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Artificial Life May Be Possible Within Ten Years
CapedOpossum writes "According to an article from a few weeks back on CNN, researchers in the field of genetics and biology think that we may be able to artificially create life within the next decade. From the article: 'Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer. Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of 'wet artificial life. "It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could run amok, but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.'"
Amok, amok, amok!
My blog
we're going to *grow* flying cars?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?"
- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang (The Human Hive), Dynamics of Mind
Artificial Intelligent Design!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
So, when will we start seeing legislation for warnings on food? If this takes off, I can see companies making stuff like pseudo-cows and pseudo-chickens that are cheaper to breed in the long term.
I suppose they'll start out with plant-like forms of life for simplicity. Strangely, eating artificial plants wouldn't bother me as much as artificial animals.
Apparently not too hard; you only took 9 months of development.
One of the answers to the Fermi Paradox that is often thrown around is the idea that intelligent life tends to destroy itself after a short amount of time. Normally, people think this means huge wars, but I actually have pondered a different theory. As technology advances, more and more power is put into the hands of relatively small groups, and then ultimately to individuals.
I've wondered if perhaps there was some sort of energy-conversion technology that we don't know about yet (such as an easy way to create antimatter), but once discovered, it puts too much power available too easily. Basically, a single nutcase then creates a doomsday bomb, and that's it. If that were possible, and assuming it was relatively undetectable, it would be inevitable that life would be destroyed. You simply can't stop determined crazy people.
On the other hand, things like this make me wonder about biological weapons. As this technology matures, it will get easier and easier, and be available cheaper and cheaper to create artificial lifeforms. You see it on the Internet... script kiddies have an immense amount of power to destroy property. Once biolife is cheap and easy, and you get a human-hating nut who *wants* to destroy humanity, how can you stop it?
It won't be war that kills everyone, it'll be the lone Unibomber type.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Let me venture a guess... 10 years?
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Humans have become so technically evolved that they can now make a living, breathing person.
A summit of scientists believed that because they now had the power to create life, God was no longer needed. So they all decided that someone should go and tell God this. One man volunteered to go. One day he climbed a mountain and called upon God.
"God! We humans now have the ability to bring people from the dead, we can create our own life, we don't need you anymore so you can leave us alone."
God listened to the scientist and nodded his head. "Okay, I'll tell you what, if you can really create life, let's have a competition, if you can create a better person than me, I'll go, but we'll have to do it the way I did it in the old days."
So the scientist agrees and begins to collect some dirt to make his person. God simply watches him and finally asks him what he's doing.
"I'm using the dirt to make a person."
God smiles, looks at the scientist and replies, "Go make your own dirt."
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
So, if I created an artificial woman I'm betting she still wouldn't go out with me.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
46 chromosomes ought to be enough for anybody.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Apparently not too hard; you only took 9 months of development.
That's only 9 months of manufacturing, it took over a billion years of R&D to flesh out the design.
I personally prefer the existing technology used to create life.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That's part of the reason it's so hard to have a debate on the subject. It's difficult to even get to the subject, because you have to wade through so many absurd assumptions about what evolution is (meaning--what the scientific theory is) before you can argue about whether it's right or wrong. Usually we never get to that point, because people don't want to give up their cherished illusions that Darwinism is best summed up by stuff like "Frog+time=prince."
It would be like me arguing against voting Republican because they eat babies. They don't eat babies, but if I couldn't give up that caricature, we could never get to the point of talking about their actual platform or policies.