"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> writes:
> 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?)
The fun part is that sculpting electron clouds like the recent theoretical ideas suggest could even be useful - lots of potential for odd chemistry, atomic manipulation, quantum computation and everything. It doesn't have to involve the nucleus to be interesting.
> What the heck does he - does *any* race with that kind of technology -
> want with gold, anyway?
Nice conductor. One of the few metals where you can see relativistic effects visibly (I seem to recall; it was a while since I read up on why gold and copper look like they do, I might be wrong here).
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