Utility Fog
Utility Fog is a multipurpose nanomachine idea by Dr. J. Storrs Hall, moderator of sci.nanotech, based on Eric Drexler's idea of "smart matter". Smart material is defined in Drexler's glossary in Unbounding the Future as material which incorporates nanomachines and nanocomputers, as well as being able to respond somewhat to the outside environment.
'Utitlity fog is a shape-changing mass composed of tiny indentical nanorobots. Each robot is mostly composed of telescoping arms 5 to 10 millionths of a meter long, with a central globular body 1 or 2 millionths wide. In this central body it contains motors, a battery, and a nanocomputer. Hall proposes a mass with 12 arms, which, when massed produced in quantity, will be able to grab/latch onto neighboring masses to communicate and move.
Each robot body is small compared to its arm spread, and the arms are relitavely thin. The results in the 'foglet' taking up only 2 or 3% of the space in the volume they fill, the balance is left for air and passing light. A room filled with utility fog would be fairly transparent, larger volumes would become cloudy at a distance.'
-much of this paraphrased from an exerpt of Nanotechnology Magazine
How it works and why:
Reflective Properties
'The color and reflectivity of an object are results of its properties as an antenna in the micron wavelength region.' Basically, the color and optical properties of objects are results of the way those objects are composed on the micron-scale. By dynamically altering these properties, such as by changing the positions of the foglets' "antenna arms", the optical properties could be dynamically changed. If you have a vast array of these foglets connected to eachother (not taking into conderation the software) these foglets could create a video screen microns wide just by having different foglets reflect different wavelengths.
Macro-Scale Physical Properties
Not only can utility fog have really cool dynamic optical properties, but it can also construct objects seemingly out of thin air. By having a lot of folgets in a given volume simultaneously
much of above from Rutgers Nano Page
Utility fog is a unique element in the myriad of nanotechnogy 'subfields' because it could be extremely powerful, and an assembler is not needed (as far as I can tell) to construct it. We have already constructed nano-sized gears, motors and other simple machines, so a simple version (prototype) of utility fog may be easily feasable in the next few years. The only problem lies with the nanocomputer....as nanocomputing technology seems a little far off and the nanocomputer would give this utility fog much greater and more real power.
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