Welcome to NanoWorld
Nanotechnology and
the Precautionary Principle Imperative
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/ ... corp2.html
Nanotechnology -- or nanotech, for short -- is a new approach to industrial production, based on the manipulation of things so small that they are invisible to the naked eye and even to most microscopes.
Nanotech is named for the nanometer, a unit of measure, a billionth of a meter, one one-thousandth of a micrometer. The Oxford English Dictionary defines nanotechnology as "the branch of technology that deals with dimensions and tolerances of less than 100 nanometers, especially the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules." Nanotech deals in the realm where a typical grain of sand is huge (a million nanometers in diameter). A human hair is 200,000 nanometers thick. A red blood cell spans 10,000 nanometers. A virus measures 100 nanometers across, and the smallest atom (hydrogen) spans 0.1 nanometers.
In the realm below 50 nanometers, the normal laws of physics no longer apply, quantum physics kicks in and materials take on surprising new properties. Something that was red may now be green; metals may become translucent and thus invisible; something that could not conduct electricity may now pass a current; nonmagnetic materials may become magnetized; insoluble substances may dissolve. Knowing the properties of a substance in bulk tells you nothing about its properties at the nano scale, so all nano materials' characteristics -- including hazardous traits -- must be learned anew by direct experiment.
Nanotechnologists foresee a second industrial revolution sweeping the world during our lifetimes as individual atoms are assembled together into thousands of useful new products. Few deny that new products may entail new hazards, but most nanotechnologists say existing regulations are adequate for controlling any hazards that may arise. In the United States, nanotech is not now subject to any special regulations and nano products need not even be labeled. Furthermore, no one has developed a consistent nomenclature for nano materials, so rigorous discussion of nanotech among regulators and policymakers is not yet possible. Without consistent nomenclature, standardized safety testing lies in the future.
No one denies that nanotech will produce real benefits, but, based on the history of nuclear power, biotechnology and the chemical industry, skeptics are calling for a precautionary approach. The resulting clash of philosophies -- "Better safe than sorry" versus "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" or even in some cases "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" -- may offer a major test of the Precautionary Principle as a new way of managing innovation.
Nanotech wasn't possible until the invention in the 1980s and early 1990s of ways to arrange individual atoms under software control. Nano particles, nanotubes and carbon nano crystals called Bucky Balls (after Buckminster Fuller) are now being manufactured in ton quantities for industrial use.
But for some prominent proponents of nanotech, this is about more than money -- it is about reinventing the entire world, including humans, as they now exist. According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, nanotechnology is the foundation stone of NBIC -- a revolutionary convergence of nanotech, biotech (manipulation of genes), info tech (computers), and cogno tech (brain function). In a report sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce, the technologists and politicians who are promoting this revolution say it is "essential to the future of humanity" because it holds the promise of "world peace, universal prosperity, and evolution to a higher level of compassion and accomplishment." They say it may be "a watershed in history to rank with the invention of agriculture and the Industrial Revolution." The ultimate aim of this revolution has been an explicit human goal for at least 400 years -- the "conquest of nature" and the enhancement of human capabilities.
In contrast, nanotech makes possible "bottom-up" construction in which atoms are arranged under software control -- or in ideal cases they will self-assemble, just as living cells self-assemble -- into the desired configuration with nothing left over, no waste. Instead of cutting trees into lumber to make a table, why not just "grow" a table? Thus nanotech seems to offer the possibility of waste-free manufacturing and therefore a cleaner environment. Furthermore, nanotech may help remediate past pollution. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is funding research on releasing nano particles into the environment to detoxify mountains of toxic waste remaining from the 20th century's experiment with petroleum-based chemistry.
Nanomedicine
http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI.htm
Are We Destined to Become a Borg?The first volume of the Nanomedicine book series describes the set of basic capabilities of molecular machine systems that may be required by many, if not most, medical nanorobotic devices, including the physical, chemical, thermodynamic, mechanical, and biological limits of such devices. Specific topics include the abilities to recognize, sort and transport important molecules; sense the environment; alter shape or surface texture; generate onboard energy to power effective robotic functions; communicate with doctors, patients, and other nanorobots; navigate throughout the human body; manipulate microscopic objects and move about inside a human body; and timekeep, perform computations, disable living cells and viruses, and operate at various pressures and temperatures.
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/paytonbyrd/ ... borg-25689
Are chemtrails nanobot aerosols?This really got me thinking about the ramifications of medical devices that are wirelessly controlled by computers. I recently posted about the growing power of GPUs and when you combine new techniques for processing with the ever forward-charging affects of Moore's Law, you start to get a sense that we're not very far from the point where we will have so much computing power available that we'll start to loose our grip on what to do with it. Artificial Intelligence is really starting to become a priority in many industries, not just gaming and research. The financial sector uses AI to examine risks and perform actions automatically based on ever changing risk factors. This type of AI has the potential to become so good at determining risk that some day they may start to attempt to reduce risk to themselves. We all know what happens then.
On the biotech front we have to look at these wondrous devices that have such potential for human benefit and figure out ways to keep these devices firmly under the control of our doctors, and not the computers used by the doctors. Imagine the President of the USA having such a device and his doctor's computer getting hacked; that would be bad, Ray.
Of course, eventually this massive computer network (let's call it Skynet), finds these little medical devices (let's call them nanoprobes). What happens to the human race at that point in time? Assimilation or termination? Only time will tell.
Morgellons, Nanomedicine,
Nanotechnology and Chemtrails
http://www.bariumblues.com/chemtrails_n ... aeroso.htm
"Airborne nanorobots can identify their host patient by chemical signature, much like a bloodhound or mosquito following its quarry's scent. Such chemical signatures or "odortypes" may include:
1) naturally-produced "baseline" chemical scents;
2) behaviorally-related scents which may appear or intensify during specific events such as heavy exercise, fear reactions (e.g., emotional excitement alone can increase the sweat rate by ~50%), defecation or flatulence, sexual activity, intoxication, and the like;
3) artificial scents such as perfumes, colognes, cosmetics and deodorants; and
artificial molecular taggants specially designed to simplify the recognition task, as for instance an odorless, volatile, digitally-encoded messenger molecule emitted from an external facility that is controlled by the patient.
Also:
Airborne nanorobots can stationkeep in the vicinity of the host patient by acoustic homing on a coded ultrasonic beacon worn by the patient, all of whose emanations are inaudible to the human ear.
Airborne nanorobots can navigate and avoid no-fly zones (Section 9.5.3.6) by various methods. For instance, a flying nanorobot approaching... human flesh would detect
thermal emissions.
....all aerial nanorobots can continuously transmit relative skin-proximity data to their neighbors, allowing each device within a virtual "warning lattice" to estimate its rate of approach to the nearest prohibited surface.
... nanorobots can also detect normal conversational speech at a range of ~2 meters using >2.4 micron3 pressure sensors (Section 4.9.1.6).