6
$\begingroup$

The Settings: A pod of nanobots stranded on earth-like barren planet orbiting sun-like star. Assume no life form has formed on the planet, and nanobots popuate the planet.

  1. Could they evolve complex ecology (techno-sytem in place of ecosystem) where plant-like and zoo-like species composed entirely from evolved nanobots (instead of biological cellular life)?
  2. Assuming Nanobot's considerably efficiency at utilizing energy for manufacturing more of them, modifying future generation for better survivability, and assuming that they were quite intelligent as a swarm, is it possible that they evolve at extremely faster rate?
  3. If a sapient species of their life line do evolve, is it possible for them to utilize other "life" of their own line (composed of evolved nanobots) in form of biotech, like intentionally evolve a species to a specialized breed for their own purpose, like transport, air transport, bioships?

Additional notes:

  1. Evolved multicellular (multinanobots?)-like species has their cell (nanites?) capable of communicate range limited to a single individual
  2. Brain-to-brain communication with different individual (another colony of specialized nanites?) could be done via general purpose (imagine usb port) wiring slots (kinda similar to James Cameron's avatar nerve-tip).
Improve this question
$\endgroup$
3
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ "Brain-to-brain communication... ...ould be done via general purpose (imagine usb port) wiring slots" Why not just use vocalizations? It works at a much longer range. $\endgroup$
    – In Hoc Signo
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 23:34
  • $\begingroup$ Hi @SEistoopoliticallycorrect it has been five years since I post this question. Apparently I forgot that I ever ask it. To answer your question, recently I fancied multiple bands of radio frequency for information transfer in fiction, but yes, it is always better to have multiple channels of communication. $\endgroup$
    – Hendrik Lie
    Commented Mar 18, 2020 at 2:14
  • $\begingroup$ Please explain in what way organic, biological life on Earth does not satisfy your requirements? At a suitable scale, cellular life is just a nanobot, built out of proteins, running instructions recorded on DNA and RNA tapes. $\endgroup$
    – PcMan
    Commented Dec 26, 2020 at 12:15

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8
$\begingroup$

Your point 2 answers the question: if they are capable of making modifications to themselves, then they can evolve, and if they can evolve, then they will begin to specialize in order to take advantages of ecological niches.

They will also have another force driving evolution, essentially ecosystems are like markets (or markets like ecosystems if you will) and the various organisms will be attempting to maximize their outputs and minimize their inputs. These "market forces" will drive specialization, develop predator/prey relationships as well as parasitism and symbiosis; all the things we see in our own ecosystem.

As machines, I will assume they operate at a factor of up to 1,000,000X faster than similar biological systems (the ratio between electrical and electrochemical signal speeds), and as nano systems, they can obviously extract resources from the planet much more quickly and efficiently than macro scale beings like ourselves. This leads me to believe that their evolution, branching out into species and establishment of an ecosystem will be far faster than Earth (the 3 billion year period when Earth was essentially covered by pond scum will be over in a few thousand years, and the "Cambrian Explosion" will take hours or days when it happens.

The only thing that will make this scenario difficult is the sheer speed of evolution will lead to extremely unstable ecosystems, with mass extinctions and wild changes to the ecosystem (and possibly climactic and even geological changes due to the actions of the nanomachines) being common events.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
4
  • $\begingroup$ Interesting, I didn't see that my point two answers my own question, +1 for it. I'll let this for another day before I pick an answer, because it's unfair to pick your answer as the best answer just because yours were the only one. But if yours proven to be the best, I'll definitely pick it as the best answer. Please understand :D $\endgroup$
    – Hendrik Lie
    Commented Mar 28, 2015 at 19:02
  • $\begingroup$ One requisite is that they should be able to replicate imperfectly. One point against nanobots evolution is that probably there is not much redundancy in their structures/software, leaving little room for "trial & error" $\endgroup$
    – SJuan76
    Commented Mar 28, 2015 at 19:53
  • $\begingroup$ Assuming that their programming (or swarm programming?) is sufficiently flexible, like "IF FAIL THEN CHANGE" scheme, would it be possible? Also, considering manufacturing flaw could be treated in the same term as on genetic mutation, would there be natural selection to occur? $\endgroup$
    – Hendrik Lie
    Commented Mar 29, 2015 at 7:09
  • $\begingroup$ If they can "telepathically" communicate however, I'd expect we'd see a world without competition and just one planetary hivemind instead. Incompatible species would quite quickly be eradicated once the first hivemind forms $\endgroup$
    – Hobbamok
    Commented Jun 2, 2022 at 8:32

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .