Science fiction always shows nanotechnology doing seemingly magical things. Last years Superman movie showed nanotech make one of the female villains essentially a Demi-god. In the real world, nanotech is already being used in a lot of mundane applications that aren’t very exciting. I believe the full future potential of nanotechnology lies somewhere in the middle of these two.
Yet what are some hard limits on the applications nanotech can and can’t do (besides not being able to make your body stretch and become superhuman)
What are not-applications of nanotechnology?
Re: What are not-applications of nanotechnology?
Notably it takes enormous power to create a proper "Santa Claus Machine," so a home nanofabricator is one. Physics doesn't allow it.
A factory sized nanofabricator lab is very much doable, especially if directly connected to a mega-power source (fusion, antimatter, ultra-dense solar, kugelblitz?) and a sufficient coolant (liquid helium most likely). And enough mass of course. Provided you have the computation to avoid mistakes and meltdowns, then you can pour in sand and get sandwiches, for gigawatts of power. So maybe not sandwiches. But definitely any rare earth element.
And if you're just going for chemical synthesis, then the power draw drops by several orders of magnitude, though you do need the exact elements you're intending to manipulate.
But "send out a nanoswarm cloud that eats everything in its path" is thankfully pure science fiction.
Yep, pure science fiction.
Pure science fiction...
And by that I mean stranglets still exist.
Also, intelligent nanobots might prove impossible.
A thing one hundred times smaller has a million times less volume. That means less room for things like computational circuitry or fuel or tools. Nanobot swarms need to be controlled externally, which allows for vastly less complicated nanomachines.
Also it's unlikely we'll have nanobots that heal wounds in an instant just because biology is so messy. Nanobots can mess with quite a bit— undoubtedly they can kill any cancer, repair any cell, and deliver any sort of drug. Intelligent AI-powered drugs are more powerful than biology, after all, and I feel some people don't understand this (I've heard some say "what if cancer mutates to fight nanobots?" Insert Invincible meme: "That's the fun part— it can't!") But macro scale construction is much much slower, almost metabolic in speed even with artificiality, just because Brownian motion isn't the same as macro scale motion (to put it VERY simply; Brownian motion isn't the only limit).
With that being said, we ought to bring up the elephant in the room: AI, especially AGI, and how it changes the nanotech game. Obviously it can't break physics, but a lot of the limitations of current nanotech is literally because of the complexity of controlling nanosystems, or even building them in the first place. Humans are crazy good at it all things considered (think of EUV scanners). But it could be much, much better.
That's what makes discussing what nanotech CAN'T do much more difficult. There are clearly hard physical limits to what we can't do. You can't send out a dust cloud of nanites and create a feast in mid-air drawing from zero-point energy and air moisture alone. Nanobots aren't going to let you LARP as Santa Claus.
But the fuzzy area from here to the impossible could be made extremely clear. AI does not create atoms you do not have nor does it make thermodynamics vanish nor does it let a nanobot store impossible fuel in impossible volume. It does not make arbitrary nuclear transmutation cheap. Nanites can't make raw biology invincible.
Whoopdedoo, it doesn't allow for actual unironic magic. You still have damn near the entire universe at your finger tips; that's an outrageous amount of stuff you still CAN do. That's what makes this question so difficult.
A factory sized nanofabricator lab is very much doable, especially if directly connected to a mega-power source (fusion, antimatter, ultra-dense solar, kugelblitz?) and a sufficient coolant (liquid helium most likely). And enough mass of course. Provided you have the computation to avoid mistakes and meltdowns, then you can pour in sand and get sandwiches, for gigawatts of power. So maybe not sandwiches. But definitely any rare earth element.
And if you're just going for chemical synthesis, then the power draw drops by several orders of magnitude, though you do need the exact elements you're intending to manipulate.
But "send out a nanoswarm cloud that eats everything in its path" is thankfully pure science fiction.
Yep, pure science fiction.
Pure science fiction...
And by that I mean stranglets still exist.
Also, intelligent nanobots might prove impossible.
A thing one hundred times smaller has a million times less volume. That means less room for things like computational circuitry or fuel or tools. Nanobot swarms need to be controlled externally, which allows for vastly less complicated nanomachines.
Also it's unlikely we'll have nanobots that heal wounds in an instant just because biology is so messy. Nanobots can mess with quite a bit— undoubtedly they can kill any cancer, repair any cell, and deliver any sort of drug. Intelligent AI-powered drugs are more powerful than biology, after all, and I feel some people don't understand this (I've heard some say "what if cancer mutates to fight nanobots?" Insert Invincible meme: "That's the fun part— it can't!") But macro scale construction is much much slower, almost metabolic in speed even with artificiality, just because Brownian motion isn't the same as macro scale motion (to put it VERY simply; Brownian motion isn't the only limit).
With that being said, we ought to bring up the elephant in the room: AI, especially AGI, and how it changes the nanotech game. Obviously it can't break physics, but a lot of the limitations of current nanotech is literally because of the complexity of controlling nanosystems, or even building them in the first place. Humans are crazy good at it all things considered (think of EUV scanners). But it could be much, much better.
That's what makes discussing what nanotech CAN'T do much more difficult. There are clearly hard physical limits to what we can't do. You can't send out a dust cloud of nanites and create a feast in mid-air drawing from zero-point energy and air moisture alone. Nanobots aren't going to let you LARP as Santa Claus.
But the fuzzy area from here to the impossible could be made extremely clear. AI does not create atoms you do not have nor does it make thermodynamics vanish nor does it let a nanobot store impossible fuel in impossible volume. It does not make arbitrary nuclear transmutation cheap. Nanites can't make raw biology invincible.
Whoopdedoo, it doesn't allow for actual unironic magic. You still have damn near the entire universe at your finger tips; that's an outrageous amount of stuff you still CAN do. That's what makes this question so difficult.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future