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Re: XKCD - Nanobots

2011-02-28 10:09:02
At 04:45 AM 2/28/2011, Bob Hinden wrote:
Yoav,

Yes, but I think the nanobots are supposed to devour the entire earth, so 
it's volume that counts. The volume is about 1x10^21 m^3. So 40% is 4 x 
10^20 m^3.  

But they start from the outside and eat down.  This causes the surface area to 
decrease and less nonobots are required.  Or to put it another way, the don't 
have to replace the earth with nonbots :-)

Umm... are you ignoring conservation of mass?  Or are you assuming perfect 
conversion to energy?  If the latter, I would expect the nanobots to melt - 
actually vaporize or turn into plasma.  If the former, I'd expect replacing the 
earth with nanobots.  Or at least something with some mass and volume. 




3.4 x 10^38 nanobots comes to 8.5 x 10^17 nanobots per m^3, or about 1.17 
microns^3 per nanobot.

Sounds about right.

This must have been one of the design goals :-)

Bob

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