Terror Defense No Al Qaida Terror

Most of their “nano-inventions” are hype. Any new advances will take decades.

While this has very real applications, as Dr Fay went on to describe, he made it very clear in his talk that many of the ideas that futurists have about nanotechnology are simply unfeasible. For example, building a space elevator out of carbon nanotubes, while it works on paper, it doesn’t work in practice; a functional space elevator would need to be 35,800 km high and made from perfect carbon nanotubes, whereas lab efforts have so far produced about 20 cm worth of imperfect carbon nanotubes. And the idea of microscopic robots administered in the form of grey goo that can either help or harm us remains a subject purely of science fiction, not science fact. But it wasn’t all crushing the fanciful imaginings of science fiction authors and fans. Dr. Fay did also describe some of the very real applications of nanotechnology in the real world. These include potential medicinal uses, such as highlighting tumours, as cancerous cells are less able to process and remove nano-particles than healthy cells, which would make it easier to locate tumours and target treatment and surgery more accurately. Other uses including self-cleaning materials, such as windows that require only sunlight and rain to do the job, as well as fabrics that are waterproof but can still breathe, allowing people (such as cyclists) to stay dry, but not to feel as if they’re wearing a plastic bag. There are also potential agricultural applications, such as tiny sensors that can be applied to crops to allow farmers to know when they need to be watered, ensuring that crops aren’t overwatered and reducing potential waste. It may not be as exciting as a missile-delivered green goo that eats the legs out from under the Eiffel Tower, causing it to the collapse into the River Seine, or as terrifying as microscopic robots that transform human beings into mindless cyborgs, but the uses are very real and beneficial to humanity. Perhaps the most important take-home message of Dr. Fay’s whole talk was the role of engineers in making the transition between a scientific discover in the lab and its application in the real world. The transistor revolutionised modern technology, but it didn’t give us the internet and smart phones overnight. Decades of hard work by scientists and engineers brought us the innovations we have today and it will be the same with nanotechnology, once we have climbed back out of the trough of disillusionment. The talk was engaging and entertaining, and covered the topic so thoroughly that we struggled to think of any questions for the Q&A. Dr. Fay’s use of a slide show was also spot-on, providing visual examples of what he was talking about, helping to illustrate just what nanotechnology is. It would be safe to say that we all came away with a better understanding and appreciation of this fascinating area of modern research.

Nanotech Inevitable

Nanotech inevitable- multinational investment

Al-Rodhan 15 What does nanotechnology mean for geopolitics? By Nayef Al-Rodhan neuroscientist, geostrategist, Honorary Fellow of St. Antony’s College at Oxford, Senior Fellow and Centre Director of the Centre for the Geopolitics of Globalization and Transnational Security Jun 23 2015 https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/06/what-does-nanotechnology-mean-for-geopolitics/♥Tina

Hundreds of commercial products now rely on nanoscale materials and processes; the market share is estimated to be between $50 billion and $1 trillion. Although commercial forecasts vary, it is without doubt that nanotech is increasingly critical for national power, a premise which follows from both current and potential military applications of nanotech. The US Department of Defence identified nanotechnology as one of the six strategic research areas in the mid-1990s, and in recent years, emerging or so-called “re-emerging” powers have increased their investments. With the use of nanotechnology, Russia has already successfully developed the world’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb, with a blast radius of 300 meters and the ability to contain the equivalent of 44 tons of explosives (the US bomb is equivalent to 11 tons).

Nanotech is already here and grey goo is a foolish scenario

Vaivodiss 14 GREY GOO: DEATH BY NANOTECH APRIL 21, 2014 ROBERT VAIVODISS B.S. Georgia Tech http://thewannabescientist.com/grey-goo-death-by-nanotech/♥Tina

Dexler described these self-replicating nanomachines, as consumers that would feed on all organic matter. After breaking down organic matter into molecules, these consumer nanomachines would work together to create a new object or another nanomachines. This kind of technology could improve manufacturing in every field, but only in a closed environment. In Dexler’s illustration of replicating nanomachines, there is only one replicator in a jar of chemicals necessary for replication and in about 1000 seconds, the lone replicator creates an exact copy of itself. Theoretically, the replicators’ mass would be higher than the mass of the Earth in two days! This shows how fast replication can get out of hand, more or less like a bacterial disease. Luckily, the nanomachines would probably never reach such a huge scale, because there are many limitations, such as reality! First, the nanomachines are powered by some power source. If the nanomachines outgrow the power source, replication will be stopped. Additionally, if replication keeps occurring, then a majority of nanomachines would have nothing to consume. Nanotech medicine Grey Goo: Death by Nanotech You might not have noticed, but nowadays nanotechnology is everywhere! Nanobots are used in the medical field to deliver medicine onto cancerous areas, perform surgery, and monitor health. Scientists hope to develop nanobots that could monitor and manage somebody’s health on a cellular level. Because of Dexler’s grey goo theory, researchers are taking note it and avoiding the creation of self-replicating nanobots. However, some researchers believe that replication of nanobots, if controlled, is completely safe.

Nanotech is here and R&D is inevitable + no grey goo- even its creator concedes it’ll be orderly.

Condliffe 15 Jamie Condliffe is a freelance science and technology writer What Will the Future of Molecular Manufacturing Really Be Like? Jamie Condliffe 2/16/15 7:00am http://gizmodo.com/what-will-the-future-of-molecular-manufacturing-really-1684637035♥Tina

There is, clearly, no shortage of technology at the nano-scale. We've self-assembling structures, folding shapes that can collect and release loads, walking contraptions, molecular motors, vehicles that make use of them, and, perhaps, even the potential to fuel them. You can also add to that list a smattering of smart extras, too—like single-molecule LEDs and simple DNA-based computers—that could, one day, make them more than just simple mechanical systems. So is there any hope of Drexler's nanoscale production line? "We've already shown that," explains Seeman, as if it were never really in doubt. A few years ago, Seeman's lab showed off what was the first molecular production line. Four DNA nanorobots walked along a specially-prepared surface, picking up gold particles and interacting with each as they moved to build themselves into one of eight different end products. Admittedly the finally result was one of eight different tangles of DNA and gold particles, but as a proof of concept it was irresistible. Progress hasn't halted since. Other assembly lines have been created which, instead of building a tangle of DNA, actually piece together smaller molecules to form larger, more complex structures that can then be used for an entirely new applications. Those molecular motors have been put to work, too, using their rotational abilities to control chiral catalysts—molecules that themselves speed up other reactions, depending on the orientations of the atoms within the more complex structure. Molecular machines are being used in labs the world over to tweak and assemble other molecules, creating larger assemblies that can be used for another purpose. Fiction to fact In other words: we're getting there. But instead of the primordial stew of nanobots producing grey goo, the reality of the molecular building site is a more nuanced, structured and modest one. Perhaps its no surprise that Drexler himself has tweaked his own hypothesis about the future on nanotechnology. In his 2013 book Radical Abundance, he writes about "microblocks." These, he suggests, are a kind of Russian Doll assembly process, where a cascade of thousands of tiny robotic cells each builds components at the molecular level, feeding those components to increasingly larger robots until a full-size product is created. You can imagine it as a series of ever larger 3D printers, the first working at the molecular level, each creating components to pass up to the chain, to create larger and larger structures. Of course, with that kind of increasingly complexity comes greater challenge—but given the distance we've come, such obstacles shouldn't be seen as too daunting. "Life itself is not possible without the multitude of molecular machines inside our bodies that work in turbulent environments and with very little power but accomplish very complex tasks from virus transport to muscle flexing," explains Professor Charles Sykes from the Department of Chemistry at Tufts University. "Many wonderful things are possible as nature has already proven." Indeed, as academics see it, there's only a single real barrier. "The key constraint is the usual one," muses Seeman. "Money." Really, then, the revelatory ambitions of the eighties assemblers have simply mellowed. Rather than scuttling around making—or destroying—at will, the molecular machines of the near future will be ordered, constrained and working for us rather than in competition. Rather less alarmist, and rather more useful. And that, it seems, is what happens when science fiction becomes more like science fact.

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