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Nov. 20, 2001 - Art Bell

02:39:00

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Nanotechnology and Cryonics - Dr. Ralph Merkle

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02:02:20

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening and or good morning, wherever you may be across this great landmark while beyond.
		This is close to 12 a.m. and I might felt so great to be back.
		So great to be back.
		I guess it's in my blood, alright.
		And when it's gone, I just miss it so horribly.
		I miss all of you and I miss doing this program and it's just great to be back.
		Anyway, let us look at the war news.
		Marines now aboard assault ships in the Arabian Sea are likely to be sent into Afghanistan with sending the Marines, possibly this week, to join the special operations troops already present.
		A Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity, please don't give my name, said that as many as 1,500 Marines might go, but no final decision has yet been made.
		Uncertain what missions they might perform when they get there.
		Probably doing what Marines do.
		Killing things and breaking things.
		That's what the armed services do.
		And they're doing a very good job of it, too, in Afghanistan right now.
		A top UN envoy to Afghanistan said that power-sharing talks concerning post-Taliban government may begin next Monday in Germany after the rebels agreed today to participate in the discussions in Kunduz, the Taliban's last northern stronghold.
		Fighting is still absolutely fierce.
		Many are martyring themselves and blowing themselves up.
		It is indeed very fierce fighting.
		An FBI, this is a puzzle to me.
		This story is a puzzle to me, as a couple of others like it have been.
		Go figure on this one.
		An FBI microbiologist speaking on condition of anonymity said today there were easily billions of anthrax spores in a letter addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy.
		Billions, mind you.
		Enough to poison millions.
		Elsewhere, an elderly woman, this is what I don't get, living in rural Connecticut was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax.
		This lady is 90 years old, in her 90s, actually.
		It is the most deadly form of the disease.
		One would imagine at her age it's going to be a real difficult pull back to health if she's able to.
		She is in critical condition.
		Nobody, of course, can explain how she contracted anthrax.
		It would be if confirmed the first case of anthrax in the state of Connecticut.
		And, you know, I wonder what's going on with this story and stories like it.
		Now, surely you understand the anthrax cases in the, you know, in the media.
		They were sent letters.
		You understand the anthrax cases in the government.
		However, these seemingly random cases that have shown up, and there have been several of them now, people with no connection to anything that has any relevance to what's been going on coming down with inhalation anthrax.
		And you notice you get these stories, and then these stories simply disappear.
		They just go away, and you never get any follow-up to them.
		Actually, that occurs with an awful lot of stories, doesn't it?
		You know, they just go away, and you never get a follow-up.
		Go figure.
		Climate experts at the University of Michigan's biological station in Pelston say that rising global temperatures could result in mild winters with little snow over the next 50 years.
		In Michigan, climate change is a result of rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, one of the so-called greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide released when fuels such as gasoline are burned.
		In Michigan, where it ought to be really, really, really cold, it may not be so cold.
		The next few decades, in fact, may become, with regard to summers, most definitely longer and hotter, and winters will start to become shorter and warmer with less snow.
		Won't that be interesting?
		Isn't it interesting to watch the changes in the world going on around us?
		For example, yesterday I told you there was a new iceberg all adrift now from Antarctica.
		Get this.
		A 233 square mile iceberg has broken off the Pine Island Glacier in the Antarctic.
		And that makes it about 25 miles long and 9 miles wide.
		Oh, my.
		My, my.
		So, you know, our satellite sensors find these things as the Antarctic continues to basically melt.
		Some world we're in, huh?
		Really some world.
		The sun continues to be incredibly active.
		The scientists appear to have missed the peak.
		Now, there may be some argument about that, but every 11 years we have a peak in the solar cycle, and then we have an 11-year low, head toward a low for 11 years.
		We should now be headed toward the low, but certainly the amount of activity wouldn't indicate that is the case, so something's going on.
		Here comes the sun.
		All kinds of comment on last night's show.
		What a blockbuster show.
		Atlantis.
	Now, Paulina Zelitsky in an interview now says not only do they have the side scan radar showing an ancient city, buildings, roads, pyramids, everything you would associate with a city in the sand, a half Mile 2,200 feet below the Atlantic.
	I mean, now they've got photographs showing symbols on stones 2,200 feet below the ocean surface.
	We may have found Atlantis.
	And a lot of comments.
	Hey, Art, the show last night was great, particularly drawn to this description Plato gave of the structures on the island of Atlantis.
	It seems to me that the way they constructed the rings of walls covered with blue, white, and black material, and the temple in the center with a copper roof and water in between the walls, probably saltwater, could be the largest natural battery ever made.
	This whole island could have been a power plant, possibly producing enough power to mine copper even at great distances.
	This is from Wendy.
	And I thought that was a brilliant idea.
	And indeed, it could be the case.
	Who is to say that the ancients did not have technological capabilities of their own that would rival and in some cases, in some ways, surpass ours?
	After all, we know that in Egypt, they moved stones that were unmovable, things that could not have been moved.
	In fact, you go to Egypt, I did, and you stand with Zahi Hawass, and he will tell you, he will show you how stones can be split, how it can be split, granite can be split, but, gosh, you ask him how it got way up there, and he shrugs his shoulders, and he goes, this is the mystery.
	We don't know.
	And indeed, they don't know.
	And it's possible there's all kinds of ancient technology, including giant batteries, that the ancients could have used, perhaps even power in some way, virtually from the air.
	Powers that we don't understand and we haven't used in a long, long time.
	And speaking of that, I think I'd like to have a lot of you comment, if you wouldn't mind, on how you're going to feel when this story breaks.
	Are you going to be surprised?
	I mean, that everything that we thought was true isn't true.
	And that mankind has been here for a very, very, very long time.
	Much, much longer than we've previously thought.
	Now, I understand a lot of paradigms are going to come crashing down, but I also understand a lot of you are not going to feel crushed.
	Do you understand that many will?
	That many people's belief systems are wrapped around what they were sure was true.
	That the ground we stand on, the continents we're on, are solid and we don't have to worry about comets and asteroids and land sinking a half mile below the water and civilizations virtually becoming erased.
	It's going to be a hard pill to swallow that all of this is possible.
	Because if it happened once, it can happen again.
	Here's another one.
	Great John Atlantis on the Atlantis find.
	It's quite possible that the reason the U.S. Navy would not reveal such a, and this is really interesting, I mean, you know that in the waters off Cuba, both Russian and American submarines have prowled those waters for years and years and years, hunting each other.
	Anyway, he goes on, it's quite possible that the reason the USN wouldn't reveal such a find is that it could compromise sensitive information, where our subs patrol, how deep they go, and so forth.
	Or they could simply say, it's not their job, which would be literally true, but amazing when you consider the implications.
	If scientists insist the ruins at such depth would be impossible, then Arthur C. Clarke is right, and the scientists must be wrong.
	And I would think you would want to comment on this, and I would love to have you do so.
	So in this hour, and we're open lines this hour, by the way, I'd love to have you comment.
	The implications of this are just incredible.
	Absolutely incredible.
	Hey, I'd like to welcome a new affiliate, KWCK in Searcy, Arizona.
	That's S-E-A-R-C-Y.
	I don't know where Searcy, Arizona is.
	Anybody out there know?
	1300 on the dial in Searcy, Arizona.
	KWCK, welcome to the network.
	In a moment, we'll continue, and open lines are coming up.
	So if you've got the numbers, let's rock.
	Next hour, we're going to be talking with a Dr. Ralph Merkel about nanotechnology.
	And that's another subject I'd like to talk with all of you about is technology in general, nanotechnology specifically.
	It's a really, really, really interesting topic to me.
	You can look at technology in many ways.
	A lot of people reject it.
unidentified		I don't need no damn computer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not going to participate in that.
		And in the end, though, as the world races forward, and it surely is racing right now, the quickening is well underway.
		As the world races forward, it may be the only thing that will save us.
		As nations develop all kinds of horrible biological weapons, nanotechnology may save our butts, or it could be the end of our butts.
		We'll see.
unidentified		SHINE!
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, it's into the night.
		We go now.
		Open lines.
		Anything you want to talk about is fair game.
		I've put a fair amount on the table, so grab what you wish and run with it.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Arn.
unidentified		This is James calling from Rutland Manor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How you doing?
unidentified		Not too bad.
unidentified		So I heard some of your Atlanta show last night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir?
unidentified		We're about three miles from the radio station where I work overnight.
		For some reason, we always flew to the last couple hours.
		Just bad reception doesn't come in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Radio conditions have been very, very, very odd lately due to the activity on the sun.
unidentified		But I like the theory that we may have been more advanced than we are now at some point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I don't know if I actually buy that.
		How about this as a theory?
		Okay.
		That we could have been a pretty good technological civilization then, but in a different way than we are now.
		In other words, a totally different technology that we don't begin to understand right now.
		Maybe Tesla understood a little bit of it, but do you understand what I'm saying?
		Technological, but in a different way.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, Tesla, like wireless electricity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, yes.
unidentified		I like it.
unidentified		I buy it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I buy it too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does it bother you?
unidentified		No, not at all.
unidentified		Maybe it gives us hope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe it does.
		Thank you very much.
		I think the way I digest it as well.
		On the one hand, it is going to break apart a lot of paradigms and things that people believe in, religious beliefs and all the rest of it.
		But I think religion will survive such a revelation.
		I think I will survive such a revelation.
		And frankly, it really intrigues me.
		I'm not threatened by it nor scared.
		Are you?
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
		Okay, sir.
		Where are you?
unidentified		San Diego.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ooki, you're on the air.
unidentified		Okay, what I wanted to say is a few nights ago, Ian Punnett had some guy on talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And he stated that the Dead Sea Scrolls don't mention Jesus.
		And I wanted to say that that is inaccurate.
		In 1973, the contents of Cave 7 were translated, and they found nine New Testament documents in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, whether Jesus is mentioned or not, is that going to affect your he made it, you know, he made that as if that was a truth, and it's not.
unidentified		Nine New Testament documents were found, and they were dated to the first century.
unidentified		And in fact, the London Times, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times, and the Biblical Archaeological Review stated this as an archaeological fact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you sound like you're upset.
unidentified		I am a little bit because he offended some of the audience, and he stated an archaeological dishonest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I sense, sir.
		You're going to be a perfect person for me to ask a couple of questions.
		I understand where you're coming from, but where you're coming from makes me realize you're going to be great for this.
		There's increasing evidence that everything that we believe to be true about the origins of man may be totally, totally wrong.
		Even some of what's contained in the Bible about when creation occurred and all the rest of it may simply be wrong.
		And there may have been civilizations millions of years ago.
		How do you digest that kind of information?
unidentified		Well, first of all, I would examine those evidential claims, and a lot of that's conjecture and theory and speculation.
		And I deal with facts and archaeological truths and real evidence.
		So if they can actually provide that evidence, then we'll deal with it at the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but even a lot of the stuff you're talking about is argued back and forth and debated by many people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You simply accept that as fact and want to hold out for harder evidence to believe anything else, correct?
unidentified		Well, what is argued?
		You mentioned that it's argued.
		What exactly are you referring to?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, people argue all kinds of things about creation, for example.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's a great debate that rages about all of that, and I'm sure you solidly believe in creation, don't you?
unidentified		Yeah, I do.
unidentified		It is true that scientists are debating that there's the young earth theory, the old earth theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		I personally subscribe to the old earth theory that the universe is billions of years old because I think the greatest scientists have proven that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But what if, but yes, sir, but what if man is proven to have been around long before the Bible says he was created?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, isn't that a bit of a problem?
unidentified		Well, if it can be proven, then we'll deal with it then, but I don't think it's been proven yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If it were to be proven, just for the sake of inquiring of your mind, if it were to be proven, how would you but if it were to be proven, sir, that's the question.
		You use the word proof yourself, so I'm just giving you a hypothetical.
		If it were to be proven, how would that affect what you think?
unidentified		It wouldn't affect it at all.
unidentified		It would just show that the book of Genesis is a mystery, you know, and all truth is of God, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But now you believe it to be a fact, right?
		Genesis, what you read in Genesis, to be a fact.
		And so if there's proof that it's wrong, you would simply say it would prove the book is a mystery.
unidentified		No, if they can prove that man, you know, predates our current views, it doesn't refute Genesis.
		It just shows that we haven't fully uncoded Genesis and fully interpreted it.
		I see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So we haven't quite read it right.
unidentified		True, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, listen, I appreciate your point of view, and I thank you for calling.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
		That is really, really interesting.
		You know, I could sense I had a hardcore person of faith here.
		And isn't it interesting to listen to his answer?
		Did you listen very carefully?
		I mean, on the one hand, until he hears differently, everything in Genesis is an absolute fact, right?
		But, you know, if the scientists come along and prove it's not a fact, then he would convert what he believes very quickly and easily, and he would say to himself, well, it just means we haven't read it and interpreted the whole thing correctly.
		And maybe that's how those of great religious faith will get by all of this, and maybe will get by all of this.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		From the high desert from Up Nevada, this is Coast to Coast, A.M. I'm the beyond.
		Turn the dark to me We're too hot to be sleeping We had to get out of the way By telling me a lie Without a reason why You don't want it all to die
		You rejoice in the Kingdom of Nigh from west of the Rockies, dial 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
		Or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
		To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and ask them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, you lied to me.
		You blown it all sky high.
		You told me where we came from.
unidentified		And you lied.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You said it was all in the book.
unidentified		That's the way a few will react, but maybe not all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That caller was very, very interesting, wasn't he?
unidentified		You lied to me.
unidentified		You're going all sky high.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll be right back.
		Ah, the crack of the thunder in the back end of the night.
		We go west of the Rockies.
		You're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		First of all, I want to say that this Atlantis business, this is all the devil's deception.
		It is being propagated and perpetrated by people like you.
		Wait a minute, what?
		This is why I am against media pornography with the pornographization of the media.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait, wait, wait, wait.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		let's have an adult discussion about this now i don't know what it is so you don't know what i think it I'm trying to have a dialogue.
unidentified		Every time I talk to you, it's insultation from you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, insultation?
		Let me tell you something.
		I could never do half the job on you that you do on yourself.
		Now, listen to me for just one moment.
		Would you please?
unidentified		I'm listening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If science finds through the method science uses, which includes video cameras and all the rest of it, that there really is a city below the waters in Cuba, and yesterday we got evidence that indeed there is.
unidentified		I'll tell you what they're doing.
		I'll tell you what they're doing.
		The same pornographers that are creating that Star Trek are doing this especially.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pornographers.
unidentified		This is pornographers did not create Star Trek.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Star Trek is one of my favorite programs.
unidentified		It's a very pornographic.
		It's pornographic.
		Star Trek?
		Yes.
		Star Trek is an icon of American science fiction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
unidentified		It is part of the media pornography that is assaulting our nation.
		Star Trek is just among.
		It's terrible.
		If you've ever seen that show with that 69 or whatever they have.
		I have seen every single episode of Star Trek.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The original Star Trek with Captain Kirk.
unidentified		I'm going to league with the media pornography.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't love Captain Kirk and Spock.
unidentified		Captain Kirk, but if you happen to know, Captain Kirk was, who was he played by?
		A Canadian.
		So.
		A Canadian.
		William Shatner is a Canadian operative.
		So?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Operative?
unidentified		That's correct?
unidentified		Operative.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		William Shatner is a spy for Canada?
unidentified		The Canadians are in control of the media in this country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		and read evidence give me one shred of evidence that canada is inside u_s_ at canada I have it.
unidentified		Aha.
		The X-Files.
		In fact, when I called before to talk to Chris Cater, who was the creator of the X-Files, when he was on, you put me on hold.
		You would not allow me to be on the airwaves with him because you knew I would confront him with the life and the Lord's truth, and I would bring the new revelation forward against him because the X-Files is Canadian pornography meant to disrupt the mind and distrust our government.
		It's all about how the American government is evil.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, J.C. JC, how do you feel about Hollywood?
unidentified		Hollywood is a cesspool.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A cesspool?
unidentified		Yes.
		You've never allowed me to speak about my cause.
		I run CLAMP, the Christian Legion against media pornography.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		hallelujah as a you're leading uh...
unidentified		sort of a charge again if i The Christian Legion against media pornography, and Hollywood is the stronghold of the pornographers.
		And there's more pornographization in our media than just sex.
		If you've ever seen the food shows that are come down to Hollywood where they garnish all these food and dress it up and make it look all succulent and freaking out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		to get back to such resendu honestly think sex is No, even you've probably had sex.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Haven't you had sex?
unidentified		Listen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Come on, Anson.
unidentified		I'm not going to give you titillating stories about my life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, there are titillating stories to be told, are there?
unidentified		No, you're crysting my words around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm not.
unidentified		Sex is evil.
unidentified		Sex is a punishment by the Lord.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sex is a punishment?
unidentified		Sex can be accomplished.
		Listen, okay, the act of reproduction can be accomplished in two strokes, two thrusts.
		One for insertion, one for completion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good Lord.
unidentified		I'm so righteous.
unidentified		I'm done and wanted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		JC, you know something I've never asked you that I'd like to ask?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you married?
unidentified		That's none of your business.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just thought I'd ask.
unidentified		Well, you ought to know.
		You've been running around in my bushes all this time.
		Call my home.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I call your home.
		Now, you've been accusing me of that for years.
		I don't call your home.
		I don't know where you are, and I don't care.
unidentified		Yes, you do.
		Actually, you called me up, and you used that silly voice of yours to taunt me.
		Now, listen, you're trying to distract me from my message, which is the new revelation and the new commandments, as I've been charged with the Lord's work.
		And all this time, you insult me.
		You called me Uncle Fester last time.
		You called me a coward.
		How dare you?
		I think we ought to settle this like men with our fists.
		Really?
		At the time.
		You want to have a fight, JC?
		Out behind the woodshed?
		Yeah?
		Anytime, Mr. Ball.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, as long as my back is in condition, JC, I'm ready for you, bro.
unidentified		You are a coward.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, come, come, get a fire.
unidentified		You are the coward.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Come get a piece of me, JC.
unidentified		You're the liar.
		You're the coward.
		And I was talking about the media pornographization of food, and you didn't let me finish my plan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Please finish that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, please finish that.
unidentified		These cooking shows, which are appealing to our gluttony, no order there's so many fat so stocking the snack bars in this country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you watch food shows, do you, JC?
unidentified		Listen, I watch in reconnaissance.
		I am going on reconnaissance missions.
		I have to know thy enemy, and I'll tell you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I bet you're an iron chef.
unidentified		They dress the food up.
		They make it look so succulent and tempting.
		And inviting people to gorgeous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Jayce, did you watch The Iron Chef?
unidentified		Yes, I did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I knew it.
unidentified		Because who was in charge of Iron Chef?
		William Shatner.
		William Shatner was on the Iron Chef.
		JC, but I'm talking about glorifying food.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		JC, you're fading away.
		You're fading away.
		You're going.
		You're gone.
		That would be my limit of JC for tonight.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		I'm just giggling.
		I can't help it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And nibbling on a pornographic carrot, probably.
unidentified		Oh, I have to redefine pornography, first of all.
		And then we need to let the world know that there's an art bell terrorizing this poor man.
		My name is Gallery.
		I'm from Ohio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		And I'm just a noon listener.
		And I listen to you while I try to sleep, but I can't sleep when I listen to you.
		So what I'm interested in is the young gentleman who was talking about Genesis.
		And I guess I missed something when he talked about that this was going to redefine how we felt about creationism.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I said that.
		He said, and I thought it was very revealing, he said that, look, what's in Genesis right now is absolute fact.
		However, if they find something that disputes that, that shows that it's not fact, then all it means is that we didn't read Genesis the right way.
unidentified		Yeah, I think you're right.
unidentified		I agree.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what he said.
unidentified		I agree that if that's the fact, then maybe we didn't read Genesis the right way.
		But even if it's not right, even if, you know, and I'm so excited about them, you know, finding all these things.
		As a matter of fact, probably about six months ago, I saw a program on cable, and I couldn't tell you what channel it was on, but they were talking about finding this find around Cuba.
		And at any rate, I think, you know, when we talk about creationism and God, and I'd like to think of myself as a spiritual person, but if the Lord created the earth first and then he created man, then he used what was here on the earth to create us.
		And then that's what we try to do with the things that we create.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you consider yourself a religious person?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You said spiritual, and I have a feeling in today's lexicon there's a difference.
unidentified		Well, I guess maybe I'm both in.
unidentified		Because I'm a true believer in God or a higher force, whatever you may want to call him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, his name has to be God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if my last caller were on the line, he would tell you it must be God.
unidentified		His name is God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate the call.
		Thank you.
		Yes, it has to be God.
		No other name will do.
		Is that true in today's modern world that there's a difference between a spiritual person and a religious person?
		I think there is.
		A lot of people seem to sort of cherry-pick what they want to believe, reject a lot of traditional values and faiths, and nevertheless claim they are spiritual in their own way.
		And I guess that's right.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Art.
		Is that fight between you and JC on pay-per-view, by the way?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If not, it probably ought to be.
unidentified		I'd love to see that.
unidentified		Anyway, you know, people say about these ancient civilizations that they were technologically superior or whatever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not, now here we go again.
		Okay.
		Not necessarily superior.
unidentified		Right, exactly.
		And that's my point, because, and here's my two cents.
		We have the Earth here tilted at 23.5 degrees or whatever.
		Plus you have evidence, solid evidence of these cataclysmic events.
		Now, maybe the reason why we supposedly can't access this ancient technology is because the environment itself was different.
		Maybe the magnetosphere was different.
		Some people say that there was a watery-like shell around the Earth instead of what we have now.
		And if the environment was different, maybe those people didn't need telephones.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you could be absolutely right.
		But I'll tell you something.
		I would not lay my money on that.
		I would lay my money on all that could be done then could be done now if we knew how to do it.
		I think our science proceeds in a certain way, in a certain linear fashion.
		Our science does.
		And there could have been a whole different science based on a whole different set of rules.
unidentified		And that's why I think the people who are going to be affected by whatever new revelation is coming is not going to be the people of faith or the religious.
		It's going to be the scientific community who thinks in this linear step-by-step, we know it.
		And, you know, that egocentric vasculus, those people are going to be shocked and will not be able to adapt.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hail William Shutner.
unidentified		Bye-bye.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, there.
		How are you?
		Well, how am I?
		That's an interesting.
		Pretty good, actually.
		Thank you.
unidentified		I think that it was an interesting comment with the previous caller.
unidentified		It's definitely the scientists, but it's the scientists who are going to repress all this stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they do that very well.
unidentified		Yeah.
		And I thought the Atlanta show, I didn't hear all of it.
		I heard bits and pieces, was fascinating, and I'm really interested in the subject.
		And I'm assuming I can go on your website and get more, what I missed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Always.
unidentified		Okay.
		I just feel that certainly there were civilizations, I believe, more advanced than ours.
		Lemuria, I don't know very much about, and Atlantis.
		I'm looking here at the map.
		I think...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really, I do.
		I think there's a lot of things that were discovered long ago, were used to move stones, giant stones that could not be moved.
		There was a man who built something called Coral Castle in Florida who appeared to have the secret and went to his grave with it.
		But there's plenty of evidence, more Than anecdotal, that some other technology existed.
		I'm sure it's still there.
		We just don't know how to access it.
unidentified		Some other form of energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		And I've heard a theory previously about Atlantis, about crystal energy, and that actually, because Atlantis is under the Atlantic somewhere off the coast of Florida, it's partially causing the Bermuda Triangle.
unidentified		But I like this Cuba thing, and if you look at the map just west of Cuba, wasn't there supposed to be a huge meteorite that hit there in the Gulf?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		Which certainly would have buried Atlantis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Could have, yes.
unidentified		I hope this is Atlantis.
		I think that these people who lived in Atlantis probably did come from another star system.
		And I think that there are people from that race still here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Entirely possible.
unidentified		Star people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Entirely possible.
		And there may be many descendants of those star people.
		Some of us may be those descendants.
		Anything's possible.
unidentified		Right?
		And I think Jesus was one.
		And so that Christian caller, aside from Genesis, there's no reason why any of this would repudiate Jesus being this being of light.
		That's exactly what he was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
		Yes, ma'am, rather.
		I'm sorry.
		Yes, a being of light.
		And many have described him exactly that.
		I mean, you could be absolutely right.
		I would be the last in the world to reject what you just said.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you very much.
		Last in the world to reject anything like that.
		On the international line, you are on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
unidentified		This is George speaking from Oslo, Norway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oslo, Norway?
unidentified		Yes, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, yi, yi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It must be, what is it now in Oslo, middle of the day?
unidentified		Well, it's actually almost 8 o'clock.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the morning?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that would make sense, right.
unidentified		But we don't see the sun yet.
unidentified		It won't be up for another half hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're way, way up north.
unidentified		Yeah, actually, we're about as far up as Anchorage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You sound, if I'm listening correctly to your accent, you are a Canadian.
		Yes, that's right.
		So what are you doing in Oslo?
unidentified		Well, I'm actually working as a scientist here at the university.
unidentified		And actually, that was part of the reason why I called is because after having listened to some of their previous guests, I have to say scientists have just as much of preconceived ideas and embrace their favorite and pet theories as much as, let me say, people who are hardcore spiritualists.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe even more so.
unidentified		I would have to say you're probably right, because for us, embracing a lot of those theories is good for us financially and for careers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, though, did you know that the Brookings report, which dealt with how the public would react if there were a revelation that we had been visited or are being visited by extraterrestrials, indicated that the chief group to be upset by this, first in line to be upset by this, would be scientists.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They would totally freak out, and they're not ready for it.
unidentified		Oh, you're absolutely right.
		You're absolutely right.
		And when I talk to my fellow colleagues here in Norway about UFOs and other phenomenon that are a bit on the outside of what is, let me say, measurable to most people, they treat it as if I'm some kind of dope-smoking theme.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not, right?
unidentified		No, no, I'm not.
unidentified		No, no, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sure they do.
		I mean, it threatens everything that they believe.
		And so, yeah, I mean, they'd find any way to put you down.
unidentified		Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
		There's so many vested interests.
		And I think probably the best example is the arguments you hear about climate change and the causes and the extent of human effects on climate change.
		There are so many groups and scientists that have funded from one end or another, that it really muddies the water and confuses things instead of helping humanity figure out exactly what we can or cannot or should or should not do.
		It's a shame, really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're originally from Canada, even though you're in Norway, so you might want to say a good word or two about William Shatner.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Much more likely.
unidentified		I've heard a few stories about William Shatner.
		And anyway, that's a long story.
		I don't want to get into it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no kidding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You all haven't sent him down to spy on us, have you?
unidentified		No, actually, we sent Michael J. Fox down to spy on us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So how long are you going to be in Norway, and how do you like it there?
unidentified		Oh, I love it.
unidentified		It's just great.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was there a few years ago, and it is just beautiful.
unidentified		It's absolutely fabulous, especially when the snow starts falling.
		Everything's just completely snow-covered, and it's not oppressively cold, at least here in Oslo, because we've got the Gulf Stream coming to it.
		Just take away to the edge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For the moment, you have it.
		Now, I read a story before I last left because of my back about the Gulf Stream having slowed about 20% in the last X number of years.
		And if the Gulf Stream should ever stop, do you have any idea how much trouble England and a lot of Europe, even where you are, how much trouble you'd be in, how cold it would suddenly get?
unidentified		We would be in deep doo-doo.
		Yeah.
		And I know exactly the report you're talking about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you do?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're aware of that.
unidentified		Oh, absolutely.
		And I've discussed it with my colleagues here.
		And once again, it's the same thing because I catch on to some of this, in fact, by listening to your show.
		And I think, geez, I better check into the actual research.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Could this really be true?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then you check into it, and lo and behold, it is.
unidentified		It's bona fide research.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		The hard numbers are there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		And so I discuss the possibilities of my colleagues here.
		And, you know, oh, well, you know, it's not enough information.
		And I'm saying, look, you guys publish in nature, science, you know, highly rated journals similar kind of values.
		And this is published in a highly rated journal, and they're not paying attention to it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, when it gets cold enough to freeze their tires to the road, maybe they'll take notice.
		But that really could happen.
		I mean, the Gulf Stream moderates temperatures across Europe, and they're where you are as well.
		So, yeah, wild stuff, sir.
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I'm glad you've taken the time to research it.
		A lot of people listen to this, and they sort of mentally just slough it off, and you say, wow, that's amazing, or something, and they've forgotten it.
		Five minutes they're on to something else.
		But if the climate in our world is changing, this is something to pay serious attention to, very serious attention.
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		And I appreciate your efforts in broadcasting the public that, you know, whether, how much of a role man is playing, even if we're innocent, maybe we can do something about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe.
		I've got to run.
		We're at the end of this hour, so I've got to go.
unidentified		Thank you very much, Mr. Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stay warm in Oslo.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And good morning.
		I'm Arbell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
		Nanotechnology next.
unidentified		It is a night My body's weak I'm on the run No time to sleep I've got to rise I'd like to win the big wind.
		And I've got such a long way to go What's the longer you can make it to the border Make it close Take this place Off that strip Just for me Wanna take a ride?
		Well, call Art Bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may recharge at 1-775-727-1222.
		The wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
		And to recharge on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Artel on the Premier Radio Networks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is.
		Good morning, everybody.
		Do you remember that movie?
		And the title escapes me at the moment.
		But they shrunk a guy down in a submarine and injected him into somebody's body to travel the blood vessels and byways of the body and go in and fix something.
		It was the work of science fiction not very long ago.
		And I suppose in a way it still is, actually still is.
		But it suggests the world of nanotechnology, and that's the world we're about to explore with Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		Merkey, I guess it is.
		Merkel.
		Merkel is correct.
		Merkel, I hope.
		Dr. Merkel received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 79, where he, get this folks, co-invented public-key cryptography.
		Cryptography.
		Cryptography.
		In other words, the secret codes, I guess, that you can use.
		You can get on the internet now and use to keep your messages secret, even perhaps from the government.
		We'll ask about that.
		He joined Xerox PARC in 1988, where he pursued research in computational nanotechnology until 1999.
		He is now a principal fellow at Zivix, where he continues to pursue research in nanotechnology.
		He chaired the fourth and fifth Foresight Conferences on Nanotechnology, was co-recipient of the 1988 Heineman Prize for Nanotechnology for Theory, was co-recipient of ACM's, I believe it's Calicus Award for Theory and Practice, the 2000 RSA Award in Mathematics, and the IEEE Kobayashi Award, My My.
		Dr. Merkel has published and spoken extensively on this subject.
		tonight he will speak to you coming up in a moment you Dr. Merkel, welcome to the program.
		Thank you for having me.
		Oh, it's great to have you.
		Where are you physically located?
		Physically, I'm located in Sunnyvale.
		That's in the Bay Area out in California.
		That sounds about where you ought to be, I guess.
		Right in the heart of it all, huh?
		Pretty much.
		Oh, I should mention the movie you were trying to think of was Fantastic Voyage.
		That's the one.
		That's the one.
		They shrank that submarine down and Raquel Welch went out and was turning about.
		Yeah, they didn't shrink her, though.
		Well, everything was kept in proportion.
		In proportion, that's right.
		That's really not nanotechnology, of course, but it is, I don't know, it suggests small devices.
		Well, it suggested, I mean, basically, we will be able to have small molecular machines that we could inject into the circulatory system.
		Obviously, that's not something we have today, so we're talking a few decades before we get this.
		But at some point in the future, we will be able to inject small devices that can float around and zap the bad things and fix things up in various ways.
		Now, these are actually machines, aren't they?
		These would be machines.
		They'd be molecular machines.
		And there are obviously a lot of ways you can design molecular machines.
		Well, I don't even know one.
		I mean, first of all, I don't understand.
		To me, a machine is gears and metal and moving parts and stuff like that.
		But that's not the kind of machine you're really talking about, is it?
		Well, we're talking about machines made out of atoms.
		Atoms.
		And, of course, that's what everything is made out of.
		I mean, all the stuff around you is made out of atoms, and all the manufactured products we see are made out of atoms.
		And I should probably give your listeners a feel for how small an atom is.
		How small is an atom?
		It's really small.
		Well, your arm is about a meter long.
		Right.
		And if you take a thousand times smaller than your arm, you're down to one millimeter.
		Right.
		Which is small, but you can still see it.
		It's not Not good as an arm, though.
		It's pretty small at that point.
	If you go down a thousand times again, you hit a micrometer.
	Now, a micrometer is so small you can't see it, but if you use the best optical microscope, you'd barely be able to see it.
	Go down a thousand times again, and you're down to a nanometer, and a nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
	Now, that's where we get the name nanotechnology, which is what we're talking about tonight.
	And an atom is just a little bit smaller than a nanometer.
	You can fit a few atoms in a nanometer.
	That's about the size scale we're talking about.
	All right.
	Well, here's what I don't understand.
	Maybe you can find language to make me understand this.
	I understand how small this is.
	It's so small that nobody can see it, really.
	Certainly not with a microscope, anyway, correct?
	Absolutely not.
	Absolutely not.
	All right, so then with an optical microscope, I should say.
	Okay.
	So how do you, in any way, that I could, that I can't imagine, manipulate these small things into something that will be a functioning machine to do anything at all?
unidentified		Well, think of it, well, think of it this way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are elements, there are atoms, and nature has given us the periodic table, a hundred basic elements.
		It includes carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen.
		And think of those little things as building blocks, sort of like Lego blocks.
		And this isn't a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.
		And today, we really don't have the ability to arrange those fundamental building blocks exactly the way we want.
		In any way at all, really, right?
		Well, we can arrange them.
		I mean, chemistry does arrange atoms, and it does a pretty good job of making small, precise things.
		But we don't have the ability to build things.
		I mean, think of it this way.
		Suppose you were trying to build stuff, and you weren't allowed to use your hands.
		You had to shake things around.
		You had to have them bump around.
		And they had to sort of somehow assemble into the thing you wanted to build.
		Now, that's what chemistry is doing today.
		If you want to make something in a test tube, you pour molecules into that test tube and you shake it around.
		And if you've been clever, and chemists are amazing at this stuff, if you've been clever, then the atoms will arrange into molecules that you want.
		They'll arrange themselves into things that are useful and interesting.
		I know, but that's the old-fashioned.
		No hand.
		Yeah, but still, it's the old-fashioned pour this into this and they mix and interesting things happen.
		Fine, but I don't see how you get from there to actual manipulation of things that are that small to put them together.
		What would you need?
		What kind of tools would you need?
unidentified		You need really small hands.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's the way to do it.
		Well, actually, you know, a lot of people back before about 1981 thought that the idea of manipulating, picking up and looking at and moving individual atoms was just crazy.
		But then two guys made something called the scanning tunneling microscope.
		And it lets you actually touch and see, if I can use that word, and move individual atoms.
		Now, what it is, it's really just a very, very, very sharp stick.
		And if you have a really, really, really sharp stick, then the atom at the end of the stick can be brought right up to a surface.
		You're telling me there's actually a tool you can use?
		There's actually a tool you can use, and people have arranged atoms with it.
		Now, we're just beginning to do it.
		We're just beginning to learn how to arrange atoms.
		But it's pretty clear where things are going.
		We're going to be able to arrange atoms better and better as time goes on.
		And in the coming years, in the coming decades, we'll learn how to put those atoms together like you'd put Lego blocks together.
		Well, you know.
		That's going to really make a remarkable change.
		Who right now, but this is almost the stuff of science fiction.
		You know, William Shatner ought to be here right now.
		It's almost science fiction to most people, and you have to wonder where the money is coming from to fund all of this.
		Who is supporting this?
		Is it private industry now or is government, is the DOD involved?
		Who's involved in it?
		The answer is yes.
		Nanotechnology, this idea of arranging atoms has got everybody's interest.
		The government has a national nanotechnology initiative, which is funded at half a billion dollars a year.
		Oh.
		And it looks like that's going to go up.
		We're seeing funding by a lot of major companies, IBM, Hewlett-Packard.
		A lot of the major players in the computer industry are very interested in this because it'll let them make better computers.
		Well, they're about to hit a wall at some point.
		Do you believe they are?
		I mean, there you are in Silicon Valley.
		At some point, instead of doubling processor speeds every 18 months, they're bound to hit some kind of wall with conventional technology, aren't they?
		Well, everyone says we're going to hit a wall, and as we shrink the circuit sizes down smaller and smaller, at some point, what we're using, I mean, we're using optical lithography right now, that's going to run out of steam.
		It won't let us build those small circuits.
		We'll have to switch over to something else.
		Do you think we're going to hit that wall before technology allows us to continue so that the 18-month cycle, you know, is endless virtually?
		Well, you know, a lot of people have forecast that we would fall off that path.
		We wouldn't hit Moore's Law, which is what you're talking about, this idea that things keep getting smaller and smaller.
		They get half the, we double the number of transistors we can put onto a circuit every 18 months or so.
		And we still are on Moore's Law.
		It's really remarkable.
		That law has been going on now for decades, and it still hasn't run out of steam.
		So I'd be a little hesitant to predict that we're going to fall off anytime soon.
		But it's real clear that the things we're doing now, the manufacturing methods we're using now, are going to have to change.
		We're going to have to adopt some new post-lithographic technology at some point in the coming years to keep that remarkable progress going, to let us build computers where the switches and the logic gates reach the ultimate limits in size, where they reach down right into the molecular range, so that we can build molecular computers.
		Can you imagine what they would be like, what the speeds would be like, if we could build molecular computers?
		Is there any reference you can use today to describe as compared to today's nice new 2 gig Pentium 4 or whatever, compared to what could be?
		Well, you could think of it this way.
		We'll be able to pack more computer power into the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the entire world today.
		Oh, my God.
		We're going to be able to pack something like almost a billion Pentiums into that volume.
		Holy man.
		And we're going to have a really astonishing amount of computer power.
		Now, I really want to convey the awesome power we're talking about.
		It will be so powerful.
		We will be able to run Windows 2015.
		Amazing things that will happen.
		You know, I've even heard speculation that if time travel is ever to be possible, it may take a molecular computer that somehow or another, a molecular computer might be able to move or actually be in several dimensions at one time.
		There are a number of very distinguished physicists, theoretical physicists who are talking about this now.
		Well, I'll have to take a pass on that one.
		I just study how atoms can be arranged.
		So getting into the physics of it gets a little bit beyond what I'm comfortable talking about.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, with regard to funding, our government does not fund things quite the way private industry does.
		Their goals are different.
		And I'm sure that there is a great positive side to nanotechnology, and I'm sure there's probably a negative side too.
		And I just have this feeling the government would be initially more interested, perhaps, in the negative side.
		Well, right now, I think a lot of the funding is at the very basic science level.
		So we find NSF, the National Science Foundation, deeply interested.
		We also find a lot of other governmental organizations.
		I think right now, we really don't know exactly what this new technology is going to be able to do.
		And so there's a lot of basic research going on to figure out what it is and what we can do with it.
		I think everyone's in agreement we're going to be able to build better computers.
		So there are a lot of people putting a lot of bucks on it to do the research to build better computers, to keep the computer hardware revolution going.
		Well, Doctor, this may be out of your, away from your field as well, too.
		But there you are in the middle of Silicon Valley.
		If we build computers that good, you know, I suppose this will even brush up against religion in a way, but at some point with so much speed, an unimaginable amount of speed and storage capability, you begin to approach and pass the human brain in capability.
		And aren't you at some point going to get an aware computer, a computer that is aware of itself?
		There are a couple of things you can look at.
		First off, you can ask how much computer power does the human brain have.
unidentified		Good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've seen a couple of estimates of that.
		And you know that number, it's an impressive number, but it is finite.
		And it looks as though if things keep going, we're going to have computers that have more raw computational power than the human brain.
		How much do we have?
		Is there any comparison you can give me that we would understand?
		Well, basically, if you have 10 to the 13th operations a second, I believe that was one estimate of the computational power of the human brain, then that would be roughly what the human brain could do, and that is 10 trillion operations a second.
		Now, when you go down and buy your computer, you get a gigahertz computer.
		That's about a factor of 10,000 slower.
		So we're not quite there yet, but we're getting there.
		And at the rate at which computer hardware keeps improving, we're going to have that kind of power, the raw power of the human brain, in another decade or two or three.
		And then you get into a question of price tag.
		Okay, you can build a big computer, a supercomputer that has that kind of power, but can you have a desktop computer that has the raw computational power of the human brain?
		And I've been ducking one question here.
		I've been saying raw computational power.
		Yes.
		The next question is, how do you program it?
		And there's a lot of discussion about that.
		I think if we have a lot of raw computational power, several orders of magnitude more raw computational power than the human brain, then it ought to make the problem of programming computers so that they are acting intelligent in some sense a lot easier.
		Well, do we want them acting intelligently?
		And by that, I mean, maybe this is hard for you to discuss, but I'm not sure what consciousness really is.
		And it's a thing that everybody argues about, but at some point, doesn't computational power and storage equal eventual awareness?
		Well, there are a lot of philosophical arguments about that.
		People have really vigorous opinions, and I have to confess, I usually cop out.
		I ask people how they define consciousness.
		Right.
		And I say, look, if you'll define consciousness, then I'll try to answer the question of whether a computer is or is not conscious.
		All right, my best shot is self-awareness.
		Well, the reason that I say define consciousness, of course, is that it's very, very hard to define it.
		Is self-awareness consciousness?
		I mean, have we got a circular definition here?
		I'm aware of my own existence.
		Are you not?
		You're aware of your existence.
		Well, if mere awareness is the criteria, then you can have a computer that would be aware of its existence, and I think we could have a computer that was aware of its existence in some sense that was definitely unconscious.
		So a computer could be aware of its existence if it was simply platting its way across a room, and it wouldn't have to be aware in any deep or profound sense.
		All right.
		I can duck that one real easy.
		Yeah, I hear that.
		Doctor, hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour, and we'll be right back.
		I think that's my definition of consciousness.
unidentified		what's yours Strange words as I will make foolish people do.
		Another dream that I have another dream that I come with you.
		Oh, yeah.
		Wanna take a ride?
		Call our bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, everybody.
		Dr. Merkel is with us.
		Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		And we're talking about nanotechnology and right now about molecular computers.
		Computers so powerful and so small that right now they're virtually unimaginable and yet they're actually on the horizon.
		We'll get right back to Dr. Merkel.
		Maybe things like emotion and envy and ego are products of computational power, Doctor?
		Well, I think there's a fair argument that says that's true.
		I know that a lot of researchers in artificial intelligence are of the opinion that an appropriately programmed computer would be conscious, would be aware, and all of the other good things.
		Whether or not that's true in some ultimate sense is debated vigorously by philosophers and others.
		I take it that your take on this is it probably is not true.
		In other words, you mentioned we could have an intelligent computer that would not be conscious or wouldn't perhaps not be conscious.
		You could have intelligence without consciousness, and depending on exactly what consciousness is, presumably you could have consciousness without intelligence.
		One might argue that there are people who demonstrate this today, but that's obviously not a deep philosophical argument.
		Yes.
		How far away, in practical terms, might we be?
		I know that we move very quickly, and sometimes we take big jumps.
		Could we take a sudden jump that would put us faster than we imagine into this world?
		Well, it's always possible things will move more rapidly than expected, and they might move more slowly than expected.
		I actually have an entire webpage devoted to not answering the question of how long it will take to develop this technology.
		But I think mostly when you talk with people, they give answers of a few decades, 10, 20, 30 years at ballpark.
		And I think if we're looking at the more dramatic developments in nanotechnology, that that's a fair assessment.
		Now, others will say, of course, that we already have some aspects of nanotechnology today, so we're seeing things moving forward.
		Indeed, and we're about to cover one of those.
		Your website, I take it, is the foresight.org website?
		Foresight.org is the website of the Foresight Organization.
		Foresight's motto is Preparing for Nanotechnology.
		All right.
		We've got a link to that on my website for anybody who wants to go up there, artbell.com under Program Tonight's Guest Info, and you'll be there now.
		Terrorism, we are currently, as you well know, facing this weird terrorist threat.
		We used to worry about nuclear bombs mostly, and there's still a worry.
		However, the little things are beginning to get more of a worry, and by little things I mean this biological threat.
		Bad as anthrax is, it's a local problem, basically a local problem.
		But if you set something loose that is capable of replicating itself like the flu virus or something of that order, then you have a worldwide, perhaps a worldwide problem and a very serious worldwide problem, something that could even wipe out all of humanity.
		And I am told that there are nanotechnological solutions presently actually developed that would go after nasty little organisms and destroy them, eat them up.
		Is that something you know?
		It depends on what you mean by nanotechnology.
		Certainly there are pharmaceuticals which have been developed using buckyballs and other things that are normally associated with early aspects of nanotechnology.
		If you ask, where is nanomedicine going?
		Do we have molecular machines That we can inject that deal with things like anthrax or other invading bacterial or menaces.
		We don't have them yet, but at some point we will.
		I mean, we're talking about technology that is going to be developed over the next few decades, I think, within the lifetime of most of the people listening to this program.
		So, I think it will be of interest to get this technology moving and to get the technology in place so that we can use it to prevent things like infections, things like anthrax, and other concerns that people have.
		If we have the ability to respond to and eliminate from the system invading bacteria, we can keep people healthy.
		Is it easier to engineer a bacteria than it is to engineer a defense against a bacteria?
		Well, I think we've seen a lot of cases where engineering defenses against natural problems can be easier or it can be more difficult.
		It's hard to say exactly what's going on.
		Certainly, the defenses that have been considered, the kind of molecular machines that have been considered, look like they'll take a while to develop.
		If you ask, what about the long-term capabilities, if you ask what happens if you want to defend against an attack, then we see examples from history where new technologies have been either advantageous for the defense or the offense.
		Castles, for example.
		Castles are easy to defend and they're hard to attack until you have gunpowder, which makes it easy to attack the castle.
		Or nuclear weapons.
		Nuclear weapons are obviously advantageous for the offense.
		Something pervasive like electric power, it's a little bit difficult to say whether that gives the advantage to the offense or the defense.
		Electricity is something that's advantageous for both sides, and you would think that it wouldn't, it's not clear whether you really get an advantage for either one.
		Now, nanotechnology is still in an early stage of development.
		We're still looking at the kind of capabilities.
		But right now, I have to say that it's something that we can probably defend against more effectively if we have it than if we don't.
		And let me give you an analogy here.
		We've always had new technologies.
		Fire was a new technology at one point.
		When that first caveman came out and he had fire, he could burn down a forest, and that was really dangerous.
		Sure.
		But we've learned how to deal with fire.
	We have fire departments.
	We have fire extinguishers.
	We know what it is.
	We know how to gain the benefits while controlling the risks.
	And I think that's true for all the technologies that we've developed, and I think it will be true for nanotechnology.
	We have a lot of bad wildfires out here in the West, Doctor, that get way out of hand and burn and burn and burn and burn.
	And we've got to keep them under control.
	So we control things, and we control a lot of it, but we don't control all of it.
	And with gray, you know, I've talked to a couple of other people in your field, and I know, I think I know what gray goo is.
unidentified		Ooh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gray goo, yeah.
		Well, gray goo is interesting.
		Grey goo is neither gray nor goo.
		It's the idea that you could design something, an artificial device, that would be self-replicating, and you would design it to replicate in a natural environment.
		And if you design it that way, then it could replicate unchecked and cause untold damage, overcome the planet, and cause, well, awful damage.
		It would virtually turn everything into some kind of goo as it went.
		It would spread unchecked.
		In fact, it would spread, I suppose, exponentially, wouldn't it?
		That's right.
		Well, that's what happens when you have replicating systems.
		can increase very rapidly.
		Now, of course, when you look at that...
		Would it be instructed to take all material, metal, rubber, wood?
		Well, it's hard to do, you know.
		I mean, when you look at it, biological systems, which replicate in a natural environment, biological systems are really pretty amazing.
		And it's pretty hard to make things that are able to replicate in a natural environment.
		Think of it this way.
		Cars and horses both provide transportation.
		Now, a horse can live off the land.
		It can eat straw and carrots and grass and potatoes and sugar lumps and hay and everything.
		But a car, a car can only use gasoline, a single source of refined energy.
		If you feed it a sugar lump, it stops working real fast.
		Yes, it does.
		So when we design things, when we design gadgets and we build gadgets, they don't have the adaptability of biological systems.
		They don't have this marvelous capability.
		Not today's gadgets.
		Not today's gadgets and not the gadgets that I think anyone would want to build if they have half a sense.
		Now, that gets into another question.
		Well, but we obviously live in a world where there are plenty of people without that sense.
		You and I both know it's true.
		Well, what you need to do at that point is say, how do you defend against that?
		How do you block that?
		How do you detect it at an early stage?
		And again, you have to say, if this technology is powerful, it's a new and powerful technology, how do you develop it safely?
		Which actually the Foresight Institute has been thinking about for quite a while.
		Well, how do you?
		Well, the Foresight guidelines have been discussing exactly that.
		I think one of the things that will happen is that people will start developing systems.
		How do I put it?
		Artificial systems.
		Getting an artificial system to replicate in a very controlled environment is going to be very, very hard.
		This is difficult.
		We're not looking at a technology which we're going to be able to develop in the next few years, the next decade, Or probably even 20 years.
		It's going to take a while to get this kind of technology going.
		And when we do have replicating technology, it's very unlikely to bear any resemblance to biological systems.
		It's sort of like thinking that cars are going to resemble horses.
		It's the idea of a car running wild in the woods and sucking sap from trees doesn't make sense.
		And it doesn't make sense because it's really hard to design a system that will operate in the natural world and respond to the complex environment in a constructive way.
		It'll keep functioning.
		So theoretically, gray goo is possible, isn't it?
		It's theoretically possible.
		It would take a lot of work.
		Someone would have to sit down and systematically think about it.
		And when you look at what would be involved, it's hard.
		Then you start to say, how do you prevent that?
		And obviously, the kind of thing you would look at would be how you detect such things early on.
		As I said, we have fire extinguishers.
		We have fire departments.
		Yes, but Professor, even if somebody didn't set out to make grey goo, as nanotechnology proceeds, there would be any number of things that could be very much grey-goo-like that could get away from the developers very, very, very easily.
		I don't think so.
		In other words, we're used to thinking of self-replication in the context of living systems.
		And living systems have evolved over billions of years to deal with the natural environment.
		If you are building a system, one of the first things that you do, well, let's give something, give a specific thing here.
		Living systems, biological systems, cells, have DNA.
	They have their own blueprints on board.
	Instructions, yeah.
	Instructions, exactly.
	Now, when you think about it, if you're building something, you don't want to have a hard time changing what it is you're building.
	You want to change what you're building right now.
	If you have a tree, a tree grows from a seed and it builds a tree.
	But suppose, instead of building a tree, you get a new order in, you want to build something else.
	You want to give new instructions.
	So one of the architectures for replication is what's called the broadcast architecture.
	And in that architecture, the actual device, the machines themselves, don't have their own blueprints.
	It's literally the case.
	They don't have the instructions.
	Those devices follow the orders.
	They follow the instructions they're given from outside.
	You broadcast the instructions to them, and they do as they're told.
	Now, if you flush that device down the toilet, it's cut off from its broadcast of instructions, and it doesn't work.
	It simply can't function.
	And it's economically advantageous to do that because that's what you want to do if you're manufacturing.
	You want to build something that can be readily told to build shoes instead of boxes.
	All right, so something like that would be possible.
	You could create something in the nanotechnological world that would virtually build shoes and take computers or whatever it is that you might want, almost like Star Trek, almost a replicator.
	In fact, this science is leading toward that, isn't it?
	A replicator.
	Well, basically, we are leading towards the ability to manufacture most arrangements of atoms that are consistent with physical law.
	So, okay, the replicator has a bunch of snazzy features that we don't have right now.
	It's awfully fast.
	I don't know how to build things that quickly.
	But we will have the ability to flexibly manufacture a lot of things.
	Think about, well, a copier or a printer.
	Better yet, a printer.
	A printer is a device that makes marks on paper.
	And you can send in a stream of bits to the printer, and the printer will produce any set of marks on paper you want.
	Correct.
	Now, it used to be back in the Middle Ages that producing marks on paper was really hard and really laborious, and you had to do it by hand, and it was painstaking.
	And now we think nothing of just printing out masses of stuff because we have this device that can receive a stream of instructions and produce this output, this printed object.
	Now, suppose we had a greater degree of flexibility in that process.
	Suppose instead of a stream of instructions of putting marks on paper, it was a stream of instructions that said, here is an arrangement of atoms that I want you to build.
	Here are a series of instructions on how to build a thing.
	So you have a thing maker that will manufacture stuff.
	That device would be very useful.
	It would let us manufacture things.
	It would let us manufacture a wide range of products.
	And it would be quite useful.
	Well, that's going to be the first line of replicator.
	In other words, it's not going to replicate anything.
	It's going to have specific instructions to make one thing.
	That's going to be the first thing, I suppose, that comes along.
	But eventually, that would lead to a replicator kind of technology.
	It would certainly be on the way, wouldn't it?
	Well, it would lead to a manufacturing base where you could have devices that could make more manufacturing systems.
	So you'd have the ability to rapidly expand what you've made.
	Well, looking at all powerful technologies, they have two sides.
	And anything that would be positive, very positive and powerful on one side, would be negative and dangerous on the other side.
	Or it could be certainly made to be so by those who wished it so, right?
	Well, all new technologies have been used for weapons.
	And I think we can reasonably expect that this new technology will also be used to build weapons.
	What kind of weapons do you imagine could be constructed using this technology?
	Well, one of the things going on here is that we'll be able to build lighter and stronger devices.
	So we'll be able to build lighter and stronger systems of all types.
	We'll be able to build more powerful computers.
	So if we have more powerful computers, we can use those.
	We could have smart bullets.
	If you had a Cray computer in a bullet, then it would obviously have a much better guidance system, a much better ability to move forward.
	So we can imagine a lot of conventional weapon systems that are built using better materials, better products.
	And then, of course, there are, well, when you have a new technology, you also get new kinds of systems that you hadn't quite thought of before.
	It's a little more difficult to describe those because, of course.
	Yes, but for example, in the medical world, Doctor, couldn't you virtually instruct something to go out and kill all people with blue eyes?
	That would be a little bit difficult right now.
	I don't know quite how I'd program that one.
	didn't say right now but certainly one of the things We're looking at new technologies, and one of the things you have to remember is that as we develop this new technology, we'll want to develop the capabilities of the good guys first.
	Because if you look at new technologies, they can be very scary.
	Fire or gunpowder.
	But you would not deny gunpowder.
	They were concerned.
	You wouldn't deny that what I just said may be possible in a future nanotechnological world, would you?
	You could target people of certain ethnicity and virtually have a nanotechnological genocidal feast.
	Gee, that sounds pretty bad.
	It sounds pretty bad.
	I think we should start developing defensive technologies very soon.
	So in other words, you acknowledge that the negative side of this technology could contain these kinds of dangers.
	Well, with a powerful technology, you have a lot of possibilities you have to be prepared for.
	And I think this technology is one where we need to think about things.
	Yeah, I'm just looking at the present state of the world and saying not a whole lot is probably going to change.
	There will be bad people in the world as it goes forth.
	And if they had the ability to eliminate or to conduct genocide with that kind of technology, they'd do it.
	Doctor, hold on.
	We're at the top of the hour.
	My guest is Dr. Merkel.
	And Dr. Ralph Merkel, and we're talking about very little things.
	Very, very, very little things.
unidentified		Saturday night I was downtown Welcome for my happy eyes Sending in a mail for big men With a bottle of power Proof that booze on my website For the people who are doing wrong It's about a call of a DA man While I'm told that's almost a unique song I
		tried to give you, was amazing Call our bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		My guest is Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		We're talking about nanotechnologies.
		Little bitty things that will change our world, turn it totally upside down.
		That will happen.
		We'll get right back to him.
		Once again, Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		Doctor, welcome back.
		Thank you.
		Okay.
		You seem to be, as I listen to you, kind of a defender of the gentler side of nanotechnology, thinking that it's really not going to get that much out of our hands, that there are ways to defend against that which man would do that would not be good, and that overall it's going to be better than it is dangerous.
		Historically, it's certainly the case that as we have looked at new technologies, we have developed ways to understand them and ways to deal with them, and ways to contain the risks and ways to gain the benefits.
		I think that on this new technology, we would be wise to understand the technology and as we understand it, to investigate what the benefits are and what the concerns are and how to deal with the risks and make sure that those risks are controlled by basically careful investigation of the possibilities.
		And the good guys, right?
		And the good guys, yes.
		This is a technology where I think it would be advantageous to have development by the good guys, as you call them, earlier on.
		So I think it would be a good thing, for example, if we were to develop and understand this technology in the democratic countries of the world and to realize what it was and to not only gain the benefits, but I also think also understand how to develop the defensive capability.
		So we should have it before Saddam.
		Another way to put it.
		Yes, I think that would be a very good idea.
		What about the positive applications?
		Cancer, heart attacks, heart problems, cholesterol in our system that we have various ways we try to reduce it.
		Couldn't there be little teeny-weeny machines made that would go and basically do a rotor-router job on you?
		Well, there are a whole bunch of applications of nanomedicine, and if you look around, you find that the opportunities are immense.
		Let's take heart attacks as an example.
		Today, if you have a heart attack, well, things progress rather rapidly, and there's very limited time to deal with it.
		The primary problem, of course, is that oxygen is not getting to the tissues.
		Now, right now, your red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to your tissues.
		They soak up carbon dioxide and they carry that carbon dioxide back to the lungs Where you exhale it.
		If we could build an artificial red blood cell, we could do a better job if that artificial red blood cell could carry more oxygen.
		Now, as it happens, there's a proposal which has been published which would have artificial red blood cells that basically would be very small spheres.
		They'd hold compressed oxygen at about 1,000 atmospheres.
		And you would inject perhaps 10 cc of these into the body.
		A few tens of cc would provide you with enough oxygen for perhaps an hour.
		And if you had these devices injected prophylactically, suppose you were at risk for a heart attack.
		Sure.
		You could have these injected.
		And then if you should have a heart attack, your first response would not be to collapse on the floor.
		Your first response would be, oh, my heart has stopped.
		And the reason you could have that response is that those artificial red blood cells, which have so much more oxygen than ordinary red blood cells, would now be releasing that oxygen into your tissues to keep the tissues functioning and buy time.
		That would be something.
		Oh, wow.
		My heart is stopping.
		That would be great.
		And then you'd call up your doctor and say, hey, Doc, my heart stopped.
		What should I do?
		And he'd say, see you in an emergency room.
		See you in three weeks.
		I hope not.
		I don't think these devices would hold you that long.
		No, no, no.
		Buy you a little time, yes, but three weeks, that would be a bit of a strategy.
		But that really could come to pass.
		In other words, your system, your brain and all parts of your body would continue to get oxygen even though your heart had stopped.
		So basic bodily functions would continue.
		Exactly.
		You'd buy time.
		You'd buy enough time to get to the emergency room.
		You'd buy enough time for the doctor to examine you, to look at you, to see what was going on, to fix up whatever the problem was.
		Wow.
		And that's rather a remarkable thing.
		Now, that's just one of the things that nanomedicine promises.
		That's one of the capabilities that's likely to occur again.
		It's a few decades away, but for all of you folks out there who expect to be around for a few more decades, this is something that you could benefit from.
		What about cancer?
	cancer is the out of control growth of cellular material, right?
	It's like gray goo in your body.
	It's bad stuff.
	Well, here you just inject something.
	Here the idea is you need to identify the cancer cells.
	Now, it's hard to identify cancer cells because they're your own cells gone bad.
	But there are ways of doing it.
	They're subtle chemical differences.
	They produce slightly different proteins.
	And in fact, people have tried to identify cancer cells by zeroing in on one particular protein they make.
	It hasn't been as successful as desired so far.
	But if you could inject a device, a nano device, that would monitor several different chemicals, that could have a small onboard computer, and by small I mean really small.
	We're talking very tiny here.
	If that device could monitor a number of different chemicals and also could tell where it was in the body, then it would be able to not only say, gee, this pattern fits the pattern of a cancer cell, it's also in the right location for the cancer cell, and then it could remove the cancer cell.
	That would let us use pinpoint precision in identifying and removing cancer, and as a consequence, we should be able to convert cancer, which is a horrible killer, into something that could be dealt with by a visit to the doctor's office.
	Well, as I've always understood it, we begin dying not that long after we begin living.
	In other words, for a while we generate more cells than I think we need or whatever.
	Anyway, a lot of new cells are generated when we're babies, but then as we get a little older, we begin losing more than we're gaining.
	Well, basically, the programming in your body doesn't quite work quite right as you get older.
	The DNA starts to get damaged, and the programming of that DNA starts to lose track of whether it's a liver cell or a skin cell or a gut cell.
	Right.
	And things just don't work so good.
	Now, pretty clearly, we're making major advances in medicine today, and as we look down the road a few decades, we're going to have further advances, so I think we're going to have longer, healthier lifespans in the future.
	And nanotechnology could contribute mightily to this?
	Could there really get to be a point where, with help from nanotechnology, we could regenerate more than we lose, virtually staying alive either for very long periods or even ultimately indefinitely?
	Well, basically, there'll always be accidents.
	I mean, if you drive around in a car, there are going to be certain problems you can't fix up.
	But basically, there's no particular reason to say that, you know, today things are so bad that the whole system is going to fall apart if you have an understanding of the basic molecular and cellular issues and if you have the tools with which to address the damage at the molecular and the cellular level, which is the fundamental cause not only of aging, but also of most disease processes.
	So that would lead to good health.
	Don't we have these things called telomeres, which are sort of, I don't know, little clocks that are telling us when to deteriorate and so forth and so on.
	And when we run out of, when they get shorter and shorter and shorter, finally we die.
	Well, one of the theories of aging is exactly what you say, which is that the DNA in our cells shortens a little bit every time the cell replicates.
	And there is an enzyme which puts that little bit back when that enzyme functions.
	And pretty obviously, that enzyme has to function in the germline.
	In other words, the germline lives forever.
	So there has to be something that puts the ends of the chromosomes back on.
	But that something doesn't apply to the cells in your body.
	Now there's research going on now to try and figure out would it be possible to put that little bit back?
	Could we extend the cells in your body and give them a little bit of an edge?
	Now there's a little bit of a problem of course because as you let the cells in the body live a few more generations, it might be that this is a cancer defense.
	So it might be that this is a way of preventing cancers from growing uncontrolled.
	Something, a cell which is damaged, as long as this clock, as long as this counter is still intact, a damaged cell would replicate a few more generations and then stop.
	Isn't cancer in its own way immortal?
	I mean, cancers are immortal, and I think that's precisely the point.
	For a cancer cell to become a cancer cell, it has to evade the control of this telomerase.
	It has to evade the control of the shortening of the DNA.
	Yes, there you are.
	So there's a little bit of a concern here.
	Obviously, if you make your cells in your body live longer by letting them replicate, does that then make you more prone to cancer?
	So there's a fine line to be drawn there, and people are still looking at it to figure out exactly what's going on.
	But certainly as we gain a better understanding of how the body works, and as we gain tools with which to fix things that are going wrong, we should be able to extend lifespan.
	And ultimately, there's no reason why there should be any fixed limit.
	there's no reason why there should be perhaps people would live in a kind of damage that is utterly irreparable other than as you point out the old mack truck accidents and Well, I certainly hope I'll be able to live as long as I want to live.
	Is there any possibility, Doctor, that these things will begin to occur in our lifetimes, for those of us that have hopefully a few more decades available?
	Well, certainly it's possible.
	Things are moving along at a fairly brisk whip in the research community.
	And of course, if you don't quite have the developments happening as rapidly as we might hope, if we reach a point where, well, it looks like the technology will be developed a little bit after you need it, then there is another alternative.
	And that alternative is cryonics.
	Cryonics.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you know about cryonics?
		now i i've interviewed uh...
		a few people uh...
		over actually involved in crannix now that they have been there uh...
		business uh...
		frozen heads and uh...
		frozen Well, I'm signed up with Alcor.
		Oh, you are?
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So when you die, are you going for the full package or just the head package?
		Well, I'm signed up for Neuro because two reasons.
		First off, it costs less.
		And secondly, the technology which is required to reverse all the freezing injury is going to be able to replace any missing tissue with the obvious exception of the human brain.
		That you want to keep and you want to repair.
		Then what are you signed up for?
		So I'm signed up for neuron.
		The head.
		Cryonics, yes.
		They're just going to freeze your head.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And why?
		That's one hell of a thing.
		The essential thing you want to preserve is, of course, the brain.
		The brain.
		That's a hell of a decision to have made.
		And I would be really interested to know how did you come to that decision?
		It's really easy.
		Think about it this way.
unidentified		There are two possible courses of action.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You can either sign up or you don't sign up.
		And there are two possible states of the universe.
		Either this is going to work or it's not.
		Now, if you don't sign up or if it doesn't work, well, we know the outcome in that case.
		If you do sign up and it does work, then you will have a very long and very healthy life in a very technologically advanced future.
		We know it will be technologically advanced because we know that we require advanced technology Yes.
		As long as we don't blow ourselves to smithereens with this technology, then we will indeed have an advanced world 100, 500, 1,000 years ago.
		Pretty much by definition, if you wake up, we figured out how to deal with all of the problems.
		If not, you'll never wake up.
		You'll never wake up.
		So your head will be separated from your body how soon after you physically pass?
		Well, now that's an interesting question.
		There is this concept of legal death.
		You cannot be cryonically suspended until your paperwork is in place.
		You're legally declared dead.
		That's right.
		But the relationship between a legal declaration of death and death by current medical criteria is already a little bit loose.
		It can be, well, for example, if you say do not resuscitate.
		Yes.
		What that means is I don't want current medical technology to be applied.
		No heroics.
		No heroics, even if it could revive me for a little bit.
		I don't want that.
		Now, when we think about where medical technology is going in the future, 100 years from now, I think we'll have a very different definition of death.
		May I ask you a hard question?
		You're good at evading them, so let's see how you do with this one.
		If you had the ability to instruct your physicians that you wished, at your command, to be cryogenically separated from your head.
		Have your head separated and cryonically preserved prior to clinical death.
		If you were legally able to instruct them in that manner, would you do so?
		Well, that would depend on the circumstances.
		Obviously, if I'm terminally ill and I have no other alternatives available, then I would prefer to start the procedure a little bit before.
		A little early.
		Right, exactly.
		Because obviously, if you start early, then that makes things a whole lot easier and improves the impact of the whole process.
		That's right.
		In other words, your brain doesn't go through oxygen deprivation as people scramble around and you've got a much better chance if it all works.
		Precisely.
		So you would instruct them, you say, though.
		Do you think we're getting closer to a time when legally you'll be able to do that?
		I think it's pretty likely we are.
		Obviously, we have the Death with Dignity Initiative in Oregon.
		And if someone has the legal right to decide that they should end their life, then certainly it would be reasonable to give someone the legal right to try and save their life using this particular technique.
		So if you had some sort of fatal disease and you would come to that point, would you, since you've already signed up, would you pursue that legally and try to go to court?
		It would depend on the legal circumstances and on the conditions.
		Obviously, the closer this comes and the more favorable legal conditions, the more likely that one would pursue that.
		There might be other aspects of it that would argue against it.
		It's going to be expensive.
		It's going to require work.
		And also it requires, well, when you're terminally ill, sometimes you don't have the stamina to go through that kind of thing.
		So there are a number of factors.
		There was a case several years ago, someone who had...
		We're at the bottom of the arrow.
		We'll pick this up right on the other side, all right?
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stay right there.
		I'm already thinking of him in a sort of a detached way.
		I'm Art Beld.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
		And you can tell he is absolutely serious.
		Would you do it coming back a thousand years in the future?
unidentified		I'm missing a little girl, she's falling in love.
		Thank you.
		Reachart Bell in the Kingdom of Nine.
		From west of the Rockies, dial 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
		Or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
		To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with our bell on the Premier Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Ralph Merkel is my guest, and whoa, the things you find out as an interview progresses.
		He signed up for Bryonics when he passes.
		We're going to talk about that.
		It's absolutely fascinating to me, has been for a very long time.
		Stay right where you are.
		This is Coast to Coast AM raging through the nighttime.
		Once again, Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		Dr. Merkel, may I ask, are you married?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are?
		Absolutely.
		I'm really fascinated with the decision with regard to cryonics.
		Did you discuss it?
		Obviously, you must have with your wife.
		No, no, no, no, definitely.
		I discussed it with my wife.
		We both signed up.
		Oh, you both signed up?
		Oh, absolutely.
		Oh, okay.
		Well, that makes life easier.
		Absolutely.
		What people are very concerned about when I think about cryonics is they think, well, I'll wake up in this future era where there are no friends, no family, no one I know.
		That's right.
		And, of course, it helps if you have friends who are involved, who are signed up, who are going to be there.
		And quite a few of my friends are.
		Okay.
		That makes life a lot simpler.
		So it's been a big topic in circles you run in, I guess, huh?
		Well, it's certainly a topic that comes up, and a fair percentage of my friends are signed up, because when you look at it, think about the alternatives.
		Oh, yes.
		Well, listen, the issue of whatever fatal disease or what might be killing you that causes you to separate your head from your body and be frozen, aside for a second, the technology needed to resuscitate your brain in whatever manner you imagine it might be done in the future, when do you imagine, for example, that technology might first or reasonably be available?
		Well, now that's an even more difficult question than how long it will take to develop nanotechnology.
		Right.
		So it's clear that we're going to have to wait until after nanotechnology has been developed.
		We'll have to wait until after the medical applications have been explored and developed.
		And we'll have to wait for regulatory approval.
		So we're looking at quite a few decades down the road at that point.
		Oh, only decades.
		I would think so.
		A century is a long time.
		Well, think of what the world was like a century ago.
		Here it is, 1900.
		Suppose you went to someone in 1900 and you just started explaining what the world was like.
		Oh, you're right.
		Computers.
		Sure.
		Flying machines that take you from here to Europe and back.
		Right.
		Landing on the moon.
		Right.
		Oh, my gosh.
		Sure.
		And so if we project.
		could be right it could be only decades but even a century uh...
		i presume that uh...
		Would you reawaken as a brain operating independently of a body?
		Would you imagine?
		I certainly hope not.
		You would imagine.
		I should add, for those of your listeners who are a bit queasy, that yes, indeed, Alcor does also offer whole bodies, so you can take your choice on that.
		It's not really a major issue.
		No, that's right.
		It's just a money issue.
		I think the whole body thing is more expensive, isn't it?
		Yes.
		It's $120K for whole body.
		It's $50K for neuro, and typically you pay for it with life insurance.
		Right.
		And I suppose if you have planned properly, You could be financially way ahead of the game when you come back.
		Oh, absolutely.
		Benjamin Franklin, when he was dying, put £1,000 into an account in Philadelphia, another 1,000 pounds into an account in Washington, and 200 years later, they were worth millions of dollars.
		So just to give you an illustration of compound interest.
	Of course, he's not around to enjoy it.
	Well, there is that minor problem.
	Of course, he did say that he would prefer to an ordinary internment to be put into a cask of Madeira.
	He had observed that flies that were in Madeira got up later and went off.
	But he said, unfortunately.
	Yes, he actually did.
	And he said, unfortunately, the era that he was in was probably insufficiently advanced for that to work.
	But nonetheless, he would like to see what happened in this great experiment called the United States that he was deeply involved in.
	Right, then.
	How do you imagine yourself revived?
	In other words, as you project in your mind what technology might be in these decades or a century that might pass, would you awaken with a new body?
	Well, I would certainly hope so.
	That is, of course, the sort of the ordinary thing that one wants.
	One wants to have a body with two arms and two legs and things like that.
	It looks as though it is indeed possible for such bodies to be made.
	I mean, certainly it is feasible within the laws of physics for bodies to exist.
	Would they be made, Doctor, or grown?
	In other words, that's an interesting question.
	Essentially, at a fundamental level, we don't have to answer that question as long as we are sure that there is at least one approach that will work.
	Certainly, the advances in biotechnology suggest that the ability to grow individual organs or individual components could be extended to replace all the tissues that are needed.
	Alternatively, you could consider other methods such as replacing tissue by simply building it to order.
	That would require rather more advanced technology.
	But in essence, there are a range of possibilities.
	There are a lot of ways it could be done, and any one of those would be entirely satisfactory.
	Would you hate to get into this area, but I can't resist.
	Would you say that if it can be done, then it's okay with God?
	On the theological issue.
	Well, I think, you know, I'm not religious, so I really can't speak authoritatively on this.
	I sense that.
	But it's certainly the case that people who are religious are signed up, and in essence, they have a feeling that they are put here to do God's work.
	And if they can live for a longer period of time, if they can stay here longer than they have a duty, they can do more work.
	Because you can do better.
	And if you look at the various religions of the world, you usually find that suicide is viewed as a bad idea and staying alive and continuing to do the work that you were put on this earth for is a good thing.
	So I think, by and large, there is a lot of support in sort of the theological structure for this.
	And certainly if you talk with people who are involved in cryonics and who are religious, they find it to be a very good idea to live longer and continue to do the work.
	Do you personally doubt that we have immortal souls?
	Do you personally doubt that we have immortal souls?
	Well, again, if you will define a soul, I will undertake to decide whether or not there is one and whether it is going to be immortal.
	All right.
	For the purpose of this discussion, let's say something that allows you to continue with some form of consciousness following physical death.
	Well, you know, actually, it's interesting you talk about that because a number of the philosophers of artificial intelligence and consciousness actually are of the opinion that the description of your brain,
	the description of your mind in an information theoretic sense, is the essential element, and that if you can model that computationally, then that would be what you could call a soul.
	So if you define a soul in that way, and obviously this is a very specific definition of soul, but if you define a soul as the information content that fully describes your brain, then that could in some abstract sense exist independently of the physical structure of the brain and could be modeled computationally.
	So that whole area gets into a number of very interesting philosophical issues.
	Well, there was a story on 60 Minutes about a year ago or better in which some lady had a very dangerous balloon, I guess one of her blood vessels or veins in her brain was ballooned out and it was going to pop.
	And of course that would be the end of her.
	They had to operate.
	And what they did was they brought her body temperature way down.
	They removed all of her blood.
	All of her vitals stopped.
	Her heart stopped.
	Oxygen to the brain stopped.
	Everything stopped.
	And they kept her in that condition for 45 minutes while they opened her brain, fixed this egregious area, and then put her blood back in.
	And this lady reanimated.
	She came back alive.
	Actually, it's a procedure they use, not regularly, but it can be used and does work.
	And so for 40 or 45 minutes, this lady was dead.
	No, clinically dead.
	I mean, where did she go during this period?
	I mean, as you think about life and death, if you define death as a permanent Cessation of vital functions, then these reports of people who died and came back to life, how do I put it?
	If death is defined as a permanent cessation of vital functions, then fairly clearly any reports that someone died would have been greatly exaggerated.
	If someone walks up to you on the street and you talk with them and they say, oh, yes, and gee, I heard you were dead, and they say, well, no, that was a greatly exaggerated report.
	You have to sort of take that at face value because if someone is alive and healthy and talking with you, then presumably claims that they were dead at some point were exaggerated.
	I have talked to many such people, Doctor.
	Are you not somewhat intrigued by the consistency of the stories that are told by those who have experienced clinical death and returned?
	It's hard to know exactly what's going on there.
	Certainly that's not an area that I've studied, so I wouldn't move in and say, you know, this, that, or the other on that particular subject.
	But these are things that you must have contemplated since you're signed up for the cryogenic trip.
	Well, certainly in cryonic circles, there's a lot of discussion of what is it that you are preserving?
unidentified		What is it that makes a human a human being?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And clearly, if you physically preserve the structure of the brain, that will make most people, that will persuade most people, yes, that's something that if you preserve it and you can restore function, that is you, that is a preservation of a human life.
		As you go into more abstract issues, more and more people start to lose interest.
		So as you start to discuss, well, if you had loss of information, if you were to model things computationally, fewer and fewer people have an interest in that.
		So I think right now, the primary interest in cryonics, of course, is to define a common basis that provides a broad range of agreement.
		And if we preserve the physical structure of the brain, I think most people will say, yes, if you preserve the physical structure of the brain, if you restore the function of the brain, if you are able to do that, then yes, you have preserved life.
		I think mostly you stick with that as a more conservative approach than going into the sort of the exotic things that might be possible but where there's greater philosophical disagreements.
		Well, on the practical side, wouldn't you be concerned that if more time passed than you thought, a thousand years, say, and you were brought back in some reasonable manner, you would be so out of it, you'd be like a caveman.
		And certainly in a thousand years, you would be like a caveman.
		Well, you have some advantages.
		Clearly, first off, I think that, in fact, the time frames are going to be more rapid than that.
		Secondly, if you wake up in that future, then you know a couple of things.
		One of the things you know is that someone went to the effort of keeping you in suspension all that time, presumably Alcor, because that's Alcor's stated purpose.
		Someone went to the trouble of reversing the injuries of restoring you to good health, again, presumably Alcor, because that's Alcor's stated purpose.
		So when you wake up, you are automatically restricting the kind of world into which you are waking up into a world where someone preserved you, someone cared enough to restore you to good health.
		So there's some boundaries on this process that provide at least some grounds for believing that you'll wake up under pretty good circumstances.
		And of course, that's something that one says, well, you know, that's sort of a downside.
		The upside is you wake up, it is in fact, you know, some number of decades, perhaps a century, and society exists, people exist, things are rolling along, things are doing pretty good.
		And you're back in the game.
		And you're back in, exactly.
		And now you get to take part in a very long and very healthy life.
		You get to see where society has been going.
		You get to see all of these marvelous technological advances that we've been discussing this evening.
		You get to see a whole lot.
		So there are a whole lot of things that make it worthwhile.
		Well, if you can in any way control the immediate manner of your passing, your odds are greatly increased.
		What does Alcor tell you about how critical it is that you be fresh meat, if you'll pardon the expression?
		Well, obviously there's a lot of concern about the precise circumstances.
		And pretty clearly, the more rapidly the process can begin, the better.
		Actually, it's very interesting.
		Recently, we've adopted new cryoprotectants.
		One of the issues here, of course, is when you cool to the temperature of liquid nitrogen, there can be ice, and ice, of course, is a bad thing.
		Freezer burn.
		Alcor has for many years used glycerol, which is anti-freeze, basically.
		And in the last year, we've adopted new cryoprotectants and new ice blockers, which effectively eliminate ice formation.
		Really?
		Yes.
		I mean, that really was the problem.
		Very good.
		So now would people frozen today have a much better shot than people frozen over the city?
		No, there's lively debate about that because, of course, we don't know in some ultimate sense.
		Think of it this way.
		What are the correct clinical trials to evaluate cryonics?
		I mean, if you were to sit down and say, okay, let's do this, buy the book.
		And the answer, of course, is you would select some subjects, you would freeze them, you would wait 100 years for this advanced future technology, this advanced medical capability we've been talking about, and then you would see if that technology could reverse the damage.
		Now, the correct answer to does Clionics work is to say the clinical trials are in progress.
		Come back in a century and we'll give you a reliable answer.
		It's quite literally the case that what we have to do is decide whether we want to be part of the experimental group or the control group.
		That's the decision we have to make, and we have to make it before we've finished the clinical trials.
		So it might be that indeed future medical technology is able to reverse extensive damage, or it might be that you have to be much more careful.
		We don't know at this point in time.
		But if you're considering doing this and you're signed up, I'm sure you would err on the side of being much more careful.
		The general tendency is to be conservative if you can, yes.
		Absolutely fascinating.
		I mean, I don't know why.
		It just absolutely fascinates.
		It's an opportunity for a long and healthy life in a very interesting and very wonderful future.
		And on the negative side, to be tossed aside like bad hamburger.
		Well, what happens to you right now?
		If you look at what's going on, we know what happens now if this has a reasonable prospect of working.
		And I think actually it has a very good chance of working, all things considered.
		That's the current thinking of those who have signed up mostly for Alcor.
		But I think there's a mix of opinions.
		One of the things that you find when you get involved in cryonics is that all of the people involved in cryonics have a lot of opinions like people in the world at large.
	So I don't think there's any way of buttonholing them and saying everyone thinks this or that.
	But certainly there are a lot of folks who think the odds are pretty good.
	There are other folks who think the odds are kind of not so good, but hey, why not?
	Give it a shot.
	As a matter of interest, what do you think the odds are?
	I think the odds are pretty good.
	With today's technology.
	Today's technology, if you are suspended under favorable circumstances, I mean, we can all imagine, you know, if you go down in an airplane crash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, forget it.
	But if things go reasonably well, I'd have to say 70, 80%, something like that.
	Oh, those are very good odds.
	Yeah, that's what I think.
	You really think they're that high?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, think about it.
		And I suppose if you live...
		And we have suspension technology today.
		We've managed to effectively eliminate the ice damage under good circumstances.
		And if you can hang in another 10 years, it's going to be even better, right?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, the longer you can stay alive and healthy, the better the technology is.
		I'll get it.
		Doctor, hold on.
		We'll take some calls the next hour.
		How would that be?
		That sounds great.
		Good.
		Stay right where you are.
		Dr. Ralph Merkel is my question.
		I'm Art Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Though I would not give you false hope on this strange immortal day, But your mother and child reunion is only a motion away.
		Oh, little darling, little man, little man, little man.
		Oh, my God.
		I can't fall in baby.
		no deixe letir.
		Thank you.
		Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
		And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
		To rechart on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Ralph Merkel is my guest and if you have questions about nanotechnology or cryogenics I suspect he'd be prepared to answer either one since he's signed up.
		Remember, doctor said, just put a little ice on it.
		We'll be right back.
		Once again, Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		Doctor, welcome back.
		Thank you very much.
		Hanging in there all right?
		Absolutely.
		Good.
		All right.
		I'd like to begin answering a few callers' questions, if that'd be all right with you.
		That sounds good.
		Here we go.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Merkel.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello, can you hear me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear you.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Hey, I'm writing a script here.
		I'm a student, film.
		I'm a film student in L.A. I'm writing a short film about a World War II veteran crippled who's frozen and wakes up a thousand years in the future, a severed head.
		And unfortunately, he is part of terrible experiments.
		I wondered if you had any opinions on maybe the adverse effects, maybe waking up your mental being in a computer or something absolutely outrageous like that.
		Do you have any interesting opinions on that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Interesting question.
		In other words, Doctor, without necessarily a new biological body, but nevertheless maintained as a functioning brain, certainly technologically possible, kind of a horror show, though.
		Well, basically, there are a lot of possibilities that people talk about.
		For some reason, people think that horrible things might happen and space aliens would swoop down and regard frozen human beings who are slightly ill at the time they were frozen as marvelous food or something like that.
		And I've never quite understood the sort of the deep visceral attraction, but certainly...
		In other words, forget the aliens for a second, but suppose you are revived as an independent head, technologically, no doubt, possible even prior to our technological ability.
		Even possible ahead of our technological ability to provide you a new body.
		Well, there are a lot of things that are possible that I don't think are very likely.
		Certainly Alcor is not going to do that.
		Certainly that would not be my wish.
		And I think certainly it's not the wish of the folks who are pursuing this.
		So again, if the technology to provide a good, satisfactory restoration is not available, stay on ice another 10 years.
		It's not that big a deal.
		Are you able, with Alcor, doctor, to specify the conditions under which you would be willing to return?
		Sure.
		You can have instructions that say, don't revive me as a disembodied head, something like that.
		Because I think Alcor would be very supportive of pursuing that particular approach.
		Fascinating.
		All right.
		Have you given such an instruction?
		I've just given the general instructions.
		Basically, you don't want to second guess too much.
		In other words, the future is not 100% predictable.
		You don't know exactly what's going to happen.
		True.
		So give the folks enough flexibility to do the right thing.
		Trust in the folks who you've dealt with, who you know, who you've come to understand and say, look, I know what I want generally.
		Take care of the specifics.
		Understand the situation and do the sensible thing.
		So I haven't tried to overspecify it.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Merkel.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		How's it going?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, sir.
unidentified		Good.
unidentified		And, Doctor, good evening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good evening.
unidentified		Good evening, sir.
		This is a very interesting show.
		My question is, actually, a couple of quick ones.
		First one would be, do we know enough about really inner brain function?
		I mean, I've always been told all my life that, you know, humans only use a small percentage of their brain, and if we actually utilized, you know, 70, 80% of our brain function, that we could do incredible things, you know, and levitate houses.
		And, you know, I grew up hearing this stuff and probably heard it on our show, you know.
		But the question is, I mean, do we truly know enough about inner brain function to make this kind of technology feasible?
		And, you know, I mean, you're talking 70, 80%.
		You feel the odds that you'll be revived.
		I'm not a doctor, but I feel that's incredibly optimistic on your part.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, what are the odds on this thing?
		Well, I think that the opinions vary.
		Obviously, if you go to the established medical community, I think most doctors would say, gee, this isn't going to work.
		I think one of the reasons they'll say that is that most doctors haven't thought about where technology is going to be 100 years from now.
		And when you sit down and think about what it is that's possible, if you think about the laws of physics and what are feasible within that framework of law, you find there are a lot of things that are possible that we have not done yet.
		And so the range of possibilities, the range of capabilities we're going to have is going to be quite remarkable.
		So we can talk about the details, but basically, there are a lot of people with a lot of different opinions.
		I think the odds are pretty good.
		Other people who are signed up think the odds aren't that good, but it's worth a shot.
		And then, of course, there are a lot of folks who think that, well, I don't see exactly how it'll work, so they haven't signed up.
unidentified		Are you sure you're going to want to wake up?
		I mean, how about waking up in a world?
		Or in other words, you may wake up in a world that you don't want to be living in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's an easy solution for that one.
		Basically, as I said, I think if you wake up at all, you'll wake up in a pretty good world.
		And of course, obviously, if you think about it for a while and you think, oh, well, you know, maybe I'll wake up in a world that's so horrible it's just not worth living.
		Okay, well.
		That can be dealt with by various techniques.
		I think, you know, one of the interesting things is when you look at this and when you talk with people, some people think the future is going to be just horrible.
		And most of those don't sign up for cryonics.
unidentified		Other folks think the future will be pretty good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Those are most of the folks who say, yeah, this looks like a good thing.
		Life is pretty good now.
		Yeah, and obviously.
		And it's going to be better.
		In interviewing you, you feel that way, don't you?
		You look forward to a brighter, better future.
		I think the odds are on our side.
		I mean, if you look back historically over the past several thousand years and you say, are we better off than people 1,000 years ago, and were they better off than people several thousand years before them?
		I think by and large the answer is yes.
		We have longer, healthier lives.
		We've dealt with many of the major plagues and illnesses that have afflicted mankind for centuries.
		We have living standards that are, well, by historical standards, quite remarkable.
		So I think as time goes on, we have seen progress.
		We have seen our lives getting better.
		It's uneven.
		Sometimes things go forward.
		Sometimes we take a step backwards.
		Let me take a contrarian view for just a second.
		I have a different theory on life.
		I kind of think that by the time we're in our 70s, 80s, and or 90s, whatever it is we make it to the century mark, you may have noticed that the music that you loved when you were young is still great today.
		Today's music absolutely sucks.
		That is, if you're, I don't know, how old are you?
		Well, I'm only 49.
		49.
		Well, you can still be experiencing that.
		The social changes that go on, you know, you look around and you see the earrings and the, you know, whatever, all, every, is arranged these days.
		And I think that God has arranged it, or the Supreme Being, or simply biological reality, has arranged it so that by the time we get to be 78 or 90, we look around the world and we look at what's going on around us and everything that has changed.
		And, you know, it's almost to the point where we say, God, take me, I'm ready to be out of here.
		Well, this place is nuts.
		And that's just 70 or 80 years.
		But take another 100-year jump and you're going to land in the middle of a place you're not going to recognize at all.
		Suppose we take that scenario, and now we say, okay, you're 70, 80, 90, but instead of being 70, 80, or 90 and your health is going down, and your hearing isn't so good, you're gumming your food, and your eyesight is a little bit blurry.
		Suppose we say, look, medical technology has reached a point where you're healthy.
		You're as healthy as you were when you were 20.
		You can go running around the racetrack and you're fast.
		You can go out and have a good time.
		It's a good point.
		You're not talking about miserable, wretched old age.
		We're talking vibrant good health.
		You can chase a young, hard-bodied 21 gals at 80.
		They don't want to know how old you are.
		It's a good point, Doctor.
		I haven't thought of that.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello?
		Hi.
		With people expecting to live only 80 years or so, this makes up a lot of their decision and choices in life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It sure does.
unidentified		They're going to get education, I'm going to travel, go to war or commit a crime.
		When people get the idea or the notion that they're going to live forever, they're going to change their behavior a lot.
		I'd like to share some ideas and thoughts on what...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hope they'll change their behavior.
		I hope they'll be a little bit more careful about committing those crimes.
		They'll think twice.
		And also, I think there's something we've lost.
		One of the things that I feel I've lost, I have a hard time understanding one area, and I like to pick a few others.
		We've lost the Renaissance man.
		We've lost the idea of a person who can study all the different arts and all the different sciences and can write a play and do research and understand the human body.
		We don't have that concept.
		And we don't have it.
		Because life is too short.
		We just don't have time to learn all about all the different fields and all the different things that people can do.
unidentified		But with replicators and no hunger and no poverty and a greatly extended life, that's all pretty good to me.
		Sure, it's coming down the line.
		You know, even I think even the death penalty is a problem that we should address today.
		You know, when you're sanctioning death penalty, you're saying it doesn't matter this person might have 100,000 years of life available to them in 10 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you're saying we don't care.
		We want them to die now.
		I don't care whether they have a year or 100,000.
		That's it right now.
unidentified		If the state unsanctions the death penalty for this reason, then it will send a clear and unambiguous message to everybody.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe.
		I don't know.
		The death penalty doesn't seem to have sent enough of an unambiguous message so that it stopped people from bringing it forth with their acts so far.
		So I don't know.
		That's a great separate argument.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Ralph Merkel.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello, welcome back, and hello, Dr. Merkel.
		Hi.
		Hi.
		I'm wondering if I have a killer application here for nanotechnology, where I believe that if you make an array of billions of carbon nanotubes and butt them into n-type semiconductor, you'll make a diode array where you'll be able to rectify the Johnson noise at each junction and turn heat directly into electricity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's something called the second law of thermodynamics.
unidentified		I know, but I don't think it counts on the nanoscopic level.
		Where heat is irregular anyway.
		It doesn't have this mathematical uniformity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Last I heard, it's still applied.
unidentified		Well, has anybody made one of these nanoscale machines and explored that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if someone's built that particular structure.
		I do know there are a lot of people who are interested in molecular electronics.
		There's a lot of talk about using these nanotubes for transistors in a computer, for using them because some nanotubes are semiconducting and some are conducting, and you can build little tiny, teeny molecular transistors and switches.
		So there are people doing that kind of research all over the place.
unidentified		Yeah, that's the difficulty we have is the properties of the individual nanotubes vary, but if that can be overcome, then you can make an array of them, and they're all in parallel, and they independently sort out the random direction of electron.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't think you're going to turn physics on its ear, but certainly you can get incredibly increased efficiencies, Doctor.
		Well, you can certainly have high efficiency if you're talking about energy conversion devices of a more conventional type.
		And obviously, if you can build things with very great precision, you can talk about high-precision conversion efficiencies.
		There you are.
		Wildcardline, you're on the air with Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		Hi.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hi, Art.
		Hi, Art.
		Welcome back.
		Hi, Dr. Merkel.
		Dr. Merkel, I have a question about cryogenics in relation to religion, because I am a non-believer like yourself.
		I am an atheist.
		I'm very much fearful of nonexistence, which I feel is logically, rationally what death is, non-existence.
		And I would like to continue existing 100 years or 1,000 years from now if possible.
		So my question to you specifically is, could you give me, the whole audience, the name, address, and phone number of Alcor in detail?
		So me as an atheist, once I die, I'm 51 now, by the way.
		Once I die a year from now, I can continue existing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, of course, that's available on the web.
		But if you have the information and want to give it, go ahead.
		Well, ALCOR is in Scottsdale, Arizona, and you can go on the web.
		They have a website, www.alcor.org, and you can get the information there off of the web.
		And you can also get information in Scottsdale.
		All right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Ralph Markle.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello, it's me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's you.
unidentified		Great, Mark.
		I can tell by your voice.
		You sound fabulous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Sound really good.
		Thank you.
		All right, here's something I want to throw on the table.
		Reincarnation and the continuing of the existence of the person, regardless of which particular body he's inhabiting and operating in any particular lifetime.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're going to be outside Dr. Merkel's box here because I don't think he's a particular believer in reincarnation.
		Well, it's not something that I personally have thought about, have pursued, but we do have people involved in cryonics and signed-up members who are.
		Really?
		Now, that's really amazing.
		There are very mixed opinions.
		I've talked with people who believe in reincarnation and say, well, cryonics will mess it up and therefore I don't want to do it.
		And I've talked with other people who say, well, cryonics who are involved in reincarnation and say, well, cryonics basically is like reincarnation except you get to remember what's going on.
		Well, I can't address it any more deeply than that.
unidentified		Okay, just an anecdote for your interest.
		I have my wife and I have two kids, two boys.
		The older one now is 22, the younger one is 18.
		Both of them, we're Scientologists, by the way, both of them, over the course of their growing up, came and told us various recollections of their just previous life with all kinds of details of where they were living and what they were doing, which we verified.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, sir.
		I appreciate the info.
		It's another show, and we've done lots of shows on that subject, and we will do others.
		But to imagine that anybody who's a believer in reincarnation would be involved in cryogenics is a real surprise.
		I'm sorry.
		Cryogenics.
		It's a real surprise to me.
		I would not have imagined they would consider it because they would, as you pointed out, imagine it would mess up the process, I would think.
		We'll talk more about that in a moment.
		I'm Art Bell.
		Dr. Ralph Merkel is my guest.
		Nanotechnology cryogenics.
		That's what we're talking about.
unidentified		No foolish dreams to make me cry.
		I'm never frightened or worried.
		I know I always get by.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good advice, dear.
unidentified		Don't forget the way I'm.
		Don't let me get me down.
		Gonna take it the way that I found it I got music in me I got music in me I got music in me Yeah I got music in me Well, there's nothing mine that I don't understand I don't know you should worry after that ain't no crime cause if you get it wrong you'll get it right next time
		To reach out bell in the Kingdom of Nye.
		From west of the Rockies, dial 1-800-618-8255.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		First-time callers may reach out at 1-775-727-1222.
		Or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295.
		To reach out on the toll-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with our bell on the Premier Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly is.
		My guest is Dr. Ralph Merkel, and we're talking about nanotechnology and cryogenics.
		Cryonics, actually.
		I keep saying cryogenics.
		Cryonics, actually.
unidentified		I know I've always got that one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know why.
unidentified		The head thing, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, we'll be right back.
unidentified		Stay right where you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, if you would like to read more about what Dr. Merkel is talking about this evening, he's got several websites listed.
		Go to my website, artbell.com.
		Under tonight's guest info, you'll see www.forsight.org, a link to that, as well as another website and the Alcor website as well for the cryonics.
		All right, call it crowd chance.
unidentified		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, welcome back.
		Thank you, Michael.
		And here come some more people waiting.
		Lots of people want to talk to you.
		First time caller live, you're on the air with Dr. Merkel.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm somewhere outside Bakersfield.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In a truck, I guess.
unidentified		Okay.
		Yeah.
		Okay, go.
		I've got two questions.
		One on each subject, actually.
		And the first is on the subject of cryonics.
		Let me see if I've got it right.
		The body and the brain is frozen after death.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now you're legally dead.
		After you're legally dead, and you get your choice whether you want whole body or neuro, it's just, you know, when you sign up, which insurance policy you fill out.
		Or just the head.
unidentified		So if that's the case, and kind of to dip in physiology here a little bit, once you're dead, it would seem the soul has already left the body, so it would be kind of difficult to bring that back or to reanimate the body.
unidentified		You could maybe physically reanimate the body, but wouldn't the soul already be gone?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, now that's that's I can't really answer that question directly, but I can point out that there are a lot of people who have been frozen as embryos.
		So they are alive and healthy.
		And if you believe that the soul enters the body at the point of conception, then those people were frozen, were stored at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, although they were embryos at the time, very small embryos at the time.
		Actually, they're alive and healthy.
		I'm sorry to interrupt.
		Doctor, I think I gave you even a better analogy.
		That lady who was gone for 45 minutes, temperature lowered, all vitals gone, brain activity ceasing, the heart not pumping, the blood gone.
		Where was she?
		She came back.
unidentified		Yeah, that definitely poses an interesting question about where the consciousness goes or where it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or even where does the soul go when you're asleep?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		True, true.
unidentified		Another conundrum.
		Because you've got to wonder, you put someone asleep for a few years, say in space travel, like they do in the movies, where is their consciousness then?
		Are they dreaming?
		Anyway.
		And my second question on the subject of nanotechnology, I did read somewhere recently, and I can't quote exactly where, that it is possible that these nanobots would be powered by artificial intelligence that comes from quantum computers or quantum technology.
		Does that sound familiar to you?
		Well, that's a mix.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are such things as quantum computers.
		Right now, They're in their infancy.
		The last time I heard, they only had a few qubits.
		Quantum computers have qubits, and normal computers have bits.
		Quantum computers have been the object of a lot of research.
		If you want to have an intelligent computer, then you're going to need a lot of computational power.
		It's probably going to be a little bit bigger physically than something you'd pack into a device, a small device that was floating around inside the body, but a slightly larger device might have a fair amount of computational power in it.
unidentified		They were saying that these nanobots could begin to proliferate or self-replicate if they had some sort of computing power.
unidentified		If they could build anything at the molecular level, which is what they're set up to do, then they could build another version of themselves and continue to replicate if not properly checked, which is why I like your idea of putting a broadcast, I think you call it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The broadcast architecture, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, that's a smart way to control it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I certainly wouldn't want to put a self-replicating device into my body, and I don't see any need to do that.
		If you inject some device into your body, presumably it's been built for a specific function, and it's going to be a lot simpler and a lot more effective and a lot easier to design if it is designed to carry out its function, and that's all.
		If you want to design something that can replicate in the body, that's a lot more complicated.
		If you have a device which is a manufacturing system, often a factory somewhere, and that factory builds the devices that you then inject.
		So, you know, you buy an injection of these devices, inject it, they do their thing, and they're flushed out of the system.
		That's a plausible scenario.
		There's no need, and in fact, there are a lot of reasons for not having those devices have any ability to replicate, both because it's difficult to do and because it's helpful function, yeah.
		In other words, you reinvented cancer.
		Really?
		I mean, if you have something that is simply replicating for the sake of replicating, you don't want it.
		No, it's a kind of cancer, really.
		All right.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Merkel.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good evening, gentlemen.
		This is Larry in Fort Lauderdale.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Larry.
unidentified		I had a couple of quick questions.
		One, can you select your thaw-out time?
		For example, let's say you don't want to opt out when your disease is first cured at the earliest time, but you want to go maybe another 100 or even 500 years beyond that.
		Can you specify your thaw-out time ahead of time?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, that's good.
		Well, as long as there's some specific thing you can describe, basically you can have advice that says, hey, I don't want to be thawed out until we've reached the moons of Jupiter or we've made it to Alpha Centauri or whatever.
		And pretty obviously, you could leave some instructions that say these are your wishes, and that's what you'd prefer to do.
		I personally am a little hesitant to try and second-guess things too much, so I might not go for that kind of thing, but it's certainly possible to do.
unidentified		Also, is there any other known famous people that have allowed their identity to be revealed that are frozen, besides that famous movie Mogul from the 60s, that the rumor always says, the one who made cartoons?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, actually, normally I don't comment on who is and is not frozen, but in the case of Walt Disney, I think it's appropriate to say that so far as anyone in the cryonics community can tell, he wasn't frozen.
unidentified		Okay, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, thank you very much.
		That is interesting.
		What are the options like with what we know presently, Doctor?
		In other words, in terms of how long you might want to tell them you wish to remain frozen.
		In other words, 50 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years.
		Certainly at 1,000 years, your odds of being successfully brought back.
		Well, there are two issues.
		Obviously, you want to stay frozen the entire time, and the other is you want the technology.
		I think generally most people who are frozen want to get it over with as quickly as possible.
		They want to be thawed rapidly.
		I haven't heard a lot of interest in recreational cryonics, just for the heck of it.
		So that's maybe a concept for the future.
		But right now, I think people are just saying, well, this looks like it could save my life.
		And when you have the technology and it works, and it's in place and it's been checked out, restore me to good health.
		You don't think you're overly optimistic?
		I mean, 70 or 80%, that's really high odds.
		Well, basically, this is one of the things where it's either going to work because the information has been preserved or there is some fatal flaw in the whole scheme.
		And what might the fatal flaw be?
		Well, if you have a technology that can reverse molecular and cellular damage, you can reverse a whole lot of damage.
		And we now have suspension technologies.
		We have this new vitrification capability, which eliminates the ice damage.
		So it looks as though we are preserving the structures that encode your memory, the synapses, the neurons.
		It looks like those are being preserved as far as we can tell.
		And so it looks pretty plausible, at least as far as I can tell.
		Wow.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Ralph Markle.
		Hello.
		Merkel.
		Hello.
		Hey, how are you doing?
		Okay, sir.
		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm fine.
		I'm calling from Real Beach, South Carolina.
		I am.
		It's just amazing to me that this is all hypothetical.
		I mean, how in the world...
		But the monkey's eyes are rolling the back of his head.
		His tongue was wagging around.
		He looked like he was in a coma.
		I mean, giving a doctor the rights to your life insurance, then you'll probably have to give him the rights to your bank accounts, to everything you own, so that he can hold it for you when you come back thousands and thousands of years into the future.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not that far.
		Well, basically, all you have to do if you want To do this is get a life insurance policy for the appropriate sum of money.
		And I have to confess, today's medical technology is not up to the job.
		So I think if you believe that today's medical technology is going to stay the same, if you think medical technology in the future is going to be pretty similar to what we've got today, then I don't think this is going to work.
		The whole idea here is that we're going to see major advances in medical technology.
		We're going to see a quantum leap, and that will let us restore people to good health even when there's been pretty bad damage.
		And if we can reduce that damage by using better seduction techniques, we should be in good shape.
		So you're optimistic.
		And I think there's good reason to be.
		I think that in all probability, there will be, say, another 50, 100 years.
		In all probability, there is going to be an exponential jump in medical capability.
		I'm sure.
		As nanotechnology develops, and since you're in the field, you'd be one to know.
		I think that's the case.
		Okay, west of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dr. Merkel.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, calling from Rancho Cucamonga, California?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		If a person is frozen for a considerable amount of time, would anything need to be done or could be done to keep the consciousness from being aware of itself?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, once you reach the temperature of liquid nitrogen, and in fact, a long time before you reach the temperature of liquid nitrogen, the activity in the brain is all turned off.
		There are no nerve impulses.
		There are no things that we associate with consciousness.
		So there's nothing going on.
		Absolutely nothing.
unidentified		That assumes that the consciousness is strictly biology related.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it assumes it's correlated with the biological function.
		You don't have to assume that that's all there is.
		But if you assume that an important component of consciousness is a neurological activity, and that seems to be the case, certainly if you take someone and use surgery today, cooling surgery, for example, where the body and the brain are cooled down, the brain stops at some point.
		Or if you use anesthetics that stop nerve impulses, if you use some sort of technique which stops nerve impulses, we observe that consciousness appears to go away.
		So that's our best guess at this point, based on what we know of these things.
unidentified		Well, it just seems worrisome that there would be a situation like an out-of-body experience where the body may seem dead, but the consciousness would still be there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ultimately, it depends on how you define consciousness.
		Like I say, if you define consciousness in some particular way, then perhaps we can start asking a specific question as to whether or not it does or does not have that particular property.
		But as far as we can tell, all the evidence today is if you cool the brain, if the nerve impulses in the brain are no longer present, then you are not conscious, you are not aware.
unidentified		Okay, thanks a lot, gentlemen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, you bet.
		Thank you.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Dr. Ralph Merkel.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		I have only a concern to, well, there is a balance for everything, correct?
		Or I may be wrong.
		But within regards to it falling into the wrong hands, as atomic, nuclear, and anything, like any technological advances through warfare, it has fallen into the wrong hands.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and so then why are you not concerned, Doctor, that this would also fall into the wrong hands?
		Well, I think, think of it this way.
		I mean, we need to ensure that this technology is developed and deployed and used by responsible parties, and so we have to do our best to move things in that direction.
		Obviously, if you look at the future and you say, here is a new technology, what are the possible scenarios, there are a whole range of scenarios.
		And what we want to do is say, you know, some of those scenarios we don't want to have happen, and other scenarios look pretty good.
		Let's try and move things towards the scenarios that look pretty good and away from the scenarios that look pretty bad.
		And that means helping and encouraging the good guys to develop new technology and make sure we understand it.
		Now, I think we all understand that if we have good advances in technology, if we have the technological edge, then that helps us when things become a little bit confused and problems occur.
		Okay.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Dr. Ralph Merkel.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Dr. Ralph Merkel.
		This is Brad in Paulsbo, Washington.
		I'm listening to you guys on K-O-M-O.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And I come from a family that is extremely, it runs in the family, centenarians run in the family.
		And it's been my personal experience of having lost loved ones that there is a real heavy burden for people like me because I have a tendency to be over-emotional.
		So what kinds of treatments are going to be existing for those of us who are prone to extreme depressions?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, pretty clearly, we have treatments today.
		We have various pharmaceutical and pharmacological agents that can be used.
		They're not 100% effective.
		We're gaining better understanding every day with the sequencing of the human genome.
		We are now in a position to understand more of the neurotransmitters that are involved.
		And as that progresses, we will have an increasing ability to treat depression of all types.
		And as we have better tools, certainly it looks as though we'll be able to treat depression probably with advances in existing technology.
		Certainly, if we add nanotechnology to the mix of medical capabilities, we should be able to cure an even wider range of mental diseases and mental conditions.
		Yes, indeed.
		The day would come, wouldn't it, when today's pharmacology approach would look like slotting a fly with a hammer?
		Pretty much.
		Basically, with nanotechnology, you should be able to deliver therapeutic doses of drugs to specific sites, not deliver them to sites that you don't want them delivered to, and do so with great precision.
		So you'll have much greater control over exactly where and how much of the drug you deliver.
		Okay.
		East of the Rockies, I think we have time for one more with Dr. Ralph Merkel.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		I'm coming out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Toronto, okay.
unidentified		Yeah, my voice is almost gone, so bear with me.
		Okay.
		Yeah, I'm just curious.
		From an insurance point of view, right?
		Say something happens during the thawing process and you happen to lose body part, like it just doesn't, something happens, it doesn't quite, you can't get it back, but that would be considered non-cosmetic.
		But do you think insurance would cover a cosmetic, such as facial reconstruction, if something bad happened, for example?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the insurance wouldn't.
		The money you put away for compound interest.
		Yeah, basically you put in enough money to keep you in suspension indefinitely, and that's put away into the patient care trust fund where it's sequestered and it only gets spent on keeping people in suspension.
		And when the technology is developed, using that technology to restore them to good health, part of that process is to restore you to complete good health.
		Pretty obviously, if we have the technology to reverse freezing injury, we should be able to have really wonderful cosmetic surgery at that point.
		Well, what a pleasure it has been to have you on air.
		Well, it's been my pleasure to have you.
		Absolute blast.
		I'm just fascinated by this kind of thing, Doctor.
		And we will have you back.
		I hope you will come back again.
		I'd be honored.
		In the meantime, I hope your websites hold up.
		I hope so, too.
		Take care, my friend.
		I will, and thank you very much.
		Stay away from the freezer burn.
		Well, I'll delay it as long as I can.
		All right.
		Good night.
		Night night.
		Night night is right.
		Tomorrow.
		Tomorrow, John David Morton is going to be here.
		He is a psychic who is probably more accurate than any we've ever had on the air here.
		I mean, it's scary stuff what this guy can do.
		That's tomorrow night on Coast to Coast AM.
		In the meantime, hang in there and keep fighting.

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