The Amazing Cellular Repair device was Re: [extropy-chat] FuturesPast

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 01:51:55PM +1000, Brett Paatsch wrote:

> > Compare with http://moleculardevices.org/howbig.htm
> 
> 
> Yep, I do like the tech used in illustrating the relationships here.
> 
> I remember you posting this before but also with some extras 
> that you'd added yourself. I think they showed gears or pumps
> from Nanosystems. 

Yes, that's the page. The renderings are from VMD, with
the nano parts and virus capsid imported (it was not
kind on the system, I almost gave up). I freely admit 
to stealing the flash from somewhere.
 
> > I'm not sure what your point is trashing a single picture, done
> > by an artist (these usually don't have scientific training).
> 
> My point is that the schematic is obviously wrong in terms of 
> scale because it can't possibly be the same device at both the
> nano and micron scale.  

Obviously.
 
> I don't know if an artist produced the diagrams. They look to me
> like the sort of hand drawn schematic that an engineer type 
> might quickly sketch out. The only names associated are those
> of Merkle and Drexler. 

It's a cryonics brochure, right? I would take it with a huge
grain of salt. Most of cryonics is cargo cult, with a few
very notable exceptions.
 
> A lot of people would not have good intuitive understandings
> of the relative scales of biological structures such as red blood
> cells and synapses because these things exist at scales that
> are way below their normal sensory radar. 

That's why I've put up that page. It gives one a nice
intiutive sense of scale, to estimate how much functionality
is can fit within a given volume.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
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