From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Jan 11 2001 - 15:37:40 MST
hal@finney.org writes:
> In the earlier discussion at
> http://www.lucifer.com/exi-lists/extropians.2Q00/3019.html, Robert
> Bradbury (who was involved in the Foresight discussions leading to the
> creation of the paper) discussed particle beam weapons as a possible
> countermeasure. You would have earth-orbiting satellites watching for
> "hot spots" which indicate a point of infection, and which sterilize
> the vicinity with neutron bombardment or some other form of disruptive
> radiation.
How good are they? I remember spending a pleasant train journey with
Henrik Ohrstrom discussing the use of neutron bombs against
nanodevices (making the other passengers distinctly nervous :-). The
problem seems to be that you really want to drench the region in
particles so that the goo will be wiped out, but then you need a
reasonably deep penetration (lots of energy) and will likely leave a
lot of ugly isotopes around. Sure, in nanotopia we can clean it up
simpler, but it is still not easy.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:04:46 MST