David Lubkin wrote:
> [jon wrote:]
> >Just give this machine any type of matter, such as water, and it
> >can rearrange the atoms to make anything else, such as an apple, or gold.
>
> Unless you're relying on the trivial traces of carbon, gold, etc. that may be present in
> tap water, you will not get apples or gold from rearranging atoms. There are far-out
> speculations about sub-nano technology that works on quarks, but it's still bad
> science fiction for now.
I don't know about that. Certainly I challenge the phrase "bad" science
fiction, because it's been done well a couple of times... but that's not
the point.
I know of at least two instances of sub-molecular technology. (1)
artificial atoms; (2) sculpted quantum states. (Unfortunately my links
appear to be broken - sorry, guys! (1) is changing the shape of a
single atom's wavefunction, and (2) is doing some kind of custom stuff
on probability distributions, I think. Anyone have a valid link?)
Not hydrogen-into-gold (does jon have any idea how much energy that would release? it'd be orders of magnitude more than an equivalent thermonuclear hydrogen-to-helium), not even close, but it strikes me as a good reason to believe that nucleus-manipulating "atomic picotechnology" would be an active frontier once atom-manipulating "molecular nanotechnology" matured.
What the heck does he - does *any* race with that kind of technology - want with gold, anyway?
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/singul_arity.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.