X-Message-Number: 32810
From: 
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:46:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: nanotech progress

I don't have the patience to list the references or expound the results,  
but even a cursory search will reveal many useful developments in  

nanotechnology, and many patents. But even if there was or is over-optimism in  
some 
quarters about the pace of progress, that does not affect the iron strength  
of the basic argument. 

The basic argument was made by Nobelist Richard  Feynman around 1959, if I 
remember correctly--that there is no known obstacle to  eventual 

manipulation of individual atoms and molecules. Since the advent of the  
scanning 
tunneling microscope. specialists have been able in some cases to push  around 
individual atoms to position them where wanted. 

If you need proof  that more complicated nano machines can exist, you need 
look no further than  thee and me and that there tree and every little louse 
and flea. The bodies of  living things for millions of years have, through 
evolution and accident,  acquired the ability to make and mend their own 
components and reproduce  themselves. There is absolutely no reason why those 
existing bionanotech  machines should be the only ones possible, why nature 
should already have  exhausted all the possibilities. The opposite conclusion 
is compelling--that  man-made nanotech will eventually dwarf the present 
achievements of nature.  

Curtis Henderson used to like the story about the skeptic who said that  
heavier-than-air flying mkachines were impossible--at the same time that a  
pigeon made a deposit on his hat. 

Robert Ettinger

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