Buckyballs could disrupt functioning of DNA

New Scientist ^ | 12/09/2005 | Kurt Kleiner

[Cicero]

There's already science fiction novels suggesting that nanotechnology can be used to kill people, or alter them. It's not all that farfetched.

But this is bad news for buckyball enthusiasts.

[md2576]

Cummings also notes that at present only a few grams of buckyballs are produced in the world every year, and that to err on the cautious side scientists treat them like toxic material.

 

This will not please Glenn Reynolds.

No, No it won't

[Behind Liberal Lines]

[Paul_Denton]

There's already science fiction novels suggesting that nanotechnology can be used to kill people, or alter them. It's not all that farfetched.

In the computer game Deus Ex it could be used both ways. The Gray Death nano-virus (central to the game's plot) was actually the same nanites that gave the Dentons their enhanced abilities. The only difference betwen nano-virus and nano augmentation was the propgramming of the nanites themselves.

[SideoutFred]

buckyballs ping

[TopDog2]

There goes all those nano-technology jobs...

[Cicero]

Most of James Alan Gardner's SF novels involve nanotechnology as a weapon or as a method of mutating biological forms.

[md2576]

All employees who handle hazardous materials need to understand the risks.

Time for a raise boss.

[manwiththehands]

Ewww. Damaging people's DNA at the molecular level. It wouldn't be pretty.

[Paul_Denton]

Very cool. I will have to check those out. The novel I am writing features it pretty heavily too. The enemy uses a nano-virus weapon and the only cure to it is a nano-counter-virus or a high dose of ionizing radiation.

[Lazamataz]

I hate buckyballs. I've always hated buckyballs.

Mostly it's the name.

[manwiththehands]

... but then again ... messing with people's DNA at the molecular level might be our next step in EVOLUTION!

Continue with the Buckyball research!

Mutations for Darwin!
Mutations for Darwin!

[WideGlide]

This time of year talk usually turns to Shweaty Balls.

[gaijin]

I don't buy it.

All kinds of activists are opposed to nanotechnology, because it will be a huge money-maker in the very long term. Activists of this type act as a kind of social troll who loudly castigates productive folks who go tramping on his bridge. He does this with the aim of getting paid, somehow (he calls it oversight, or conducting a study). And then this troll asks to get thanked for playing this expensive and unproductive role.

Think of the troll as a kind of progress "toll taker".

Activists like this also fear nanotechnology because they don't understand it. And they don't understand much, come to think of it...

[md2576]

Hey you stole my tagline! LOL

[gaijin]

I forgot:

When genetically modified foods came out, they trundled out this Scottish nut to allege that genetically-modified corn would accumulate in the gut of butterflies, thereby killing them.

Basically a shrewd re-hash of, Silent Spring.

Of course, it was all BS, and it is a fact that about 80% of all US food is somehow genetically modified.

Yes --80%.

[md2576]

Mark Wiesner, an environmental engineer at Rice University in Houston, says that it will take experiments with actual buckyballs and DNA to tell whether the simulations hold up.

Makes me wonder why they have not done this already.

[Cicero]

I met Bucky Fuller twice in Maine. The first time was when my mother-in-law's lobster boat went up on a shoal by Bear Island in Penobscot Bay. We were rescued and after the tide rose pulled off by another lobster boat containing Bucky Fuller, Doctor Spock (the pediatrician, not the alien), Walter Cronkite, and Eliot Porter.

We went in to their dock to check our boat out because there was a smell of gasoline. When they pushed us off for the return journey, Bucky reached out and gave the boat a delicate little spin, so as it drifted out from the dock it turned around, and was headed toward the harbor entrance when I started the engine. He clearly had a good spatial sense.