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US unprepared for dirty-bomb attacks
(PHILIP BALL, Nature, 26 April 2004)
The United States is ill prepared to deal with the long term aftermath of a 'dirty-bomb' terrorist attack, say analysts. They warn that existing clean-up laws and regulations covering radioactive materials were not designed with dirty bombs in mind, and give conflicting recommendations. If such an attack were to happen now, measures designed to cover industrial accidents would apply by default, say Deborah Elcock of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and her colleagues. They are concerned that the resulting confusion could hamper attempts to clean up the site and restore order... Although human injury is likely to be the immediate consequence of an attack, there are longer-term implications. An urban area contaminated with radioactivity would have to be cordoned off or evacuated until it was cleaned up.

posted by A Curmudgeon 5:24 AM

 

Nanotechnology, secure computing, and more at e-drexler.com
You might be interested in checking out Eric Drexler's new Web site, via the link above. Here is what you will find:

Crucial physical and informational technologies: This site focuses on the science behind emerging technologies of broad importance, summarizing research results and offering technical perspectives on research directions. It includes tutorial material, new results, annotated bibliographies and links to external web resources. Initial topics include nanotechnology-based production systems (central to the future of physical technology), and secure, distributed computing (central to the future of informational technology). In both these areas, several widespread assumptions are very wrong. A better understanding can benefit both technical leaders seeking productive directions for research and development, and policy makers aiming to make wise decisions.

E-drexler.com contains original information not previously published as well as new diagrams and computer animations. The site is intended to complement Dr. Drexler's published technical work and his textbook Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation and is intended to assist researchers, educators and students exploring these areas. A site map that gives an overview of its current contents can be found at: http://e-drexler.com/amap.html

The entries on e-drexler.com have evolved from queries from researchers and students and reflect areas of frequent discussion.

posted by Lorenzo 2:36 PM

 

A Gathering of Planets
It's happening again: the Moon and a bunch of planets are gathering in the evening sky. . . . Unlike last month, when five bright planets (including Mercury) were visible, this time there are only four: Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. Four is plenty, though. Using only your eyes and, if you have one, a small telescope, you'll be able to see some wondrous things. . . . The show begins on Thursday, April 22nd. Step outside after nightfall and look west. The first thing you'll notice is piercing-bright Venus and, not far below it, the delicate crescent Moon. These are the two brightest objects in the night sky, pleasingly close together. Mars is there, too, albeit not much brighter than an ordinary star. You can find it just above Venus, at one vertex of a Moon-Mars-Venus isosceles triangle. . . . The NASA-ESA Cassini spacecraft is en route to Saturn now, due to arrive in July. Cassini will orbit for four years, studying Saturn's rings, weather and magnetic field. Cassini will also drop a probe named Huygens through the thick orange clouds of Titan to discover what lies beneath. . . . Titan is one of the most mysterious worlds in the solar system. It has a nitrogen atmosphere denser than Earth's and clouds laced with organic compounds. Some researchers believe there might be puddles, lakes or even oceans of liquid hydrocarbons sloshing around on the surface. These are places where organic molecules might get together for the first stirrings of simple life. . . . Through a backyard telescope Titan looks like an 8th magnitude star, an unremarkable pinprick. In fact, Titan is bigger than Mercury and Pluto. If it orbited the sun it would surely be considered a planet. What do the clouds of Titan hide? It's something to think about while you're peering through the eyepiece.

posted by Lorenzo 3:34 PM

 

Mars' "Bounce" rock's cosmic portent
(Phil Berardelli, United Press International, 4-16-2004)
Not only did NASA's rover land smack-dab in the middle of a neatly excavated and navigable crater on Mars, where it promptly uncovered persuasive evidence that water once flowed across the red planet, and not only has it been performing nearly flawlessly since it touched down on Jan. 24. Now, it also, essentially, has stubbed its toe on a rock whose discovery portends cosmic implications. . . . Controllers considered Bounce an odd find because it did not resemble any of the other rocks in the crater's vicinity -- nor did it resemble anything seen before on Mars, they said. . . . So they ordered Opportunity to train its formidable instruments on the rock, including the tool NASA engineers affectionately called the "RAT," for rock abrasion tool, which grinds away surface impurities to expose the undisturbed, primordial composition below. . . . The results stunned the NASA team. . . . "We think we have a rock similar to something found on Earth," . . . Rather more than that. Bounce's chemical composition exactly matches that of a meteorite that hit the ground in Shergotty, India, on Aug. 25, 1865. . . . Called the Shergotty meteorite -- and the source name for a class of meteorites called shergottites -- its chemical composition is a "matching fingerprint" to Bounce, said David Grinspoon, professor of planetary science at the University of Colorado in Boulder. . . . The resemblance helps confirm something meteorite specialists and planetary scientists have suspected for more than two decades but until now have been unable to prove: Micro-bubbles of gas trapped in dozens of meteorites found on Earth -- including Shergotty -- match the recipe of Martian atmosphere so closely that they must have originated on Mars. . . . As a result, NASA scientists are convinced Shergotty, EETA79001 and Bounce -- and maybe a couple dozen other Martian rocks that found their way to Earth -- were ejected from Mars by the impact of a large asteroid or comet. . . . So far, no one has broached the bigger implication: Bounce provides conclusive evidence not only of Martian meteorites on Earth, but also of the possibility of cross-seeding. . . . During the early eons of the solar system, planetary impacts were downright common. Given the relative proximity of Earth and Mars, it is easy to accept the possibility that materials propelled upward from one planet eventually could make their way to the other. . . . It is conceivable that material ejected from Earth by those impacts could have landed on Mars carrying some of those organisms -- or their raw ingredients. The converse also is possible -- early organisms from Mars could have landed on Earth. . . . The discovery of Bounce raises the distinct possibility that life arising from a common source could have existed for a time on both worlds.

posted by Lorenzo 10:31 AM

 

Staring Into The Singularity - The End of History
It began four billion years ago in a pool of muck, when a molecule made a copy of itself and so became the ultimate ancestor of all earthly life. . . . It began two and a half million years ago, when the first human awoke to consciousness. . . . Fifty thousand years ago with the rise of the Cro-Magnons. . . . Ten thousand years ago with the invention of civilization. . . . Five hundred years ago with the invention of the printing press. . . . Fifty years ago with the invention of the computer. In less than forty years, it will end. . . . Vernor Vinge saw it first. At some point in the near future, someone will come up with a method of increasing the maximum intelligence on the planet - either coding a true Artificial Intelligence or enhancing human intelligence. An enhanced human would be better at thinking up ways of enhancing humans; he would have an "increased capacity for invention". What is this increased ability going to be directed upon? Why, the next generation of enhanced humans, of course. . . . And an AI researcher would be able to reprogram itself, directly, to operate even faster - and better still, smarter. And then our crystal ball explodes, everything we know is out the window, Life As We Know It is over, the "old models break down and new ones must be applied". Hence the phrase: Singularity. . . . If the current trends continue - if we don't run up against some unexpected theoretical cap on intelligence, or turn the Earth into a radioactive wasteland, or trip on one of the hazards of truly advanced technology - the Singularity is inevitable. . . . The generally accepted estimate has been and remains 2035 - less than forty years! - although many, including I, think that the Singularity may occur substantially sooner.

posted by Lorenzo 7:57 PM

 

Insanely Destructive Devices
(Lawrence Lessig, Wired.com, April 2004)
Naturally evolving pathogens keep enough victims around to kill again. . . . Engineered pathogens can be different - as recent work in Australia has terrifyingly demonstrated. By inserting a mail-order gene into mousepox, scientists increased the death rate in mice to 100 percent. Even after vaccination, the rate was 60 percent. . . . We don't know whether the mail-order gene would have the same effect with smallpox. But the very idea is an example of the fear that led Bill Joy to write his frightening piece "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," published four years ago this month in Wired. . . . Joy worried that key technologies of the future - in particular, genetic engineering, nanotech, and robotics (or GNR) because they are self-replicating and increasingly easier to craft - would be radically more dangerous than technologies of the past. It is impossibly hard to build an atomic bomb; when you build one, you've built just one. But the equivalent evil implanted in a malevolent virus will become easier to build, and if built, could become self-replicating. This is P2P (peer-to-peer) meets WMD (weapons of mass destruction), producing IDDs (insanely destructive devices). . . . I asked a local genius, Silicon Valley venture capitalist and polymath Steve Jurvetson, to help frame a course around the challenges raised by Joy. He opened the class with the smallpox example and asked how a society should protect itself from innovations that lead to pox viruses with 100-percent kill rates. What strategies does it adopt when everyone, even vaccinated health care workers, are vulnerable? . . . The first reaction of some in the class was positively Soviet. Science must be controlled. Publications must be reviewed before being printed. . . . But it didn't take long to see the futility of these responses. GNR science doesn't require huge labs. You might not be able to conceal the work in Manhattan, but you could easily hide it in the vast wilds of, say, Montana. Moreover, a great deal of important work would be lost if the government filtered everything - as would the essence of a free society. However comforting the Star Wars-like Virus Defense Initiative might be, engineered diseases would spread long before anyone could don a space suit. . . . Then one student suggested a very different approach. If we can't defend against an attack, perhaps the rational response is to reduce the incentives to attack. Rather than designing space suits, maybe we should focus on ways to eliminate the reasons to annihilate us. Rather than stirring up a hornet's nest and then hiding behind a bush, maybe the solution is to avoid the causes of rage. Crazies, of course, can't be reasoned with. But we can reduce the incentives to become a crazy. We could reduce the reasonableness - from a certain perspective - for finding ways to destroy us. . . . If you can't control the supply of IDDs, then the right response is to reduce the demand for IDDs. Yet as everyone in the class understood, in the four years since Joy wrote his Wired piece, we've done precisely the opposite. Our present course of unilateral cowboyism will continue to produce generations of angry souls seeking revenge on us. . . . We've not yet fully understood Joy. In the future there most certainly will be IDDs. Abolishing freedom, issuing space suits, and launching wars only increases the danger that they will be used. We had better learn that soon.

posted by Lorenzo 12:09 PM