Gray goo
The gray goo scenario ( Engl. Gray Goo ) is a hypothetical doomsday scenario that through tiny ( molecular nanotechnology ) out of control equipment ( " Assembler is brought about"). The self-replicating assemblers use up the majority of important elements on the earth's surface to create more and more copies of themselves, which destroys flora and fauna . This scenario is also called ecophagy ("eating up the environment"). The original assumption was that machines are already designed with the ability to replicate themselves, while society assumes that machines could, through some circumstance, acquire this ability on their own.
The fiction of larger self-replicating machines was originally described by the mathematician John von Neumann . An example of such a fiction based on the idea of the self-reproducing automaton is the Von Neumann probe . The term gray smear or engl. gray goo was introduced by nanotechnology thought leader Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation . In 2004 Drexler said: "I wish I had never used the term 'gray goo'."
definition
The term was first used by nanotechnology thought leader Eric Drexler in his book Engines of Creation (1986). In Chapter 4, Engines Of Abundance , Drexler describes the exponential growth and the associated limitations of nanomachines, which can only replicate with the addition of special raw materials:
Imagine a replicator in a jar full of chemicals making copies of itself ... The first replicator makes a copy in 1000 seconds, the two replicators make two more in the next 1000 seconds, the four make four more, and the one eight again create eight replicators. After ten hours there are not 36 new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day they would weigh 1 ton; in less than two days the mass would be greater than that of the earth; and 4 hours later the replicators would have a mass greater than that of the sun and all planets in common - had the chemicals not been used up long before.
In a History Channel broadcast, a futuristic gray-goo-doomsday scenario was described:
“It is common practice to clean up an oil spill on the Louisiana coast with billions of nanobots being released. However, due to a programming error, all carbon-based objects are used by the nanobots for replication, and not just the hydrocarbons in the oil. As a result, the nanobots simply destroy everything in order to copy themselves. The earth turns to dust within days. "
Drexler describes the gray grease in Engines Of Creation Chapter 11:
First assembler-based replicators could beat the most advanced modern organisms. Replicator 'plants' with 'leaves', no more effective than today's solar cells, could displace real plants by covering their habitat with replicator leaves. Omnivorous replicator 'bacteria' could fly like pollen, replicate quickly and thus turn the habitat to dust within a few days. Dangerous replicators could quickly become too resilient, small, and rapidly expanding before they can be stopped - at least if we don't make any preparations. We already have enough difficulty controlling viruses and fruit flies.
Drexler notes that the geometric growth that is possible through self-replication is fundamentally limited by the availability of suitable raw materials.
Drexler does not use the expression "gray smear" to describe color or texture, but to represent the difference between "superiority" in the sense of human values and "superiority" in the sense of competitive triumph:
Although masses of uncontrolled replicators need not necessarily be gray or greasy, the phrase 'gray goo' underscores that replicators with the ability to wipe out all life can be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. The replicators may be 'superior' in terms of evolution, but that doesn't necessarily make them valuable.
Risks and Protective Measures
Drexler recently suggested that there was no need to develop anything that even looked like a potential replicator runaway. This would avoid the problems from the outset. In an article in the journal Nanotechnology , he argues that self-replicating machines are unnecessarily complex and inefficient. In his book on advanced nanotechnologies, Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation , published in 1992 , he describes desk-sized manufacturing systems with special tools that enable the manufacture of tiny nanomechanical components, devices and systems and that will revolutionize previous industrial production through miniaturization. This could not prevent someone from producing such self-replicating assemblers and using them as weapons, should this become possible.
In the UK , Prince Charles called on the Royal Society to investigate the "enormous environmental and social risks" of nanotechnology, which generated a lot of media coverage. The Royal Society Report on Nanoscience was published on July 29, 2004. It stated that such self-replicating machines were too far in the future to be of concern to regulators.
Drexler publicly turned his back on his statement from the 1980s in an effort to steer the discussion about the “gray smear” to more current and more realistic abusive applications such as nano-terrorism.
In the article Safe Exponential Manufacturing by Chris Phoenix and Eric Drexler, published in a 2004 issue of Nanotechnology , it was suggested that there was no need to make manufacturing systems with the ability to self-replicate using their own energy sources. The Foresight Institute recommended integrating control mechanisms into such molecular machines in order to prevent their misuse, and thus the gray-smear scenario.
restrictions
Gray goo nanobots need a source of energy so that they can replicate. For efficiency reasons, the energy would likely be generated through oxidation and other chemical reactions with organic matter - a process known as digestion in organic life - rather than from an external source of energy.
In a gray-goose scenario, replication is self-limiting . The more organic material is consumed by the gray goo, the less is left for further replication. After the locally available energy has been consumed, the gray smear would therefore spread more slowly or stop spreading entirely.
Some organisms could prove to be more resistant to the gray goo than others. Natural selection would mean the persistence and strengthening of the phenotypic resistance characteristics of the “stronger” organism.
If the gray-smear nanobots could develop further in the course of replication , they could acquire the ability to “consume” one another in order to obtain a new source of energy for replication. In the further course, individuals could develop a resistance to being consumed. This evolutionary pressure would make speciation , competition between species and specializations possible in order to adapt to ecological niches . Nevertheless, molecular machines constructed in this way, as proposed by Drexler, are fundamentally simpler and less susceptible to further development than biological systems.
Media processing
In the video game Horizon Zero Dawn , the protagonist moves in a post-apocalyptic world that emerged from a gray smear scenario.
See also
literature
- Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What Is Life? (1995). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-81087-5
- Green Goo - Life in the Era of Humane Genocide by Nick Szabo
- Green Goo: The New Nanothreat by Wired
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gray Goo is a Small Issue . Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. December 14, 2003. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ↑ Nanotechnology pioneer slays “gray goo” myths . In: Nanotechnology . Institute of Physics . July 6, 2006. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ^ Robert A. Freitas Jr .: Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations . April 2000. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ↑ Lawrence E. Joseph: Apocalypse 2012 . Broadway, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-7679-2448-1 , p. 6.
- ↑ Jim Giles: Nanotech takes small step towards burying 'gray goo' . In: Nature . 429, No. 6992, 2004, p. 591. doi : 10.1038 / 429591b . PMID 15190320 .
- ↑ Modern Marvels: Doomsday Tech DVD . History Channel. December 28, 2004. Archived from the original on September 20, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ^ K. Eric Drexler: Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation . Wiley, 1992, ISBN 978-0-471-57518-4 .
- ↑ Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties . The Royal Society. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ^ Paul Rincon: Nanotech guru turns back on 'goo' , BBC News. June 9, 2004. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ↑ Chris Phoenix, Eric Drexler: Safe Exponential Manufacturing . In: IOP Publishing Ltd. (Ed.): Nanotechnology . August 2004.
- ^ Foresight Guidelines for Responsible Nanotechnology Development . Foresight Institute and IMM. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ↑ WOWIO: Engines of Creation 2.0: The Coming Era… by K. Eric Drexler , accessed on February 11, 2019 (archived version)
