Richard Feynman "Tiny Machines" Nanotechnology Lecture - aka "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom"
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it when discussing nanobots and microscale physics, including how things behave at tiny scales.
What it is
A recording of Richard Feynman's talk on the possibilities of manipulating matter at very small scales, widely seen as an early vision of nanotechnology. This is a later version of his 1959 "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" lecture.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2015 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends pazimzadeh · 2026-04 · on “A True Life Hack: What Physical 'Life Force' Turns Biology's Wheels?”
at the scale that it operates, the flagella is more a drill than a propeller there's a good richard feynam video about how things feel when they're that small [this video]
Cites JonnieCache · 2015-05 · on “There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959)”
Here's a video of him giving a version of the talk in 1984, to an audience of ludicrous californian hippies: [this video] I think it might be at the infamous esalen institute.
Cites pazimzadeh · 2019-05 · on “Microbots Are on Their Way”
This is fantastic, but another approach would be to use the things that are already small and learn how they work, and then maybe reprogram them (i.e. bacteria). Also, as Richard Feynman pointed out ( [this video] ) at small scales water is thick like honey so it's probably more efficient to use a rotating turbine mechanism (i.e. flagella) for propulsion rather than trying to shrink paddles down to micron sizes. And almost foreign material that you put in your body will eventually be covered in bacterial biofilms. So might as well learn how to program and control the bacteria in the first place.
Cites pazimzadeh · 2022-09 · on “Antibiotic-loaded microalgae treat bacterial pneumonia in mice”
2030 seems way too early, but Feynman predicted the nanobots a while ago: [this video] There are at least two ways to go about this: 1 - keep making computers smaller until they are ingestible and somehow interface with biology 2 - learn enough about existing biology to be able to re-program cells for our purposes However, to me the most exciting type of projects are the ones that merge these approaches, like an ingestible pill shaped device containing a compartment filled with bacteria engineered for particular tasks. In one case the bacteria were made to glow in the presence of heme, and the device contains a light sensor as well as bluetooth transmitter to relay the data to the smartphone in r
Cites morphle · 2024-03 · on “Fiber-optic data transfer speeds hit a rapid 301 Tbps”
The sequential process performance ceiling will be set by physical limits. Photons at high frequenties have too much energy, for example gamma rays. The practical ceiling will be set by manufacturing limitations for the next few decades: can we build structures atom by atom? [1] [1] Richard Feynman "Tiny Machines" Nanotechnology Lecture - aka "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" [this video]