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Sept. 28, 2003 - Art Bell

02:49:12

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Nanotechnology - Douglas Mulhall

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01:10:17

douglas mulhall

01:08:04

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be across all the world's time zones.
unidentified		I'm Mark Bell, and this is the weekend edition of Coast to Coast, AM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How you doing?
		It's Sunday night, Monday morning.
		Monday morning in many places, and as I did last night with the big power outage in Italy, I'm going to begin the night with possible breaking news.
		Now, this is coming to me via fast blast, so you never know, but I'm sure we'll get confirmed shortly if it's true.
		Breaking news says, Dan, in the last hour, one of the main U.S. comm satellites, communication satellites has failed, affecting television and radio networks.
		The reason for the failure is not known.
		Investigating at the uplink to last seven days, they admit high solar activity, a possible cause.
		Now, that's very interesting.
		I have no way of knowing whether it's true or not.
		I'm sure it'll be confirmed as the show progresses, but I've got a kind of an inside source who's been forwarding me information on what's been going on with some of our satellites.
		And he forwarded quite a bit of information about the failure of Telstar 4 to me.
		And he sent me a sort of a little note on AMC-5.
		Now, all of these are major U.S. communication satellites for television, radio, that kind of thing.
		By the way, I hope whichever one it is is not mine, and I'm on the air right now.
		I presume I am.
		There are many of them up there, but when they fail, it's a pretty serious situation, and it means something is going on in space.
		The power supply's a die or whatever.
		Pretty interesting stuff.
		So as the show goes on, I'm sure we'll get some sort of information.
		Last night's breaking news at this hour was all about Italy.
		Again, at that time, I had nothing but rumor, but the rumor was that power had gone off for all of Italy.
		All of Italy.
unidentified		And sure enough, it turned out to be true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Three dead underlining Italy's reliance on imported power was Italy's worst power outage since World War II.
		Most of the country's 58 million people were, in fact, affected, more than in North America's biggest blackout.
		That left about 50 million people without power.
		Now, with regard to how it happened and why it happened, I've got a CNN article here, a CNN news story, and the headline is, tree blamed.
		Now, we're not talking about our neighborhood.
		We're talking about Italy here, right?
		Tree blamed.
		One tree fell and an entire country lost power.
		Indeed, a spokesperson for ATEL, one of Switzerland's biggest electricity providers, said, get this, a tree uprooted by strong winds, knocked out a Swiss transmission line in Italy.
		A tree did it!
		Officials reported eight hours later that electricity had been restored to 90% of the country, but they were having like an all-night party in Rome.
		And boy, I'll tell you, this baby put the wet blanket on that one.
		So people are just sort of sitting around partying quietly.
		The Bush administration on Sunday sent out its minions to the talk show disputing assertions by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee that the U.S. went to war in Iraq on the basis of outdated and vague intelligence.
		Senior U.S. officials said that premise would have assumed a dramatic change in behavior by Saddam Hussein, the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction since the departure of UN inspectors in 1998.
unidentified		Hmm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		which WMDs would those be?
		Californians favor And here it comes, folks.
		The Terminator.
		With a campaign to recall Governor Gray Davis entering its final full week, a poll released Sunday shows the Democrat could lose office by a wide margin and put Arnold Schwarzenegger way ahead of everyone else trying to become the governor of California.
		Schwarzenegger barnstormed around California on Sunday, appearing before enthusiastic crowds in airport hangars.
		That's a strange place.
		Well, I guess not.
		Saying, quote, this is now hand-to-hand combat.
		We are in the trenches.
		This is a new war, Schwarzenegger said, adopting a newly aggressive tone.
		Like he's not aggressive enough already.
		All right, I've got a lot more news for you.
		Some of it awfully interesting.
		So if you have a tape recorder, you might want to run it here.
		The changes in the world going on around us right now are very non-trivial.
		Last week, of course, from Reuters in Washington, the largest ice shelf in the Arctic, not the Antarctic, but the Arctic, a solid feature for 3,000 years, has just broken up, according to scientists both here in the U.S. and Canada.
		They said the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's Nuvova territory broke into two main parts, themselves cut through with fissures.
		A freshwater lake drained into the sea.
		Large ice islands also calved off from the shelf, and some are large enough to be dangerous to shipping and drilling platforms.
		Local warming of the climate is to blame, they say, but they don't have enough evidence to link it all to global warming.
		Warwick Vincent and Derek Mueller of the Laval University in Quebec City, Canada, And Martin Jeffries of the University of Alaska Fairbanks lived at that site.
		They flew over it and used radar imaging for their study, writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research Letters.
		Vincent's team said that, get this, all of the fresh water poured out of the 20-mile-long Disraeli fjord.
		Holy crap.
		That means the Arctic, which we told you about some time ago, is in fact quickly now becoming the Arctic Sea.
		There will be no more Arctic.
		At the Antarctic, the other side of the world, we've had ice shelves breaking off at a pretty regular pace lately.
		Now, these are big changes in our world.
		I know they're not the world that we see every day that's around us, and so we might not pay attention when stories like this occur.
		But when things at the top of the world and things at the bottom of the world are beginning to melt and go away and change, well, those of us who don't get to see it but yet hear about it like this really need to pay attention.
		Here's another one for you.
		Australia is experiencing its worst drought in 100 years due to the widening ozone hole.
		Now, you see, that doesn't make sense right away.
		I said this a few years ago that I thought the ozone hole had something to do with it.
		Everybody said, oh, no, no, no, no.
		It doesn't relate in any way to the weather.
		Well, the ozone hole was once thought only to affect skin cancer rates in Australia by letting in more ultraviolet light.
		But now, it's been discovered that ozone acts with changing winds to blow rain clouds away.
		Mark Horstman writes in ABC Australia Online that an accelerating vortex of winds moving now at 100 miles an hour is pulling rain clouds away from Australia and into the southern ocean.
		Meteorologist David Jones says, quote, we just can't look at the natural variability or greenhouse climate change in isolation.
		We also have to factor in ozone.
		The Antarctic polar vortex is a natural tornado of fast-moving super-cold winds that surround the ozone hole.
		It's created by the movement of the Earth interacting with temperature differences between the Antarctic and the rest of the Earth's surface.
		The vortex blows in the rain clouds that southern Australia depends on for its water supply.
		Jones discovered that global warming and ozone depletion are working together to shrink the vortex as well as cause the winds to move even faster, dragging rain clouds toward the South Pole away from Australia's landmass.
		Australia just happens to be a major agricultural exporter, but perhaps not for much longer.
		Climate predictions are now showing Australia in winter having the largest reduction in rainfall of any region in the world.
		Rainfall has already declined by nearly 20% in the last seven years.
		That's 20%.
		At the same time, Australia is getting warmer, meaning it needs more rain just to stay even.
		The condition could become permanent.
		Meteorologist James Rigby says, quote, worst case scenario is we start to run out of water around the cities.
		In that case, we'd have to think seriously about moving some of the water out of agriculture and into urban uses.
		It's hard to imagine a major country like Australia ceasing to exist, but it happened before.
		So these weather changes going on all around us, creating a change in the globe, the earth we live on.
		And I ran into, thanks to one of you out there, an article by a man named John Rappaport.
		And he's got some sort of website called www.nomorefakenews.com.
		And I kind of liked some of his comments.
		September 26th, title Weather Control.
		Listen to this.
		One of the prime myths about the media is that when a blockbuster story begins to surface, intrepid reporters pull at the tag end like wild dogs and drag it into the light.
		Well, often the opposite thing occurs.
		The reporters wait for more information from the government.
		And when the details are not forthcoming, the reporters shrug and walk away.
	Or perhaps at a higher level, editors decide to abandon the piece.
	Too much work, too hard to find facts, or the publisher intervenes and kills the story.
	The controlled press can be controlled from many perches indeed.
	The result is a limited and contradictory and insane and senseless reality is shaped for the public.
	All of us.
	A case in point.
	Here is a statement that I recently came across.
	It was made by the Secretary of Defense William Cohen in 1997 and included in a DOD news briefing.
	Quote, Others, in brackets then, terrorists, are engaging even in an echo type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.
	So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work now finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations.
	It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our counterterrorism efforts.
	Talk about something to chew on.
	Assuming the weather interests everybody, look at the coverage of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, of which we've had many lately, to say nothing of the recent heat wave in Europe.
	And you would imagine a fleet of reporters would have jumped on this remark with both feet.
	It didn't really happen.
	Doesn't take a genius to figure out that if Cohen was being serious, the U.S. Moadhurry was and is up to its own ears in climate control.
	And electromagnetic waves?
	That phrase alone Should have set off alarm bells from one end of the U.S. media establishment to the other.
	It had long been speculated that this was the frontier of WMD's weapons of mass destruction, and here was a sitting Secretary of Defense asserting that these weapons were real and were being deployed.
	Hello?
	Anyone out there follow up?
	It's a story of a century.
	Just sitting there.
	Plenty of disasters one could ask questions about, including the recent blackout in the U.S. Anyway, it's incredible.
	The implications of Cohen's remarks.
	If electromagnetic waves are on the table as workable WMDs, then we have to admit that the technology we know is only a tiny fraction of what exists.
	What else could be out there, do you suppose, that we don't know a thing about?
	That's pretty incredible, what Cohen said.
	If that's an accurate quote, and I believe it to be, then it's absolutely incredible.
	And the reporters just let it go by like a spring wind.
	With so many probes heading for Mars and other planets, the question of whether they could bring back some kind of new disease has now become important.
	SARS, MAD COW, and HIV are only three of the diseases that have crossed the species barrier.
	So infectious pathogens from Martian rock samples probably could do it too.
	Leslie Mullen writes in a magazine that the International Committee Against Martian Sample Return, that's the International Committee Against Martian Sample Return, they don't want that stuff back here, is worried about all of this.
	Not all pathogens cross the species barrier, of course.
	Our dogs and cats get diseases that we don't get.
	Chicken and sheep farmers are untouched by diseases that wipe out flocks and herds.
	A Martian microbe, though, could enter the human body, but be harmless because it's incompatible with human physiology.
	After living in the dirt of Mars, a pathogen, for example, could see our bodies as a comparable host.
	They could treat us like dirt, says NASA's John Rummel.
	It could be that even if the microbes lived inside us, they wouldn't do anything.
	It would just be like this lump living inside of you.
	So you see, that is supposed to assuage our fears, I guess.
	So what do you think?
	How do you feel?
	If you've got a Martian lump living inside of you, albeit benign, but a Martian lump nevertheless, are your fears assuaged?
	Or, you know, would you remember the movie Alien?
	Where something screaming and hungry bursts out?
	And then here's something that really hit me between the eyes.
	This is, as you know, I've put up a very large antenna.
	You know, I've got this 1,000-foot loop that I put around.
	It's fed up in 100 feet.
	And it's about 75 feet all the way around the top one, and then 68 feet all the way around.
	The bottom one, made out of number 10 wire, very large wire for that kind of an antenna, very hefty and weighty.
	And I've got a lot of towers up to do it.
	I ended up with all of this voltage on the antenna, and I couldn't figure out why.
	And then, boom, here comes this article called Fair Weather Atmospheric Electricity.
	Let me repeat that.
	No clouds, no wind, fair weather atmospheric electricity.
	Many people, even scientists, are unaware that the atmosphere carries a continuous electric current even during fair weather.
	There's a strong electrostatic field up to 200 volts per meter very close to the ground.
	This electric current is thought to be due to the accumulated effects of thousands of thunderstorms, mostly in the tropical regions of the Earth.
	Now get this, the storms feed a current from the ground up to the ionosphere, a highly conducting layer in the atmosphere, which lies about 70 kilometers up.
	The current spreads out around the globe through this layer and returns to Earth through the atmosphere as the fair weather current, in quotes, outside the thunderstorm area.
	So in other words, what they're suggesting is that thousands of thunderstorms that are going on down in the tropics, and of course they are, are conducted or the electrical activity from these thunderstorms is conducted in some magical way through the ionosphere to the rest of the globe.
	And that would account for the strange voltage that I have on the antenna.
	They go on, although the existence of the global electric circuit has been known for decades, most recent research has concentrated on the generators.
	In other words, the thunderstorms.
	There are many gaps in our knowledge concerning, for example, the contribution of other generators such as the solar wind and the upper atmosphere tides.
	And here they show a long wire experiencing this kind of trouble, very much like I'm having here at S range, wherever S range is.
	I'm not really sure.
	And then we're getting toward the bottom of the hour, so I want to get a couple.
	We are going to take phone calls here in a few moments, by the way.
	If you have something you desperately want to contribute in the first half hour, you better get on it.
	All right, here it is.
	Landlord loves all creatures, great and small.
	We have finally gone too far, folks.
	When bridal shop owner Nancy Owen found ants in her store, she had two choices.
	Poor lady, relocate the little critters, or relocate her shop.
	Extermination was not an option.
	That's because the landlord of the Austin Shopping Center, where her store was located, is a supporter of people for the ethical treatment of animals.
	The landlord imposed strict rules on tenants requiring no meat or animal products be sold in the stores, that no animals, including ants, be harmed.
	So this poor lady had to spend 10 grand and move her store.
	And I thought that was the end, but I did a Google search and came up with this.
	Ant-loving Germany promotes bug relocation.
	Bug relocation.
	Berlin.
	Germans are known for their love of animals, and these sentiments have now been extended to ants.
	Said one of the country's 85, prepare yourself.
	One of the country's 85 officially recognized ant protection officers in an interview on Tuesday.
	People with an ant hill in their garden must under no circumstances resort to the use of poison.
	Now this comes from an ant officer known as Dieter Kramer.
	This was a violation of federal nature protection laws and punishable with hefty fines, Kramer warned.
	Instead, those who wish to get rid of pesky ants, well, they ought to call the state forestry people and apply.
	That's right, you've got to fill out a form.
	Apply to have the ant hills dug up and moved to a local forest, he said.
	Now, I ask you how many of you out there would like to know that your tax dollars are going to support an ant officer.
unidentified		Maybe a guy with a patch on his side, you know, looking pretty official with maybe a big ant there or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of ants and bugs, one crawled into my keyboard, went right under the H, and I still can't get them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast AM.
		Wanna take a ride?
		Call our bell from West of the Rockies at 1-800-6188-255.
		East of the Rockies at 1-800-8255-033.
		First time covers may reach our area code 7757271222.
		Or call the Wildcard line at 775-727-1295.
		To talk with Art on the Toll-Free International Line, call your AT ⁇ T operators and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll tell you this song, if you listen to the words, there's a lot of wisdom in this song.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lots of wisdom.
unidentified		Open up in there.
		We know.
		We know you have ants.
		You have ants in the house.
		Open up now or there'll be trouble.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's do it, Joey.
		I said phone calls from now in tools at top of the hour.
		And so that's exactly what we'll do.
		And by the way, at the top of the hour, we're going all the way to get this, the Bahamas.
		That's where my guest is, the Bahama Islands.
		We'll have to ask about Hurricane Douglas Mulhall.
		And he's going to be talking about nanotechnology.
		There is nothing, if we survive, if we survive, there's nothing that's going to be more important to us as the future comes than this thing called nanotechnology.
		And so if you don't know what it is, and I know a lot of you do and many of you no doubt don't, you're going to want to listen very carefully because this is not only a technology that is here now, but beginning to mature.
		And as it does, it's going to do things for and against humanity that just are, it seems like they're way over the top.
		And believe me, they are.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air at Coast to Coast AM with Arpell.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hi there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Now, let's get back to the bug in your house.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, okay, let me tell you the story properly.
		This bug is number one, not in, well, I mean, he's in my house in a sense, but this is a bug.
		One of these suckers, one of these little puss nailed me last week, and, you know, the side of my neck swollen up.
		It looks like a sort of a wasp, a little miniature wasp, long wings.
		Anyway, one nail, and so I saw him on my monitor last night.
		I was talking to a bunch of friends on ham radio, and I saw him on my monitor, and I did what any red-blooded American would do, you know, if the German authorities aren't there anyway.
		I went, and this little sucker fell straight down from, you know, my monitor onto my keyboard, where he reanimated and then crawled into my H, the H on my keyboard.
		And I can't find him.
		He's still in there.
		I don't know how he managed to escape, but he's in there.
		He's under the H, or now he's, of course, probably moved much further somehow.
		And the entire keyboard appears to be working.
		I turned it upside down and shook it, and a lot of disgusting stuff fell out, but no bugs.
		Well, there you are.
		That's the story.
unidentified		Well, did you ever hear of Osage oranges?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Osage.
unidentified		Osage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oranges.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		You don't eat them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you do with them?
unidentified		Well, you have to pick them.
		You can't use the ones that fall on the ground from the tree.
		You have to pick them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and then.
unidentified		And you cure them for a week or two, and you lay them around your house.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then?
unidentified		Not one single insect will enter your house.
unidentified		And they won't hurt Yeti or any of your little kitty friends.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was going to ask how many of my little cats would go belly Up.
unidentified		No, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, huh?
unidentified		Nope.
unidentified		Okay, well, oh, as a matter of fact, they will even repel the fleas on little Yeti.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, thank you.
		I will bear that in mind.
		I'll tell you this.
		Sunday, now, how did he get in here?
		She mentions Yeti, and here he is.
		Well, he's been in here all the time then.
		Yeti has been in here all the time.
		Now he's wandering around wondering why he's locked in here and sticking his nose in the grate.
		We have grates in the floor that bring in the air conditioning, and for some reason he has this unnatural interest in the fact that air comes out of a grate.
		And so he just, he sticks his little nose down there all the time like this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
		Actual air coming out of a grate.
		Well, West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, Arch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Great you're back on the air.
		This is Epson.
		Epson, MLA.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, welcome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, the mighty KFI, which, by the way, is responsible for getting me back here.
unidentified		Okay, that's great.
unidentified		Have you ever heard of the Tesla Free Energy Car?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Free Energy Car?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No?
unidentified		Well, it's supposed to have been a Pierce Arrow.
		It used to be a brand of car back in the 1900s and 1920s, and Tesla developed it at...
		And supposedly, Tesla would drive around or have somebody drive him around.
		And you stop at a service station.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, there are so many myths that surround Tesla.
		You know, it's hard to know what's real and what's not.
		I know he was certainly working in these areas, but did he really get to the point where he developed a free free energy is a very strong phrase.
		I mean, free energy, in other words, straight out of the air, and you're doing 0 to 60 and 5.4 or something.
		That's incredible.
unidentified		Well, if it's still around, somebody might call up and say, I've got a free energy car.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, if there really was such a thing, my dear, you know that one of the major car companies long ago would have had a crush down to something the size of a postage stamp.
unidentified		Probably.
		With the paperwork to kill answer with.
		Also about, you know, George Norrie has been talking about the old TV show One Step Beyond.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		And about the special segment about the man who turned water into gasoline.
		Well, I understand that he lived into the 1970s, and actually it was something like a settling that he was making.
		You know those toy cans that they used to have to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, okay, you're going to have to pardon me, but I don't buy that one any more than I buy the other one, to be honest with you.
		A man who was able, that's like the man who turned lead into gold, right?
		A man who would be able to turn water into gasoline would be put in the same crusher as the car she mentioned at the beginning of the call and turned into the same small posted stamp little guy.
		They just wouldn't put up with that.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, are you talking to me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I am indeed.
unidentified		Hey, it fits are so weird.
unidentified		I was just publishing something on Tesla's electric car number two.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah?
unidentified		They've never been able to duplicate it.
		And I think he was using a trick.
		I think he was sending radio transmissions to an electric car.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, perhaps what he was doing was he claimed, of course, to be able to transmit electricity through the air.
		So yeah, you're right.
		He could have been actually, in a sense, microwaving, or its equivalent then, energy from point A to point B to move the car.
		Yes.
unidentified		Yeah, because it did make any sense.
		He used vacuum tubes.
		If you type in a Google search, type in Tesla's electric car, and you'll get something.
		But I was calling mainly because of your atmospheric electricity.
		Oh, yes.
		Actually, that's sort of like a crystal radio, how you put a diode in an earpiece and a copper coil with no battery, and you can obtain radio signals, right?
		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I made one else Boy Scout.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think most people did.
unidentified		And I was wondering, this is static electricity that's sitting on your wait a while now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold on a minute.
		I'll tell you a little story about it that will make you go, huh?
		I can take, now I've got a device out there to protect my antenna that takes all this voltage away before it gets in the house.
		Thank you very much, and ruins my radios.
		But you can go out there on the other side of this device and you can take the twin lead off.
		You can touch ground and you will get, boom, a snap and a blue, about one inch of a blue spark.
		Now, that's a lot, but here's the thing.
		You can just then immediately touch ground again and get the same size spark.
		In other words, there's no apparent rise time or build-up time.
		And I'm talking a clear day, my friend.
		Nary a cloud in the sky.
		No wind whistling by, nothing.
		Total still.
		And zap.
		I've got almost 400 volts.
		Admittedly, not at a lot of current.
		Haven't measured it yet, but I will.
		But it's there.
		It's there from somewhere.
unidentified		Well, it's static.
unidentified		We're operating in a big magnet, you know, the magnetic North Pole.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by wait a minute though, if it was static, then you'd have a recharge time.
		In other words, you couldn't just sit there going snap, snap, snap, snap.
		The rise time would be much longer if it was static.
unidentified		Oh, I understand.
unidentified		I'm talking about there's three different types of electricity, AC, DC, and then static.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, I put a scope on it, and there's components of both, AC, and DC.
unidentified		Well, yeah, I mean, we don't have any engines or machines that are using static electricity, which is definitely a possibility.
		But once you put an amp down, for some reason with our electronics, actually the first electric engines were static engines.
		They smelled, too.
		Like ozone, they called them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sure they would.
unidentified		But hey, are you ever going to do a show on cosmic radio waves?
		Some of the static on your TV is from outer space.
		160 megahertz is a cosmic frequency near the weather station 190 in TV channel 78.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I'll check it out, and maybe I'll do a show on it.
		You never know.
		Hey, I ran into something before the show that is irreverent.
		I acknowledge it is irreverent.
		My cat's still in here.
		My wife brings me a bulletin of minor but interesting significance.
		Oh, by the way, two things that I should note before I even move on, and that's the webcam.
		You'll notice on the website, coast2coastam.com, that in the upper left-hand corner it says Arts Webcam, and on the webcam tonight, I have included Ramona in the photograph.
		I think it's kind of a cute picture of us.
		Much cuter of her.
		She is really a reason to go up there and take a look.
		My normal sour face is there as usual, but believe me, it's not the same kind of thing to be able to look at Ramona as it is, or look at me as it is to be able to look at Ramona.
		She has a serious eye appeal.
		All right, now, so that's on the webcam, and then I ran into something that Ramona just handed me a note about, irreverent article called How to Cook an Alien.
		An alien.
		That's right, how to cook an alien.
		It's up now under Hot Topics on the website.
		I found this about a half hour before.
		If you search through this website, it starts from Australia, where they may have to worry about cooking aliens soon, the way it's going down there.
		Anyway, it is an Australian website, I believe, and you'll get a kick out of it.
		Even the sub-topics, I mean, when it first comes up, you see the barbecue, you know, an alien-type sort of shaped barbecue.
		It's got various sub-in fact, I really should go over to it, read some of the sub-categories to you.
		But you can have fun reading it yourself.
		So I'm told Lex Lonehood, the webmaster now, tells me that it's now up there.
		I guess he got home and got his phone message.
		I said, this thing is a riot.
		If you can get it up there, do it.
		So it's up there under Hot Topics.
		It says how to cook an alien.
		You definitely want to check that out.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello.
		Hello.
		This is Patrick from Eugene Oregon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Patrick.
unidentified		I've got a comment about last night's show.
		Okay.
		And the overwhelming sentiment was that there were no good guys out there in space.
		It was just the greys against us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not true.
		He's not saying that he's definitely right.
		He's simply saying, look, everybody out there has been saying they're warm, friendly, fuzzy little guys that are going to save our butts.
		Well, you know, don't depend on that is what he's saying.
unidentified		I see.
		Well, I've also run across some information that may or may not be true.
		Maybe, okay, if you're an abductee, you can try this out, I guess.
		I read this story about a guy who was out in his lawn and he saw his wife being beamed up to a ship or something, and he yelled out, stop or my God will crush your ship.
		And they looked at him confused and said, well, okay, then they dropped her.
		I guess they don't understand what God is or don't understand that whole thing.
		So I guess if you're a religious person or not, you can try it out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, and they dropped her, huh?
		I hope from not too high an altitude.
		All right, well, thank you very much.
		So they just dropped her.
		Drop her or we're going to crush that thing.
		On the international line, you are on the air.
		Tally-ho.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		It was me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I didn't.
		I just took a step.
		Yeah, no kidding.
		Lucky one.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		I was actually thinking that maybe it's worth discussing soon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, listen, wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Since you're there in Europe, I'm wondering what the news was like of all of Italy going out the night the lights went out in Italy.
unidentified		Well, I did keep an eye on the situation there.
		I did hear there was news before it happened that Italy were suffering power problems as well.
		Really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand that they initially blamed it on the French.
unidentified		Yeah, well, you see, they get a certain amount of their power from France.
unidentified		They've now effectively become dependent on them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a lesson about energy independence, for sure.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I mean, just like when it happened in the States, the idea is meant to be that they are sharing surplus, but it doesn't seem to be happening that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, anyway, what's up?
unidentified		Oh, okay.
unidentified		I've just got to pass on an idea I had for not really time travel, but time teleportation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Time teleportation.
unidentified		Well, you may have heard that teleportation has already been achieved.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		Right, in two places now.
unidentified		Recently, it was across the Blue Danube as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think it was just light molecules that were moved from one place to another, but hey, it's a beginning.
unidentified		Yeah, well, the usual method for doing teleportation is you use quantum entanglement.
		That's where you have particles that share a property called entanglement, which unusually separate particles in different locations will react at the same time.
		When you do one thing to one, it instantly causes a reaction at the other side.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, correct.
unidentified		Right.
		Well, that's how teleportation works.
		But the ages of the particles are normally identical.
		You ever thought what would happen if you took one of those particles and put it through a particle accelerator?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're dabbling in all kinds of interesting things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I've also heard that it may be true that when they do that procedure, it may be that for an immeasurable instant, whatever it is, or the particles, are actually in two places at the same time.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which is something to contemplate when you think about it.
unidentified		Einstein used to call it spooky action at a distance.
		It's basically this thing happening at the same time.
		But the thing that you miss is that if you age one of those particles using the sort of twins paradox idea, what could happen is that it may no longer be at the same time.
		It may be in the future or in the past that the other particle reacts.
		So if you then use those particles as part of a teleporter, you can time teleport.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I believe it's going to happen.
		I believe that time travel will come to pass.
		And I don't know why I believe that, but I just do thank you very much for the call all the way from Britain.
		It's something I've been giving a great deal of thought to.
		And if, should I ever write another book, that will be the subject time travel.
		There have been time travel books written, some good, some not so good.
		But, you know, I've got a few ideas on the subject, and there is nothing, as most of you know, that fascinates me like the prospect and possibility of time travel.
		West of the Rockies, you are on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Calling from Hello Desert in Arizona.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And I have a quick academic question for you and a quick comment.
		Okay.
		The academic question is, if somewhere in the world a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does that mean 30 million people will have to be without power anyway?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Apparently the answer is yes.
		Okay.
		A tree did it.
		A whole country.
unidentified		Oh, yeah.
unidentified		We are very arrogant about how great our technology is for taking care of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Aren't we?
		And one tree goes down.
		Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Although, you know what?
		I don't know if I believe it.
		Fine.
		They can say it, but a whole country, a country I should add, that gets power not just from one other country, but from like three other countries.
		And so one tree falls and Italy goes down.
unidentified		Well, everybody blames France anyway, so why not?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I'm in agreement without actually the hell of the French blame.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, you had a comment?
unidentified		Yeah, I'm a fan of, you know, I mean, as a hobby, I study comparative mythology.
unidentified		And the Hopis talk about how there's been several worlds and each has been destroyed catastrophically by different methods.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And I noticed the Aztec have, they talk about five worlds.
		We're in the fifth world.
		And the last one was destroyed by flood.
		And this one is a world ruled by a sun god, Alan, O-L-L-I-N, and that it will be destroyed by earthquakes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Earthquakes.
unidentified		Yeah.
		That's something to think about.
		Anyway, I thought I'd put that forth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, as you listen to the news, a lot of which I read tonight about what's going on at the top and bottom of the world, doesn't that begin to sort of, I don't know, tell a story?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fifth world, huh?
unidentified		It makes you think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It makes you think.
		All right.
		Thank you very much.
		That's what we're here for, you know, to make you think.
		The world, as they've always said, is going to hell on a handbasket.
		And I don't really know if that's happening, but I do know that things going on around us right now seem to point to what the Hopi, as this gentleman pointed out, have said for a long time.
		You can come to your own conclusions.
unidentified		Think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll be back, and when we are, we'll talk about the small things in life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stay right there.
unidentified		Stay right there.
		Stay right there.
		Take a ride.
		Call our bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-6188-255.
		East of the Rockies at 1-800-8255-033.
		First time callers may recharge at 1775727-1222.
		The final chart line is open at 1775727-1295.
		And to recharge on the full-free international line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Arpel on the Premier Radio Networks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In a moment, we'll talk about the little things.
		By the way, if you would wish to email me with a guest suggestion or you are a guest who would like to appear on the program and you have compelling, fascinating stuff to talk about, like my guest coming up, you can reach me at artbell at mindspring.com.
		That's my email address.
		Artbell, A-R-T-D-E-L-L, all in lowercase at mindspring.com.
		I think there's a link on the website to do exactly that.
		Or I have a second address, by the way, artbell at A-O-L.com.
		Okay, here comes a fascinating guy.
		Douglas Mulhall's work examines the transformative role of nanotechnology, robotics, genetics, artificial intelligence.
		He explains how we might use them to improve our lives and cope with natural threats that range from diseases to climate change.
		He is one of the first journalists to describe the field of nanoecology to be the interface between nanotechnology and ecology.
		He has also co-authored work that depicts nanobacteria, an infectious bacterium whose discovery has stunned healthcare professionals and may lead to cures for heart and joint diseases.
		His experience in communication started with an advanced degree in journalism, progressed to documentary filmmaking, has produced a broad range of technology training materials, and written for national media such as The Futurist, Small Times Magazine, and The National Post.
		Now, most times when I see journalists, I get all concerned because a lot of times when you talk to a journalist, they can sort of tell you the headline and a little bit of the story, but none of the background.
		So I asked Douglas about that earlier, and he said, oh, no, I, well, Hi.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Art.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's good to be back, and it's good to have you back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		What I said earlier was that the good news is that I spent a good deal of my career, not as a journalist, but rather managing scientific research in the field and managing scientific researchers looking into things such as water purification and other types of environmental technologies.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So we had a team that really has some on-the-ground experience, and one of the things that we had to do constantly was to explain technology to people who didn't know a whole lot about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Got to be us.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So I think that's probably where we're going to start tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Just before we do, though, I noted when I talked to you earlier, I said, oh, by the way, where are you?
		And you said, oh, I'm in the Bahamas.
		What?
		The Bahamas.
		Now, unless I miss my guess, and I know I don't, I saw this giant hurricane go over the Bahamas here recently.
unidentified		Were you there for that?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		We actually were, and fortunately, it missed us.
		But later on in the show, I think we can talk about why what we're about to talk about is so important for helping everybody on the hurricane coasts deal with hurricanes.
		And also, here in the Bahamas and on the east coast of the U.S., we have another potential big problem that we'll talk about a little later.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And still, when that thing came by, it was a giant mother.
		And I bet you guys looked at that and said, oh, geez.
		You know, if that hits us, we're toast.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, especially seeing as the plane stopped flying out about three days before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, great.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, if you decided this one is horrible and it's coming our way, you couldn't have made it out of there no matter what.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that's why we need better hurricane shelters, and that's something we'll talk about later.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's do the quick 101 on nanotechnology.
		There will inevitably be some listeners who don't have a clue about what we're talking about and can barely even contemplate something the size of a molecule.
		Most people really can't.
		So what is it we're talking about here?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that's a great place to start, Art, because it's all over the map right now.
		Ever since Michael Crichton's book, Prey, was published about nanobots taking over the planet, there's been a whole lot of publicity about nanotechnology.
		It's kind of sprung onto the scene.
		And, you know, a lot of people think that they know a lot about it, and most people think they just don't really know what it is except things that are very small.
		So let's start like this.
		There are really two types of nanotechnology.
		One is the near-term nanotechnology, and the other is the stuff that's just on the horizon.
		Now, the near-term nanotechnology is really easy to understand if it's explained like this.
		It means manipulating things at the level of one billionth of a meter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One billionth of a meter.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		One billionth of a meter.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that basically means being able to pick up individual atoms and molecules and take them from one place and put them into another place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How would you possibly do that?
		I mean, something that you cannot even see.
		How do you see it and then how do you manipulate it?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a very good question.
		Because a lot of people think that most of the ways in which you do it is just, you know, to sort of physically pick something up and put it somewhere else, which is being done.
		For example, as early as the early 1980s, IBM succeeded to spell the words IBM in xenon atoms by simply physically picking up these atoms and putting them in a row.
		And the way that it's done is with something called a, without getting too technical, a scanning tunneling microscope.
		And that basically has a little tip on it that allows you to, that is so small that you can pick up a single atom and push it around.
		Now that was happening in two dimensions because they hadn't figured at that time how to actually pick these things up and they still have trouble putting them on top of each other.
		But actually today, most of the consumer technologies that are using nanotechnologies don't use physical technologies to manipulate atoms.
		They use chemistry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many atoms can you stack on top of each other before they fall over?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, at this point, they're having trouble putting more than a few hundred on top of each other.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's pretty good.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's about a millionth the size of a hair.
		But the big advances, and this is something that most people don't understand and haven't been told, is that it's chemistry.
		It's putting chemicals together and having atoms and molecules move together in chemical combinations that are really bringing the big advances in nanotechnology today.
		So it's not physical manipulation, it's chemical manipulation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Chemical manipulation.
		I can't contemplate that.
		Does that mean that you add some chemical solution and then things start marching about?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		And a good example of that is a material that is made, a stain-resistant material that is now, as we speak, being made and manufactured by Eddie Bauer, a subsidiary called Nanotex.
		And it is a stain-resistant material that's being put into clothing and sold and is used as well in upholstery.
		And what happens is that they've been able to chemically get these little groups of molecules to stand on end in thousands and thousands of tiny little hairs that when they're all stuffed together on a surface actually prevent stain material, you know, liquids and things like that, from getting a hold onto a material.
		And it actually sits on top of the material and then just brushes off.
		So it's so small.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It literally will not allow a stain to take hold.
		That's hard to contemplate.
		In other words, you've got a material, whatever it happens to be made out of, but because of the presence of this, a stain won't be aware of the material.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's a good example.
		A lot of people have seen it.
		You've seen a bug standing on water in a lake.
		And because of the surface tension of the water, he just won't sink into it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, CNN did a big story on that recently.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Think of the opposite, where the water is sitting on the bug.
		And that's basically what happens.
		You've got these thousands and thousands of legs standing up, and they're so packed together that both the surface tension and the chemical makeup of the liquid doesn't get through to the material.
		Now, that's a simple representation, obviously.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How then does it otherwise change the composition and makeup and reaction of the material that, let's say, the couch is made out of otherwise?
		I mean, does it feel different when you sit on it?
		Does it react different?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Nope.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No one can tell the difference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No one can tell the difference.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No, no, because you're talking about levels that are, you know, let's say a thousandth the size of a human hair.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're telling me then we're already getting applications, real-world applications from nanotechnology.
unidentified		You bet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people think this is just, you know, mostly science fiction and mostly in the future, but you're saying, mm-mm, already beginning.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Now keep in mind, and we'll get into this later, this second part, that the stuff that's coming is really going to be the revolution, and that's called molecular nanotechnology.
		But let's just stick with these applications for a minute so people can see what's here.
		I'll just give you another example, which is kind of strange, but something called nanoclay that is used in tennis balls.
		And what they've done is they've coated the inside of tennis balls with these nanoscale particles that prevent air from escaping.
		The reason that tennis balls lose their bounce is because air leaks out of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And you've got this material.
		And oddly, I mean, air is a really tenacious substance.
		It wants to get out.
		And when it's getting squashed all the time by a tennis racket, you get these tremendous pressures developing, and the air actually leaks out.
		And that's why tennis balls, aside from also losing some of their surface material, lose their bounce.
		So what has been developed is this nanoclay that is flexible enough to take all of the pounding that goes into a tennis ball, but still retains its air tightness.
		And this has given much longer life to tennis balls by preventing the air from escaping.
		So that's a class example of how it's in the life of people who are engaged in sports.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Douglas, how widespread is the research into nanotechnology now?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, how hot a topic is it in science generally?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I would say it's the topic, Arthur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The topic.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's not like a topic.
		It's the topic.
		The United States government is pouring billions of dollars into it.
		Most universities, major universities in the United States, are working very, very seriously on nanotechnology.
		In every state in the United States now, there are universities that are working on nanotechnology.
		Plus, it's happening in China, it's happening in Europe, it's happening all over the world.
		It's not certainly not confined to the United States.
		And in fact, the United States is behind on a number of these technologies compared to, for example, the Germans and some other countries.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't this ultimately, when you look out, I don't know, you tell me how many years, but it's going to at some point utterly transform our lives, the way we live them, and everything that is around us?
		I mean, literally everything is going to be transformed by this ultimately.
		Is it that strong or is that strong?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No, it's funny you should say that because James Ellenboggen, who is a very well-known scientist working on nanotechnology, said just a little while ago, and it's quite well known now, we tend to overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in 10 years.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So you hear a lot of hype from the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes, Douglas, sometimes, and sometimes it's the other way around.
		Sometimes we way overestimate what might happen.
		And one of the subjects that you cover, I guess, and could cover would be robots.
		Now, I remember we were promised when I was young that by the time I was the age I am now, or even sooner, we would be served.
		Every one of our needs would be taken care of by a robot.
		Robotics was going to, you know, do all the slave work of the world and things were going to be wonderful.
		Well, hey, they just barely got a robot in Japan to sort of jump up from a sitting position and they thought that was the cat's meow.
		So we haven't come so far in robotics.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That is true, but I'll just sort of give the other take on that.
		There are several hundred thousand robots in the world today, and most of the work that they do, we don't see.
		So the robots that were supposed to be serving us aren't here yet, but the robots that are manufacturing our cars or electronics and our computers are very much here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you're right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In manufacturing.
unidentified		And that's the interesting thing is we don't see it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that's why we think, oh, gee, you know, they promised those robots and they're not here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But actually, why, though, do you think?
		Yes, but why do you think the articulation that was promised and the domestic uses that were promised did not come to pass?
		Why do you suppose?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I would put in the word yet.
unidentified		Yet.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I would say that when people have tried to predict technologies in the past, and I'll just give an example that I give in the book Our Molecular Future, sometimes they can be very right and sometimes they can just be off by a generation.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		For example, 100 years ago, if you went to a guy on a farm somewhere in Tennessee and told him that his grandchildren would be working in skyscrapers and flying around the world and landing on the moon, he would have kicked you off his land.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		As crazy.
		So the point is that certain forecasts actually have come true, and other forecasts have been way off the mark.
		But I think it's more a question of time Rather than whether or not they will occur?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, with regard to nanotechnology, we can look at what was promised.
		I can recall talking to people like yourself a few years ago.
		And at that point, nanotechnology was the gleam in the eye of a person like yourself.
		And now we have practical application already.
		So it does look like this is taking off quick.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The manipulation of atoms at the molecular scale is phenomenal what's happening.
		I'm even surprised by some of it.
		That's not to say that everything is going to transform tomorrow, but I think your statement is going to be correct.
		I think you're going to be proven correct, and that is that it's going to transform what we are.
		And just to give some other examples, you know all this controversy that happened when we had PABA in suntan lotion and then it turned out to be carcinogenic and that didn't work too well.
		Well, one area that has been proven to be relatively safe is just using zinc oxide.
		But of course it's kind of ugly because you end up with a white nose and white lips and all this stuff.
		Well, guess what happens to zinc oxide when you develop it at the nanoscale with nanoparticles?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It becomes invisible.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, today a number of cosmetics manufacturers have already incorporated invisible particles, invisible to the eye, of zinc oxide, and that's what provides the sunscreen in cosmetics now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Already, huh?
		And then there's other invisibility on the horizon, so to speak, with nanotechnology.
		For example, I remember perhaps it was you, with regard to windows.
		One day, I'm told, with nanotechnology manipulated the correct way, an entire wall of your house could simply be made to be invisible, thusly turning it into a wide expanse, beautiful view of the outdoors.
		But in fact, physically in some manner, that wall remains there, stopping the wind and the weather and whatever, all else, but it just simply becomes invisible.
		Is that true?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's called, in the trade, that's called utility fog.
		And it's basically a substance that you can walk through, but will stop the weather from coming in.
		And if you look at the primitive precursors of that art, it's really interesting you should say that.
		And you started off by asking about the hurricanes.
		Look at the hurricane-proof windows that are being developed now.
		It's really interesting.
		For example, here in Bahamas and in Florida also, you've got houses that now have these hurricane-proof windows that can take an impact of 200 miles per hour.
		Like that's a 2x4 flying at a window at 200 miles per hour.
		Now, this is the beginning of nanostructured materials, these super strong materials.
		And two years ago, at the University, actually just after I was on the show last time, at the University of Missouri, they invented something called aerogels that are 100 times stronger than previous aerogels.
		Aerogels have been around for years and a lot of people have used them.
		But the problem is they've been too brittle, and so they haven't been good for manufacturing applications.
		Well, it turns out now that with nanoscale manipulation, they have managed to make aerogels super strong and super flexible.
		And these are now being incorporated into substances such as window panes to make them super strong.
		Now, so this is the first primitive step in practically showing what it is that you're talking about, except, of course, what you're talking about is a whole lot more sophisticated and involves something that is known as molecular nanomanufacturing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we'll get to that in a moment.
		Hold on a sec.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		Imagine this, an entire wall.
		You live up high on a hill overlooking, I don't know, Los Angeles, some beautiful vista below.
		You wave your hand, and there it is.
unidentified		The whole wall is just plain gone.
		And you can see for miles and miles and miles.
		I know you can see the obvious surprise.
		I know that you have because there's magic in my eyes.
		I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles.
		I can see for miles and miles.
		Ain't got no trouble in my life.
		No foolish dream to make me cry.
		I'm never frightened or worried.
		I know I always get by.
		I hear I cool down.
		Something gets in my way unwounded.
		Don't let life get me down.
		Gonna take it the way that I found it.
		I got music in me.
		Yeah.
		I got music in me.
		They say that life is a circle.
		I got music in me.
		I got music in me.
		Gonna move in a straight line.
		Keeping my feet.
		Hurry on the ground.
		Alrightbell 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.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, Americans are accustomed to thinking of things big, right?
		Big things.
		We do big things, but the future may not be there at all.
		It may be in the little ones.
		Right now, the United States has great big rockets.
		The space shuttle, which sometimes doesn't work as well as we'd have it work, right?
		To get into space, it takes enormous, enormous amounts of power and money to even send a few Americans into low Earth orbit to connect with the International Space Station, right?
		But there was this article not long ago about something called a space elevator.
		It was NASA produced.
		It's the most incredible thing I ever heard of, an elevator.
		In other words, you'd get into an elevator at ground level, you'd push top floor or a space station, and you would take an elevator from the Earth into space, an elevator.
		Well, it's listed under one of the things that Douglas Mulhall would like to talk about with regard to nanotechnology.
		What about it, Douglas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, Art, the interesting thing about the space elevator is that as with most things that are proposed by NASA, the original idea was to build this enormous elevator into space.
		And the theory basically goes like this.
		If you put an anchor way out there at geosynchronous orbit, which is 25,000 miles out from Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean like a satellite?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Like a satellite, that's right.
		So it always stays in the same place in relationship to the Earth.
		And then you build something down right to Earth that it will, of course, stay in place because you've got that anchor, say like an asteroid or a very large spaceship at one end, basically acting as a counterbalance to the weight of this 25,000 mile long cable.
		And so that's the basic theory.
		And it was proposed, if you can believe it, it was actually originally proposed in about 1895 by a Russian scientist.
		But Arthur C. Clarke popularized it by writing about it many years later.
		Now, the thing is that until about three or four years ago, the practicalities of a space cable were simply impossible for one very simple reason.
		If you try and build something that high, it will collapse upon itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of its own weight.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Of its own weight.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And even the composite materials that we had a few years ago were just simply not capable of handling that type of weight without, you know, you'd have to have something that was 300 or 400 miles wide at the base in order to support the strength at the top, and it just wouldn't work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so enter nanotechnology.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and what happens is that when you structure carbon fibers at the nano scale, you get something known as carbon nanotubes.
		And these they started growing these little nanotubes just a few years ago, and now they've gone from having them a few nanometers long to actually being able to grow them a few feet long.
		So the progress has been really tremendous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what do you get with carbon nanotubes?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You get tremendous strength and flexibility.
		You get basically about 30 times the tensile strength of steel.
		So suddenly your 300-mile-wide base shrinks by a factor of 30, and things start to look practical all of a sudden.
		So a few years ago, NASA went, hey, we've got these carbon nanotubes, and suddenly this may be feasible.
		So they started commissioning feasibility studies into it.
		And the original idea was that they were going to, as I said, build this huge, thick elevator into space that would have these big machines running up and down it.
		And then last year, a scientist came along and said, well, wait a minute.
		Why don't we try building the Wright brothers version instead?
		And what he envisaged was a thin ribbon about three feet wide and about the thickness of a sheet of paper going up about 25,000 miles into geosynchronous orbit.
		And if that is feasible to build, then it'll only cost in the neighborhood of $6 to $10 billion, keeping in mind that the International Space Station has already cost $100 billion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You betcha.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		We're starting to talk about something that is practical.
		Now, why is this important?
		The reason it's important is because right now it costs $10,000 a pound to put material into space, and a space elevator would take it down to $100 a pound.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
		Why is it important?
		My God, if you could take an elevator into geosync orbit, holy mackerel, holy mackerel, that would change everything.
		To even contemplate something like that is just, it seems like it's totally beyond, and it is beyond anything I understand.
		But again, so you would have strength, and then what about the weight of such a substance?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, this stuff is super light to its strength.
		It's basically a factor of 30 to 1 to steel, for example.
		Wow.
		And so that's what makes it practical.
		But the interesting thing is that this guy, Brad Edwards, a scientist at Los Alamos, has figured out that you can actually weave these carbon ribbons together in a very, very thin strand and attach microscopic treads to them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then, of course, it's going to get that much stronger.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any weave automatically is going to become that much stronger.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And also when you start to so-called contaminate these nanofibers with other traces of metals, you can also Strengthen them substantially and also make them resistant to things like oxidation and rusting and stuff like that.
		So, when you start to get these complex nanofibers and then you add a moving tread onto them, just think of a tank tread, you know, moving along, except at a much smaller scale, then you can actually move things up and down this elevator.
		So, this guy foresees that you're going to be able to move these treads up this 25,000-mile-long ribbon and actually take weights of about 13 tons into space over a period of a week.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy mackerel.
		So in other words, right now to get into space, we've got to get in a giant rocket and get ourselves going, what, about 18,000 miles an hour, something like that, to get away from the pull of gravity.
		And then coming back to Earth, we've got to risk these terrible heats with the re-entry speed, hitting the atmosphere, boom, like a rock.
		And you're telling me that we could just do it nice and slow and easy and go up until we got there.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and be real heavy.
		And you know, the genius of what he's proposing is interesting, and this has just happened over the last 12 months.
		What he's proposing is to drop the cable down instead of build it up, and it being so light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're dropping it through the ionosphere, through the higher levels, down through the atmosphere, down through the clouds, and then somebody at Cape Kennedy grabs it and says, got it!
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man, that's so incredible.
		Maybe it's just the fact that we never thought of it the right way, and nanotechnology wasn't there to give us the final material answers.
		That's incredible.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, this guy also got the right idea.
		This idea was really stuck for about 18 months because people said, oh, we're going to have to build this huge, you know, 20-mile high tower and everything else.
		And this guy went, well, you know, why don't we just drop a ribbon down?
		And everyone went, oh, yeah, right.
		And this actually happened at a conference this month at Los Alamos.
		So it's quite new, the development.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so if you think about it, there wouldn't be friction, really.
		Once this was established, you've got something rotating at the same speed as the Earth.
		That's what being in geosynchronous orbit means.
		It means satellite relative to Earth is staying in exactly the same spot.
		So there wouldn't be any friction because everything's moving together as the Earth turns, as it were, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But you do, of course, have atmospheric friction, and you've got these problems of colliding with space objects and all this space junk out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they've got that trouble now.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And the interesting thing is that what this guy is proposing is putting the thing on a platform in the middle of the eastern Pacific where you don't have a lot of air traffic so that they can actually move space around on a floating platform.
		And if that sounds unreasonable, just consider that today about 30 launches a year are being done from this space platform that moves around in the Pacific all the time.
		So the prototype for doing something like that actually exists.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then I guess there's no, well, here's somebody who says it.
		Stephen in Thornton, California says, hey, Art, please ponder it for me with your guests.
		This question may seem a little out there, but nanotechnology seems to be endless.
		If a tennis ball can be lined with nanoclay, what about a submarine?
		Couldn't you take such a submarine, once outfitted, and dive to unlimited depths?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's a very good comparison.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And you can also make a torpedo go a few hundred miles per hour instead of 30 or 40.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A few hundred miles an hour?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, there's actually, and we'll get into that, I guess, when we talk about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that is funding a lot of this research for the military.
		But there are prototypes of torpedoes on the drawing boards today that can develop an air bubble in front of them and achieve subsonic speeds.
		So, of course, what that suggests, and I guess we'll get into it later in the program, is that we're about to have a military upheaval as well because, of course, that spells the end of the aircraft carrier, the big ship, and a lot of other things that are happening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And a lot of Navy admirals would say, you know, the end of our ships has been forecast now for several wars, and guess what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're still there.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and also, you know, there might be nanotechnology-based defense systems that can protect those ships, and, you know, we can get into that as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But there's nanomedicine.
		I'm trying to really stay on the lighter side of this.
		There is a very dark side to nanotechnology, and we'll get to it.
		But there's nanomedicine, and basically, it is possible, isn't it, Douglas, to make little machines that would go, you know, kind of like one of the old movies where they shrunk down the submarine and injected it into somebody.
		You could shrink down a machine and literally inject it into somebody, and it would go to work in their body in various ways, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and in fact, this is already being done.
		There are little things called gold nanotubes that are being coated with antibodies.
		An antibody allows you to identify a specific contaminant or pathogen in the body.
		So these things can go and actually mark, for diagnosis purposes, a particular pathogen in the body.
		And the key thing is very fast and very cheap.
		So this type of medical diagnostic already exists today.
		And these nanoscale particles are being used, for example, for blood testing to get very rapid blood test results.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Douglas, one of the things that medical science has had almost no luck With very little luck, are viruses.
		Viruses are really incredible things.
		I mean, they just, you know, mutate at an incredible rate.
		The AIDS virus, the AIDS is one of those, rather, and it just mutates very quickly.
		Even the common cold virus and the flu virus mutates very quickly.
		It's very hard to get hold of viruses.
		But nanotechnology would be an equal opportunity killer, wouldn't it?
		I mean, you could send it in after a virus, couldn't you?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yes, indeed.
		And the interesting thing is, just getting back to this issue of chemistry being the foundation for nanotechnology, in fact, at a chemical level, that is already occurring today with a nanoscale pathogen that was actually discovered in the early 1980s and,
		as you mentioned at the top of the show, is now been identified as being a trigger for heart disease and other types of diseases.
		And the way that this discovery came about is a real detective story.
		It's totally exciting.
		Because when one scientist who was working at Scripps in California was looking for it, he wasn't looking for heart disease or anything like that.
		He was trying to figure out why thousands of samples that scientists were using around the world called mammalian cell cultures that are used to develop vaccines and all kinds of biological products kept dying.
		All of these researchers around the world that develop these vaccines and biological products, they have to throw out their cell samples that they experiment with every couple of generations because they die and nobody knew why.
		Here you had these sterile serums.
		Why would these cells be dying in a sterile serum?
		But that's what happened.
		They were dropping off all over the place and people had to throw out their samples.
		So right, so they had to figure out what was going on.
		And this guy suspected that there was something in the serum that could only be grown under different circumstances, that it wasn't fitting the normal pattern for what you mentioned is viruses and bacteria that basically take a few seconds or minutes or at the very longest hours to replicate.
		And therefore, you can grow them quite quickly in a Petri dish and you can see them.
		Well, what he guessed was that there was something in there that took much longer to grow.
		And so what he did was he incubated it for a month.
		And after a month, he found a biofilm, this creamy white stuff that you see in a Petri dish that is significant because it shows that something is growing there.
		And when he put it under a very powerful microscope, lo and behold, he found something growing in the serum.
		And it was below the micron level, that is below the level for bacteria.
		It was 100 times smaller than a bacterium and much closer to the size of a virus, but it wasn't a virus.
		It was something else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, he called it nanobacteria.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nanobacteria.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Nanobacteria.
		Now, nanobacteria is not bacteria and it's not a virus.
		It's something else.
		And the reason it's something else is because what is known so far about its DNA structure suggests that it doesn't have this magic double helix that you've heard about since high school that is the classic DNA structure for life,
		but in fact has a single strand of DNA or something like it that allows it to act like something that's alive, but at a very, very, very small range that actually challenges the definition of life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I understand, Douglas, that when you talk about nanotechnology, you tend to dwell, you're the half-full glass guy, and you're on the positive sides of this.
		But when you start talking about stuff like nanobacteria, that scares the hell out of me.
		It's like I know somewhere in all of this, you know, short of the gray goo scenario, which is really awful, we'll talk about that later, there's something like this that we're going to find or is going to be developed as a result of the work we do, which is going to bite us right in our big butts with a little nanotechnological.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there's no doubt about that.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But here, you know, when you take the example of nanobacteria, the interesting thing is they found out how to kill it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's comforting, I think.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was very comforting because, and they almost found out by accident.
		What happened was they poured a chemical known as EDTA, which people who are familiar with chelation therapy, for example, have heard of.
		Anyways, they poured EDTA on it, and it started acting really weird.
		And then they started hitting it up with a whole bunch of drugs, and the drug that seemed to work really well on it was tetracycline.
		So why did this happen?
		They couldn't understand why they poured this combination of chemicals on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tetracycline is an antibiotic.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Tetracycline is an antibiotic.
		So what was happening, the question is, how has this nanobacteria been around for so long and causing all of these troubles inside us, apparently?
		But we can't get rid of it.
		And the answer lay in a discovery that they made in the early 1990s, the same team, and that was that this little critter protects itself by calcifying.
		It emits a biofilm and creates a calcium shell, and we can explain more about that after the break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so we shall.
		Hold it right there.
		I'm telling you, nano, nano, curio, we're toying around with these little things.
unidentified		Sometimes I really feel as though we know not what we do.
		Seasons don't feel the reaper.
		No due to wind, the sun, or the rain, we can be like Dale.
		Come on, baby, don't feel the reaper.
		Better take my hand, don't feel the reaper.
		We'll be able to fly, don't feel the reaper.
		Baby, I'm the man.
		La, la, la, la, la, la, la.
		I have met my destiny in quite a single way The mystery book on the shelf The song's repeating itself
		Wada-lou, I was repeating you all before Wada-lou, I miss you love me forevermore Wada-lou, goodness
		you, if I wanna do Wada-lou, knowing my face will be you Oh, oh, oh, oh, Wada-lou, finally crazy I wanna do I tried to hold you back when you were stronger Wanna take a ride.
		All I tell from west to the Rockies at 1-800-6188255.
		East of the Rockies 1-800-8255033.
		First time callers may reach out at 17757271222.
		The Foil Chart line is open at 17757271295.
		And to follow it 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 IFL from the Kingdom of Nine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert, actually in the middle of the night, talking about the little things there in our immediate future.
		And actually, surprise, surprise, as of tonight's show, these things are already being developed.
		So if you want to hear what your life is going to be like, stay tuned.
		And now, once again, from the Bahama Islands, where nobody lets the little things bother them, it's a laid-back life.
		Here's Douglas Maul.
		Douglas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Eric.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
		Okay, we had a little hum on the phone, which we've now taken care of.
		It's all gone.
		That's very nice.
		Douglas, conceivably, hurricanes could be changed.
		Weather climates could be modified.
		Is that a possibility with nanotechnology?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Theoretically, yes.
		We're certainly not anywhere near that right now.
		We're a lot closer to being able to protect ourselves from hurricanes and natural disasters than we are from actually being able to stop them from happening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, an application for nanotechnology then might be creating, say, a house, as you pointed out earlier, with windows and presumably the rest of it that would withstand 200 miles an hour and just laugh.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Not to mention earthquakes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, what could nanotechnology all the same thing, a strong place to live?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		Well, let's talk years.
		How many years from such development with nanotechnology might we be now?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, to be honest with you, if we put some serious money into it, some of this stuff could be here right now because as I mentioned earlier, the aerogels that have been nanoengineered are with us today.
		And it's just a question of bringing them into industrial production.
		And these things can be applied to structures.
		The biggest problem that we face today with hurricanes and with earthquakes is that the construction industry has consistently, with some justification but not much, resisted the idea of putting extra cost into structures in order to make them resistant to these tremendous natural forces.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, on behalf of those who work in carpentry and the various trades, you know, those people really would like to do as you have suggested.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		However, they are controlled by those who are building the track houses, for example.
unidentified		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That have to worry about the next quarter.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, so in order to do what they're doing.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But you know, the interesting thing is, Art, about that, and it's really a sidetrack to nanotechnology, but it's a little bit like you have this ingrained idea that making these buildings stronger is going to cost a whole lot of extra money, and it's just not the case.
		And now, with these nanostructured materials, you're actually going to be able to do it very cheaply.
		And that is one of the early revolutions that nanostructured materials is going to bring.
		This stuff is cheap.
		It's cheap to manufacture.
		And that's the key thing.
		You're going to have cheap, super strong materials that allow us to do this.
		And really, it's just going to be a question of policy priority as to whether, for example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and local municipalities across the country get up to speed in terms of enabling this and enacting zoning requirements that get these technologies into place so that we don't have to put up with this nonsense,
		for example, of having to evacuate every time we have a hurricane or watching our buildings fall down around us every time we have an earthquake.
		So your question about how long is this going to take to be implemented, we can do it now with some of this stuff.
		There's no question about it, especially in the area of strong materials.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I come from a time when I date myself, there were no computers, not really.
		I mean, the government had some monstrous things that took up entire walls that sort of computed.
		But then along came the VIC-20.
		You know, that was my first computer.
		Now we have the Pentium IV, and we're racing toward God knows what, speed-wise, and our storage is increasing exponentially.
		I mean, it's just unbelievable what's happened with computers.
		And ahead of time, there's some kind of a brick wall.
		I know there is in terms of what they can do with the Pentium, for example.
		They're going to hit a wall.
		They've got to hit a wall.
		They can't keep doubling every 18 months or maybe with nanotechnology they can.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's a good example.
		You're absolutely right.
		Silicone materials can't stand the heat and they just melt.
		I mean, anyone who has a Pentium IV will hear their fan humming all the time and know that they've got a little heat factory there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You can almost heat your house with it.
		So as these units get smaller and smaller, they generate more and more heat, and it's a real problem.
		They are going to run into a brick wall.
		Well, it appears as though the solution, one of the solutions, is going to be diamonds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Diamonds?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Diamonds.
		There has been a remarkable development in diamond manufacturing in the last few months.
		And that is that two new manufacturing methods have been announced.
		And for those out there who have got their diamond rings, they may not want to hear this, that are going to make diamonds, A, indistinguishable from the real thing, and B, cost about 1 20th of what it costs now to mine diamonds simply to manufacture them.
		We're talking diamonds that will cost anywhere from $5 to $20 a carat to manufacture.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		$5 to $20 a carat.
		You're talking about not a zirconia.
		You're talking about a real thing here.
		You're telling me this will be indistinguishable from a real diamond.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Already is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Already is.
		And I can tell you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, De Beers.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		They're not happy about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're going to hate this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely going to hate this.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		De Beers is not happy about it.
		And there is a journalist who's been investigating this story who walked into De Beers' offices about a month and a half ago.
		And they were saying, oh, yes, we've heard about that, but it's being manufactured in such small quantities it doesn't really matter.
		And we can distinguish it anyways.
		At which point he reached into his pocket, pull out a handful of these diamonds and put them on the counter in front of these guys.
		And he said everyone just blanched.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's hear a little more about this.
		I mean, how do you make a diamond?
		I always thought you just compressed coal.
		You know, if you were Superman, you grabbed a lump of coal, and there was a diamond, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's basically a function of heat and chemistry and pressure.
		But it's also a function of structure.
		And this is where we come back to this thing about nanotechnology being as much chemistry as it is physically manipulating things.
		So basically, two different companies, and by the way, the Russians did it.
		It was the Russian military that developed the methodology, the chemical methodology for developing true diamonds.
		And what happened was an American general went across to Russia and got the rights.
		And there are now two different technologies.
		One is out of Florida, and the other is out of the northeast coast of the United States.
		And they're different technologies.
		One is already operating, and the other is operating at a much smaller level, but has much bigger promise to make cheaper diamonds.
		And that's the one on the northwest coast of the U.S. Well, how are they doing this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You still haven't told me.
		I mean, not really.
		I mean, how are they doing this?
		What method creates the diamond?
		What are you making it out of?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		They're making it out of the same chemicals that diamonds are made out of.
		They're actually using carbonoid nanostructures to build this.
		It's the same thing, and I'll just give you an example.
		With the chemistry of nanotechnology, for example, when you take gold and you take it down to the nanoscale level, it becomes a million times more fluorescent than normal gold is.
		And what that allows you to do when you put an electronic current into it is to develop these brilliant colors that change color instantly with an electronic current.
		So the reason I give that example is to show that when you get down to the nano scale, you can actually structure these materials physically differently so that they have a different chemical property.
		And what they've done with diamonds is basically to find the way to do that very cheaply.
		So they've taken the ingredients that go into diamonds and they have manufactured these diamonds and they've been able to do it for quite some time, but the key thing has been the cost.
		And what nanotechnology has allowed them to do is to structure the diamond in a way that they can mass manufacture it.
unidentified		And that's the key thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I don't know if I still understand, and maybe you can't even tell me, but they're creating some kind of nanocarbon structure, and then what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's some chemical reaction, and then suddenly you've got a dynamic.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		With a high heat and pressure process, it precipitates as a crystal.
unidentified		this should be bigger news should actually it it has it was uh...
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Oddly enough, the way that I heard about it was, if I can just say this on your program, I heard it on NPR.
		They actually did a feature program about this.
		And it has been quite big news in the science magazines.
		The New Scientist and Discover magazine and a lot of the scientific news services have carried this story.
		And it's really becoming quite large.
		And as I mentioned, the Beers, who are the diamond monopoly around the world, are A, extremely worried about this, B, trying to claim that they can actually tell the difference when actually they can't, because, of course, they're trying to hold on to their market.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, naturally.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And there really is no Difference?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		There really is no difference.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Big problem for diamonds.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Big problem.
		That's right.
		But big advantage for what you asked earlier about, and that is computing.
		Because diamonds can dissipate heat and also handle a huge energy transfer without generating heat 100 times more than silicone can.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if diamonds are plentiful and diamonds compute, away we go, is what you're saying?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yes, diamond structures are going to replace silicone in computing when this price drop happens, which is already beginning to occur, and when they get into mass manufacturing with these technologies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any idea of, for example, what they imagine a diamond-type processor would do speed-wise and computing?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The estimates are 100 times faster than what we have today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		100 times faster.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Simply because of the ability to do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I'm getting sick of buying computers as it is.
unidentified		And you're telling me 100 times faster?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But I tell you, Art, you're not going to have to worry about it because they're going to be manufacturing these computers in your home in what's known as a desktop factory.
		And that is something that I mentioned on your show the last time I was on and has gone through tremendous advances now.
		It's also called rapid prototyping, and it's used in industry quite frequently now, and it basically is based on the inkjet principle.
		Everyone has an inkjet printer in their house, and everyone also knows that 15 years ago, nobody had an inkjet printer in their house.
		So that technology has basically taken over the world in terms of printing.
		And what is happening now in industry, and I want to emphasize it is happening now, it is happening frequently everywhere in manufacturing.
		three-dimensional products are being printed with the same technology that is used in inkjet printers.
		So for example Three-dimensional.
		So let me just give an example.
unidentified		Yes, please.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		In surgery, surgeons have often had to go in and do exploratory surgery because they just don't have an accurate model of the patient.
		Now, they put the patient through an MRI machine, which is basically a three-dimensional X-ray that is then translated into a computer program that can show you the exact structure of the individual that went through that.
		That is then sent by instruction to a inkjet printer that has polymers, that is plastics instead of ink in the inkjet.
		And those liquid polymers are put in layer by layer, very thin layers, until they build a precise replica of the anatomical part that the surgeon is going to operate on, be it the skull or the hand or the foot or whatever.
unidentified		Wow.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And they're cheap and they're fast.
		They can be done in a matter of hours, and they are frequently used now by surgeons today to do that.
		Also, prototypes for car parts, small car parts, are all being manufactured this way.
		So this isn't something that's in the future.
		This is something that's called desktop manufacturing or rapid prototyping, and it is occurring right now.
		And guess what?
		the big development since I was last on your program is that they have developed something known as organic electronics.
		Organic electronics are plastics that can basically carry an electric current which means if you can build these models in three dimensions...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Plastics that can carry electric current.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Work with me on this one.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		They've been around for a while.
		It's not unusual to have a polymer that can basically conduct an electric current.
		All you need to do is dope it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, under some circumstances, everything will conduct, I suppose, to some small degree.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I take it here that you're talking about a high degree of conduction through plastic, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and the new development has been this group of plastics, and they call it organic electronics.
		And the advantage is, just as you said, the ability to conduct current much more efficiently than some of these earlier polymers could.
		Now, when you take these organic electronics and make them into a liquid, that all plastics are before they become hard plastic, and put them through an inkjet printer, you can print circuits, and you can do it in three dimensions.
		And so these organic electronics are now being used to print circuits in a desktop printer.
		And that's been the big advance since I was last on the program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a pretty big one, all right.
		You see, I always imagined something that would look like a, and maybe it is in the dim, dark future somewhere, you know, look like a microwave oven, and you'd enter a few things on a keypad in the front, and essentially you would create anything you wanted in this machine, you know, kind of like the Star Trek replicator, which would turn out the dish of your choice, or presumably anything else, I suppose, could be made.
		But you would enter a code, and that code would translate to an item that would be produced in the nanotechnological world somehow or another.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And what does this mean?
		It means that you're no longer going to be paying for materials.
		You're going to be paying for software.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Because it's the software that makes all of that happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The software, the writers of software in the world are going to be the new kings.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And that's why the whole issue that you're hearing about with these software monopolies, I won't mention any corporate names, but everybody knows who they are, are so important because the issue of intellectual property and free access to intellectual property in order to be able to develop this stuff and in order for consumers to have affordable access to it is going to become one of the biggest single issues because it's no longer going to become an issue of the
		freedom to make money.
		It's going to become a human right to be able to have access to the market.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so, Douglas, what then is your position on that intellectual property issue?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When it becomes so important that it's virtually a question of mankind's comfort or not, or existence or not, or whatever, when it gets to be that important, then what position do you take on the person that develops all of this and or company?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, art, first of all, it has to become the things that are the basis for it, those are the building blocks.
		And, you know, the beautiful example of that is the building block of the Internet.
		You know, what's known as HTML markup language, for example, for the World Wide Web, I'm sorry.
		That is, you know, freely available.
		I mean, it was developed and it was put out there and it's basically freely available.
		This is a building block that has allowed everybody to build products on top of it.
		My position is basically, and the position of a lot of scientists now, is that these building blocks should be public domain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All open code, huh?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It should be open code.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the other product...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There is a...
		Hold on a sec, Douglas.
		We're at a breakpoint.
		You see, the open code part is okay, and it sounds really cool and one-world-ish, but you know, somebody worked their butt off to create that code that might save mankind's butt, and he's going to figure he ought to be able to make a penny or two on it, or even a whole lot of money, right?
		So we'll tackle that aspect.
unidentified		We'll tackle that aspect.
		We'll tackle that aspect.
		There's something inside that we need so much: the sight of the touch, or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an oak moves deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again, or to fly to the sun without burning a wing, to lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing, all these things in our memories hold, and the useless comes to power.
		Yeah!
		Find my shoe store, take this place, on this trip, just for me!
		Find, take a pillow, take my place, up my seat, it's for free!
		Wanna take a ride?
		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 reach ART at area code 775-727-1222.
		Or call the wildcard line at 775-727-1295.
		To talk with ART 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 Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so the people who write the software that will manipulate all of these little things are going to be the new kings.
		They are going to be those who will inherit the Earth if we let them.
		That's really something to think about.
		In other words, our entire future, folks, is going to be controlled by the people who write the software.
		Now, that's something to think about.
unidentified		The new king.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First, let's make sure we're not overstating this.
		Douglas, would it be true then that, just to be sure we're talking about the right thing here, that once nanotechnology starts to become the tour, that those who write the software, the code, that will control and literally do all of this, provide all the orders for all of this to happen, that'll affect every aspect of our lives, those who write that software, well, unless something changes, they will be the new kings.
		Will they not?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so it is that big.
		I've got a message from somebody named Ilkin Sacramento who says, what you say makes sense, Art.
		However, who in history has come up with true innovation and received a place or a piece rather of the pie every time that innovation is used?
		When do rights become greed, hard science must remain open.
		And I take it that that is your position too.
		But what gives the, well, I don't know, what gets the software writers going and the companies that employ them unless they think they're going to be able to reap the harvest?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, Art.
		And there's a big qualification to saying it should be open source.
		First of all, we have to remember that the infrastructure that brought all of our software and hardware to us was the governments of this world, especially the United States government and the military.
		In other words, our tax dollars.
		Because there was enormous infrastructure investment that went into, for example, computing and software before Bill Gates or anyone else came along.
		And they were successful, of course, at taking it from that huge government investment and turning it into something commercial.
		And that was definitely a piece of business genius.
		But the main thing is that there are certain parts of those systems now that are basically utilities.
		And so once someone has made their nice pile of money out of the original invention, but I want to add here that some people never did, for example with the HTML markup language.
		What people have made the money out of is the products that come on top of that.
		So the issue is where do you draw the line?
		What should be public domain software versus the software that builds on top of that so you can make all of these different tremendously different products?
		So there will be certain basic building blocks that probably should be public domain.
		It doesn't mean that they won't be licensed to the manufacturers or the inventors and that those inventors won't get a fraction of a cent for every piece of every time their software is used.
		But what it means is that everyone will have access to it and can build products on top of that.
		And that's the difference.
		That's the important thing to understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then perhaps one might imagine some master manipulation piece of software that really allows you to do the moving and the shuffling and the creation of these various nanotechnological little teeny weeny things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, that mechanism perhaps should be open sourced and then all of the applications that come from it you're suggesting could be licensed.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's very much the way in which the Internet runs today.
		There's a committee of industry representatives that come from private enterprise and from government and they meet constantly by email and they determine the standards by which software is applied on the Internet.
		And so there is a certain amount of public domain foundation on which the Internet and the World Wide Web function that everybody uses.
		Now that is fundamentally different from, for example, Windows or something else, which many people think is actually a barrier to innovation because someone's got their hands on it.
		So that's where the argument is.
		You know, the argument is what part of the system should be open source, and that's where you're seeing a lot of the debate going on today.
		But the fact is, it's going to happen organically, probably, because that's what happened with the Internet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, okay, well, let's make a right-hand turn here.
		If it's that powerful, then one thing's for damn sure, and that is that our military is going to glom onto it really quickly, very quickly.
		And they're probably right in there experimenting along with private sector science right now.
		And if an application comes along that's so important for the military, some new way to kill more people with less bang, you know, less dollar bang for the buck or more bang for the buck, whatever it is, they're going to get this right away.
		And they're going to go after it right away.
		I'm sure you would agree.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The basic driver behind most of the molecular nanotechnologies that are being built today is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is the research arm of the Department of Defense.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And it's coming your way in your state part because in March of next year, DARPA is sponsoring a robotics race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A robotics race.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		A robotics race.
unidentified		Good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad you were going to say they're about to explode a nanotech bomb at Mercury, you know.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, who knows?
		But the interesting thing about this race is the robots have to be completely autonomous and have no human contact whatsoever.
		So there's actually a bunch of universities out there right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean with nobody controlling them with a joystick?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Exactly.
		There's a bunch of universities out there right now that are installing robotic controls into all-terrain vehicles, and those terrain vehicles have to go from Los Angeles to Las Vegas without any human input.
		They don't find out the route until two hours before the race starts.
		So they have to build these vehicles, put the software in them, figure out how to get there, and then program them within two hours of receiving the information, and then off they go on their own, and everyone waits at the other end.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all I can say is God help Baker and Barstow.
		That's incredible.
		That's incredible.
		All right, I'm going to drag you over here now.
		There is this little thing called Grey Goo.
		And from all the technical people in nanotechnology that I've talked about, they all say, yep, it's true.
		Now, please, as best you can, and in the most non-technical way you can, please explain to us what Grey Goo is and its potential consequences.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Grey goo comes from a machine thinking that carbon-based life forms are food.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe not.
		It comes from creating a machine, doesn't it?
		For example, a little nano machine with a very simple, very simple instruction, and that is to replicate yourself using whatever material you encounter.
		Now, that's what I heard about Gregory.
		Now, if that was true, Douglas, somebody would drop something in a lab somewhere, oops, and this stuff would begin to spread.
		And maybe I've got this wrong.
		And if I do, you knock me right down.
		But as it spread, it would eat everything.
		It would eat dirt, rocks, carpeting, houses, people, animals, trees, every single thing it encountered, it would turn into this damned gray goo.
		That's the way it was once explained to me, and it would spread at an alarming rate.
		Now, if I've got it wrong, lay it on me.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No, that's generally the idea.
		And as I said before, Art, the thing behind that, the food for this self-replicating monster, would be carbon, carbon-based life forms that provide the energy and the materials for these things to grow.
		But there's a couple of crinks in this idea.
		And I need to emphasize that as many scientists have come up with this idea of gray goo, scientists on the other side have said, wait a minute, you're forgetting a small detail something called ecosystems, because in real life, in the real world, for every potential monster that comes up to take over the planet and destroy everything, there is actually a counterbalance.
		Call it antibodies, call it anything you want.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but you're talking about a natural occurrence versus a natural occurrence.
		You're not talking about the intervention of the hand of man modifying something to be specifically and totally destructive.
		In other words, to turn everything into goo.
		And so I understand that within nature, if you have a monster, then nature tends to come with a counterbalance.
		But we haven't yet put man's hand into this, for example.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You know, Ray Kurzweil, who you've heard of and a lot of other people have heard of because he invented the desktop scanner, for example, and a couple of other things along the way, has, I think, given us a very profound insight into this potential risk and why we're going to be able to deal with it.
		And that is, he has basically said that technology is evolution by other means.
		Now, what he's basically saying when he says that is that our technologies are going to start to become indistinguishable from the ecology, and they're going to develop their own ecology.
		And that is to say that for every potential monster that springs up that has the capacity to do this, other counteravailing technologies will spring up that act as balances to them, just as we have balances in nature.
		Now, that's not to say that there aren't going to be big accidents.
		I mean, after all, we have had a few nuclear accidents along the way.
		There's no doubt about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, plus there's this, too.
		I mean, Douglas, though they have not been used yet in the manner that they could have been, I lived through the Cuban crisis, and we had hydrogen bombs here and there.
		And we could have let them all loose, in which case we would have surely destroyed every person on Earth and probably everything alive on Earth.
		We would have done it, and we could still do it.
		That's an example of where man's hand can introduce a monster that nature doesn't have an answer for right away.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Art, you're absolutely right.
		And the reply that is given to that by people who are opposing the Grey Goo idea is this.
		There is an assumption out there that somehow human intelligence is going to remain static while all of these tremendous technologies move on.
		In other words, our intelligence is only going to evolve biologically as it has for the last several hundred thousand years, but everything else is going to evolve technologically, and therefore we won't have the intelligence or the wisdom to be able to deal with it.
		And what they're saying is that is nonsense.
		What they're saying is that the convergence, and this is what I talk about in our molecular future in the book, the convergence of nanotechnology, genetics, robotics, and artificial intelligence is also going to alter what we are as Homo sapiens and will enhance our own intelligence and our capabilities to deal with these very powerful technologies.
		And just let me give you one small primitive example of where this is beginning to happen.
		It's in the area of artificial retinas, where thousands of tiny microchips have been implanted into the back of the human eye and connected directly to the optical nerve.
		And in blind people, this allows these computer chips to receive and interpret light signals, converse them into an image, and send them directly along the optical nerve to the brain.
		So now we're talking about direct interface between computers and the human brain.
		So this is the first primitive example where we're being able to augment our own capabilities with computerization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's absolutely no question about it.
		I mean, this is an incredibly powerful future we're talking about.
		I just fully understand that that power can be wielded in any way at all.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		There's no question that human beings' power to make a big mess is going to exponentially increase.
		But the missing part of the argument that we won't be able to handle it is that our intelligence is somehow going to stay the same.
		And what these people are arguing, and I tend to agree with them, is that human intelligence is going to start to evolve as quickly as these technologies do.
		And this means, as you said at the top of the program, Art, it's not going to transform just what we do, but also what we are.
		And that's scary for a lot of people, but it also holds tremendous promise.
		It may mean that we are evolving into a different species, and not just one species, but maybe many different species that are self-aware, very intelligent, and can handle some of these tremendously powerful technologies.
		And let me make the case for why I think we have no choice but to go ahead with these technologies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'm sure you're right about that, but go ahead.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You know, the Galileo satellite just crashed into Jupiter the other day after offering us a great service by showing us all these wonderful things about our solar system.
		And one of the things it showed was the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smashing into Jupiter.
		And as you've talked about many times on your program, there is no guarantee that someday, without any warning, we're going to get zapped by one of these things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, had just a portion of those that slammed into Jupiter instead hit Earth, you and I wouldn't be chatting at all right now.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And what I argue in our molecular future is that the universe doesn't care that much about whether we exist or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Probably not.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And so we have got to develop technologies that can defend us against these types of natural onslaughts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Give me an example of an application you could foresee.
		If a giant, let's say here it comes, oh my god, six miles wide, and it's coming right at Earth.
		So let's say we've got a year or two or so to do whatever we can do to deflect this thing or stop it or turn it or whatever, blow it to smithereens.
		What do you even envision, assuming we had a luxury of another 50 or 100 years, we could do to stop it with nanotechnology?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, first of all, I don't think it's going to be 50 to 100 years.
		I think it's going to be sooner than that we'll have the capability to do it in the order of 30 to 50 years, perhaps.
		And you've already given the solution, and that is Grey Goo.
		Because what we can do is we can launch self-replicating nanobots onto these asteroids.
		It's already happened, by the way, in terms of being able to land on them, because we've landed the Euro satellite on an asteroid in the asteroid belt.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right, we did.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, you land one of these things on it, it just spits out a small number of these self-replicating nanobots.
		They use solar energy and the material on the asteroid to simply eat it.
		And what we end up with is trillions of micrometeorites that just burn up in the atmosphere when they get here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Brilliant.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's just one potential solution.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, trust you to come up with a positive application for gray goo.
		Just eat the damn thing.
		That's quite good.
		That's very good.
		So then the development of gray goo might even be considered to be a priority once we get to that technological level for that reason, if no other.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		For example, it could actually mean our survival in a hostile universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You betcha.
		But I just worry about this guy in the lab.
		I can see him.
		I can close my eyes.
		He's got a white coat on, and he's walking over with a little jar, well, a little beaker of gray goo.
		And I can see him in my mind's eye.
		He's tripping on a tile right now.
		Ah!
unidentified		There it is!
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And on the floor, and it's spreading.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And of course, he'll be the first thing, and it'll eat.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's when we come to genetic computing and pervasive observation, because it's clear that with these technologies, you're going to need artificially intelligent systems to observe and to regulate the activities that are going on in these laboratories.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, put another way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're saying we're going to need machines that are smarter than we are to keep control of stuff.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		We're going to need machines that enhance our own intelligence to give us the capability to regulate this development.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So we'll talk about artificial intelligence when we get back, and we'll also take some telephone calls from all of you.
		We're talking about nanotechnology.
		It's a small thing, but it's big.
unidentified		It's a big night.
		Look, I can see the greener.
		Some shuffling took me out of my world.
		I walked off.
		Suddenly I just pulled up.
		I got up.
		When you find it, that you love the future.
		I got up.
		So you got to turn your little to care of.
		Then you better keep wearing.
		One day you'll have to turn around.
		You'll find your world.
		It happens to me.
		And it can happen to you.
		You'll find your world.
		I got to turn around.
		You'll find your world.
		Thank you.
		Reachart Bell in the Kingdom of Nai.
		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 ▲ ● ▼		All right, we are about, believe it or not, to go to the telephone, but I'm going to turn this show over to you and let you ask Douglas Mulhall any question you want about nanotechnology.
		Obviously, this is coming.
		Oh, correction.
		Parts of it are already here, and the rest of it is coming very quickly, and it's going to change our entire lives.
		So if you don't have any questions about some of what you've heard, well, then you just haven't been listening, I guess.
		So those are the numbers.
		Get ready.
		I've got one little thing I'd like to pop to him before that.
		Then we'll go directly to the phones, and it's all yours.
		A question perhaps Douglas cannot answer.
		I recognize That as nanotechnology comes, nano-computing, genetic, virtually genetic computing arrives, and it's around the corner, folks.
		As quickly as we're going, it's around the corner.
		Well, as storage increases and we begin to get these incredible leaps, I mean, imagine 100 times the processing power suddenly, just like that.
		We have right now, 100 times, not twice, but 100 times.
		Now, somewhere along the line, I've got a feeling something is going to happen.
		We're going to get machines that are smarter than we are.
		That's what we were talking about, of artificial intelligence.
		Here's the thing, though, Douglas.
		At some point, at some amount of storage or some computing speed or somewhere along the line, maybe not too very many years away, we're going to arrive at something that becomes aware of itself.
		Absolutely.
		Yeah, well, absolutely, huh?
		Absolutely.
		Okay, when something becomes aware of itself, well, gee, Douglas, then we have created, well, what have we created?
		a being i've we created uh...
unidentified		uh...
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		There's been tons of stuff written about this, and the thing that is missing, again, from the equation is there's this idea out there that somehow machines are going to move ahead of human intelligence, and they're going to be completely separate from each other.
		But what my book is about, and if people want to read more about this, they can go to the websites that are on your website.
		There are two of them.
		One is rmolecularfuture.com and the other is calcify.com, which is the medical side of it, because it's a longer discussion.
		But basically, the idea that machine intelligence is going to evolve separately from human intelligence, all the indicators are that's not correct.
		The indicators are that machine intelligence and human intelligence are merging.
		And that is the key thing that we need to keep track of when we start talking about self-aware machines that are smarter than humans.
		What is really happening here is that as our technologies become part of the environment and part of us, our intelligence is merging with theirs.
		And a good concrete example of that, although it sounds so obvious, is the Internet, because the Internet is actually enhancing our own intelligence.
		And I'll just give you an example.
		You know, the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, when people want to phone home to get an expert to answer a question for them, there are now examples where experts with a basic amount of information in a certain field can go on Google and get the answer to a question faster than they could have gotten it.
		That is called mass enhancement of intelligence.
		And when you combine that with what I spoke about earlier, that is implantation of artificial retinas, which are basically computers that attach to the brain and allow you to see, when you put those two things together, you see that machines are not going to evolve separately from Homo sapiens, that we are going to merge with them.
		And so I don't want to put a positive spin on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you ever read a book called The Foreban Project?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Foreban Project, yeah, it's very interesting.
		It's turning the nuclear retaliatory mechanism over to computers with predictable results, and the computers get smarter and decide that they're going to tell mankind to disarm, and by God, we're going to disarm or they're going to turn us into dust.
		Now, here, square this one with me, and I'm tracking where you're going, but I look at what we actually are doing in the world right now.
		For example, the Arctic is melting.
		There's going to be a new ocean up there in the Arctic because it's all melting, and then calving out down in the Antarctic, and the ozone a whole bigger than ever, and all kinds of really weird stuff is going on right now that could have to do with man's hand.
		Now, if we create a machine that is ostensibly for the benefit of mankind, and it becomes significantly smarter than we are, and is not subject to the political whims that we all are about how things are going to be done or not done, then that machine then conceivably might decide we're not doing a good thing.
		And so the best thing for us would be blah, blah, blah.
		If you follow me.
		In other words, simply logic.
		It's not like logic, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The idea that a machine will start to make those types of decisions for humanity has been bandied around for quite some time.
		But you have to come back to this issue of, are these machines going to evolve separately from us?
		Are they somehow suddenly going to become more intelligent than us?
		Or are we going to begin to evolve into a different species that has the capability to cope with these super intelligent machines?
		And this has always been the fly in the ointment of the argument that machines are going to take over the world.
		This assumption that the human brain is always going to continue to evolve biologically while everything else evolves technologically just doesn't make sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, but if you talk about the rate of evolution going on, for example, at Intel and the rate of evolution of mankind right now, Intel is not up to mankind, but on the other hand, it's moving evolutionary, from an evolutionary point of view, a hell of a lot faster.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the question is, what's to stop that evolution from being tied into the human brain?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, nothing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But again, if a machine, the point I was trying to make is, if a machine is more intelligent and is rightly designed for the benefit of mankind, or to be for the benefit of mankind, such a machine, well, it might decide that we're doing some things ecologically that are suicidal and make an appropriate decision.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I absolutely agree with you.
		And on top of that, the evolved human that is enhanced by those machines may also make that type of decision.
		And that may actually be our salvation.
		Because those enhanced humans may have those types of capabilities to have some sense in them that we have to start using these technologies in a different way than we are at the moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hope you're right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, I promise, so here it comes.
unidentified		Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Can I just add one thing about the diamonds?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I want to add something about the diamonds, too.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Okay, because I just looked it up at the break.
		And there are two companies.
		One is Gemesis in Florida, and the other is Apollo in the Northeast Coast, as I mentioned.
		And they are cranking out this stuff right now.
		This summer, they started manufacturing these diamonds.
		And it is a process where you have intense heat and energy put around a sliver of diamond, and then they throw in carbon, and you end up with a much larger diamond.
		And what the Russians did was to make the process low energy consumption and therefore very cheap.
		And they brought the stuff, the machines from Russia over to Florida, and they computerized them.
		And they're now cranking these things out.
		So it's happening right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's some news.
		Let me tell you, I've got a fast blast from Bob Donahue in Indianapolis, Indiana.
		And you know what he says?
		I'm a funeral director, R, and I just heard about a company that creates diamonds out of family members of ashes at this year's funeral directors convention.
		It's a new thing to market cremation and memorialize your loved one.
		You turn them into a diamond.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm serious.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you want to learn more about it, Wired Magazine in their September 11th edition has a full feature on it, and it's a very good article.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Incredible.
		All right, here we do go.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mahall.
		Hello.
unidentified		Morning, Art and Douglas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		I have a question about the diamond technology also.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good.
unidentified		How close is it to moisenite?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's not.
unidentified		It's not.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's diamond.
unidentified		Okay.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		This is the real thing.
		This is the money or anything else.
		It's indistinguishable, and De Beers is going up the wall claiming it's not.
		But if you read more about it, and I suggest going to this wired article that is online, you will see that they are very, very concerned.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, can you give me any idea of, for example, what the diamond industry is saying it can see that marks the difference?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what claims are they making or are they not?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're basically saying that there are certain imperfections in natural diamonds that distinguish them from these diamond structures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there better be.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But they're also saying no comment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Also, no comment.
		All right.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Hi.
		I'm calling from Wichita, Kansas, and my name is Sai.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Wichita, Kansas.
unidentified		All right.
		Yeah.
		What a great show today is, and what a great guest to have on the show.
		Indeed.
		I just have two quick questions.
		Earlier in the show, he was talking about something invisible, making the cosmetics invisible.
		And is that possible while cloning, for example, the dolly, the sheep, is that possible to genetic nanotechnology?
		By using nanotechnology, we can make the newborn invisible.
		What I'm getting to is we can have invisible robots which can crime fight, which can do crime fight in hostage situations, which is invisible, which will be much more advantageous.
		And my second question is that...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you get that one, Douglas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I did, actually, and that's a good question.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Because on the surface, it sounds crazy, but actually, you know the Harry Potter movie where they put this cloak over themselves and they become just like the background does?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are now there are roll-up L C D screens being developed that are flexible.
		So the theory is that you can put these things on a blanket and they can, just like a chameleon does, learn to mimic the background and effectively make you invisible as you move through backgrounds.
		They will just mimic it and effectively replicate invisibility.
		So this is not such a crazy idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've heard the Air Force is already using this technology on airplanes that, you know, sometimes you look up and you hear the sound and you can't see the airplane.
		Well, guess what, folks?
		Sometimes you can't see it because it's just presenting sky to you.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's very high-level computing as well, because you need a very fast computer to interpret what is around you in the environment to be able to actually televise it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Collar, you have a part two here?
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		My second question is that, is that possible by using nanotechnology, we can implement, we can implant chlorophyll on human beings or the newborns such that we need not have to be dependent on the plants or other life forms and we can be self-independent for food using the sun as a source?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, the problem with solar energy is basically, as I say in the book, a gallon of gasoline produces more bang for the buck than a gallon of solar cells.
		The difficulty is that solar power falls on a much broader area to give you the same type of energy that food and other fuels do that have actually grown using that solar energy and soil from the earth to develop a more compact form of fuel that we can consume.
		So being covered with chlorophyll isn't going to give you the kind of energy levels that especially your brain requires.
		But what we might be able to do is because we now have these flexible solar cells that you Can basically paint on surfaces, and that's another new development that has occurred in the last 18 months.
		We may be able to tie ourselves into those types of energy sources to liberate ourselves from some of our dependence on these other fuels that we use.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, you know, we're fighting wars now, ostensibly one could argue, over oil.
		I know that isn't the popular presentation for why we send our young men and women to die, but it's one that a lot of people believe, Douglas.
		So if you're going to have to fight a war for energy, then there should be some other things on the horizon ready to take up the slack when it's all gone, or we lose the war.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and as we all know, those types of wars are unnecessary because we have the technology now to give ourselves that energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But we would rather fight a war instead, is what you're saying.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, Art, as you know, it's a heavy, complicated topic, but it kind of makes you wonder when we have this technology to do this, and also while there's a whole bunch of oil sitting up in the Canadian tar sands that are equal to the total reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iraq put together, why we're not using that first, but that's another argument.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder all the time, Douglas.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
		Hello.
unidentified		Lauren, can you hear me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear you.
unidentified		Oh, this is Eric from Albuquerque.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Eric.
unidentified		My question has to do with something that they say that can't be repaired.
		I just wonder what is nanotechnology, what could it possibly do with spinal cord paralysis?
		Aha.
		I'll just listen on the radio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		You're very welcome.
		Thank you.
		Jan, spinal cord injury.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Remember we were talking about desktop manufacturing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, they are also injecting growth cells into these inkjet printers, and they are actually printing human tissue now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Printing human tissue.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Printing human tissue.
		That's number one.
		But number two, you remember earlier, Art, I was talking about this problem of nanobacteria, and we left off at this point of calcification.
		Remember how these nanobacteria grow a calcium shell?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's the same kind of calcium that you find in spinal cord growths that paralyze people in heart disease, in kidney stones, and in gallstones.
		It's all the same type of calcium phosphate.
		And what they have found is that these nanobacteria generate this calcium phosphate that is found in all of these diseases.
		And what I didn't get to say earlier that I'll say now is that a treatment has been discovered for this and is available.
		And if you want to read more about it, go to calcify.com on the website.
		And we're about to publish a book about it.
		It's called Has Heart Disease Been Cured?
		But it also deals with a lot of these other calcification-related diseases.
		So there's two possibilities for spinal cord problems.
		The first one is this nanobacterial problem that has a solution to it, in the case of calcium buildups on the spine.
		And the second one is these new medical nano-sized tools that are going to be able to replicate the type of tissue and nerve endings that have been destroyed during spinal cord injuries.
		So they're attacking it from two different directions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me jump way ahead here.
		I know medical science is working on it, so why not this aspect of science?
		Wouldn't it be true that ultimately nanotechnology in application in medical areas would virtually offer the human being immortality?
		In other words, once you can fix that which continues to, I don't know, age, lose cells, whatever it is, the aging process that eventually kills us, if you get control of everything, well, then nothing kills you, more or less.
		Right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I think that the earlier signs of that we're already seeing, given that our lifespan has virtually doubled in the last century, and I think you're going to see much, much more of that as we do two things.
		The first one is fix the human body and also get rid of some of these nanoscale infections that we've been talking about, which seem to have a real effect on our longevity.
		And the second thing is, and this is further in the future, and I want to emphasize this isn't happening right now, but we may develop the capacity to download our thoughts and our memories into a computer until we can grow a replacement body.
		But that is a long time away, but that's the theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the entire contents of a person's brain prior to physical death would simply be downloaded where it would reside in some sort of newfangled storage device until an appropriate body can be found.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that about right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But just to add one thing to that, Art, and that comes back to the theme of the merger between man and machine, that you may already have a backup attached to your brain that actually takes over when your body dies so that you can then switch over to another body that is cloned.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
		You don't have to go.
		Oh, oh, oh, oh.
		You don't have to go.
		Oh, oh, oh, oh.
		You don't have to go.
		Oh, oh, oh, oh.
		Wanna take a ride?
		Well, call our bell from west of the Rockies at 1-800-6188255.
		East of the Rockies at 1-800-8255033.
		First time callers may recharge at 1775727-1222.
		The wildcard line is open at 1775727-1295.
		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 Arpell on the Premier Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas Mohawk Hall is that he's actually telling you exactly the ride you're on.
		It's quite a ride.
		And I don't even know about the ending, do you?
		Imagine as this technology develops.
		What would be the end?
		There literally would be no end.
		But maybe for us.
		You See, I look at the glass the other way, not exactly the way Douglas does, but I see certainly the positive aspects of this technology.
		But where does it end?
		I don't think we've drawn that one yet.
		We'll be right back.
		The end of anything is always interesting to contemplate, but the end of nanotechnological applications, you just really can't see it at all today, can you, Douglas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Not at the moment, Art.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's really an open door.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, really open.
		All right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
unidentified		Hi.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my goodness.
unidentified		I didn't know it was me.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I didn't hear any click or anything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Modern technology.
unidentified		Yeah, amazing.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		When is NASA going to get its elevator going?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, the two things are elevator and NASA, which may not fit into the same sentence, but basically they've already got it going in the sense that the feasibility studies have already been awarded.
		The scientist Edwards that I mentioned at the top of the show has been given a half a million dollar grant to go and determine how his Wright brothers version of the space elevator might in fact be developed.
		So the feasibility studies are already underway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Wright Brothers version, I assume you refer to just the very first of whatever it's going to be, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, get the thing off the ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on air with Douglas Mulhall.
unidentified		Hi.
		Art?
		Yes.
		This is Jim from the High Sierra.
		Hi, Jim.
		I'd like to just verify and support everything this man has said is correct because I just videotaped last week on the technology channel.
		They showed the complete two technologies of how they were manufacturing the diamonds.
		They must have spent 20, 25, 30 minutes showing it.
		It was fantastic.
		And it's all correct.
		But I'd like to add something with your kind permission.
		A couple of days ago, an editor of an electric magazine came by my house and he left me about 150 pages that he had gotten out of Russia.
		And I have the most awesome documentation of what the Soviets are doing with, I don't know if you want to call it a reason.
		Yeah, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With what they're doing with what?
unidentified		With over-unity and motor generators.
unidentified		They're just doing miracles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, let's ask Douglas about that.
		I have great suspicion about what he just said.
		There have been spectacular claims in this country, Douglas, of over-unity devices existing, you know, more output than input, that kind of thing, right?
		And inevitably, you can't break the black box open.
		They don't want you to see what they're doing, and so you can't exactly verify it.
		And I've certainly never seen one example of an over-unity anything.
		Is there anything in nanotechnology that promises more out than in, in essence?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		If I said I knew something about it, I'd be lying.
		But I can say that one of the possibilities that nanotechnology is giving us and will give us more of is to transmit power from one place to another in vast quantities.
		And these diamond structures that we're talking about are a beautiful example of that.
		You know, you've got this exponential increase in computing capability because they aren't affected as much by heat.
		And so these transmission capabilities can give you the illusion of more out than in because you're getting it from somewhere else.
		And I think that's going to be one of the really important developments is when you combine computing with energy transmission at very high speeds with very low heat generation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, fine.
		It gets very good, but it doesn't really get to.
		And the illusion of more out than in is not what we need.
		We need the actual fact of it.
		But I see what you're saying.
		Okay.
		First time caller align, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah, this is Rick from South Carolina.
		Hello, Rick.
		I just wanted to know if the diamonds could be made into fibers and then used to make a composite to cover aircraft and spacecraft with.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Ah, very good question.
		Actually, diamond structures have also been hypothesized for the space elevator.
		So there has been a lot of thinking going into that.
		And the advantage of nanostructured diminoid structures in theory is that they're a lot more flexible and a lot less brittle.
		So there is a lot of investigation going into precisely what you're talking about, but I don't know that there are any practical applications because these fibers that you're talking about have still have yet to be developed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Count, the implications of what you have said tonight.
		I mean, you might as well have come on and said, well, I really do know how to turn lead into gold.
		You might as well have said that.
		It's pretty cool.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		At least into diamonds, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Art.
		This is Greg, formerly of San Clemente.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		One of our old-time callers now in Detroit.
unidentified		Oh, real quick, if they build the elevator, you know what the sign on the door would say, don't you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
unidentified		Want to take a ride?
		I've got two quick questions.
		Number one, if they can merge this technology with the human brain, doesn't that provide for the possibility for an absolute super intellect?
		And if that be the case, can they also possibly implant into, say, chimpanzees to make their IQ high enough to be able to communicate with us better?
		That's question one.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, as I mentioned, once you have super fast computing merged with organic matter such as the human brain, then you obviously have possibilities to merge it with the brains of other species.
		So you could foreseeably see that you have this upgrade happening with these different species.
		But I need to emphasize something.
		We're not talking about now when we're saying that.
		What we're doing is extrapolating from the development of these various technologies that will allow us to do supercomputing in a very small space and interface with the human brain.
		So this is some time off, but what you're saying has merit in that direction.
unidentified		Well, the second question is, you know, when physicists talk about we have, you know, many dimensions beyond just, you know, three or four, they say that there's some kind of like a frequency or something that the matter vibrates on.
unidentified		I was wondering if they're getting down to the area where they could possibly change frequencies where the matter becomes interdimensional.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are also people who say that nanotechnology, when combined with computing, would enable us to have something called a quantum computer, which literally could look outside the present reality or the present dimension, if you will, like a gigantic interdimensional Google to glean information from elsewhere virtually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever heard of that, Douglas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I have heard of it, Art, but I think I would even defer to you on that because quantum mechanics I don't understand.
		I've heard exactly what you have spoken about, but I tend towards the more conceivable practical stuff that at least people can understand concretely.
		It's definitely not outside the realm of possibility, but I am not qualified to really comment on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I am.
		I'll stick my neck out anywhere.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mahall.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, can you hear me all right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just fine.
unidentified		Okay, great.
		Two short questions, and I'll get off and listen to it on the radio.
		One, on the stairway to heaven, or space elevator.
		If that's in the Pacific, or if it's anywhere, actually, I guess, wouldn't it be affected by weather?
		And, like, tell you, whatever.
		And number two, on the diamond creation, creating a larger diamond flawlessly and using it for laser technology.
		I'll get off the phone and listen to you on the radio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The answer to the second question is yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the first question on the elevator and the.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The question is, if you're going to build something that's strong enough to go up 25,000 miles, it's definitely going to be able to tolerate a thunderstorm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
		Although you can imagine it might get rocky along the way up there somewhere.
		All right, West of the Rockies.
		You're on the air with Douglas Mulhole.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		You asked the question about the scientists dropping the beaker, but if Grey Goo does what you say it does, wouldn't it just eat its way out of the beaker and you wouldn't have to drop it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A very good point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have no idea how you would contain Grey Goo, which virtually would eat anything.
unidentified		So it would be rather different.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess you would have to design it with safeguards.
		I mean, you wouldn't make unlimited grey goo.
		I would hope you wouldn't anyway.
		Douglas, it's a very good question.
		How would you contain something that would eat everything?
		Answer?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You couldn't.
		But that's the thing, Art.
		First of all, these things won't necessarily eat everything.
		The gray goo argument came around in the beginning, the idea of carbon-based substances and life forms being consumables by these little monsters.
		But, for example, glass is not carbon-based, so it wouldn't be able to be eaten.
		That's just an example of what I'm talking about.
		So the idea that this nanobot would eat everything is not really correct.
		It's a bit of an exaggeration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I hope so.
		Wildcard line, you're on there with Douglas Mulhall.
		Hi.
unidentified		Yes, Hart.
unidentified		This is Brad calling from Nebraska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Pleasure to talk to you, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		First time caller, and I'm glad you're back.
		Thank you.
		A comment to your guest.
		Sir, are you familiar with the works of Charles Sheffield?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No.
unidentified		Okay.
		He was a science fiction writer.
		He passed away a few years ago, and he was talking about the space elevator or the Beanstalk technology.
		Uh-huh.
		And he felt that the cable would be very, very stable in orbit.
		The only way that it could be probably brought down would be through sabotage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a good thing we don't have anything like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that was before the technology that's being described tonight was even applied to the idea.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		There's already been a book written about that.
		It's a very famous science fiction trilogy, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars.
		And they talk about the space elevator being built on Mars and being sabotaged and wrapping itself around the planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yeah.
		I look at those kinds of things.
		As it calls.
		Yeah, no doubt.
		Oh, boy.
		First time caller line.
		You're on the air with Douglas Moho.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, this is Tim from St. Louis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Tim.
unidentified		Glad to have you back.
		I've been working on a science fiction story for some time where it's all based on nanotechnology and kind of what that does to the future.
		And the theory I came up with for controlling it was programming in a limited number of generations of these separate self-replicating units.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, that would be a little safety margin thing you'd build into it.
unidentified		Exactly.
unidentified		And I was wondering if, see, of course, I haven't worked out the science of how to actually do that since this is all speculative, but it's far from speculative.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The Foresight Institute, which is founded by Eric Drexler, who is often referred to as the father of nanotechnology, has Proposed, and you can see it on their website at foresight.org, a series of safety mechanisms for controlling self-replicating mechanisms.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And one of them is to have a built-in fail-safe mechanism exactly along the lines of what you just discussed.
unidentified		Well, that makes me feel really good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The whole phrase fail-safe doesn't do much for me.
		But that's me again, and I just worry that these fail-safes, these things that cannot go wrong, I just read so many stories about things that seem to go wrong.
		When scientists say it can't happen, but darn it, it happened.
		I mean, look at Three Mile Island, you know, we can't have a nuclear.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I have to agree with you on that.
		I mean, I have to be clear that although I'm taking the role of the positive guy here, actually what I'm saying is not that I believe these are all wonderful technologies and we're not going to have any trouble with them, because we are going to have trouble with them.
		And an example of that, again, that I refer to in my upcoming book, is that when these guys were looking for these nanobacteria, you know where they found them?
		They found them in fetal bovine serum that is used to manufacture vaccines.
		And what they found was they found that the cheapest source was fetal bovine serum from England, from these little cows, and that had the most nanobacteria in it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And where would be the worst possible place you could put such a thing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In vaccines.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's not, I don't want to cause a panic because the harm that you get from nanobacteria takes a lot more time than the diseases that the vaccine will protect you against.
		So it's not to say, you know, don't take vaccines because they're full of nanobacteria.
		But what it does say is exactly what you're saying, and that is, here we are merrily going along developing biological products that have contaminations in them that we did not know about.
		And so I agree with your viewpoint on these risks.
		But on the balance of that, we have to consider this.
		Let's talk about the ozone hole for a second.
		Let's talk about the collapse of the magnetosphere.
		The question is, is this a natural occurrence or is it man-made?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's the question.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		If it is a natural occurrence, we're going to have to protect ourselves from the collapse of the magnetosphere that protects us from the radioactive solar wind.
		And we can't do it with current technology.
		So what I argue is that despite the risks, which are substantial, we eventually will have to protect ourselves from some very big natural events that put us at risk.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My position is that at this point, it doesn't matter whether it's the hand of man or it's a natural cyclic thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If we don't start preparing for it, Douglas, we're dead meat.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's how I look at it.
		Let's get past arguing about what's doing it.
		Let's just observe, hey, it's happening.
		And now let's start doing something about it.
		That's my position.
		Listen, I do want to talk about your books because our program is ending.
		You've got two that are listed here, our Molecular Future and Has Heart Disease Been Cured?
		I take it that you would recommend to a new listener who's been intrigued tonight by what you've said, and there's plenty of intrigue, that's for sure, should they start with Molecular Future or the Heart Disease book?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		They are companion books, Art, and anyone who has a heart condition should definitely go straight to Has Heart Disease Been Cured question mark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would it help them?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It will definitely give them help because there is a new treatment for nanobacteria infections, and people who are very ill with heart disease need to inform themselves about it so that they can ask their doctors about it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		This is very important.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		And our molecular future, I guess it's a kind of a roadmap.
		What we've been talking about tonight, there's always a danger, I guess, writing a book like that, and that is that all kinds of advances occur the day after you do it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's why we have the website by the same name, which gives the updates on a lot of the material.
		And the thing is that the book has a very large number of websites listed in it.
		We have 700 endnotes that have websites attached to them in the book.
		And so people can go through the book and then go to those websites to see the extension of the developments that have come out of that.
		And by the way, I might add that about a dozen of the items that we forecasted, not predicted, but forecasted might occur, have come to pass.
		So the book is actually proving itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so you're saying that the batting average so far is pretty doggone good, and every time one hits, I'm sure you make immediate note of that on your website.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		If you go to the front page, you'll see that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
		Well, it's been a distinct pleasure having you here, and I have a feeling that by the next time I have you back, well, I mean, this time we got diamonds.
		God knows what could lie ahead by the next time we have you on, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Art, it is so good to have you back, and I look forward to coming back to talk exactly about those things because the developments are now cascading so quickly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, incredible.
		Thank you, my friend.
		And good night.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for having me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's Douglas Mulhall.
		And there you have it, a little sort of a glimpse of our molecular future, indeed, our molecular...
		Some of that is, it seems so far out, but if you listen carefully, he said a great deal of it is happening right now.
		Well, as always, it has been my pleasure to be with you this weekend.
		Look forward to next weekend.
		And as always, I've got Crystal to take us out of here.
		From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
		Good night.
unidentified		Shooting stars across the sky.
unidentified		This magical journey will take us on a ride filled with the longing, searching for the truth.

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