Self-Copying Factories
Most important trends that change our world do not make the news. Exhibit A:
RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right – a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the component up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about 30,000 Euro. And it isn’t even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs will be about 400 Euro). … We are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. … We hope to announce self-replication in 2008, though the machine that will do it – RepRap Version 1.0 “Darwin” – can be built now.
There are at least seven copies of the RepRap machine in the world that Olliver knows about.
Exhibit B is even more dramatic, if you know what you are seeing:
This paper presents the first theoretical quantitative systems level study of a complete suite of reaction pathways for scanning-probe based ultrahigh-vacuum diamond mechanosynthesis (DMS). A minimal toolset is proposed for positionally controlled DMS consisting of three primary tools … and six auxiliary tools … Our description of this toolset, the first to exhibit 100% process closure, explicitly specifies all reaction steps and reaction pathologies, also for the first time. The toolset employs three element types … and requires inputs of four feedstock molecules … The 9-tooltype toolset can, using only these simple bulk-produced chemical inputs: (1) fabricate all nine tooltypes, including their adamantane handle structures and reactive tool intermediates, starting from a flat passivated diamond surface or an adamantane seed structure; (2) recharge all nine tooltypes after use; and (3) build both clean and hydrogenated molecularly-precise unstrained cubic diamond … and hexagonal diamond surfaces of process-unlimited size … Reaction pathways and transition geometries involving 1620 tooltip/workpiece structures were analyzed … to compile 65 Reaction Sequences comprised of 328 reaction steps, 354 unique pathological side reactions and 1321 reported DFT energies. The reactions should exhibit high reliability at 80 K.
On tv recently, there was a Naked Science episode called "Super Diamonds" which said:1 in 100000 diamonds are blue, like the "Hope Diamond", because they contain certain non-carbon atoms.Blue diamonds glow for a few seconds after all lights are turned off. [I think that means the light echos in it, and given the high speed of light, staying in the same cubic inch for a few seconds is a lot of echoing]Some asteroids are made of many connected diamonds containing many big and small empty spaces, and they are stronger than perfect carbon crystals (which can be split on a plane), and they are black because they are like a maze which light can rarely find its way into or out of.Diamond-like structures can replace silicon circuits, and that all parts of a cell-phone could be made that way.
My following prediction is extremely speculative and probably would not work, but a similar design may work. Current diamond research does not have the precision for it, and they create their diamonds by smashing layers of carbon together.
I predict that if the 3 degrees Kelvin background radiation can be blocked or very much reduced, and you can connect many atoms with single atom precision, then the following can be built:
A group of connected atoms (mostly carbon), contained in a large maze-like shield with at least 1 hole thats 1 atom wide that has a straight tunnel of carbon.That tunnel allows only 1 type of laser light to enter.That tunnel will lead to a battery-like group of atoms where the light bounces around while it waits for enough photons to be there (I dont know exactly how).When enough photons are there, they would somehow be let out in the same laser pattern, pointing at a specific atom in a smaller structure floating inside the shell.Position of the floating structure would be maintained by throwing photons in the opposite direction to move, and out a hole in the shell (Which would require 1-way tunnels).That smaller structure has turing-machine parts and quantum-computer parts, and directs the light to detach atoms from specific known locations and attach them into other locations which are calculated, using the extremely precise single photon laser.It can self replicate within the large shell, limited to the number of atoms inside the large shell.At least 2 of the battery-like things are needed, paired on opposite sides of the floating structures, so constant position can be maintained.
A more practical design is for it not to build things and only use it as a quantum computer that takes laser inputs and gives laser outputs.
"Future computers are more likely to be built by self-assembly processes analogous to crystalisation. Poking atoms into place one at a time using a pointy tool would be a prohibitively expensive manufacturing technique."
Actually, no. At that size (and consequently required energy level), with tools that can self-replicate, and multitudes of them can work on an assembly at once, it becomes an unbelievably cheap manufacturing technique.