ChemTech

[JohnHunt]

"Chemtech" is a particular type of nanotech. The moment that an inexpensive desktop molecular manufacturing device is created then some college student somewhere is going to think, "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I were to write a program to make this thing produce every conceivable molecule of increasing size." Since such molecules are fairly small and since actions happen very rapidly on the nanoscale, said molecules would be produced in the thousands very quickly. Some of those may be entirely novel molecules. Should one of those molecules be an ecophage it is all over.

Scientists are now investigating to determine what the necessary properties of a self-replicating molecule are. And yes, they are publishing their work openly. The result is that it is likely that someone will produce a self-replicating chemical which will prompt others to do likewise. Eventually, someone will be tempted to produce a self-replicating chemical which utilized readily available resources such as CO2.

[Boxy]

The ultimate question, as you put it, is whether there are self-replicating molecules that are ecophagous. In the beginning of life on Earth, I'm sure that DNA had to compete with other self-replicating molecules (unless, of course, DNA is the only possible self-replicating molecule resulting from the primordial soup). If this is the case, then new ecophagous molecules would have to compete against an operating system of the matter machine that has had 3.7 billion years to become so thoroughly entrenched that we do not know of any life that does not use DNA as its fundamental information storage.

Food for thought, yes, and we must needs be educated on what we're doing before we open Pandora's box. However, criticisms need to be directed in a useful manner. I would not particularly like a product that could be used to manufacture smallpox or mustard gas, and I'm sure there's enough consumer groups and arms control hawks to nerf any such product.

Maybe such a product would be heavily regulated, sort of like how access to standard chemicals are regulate.

[JohnHunt]

...I'm sure there's enough consumer groups and arms control hawks to nerf any such product.
I'm not sure that they would stop it in time. When it comes to NBC weapons they were not existential from the get-go. If nukes were self-replicating, we'd all have been dead in 1945 and the arms control efforts of the '70s to present would have been too late. So how sure can any of us be that the powers-that-be will have such foresight that they'll prevent the first ecophagic chemical from being created when we really have no previous experience to warn us. This is why I advocate a contained existential demonstration. It would demonstrate that such threats are real, not just theoretical, and that the urgency to do something about it is extreme.

...new ecophagous molecules would have to compete against an operating system of (DNA) ... become so thoroughly entrenched...
Entrenchment doesn't guarantee survival. As far as I know, the whole presumed menagerie of self-replicating chemicals and cells up to the simplest bacterium (Mycoplasma genetalium) are completely non-existent. Now, either there's something wrong with the standard story or all of these species went extinct. If a self-replicating molecule had CO2 as its limiting feedstock then how would the long history of plants also using CO2 prevent this chemical from using up all available CO2?

[Boxy]

I'm really skeptical of the prospect of having CO2 as a limiting factor. I mean, it makes up pretty much the entire atmosphere after nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. Take a look at this graph:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Atmosphere_gas_proportions.svg

Plus you have the whole deal with carbon fuels producing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. Even if there were a self-replicating chemical which used carbon dioxide as an input and therefore competed with plant-based life, it would have some time for reaction (i.e. it would not be instantaneous) and therefore there could be the potential for a new equilibrium.

I would expect any self-replicating "ecophagous" (what you mean by this is chemicals which compete with life for resources, not necessarily "eating" it, as the etymology would indicate) would require significant quantities of substances other than CO2 to operate. CO2 itself is not a particularly useful chemical outside of photosynthesis, so your focus on this chemical seems unusual.

As far as I know, the whole presumed menagerie of self-replicating chemicals and cells up to the simplest bacterium (Mycoplasma genetalium) are completely non-existent.Boh? Viruses are non-existent?

Mycoplasma genetalium is about 300 nanometers (0.3 micrometers) wide (source (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_smallest_bacteria)), while the largest virus typically studied is about that size, and the smallest is 20 nanometers (source (http://www.drgreene.com/21_527.html)). Viruses are sometimes considered "life," although they cannot reproduce without bacteria (possibly because it is more cost-efficient to produce metabolic energy inside the cell wall rather than let it float around in the intercellular plasma).

Life first developed in a primordial soup that was chock-full of the building-blocks of life, such as amino acids and proteins. Nowadays, cellular life has pretty much exploited all the available free metabolic energy sources, developed into multi-cellular structures, developed photosynthetic energy sources, and created a brand-new level of complexity to existence. The pre-cellular soup that was floating around could very well support pre-cellular life. However, the dearth of pre-cellular building blocks that exists today would mean that in order to support life, more complex metabolic processes are necessary to extract further metabolic energy.

If there is possible metabolic energy available to non-cellular nanotechnology, it must be of a radically different makeup to be non-competitive with organic life. For example, silicon could very well be a useful building material for nanobots, but you would still need some sort of biochemical energy source to power the brave little nanobot.

[Bluesteel]

"Chemtech" is a particular type of nanotech. The moment that an inexpensive desktop molecular manufacturing device is created then some college student somewhere is going to think, "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I were to write a program to make this thing produce every conceivable molecule of increasing size." Since such molecules are fairly small and since actions happen very rapidly on the nanoscale, said molecules would be produced in the thousands very quickly. Some of those may be entirely novel molecules. Should one of those molecules be an ecophage it is all over.
I've never heard the work "Chemtech" being used in association with Nanotechnology before (apart from the name of a company that has some involvement), could you provide sources/citations please so I can look into it?

As I've pointed out in the Nanotech thread, the chances of even the most advanced research lab with limitless funding achieving anything like a universal assembler/disassembler in the near, medium or even far term is remote. So a student in a garage/bedroom is all but impossible.

In fact this is exactly what I thought back in 1996 when I first read Drexlers book "Engines of Creation". But subsequent research and my final involvement in the major Royal Society investigation and Report of the future of Nanotechnology has convinced me that such a danger is so remote it is not really worth considering at this moment in time. Indeed it would be more worth while considering the danger of the chemical H20 as just one bucket of this substance can kill millions of people... ;)

Scientists are now investigating to determine what the necessary properties of a self-replicating molecule are. And yes, they are publishing their work openly. The result is that it is likely that someone will produce a self-replicating chemical which will prompt others to do likewise. Eventually, someone will be tempted to produce a self-replicating chemical which utilized readily available resources such as CO2.
Again can you cite any publications? I know Chris Phoenix at the Centre for Responsible Nanotechnology published ideas behind a theoretical Nanofactory, but I am unaware of any serious peer reviewed papers getting anywhere close to Assembler/Disassembler technology, and I keep a close watch on the field. Sure there's lots of speculation, but nothing so far has been anywhere close to near or mid term credible designs that could be implemented any time soon - or even far.

Also self-replication is a long way from 'runaway self-replication', the former only works in a controlled environment with supplied feed stocks. Anything that has to exist in the natural environment encounters such a number of problems that it's more likely that your car will go rogue, break out of it's garage and go to live in the wild! :)

I'm not saying there aren't any dangers with Nanotechnology, it's a tool like all other technologies and can be put equally to bad as well as good use. But the good uses for Nanotech, especially in the field of Space Exploration, outweigh the bad by a considerable margin both IMHO and in the Royal Society Report (and many other Governmental and NGO reports).

Julian (Member of the Institute of Nanotechnology)

[JohnHunt]

Boxy,

I am familiar with the composition of the atmosphere. But compared to other potential reactants such as hydrogen and oxygen, atmospheric CO2 is much less. As for nitrogen, of course there's much more of that than CO2 however N2 may or may not be able to be used in a chemical reaction.

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig3-1.htm

Plus you have the whole deal with carbon fuels producing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide
If atmospheric CO2 is consumed we won't have more carbon fuels being produced because we'll be dead. And it's not enormous amounts from a percentage standpoint. CO2 levels have gone up about a third since the industrial revolution.

Even if there were a self-replicating chemical which used carbon dioxide as an input and therefore competed with plant-based life
I'm honestly asking. Just because something else consumes CO2 how does that prevent a self-replicating chemical from using up all of the remaining atmospheric CO2?

it would have some time for reaction (i.e. it would not be instantaneous) and therefore there could be the potential for a new equilibrium.
There are about 4 x 10^40 CO2 atoms in the atmosphere. It would take about 135 doublings (generations) to reach that number. Bacteria replicate about every 20 minutes. 135 generations would mean just under two days.
A self-replicating chemical would replicate at a much faster rate. I simply don't understand your equilibrium point. Perhaps you could elucidate.

Boh? Viruses are non-existent?
Viruses are not considered evolutionary precursors to bacteria. That is why I excluded them. So there is still this huge missing gap of "entrenched life" before Mycoplasma genetalium. I don't see the long existence of DNA life as guaranteeing survival.

However, the dearth of pre-cellular building blocks that exists today would mean that in order to support life, more complex metabolic processes are necessary to extract further metabolic energy.
I had presumed that the self-replicating chemical would use sunlight as its power source. Is there some reason why it has to be metabolic energy (i.e. consuming organic chemicals for fuel)?

brave little nanobot
Never thought of them in such endearing terms! I am not discussing nanobots right now. It seems to me that once we get atom-by-atom desktop manufacturing then someone writing an iterative program to produce ever larger chemicals would happen before complex nanobots were created.

[JohnHunt]

Julian,

I've never heard the work "Chemtech" being used in association with Nanotechnology before...
It is a term which I have coined. There's NanoTech, BioTech...but I think that ChemTech deserves its own category because to leave it in the nanotech category would mean to ignore this fundamentally different category.

It is fundamentally different because it completely gets around the hurdles of getting nanobots to an ecophagic state. It would be hard to get nanobots to replicate, but potentially easy for chemicals to replicate (e.g. by producing 1,000,000 novel chemicals of which one so happens to be self-replicating). You don't even have to be able to understand how to produce a self-replicating chemical. Produce enough and one of them might be self-replicating.

Whereas nanobots need a significant power source, chemicals could use solar energy. Whereas nanobots need a method of movement, chemicals could use the wind. There's about five reasons why nanobots have been put on the "can't cause extinction" list. But chemicals blow right past each. Chemtech is worthy of its own category.

It is also different in an important way from nanotech when considering existential risks in that, IMO, chemtech will happen before nanobots because chemtech technology may be a necessary precursor to nanobots. Can you produce ecophagic nanobots without producing them atom-by-atom? If not then you can produce any legitimate biochemical de novo before you start assembling your first nanobots.

As I've pointed out in the Nanotech thread, the chances of even the most advanced research lab with limitless funding achieving anything like a universal assembler/disassembler in the near, medium or even far term is remote. So a student in a garage/bedroom is all but impossible.
Not true with chemtech as I hope you now see. Self-replicating chemicals uses no gears, no pulleys, no conveyor belts, no robotic-like arms...they're just individual chemicals. Think of all of the reasons that you rejected the idea of nanotech causing ecophagy. How many of those ideas were based upon engineer-designed nanobots? Self-replicating chemicals are NOT nanobots. They are chemicals. Good old-fashioned ball and stick chemicals. You don't even have to know what you're doing. Just iteratively or randomly produce enough chemicals and perhaps one of them will be self-replicating.

I don't have access to scientific articles. So the best that I can do is to point you to news references about research and researchers. The first link is what I was referring to.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n22_v146/ai_15952616/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/replicatingrna/
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1990/may09/23124.html

I am unaware of any serious peer reviewed papers getting anywhere close to Assembler/Disassembler technology
Remember, I'm talking about chemtech here. One could theoretically produce a self-replicating chemical using ordinary chemical or biochemical means. But I choose to describe chemtech as a result of atom-by-atom assembly (i.e. nanotech) because it breaks open what type of chemicals can be produced. For example, one can produce a nearly infinite number of mutated RNA molecules but in the end, they are still RNAs. But atom-by-atom assembly is freed from any established chemical or biochemical process.

But to answer your question, certainly you are aware of the debate surrounding diamondoid mechanosynthesis. The point that I would like to make is that I'm not looking at what will happen now or even ten years from now but in about 40-50 years from now. Just because we are not on the verge of having that technology now in no way means that it will be unlikely in 40-50 years from now. Given the progress of the last 10 years it is not unreasonable to think that we could have that technology in a half a century.

The reason I use the 40-50 year time frame is that I am looking at this from the standpoint of whether we'll have a self-sustaining lunar base by then. We could but only if we intend to. So I see it as a race between existential threats and an off-Earth self-supporting base. We can hurry up with a base and slow down with the threats. And I think that we should try and do both.

Also self-replication is a long way from 'runaway self-replication', the former only works in a controlled environment with supplied feed stocks.
I'm not sure I see the difference. I presume that there are certain bacterial species which exist in all oceans. Is that self-replication or runaway self-replication? Do you consider the ocean to be a controlled environment? If so, then would you consider the atmosphere to be a controlled environment? If not, then bacteria are able to replicate in an uncontrolled environment and one might expect a self-replicating chemical to replicate in the "uncontrolled" environment of the atmosphere.

Anything that has to exist in the natural environment encounters such a number of problems
Please elaborate.

But the good uses for Nanotech, especially in the field of Space Exploration, outweigh the bad by a considerable margin
One existential event nullifies all previous and potential benefits. And remember, they are thinking about nanotech and probably never considered chemtech. That's not to say that we should stop all progress if there is an exceeding small possibility of an existential risk.

But what I am saying is that, if there is a possibility of an existential threat, then we'd better work darn hard to clarify if it actually exists and even experiment in a contained environment to see if we can create it. If we actually create it, then we need to then highly regulate the technology while all along work toward the early establishment of an off-Earth, self-sustaining base in case.

[Bluesteel]

Apologies for the delay in replying but I've been on holiday and the WiFi connection I was promised failed to materialise...

Julian,
It is a term which I have coined. There's NanoTech, BioTech...but I think that ChemTech deserves its own category because to leave it in the nanotech category would mean to ignore this fundamentally different category.
I'm not sure a new term is required as what you are talking about is effectively synthetic life, and alternative to RNA/DNA, and therefore part of biochem.

It is fundamentally different because it completely gets around the hurdles of getting nanobots to an ecophagic state. It would be hard to get nanobots to replicate, but potentially easy for chemicals to replicate (e.g. by producing 1,000,000 novel chemicals of which one so happens to be self-replicating). You don't even have to be able to understand how to produce a self-replicating chemical. Produce enough and one of them might be self-replicating.
I don't think it is so fundamentally different. Self-replication needs such specific conditions that, outside of very controlled environments it would be almost impossible for one to spontaneously occur. I say 'almost' as it plainly isn't impossible as we are here to witness that it has happened once, with RNA/DNA. But as nothing else has been found in the natural environment that has the same characteristics, the chances of anything arriving by Abiogenesis seem to be remote indeed.

Whereas nanobots need a significant power source, chemicals could use solar energy. Whereas nanobots need a method of movement, chemicals could use the wind. There's about five reasons why nanobots have been put on the "can't cause extinction" list. But chemicals blow right past each. Chemtech is worthy of its own category.
But as the first article mentioned, such power source conversion would have to be engineered in as do methods of breaking down, consuming and re-using local matter - which again needs all the elements of basic life.


It is also different in an important way from nanotech when considering existential risks in that, IMO, chemtech will happen before nanobots because chemtech technology may be a necessary precursor to nanobots. Can you produce ecophagic nanobots without producing them atom-by-atom? If not then you can produce any legitimate biochemical de novo before you start assembling your first nanobots.
But such replication would need to be at least nanoscale I would assume in order to have sufficient working parts to survive in an open environment, and hence would be either Nano or Biotech (both are merging at the moment anyway)

Not true with chemtech as I hope you now see. Self-replicating chemicals uses no gears, no pulleys, no conveyor belts, no robotic-like arms...they're just individual chemicals. Think of all of the reasons that you rejected the idea of nanotech causing ecophagy. How many of those ideas were based upon engineer-designed nanobots? Self-replicating chemicals are NOT nanobots. They are chemicals. Good old-fashioned ball and stick chemicals. You don't even have to know what you're doing. Just iteratively or randomly produce enough chemicals and perhaps one of them will be self-replicating.
But without mechanisms to convert energies, move and breakdown materials and recombine them they wouldn't be capable of surviving and thriving in an open environment would they? Simple chemicals are exactly that, simple chemicals and if they become complex enough to become simple life they would have to have rudimentary working systems, the definition between that and engineered Nano-organisms is merely semantic.

I don't have access to scientific articles. So the best that I can do is to point you to news references about research and researchers. The first link is what I was referring to.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n22_v146/ai_15952616/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/replicatingrna/
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1990/may09/23124.html
Interesting articles in their own right, and I know Craig Venters is working on something similar. But it's all far from demonstrating that synthetic life could be engineered to survive in the wild, let alone evolve.

Remember, I'm talking about chemtech here. One could theoretically produce a self-replicating chemical using ordinary chemical or biochemical means. But I choose to describe chemtech as a result of atom-by-atom assembly (i.e. nanotech) because it breaks open what type of chemicals can be produced. For example, one can produce a nearly infinite number of mutated RNA molecules but in the end, they are still RNAs. But atom-by-atom assembly is freed from any established chemical or biochemical process.
Again I fail to see the need for a new term, because as soon as any chemicals/molecules have been engineered to do anything useful such as replicate they are at a nanoscale. After all molecules are chemicals, and manipulating those precisely at the nanoscale is MNT, Molecular Nanotechnology. I think your 'Chemtech' and MNT are the same thing.

But to answer your question, certainly you are aware of the debate surrounding diamondoid mechanosynthesis. The point that I would like to make is that I'm not looking at what will happen now or even ten years from now but in about 40-50 years from now. Just because we are not on the verge of having that technology now in no way means that it will be unlikely in 40-50 years from now. Given the progress of the last 10 years it is not unreasonable to think that we could have that technology in a half a century.

But gazing so far into the future if fraught with difficulties as anything can happen, contact with alien life etc. But as it's taken billions of years for original abiogenesis to produce us, I'm rather sceptical that, even with the interference of man, a rival replicator will emerge. Natural Selection has done a good job of fine tuning the original for our current environment, for another to take over a highly accelerated evolutionary process must be forced.

The reason I use the 40-50 year time frame is that I am looking at this from the standpoint of whether we'll have a self-sustaining lunar base by then. We could but only if we intend to. So I see it as a race between existential threats and an off-Earth self-supporting base. We can hurry up with a base and slow down with the threats. And I think that we should try and do both.
That I agree with, but see the chance of asteroid strike or plague to be infinitely more problematic than runaway replicators - although to some extent you could say a plague is close to that, although surviving in a more limited environment

I'm not sure I see the difference. I presume that there are certain bacterial species which exist in all oceans. Is that self-replication or runaway self-replication? Do you consider the ocean to be a controlled environment? If so, then would you consider the atmosphere to be a controlled environment? If not, then bacteria are able to replicate in an uncontrolled environment and one might expect a self-replicating chemical to replicate in the "uncontrolled" environment of the atmosphere.

One existential event nullifies all previous and potential benefits. And remember, they are thinking about nanotech and probably never considered chemtech. That's not to say that we should stop all progress if there is an exceeding small possibility of an existential risk.
Well each environment, although large, is effectively a controlled environment. Even within an Ocean there are usually temperature, acidity and salinity constraints that prevent the spread of such bacteria or all bodies of water would now be clogged with such bacteria. Again I don't think there's a necessity for a new term that's covered by both bio and MNT.

But what I am saying is that, if there is a possibility of an existential threat, then we'd better work darn hard to clarify if it actually exists and even experiment in a contained environment to see if we can create it. If we actually create it, then we need to then highly regulate the technology while all along work toward the early establishment of an off-Earth, self-sustaining base in case.
I totally agree with that, not only to assess threat level, but also opportunity level, as there's usually a beneficial flip side to any threat. Which is why I'm not in favour of the increasingly over protective Precautionary Principle, but more in favour of the Proactionary Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactionary_principle which weighs benefits as well as possible problems and attempts to put a statistical analysis on both sides.

Julian

[Sam Fraser]

Fascinating thread. I have never heard of Chemtech. I'm reminded of "Ice-9" in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.

[JohnHunt]

I'm not sure a new term is required as what you are talking about is effectively synthetic life, and alternative to RNA/DNA, and therefore part of biochem.

New terms are needed when old terms have difficulty getting people to understand what you're talking about.

Imagine this conversation:

You - Tell me about synthetic life.
They - Yeah, like Craig Venter making new bacteria by assembling a lot of specific genes, within a lipid bilayer and some cellular machinery thrown in.

You - Sure, but that's not specifically what I'm talking about. I'm talking about synthetic life where you have life but not in the cellular form.
They - Oh yeah, you mean like self-replicating RNA chemicals.

You - Yes, but it's not RNA.
They - Oh, so you mean like some sort of pre-biotic, self-replicating chemical? I've never heard of anyone actually producing one of those before.

You - Yes, exactly. So, if I wanted to make such a thing how would I go about doing it?
They - Wow, um....I suppose you'd have to really know your organic chemistry. Probably have to first guess what specific chemical structure that might be self-replicating and then figure out what basic chemicals are necessary as reactants. Then you figure out what temperature and pressure to run the reaction at and then figure out how to purify your desired product. You might even have to use special enzymes to catalyze specific reactions.

You - Well, that's what's usually done in biochemistry. How fast do you think that I could create different novel chemicals by this method.
They - Man, that would be extremely labor-intensive. It would take forever. Why not just mutate RNA to create an infinite variety of potentially self-replicating chemicals?

You - Well, imagine that I wanted to discover a new self-replicating chemical which was completely unrelated to current biochemical pathways.
They - Umm...I have no idea how you would do that.

You - How about by using ChemTech?
They - Excuse me?

You - ChemTech. Using a NanoTech machine to construct novel chemicals atom-by-atom. You type in whatever novel chemical structure you desire and the thing constructs it in a millisecond. When we get desktop molecular manufacturing machines, do you think it would be possible to program it to produce novel chemicals of ever-increasing size?
They - Sure.

You - By producing each new chemical in a millisecond you could produce nearly a hundred million of them each day. Running the program for a month would produce 2.6 billion chemicals. Might one of them be chemicals never before produced by a natural biochemical pathway?
They - Absolutely!

You - Might some of them be self-replicating?
They - Sure.

You - So, the next time I mention the term "ChemTech" will you understand what I'm talking about?
They - Sure.

------

Think about it:

<pre>
ChemTech NanoTech Biochem O Chem BioTech Synth Life
<hr>
Requires atomic precision Yes Yes No No No No
<hr>
Product is a chemical Yes No Yes Yes +/- No
<hr>
Must be intentionally designed No Yes Usually Usually +/- Yes
<hr>
Variants produced very rapidly Yes No Usually Usually +/- No
not not
<hr>
Self-replicating Possible Very If No Often Yes
yes hard trying
<hr>
Able to do now No No Yes Yes Yes Yes
<hr>
Extinction potential Yes Yes No No No? Possible
</pre>
---------

ChemTech is fundamentally different than any other category. In today's use, the other terms bring up common ideas and assumptions which do not apply to ChemTech. Because of the extinction threat which ChemTech poses, it needs particular scrutiny which it's own terminology could facilitate.

[Rhyshaelkan]

I love question and answer lists. I find myself talking to myself in such a manner from time to time. Thinking of all the negative things people have to say about space and such, and then thinking of my rebuttals.

[JohnHunt]

> Thinking of all the negative things people have to say about space and such, and then thinking of my rebuttals.

This is what's so great about the PERMANENT Forums. There are not a lot of people here but there is good response. So I view this forum as a place where we can try out ideas and get good feedback. If people agree then, that's great, it helps reassure that one is on the right track. But equally, if not more important, is negative feedback. We all have our biases which makes us not pay adequate attention to the opposing argument. But others naturally have different perspectives. How can we ever refine our ideas without input from those people? It's invaluable.

So, thanks to everyone for participating here.