Nanotechnology: between DNA origami and gray goo
Back in 1986, when E. Drexler was scaring the world with the idea of “gray goo”—self-replicating nanobots devouring the biosphere after being accidentally released into the environment—it was hard to imagine that 40 years later the hottest trend in nanotechnology would be… folding DNA like Japanese origami.
This material was created in collaboration with Nowa Fantastyka.
Drexler, often called the father of nanotechnology, described in his book “Engines of Creation” a scenario in which molecular assemblers could replicate uncontrollably, but today, instead of building armies of microscopic robots, scientists would rather tinker at the molecular level.
Share
You might be interested in
-
Bus to Proxima: how far really is far?
If Voyager 1, our farthest space envoy, were headed towards Proxima Centauri (which it isn’t), it would take it about 73,000 years to arrive. That’s roughly the same amount of time since…
-
Mars is a paradise, but only for robots
Elon Musk promises a million people on Mars by 2050. Meanwhile, NASA is struggling to keep seven people on the International Space Station, which is just 250 miles above our heads.
-
We’re getting dumber, and technology is contributing to that.
Socrates was right. When in the 5th century BCE, in Phaedrus, he warned about the invention of writing, arguing that it would destroy human memory, he was laughed at as a technophobe.
