Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: landman@sun.com (Howard A. Landman x61391) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Crash protection (was Re: Utility Fog) Message-ID: Date: 12 Sep 89 21:03:41 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 29 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article gordon@idca.tds.philips.nl (Gordon Booman) writes: >If the problem is the brain sloshing up against the skull, why not >solidify the brain and its surrounding fluid whenever great acceleration >is detected? Inject nano-machines into the brain that just roll around >until accelerated, at which point the reach out and grab someone. >Seems a lot simpler than Utility Fog. (Hah! as if any of these schemes >were easy!) In that case, we hardly need nanotechnology. We already know how to make solutions that become more viscous under stress - cornstarch and water demonstrates the principle admirably well. We just need to design something non-toxic and compatible with cerebro-spinal fluid. Of course, we could always make genes to build it in. A related question: is it clear that we *could* build acceleration triggers on a nano scale? Wouldn't Brownian motion constantly be setting them off? The kinetic environment at that scale is *very* noisy! Howard A. Landman landman@sun.com [The Utility Fog schemes, as I originally envisioned them, require an overall control. There is not enough information avalible to the individual Foglet to make the right decisions, even if it had the processing power. --JoSH]