There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom
There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom is the title of a lecture given by physicist Richard Feynman on December 29, 1959 at the California Institute of Technology . He presented numerous ideas on how technology could work on a microscopic level. His proposals later became the basis of nanotechnology .
Main ideas of the speech
Data storage options
Feynman explains that the theoretical possibilities of compressing data into small spaces are by no means exhausted. He uses as an example that the entire Encyclopædia Britannica could be saved on the tip of a pen in such a way that the resolution of the writing would be preserved. Feynman presents electron beam lithography as a way of writing on such a scale , without using this term.
"If you look back in 2000 on today, you will ask yourself why it was only in 1960 that someone seriously began to research in this direction."
Need for better electron microscopes
Another point of the speech is the appeal to increase the resolution of electron microscopes . According to Feynman, this could lead to essential biological mechanisms such as B. the development of mutations can be clarified by simple direct observation. In addition, more powerful electron microscopes would make it possible to read very small images of data, so that the storage capacity would increase per space used.
“We have to improve the electron microscope a hundred times. It's not impossible; it does not contradict the laws of electron diffraction . "
In 1999, the chemist Chad Mirkin and his colleagues wrote the first paragraph of Feynman's speech in nano-script on "an area one thousandth times the size of the point of a needle".
Advantages of miniaturized computers
Feynman also suggests miniaturizing computers so that their wires have a diameter of around 10–100 atoms. This mark has been reached today in new computer models. It is shown that because of the impossibility of exceeding the speed of light, the cable length and thus the size of the computer should be as small as possible in order to enable the fastest possible calculations.
Construction of microscopic machines
Due to the difficulties that z. B. exist in the repair of very small objects, Feynman also suggests that microscopic machines be built that can do such work. These machines could be made very small: If a car deviates a maximum of 4 · 10 −4 inches from its blueprint, and if this car is reduced by a factor of 4,000, the new deviation from the blueprint corresponds to about ten atoms; According to Feynman, this is in the acceptable range.
Feynman saw one way of constructing such small machines in a step-by-step downsizing of the production machines: First, one would build automatic and controllable artificial hands that would be a quarter the size of normal hands. These could then be used to build automatic, controllable hands that would be one sixteenth the size of normal hands. One could continue this process until one had automatic and controllable hands that were small enough to construct microscopic machines.
In this process, the number of automatic hands could be increased by a factor of 10 for each iteration level, i.e. H. one automatic size hand produces ten size hands . In this way, a large number of microscopic production facilities could be built without significant material costs.
Physical molecule manipulation
Feynman is also considering whether it would be possible to use physical methods instead of chemical processes to manipulate and manufacture certain molecules . Feynman admits that chemistry would make such great advances that chemists would be able to synthesize almost any material before such a physical process could be invented. Nevertheless, he believes that the development of such a process is of theoretical interest.
Competition
To advance research in the field of nanotechnology, Feynman offered $ 1,000 each for two services:
- for constructing a motor that rotates and is 1 ⁄ 64 cubic inches,
- and for the miniaturization of any book page by a factor of 25,000 so that the miniaturized version of the book page can be read with an electron microscope.
Both prizes have since been won.
Web links
- Richard Phillips Feynman: Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Transcript of the lecture. December 1959, archived from the original on March 15, 2012 ; accessed on October 28, 2018 (English).
- Richard P. Feynman: Lots of leeway downwards. An invitation to a new field of physics . In: Deutsches Museum (Ed.): Culture & Technology . No. 1 , 2000 ( deutsches-museum.de [PDF; 6.0 MB ; accessed on December 8, 2017] English: There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom . 1960. Translated by Graham Lack, first edition: Engineering and Science, pp. 20 ff.).
- Physical molecule manipulation (1999)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Eric Drexler : "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" (Richard Feynman, Pasadena, December 29, 1959). Eric Drexler, December 29, 2009, accessed May 1, 2013 .
- ↑ Richard P. Feynman: A lot of leeway downwards. An invitation to a new field of physics . In: Deutsches Museum (Ed.): Culture & Technology . No. 1 , 2000 ( deutsches-museum.de [PDF; 6.0 MB ; accessed on December 8, 2017] English: There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom . 1960. Translated by Graham Lack, first edition: Engineering and Science, pp. 20 ff.).
- ↑ Richard Feynman: A lot of leeway downwards. In: Deutsches Museum (Ed.): Culture & Technology . No. 1 , 2000, pp. 1 ( deutsches-museum.de [PDF; 6.0 MB ; accessed on December 8, 2017]).
- ↑ a b Richard Feynman: Lots of leeway downwards. In: Deutsches Museum (Ed.): Culture & Technology . No. 1 , 2000, pp. 3 ( deutsches-museum.de [PDF; 6.0 MB ; accessed on December 8, 2017]).
- ↑ Ilya V. Avdeev: NEW FORMULATION FOR FINITE ELEMENT MODELING electrostatically DRIVEN MICRO ELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS. (PDF; 3.0 MB) Retrieved November 26, 2017 . , P. 12