Nanofactory Animation
Why Hacker News recommends it
Shared as a visualization of Ralph Merkle's theoretical work on molecular manufacturing.
What it is
A short animation illustrating the proposed nanofactory concept, where nanomachines assemble atomically precise parts into larger products. It depicts how such a system might build macroscopic goods from raw materials and energy.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2015 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Cites chriswarbo · 2015-05 · on “There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959)”
Drexler's name is synonymous with the idea of a nano-robots and self-replication. I think he also coined the term "clanking replicator" to describe a traditional robotic approach to replication (eg. RepRaps, robot arms, etc.) Ralph Merkle (of public key cryptograpy fame) has done some recent theoretical work, eg. his on "nanofactory", which consists of exponentially-smaller gantry-like systems (a bit like the print head on a cartesian 3D printer). He's also looked at "mechanochemistry" (forming molecules by moving specific atoms together in the right ways) and concrete studies of particular molecules, the energy levels and forces required, etc. His most recent work I can find on Google Schol
Cites EugeneAZ · 2017-08 · on “Percentage of Europeans Who Are Willing to Fight a War for Their Country”
Man. They are all corrupted or just too ignorant. J.R.Nyquist can tell you even more : ) Have you ever heard of thista? For any engineering problem one can make a "brute-force" algorithm, which theoretically finds its solution, describe that algorithm as a logical scheme (a directed graph with logic gates as nodes) and then one can use an AI agent to make that logical scheme easier to compute, by simplifying (through transformation rules like the De Morgan rule) unnecessary computation steps, input variables, etc. The solution to the problem can be found by calculation of that simplified version of the logical scheme. The AI agent may be built from Neural Nets, or from the algorithm, which I
Cites adastra22 · 2023-10 · on “International team develops novel DNA nano engine”
Yes, gigahertz operation speeds. This is a straightforward result from mechanical scaling laws. A machine scaled down by 1/10th in each linear dimension is able to operate at 10x speed. So a machine operating at 10Hz in ~1m regime (perfectly reasonable in an industrial setting) will be able to operate at 1GHz speeds when scaled down to be ~10nm in size. Biology operates by means of Brownian motion. Enzymes randomly jiggle around as they are bombarded in solution, until by totally random chance one of the reactants they catalyze hits in the right spot and sticks, then waits until the other reactant hits the other spot. This can take a very, very long time to happen. Animations you might watch