From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Apr 14 1999 - 01:21:53 MDT
"Ross A. Finlayson" <RAF@tomco.net> writes:
> Well, as soon as it is possible to overcome the strong nuclear and repulsion
> forces to actually modify an atom's atomic weight and its electrons, then any
> matter could be formed into any other matter.
Perhaps. But this technology is far beyond nanotech, and modifying the
strong force may not even be possible; we at least know atoms can be
moved around, but we have no idea how to change the forces in the
nucleus (except banging things into it at a high speed).
> If that is not possible (it is not likely to be possible any time soon), a
> couple of bags of rust would do.
Yes. Most likely a nanotech construction site would look like a pool
of stuff from which the building would grow, with trucks pouring in
stuff like iron oxide, sugar (for energy) and sand.
> Silicon possesses very similar qualities to carbon in terms of electron
> stability, and it would be likely that, for example, buckyballs and nanotubes
> could be made from silicon, as well as higher level structures like
> diamondoid structural building materials.
Isn't the Si-Si bond weaker than the C-C bond? The silicon fullerenes
doesn't have to be stable. I can't recall if silicon even can form
something like graphite sheets.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:32 MST