Send In The Nanites

[Dryson]

This article from StarTrek.com was very interesting as well the accompanying video.

http://www.startrek.com/article/send-in-the-nanites

Not only will these Nanites be used for medical purposes they could also be used on a much larger scale maybe to grapple small chunks of rocks in space.

It looks like the Nanite Grappler responds to magnetic field instructions being emitted from the wand over the bowl the Grapplers are in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpJAnFE33w0&feature=youtu.be

 

[Silvercrest]

On a larger scale, they wouldn't be nanites anymore.

 

[Dryson]

Would they still be considered Nanites because a lot of them that are small and unseen would make up the larger seen mechanism?

I think that these nanites would be very beneficial in terraforming planets as they would be able to hold the soil together once they were able to connect to each other.

Maybe they could even be used to directly apply fertilizer to a plant from their underground storage bin.

 

[137th Gebirg]

They will float through the air and inhaled by every living thing, sight unseen.

They will embed themselves in the food we eat and ingested by every living thing, sight unseen.

And then, when there are enough of them to work together as one to achieve a collective sentient consciousness, they will "flip the switch" and kill us all in .02 milliseconds.

That damn show "Revolution" got me thinking way too much about those little bastards...

 

[Dryson]

I doubt if the creators of the nanites would give them the two basic functions of a parasite, the ability to consume and reproduce their self. Parasites have these same bade functions that when enough energy had been stored a new parasite is created from the original parasite until all of the consumable energy or material in an area had been reduced to almost nothing. If the nanites had this ability they would ravage the planet within a year or so. Good sci-fi material but not very good for reality.

The nanites would most likely be controlled by a program that would direct the magnetic fields controlling it so that just such an event could not happen.

 

[{ Emilia }]

Good sci-fi material but not very good for reality.

Sorry, but you're about 13 years too late.

 

[Dryson]

Another use for these Nanites as big as they are would be excavating planetary surfaces. Each of them could be assigned an area to excavate and let to do their thing basically all day long. They wouldnt need breaks or sleep. One per square meter could potentially excavate up to a foot per day.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I like the idea of medical nanobots.

Bring it on. I want my private army of robots to keep me alive

 

[Into Darkness]

Everyone talks about mechanical nanites, why mechanical? the way we are heading in biology we'll soon be able to design and create biological cells programmed however we want. We could create biological cells built from scratch that replicate themselves via cell division.

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ I think that this would be the better way to go. The organic nature of the nanites would make it easier for the body to purge naturally from the system once they outlived their usefulness. Having mechanical ones could leave a bunch of little skeletons behind after they shut down, which could lead to inadvertently clogging arteries or a modern/future-day version of black lung.

Then again, we already do have white blood cells that do this very thing, so...

 

[Into Darkness]

All you'd need to do is create a strand of DNA/information, implant it into the nucleus of a cell and that would tell the cell what to become. Once we've fully cracked the ability to program a cell from scratch we could create any kind of cell we want. Even one that can target and destroy any virus.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

All you'd need to do is create a strand of DNA/information, implant it into the nucleus of a cell and that would tell the cell what to become. Once we've fully cracked the ability to program a cell from scratch we could create any kind of cell we want. Even one that can target and destroy any virus.

Any virus except HIV They haven't yet managed to get that sucker.

 

[HIjol]

I read with interest the mention of "fertilizer"' above. Funny how I had just been thinking that. I am also of the opinion that tailored, programmed, controlled living cells is a better way to go, but Nanites, or, "on a larger scale", Largeites, could serve some good industrial purposes.

 

[Silvercrest]

All you'd need to do is create a strand of DNA/information, implant it into the nucleus of a cell and that would tell the cell what to become ... Even one that can target and destroy any virus.

That is a virus.

How do you keep the body's defenses from attacking them?

 

[HIjol]

^^ Give them a cold?

Sorry, could not resist!

I am aware of research regarding bio-coatings that could conceivably be used to "protect" the engineered cell from the body's defenses, but the cascade effect of monitoring, effect on other structures, inter and intra-cellular communication, Unknowns, would be legion!

The "cure" would be worse than the 'disease", methinks

 

[JES]

The cure could be worse than the disease if the nanites you programmed to say, search and destroy HIV virus cells, malfunctions, and starts searching for and destroying something else as well.

There is also the issue of getting them out of the body, so that they aren't an unhealthy variable that can go somewhere and cause trouble later on.

Nanites are just as capable of wreaking havoc on the body as fixing or maintaining it.

My worst nightmare on the subject is some crazy idiot programming a hoard to take apart anything in sight at the subatomic level, and using them as a terror weapon. Worst case scenario in my mind involves someone brilliant, but insane, working for some terrorist group, they are released, they do as they are programmed with great alacrity, and spread like a mechanical plague. How do you fight something like that? The only answer I can think of is making and programming nanites to destroy the other nanites.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Yep, it would be a whole new kind of self-inflicted auto-immune disease.

 

[publiusr]

Here are some more advances


Nano bots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL6e3co4Qqc
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/06/darpa-boosting-additive-manufacturing.html

This might help model makers
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/06/every-soldier-eagle-eyed-marksman-on.html

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The cure could be worse than the disease if the nanites you programmed to say, search and destroy HIV virus cells, malfunctions, and starts searching for and destroying something else as well.

There is also the issue of getting them out of the body, so that they aren't an unhealthy variable that can go somewhere and cause trouble later on.

Nanites are just as capable of wreaking havoc on the body as fixing or maintaining it.

My worst nightmare on the subject is some crazy idiot programming a hoard to take apart anything in sight at the subatomic level, and using them as a terror weapon. Worst case scenario in my mind involves someone brilliant, but insane, working for some terrorist group, they are released, they do as they are programmed with great alacrity, and spread like a mechanical plague. How do you fight something like that? The only answer I can think of is making and programming nanites to destroy the other nanites.

They did that in the very first Cody Banks movie, and the bad guy gets a cube of ice shoved in his mouth containing these nanites and they eat him. Only we never see if they shut off as they start eating the evil guys base.. I assumed the explosions and fire killed them off.

 

[JES]

The cure could be worse than the disease if the nanites you programmed to say, search and destroy HIV virus cells, malfunctions, and starts searching for and destroying something else as well.

There is also the issue of getting them out of the body, so that they aren't an unhealthy variable that can go somewhere and cause trouble later on.

Nanites are just as capable of wreaking havoc on the body as fixing or maintaining it.

My worst nightmare on the subject is some crazy idiot programming a hoard to take apart anything in sight at the subatomic level, and using them as a terror weapon. Worst case scenario in my mind involves someone brilliant, but insane, working for some terrorist group, they are released, they do as they are programmed with great alacrity, and spread like a mechanical plague. How do you fight something like that? The only answer I can think of is making and programming nanites to destroy the other nanites.

They did that in the very first Cody Banks movie, and the bad guy gets a cube of ice shoved in his mouth containing these nanites and they eat him. Only we never see if they shut off as they start eating the evil guys base.. I assumed the explosions and fire killed them off.

Yeah, that is the latter, having nanites used as a terror weapon. Our poor bad guy would've felt like he was being eaten from the inside out, and would've felt every singe cut and bite that the nanites made.

A nasty way to go. Even he probably didn't deserve it.