Could a "Santa Claus Machine" ever be built?

[Simon Ross]

I think we kinda need to baseline where we are at, at the moment

We can pretty much accurately map a DNA strand

This is pretty impressive, it doesn't mean we can re create it, it simply means that in a low fidelity sense, we can map a DNA strand and understand the molecules that go together to make DNA work as it does.

The next level up is cellular, and that is a HUGE jump

Think 2 and a LOT of zeros !

[jwenting]

we can even replicate it, or rather synthesize it out of its component building blocks. We do that in a machine that makes use of the natural way DNA uses to reproduce itself, chemically inducing that in an environment containing the required molecules.

Completely different process from a mass replicator, which would generate a physical object out of thin air and electricity... THAT is impossible to do, and will remain so.

Anyone thinking otherwise is stuck in the middle ages looking for the philosopher's stone to transmute lead into gold, as transmutation of base elements into anything else would be required to achieve that.

[Sillychris]

we can even replicate it, or rather synthesize it out of its component building blocks. We do that in a machine that makes use of the natural way DNA uses to reproduce itself, chemically inducing that in an environment containing the required molecules.

Completely different process from a mass replicator, which would generate a physical object out of thin air and electricity... THAT is impossible to do, and will remain so.

Anyone thinking otherwise is stuck in the middle ages looking for the philosopher's stone to transmute lead into gold, as transmutation of base elements into anything else would be required to achieve that.

We can transmute lead into gold, and do similar processes on a regular basis. "Transmutation" of elements became a well established field in the 20th century and earned the name "nuclear physics".

In practice, it is much easier to transmute mercury into gold via neutron bombardment and this is in fact carried out on a regular basis to manufacture extremely high purity gold(generally for scientific applications).

Before you point out that it would not be economically practical to transmute elements instead of just mining them, I would like to point out that the point of this thread is to investigate whether it is theoretically possible. Economics do not enter the discussion.

[Camacha]

It was kind of a rhetorical question.

I know. Consider it a rhetorical answer.

Completely different process from a mass replicator, which would generate a physical object out of thin air and electricity... THAT is impossible to do, and will remain so.

I consider that a pretty bold statement, coming from someone living in pretty much the stone age of quantum physics (as we are all). Consider that we have only known the real form of DNA for roughly the past 60 years, yet now we are able to copy it artificially in great numbers with quite some ease. Also consider that we barely have a clue how everything works on the smallest levels. If we do not even understand the real nature of the stuff, how can we tell whether we can work with it or not?

[Everten P.]

Okay... okay... First of all if you had a virtual infinite amount of energy [such as a black hole generator(yes that's a thing)] then it could work. You would also require a way to attract energy to bond and "trick" it into bonding together in certain patterns. Say in the example of air to chicken, some people think that you need to fry chicken to get fried chicken but no, you can arrange amino acids to make cells and arrange them to create muscles finally adding a layer of the substance fry is made of (IDK).

[Duxwing]

Sorry guys, but for this to work on anything above the most simple objects you would pretty much have to re-write every known law of Quantum Mechanics !

Uncertainty Principle states that you can make an accurate observation of a particle's position and momentum... However you cannot do both at the same time !

This actually works very much the same with events in the universe we live in day to day....

No: at human scale position and momentum are so obvious that we amuse ourselves with them; e.g., by playing catch in the park.

Imagine a bullet in flight, you want to log it's exact position and velocity in a single instant of it's trajectory. Well, lets freeze frame it at that instant !

From here we can give an extremely accurate measurement of the bullet's position in 3D space, however we cannot gather any data on the velocity of the bullet, it's no longer moving.

So lets set the bullet moving again. Now we can take an extremely accurate measurement of the bullet's velocity, however, the positional measurement we took of the bullet is no longer valid as the bullet has moved on from that position.

Given this verified law, it is impossible to accurately scan and measure a single particle, let alone a complex object.

Protons and neutrons generally stick around. Electrons can be added and removed via a spray.

For a very simple (non living object) there are ways around this in terms of multiple sampling and determing average positions and energy states. So say we scan a house brick for instance... After billions of individual scans we have collected enough data to enable us to replicate a house brick, however even an object as simple as a replicated house brick will still not be an EXACT copy of the house brick you originally scanned, there will always be accumulated errors in the data.

For practical purposes these errors need only be less than immediate environmental effects.

Now go try this with something as complex as a human being !

Trust me, your going to end up with a puddle of organic mush !

Could going one piece at a time achieve a sufficiently close result?

-Duxwing

[Camacha]

Without some more substantiated claims than just it's not going to work bros, I feel we are not going to get much further in this discussion. I guess the same goes for the argument the other way around.

[Sillychris]

It seems that the naysayers in this forum tend to develop tunnel vision over the engineering difficulties and practicality/economics of such a device.

But the question was whether it was possible. The question was NOT whether humans could/would do it or whether it would happen in the forseeable future with technology we could predict at present.

As such, I stand by my original answer: There is nothing in known physics that prohibits rearrangement of nuclear matter at will. All you need is energy.

[The Jedi Master]

So basically a Star Trek replicator?

No. That's not how atoms work. You can't just rearrange them like LEGO. If you try to turn a pile of metal into a TV by rearranging the particles, you will end up with a pile of melted metal.

[Seret]

That's not how atoms work.

Er, it sort of is. All electrons, protons and neutrons are the same. Granted, disassembling the atoms and sticking them back together is wildly impractical, but it's not actually impossible.

[Sillychris]

If you try to turn a pile of metal into a TV by rearranging the particles, you will end up with a pile of melted metal.

What if you then manipulated the melted metal into the shape of a tv? That's how tv's are, in fact, made (plus some other elements)

[Sillychris]

I can't remember the exact quote, or who said it, but nanotechnologists have compared the current state of our manufacturing prowess to conducting brain surgery with a chainsaw.

Also, as previously mentioned in this forum, we are in the dark ages of quantum mechanics. Only the hydrogen atom has been solved analytically, and only if you ignore intrinsic electron spin! Who are we to be declaring impossibilities at such a primitive stage?

I'm sure if you talked to an average person in the technological dark ages they would have declared travelling to the moon, or any of the wandering stars "impossible".

[ZetaX]

You have a very narrow understanding of science if you think our lack of detail on some computation-heavy stuff is in any way comparable to the dark age's understanding of science. We can easily get claims of impossibility (with the usual almost-certainty science can give) by formal deductions from very well verified statements; those are obviously not absolute, but they are of an entirely different kind of understanding than the one you mentioned.

[Sillychris]

You have a very narrow understanding of science if you think our lack of detail on some computation-heavy stuff is in any way comparable to the dark age's understanding of science.

I would claim vice versa for yourself, if insulting an opponent weren't considered poor form in debates.

Quantum computers don't exist, yet. We still have no idea what they may be capable of. The next step beyond quantum computers (Whatever that may be) hasn't even been suggested yet. Moore's law seems to be holding out quite reliably, so far. Is there an ultimate limit to computational power? I doubt it. Well, maybe if you converted the entire universe into a computer... that may be the ultimate limit. Maybe.

Look at what people believed a mere 100 years ago. Science and formal logic were very well developed as compared to the middle ages, but we were still clueless by today's standards (eg: tectonic plates, mechanism of the sun's heat). Give it another 100 years and people will be laughing at our beliefs and practices today.

[RuBisCO]

I think all this depends on exactly what is wanted. Lets say you want a chicken, do you just want one to magically appear in a second flat, yeah that not going to happen. Do you want a machine that can take raw organic material, maybe some bioroid cells, insert printed out DNA of chicken genome, have it grow a live chicken, then kill it and serve it for dinner, sure that might be doable.

Heck we could have it make copies of you, now before you complain they wont be "you" lets just assume that for this copy to be made you had to die, your brain cryogenicallly frozen in a brick of wax, ablatively scaned by an array of high powered electron microscopes until there is nothing left. And the copy of you is a bioroid made of engineered cells with your genome inserted (like the chicken) and a brain formated to match the one that was scaned... if it works it would be good enough, because it is better then just being dead.

What I'm saying is the "Santa Machine" is possible, if your willing to accept pratical constraints of time and process.