Nano Future 2030

Not exactly nano, but we can speculate on how to clean up such a problem.
For one possible solution today, I whipped up a short walk through of one way to approach this problem. Wish they had put five different teams on this oil slick and funded them so we had five totally independent solutions happening in parallel. A bit late now, but what the hey.

You can see my suggestion here.

• Windows media version, 20 megs, better quality.
• MPG, 5 megs, but more grainy.

Hopefully, in a decade or two, we will have nano tools that make such deep drilling less dangerous. Nano in this situation, means we have better robots down there that can work with as much dexterity as a human. They know what is going on, because they can send sensors into the pipes and measure anything that is important. They can build barriers or pipes in place and thereby control the flow of oil more easily then today. Now you have to figure it out first, build it and ship it to the well head. In the future, we hope they can make changes at the well head as needed.

In a way, it’s good to not drill now. Make this oil hungry civilization find something else to eat for a while. Save the resources for later when they can be drilled more safely.

We need small parts and structures to build anything of consequence in nanotechnology. We can not yet build functional parts that can be assembled into a larger device. So far, we’ve reached the level of a sharpened stick to poke and prod things apart , scan surfaces, or to rearrange atoms on a surface. We need machined parts. We need the ability to manipulate those parts so they can be assembled into useful devices.

Twenty or thirty years from now, many things will be made of diamond because carbon is cheap, light and strong. During these early years, diamond is a great material for the fabrication of complex mechanical parts, but we can’t build them yet because we can’t sculpt, machine or cast these tiny parts. We need a way to create small parts – that is, objects in the range of 10 to 100 nanometers in size.

One speculation path is to consider how they will build these parts 50 years from now. For research, the most efficient method would be to grow them under computer control by beam deposition of carbon atoms into a diamond crystal matrix. Sure, we may find that impossible without additional techniques. As Dr. Drexler has said, if you try to stick carbon atoms onto a diamond surface, you may get graphite instead of diamond because it is easier to form one than the other. Somehow you have to handle that issue and the solution is to try it and then find a solution – if possible.

Also, in the early years, we need to build many devices in a research environment. That means we want to build a small number of parts, assemble them and create a few test items instead of mass production. It would be good to have a fabrication process that gave us the option to build anything on demand. We would use a CAD program, draw up the specs and have the device fabricated inside our nanolab.

The most similar idea is the desktop 3D printer that exists now for the creation of plastic parts from CAD drawings. The plastic is applied in layers to build up a shape. In diamond parts, we would love to apply carbon atoms in layers to build up diamond parts. But the atoms have to become part of the crystal, not just adhere to the surface.

It is obvious that carbon atoms applied to other carbon atoms form diamond under enough pressure and temperature. The question is, can we duplicate that chemical bonding process in a deposition oven.

It seems reasonable that if you slam carbon atoms into a diamond substrate, there might be conditions under which the atom is bonded to the crystal structure and the diamond grows. Perhaps at a certain temperature, and from a certain angle, with a certain kinetic energy, an atom will bond if it hits the crystal plane at a favorable position. Maybe not. But if I had an electron microscope, a diamond substrate, and a source of ionized carbon atoms somewhat like the electron beam of a CRT television, I would rotate the temperature controlled, diamond surface back and forth through a 120 degree angle while the carbon beam applied one, two or many atoms to the surface. And scan the beam over the surface to create all combinations of angle, energy, and temperature. Then scan or evaluate the surface for growth of diamond versus graphite at all locations where the beam hit the surface.

If you find a temperature, an angle, and a kinetic energy where carbon is added to the crystal rather than forming unwanted graphite, you will have a diamond printer tool.

Seems worth the try to me, but the PHD’s who work with this stuff on a daily basis may have a different perspective.

Nanotechnology is destined to be both positive and negative. Everything is that way, but the more powerful something is, the more intense the results. I want to talk about how nano is important to us today because it is our only hope against big natural disasters.

I’ve been watching a lot of TV on History and they often show very interesting programs on what happened in the past that severely affected humans or the biosphere in general. Today we are in danger more than in the past due to our highly developed infrastructure. We have accomplished great things because we have better medicine, better communications, better transportation, better education, etc. But at the same time we have become dependent on these huge and complex technologies. We have a few weeks of food in the pipeline. Many things can upset the apple cart – a small meteorite, airborne plague, megavolcano, terrorists with a dirty bomb, or an economic crisis that somehow leads to true financial failure. What we’ve been through economically in the last few years is nothing but a hiccup compared to what is possible.

In other words, we live in and depend on a china shop of delicate and valuable technologies, and any bull that gets loose could bring the whole thing down because we are not resilient beyond an unspecified limit.

Will we have useful and relatively mature nanotechology before a bull arrives? I’d say we have twenty to thirty years before the individual has access to nano converters that can take in raw materials and generate food directly. I’m sure we will have water purifiers and effective solar power long before food creation is possible. I mean nano versions of these things that pop out of a knapsack and set up shop and produce what is needed in sufficient volume to keep a family alive indefinitely.

I’d like to have a self sustaining package at home that can supply food, shelter and communications. Once that happens, the human race can survive a meteorite or plague or anything else. Doesn’t mean you would not lose a few billion people in a disaster, but it would mean the survivors could rebuild and continue to live under almost any conditions. Anything would be better than the brutal, scavenger society that would arise today after any disaster that disrupts the food supply.

What would that package have to do? Food creation is the most difficult, but it could extract nutrients from raw organic material you can not eat, with a lot less effort. Water could be pulled out of the air with refrigeration or dirty water could be purified. Solar power is essential to a survivor because communications is the only way to prevent total destruction of society. The ability to create large solar panels from raw materials allows any survivor to communicate, to be part of society and to obtain or provide help to others.

So, the essentials are food creation or extraction, water purification, electrical power for light, communication, heating and cooling, and medical drug and tool creation for pain control, curing disease and basic health. It would be cool to be able to manufacture such things as paper, bandages, salt, soap, gunpowder, aspirin.

Once we have the capability to give each person this tool kit, the human race can survive almost anything less intense than the sun going red giant.

Anyone looking for a career might consider nanotechnology and it’s mature form of molecular manufacturing of any desired object from atoms and molecules. We are not there yet and we will need people in these high tech industries.

I worry about the future as much as I speculate about it. As science and technology, especially nano technology, moves from the lab into the garage it can and will be used by both good, moral people as well as people more … shall we say, driven by personal needs over the needs of civilization. ‘Moral’ means “having to do with or affecting other people. The results will have benefit and sometimes they will have more worrisome aspects.

I was stuck by a recent article in the magazine ‘O” (Opra) by the mother of one of the Colindale school shooters. She seems like a decent person, an ordinary mother, who suddenly had her world torn apart by her son and she had no clue it was coming. Her feelings of guilt will be with her for the rest of her life. The point is that we can’t predict what an individual will do even if we think we know them. So how do we keep intelligent, but mentally disturbed individuals from working out their issues using the power that comes from very powerful technology?

I hope to have a replicator on my desk someday, but how do any of us live in a community with a crazy man or woman who also has a replcator and the time to build dangerous things?

I read a science fiction book recently and one aspect of the fictional world was an alternative society that had no crime because they had an “alibi recorder” for each individual in the society. They each had a small device embedded in their body that sent data to a central data bank of everything they saw and did. No one watched the data, it was only recorded for use later if that person needed an alibi. I’ll try to find the book and give credit to the author.

I don’t think you could talk the human race into something like that. People are very private and secretive about so many things from how they make money to who they sleep with. But I think that anyone who has access to nano design software and hardware needs a 24 hour continuous alibi. If you don’t have that data connection, you don’t have access to any tool of nano design. Unmonitored people found with nano design tools will be shot on sight. Maybe I’m a bit too draconian here. The people who decide to be nano researchers, nano engineers and nano programmers should be required to create and maintain this sort of alibi.

In other words, anyone with access to the design tools for that technology makes their life available for scrutiny. They have privacy since no one can see the data without a court order. But they are known or can be known if there is a question.

My opinion is that society will never do such a thing until our pain is great enough to justify it. We shall see if intelligence wins out over animal emotion driven desire for privacy.