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Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 1261701" data-attributes="member: 6929">I would think that alchemical transmutation would be very difficult for nanotech to perform - you actually have to rip apart atomic nuclei to change the element type, and that's really only possible with high-energy reactors to the best of my knowledge. I don't think a nanite would carry enough power to do so, unless they had antimatter power onboard (say an antihydrogen atom or two). It's possible (although you might have to fiddle around with Schrodinger's uncertainty principles), don't get me wrong, it's just a few technological generations on from, say, biological immortality.I haven't read either book myself, but nano is a tech that scares and excites me more than just about anything else. We live in an age when people can draw stick figures with atoms, when you can buy shirts that iron themselves on a molecular level, etc etc. I reckon the 21st century will be the era when people make the greatest breakthroughs in complex application, not basic principles - we know how molecular and atomic forces work, but putting them together will be interesting.This paragraph discusses nano intelligence with reference to the novels Prey, Diaspora (Greg Egan) and Ventus (Karl Schroeder). [spoiler]BiggusGeekus makes an interesting comment about the nano having hard drives. That seems implausible to me. Either use a technique from Diaspora (coding information into the quantum spin of neutrons - not up/down/up/down or whatever, but a binary data stream; it was used for a message in the book, but could just as easily be used for an OS), or from Ventus (teleological intelligence - one nanite is dumb, the networked nanites in a blade of grass might be able to compute like your desktop box, the networked nanites in an entire forest are smarter than some gods). I think the teleological model is probably more feasible.[/spoiler]Anyway, I think that nano will eventually attain the heady heights of alchemical promise that have been predicted. It just won't happen soon, and it may happen in an unusual way - look at the most sophisticated molecular data/replication technology on the planet right now.It's you.</blockquote>

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