From: James Wetterau (jwjr@ignition.name.net)
Date: Thu Jan 20 2000 - 08:12:21 MST
Anders Sandberg says:
> "Michael M. Butler" <butler@comp-lib.org> writes:
>
> > And we ask the question: Are they doing this work in a Category IV
> > facility? Echo answers mournfully.
>
> Since the Earth itself is not a Cat IV facility and there has been
> many hundreds of millions of years for the nanomicrobes to get to the
....
As Anders Sandberg apparently realized, "microbes" is not the right
term for these things. They are called "nanobes" in the Times
article. I think the coinage is good.
I'm intrigued by the question of how these will contribute to our
understanding of the origins of petroleum. As I understand it
presently there's a big debate about how biological a process
petroleum creation is. At least part of the problem is explaining
what tiny creatures could be at work deep in the Earth's crust. Maybe
these nanobes hold some explanation?
All the best,
James Wetterau
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