Make Anything Out Of Anything

[korin 0]

I thought of this a long time back and I thought I'd bring it to some attention. My theory is on of atoms, the way we understand them as of now. Now, so far we think that atoms consist of basically protons, neutrons and electrons. So, my idea is that of splitting them up and containing them. Nuclear power planets use a process known as nuclear fission I believe, which is the splitting of an atom to create energy.

 

Base units that you know from the periodic table are what we as humans have found so far in our known space. What I was thinking is possible is to take anything you want, say water, and split up the atoms into individual pieces. (Electrons, protons and neutrons) Then you could take the pieces that you have and use nuclear fusion to put them back together. Let me give an example to help explain it.

 

Hydrogen, the first unit on the periodic table, has one proton and one electron. What if you split the atom in to the proton and electron by themselves and set them in some kind of container. Then, say you wanted to make some Helium. I believe Helium has two protons and two electrons. So, in theory you could take two Hydrogen atoms, and turn them into one atom of Helium.

 

I believe that if this process is at all possible in any way shape or form, everything would be solved on the planet. World hunger would cease because we could just manufacture the food we wanted. You wouldn't even really have to waste land growing it anymore. Anything could be made from anything. The army could make tanks from water, or pee, or whatever they had. What do you guys think about this idea.

[amit nigam 0]

nice thought....but if you must have seen terminator 2 maybe you would have got your answer...the bad robot does almost the same thing as you are saying...actually the thing you are saying is being researched right now....as far as i know...under the field of nanotechnology...they are working on the concept where you can break down any material upto the atomic level and then can reconfigure it into anything....actually the thing that is shown in terminator 2 is theoretically possible....i feel...we have to build nanorobots...robots of the size of atoms...then whenever a robots eyes see someone he can make some sort of bitmap of that person and store that in central processing unit....then the central processing unit can arrange nanorobots to form the desired shape....as children arrange blocks...i know its not as simple as it looks while talking ....but the point is that i think its theoritically possible....what about others???

[delivi 0]

i'd say that this is only possible in our dreams, because the Man has a limited intelligence compared to the things present in this wonderful world.Eventhough science has developed a lot, there is no proper cure for the Common Cold !!!!

[salamangkero 0]

i'd say that this is only possible in our dreams, because the Man has a limited intelligence compared to the things present in this wonderful world.

 

Even though science has developed a lot, there is no proper cure for the Common Cold !!!!

I couldn't have said it more accurately

 

We tend to place too much confidence in our technologies that, sometimes, we are led to believe, simply by observing a small part of the whole, that anything is possible. While it is true that we can do nuclear fission and fusion, we still have a long way to go. For one, the energy we need to split and recombine atoms with accuracy far exceeds those that we could get from those atoms.

 

Also, we can't just take a tank of pee and turn it into a crate of cabbages. For one, we can never be sure what exactly pee is comprised of and what constitutes a "real" cabbage. While, in theory, creating single atoms could probably be child's play, the enormity of the process of creating billions of atoms become quickly apparent when you realize how many atoms you have to split, fuse and reconfigure in a tank of pee.

 

I do believe it is possible, though, it probably won't happen in your lifetime... or your kid's lifetime... or your grandkid's lifetime. Y'know what, suffice to say that it won't happen anytime soon

 

P.S. I don't think we can play god so easily...

 

P.P.S. ...because I don't believe in a god

[korin 0]

Yeah, my whole point isn't if it were possible right now, but maybe sometime in the future. But, I guess no one can really answer that until the future gets here.

[midnightvamp 1]

That sounds very possible, and maybe we could harness the power that comes from splitting it up and give us our energy as well from it. Though I'm not sure if separating the atoms gives the energy or if it needs to split on in half. I'm not quite sure of the process here.I wonder how hard or how costly it would really be to do this, and what things would be the first to be made once we have the technology.

[cangor 0]

I pretty much doubt that it's possible to do this with today's technology. Nuclear fission is basically splitting a big atom (e.g. uranium) into smaller atoms (helium, hydrogen, stray neutrons, etc) And you can also fuse stuff together, so, theoretically...However, it takes a lot of energy to do some of these things, and they're hard to control. Perhaps we can create some processes to create SOME things, but most of the time you can't really change these processes so you can get whatever you want out. Uranium decay basically just changes into a few other elements and eventually turns into lead. Anything reactive will usually turn into lead or a more stable isotope of whatever it is, so you can't really get, say, gold out of uranium or something like that.Second, these processes that do work, to do stuff like this, are very, VERY expensive and inefficient. I mean, we MIGHT be able to "make anything out of anything" someday, but for now it's just too difficult. You know how they've discovered a lot of elements synthetically? well these take place in an absolutely crazy high power device and only stick around for a fraction of a second until they decay into something else. It's kinda like shooting around a bunch of subatomic particles and hoping they stick for a nanosecond before flying apart.In short, this is a really cool idea, and I hope they can do it someday, but I really don't think someday will be sometime soon.

Edited January 18, 2007 by cangor (see edit history)

[amit nigam 0]

hi friends...
as i hav seen in ur posts most of you are believing that myself or korin has suggested that this is possible right now....no..we are not saying that...we are just saying that it is theoretically possible and maybe in some time in future it can be done......"sometime in future".....

as far as my friend delvi's statement is concerned which i m quoting...

i'd say that this is only possible in our dreams, because the Man has a limited intelligence compared to the things present in this wonderful world.
Eventhough science has developed a lot, there is no proper cure for the Common Cold !!!!

maybe he is right by saying that we have not found a proper cure for common cold...but isn't it also true that we have right now the technology to clone humans( i don't want to discuss the ethical part...but we have the technology) ....also we have gone to moon quite a few times and our satellites are reaching the outer areas of solar system...isn't it true....i m an optimist...and i urge other people around me to be optimistic too....don't be pessimist.....we are doing research on tele-transportation....theoretical research on travelling back in time....then anything is possible...remeber just 100 years back people would have laughed at any person talking about going to moon...

keep writing...may the future holds so much for all of us that we have nice surprises all through our lives...i would definitely love to see humans settle on moon in my lifetime....

[korin 0]

That's exactly what I was trying to say amit nigam. If I may add to your little list of current technologies, the US military and some other groups as well, have now developed cloaking technology. Like the kind that you see, or NOT so, in shows like Star Trek. Pretty kool if you think about it.

[zyzzyvette 0]

Wouldn't it be more efficient just to grow the crops? It seems to me that such a process would be very inefficient, and would consume a lot of energy... any land we saved from farmland would likely be used over 10x in energy production (wind farms, etc). Semi-related comment- the problem with world hunger isn't that we aren't making enough. We have plenty- the problem is distributing it all to those who need it. I doubt a country suffering from hunger would have money to spend on technology like that.Would be a sweet thing to show off, though.

[salamangkero 0]

Semi-related comment- the problem with world hunger isn't that we aren't making enough. We have plenty- the problem is distributing it all to those who need it. I doubt a country suffering from hunger would have money to spend on technology like that.

On a side note, I'd like to disagree with that and add that the problem with world hunger is not that we're not making enough. The problem is that there are too many of us.

Interestingly, a lot of countries have been working on that using their latest technology called "war". So far, they have been successful, don't you think?

A synthesizer (for lack of a better name) probably won't be used to create vegetables or any organism, for that matter. Imagine the possibilities of cloning, k? I do believe, though, that is such a synthesizer would be used, it would be for fashioning items that are quite rare or hard to acquire in this planet. For instance, we have lots of uranium and plutonium in the earth's mantle but we just can't dig past the crust, ne? I do admit, if they did that, they'd probably end up with unstable isotopes, though

[korin 0]

I think I was trying to get at in the future. Sure our most powerful energy and technology right now can't do it. But what if in the future we find a way to directly gather energy from the sun, and i don't mean solar panels. I mean some process where we go basically right up to the sun and begin gathering energy. The future is fun, too bad I ain't gonna live long enough to see all of it.

[zyzzyvette 0]

On a side note, I'd like to disagree with that and add that the problem with world hunger is not that we're not making enough. The problem is that there are too many of us.
Interestingly, a lot of countries have been working on that using their latest technology called "war". So far, they have been successful, don't you think?

A synthesizer (for lack of a better name) probably won't be used to create vegetables or any organism, for that matter. Imagine the possibilities of cloning, k? I do believe, though, that is such a synthesizer would be used, it would be for fashioning items that are quite rare or hard to acquire in this planet. For instance, we have lots of uranium and plutonium in the earth's mantle but we just can't dig past the crust, ne? I do admit, if they did that, they'd probably end up with unstable isotopes, though

Using existing atoms to make single-element objects has already been done- its not a new technology. Its creating complex objects (multiple molecules and/or biotic, etc) that would be difficult and inefficient.

I agree that there's way too many of us, but it seems more humane to me to just feed the starving, rather than killing them (and letting the population drop back down to a reasonable level). I wouldn't mind a baby-limit, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

[bhavesh 0]

To break anything is easy, but to join them in a systematic manner is very difficult. Even to get back the original shape is difficult, so thinking to get a new shape that too in controlled manner is far from reality.Controlled fusion reaction is not possible. To store the amount of energy emitted from fusion reaction is also very difficult.Your idea is theoretically possible but practically, there are many difficulties and to over come them will require centuries for our technology to develop to that level.So it's better to see the present and be more realistic and conserve our resources.

[PurPleKuSh 0]

Sorry to crush your hopes and dreams, but we eat sun rays. We get energy from the sun and thats what we run off of. When a plant grows it harvests a lot of the suns energy. When an animal eats a plant he takes something like 1/10th of its energy. Sae with us when we eat a plant, or an animal. You cant manufacture food because you need solar energy inside the food or else the food will be useless. Now if you can think of a way to manufacture solar energy......

Edited January 24, 2007 by PurPleKuSh (see edit history)