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Feb. 26, 2005 - Art Bell

02:53:43

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

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	So, I'm going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to go ahead and start the video.
	From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good
	morning, good afternoon, as the case may be across all these time zones, the entire world
	in fact, all of them, covers one way or the other. Bye.
	This great program, Coast to Coast AM.
	I'm Art 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 have made comments about the show and reviewed it.
	Most of them, you know, ufologists, 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 over-informed!
	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?
	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 had been out here in the evening hours.
	And they got in the BLM land out across the road from the house and took a... It was all done in high definition if you had a high DTV.
	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 compound-ish, 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.
	in a moment we'll get into some of the world news not much of it uh... all that
	a thirty one-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, someway.
	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, he had a little microphone on his lapel.
	He looked almost like a cop, but he wasn't a city worker.
	He was arrested Friday, and police would not say how they identified him as a suspect.
	Um, or whether he's said a word since being arrested, but they seem confident that indeed they have caught BTA and Ed Dames had nothing to do with it.
	He had been planning, uh, how 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 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 change 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 anchorwoman 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 Lundford 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 a thousand.
	Now, maybe 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 Strieber'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.
	He, bless his heart, he got a video camera of two of them.
	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 light, lights event, they did
	cover that in ABC, in March of 1977.
	That would 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 a hundred and fifty feet, seemingly.
	I mean, very close.
	Almost felt like, 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 gonna go, come on, I expected the world... Why, I expected that they would get President Bush to get in front of that Back camera, and admit to the world what's been going on for fifty 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... They may have dismissed the Roswell business very much too easily.
	But as for the rest of it, I thought it was a good first step.
	Well, Cardline, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Good morning, Art.
	How are you doing, sir?
	Fine.
	At least we got to see what you and Ramona look like.
	You've got a pretty exotic-looking wife.
	I do, indeed.
	You can really tell she loves you.
	Well, we've been very much in love.
	We're soulmates, been married well over a decade now, and it's going well.
	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 trick 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.
	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 of somebody who has only chuckled reading an occasional 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.
	Like you said, this was the first.
	Two hours on a major network, prime time, is pretty damn good.
	It really is.
	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.
	Well, they missed so many, well, they screwed up the Roswell thing.
	I'm not going to try and apologize for that, they screwed it up, yeah.
	But at any rate, at least now when we're talking to you, we get to know your studio, and hey, you've got a pretty nice spread there, Jack.
	You really do.
	It's a nice compound as compounds go.
	Yeah, it looked like a compound.
	It really did.
	Well, that's why they called it that, I guess.
	It's alright.
	And you're out in, you're really in the desert, aren't you?
	I mean, you're head out right in the middle of it.
	About 20 miles from Death Valley.
	That's pretty serious data.
	That's pretty desert-like.
	I bet you get a lot of critters coming in and out.
	We have critters, yes.
	Oh, good critters, too.
	Critters all over the place, sir.
	Well, look, at least you did get more than 30 seconds.
	Alright.
	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.
	Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip.
	Kind of a little strange sound when they're in packs.
	It's kind of eerie to hear them.
	You know, there's ten, twelve, or more of them out there.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air, top of the morning.
	Top of the morning, Art.
	Uh, Warp Speed A-Plus from Tony Waltavistic 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.
	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, you know, from uh... the uh... the boulder people or perhaps why at any rate uh... it is very accurate uh... minus the speed of light that it takes uh... uh... for the signal to uh... 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 really quite fascinating most of the rockies you're on the air hello
	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.
	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's point of view, or it would have been way out there.
	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.
	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 the newspaper with a little joke line at the end.
	Other than that, they don't know a darn thing about UFOs.
	You got that right.
	And the ratings.
	I think George last night mentioned the overnight ratings.
	It was number two for the first hour.
	That's correct.
	That's excellent and more power to it.
	Let's keep it going.
	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 time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Oh, hello, Art.
	Let me say it's just an honor to speak to you, my long-time listener, first-time caller.
	Yes, sir.
	Where are you?
	I'm in Orlando, Florida.
	Okay.
	Not a lot of time before the break, so what's up?
	My only thing is, I thought it was great.
	I agree with what you said, but my only thing about it was that the scientists Who disagreed with the whole UFO phenomenon?
	Mm-hmm.
	I mean, it's good to have, you know, somebody who disagrees because it makes the argument more interesting, but I thought that the scientists that they interviewed were very, very close-minded when it came to the whole... Well, scientists are kind of close-minded, sir.
	As a general rule, a lot of my interviews right here are very close-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.
	They put a pretty good mix in there.
	What do you think?
	Caller?
	I guess he's gone.
	He 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 reined 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 wash, little at a time.
	From the high desert, this is Coast to Coast AM.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	This is Coast to Coast AM.
	R Willie axs a
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	Q Y'all listen very carefully now, our phone numbers are just ever so slightly different for the weekend, and here they are.
	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 800-825-503-7000.
	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.
	800-893-0903. From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM
	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.
	Incidentally, top of the hour, Douglas Mulhall will be here and we'll be talking about nanotechnology and robots.
	I...
	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, you know, the future tech kind of guys, are all talking about nanotechnology, because it relates to so many of their fields.
	Including, of course, robotics.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air, top of the morning.
	Hello, good morning, Mr. Bell.
	Hi, where are you, sir?
	I am calling from Kentucky.
	Okay, you're going to have to speak up good and loud, you're not too loud.
	Okay, is that better?
	Ever so much better, yes.
	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 incident, to me, gave a lot of credence to the UFO phenomenon.
	That's correct.
	And, to me, the special was UFOs 101, that it was for the uninitiated.
	Thank you.
	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, not ufologists, whose expectation, of course, would be so much higher if they had only put the program together.
	Yeah.
	It was not something for the hardcore UFO experts who know A to Z of aliens and UFOs.
	No, this is the program for them.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And programs like it that are dedicated to this kind of thing.
	Sure.
	No, you've hit it exactly.
	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 A 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.
	That's right.
	That was Jill Turner, actually.
	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.
	Well, you see, you were listening to somebody intimately involved in the SETI program.
	And the SETI program, of course, is spending a great deal of money.
	Uh, 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.
	But anyway, that's all I had.
	I enjoyed getting through and talking to you.
	Glad you made it.
	Thanks.
	Thank you very much and take care.
	Uh, 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.
	Hi.
	Hi, this is Steve Collin from Lowell, Massachusetts.
	How are you, Alan?
	I'm fine, but the name's Art.
	My bad.
	Listen, I want to talk about nanotechnology.
	Oh good!
	Douglas Malmo, coming up top of the hour about exactly that.
	Yep, I'm waiting for him to come on.
	I have been following physics at an amateur level, and been following some of Einstein's theories, and studying eagles and sea squids.
	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 of our time.
	And I think it's also potentially the worst and most dangerous scientific discovery of our time.
	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.
	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 nanoneedles?
	That they can drive right into the side of an atom and very easily break open the atom, therefore releasing a lot of energy.
	Nano-needles.
	Nano-needles.
	You know, let me ask him about that.
	Nano-needles.
	I like the expression.
	Or not like it.
	Let's see.
	Nano-needles.
	Alright, that's good.
	I'll be sure to ask.
	I'm afraid that could be done, because I don't know the size of an atom.
	In relation to, uh, in relation to, uh... Definitely small.
	Atometers.
	In, with respect to almost anything else, small.
	Um, but if a needle could be used to break an atom, then it could be used to give us, uh, lots of energy, extremely cheap.
	And then there's, of course, the infamous grey goo thing.
	I'm not familiar with that.
	Oh, you're not?
	Oh, how could you know about nanotechnology and not grey goo?
	Shall I explain grey goo to you?
	Would you please?
	I'm only an amateur.
	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.
	Goo.
	Now do you get it?
	I get it.
	Not only is it... Yeah, there you go.
	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 the air.
	Hi.
	Hi Art, this is Andrew from Wichita and I have a little bit of information on VTK for you.
	Oh, what do you know?
	Well, it turns out that his daughter has suspicions of her father being VTK.
	So she went to the police with her DNA and they back traced it to Wow!
	match and then they surveilled him for a week and then they went in and arrested him.
	Oh my god, that is big news.
	Where did you get that?
	This was off of CAKE channel 10, a local news media here in Wichita.
	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 would have to have been a relative of hers that did the deed, because the DNA would match, and then they surveilled him for how long?
	One week.
	For a week?
	One week.
	And it also turns out that he is a dog catcher for Park City.
	Yes, that I had heard on CNN.
	Oh, that's incredible.
	Oh, okay.
	I had not known that part.
	Yeah, when they 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.
	Right.
	All right.
	Real close, though.
	Listen, thank you so very much.
	You're welcome.
	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.
	Welcome to the program.
	How are you?
	I'm quite well, thank you.
	I 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 strength to endure all the years you have.
	About the show, it was superb.
	We couldn't have asked for anything better.
	It was boldly done, very imaginative.
	The story, especially about the B-52 pilots, were superb.
	Oh, yes.
	And along with Dr. Michikaku.
	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, 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.
	Oh, yes.
	I was listening to a radio program here locally back in 1976, or actually 1976, was Ed Bush.
	And he had a scientist from NASA at that time by the name of Alan Schussler who made an example of the very thing Dr. Michikaku 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 Shusler 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, about fell out of the chair.
	I appreciate your call, sir.
	Thank you.
	Have a wonderful evening.
	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 air, hi.
	Hi Art, this is Dane from Southern Indiana, 1280 WGBF.
	That bumper music you had didn't do your so-called pound pound any good.
	Which bumper music?
	Sounds like Indians inside of a compound.
	You think that sounded a little cultish?
	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.
	Which is a lot to ask for for a mainstream network in a first effort.
	Right.
	It's not bad.
	I don't think it floored anybody.
	No, as I was saying, you don't whip out the Lear test on somebody who does a 9-5 job in a cubicle every day.
	You just don't do that.
	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.
	We'll shorten it and call it The Pound.
	Okay.
	All right, thanks.
	Well, you got cash.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Right.
	Okay, thanks.
	Thank you.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Good evening, Leonard.
	Good evening.
	This is Robert up in Marysville, California.
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, I was listening to the thing.
	I'll agree with everybody with what they had 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 In 1947 in Roswell, they're showing, was it Marcel or Kershko or whoever, you know, showing up there.
	Jesse Marcel Jr.
	Right.
	They're talking about, okay, weather balloons.
	And Project Mogul, actually.
	Not weather balloons, but balloon trains that were designed to detect Russian atomic tests.
	Right.
	But just before they showed that, they were talking about, well, we found this debris on the ground.
	It looked like tinfoil, and we'd hit it with sledgehammers, and it would bounce off.
	Yes.
	In the next segment, they're showing weather balloons.
	Yes.
	I did see a bit of aluminum in them weather balloons floating up there.
	Well, you're right.
	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 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 on the line.
	You're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi there.
	How are you doing today?
	Just great, sir.
	Thank you.
	I think it begins to break, but I really do enjoy your show.
	I had a good work that night, but I managed to watch the first hour, and I learned a lot that I really hadn't heard about about UFOs.
	But I'd like to suggest maybe you and your 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.
	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 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 AM with Art Bell.
	Not a lot of time, but on the air you are.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Going once.
	Yes, ma'am.
	Good morning to you.
	Good morning.
	I'm a first-time caller and I've been listening to your show and I really like it.
	Well, thank you.
	Don't turn your radio off.
	That's a first-time caller.
	Turn my radio off.
	One second, please.
	Rookie mistake, yes.
	I'll stand by while you do that.
	Everybody should know to turn it off immediately or you'll have... Okay, here I am.
	They're very good.
	Okay.
	My name is Sharon.
	Yes, Sharon.
	And I'm from Pittsburgh.
	Okay.
	And I believe that I was called when I was six years old to serve the Lord.
	Okay.
	I'm now 60 years old.
	And how have you done?
	Wonderful.
	I've never failed.
	Never failed?
	Never failed.
	Well, then I'm sure the Lord is pleased with you.
	He is very pleased with me, and I'm pleased with you.
	And you said in 1976, well, I had a son in 1976, who turned against me.
	Your son turned against you?
	Yes, he believes that there's a force out there.
	And I haven't been able to reach him for 13 years.
	Does he call it... He won't speak to me.
	Does he call it The Force?
	He says A-Force.
	A-Force.
	Yeah, you know, like... Well, if it was The Force, then it might have come from, you know, like Star Wars or something.
	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 hopeful 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.
	I'm going to play a little bit of it.
	This is a house, feels like being home.
	I keep coming through like a moon and star.
	And I know now that I've lost the force to the ground.
	When your mother hits the phone So you're a young girl
	When your mother hits the phone When your mother hits the phone
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 7.
	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.
	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 Art at 800-618-8255.
	International Callers International callers
	My guest coming up in a moment is Douglas Mulhall.
	He's going to be talking about nanotechnology.
	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.
	Rocking the night away.
	My guest coming up in a moment is Douglas Mulhall.
	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're all but ready now to build robots to fight our wars, but far from prepared to resolve the cadre of attendant ethical questions.
	Science fiction has a way of becoming more science than fiction.
	Decades ago, Isaac Asimov wrote I, Robot.
	today pentagon's future combat systems project is spending get this was a hundred twenty seven billion dollars
	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
	will be endowed with increasing autonomy Peace.
	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 and 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?
	In a moment, Douglas Maulhall.
	stay right there douglas moho is a leading nanotechnology journalist
	and 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, The Calcium Bomb, about a nanobacterial link to heart disease and cancer that is shaking the medical world.
	It describes a 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 megascale 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.
	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.
	Right.
	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.
	Exactly.
	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.
	Well, this program tends to lead, you know, in a lot of areas.
	Exactly.
	People find out about things years before they appear in mainstream press.
	But that almost goes back to last hour, in a way.
	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 spinoffs 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 gee whiz 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.
	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-such and such or we're going to send this army of killing machines against you.
	And there's two interesting concepts to that.
	The first one is the idea that the US 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 nanoneedles 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 start-up companies.
	So, the idea that it's only going to be, you know, 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, the 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.
	And what does this SmartDust do?
	Well, preliminarily, they've been used for sensing, because that's one of the easiest things to do.
	So they have a camera on board, self-propelled, Energy source, communications device.
	Wow.
	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.
	And what they've done is they've shrunk them down to the level where you can hardly see them.
	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.
	Yeah, because, for example, camera lenses can be almost the size of a few molecules now, just for example.
	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 smart dust, and we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here, 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.
	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?
	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.
	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.
	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.
	And that is actually quite achievable.
	You may wake up feeling pink, but there'll be no day I wake up feeling pink.
	Any color you want!
	Yeah, please!
	So, I mean, that's a practical example.
	You know, 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, you know, a very minor example of some of the possibilities.
	Some of the further out possibilities that are being addressed in the military again today Our body suits that basically perform a whole bunch of functions, including air conditioning, bullet-proofing us.
	I like air conditioning already.
	I mean, clothing, you're saying, that would air condition the person wearing it.
	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.
	Will the power source itself be nanotechnological?
	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 and 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 billionth 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.
	Wouldn't the average person perhaps perceive it in some applications as creation?
	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.
	Yeah, 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 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's 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 a 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.
	Douglas, what is it that's allowing all of this to begin taking off the way it is right now?
	What is the breakthrough that let us get to this suddenly?
	Right.
	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 ...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 it 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.
	And 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, you know, 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, and that's what happened.
	But ultimately then, software will be the command and control mechanism that tells the nanotechnological things what to do, yes?
	Yes, software is a huge player, and as software learns by its own mistakes, It is taking over the manufacturing processes.
	Oh, as it learns by its own mistakes.
	That, of course, is beginning to get into the artificial intelligence world, right?
	That is correct.
	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.
	by Mark Bell.
	I'm going to be doing a lot of research on this topic. So I'm going to be doing a lot
	of research on this topic.
	So I'm going to be doing a lot of research on this topic.
	Be it silent silence when we're touched by something inside that we need so much.
	Be it silent silence when we're touched by something inside that we need so much.
	The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound, or the strength of an oak when it 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 a meadow and hear the grass sing?
	To have all these things in a hammer and saw?
	And they use them to cover themselves.
	And they use them to cover themselves.
	I see stars, take this place, on this trip, just for me I'll take a pillow, in my eyes, I'll put a seat, it's for
	me 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 To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033.
	From east of the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033.
	From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
	International callers may reach out 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.
	Actually, it's very difficult to overstate the case for nanotechnology and how it will affect our lives, really is.
	If you were to be able to see the full effect of a matured nanotechnological world,
	it would have perhaps very little resemblance to what's around you right now.
	Very little indeed.
	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 Nanobacteria 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?
	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, like, 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 I think that's a really nice example that people can understand.
	particle 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.
	Would nanotechnology mature to be able to make gold?
	Well, that's the alchemist's dream, isn't it?
	Yes.
	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, 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 gonna blow
	people's socks off well alright
	that you say an announcement that was made this week i missed it
	what was it well that's the interesting thing
	uh...
	there were actually uh... one out of last month and one announcement last
	week but they both basically said the same thing and that is
	they have being able to develop solar cells
	competitive with conventional energy and as you're aware and you've spoken about quite often on
	your show that is really the holy grail
	solar power It is, yes.
	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.
	All right, explain to me what we're talking about here.
	In what way is nanotechnology applied in the solar field that makes it suddenly feasible?
	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.
	in the form of sun. Yeah, so there's lots of the stuff around, but the problem has always been
	A. How do you actually get it without blanketing, you know, 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.
	That's right, yes.
	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 had to bend 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, you know, go directly into the sun.
	So they track the sun and keep maximum efficiency all day long, yes.
	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.
	So imagine this into a constructed device.
	What would it look like?
	What are we talking about?
	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've basically manufactured them so 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 What does it look like?
	I mean, is it equivalent to... I'm trying to imagine for everybody, is it like a large sheet that can be... or what?
	It's exactly like a large sheet.
	Like a large sheet, yeah.
	And here's the other really important thing about it.
	The other problem with solar cells has been that they have only been able to absorb a certain part of the light spectrum.
	Right.
	Infrared hasn't worked very well.
	Right.
	They've just overcome that.
	And that's a huge change.
	Oh my God, this is a big announcement.
	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 have not made a formal announcement of it yet.
	So this is really new news before it comes out.
	Certainly new to me.
	Yeah.
	And I imagine all my audience as well.
	That's incredible.
	All right.
	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?
	A hundred times.
	Oh my God.
	And I should say by price.
	By price.
	It doesn't shrink the amount of space needed by a hundredfold, but what it does is it shrinks the amount of material by a hundredfold.
	And it also, because of this three-dimensional capability, increases the efficiency.
	And I'm going to get... All right, well, that was my... It really was my question.
	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?
	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 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 is because they can conduct electricity.
	And there's a whole new generation of plastics that are coming out that can conduct 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.
	Solar paint.
	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.
	Can I ask a sort of a technical question?
	Fire away!
	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?
	And that comes into the power management aspect, because that has been one of the big problems.
	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.
	Wow.
	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 can 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 the theme of convergence.
	It's the convergence of, 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.
	I'm not clear on how the decentralized management works yet.
	Right.
	Well, one of the problems is... Unless, you know, I mean, the sun is always shining somewhere in the world.
	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 out the other end.
	The grid is not very good at all at accepting power from, say, three million different homes that are sitting there generating This power, some of which they may not be using because everyone that worked during the day in their house isn't using that much energy.
	Right.
	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.
	But are you saying this could be done with the existing grid or no?
	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.
	So the current grid, the current electricity generating grid and the current transmission grid could be used if you allow these upgrades to it.
	Do you have any idea of the dollars that we're talking about?
	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.
	Yes.
	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.
	I'll say.
	Another example is a house painted with solar cells.
	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?
	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, you know, VCRs that we've got all around.
	All these cathode ray tubes that we have all over the place.
	So you're seeing exponential increases in energy efficiency at the same time.
	There's no question about it.
	I operate here in a very small room.
	And I originally had three monitors in here.
	You know, regular old monitor monitors.
	And you could put your hand on top of them.
	Try it at home if you have a monitor, folks.
	And I'll tell you right now.
	Fry an egg.
	Ah, 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.
	Alright, uh, Douglas, hold on.
	We're at the top of the hour.
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	imaginary lovers. They're like, uh, well, more flexible imaginary friends.
	You're 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?
	Well, that's what someone asked me.
	When's it going to be in Home Depot?
	That's right.
	That's exactly right, yes.
	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.
	Oh, baby!
	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 plant 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.
	Holy mackerel!
	That's gigantic!
	That's gigantic!
	You combine that with the small cost, and... Oh my goodness, that's going to change the world.
	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.
	That is really exciting.
	It is.
	That is exciting.
	And not in the far distant future, but, you know, like next year.
	Exactly.
	Oh, man.
	It's wonderful.
	It's wonderful news.
	It's actually just unbelievable news.
	Are you sure?
	You mean, am I sure that I'm reading it?
	Well, yes.
	Well, I'm sure you're reading it, too.
	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.
	Yeah.
	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, you know, coming to the fore so quickly.
	And, you know, 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.
	Yes.
	And who knows, you know, we could be on the verge of just making all of that go away.
	Well, Douglas, there are two sides to this, and it would make a lot of other things go away, too.
	I mean, 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.
	And here's the interesting thing.
	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.
	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!
	Well, 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 Earth.
	The Chinese aren't fooling around with it.
	They are going into it big time.
	One of the biggest biotechnology, nanotechnology countries It's Singapore, and they are pulling scientists of the United States and Europe like crazy.
	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?
	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 Um, 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, 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.
	Douglas, patents, for example.
	I mean, is anybody locking down this technology?
	Is it going to get... is there any danger it will be either buried or... I don't know.
	On the contrary, it's burying the patent office.
	It's interesting you should bring this up.
	That's great, yes.
	Because what is happening, and there was just actually an article published on this recently in Forbes, 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.
	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 the 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.
	I don't even know where to start.
	When a artificially intelligent idea is patentable, whose name is put on it?
	Well, probably the guy that invented the artificial intelligence software, you know, and then had the claim to it.
	But this is seriously happening.
	Yes, I know, but you can't have the whole patent system collapse, or then how do you take advantage of your invention?
	You have to be able to capitalize on it.
	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 Torvalds' Linux.
	Yes.
	Which is one of the big competitors to Microsoft.
	Yes.
	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.
	Well, is the person who invented Linux rich and comfortable in a big mansion somewhere?
	Not at all.
	Torvalds gave it away.
	We'll see now.
	He gets paid as a consultant to help develop it in a way that it serves as the platform.
	Oh, I understand that.
	I was just wondering if... No, Tarmel isn't rich at all.
	No.
	No, he's not.
	And he just decided that this was a worthwhile thing to do.
	It's like the guy who invented... Well, that's wonderful, but he ought to be rich.
	Well, he could be, actually.
	I mean, isn't that a little worrisome?
	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?
	Well, yes, but you know, 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 classic example of that is HTML markup language that's used that allowed the Internet to be used by everybody.
	Now, if someone had patented that, we would be in big trouble.
	We wouldn't have it.
	That's right.
	They gave it away.
	And it's those kinds of people who, more than the Microsofts of the world, So then you're predicting that nanotechnological ideas 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 business?
	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.
	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.
	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.
	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?
	Are they sitting on these ideas?
	No!
	There is wholesale borrowing going on.
	I mean, this is a big problem right now.
	What do you mean, borrowing?
	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.
	It's already becoming unmanageable in a lot of these areas.
	So you envision then a world where these ideas are just sort of instantly shared with the world?
	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 It's going to start being generated in completely other ways.
	Well, explain some of those ways.
	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.
	Boy, is that a dog-eat-dog world, or what?
	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.
	Though, Douglas, if you were an inventor, and you had just stumbled into some earth-shakingly important discovery in nanotechnology and energy, it was a good example, And your idea was just stolen away by somebody who really knows how to produce stuff, like in China, for example.
	You might not feel that way.
	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.
	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.
	You're absolutely right.
	But that is changing.
	If you look, for example, at the Amazon.com's 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.
	Well, I mean, that is good news if it is sort of generally true.
	But it is happening because look at the number of people that I mean, it's not 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.
	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?
	Well, there's a couple of things.
	The great sucking sound.
	The great sucking sound.
	Robotic sucking sound.
	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-baron 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.
	G. Douglas.
	We're in that cycle again.
	G. Douglas.
	I don't know.
	History is not on your side.
	I mean, it's a good vision you have there, but a robber baron kind of atmosphere seems to me is more likely than the other.
	I think you're right, Art.
	I think that we're going to run into a robber baron 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.
	Douglas, how quickly will the problem begin in earnest?
	Well, I think that, you know, you're already seeing it because... Oh, no, I knew you were going to say that, but I meant really in earnest.
	In other words, we're on the cusp, apparently, of this giant cliff that most people don't even see coming called nanotechnology.
	Well, here's what the forecasts have been from people Like Eric Drexler and Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge and other people who are really into creating this stuff.
	Yes.
	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, Well, but there's the announcement about next year, too.
	Next year!
	Exactly.
	For the paint, or whatever.
	All right, hold it right there.
	We're at a break point.
	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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	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
	The night is not as it would seem.
	Some music just fits me like a blanket.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Douglas Mulhall 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.
	A 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 brutish 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.
	It 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 of 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.
	I think Douglas has done a spectacular, spectacular job of addressing the upside of nanotechnology,
	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.
	What is the negative side of nanotechnology?
	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 Well, okay.
	nuclear power but it's not the same with nanotechnology you can have
	very uh...
	amount of funding uh... to
	create some potentially dangerous happen well okay for for example
	doubles you you mentioned uh... a couple of guys working in a garage earlier
	by that was one of your examples of where somebody might create some
	spectacular really cool thing right and not even patented
	been donnie think about patting it because all of single-week ball and you
	can't happen and so these two guys if let's say they were
	Real good guys.
	Right.
	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?
	Well, let's talk about the short-term risks, okay?
	Sure.
	Because I think that's a good place to start with this.
	Sure.
	And they're in two areas.
	One is the whoops factor.
	Whoops?
	Yes, whoops.
	I didn't realize it did that.
	Yes.
	And the other one is the deliberate factor, which is Well, let's start with whoops.
	Okay, well, whoops is a good example.
	Give me an example of a whoops.
	A whoops is, gee, we put these rats in a room full of nanotubes and they drop dead.
	In fact, that was reported in one of the early studies that was done on the physiological, potential physiological impacts.
	Douglas, why did they drop dead?
	They suffocated.
	Now, I have to really emphasize something here.
	Yes?
	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... That's what all the drug companies said.
	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.
	What were these nanotubes ostensibly designed to do, the ones that were in Lutheranus?
	Well, these nanotubes are used quite commonly, for example, now for developing super small electronic circuits for computing.
	I see.
	And so the rats inhaled. And they're also used in coatings.
	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, you know, nanoparticles have been in the air for 200 years from coal dust burning.
	Yes, but what if you intentionally decided to suffocate with nanotubes?
	Well, I think actually that 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 nano, 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.
	I understand that you are a cheerleader, and you're going to come back to the positive side every time you can do it, but I'm really wanting to hold you on line here.
	Oh no, I'm agreeing with you here, Art.
	I'm just saying the problem is we have these nanoparticles out there in the environment, but we have not determined their medical impact.
	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.
	Well, Douglas, isn't the EPA going to get into the same kind of trouble as the Patent Office?
	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.
	So, how much of a An oops percentage might there be?
	I mean, there's going to be some pretty exotic things that are worked on.
	Well, that depends on who you talk to.
	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.
	But they're not the ones to listen to.
	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.
	I'm glad you brought up gray matter.
	Gray goo, right?
	Yes, well sure.
	Now, it seems to me that in nanotechnology, in the very early stages of nanotechnology, Uh, 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.
	Right.
	To give, it would be relatively easy command.
	You want to explain that to everybody, please?
	Actually, Grey Goo is a very interesting thing, because it's sort of being redefined.
	What is?
	Define it, first of all.
	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, pray he 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.
	Eat to replicate.
	Eat to replicate and get energy.
	That's right.
	And so Grey Goo would do what?
	What would happen is Grey Goo would be the result of that process because we would all be consumed by these little robots that were turning everything into Uh, you know, gray matter.
	So in my mind, Douglas, I visualize a scientist holding a, I don't know, a test tube full of nanobots.
	Nanobots.
	Grey goo things.
	Oops.
	Dropping it.
	Dropping it.
	And then I picture the floor in front of him slowly radiating out, turning grey, until it's developing first his house, then the city, then the state, then the world.
	And if you look at that in nature, for example, you'll see that we get that all the time.
	We do?
	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.
	They kill so quickly that, yes, they collapse on themselves.
	But that wouldn't be the case with Gregoo, because Gregoo, no matter what it was, whether it was dirt, rocks, or anything in its path, would convert it to more Gregoo, right?
	Yeah, but the technologists are arguing that that simply is not feasible.
	In other words, how would it burn out?
	Well, Art, the thing is this.
	First of all, I don't think that that is a short-term risk.
	I would like to... Well, maybe not, but it is actually a risk, Douglas, isn't it?
	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.
	Does he explain why?
	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 grey 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 grey 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.
	All right, 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.
	And the place that's going to play out first is with biotechnology.
	That's why I'm mentioning viruses.
	Because viruses can Sure.
	your body into grey 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
	But look, this is a very strong, very important technology.
	And so this brings us to where I need to ask you about controls and oversight.
	Right.
	Surely you're not in favor of no controls and no oversight.
	Oh, on the contrary.
	I think we're going to have to develop a very, very powerful regime that operates Quite broadly, and the problem that you run into with that immediately is the Big Brother Syndrome.
	Yes.
	Do we have to have a completely militarized, controlled society in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening?
	Well, almost.
	If it is as strong on the negative side as I suspect it really is, then... And you have a very valid point.
	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.
	For example... What are their basic positions and the differences?
	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.
	Yes.
	That's all there is to it.
	And Kurzweil is basically saying should've, could've, would've ain't gonna work because it's gonna 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 Futures 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.
	Try me.
	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.
	Now, the issue becomes... Are you going to finally suggest, look, let the machines decide for us!
	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 thing 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.
	In other words, become part machine ourselves.
	The only possible salvation for us is to become... Other humanly.
	Other than humanly.
	Other humanly.
	Well, other than humanly, actually.
	Some people call it... You see, and it's very important to be careful about the words that we use here because then you talk about cyborgs and everybody gets this image of Star Trek and the Borg in their head.
	But really, we are already beginning to see the merging of artificial and human intelligence, and the Internet is a classic example of that.
	Maybe our only hope is to be able to actually see at the molecular level.
	Exactly.
	And Art, I want to tell you, I think that really it's a scary thing, but really we have to look at becoming a different type of human In order to manage the risks and the downside.
	That is the bottom line of all of this.
	Oh my goodness.
	Well, you did surprise me with your answer.
	I must admit.
	Well, we explain it more in the book in some depth, because I want to emphasize I'm not the eternal optimist on this stuff.
	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.
	All right, that's exactly what we'll do.
	Hold on, because it is that time.
	From the High Desert, instructively, I'm Mark Bell.
	Now it begins Now I've got your gun
	Needles and pins you
	Why that you done?
	Watching black bars.
	Till you return.
	Hiding blackboards.
	Back door, and watching you play.
	I'm not a fan of the music.
	To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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	From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with Art Bell.
	To the cones we go with Douglas Maulhall in a moment.
	My guest is Douglas Maulhall 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, and 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 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'd totally volunteer to be enhanced by nanochip implantation now!
	Better now!
	Better memory!
	Better eyesight!
	Better everything!
	I'm faster!
	I'll be more complex!
	Yes!
	I want it now!
	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 and 666.
	What if we are the beast?
	What if we are the beast?
	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, and one of the great students of that has been... Stay good and close to the phone for me.
	...has been Stephen Jay Gould.
	Yes.
	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 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.
	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, OK, 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.
	Oh yes.
	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.
	A hundred million X-rays and scans are done every year that come across it, and a hundred billion dollars 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.
	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.
	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 it had been developed because of a very interesting development, and this is another announcement that we have here, because it just happened this month.
	Another announcement, folks.
	Another announcement.
	All right.
	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.
	That's right, yes.
	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. Nevesh 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 sanguinum, 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.
	Well, I hadn't heard that, but then again, I don't keep Kidney International on my coffee table.
	So I might have missed that.
	So the long and short of it is this.
	When they were characterizing this little nano-critter, 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, you know, eventually really gets us.
	Creeping death.
	Creeping death.
	What they found was that in order to examine it, they had to strip off its 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.
	Alright, listen up.
	We need to pepper this with calls.
	We have people waiting for you.
	Alright, fire away!
	Very patiently.
	First time caller on the line.
	You're on the air with Douglas Maul.
	Hello.
	Yes, Art?
	Yes.
	Uh, yeah, you know, uh, mentioned something earlier about, uh, uh, the board from Star Trek.
	And, uh, 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, of, uh, nanobots.
	That's an extremely good question.
	Absolutely.
	And what I wanted to bring up is because you'd have to control everybody's thoughts and actions.
	Right.
	We've got it, sir.
	We've got it.
	Hold on and listen.
	Alright.
	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.
	You realize this prospect is somewhat unappealing for some people, Douglas?
	Oh boy, I'm telling you.
	It's gonna 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 inhumanism and the human being being the ultimate result Of everything that came before, this is definitely not appealing stuff.
	Not at all.
	But it's happening right now, and a good example of that is Octobionics, 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.
	This is being done right now in people who have macular degeneration.
	Well, you know, Douglas, you see, if you can relay those optical signals to the brain, then you can relay those optical signals, well, I don't know, you could transmit them even.
	Exactly.
	Oh, baby.
	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.
	We better get ready for it.
	Do you personally look forward to this world?
	You know, I wake up in the middle of the night, and half of the time I'm thinking, oh, this is going to be great, and the other half of the time I'm thinking, oh, God, what are we doing?
	But you know, you have a certain, I don't know, energy in your voice, Douglas, that tells me you're really more of a cheerleader for this than not.
	Well, I tell you something, 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.
	But see, the regulatory aspect of this ain't any better than the patent aspect of this.
	In other words, it's likely to confuse regulatory attempts.
	I was using regulatory in the wider sense.
	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.
	The American people are very individualistic.
	And they're just not going to like becoming part machine.
	They're not going to like it.
	Unless that part machine allows them to do a whole bunch of things as individuals that they couldn't do before.
	Well, yeah, maybe.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mall.
	Hi.
	Oh, yes.
	Hello, Eric.
	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.
	But has identity theft kept you from having credit cards?
	I bet not.
	True.
	And has the possibility of your cell phone exploding yet stopped you from putting one to your ear?
	I don't have a cell phone.
	Well, if you have one.
	My point is that you're right about all of that, but it's not stopping it.
	Right?
	Yeah, but 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?
	Because, Douglas just said, it's the only way we'll fight it!
	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.
	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.
	You know, some people would say, no, you know, all of this alienation, everything that's going on.
	It's a very personal and individual perception.
	Hey, Douglas, Douglas, look, what happens if we don't move, as you've 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?
	Well, the likely outcome of that scenario, as Werner Wenge said, was as soon as we create something that is smarter than ourselves, the human era will end.
	That's what he said.
	So, the stakes are not so small?
	No, the stakes are very large.
	There's no question about it.
	The stakes are large.
	And if we don't, uh, 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.
	You need a slogan, Douglas.
	Uh, how about upgrade or die?
	That's very good, Art.
	I think I'll trademark that.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
	Hi.
	Well, hi, this is Tom in San Diego.
	Yo, Tom.
	I had two questions.
	One, you had a guest a month ago or longer that talked about orbital solar transmission to Earth.
	That's right, yes.
	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.
	Right.
	And the quantum dot theory, is there something about the heat retention or transmission through it that it would A direct application might have to be looked out for.
	All right, take number two first, Douglas.
	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.
	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 that power to ground stations.
	Absolutely.
	And the answer is, why bother?
	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.
	Precisely.
	Why bother?
	Have the inventors of this new technology wondered about their safety in the night, Douglas?
	I mean... Good question.
	Well, actually, I would.
	I would, too.
	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.
	Okay, so you agree the grey goo is technically plausible, right?
	Well, Eric Drexler would disagree with that.
	All we need now Is somebody willing to give their life to kill a lot of people?
	It's a good thing we don't have people like that around.
	Yeah, right.
	Well, none of those around are there.
	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 the
	the the
	the Let the wind blow
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	worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with 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's played seem to explain enough of all that that this would be a prize possession this program with
	douglas and uh... you would pass it on to your friends so they might understand
	what's coming A lot of guests come on and all they do is plug their book
	all the way through the program 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.
	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.
	Are those books available on Amazon.com?
	Probably.
	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 I 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've 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, 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 non-profit organizations.
	One is the Foresight Institute that does great work and 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 there you 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.
	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.
	What could I likely do 10 years from now, 20 years from now?
	Well, actually, I think what you could do in the next few years... Yes, all right, let's cover... Yeah, 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 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 bio labs 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.
	Well, have you ever listened to Dr. Michio Kaku on the subject of, you know, we're a Type 0 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, that we would blow ourselves to smithereens.
	And the chances, frankly, he gives, whether it's nanotechnology or nuclear power, whatever, of our blowing ourselves to smithereens, before getting to Type I, is like 99 out of 100.
	Yeah, I understand that.
	But you know, there's another argument that I have.
	But you understand it with such a cheerful damn voice!
	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, you know, 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?
	All right.
	First time caller line, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	Jim from Los Angeles on KFI.
	Hey, Jim.
	Welcome.
	Yes, sir.
	And the things that the guest has been describing regarding power generation and and many others, and 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 have if you didn't have to pay for Your power in the conventional way and your fuel in the conventional way.
	Has the guest 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?
	You know what's really interesting about that?
	I sent this statistic to Art as well.
	He's got it in front of him.
	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.
	Why would you assume that?
	Well, that's the problem.
	Well, you wouldn't assume the opposite.
	There's going to be, and there always has been, inertia resistance to the introduction of new technologies.
	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
	it is you never happened before
	but the pope the problem is as you and i have been discussing
	they have no choice because they have to keep up with everybody else trying to
	doing the same thing the military industrial complex going to war
	uh... wildcard liner on there with douglas mall hello hello art
	Hi, this is Sadie calling from Chicago.
	Welcome, Sadie.
	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.
	But 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, you know, the beginning of our capability to really begin to explore the galaxy.
	So because of these, 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.
	Or, Douglas, if human behavior does not largely change, it might give us a chance to escape from the planet before it becomes all grey.
	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.
	And the sooner that we get away from that, the better off we're going to be.
	All right.
	I agree with you.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
	Hi.
	Hi, this is Cory calling out of Cincinnati.
	Cory!
	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 Nanotechnology is already being used to browse the internet.
	No, you said in our mind's eye.
	In our mind's eye.
	And that is maybe a few years away because as I mentioned with Octobionics, 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.
	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.
	So the heck with the computer, we would just all become connected in our brain.
	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.
	Well, new would be a closer, more complex integration with the brain.
	That would be new.
	Well, so that, for example, our email doesn't come to our computer, it just comes to our brain.
	Right.
	And we mentally think it open, read it, and respond to it.
	Exactly.
	Well... And look what's happening with robotics right now and prosthetics.
	Well, we damn well better be able to control the input to our brain better than my mailbox is controlled right now.
	I can tell you that right now.
	Otherwise, we'll be spammed to death.
	That's a fact.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Douglas Mulhall.
	Hello.
	Hi, Art.
	Yeah?
	This is Mike Collins from Kirtland, California.
	Listen to the KOH.
	Yes, sir.
	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.
	Will be, yes.
	And referring back to an old story by Isaac Asimov, iRobot, this technology sounds familiar to me, where you better have your safety net and your firewalls and your double redundancies built in before you even manufacture the project.
	Yeah, well, that's what we were just talking about, sort of.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's still much under.
	But I wonder, maybe to answer that question, are you doing anything Is anybody doing anything to make it safe before they even go into the development stage of research?
	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.
	Well, that is what you're doing otherwise, isn't it?
	So there's been a very radical departure between the U.S.
	and Europe on how to approach this type of thing, 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.
	Um, but on the other hand, the possible consequences of an oops or even an intentional thing, um, I don't know.
	It's so monumental that if England is not allowing it, and we are, England still has to worry!
	That's right.
	And so that brings up a problem, doesn't it?
	Well, it would seem to.
	Uh-huh.
	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.
	Well, you know what we need?
	We need a one-world control, Douglas.
	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.
	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.
	Okay, but why would they not be overwhelmed as every other agency we've talked about?
	Well, what's interesting is that they would have been overwhelmed ten years ago with SARS if a new system for managing those types of rapidly emerging diseases had not been in place.
	So we are evolving these systems and I think really that the SARS outbreak is a nice template to look at For how we might be able to manage these rapidly emerging... 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?
	Well, it's happened before.
	I mean, look what happened with the Black Death.
	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.
	One of the problems with this is that people seem to forget that these things did happen to humanity in the past.
	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.
	These things happen.
	Alright, listen, Douglas, buddy, it has been such a pleasure to have you on the air.
	You really are.
	You're something else.
	It's always enjoyable, Art, and I hope that you're going to replace Peter Jennings on the next show.
	You have a good night, buddy.
	Take care.
	Okay, you too.
	These words are absolutely the right ones to close any show with.
	I'm Art Bell, and this is Crystal.
	Midnight in the desert, shooting stars across the sky This magical journey will take us on a ride
	Filled with a longing, searching for the truth Will we make it to tomorrow?
	Will the sun shine on you?
	Midnight in the desert, and we're listening

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