The ultimate cheat code for physics: turning anything into anything else with 100% efficiency and zero waste. This isn't recycling; it's the literal, atom-by-atom deconstruction of a pile of garbage and its perfect reassembly into a steak dinner, a diamond, or a starship part, using the exact same raw material (E=mc² energy requirements notwithstanding). It’s the replicator from Star Trek, the endpoint of nanotechnology, and the death knell for all scarcity-based economics. If you have energy and a matter source (like, say, random asteroids), you have everything.
*Example: "The colony ship doesn't carry spare parts; it has a lossless matter conversion bay. A broken thruster gets fed in, the atoms are scrambled, and out comes a new thruster, a medical kit, and a fresh batch of coffee, all from the same base matter. It just costs a solar system's worth of energy to run."
by Dumuabzu January 29, 2026
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