Tuesday, December 26, 2017

The Nanofabricator is coming! By Thomas Hornigold.

Topics

How a Machine That Can Make Anything Would Change Everything

Dec 25, 2017

“Something is going to happen in the next forty years that will change things, probably more than anything else since we left the caves.” –James Burke

James Burke has a vision for the future. He believes that by the middle of this century, perhaps as early as 2042, our world will be defined by a new device: the nanofabricator.

These tiny factories will be large at first, like early computers, but soon enough you’ll be able to buy one that can fit on a desk. You’ll pour in some raw materials—perhaps water, air, dirt, and a few powders of rare elements if required—and the nanofabricator will go to work. Powered by flexible photovoltaic panels that coat your house, it will tear apart the molecules of the raw materials, manipulating them on the atomic level to create…anything you like. Food. A new laptop. A copy of Kate Bush’s debut album, The Kick Inside. Anything, providing you can give it both the raw materials and the blueprint for creation.

It sounds like science fiction—although, with the advent of 3D printers in recent years, less so than it used to. Burke, who hosted the BBC showTomorrow’s World, which introduced bemused and excited audiences to all kinds of technologies, has a decades-long track record of technological predictions. He isn’t alone in envisioning the nanofactory as the technology that will change the world forever. Eric Drexler, thought by many to be the father of nanotechnology, wrote in the 1990s about molecular assemblers, hypothetical machines capable of manipulating matter and constructing molecules on the nano level, with scales of a billionth of a meter.

Richard Feynman, the famous inspirational physicist and bongo-playing eccentric, gave the lecture that inspired Drexler as early as 1959. Feynman’s talk, “Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” speculated about a world where moving individual atoms would be possible. While this is considered more difficult than molecular manufacturing, which seeks to manipulate slightly bigger chunks of matter, to date no one has been able to demonstrate that such machines violate the laws of physics.

In recent years, progress has been made towards this goal. It may well be that we make faster progress by mimicking the processes of biology, where individual cells, optimized by billions of years of evolution, routinely manipulate chemicals and molecules to keep us alive.

“If nanofabricators are ever built, the systems and structure of the world as we know them were built to solve a problem that will no longer exist.”

But the dream of the nanofabricator is not yet dead. What is perhaps even more astonishing than the idea of having such a device—something that could create anything you want—is the potential consequences it could have for society. Suddenly, all you need is light and raw materials. Starvation ceases to be a problem. After all, what is food? Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulphur. Nothing that you won’t find with some dirt, some air, and maybe a little biomass thrown in for efficiency’s sake.

Equally, there’s no need to worry about not having medicine as long as you have the recipe and a nanofabricator. After all, the same elements I listed above could just as easily make insulin, paracetamol, and presumably the superior drugs of the future, too.

What the internet did for information—allowing it to be shared, transmitted, and replicated with ease, instantaneously—the nanofabricator would do for physical objects. Energy will be in plentiful supply from the sun; your Santa Clause machine will be able to create new solar panels and batteries to harness and store this energy whenever it needs to.

Suddenly only three commodities have any value: the raw materials for the nanofabricator (many of which, depending on what you want to make, will be plentiful just from the world around you); the nanofabricators themselves (unless, of course, they can self-replicate, in which case they become just a simple ‘conversion’ away from raw materials); and, finally, the blueprints for the things you want to make.

In a world where material possessions are abundant for everyone, will anyone see any necessity in hoarding these blueprints? Far better for a few designers to tinker and create new things for the joy of it, and share them with all. What does ‘profit’ mean in a world where you can generate anything you want?

As Burke puts it, “This will destroy the current social, economic, and political system, because it will become pointless…every institution, every value system, every aspect of our lives have been governed by scarcity: the problem of distributing a finite amount of stuff. There will be no need for any of the social institutions.”

In other words, if nanofabricators are ever built, the systems and structure of the world as we know them were built to solve a problem that will no longer exist.

In some ways, speculating about such a world that’s so far removed from our own reminds me of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s warning about trying to divine what a superintelligent AI might make of the human race. We are limited to considering things in our own terms; we might think of a mouse as low on the scale of intelligence, and Einstein as the high end. But superintelligence breaks the scale; there is no sense in comparing it to anything we know, because it is different in kind. In the same way, such a world would be different in kind to the one we live in today.

We, too, will be different in kind. Liberated more than ever before from the drive for survival, the great struggle of humanity. No human attempts at measurement can comprehend what is inside a black hole, a physical singularity. Similarly, inside the veil of this technological singularity, no human attempts at prognostication can really comprehend what the future will look like. The one thing that seems certain is that human history will be forever divided in two. We may well be living in the Dark Age before this great dawn. Or it may never happen. But James Burke, just as he did over forty years ago, has faith.

Image Credit: 3DSculptor / Shutterstock.com

From Earth Blog, Earth Four Billion Years Ago.

September 16, 2016

Earth, 4 billion years ago

New research shows that more than four billion years ago the surface of Earth was heavily reprocessed – or melted, mixed, and buried – as a result of giant asteroid impacts. A new terrestrial bombardment model, calibrated using existing lunar and terrestrial data, sheds light on the role asteroid collisions played in the evolution of the uppermost layers of the early Earth during the geologic eon called the "Hadean" (approximately 4 to 4.5 billion years ago).

"A large asteroid impact could have buried a substantial amount of Earth's crust with impact-generated melt," said Yvonne Pendleton, SSERVI Director at Ames. "This new model helps explain how repeated asteroid impacts may have buried Earth's earliest and oldest rocks."

Terrestrial planet formation models indicate Earth went through a sequence of major growth phases: initially accretion of planetesimals – planetary embryos – over many tens of millions of years, then a giant impact by a large proto-planet that led to the formation of our Moon, followed by the late bombardment when giant asteroids several tens to hundreds of miles in size periodically hit ancient Earth, dwarfing the one that killed the dinosaurs (estimated to be six miles in size) only 65 million years ago.

Researchers estimate accretion during the late bombardment contributed less than one percent of Earth's present-day mass, but the giant asteroid impacts still had a profound effect on the geological evolution of early Earth. Prior to four billion years ago Earth was resurfaced over and over by voluminous impact-generated melt. Furthermore, large collisions as late as about four billion years ago may have repeatedly boiled away existing oceans into steamy atmospheres. Despite the heavy bombardment, the findings are compatible with the claim of liquid water on Earth's surface as early as about 4.3 billion years ago based on geochemical data.

The new research reveals that asteroidal collisions not only severely altered the geology of the Hadean eon Earth, but likely also played a major role in the subsequent evolution of life on Earth as well.

"Prior to approximately four billion years ago, no large region of Earth's surface could have survived untouched by impacts and their effects," said Simone Marchi, SSERVI senior researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and the paper's lead author. "The new picture of the Hadean Earth emerging from this work has important implications for its habitability."

Large impacts had particularly severe effects on existing ecosystems. Researchers found that on average, Hadean Earth more than four billion years ago could have been hit by one to four impactors that were more than 600 miles wide and capable of global sterilization, and by three to seven impactors more than 300 miles wide and capable of global ocean vaporization.

"During that time, the lag between major collisions was long enough to allow intervals of more clement conditions, at least on a local scale," said Marchi. "Any life emerging during the Hadean eon likely needed to be resistant to high temperatures, and could have survived such a violent period in Earth’s history by thriving in niches deep underground or in the ocean’s crust.”

Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab/Simone Marchi
Explanation from: https://www.nasa.gov/ames/new-nasa-research-shows-giant-asteroids-battered-early-earth/

From Singularity Hub, a human healing device.

Experts

This Chip Uses Electricity to Reprogram Cells for Healing

Shelly Fan

Aug 22, 2017

7,678

It sounds like science fiction: with a light zap of electricity, a tiny stamp-like device transforms your skin cells into reservoirs of blood vessels or brain cells, ready to heal you from within.

Recently, a team of medical mavericks at the Ohio State University introduced a device that does just that. The technology, dubbed tissue nanotransfection (TNT), is set to blow up the field of organ regeneration.

When zapped with a light electrical jolt, the device shoots extra bits of DNA code from its nanotube arrays directly into tiny pores in the skin. There, the DNA triggers the cells to shed their identity and reprograms them into other cell types that can be harvested to repair damaged organs.

Remarkably, the effect spreads with time. The rebooted cells release tiny membrane bubbles onto their neighboring skin cells, coaxing them to undergo transformation. Like zombies, but for good.

So far, the device has already been used to generate neurons to protect the brains of mice with experimental stroke. The team also successfully healed the legs of injured mice by turning the skin cells on their hind limbs into a forest of blood vessels.

While still a ways from human use, scientists believe future iterations of the technology could perform a myriad of medical wonders: repairing damaged organs, relieving brain degeneration, or even restoring aged tissue back to a youthful state.

“By using our novel nanochip technology, injured or compromised organs can be replaced. We have shown that skin is a fertile land where we can grow the elements of any organ that is declining,” says lead author Dr. Chandan Sen, who published the result in Nature Nanotechnology.

“In my lab, we have ongoing research trying to understand the mechanism and do even better,” adds Dr. L. James Lee, who co-led the study with Sen. “So, this is the beginning, more to come.”

The Promise of Cell Therapy

The Ohio team’s research builds on an age-old idea in regenerative medicine: that even aged bodies have the ability to produce and integrate healthy, youthful cells—given the right set of cues.

While some controversy remains on whether replacement cells survive in an injured body, scientists—and some rather dubious clinics—are readily exploring the potential of cell-based therapies.

All cells harbor the same set of DNA; whether they turn into heart cells, neurons, or back into stem cells depend on which genes are activated. The gatekeeper of gene expression is a set of specialized proteins. Scientists can stick the DNA code for these proteins into cells, where they hijack its DNA machinery with orders to produce the protein switches—and the cell transforms into another cell type.

The actual process works like this: scientists harvest mature cells from patients, reprogram them into stem cells inside a Petri dish, inject those cells back into the patients and wait for them to develop into the needed cell types.

It’s a cumbersome process packed with landmines. Researchers often use viruses to deliver the genetic payload into cells. In some animal studies, this has led to unwanted mutations and cancer. It’s also unclear whether the reprogrammed stem cells survive inside the patients. Whether they actually turn into healthy tissue is even more up for debate.

Heal Thyself

The Ohio team’s device tackles many of these problems head on.

Eschewing the need for viruses, the team manufactured a stamp-sized device out of silicon that serves as a reservoir and injector for DNA. Microetched onto each device are arrays of nanochannels that connect to microscopic dents. Scientists can load DNA material into these tiny holding spots, where they sit stably until a ten-millisecond zap shoots them into the recipient’s tissue.

“We based TNT on a bulk transfection, which is often used in the lab to deliver genes into cells,” the authors explain. Like its bulk counterpart, the electrical zap opens up tiny, transient pores on the cell membrane, which allows the DNA instructions to get it.

The problem with bulk transfection is that not all genes get into each cell. Some cells may get more than they bargained for and take up more than one copy, which increases the chance of random mutations.

“We found that TNT is extremely focused, with each cell receiving ample DNA,” the authors say.

The device also skips an intermediary step in cell conversion: rather than turning cells back into stem cells, the team pushed mouse skin cells directly into other mature cell types using different sets of previously-discovered protein factors.

In one early experiment, the team successfully generated neurons from skin cells that seem indistinguishable from their natural counterparts: they shot off electrical pulses and had similar gene expression profiles.

Surprisingly, the team found that even non-zapped cells in the skin’s deeper layers transformed. Further testing found that the newly reprogrammed neurons released tiny fatty bubbles that contained the molecular instructions for transformation.

When the team harvested these bubbles and injected them into mice subjected to experimental stroke, the bubbles triggered the brain to generate new neurons and repair itself.

“We don’t know if the bubbles are somehow transforming other brain cell types into neurons, but they do seem to be loaded with molecules that protect the brain,” the researchers say.

In an ultimate test of the device’s healing potential, the researchers placed it onto the injured hind leg of a handful of mice. Three days prior, their leg arteries had been experimentally severed, which—when left untreated—leads to tissue decay.

The team loaded the device with factors that convert skin cells into blood vessel cells. Within a week of conversion, the team watched as new blood vessels sprouted and grew beyond the local treatment area. In the end, TNT-zapped mice had fewer signs of tissue injury and higher leg muscle metabolism compared to non-treated controls.

“This is difficult to imagine, but it is achievable, successfully working about 98 percent of the time,” says Sen.

An Explosive Treatment?

A major draw of the device is that it’s one-touch-and-go.

There are no expensive cell isolation procedures and no finicky lab manipulations. The conversion happens right on the skin, essentially transforming patient’s bodies into their own prolific bioreactors.

“This process only takes less than a second and is non-invasive, and then you’re off. The chip does not stay with you, and the reprogramming of the cell starts,” says Sen.

Because the converted cells come directly from the patient, they’re in an “immune-privileged” position, which reduces the chance of rejection.

This means that in the future, if the technology is used to manufacture organs “immune suppression is not necessary,” says Sen.

While the team plans to test the device in humans as early as next year, Sen acknowledges that they’ll likely run into problems.

For one, because the device needs to be in direct contact with tissue, the skin is the only easily-accessible body part to do these conversions. Repairing deeper tissue would require surgery to insert the device into wounded areas. And to many, growing other organ cell types is a pretty creepy thought, especially because the transformation isn’t completely local—non-targeted cells are also reprogrammed.

That could be because the body is trying to heal itself, the authorshypothesize. Using the chip on healthy legs didn’t sprout new blood vessels, suggesting that the widespread conversion is because of injury, though (for now) there isn’t much evidence supporting the idea.

For another, scientists are still working out the specialized factors required to directly convert between cell types. So far, they’ve only had limited success.

But Sen and his team are optimistic.

“When these things come out for the first time, it’s basically crossing the chasm from impossible to possible,” he says. “We have established feasibility.”

Image Credit: Researchers demonstrate tissue nanotransfection, courtesy of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Monday, December 25, 2017

Earth Blog. Magnificent description!

March 14, 2016

Comparison of the Earth to Mars

The Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to harbor life.

According to evidence from radiometric dating and other sources, Earth was formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earth gravitationally interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its own axis 366.26 times, creating 365.26 solar days or one sidereal year. Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). The Moon is Earth's only permanent natural satellite. Its gravitational interaction with Earth causes ocean tides, stabilizes the orientation of Earth's rotational axis, and gradually slows Earth's rotational rate.

Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water, with the remainder consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. Earth's polar regions are mostly covered with ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice of the Arctic ice pack. Earth's interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics.

Within its first billion years, life appeared in Earth's oceans and began to affect its atmosphere and surface, promoting the proliferation of aerobic as well as anaerobic organisms. Since then, the combination of Earth's distance from the Sun, its physical properties and its geological history have allowed life to thrive and evolve. The earliest undisputed life on Earth arose at least 3.5 billion years ago. Earlier physical evidence of life includes biogenic graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in southwestern Greenland, as well as "remains of biotic life" found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. Earth's biodiversity has expanded continually except when interrupted by mass extinctions. Although scholars estimate that over 99% of all species of life (over five billion) that ever lived on Earth are extinct, there are still an estimated 10–14 million extant species, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86% have not yet been described. Over 7.3 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Earth's human population is divided among about two hundred sovereign states which interact through diplomacy, conflict, travel, trade and communication media.

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the Roman god of war, it is often referred to as the "Red Planet" because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth.

The rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of Earth, as is the tilt that produces the seasons. Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and second-highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The smooth Borealis basin in the northern hemisphere covers 40% of the planet and may be a giant impact feature. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Mars trojan.

Until the first successful Mars flyby in 1965 by Mariner 4, many speculated about the presence of liquid water on the planet's surface. This was based on observed periodic variations in light and dark patches, particularly in the polar latitudes, which appeared to be seas and continents; long, dark striations were interpreted by some as irrigation channels for liquid water. These straight line features were later explained as optical illusions, though geological evidence gathered by uncrewed missions suggests that Mars once had large-scale water coverage on its surface at some earlier stage of its existence. In 2005, radar data revealed the presence of large quantities of water ice at the poles and at mid-latitudes. The Mars rover Spirit sampled chemical compounds containing water molecules in March 2007. The Phoenix lander directly sampled water ice in shallow Martian soil on July 31, 2008. On September 28, 2015, NASA announced the presence of briny flowing salt water on the Martian surface.

Mars is host to seven functioning spacecraft: five in orbit—2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN and Mars Orbiter Mission—and two on the surface—Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity. Observations by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars. In 2013, NASA's Curiosity rover discovered that Mars's soil contains between 1.5% and 3% water by mass (albeit attached to other compounds and thus not freely accessible).

There are ongoing investigations assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life. In situ investigations have been performed by the Viking landers, Spirit and Opportunity rovers, Phoenix lander, and Curiosity rover. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including the Mars 2020 and ExoMars rovers.

Mars can easily be seen from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.91, which is surpassed only by Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, and the Sun. Optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometers (190 mi) across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earth's atmosphere.

Explanation from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars

THE WORLD HUMANITARIAN PEACE AND ECOLOGY MOVEMENT.