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For those who think that nanotechnology is too mundane, what about machines made from nucleons? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtotechnology https://en.wikipe

by IvyMike 13y ago

For those who think that nanotechnology is too mundane, what about machines made from nucleons? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtotechnology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtotechnology Greg Egan speculates on femtotechnology in some of his sci-fi, mostly as insanely fast computers. (I mean, jeez, it takes SO MUCH TIME for an electron to whirl around the nucleus of an atom... it's so much faster when your computer is the nucleus.) An excerpt from a Egan short story: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/SCHILD/00/SchildExcerpt.html http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/SCHILD/00/SchildExc... More on femtocomputing: http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/11/01/femtocomputing/ http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/11/01/femtocomputing/

T-A 13y ago
Thank you for reminding me of Dragon's Egg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg Read it many years ago, was great fun. I guess it "inspired" one of the better Star Trek Voyager episodes, Blink of an Eye, http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(episode) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(episode)
maaku 13y ago
As a physicist and mechanical engineer ... I have absolutely no idea how femtotechnology is supposed to work. The entire premise seems to be: "quarks are smaller!" So? You know what you get when you put a bunch of sub-atomic particles together? Atoms. I would like very much to see an actual femtocomputer design, one which has a chance of working (as a commentator in the h+ article points out: "Unfortunately, this relies on assumptions that contradict known physics and ones that have not yet been proven."), so I could at least understand what it is supposed to be...
- evanb 13y ago
  QCD's strong coupling makes it hard to imagine how one could create programs for quarks with bounded errors. The linked article seems to suggest using gluons/interactions as gates for the colors on the quarks. This is so totally bonkers it is hard to know where to start, but perhaps an easy place is: how would you go about isolating a single quark and a single gluon in the horrible nonperturbative mess that is the QCD vacuum[0]. If you want to program the nucleons in the nucleus, you can switch your description to chiral perturbation theory[1], which is weakly coupled, but you need to be able to shoot individual pions at individual nuclei, which would be extremely difficult, and might require enough energy to liberate the target nucleon from the rest of the nucleus, anyway, destroying your "computer". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QCD_vacuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QCD_vacuum [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_perturbation_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_perturbation_theory

by IvyMike 13y ago

T-A 13y ago

Thank you for reminding me of Dragon's Egg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg Read it many years ago, was great fun. I guess it "inspired" one of the better Star Trek Voyager episodes, Blink of an Eye, http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(episode) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(episode)

maaku 13y ago

As a physicist and mechanical engineer ... I have absolutely no idea how femtotechnology is supposed to work. The entire premise seems to be: "quarks are smaller!" So? You know what you get when you put a bunch of sub-atomic particles together? Atoms. I would like very much to see an actual femtocomputer design, one which has a chance of working (as a commentator in the h+ article points out: "Unfortunately, this relies on assumptions that contradict known physics and ones that have not yet been proven."), so I could at least understand what it is supposed to be...

evanb 13y ago
QCD's strong coupling makes it hard to imagine how one could create programs for quarks with bounded errors. The linked article seems to suggest using gluons/interactions as gates for the colors on the quarks. This is so totally bonkers it is hard to know where to start, but perhaps an easy place is: how would you go about isolating a single quark and a single gluon in the horrible nonperturbative mess that is the QCD vacuum[0]. If you want to program the nucleons in the nucleus, you can switch your description to chiral perturbation theory[1], which is weakly coupled, but you need to be able to shoot individual pions at individual nuclei, which would be extremely difficult, and might require enough energy to liberate the target nucleon from the rest of the nucleus, anyway, destroying your "computer". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QCD_vacuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QCD_vacuum [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_perturbation_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiral_perturbation_theory