rangerBlog

12:40 am - Molecular Machines

While searching for somethign completely unrelated, I ran across the image at right from this blog about building and simulating molecule-scale machines. It is extremely fucking awesome, and also scary.

Sci-fi writers told us for years about nanomachines, buy it was largely in the vague 'magical' sense- a kind of 'the type of machines that naturally exist on that scale,' fairy-tale about optimized forms that pry about molecules and operate in hive intelligences. Something that will reassuringly take a full generation to readjust human thinking, even for the smarties to figure out how to do properly... molecular muscles and all that.

This shit... that's a fucking differential gear built out of individual atoms. And it works.

Scientists announced a year ago they invented a nanomaterial that causes water beaded on its surface to flow uphill, powered by a light shining on it. That's the kinda superUnnatural shit I grew up thinking about for nanotech-- things whose workings were alien to our current way of thinking. But this... this is 1945-level technology built on a frightening small scale.

You can do a lot with 1945 level technology, we waged a world war with it. And this... works, and it'll all be worked otu and ready just as soon as we figure out how to build a proper molecular assembler.

There isn't gonna be a generation-lag for us to re-learn everything. Nanotech is just going to explode once the first killer app hits to justify the initial infrastructure investment.

It's scary as fuck. On the other hand, I hear that if I live to 2060 I can expect to live to be 300. So that'll be nice I guess.

Current Mood: nervous