I heard a myth a few decades ago, that top-secret work in most fields is at least 50 years ahead of the current published state of the art. I can't begin to imagine what that would look like here.
What would that look like here? What sorts of things do you think are solidly plausible within the next 50 years of work in the field of nano-technology, and how would we detect them "in the field" today, if we were to look for them? How and where might we start to look for them, if we wanted to be likely to find something?
I know there were published discussions about silicon based listening and transmitting devices, bugs, that were smaller than grains of salt. I also know that there was great published fervor over single-pixel cameras, and, impo, I have seen a surprising gap in entangled non-return imaging. I expect "they" have working, single-photon, non-return-imaging cameras on grains of silicon too small for the eye to work with, so perhaps nano drone swarms used for data gathering/surveillance, where each drone is less than 0.1mm across?
When I look at robo-cat, and the alleged robo-squirrels or robo-insects, I think they have such swarms that can be ingested/injected/otherwise-implanted inside animals that don't realize they have become "listening posts". What would you do with a fully-functional jet-engine that was only a few microns across? I remember sub-cellular size bar-codes made by shooting proton based cylindrical holes in silicon, then lithographing layers of gold or other stuff to make the code, then removing the silicon substrate. Could we put markers into people to inform future medical reconstruction such as "non-invasive" 3d printing of organs in-vivo? How would we detect sub-cell-size tagging, or fabrication? I like the idea of nanotech-driven bio-energy harvesting. Why can't we turn trees into solar panels by hacking into their organic photosynthesis?
Some of your questions are good, but it's very unlikely that they would get asked because you didn't adhere to the "one per comment" rule. You might want to pick the ones you're most interested in and post them separately.
There is no "top secret" work that is 50 years ahead. If there were, those people would quit and make billions in industry. You live in a fantasy world.
Baloney. There are no "secrets" like that. A jet engine a micron across? But we can barely make a functional F-35 after billions in development. Right.
The concept is not that someone is 50 years ahead of their peers in science. The concept is that science is 50 years ahead of industry. That's actually pretty true, and this is a pretty common discussion in science.
Generally, you lose money when bringing cutting edge research to industry. I wish it were as easy as you make it seem.
I am an industrial scientist specialized in nanotechnology. I've seen the good and bad of how this works. If you have a single scientist working for a year to produce a groundbr
Not really. In a lot of cases the public sector moves much faster. There's more money and people working on it. This wouldn't necessarily be the case in a place like the Soviet Union though. But there are cases where technology even regresses, like supersonic transport, or super-heavy space lift, so it's perfectly possible some "secret tech" is 50 years ahead or whatever.
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run
like a staff function.
-- Paul Licker
50 years ahead (Score:2)
I heard a myth a few decades ago, that top-secret work in most fields is at least 50 years ahead of the current published state of the art. I can't begin to imagine what that would look like here.
What would that look like here? What sorts of things do you think are solidly plausible within the next 50 years of work in the field of nano-technology, and how would we detect them "in the field" today, if we were to look for them? How and where might we start to look for them, if we wanted to be likely to find something?
I know there were published discussions about silicon based listening and transmitting devices, bugs, that were smaller than grains of salt. I also know that there was great published fervor over single-pixel cameras, and, impo, I have seen a surprising gap in entangled non-return imaging. I expect "they" have working, single-photon, non-return-imaging cameras on grains of silicon too small for the eye to work with, so perhaps nano drone swarms used for data gathering/surveillance, where each drone is less than 0.1mm across?
When I look at robo-cat, and the alleged robo-squirrels or robo-insects, I think they have such swarms that can be ingested/injected/otherwise-implanted inside animals that don't realize they have become "listening posts". What would you do with a fully-functional jet-engine that was only a few microns across? I remember sub-cellular size bar-codes made by shooting proton based cylindrical holes in silicon, then lithographing layers of gold or other stuff to make the code, then removing the silicon substrate. Could we put markers into people to inform future medical reconstruction such as "non-invasive" 3d printing of organs in-vivo? How would we detect sub-cell-size tagging, or fabrication? I like the idea of nanotech-driven bio-energy harvesting. Why can't we turn trees into solar panels by hacking into their organic photosynthesis?
-EngrStudent
Re: (Score:2)
Some of your questions are good, but it's very unlikely that they would get asked because you didn't adhere to the "one per comment" rule. You might want to pick the ones you're most interested in and post them separately.
Re:50 years ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The concept is not that someone is 50 years ahead of their peers in science. The concept is that science is 50 years ahead of industry. That's actually pretty true, and this is a pretty common discussion in science.
Generally, you lose money when bringing cutting edge research to industry. I wish it were as easy as you make it seem.
I am an industrial scientist specialized in nanotechnology. I've seen the good and bad of how this works. If you have a single scientist working for a year to produce a groundbr
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. In a lot of cases the public sector moves much faster. There's more money and people working on it. This wouldn't necessarily be the case in a place like the Soviet Union though. But there are cases where technology even regresses, like supersonic transport, or super-heavy space lift, so it's perfectly possible some "secret tech" is 50 years ahead or whatever.