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San Francisco, 12:24 PM
Thu Dec 3
24 posts in the last 24 hours
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07/29/09
As a result, they have to be careful to contain their own nanotech diseases, lest the wipe all life on other worlds during a first contact encounter. They go to great lengths to keep themselves quarantined because they are haunted by the fact that they were born out of the destruction of another civilization, one that has been completely erased from existence because the goo ate away everything on their planet above the planet's mantle. The destruction was so complete that they don't have any clue what the organic life was like that proceeded them, and that lack of knowledge about their origins haunts them.
They are an interesting idea for an alien race, but I just don't have a good story to use them in yet.
07/29/09
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In all seriousness, this is a pretty neat piece of conceptual art with a sci-fi twist.
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07/29/09
Any device able to remake itself from -anything- would surely end up varying colours, and (depending on scale) probably shiny/oil-like in appperance due to defraction effects.
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PS. Are you going to kill me for the use of emoticons? :8)
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Anyway, I think it's fair to say that she was inspired by a lot of prior art, but doesn't contain much UNIX code.
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05/15/09
But my question would is, why would grey-goo do anything to make structural objects? if it's basic goal is to deconstruct existing matter in order to replicate itself, wouldn't it just lie around in puddles? spread like a viscous material? And if not, wouldn't it be more likely to be programed to arrange into some geometrically defined pattern? in which case we'd see more order. Just thinkin is all. Still, it's an apocalyptic scenario that i can buy into.
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12/29/08
12/27/08
As for nanotech's actual prospects: quoted from Wikipedia, because they've summed it up quite nicely, "in the latest report A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative put out by the National Academies Press in December 2006... "Although theoretical calculations can be made today, the eventually attainable range of chemical reaction cycles, error rates, speed of operation, and thermodynamic efficiencies of such bottom-up manufacturing systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Thus, the eventually attainable perfection and complexity of manufactured products, while they can be calculated in theory, cannot be predicted with confidence. Finally, the optimum research paths that might lead to systems which greatly exceed the thermodynamic efficiencies and other capabilities of biological systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Research funding that is based on the ability of investigators to produce experimental demonstrations that link to abstract models and guide long-term vision is most appropriate to achieve this goal."
12/28/08
12/26/08
And *where* exactly is *any* argument made to support the above in the referenced article? All it says is that the tech has currently not reached the heights that fiction writers claim it can reach. No where does it even *attempt* to argue that it *cannot* reach them.
Is simply repeating *arbitrary* assertions for the sake of nonsensical but sensationalist posts now becoming the standard for io9 'articles'? The increasing frequency of such writings certainly makes it seem so.
12/26/08
12/26/08