Lifeboat Foundation Nanoshield

Maria Williams writes "KurzweilAI.net says: Tomorrow's biggest danger may be nanoweapons (grey goo and other) created with molecular manufacturing. The Lifeboat Foundation proposes development of detection methods, such as infrared satellite surveillance for nanobot signatures, along with a three-layer defense system, with devices such as an orbiting mirror to focus concentrated sunlight on an ecophagic outbreak."

Comments

Get your sunglasses out,

[LiquidCoooled]

'Cos it looks like we will all be blinded soon since we could be considered a ecophagic outbreak.

Nanoweapons scare me

[xianfa]

I have been long considering a society of very long lived people through the use of nano technology. I have envisioned nano bots injected into a person to be used for "maintenance" of organs that fail over time. I always thought these bots could be programmed to roam our body and kill off viruses, bad bacteria, and cancer cells as well as repairing failing organs and using our fat cells as an energy source, thereby keeping us thin.

My wife has always said a weapon would be developed long before any life enrichment uses. We have seen a steady flow of nano technology in the last decade or so, I just hope global nano terrorism is not just around the corner.

Re:Nanoweapons scare me

[lawpoop]

"I always thought these bots could be programmed to roam our body and kill off viruses, bad bacteria, and cancer cells... "

Do you think they could out-perform white blood cells?

"as well as repairing failing organs..."Given that modern day robots millions of times larger have problems with simple tasks like picking up a glass, I think organ repair in the near future will be solved with genetic engineering over robots.

The nanotechnologists I've spoken with...

[FooAtWFU]

The nanotechnologist types I've spoken with (as a component of a university seminar course) who are all quite dismissive of "grey goo" and such. In summary: It's not easy for those little guys to get energy to, say, systematically munch their way through concrete or solid steel or something - it will take more energy than it would consume. When you get down to it, we have little to fear from nano-sized robots that we don't have to fear from, say, bacteria - who already have billions of years' worth of experience in the just-above-the-nano-scale operations. Furthermore, even if we did have some miraculous way of getting those things the amounts of energy they would need, you're probably looking at them blowing apart from the amounts of heat involved. (Mind you, that's blowing apart on the molecluar scale, not blowing up like a bomb, so don't get ideas there either.)

Most nanotechnology concerns at present are materials science affairs, and this is likely to remain the case for a while. Nanoscale robots just aren't very feasible under the currently known laws of physics, especially not the infamous "grey goo" variety.

Re:The nanotechnologists I've spoken with...

[vertinox]

hen you get down to it, we have little to fear from nano-sized robots that we don't have to fear from, say, bacteria - who already have billions of years' worth of experience in the just-above-the-nano-scale operations.

If you ever happened to read Ray Kurzweil's, The Singularity is Near, he argues that the evidence that nanotechnology is possible is the human body, viruses, and bacteria. Chances are that the first nanotechnologies will resemble our own cells if not just modified versions of them. When we talk about grey goo and the like most people envision little tiny robot spiders manufacturing everything into themselves.

However, we would more likely see a super virus or bacteria that kills off 50% of the population before we would see that. However, I'd like to point out gray goo is possible, but concrete and non-organic material would be resistance for a while. All the nanoids would have to do is process air, water, and sunlight much like plants.

Think of it like a super plankton consuming the ocean and all life as long as it has sunlight and the ability to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Signatures

[Rob T Firefly]

The Lifeboat Foundation proposes development of detection methods, such as infrared satellite surveillance for nanobot signatures

We hardly need satellites to find them if the stupid bots are going to be writing their names on things! Dumbass punk robots and their gang tags...

More things than nanoparticles can do that.

[Kadin2048]

While your points are valid, why concern yourself with nano particles so much, when there are lots of things that could turn your lungs to a pink pulp or fill them full of phelgm and drown you, without looking to nanotechnology?

I think we're overly complacent about the killer weapons (biologicals, particularly) that are already scattered around the planet in significant quantities; before we go and spend a lot of effort worrying about the possible effects of technologies that don't exist yet, we could spend some of the same resources cleaning up problems that exist right now.

Dying from antibiotic-resistant TB may not be as sexy as being consumed by nanobots-run-amok, but at least in the foreseeable future, it's a lot more likely.

Grey goo?

[Sterling Christensen]

If you're imagining a grey blob, don't. Remember conservation of mass - it won't get bigger/heavier than what it eats. Instead image grey mold growing on all the plants outside. Spreading more like a disease than a blob.

Even if it could convert biomatter to nanobots with the fantastically unlikely efficiency needed to build up an actual sea or even just a blob of them, I sure wouldn't be so stupid as to program them to clump together into an easy target if it were me.

A sea/blob won't happen by accident either, or else some strain of mold or bacteria would have done it by now.

Unless you mean to sterilize an entire area as a last resort, a mirror would be useless. It won't be a big localized thing you can just shoot at.

Get some perspective here

[TheLink]

Unless I see concrete reasoning/evidence otherwise, this worry about goo stuff is way overblown.

Where will the grey goo get _energy_ from to be such a big threat? Solar energy isn't that great a source of energy.

Bacteria have been around for billions of years, there are all sorts of bacteria "eating" all sorts of stuff. If it was so easy to turn the entire environment to goo, the bacteria would have done it already - it's practically what all of them try to do all the time (just look up fermentation).

It takes a pretty sophisticated grey goo to do what bacteria do, and if the grey goo is made of stuff which bacteria or fungi can use, then I think it's the grey goo that has to watch out...

Viruses, bacteria etc can be a problem to us, because they can get energy and resources by parasiting _us_ and other creatures we depend on, in often harmful or deadly ways. They are made from the same stuff as us and thus they can build themselves from us (or subvert our machinery to build themselves).

So if you have a "naive" organic-based goo, good luck stopping fungus and bacteria etc from eating it the moment it gets wet :). I call a goo with no such defenses "naive" - because it was just born yesterday - unlike bacteria etc which have been battling each other for billions of years.

In theory if you have a normal naive (no defense against other micro/nano organisms) organic-based goo our immune system (phages) would probably be able to eat it too. Now if you design a goo that subverts our immune and other systems, then we could have a problem, however I suspect it will be easier to modify an existing virus than to build a "goo" one from scratch.

Alternatively if you have a metal based goo, these would only be a problem if you could create a grey goo that can somehow float around, land and burn/catalyze oil and air and use the energy to shape metal in a way so it can reproduce and repeat the process... The big issue is the burn/catalyze part. Catalysts used by common living creatures (enzymes) are mainly made of commonly available materials - only very trace amounts of other elements are required (if at all). If you prefer to burn instead, then you need to store a fair bit more energy, be able to release it at a high enough power and at the right time to start the burning process.

I recall there was a fungus in South America that was eating CDs - polycarbonate and metal.

So IMO, the most likely great danger to humans from micro/nano stuff would be biological viruses whether modified/bred/engineered or "natural".

I'm not a biotech person but I believe one can feasibly breed viruses to be more dangerous - just get tons of cultures of human cells, then expose the viruses to them, and repeat the process with viruses that produce the effect closest to what you want. No need for much engineering - could probably be very automated. Or do it in conjunction with a carrier organism and human cells - basically breed the virus to survive and spread sublethally in the target carrier organism - rat/roach/flies etc, but be really bad to human cells. The danger is some person/organization actually doing this for USD100k or something.

For macro dangers it'll be one of those meteorites/comets, or humans (we are probably one of the best things at killing ourselves).