The people who think that nanobots will be able to manufacture arbitrary awesome things in arbitrary amounts at negligible costs… where do they think the nanobots will take the negentropy from?
Almost all the available energy on Earth originally came from the Sun; the only other sources I know of are radioactive elements within the Earth and the rotation of the Earth-Moon system.
So even if it’s not from the sun’s current output, it’s probably going to be from the sun’s past output.
Hydrogen for fusion is also available on the Earth and didn’t come from the Sun. We can’t exploit it commercially yet, but that’s just an engineering problem. (Yes, if you want to be pedantic, we need primordial deuterium and synthesized tritium, because proton-proton fusion is far beyond our capabilities. However, D-T’s ingredients still don’t come from the Sun.)
The people who think that nanobots will be able to manufacture arbitrary awesome things in arbitrary amounts at negligible costs… where do they think the nanobots will take the negentropy from?
The sun.
Almost all the available energy on Earth originally came from the Sun; the only other sources I know of are radioactive elements within the Earth and the rotation of the Earth-Moon system.
So even if it’s not from the sun’s current output, it’s probably going to be from the sun’s past output.
Hydrogen for fusion is also available on the Earth and didn’t come from the Sun. We can’t exploit it commercially yet, but that’s just an engineering problem. (Yes, if you want to be pedantic, we need primordial deuterium and synthesized tritium, because proton-proton fusion is far beyond our capabilities. However, D-T’s ingredients still don’t come from the Sun.)
Yes. Good call.
They could probably get a decent amount from fusing light elements as well.