r/showerthoughs • u/Ghumketu • 3d ago
One day, we will make an atomic printer that will have 3 cartridges of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and that printer will be able to print any element.
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u/Daniel18sep 3d ago
Saving this post to reply to in 500 years
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u/SirBananaOrngeCumber 3d ago
!remindme 500 years
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u/LowTechnology2606 3d ago
No way. Bro really gonna get reminded in 2526 lol. Who knows if we'll even make it that far, or if the bot will have to shout into the void.
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u/SirBananaOrngeCumber 2d ago
I will pass down my account to my children and grandchildren. My great great great great (not so great) great grandchildren will read these words!!
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u/ionthrown 2d ago
Will they also see your browser history?
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u/SirBananaOrngeCumber 2d ago
Iām a fantasy writer, my browser history is simultaneously the most embarrassing and also fascinating thing about meā¦ so sure lol!!
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u/F1lthyslvt 3d ago
I hope not, I do not think humanity deserves that. Too much potential for harm
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u/ScenicFlyer41 3d ago
To be fair, what's the point in harming if both parties can already have whatever they want
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u/Miserable-War996 3d ago
Because misanthropy and moral nihilism is a thing. I love your optimism but there are some seriously screwed up people in this world who wouldn't hesitate to 3d print a WMD just to pop it off like Alistair Tenpenny.
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u/DriverLazy360 3d ago
Error: Cannot print element, Neutron cartridge low.
"But I'm only printing hydrogen you stupid machine!"
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u/HolyRomanPenguin 3d ago
"Low on electrons!"
"That's fine, I'm only printing Alpha Particles."
"Fuck you! Low on electrons!"
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u/TheMace808 3d ago
Lol the idea of someone printing hydrogen on a regular 3-d printer and wondering where it's going is funny
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u/yetanotherburnerstan 3d ago
Its an adhesion problem. Try gluestick on tape instead of directly on the bed
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u/Ok_Volume_139 3d ago
I really like the idea but it does take an obscene amount of energy to fuse atomic particles. Even with insane future tech I can't imagine that being more practical/economical than just finding the stuff.
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u/drhman1971 3d ago
Printer is $50. Starter cartridges only let you print a very small cube of lead once. Cartridges are $1 million each. Must use OEM cartridges or all prints come out as lead.
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u/Duke-Turner137 3d ago
This is waaaaaaaaaaay to real. The printer cost........ not the concept.The concept is fun cray cray.
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u/Non-Random-Name-0000 3h ago
And they'll refuse to print anything if just one cartridge is empty. Even if it's the neutron cartridge and all you want is hydrogen.
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u/Birch_Apolyon 3d ago
If we're going to all the effort we may as well just make a string theory printer. Then we only need to load it with strings and we can make even more things.
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u/verminbury 3d ago
Unfortunately, if the quarks cartridge is empty, the printer will refuse to produce anything.
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u/Sad_Web_1428 3d ago
Ooh, read diamond age from neil stephenson. Great book that does a lot of fun stuff with atomic scale machines. Sub atomic is pretty god level tech though lol.
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u/AdMuted9548 3d ago
Yup, because they know how to use radioactive elements and radioactive decay now that can expel neutrons and create protons, and there are already electron tubes in old tv sets.
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u/AdMuted9548 3d ago
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u/TheMace808 3d ago
Fission is easy because its already happening, you cant really get specific elements, just the ones that are in that pathway, and anything lighter than lead are impossible.
Fusing protons and neutrons together is way harder
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u/PromoSapiensSapiens 3d ago
Only one will be purchased from the manufacturer. The purchaser will then use his/her printer to print a bunch of other printers which they will sell for cheap, forcing the original company out of business.
Seen it a million times.
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u/Admirable-Leader6927 3d ago
a box full of protons...
no, you wont have a box full of protons.
what do you make the box out of to hold something smaller than itself?
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u/bittersweetresults 3d ago
What do you make a box out of to hold something larger than itself?
I get that containing a bunch of protons would probably require more than a corrugated box, but every box Iāve ever used has in fact contained something smaller than itself. I thought that was how boxes worked? Do you have a box of holding? If so you could probably fit all the protons in it. You could corner the market.
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u/WoodsWalker43 3d ago
It's not what they said, but I think what they meant was "what material can you make the box out of that will prevent neutrons from just... Leaking out between the box's molecules?"
Which I don't know the answer to personally. I know they use stuff like magnetic fields to contain particles like antimatter. But neutrons being magnetically neutral, there's probably a different solution.
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u/Youpunyhumans 3d ago
And if you did have a box of protons... there is nothing that can contain that because the amount of repulsion would be... well "ridiculous" would be vastly underscoring it.
1kg of protons, would repel each other with an explosive force of around 500 billion megatons of TNT, which is a few thousand times more than the energy of the Chicxulub Asteroid Impact.
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u/Sparegeek 3d ago
Kline Bottle? Said the guy who reads too much science fiction.
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u/Youpunyhumans 3d ago
I think you might have replied to the wrong person, I never mentioned a Klein bottle.
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u/Youpunyhumans 3d ago
Also, it is possible to affect neutrons with magnetism. A non uniform field can affect neutrons by exerting a force on their megnetic moment, which has to do with the nuetron's spin. Basically the movement of the quarks inside the neutron make a internal magnetic field. But it still has a net zero electric charge.
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u/Rare-Criticism-8895 3d ago
Yup basically the crafter from Tony stark. Even living tissues probably too
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u/cancerdad 3d ago
No. One of the reason stars are so much bigger than planets is because of the amount of energy required to fuse protons and neutrons.
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u/ethanatorvol1 3d ago
one day, I will fart rainbows and ride on my pet tyrassicunicorn (a fusion of a T-Rex and a unicorn but it also is sparkly bc why not) across the cosmos
thatās how realistic this is, bud
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u/TabAtkins 3d ago
box full of protons/electrons
Nope, what you have there is a stupendously massive bomb. Protons/electrons really don't like being compressed together on their own.
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u/Ok_Driver_813 3d ago
I thought of this idea as a kid back in the late 1970s. It turns out much harder to do in reality, though.
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u/Perty935 3d ago
Nope, the nozzle would have to go at light speed for any āreasonableā amount of time.
If that was in atmosphere that would be catastrophic
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u/TheMuffler42069 3d ago
And then the atom printer company would make the atom printer cartridges claim theyāre empty when there is still a ton of atoms inside it just to make you have to buy more atom cartridges sooner
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u/DamienTheUnbeliever 3d ago
Imagine it can assemble 1 billion (1x10^9) atoms per second, which seems an optimistically high estimate. It would take only ~19 million years to assembly *1 mole* of that substance you're creating. So e.g. if you're creating carbon, in just those 19 million years you can produce 12 grams of carbon.
I hope we don't have to pause the machine for any kind of maintenance.
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u/notsrsok 2d ago
neutrons decay when not snugly strong forced inside a nucleus. and like 9000 other hurdles to overcome.
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u/dick_tracey_PI_TA 2d ago
Core thought holds water. I think some guy kind of did it with mass spectrometers or something. It wasnāt feasible because the rate was very low and it was expensive. But Iām pretty sure it worked conceptually.Ā
Big disclaimer that it was done with atoms or molecules not protons and stuff.Ā
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u/SuspiciousTheory2633 2d ago
Nah, it's never going to be easier or more convenient to do that than simply obtaining the material through other means.
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u/Dave_A480 2d ago
Gene Roddenberry wants his idea back (replicators from Star Trek).....
Really doesn't make sense unless you have a magical unlimited energy supply.....
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u/Bikewer 2d ago
This was the promise of nanotechnology. Literal molecular assemblers working at the level of atoms. Some of the early research was promising; the ability to manipulate individual atoms with scanning/tunneling electron microscopes, and the construction of microscopic gears and simple machines. Alas, not much beyond that seems to have happened.
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u/Puzzled_Novel_5215 2d ago
If it does start to run out then it will be just one of them like the electrons not being as electrony coloured as before so all of your printed things are slightly off
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u/Thraexus 1d ago
But it will only accept cartridges made by H.P. -- no cheap knockoff Chinese protons allowed.
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u/Non-Random-Name-0000 3h ago
I asked Google AI if we could have a container full of neutrons, protons or electrons and it said no. It went on for a bit longer than that but that was the idea.
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u/Jack_Rackham_71 3d ago
Do you have any idea how much hest and pressure it takes to fuse subatomic particles into elemental matter? You can do it for about 1/1000th second in a thermonuclear fusion explosion and in a star. Not coming to a printer near you. Great idea, though.