reply to post by g146541
As far as replicators go I'm seeing several comments in this thread where the quantum handwave dodge is used to explain replicators... Now when I
saw those replicators on star trek my mind went a different place than it appears most of everyone else's mind went when I tried to decide how they
worked.
What I always assumed was that when the ship docks at the starbase it s crates of "feedstock" for the replicator. My thought on what the feedstock
was was something along the lines of big blocks of ULTRA dense matter either exotic or nonexotic. If I was thinking about exotic ways to do it I
figured it would be blocks of iron which is extraordinarily common in the universe at large that are somehow compressed in freakishly high gravity to
a density well beyond that of iron in conventional state. (thinking like a metric ton per cubic centimeter here) My other thought was it was stuff
like depleted uranium and other heavy elements from the bottom rows of the periodic table with or without their radioactive isotopes included which
may or may not help supply part of the juice needed to do what comes next.
now my assumption was that when you told the replicator what you wanted it would then use some sort of particle beam or electron gun or whatever to
"slice" off or volatilize a sufficient total amount of feedstock mass for the request you made. It would then use ultra compact and super powerful
particle accelerators and etc to literally disassemble the molecules of the feedstock first and then further break down the individual ATOMS. It
would then use tractor beams and other really cool enterprise grade technology to take this slurry of protons neutrons and electrons and rebuild it
valance by valance into the atoms and molecules you want *cue 6 million dollar man soundtrack we can rebuild him*
Once it has built the sum total of the molecules and atoms needed to construct your item. It would then proceed to use electromagnetic means to spit
out atoms and molecules a few thousand at a time and use a variety of means from electron beam melting to more esoteric and advanced means to turn the
molecules into the actual items.
Overall I'd say we're not nearly as far off as some people believe from replicator like technology with the exception of being able to generate the
mind boggling amounts of power this would require in a compact package.... (with the methods I sketched out above you'd be talking a liquid natural
gas supertanker ship worth of natural gas to make a foot long subway sandwich) Not to mention miniaturizing a crap ton of the technoogies we already
have that you'd need to package into a replicator as well as the new technologies you'd need to develop and then miniaturize. It's not an
insurmountable task, but there's some very key hurdles that we need to overcome before we could even THINK about building a replicator.
Now onto my rant
RANT:
How would those small villages have access to unlimited everything exactly? You do realize that the replicator in star trek was not a free lunch
machine right? There was a "cost" to having the replicator make something which is made clear at one point or another in EVERY star trek series
except maybe the original.
And further how would it bankrupt companies? even if your device COULD make anything for free at No cost to you or the environment... You would still
have the need to provide specifications and designs to said machine in order for it to produce things. This essentially means that lots of people
would still be employed all over the world figuring out how to make new things or make old versions of stuff better.... Then there's installation and
servicing of the machines building things that are too large for a replicator to produce whole and about 150 million other things that could very much
keep people busy and that said busy people could charge people for the privilege of having done.
This is like the inane wish fulfillment statements "free energy" proponents often tout where once "free energy" devices are available evil will be
out of a job Lions will escort old zebras and giraffes to and from the watering hole, and congress will get along!
The reality is statements like these and the mindsets behind statements like this are essentially LAZY. Freedom isn't free! Liberty is, quite
frankly, pretty damn labor intensive to maintain, and finally if someone offers you an EASY solution where they make the hard choices for you it's
not because they're nice people!
People need to grow up and stop thinking if only X or Y would happen, or if only this or that were illegal, or if only everyone agreed with me on X or
Y topic (and or if only it were ILLEGAL or would get you declared insane to state this opinion that doesn't match mine! ) There is NO magic solution
or technology that will come along and make life easy and egalitarian for humanity!
Quite frankly thinking that there is is the sign of a weak mind that has to assign human like motivations to inanimate objects and concepts.
Technology and Information are both completely neutral, it's how you as a person choose to use them that creates positive or negative situations and
experiences for yourself and others.