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Science Forum Index » Nanotechnology Forum » Nanobot dangers - pollution
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| Rory McLean |
 Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 12:43 pm |
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As has been pointed out to me, pollution by nanobots can take a
number of forms, and I wont try and deal with them exhaustively.
A basic problem involves work that the nanobots are doing for
you. This work may well have several steps, and some of the
intermediary steps may produce things that you don't want to have
around in the environment. If the intermediary product either
escapes from the processing, or the nanobot breaks-down for some
reason, you will need to ensure that the environment can handle
it.
A second problem is what happens to nanobots that break-down. You
might have scavenger nanobots which remove these from the
environment, but this will probably take time, and some may be
missed. Hopefully the number of nanobots will fall below the
pollution threshold for the environment. But, if you are going to
lose some, you'll want to know a lot about their break-down and
decay modes. Any decay mode which produce unwanted effects on the
environment will have to be avoided.
Note that 'environment' in the above is a matter of where the
nanobot is functioning, and might vary between inside a human
body, through a body of polluted water, to a sealed and guarded
chamber wrapped in thermite - different environments have
different requirements.
--
Rory McLean
rory@romsys.demon.co.uk |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:17 pm |
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For these reasons I think our nano-bots should be designed more like
like bacteria, so that their outputs could be something like oxygen or
carbon, things that the eco-system can work with.
We have a wonderfull ecosystem which is good at cleaning up organic
material within a range and is very stable, we should use these.
We should probably merge nano-technology and genetic engineering to
create small animals that can be programmed to work rather than little
metal bots.
IMHO |
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| Rory McLean |
| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 1:47 pm |
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In article <11vc19vrmsb1161@news.supernews.com>,
<URL:mailto:rhooker123@hotmail.com> wrote:
Quote:
For these reasons I think our nano-bots should be designed more like
like bacteria, so that their outputs could be something like oxygen or
carbon, things that the eco-system can work with.
We have a wonderfull ecosystem which is good at cleaning up organic
material within a range and is very stable, we should use these.
We should probably merge nano-technology and genetic engineering to
create small animals that can be programmed to work rather than little
metal bots.
IMHO
If you plan on running your nanobots on sugar, which they burn
with oxygen to give carbon dioxide and water, this might make
them considerably more complex to fuel, rather than planning on
using solar energy, acquired by photo-voltaic means.
Are you saying they should mimic the photosynthesis of plants,
and make oxygen and hydrocarbons using sunlight, carbon dioxide,
and water?
I don't think we want to have the ecosystem interacting with our
nanotech except in ways very much under our control. Neither are
things we properly understand at the moment, and the possible
interactions between the two could be quite horrible.
Releasing new organisms into the ecosystem, in particular those
that can self-replicate, is a serious recipe for disaster - we
don't really know what is there at the moment, and how it
interacts. Mutating biologically based nanotech could be very
bad, and that's assuming that you've locked-up the genetic info
so it can't be accidentally transferred to other organisms.
Look at how a number of the attempts at biological control have
gone, and that is just existing, stable, proven organisms. We
don't want the nanotech produced equivalent of the Australian
cane toad problem! Particularly if we or something vital to us is
on their menu!
In the longer run, when we have a much bettter idea of what we
are about, and have reasonable assays of the biological diversity
of our ecosystem, and working simulation models that we are
pretty sure show how it works, we might consider nanotech
'animals'. But, initially, this is an area it is almost certainly
best not to mess with, outside high security labs.
--
Rory McLean
rory@romsys.demon.co.uk |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:11 pm |
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Certianly risks are massive in nanotech, but anyway you go are risks.
Tiny machines made of heavy metals getting in to the water would
probably be more of a risk than algea that can clean water.
Right now we are ruining the planet, filling it with so many heavy
metals, toxins, and CO2 that I see that the future economy will be more
than just green, in that it will try to make things will little waste,
but that the greatest demand will be clean up. I see nanobot cleaning
up our wastes of metals and other chemicals and forming in to solar
powered factories which may produce energy or other products from the
screw up we made, or just clean things up.
As for how we should make these machines, I think organic makes more
sense than inorganic, and that the energy systems designed for small
scale creatures, mostly solare power, make the most sense, though I am
also certainl that these little bots will have the ability to use the
masses of metal we have left around to build inorganic tools.
Any way you do it will be risky. |
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