Picotech? Femtotech? Yoctotech? Sub-nanoscale technology.

[Xyph]

Is it at all likely that we'll eventually be able to build things on scales smaller than nanoscale? What problems would we encounter when building things out of nucleons, or even quarks? If the quark has a substructure, could we go beyond? Is it at all feasible that we'd eventually be able to build even on the planck scale?

[insane_alien]

dunno i don't think we know enough about the elementary particles yet even to know if they are actually elementary.

[swansont]

Is it at all likely that we'll eventually be able to build things on scales smaller than nanoscale? What problems would we encounter when building things out of nucleons, or even quarks? If the quark has a substructure, could we go beyond? Is it at all feasible that we'd eventually be able to build even on the planck scale?

 

In a way, we do that already in particle accelerators. A problem with doing it precisely is dealing with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - putting the particle where you want it with only a small amount of energy (and thus momentum).

[Xyph]

Hm, but is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle likely to be fundamentally impossible to bypass, or is it feasible that it could eventually be overcome? I've heard of something called Weak Measurement, which supposedly could lead to a way around it, although I don't know if I've understood it properly.