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The Los Alamos Bug

Posted by Zonk on from the not-interested-in-acting-as-a-carrier dept.

Kannappan writes "'You somehow have to forget everything you know about life', says Steen Rasmussen, a colleague of Norman Packard. Packard and his team are working on creating life artificially, nicknamed The Los Alamos bug (pdf). It will be created out of a molecule called Peptide Nucleic Acid(PNA), with a blend of three different factors crucial to life, viz. containment, heredity and metabolism. The researchers believe that the synthetic lives so created will have an enormous practical value in producing clean fuels, healing injured bodies and acting as tiny diagnosticians roaming our bodies."

20 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. PNA? by Punboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are there any other lifeforms based on PNA? Why aren't they using DNA?

    Do I just need to RTFA?

    --
    If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
    1. Re:PNA? by JumperCable · · Score: 4, Funny

      They want to lock in all future life into a proprietary format. With current DNA being patented our only hope left is to create our own truly open source life form.

      No word yet on which format Microsoft and Sony intend to back. In related news, Bush is working heavily with Monsanto to ensure that the DMCA is found to be applicable to current life forms. Scientists caught attempting to reverse engineer life should expect to be raided by the FBI by the end of year.

    2. Re:PNA? by bdcrazy · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think they need a QNA session.

      --
      Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
  2. I41 by aapold · · Score: 2, Funny

    cmon, you know you want to bow down before them....

    --
    "Waste not one watt!" - CZ
  3. Well. that's one way by inode_buddha · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well. that's one way to get a life.

    --
    C|N>K
  4. I for one... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ... welcome our new grey-goo overlords. :)

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. What the hell? by commodoresloat · · Score: 2, Funny
    We have the opportunity to create life and the first thing these guys think of making is a freakin' bug?? Like there aren't enough annoying insects on this miserable planet -- we need science to develop new roaches, new fruit flies, new mosquitos so we can spend our time swatting at them and invest our money in new poison products to kill them.

    Freakin scientists. Go cure cancer or something, will ya?!

  7. Sounds like Halflife by N8F8 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe it was a dream but I remember taking the tram ride for a few minutes into a secret lab where an experiment had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

    --
    "God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
  8. Re:Scientists need to stop playing God! by Travoltus · · Score: 2, Funny

    But at some point we run the risk of creating a new life that will seek to perpetuate its survival at the expense of our own.

    Science without restraint and wisdom is as superstitious and downright dangerous as the more irrational aspects of religion.

    Religion at its worst will keep us in the dark ages, while science at its worst will lead to a runaway extinction event by means of environmental pollution or epidemic.

    There has to be a balance.

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
  9. Re:Scientists need to stop playing God! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I completly agree. Does GWB even knows that this is happening in a federal lab, using federal taxpayer money?? I have a feeling that we'll soon have a taste of category 6 and higher hurricanes if we continue this way...

    I must pray over this.

  10. Re:Hmmmm by JrbM689 · · Score: 1, Funny

    Goofus maximus

  11. Re:Only a matter of time by Sheepdot · · Score: 2, Funny

    You're right about the 'humor aside'; it could be argued that intelligence has yet to be created.

  12. Not playing God... by clambake · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just to remind everyone, it's not playing God if you aren't creating life with pure will power alone...

    1. Re:Not playing God... by spongman · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wonder if they'll take the day off when they're done.

  13. I've created......an ego by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    "I've done it! It's alive, ALIVE!"

    "Now, bow down and worship me, you microscopic lump of lard or i'll flush you!"

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  14. One last touch by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    "So now we've carefully put everything from the checklist in so that we know exactly what's in there and what's not. Next we put the lid o...ah...aaaaah CHHHOOOO!!"

    "Oh shit"

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  15. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Microsoftus featuris

  16. Re:Scientists need to stop playing God! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    Dunno about specific verses, but Judeo Christian dogma seems pretty adamant that trying to put yourself on a level with God is a serious sin, basically what Lucifer did.

    Thomas Edison must be dwelling in the deepest pits of hell right now:
    And Edison said, Let there be light: and there was light.
    And Edison saw the light, that it was good: and Edison divided the light from the darkness.

  17. Re:Only a matter of time by Harodotus · · Score: 2, Funny
    but probably by then SkyNet will already have enslaved us all

    Oh come on, as a California resident, we've seriously mitigated this risk by electing as Governor Humanity's protector from Terminator 2 and 3...

    --
    Its not users who are broken, it's systems not taking account their likely behaviour and fixing it technically.