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Buckyballs Kill Fish
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post (free registration, not too invasive) has a disturbing article on a new study of the environmental dangers of nanotech. Buckyballs caused "severe" brain damage in largemouth bass when added to their aquariums in concentrations of 0.5 ppm, a concentration level on par with common US pollutants. They also caused die-offs of Daphnia, waterfleas that are a crucial part of the ocean food chain. "The new findings are somewhat surprising because many scientists had predicted that buckyballs would not linger in water but would quickly form clumps and sink." The findings have yet to be peer-reviewed."
Well, we're all going to die anyway.
But, if I had my choice in the matter, I'd want to die by the hands of something cool enough to be named buckyballs.
Imagine the death certificate. CAUSE: Buckyballs.
Imagine the eulogy. "It's so sad that he was taken from us so soon by buckyballs..."
Yeah, so, you still don't want buckyballs to kill you?
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
A buckyball is a carbon molecule that has 60 atoms in it and is shaped like a soccer ball. Google for Buckminster Fuller for more information.
AND NO, it's NOTHING DIRTY!!!!! (for once)
The buckyballs aren't getting into the fish and casuing brain damage, this is all a coverup for the escape of a very dangerous nanotechnology. Millions of nanobots are playing dodgeball with these buckyballs...sometimes the fish get in the way, and BAM, brain damage.
"Because of the novel arrangements of the atoms in these molecules -- and because the laws of physics behave differently at such scales -- nanoparticles display bizarre chemical properties."
The laws of physics do not behave differently on a HUGE carbon 60 molecule! The article fails to show what the buckyballs do to the fish or aquatic fleas. Does anyone have insight?
120 chars of filth!
Buckyball is a colloquial term for the Buckminster-Fullerene, a molecule of 60 carbon atoms in the shape of a soccer ball. It was names after Buckminster-Fuller, an architect of domes with a similar structure.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
"Any of various cagelike, hollow molecules composed of hexagonal and pentagonal groups of atoms, and especially those formed from carbon, that constitute the third form of carbon after diamond and graphite." dictionary.
In the dozen years since their discovery in 1985, the soccer-ball-shaped molecules of 60 or more carbon atoms now known as fullerenes have displayed a dazzling variety of tricks. Although real-world applications are still a way off, researchers have coaxed these "buckyballs" to become superconductors at low temperatures, emit light and carbon ion beams, and form many other compounds with different properties.
120 chars of filth!
I knew it,
Soccer rots your brain.
A witty
From what I have read buckyballs have really neat conductive and structural properties. The article fails to state that there have been no commercially viable applications for the molecules. As long as that is true the fishes have little to worry about.
120 chars of filth!
The word "nanotechnology" spans two competely different fields: nanomachines and nanomaterials.
Nanomaterials is what this article is about. The whole field of nanomaterials is exploitng the fact that extremely small particles of materials show physico-chemical behaviour different from that shown at larger scales. Not that the laws of pysics change as some people have said, but that tiny size has an effect upon which laws manifest. Some of those changes are useful - which is why people are researching them. Some are, surprise surprise, dangerous. You get that with any new invention - fire destroys as well as warms.
Nanomaterials are here, now. We need to worry about them like any other new chemical (which, in a way, is what they are - on the boundaries of chemistry and materials physics). But not more. Of course they should be tested - and guess what, they are, as this article shows. No more (or less) of a risk than any of the hundreds of new chemicals which emerge every year. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
Nanomachines are a totally different question. Nanomachines are extremely tiny machines build up either from molecules, or by using silicon engineering developed for microchips to machine silicon (actually two very different technologies lumped together, but so be it). Apart from a few very crude devices, nanomachines are still a long way from any serious production.
People have hypothesized that it might be possible to build self-replicating nanomachines, and that such self-replicationg nanomachines might replicate so fast as to take over the world and reduce it to "grey goo". While you cannot say that this is absolutely impossible, it is very, very far ahead of anything even dreamed off. While a few useful widgets might emerge in the next few years, such gadgets are orders of magnitude away from anything presenting a serious risk to people at large.
(And, actually, I believe we already have self-replicating nanomachines: they are called viruses).
But, because of the confusion of the two terminologies, people are saying "Panic about what nanomachines might do because nanomaterials are here now".
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Ummm ... :)
You have a girlfriend?
If you do, take her to a jewlers
Show her the diamonds
Watch her IQ drop like a stone
Please remember that we are composed primarily of organic compounds... we react in a serious way to molecular carbon. All life on the planet reacts in a serious way to molecular carbon.
Carbon fibers, can and do penetrate cell walls. It's already been discovered that incredibly small concentrations of buckytube carbon fibers, can cause tremendous and unexpectedly servere lung damage, and that those bucky tubes quickly begin dispersing through the other tissues in the body with potentially serious and unpredictable impacts.
Buckyballs can transport metal ions into places metal ions normally can't go in our bodies. Buckyballs can pass easily through the blood brain barrier, and there's no information yet on their impact to neural, blood, or critical organ tissues.
Seeing as nature decided to use carbon as it's primary source of nanotech, and that we are almost certainly going to do the same, we would be wise to make sure that our creations are minimally compatible, and interoperable to the existing machines. To not take these issues into consideration, is to risk unprecedented damage to our environment, and ourselves.
Genda
Nope - H202 and Cl are both oxidising agents, and as such both "steal" electrons. If Buckyballs steal electrons then they too are oxidising agents. Remember the handy little mnemonic OIL RIG: Oxidation Involves Loss, Reduction Involves Gain.
You're absolutely right.
Just as a sidenote, for anyone who doesn't know the significance of the Daphnia dying,
it basically means buckyballs are toxic (Daphnia are used for toxicity testing...)
Am I just stating the obvious? Well, you never know.
I have heard that another carbon arrangement, known as diamond, is a pretty toxic chemical that affects the brain of many female homo sapien. It is also known to be additive.
Strangely, this material seems to have little effect on male home sapien, although the lack of it seems to affect the reproductive potential of that subspecies.
... Where it clearly states:
Do not taunt happy fun ball.
"Cause of death: B-b-b-buh-buh. C60 overdose."
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OP comes from New Scientist, picked up by the Washington Post.
Check it out w/o registering:http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
Brain damage is usually caused by oxygen starvation. Could the buckyballs be absorbing the oxygen from the bloodstream?
The biggest and quickkest damage doesn't come from the oxygen starvation itself, but by the return of blood flow.
Brain cells metabolism is oxygen based and produces lots of free radicals - toxic by-products that are produced by oxagen metabolism. Normally that isn't a problem for our cells, because they also have the tools to control free-radicals production and degradation (with help of anti-oxydizer and well controlled reactions...)
When blood flow is cut, cells are suffering from the lack of oxygen but are still managing to survive for a short period in some way (brain cells aren't as good at fermentation....)
During this period they may undergo some damage but are still viable (DNA and basic protein synthesis tools may be still intact). The problem is : part of this damage can happen on metabolic tools that are intended to control free-radicals. During this period, it doesn't matter, because as the cell doesn't recieve oxygen, it doesn't produce free radicals
The problems arises when blood flow comes back : some cell (the less damaged from the lack of blood) survive, some other, although viable get killed because oxygen metabolism restarts and free-radicals are produced again... but the cells aren't able to cope with them anymore !
This phenomenon is called Reperfusion Damage, and lot of research is currently done to find way to minimise it (example : using anti-oxidizers).
[HINT : google this keywords for more information on the subjet]
To get back to the main subjet : as this buckyballs are known to be good oxidiser, it's very probable that their oxydizing propreties are exceeding brain's capacity of handling free radicals
other typical damage of free radicals : cataract (I wonder if they found it too on the fishes ?)
other tissus like muscles are less prone to free-radical damage, because it's easier for them to divide and replace damaged cells with new clean one.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
i hate to sound anal about this, but what does buckminsterfullerene have to do with nanotechnology? i realize they could be used for nanotechnology, but C60 is just a big molecule. there's no nanotech involved in making fullerenes; you can build a carbon arc in your garage if you want to have them. no microscopic manipulation required. you separate them out.... using a solvent. this isn't nanotech, it's chemistry. whoever wrote this article should think before using buzzwords.
also, interestingly, it should be noted that the toxicity of fullerenes isn't a surprise; when richard smalley and company came up with the fullerene structure in the mid-80's, everyone assumed they were toxic (the molecules, not the scientists). most chemicals with a benzene ring (benzene, toluene, PAHs) are pretty nasty stuff; a buckminsterfullerene molecule has 20 benzene rings in it. it would be a miracle if it weren't toxic.
so anyway, in this article, a group of scientists used well-established chemistry techniques to create an aromatic carbon molecule, and showed that it's toxic. why is this news?