(Story begins here.)
He perused the thread list, trying to look for something that was interesting to print that had not been identified yet. He saw some threads that had been around for about two months with no positive identification---he put them aside as probably being ``impossible''. He saw some that had hundreds of positive identifications and ignored them since there was little fun in figuring out a mystery molecule puzzle that had already been solved six ways before dinner. Some of the threads had interesting mystery molcule puzzles that seemed to require quite a fair bit of precious metals printing gel; he dismissed them out of hand because he only had a limited amount of that.
After some more browsing with frequent intervals to check on the progress of the molecular printer's self-test, Liubo finally shortlisted a couple of mystery molecule puzzles to try, covering the middle and largest sizes that his molecular printer could assemble. They used mostly the organic and base metals gels, and were stated by their original posters to be identified using reagents that were available in the household.
The printer beeped three times in rapid succession and drew Liubo's attention back to it. `Ah, finally,' he thought to himself, `the self-test is done. Time to try the starch molecule.'
Liubo connected his laptop to the printer via the provided USB cable, and both the printer and his laptop chirped a beep to indicate that both devices have detected a new connection each. He quickly tapped on the on-screen menu on the printer to accept the connection and clicked on the dialogue box on his laptop to install additional drivers and software to make use of it. The molecular printer itself came with its own software for uploading the printing instructions to it, and the software was automatically made available on connecting it to a working computer. Liubo waited impatiently for the software to be installed, and when it was done, he started it up on his laptop and entered in the initial set of information that was needed to register the printer and the laptop to each other. This was a security feature to ensure that the molecular printer itself was always under control of only one computer at a time, a hold-over from the days when the molecular printe was only available in industrial settings. Back then a popular sabotage attack was to break-in to the factory, plug in a small form-factor computer to upload some contaminating/denial-of-service printing instruction to occupy/damage the molecular printer, and leave. The physical process was needed then because factories were smart enough to not connect their molecular printer controlling computers into the external facing network thanks to lessons learnt from bad SCADA implementations in the past.
The software loaded itself and showed an empty workspace in its main window. Liubo opened up the printing instructions file for the starch molecule, and activated the menu command to send it to the molecular printer. The program showed a small scrolling status screen while it was checking the syntax of the printing instructions and compiling it, before popping up a dialogue box to ask for the quantity (in grams) of the molecule wanted. The dialogue box also indicated that based on the existing amount of printing gels available for that model of a molecular printer, the maximum amount it could do in this batch was 10 g.
`Eh, I think 1 g should be enough,' Liubo thought to himself as he quickly entered the number before clicking on the ``send'' button next to it. The software acknowledged his input and showed a few more lines of output in its status screen, before showing a new window that indicated the time remaining to print.
It displayed a countdown timer of ten minutes.
Liubo sighed as he waited for it to complete.
The molecular printer was eerily silent as it was doing its work, a completely different experience from the regular filament 3D printer, where the whirr of the stepper motors was always present. It was to be expected though, since there was nothing really mechanically moving within the molecular printer.
The ten minutes passed swiftly and the printer beeped three times in rapid fashion. The on-screen menu showed the message ``attach container to solid output to continue''. Liubo scoured around his room for a test tube, and put it at the nozzle that was labelled ``Solid Output'' before he tapped on the rasterised ``continue'' button. A small huff was heard at the nozzle, and a white powder was deposited into the test tube that was attached to it.
Liubo pulled the test tube away from the nozzle and looked at it in awe. His first molecular printing, in a test tube! He quickly glanced at the on-screen display of the molecular printer. It showed nothing more than a single line of text saying ``job complete''. Ignoring it for the moment, Liubo took his test tube of freshly assembled starch towards the kitchen, where he had a small rack of reagents available. Reaching for the dropper in his bottle of tri-iodine, he dropped a couple of drops of the tri-iodine tincture into his test tube.
The white powder turned into a dark blue one on contact with the tri-iodine tincture.
Liubo grinned in glee: the molecular printer was working!
Thursday, 27 May 2021
Friday, 30 April 2021
Print Me: Part IV
(Story begins here.)
Liubo perused the list of available molecules for printing. The forum's repository of printing instructions for molecules were loosely grouped according to molecular weight in atomic mass units, then by number of atoms, then roughly according to the proportion of the types of atoms that were used so as to conform to the type of molecular gel (organic, base metals, precious metals) that needed to be used.
It was a veritable trove of interesting information that chemists would have killed for a century ago. A catalogue of chemical compounds was one thing that even the mighty Dupont Corporation had amassed for a long time, but to have them catalogued in such a manner, complete with synthesis information that an automated device could use for absolute replicability, it was the type of standard that any chemist or chemical engineer would kill for. Part of the difficulty of synthesising molecules was the need to work out what source materials could be used in terms of their associated binding energy and unit price on the market; the other part was dealing with by-products of the associated chemical reaction that was considered waste. In many ways, chemical synthesis of molecules was the micro-economic version of regular economics, since there was no way to absolutely destroy waste by-products, since matter was never truly created or destroyed---they could only be combined in a myriad of ways according to their chemical properties.
`Maybe I should start with something small and easy to confirm. Something like glucose? Ah, I don't have the right reagents to test for that. Let me see... oh I can do a simple starch. It's not that small, but I do have a bottle of tri-iodine that I could use to test for its presence. Okay, that's settled then,' Liubo thought to himself as he looked at the repository of chemicals and settled on one of the many starch molecules for synthesis.
He downloaded the instruction file to his laptop's desktop, and continued to scour through the database for something fun to print in the future. He gave a quick glance to the molecular printer---it was still running through its paces, and the screen glowed with ``45 minutes left''.
Liubo shrugged his shoulders and continued to look through the forum.
In one of the newer conversation threads, there was a post that had a ``mystery'' molecule printing instruction uploaded. It was in one of the puzzle forums, where the goal was to print the mystery molecule using the printing instructions, and then, based on whatever chemical/physical tests that one could muster, deduce what the molecule was. It was a fun game that was played by many owners of molecular printing devices, because it served as a great way to build up skill in qualitative analysis, as well as using other physical chemistry tools that were available to improve the chemical deductive knowledge. Such games were possible because the instructions for the molecular printer were not exactly human readable---while there had been decompilers that could convert the binary-encoded information into a set of mnemonic instructions that could, in theory, be read by a human, the reality was that the instructions were to control quantum-mechanical parameters, which meant that even though one could read the the translated instructions, what they actually ended up synthesising was still a mystery until the end product was synthesised.
There was always some risk that the mystery molecule was something that could be termed as a biohazard, but those were far and few. There was a budding industry of ``molecular anti-virus companies'' who were full-blown testing labs whose sole purpose was to take various molecular printing instructions, synthesise the molecules, and then test them for safety. Those that were deemed safe would have a digital signature assigned to it to assure others who downloaded the same instructions that they were unaltered and were safe. The whole industry revolving around such anti-virus capabilities was still nascent, since the number of tests that were needed to deem a synthesised molecule as relatively safe was always increasing, with ever-increasing complexity.
So despite all the efforts, there was always some residual risk involved.
But that was part of the fun of the mystery molecule puzzles anyway---to be a sleuth in figuring out what the molecule was. There had been various efforts to simulate the mnemonic instructions in a computer, but due to the large numbers of quantum-mechanical effects involved with the sometimes stupendously large number of atoms, only the smallest molecules' behaviour could be thus simulated.
Liubo was well aware of the risks that were involved, but the draw of being the first to identify the molecule from the provided printing instructions was too big to resist, and so he spent much of the remaining time looking through them for mystery molecules of various sizes.
(Story continues here.)
Liubo perused the list of available molecules for printing. The forum's repository of printing instructions for molecules were loosely grouped according to molecular weight in atomic mass units, then by number of atoms, then roughly according to the proportion of the types of atoms that were used so as to conform to the type of molecular gel (organic, base metals, precious metals) that needed to be used.
It was a veritable trove of interesting information that chemists would have killed for a century ago. A catalogue of chemical compounds was one thing that even the mighty Dupont Corporation had amassed for a long time, but to have them catalogued in such a manner, complete with synthesis information that an automated device could use for absolute replicability, it was the type of standard that any chemist or chemical engineer would kill for. Part of the difficulty of synthesising molecules was the need to work out what source materials could be used in terms of their associated binding energy and unit price on the market; the other part was dealing with by-products of the associated chemical reaction that was considered waste. In many ways, chemical synthesis of molecules was the micro-economic version of regular economics, since there was no way to absolutely destroy waste by-products, since matter was never truly created or destroyed---they could only be combined in a myriad of ways according to their chemical properties.
`Maybe I should start with something small and easy to confirm. Something like glucose? Ah, I don't have the right reagents to test for that. Let me see... oh I can do a simple starch. It's not that small, but I do have a bottle of tri-iodine that I could use to test for its presence. Okay, that's settled then,' Liubo thought to himself as he looked at the repository of chemicals and settled on one of the many starch molecules for synthesis.
He downloaded the instruction file to his laptop's desktop, and continued to scour through the database for something fun to print in the future. He gave a quick glance to the molecular printer---it was still running through its paces, and the screen glowed with ``45 minutes left''.
Liubo shrugged his shoulders and continued to look through the forum.
In one of the newer conversation threads, there was a post that had a ``mystery'' molecule printing instruction uploaded. It was in one of the puzzle forums, where the goal was to print the mystery molecule using the printing instructions, and then, based on whatever chemical/physical tests that one could muster, deduce what the molecule was. It was a fun game that was played by many owners of molecular printing devices, because it served as a great way to build up skill in qualitative analysis, as well as using other physical chemistry tools that were available to improve the chemical deductive knowledge. Such games were possible because the instructions for the molecular printer were not exactly human readable---while there had been decompilers that could convert the binary-encoded information into a set of mnemonic instructions that could, in theory, be read by a human, the reality was that the instructions were to control quantum-mechanical parameters, which meant that even though one could read the the translated instructions, what they actually ended up synthesising was still a mystery until the end product was synthesised.
There was always some risk that the mystery molecule was something that could be termed as a biohazard, but those were far and few. There was a budding industry of ``molecular anti-virus companies'' who were full-blown testing labs whose sole purpose was to take various molecular printing instructions, synthesise the molecules, and then test them for safety. Those that were deemed safe would have a digital signature assigned to it to assure others who downloaded the same instructions that they were unaltered and were safe. The whole industry revolving around such anti-virus capabilities was still nascent, since the number of tests that were needed to deem a synthesised molecule as relatively safe was always increasing, with ever-increasing complexity.
So despite all the efforts, there was always some residual risk involved.
But that was part of the fun of the mystery molecule puzzles anyway---to be a sleuth in figuring out what the molecule was. There had been various efforts to simulate the mnemonic instructions in a computer, but due to the large numbers of quantum-mechanical effects involved with the sometimes stupendously large number of atoms, only the smallest molecules' behaviour could be thus simulated.
Liubo was well aware of the risks that were involved, but the draw of being the first to identify the molecule from the provided printing instructions was too big to resist, and so he spent much of the remaining time looking through them for mystery molecules of various sizes.
(Story continues here.)
Tuesday, 27 April 2021
Print Me: Part III
(Story begins here.)
Dinner was hurriedly had, and Liubo quickly hooked up the power supply to the molecular printer. Double checking all the connections and assemblies against the mangled Chinglish instructions, he was satisfied at their correctness and stopped for a moment to stare at the technological marvel that sat in front of him at his main work bench. Hesitating just slightly with that remnant bit of doubt, Liubo flipped the switch on the power extender that he had connected the molecular printer to, before pressing on the literal Big Red Switch that was on the molecular printer itself.
The click of the switch engaging was soon overtaken by a low frequency hum that was close in frequency to that of the mains supply but was off in timbre just by that bit---within it was a kind of high pitched squeal that was not unpleasant.
Liubo looked on eagerly as the machine went through its power on self-test, beeping confidently at the end of it to indicate that there were no obvious issues that it had detected since the last time it was on. Next to the Big Red Switch was a small coloured LED display that showed a single line of ``Ready'' followed by some rasterised buttons on actions that could be done with it.
Liubo checked the instructions and followed it to navigate the on-screen menu to get to the more in-depth diagnostics and calibration. The instructions suggested that the in-depth diagnostics and calibration be run at least once a month or after every one hundred hours of operation, whichever came first. It explained that it was necessary to ensure that the internal quantum systems were within parameters that the built-in error correction could account for. Liubo knew that it was a vast improvement over the milli-second decoherence that the very first systems had. Sure, it did not have the same level of consistency and reliability as that of a filament-based 3D printer, but then again, it was using technology more complex than the electro-mechanical ones.
The on-screen menu was now on the in-depth diagnostics and calibration menu item, with an indication that it would take about an hour to complete, with an option to run a more superficial one that would take only ten minutes. It also said that it had detected that it was the first time that the molecular printer was activated in the local environment (`How did it know that?' thought Liubo to himself), and that the full version was recommended to ensure proper operation.
Liubo sighed and tapped on the rasterised button that said ``Run Full''. A confirmation screen came up and he replied positively to that as well. With the acknowledgements in place, the printer showed one final message reminding Liubo to not power off the machine for any reason while the in-depth diagnostics and calibration was taking place. The machine beeped off a final confirmation and went on its merry way, humming and shrieking at various durations throughout the whole hour.
Liubo wanted to go away and do something else, but felt obliged to sit around to observe---it was, after all, the first time that he was operating such a device. While doing research for the purchase, he had already learnt of the basic principles that guided the operation of the molecular printer. Among those principles included the astronomically small probability that the quantum-mechanical system house within could create a strange black hole that could cause a localised gravitational anomaly that would lead to a runaway effect of wiping out matter within a one kilometre radius, but there had been quite a few safety features built in to reduce the likelihood of that happening to even lower than the probability of being simultaneously struck by lightning while getting knocked down by a car off a mountain road with a shark biting on one's left ankle.
In short, it was safe to use, but the novelty of the device could not draw Liubo away from it.
After staring at the printer for nearly ten minutes, Liubo finally decided that there was nothing to observe from the outside while the printer was going through its diagnostics and calibration, and that it was probably a better use of his time to look for molecules to print with it.
Liubo pulled up his laptop from one of the other tables, and turned to the molecular printer owners' forum, where other enthusiasts of molecular printing hung out and shared their knowledge and gossip.
Among those was some printing instructions for some interesting molecules.
(Story continues here.)
Dinner was hurriedly had, and Liubo quickly hooked up the power supply to the molecular printer. Double checking all the connections and assemblies against the mangled Chinglish instructions, he was satisfied at their correctness and stopped for a moment to stare at the technological marvel that sat in front of him at his main work bench. Hesitating just slightly with that remnant bit of doubt, Liubo flipped the switch on the power extender that he had connected the molecular printer to, before pressing on the literal Big Red Switch that was on the molecular printer itself.
The click of the switch engaging was soon overtaken by a low frequency hum that was close in frequency to that of the mains supply but was off in timbre just by that bit---within it was a kind of high pitched squeal that was not unpleasant.
Liubo looked on eagerly as the machine went through its power on self-test, beeping confidently at the end of it to indicate that there were no obvious issues that it had detected since the last time it was on. Next to the Big Red Switch was a small coloured LED display that showed a single line of ``Ready'' followed by some rasterised buttons on actions that could be done with it.
Liubo checked the instructions and followed it to navigate the on-screen menu to get to the more in-depth diagnostics and calibration. The instructions suggested that the in-depth diagnostics and calibration be run at least once a month or after every one hundred hours of operation, whichever came first. It explained that it was necessary to ensure that the internal quantum systems were within parameters that the built-in error correction could account for. Liubo knew that it was a vast improvement over the milli-second decoherence that the very first systems had. Sure, it did not have the same level of consistency and reliability as that of a filament-based 3D printer, but then again, it was using technology more complex than the electro-mechanical ones.
The on-screen menu was now on the in-depth diagnostics and calibration menu item, with an indication that it would take about an hour to complete, with an option to run a more superficial one that would take only ten minutes. It also said that it had detected that it was the first time that the molecular printer was activated in the local environment (`How did it know that?' thought Liubo to himself), and that the full version was recommended to ensure proper operation.
Liubo sighed and tapped on the rasterised button that said ``Run Full''. A confirmation screen came up and he replied positively to that as well. With the acknowledgements in place, the printer showed one final message reminding Liubo to not power off the machine for any reason while the in-depth diagnostics and calibration was taking place. The machine beeped off a final confirmation and went on its merry way, humming and shrieking at various durations throughout the whole hour.
Liubo wanted to go away and do something else, but felt obliged to sit around to observe---it was, after all, the first time that he was operating such a device. While doing research for the purchase, he had already learnt of the basic principles that guided the operation of the molecular printer. Among those principles included the astronomically small probability that the quantum-mechanical system house within could create a strange black hole that could cause a localised gravitational anomaly that would lead to a runaway effect of wiping out matter within a one kilometre radius, but there had been quite a few safety features built in to reduce the likelihood of that happening to even lower than the probability of being simultaneously struck by lightning while getting knocked down by a car off a mountain road with a shark biting on one's left ankle.
In short, it was safe to use, but the novelty of the device could not draw Liubo away from it.
After staring at the printer for nearly ten minutes, Liubo finally decided that there was nothing to observe from the outside while the printer was going through its diagnostics and calibration, and that it was probably a better use of his time to look for molecules to print with it.
Liubo pulled up his laptop from one of the other tables, and turned to the molecular printer owners' forum, where other enthusiasts of molecular printing hung out and shared their knowledge and gossip.
Among those was some printing instructions for some interesting molecules.
(Story continues here.)
Monday, 1 February 2021
Print Me: Part II
(Story begins here.)
The disassembled molecular printer was neatly packed by its component box-like constructions that looked like they were machined out of some nice blocks of stainless steel, with a simple user manual placed on top of them, almost as an after thought.
Liubo took out the user manual, scanning through it cursorily, and set it aside. He would refer to it later for the actual assembly.
Carefully, Liubo removed each of the components from the carton (except for the base), weighing each gently in his hands as he took his time to wonder at the intricacies of each part that he was not completely able to see. Unlike the 3D printer, which used purely physical parts only, the molecular printer had a lot of quantum mechanical components that were fabricated with larger and more sophisticated industrial scale sub-molecular printers---these parts were not directly serviceable by the home consumer, and more importantly, were too intricate to be allowed to exist out of the specific homeostatic conditions in which the components were deliberately fabricated in.
The quantum mechanical components were what made it possible for massive miniaturisation of the molecular printer that allowed it to reach the consumer market. Liubo remembered the time where the first molecular printer was invented---it was nearly twenty years ago, and it took up the whole building where it was first put together, and it took an entire power sub-station just to provide it with enough energy to assemble any molecules of up to five different atoms. It was that large because the molecular printer (called the general purpose molecular assembler then) had to rely on high energy physics with some chemistry to force-align the electron clouds to allow arbitrary atoms to be combined in any of the possible types of bonds to create molecules. It was also limited to only five different atoms because the order and intensity of the process of molecular assembly itself grew super exponentially with the number of atoms involved, and beyond five was when the digital computers of the day could not keep up with tracking of all possible states and thus maintaining the right equilibria to perform the assembly.
But the package that lay before him could easily assemble one billion atoms together into molecules that used all the known forces that could be called a molecule, at a significant fraction of the energy cost. It was such a significant fraction that it could be powered from the standard 220 V AC socket found at home. Truly a marvel of technological advancement.
Liubo placed each component of the molecular printer on the ground near him, and retrieved the user manual that he had set aside earlier.
``Congratulations on your Molecular Printing Device (small), bring to you by the Shenzhen Molecular Printing Company! May your molecular printing needs be meet with good and efficient!''
Liubo cringed. It was typical Chinglish, an unfortunate bastardisation of the English language brought about by the helpfulness of automated machine translators that worked with the original Chinese source text. `All the technology in building quantum mechanical components for consumer electronics and they cannot even fix the machine translation,' Liubo thought to himself sardonically as he flipped through the user manual more.
The assembly instructions were quite straightforward. The largest component that was in the bottom of the carton was the molecular printer's base. It was, incidentally, also the most massive.
Liubo opened up the carton more thoroughly to expose the built-in handles of the base before carefully lifting up from the floor and placing it on a scale nearby. The scale read ``20.0 kg'', which matched the stated mass number in the assembly instructions. The mass of the molecular printer's base was very important---it served as a proxy to indicating if the quantum mechanical components were kept intact from the shipping.
Happy with no obvious damage, Liubo carefully lifted the base up seventy centimetres to place it on the freed up table space on his main work bench. He then picked up each of the other components and carefully assembled them on to the base according to the assembly instructions, surprised that they were accurate despite having more of the Chinglish. There was little need for the application of screws and the like---the parts fit together using various built-in clasps and magnetics.
The last to be added where the three molecular printing gels, and there were exactly three slots in the molecular printer where each of the sealed cannisters could go. Staring intently at the assembly instructions for a while more, Liubo realised that other than the general uprightness fit of the cannisters in the slots, there was no other alignment needed. Satisfied with the finding, he finished up the assembly of the molecular printer.
The powering up of the printer for self-diagnosis tests had to be deferred till after Liubo had his dinner.
(Story continues here.)
The disassembled molecular printer was neatly packed by its component box-like constructions that looked like they were machined out of some nice blocks of stainless steel, with a simple user manual placed on top of them, almost as an after thought.
Liubo took out the user manual, scanning through it cursorily, and set it aside. He would refer to it later for the actual assembly.
Carefully, Liubo removed each of the components from the carton (except for the base), weighing each gently in his hands as he took his time to wonder at the intricacies of each part that he was not completely able to see. Unlike the 3D printer, which used purely physical parts only, the molecular printer had a lot of quantum mechanical components that were fabricated with larger and more sophisticated industrial scale sub-molecular printers---these parts were not directly serviceable by the home consumer, and more importantly, were too intricate to be allowed to exist out of the specific homeostatic conditions in which the components were deliberately fabricated in.
The quantum mechanical components were what made it possible for massive miniaturisation of the molecular printer that allowed it to reach the consumer market. Liubo remembered the time where the first molecular printer was invented---it was nearly twenty years ago, and it took up the whole building where it was first put together, and it took an entire power sub-station just to provide it with enough energy to assemble any molecules of up to five different atoms. It was that large because the molecular printer (called the general purpose molecular assembler then) had to rely on high energy physics with some chemistry to force-align the electron clouds to allow arbitrary atoms to be combined in any of the possible types of bonds to create molecules. It was also limited to only five different atoms because the order and intensity of the process of molecular assembly itself grew super exponentially with the number of atoms involved, and beyond five was when the digital computers of the day could not keep up with tracking of all possible states and thus maintaining the right equilibria to perform the assembly.
But the package that lay before him could easily assemble one billion atoms together into molecules that used all the known forces that could be called a molecule, at a significant fraction of the energy cost. It was such a significant fraction that it could be powered from the standard 220 V AC socket found at home. Truly a marvel of technological advancement.
Liubo placed each component of the molecular printer on the ground near him, and retrieved the user manual that he had set aside earlier.
``Congratulations on your Molecular Printing Device (small), bring to you by the Shenzhen Molecular Printing Company! May your molecular printing needs be meet with good and efficient!''
Liubo cringed. It was typical Chinglish, an unfortunate bastardisation of the English language brought about by the helpfulness of automated machine translators that worked with the original Chinese source text. `All the technology in building quantum mechanical components for consumer electronics and they cannot even fix the machine translation,' Liubo thought to himself sardonically as he flipped through the user manual more.
The assembly instructions were quite straightforward. The largest component that was in the bottom of the carton was the molecular printer's base. It was, incidentally, also the most massive.
Liubo opened up the carton more thoroughly to expose the built-in handles of the base before carefully lifting up from the floor and placing it on a scale nearby. The scale read ``20.0 kg'', which matched the stated mass number in the assembly instructions. The mass of the molecular printer's base was very important---it served as a proxy to indicating if the quantum mechanical components were kept intact from the shipping.
Happy with no obvious damage, Liubo carefully lifted the base up seventy centimetres to place it on the freed up table space on his main work bench. He then picked up each of the other components and carefully assembled them on to the base according to the assembly instructions, surprised that they were accurate despite having more of the Chinglish. There was little need for the application of screws and the like---the parts fit together using various built-in clasps and magnetics.
The last to be added where the three molecular printing gels, and there were exactly three slots in the molecular printer where each of the sealed cannisters could go. Staring intently at the assembly instructions for a while more, Liubo realised that other than the general uprightness fit of the cannisters in the slots, there was no other alignment needed. Satisfied with the finding, he finished up the assembly of the molecular printer.
The powering up of the printer for self-diagnosis tests had to be deferred till after Liubo had his dinner.
(Story continues here.)
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