[ExI] Fwd: [ctrl] Nuclear Powered Nanorobots 2Replace Food?-Robert Freitas on How Nuclear-Powered Nanobots Will Allow Us 2Forgo Eating a Square Meal for a Century

[ddraig]

Hiyas

I am quite astonished to find this on the Conspiracy Theory Research
List and not on exichat, but, there you go.
Any comments in the body of the text are not mine - Dwayne

And here we are:



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: [ctrl] Nuclear Powered Nanorobots 2Replace Food?- Robert
Freitas on How Nuclear-Powered Nanobots Will Allow Us 2Forgo Eating a
Square Meal for a Century


"In the future, we may see a type of pill for replacing food, but
experts say it likely would not be a simple compound of chemicals. A
pill-sized food replacement system would have to be extremely complex
because of the sheer difficulty of the task it was being asked to
perform, more complex than any simple chemical reaction could be. The
most viable solution, according to many futurists, would be a
nanorobot food replacement system.



Dr. Robert Freitas, author of the Nanomedicine series and senior
research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing spoke
with FUTURIST magazine senior editor Patrick Tucker about it.'



Read ...



WFS Update: Robert Freitas on How Nuclear-Powered Nanobots Will Allow
Us to Forgo Eating a Square Meal for a Century Tuesday, Dec 29 2009

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2009/12/wfs-update-robert-freitas-on-how-nuclear-powered-nanobots-will-allow-us-to-forgo-eating-a-square-meal-for-a-century/


Wow, this surprised me. This is the sort of thing that I would write
off as nonsense on first glance if it weren’t from Robert Freitas, who
is legendary for the rigor of his calculations
[http://www.nanomedicine.com/]. Here’s the bit, from a World Future
Society update:

The Issue: Hunger

The number of people on the brink of starvation will likely reach 1.02
billion — or one-sixth of the global population — in 2009, according
to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In the
United States, 36.2 million adults and children struggled with hunger
at some point during 2007.

The Future: The earth’s population is projected to increase by 2.5
billion people in the next four decades, most of these people will be
born in the countries that are least able to grow food. Research
indicates that these trends could be offset by improved global
education among the world’s developing populations.

Population declines sharply in countries where almost all women can
read and where GDP is high. As many as 2/3 of the earth’s inhabitants
will live in water-stressed area by 2030 and decreasing water supplies
will have a direct effect on hunger. Nearly 200 million Africans are
facing serious water shortages. That number will climb to 230 million
by 2025, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Finding
fresh water in Africa is often a huge task, requiring people (mostly
women and children) to trek miles to public wells. While the average
human requires only about 4 liters of drinking water a day, as much as
5,000 liters of water is needed to produce a person’s daily food
requirements.


Futurist Fixes

1. The Food Pill. In the future, we may see a type of pill for
replacing food, but experts say it likely would not be a simple
compound of chemicals. A pill-sized food replacement system would have
to be extremely complex because of the sheer difficulty of the task it
was being asked to perform, more complex than any simple chemical
reaction could be. The most viable solution, according to many
futurists, would be a nanorobot food replacement system.

Dr. Robert Freitas, author of the Nanomedicine series and senior
research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing spoke
with FUTURIST magazine senior editor Patrick Tucker about it.

In his books and various writings, Freitas has described several
potential food replacement technologies that are somewhat pill-like.
The key difference, however, is that instead of containing drug
compounds, the capsules would contain thousands of microscopic robots
called nanorobots. These would be in the range of a billionth of a
meter in size so they could easily fit into a large capsule, though a
capsule would not necessarily be the best way to administer them to
the body. Also, while these microscopic entities would be called
“robots,” they would not necessarily be composed of metal or possess
circuitry.

They would be robotic in that they would be programmed to carry out
complex and specific functions in three-dimensional space.

One food replacement Dr. Freitas has described is nuclear powered
nanorobots. Here’s how these would work: the only reason people eat is
to replace the energy they expend walking around, breathing, living
life, etc. Like all creatures, we take energy stored in plant or
animal matter. Freitas points out that the isotope gadolinium-148
could provide much of the fuel the body needs. But a person can’t just
eat a radioactive chemical and hope to be healthy, instead he or she
would ingest the gadolinium in the form of nanorobots. The
gadolinium-powered robots would make sure that the person’s body was
absorbing the energy safely and consistently. Freitas says the person
might still have to take some vitamin or protein supplements but
because gadolinium has a half life of 75 years, the person might be
able to go for a century or longer without a square meal.

For people who really like eating but don’t like what a food-indulgent
lifestyle does to their body, Freitas has two other nanobot solutions.

“Nutribots” floating through the bloodstream would allow people to eat
virtually anything, a big fatty steak for instance, and experience
very limited weight or cholesterol gain. The nutribots would take the
fat, excess iron, and anything else that the eater in question did not
want absorbed into his or her body and hold onto it. The body would
pass the nurtibots, and the excess fat, normally out of the body in
the restroom.

A nanobot Dr. Freitas calls a “lipovore” would act like a microscopic
cosmetic surgeon, sucking fat cells out of your body and giving off
heat, which the body could convert to energy to eat a bit less.

Where can you read more about Robert Freitas’s ideas? In the
January-February 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, Freitas lays out
his ideas for improving human health through nanotechnology.

Yes, there are many other technologies that could help out better with
hunger right now. The most important are the three initiatives singled
out by Giving What We Can as being high-leverage intervention points:
schistosomiasis control, stopping tuberculosis, and the regular
delivery of micronutrient packages. Another is the iodization of salt.
How can these stop hunger? Well, the diseases and ill health caused by
the absence of these measures is so great that alleviating them will
increase the total amount of time that people have available to engage
in farming, which in the short term will alleviate hunger more
effectively than any direct measure. Delivering food in the form of
aid fosters dependence.

Anyway, the summary of Freitas’ food bot ideas above seems very
limited. I’m sure that Freitas has worked out the design in greater
detail. For instance, are the nanobots he is talking about is powered
through a radioisotope rather than a nuclear fission plant, and the
text doesn’t make that clear enough, in my opinion. I wonder —

how is it that gadolinium can be broken down into all the nutrients
the body needs? Wouldn’t a large amount be required, because fueling
the chemical reactions of the body requires bulk and mass no matter
how you slice it? I am seeing a lot of technical questions and holes
in the idea, as it is brusquely presented above. I will email Freitas
and ask him to point us to the proper writings.



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