Robot, Build Thyself. And when you finish that, build some more of you. Go ahead, fill a whole desert valley. And then product unlimited energy while elmiminating the greenhouse effect, Okay? Thanks. Klaus Lackner and Christopher Wendt, the desert White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico will be transformed into a new world. For hundreds of miles in every direction the alkali flats will be covered with a blinking array of solar panels. These might look familiar but nothe little suitcase size robots scurrying among the panels on a grid of white ceramic tracks. The robots, called auxons (from the Greek auxein "to grow") are designed for specialized tasks. Digger auxons scrape an inch of dirt off the desert floor. Transport auxons carry the dirt to a beehive of electrified ovens. Out of these ovens, which work at superhigh temperatures, come useful metals, like iron and aluminum, or the silicon required for making computer chips. Production auxons shape these materials into machine parts and solar panels. Assembly auxons fit them in place. The process begins again as a new batch of self replicating automatons rolls into the desert to scoop up another load of dirt. This electrified grid of tracks and bbustling robots grow exponentially across the new mexican mesas, doubling in size every six months. Starting at the size of a football field, in 10 year it would cover the continent. This one colony of auxons alone will produce enough power to meet the current electrical energy needs of the United States. When switched from reproduction to production, the colonies will salinate seawater, pump freshwater to the nation's farmland, and suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, transform carbon dioxide into mountains of limestone. Another exponentially growingauxon colony, it will be able to meet the world's total energy demands 3 times over. No longer starved for power or limited to the polluting technologies once used to get it, people will be looking forward to the 22nd century, when things should really get interesting. 1992 Klaus Lackner at Los Alamos National Lab and Christopher Wendt began wondering why scientists no longer think about big projects. In the 1950's people weren't afraid to pop off ideas about interplanetary travel or terraforming Mars into a space colony. Talked about the problem of global warming and how it could be solved by transforming carbon dioxide into carbonate rock- a stable form of matter that would give us no more trouble than the cliffs of Dover. But to make these chalky white cliffs of stabilized CO2 would require so much machinery that the cost of buying or manufacturing it would bankrupt you. The only way you could do it would be to produce the machinery automatically. During the day 300-1000 watts of solar power rains down on every square meter of land. Harness this power into a self reproducing system and 2 things happen. The system grows big fast, and it produces a phenomenal amount of energy. A million - square-kilometer auxon system would provide all the elements for a sustainable world econom. The price tag $1bil- $100 bil. Cheap compared with the current military budget of $264 bil. Automated industrial process growing like algae over the surface of the planet, but they knew it was big and powerful and could be programmed for a wide variety of human uses. They would bring the dark, satanic mills of the 19th century into today's sunlight. They would scoop up the free energy raining down on Earth and use it to put the spark of life into dirt, water and air, which were all that were needed to build artificial life. Researching the industrial processes and chemical reactions required to build self reproducing machines. They couldn't think of one, but they imagined that somewhere there had to be a bottleneck, a first principle or fundamental law which made the idea impossible. They neer found one. Klaus Lackner and Wendt outlines a self-reproducing system with closure. This means it was capable of making copies of itself without the addition of material from outside. Designed into the system were the powers of production, replication, growth and self repair. The tools required for building an auxon system are borrowed from experimental physics, chemistry, robot design and inventiveness. Start with common dirt and break it into its components. Dirt from anywhere filled with iron ore, aluminum, silicon, copper, carbon and virtually every other element required for industrial production. Low concentrations and metals existing as oxides. Steer clear of substances in short supply. So develop the chemistry for a new kind of industrial process. Stripping away the oxygen molecules in metallic oxides by binding them to silicon (which abounds in dirt) or carbon (which abounds in air). The one sticking point in making this process work is the heat it requires. Ores break down in the presence of carbon and release their constitutent metals only when fired at temperatures ranging up to 4000'F; the silicon reaction does work at lower temperatures, but more heat makes it go faster. These temperatures, although feasible in today's industrial processes are too expensive to maintain - unless the system is being run by auxons with plenty of solar energy to spare. After the initial priming with silicon and carbon, the system recycles all the elements required to keep itself going. You scoop up dirt and heat it. Into the furnace goes silicon. The silicon gloms on to the oxygen atoms, ripping them away from the iron, sodium, potassium and magnesium. There they are- the metals you were after in the form ofa liquid or a gas. The oxygen from the metals turns the silicon into silicon dioxide, or quartz. Carbon rips away the oxygen atoms again, turning the quartz back into silicon and carbon monxide. Carbon monoxide , in the presence of hydrogen, becomes carbon and water. Carbon reduces aluminum. Electricity splits water into hydrogen and oxygen and the process starts all over again, with silicon ,carbon and hydrogen being dumped into dirt filled high temperature furnaces. Searched literature on industrial techniques for making metals.Iron, magnesium,calcium - all at one time or another have been extracted by applying intense heat to ores, Even aluminum has been extracted this way. Once dirt is broken down into piles of metals, there's no conceptual difficulty with the rest of the technology for shaping these piles into rodes, panels, cogs, conductors, insulators, computer chips and other modern tools. Robots are not good at rolling ingots, hammering them into sheets of metal, cutting and shaping machines parts , and the nassembling them into usable tools. "A close cousin to all the automated steps required to build auxons already exists in industry. A can can be made in 16 hours almost entirely by robots. Robots controlled by apple computers assembl parts of apple computers. The only difference will be that they are producing more of themselves as the target lot. Lackner and Wendt were merely trying to prove that their idea wasn't impossible. Once the bolt cutters and fasteners were running, the trick to keeping the system going would be simplicity. Rather than smart robots make a decentralized system of dumb machines, each performing its dedicated task. You want them cheap and dispensable, an auxon can jump off a cliff and you won't miss it. The auxon system wouldn't have any brain or automatic administrative center like the one NASA envisioned in 1980 when it proposed building self growing mining modules on the surface of the mooon. They proposed instead to manage their auxons using remot, localized sensor that work by reflex. Each auxon would be able to sense what was going on in its immediate neighborhood and respond in a simple , way. Monitor system via satellite or feedback loops. Humans enter to reprogram some machines The system's ultimate control would lie in turning off the eenrgy. The system could be designed to respond to a broadcast radio signal that would shut down the solar panels. Administrative auxons - regulators that scuttle around enforcing productin specs and preventing mutations from reproducing themselves. Exponential growth of Large self - reproducing machine systems" published in May in Mathematical and computer modeling. 1970 Freeman Dyson conducted thought experiments on future of machinery. Dyson proposed building a rock-eating automaton that would fill the Sonoran Desert with self reproducing machines. Devoted toc ollecting sunlight and producing electric power, these machines would generate so much power that the rock eaters could easily support another colony, this one of rock restorers devoted to putting the desert back to its original form. /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ Hypersea Invasion life began in the sea but really succeeded on land. Why? According to one grand theory, it's because 450million years ago life created hypersea - a vast interior ocean flowing through all the organisms on the face of the earth. /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ The best computer in all possible worlds. David Deutsch Oxford physicist. 10 years ago conceived of a quantum computer - whose fundamental components are single atoms or even individual particles o light. A quantum computer would be the ultimate computer, less a machine than a force of nature. Components in computers cannot continue to shrink indefinitely. At the current rate we'll hit atomic scale in 20years time. In quantum mechanics protons, electrons and particles are slippery. Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Deutsch explained how it may be possible to build acomputer by taking advantage of a particles ability to bein many places at once. The two slit experiment wave-particle duality-interferences. Light is made of particles called photons. wavelike particle. One version of physics interfereing alternate universes is many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Hugh Everett. Computation ultimately must have some physical basis. Whether it's atoms or photons, or electric currents in a conventional computer something is manipulated. to carry out a calculation. Peter Shor mathematician at AT&T Bell Labs Shor proved that a full blown quantum computer if one is built could factor any number , no matter how long, in seconds. To say that is a task beyond the reach of today's computers is a tremendous understatement. The trick is to manipulate the quantum mechanical properties of photons, atoms or other particles, This would allow the computer to carry out calculations simultaneously in many parallel universes. A quantum computer with 1000 atoms or photons in place of conventional computer circuits would have access to more universes than there are atoms in our universe. Jeff Kimble at Caltech, beginningso f a quantum computer. 2 small mirrors in a metal cylinder, the mirrors are 50microns (0.002 inches) apart. One partially transparent so a laser beam can shine photons through it and into the space between the two mirrors. When the experiment is running a beam of cesium atoms passes between the 2 mirors, parallel to their surfaces and at right angles to the photons coming through the partially transparent mirror. In conventional computers the presense or absence of a electric charge on a circuit element like a transistor stands for a zero or a one in binary code. A computer works by storing or changing these binary numbers as it carries out its calculations. Kimble is doing something analogous with photons. Polarized photon - vibrating in specific measureable directions as they travel. Photons virating in one direction up/down couldd stand for a zero, photon vibrating from side-side strand for a 1. Kimble wants to send polarized photons between the two mirrors, these vibrating photons would in turn cause the cesium atoms to bibrate. The vibrating cesium atoms would create an electromagnetic field that would change the polarization of the photons - from up / down to side-side. The change dphotons would bounce off the fully reflective mirror, then exit through the partially transparent one, and a detector would register the new polarization. Such simple changes in polarization could be the basis for a quantum computer. Changing a zero to a one to represent a single step in addition, Photons could simultaneously manipulate 2^1,000 strings of zeros and ones . This is because a photon can simultaneously be in two polarized states. A photon has one polarization in one universe and another in some parallel univese. Since each of the 1000 photons can be both a zero and a one at the same time, there are 2^1,000 possible compbinations of those photons. A quantum computer could work with all these states simultaneously. David Wineland and Chris Monroe at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder Colorado, have the same goal as Kimble but are using different means to achieve it. They hold a row of mercury ions in an electromagnetic field and use lasers to make the ions jump between two quantum energy states. The excited state represents a one in binary code; the gorund, or lower, energy level is a zero. Here too- until someone make a measurement - the ions can simultaneously be in both the ground and excited states. Both these approaches are a long way from a working quantum compute. No one has yet figured out how to get atoms or photons to interfere in such a way that the resulting interference pattern would correspond to the answer to some calculation. Kimble and Wineland express two sslightly differenttakes on the long-term prospects of their work. Problems : (1) easily jostled by stray particles and radiation from the outside world. (2) interference from the outside. Laser pulses that control the photons will be strong or a bit too weak. A scheme for a quantum computer : instead of trapping atoms in an electromagnetic field, Lloyd would use atoms that are already naturally entrapped in a crystal lattice. He would change the states of these atoms by bombarbng them with laser light. It's a crystal in which you excite intelligent vibrations by shining colored lights on it. /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ DNA computing p98 /*---------------------------------------------------------------------*/ A Small problem of Propulsion Gerald Smith Penn State Phsysicist. Antimatter rocket fuel to prpel a spaceship to near light speeds. Smith has worked out how to build an antimatter rocket. Now we're about to make atomic antihydrogen. By going a mere 50 billion miles researcher could use the sun's gravitational field as a giant magnifying lens to peer into the heart of the galaxy. Alpha centauri is 4.3 lightyears 25trillion miles away. To reach Alpha Centaurin a decade you'd have to average .5c , lorentz transform are problematic. Increased mass. This rules out chemical rockets, nuclear electric propulsion woudl provide 10 million times more thrust / pound of fuel but problems. Fission needs to be contained by an elaborate reactor which would emlt under the high temperatures requiredf or propulsion. Fission produces heavy, slow moving ioins that don't lend themselvest o fast accelration. Fusion is better suited . A pellet of fuel bombarded by laser beams could be made to produce a fusion explosion in a combustion chamber, releasing enough energy to kick a rocket to high speeds. A reliable fusion reaction is difficult. Antimatter - antiprotons, antielectrons, positrons. Disappear in a burst of energy when they come into contact with their matter counterparts. Annihilation events release tremendous energy in the form of gamma rays and pi-mesons, or pions. A pound of antimatter fuel would yield a hundred times more energy than a pound of fission or fusion fuel. An antimater rocket should be able to accelerate a 1 ton payload to .1C with a mere 9kilograms of antimatter fuel. The first problem is getting enough antimatter. Antimatter particles are hard to catch. Can catch antiprotons from accelerator put in a magnetic bottle Penning trap, but a strong B field superconducting magnets to hold hundred billion antiprotons. Better is to combine antiprotons with positrons to make antihydrogen atoms. What would keep the atoms from excaping the magnetic trap is the tiny magnetic field created by each spinning positron and anti protons. This so called magnetic moment, if it is oriented opposite to the field of hte bottle, generates a force that is just strong enough to push the atoms to the center of the trap without bursting it. Condense antihydrogen into liquid droplets, or icelike crystals and store them at low temperatures. Allowing more compact and efficient storage than penning traps. Forget about pure antimatter propulsion. Use antimatter as a catalyst for a conventional fission-fusion reaction - the kind used in hydrogen bombs. Start with uranium Bombard it with neutrons starting a fission reaction, which in turn heats a capsule of deuterium and tritium - heavy forms of hydrogen - triggering a fusion reaction. Problem is huge explosions. Inject antiprotons , wen hits a uranium atoms, annihilates itself with one of the protons in the nucleus. The resulting pions rip through the remaininder of the nucleus and blast it aparts. Releasing neutrons. The fission chain proceeds enormously fast, generating enough heat and pressure to trigger a fusion reaction in the deuterium - tritium core. Setting of 15ton TNT eery second for a few days a manned ship could get to make it to Pluton in 3 years. Problem with fuel burning interstellar rockets says Bob forward (NASA) is that the rocket has a push reaction mass Dead weight. Bob Forward in 1960 toying with an idea for a solar sail. Big swatch of aluminum foil to catch the solar wind, the charged particles that stream constantly from the sun,, ride it out of the solar system. The free ride aspect as attractive, but wouldn't work for interstellar travel. Hit doldrums outside the solar system , where the wind peters out. Idea using a ruby laser light "birghter than the suns" Push the sail with a laser beam. Photons from the laser would strike the sail and impart some of their energy in the form of momentum pushing the sail faster and faster. Since the power source would be left behind in the solar system it would be serviced and maintained on earth. without the need for engines or fuel, the ship could be made much lighter which means less power would be needed to push it to near light speeds. The laser beam would push the sail for about a year, accelerating to .3C, then the beam would be turned off, and the ship would coast. As it neared alpha centauri, they would detach the outer ring of the sail - the sail would be constructed in 3 concentric circles and push it in front of the ship, Back in the solar system, the big sun powered laser would be fired up again, sending a giant slug of light toward the ship. The light would bounce off the detached loop and fall onto the center part of the sail from the front, thus breaking the space craft. The push a laser impacts to a sail is from its magnetic field. Which exerts a forward force on charged particles oscilatting in the sail, but the force is small. The challenge would be building a laser lengs. Laser beam tends to diverge over long distances. Saturn and neptune refocus the beam and keep it powerful. Balance between the sun's gravitaitonal pull and outward push of the laesr. Consist of rings of plastic alternating with empty space ona steel framework, would be just as big as the sail. 50000 tons. The problem is using lasers, lasers have a wimpy momentum transfer. Particle beams offer the best chance of reaching the stars. Particle beams are beams of heavier particles, such as protons, which travel slightly slower than light but which because they have more mass, are more efficient than massles photons at imparting momentum. Bob Zubrin of Lockheed Martin and Danna Andrews CE of Boeing's X33 Project . The spacecraft's sail is a giant loop of superconducting wire, which generates a doughnut-shaped magnetic field, when charged particles from the beam strike the field, they are deflected, just as the solar wind is deflected by Earth's magnetic field. But in the process they transfer momentum to the sail. The particle beam itself would be powered bya fusion reactor, probably located on an asteroid, which would heat a gas to extremely high temperature. This hot gas (plasma) would be funneled into a tube 1/2 mile long. As the particles moved down the tube, they would be deflected off the sides so taht by the time they reached the end, they would all be travling in more or less thesame direction. A particle beam diverges quickly, only effective over short distance. Since particlebeam is a more powerful accelerator than a laser it would not need to be trained on the ship for as long. Accelerate a manned ship to .3C in 1/6 the energy required by Forward's laser scheme. But 1000g accleration can humnans survive? Immerse astronauts in highly oxygenated liquid (water or fluorocarbon). Another drawback to particle beams is they they cannot project power across stellar distances. Once the crew traelled to Alpha Centauri they couldn't return. One solution would be to make a spacecraft about the size of the head of a pin. A nanotechnology spacecraft. Weighing about a gram, a pinsize probe could be accelerated to .75C without having its mass swell to overwhelming proportions. If researchers master the art of building a probe that small, which they have not done, other obstacles.... How would we track a pinhead at Alpha Centauri? Shining a laser beam on it and then looking for the reflection with the Keck telescope. No way of reporting back, no way to build a radio dish as small as a pinhead.