/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3805749

Well, this guy, Philip Moriarty is an experimental physicist working at Nottingham. In the 2006 Nanoscience debate he got all pissed at the Drexler cheerleading crowd (See here, I guess: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-nanotech-schism)) and told them their ideas of nanomachines based on diamond had not been proven because nobody had as much as removed a Hydrogen atom from a Diamond surface.

So what does he do? He makes an experiment proposal. And he gets the funding. In 2008 he got a 5 years grant to perform mechanosynthesis experiments ( http://www.molecularassembler.com/Nanofactory/Media/PressReleaseAug08.htm ; http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/G007837/1)) and has been doing both diamond and silicon mechanosynthesis experiments.

For some diamond mechansynthesis stuff (DMS): http://www.molecularassembler.com/Nanofactory/

A nice video by him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XPE07QIFBM

I generally agree with the objections that some of the systems proposed are infeasible (See pic for an example of a 'bearing' which was used as an example of an ideal nanosystem which I think is infeasible) but I also think nanotechnology doesn't have to be explicitly based on biological systems. Just because biology got it right in a water solution doesn't mean that if you change the conditions, the design for nanosystems doesn't change.

The structure is a planetary gear with the case removed, by the way.