9 September 2020

Nanoscale techniques can save many people from serious illnesses and can also contribute to the development of materials with truly fantastic properties. Smart materials, super-resistant to impact, tearing, and any type of damage caused by external factors, and shape-memory materials are the future of transportation, construction, and space exploration. From a technological perspective, the ability to program the behavior of specific materials at the nanoscale is crucial. To achieve this, a range of additional technological capabilities are required, enabling interference with the structure of nanoparticles of matter and achieving functionality comparable to that of macromolecular conglomerates such as polymerases in the human body, in terms of biological function, or particles capable of self-reproduction or transforming a specific chemical environment into a qualitatively different substance, for example, those that deal with environmental pollution, for example, those capable of processing crude oil or fuel oil spilled at sea into substances that can be assimilated by standard organisms. It would also become possible, over time, to program matter within animal and human organisms to aid them in the progression of many diseases and organic dysfunctions that are currently uncontrollable and often simply result in the organism's death. Adapting organisms to the environmental conditions prevailing on planets less hospitable than Earth could also be an important element of this type of technology, or metallurgical production and processing involving the demonstration of behaviors beyond those predicted and elemental compositions in terms of chemical reactions, catalysts, and chemical memory. Another important element would be the creation of self-replicating and self-assembling metallurgical or other materials that could be programmed to always react in a specific way and always create the same large-scale structures. This would enable the automatic construction of shelters and hiding places for colonizers. Shape-shifting programming, following the application of an external factor, such as an electric field, current flow, or another field such as a magnetic field, would lead to spontaneous hardening and arrangement of the material into pre-programmed structures, which could later be used to build other devices or structures. It seems that the mere reproduction and self-replication of nanotechnological materials is no longer such a distant technological solution. Once supplied with a building block, the system could manipulate it itself and build its own structure as programmed. Such phenomena are now commonplace, as they affect the world of plants, viruses, and animals. Viruses are organisms with genetic memory that have a method of self-reproduction at the expense of organisms higher than themselves. If we managed to transfer this feature to another technological level not related to the organic world but to any inanimate matter, we would be dealing with something both dangerous and characterized by fantastic technological possibilities.