Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MonkeyHead]

Obligatory Cordyceps reference...

[Amperzand]

I mean, planet cracking is a valid strategy.

[TheDarkStar]

A real sci-fi grey goo scenario seems extremely unlikely, given that most planets have had billions of years to have all their more reactive compounds become more stable and less reactive. At this point, it would take more energy to make another grey goo unit than would be gained by breaking the material down.

The other argument against the possibility of grey goo is this: We live on a planet where there are 5x10³⁰ bacteria whose only goal is to turn their environment into more bacteria and they haven't managed to cause a grey-goo scenario yet.

[Rolepgeek]

We also live on a planet where planets have had millions of years to become more efficient at pulling energy from sunlight, and yet advanced modern solar cells are more effective than they.

Evolution can also evolve to extinction, and when something is in competition with itself over a very long period of time, well...you develop countermeasures. The whole Oxygen extinction was something of a grey goo scenario, over a very long period of time. We're products of that. And if we can design machines that can be faster, stronger, and more durable than naturally occurring organic machines, what's to say we can't develop something smaller?

[HAMMERMILL]

I always liked the idea of sulfur hexafluoride as a sci-fit weapon. It is an absurdly potent greenhouse gas. Rocket payloads of it could be a duel-use terraforming/ doomsday weapon depending on the context.

Grey-goo would run into energy scarcity, like bacteria do on earth but worse. Also I figure a self-replicating machine would be less efficient at reproducing than a bacteria, since it must go through the entire supply chain of a finished industrialized product, by itself. Instead of just getting big and splitting into two it has to extract material, refine it, fabricate parts, assemble them, program them, ect. Also if they can design grey-goo they can aerosol something that could render them inert. Like napalm.

[Culise]

In addition to the points made above, most nanomachines are also likely to be ridiculously vulnerable to thermal damage and radiation due to issues of scale; when atoms are measured on similar scales to your robots, highly agitated atoms or subatomic particles are basically like bowling balls in a china shop.  As a practical matter in the original design, it's also easier to centralize your nanomachine swarm than to create a true decentralized network, which also has the benefit of easing control and reducing the odds of an accidental grey goo scenario (note that this, however, completely ignores the possibility of an intentional one).

But if you think about it, bacteria actually have managed to succeed in their "grey goo" scenario, apropos of Rolepgeek's point and contrary to that which was said earlier.  All life on Earth is derived from basic prokaryotic life, albeit with significant evolutionary changes over the millenia, and it has spread to the most unlikely corners of the world.  Life has developed to survive in tremendously acidic or basic environments, in the absence of oxygen (or for that matter, in its presence; oxygen is not a "live and let live" element by any measure), in tremendous temperatures above boiling, at pressures upwards of 100 MPa (1000 times sea level atmospheric pressure), or in water that contains significant concentrations or heavy metals ranging from copper to arsenic.  It can consume solar radiation, other forms of life, subsist on one of the strongest reducing agents in the atmosphere (oxygen, which it also put there in the first place), or for more extreme conditions, examples can consume radiation or rocks.  If you generalize the concept to any self-perpetuating swarm, organic life is literally the original grey goo. 

[Sheb]

Grey-goo would run into energy scarcity, like bacteria do on earth but worse. Also I figure a self-replicating machine would be less efficient at reproducing than a bacteria, since it must go through the entire supply chain of a finished industrialized product, by itself. Instead of just getting big and splitting into two it has to extract material, refine it, fabricate parts, assemble them, program them, ect. Also if they can design grey-goo they can aerosol something that could render them inert. Like napalm.

Yeah, because bacteria don't need to extract nutrients, process them into proteins, lipids and sugars, assemble those into organites and program them with DNA.

[i2amroy]

Honestly a much more feasible "grey goo" scenario would be if you built a large machine that was able to replicate several different types of machines, ranging from hundreds of thousands of tiny nanobots all of the way up to making a copy of itself, rather than having tiny totally self-replicating nanobots. That simultaneously unlocks the abilities for nanobots to have some small measure of intelligence, as well as having much higher efficiencies for processing materials, etc., and allowing for several different designs focused towards different purposes. It would open up some vulnerabilities (such as taking out each core making a large number of nanobots much less harmful without it to make more or guide them), but it would be a much more feasible task to actually accomplish in such a way that it actually still poses a threat.

What about a grey goo that converts living matter into robotic servants loyal to you? That's much better than a load of belligerent wasters ruining your victory with their moaning.

You'd have to understand the exact method that any creature you wanted to infect's brain pulses actually worked, and then you'd have to penetrate the skin, and then you'd need nanobots that weren't instantly devoured/covered in scar tissue by the body itself. All in all any plan like that would have a vastly reduced target species range (so no mind controlling every type of household pet to work as your spy) and would be much more likely to paralyze something than successfully control it.

[Fniff]

I was thinking less controlling it than melting it down for parts.

[Amperzand]

I mean, that's basically a Tyranid bacterium. Nano machines are not best suited to using biological materials, at least in the speculative designs I've seen.

[wierd]

Misconception fixing time:

There is "grey goo", and there is "grey goo catastrophe."

The former is a nano-robotic manufacturing technology bordering on omni-replication.
The latter is what happens when that manufacturing tech goes sideways.

I proposed the former, not the latter.  "nano-robotics" can be quite "macro" compared to germs. Think more the size of a period (full stop in UK terms), and less the size of a germ. Small enough that they can get inside people, big enough to not have so many serious problems.

The devices dont use human flesh to replicate. They are not intended to spread. Instead, they rarify human bodies into useful products to be picked up and used later. Like say, amine based plastics, which are useful for making bullet proof vests, and flame resistant garments.

Such devices can be programmed to process only humans meeting certain genetic or biochemical requirements, being large enough to have sensors and decision making processors on board. In this way, they can be quite "enemy specific", since soldiers can be given oral medication that the goo is programmed to be responsive to as a boolean flag, so they dont process your soldiers on the field. Everyone else? Die horribly as all the protiens in their bodies gets turned into amine plastic fibers while they are still alive.

[Rolepgeek]

I mean, that's basically a Tyranid bacterium. Nano machines are not best suited to using biological materials, at least in the speculative designs I've seen.

Meh.  When I think nanobots, I think cells we can precisely control, anyway.

On another note, what do you guys think will come after missiles and rockets once active/passive defenses reduce their cost effectiveness too much to be as practical as they are now?

[MonkeyHead]

I'm thinking of a system where standard armor is advanced enough to deflect 3~4 bullets from a standard rifle in the main places (chest, head (yes the helmet is very heavily plated, I think I'll have the neck armor brace it a bit), arms excluding joints, legs excluding joints) and enough to eat a single round in the softer places (neck, back, stomach, joints (except the back of the joints), feet, hands). Other places use mail (which is essentially just against debris and rough things). So, my question?

Laser guns. I redid my weapon system, and now the point of lasers is that they are weak but quick, and usually slightly inaccurate on purpose. They are meant to either hit the mail'd spots or slowly melt the weaker plates. Now for the actual question.

Laser cannon. Is it worth it to make a cannon that fires blasts large enough to engulf a soldier, autohitting any weak points? Or should it just be more concentrated blasts?

Lasers work best when concentrated. Even a moderate power laser will cut through most things if concentrated enough. As such, pretty much any armour (if not incredibly reflective) can be punched through with a concentrated beam of sufficient wattage, and cause significant wounding to an organic target... or, possibly more desirably, be used as a conduction channel for an electric current. Large laser beams to vaporise a human sized target are just too power hungry to be worthwhile.

[Rolepgeek]

I'm thinking of a system where standard armor is advanced enough to deflect 3~4 bullets from a standard rifle in the main places (chest, head (yes the helmet is very heavily plated, I think I'll have the neck armor brace it a bit), arms excluding joints, legs excluding joints) and enough to eat a single round in the softer places (neck, back, stomach, joints (except the back of the joints), feet, hands). Other places use mail (which is essentially just against debris and rough things). So, my question?

Laser guns. I redid my weapon system, and now the point of lasers is that they are weak but quick, and usually slightly inaccurate on purpose. They are meant to either hit the mail'd spots or slowly melt the weaker plates. Now for the actual question.

Laser cannon. Is it worth it to make a cannon that fires blasts large enough to engulf a soldier, autohitting any weak points? Or should it just be more concentrated blasts?

Honestly,  a laser that large should really just be used to make plasma explosions. Two shots focused on the same point will make an explosion at will. It's what one idea for how to deflect missiles or a nuke was. Bunch of explosions in its path, throw out off course. Would work on soft targets too, I'll wager.

[wierd]

Dual beam colimation would make the "it's reflective silly!" argument go away.

Basically, when two beams of sufficient energy intersect, the local energy is sufficient to bloom the atmosphere at that point, making a small thermal explosion. You can damage even reflective surfaces with the resulting plasma ball that way. Once the surface is marred by this explosion, traditional beams will burn right through.

Now with video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HHJhpStza0