Science Quote of the Week

[Aggie]

"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

_{http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/08/20/artificiallife_tec_02.html?category=technology&guid=20070820103030}
 

And from the same article on artificial life:

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."

We're officially doomed. 

[Swatopluk]

Wait until someone crosses prions with rabies

[Sibling Chatty]

Rabions?? Pribies??

[Swatopluk]

Synthetic prions could be all the rage in bioweaponry

[Aggie]

They probably are already. 

I thought I caught something about the discovery of a new anti-BSE prion....?  Not sure...

[Swatopluk]

Time for novels on esprionage

[ivor]

I saw that article.  Sounds like famous last words to me.

They are technically smart enough to do these things but not smart enough not to do these things.  Nice...

[Swatopluk]

As someone put it in the early 20th century (alluding to nuclear physics): We live on an island made of gun cotton. Luckily we have not yet found the matches (but the scientists are frantically looking for them).

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

No wonder, when they discover new (very touchy) explosives, while trying to discover medicine...

(can't find the realted article to that story...)

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Meh, fear garage particle accelerators and cheap antimatter. 

[Alpaca]

Wasn't there a guy who built a cheap accelerator in his backyard? And used it? Neighbors called in police about it.

[Swatopluk]

Isn't a (tube) TV set a very crude particle accelerator?

[beagle]

Wasn't there a guy who built a cheap accelerator in his backyard? And used it? Neighbors called in police about it.

Yep, More of a reactor than accelerator.

When I was at school in the 70s there was another bloke (probably after his megalomania badge) who built his own atom bomb (minus fissile material). As I recall he rang up one of the big chemical companies and got their advice on the best explosive to use for creating highly symmetric spherical implosions.

[Swatopluk]

Any relation to Otto Hahn ?

http://www.ohg.sh.schule.de/ohg/schule/otto-hahn.jpg

[Alpaca]

Isn't a (tube) TV set a very crude particle accelerator?

I guess so, cathode-ray-style. Doesn't quite make the cut, though, I think, since it's not acceleration to achieve higher speed, but acceleration to change the direction of the particle's motion. Unless I'm thinking about it wrong.