Realistic limits to the transforming abilities of nanomachines?

Question: We all know how fiction likes to play fast and loose with nanomachines. But
really, what would they be capable of in real life, assuming you had an utterly arbitrary amount
of them? What would the timescale be? Would you ever be able to shapeshift or use
nanomachine-based superpowers, or is that all strictly fantasy no matter what limitations you
put on it?

Energy
Some arbitrary rearrangement of atoms that's for your designed result rather than part of a
metabolism will require energy. There needs to be other reactions to provide fuel, and handle
waste products. So how do you get a pure result, and deal with available source material?

Rare atoms
Natural life uses what it finds and ignores what's useless. But you need catalysts to work on
whatever stuff you want to break down, not ignore it! So you need various catalysts, and
these often use small quantities of unique and rare atoms. Which happen to not be in the
stuff youre processing!

Logistics
So, you need feedstock suitable for doing your work as well as the stuff in-situ that you are
supposed to be working on. Your work will produce wastes and byproducts, as well as the
result you wanted.

Example
So, the individual says deploy the goo! Develop a program to replace this volcanic
outcropping with a marble palace. And the minions sigh, and haul away the basalt to a
dumping site, consuming energy produced elsewhere, taking large quantities of working
material sourced elsewhere; then locate calcium carbonate elsewhere. Oh, no prior life to
produce limestone deposits? Well, dig through the crust to locate sources of calcium, taking
boatloads of energy to do so, taking 100 the structure to make the roots to achieve this.
Meanwhile, decide which source of carbon and oxygen to useif a CO2 atmosphere, grow
processing facilities using other raw materials and feed it lots of energy to crack the gas. So
finally you have the feedstocks needed to produce marble. Take that, along with other
materials needed to grow the machines needed to do that, to the site. As well as marble
deposited in-place, there will be wastes to carry off. And finally the machines need to
withdraw and be disposed of.

First, decide what you mean by Nanomachines. The usual rules for Nanomachines involve:

Artifices. These are machines, not life. They do not evolve in unpredictable ways and
are inherently digital. Seeding a planet with appropriate microbes does not meet your
 story goals, nor using machines to modifying local biota to make the beautiful rafting
trees (as in Titan) for example.
Programmed. Dropping the machines has a definite goal. For example, Engines of
Creation builds a city and hatchery for a foreign race.
Replicating. You only seed a few of the machines. Finding local resources, they create
more machines. This whole colony is the factory. This model of self-replication is
attributed to Von Neumann.

Now make a few decisions:

Goo. Goo is made with the simple rules, with Gray Goo being 'reproduce at all costs'.
Aside from the Gray Goo scenario, there are useful models. Asteroid mining programs
could be as simple as "create two copies of yourself; fill up cargo with a gram of gold; go
to the mining beacon; die", leaving some other tool to gather up the gold mountain
covering the mining beacon.
The alternate is the deeply programmed model. Dense storage in a DNA style molecule
would allow complex behaviors with the obligatory gigabytes of cruft for compatibility with
old versions of the operating system.
Emergent Behavior. Each machine does its thing and the end goal arises from the
combined self-organized system. For example, surveying nanobots would each try to
get a little ways away from any other nanobot before expending itself to make a reading.
The mineral map would be the aggregate of each of the data points reported by a robot.
The alternate is networked behavior where the nanobots communicate over wireless
links, direct contact, or hub and spoke systems.
Single Shot. A single shot of nanobots tries to accomplish a single mission and then
die. For example, source gas in Transmetropolitan is good for a single interview and
then goes inactive. The job might take years, for example, sequestering carbon, but only
one simple goal is achieved.
The alternate is a bootstrapping approach, where the nanobots follow a growth and
alteration program. For example, they might survey, choose a site, build a solar plant,
use the power to make simpler nanobots, create a base, fill it with supplies, and then wait
until humans arrive.

Once you have these decisions now you have some questions:

Energy Source: Unless you use Deus Ex Machina and supply the nanobots with some
shared antimatter, you need energy. Most energy is liberated on macroscales,
even FOOF provides only a bit of energy in the scales of nanomachines. One pretty
much needs to assume either an efficient high-density battery or great energy
transmission. Still, most nanobot missions will start with creating a power plant.
Armor: The world is a hostile place, full of cosmic rays, radioactive alpha and beta
particles, reactive oxygen, and stuff. Nanobots need to repair or defend against the
environment in some way. Vacuum work spheres might work. Fast assembly might
work.
Complexity: The complexity of a successful intervention with nanobots is staggering.
Start with the idea of understanding a landscape solely from single point measurements,
go on to how to extract minerals and working materials, and continue onto running a
major industrial complex under computer control. Whole industries creating small tweaks
and software for nanobots is not unreasonable.
Even if your story is hand-waving over the physics, stating that the handy container of
nanobots is the result of decades of innovation and work would be worthwhile.

Nano tech is limited, like most other things, by the amount of energy it has access to and the
material it can work with. Nanites can manipulate matter at the atomic scale so as long as
they have the atoms to make something, they can do the thing you want them to do. This
ranges from repairing DNA and cells to creating planets. If they have the material, energy,
and instructions to do so they can do it.

As far as Time scale goes. That depends on distance to material and goal combined with
travel speed and amount of nanites that there are. The nanites could probably travel a few
feet per second, lets say 1m/s. Assume all the material you need is at the edge of a 1m^3,
have 1 nanite, and have a structure that will take up half the volume of the cube. Find how
much material that is in atoms and then multiply by 2 because a nanite can carry one atom
at a time and a round trip would take 2 seconds. This gives you how long that structure would
take to be made with 1 nanite. For every extra nanite divide by that number of nanites.

Basically, think what you can do in minecraft for example with just picking up and moving
blocks around. That's what you can do, on our level, with nanites.

There is however Femto- level tech which is the next level and likely will be called nanites
just because people aren't too good with distinguishing things that are very similar to them,
but on our scale their abilities could be very magical looking. Where nanites can manipulate
atoms, femtites would be able to manipulate quarks.

Nanite manipulation could cause all types of chemical energy to be released, but once we
get to Femtite manipulation we're dealing with nuclear energies and building atoms. Nanites
you have to have the atoms to move around, Femtites you need the quarks from the atoms
to make whatever atom you want. You couldn't change the mass, but you could change what
it appears to us as.

Let's say you want to create an iron statue for example. Nanites would require that there be
iron around to make the statue. If there is no iron around they can't make it and if there is
iron in their search area but far away they have to travel to get it. Femtites on the other hand
could just pluck quarks from the matter around them, create the particles/atoms needed on
the spot, and provide you the statue. Want the statue to be gold? The Femtites just grab the
particles needed and add them to the Iron atoms to make them gold atoms... Of course that's
assuming that doing this doesn't blow things up, because doing this could cause nuclear
explosions since a brute force way of doing this is how nuclear bombs work.

So again, when you think Nanites, think Minecraft more or less as an example. When you
think Femtites, think of what would appear to you as magic and alchemy, even though it is
still essentially Minecraft.

Informational Source: http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/51368/realistic-

limits-to-the-transforming-abilities-of-nanomachines
Nanobots in Todays World of the 21 Century

Uses in Medicine and Industry Understanding the

Engineering and Drawbacks
An emerging branch of technological research, designing and constructing nanobots will have
incalculable implications in science and industry. Also known as nanorobots, nanites, or
nanomachines, these devices are in the development phase and only primitive nanomachines
have been tested.

The term nano describes a length of measurement equal to one-billionth of one meter which
is approximately the width of 10 atoms. The resulting miniature robotic machines may be as
small as a few molecules in length or width.

Although the genesis of the term nanobots is unclear, two

descriptions may apply.

First, a nanorobot is a device, synthetic or biological, that is able

to function on a near atomic level and perform a
preprogrammed task.

A less restrictive description would be a device that facilitates

interaction on a nanoscale level. Rather than only describing an
infinitesimally small machine, this characterization would include a scanning tunneling
microscope and other similar microscopes that can be used to manipulate nanoscale
structures.

Engineering
Nanotechnology is the name of the branch of engineering concerned with engineering
nanobots.

By virtue of the fact that nanorobots may be made from almost any type of material, the
manufacturing processes being researched are varied as well. The two principle
manufacturing conventions are top down or bottom up.

The former process involves the extreme miniaturization of existing robotic devices while the
latter describes a process of building starting at the atomic level and constructing any object
one atom at a time.

Specialized nanorobots known as assembler nanobots will be required to create more

sophisticated units. Theoretically, the assemblers would use the bottom up approach and
stack atoms upon each other in layers to form the desired nanomachine. However these
assembler units have yet to be developed. Current technology has employed atomic force
microscopes and scanning tunneling microscopes to arrange atoms.
The scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopes from the scanning probe family and the
transmission electron microscope from the electron microscope family, not only can resolve
specimens at the atomic level but have been used to move atoms and molecules.

Initially, the microscope is used to precisely locate the particle that will be moved. Then, a
higher electron force than is normally used for imaging is targeted on the particle. This needs
to be done in a vacuum and at very low temperatures approaching four degrees Kelvin to
inhibit electron excitation and spatial uncertainty caused by temperature drift in the room and
between the specimen and the probe when using a scanning probe microscope.

These constraints illuminate the limit of the efficacy of this technology to construct nanobots.

Anecdotally, scientists at IBM used a scanning tunneling microscope to rearrange 35 xenon

atoms to form the company logo.

Scientists are studying the self-replicating properties of DNA as a mechanism for the creation
of these nanorobots.

Researchers created a rudimentary precursor to a functional nanobot from synthetic DNA and,
following this line of research; scientists are trying to engineer DNA strands to independently
combine in a predetermined manner to form a nanomachine.

This nascent nanobot had two arms and would rotate in response to a chemical reaction.

Problems - Manufacturing
A few hurdles stand in the way of manufacturing useful nanobots.

From the top down approach, the most daunting obstacle is the power supply. Batteries and
solar cells are not viable solutions for this problem. Nuclear power, in which a thin layer of
radioactive material is painted onto the surface of the nanorobot, may be one solution. The
nanites can absorb energy from the decaying atomic particles. Biological nanobots could be
engineered to ingest insignificant amounts of body tissue to obtain energy.

Regardless of the design method, a nanorobot will ideally perform its task and then dissolve
so the body can absorb and excrete it.

For several reasons silicon is a good choice for the construction of nanobots. It is durable,
flexible, and conducts electricity; however it will not dissolve in body fluids. Since these
devices are so small, swarms of them will be necessary to perform most tasks.

For medical applications, biodegradability will be a significant problem due to so many foreign
particles inside the body.

To perform certain tasks, especially in medical applications, controlled mobility is another

issue.

Often mentioned medical uses of these devices include plaque removal and cardiac repair.
They must migrate to a predetermined site and remain in that location to complete the task.
Another requirement of a useful nanomachine is that it operates autonomously, independent
of outside control. Physical, electrical, and chemical reactions can produce a response but the
introduction of these stimuli rob the device of the advantage of independent operation and
they also can produce a response in the nanobots surrounding environment.

An inherent drawback to producing these devices is their size.

Building atom by atom and molecule by molecule is tedious and doesnt lend itself to mass
production. At the other end of the manufacturing spectrum, miniaturization of synthetic
devices will require advances in metallurgy since the building materials will need to be reduced
to a nanoscale.

Uses in Medicine and Industry

By consensus, nanobots will find their first applications in medical science.

Also known as nanomedibots, these machines will be able to repair damaged or diseased
tissues at the molecular level. The circulatory system is a natural highway for these devices
and the nanomedibots will cruise through the blood stream to the area of distress.

They may be used to attach themselves to specific cells, such as cancer cells, and report the
position and structure of these tissues.

A creative theory in the use of these devices to fight cancer

involves using silicon nanomachines with a thin coating of gold
and light in the near infrared spectrum.

Light in the 700-1000 nanometer range will pass through

tissue with minimal absorption.

When this near infrared light strikes this particular type of

nanomedibot, the device gets hot due to the oscillation of the
metals electrons in response to the light.

Using an MRI to precisely place the nanomedibots in the cancerous region, the light causes
the devices to heat to 131 degrees Fahrenheit which destroys the cancerous cells but doesnt
damage surrounding tissues.

Also regarding cancer treatment, ribonucleic acid interference is a method that attacks
cancers on a genetic level. Nanobots laden with interfering RNA that deactivates the protein
production of the cancer and kills the malignancy would attach themselves to the tumor and
deliver the lethal genetic material.

In addition to removing plaque from arterial walls, they could also be used to find areas of
arterial weakness.

Nanorobots may also be employed to detect specific chemicals or toxins and could give early
warning of organ failure or tissue rejection. Also used to take biometric measurements, they
may be employed to monitor the general health of an individual.
These devices may find application in a variety of industrial applications. Research is ongoing
into using them in the oil industry.

In addition, current research is investigating their application in nanophotonics to produce

light more efficiently. Computer circuits may be produced by these tiny devices. They could
create circuits on a smaller scale than current etching techniques and would allow for the
manufacture of extremely small processors and chips.

Quick Summary
Broadly speaking, nanobots may be synthetic or biological.

The goal of some scientists has been to create a completely mechanical nanorobot; however,
a hybrid device possessing biological and robotic features may be the most practical idea.

To qualify as a true nanite, the device will have to have mobility, the ability to process
information or to be programmed, and have a power supply.

Ideally, it would also be able to self-replicate. Scientists envision the manufacture of a

functional nanite in approximately 25 years.

Informational Source: http://www.microscopemaster.com/nanobots.html

What Are Nanorobots?

A nanobot is an extremely small robot that operates on a microscopic scale. Originally spoken of in
science fiction circles, there has been an increased focus on it in biological and robotics research. The
term nanorobot was created by combining the terms robot and nanometer. Other common names for
robots of this size include nanobots, nanomites, and nanites with sizes ranging from 0.01 to 0.1
micrometers. Currently, most nanobot research is being done in the medical and military fields. The
more the technology develops, the greater the number of potential uses that arise. An alternative
development for nanorobots is the interactions that a robot can accomplish on the nanoscale resolution
with no restriction on the overall size of the robot.
The two basic kinds of nanobots are assemblers and self-replicators. Assemblers are simple cell-
shaped nanobots that may be able to decipher molecules or atoms of different types, and controlled
by specific programs. Self-replicators are essentially assemblers capable of duplicating themselves at
a large rate. This sort of duplication aids the building of large-scale applications or deployment of
nanobots for large-scale tasks.

Future Potential Uses for Nanorobots

Most science fiction movies depict nanorobots in a swarm, predominantly in medical or extreme
military uses. Some of these depictions are based on nanotheory that allows nanorobots to rebuild
matter and to be able to create food, protein, or even other microprocessors if programmed
appropriately. Another potential use for the technology is to use nanorobots to build new nanorobots
in a self/automatic replication form, which can be coupled with swarm theories to accomplish tasks.
Most nanorobot research is focused on the medical sciences. Since nanorobots can operate at the
same scale as viruses, cancers, and bacteria, they hold the promise of being able to directly fight
these intrusions to the human body, conduct health scans, or to ensure the bodys tissues and organs
are working at its optimal level.
Cancer patient could be injected with a specific type of nanobot that will look for and eradicate cancer
cells. This sort of treatment will eliminate the side effects of hair loss, nausea and tiredness usually
associated with conventional cancer treatment such as radiation and chemotherapy. Another good
application would be to use nanobots to clear blocked arteries. They could also act as antibodies for
patients with weak immune systems. Nanobots can also be used in electronics and manufacturing
industries to build small form factor devices or large industrial installations. Nanobots can be used in
environment cleanup initiatives such as cleaning of oil spills, toxic dump sites, and polluted water
sources and so on.

What Are the Potential Military Roles of Nanorobots?

Nanorobots research in the military is mainly focused on protecting individual soldiers while in combat.
They can be used as an improved body armor that is capable of self-repair if damaged. This body
armor would not be the super suits seen in some recent science fiction films. Rather, they would be a
generational leap in protective capabilities over the current body armors deployed to the field.
Nanorobots will be used in the near future to rapidly repair injured people and damaged equipment on
the battlefield and as eavesdropping devices that are practically undetectable. Nanorobots could prove
to be one of the largest developments in war technology since the advent of the atomic bomb in World
War II, due to the expected difficulty in countering the first weapons developed with the technology.
Informational Source: http://www.tech-faq.com/nanorobots.html

The mind-blowing things nanobots could do

When it comes to innovative technology on a truly epic scale theres nothing more exciting (or
scary) than nanorobotics.

Scientists are developing robots smaller than the width of a human hair with the idea they could
be controlled on a molecular level thats literally moving atoms and cells us humans arent able
to.

They could be programmed and put to use inside human bodies to tinker around with the smallest
of our cells, be part of a million-strong miniature work force for rapid construction or even be used
as a potential weapon.

But these little robotic critters have been putting the bejesus up us ever since science mentioned
the name.

The thought of swarms of millions of microscopic machines working as one to literally deconstruct
us by the very molecules were made from can raise fears and many ethical concerns as to how the
technology will be used or programmed so it does not cause harm to the human body. Nanorobotic
nanites can ruin DNA just as they can heal diseases if programmed a specific task the nanites can
literally destroy the human system, if the nanocoating of materials used to create the nanobots is
in any way wrong in composition it can poison the living system, as well the nanorobotics nanites
can be weaponized especially the self-replicating technology which can decimate planets, and
living organisms.
So will they kill us all or save humanity? The technology is still very much in the lab stage but
used in the right way nanotech possibilities are truly worthy of sci-fi movie fodder.

Medicine

The application of nanotechnology in the field of medicine is possibly the most exciting and life-
changing prospect. It has doctors and potential patients fizzing with excitement. Research is
ongoing to develop nanobots that could be injected into our bodies to intelligently destroy disease
and perform surgeries on individual cells we otherwise couldnt. The cure for cancer could lie with
these bots with trials underway using nanoparticles that seek and destroy cancerous cells but
without harming surrounding healthy tissue like chemotherapy does.

We may never get sick in the future thanks to nanobot maintained immune systems. It would see
the mini machines constantly monitoring you from the inside, pre-empting illness and performing
the necessary actions like delivering drugs to keep you tip top. For instance if a cold virus is
detected bots could actively breakdown the very atoms of the virus molecule. No more sniffles.

Medics are hoping nanobots might be the answer to a quicker way to administer medicine into the
body as they can be programmed to go straight to the target area. The US defence agency DARPA
is developing its In Vivo Nanoplatform program to help diagnose and rapidly treat disease within
soldiers, perhaps eliminating the need for medics on the frontline as the drug-carrying bots could
be self-delivered.

Elsewhere in medicine we are turning to nanobots to help in brain surgery thanks to their ability
to manoeuvre their micron size through the complex and delicate passageways.

Human 2.0

So, thats disease and illness terminated but nanotech wont stop there. Scientists and futurists
alike have pondered how it could be used to give our bodies a physical upgrade.

Nanotech pioneer Robert Freitas has designed a bot called a Respirocyte that can carry 9 billion
oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules 200 times that of typical red blood cells meaning that
humans could run at full tilt for a good 15 minutes without running out of puff. The same level
ability to hold oxygen means we could also go without having to take a breath for hours. Scuba,
anyone?

As well as this super stamina muscle tissue could be broken down by bots and re-worked to give
us super strength, poor eyesight could be rectified and teeth kept clean to microscopic levels.

Nanobots could be programmed to seek out ageing cells, tissue and muscles that have lost any
ability due to degeneration for repair, replace and tune up. It means we could essentially extend
lifespan and keep razor-sharp well into old age.
Environment

If youre still wary of nanorobotics just think what they could do for the environment. A disaster
like an oil spill takes an extraordinary level of effort to clean, if fully cleaned at all. But many
hands make light work so nanobots deployed at the scene could get scrubbing in their millions,
destroying every contaminated molecule much faster than any method currently available. In smog
ridden cities or chemical emitting factories a swarm released into the atmosphere could deconstruct
the pollutants.

Safe, purified drinking water without the need for chemicals could be made available anywhere
with nanotechnology particles destroying the water-borne bacteria, which claims many lives.

Of course for all of your practical and serious applications there are endless potential quirky uses
for nanorobotics. From self-cleaning clothes, cars that can repair themselves, to keeping food fresh
you can be sure there are people in white coats squinting down a microscope right now to bring us
tomorrows world today.

Informational Source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/gadgets/wearables/the-

mindblowing-things-nanobots-could-do/news-story/5c1d2305a52c6056c63cc0a53422ce82