Thread: Nanotechnology

Page wouldn't load for me ... can ya fix it? Sounds interesting ...

Nanotech is defined as research at the scale of below 100nm.

If you are looking for examples, look into bucky (buckminister fullerene) balls with embedded medince.

Also, carbon nanotunes are being researched into replacing CRT tubes. This could mean ultra thin and ultra light TVs, Monitors and screens.

I'm taking a 1/2 semester course on nano right now. Will be taking a few more next year.

Do a search on Ray Kurzweil.

Nanotechnology should change the world within 20 years... much more than the industrial revolution did.

For one thing, most of us should be able to live as long as we want to. Also, pollution should we wiped out. We will be able to download and manufacture just about anything in our homes. You want a steak? There is no reason to kill a cow anymore. You can literally build one atom by atom from carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen... and you can use your garbage (or the dirt from your yard if you have no garbage) as the source for these atoms.

The stuff most people talk about now is just the surface of what is possible when you can control the world on an atomic level.

Tissue engineering of that complexity is much farther away than 20 years from now. It is not so simple as to place the atoms side by side and voila, you have a heart or a muscle.

Tissue engineering currently takes undifferentiated cells (stem cells and such) and places it within a matrix. The matrix is planted in vivo and eventually tissue will grow.

However, it does not guarantee success. For example, cartilage grown in this method is has a different composition than natural cartilage and is much weaker.

Originally Posted by Spud

Tissue engineering of that complexity is much farther away than 20 years from now. It is not so simple as to place the atoms side by side and voila, you have a heart or a muscle.

Tissue engineering currently takes undifferentiated cells (stem cells and such) and places it within a matrix. The matrix is planted in vivo and eventually tissue will grow.

However, it does not guarantee success. For example, cartilage grown in this method is has a different composition than natural cartilage and is much weaker.

It is much farther away than 20 years from now at current rates of progress. However, we are not going in linear progression mode. We are advancing exponentially. The doubling rate of technology is now under 10 years. So in 20 years, we should see 3-4 doublings of all of our technical knowledge. This means in 20 years we should be 8-16 times more advanced than we are right now. Then 2-3 years after that, 16-32 times more advanced and 25 years from now 32-64 times more advanced. After that doubling times will be a year or less so after 30-40 more years, we will be 1000s of times more advanced than we are right now. We are approaching the knee of the curve, where advancement becomes explosive.

The speed of computation power is already doubling about every year. And today's supercomputers are already comparable to a human brain in the number of computations they can do. Pattern recognition is increasing dramatically. Today we have computers that can listen to a conversation with background noise (like a party), and accurately convert the conversation into written text and translate it into other languages... with correct grammar. (not something most people on this site could do). With new scanning techniques and computer power, reverse engineering of the human brain is getting closer and closer to a reality.

The Human-Genome project started in 1990 and critics pointed out that with 1990 technology and scanning rates, it would take thousands of years to complete the project... yet it finished the first draft in 2003, 2 years ahead of their aggressive schedule.

"The cost of DNA sequencing came down from about ten dollars per base pair in 1990 to a couple of pennies in 2004 and is rapidly continuing to fall" - The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurweil

It took 31 days to sequence the SARS virus - compare that to 15 years for the HIV virus.

We are not as far away as you might believe. The problem with most peoples predictions on technology is that they base future progress on past progress... which leads to a lot of under estimation.

Originally Posted by Spud

Tissue engineering of that complexity is much farther away than 20 years from now. It is not so simple as to place the atoms side by side and voila, you have a heart or a muscle.

Tissue engineering currently takes undifferentiated cells (stem cells and such) and places it within a matrix. The matrix is planted in vivo and eventually tissue will grow.

However, it does not guarantee success. For example, cartilage grown in this method is has a different composition than natural cartilage and is much weaker.

That is one way to do tissue engineering... a current way.

But what if you could literally scan the position of every atom in an object (biological or not), save that in a file (yeah a large file) and with nanobots or a nanofactory, literally place all those atoms in the same place as the original?

How is the new object any different than the original?

This is the utimate goal of nanomanufacturing. Download the object... and recreate it. No matter what it is or how molecularly complex it is. For all biological objects, the resources are pretty much the same and fairly common simple atoms. Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Iron, Calcium, Magnesium. You wouldn't even need sources of more rare atoms (mercury, etc) for most objects.

To me, the problem is similar to the "If you had an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters, would you end up with a Shakespearean work?"

Looking at a Shakespearean play as simply an arrangement of letters, spaces and punctuation is an oversimplification. Likewise, looking at a molecule and breaking it down as simply a spaial orientation of atoms is too much of an oversimplification.

I'm not saying it's not eventually possible, but in order to fully control the spacial interactions of electrostatic forces and to guarantee that the tissue/material would behave as it should after it is manufactured, is an enormous undertaking.

Going along further with my example of the play. If you had several actors voice the same line, each would probably express it differently. How can you guarantee that the arrangement of letters that was programmed and fully encompass the original intentions of the author?

Link still doesnt work sir....