RE: Submolecular nanotech [WAS: Goals]

Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Wed, 19 May 1999 17:51:08 -0700 (PDT)

Billy Brown writes:

> I agree. I think Anders was on to something with his "picotech processors
> living on a neutron star" idea. Creating a density regime in which it is
> possible for subatomic particles to form compact structures with the same

Is there any evidence that sufficiently stable yet complex structures are possible in the semidegenerate matter shell around the neutronium core? I also wonder about thermal regime. Surface temperatures might range from MK to GK, which is damn broad even for nucleonic matter (drextech can probably only cover 0..800 K) range.

> range of complexity exhibited by normal matter is probably a very delicate
> process, but it seems reasonable to think that it could be done in
> principle. That being the case, we should expect than any posthuman society
> would either graduate to pico-scale engineering in short order or invent
> something so much better as to make it superfluous.