Make anything, with programmable matter

[Spaceception]

Programmable matter is exactly what it sounds like, and it's amazing, need a new cup? Push some buttons and a few seconds later, you have a cup, need a chair? Again, push some buttons and you have a chair. Need a city? Yes, a city. Press some buttons, and a city will appear right before your eyes, this is like a step up from 3D printing, instead of printing out the object you need, you just need a program, press a few keys, and it'll appear in a few seconds instead of a few hours, now, depending on how advanced it is, we could use it for rockets, nothing would fail, because the matter would just take a new shape to compensate, or even repair it extremely quickly, making rocket failures almost nonexistent, so what do you think of its potential?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_matter

 

[p1t1o]

Present day "approaches" to "programmable" matter are more akin to "self assembly" - whereas what you describe is an almost godlike material that can transmute elements and make intelligent, expert decisions. The potential as described, would seem infinite. This is technology so advanced as to appear to be magic.

In several pieces of science fiction though, I have heard described furniture that is "extruded" from the floor, on demand, or if a need is automatically sensed.

That sounds neat

 

[Spaceception]

10 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Present day "approaches" to "programmable" matter are more akin to "self assembly" - whereas what you describe is an almost godlike material that can transmute elements and make intelligent, expert decisions. The potential as described, would seem infinite. This is technology so advanced as to appear to be magic.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clark

[p1t1o]

7 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clark

lol, that is exactly what I was getting at  figured you'd recognise it without me invoking the big man's name!

[RainDreamer]

One sec, is that material also capable of getting rid of contaminant on itself? Such a universal material...I certainly wouldn't want my carpet to become my cereal bowls, including whatever was on the carpet itself caught inside.

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

Programmable matter is exactly what it sounds like, and it's amazing, need a new cup? Push some buttons and a few seconds later, you have a cup, need a chair? Again, push some buttons and you have a chair. Need a city? Yes, a city. Press some buttons, and a city will appear right before your eyes, this is like a step up from 3D printing, instead of printing out the object you need, you just need a program, press a few keys, and it'll appear in a few seconds instead of a few hours,

Your wikipedia link describes a much more modest category of purpose-built substances that can be manipulated to alter their function in some way. "For example, a liquid crystal display is a form of programmable matter." I can't order my LCD monitor to turn into a cup.

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

now, depending on how advanced it is, we could use it for rockets, nothing would fail, because the matter would just take a new shape to compensate, or even repair it extremely quickly, making rocket failures almost nonexistent, so what do you think of its potential?

It would melt, incinerate, bend, and shatter in those applications. Another substance attempting to replace steel (or other aerospace mainstays) would have to emulate its strength and ability to withstand high temperatures, and that's hard to do if the material is shot through with tiny CPUs and receivers and transmitters and little points of flexibility where they can apply force via tiny motors.

[todofwar]

I used to think this kind of thing was the future, but honestly the laws of chemistry just don't work that way. Molecules don't know what they're part of, they just are. A set of molecules ready to assemble on command and self repair already exists, it's called life. Biological systems are extremely complicated because they are maintaining this high level of sophisticated control at all times. So, any kind of programmable matter either needs us to be misunderstanding some laws of physics at the moment, or will be limited to a set of conformations. 

[Atlas2342]

What about nanobots? Sure, it wont emulate other materials but close enough righht?

[PB666]

21 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Programmable matter is exactly what it sounds like, and it's amazing, need a new cup? Push some buttons and a few seconds later, you have a cup, need a chair? Again, push some buttons and you have a chair. Need a city? Yes, a city. Press some buttons, and a city will appear right before your eyes, this is like a step up from 3D printing, instead of printing out the object you need, you just need a program, press a few keys, and it'll appear in a few seconds instead of a few hours, now, depending on how advanced it is, we could use it for rockets, nothing would fail, because the matter would just take a new shape to compensate, or even repair it extremely quickly, making rocket failures almost nonexistent, so what do you think of its potential?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_matter

 

What is the first thing I would build? A big black box to put all the jerky, hand-waving, hyped-out about nothing, you tube video presenters in.

[todofwar]

 

8 hours ago, Atlas2342 said:

What about nanobots? Sure, it wont emulate other materials but close enough righht?

I would say it's possible. But nanobots are far more complicated than people think. They will require energy, computing power, the ability to communicate, etc. Nature gave us bacteria, which are almost nanoscale. You'd probably need analogies of most of the systems in a bacterial cell. Still, it could work. They form biofilms, which may be engineerable into specialized materials. 

[PB666]

16 minutes ago, todofwar said:

 

I would say it's possible. But nanobots are far more complicated than people think. They will require energy, computing power, the ability to communicate, etc. Nature gave us bacteria, which are almost nanoscale. You'd probably need analogies of most of the systems in a bacterial cell. Still, it could work. They form biofilms, which may be engineerable into specialized materials. 

It is not possible to scale intelligence to the atomic level, even that the 100 atom size you still have quantum effects to deal with, you get haphazard communiction. The scale that is plausible is something that maybe >10^3.

Again this author is presenting vapor-ware, that's all. Go by biology, for example plasmodium, how many atoms to make a plasmodium cell. Then there are compatibility issues, you make a coffee cup, but the coffee is an acid and very stick materials would bind to the material. Think about a coffee cup it weighs say 40 grams, lets say one unit is 1000 atoms and each atom is say average 40 daltons. thats 40000 daltons, there are 6.0223 E 23 units in the cup that would equate to 6.0223 E20 units. So for each unit to know what it is its number would need to be digitized and stored, but its numeric storage capacity even with no quantum decoherance is far less than the number of units, and it lacks instructions as to where it should be. How is it that a cell would know 'im cell x, I need to link to y on this node, z on that node, a on the other node, and b on the fuzzy pink node. OK so how big does it need to be, it needs to be big enough to have at least 6 nodes, each node needs to be embedded in at least 17 atoms (18 total), there needs to be edges, there needs to be information storage, say 8 bytes per node to identify who it binds, and one byte to know which node it binds with that adjacent cell it needs to have another byte to know which adjacent cell node it binds. It needs to have a travel function, it needs a cleanse function. Just the memory set and clean functions for the bytes we are talking about millions and billions of atoms, as the mass of memory grows so do the number of atoms in each node, and the surrounding structures, as that grows you need vector bytes to orient and properly align nodes. How do the nodes link, magnetically, you need electromagnets. We are up to trillions of atoms.

[Darnok]

Programmable toothbrush that can be changed into knife inside plane... how nice.

[Atlas2342]

On 23/04/2016 at 2:14 AM, Darnok said:

Programmable toothbrush that can be changed into knife inside plane... how nice.

Maybe there could be guidelines like, you can't change X to Y in Z or something like that...

Edited April 25, 2016 by Atlas2342

[Darnok]

27 minutes ago, Atlas2342 said:

Maybe there could be guidelines like, you can't change X to Y in Z or something like that...

Ohh right and someone that wants to make weapon to kill people will follow those guidelines.

[Atlas2342]

Just now, Darnok said:

Ohh right and someone that wants to make weapon to kill people will follow those guidelines.

Fair point due to my poor wording. Let me rephrase it, maybe the programmable matter could "deactivate" or something like that in some places, vehicles, etc...

[Darnok]

31 minutes ago, Atlas2342 said:

Fair point due to my poor wording. Let me rephrase it, maybe the programmable matter could "deactivate" or something like that in some places, vehicles, etc...

If that kind of protection would be possible then software piracy would be non-existent

[insert_name]

On 4/23/2016 at 11:14 AM, Darnok said:

Programmable toothbrush that can be changed into knife inside plane... how nice.

Programmable plane detecs knife and absorbs it

[Darnok]

7 minutes ago, insert_name said:

Programmable plane detecs knife and absorbs it

Programmable toothbrush infects programmable plane and plane crashes.

[insert_name]

49 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Programmable toothbrush infects programmable plane and plane crashes.

Why would the plane do what the knife says? It would contain the knife until the end of the flight and submit the knife to law enforcement

[Darnok]

1 minute ago, insert_name said:

Why would the plane do what the knife says? It would contain the knife until the end of the flight and submit the knife to law enforcement

Why would your windows do what virus says? It should contain virus and alert you

When you are giving something programmable to people you can't make it secure, it just won't work. It is impossible to secure device or software that is physically accessible to people.

If you don't believe me, just name one device or software that was never hacked/cracked/"or whatever you call it".

[insert_name]

24 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Why would your windows do what virus says? It should contain virus and alert you

When you are giving something programmable to people you can't make it secure, it just won't work. It is impossible to secure device or software that is physically accessible to people.

If you don't believe me, just name one device or software that was never hacked/cracked/"or whatever you call it".

Why would someone bring a knife on a plane if they could hack it, and why would you fly on an airline when you can make your own plane?

[HebaruSan]

3 minutes ago, insert_name said:

Why would someone bring a knife on a plane if they could hack it, and why would you fly on an airline when you can make your own plane?

They brought a toothbrush on the plane, it's their hacking device, and they're attempting to hijack the plane to abduct a VIP.

[insert_name]

11 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

They brought a toothbrush on the plane, it's their hacking device, and they're attempting to hijack the plane to abduct a VIP.

but why is the VIP on the plane with them in the first place?

[Darnok]

6 minutes ago, insert_name said:

but why is the VIP on the plane with them in the first place?

Because he wants to know how poor people use planes.

[HebaruSan]

11 minutes ago, insert_name said:

but why is the VIP on the plane with them in the first place?

Presumably they want to spend the next few days in a different geographic location.