Yes, it's coming soon.

An earlier article of Mike's inspired the following conversation.

Hal: Do any nanotechnologists actually support [CRN's] 15-year timeline?

NanoEnthusiast: Hal, from what I have seen, CRN's 15-year timeline is predicated on the assumption that the whole world, or at least the United States, will drop whatever other research is going on in other fields and focus exclusively on MNT...

Recently, I have seen a number of significant (sometimes breakthrough) advances in practical molecular construction techniques. These are not just milestones, like the first engineered protein fold; they are stepping stones.

A year or so ago, I took a quick survey of several leading molecular manufacturing researchers. They generally thought our timeline was reasonable, or at least plausible, and some agreed with it.

My earlier post today on approaching nanofactories did not directly address timeline, but should have made it clear that incremental progress in rapidly-developing fields is moving us straight toward a nanofactory.

My other post on cubic-micron DNA constructions should make it clear that we could be very close to building billion-atom molecular machines. In fact, I don't think there's anything we don't know how to do, in principle--it's just a matter of combining techniques. It would probably take several smallish research teams a few years to develop the entire infrastructure required to build a new, ten-billion-atom cubic-micron construction every week at a cost of under a million dollars per block (and far less per additional copy).

This would not be molecular manufacturing, because it would use large machines to make small products. But it would be a massively useful enabling technology.

There are already other techniques under development for making large regular and semi-regular 3D arrays of DNA that can be decorated with other molecules. There will probably be some creative thought coming from those projects as to what could be put into a heterogeneous directly-manufactured array. That would create concrete wishes for the manufactured-DNA-construct system to build. More generally, as the broad field of nanotechnology moves from discovering new phenomena to trying to build inventions, they will be wanting something better than self-assembly. That will help to drive projects like this.

If a large country or company put a Manhattan project-like focus on MM--not a total redirection, just hiring a few thousand scientists--starting today, I think we could certainly have biomolecule-based MM in well under ten years, and maybe less than five. If someone has been focusing on it for the past ten years, we could have it any time now.

How long it will take to get from biomolecules to diamondoid is a matter of opinion. Personally, I think it will likely be pretty quick. Biomolecules build silica in water, silica builds diamond in vacuum.

And big biomolecule machines are just one of several promising pathways to diamond-building nanomachines.

Yes, it's coming soon.

Chris Phoenix

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology weblog blog

Comments

[MysticMonkeyGuru]

It is NOT coming soon. This stuff is at least 80 to 100 years away.

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

Which dimension is going to be the one that takes at least 80 years? And why? Be specific, please. Or go away.

Chris

[NanoEnthusiast]

This is what always gets me, the optimists are too optimistic, and pessimist are way too pessimistic. There is far too much researched focused on the nanoscale to make 80-100 timeline make sense. If we have practical demonstrations of basic mechanosysthesis reactions in 20 years or so, you would see the floodgates open all around the world, because no one would then risk loosing out on MNT. Making 2040-2050 the absolute latest for nanofactory development. However if the most basic reactions can't be demonstrated in the next couple of decades, despite improvements to scanning probe microscopes, then the goal of the nanofactory will have been proven impossible. This is why I think century(ies) long timelines don't make sense, it is 30-50 years away or never for me.

Furthermore, from what I have read, the ideas of Drexler are not uniformly met with criticism by the establishment. The response is, I think, more like; "This is too far away to matter to what I am doing, therefore I will not give it much thought." I think in private many scientists would admit to finding these ideas compelling, but see no upside to siding with the MNT community and plenty of downside. Since we are not, in my opinion, yet at a point where there is a need to take a stand (i.e. current basic nano-scale research is necessary first step to MNT, and it is not clear if a directed effort would really help this early in the game), then why force the people making the first steps to support MNT? For most researchers this is a controversy best set aside for latter. The question is, what would it take to change this situation?

If CRN is going to adhere to a 15 year timeline, then there must be something so spectacular in the works on a 2-5 year scale that would make that kind of paradigm shift needed to happen. That would then leave a solid decade where everyone sees, and then works toward that goal. So far I see nothing like that it the works, instead there are many breakthroughs that are only POTENTIAL ENABLING technologies for MNT. There must be some concrete plan-of-action by the MNT community that uses these breakthroughs outside of the community to prove something *specific* to MNT in the lab. Only then will you see a change of attitudes.

[MysticMonkeyGuru]

http://www.kurzweilai.net/mindx/frame.html

Government expert: Nanobots 100 years away.

"A Dr. Andrew Maynard from the Woodrow Wilson Center for Something or Other just appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio and said that nanobots are 80 to 100 years away IF then."

[Chris Phoenix, CRN]

NanoEnthusiast, thanks for your comments; you inspired today's blog post.

Chris

[Jan-Willem Bats]

"Government expert: Nanobots 100 years away."

Oh yeah, it's well known that every technology takes at least 120 years to come to full adulthood, right?

WRONG!

Several decades tops. And nanotech is already 20 years old.

[NanoStuff]

Some guy some time ago: "Planes one billion years away"

Ok, so I'm making shit up, but you can't make a reliable prediction not knowing what's required to reach it. You will either go very wrong one way, the other way or you will get lucky.

[NanoEnthusiast]

I've always found this one amusing.

“I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.”
-Wilbur Wright

I also remember one that went something like,'I don't think man will master flight in a hundred years or a thousand years.' This was also by Wilbur, but I can't find a source on that one.