Sandia Labs Venture Into Nanotechnology

Saige writes "Sandia National Laboratories and other US Dept. of Energy labs are taking up research into nanotechnology. They've issued a press release which mentions this and gives a simple overview of what nanotech is and may become. There are also a number of interesting links at the bottom to news releases about things such as self-assembled nanospheres, quantum transistors, and protonic computer memory. "

Comments

Nano Technology not covered by Geneva Convention

[buckrogers]

Although nano technology has the promise of being able to build copies of itself like bacteria and indeed infect people with bacteria like infections, it is in fact a machine and not life and therefore its use in warefare is entirely lawful.

A new international conference needs to be held in order to add these agents to the list of banned weapons of war.

Otherwise we may indeed see contries developing the "grey plague."

Additionally it seems that our technology always seems to get out from under our control through the law of unintended consequences.

We need to have an international safety board to review all research in the area of nano technology and to slow down the release of wild strains of nanobots into the environment. Some will still get out, but at a slower, more manageable rate than otherwise.