Well, yeah, because we can’t make that yet. If you describe anything in nature we can’t make with technology as technology then it sounds like science fiction. That’s just tautological!
Replace “machines” with “organisms”.
Not to make this sound less cool but you forgot to mention the speed.
That being said, there are some ridiculously fast growing plants on this planet.
Cells are basically the self replicating nanobots that sci fi sometimes has as an example of highly advanced technology, but naturally occurring.
R&D life cycle… hundreds of millions of years.
The manufacturer takes a really long time to respond to new feature requests, and most of the support tickets are still open.
Update request? Sorry, best I can do is a new kind of cancer.
There are support tickets? I have a few complaints…
Theoretically you can submit complaints to the lead engineer, but there are very few, very old reports of anyone receiving a response and the sources are somewhat suspect.
Plus major patch releases only seem to happen after major events that make old renditions obsolete, if not downright broken and dismantled.
Although new software does have a ton of useless speghetti code.
Typical enshittification. Brilliant and amazing technology taken over by private equity and run into the ground
Went out on a limb for that one.
No reason to bark at them, it has a nice ring to it.
Leaf them bee
I’m rooting for them
Take a bough.
Star Trek writers seeing this and making a new movie
Replace oxygen with dilithium and introduce a primitive species that safeguards it at conflict with the rolls die cardassians. Throw in some beastie boys for good measure.
I feel Le Guin may have beat them to it.
Don’t forget the symbiotic organic filament network used to transmit raw materials and information between units
Shrooms fo life yo
Careful. Muskrat might read this and think it’s a good idea to try to waste loads of CO2 emissions manufacturing synthetic trees
Yup. To put it another way, we’d be hard-pressed to replicate all of that with our current non-tree-based technology track, at even a fraction of the same efficiency. Chlorophyll is basically a miracle-molecule that makes all that possible, and we have yet to engineer anything like it.
I’d think we could probably engineer similarly insanely capable biotech if we were completely reckless, committed a serious fraction of our resources and people, and had infinite Earths to ruin in the process.
I’m not sure how GMO’s are handled, but I’m guessing it’s a quite restrictive on the engineering side and somewhat cautious in implementation.
We are likely a few hundred years away from actually synthesizing a close equivalent and if we do, this one most likely is THE molecule for planet Earth. Other molecules may be suited for other stars and other atmospheres, but clearly chlorophyll won the race of the most efficient simplest molecule to best utilize the resources of our planet.
actually we have solar panels and electrolysis of water, which produces hydrogen, which you can perceive to be H2, which is H-(CH2)0-H, so it’s the simplest (zeroth) hydrocarbon if you will. Not quite glucose, but it’s something.
btw i give H2 the name zen-ane (where zen means zero and -ane means it’s an alcane).
You can make a thin layer of anything on anything, not impressive
Yeah, this is a really really neat way of looking at nature that I sometimes thought about. Nature is pretty fucking darn technologically advanced
They have JUST a slight time advantage: over 1.1 billion years. And that’s LESS than ¼ of Terra’s age.
They also look amazing, with a stunning variety of forms and foliage.
Imagine aliens that don’t have anything like trees.
They’d be so fucking jealous.
Imagine being born on a world made of just mostly slimy grasslands, with bare rock and deserts and a shallow sea full of parasites. And the atmosphere is awful, so running a marathon would be like physically impossible. Actually, besides the dry parts, that kinda sounds like Florida… At least Florida has trees, though. Imagine how shit Florida would be without any trees at all.
I come from outer space: Your grass is too dry, lacks life and squishiness. Your rocks are sharp and uneven and stupidly confusing. Your sea is too deep, too empty (damn scary) and it lacks nutrients. What even is the point of running marathons? Cultural quirk to want to move that fast. The Trees are nice though, gotta leave you that.
The trees are damn nice.
At least Florida has trees, though.
For now
I had a huge Magnolia tree in my backyard. My backyard is not that big. But after I cut it down, the silence was deafening. It was very sad. The tree was too big for my small yard and it was dropping leaves like crazy. Every other day I had to go pick up like three trash cans of leaves.
poor tree
“wow, cool. Let’s see how people interact with these magical creatures”
They are mowed down faster than they can regrow and are replaced with asphalt. Oh.
“Burn Them!”
I do live in a bit of a different part of the globe. It is a losing battle here on side of humans. Trees pop up and every year there are less people around.
I like it here, may it make me a hillbilly on a flat ground or not.
Your part of the globe sounds awesome. I suspect it’s close to my part of the globe.
Self-replicating, solar-powered machines with long life cycles that synthesise carbon dioxide and rainwater into oxygen, sturdy building materials and sometimes edible products, while providing shade, cooling and ground stabilisation.
