[extropy-chat] Research question

[Jef Allbright]

  _____  

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of pjmanney
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 11:20 AM
To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org; extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org;
transhumantech at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [extropy-chat] Research question



I'm working on the book and I've left a crucial, climactic section quite
vague that I need to start to flesh out in detail.  You know the kind of
vague I mean: hero neutralizes the threat and action ensues.  Only I was
naughty and eager to just get writing and hadn't completed my research for
it.  So this is a theoretical question for all you engineers and physicists
and just plain smart folk:

What would theoretically destroy nanobots?  I guess the more specific
question would be: what disassembles diamondoid nanostructures at an atomic
level and reverts them back to harmless carbon atoms?  Or simply screws with
them enough to render them neutral/inactive/harmless?  To give you some
possibly important detail, these are medicinal bots and would be used
internally in the brain.  They would need to pass the blood/brain barrier
after ingestion.  And there are a whole lot of them.   

Remove their external energy source, or if they're using the host metabolism
then possibly poison it (without killing host), or relocate their energy
source as a means of controlling their behavior, or...) (they're too small
to carry their own fuel, right?)

Modify their programming (with a virus, or by communicating with their
controller, or lots of other possibilities here) to either stop them or
convert them to some useful purpose.  Exploit some bug in their programming
in an unexpected way,.Force them out by infiltrating their command and
control structure with similar, but benign nanobots.

Find and activate the secret failsafe or deadman switch built in by their
designer.

Give them a decoy host brain and when they're all there, destroy it.
(Sorry, I'm sure that's too simple.)

I don't know of any chemical means to dissolve the diamondoid atomic bonds
without killing the host, but I am not a chemist.

- Jef

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