to the point where every individual on earth issues their own. An economy where an afternoon's hard work produces enough reward to feed your family for the year would make the relative security of the 'big' currencies less of a concern at the personal level, and information technology makes systems of currency cheaper to maintian year by year. We may reach a point where simply saying 'I owe you one' in an electronically readable honest frame of mind is equivalent to handing someone a $50 Bank of Me Bill..

Re:Nanotech is the key to a living hell

[mOdQuArK!]

Concerning how long you want to live, go ahead and live 500, 1,000, 5,000 years..you'll literally have to live with it..I just know I won't and don't want to be around to see it.I don't see what the problem is - you live until you don't want to, then you shut down the nanotech & start dying. You get a choice - unlike today.Just ponder the implications of being able to directly modify/"implant" memories..it's bad enough when propoganda and rewriting history causes events to be "forgotten", imagine actually forgetting the event, did it even happen, then?Potentially quite a big issue. If someone WAS going around using nanotech to modify/erase people's memories, would it be possible to create nanotech to protect yourself from such a malicious act? ("backup & restore your brain!")And as for death..I don't see a natural death as horrible (of course, what constitutes a "natural" death is a debate considerably out of the scope of this thread)..I think it'd be more horrible to watch your friends and lovers age and die while you stay perfectly healthy..and how long could a body last until it became totally dependent on nanotech for survival, to the point where death would be instant should the nanobots be partially or totally removed?I don't see "personal" nano technology evolving this way, it sounds too much like one of those corny occult movies where the villian is sustaining himself beyond "natural" means by existing on the life force of other creatures, and dies instantaneously when he can't get his fix.First, if nanotech is widely available, then your friends/lovers/family/etc will have just as much chance to live long as you do.Second, if nanotech is just being used to continually maintain & repair an existing body, then it won't kill you if they were removed (given that the removal process doesn't kill you) - your body would just keep doing what it was doing BEFORE it had the nanotech. If the nanotech has combined with your body to the point where your body no longer does the things it did before - well, then the nanotech has become part of your body, and removing it is just the same is murdering you. I don't see any real ethical difference between murdering you with or w/o nanotech.

If memory is holographic there is a problem....

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that memories are distributed throughout the brain... you may be able to trigger a memory by stimulating a certain area, but you can't excise a memory by excising a certain area... you have to start scooping out huge amounts of brain matter before memory is affected, and then you affect all memories, not just the one you're trying to get rid of. This evidence is used to argue that memory is holographic, and depending on which way the "laser" (brainwave) shines on it you get a different "picture" (memory). SO... when we figure out how to create holographic pictures by manipulating individual pixels we can start to dream about manipulating human knowledge and memory through direct, physical interaction. Just a bit of speculation.... -Legba

Re:Mortality [was: '... a living hell']

[Lord Kano]

>>Why are we so afraid of death?

After seeing death, I know that I don't want it to happen to me.

I don't want my body to lie in wormy earth and decompose. I know that I can't stop it from happening, but at the same time I don't WANT it to happen. I don't see a problem with that.

>>I think the idea that the soul goes on is detrimental because it encourages people to dismiss reality in favor of an imagined reward that is cut off from our lives by the sharp division of death.

I find that my beliefe in an afterlife is more dependant upon the need for punishment than the need for a reward. I'll explain, I don't find it acceptable to think that someone like Adolph Hitler will not face some manner of punishment in the next life while someone like Mother Teresa (No I'm not Catholic) will not be rewarded.

>>On the other hand, maybe people would relax a bit more if our lifespans were extended to, say, 200 healthy years. Maybe things would slow down and people would think about the consequences of their actions more, and feel less pressure.

This is not my point, when it's possible if I'm still alive and can afford to do so I'd jump at the chance.

LK

nano go with cell automata

[Anonymous Coward]

can anyone imagine cellular automata at the nano level?

eat my heart out.

btw, a plug: I'm selling my iMac cheapo. it runs LinuxPPC with Gnome. You know where to find it.

Xah
xah@best.com
http://www.best.com/~xah/PageTwo_dir/more.html

Re:Nanotech key to immortality[Foreverness?]

[Anonymous Coward]

A concept to assist grasping foreverness: To live forever would mean that you would have enough time to chat up every girl (or guy), live with them for a while, have a few kids and then move on to the next person (assuming that everyone else lived forever). That would take a long time, however forever is longer.

Alien technology

[Voltage_Gate]

I'm afraid that we are about to be if flagrant violation of galactic patent laws that give full rights of this technology exclusively to the alien civilization that lost a ship at Roswell. God I'm drunk.

Why we don't need to worry about Gray Goo

[Anonymous Coward]

It will take a lot of work to get nanotechnology to the point where the Gray Goo scenario will be possible. I'm not saying it won't happen -- I'm certain it will, it will simply take some time. While we're getting to that point, nanotechnology will extremely useful for enhancing a plethora of other technologies -- computers, genetic engineering, material engineering will all see the benefits of atomic manipulation. If we're to be overcome by a catastrophe, it seems likely that we'll get hit by an engineered supervirus, or killer bacteria, or AI run amok, or IA (vinge's term for Intelligence Amplification) before nanotechnology advances to the point of eating us all up.

In other words, if you think the Gray Goo scenario is likely, then you're likely to think that these other catastrophes will also be likely, and we will be in danger of these catastrophes before Gray Goo becomes possible. And if you don't think the Gray Goo scenario is likely, then, well, you don't think Gray Goo will happen anyway. In either case, nanotechnology is not (directly) a threat.

-- Guges --

studying nanotech: study physical chemistry

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric Drexler was teaching a nanotech course for a while here at Stanford, but I think that has been discontinued (please correct me if it's still going on). For nanotech you really really need to understand physical chemistry. Molecular biology, physics, and computer science are also very important, but the closest traditional subject with a name is called "physical chemistry". Nanotech is a very eclectic area where you need to understand the world of the molecule: how atoms go together, how the forces work to shape / build / break / fold molecules of various sorts, how molecules link up to form various crystals / substances / structures, etc. Most of this is currently within the realm of what is called physical chemistry, where the topic is the physics of molecules.

Oh Please!

[monk]

You sound like some B sci-fi hero. What could possibly have led you to believe that there is anything sacred about a 70 year life span? Was 30 sacred, 20... Is 80 too long, 100, 150?

The bottom line is that there is an awful lot more of the universe than I can explore in 70 years. I couldn't run out of new experiences and frontiers in 10,000. Especially if I get to do it with 100 billion of my closest friends and a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Use some imagination. History hasn't even begun yet.

More on self-assembly

[AlpineR]

Thought some people might be interested in learning more about self-assembled electronic structures. My doctorate research topic is self-assembled quantum dots. I recently gave an introductory presentation on the topic. Get it directly in PDF format or browse through my chemical engineering page.

Rick Wagner
U of Mich - Dept of Chem Eng

Nano Nano

[KimmBadd]

This is Mork's field.

Some related fiction..

[mattr]

You probably know about this book but for those who haven't been into sci-fi for a long time, check out Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which features something called Ice-Nine..

I'd guess this is probably the classic story, mixes self-assembly _and_ crystallization and I'd better not tell you any more or I'll give it away.
Checking the name of the book I found a relevant url.. http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/Issues/Sciobs96/Sciob s96-09Ice.html

The name of this substance somehow strikes the soul harder than something called "gray goo" for me anyway.. which sounds so silly maybe it should be renamed. Gray Nemesis? Another oldie.. this on what happens when the goo gets smart: Greg Bear, Blood Music.

Also another good book if you like nano and society. Beggars and Choosers, by Nancy Kress. A good read.

Matt