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Oninion: two incredebly stupid scientific projects

Finch

Whats it to ya?
Blah blah yadda yada yada. Ok what am talking about? something that i feel are being pushed a head recklessly with potential for disaterous results.

The next generation of particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, is hoped to be powerfull enough to produce mini black holes within it.

Hes, you heard right: black holes.

Apparently it would be a stunning and exiting physics discovery and prove that the existence of other dimensions is fact and not just a theory. A exiting prospect, certainly. But what do we do with the black holes?

Well physicist say that if they are produced, that they should last a billionth of a billonth of a second and then evaporate. should. and that probably (hopefully) should be too breif to swallow surrounding matter. probably.

You know, physicists have been wrong before. Even if theyre right, what if two of these mini-black holes collide with each other and merge before they disappear? What then? They say thats "unlikely".

Does anyone else find it a litytle unnerving that we are having the potential of creating black holes in our back yard and that the best we can get is a "most likely" that they will evaporate before they can cause a problem? Well we'll know when its opened next year.

The other one is genetically engineering species of alge to produce hydrogen instead of oxygen as a by product of photosynthesis as a new source of fuel. Does anyone remember the last time a new byproduct was emitted by life-forms from photosynthesis? a little something called oxygen? As i understand it it cause quite a bit of problems for the other life forms about then. What if this gives the alge a edge other oxygen-producing alge in the wild? Why wed be screwed. Alge produces lots of the oxygen we breathe.


So thats my worries. what are some scientific endeavors that worry you?
 
I thought you were saying onions were a threat to mankind for a second there.
smile.gif


These black holes are beyond tiny. They're scary mostly in that they share the name "black hole" (it can make the knee jerk). There are a thousand scientific projects I'd be more concerned about, personally.

I'm trying to think of one that really bugs me.

I think nanotechnology may be one of the biggests tests we'll have to face. Our power over matter could be pretty godly 50-100 years from now, and like anything it'll be a double-edged sword. We've managed not to blow ourselves up with nukes so far, but that's kiddie stuff. One of the typical fears is the whole "gray goo" scenario (pretty easy to avoid an accidental occurance, but what about a purposeful one?). People say a lot of theoretical nano feats can't be done, so there's nothing to worry about, but remember you were assembled via self-replicating nanotechnology (using sloppy and bloated "code" at that). And if nature can do it, it's only a matter of time before we do it "better".

Nanotech doesn't bother me that much though... we have 50-100 years to wise up on it, and some very smart people have been thinking about it for over half a century already.

The stuff that really bugs me is the stuff that happens out of corporate greed. Like pharmaceutical companies trying to make us forget about natural, more effective remedies for things that they don't like because they can't patent them. Or when fast food places start engineering pseudo-food where nutrition is barely an afterthought. That's the stuff that does the most damage to society in the end, I think.

Thankfully if used properly, nanotechnology will be somewhat like cold fusion... when things we fight over become as plentiful as air, the world becomes a much safer place. So greed can't have as much of a hold on people.

Otherwise I'd say corporations + nanotechnology = nice knowing you, earth.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]but remember you were assembled via self-replicating nanotechnology (using sloppy and bloated "code" at that).

I don't appreciate you talking about my parents like that.
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As for the "black hole" thing, I wouldn't waste my time worrying about it. Do some research on it and I'm sure you'll find that there's really not much to worry about.

Um, currently I'm not pulling out my hair about anything, but some of the genetic modifying going on is the most stupid things I've ever heard of. I'm not one of those people opposed to everything genetically modified, but things like the terminator gene... it's downright irresponsible, idiotic, and irking. Like endparenthesis said, it's businesses you gotta watch out for. It isn't paranoia, either. Think of how cruddy things would start getting if the human genome has sucessfully been patented (in entirety.) The key to all of these things is to take it easy and not go too wild. Businesses like to go wild when they smell cash. Well, we'll see how things continue to develope, but one thing is for sure: there'll be good and there'll be bad, no two ways around it. One thing that people fearing genetic modification is that it's nothing new. Kale, colrabi (spelling?), broccoli, cauliflower, and a couple of more all have been selectively chosen and all originated from the same mustard plant. So don't get over edgy, but watch out for the pigs with wings.
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Black holes undergo a process called evaporation, whereby they slowly radiate their mass away.  The smaller they are, the faster the evaporation process occurs. Google "Hawking Radiation" if you wish to know more.

The black holes produced by the collider will be so tiny, if they are produced at all, that they will exist for a tiny fraction of a second.

What's more, if theory is correct, they're already being formed in our atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays.

The natural ones are no problem, so the artificial ones will not be, either.
 
I don't see what's so wrong with hydrogen-producing algae. If we wish to use hydrogen as a fuel source, we will need to get it from somewhere...and lots of it. This method would produce tons. Calling it 'incredibly stupid' seems a bit absurd, especially when you consider the environmental impacts of current energy policies.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Think of how cruddy things would start getting if the human genome has sucessfully been patented (in entirety.)
It's already public domain, many researchers use it on a daily basis, so don't freak out. Genetic engineering is not all about three-eyed fish...Diabetics are thankful for the development of recombinant (that means genetically engineered!) human insulin. Instead of the bovine and swine insulin used before.

But I agree with the coporate greed stuff...I mean, c'mon, Viagra?! They're wasting time with this!?
 
Hey Michael,

I agree with what you say but algae is exceptionally difficult to control and keep in one location. Now ramp it up to production scale and think you can keep it in one area?

GMO corn set to produce Bacillus thuriengensis israeliensis toxin (hope that's spelled correctly) were found to transmit the trait through it's pollen possibly allowing cross pollination to other crops.

I work in a containment lab setting and lots of precautions need to be taken to prevent cross contamination. Think how much algae there is worldwide and if the trait could be passed to other genera/species of algae or simply to wild-type. Hygdrogen could potentially be generated on a large scale worldwide. I think this study should proceed but VERY carefully.

Just because something doesn't cause disease to humans doesn't mean it won't have a substantial impact to the environement.

On a positive note: a company in Cambridge is using algae to reduce power plant emissions. That CO2 is good for something.

Kirk
Fitchburg Mass
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (kirkwmartin @ Sep. 08 2005,1:41)]GMO corn set to produce Bacillus thuriengensis israeliensis toxin (hope that's spelled correctly) were found to transmit the trait through it's pollen possibly allowing cross pollination to other crops.
Except that corn can not cross pollinate with any other crops. Kind of the way apple tree pollen can not cross pollinate with an orange tree.

The real "worry" with BT corn is that the pollen itself carries the toxin and so if the pollen blows onto wildflowers near the farm then any insects that visit those flowers are then subject to being poisoned by the pollen if they happen to ingest it. Then those insects die and their predator can't find enough food so they die and then all the other bugs that that predator eats will suddenly undergo a huge population boom and take over the world. At least that is what most of the anti-GMO groups would have you believe.

Here is some more educated clarification. The different sub-species of B. thur. tend to be pretty specific to the insects they kill. So the ones that kill mites are by and large harmless to butterflies and vice versa. Couple that with the dilution principle. If it takes a minimum amount of toxin to kill it is pretty easy to get that minimum amount when you are eating a plant loaded with the toxin. However, if you blow a billion pollen grains over a square mile how easy is it to get that same minimum dose? (and to answer the question before it is asked: No, a single pollen grain does not carry the minimum dose.)

It is all a matter of thinking it through and doing all the research. Something that cause-heads are not very prone to.

Now, as for the baby blackholes. My recommendation is to read some of Hawking's work. That should help ease your fears some. Sure there is a chance that something could go wrong. But at the same time there is a chance that if I throw myself off the roof of a 30 story building I won't fall to my death. And while I don't remember the statistics exactly I believe the odds of my flying are better than those of a micro-black hole getting dangerously big (even if it managed to merge with a second micro-black hole.)

And as for hydrogen producing algae (and just a quick note, this would not be photosynthesis as that term is specifically for the formation of sugars and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water,) I seriously doubt that it will be a problem. Nature has already shown that metabolic processes that produce sizable amounts of hydrogen as a by product are not very robust so the odds of it escaping and reformatting the environment are pretty slim. Plus, you need very specific conditions for it to happen. Conditions that are not to be found in your every day average lake, stream, pond, ocean, puddle, etc.
 
yeah they said that the RHIC accelerator at Brookhaven Nat'l Labs was going to make black holes too... and look, new york is still very much in existance ;) although a few nutjobs did try (unsuccessfully) to blame JFK Jr's plane crash on the tiny black holes.

and yes, i would be far more concerned about how far genetic engineering is going. i'm all for the good that it can do for humankind, but i don't think that there are nearly enough limits placed on it. anyone ever see the movie "Gattaca"? it's about a futuristic world where parents visit the local geneticist before having kids, and the embryos' genomes are selectively edited until only the best traits are expressed. "it's not that it's not you... it's just the very best of you." people are divided into "valids" and "in-valids" based on their genetic code, because no company wants to invest all their time and money into a person who's going to develop a heart condition at 35. and what's scary is, it's kind of happening already... parents find that their unborn children are going to have some horrible disease like Tay-Sachs that will kill them before the age of four, and sometimes they abort. i've heard rumors of people who refuse to be tested for genetic diseases that run in their families, for fear that their insurance companies will either hike their premiums or drop them entirely.

think about what would happen if somebody came across a genetic marker for violence or pedophilia or some other socially unacceptable vice. or if insurance companies started mandating genetic testing as a part of their already asinine risk analyses. it's subtle and insidious, but the more you know about what your genetic blueprint really says... engineering aside, how will the knowledge alone affect human behavior?
 
Seeing how little we know about black holes as it i have much difficulty saying tahat evena fraction of a second is too short to suck up matter because we dont know. I DID reserch on this and resent trhat it has been suggested that i havent.  Hawking isnt always right you know. Hawkings radiation no doubt exists but just assuming it could take care of any black hole we produce is... premature






[b said:
Quote[/b] ]And as for hydrogen producing algae (and just a quick note, this would not be photosynthesis as that term is specifically for the formation of sugars and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water,) I seriously doubt that it will be a problem. Nature has already shown that metabolic processes that produce sizable amounts of hydrogen as a by product are not very robust so the odds of it escaping and reformatting the environment are pretty slim. Plus, you need very specific conditions for it to happen. Conditions that are not to be found in your every day average lake, stream, pond, ocean, puddle, etc.



Look, the fact of the matter with the algae is it would be impossible to contain if it got out. The species being engeneerd is a common species found in ponds all over the world. Conditions that are found in your every day average lake, stream, pond, ocean, puddle, etc. The existing species mostly produce oxygen as a product of photosynthesis. Were not talking about harnesing a organism that naturally produces hydrogen in some inhospitibal crack. Wre talking about the scum in a lake or pond or something, things that harness much of the planets oxygen and give off very little hydrogen.


As for genetic engeneering, worry about the future - geneticly engeneerd super solders. you cant tell me that if they had acess to the tecnology to do that some countries wouldnt.


OH MY GOD I JUST FIGURED OUT I SPELLED OPINION WRONG...

great. THAT makes me look like i know what im talking about
 
  • #10
About the microblack holes, I'm not really worried about them.
But I am definately not comfortable with genetic engineering. One cannot predict exactly how the GM organism will impact the environment.
and i'm SURE that SOMEONE somewhere, someday, would be reckless and not do it right, or actually do something voluntarily to cause harm. It could even be the US government. You know how stupid they can be.
or why the US govt? other govts. could do it too. like russia I believe? that was experimenting with making bio weapons from uh... smallpox and other horrible diseases.
I think even if we take all the necessary precausions, for example:
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Look, the fact of the matter with the algae is it would be impossible to contain if it got out. The species being engeneerd is a common species found in ponds all over the world.
What if you modified the algae so say the tiniest amount of some (non toxic) chemical would kill them? then they could only live in labs and if any escaped, they would be easy to kill off or maybe they would automatically die off because the chemical is already present in the environment.
Know what I mean?
but people ain't perfect, and many times they're brainless idiots.
frankly I don't trust people enough to start messing with the very core of life.
 
  • #11
They could need a substance not found in nature to survive a la Jurassic Park.

But life... (Goldblum pause)... finds a way!
 
  • #12
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]It's already public domain, many researchers use it on a daily basis, so don't freak out. Genetic engineering is not all about three-eyed fish...Diabetics are thankful for the development of recombinant (that means genetically engineered!) human insulin. Instead of the bovine and swine insulin used before.

Woops, typo on my part, I meant "had been", not "has been." I know the genome race is over, I've talked with one of the leaders of the public domain team.
laugh.gif
 
  • #13
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]But life... (Goldblum pause)... finds a way!
yes, but will we be among the ones who do? and anyway, the sheer number of deaths and extinctions wouldn't be worth it. Sure, you can cut a 200 year old tree like back to less than a foot off the ground and it will grow back, but why do it if you can prevent it?
or were you saying that the uh... chemical dependent GMOs would find a way to... uh... break from the addiction? lol
 
  • #14
[b said:
Quote[/b] (TheAlphaWolf @ Sep. 08 2005,7:49)]or were you saying that the uh... chemical dependent GMOs would find a way to... uh... break from the addiction? lol
That one. It probably wouldn't happen... I just wanted to have a Goldblum moment.
 
  • #15
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Finch @ Sep. 08 2005,5:11)]I DID reserch on this and resent that it has been suggested that i havent.
I don't think I said you did not do any research. I said "cause-heads" in general. I admit it is a tag I apply to a broad number of people but I was not specifically refering to you. If I was specifically refering to you I would have singled you out by name.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Seeing how little we know about black holes as it i have much difficulty saying that even a fraction of a second is too short to suck up matter because we dont know.

We actually know a lot more about black holes than we do about a great number of things. Like say Great white shark breeding behavior... No, we do not know absolutly without a doubt one hundred percent that that fraction of a second is not too long. But if you want to get technical we don't know absolutly without a doubt one hundred percent on anything for the simple reason that it is not possible. You just can not know every single thing about any one thing. Period.

Back to the experiment, all the math says that it takes it takes a certain critical mass for a certain minimum time to create a stable black hole, neither of which are acheived by the experiment you are talking about. And no one is saying you have to accept the math but the scientists running the project make the decision. The statistical chance that the detonation of a hydrogen bomb would cause the combustion of all the oxygen in the atmosphere did not stop us from building one and then testing it. And the odds of that happening were orders of magnitude greater than a micro-black hole becoming self-sustaining.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Hawking isnt always right you know. Hawkings radiation no doubt exists but just assuming it could take care of any black hole we produce is... premature

I never said Hawkin was always right (but I am sure he know a darn sight more than any of us about physics and black holes.) And considering Hawking radiation has "taken care of" naturally occuring black holes that are hundreds, thousands and even billions of time larger than anything we could produce I would feel pretty safe saying it is not premature to accept that the micro-black holes will evaporate in a fraction of a second.

[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Look, the fact of the matter with the algae is it would be impossible to contain if it got out. The species being engeneerd is a common species found in ponds all over the world. Conditions that are found in your every day average lake, stream, pond, ocean, puddle, etc. The existing species mostly produce oxygen as a product of photosynthesis. Were not talking about harnesing a organism that naturally produces hydrogen in some inhospitibal crack. Wre talking about the scum in a lake or pond or something, things that harness much of the planets oxygen and give off very little hydrogen.

Whether or not the species itself is common is not the issue. It is the metabolic process that I am talking about. For example, there are a number of organisms that can grow in the abscence of oxygen, that does not mean that they always grow without oxygen though. When there is oxygen present they grow like most "normal" organisms do. When there is not any oxygen then they switch metabolic paths to anaerobic respiration. And sure they keep growing, but at a rate that is fractional to that of aerobic respiration. The same thing happens with metabolic processes that produce hydrogen as a by-product. Under normal conditions that you find in your lake, stream, river, whatever, the thing is not going to opt for the hydrogen generating metabolic pathway because there are other, better metabolic pathways it can use. And even if they tweeked it so it had only the hydrogen producing metabolism then the thing would not be able to grow at a rate to maintain itself against competing organisms because the hydrogen producing metabolic pathway is not at all efficient at generating energy for growth. That is one of the main reasons it is stuck in organisms that live in teeny-tiny out of the way cracks where nothing else lives. Because that is the only place an organism with that metabolism can live!!
 
  • #16
Oh... I thought this thread was about onions. I like Vidalias.
 
  • #17
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Dyflam @ Sep. 09 2005,2:06)]Oh... I thought this thread was about onions. I like Vidalias.
HAve you tried baby Vidalias on the BarBQ?? SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OO good!!
 
  • #18
Romans ate onions for dessert, like an apple. It was supposed to be an aphrodesiac. They called them "love apples" (go figure).

As to the topic of dicussion, I would prefer that science concentrate on making a phone that will work longer than a year running. I read a lot of science fiction and creating new biological niches makes me very nervous. All life is at the expense of other life, if something increases something else declines and I would not want it to be yours truly. Look up the definition of "Hubris".

Take the money that would go to make a black hole and give it to the schools that can't afford to have a strings section in orchestra because they can't afford instruments for the kids. Black holes might be interesting, but music is essential.
 
  • #19
Oninion? Another great typo on your part, Funch.
 
  • #20
[b said:
Quote[/b] (Tamlin Dawnstar @ Sep. 10 2005,8:25)]Take the money that would go to make a black hole and give it to the schools that can't afford to have a strings section in orchestra because they can't afford instruments for the kids.   Black holes might be interesting, but music is essential.
Better yet, take the money to make a military plane that spends its entire life time rusting unused in a hanger and give that to the schools.

Music is essential but science is too. None of us would be where we are without science.
 
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