Proto-assembler (outdated)
Note: This page is talking about "molecular assemblers" (here "proto-assemblers") in the sense of:
Diamondoid self-replicative nanodevices/nanobots that are monolitic, ultra-compact, and usually mobile in 3D.
For a disambiguation to other meanings see page Molecular assembler (disambiguation)
(wiki-TODO: make this into a template)
Proto-assembler: The basic idea is/was to create a machine with side-lengths of one to a few hundred nanometers which
packages all the functionality to produce useful products and also make copies of itself (directly with diamondoid mechanosynthesis).
This way one would get an exponential rate of replication and can
eventually switch from replication to production of macroscopic goods withinin reasonable amounts of time.
There's a lot of collary falling out from this premise. One thing that everyone immediately jumps at:
What if the switch from replication to production fails and these assembles never stop replication?
Wahaaa panic!! 😱😱😱
See: Grey goo horror fable, Reproduction hexagon & Replication pentagon
Contents
The three problems
There are three main problems with molecular assemblers.
- their inefficiency
- the difficulty in reaching them
- their undesirability
- Why ultra-compact molecular assemblers are too inefficient
- Why ultra-compact molecular assemblers are too difficult
- Why ultra-compact molecular assemblers are not desirable
Inefficiency
For a proto-assembler inefficiency can be an excusable issue
so long that inefficiency is not impacting feasibility.
For more on the several inefficiency issues of molecular assembles see page:
Molecular assemblers as advanced productive nanosystem (outdated)
It turned out that packaging all the functionality into such a small package is a rather unbalanced and inefficient approach for in-vacuum gem-gum technology. This can be seen in the nanofactory cross section image where it is visible that the bottommost assembly levels (there arranged as stacked coplanar layers) take the largest portion of the stack. In the small package of an assembler the bottommost layers would be highly underrepresented making it rather slow (and inefficient).
Difficulty
High difficulty is a serious problem and was (and still is 2023)
a big critique point regarding the direct path.
(wiki-TODO: factor following out to: Direct path atom manipulation difficulties)
Doing single atomic manipulation with scanning probe microscopy is a very hard problem.
Especially when going only a bit out of 2D into 3D.
Especially materials (like diamond) that …
– feature strong covalent room temperature stable bonds
– are non conductive
– have small crystal lattice spacing
– don't like to form large scale atomically flat surfaces
Plus atom placement needs to be done in sufficient fast succession to form a proto-system in reasonable time …
– either by frequency (very difficult with macroscale tips pushing around nanoscale atoms)
– or by parallelism (multiple needle tips) other challenges here
Undesirability
Reasons for undesirably were clearly over-hyped. See: Grey goo horror fable
But it's clear that they came from overused misleading insidiously self suggesting biological analogies.
For "Molecular assemblers as advanced productive nanosystem (outdated)" it eventually became clear that
following this immediately self suggesting bio-analogy to living cells leads to a massively sub-optimal system.
For a proto-assembler that sub-optimality may be acceptable but there is still the matter of difficulty.
Optimal systems look very different. See: gemstone metamaterial on-chip factories
Old proto-assembler designs
Quite a bit of thought was put into the assembler model (wiki-TODO: link relevant parts in KSRM).
Either they where supposed to swim about in a solution
or there was some form of movement mechanism in a machine phase scaffold crystal envisioned like:
- sliding cubes (wiki-TODO: TODO add references)
- legged blocks (wiki-TODO: TODO add references)
Terminology
The term "proto-assembler" is not a completely new word creation here.
It likely has found some use in disussions arond the topic in the past.
Related
The three problems of molecular assemblers that make them an outdated concept:
- Why ultra-compact molecular assemblers are too inefficient
- Why ultra-compact molecular assemblers are too difficult
- Why ultra-compact molecular assemblers are not desirable
The microscale analogon
Microcomponent maintenance microbots
These are also monolithic mobile devices but …
- way bigger, that is: microscale and mesoscale (not milliscale though) — see: Scales
- not capable of mechanosynthesis (as this would be way too slow and inefficient)
- operating at a higher assembly levels above assembly level 1
- being dependent on preproduced microcomponents or crystolecules and their assembies as vitamins.
- not so ultra compact, that is not so compressed in functionality (not rferring to size but to functional compressedness)
Microcomponent maintenance microbots are not selfreplcative, well, assuming a supply of preproduced-vitamins they could act weakly selfreplicatingly. Especially for ones capable of processing (or even scavenging) crystolecules. Malicious crystolecule scavenger microbots could be a (very advanced tech) scenario. Pure microcomponent scavenger microbots though obviously can't selfreplicate just lug same sized identical units around at best. They may act like a beehive, dispersing to do scavenging and returning to (macroscopic scale) base to put the loot into part magazines.
Regarding the three problems of molecular assemblers
these apply much less for Microcomponent maintenance microbots:
- Efficientcy: Better because of better level throughput balancing as there is no (ignored) need to integrate many long factory lines for many different mass produced standard part types. And also there's less energy turnover and a much smaller number of pieces of matter that need moving around.
- Difficulty: Easier to build, well kind of, they'll be built by already advances systems. See: Gem-gum factory
- Undesirability: Muchvless so as they are usually not selfreplicative and if so then they need preproduced vitamins.
Strongly depends on the concrete design. Politically unproblematic as once they are specifically discussed in public awareness, then there is already a very great deal of awareness.
