“Would aliens also have X?” for almost any X tickles the brain a lot.
The X that primed it for me just now (again) is stainless steel, but almost any generalization of it works.
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Does feel like the right way to rate the progress of a species is material technology!
Alien species prob relied on stainless steel during a brief phase of their existence? Humans have only had it for a small fraction and will likely move beyond it in time?
Great material tho!
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I’d say humans are <100 years from atomic level designer materials. Specificy the properties you want, a quantum computer figures out the optimal atomic composition and then a “printer” drags atoms intro the right place. I’d guess any sufficiently advanced civ has these 🧐🤞🙏
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Fascinating. Is there a defined path to getting there yet? Like is that <100 years a set of known challenges to solve or is the path still unknown?
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I mean we’ve been using STMs to draw things with atoms for a bit. I wonder if it’s just scaling up things like that.