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It's fun to imagine the type of replicator a Type I civilization might be able to produce. Imagine a machine that takes hydrogen and energy (or just energy) an
by breckinloggins 14y ago
It's fun to imagine the type of replicator a Type I civilization might be able to produce. Imagine a machine that takes hydrogen and energy (or just energy) and builds, from the subatomic particles up, all the elements needed for production (just as stars do). Then, using a combination of scaffolding, precise placement, and self-replicating nano-structures, creates any object, organic or otherwise. Who knows, we may ultimately figure out how to manipulate a more fundamental physical substrate than just "packets of energy orbiting each other" and so create exotic but stable condensates and states of matter we can now only imagine. This would be something akin to using the hypothetical "quantum foam" as a sculpting material.
Granted, this all requires physics that aren't currently understood and may not even exist, and the amount of energy required would be staggering, but a true "anything replicator" would surpass the Star Trek vision into something that needed no "raw materials" at all except energy.
- KaoruAoiShiho 14y agoMight not even need energy, require information only.
- archivator 14y agoWell, there's work to be done (quite literally), so unless we discover the laws of thermodynamics don't work, energy will always be expended.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- robertk 14y agoNot if you can set up a framework where physical objects are equivalent to reversible computations (and hence energyless).
- salgernon 14y agoOr we could just render the satisfaction of owning an object, rather than actually producing the object itself. (One possibility of the whole singularity thing - desire for physical objects may not be satisfied when we lack a physical existence. (For some value of singularity.))
- ChuckMcM 14y agoStrangely enough the problem might be 'too much' energy. If you take some hydrogen and fuse them together several times to make iron you liberate a lot energy, its how stars work. The tricky bits involve starting it off (you do need energy to start fusing Hydrogen into Helium, then you can use that energy to keep fusing helium in to carbon, Etc. And directing it, which is to say if you've got a hot plasma of Iron, Nickel, and Carbon atoms how to coalesce them into stainless steel, and in the shape of a dinner fork? Quite the challenge that.