Consolidation Earth
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Generally speaking, in scientific circles, when observations disagree with the theory, it is the theory which is wrong and needs to be revised, or thrown out entirely and replaced. The trouble in this case was that different teams achieved inconsistent results from the same experiments being performed in different places, even when the results were consistent when performed multiple times in the same location. This was increasingly frustrating for researchers in the field, since an important part of the scientific method is repeatability. Perhaps people were just being sloppy when reproducing the effects; maybe there was some chaotic behaviour with different emergent outcomes with only the tiniest differences in starting conditions. Nobody seemed to know. Eventually, another scientific convention was invoked: organise an international conference on the subject and invite everybody who might have some insight into the matter. The 'International Conference on Progress on Turing-Complete Nanomachines' was held, rather quaintly, actually on the surface of the planet, in the Prague Congress Centre, tucked into the slightly newer parts of that ancient city. With only a small amount of effort, I persuaded my university to fund my attendance at the conference, with a modest travel budget; in the event, I travelled conventionally enough by spaceplane to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and then a comfortable overnight journey by high-speed train to Prague main station. I threw myself into the plenary sessions and paper presentations and structured debates and panel discussions which formed the formal proceedings of the event. After all, my university had given me a substantial sum of money to attend, and it would be churlish not to take full advantage of everything that was on offer. Still, I could not help but notice that there was surprisingly little actual contribution to the problem at hand: there was plenty of argument and heated discussions, but no concrete suggestions as to what was really going on. One of the abiding features of scientific conferences is that the most fruitful discussions happen outside the formal presentations and, researchers being only human too, in the bar after the day is over. In this case, I had just settled in a bar imaginatively called (in English) Pub Two - Pub One was right next door - with two colleagues, both men, both of whom I knew slightly, although I was rapidly getting to know a lot better. One was Ted Harris, a Brit originally - not that these things really count for much anymore - and now a tenured associate professor at the Kyoto University of Advanced Science, and the other was Ken Chun, originally from some Chinese province and now attached to the University of Technology in Sydney. The tree of us were sitting within a comfortable radius of a warming fireplace - not actually burning, of course, but a very good facsimile of flames - keeping away the chill of a northern hemisphere winter - something of a novelty for me, I admit - with large glasses of authentic Czech pilsner in front of us, shortly joined by large plates of equally authentic Czech food: heavy on the dumplings and pickles. In this convivial old-world atmosphere, our talk turned naturally enough to the cutting-edge science of the teeny-tiny world of self-replicating nanomachines which, it seemed, we were still no closer to actually building. "What's the most exciting thing we could do with nanomachines, if they actually did work like the theory says?" Ted said, wiping froth from his upper lip. "Monumental engineering, even on a planetary scale," Ken replied, around a mouthful of dumpling and gravy. I nodded. "We could engineer the Earth back to the way it was," I replied, "Or engineer Earth to be how we would like it, even if it was never like that before. There's no limitation of scale, to any project we could imagine. We just have to wait long enough and exponential growth would do the rest." "Hah. We could engineer any planet to be the way we wanted it," Ted suggested, "Venus, or Mars. Or moons: Europa, Titan. Lots of places." "It would be against the principles of Gaia," Ken muttered. "Yes, it would," I agreed, "And there'd be any number of objections from environmental authorities, watchdogs, preservationists, environment risk analysts and the whole public pressure for the status quo." "These are all be issues which would have to be resolved," Ted observed, "Whenever we make it work properly." "I wonder if those Expansionists have made it work?" Ken mused, "It would be very much aligned with their shameful policy of spreading themselves away from Mother Earth." Ted snorted. "Indeed. Let's not get into all that just now, huh?" There was a long moment of silence, punctuated only by the enthusiastic sampling of beer and pickles. After a few moments masticating, I said thoughtfully: "We need to capture the moment when the actual molecular assembly process fails. We've never actually seen it happening. Wherever it is in the overall process." "Ye-es," Ted said, sounding uncertain, "That's true. We only know a step has failed when the following process fails to start. By then it's too late. The entire substructure has fallen apart." "We don't have anything which could directly image the process step," Ken agreed, "The electron beams for lithography and assembly of atoms are far too energetic, and the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope doesn't really have the imaging range or depth of field." "All true," I said, "But we could augment the apparatus with a scanning electron microscope." "In the same hard-vacuum chamber?" Ted asked. I nodded. "That might be difficult," Ken said, "There's not a lot of space in the chamber as it is." "We could add an extension ring," I suggested, "Eight or ten centimetres should be enough. And there's probably enough spare capacity in the pump cascades to cope with the extra volume." There was another long quiet moment, although this one did not include the consumption of food or drink. "There's a paper in it, maybe more than one," I pressed, "We could all try this in our own labs and compare the results." Broad smiles spread across the faces of Ted and Ken. We toasted the success of our proposal with much Czech beer.
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Part 1