[extropy-chat] Smalley, Drexler and the monster in Lake Michigan

[Alejandro Dubrovsky]

On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 05:38, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> SYNTHETIC CHEMISTRY: it isn't sophisticated enough yet and the computational
> capacity isn't up to the job.  The largest synthetic molecules that have
> been made are things like Vitamin B-12, vancomycin and maitotoxin.  They
> have atomic sizes ranging from ~200-500 atoms.  Even for the fine motion
> controller which is 2600 atoms in size but probably only 1/500th to 1/1000th
> of an 4,000,000 atom assembler arm design (not counting the motors and
> computer interface you might need to control it).

Current synthetic molecules can be a bit bigger than the ones you
pointed out:
http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/9293/Apr05_93/11.htm shows synthesis of a
pure hydrocarbon sphere of 1134 carbon atoms (2.2k atoms overall).

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=24856 shows
total chemical synthesis of a 238 amino-acid chain.  (This last one is
from 1998, don't know if this has been bettered).

alejandro