Michio Kaku: The von Neumann Probe (A Nano Ship to the Stars)
One of the inventions that may be realized by advances in nanotechnology is the creation of a von Neumann probe, which is essentially a virus, a self-replicating probe that can then explore...
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Recently there was a conference, the One Hundred Year Starship, and of course many people came in with designs to have gigantic fusion rockets take us to Mars and beyond Jupiter, into the stars. Other people said yes, antimatter rockets, that's the way to go, and we all had this mental vision of the Enterprise going to the nearby star systems. . . . There is another way to do it. Think of Mother Nature. When Mother Nature wants to propagate life, one possibility is to send out seeds, not just one or two, but millions of seeds. Most of the seeds never make it, but one or two do and as a consequence that's how trees in forests propagate. So why not create a nano ship using nanotechnology? How big would it be? Some people like Paul Davies s...
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Recently there was a conference, the One Hundred Year Starship, and of course many people came in with designs to have gigantic fusion rockets take us to Mars and beyond Jupiter, into the stars. Other people said yes, antimatter rockets, that's the way to go, and we all had this mental vision of the Enterprise going to the nearby star systems. . . . There is another way to do it. Think of Mother Nature. When Mother Nature wants to propagate life, one possibility is to send out seeds, not just one or two, but millions of seeds. Most of the seeds never make it, but one or two do and as a consequence that's how trees in forests propagate. So why not create a nano ship using nanotechnology? How big would it be? Some people like Paul Davies s...
