They say it can't happen that fast...

Several researchers were quoted in an ABC News article as being quite skeptical about our timeline for molecular manufacturing. Our claim is that revolutionary capabilities will probably be developed, one way or another, by 2020 if not earlier. They said it would take at least several decades more than that.

So why am I so confident?

One reason is that I believe I've done more thinking about the system-level issues than the timeline skeptics. They have jobs and research projects--they probably have not had time to think in detail about how various capabilities can synergize and make a lot of requirements get easier in tandem.

Another reason is that a lot of the timeline skepticism comes from academia. Academic researchers have several reasons to expect things to take a long time. Perhaps the biggest is that they--at least the good ones--are on the cutting edge, where technologies do not yet synergize. They have to build tools to make tools to make tools, and they have to not just learn, but develop techniques almost every step of the way. Add to that the bureaucracy and grant-writing, and the desire to train new students on the job, and you have a recipe for delay.

Academics in today's funding environment often can't admit when they're working toward something really cool and speculative--they have to take it one tiny predictable step at a time, or they won't get funded. So it is often hard to move quickly toward exciting stuff. And finally, academics may have trouble collaborating (for a number of reasons, some good and some bad), so they may have to reinvent things that another group might have supplied more easily. If molecular manufacturing were going to come out of academia, I would indeed expect it to take 30-60 years.

DNA researcher Ned Seeman raised the point that "Most of the basic principles have not been demonstrated, much less in a 'desktop' context." This is true... depending on what you mean by "basic." For example, low-friction, low-wear, nanoscale linear, rotational, and 2-D sliding bearings have been demonstrated. They were not made by mechanosynthesis, but by manipulating and modifying existing molecules of buckytube and graphite. If mechanosynthesis will be able to make graphite and buckytubes in general-purpose shapes, then it should be able to make bearings. In fact, mechanosynthesis via scanning probe has been demonstrated--but not synthesis of diamond, yet.

So what will it take to pull together buckytube bearings (and what they imply about superlubricity in general), scanning probe chemistry (including reactions that haven't been invented yet), and the other dozen capabilities that will be needed for a nanofactory? I would argue that the biggest single factor is trying explicitly to work on a nanofactory--something which is currently impossible in academia, and unlikely in business as well. Where in academia do you see a team of 100 hand-picked researchers in a dozen different disciplines, all working toward the same goal, all expected to cooperate, and all well-funded with no paperwork? In business, you can get most of those conditions, but it's hard to get the dozen different disciplines in a single company.

Let's not forget that breakthroughs happen. Go back in time just a few years--say, to 2002--and ask any DNA researcher: Would you believe that within five years, there will be a breakthrough that will enable a single novice person, using skills and supplies obtained over the Internet on a hobbyist's budget, to design and make an engineered DNA shape with 10,000 bases in less than a month? I doubt that a single researcher in the world would have thought that was likely. But it has happened.

I can't predict what breakthroughs will happen in the next ten years. Perhaps floppy DNA scaffolds will turn out to be useful for holding buckytubes in a 3D arrangement that can be welded together (and the DNA dissolved simultaneously) with a blast from an electron microscope. Perhaps someone will discover a polymer with many of the properties of protein, but it works just fine in vacuum. Perhaps Zyvex is about to come out with a breakthrough MEMS-based scanning-probe device that will allow high-throughput mechanosynthesis experiments. None of these is likely--but it is likely that there will be one or two dozen equally useful breakthroughs by 2015.

Perhaps my position can best be summarized thus: If, for some reason, a nanofactory project has not started by 2015, but enabling technologies contine to develop and paradigms continue to shift at their current rate, then I would not expect myself to be worried in 2015 that a nanofactory will be unlikely by 2020.

Chris

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology weblog blog

Comments

[Jan-Willem Bats]

"Would you believe that within five years, there will be a breakthrough that will enable a single novice person, using skills and supplies obtained over the Internet on a hobbyist's budget, to design and make an engineered DNA shape with 10,000 bases in less than a month?"

Can you please elaborate on this? Where could I do this and which breakthrough has made it possible?

[Mike Treder, CRN]

Good explanation, Chris. I'll add two more points. The first point is that scientist-academics take a distinctly different approach to problem-solving than do engineers and product designers. This has been well-explained by Eric Drexler here and even better explained by Chris Phoenix here.

The second important point is CRN's reason for adopting an especially agressive timeline. I've talked about this before, but it's important to reiterate. Our mission is to raise awareness of and stimulate preparation for the transformative and disruptive impacts of molecular manufacturing. It's our job to watch for signs that indicate the technology might be developed faster than many people realize. We (the world) can't afford to be caught by surprise, and CRN can't afford to be cautious about taking positions that may not be popular with the mainstream. We'd rather be wrong about how quickly MM will be developed than be wrong about how long it will take.

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

Jan-Willem, I'm talking about Rothemund's DNA staples.

Re Mike's comment, I want to emphasize that CRN is not exaggerating or selecting a lower bound of our time estimates. A lower bound would be tomorrow -- if someone has been working on it in a low-profile high-urgency manner for the past decade, it's conceivable that they could finish at any time.

Knowing what we know about the projected capabilities of molecular manufacturing, we can see a lot of incentive for a focused development program -- once development has been accepted as possible.

Seeing the rapidity of technical progress and the slower but ongoing advance of paradigm shifts, we feel it's essentially certain that MM will be accepted as possible (by at least one major funder) by 2015, and likely by 2010.

And how long will the project take, once launched? With another decade of advances and breakthroughs, it would surprise us if a well-designed program starting in 2015 took more than five years. It would surprise me a lot if a program starting in 2010 took more than ten years.

Couple that with the rapidly decreasing cost of the development program, leading to an explosive growth in the number of people who could fund it, and that that's why we're comfortable with our estimate.

Chris