Creating items by using Atoms.

I did a search on google but found nothing, so i hope somebody here could put some light on this subject for me and anyone else who maybe interested. maybe some links to articles?

We know that everything around us is made from atoms, humans, clothes, cars, bricks, EVERYTHING.

My question is, can scientists create items purely by using atoms in some way? kinda like on star trek when they want a glass of water they press a button and DING is appears.

what are the barriers that is stopping us from achieving this technology?

You know, Michio Kaku discusses this (Im fairly sure its him) in one of his videos/movies/documentaries....

Ill try to find it for you, its pretty cool stuff.

Originally posted by Itop1

My question is, can scientists create items purely by using atoms in some way? kinda like on star trek when they want a glass of water they press a button and DING is appears.

what are the barriers that is stopping us from achieving this technology?

indeed. If someone could point me to the "cold beer" button
I would be most grateful.

reply to post by Itop1


It has to do with the 4 fundemental forces of nature.

The strong force that holds atoms together to form materials would be the key missing. At least that is what I take out of it.

Well there are amazing ideas emerging right now, for example programmable matter, which is kinda what you are pointing at i think?

Claytronics:

"Claytronics" is an emerging field of engineering concerning reconfigurable nanoscale robots ('claytronic atoms', or catoms) designed to form much larger scale machines or mechanisms. Also known as "programmable matter", the catoms will be sub-millimeter computers that will eventually have the ability to move around, communicate with each others, change color, and electrostatically connect to other catoms to form different shapes. The forms made up of catoms could morph into nearly any object, even replicas of human beings for virtual meetings.

Link

reply to post by Itop1


I can't remember what program or which episode it was but some guy was at a research lab and had his name writing on a single hair by using a laser that shot individual atoms.

I believe they even had room to write his entire address on that one strain of hair.

Now if i could onlt remember the name of the program......i'll look it up for you.

Peace

science can only manipulate single atoms. Elements are things like gold lead hydrogen etc these are things that cannot be broken down into anything else. Gold are made of gold atoms lead from lead atoms etc. When you combine these you get what is called a compound like bronze is which is copper and tin.

now lets work with gold for example if you had lots of lots of gold atoms and you wanted to build a structure with it you have to manipulate the quantum world and science cannot determine where the electron is also you need to overcome certain forces to bind the 2 atoms together. Now to merge to gold atoms together all you need is to give it heat which excites the atoms to get them to join.

However to create complex atomics structures you need to overcome quantum forces as piecing 2 atoms together in an controlled enviornment just like a jigsaw puzzle is beyond science capabilities.

I actually saw something on just this very topic the other day... lemmie see if I can find it.

Got it...

H+ Magazine - NanoTech: Robot Arm Places Atoms and Molecules with 100% Accuracy.

In a 2009 article in Nature Nanotechnology, Dr. Seeman shared the results of experiments performed by his lab, along with collaborators at Nanjing University in China, in which scientists built a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them. The device was approximately 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size — over a million could fit in a single red blood cell. Using robust error-correction mechanisms, the device can place DNA molecules with 100% accuracy. Earlier trials had yielded only 60-80% accuracy.

Yeah... DNA Origami. There's a good TEDtalk from a few years ago that gives a good introduction to DNA folding.

Tesla made Radium from some unknown element.
Presumably cheaper than Radium.
More than a Mev that Tesla said he could make to any level
might rearrange many atoms.
But then what do you do.
Perhaps the burning of Nitrogen was his biggest achievement,
making fertilizer. He wanted third world and desert regions to
make a network of his ether spark gap to voltage towers to make
fertilizer and make the world green all over. Too bad his sparks
interfere with radio and TV signals.

Some really simple things have been built by manipulating individual atoms. For instance, IBM in 1989 spelled 'I B M' with Xenon atoms and took an image of it. Not very useful, but it's a start along the path to where we might be able to do something better with it someday.