it's not molecular manufacturing if that's what you mean... it's all done with synthetic chemistry, and it's really impressive synthetic chemistry--and importantly it works at room temp and normal pressure--but no, not a building block. Neither Tour nor Kelly (the Rice people) seem really into the Drexler vision-- they talk a lot about how simplistic and unworkable it is. Nonetheless, they are making really cool things...
It's also not a car because it can fold in half, so that the wheels can land on top of each other... it's more like a floppy four legged thing with giant rotating spheres on each limb. I don't think there's a good metaphor... ck On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 04:53:14PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 05:14:58PM +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: > > Udhay Shankar N wrote: > > > CKelty, have you run into these folks? > > > > > > Researchers at Rice University have built a one-molecule car, complete > > > with working chassis, axles, and wheels. > > It's a nice structure, but certainly no car. It brings us > no closer structures at the bottom of http://moleculardevices.org/howbig.htm > > > Ah. A ricer? > > http://funroll-loops.org/ > > > > -- > Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
