Molecular Manufacturing On Fox News

It's official: molecular manufacturing could be the second industrial revolution.

Physics professor Michio Kaku was interviewed on Fox News, talking about the virus-built battery that MIT's Angela Belcher has achieved. Prof. Kaku had a lot to say about molecular manufacturing in the interview:

"The holy grail of manufacture is to create a molecular factory, that is using viruses and molecules to cut, splice, and dice other molecules to create computers, laptops, transistors, and batteries for your car."

Although I expect future molecular manufacturing systems will use a more direct method than engineered viruses, the idea of "cut, splice and dice other molecules" to create products is certainly what molecular manufacturing is about.

"A virus cuts and splices other molecules together. .... At the key juncture, then you manufacture billions of these things .... This could set off a second industrial revolution. Imagine molecular factories creating Pentium chips. Molecular factories creating batteries."

So, he's talking about have massively parallel operations, being done by billions of molecular machines (viruses, in this case). So what's the big picture?

"It could create a second industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution was based on mass production of large machines. The second industrial revolution could be molecular manufacture. "

Yep, he said it: Molecular manufacture.

"We're talking about a new way of manufacturing almost everything. Instead of having robots that are gigantic and clumsy, you now have molecular robots, because what does a virus do? A virus cuts and splices and dices other molecules. So why not use that molecular ability to create a whole plethora of things for the computer age and the electric age? And so this could remove many bottlenecks in our manufacturing industry."

There's something almost Feynman-esque in his turns of phrase. Not only do we get molecular manufacturing of advanced products, but he expects it to have a large impact on the manufacturing industry as a whole.

At the end of the interview, the interviewer asks, "Just to be clear, you're a believer, right?" Kaku answers without hesitation: "In molecular manufacture. That could be the future - a second industrial revolution."

When CRN was founded in late 2002, one of our major goals was for people to accept that molecular manufacturing is coming. It seemed a long way off. And, in high tech, six and a half years is a long time. A lot of time in which there still hasn't been much discussion of the broader implications of molecular manufacturing. But I think we can say that that goal has now been pretty much achieved.

It's now time for CRN to focus even harder on those broader implications. One of the things that Prof. Kaku did not cover is the idea of factories building factories, so that for the first time in history, manufacturing capacity will not be scarce. He talked about electrical and electronic products, but not about mechanical products - including weapons. He did not discuss the economic, social, medical, and political impacts of molecular manufacturing. Of course, he couldn't, in a four-minute interview. But that's where the discussion needs to go next.

(Hat tip to Tristan Hambling.)

Chris Phoenix

Comments

[Mike Treder]

Last year on the BBC, Kaku was even more explicit.

[Tom Craver]

Dos a virus cut and splice and dice molecules?

[Chris Phoenix]

Well, the battery seems to have been made by self-assembly; the molecules were sliced and diced in the process of making the viruses, not by the viruses themselves.

But some viruses do slice and dice molecules. Most bacteria have a cell wall, and (for example) the phages that infect E. coli include an enzyme on their "landing pad" that digests the cell wall.

Chris

[kurt9]

You will notice that this "virus-built" battery technology is "wet" nanotech, much like the recent development by Dr. Seemens.

[tin whisker]

Why would we develop molecular manufacturing?How will molecular manufacturing improve our lives?...

[ISAM]

I think that a lot of nanofactory enthusiasts forget that it is almost impossibly difficult to surmount the technical difficulties of building such a machine.If one day these building problems are solved it definitely won't be in our lifetimes.I really hope I am wrong and I can benefit from these technical marvels.

[Chris Phoenix]

ISAM, have you seen the paper in which I describe a feasible nanofactory architecture in detail? It's really not that hard. Just some robotics, some chemistry, a few levels of hierarchy, some product design, some mechanical layout, some simple fault tolerance...

Chris

[Mark Liechens]

I have to agree with some of the other commentors in that I have a difficult time seeing how molecular manufacturing would in any way effect our lives.

[Chris Phoenix]

High-volume rapid prototyping of advanced high-performance products with near-unlimited manufacturing capacity, and you don't see how it could affect our lives? You don't see the implications for aerospace, medicine, food and energy, entertainment, military...?

Chris