Programmed Reality

So Craig Venter created synthetic life.  How cool is that?  I mean, really, this has been sort of a biologists holy grail for as long as I can remember.  Of course, Dr. Venter's detractors are quick to point out that Synthia, the name given to this synthetic organism, was not really built from scratch, but sort of assembled from sub-living components and injected into a cell where it could replicate.  Either way, it is a huge step in the direction of man-made life forms.  If I were to meet Dr. Venter, the conversation might go something like this:

Jim: So, Dr. Venter, help me understand how man-made your little creation really is.  I've read some articles that state that while your achievement is most impressive, the cytoplasm that the genome was transplanted to was not man made.

Craig: True dat, Jim.  But we all need an environment to live in, and a cell is no different.  The organism was certainly man made, even if its environment already existed.

Jim: But wait a minute.  Aren't we all man-made?  Wasn't that the message in those sex education classes I took in high school?  

Craig: No, the difference is that this is effectively a new species, created synthetically.  

Jim: So, how different is that from a clone?  Are they also created synthetically?

Craig: Sort of, but a clone isn't a new species.

Jim: How about genetically modified organisms then?  New species created synthetically?  

Craig: Yes, but they were a modification made to an existing living organism, not a synthetically created one.

Jim: What about that robot that cleans my floor?  Isn't that a synthetically created organism?

Craig: Well, maybe, in some sense, but can it replicate itself?

Jim: Ah, but that is just a matter of programming.  Factory robots can build cars, why couldn't they be programmed to build other factory robots?

Craig: That wouldn't be biological replication, like cell division.

Jim: You mean, just because the robots are made of silicon instead of carbon?  Seems kind of arbitrary to me.

Craig: OK, you're kind of getting on my nerves, robot-boy.  The point is that this is the first synthetically created biological organism.

Jim: Um, that's really cool and all, but we can build all kinds of junk with nanotech, including synthetic meat, and little self-replicating machines.  

Craig: Neither of which are alive.

Jim: Define alive.

Craig: Well, generally life is anything that exhibits growth, metabolism, motion, reproduction, and homeostasis.

Jim: So, a drone bee isn't alive because it can't reproduce?

Craig: Of course, there are exceptions.

Jim: What about fire, crystals, or the earth itself.  All of those exhibit your life-defining properties.  Are they alive?

Craig: Dude, we're getting way off topic here.  Let's get back to synthetic organisms.

Jim: OK, let's take a different tack.  Physicist Paul Davies said that Google is smarter than any human on the planet.  Is Google alive?  What about computer networks that can reconfigure themselves intelligently.

Craig: Those items aren't really alive because they have to be programmed.

Jim: Yeah, and what's that little code in Synthia's DNA?

Craig: Uhhh...

Jim: And how do you know that you aren't synthetic?  Is it at all possible that your world and all of your perceptions could be completely under programmed control?

Craig: I suppose it could be possible.  But I highly doubt it.

Jim: Doubt based on what? All of your preconceived notions about reality?

Craig: OK, let's say we are under programmed control.  So what?

Jim: Well, that implies a creator.  Which in turn implies that our bodies are a creation.  Which makes us just as synthetic as Synthia.  The only difference is that you created Synthia, while we might have been created by some highly advanced geek in an other reality.

Craig: Been watching a few Wachowski Brothers movies, Jim?

Jim: Guilty as charged, Craig.

Tags: craig venter, synthetic life, artificial life, synthia, robots, ai, artificial intelligence, programmed reality, nanotech, matrix, synthetic, artificial, venter, biologists
Categories: AI | Future Tech | Life | Nanotech | Programmed Reality | Robotics | Science

Ah yes, the good old 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. The idea that the total disorder of a system, e.g. the universe, always increases.  Or that heat always flows from hot to cold.  It's why coffee always gets cold, why money seems to dissipate at a casino, why time flows forward, why Murphy had a law, why cats and dogs don't tend to clean up the house.

Ultimately, due to this rather depressing physical law, the universe will die by "heat death," where it reaches a state of absolute zero, no more heat, no motion of particles.  Don't worry, that's not predicted for another 10^100 (or, a Googol) years.  But, I always wondered, is it always always the case, or can entropy decrease in certain circumstances?

Got a spare fortnight? Google "violations of the second law of thermodynamics."  Personally, I rather like Maxwell's idea that it is a statistical argument, not an absolute one. "Maxwell's Demon" is that hypothetical device that funnels hot molecules in one directions and cold ones in the opposite, thereby reversing the normal flow of heat.  Could a nanotech device do that some day?  Yes, I know that there has to be energy put into the system for the device to do its work, thereby increasing the size of the system upon which the 2nd law holds.  But, even without the demon, aren't there statistical instances of 2nd Law violation in a closed system?  Not unlike the infinitesimal probability that someone's constituent atoms suddenly line up in such a manner that they can walk through a door (see recent blog topic), so could a system become more coherent as time moves to the future.

What about lowering temperature to the point where superconductivity occurs?  Isn't that less random than non-superconductivity.  One might argue that the energy that it takes to become superconductive exceeds the resulting decrease in entropy.  However, I would argue that since the transition from conductive to superconductive occurs abruptly, there must be a time period, arbitrarily small, during which you would watch entropy decrease.

There are those who cite life and evolution as examples of building order out of chaos.  Sounds reasonable to me, and the arguments against the idea sound circular and defensive.  However, it all seems to net out in the end.  Take a puppy, for instance.  Evolutionary processes worked for millions of years to create the domestic dog.  Entropy-decreasing processes seem to responsible for the formation of a puppy from its original constituents, sperm and an egg.  But then the puppy spends years ripping up your carpet, chewing the legs of the furniture and ripping your favorite magazines into little pieces; in short, increasing the disorder of the universe.  Net effect?  Zero. 

Tags: thermodynamics, entropy, heat death, nanotech, superconductivity, life, evolution
Categories: Cosmology | Life | Nanotech | Physics | Science

This one felt really important during the height of the cold war.

All H-Bombs have an A-Bomb at their core.  The A-Bomb is needed to generated the million of degree temperature to begin the fusion reaction in the H-Bomb fuel.  So, all nukes, therefore, have at their core, a hunk of fissionable material, generally Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239.  U-235, for example, works well as a nuclear fission fuel because when the nucleus absorbs a neutron, it becomes unstable and splits into two smaller nuclei (e.g. Barium and Krypton), releasing more neutrons which then generate more reactions.  A critical mass of fissionable material will explode because the number of neutrons needed to maintain the reaction is exceeded by the number generated.  But, U-235 can also safely absorb a neutron and not undergo fission, transmuting in non-fissionable U-236 before further decay.  But if some process (for example, creating the perfect neutron energy) were to be discovered that caused absorption rather than fission, the core of the nuke could be neutralized.

So, my thought was to blanket the earth with a "rain" of the right particles to neutralize all nuke cores, regardless of where they are buried or hidden, thereby ending all fear of nuclear strikes.

My naivete may have been to think that we could generate enough particles at high enough density to neutralize a nuke core at any given point on the earth without having that particle beam have an adverse effect on plant and animal life.

So where are we today?  Actually, there are a number of nuclear remediation technologies (for example see Gary Vesperman's "Comparison of My List of 27 Methods of Neutralizing or Disposing of Radioactive Waste with PACE’s 9 Methods") that can clean up cores of nukes or fissionable material in general.  None can be accomplished on the "earth blanketing" scale that I envisioned.  However, maybe nanotech can come to the rescue.  Imagine a healthy swarm of nanobots, all carrying the materials needed for a nuclear remediation technique, such as RIPPLE Fission, and instructed to seek out all U-235 and P-239 and unleash the neutralization technique.  

Time frame?  I'm thinking...

2040

Tags: nuclear remediation, nukes, nanotech, fission
Categories: Future Tech | General | Nanotech