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Feb. 26, 2005 - Art Bell

02:53:13

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

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01:01:09

douglas mulhall

01:15:40

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This great program close to post a.m.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		It's my honor, my privilege to escort you through this weekend, and a good one it's going to be.
		Now, right here at the beginning of the show, I'm going to address the ABC special because I've only had about 5,000 emails about this, and a very interesting reaction from the audience it was.
		Now, I've read a number of people who have made comments about the show and reviewed it, most of them, you know, uthologists, there's people in the field, and then, of course, the audience, all of you, and you're certainly in the field.
		And with some few exceptions, well, two things.
		My part of it, yes, I got more than 30 seconds, and people seemed to really like that.
		Thank you very much.
		It was enjoyable.
		But then when they commented on the rest of the program, well, there were two categories of emails that I got.
		One from the occasional sort of average citizen who heard it and saw it, and they loved it.
		But then there were the most of you, listeners to this program, and ufologists like Whitley and others that I've seen really panned the ABC special.
		And I understand that, but you're wrong.
		You guys are wrong.
		Now, I understand why you feel that way.
		I mean, people who listen to this program, you're very informed on the subject of ufology.
		Very informed.
		Maybe even overinformed.
		I don't know, but very informed.
		And then, of course, ufologists obviously are very informed.
		And from a very informed person's point of view, the ABC special probably would have seemed rather pedestrian.
		Now, there was one glaring difficulty that I had with it, and that, of course, was Roswell.
		They reduced Roswell to one word, myth.
		And I've interviewed too many witnesses to even begin to agree with that.
		But you know, the rest of the program, now, listen to me carefully.
		Not all of you who, you know, you're really well informed on UFOs.
		How could you not be?
		You're a regular listener to this program.
		You've heard far more.
		A very common comment, well, I didn't see anything new.
		Well, of course not.
		You know much more than the average person does.
		Remember, this wasn't aimed at those people who listen to this program.
		This was aimed at the great, unwashed general public.
		And for that group of people, it did save the Roswell bit a wonderful job.
		It is a first step only.
		I mean, what do you expect that they would give the general public the Lear test and then say, well, what do you think?
unidentified		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're going to start out with some of the mainstream sightings, and they did that very well.
		The Midwest stuff, you know, they covered a lot quite well.
		It was only two hours.
		Not bad in network prime time, actually.
		And again, I beg of you, consider the audience to which it was proffered.
		The general unwashed public, not all of you.
		I know from your informed point of view, you didn't learn anything new, and boy, they just didn't get into any depth at all.
		Well, sure, not compared to what you get here.
		But for a first big step to a mass audience, I know there's been stuff on the science fiction channel and other channels that probably exceed what ABC did, but for a first step to the great unwashed general public, it was one hell of a good effort.
		And it was only, we can hope, a first step.
		The ratings were good, so they'll probably do more.
		And as we get more, there'll be more depth and more revelation.
		You just can't dump all of that on the general public all at once.
		So, again, I ask you, those of you who are in ufology and those of you who listen to this program, to reconsider it from not your own perspective, which is, of course, what you jump and leap and do, you know, based on your own knowledge.
		No, it wasn't anything new at all and rather pedestrian.
		But for the general public, unwashed, it was a giant step for mankind.
		And I want to thank ABC.
		And by the way, they took some really, really cool shots of what they called the compound.
		The house here.
		And, well, it is sort of compound-ish, actually.
		There are quite a number of buildings.
		But what they did is they lit them up at night.
		i told you they've been out here in the evening hours and they got in the b_l_m_ land out across uh...
		the road from the house and took a And I took a little snapshot of one of the shots they took of the house in that special and put it up there on my webcam.
		So Art's webcam has that picture.
		Pretty cool stuff.
		Looks really good at night, huh?
		Really compoundish, which is what they called it.
		We may set up a Kool-Aid stand out there.
		I don't know, I can't see the gun ports from here.
		Anyway, so there you have it.
		The ABC special I thought was really excellent for what it was.
		And once again, think of it not as you do, as a very well-informed person with regard to ufology, but as somebody who didn't know a damn thing about it.
		And from that perspective, it was pretty good stuff.
		Now, in a moment, we'll get into some of the world news.
		Not much of it all that good.
unidentified		All that good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A 31-year manhunt is over.
		They've got the serial killer called BTK.
		And I have no idea how they did it.
		It was DNA that they got someplace, somehow, some way.
		The suspect identified as Dennis L. Rader, a 59-year-old city worker in nearby Park City.
		In fact, the actual picture I saw of him on CNN had a little microphone on his lapel.
		He looked almost like a cop, but he wasn't city worker.
		He was arrested Friday, and police would not say how they identified him as a suspect or whether he said a word since being arrested.
		But they seem confident that indeed they have caught BTK, and Ed Dames had nothing to do with it.
		He had been planning, have the airline tickets to go out there, and still is going to, I guess.
		I talked to him earlier tonight, but no.
		I checked with Ed, and he said he had not a thing to do with it.
		But a lot of people sighing some big relief in Wichita, Kansas, that's for sure.
		In fact, I think they started the news conference going, whoo, like that.
		Israel's defense minister on Saturday blamed Syria and a Palestinian militant group based there for a suicide bombing that killed four Israelis outside a Tel Aviv nightclub and shattered an informal truce, prompting him to freeze plans to hand over security responsibilities in the West Bank.
		It's going to go on forever, isn't it?
		In a surprise and very dramatic reversal, President Barak took a first step Saturday toward a democratic reform in the world's most populous Arab country, ordering the constitution changed to allow presidential challengers on ballot this fall.
		So that's something new for Egypt.
		There will be an opposition party.
		A major oil fire raged Saturday after insurgents blew up a pipeline in the north part of the country in Iraq.
		The family of an anchor woman for a U.S.-funded state television station, the mother of four who was reportedly shot in the head, found her body dumped on a street in the northern city of Mosul.
		Insurgents, meanwhile, killed two civilians in a roadside bombing west of Baghdad.
		That, too, seems like it'll go on forever.
		Whenever Jessica Marie Lunford went out to play, her father and grandparents trusted her to come home when she was supposed to.
		But now, as you know, I'm sure if you watch the news a lot, you know she's missing, vanished, gone from her bedroom during the night, and her father fears she has been kidnapped.
		And that's all over the news.
		And they're showing pictures of her, so see if you recognize anything.
		Breaking a tradition he kept even after being shot two decades ago, Pope John Paul II will not lead Sunday prayers, and that'll be the first time in his 26-year papacy.
		Can you believe that?
		First time.
		Others are taking over the power of that seat, and there's a certain hierarchy and a certain way things run, even when the Pope is not there.
		When a roadside bomb in Iraq exploded on February 9th, Army Sergeant Jessica Housby became the 21st female soldier killed in action since the war began two years ago now, and that may seem a small number, given that hostile deaths among U.S. troops recently surpassed 1,000, now may be actually closer to 1,500 when fatal accidents and other non-battle deaths are included.
		Well, of course, it is what I saw.
		The headline from Whitley Striber's Unknown Country is triangle UFOs are everywhere, and they are.
		Mysterious black triangles have been reported now in Canada, Maryland, and now Dr. Mark Olson of Sonora, California has taken spectacular video, I guess.
		Bless his heart.
		He got a video camera of two of them.
		The sighting of a huge black triangle reported to unknowncountry.com over West Hollywood, California on February 5th, but no images were obtained.
		Black triangles have been a feature of UFO sightings at least since the 70s and are responsible for some of the most spectacular sightings ever recorded.
		Among them, the passage of an enormous triangle across Arizona during the famous Phoenix lights event.
		They did cover that in ABC.
		In March of 1977.
		That'd be 97, actually.
		Where'd they get that?
		March of 77.
		A black triangle was spotted in the sky over Maryland on February 9th.
		As usual with these sightings, there were no lights on the UFO, and it was totally silent.
		The witness simply saw a black triangle shape that blotted out stars in the night sky.
		And that's exactly what my wife and I saw.
		Blotted out the stars.
		The nearly full moon, all gone.
		And here's this craft, not more than 150 feet, seemingly.
		I mean, very close.
		Almost felt like you, because of the size of this thing.
		It felt like you could throw a rock at it.
		But I didn't.
		I just stood there in shock, as I guarantee most of you would.
		All right, I would like to get a sense, as I open the lines here, and that's what I'm about to do, of what you thought of the ABC special.
		And again, I would ask that you consider it not from your point of view as a very informed listener or even that of a ufologist, if that's what you are.
		And frankly, a lot of you out there who listen to this show frequently are very close to the kind of knowledge that a regular ufologist would have.
		Of course, that's going to be small potatoes and nothing new to you.
		And you're going to go, oh, come on.
		I expected the world, why, I expected that they would get President Bush to get in front of that camera and admit to the world what's been going on for 50 years.
		Not likely.
	But again, for what it was and who it was aimed at primarily, I think it was great and a tremendous first step, and ABC should be applauded.
	Now, they may not have dismissed the Roswell business very much too easily.
	But as for the rest of it, I thought it was a good first step.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How you doing, sir?
unidentified		Fine.
		At least we got to see what you and Ramona look like.
		Hey, you've got a pretty exotic looking wife.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do indeed.
unidentified		You can really tell she loves you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've been very much in love.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're soulmates, been married well over a decade now, and it's going well.
unidentified		Well, my 82-year-old mother watched the show, and of course she's seen things that she had never seen before.
		And, of course, she asked me, she says, was that fake photography?
		And I said, no, mother, that was very good pictures.
		But the only thing I saw wrong with it, and I've been studying this stuff ever since I was a little kid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		See, that qualifies you, though, as somebody very much in the know.
		And again, you've got to remember, take it from the point of view from somebody who has only chuckled reading an occasional, you know, maybe story in the newspaper or hearing a kicker on the evening news or something like that.
		For that person, this was a lot of information.
unidentified		Like you said, this was the first.
unidentified		And two hours on a major network at prime time, it's pretty dadgum good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It really is.
unidentified		But I really didn't, you know, the Roswell thing, they could have gone, at least their investigators could have gone to the GAO or someplace like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they missed so many.
		Well, they screwed up the Roswell thing.
		I'm not going to try and apologize.
		No, we're not going to screw it up.
unidentified		At any rate, at least now when we're talking to you, we get to know what your studio is.
		Hey, you got a pretty nice friend there, Jack.
		You really do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a nice compound, as compounds go.
unidentified		Yeah, it really looked like a compound.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It really did.
		Well, that's why they called it that, I guess.
		It's all right.
unidentified		And you're really in the desert, aren't you?
unidentified		I mean, you're dead out right in the middle of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		About 20 miles from Death Valley.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's pretty serious desert, man.
unidentified		That's pretty desert-like.
unidentified		But you get a lot of critters coming in and out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We have critters, yes.
unidentified		Oh, good critters, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, critters all over the place there.
unidentified		Well, look, at least you did get more than 30 seconds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		That I did.
		Thank you very much.
		Yes, we have coyotes here.
		They run in packs.
		Pretty weird late at night.
		You'll hear them all out there.
unidentified		Yep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Kind of a little strange sound.
		And when they're in packs, it's kind of eerie to hear them.
		You know, there's 10, 12, or more of them out there.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air, top of the morning.
unidentified		Top of the morning, Art.
		Hi.
		Warp Speed A Plus, Newtonian Relativistic Mechanics, the book predicts a calculated numerical increase for the observed speed of light from the point of view of an atomic clock placed on the surface of the planet Mercury of between 1 meter per second, Mercury furthest from our Sun, to 4.3 meters per second, Mercury nearest our Sun.
		This might not seem like much.
		However, for a spaceship moving at 0.866 times the speed of light, whoops Speed A Plus predicts the speed of light would double.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The speed of light would double.
		That's interesting.
		That's one I've never heard before.
		The difference in the atomic clocks, as a matter of fact, if you were to take what's called an atomic clock, actually it just gets a signal from the Boulder people, or perhaps Hawaii.
		At any rate, it is very accurate, minus the speed of light that it takes for the signal to get to you.
		There would be that much lag.
		But if they're flown in opposite directions, there actually would be a detectable difference.
		It's really quite fascinating.
		Western Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Art, I thought the police officers' testimony and the Air Force personnel's testimonies in the first hour was quite compelling if you were a first-time viewer of a UFO phenomenon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You betcha.
		I did too, sir.
		And look, again, they only had two hours.
		They couldn't come at this, you know, kind of from the already educated, knowledgeable ufologist point of view, or it would have been way out there.
unidentified		Exactly.
		Of course, I would have preferred the Stephen Greer disclosure.
		You talked to him for three hours when ABC was filming, but like you said, a foot's in the door now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And it was a good first step.
		And the criticism is all coming from the very well-informed.
		And from their point of view, it was a disappointment.
		And I can understand that.
		But come on, folks.
		This is a general public we're talking about here.
		As I said, these people might have heard a few jokes about it on the local news or read a little thing in their newspaper with a little joke line at the end.
		Other than that, they don't know a darn thing about UFOs.
unidentified		You got that right.
		And the ratings.
		I think George last night mentioned the overnight ratings.
		It was number two for the first hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
unidentified		That's excellent.
		And More power, too.
		Let's keep it going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Thank you very much.
		That's how I feel about it.
		Disclosure is not going to happen instantaneously.
		And as I said, would you give the Lear test to the unwashed?
		Oh, no.
		No, no.
		You might ask a far less provocative question, but you wouldn't start out with something as provocative as the Lear test, would you?
		West of the Rockies?
		No, hold that.
		Wrong line.
		First of the first time call our line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Oh, hello, Arta.
		Let me say it's just an honor to speak to you, Longvan Listener, first time caller.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Orlando, Florida.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, not a lot of time before the break, so what's uh my only thing is um I thought it was great.
unidentified		I agree with uh what you said, and my only thing about it was that the scientists who disagreed with the whole UFO phenomenon, I mean it's good to have science, you know, somebody who disagrees because it makes the argument more interesting, but I thought that the scientists that they interviewed were very, very closed-minded when it came to the whole.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, scientists are kind of closed-minded, sir.
		As a general rule, a lot of my interview right here are very closed-minded about a lot of things.
		But then, of course, they also put Michio Kaku on, so and he was very good.
		So, I don't know.
unidentified		They put a pretty good mix in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
		Caller?
		I guess he's gone.
		You thought that's all the time I had.
		But we could have trailed out.
		Yes, Michio was in there, and he was absolutely excellent.
		So, listen, folks, again, I beseech those of you who have rained it down with criticism from your informed points of view, remember to whom this show was primarily aimed.
		That would be the great unwashed who now are a little washed, a little at a time, from the high desert.
		This is Host to Coast AM.
unidentified		Host to Coast AM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Y'all listen very carefully now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Our phone numbers are just ever so slightly different for the weekend, and here they are.
unidentified		To talk with Art Bell.
		Call the Wild Guard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ART by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's how you do it, folks.
		Good morning.
		How you doing?
		We're talking about the ABC special because that's kind of on everybody's mind.
		And I definitely had a few things I wanted to say about it.
		I hope I was clear.
		And once again, I think the criticism of it is, with the exception of the Roswell piece, totally unfounded.
		And the people, the informed people who are making that criticism, really should think very hard about who that show was aimed at and count their blessings.
unidentified		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Incidentally, top of the hour, Douglas Mulhall will be here, and we'll be talking about nanotechnology and robots.
		I dearly love the subject of both, as you know, nanotechnology, which seems to be involved in almost everything that is futuristic.
		Have you noticed that most of the scientists that we have on and many of the future tech kind of guys are all talking about nanotechnology because it relates to so many of their fields, including, of course, robotics.
		Wildcardline, you're on the air.
		Top of the morning.
unidentified		Hello, and good morning, Mr. Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		I am calling from Kentucky.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you're going to have to speak up good and loud.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not going to be able to do it.
unidentified		Okay, is that better?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ever so much better, yeah.
unidentified		Okay, excellent.
		Yeah, about the UFO special, I was honestly skeptical about it before I saw it.
		I thought they would try to debunk UFOs or discredit the witnesses.
		But the police testimony that they had, the airline pilots that they had on there, multiple witnesses of the same incidents, to me gave a lot of credence to the UFO phenomenon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
unidentified		And to me, the special was UFOs 101, that it was for the uninitiated.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
		I should have said that.
		You said it exactly right.
		UFOs 101, it was for the uninitiated, not the listeners of this program.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		not ufologists, whose expectation, of course, would be so much higher if they had only put the program together.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Yeah, it was not something for the hardcore UFO experts who know A to Z of aliens and UFOs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, this is the program for them.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And programs like it that are dedicated to this kind of thing.
		Sure.
		No, you've hit it exactly.
unidentified		But there was one, I was reading reviews of the special on the internet, and somebody was complaining about there was a section on there where a female woman pilot was talking about her husband flying and they saw a bright light coming at them and there was a break in the clouds and they saw it was the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That was Jill Turner, actually.
unidentified		Okay.
		They were complaining that that made it seem like all UFOs are natural phenomena.
		To me, what that sends the message is, look, on the one hand, we've established that there are a lot of weird phenomena in the sky that are actual unidentified flying objects.
		Some of them, however, as all of us know, are natural.
		And so to me, the message they sent was, be on the look, but be careful at what you're looking at.
		Don't jump up and down and say that every light you see is a UFO.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but you were listening to somebody intimately involved in the SETI program.
		And the SETI program, of course, is spending a great deal of money looking for them out there.
		And even they said on the program that if they're already here, what's the point of looking out there?
		So their point of view is pretty naturally going to be we should keep looking, and they should.
unidentified		But anyway, that's all I had.
unidentified		I enjoyed getting through and talking to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Glad you made it.
		Thank you very much, and take care.
		Yes.
		And that was Jill, and that would be her position without question.
		And nevertheless, I feel that we should continue to look out there.
		We should do both.
		And we're really good in this world, particularly in America.
		We can walk and we can chew gum at the same time.
		So keep pointing those radio telescopes, but don't ignore what you hear here either.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, this is Steve Collins from Lowell, Massachusetts.
		How are you, Alan?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm fine, but the name's Art.
unidentified		My bad.
unidentified		Listen, I want to talk about nanotechnology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas Mulhoe coming up top of the hour about exactly that.
unidentified		Yep, I'm waiting for him to come on.
		I have been following physics in an amateur level and been following some of Einstein's theories and studying E equals NC squared.
		And I understand that one of Einstein's greatest insights was to realize that matter and energy are really forms of the same thing.
		And I worry about nanotechnology because I think nanotechnology is potentially our most beneficial scientific discovery about time.
		And I think it's also potentially the worst and most dangerous scientific discovery about time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which makes it exactly no different than any other gigantic discovery like the splitting of the atom.
		The best and the worst.
		You get it all.
unidentified		And you're going right in the direction that I'm going.
		I wonder if nanotechnology is going to be used to break atoms.
		I know currently to break atoms, you smash them together.
		It takes a lot of energy, and therefore it releases a lot of energy when they smash.
		What happens if these guys take nanotechnology and they create nano-needles that they can drive right into the side of an atom and very easily break open the atom, therefore releasing a lot of energy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nano needles.
unidentified		Nano needles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, let me ask about nano-needles.
		I like the expression or not like it.
		Let's see, nano-needles.
		All right, that's good.
		I'll be sure and ask.
unidentified		I'm afraid that if that could be done, because I don't know the size of an atom, you know, in relation to nanometers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		With respect to almost anything else, small.
unidentified		But if a needle could be used to break an atom, then it could be used to give us lots of energy, extremely cheap.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then there's, of course, the infamous gray goo thing.
unidentified		I'm not familiar with that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you're not.
		How could you know about nanotechnology and not gray goo?
		Shall I explain gray goo to you?
unidentified		Would you please?
unidentified		I think I'm only an amateur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you make a tiny little robot, in essence, right?
		A nanotechnological robot, and you simply tell it two things.
		Multiply and eat everything in your path in order to continue to reproduce yourself.
		And so what happens is it gets dropped on the floor and you can't even see it, but pretty soon everything in its path, the floor, the rug, the metal, the plastic, human flesh, everything in its path gets reduced to gray goo.
		Now do you get it?
		I get it.
		That's scary stuff when it comes to nanotechnology.
		Just instructed to do two things.
		Reproduce.
		And use everything that you encounter to reproduce with.
		In other words, consume everything in your path.
		West of the Rockies?
		Top of the day.
		Hello?
		I guess I gave up.
		First time caller line, you're on here.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Art.
		This is Andrew from Wichita, and I had a little bit of information on BTK for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, what do you know?
unidentified		Well, it turns out that his daughter had suspicions of her father being BTK.
unidentified		So she went to the police with her DNA, and they backtraced it to Match, and then they surveilled him for a week, and then they went in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is big news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where did you get that?
unidentified		This was off of Cake Channel 10, local news media here in Wichita, where he was in the middle of the day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right there in Wichita.
		Wow, wow, that's big news.
		So let me get this straight again.
		So everybody has got it.
		His daughter suspicioned that dad might be BTK for whatever reason, donated her own DNA, which showed that it had to have been a relative of hers that did the deed because the DNA would match, and then they surveilled him for how long?
unidentified		One week.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For a week.
unidentified		One week.
unidentified		And it also turns out that he is a dog catcher for Park City.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that I had heard on CNN.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's in.
unidentified		Wow, okay.
unidentified		I had not known that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, when I showed the picture of him on CNN, he had a little microphone on his lapel like a cop might have, and I thought, oh, my God, it's a cop, but it wasn't.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		Real close, though.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, thank you so very much.
unidentified		You're welcome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there's a little bit of an update for you, everybody, from Wichita, the city where that horror was ongoing.
		Wow.
		Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Welcome to the program.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm quite well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Just want to take a brief moment and let you know that it's wonderful to have someone on the air who has the fortitude and the strength to endure all the years you have.
		And about the show, it was superb.
		We couldn't have asked for anything better.
		It was boldly done, very imaginative.
		The stories, especially about the B-52 pilots, were superb.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		And along with Dr. Vichikaku.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, sir, you are so correct.
		And yet you should have seen the avalanche of complaints, many of them I might add, from people in ufology, about how the program was shallow, and damn it, I didn't learn one new thing, and as though it was going to be revelatory to a ufologist.
		None of them, it seems like, understood who this was aimed at and what you could deliver to these folks at any given time.
		They did a wonderful job.
		All the things you just talked about and so much more.
unidentified		Oh, yes.
		I was listening to a radio program here locally back in 1976, or actually, yeah, 1976.
		It was Ed Bush, and he had a scientist from NASA at that time by the name of Alan Schusler, who made an example of the very thing Dr. Mitchikaku did as well.
		And that was 30 years ago.
		So can you imagine someone who's been listening to this and following this for over 30 years, for 30 years later to hear a scientist in today's world from a university in New York who's teaching these theories to a class 30 years later,
		Alan Schussler said, not only did they know that the shortest distance between two points was a warped line, but also that they had on their drawing boards a craft that could take us to the nearest star and back on one cabin supply of air.
		And that was in 1976.
		I about fell out of the chair when I heard that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate your call, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Have a wonderful evening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you too.
		So there you go.
		Some people apparently waiting in the wings to at least agree with that.
		I was really astounded at the short-sightedness of some people in just heaping the criticism on that.
		And believe me, most of it came from inside ufology.
		As you might expect, and for the reasons that I just articulated, what I'm surprised about is that some of those in the discipline weren't smart enough to know, I don't know what the network was doing, what it meant, that it was a first step, that it was going to the general public, not a symposium of people they stand in front of and talk about the latest UFO news.
		East of the Rockies, you're on here.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hello.
unidentified		This is Dane from Southern Indiana, 1280, WGBF.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Welcome, Dane.
unidentified		That bumper music you had didn't do your so-called pound-pound any good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which bumper music?
unidentified		It wasn't the drums and Indians outside of a compound.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You think that sounded a little cultish?
unidentified		Yeah.
		I thought the show, it was kind of evened up between believers and non-believers.
		I don't think they wanted to come out and just floor people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There is a lot to ask for for a mainstream network in a first effort.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's not bad.
unidentified		I don't think it floored anybody, did it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, as I was saying, you don't whip out the Lyr test on somebody who does a 9 to 5 job in a cubicle every day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You just don't do that.
unidentified		Right.
		Okay, and that's what I wanted to say.
		I really liked it, though.
		I really liked your place.
		So that was my answer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll shorten it and call it the pound.
unidentified		Okay.
		All right, guys.
		Well, you got cats.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		Okay, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Good evening, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good evening.
unidentified		Yeah, this is Robert up in Marysville, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Yeah, listening to the thing.
		I'll agree with everybody with that head to say.
		I just wanted to throw in a couple of quick bits before the break.
		Okay.
		What I caught on there, nobody's ever made mention of it before, and they were talking about in 47 in Roswell, and they're showing, was it Marcel or Kursko or whoever, you know, showing up there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jesse Marcel Jr.
unidentified		Right.
		Yes.
		It was talking about, okay, it's weather balloons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Project Mogul, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not weather balloons, but balloon trains that were designed to detect Russian atomic tests.
unidentified		Right.
		But just before they showed that, they were talking about, well, we found this debris on the ground.
		It looked like tin foil, and we'd hit it with sledgehammers, and it would bounce off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Then the next segment, they're showing weather balloons.
unidentified		I didn't see a bit of aluminum in them weather balloons floating up there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've had the opportunity, thank you, to interview Jesse Marcel Jr., and he described a lot of things that he was able to touch, pieces that his dad brought home and all the rest of it.
		And again, you know, here's What I've sort of always considered, Jesse Marcel Sr. was a man who knew what he was seeing.
		He wasn't a one of the unwashed.
		He was a military officer who would know exactly what he was seeing.
		And he said it was a UFO.
		And I believe there was a general who at first said indeed they had captured a flying disc, right?
		That was the headline.
		And that, in fact, was the press release.
		Only later was it turned into a weather balloon or whatever.
		Project Mogul or, you know, in later years, whatever.
		But two men who would have known what they were seeing said that they had a UFO.
		No, I thought the program dismissed the whole Roswell thing entirely too quickly.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi there, Art.
unidentified		How are you doing today?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just great, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		I'm standing up against the break, but I really do enjoy your show.
		I had to go to work that night, but I managed to watch the first hour.
		And I learned a lot that I really hadn't heard about UFOs.
		But I'd like to make a suggestion.
		Maybe you and the fellow listeners can get behind ABC and maybe make a suggestion.
		That was one little step.
		Maybe they can come back and do a weekly synopsis or maybe once in a while, once a month.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What will determine that, sir, is the ratings of the program.
		And it was number two, close up on the heels of Survivor.
		And that fact alone is most likely going to ensure a follow-up.
		And that's the best we can hope for is a follow-up.
		And of course, in a successive show, they would start where this last one left off.
		And there's lots, God knows, there's lots of new information they could give in a succeeding special, right?
		All kinds of information.
		And eventually, after several more specials, they would begin presenting material that would put a smile on the lips of some current ufologist.
		You're on the air, coast to coast, I am with RPL.
		Not a lot of time, but on the air you are.
		Hi.
		Hello?
		Going once?
		Yes, ma'am.
unidentified		Good morning to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		I'm a first-time caller, and I've been listening to your show, and I really like it.
unidentified		Well, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, turn your radio off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a first-time caller.
unidentified		Turn my radio off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll stand by while you do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everybody should know to turn it off immediately or you'll have.
unidentified		Okay, here I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very good.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		My name is Sharon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Sharon.
unidentified		And I'm from Pittsburgh.
		Okay.
		And I believe that I was called when I was six years old to serve the Lord.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		I'm now 60 years old.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And how have you done?
unidentified		Wonderful.
unidentified		I've never failed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Never failed.
unidentified		Never failed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then I'm sure the Lord is pleased with you.
unidentified		He is very pleased with me, and I'm pleased with you.
unidentified		And you said in 1976, well, I had a son in 1976, he turned against me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your son turned against you?
unidentified		Yes, he believes that there's a force out there.
		And I haven't been able to reach him for 13 years.
		He won't speak to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does he call it the force?
unidentified		He says a force.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		for us.
		Yeah, you know, like Yeah, something like that.
		Well, maybe there's not as much difference between you and your son as you think.
		What he refers to as the force may well be the same God you've served all these years.
		Who knows?
		Speaking of forces, coming up in a moment, we're going to talk about the newest, the latest, perhaps the most dangerous or the most helpful force in the entire world.
		That would be nanotechnology.
		If you're new to it, if you haven't heard about it, then stay right where you are because it'll be very informative.
		It's not science, fiction, but it's science.
		And it's beginning to unfold right in front of our eyes.
		You'll learn all about it in a moment.
unidentified		Thank you.
		I can feel it coming in the air.
		Well, the night is heavy on his guilty mind.
		The best thought from the borderline Where the headband comes Who knows damn well he has been cheated And he said, "I'm stepping into the twilight zone" Places in the house, feels like people But we don't get long, got the moon and star Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?
		The best thought from the twilight zone Places in the house, feels like people But we don't get long, got the moon and star Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?
		Still the wrong road When I'm falling as super-worn Still the wrong road When I'm falling as super-worn When a bullet hits the ball To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call ARC at 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ArtVell by calling your in-country spread access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with ArtVell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Rocking the night away.
		My guest coming up in a moment is Douglas Mulhull.
		He's going to be talking about nanotechnology.
		He sent an article along published in the Seattle Post Intelligencer February 24th.
		So a brand new article.
		And I'm going to read it to you because it should frame the discussion tonight perfectly.
		It says, as in medicine, our skill at creating technology is outpacing our ability to grasp its ethical application.
		This time, the gap between ingenuity and morality is on the battlefield.
		We are all but ready now to build robots to fight our wars, but far from prepared to resolve the congregative attendant ethical questions.
		Science fiction has a way of becoming more science than fiction decades ago.
		Isaac Asimov wrote, iRobot, today, the Pentagon's Future Combat Systems Project is spending, get this folks, $127 billion to create artificial intelligence warriors.
		According to a recent New York Times study, these silicon soldiers will at first be remote control, but over time, they'll be endowed with increasing autonomy.
		It's perfectly logical to put machines at risk before humans, clearing minefields, performing guard duty in hostile locales, but if war can be fought virtually without loss of human soldiers' lives, it could jumble the entire strategic and political calculus of war.
		After all, the cataclysms at Hiroshima, Nagasaki not long ago established the acceptable cost in enemy lives, even enemy civilians, to be paid for sparing the lives of American troops.
		Won't wars without casualties, at least on our side, be more alluring?
		Or will the chilling prospects of automated legions of fearless, bloodless, soulless killing machines have the same sobering effect that the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had, driving us to pursue peace in the face of a new kind of unacceptable war.
		moment dot douglas mahal stay right there the Douglas Mulhall is a leading nanotechnology journalist, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and broadcast executive.
		Douglas has also led at least one other life as a pioneer in scientific research.
		His landmark book, Our Molecular Future, describes powerful new tools to save the globalized economy from nature's time bombs.
		That cutting-edge approach is reaffirmed in a new co-authored book, Calcium Bomb, about a nanobacteria link to heart disease and cancer that is shaking the medical world.
		It describes the discovery and treatment of a previously undetectable infection in arthritis, heart disease, and other widespread illnesses.
		The link between these two books, of course, is the use of radical nanotechnologies to help us survive nature's wrath at the mega scale from earthquakes, climate changes, and the nanoscale from new infections.
		So I thought maybe an appropriate way to begin the program would be with this news story.
		And Douglas, so let me ask you, what about that?
		A war without, anyway, American casualties, sending in a legion of fearless, bloodless, soulless killing machines, the ethics of doing that.
		I realize that's jumping way out, but I couldn't resist.
		It's too good.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I sent that article along because I think it gives a beautiful example of some of the fears and conceptions about what nanotechnology is and does and can do.
		Because here's the interesting thing.
		They really don't talk that much in that article about nanotechnology.
		They talk about robotics.
		What most people don't realize is that the reason that robotics are moving ahead so quickly is because of nanotechnology.
		Nanotechnology allows things to be made smaller, more powerful, more efficient, cheaper.
		And that is what makes it real for industry and the military.
		And it's interesting also that in this article they talk about the relationship between science fiction becoming science because as you know, when we were on this program a few years ago talking about this, people were calling it science fiction and we were both saying, uh-uh, no, not science fiction, here, now, and we'd better wake up and smell the coffee.
		And now we have the conservative editorials in the nation's newspapers talking about this stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, this program tends to lead, you know, in a lot of areas.
		They find out about things years before they appear in mainstream press.
		But that's it almost goes back to last hour, in a way.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, and there's a couple of things actually back in the last hour that I wanted to refer back to.
		But before we get to that, the other thing that this editorial points out is that the military is leading the way in nanotechnology investment, and those investments are having enormous civilian spin-offs as well.
		And one word that we've been talking about a lot over the last couple of years on the show is an acronym called DARPA, which is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
		And they are basically the GWIS investment guys in the military.
		And they really have been driving the nanotechnology revolution in almost every area from materials to medicine.
		So in our show tonight, you're going to hear that theme coming up again And again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's fine.
		But let's go ahead and deal with what the article said for a moment.
		I mean, imagine the terror involved for any nation if the United States possessed such an army of bloodless, soulless, killing machines, and we simply said either you do the following, withdraw your troops from so-and-so-and-such, or we're going to send this army of killing machines against you.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And there's two interesting concepts to that.
		The first one is the idea that the U.S. would come up with it first, which seems to be unlikely because this stuff is breaking out all over the planet.
		And that's one thing we spoke about earlier as well, that every university in every country in the world right now is investing heavily in nanotechnology.
		And I refer back to this question that one of your callers asked, you know, can we use nano needles to break open an atom?
		And I think that's a good question because it indicates some of the misunderstandings about nanotechnology and what we're talking about right here in warfare because unlike nuclear power, where you need huge amounts of energy to break open an atom,
		and that's why, by the way, you can't use a nano needle to break open an atom, because you need this vast amount of energy and a huge infrastructure to refine the uranium and turn it into things like plutonium and do all those things.
		The difference between that and nanotechnology is that two or three very talented people working in a very small room can develop nanotechnologies and bring them out into the marketplace.
		And in fact, that is what is happening right now with a lot of small startup companies.
		So the idea that it's only going to be one technologically superior country that suddenly comes up with these robotic warriors is simply not in the cards.
		It's going to happen in a lot of places at once.
		That's the first thing.
		And the next thing is these so-called robotic warriors, the first ones you probably won't be able to see because, for example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, this DARPA organization, has already been funding these things called SmartDust.
		And SmartDust is basically a robot that is so small that it can float on air.
		And these are in existence now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what does this SmartDust do?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, preliminarily, they've been used for sensing, because that's one of the easiest things to do.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So they have a camera on board, self-propelled, energy source communications device.
unidentified		Wow.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So what they can do is, you know, they can and by the way, all the stuff that they've been using in Iraq and Iran to fly over, you know, the drones are just big versions of that.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And what they've done is they shrunk them down to the level where you can hardly see them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of fact, they have shrunk them to the level that they are so light, camera, communications gear, and all, they're lighter than air virtually and float in the air as would dust.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because for example, camera lenses can be almost the size of a few molecules now, just for example.
		And the same with community.
		Actually, the communications devices are some of the heaviest things.
		But nanotechnology is allowing all of these components to be brought together.
		And the reason that I bring that example up of SmartDust, and we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here, but is because it's the convergence of all of these technologies.
		It's nanotechnology, artificially intelligent software, robotics, these things all together, I call them the grain technology, genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology put together that is really creating this revolution.
		And I think that, if anything, if people come away from this show tonight, that is the main message.
		It's the acceleration of the convergence of these technologies.
		And it also comes back to the discussion earlier in the show about the ABC documentary on UFOs, because there is this idea out there that somehow, and it was mentioned frequently in the show where you had very dependable eyewitnesses saying, this is something otherworldly that we have never seen here.
		What we're going to explain tonight is that we are on the cusp of ourselves creating otherworldly technologies that are going to make UFOs seem a lot more understandable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm curious about this, so that the audience understands the scale of application of nanotechnology.
		Is there any field you can think of that would not be affected ultimately by nanotechnology?
		In other words, it'll apply to almost everything, won't it?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		As an enabling technology, it will be the same foundation as silicone has been to the computing industry.
		It is a basic technological building block on which a whole new societal range of technologies are being developed and are in existence right now.
		So it is what they call a disruptive technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Give the audience some pretty wild examples of where it ultimately can go so they can get an idea in their heads of the scale of what we're talking about tonight.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think from, you know, just from the ordinary person's point of view, imagine being able to just change the color of your car or clothes or anything in your personal area of ownership with the flick of a switch so that you wake up feeling pink today and you just change your room pink.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that is actually quite achievable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You may wake up feeling pink, but there'll be no day I wake up feeling pink.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Pink any color you want.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, please.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So, I mean, that's a practical example.
		Really, and there are actually some car paints today that are using this that can actually change the hue of the paint on the car with an electrical current.
		But that is just a very minor example of some of the possibilities.
		Some of the further out possibilities that are being addressed in the military again today are bodysuits that basically perform a whole bunch of functions, including air conditioning, bulletproofing us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I like air conditioning already.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, clothing, you're saying, that would air condition the person wearing it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and in fact, a group in Oregon, a group of universities in Oregon, is working, and we'll talk about this later, is working with the military right now to develop these body suits that will allow soldiers to operate in air-conditioned comfort in the desert.
		The reason it hasn't been possible before is quite simply the power source.
		And what they've managed to do is to combine these air-conditioning body suits with shrinking a power source from 20 pounds down to 8-ounce lighter fuel cell that does basically the same thing.
		So as soon as you start doing this, you start shrinking these power sources like this, you are in a position to do a whole bunch of things that nobody could ever do before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Will the power source itself be nanotechnological?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The power source itself is nanotechnological, and the way that it Does that is to arrange molecules and atoms more precisely.
		And this brings us back actually to explaining some of the basics of nanotechnology.
		The real question is: why is nanotechnology so interesting for industry in the military and why is it so powerful?
		And actually, the reasons are not that hard to understand when people understand this one thing.
		Materials take on very different properties at the nanoscale.
		That's one billionth of a meter to 100 billionths of a meter, more or less.
		When they're at that scale, the normal rules don't apply.
		What happens is that other properties, such as, for example, friction and electromagnetic properties, take over from the normal things like gravity and weight and the things that govern our normal everyday lives.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't the average person perhaps perceive it in some applications as creation?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, remember the Star Trek thing where they could order whatever kind of meal they wanted or a chocolate ice cream sundae or whatever and it would pop into one of these Microwave-sized things, and there it would be, just out of nowhere, boom.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that is known today as molecular manufacturing.
		And it is the more advanced type of nanotechnology that we'll be talking about later in the show because it involves, there's two types of nanotechnology right now, and it's important to understand the difference between them.
		Because the first type is what's being used right now, and the second type is the really gee whiz, uh-oh, society is going to really change type of thing.
		But the first type is basically pushing molecules around and arranging them in very precise order.
		And that is being done right now.
		It has been done for many years now, and it's being used to produce a whole bunch of products.
		And the way it is done is either with physical chemistry or by actually using an atomic force microscope, and I'll explain how that works in a minute, to push these little molecules all around and put them in the right place.
		Now, all of that is using larger machines to push smaller things around.
		So that's how nanotechnology works right now.
		We're taking bigger machines, making them smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until we get down to the level, in some cases, of a single atom and certainly a single molecule.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas, what is it that's allowing all of this to begin taking off the way it is right now?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is the breakthrough that let us get to this suddenly?
unidentified		Right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, Art, it comes back to this thing of convergence.
		What it started out with was something known as the scanning electron microscope that has actually been around for decades.
		And it was really one of the first things that allowed us to see down to the molecular level by bombarding an object with electrons and then basically taking a picture of those electrons and translating that into a television image.
		So that's what let us actually see.
		But what it didn't really let us do too much was to push things around.
		And then someone came along with an invention known as the Atomic Force Microscope.
		And the Atomic Force Microscope, and some people, I even find this hard to believe myself, even though I've said it so many times, they actually have a cantilever on them that is a physical thing that bounces along a surface and is so sensitive that it can sense something as small as a single atom when it goes over it.
		Now, what happens is when that cantilever moves up and down, a laser reflects off the top of it and records those movements.
		And you can then translate those movements into a picture.
		It's basically, it's that simple.
		I mean, it's a lot more complicated than that because then it has to be translated by software into a real picture that we can understand.
		So here you have this convergence of, first of all, being able to cut something small enough, this cantilever, that can actually go over a single atom, then the laser being sensitive enough to actually figure out how much it's moving, and then translating all of that into a television picture.
		That took a whole bunch of technologies coming together.
unidentified		Okay.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that's what happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But ultimately, then, software will be the command and control mechanism that tells the nanotechnological things what to do, yes?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yes, software is a huge player, and as software learns by its own mistakes, it is taking over the manufacturing processes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, as it learns by its own mistakes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That, of course, is beginning to get into the artificial intelligence world, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That is correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas, hold it right there.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		This is your world ahead, folks.
		You'd do well to listen very carefully to this morning's show.
unidentified		I'm Arquette.
		You feel my heartbeat in this colour.
		You know that behind all this call.
		I said, "Ti-Ti-Saya, Tamele, hey, hey, hey, hey, come on me for a, itamele." Be it sight, sound, smell, touch, the something inside that we need so much.
		The sight of the touch, or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an oak roots 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.
		Oh, the young woman is wanna
		take a ride?
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east to the Rockies, call toll-free 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ARC by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, it's very difficult to overstate the case for nanotechnology and how it will affect our lives.
		It really is.
		If you were to be able to see the full effect of a mature nanotechnological world, it would have perhaps very little resemblance to what's around you right now.
unidentified		very little indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is something you really might want to read more about since it's right in front of all of us.
		Our Molecular Future is one of the books, Our Molecular Future, How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World.
		And also the calcium bomb, the nanobacterial link to heart disease and cancer.
		Now, once again, Douglas, welcome back.
		Maybe we should understand, as a technology, how quickly nanotechnology is now advancing.
		Are there any obvious barriers or walls?
		I'm sure there are some ahead, but any that seem impossible from today's point of view?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, about 40 years ago, Richard Feynman, who is a very well-known scientist in the United States, he was the guy who was basically responsible for figuring out why the first space shuttle blew up due to the O-rings, against all of the other scientists' conventional wisdom.
		He said many years ago that there were really no barriers in physics to being able to assemble things molecule by molecule.
		And everything that has happened until then has basically proven him to be correct.
		And what we keep saying, and the reason that we wrote these two books, is to basically say to people, we have to wake up and smell the coffee because although everyone is saying, well, we have to be cautious and, you know, it's not moving ahead so quickly, it is.
		It is here, it is happening now, and we have to get a handle on it because it is beginning to have effects on our daily lives.
		And I'll just give you one example of that.
		There was just an ad on your program for gold, of course.
		Well, gold is a beautiful example of what happens at the nano level because it is a million times more luminescent at the nano scale than it is at the macro scale because of these electromagnetic and other properties that we talked about earlier.
		And because of that, gold nanoparticles can be used, for example, to be attached to individual, for example, cells or cancer cells so that you can track them in the body because they respond to very low levels of energy from outside the body.
		So what it means is that you can excite these gold nanoparticles from outside the body without being invasive, and you can track individual cells and individual biological processes in the body.
		Now, imagine instead of filling the body full of radiation and chemotherapy and all of these things, if you could track every individual cancer cell by having a gold nanoparticle latch onto it and, first of all, identify it, and then release something that kills the individual cell instead of killing everything around it.
		Those are the kinds of potentials that we're talking about, and gold nanoparticles are being used right now in medicine for diagnostics.
		So I think that's a really nice example that people can understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would nanotechnology matured be able to make gold?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the alchemist's dream, isn't it?
unidentified		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You know, the jury is still out on that one, but there is one thing that is certain, and that is that new materials are being invented every day with nanotechnology.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And actually, that is a nice lead-in to this whole solar electricity announcement that has just been made in the last week, because what we're looking at here is the combination of new types of materials to do something that is really going to blow people's socks off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right.
		But you say an announcement that was made this week.
		I missed it.
unidentified		What was it?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the interesting thing.
		There were actually one announcement last month and one announcement last week, but they both basically said the same thing, and that is that they have been able to develop solar cells that are cost-competitive with conventional energy sources.
		And as you're aware, and you've spoken about quite often on your show, that is really the holy grail of solar power.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		For the last 30 years, they have been promising this.
		The solar energy has said that it's feasible, but they've never pulled it off.
		And it looks like two, at least two separate organizations.
		One, a small Palo Alto startup company called Nano Solar that has only been around since 2002, but has some of the top minds in the industry working with it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, explain to me what we're talking about here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In what way is nanotechnology applied in the solar field that makes it suddenly feasible?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, first some background.
		Just so that people can remember this, they may have heard it before.
		You've got 500 times the amount of the total energy consumed in the United States today hits the continental United States every day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the form of sun.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So there's lots of the stuff around, but the problem has always been, A, how do you actually get it without blanketing the whole of the United States with these inefficient solar cells that we've had until now?
		And B, how do you transport the stuff around on all these huge big blankets of solar panels and put them into a grid?
		Because our grids today just aren't capable of handling that.
		So there's been the generation problem and the delivery and management problems.
		And all of those problems have to be solved before you can really have A solar economy.
		So let's talk about the solar cells.
		Until now, about 95% of all the solar cells have been made out of these silicone wafers that basically generate an electric current when electricity hits them.
		But they have a few problems attached to them.
		First of all, they've been pretty brittle, so they've have to been on these huge, ugly panels that you see everywhere sitting on roofs.
		And you can't really make them on any flexible surface.
		But the second problem has been they've usually only been in two dimensions, so they can only absorb the sunlight that's hitting them directly, you know, heading in one direction, which is why you see a lot of these solar panels out there with these motors turning them so that they can go directly into the sun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they track the sun and keep maximum efficiency all day long, yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And the third problem has been the actual thickness of the wafers, which means that they, for the amount of money invested in them, they have a very limited production capacity and efficiency.
		Well, these guys, one group from Palo Alto and the other from the University of Toronto, seem to have solved all three problems simultaneously.
		And they have done it by using something known as a quantum dot.
		Now, a quantum dot has quite often been described as an artificial atom.
		It's a lot bigger than an atom, but it has a lot of the same characteristics.
		And the one that's important for solar power is this.
		It operates in three dimensions.
		It can hang on to electrons in three dimensions, which means that for starters, it can absorb solar energy from a whole bunch of different directions, which vastly increases its efficiency, its capability to pull in this solar energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So imagine this into a constructed device.
		What would it look like?
		What are we talking about?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are two different visions, but they're both quite similar.
		One, which is actually happening today, it is in existence, is to put these onto flexible roll-up sheets.
		And that's been done right now.
		They have them.
		They basically manufactured them so that you can put them on flexible roll-up sheets, which means that you can laminate them to the roof or to the wall or to any flat surface or any rolling surface.
		And in that way, you have a lot less expensive and a lot more efficient areas for getting at this solar energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what does it look like?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, is it equivalent to, I'm trying to imagine for everybody, is it like a large sheet that can be or what?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's exactly like a large sheet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like a large sheet.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and here's the other really important thing about it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The other problem with solar cells has been that they have only been able to absorb a certain part of the light spectrum.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Infrared hasn't worked very well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		They've just overcome that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's a huge...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is a big announcement.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And here's what's interesting.
		People are hearing it really for the first time on coast to coast because the only other organization that has broken this story was the Hindu newspaper in India because some of their engineers are working in Palo Alto on it.
		But the company actually has not made a formal announcement of it yet.
		So this is really new news before it comes out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Certainly new to me.
		I imagine all my audience as well.
		That's incredible.
		All right.
		Give me, do you have any numbers you can give me?
		I mean, for example, for a given area, how much more efficient would this be than a traditional solar panel?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		100 times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And I should say by price.
		By price.
		It doesn't shrink the amount of space needed by 100 fold, but what it does is it shrinks the amount of material by 100 fold.
		And it also, because of this three-dimensional capability, increases the efficiency.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It really was my question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, for a given amount of area, as compared to a standard solar panel, how efficient in gathering energy is this new material?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, the numbers that are being thrown out, and again, because this hasn't been formally released, I don't want to get myself into trouble by giving precise numbers and then having someone come back on me on it, but I would say from what I've read and also from what's being said at the University of Toronto, that it's anywhere from three to seven times more efficient.
		But the main thing is not so much that, because you can have low efficiency if you have low price.
		And that's the thing, because what they've done at the University of Toronto is they've actually incorporated this into something known as organic plastics.
		And the reason organic plastics are important, Art, is because they can conduct electricity.
		And there's a whole new generation of plastics that are coming out that can conduct electricity.
		And when you combine those with crystals, nanocrystals, what you can do is you can have paint, solar paint, basically, that you can paint onto a surface because they don't lose their properties in liquid form.
		Now, there's a big debate on right now as to whether or not solar paint is actually feasible, but these guys at the University of Toronto are definitely using the term solar paint.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Solar paint.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, this means that if you can keep it in the liquid form and maintain its properties, that means that you're talking about painting buildings, cars, and those are the examples that they give at U of T. They've said the possibility is to use it as a coating on a car.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can I ask a sort of a technical question?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Fire away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's say that you had a house painted with solar paint.
		How would you collect the electricity?
		How would you collect the differential?
		There'd be a differential then between the house itself and the ground, as an example, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that comes into the power management aspect because that has been one of the big problems.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the nice thing about these nanoscale crystals that they're using is that they can not only absorb the energy, but they can also transmit it universally across each other.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So this means that basically, and I'm being very simplistic here, you can attach an electrode to one end, an electrode to the other, and you get a current out of it.
		So now the problem, though, is this.
		You're actually going to end up in a lot of cases with a surplus of energy.
		And for example, one of the big problems with solar energy, and they haven't solved this yet, is night.
		So you have to combine this with energy storage.
		And the key thing about energy storage has always been, number one, cost.
		Number two, if you're using fuel cells, you know, how do you create this hydrogen that is used to fuel the fuel cells?
		And there's a huge argument over it right now, as everybody knows.
		The problem is creating the hydrogen for the fuel cells.
		Well, if you have got an enormous amount of energy coming off of these solar cells and you can put it into a grid, then you can convert hydrogen.
		And when you can do that, then you've got your 24-7 energy source.
		The problem with that, one of many, has been that our current energy grids, there's no way.
		They are not capable of doing that.
		And they haven't been for the last many years.
		But interestingly enough, one of the things that has come along is called the Internet.
		And the Internet has done something extremely important.
		It has decentralized communications management to the point where we can start managing these millions and millions of point sources of solar energy into and out of the grid, which the current grid is not capable of handling.
		And that was one of the other barriers to the wide-scale adoption of solar energy.
		You could stick it on your house maybe and have batteries in your house, but when it came to sucking it off the grid and putting it back into the grid, the grid just had a nervous breakdown.
		It wouldn't be able to handle it.
		So again, you see this theme of convergence.
		It's the convergence of the, first of all, the actual hard stuff that's going into the solar cells, combined with the transmission that we just talked about, combined with the decentralized management of these millions of point sources of energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not clear on how the decentralized management works yet.
unidentified		Right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, one of the problems is...
		That's right.
		And so what you want to do is you want to have a grid that takes advantage of that so that when the sun is up on the east coast, they can get that over to the west coast when it's still dark and benefit from it.
		But you can't do that with today's current grid because the current grid is only designed to take the power from a limited number of centralized power sources, feed it through all these wires, and then have it go at the other end.
		The grid is not very good at all at accepting power from, say, 3 million different homes that are sitting there generating this power, some of which they may not be using because everyone's at work during the day and their house isn't using that much energy.
		The grid just can't handle that.
		But now that we have an internet-based economy, you can have these millions and millions and millions of computer chips simply managing that supply and demand automatically when you combine it, again, with artificially intelligent systems that can sense all of this incoming and outgoing power and manage it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But are you saying this could be done with the existing grid or no?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It could be done with the existing grid if you upgrade it with the type of internet-based technology that we're talking about here.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So the current grid, the current electricity generating grid and the current transmission grid could be used if you allow these upgrades to it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any idea of the dollars that we're talking about?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's one of the huge advantages.
		And by the way, people will become more and more independent of the grid.
		The grid will be used for certain energy-intensive uses, but more and more people will start to become independent.
		I'll give you a concrete example of that.
		If you have a car that's painted with solar cells, and those solar cells can recharge the fuel cells, then your service station just wave it goodbye because you're not going to need it anymore.
		So that's an example of going off the grid.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll say.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Another example is a house painted with solar cells.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let me stop you right there.
		I like the concept of a house painted with solar cells.
		Could a house painted with solar cells during the day when the sun is there supply all of its needs?
		Would there be that much current available?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And you know another reason why?
		Because nanotechnology is making all of the appliances in the houses, all the computers and televisions and everything else, super efficient.
		It's what Amory Lovins has been talking about for the last 20 years.
		So you have, and you see it happening with flat-screen televisions as opposed to these big VCRs that we've got all over, sorry, all these cathode ray tubes that we have all over the place.
		So you're seeing exponential increases in energy efficiency.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's no question about it.
		I operate here in a very small room.
		And I originally had three monitors in here, regular old monitor monitors.
		And you could put your hand on top of them.
		Fry it at home if you have a monitor, folks.
		And I'll tell you right now.
unidentified		Fry an egg.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You could fry an egg.
		Yeah.
		All that heat coming up.
		And it used to make this room so hot, I just couldn't stand it.
		I replaced it with flat screens, with LCD flat screens, and you can put your hand above those, and you can barely feel just a little bit of warmth.
		The difference is incredible.
		All right.
		Douglas, hold on.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		You're listening to the world that is directly ahead, everybody.
		This is for real.
		This is not science fiction.
		This is science that's right in front of us, and it will change the world.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell.
		I'll see you next time.
		Imaginary lovers don't mind any time.
		Imaginary lovers, oh yeah.
		With ordinary lovers, gonna feel what you feel.
		Real life situations lose their freedom.
		Imagination's unreal.
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Imaginary lovers.
		They're like, well, more flexible imaginary friends.
		That's quite an announcement here on Coast to Coast AM.
		First time, here it comes.
		Nanotechnology paint or a new kind of solar collection.
		This is a big announcement, Douglas.
		When might the commercial product actually become available, or is it already?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what someone asked me.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		When's it going to be in Home Depot?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		That's exactly right.
		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, I actually asked the president of the company a couple of days ago, and he said that they expected to roll it out by the end of 2006.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, baby.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So, and also, Art, I just wanted to reconfirm the Canadian announcement, and I'm reading from a Canadian newspaper here.
		With minor fine-tuning, the new plastic is expected to convert 30% of solar energy into electricity, a five-fold improvement over current nano-engineered solar cells.
		So I said three to seven, I was in the middle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Holy mackerel, that's gigantic.
unidentified		That's gigantic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You combine that with the small cost, and oh, my goodness, that's going to change the world.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, we are here, and I think the more people that know about this and the demand that it be brought into commercial production, the quicker we're going to get off the oil train.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		God, that is really exciting.
		That is exciting.
		And not in the far distant future, but like next year.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wonderful.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's wonderful news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's actually just unbelievable news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you sure?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You mean, am I sure that I'm reading it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sure you're reading it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I know.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly why I phoned up the company, because when I read this in one newspaper coming out of India, I thought, wait a minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And so I phoned them up.
		And the president got on the line with me.
		And he said, yes, everything in the article is accurate.
		We haven't released the information yet in our own news release, but it is there.
		And then, of course, I came across the announcement from the University of Toronto that actually came out in January about the solar paint plastics, which, as I mentioned, both of these are based on a very similar technology, which is quantum dots.
		So there's already competition going on.
		And by the way, it's not just these two groups that are involved.
		I mean, Oxford University in the UK and Berkeley has been working on organic plastics and solar paint for some time now.
		So this is really breaking out all over the place.
		But it's wonderful to see the commercial applications coming to the fore so quickly.
		And it's like sometimes the night is darkest before the dawn because here we have all of this militarism going on over oil around the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And who knows?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		We could be on the verge of just making all of that go away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Douglas, there are two sides to this, and it would make a lot of other things go away, too.
		I mean, it's, you know, these are large interests, these oil companies.
		They have a lot of power.
		Exactly.
		Oh, they have a lot of power, Douglas.
		A lot of power.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And here's the interesting thing.
		You know, for years and years, there have been accusations leveled against the oil companies and the military, the military-industrial complex, for suppressing solar energy technology.
		But there have really been some serious technological problems.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you say it would be fair to say that the economics of it and the current state of the technology is what has suppressed it, not the oil companies?
		Because if it really was that good, my God, it would be used.
		That's what I'm saying.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, let's put it this way.
		They haven't rushed to invest in it.
		But here's the interesting thing.
		The very military-industrial complex that has been accused of suppressing Solar technology is going gangbusters investing into nanotechnology and nanoscale solar panels.
		And here's the reason.
		It's a very interesting one because basically they've been forced to do it.
		And it's what I mentioned earlier.
		This stuff is breaking out all across the planet, Art.
		The Chinese aren't fooling around with it.
		They are going into it big time.
		One of the biggest biotechnology, nanotechnology countries is Singapore.
		And they are pulling scientists of the United States and Europe like crazy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, see, I want to stop you and ask you, where is the U.S. with respect to the rest of the world?
		Are we ahead of the rest of the world or are we lagging terribly?
		Is there a nano gap?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It depends on the industry.
		But basically, for example, the Germans are ahead in some areas.
		And oddly enough, for example, the Koreans and Singaporeans are pulling ahead in others.
		So it depends on the individual field that you're looking at.
		But there's another thing that's occurring, and that is you're getting this huge international collaboration because the internet sharing of knowledge is just skyrocketing.
		And so it's really not happening on a national level at all.
		And there's no way to keep this genie in the bottle.
		That's why the DARPA and the military have had to invest so much in it because they can't afford to be left off the train when it leaves the station.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas, patents, for example, I mean, is anybody locking down this technology?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Is it going to get is there any danger it will be either buried or I believe,
		that the patent office is now falling years behind on processing patent applications, and it's nanotechnology that is driving this flood that is basically drowning the patent office.
		But what we are seeing here, Art, is in front of us a potential collapse of the conventional patents regime on which the industrialized world has based its superiority over the rest of the world.
		Patents have been the foundation on which drug companies, all the high technology companies have based their dominance.
		But now we're getting to a situation where not only are there so many inventions coming forward from people, but also artificially intelligent systems are beginning to design machinery that is patentable.
		And so all of these patents are being thrown into this system.
		And guess what?
		All the people who have the intelligence to assess this certainly aren't working for the patent office because they're getting paid a bundle of money to work for the company.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't even know where to start.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When an artificially intelligent idea is patentable, whose name is put on it?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, probably the guy that invented the software.
		You know, and then had the claim to it.
		But this is seriously happening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I know, but you can't have the whole patent system collapse, or then how do you take advantage of your invention?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have to be able to capitalize on it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		There is a huge conflict going on right now in the intellectual property community over this.
		It's called open source.
		And of course, the best example of that that most people have heard of is what was invented by Linus Torveld is Linux, which is one of the big competitors to Microsoft.
		And what you see there is an open source type of software going out there in the marketplace.
		And by the way, countries like all of the municipalities in Germany, or many of them at least, and the whole country of China have basically started kicking out Microsoft and said, no, thank you.
		We're going to use this open source stuff because it's so much cheaper.
		And here's the important thing, when you talk about can benefits still accrue to individual inventors, here's the dividing line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, is the person who invented Linux rich and comfortable in a big mansion somewhere?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Not at all.
		Torvells gave it away.
		He gets paid as a consultant to help develop it in a way that it serves as the platform.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I understand that.
unidentified		I was just wondering if No.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No, he's not.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		and he he just decided that this was a worthwhile thing to do it's like the guy who invented Well, he could be, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, isn't that a little worrisome?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you invent something totally revolutionary, like the paint you just talked about or whatever, you probably should have the right to capitalize on it, shouldn't you?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, but the whole argument in the science community has been for years and years and years that scientists who contribute to these types of inventions are also putting that out there in the public domain.
		And here's the important dividing line.
		The important dividing line is when scientists invent platforms that can be used across a whole bunch of industries to develop patentable inventions as opposed to patenting the platforms themselves.
		And the class example of that is HTML markup language that allowed the Internet to be used by everybody.
		Now, if someone had patented that, we would be in big trouble.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We wouldn't have it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		They gave it away.
		And it's those kinds of people who more than the Microsofts of the world are enabling these types of new technologies to run across all kinds of platforms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then you're predicting that nanotechnological ideas there are going to be so many and it's going to progress so fast that it is going to put the patent office out of biz?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I think that you're going to see a combination of those two things.
		You're going to see a collapse of the patent regime in certain areas because they simply can't handle it on platforms.
		And by the way, a lot of countries don't pay any attention to the patent regime.
		They're just going ahead and innovating anyways.
		Sure.
		And on the other hand, you are still going to see people being able to use patents in limited areas to make a lot of money.
		And I think actually that's a very good compromise.
		But to do that, the patent office is going to have to do one thing, and it's a theme that you and I have been talking about for years.
		They also are going to have to use artificially intelligent systems to do pattern recognition, for example, to identify these patentable ideas because there's simply too many of them for the ordinary person to handle.
		And all the people with the skills aren't working for the patent office.
		They're working for the companies.
		So the patent office is going to have to figure out a way to use computing and artificial intelligence to digest and make sense of these hundreds of thousands of patent applications that are in the middle of the market.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, in the meantime, though, with the patent office being bogged down and not having much of a chance of a very technical nanotechnological patent going through, are people just sitting?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are they sitting on these ideas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No, there is wholesale borrowing going on.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's a big problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean borrowing?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Borrowing means that basically, for example, in software, a lot of lines of software are being taken out of programs that have so-called patent pending and are being used in other programs.
		And so you're getting this huge mix.
		And if anyone could ever apply patent limitations to every single line of software that had been borrowed and put into another piece of software, the whole system would just collapse on itself because you'd be paralyzed by lawsuits preventing all this software from working.
		So it's already becoming unmanageable in a lot of these areas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you envision then a world where these ideas are just sort of instantly shared with the world.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I see the, And I'm not the only one, Ray Kurzweil, who you know very well and who has been cited often on this show, who, by the way, invented the scanner and the synthesizer and a bunch of other things, along with a lot of other very knowledgeable people who are a lot smarter than I am, have basically said that what we're seeing here is the exponential acceleration of knowledge and invention.
		And this exponential acceleration is going to undo a lot of these archaic legal mechanisms that we have set up to generate wealth.
		So wealth is going to start being generated in completely other ways.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, explain some of those ways.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, it'll be the first to market.
		Instead of the first to patent, it'll be the first one who can actually get the product out there, get it sold, and make a bunch of money on it before someone else borrows from it and takes over and supersedes it.
		So you're going to see this very rapid super acceleration of knowledge and invention and money being made in quite different ways.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, is that a dog-eat-dog world or what?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, in one sense, it is, but in the other sense, it is going to potentially produce enormous benefits that will allow people and inventors to spring off into other niches.
		And it will be those niche industries where people can generate wealth for themselves and be secure for the rest of their lives.
		So I don't see this as a catastrophe, rather I see it as a democratization in a lot of ways of these huge number of inventions that are coming onto the market.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		like in China, for example, you might not feel that way.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But here's the advantage.
		Nanotechnology is going to give the individual inventor.
		The individual inventor, with nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, will be able to bring things to market themselves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
		But see, there's a little catch there, Douglas, because a lot of scientists and inventors are totally lousy marketers.
		I mean, they're just totally lousy.
		They don't know the value of their own idea.
		They don't know the applications for their own idea.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You're absolutely right.
		But that is changing.
		If you look, for example, at the Amazon.coms of the world or the self-publishers of the world or any other industry, you'll see that many, many industries are bringing integration down to the level of the individual.
		And a lot of people are running their own companies out of their backyards.
		And as we know, that has been the great strength of the American economy, and that's where the great job creation has occurred.
		That's true.
		It's in these small industries.
		And what's happening is that nanotechnology and artificial intelligence and these other technologies that we've been talking about are empowering small guys to compete with the big guys on level ground.
		And that is good news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that is good news if it is sort of generally true.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is happening because look at the number of people that, I mean, it's no longer the big companies that are employing everybody.
		Everybody's becoming a contractor.
		I mean, that's where employment generation is happening in America today, and that's being enabled by these kinds of technologies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's one of the things that people worry about.
		George, for example, fast blast me here from Redwood City.
		Look, smaller, cheaper equals less jobs for more people.
		And so with nanotechnology, what about the job drain?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a couple of things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The great sucking sound.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The great sucking sound.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Robotic sucking sound.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Robotic sucking sound.
		Our current social models are not going to work with nanotechnology because wealth is going to be created in a whole bunch of different ways.
		And what you can't have is a population of one or two controlling all of these nanobots running around and creating all this wealth.
		So you're going to have more and more wealth created more and more by artificially intelligent machines.
		And when you have that, you either have to find a way of spreading that wealth around equitably, or you're going to have a rapidly unbalanced, robber-barren capitalism situation, such as we have, for example, in Russia right now or we had at the beginning of the century in the United States.
		It's happened before.
		And we've always found ways to make it more equitable for people.
		And we're in that cycle again.
		We're in that cycle again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gee, Douglas, I don't know.
		History is not on your side.
		I mean, it's a good vision you have there, but a robber-barren kind of atmosphere seems to me as more likely than the other.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I think you're right, Art.
		I think that we're going to run into a robber-barren situation that will force the kind of crisis that we had with the big trusts in the earlier part of this century.
		And we're going to have to go through that cycle once again in order to reach a balance that is going to give people what they need to survive in this brave new world.
		It's definitely a problem.
		There's no question about it, and we've got to start looking at it.
		And again, that's why we wrote these two books, was to alert people to the rapidity with which this type of thing is going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas, how quickly will the problem begin in earnest?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that you're already seeing it because...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, we're on the cusp, apparently, of this giant cliff that most people don't even see coming called nanotechnology.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, here's what the forecasts have been from people like Eric Drexler and Ray Kurzweil and Werner Winge and other people who are really into creating this stuff.
		Basically, definitely within 30 years, we're going to see a major, major change.
		And a lot of people have Said anywhere starting from 10 years to 30 years.
		So there's that argument.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it's underneath the announcement about next year, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Next year.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Some paint or whatever.
		All right, hold it right there.
		We're at a breakpoint.
		Douglas Mulhall is here, and we're discussing the next world, in a way.
		I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		The night is not as it would seem.
		Some music just hits me like blanket.
		Good morning, everybody.
		Douglas Mulhull is here, and we're talking about a whole new world, nanotechnology.
		And it really is that.
		This is astounding.
		And you must admit that we have covered the positive side of nanotechnology, almost to a joyful point, in fact, conversion of our entire electric system in America.
		An announcement made just now on this program about a product developed that will make the current solar panels look like British monsters.
		Now, I do have a rather inexplicable affinity for the dark side, as you know.
		I admit that.
		And I have withheld any questions that might take one to the dark side.
		But every power that exists on the face of the earth, nuclear power, well, any kind of power you want to talk about, any big power, has a very positive side and a very negative side.
		We can cure cancer with some kinds of radiation, and we can kill people with some kinds of radiation.
		And so it shall be, no doubt, with this incredible science that's now upon us, coming upon us right now, nanotechnology.
		It will have a bright side, and it will have a negative side.
		In a moment, I'm going to ask about the other side.
unidentified		The other side.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think Douglas has done a spectacular, spectacular job of addressing the upside of nanotechnology, the potential benefits, some of them just maybe a year away.
		I mean, there's no question about it.
		It's got a gigantic upside.
		But something as powerful as the rearrangement of molecules and machines that duplicate machines and things so small you can't even see.
		I mean, that's gigantic power, a monstrous power.
		It's like nuclear power.
		And nuclear power has, you know, a plus side and a negative side.
		And what is the negative side of nanotechnology?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, one of the negative sides is that it's very different from nuclear energy because as I mentioned earlier in the program, you really need a large infrastructure to create a nuclear weapon or nuclear power.
		But it's not the same with nanotechnology.
		You can have very low amounts of funding to create some potentially dangerous stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, for example, Douglas, you mentioned a couple of guys working in a garage earlier, right?
		That was one of your examples, where somebody might create some spectacular, really cool thing, right?
		And not even patent it and not even think about patenting it because all the thing will be gone.
		You can't patent anything.
		So these two guys, if, let's say, they weren't, well, real good guys, and they were trying to invent something that would hurt the human race In some spectacular way.
		What kinds of things could they do, Douglas?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's talk about the short-term risks, okay?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Because I think that's a good place to start with this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And they're in two areas: one is the whoops factor.
unidentified		Whoops?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, whoops.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Didn't realize it did that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the other one is the deliberate factor, which is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, let's start with whoops.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, whoops is a good example because A whoops is, gee, we put these rats in a room full of nanotubes and they drop dead.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And in fact, that was reported in one of the early studies that was done on the potential physiological impacts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas, why did they drop dead?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		They suffocated.
		Now, I have to really emphasize something here.
		This was a huge number of nanotubes that was put in this room, and you would never see that in any manufacturing facility or in real life.
		But what they were trying to do was they were trying to figure out what an overdose of this stuff would do.
		And what shocked them was that the rats didn't die of toxic poisoning.
		They suffocated because these nanoparticles went straight for the lungs and clumped and just basically cut off all the air.
		And they had rarely seen that in experiments before, so it really concerned them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What were these nanotubes ostensibly designed to do, the ones that were in Luthoran?
		I see.
		And so the rats inhaled.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And they're also used in coatings.
		The rats inhaled them.
		They were put in this space where they were actually in the air.
		And like I said, you just don't see that in real life.
		So I want to emphasize we're not at immediate risk from being suffocated by nanoparticles.
		In fact, nanoparticles have been in the air for 200 years from coal dust burning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but what if you intentionally decided to suffocate with nanotubes?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think actually that's not the short-term risk.
		The short-term risk is that we've already got thousands of pounds and more than that, many, many tons of engineered nanoparticles that are out there in the environment.
		They're used in coatings.
		They're used on car bumpers.
		You know, they're being used in industry right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand that you are a cheerleader, and you're going to come back to the positive side every time you can do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I'm really wanting to hold you online here.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I'm agreeing with you here, Ark.
		I'm just saying the problem is we have these nanoparticles out there in the environment, but we have not determined their medical impacts.
		And that's why, for example, the EPA put a huge amount of $9 million, yippee doo, into examining the potential medical impacts.
		Well, it was clear from the conference that I attended last year at the invitation of the Institute of Medicine at the Academy of Sciences that we are way behind on examining the short-term medical risks that are posed by nanoparticles, engineered nanoparticles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Douglas, isn't the EPA going to get into the same kind of trouble as the patent office?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a good question.
		At the moment, it's quite clear that, as is normal with the EPA, they've been running behind everything else, and they're now running behind nanotechnology.
		You know, the train has left the station, and they're trying to catch up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So how much of an oops percentage might there be?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's going to be some pretty exotic things that are worked on.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that depends on who you talk to.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		If you talk to the nanotechnologists who have a lot invested in this, they say, oh, no danger, not proven, don't worry about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they're not the ones to listen to.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		And so, I mean, the EPA scientists have got some very real concerns.
		And by the way, I'll just give you an example of just yesterday, for example, in the United Kingdom, the national government there refused to fund a new nanotechnology center.
		And this was partially due to concerns about understudied health effects of nanoparticles.
		And they said this clearly.
		They said, look, before we go running ahead too fast on this stuff, we've really got to start to assess some of the potential medical impacts.
		And an example of that would be if you get an active nanoparticle sitting next to your DNA or next to your brain matter, it can certainly have some effects that we just don't know about yet because these particles haven't been fully characterized.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad you brought up gray matter.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Gray goo, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, sure.
		Now, hold on, Douglas.
		It seems to me that in nanotechnology, in the very early stages of nanotechnology, reproduction and sort of consuming anything in your path wouldn't be, you know, the more complicated, it'll be 30 or 40 years from now kind of command to give.
		It would be a relatively easy command.
unidentified		Greg Goo, you want to explain that to everybody, please?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Actually, Grey Goo is a very interesting thing because it's sort of being redefined.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is define it first of all?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, the classic thing, and by the way, I got an email from one of your listeners about this.
		You know, hungry little bugs, Michael Crichton, prey, scared me, what can I do?
		Well, here's the thing.
		Grey goo was coined by Eric Drexler, who is known as the father of nanotechnology.
		And it basically was little self-replicating machines eating every carbon-based thing in existence for energy and replicating forever and ever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's bottom.
unidentified		Eat energy.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Replicate and get energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Okay.
		And so gray goo would do what?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, gray goo, what would happen is gray goo would be the result of that process because we would all be consumed by these little robots that were turning everything into gray matter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in my mind, Douglas, I visualize a scientist holding a test tube full of gray goo things in his hand.
		And oops, dropping it.
		Dropping it.
		And then I picture the floor in front of him slowly radiating out, turning gray, and until it's developing first his house, then the city, then the state.
		Then the world.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Okay.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And if you look at that in nature, for example, you'll see that we get that all the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We do?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you get all these infestations, you get grasshopper invasions, and all kinds of things with these hugely rapid developments of very nasty things.
		AIDS is another example.
		I know.
		And they get out of control and then they collapse on themselves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They kill so quickly, right?
		Yes, they collapse on them.
		But that wouldn't be the case with Grey Goo because Grey Goo, no matter what it was, whether it was dirt, rocks, or anything in its path, would convert it to more Grey Goo, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but the technologists are arguing that that simply is not feasible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why not?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, how would it burn out?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, the thing is this.
		First of all, I don't think that that is the short-term risk.
		And I would like to talk about...
		It may be a risk.
		It may be a risk.
		But actually, Drexler, who first talked about this, has come out with a very strong calculation and statement, basically saying that this just can't happen with these types of machines.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does he explain why?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, basically, I think he does a very good job of saying for the same reason that it hasn't happened in nature.
		Because you always get these countervailing forces that come up as a sort of environmental immunity to these things before they get totally out of control.
		But before they get totally out of control, they can still do a lot of damage.
		And there is no understating the risk from that type of thing.
		And in the short term, that risk is translated into another kind of gray goo.
		And that kind of grey goo is what Ray Kurzweil has been talking about as the main risk, and that is engineered viruses.
		Engineered viruses, we think, pose one of the greatest risks long before gray goo ever comes along in the form that you've just been talking about.
		Because engineered viruses can be done by small numbers of individuals with relatively primitive technologies, and that's where the short-term risk really lies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, but okay, but that's shifting it.
		And I fully understand that what you're saying is correct.
		That altering of viruses for terrorist reasons is a horrible threat.
		But you're talking about nanotechnology.
		And the Grey Goo thing, it seems to me, I hear you trying to soft play it a little bit.
		But, you know, even in the early applications, Douglas, of nanotechnology, these are going to be the early instructions.
		Replicate and become this or become that.
		So it could even happen as an oops thing.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the place that's going to play out first is with biotechnology.
		That's why I'm mentioning viruses.
		Because viruses can turn your body into gray goo very quickly if they get out of control and have no resistance to them.
		I mean, the body can turn to water if it's attacked by a number of very virulent illnesses that are even around today, the Ebola virus, for example.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, but look, this is a very strong, very important technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so this brings us to where I need to ask you about controls and oversight.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Surely you're not in favor of no controls and no oversight.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Oh, on the contrary, I think we're going to have to develop a very, very powerful regime that operates quite broadly.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the problem that you run into with that immediately is the Big Brother syndrome.
unidentified		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Do we have to have a completely militarized, controlled society in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, almost if it is as strong on the negative side as I suspect it really is, then...
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No one would ever deny that that is a risk.
		And the question becomes, how do we cope with that risk?
		How do we manage that downside risk?
		And the conclusion that I came to, and by the way, there's a lot of very smart people arguing about this right now, and they're not agreeing at all.
		Bill Joy does not agree with Ray Kurzweil.
		Excuse me.
		For example, they agree.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are their basic positions and the differences?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Bill Joy came out with this famous article several years ago now that was one of the most replicated articles in the history of humanity, which is called Why the Future Doesn't Need Us.
		And Bill basically said that Grey Goo is a risk, and there are certain technologies that we just shouldn't go there.
		That's all there is to it.
		And Kurzweil is basically saying, should have, could have, would have ain't going to work because it's going to be done.
		And we have to learn how to cope with it because somewhere on the planet, it's going to happen.
		And personally, I think that actually Kurzweil's opinion is the realistic outlook on this.
		And I think that he and Bill Joy, or the Bill Joys of the world, are coming to more and more agreement that it's going to happen and we've got to have some way to manage the risk.
		But I don't hear personally, and I've been to the World Futurist Congress, I've heard these guys speak, I've been on the platform with them.
		I have yet to hear a cohesive, cogent strategy, especially in the current political situation that we have for actually getting a hold of this.
		But that brings us around to what I suggested might be a direction in this book, Our Molecular Future.
		And that is, and it's almost an unthinkable thing because it takes us to a level that we can hardly imagine right now.
		But I'll just try you out on it.
		Basically, one of the great things that's coming out of nanotechnology is this self-instructing Software that basically is called genetic algorithms, and they operate on a very simple basis.
		It's called trial and error.
		And the more fast computing you have, the faster you can do trial and error, and eventually you have self-learning systems.
		And that's what this software is beginning to do today.
		And that is what is called artificial intelligence, or at least the beginnings of it.
		It is not self-aware yet, but it is certainly learning how to teach itself.
unidentified		Now, the issue becomes...
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Actually, no.
		And I don't think that's what's going to happen.
		I think what we are already seeing, and it's happening, for example, with the Internet, is we are seeing the merging of human and artificial intelligence.
		And that scares the bejesus out of most people when you talk about that.
		But I believe, from what I have seen and the people that I have listened to, that this is the only feasible direction that we can take to control the downside risks is by combining artificially intelligent systems with human intelligence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, become part machine ourselves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The only possible salvation for us is to become other than humanly.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Other humanly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		other than humanly, actually.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But really, we are already beginning to see the merging of artificial and human intelligence, and the Internet is a classic example of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe our only hope is to be able to actually see at the molecular level.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And I want to tell you, I think that really it's a scary thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But really, we have to look at becoming a different type of human in order to manage the risks and the downside.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That is the bottom line of all of this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my goodness.
		Well, you did surprise me with your answer, I must admit.
		That certainly was.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, we explain it more in the book in some depth because I want to emphasize I am not the eternal optimist on this stuff.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The reason I talk about the optimistic stuff, and I hope in the next hour we can talk a little bit about how this can have benefits for people on a real personal level.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, that's exactly what we'll do.
		Hold on, because it is that time.
		from the high desert.
		Instructively, I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Now it begins Now that you're gone Needles and pins What's that you're done Watching that cloud Till you return Hiding that door And watching the birds
		We were so alone You and me All over one While we breathe Here's all we got Lay it down Take it in the shadow To
		the town We were born in the good night Hanging in the shadow Just in the light There was so nice To touch with Art Bell, form a wildcard line in area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To touch with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free, 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To the phones we go with Douglas Mulholl in a moment.
		My guest is Douglas Mulhall, and we're at an interesting juncture here.
		We are about to take calls for Douglas, and I know there are going to be many.
		It's been a very serious night of revelations and announcements, and the latest, if I think I understood it correctly, was to combat the possible oops factor involved in nanotechnology, or even more so, the on-purpose sort of terrorist approach to nanotechnology.
		In order to combat that, we virtually are going to have to become ourselves a part machine.
		Perhaps eyesight that would see at the molecular level, perhaps, well, who knows what?
		All kinds of things.
		Enhancements, as it were, to the human being.
		Somebody, unlikely enough named Smith, that's all I get, Smith, in Portland says, hey, Art, I totally volunteer to be enhanced by nano chip implementation.
		Now, better, now.
		Better memory, better eyesight, better everything.
		I'm faster.
		I'll be more complex.
unidentified		Yes, I want it now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that'll be one, perhaps, person, one person's reaction, but another's might be, if the only defense we have ultimately against the negative side of nanotechnology Is becoming ourselves part machine, then, well, I know you've read the Bible, Douglas, and I know you know about the beast in 666.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What if we are the beast?
unidentified		What if we are the beast?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, there's been a lot of discussion in history about the great disruptive mass extinctions and upheavals that have occurred in history.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And one of the great students of that has been Stephen Jay Gould.
unidentified		Yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And he came up with something known as the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which basically stated that natural systems actually do not evolve slowly,
		but in fact go through these violent, occasional upheavals that then are followed by long periods of gradual development, but that it is in fact these punctuations in evolution that cause the real changes.
		And there is a very substantial body of thought being gathered right now that says that we are the next punctuated equilibrium, that this change is not going to occur from an outside so-called natural source, but that we are actually, this time, the continuation of this natural process by another means, that technology is, in fact, evolution by other means.
		And so that this great upheaval that we're in the process of experiencing and causing right now is going to be the Homo sapien upheaval that causes us to go to the next level.
		And Art, I just want to say here, because I think it's very important, I totally agree with you about the downside risks and the negative problems here.
		And when we finished our molecular future, we looked at that problem very deeply and said, how can we help people make this transition from being afraid and not understanding this technology and what it might do to us on the nasty side, to the biggest number of people having the broadest possible benefit from it in the shortest possible time?
		And that is the question that we asked ourselves when we came out of finishing that book.
		And that took us to this book, The Calcium Bomb.
		Because what we did was we looked across the whole spectrum and we said, okay, what is it that has not been solved right now that has been looked at for years and years and years and that if it was solved could produce the greatest possible benefit for the greatest number of people?
		And what we came across was this condition that cuts across almost every major chronic disease on the leading causes of death list.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that also is endemic in almost everyone who is older.
		And it is known as calcification.
		And in really simple terms, it is these calcium phosphate deposits that instead of forming in our bones and teeth, form in all the wrong places, in our arteries, in kidney stones, in arthritic joints.
		It's in a dozen different illnesses.
		And here's the interesting thing about it.
		23,000 research papers in the National Library of Medicine have been written about it.
		100 million x-rays and scans are done every year that come across it.
		And $100 billion is spent on scanning and x-rays that actually find this stuff.
		The numbers are astonishing.
		And guess what?
		For the last 150 years, they've been staring at this stuff.
		Radiologists stare at it every day on x-rays.
		And no one has known where it comes from or how to get rid of it.
		And yet, it cuts across all of these illnesses.
		And we realized when we saw this and started talking to cardiologists and urologists and radiologists about it, that this was the monster in the closet of modern medicine.
		Because these calcium deposits don't just sit there and clog up your arteries.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You see this wonderful future where little nanobots go in and clean up these calcium deposits that kill many of us with strokes and heart attacks and all the rest of that.
		I fully understand what you're saying.
		But I, on the other hand, see somebody getting a shot of these calcium-eaten bots.
		And they go through, and yes, they eat up that calcium, and then they keep on eating until they get all our calcium.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Right, and that's an absolute definite possibility.
		But here's the interesting thing.
		Before those nanobots have ever come along, because actually that's not what we suggest in the book, what we show in the book is that an early diagnostic and treatment has already been developed for this using these tools, and it's got nothing to do with nanobots.
		It actually is a combination of very well-known chemicals and drugs that are around today and that have been developed because of a very interesting development.
		And this is another announcement that we have here because it just happened this month.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Another announcement.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Another announcement.
		Well, in the space program, for years and years and years, ever since extended exploration began, people being out in space for more than a week or so, astronauts who are perfectly healthy have come down with a very serious problem.
		They get these calcium deposits.
		They get kidney disease as a result of it, and they also get hardening of the arteries when they've been perfectly healthy and not shown any symptoms of them whatsoever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has recognized this as a serious problem for the last 20 years and has been studying it.
		Well, lo and behold, this month, one of their leading microbiologists, Dr. Nevishev Sholu, published a paper in one of the leading medical journals, Kidney International, revealing that there is a tiny little blood Particle known as nanobacterium sanguinium or blood nanobacteria that does something really weird.
		Not only does it create a calcium phosphate shell around itself, which is the only particle known to do that, but it does it five times faster in weightlessness.
		And that paper, as I said, was just published in Kidney International and explains or goes a long way to explaining why these astronauts have been suddenly getting this calcification out of nowhere.
		So that's why NASA has been involved in tracking down the source of this calcification.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hadn't heard that, but then again, I don't keep Kidney International on my coffee table.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No, I might have missed books.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Might have missed that.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So the long and short of it is this.
		When they were characterizing this little nanocritter, and by the way, this is an example of a nanoparticle that exists in nature that does a whole lot of harm to us.
		It does it more slowly, but it still eventually really gets us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Creeping death.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Creeping death.
		What they found was that in order to examine it, they had to strip off this calcium shell.
		And the way they did it was with a combination of a chemical and an antibiotic.
		And lo and behold, when they did it, they were able to actually get rid of it.
		And guess what?
		Also, this month, the Cleveland Clinic, which is well known to many people, it's one of the leading urology institutes in the United States, published a clinical trial study showing that when they attacked this nanoparticle in the blood, they were able to reverse the symptoms of prostate disease in men whose other drugs had failed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, we need to pepper this with calls.
		We have people waiting.
		All right, firewait.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Douglas Moll.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes, all right.
		Yes.
		Yeah, you mentioned something earlier about the board from Star Trek.
		And unfortunately, I see that this is the way things would have to move because you couldn't have any free-thinking individual controlling the power of nanobots.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's an extremely good question.
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		And what I wanted to bring up is because you'd have to control everybody's thoughts and actions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We've got it, sir.
		We've got it.
		Hold on and listen.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And there are two different visions of how this will unfold.
		One is the Borg, total control of everybody.
		And the other is the rapid branching out of the human species into other species that have varying combinations of this artificial intelligence and human intelligence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You realize this prospect is somewhat unappealing for some people, doesn't it?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Oh boy, I'm telling you.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's going to scare the heck out of a whole bunch of people because from a religious point of view, from the point of view of people who believe that in humanism and the human being being the ultimate result of everything that came before, this is definitely not appealing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not at all.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But it's happening right now, and a good example of that is optobionics, where you have the implants of these thousands of computer chips into the back of the eye that are relaying signals directly through the optical nerve to the brain.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		This is being done right now in people who have macular degeneration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, Douglas, you see, if you can relay those optical signals to the brain, then you can relay those optical signals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know, you could transmit them even.
unidentified		Exactly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, baby.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		You hit the nail on the head.
		And so that starts to redefine what we mean by intelligence, by being in one place at the same time, or 50 places at the same time.
		It's an enormously complex and scary world that we're entering into.
		But all I'm saying is this.
		You better get ready for it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you personally look forward to this world?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You know, I tell you, I wake up in the middle of the night, and half of the time I'm thinking, oh, this is going to be great.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the other half of the time I'm thinking, oh, God, what are we doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, you have a certain, I don't know, energy in your voice, Douglas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It tells me you're really more of a cheerleader for this than not.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, I tell you something.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You should tell that to the folks that I've been speaking to in the nanotechnology community because they keep telling me, really, they don't like what I'm saying in a lot of these ways because I keep saying to them, look, you guys had better start dealing with the regulatory aspects of this technology or else you are going to be really unpopular.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		but see the regulatory aspect of this ain't any better than the patent aspect of this uh...
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		in other words it is likely to confuse the regulatory attempts In other words, systems that regulate themselves.
		How are we going to do this?
		How are we going to control the downsides of this?
		A lot of these questions simply have not been answered, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The American people are very individualistic.
		And they're just not going to like becoming part machine.
		They're not going to like it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Unless that part machine allows them to do a whole bunch of things as individuals that they couldn't do before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, maybe.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhole.
		Hi.
unidentified		Oh, yes.
		Hello, Art.
		Hi.
		This is Keith in Hamilton, Ontario.
		Yes.
		I hear what you're saying, but I think the more we advance in technology, it also seems like we take a step back as well.
		I mean, all these cell phones exploding, computer viruses, identity theft, it seems the higher we advance, there's a lot more chance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But has identity theft kept you from having credit cards?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I bet not.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		True.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And has the possibility of your cell phone exploding yet stopped you from putting one to your ear?
		I don't have a phone.
		Well, if you had one, my point is that you're right about all of that, but it's not stopping it.
		Right?
unidentified		Yeah.
		My question, though, is relating to that.
		And in terms of, Okay, there's a lot more chance of technology doing us in.
		So why would we want to turn ourselves into somewhat of a malcontrolled computerized robot?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because Douglas just said it's the only way we'll fight it.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And not only that, but until now, despite all of the problems, we haven't done so bad with technology.
		And that's what the perception of people is.
		You know, people's perception is, look what we've gotten until now, and you have to ask yourself, are we better off than we were or not?
		Well, some people would say we're not.
		Some people would say no, you know, all of this alienation, everything that's going on.
		It's a very personal and individual perception.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Douglas, Douglas.
		Look, what happens if we don't move, as you have suggested, and become, in part, machines ourselves, but instead end up creating a nanotechnological brain superior to the human brain without improving ourselves?
		What's the likely outcome of that scenario?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, the likely outcome of that scenario, as Werner Winge said, was as soon as we create something that is smarter than ourselves, the human era will end.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's what he said a few years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the stakes are not so small.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		No, the stakes are very large.
		There's no question about it.
		The stakes are large.
		And if we don't, I hate to use the word improve, if we don't modify the human intellect and body to keep up with the machines that we're creating, then we're going to have a problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You need a slogan, Douglas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How about upgrade or die?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's very good, Art.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		I think I'll trademark that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Most of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Smallhole.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Well, hi, this is Tom in San Diego.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yo, Tom.
unidentified		Hi.
		I had two questions.
		One, Art, you had a guest a month ago or longer that talked about orbital solar transmission to Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		My first question, though, was my solar panels, half of the expense was the installation because of the brackets needed to remove the heat from the roof.
		You needed an airspace there so you didn't cook your roof.
		In the quantum dot theory, is there something about the heat retention or transmission through it that it would be a direct application might have to be looked out for?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, tech number two first, Douglas.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, the beauty of these three-dimensional quantum dots is that they can move this stuff without this tremendous heat generation.
		And so that problem goes away very quickly.
		And also remember, we're not talking about thermal solar here.
		We're talking about photovoltaics.
		So you don't necessarily have to put things off of your roof to have this, avoid this heat transfer.
		That's more with thermal solar rather than photovoltaics.
		But even photovoltaics do have that issue currently, but that issue is about to go away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		And now the first question.
		Certainly there have been many lately that have told us about the possibility of orbiting solar collection stations and then microwaving power to ground stations.
unidentified		Absolutely.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the answer is why bother?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the answer is why bother?
		Because of this new technology.
		It's going to be so efficient that you don't need to be in space to get that kind of efficiency.
		You can do it right here on Earth.
unidentified		Precisely.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Why bother?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have the inventors of this new technology wondered about their safety in the night, Douglas?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's a good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, it is.
		I would.
		I would, too.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But here's an example, I think, of what we were talking about earlier.
		This is breaking out all over the place.
		It can't be stopped.
		I mean, you'd have to close down the military to stop it because it's happening in Toronto, in Oxford, in Berkeley, in Silicon Valley.
		It's not just happening in one place.
		It's not like one guy invented this.
		This has happened simultaneously at a bunch of universities in a bunch of countries, and it's not going to be stopped.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so you agree the gray goo is technically plausible, right?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, Eric Drexler would disagree with that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All we need now is somebody willing to give their life to kill a lot of people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a good thing we don't have people like that around.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, none of those around, are there?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I liked your chuckle.
		It was sort of a resigned, knowing chuckle.
		Upgrade or die.
		That's your slogan, Douglas.
		Hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the hour.
		From the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM.
		How about it, folks?
		You ready for Human 4.5?
		No?
		Well, then we'll have to take you over to the trash can.
		There you go.
unidentified		Sweet dreams are made of this.
		Who am I to disagree?
		I travel the world and the seven seas.
		Everybody is looking for something.
		Some of them want to use you.
		Some of them want to get used by you.
		Some of them want to abuse you.
		Some of them want to be abused.
		To talk with Arkbell.
		call the wildcard line at area code 7757271295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 7757271222.
		To talk with Arcal from east to the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, you know, the enormity of this subject and the way it was explained in this morning's program was so elegant that I think a lot of you should make copies of this program and give it to your friends.
		It would be improper not to understand the magnitude of what's coming directly in front of us, in my opinion.
		And so this show kind of explains it, to my mind, in my way of thinking, in such a way that the average person really can grasp how big this is, how important this is, and what kind of world we have directly ahead of us.
		It seemed to explain enough of all that that this would be a prized possession, this program with Douglas, and you would pass it on to your friends so they might understand what's coming.
unidentified		Mario's music Mario's music Mario's music Mario's music Mario's music Mario's music Mario's music *Mario's A lot of guests come on and all they do is plug their book all the way through the program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Douglas hadn't done that, so I'm doing it for him.
		I can't imagine that you would be hearing this tonight and not need to know more.
		And obviously, the way to do that would be his books.
		A couple of really big ones, actually.
		First one, Our Molecular Future, How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World.
		And The Calcium Bomb, The Nanobacteria Linked to Heart Disease and Cancer.
		These are big ones.
		And this is a real science.
		This is not a science fiction.
		This is science underway now.
		I guess that's the important thing to understand.
		Douglas, welcome back.
		Those books are available, Amazon.com, probably.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you can get them at all the bookstores.
		And also, you go to our website.
		It's calcify.com.
		C-A-L-C-I-F-Y.
		It's on your site, Art, so people can just click onto it and they can go to all those.
		And just wanted to say just one word about your upgrade or die thing, because I thought it was great.
		You know, in the last hundred years, we doubled lifespan.
		It's a phenomenal achievement when you think about it.
		But we're running up against a wall.
		And that wall is calcification.
		Because until we get rid of that, as we age, we're just, the body is getting worn out and brittle and breaking up because of these calcium deposits that form.
		And that's why we targeted that in our latest work, because we realized that this is really the thing that cuts across everything else.
		So that upgrade or die applies very directly to the limitations on our current lifespan as well.
		The other thing that I wanted to mention is that there are a number of organizations working on this problem that you and I have been talking about tonight about how to handle the downsides and benefit from the upsides.
		And I just want to mention a few of them.
		They're all nonprofit organizations.
		One is the Foresight Institute that does great work, has been recommended by the New York Times as one of the leading nanotechnology think tanks in the United States.
		Eric Drexler is the co-founder along with Christine Peterson.
		They do great work.
		I would advise going to their website at foresight.org.
		The other one is the Institute for Accelerating Change.
		And they have a great conference coming up in September about artificial intelligence and human enhancement.
		And I would strongly recommend that people pay attention to that because some of the greatest thinkers in this area talking about the upsides and downsides are going to be there.
		And there's also a couple of other organizations that talk about the managing these risks.
		For example, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
		So they have three organizations that are working on these problems that you have very well brought up as serious risks.
		And what we need is we need people to pay attention to what those organizations are talking about in terms of real ways of managing those risks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Suppose I were one of a couple of guys in a garage with a very great deal of knowledge about nanotechnology and an absolutely evil intent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What could I likely do 10 years from now, 20 years from now?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, I think what you could do in the next few years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, all right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Let's cover is engineer a virus.
		I think this is really the area that is the most potentially destructive, and all you need to do is look at what we're doing by accident with chickens in Asia to understand that we're even doing it accidentally ourselves without anybody's help.
		And because these biolabs on a chip are being developed, where you basically have the capability to measure and combine DNA in completely new combinations in very small spaces, you just need someone who has the requisite intelligence, and you can potentially create a lot of trouble.
		There's no question about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, have you ever listened to Dr. Nikchiu Kaku on the subject of, you know, we're a type zero civilization, according to him right now, hoping to become a type 1.
		When you really pin him down, he talks about the discovery of element 92 and suggests that might be a big hang-up in getting to be a type 1.
		In other words, if we would blow ourselves to Smithereens, well, and the chances, frankly, he gives, whether it's nanotechnology or nuclear power or whatever, of our blowing ourselves to Smithereens before getting to Type 1 is like 99 out of 100.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And I understand that.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, there's another argument that I have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you understand it with such a cheerful damn voice.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I mean, what am I going to do?
		Here's another thing, though, Art.
		You know, when we talk about the risks that humanity poses to itself, we don't very often talk about the risk from asteroids or, as one of your former guests put it, that we're actually going to be hit by a parallel universe and it's not going to matter anyways.
		These seem to people to be existential risks, but in fact, they are not.
		In fact, the more that scientists are looking at these larger natural risks that until now we have not been able to do anything about, the more they realize that the danger, for example, of getting hit by a planet-killing asteroid are a lot better than we originally thought they were as we learn more about what's out there.
		So the question becomes, are we going to risk doing ourselves in, or are we just going to sit around and do the same thing and wait until something else does?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Jim from Los Angeles on KFI.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Jim.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Welcome.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		And the things that the guest has been describing regarding power generation and many others, I mean, certainly material science, it seems that in a few years, there probably will be perhaps 100 million people in America that don't have the job that they're used to having.
		And I don't see that as necessarily bad because you could probably be very wealthy if you didn't have to pay for your power in the conventional way and your fuel in the conventional way.
		Does the guest have, have you looked into what the world will be in 10 or 20 years with 100 million people freed up from jobs they really don't like?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		You know what's really interesting about that?
		I sent this statistic to Art as well.
		He's got it in front of him.
		But the Solar Energy Industry Association, I'm sorry I may not have the name right, has done a projection of how many extra jobs might be created by the year 2015 by solar energy.
		And they've projected something like, I think it's 42,000.
		I mean, it's such a small figure.
		It's unbelievable.
		And what we're saying to them is, hello, take a look at your own technology.
		You know, even the Solar Industry Association, I think, is grossly underestimating the kind of job creation that we're going to see from this single industry just sweeping across.
		Now, that is assuming that there is not an inordinate amount of political resistance by the oil industry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why would you assume that?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you would assume the oil.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		There's going to be, and there always has been, inertia, resistance to the introduction of new technologies.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		But here, as you and I talked about earlier in the show, is this fantastic dichotomy where you've actually got the military funding what could end up being the downfall of the oil industry, which is a rather interesting dynamic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And it's never happened before.
		But the problem is, as you and I have been discussing, they have no choice because they have to keep up with everybody else.
		China's doing the same thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The military-industrial complex going to war.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Douglas Moll.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, this is Sadie calling from Chicago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Welcome, Sadie.
unidentified		Thank you.
		I have a question.
		Douglas mentioned something in the beginning about nanotechnology redefining what we think about UFOs.
		And that got me started thinking about what the implications might be for space travel, time travel, especially if physics, the normal laws of physics, don't apply at the nano level.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		The normal laws of physics do apply at the nano level.
		But they are different from the laws that govern macro materials.
		So you have these laws of physics that are the same.
		But to answer your question, I think that one of the things that nanotechnology may enable us to do is at least get to places like Mars a whole lot faster.
		And that will be the beginning of our capability to really begin to explore the galaxy.
		So because of these incredibly compact and powerful fuels and new ways of using energy, it can open up a tremendous new era in space travel and really get us away from having to go around the planet in these rapidly outdated space stations and actually go somewhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or, Douglas, if human behavior does not largely change, it might give us a chance to escape from the planet before it becomes all gray.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've always argued that, you know, we're really taking a big shot, putting everything in one basket, and that's where we are right now.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And the sooner that we get away from that, the better off we're going to be.
unidentified		I agree with you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on there with Douglas Mulhall.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, this is Corey, calling out of Cincinnati.
		Corey.
		And I was just wondering what Douglas thought of how far off we are from seeing nanotechnology used in maybe like browsing the Internet in our mind's eye or like it's...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you said in our mind's eye.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		In our mind's eye.
		And that is maybe a few years away because, as I mentioned, with optobionics, they've already connected thousands of computer chips in the back of the eye to the optical nerve, and they are interpreting light signals.
		And having a wireless connection to those chips is a very small step.
		And at that point, you can start to surf the internet in your eye.
		So, and believe me, what I'm talking about here, the optobionics, they're already being used.
		So, it's a very small step going from there to having a wireless interface to those chips.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the heck with the computer, we would just all become connected in our brain.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, Art, you know, I mean, the whole idea of wearable computers and also the military has been using some of these implants for quite a while.
		It's nothing new.
		It's just that now it's getting really small.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, new would be a closer, more complex integration with the brain.
		Well, so that, for example, our email doesn't come to our computer, it just comes to our brain, and we mentally think it open, read it, and respond to it.
		Exactly.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And look what's happening with robotics right now and prosthetics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we damn well better be able to control the input to our brain better than my mailbox is controlled right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can tell you that.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Otherwise, we'll be spammed to death.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a fact.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
		Hello.
		Hi, Art.
unidentified		This is Mike Collin from Crushline, California, listening to the KOH.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Sounds to me like, well, human history has proved, in my opinion, that any technology which can be used for an evil purpose will be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Will be, yes.
unidentified		And referring back to an old story by Isaac Asimov of iRobot, this technology sounds to me like something where you better have your safety net and your firewalls and your double redundancies built in before you even manufacture the project.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what we ended up just talking about, sort of.
unidentified		Yeah, and it's still much under.
		But I wonder, maybe you'd answer that question.
		Is anybody doing anything to make it safe before they even go into the development stage of research?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's a very interesting point that you brought up because the approach in the United States and the approach in Europe have been completely different.
		In Europe, what you're seeing with new technologies is the implementation of something called the precautionary principle.
		And basically, the precautionary principle states, if you can't prove that it isn't really harmful, then you're not going to be able to do it until you can.
		This has absolutely horrified all of the industries in the United States who have said, no way, Jose, we're not putting up with that stuff.
		We're just going to go ahead and do it and see what happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that is what you're doing otherwise, isn't it?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So there's been a very radical departure between the U.S. and Europe on how to approach this type of thing.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And that's one reason why I just mentioned earlier on the program that the U.K. government has turned down the funding for one of these centers because it's starting to become an issue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But on the other hand, the possible consequences of an oops or even an intentional thing, I don't know, it's so monumental that if England is not allowing it, and we are, England still has to worry.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And so that brings up a problem, doesn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would seem to.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		And so here, you've just said it so concisely because it means that the current nation-state mechanisms are really not going to work to manage these risks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know what we need?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We need a one-world control, Douglas.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, on the other hand, let's look at what happened as a concrete example with SARS and the World Health Organization, which I don't think anyone would say that the World Health Organization is a one-world mind control organization.
		No.
		But they were very effective at getting everyone around the planet to get onto this thing, and they forced the Chinese to open up their system and make it more transparent to tell the world what was really happening there.
		So that is a good concrete example.
		And I think that the WHO system bears examination for controlling some of these risks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but why would they not be overwhelmed as every other agency we've talked about?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, what's interesting is that they would have been overwhelmed 10 years ago with Tsars if a new system for managing those types of rapidly emerging diseases had not been in place.
unidentified		That's true.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		So we are evolving these systems, and I think really that the Tsars outbreak is a nice template to look at for how we might be able to manage these rapidly emerging diseases.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But not the only one to be concerned about.
		I mean, yes, I grant you, they did a good job with SARS.
		But suppose, for example, the bird flu makes the jump that everybody seems to expect it's going to make, and it becomes transmissible through the air, human to human, with a 70 or 75 percent mortality rate.
		Then what?
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's happened before.
		I mean, look what happened with the black death.
		We lost how many, what percentage of the world population was lost.
		In the Middle Ages, it was a very large number.
		It's not like it hasn't happened before.
		So one of the problems with this is that people seem to forget that these things did happen to humanity in past.
		And, you know, we've spoken on earlier shows about the problems that happened, for example, with this big event that happened in the year 535.
		Nobody knows quite what caused it, but crops around the world failed.
		There was mass starvation.
		There were, you know, epidemics everywhere.
		It's not like it hasn't happened before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		These things happen.
		All right, listen, Douglas, buddy, it has been such a pleasure to have you on the air.
		You really are.
		You're something else.
douglas mulhall ▲ ● ▼		It's always enjoyable, Art, and I hope that you're going to replace Peter Jennings on the next show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have a good night, buddy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
unidentified		Okay, you too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		These words are absolutely the right ones to close any show with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Mark Bell, and this is Crystal.
unidentified		Shooting stars across the sky.

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