The following lengthy article, I think is very important. I have long
thought that the "replicator" used in the Star Trek space series was the
ultimate invention. The creation of matter by basic molecular
reconstruction solves that Starships food problem. On Earth, we may find
that a "replicator" technology might supply needed resource material we have
overused or perhaps even food that can be made as a manufactured product
based on mathematically knowing all the molecular compounds and developing
ways to combine them. What freedom that would bring - that each person
might have the "means of production" as defined in Hilaire Belloc's book The
Servile State - and perhaps more than just production, but also, the
creation of all necessary and luxury items a person could desire - made from
recombining at the molecular level. Is that a possibilitythat can be drawn
from this article below?
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
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From: Mark Graffis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: graffis-l [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Bob Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [graffis-l] The Virtual Alchemists
Date: Tue, Jul 6, 1999, 3:15 PM
From: Mark Graffis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
MIT Bldg. W59-200 201 Vassar St. Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel
617-253-8250 Fax 617-258-5850 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CURRENT ISSUE
July/August 1999
After a decade of calculations, the first wave of materials
designed from scratch on the computer are ready to be made and
tested. On the horizon: new substrates for optics and electronics.
By [16]David Voss
photo The first thing you notice about Gerbrand Ceder's materials
science lab at MIT is that there are no crucibles, no furnaces, no
crystal-growing instruments. Instead, you find a row of
high-resolution computer displays with grad students and postdocs
tweaking code and constructing colorful 3-D images. It's in this
room, quiet except for the hum of fans cooling the computer power,
where new high-tech ceramics and electronic materials that have
never been seen or made before are being forged. They are taking
form "in virtuo"designed from scratch on the computer, distilled
out of the basic laws of physics.
The next thing you're likely to notice is how young Ceder is. Quick
to laugh but intensely passionate in explaining his work, the
33-year-old associate professor is one of a new breed of materials
researchers, trained in traditional processing techniques, who have
turned to discovering materials using computers. The dream is
simple: Replace the age-old practice of finding new substances by
trial and error, with calculations based on the laws of quantum
mechanics that predict the properties of materials before you make
them.
You can, in theory at least, design metals, semiconductors and
ceramics atom by atom, adjusting the structure as you go to achieve
desired effects. That should make it possible to come up with, say,
a new composition for an electronic material much faster. Even more
important, tinkering with atomic structure on a computer makes it
possible to invent classes of materials that defy the instincts of
the trial-and-error traditionalists.
It's an idea that has been kicking around for at least a decade.
But with the explosion in accessible computer power, as well as the
development of better software and theories, it's becoming a
reality. Last year, Ceder and his collaborators at MIT synthesized
one of the first materials that had actually been predicted on a
computer before it existed. This new aluminum oxide is a cheap and
efficient electrode for batteries. And while it may or may not lead
to a better, lighter rechargeable battery, the success of Ceder's
groupand related work at a handful of other labsis proving that
useful materials can be designed from the basic laws of physics.
Designing from first principles represents a whole new way of doing
materials science, a discipline that Ceder describes as "a
collection of facts with some brilliant insights thrown in." It's a
transformation he's been aiming at since his undergraduate days in
the late 1980s at UniversitÈ Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. "My
background is heat and beat metallurgy," he explains. "But I always
thought there should be more to it, some way to calculate things
using all the great physics of quantum mechanics."
Getting there, however, won't be easy. Scientists have known for
decades that, according to the rules of quantum mechanics, if you
could detail the position of the electrons swarming around atoms,
you could then calculate physical properties of the material. Yet
the sheer diff
