Star Trek

Thinking about Dr. Noonien Soong’s positronic brains, I read that back in 2008, physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California—led by physicist Hui Chen—used a short, ultra-intense laser, to ionize electrons and drive them through a one-millimeter-thick piece of gold. Peter Beiersdorfer, a LLNL physicist, explains that the laser excites the electrons, causing each of them to "wiggle" and  break down naturally, into a lower-energy electron and its antimatter opposite, a positron; the gold simply speeds up the transformation. Every shot of the lab's high-powered Titan laser, which they can fire every 30 minutes, can create about 10 billion positrons.

The negative electrons and positive positrons then emerge from the gold in a cone-shaped "jet."  A magnetic field then separates the two, because of their opposite charges. A split-second later, the positrons and electrons collide and annihilate each other, in a flash of pure energy called a gamma ray.  Of course, if this antimatter could be stored for longer periods of time, even more positrons could be produced.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27998860/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2345/laser-creates-billions-particles-antimatter

If a smaller laser could be developed, it could provide the positrons for an android’s brain.

Thinking about this possibility this morning, I came up two lines of inquiry:

1.    Regarding the laser, Beta waves (13-60 pulses per second) are the normal, actively awake human brain waves.

Alpha waves (7-13 pulses per second) are associated with relaxing, taking a break.

Theta waves (4-8 pulses per second) are associated with driving, brushing your teeth, daydreaming.

Delta waves (1-4 pulses per second) are associated with sleep.

Scientists can produce these waves in human brains (volunteers) with small electric currents.  So, if an android were to think like a human, it seems that he/she would only need a small device to produce electric currents in these small amounts. http://www.yearofscience.org/the-boosting-of-brain-waves-may-slow-you-down/

            In general, voltage converters and voltage transformers are used to convert electricity. US and Canadian devices operate on 110/120 volt AC 60 HZ, while most of the world operates on 220/240 volts AC 50 HZ. Voltage converters change the electricity to make work electrical appliances in different countries.      http://www.sevenstar.com/faq-electronics.htm

            Hertz is the modern name for cycles and represents how many times an Alternating Current (AC) changes from + to - per second and has nothing to do with voltage. Voltage can be either AC or DC. So, if you have an alternator and can rotate the shaft 60 times per second, with a voltage of 120 volts, you will produce the same ACvoltage that you find in your wall outlet. (Alternators produce AC while generators produce DC electricity.)             http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_convert_hertz_into_volts

            Some television circuits could run off 240 volts, while others require 900-1,200 volts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC/DC_(electricity)

            The 60 Hertz range is in the Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) field at the end of the electromagnetic spectrum, from zero to 3,000 Hz.            http://www.ehib.org/emf/ckgloss.html

2.    Regarding the gold target, scientists could perhaps target the most common elements on Earth:  hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, neon, silicon, magnesium, iron, sulfur, aluminum, argon, calcium, sodium and nickel.  These elements would be less-expensive than gold.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements

            I do have one question, though:  Can you use a laser to target a gas?  Or, would researchers have to restrict their testing to solid elements?

An android could perhaps be powered by a conventional battery; they are making great strides, such as with a nickel-iron battery.  (Professor Brown might not need to consort with terrorists!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery

A nickel-iron battery can withstand a lot of abuse and still last between 20 and 50 years.  They are rechargeable.  Thomas Edison invented them in 1901.  And, they have less of a detrimental impact on the environment than lead-cadmium batteries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechargeable_battery

Silicon whiskers inside a conventional Li-ion battery offer high capacity, good cycle life, fast rate and low charge time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

This new battery fabrication process not only would provide with greater power storage capacities, but would also enable the creation of smaller volume, and lower weight power sources. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Silicon-Whiskers-Make-Li-ion-Batteries-Store-More-Power-74262.shtml

http://www.psicorp.com/news_events/display_news.html?id=1029

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2007/12/silicon-whiskers-lead-to-battery.html

Perhaps a less-expensive combination might be as good as gold.  A technique that deposits silicon (Si) on top of silicon germanium (SiGe) stretches the silicon atoms, producing “stretched silicon.”

http://www.answers.com/topic/strained-silicon

http://www.answers.com/topic/strained-silicon#ixzz2DSVTgSIS

http://www.answers.com/topic/sige#ixzz2DSVeTBRI

And, back in 1990, scientists bombarded sodium trisilicate glass (Na2O⋅3SiO2) with 248‐nm excimer laser light and produced a cloud of electrons and negative ions accompanied by a large number of positive ions,

http://jap.aip.org/resource/1/japiau/v68/i8/p4253_s1?isAuthorized=no

So, perhaps bombarding one of these materials with laser energy could produce as many useful electrons and positrons as with the gold target.

Titanium nitride (TiN) --an extremely hard ceramic material—could be used in an android.  It can be applied as a thin coating, to harden and protect surfaces and as a non-toxic exterior for medical implants. In most applications, a coating of less than 5 micrometers (0.00020 in.) of tin nitride is used.Due to its high biostability, TiN may also be used for electrodes in bioelectronic applications, such as in intelligent implants or in-vivo biosensors. TiN electrodes have already been employed in the subretinal prosthesis project, as well as in biomedical microelectromechanical systems  (BioMEMS).  And, titanium nitride has been chilled to near absolute zero, converting it into the first known superinsulator, allegedly making it 100,000 times more resistant.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_nitride

Yttrium aluminium garnet (YAG, Y3Al5O12) is a synthetic laser.  Doped with holmium, chromium and thulium, it can be pumped by a flashlamp or a laser diode and works well at room temperatures. Perhaps it could be used for our android.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_aluminium_garnet

The android's body could be made of some kind of boron nitride.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron_nitride

It does little good to discuss the feasibility of a positronic brain because Asimov never described what it was. It was just a buzz word to him. The best I can figure is that a system using real positrons as charge carriers instead of electrons would be no more sophisticated and basically be a walking antimatter bomb. Generating positrons is cool, but I'm not sure how anyone would begin to apply that to artificial intelligence. Considering that Asimov's robots had brains made of real metals, I doubt the word positronic actually means using positrons as a charge carrier. It's like saying phasers fire nadian particles. They don't exist!

I good technobabble answer in true Trek fashion would be to assume that a positronic brain was some form of quantum computer that used positrons as some kind of secondary information carrier.

I'm not sure of the date on this, but I just found this today:

http://theweek.com/article/index/237825/meet-kenshiro-japans-creepyboy-robot-with-an-aluminum-skeleton-and-160-muscles