New answers tagged nanotechnology
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A two-stage approach involving alkali metals
The alkali metals are the ones in the first column of the Periodic Table of Elements, and include, among others, Cesium.
All alkali metals, the heavier ones especially, react violently when mixed with water.
All the nano-bots need to do is grab some alkali metals, and dump it all over the enemy. The second ...
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Your nanobots, just like living beeings create a new generation any x-lifecycles.
They do this to repair, get more numerous- and to pass on instructions- via genedrive. Meaning.. a new nanobot with a brand new instructionset, overrides previous instructions by his ancestors writting over the instructions of the previous generation.
So to pass out new ...
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Flocking behavior.
You will not directly control your many drones. You will set a task and the drones will communicate between themselves and figure out how to do it. Like an ant or bird, each drone will have a set of rules that govern its behavior according to its position and motion, the position and motion of the target and the position and motion of ...
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From a comms perspective what you need is a technique called Multiplexing. This technique has been around since the telegraph and in general terms allows one to share multiple signals on a single 'line'. In the case of your nanobots, this is probably a single wireless channel.
The link provided talks about the different types of multiplexing techniques and ...
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Presumably the fog has some way to replenish itself (or used to, at least). Foglets will be lost to time, mishaps and just plain old wear and tear, so they need remaking. That could be by a fog factory or by each other (or somewhere in between).
Given that this is true: why care about destroying the fog? The amount of energy your fog can call on is (...
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Computing is the EASIEST part of the Grey Goo Monster
We already have amorphous, distributed computing - it's called the internet, and it seems to work ok.
Computers don't need to know where other computers are in the physical world, they need to know where other computers are in the logical world. Generally, we use IP addresses to achieve this. There is a ...
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Disclaimer
As you imply, the oft-depicted amorphous grey goo robot doesn't make all that much sense.
Humans and animals are made of nano-robots. But we still have bones, brains and livers. We are not a homogeneous mass.
The "grey-goo robot" is a hybrid of two (probably) scientifically incompatible concepts. The "grey goo" scenario, which is a semi-...
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Maybe redundancy...the "memory" or state of the machine is represented in a distributed and redundant form, so in order to destroy it, you must destroy it completely, or at least more than a certain fraction (such fraction to be determined through plot points). That adds a certain twist to combat; just "aim for the head" doesn't work anymore, you need to go ...
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There are two major aspects: Computing and memory.
I'll forego the outer appearance, mostly, and just assume that the body consists of a swarm of cells that are capable of:
Executing minor computations
Storing small amounts of data
Communicating over short distances (let's say a few cm), relaying messages. A larger group can group together to communicate ...
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Each bot must be quite a bit smarter than we can make them today. Not nearly human-smart but, say, ant-smart. So, we have trillions of well-organized "ants".
The things the whole organism knows must be divided into small "facts" that can be stored in single ants. Each ant should be able to handle maybe a hundred facts and reason about them.
Important ...
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The human brain already deals fairly well with adapting to losing surprisingly large chunks of itself.
It seems reasonable that a structure capable of re-aligning could do just fine assuming it didn't have anything else too complicated to think about while it was reforming the bits it needed for higher-order processing.
A housefly's brain is really small, ...
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It might be worth adding that when dealing with a technology level that assumes nano-scale replicators working in tandem, having any kind of a "microchip" as part of the body would be comparable to fueling a space craft with a wood stove. I don't think such a robot would have any identifiable control chip. If the nanobots that constitute this robot have ...
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Modular computing, and flexible multipurpose components
First point to consider is that a computing task can be broken down into very small elements, and the physical location of those elements doesn't actually matter if their inputs and results can be routed to where they are going.
Think about how simple transistors make up an actual computer. Those are ...
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We already have self-forming microbot swarms in the laboratory. If you continue the micro-miniaturisation, or simply posit self-healing synapse systems, that should take care of your organic (or amorphous) greygoo.
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Mixing the right amount of techno-babble and science, consider that in a neural network the output of the network depends on its layers, but do not change if you swap the neurons, which individually perform the same operations. What changes is the input/output of each neuron according to its position in the network.
Your "fixed form" equals the "fixed ...
answered Feb 5 at 16:08
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I can't imagine any way to accomplish this using any tech whatever. As one of the comments says, getting this kind of energy out of nanites is going to be a tall order.
The problem is to make it thin and strong enough to block a human. But at the same time not destroy what is inside.
Imagine a huge pile of jet engines set in a ring.
https://www.youtube....
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Assuming they are capable of doing so, the "obvious" answer is that they float around waiting for a human to be within range and then cause a massive cerebral hemorrhage. For the setting, this should cause people to basically fall over near the object, with no one able to figure out why it happens.
The tricky part is whether they can do it quickly enough to ...
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I suggest the treasure is highly radioactive. That would certainly kill off those who came into contact with it and would bring the curse too life with a vengeance. Unless the population were from an advanced industrialised nation they would not have a clue what was causing the curse.
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With nano materials you should be good. Millimeter-sized drones would hover maintaining centimeter-sized gaps. When it's time to assemble, they would deploy "tentacles" which should connect to each other, forming a strong lattice. Nano materials can, in theory, provide sufficient strength and rigidity for this lattice.
This lattice, though, would be just a ...
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Utility Fog
The atmosphere is saturated with a thin fog of microscopic nanobots, capable of linking together to create larger machines. The card is simply a program and a transmitter that sends a signal to all nearby "foglets", calling them together to form the creature. Summoning takes time because it takes a while for the foglets to migrate to the ...
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Wormholes and entanglement
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke
Eyeing that science-based tag, I'm awfully skeptical that there's a scientific way to summon an eagle. But if we assume the eagle is real, and his attacks are real, all we need to do is figure out a plausible way to get him there.
First, ...
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Your creature is a hologram and the card is a projector with a self recharging battery (solar, nuclear, soul sucking, up to you).
When Belram is attacked, the projector needs to simulate the damage and interaction with the Belram which consumes more power causing the hologram to fail and return to its "Card form" after receiving a few blows.
This is also ...
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