Busting Out

Shurhaian · Post by **Shurhaian** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:40 am

If nothing else, organic nanotech will serve as an excellent foundation and assembly base. After all, cells have been manufacturing proteins for over a billion years; the machinery is there. Using organic compontents as an "anchor" for inorganic components is sort of like how our bodies use vitamins, minerals, and coenzymes - only more so.

And even in the carbon world there is largely untapped potential. Buckytubes anyone?

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 3:21 pm

Ahhhhhhhhhh, buckytubeules.

Pretty much my favorite candidate for massive engineering projects like skyhooks and worldbridges. But of course, to do this, we'll need a few things, like mass production technologies. Fortunately, mass production of buckytubes isn't ~that~ far off from the look of things. Too bad they're fairly vulnerable to corrosion.

Semiconducting buckytubes also offer a potential "next step down" in the scale ladder for microelectronics. However, to build complex buckmensterfullerine structures using biological nanotech, one would have to overcome a wide variety of chemical engineering challenges. Basically, the good news is that C-60 and its various derived molecules are literally -all- carbon bonded and thus might "play nice" with organics, but the bad news is that they are in no way inherantly compatible with pre-existing cellular manufacture technologies.

If you want bionano to play nice with buckytubes, you're going to have to invent a few things nature never bothered with. Not that it couldn't be done, of course!

Cyril_Dran · Post by **Cyril_Dran** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:26 pm

Not that it ever will be done, what with people freaking out about stem cell, much less Things Nature Never Intended.

Once again, I turn to Lewis Black's opinion that if those people followed their logic all the way through, we'd need the National Guard at the supermarket meat department to protect the bacteria.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sun Dec 24, 2006 11:40 am

I contend that it will happen, and even that it will happen in America.

But I do so as a hope, not as a certainty. Much to my sorrow.

...

DAMN but I watch too much McGloughlin Group.

GreatLimmick · Post by **GreatLimmick** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 1:13 pm

Even "Conservative Christians" don't seem terribly inimicable to monkeying around with bacteria. At least, they haven't said anything about the ones that make insulin. I think the main problem with stem cell research is the fact that it requires the destruction of a human embryo, combined with the claim of the Prophet Jeremiah that God had a purpose for him even inside his mother's womb, implying that life begins before birth, and arbitrarily assuming that it begins specifically at conception. If we can convince bacteria to build Buckytubes, I'm sure they'll be all for it. (And with Buckytube superconductors, maybe someday the Internet really will be a series of tubes...)

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 10:40 pm

Oh, QUITE.

The notion of "dominion over the animals" pretty much means that Fundamentalist Christianity supports any and all mucking with animals, and materials sciences, so long as said mucking in no way threatens the divine nature of the human experience.

The insulin-producing bacteria probably ~should~ be raising a few eyebrows over with the Fundamentalist camp, given that these creatures are in fact human-animal hybrids, which George W. Bush advocated banning back in that State of the Union address.

The difference, I think, is probably that when we take an animal and give it some human genes, we don't have a human female doing the birthing and so FC places this firmly in the "dominion" category.

Honestly I think some measure of caution with larger animals is warranted if only so we don't wind up with a goat sitting there going "OH CRAP I'M A GOAT!!"

GreatLimmick · Post by **GreatLimmick** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 1:44 am

Actually, as prokaryotes, bacteria aren't really animals at all. Technically human hybrids yes, but not animals.

Shurhaian · Post by **Shurhaian** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:00 am

If one were to go by the Bible, bacteria wouldn't exist. So I'm not sure if that's better or worse, really...

GreatLimmick · Post by **GreatLimmick** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 1:03 pm

And how's that?

Shurhaian · Post by **Shurhaian** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 5:56 pm

It's something the Bible didn't cover. Some might say this makes it fair game. On the other hand, it wasn't that long ago that it was widely believed that anything not in the Bible was not only not worth knowing, but heresy. Some fundamentalists might still hold that view.

GreatLimmick · Post by **GreatLimmick** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 12:07 pm

Well, until recently, bacteria were considered plants, and the Bible specifically states not only that God created plants, but on what day.

Alfador · Post by **Alfador** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 1:18 pm

What about viruses?

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:14 pm

Now, now... Let's not go taxing the "no politics" boundary...

Micro_Fur · Post by **Micro_Fur** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:18 pm

No offense to the gang here, but this thread has the earnarkings of an Fchan thread gone awry. I have yet to see Allan make an angry post, and I don't think I want to. I suggest you two (or three) take advantage of the PM system if you want to get into a debate about those things.

Micro_fur - Spineless pansy.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:05 pm

Now, now, this has been (mostly) in reasonably good humor; things have just been drifting towards fundie-bashing, which I must admit I do myself on occasion, but which I've decided has to be dropped along with other potentially devicive political discussion.

Just for the good of the board, y'understand.