From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Wed Jun 25 2003 - 17:20:57 MDT
--- "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
> Has anyone on the list read Wil McCarthy's book
> "Hacking Matter"?
>
> From my quick read of his nanotech-now interview:
>
>
http://nanotech-now.com/Wil-McCarthy-interview-06132003.htm
> I get the impression that he may be proposing
> electron densities
> that are unrealistic.
That may be so, and there's another problem: even if
the model he proposes is correct, these "artificial
atoms" will exist only within the special, small
devices that make them possible. Which means the
bulk of any substance containing these things would
be the AA-creators, not the AAs themselves. (For
instance, wellstone as described in the interview
would mostly consist of the stone threads, not the
atoms on the surfaces of the threads.) But the
applications he describes rely on the bulk, or
sometimes all, of the material being the AAs.
(For example: stealth aircraft being made of AAs.
Even if you made the skin 100% AAs, you've still got
all the guts of the vehicle: fuel, electronics, and
whatever payload - humans or other control systems,
munitions, sensors - that makes the aircraft worth
flying. Less than 100% of this material can be made
of transparent atoms without new figuring out the
chemical composition of, e.g., transparent fuels,
transparent power electronics, transparent cameras,
et cetera - even if you select a payload that can be
made of 100% AAs, for instance not humans.)
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