Picotechnology
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The term picotechnology is a
portmanteau of picometre and technology, intended to parallel the term nanotechnology. It is a hypothetical future level of technological manipulation of matter, on the scale of trillionths of a metre or picoscale (10−12). This is three orders of magnitude smaller than a nanometre (and thus most nanotechnology) and two orders of magnitude smaller than most chemistry transformations and measurements. Picotechnology would involve the manipulation of matter at the atomic level. A further hypothetical development, femtotechnology
, would involve working with matter at the subatomic level.
Applications
Picoscience is a term used by some
oxidation states of atoms; excitation of electrons to metastable excited states as with lasers and some forms of saturable absorption; and the manipulation of the states of excited electrons in Rydberg atoms
to encode information. However, none of these processes produces the types of exotic atoms described by futurists.
Alternatively, picotechnology is used by some researchers in
Pauli exclusion at short ranges and van der Waals forces
at long ranges).
In popular culture
The Chinese science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem features a plot-point in which an advanced alien civilization imbues individual protons with supercomputing powers and subsequently manipulates said protons via quantum entanglement (the fictional name for these proton-sized supercomputers is "sophons").[1]
See also
- Femtotechnology
- IBM in atoms, a 1989 demonstration by IBM of a technology capable of manipulating individual atoms
- Technological singularity
- "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", a 1959 lecture by physicist Richard Feynman on the direct manipulation of individual atoms
References
- ^ Colby Anderson (8 January 2021). "The Three-Body Problem: Review". The Pacer. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
External links
- Picotechnology at the Nanosciences group at CEMES (in French), France.
