X-Message-Number: 32815
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 08:54:39 -0700
Subject: Re: "Nano-nonsense
From: Keith Henson <>

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 2:00 AM, "Perry E. Metzger" <> wrote:

snip

> Let me start by saying that if nano is impossible, you are impossible,
> because you are made of molecular machines. How do you function if
> molecular machines can't function?

It's a good argument, same thing could have been said for a thousand
years about heavier than air flight because birds and bats do it.
Proof by example that it can be done.  Living stuff is proof that
molecular machines function.

> Let me also say that the characterization of Drexler's thesis is
> either the result of someone being unable to read it or the result of
> someone who feels like lying to stir up controversy is fun.

Or is just trying to be obnoxious.

snip

> Heck, the blog poster's opener is even a lie, Drexler doesn't even
> "invoke the Schroedinger equation" anywhere that I can remember. I'm
> not sure he even prints it in the book, though my copy isn't
> nearby. Why? Because pretty early on

Page 12

> he notes (correctly) that exact
> ab initio models are incapable of yielding much information about
> nanomachines because finding solutions to the Schroedinger equation
> for mesomolecular systems will always be computationally
> intractable. (He then spends a long time discussing what sort of
> mathematical models you need to use in order to understand the
> behavior of such systems.)


The Schroedinger equation is mentioned in passing on two other pages, 40 and 64.

> Believe whatever you like, however, including that you yourself don't
> exist.
>
> So, why hasn't Nanotechnology borne fruit? Because no one is working
> on it. That's a slight exaggeration, of course, there are perhaps a
> dozen of us working on it, but there need to be thousands in order to
> get anywhere. The average Intel microprocessor has several thousand
> engineers working on the design, and that's ignoring all the people
> that built all the machines needed to make those engineers
> productive. Even a simple MNT device is far more complicated than an
> Intel Core 2, but there's just about no one doing the work, so of
> course we're not getting anywhere.

Arguing from living devices, Venter recently made all synthetic DNA
and stuck it inside a cored out bacteria to generate a living one.
The code was a million base pairs.  I would not be surprised if the
code for a modern microprocessor is in that class.  But your point is
correct, MNT devices would take thousands of engineer working on them
and another army of support people to make the tools that make them
productive.  Also it takes highly evolved tools to produce
microprocessors after they have been designed.  How we get from what
we have to a full tool kit is not easy to envision (or we would have
done it already).

On the other hand, if the feature size in integrated circuits
continues to shrink, they will have to develop the tools needed for
MNT.

Keith

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