[extropy-chat] NANO/ID: Spooky nanowire crappying bacteria...

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:

> --- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Okay. Either these little guys were engineered by a crypto dirt
> > civilization, or there may be something to ID. What is the
> > evolutionary
> > point of a bacteria that craps conductive nano-wires?
> 
> Just in case you were serious, or anyone thinks you were, the article
> itself answers that question:
> 
> > it uses metals, rather than oxygen, for respiration
> > it explains Geobacter's ability to remove metals from soil and
> > water. A key step in its metabolism is the transfer of electrons
> > from its interior to metals in its surroundings.
> 
> The wires help the bacteria gather that which they use for
> respiration. If your blood supply was external, you'd want to make
> it really easy to gather blood too.

"Make"? Using such words is ID talk. It's not as if human beings made
themselves the way they are, outside of our intelligence related
technological features. The bacteria are clearly not intelligent (so
far as we can tell), so the question remains as to how a bacteria could
evolve to this point from some other point? Another question is why
would it do so? If there is more energetic oxygen available, dissolved
in water, why would it need to respirate through metals? From an
economics point of view, an organism would only evolve such a
respiratory system if that system provided more energy than the
previous system it was using, or if the bacteria was attempting to
colonize a habitat that did not provide for the first respiratory
system.

It still seems just too perfect. 

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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