Manfred comments on How probable is Molecular Nanotech? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (56)
Well you can bend diamond, you just need to be fast about it, like 310 kHz fast. But yeah, "thread" it is not.
Well, this sounds a bit less outlandish if rephrased: "Proteins can make and break carbon-carbon sigma-bonds." Which of course happens all the time in the course of making organic molecules.
For making diamond specifically, you might try starting out with formaldehyde, and releasing water as you stick carbons together. Looks like there should be plenty of spare energy to do it. Hm, but that seems very tricky to do, I wonder how people do it with synthetic diamond. Ah. Very high temperature carbon radicals sticking to a lattice-matched substrate.