"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
> 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.
Actually, it wouldn't be orders of magnitude more. It might actually take quite a bit of extra energy to complete. The energy break-even point for fusion is at the level of iron. Gold is decidedly further up the elemental scale than that, in the area of lead (the common byproduct of the uranium fission series). It might be simpler to tailor high level element isotopes that will degrade into gold. I doubt it is that simple though, or nature would have produced a lot more gold than there is.
> What the heck does he - does *any* race with that kind of technology -
> want with gold, anyway?
gold is the best metallic electrical conductor, its easily alloyable and malleable, which is of obvious use to any technologist.