A planet of viruses
Viruses are the smallest living things known to science, and yet they hold the entire planet in their sway. We are most familiar with the viruses that give us colds or the flu, but viruses also cause a vast range of other diseases. Viruses have been a part of our lives for so long, in fact, that we are actually part virus: the human genome contains more DNA from viruses than our own genes. Meanwhile, scientists are discovering viruses everywhere they look: in the soil, in the ocean, even in deep caves miles underground. Here, science writer Carl Zimmer presents the latest research on how viruses hold sway over our lives and our biosphere, how viruses helped give rise to the first life forms, how viruses are producing new diseases, how we can harness viruses for our own ends, and how viruses will continue to control our fate for years to come.--From publisher description.
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- I would add Carl Zimmer’s “A Planet of Viruses” as well.
- I recommend "A Planet of Viruses" by Carl Zimmer. It's really short but almost every page is a mind-blower.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10840041-a-planet-of-vir...
There are viruses that go into the hosts DNA, replicate along with it over generations, then wake up and start being viruses again!
The oceans are Grey Goo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_bacteriophage
> Marine viruses, although microscopic and essentially unnoticed by scientists until recently, are the most abundant and diverse biological entities in the ocean. Viruses have an estimated abundance of 10^30 in the ocean.
Marine bacteriophages kill about 40% of all bacteria in the ocean every day.
(I don't know why you don't explode into viruses ten seconds after you enter the ocean, there must be a way that the maelstrom of evolution doesn't create monsters, eh? Or maybe we are playing Russian Roulette every time we go in the water?)
- I strongly recommend "A Planet of Viruses" by Carl Zimmer
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo222...
There are viruses that enter a host, merge with its DNA, replicate along with it for generations just like "normal" DNA. Eventually, it can "wake up", cut itself out of the host genes, and start replicating as a virus again.
Some of our DNA is apparently made out of viruses that did this and got stuck.
The model that emerges from consideration of recent discoveries is something like, bacteria and viruses form a single global organism that is the primary resident of this planet (by mass, by throughput, etc.)
- This is faulty reasoning. To think that the female reproductive system developed prior to the fetus (in order to pave way for nurturing of the embryo) is implying evolution is a purpose-driven, goal-oriented process - a line of reasoning not too far from "intelligent design".
Not to mention the egg-chicken dichotomy is absurd. There was neither a "first chicken" nor a "first egg".
Single celled protists first developed sexual reproduction about 2 billion years ago as a means of producing genetically variable offsprings. It may be assumed both the offspring and the reproductive machinery of the parents developed concomitantly as life was making a shift from uni-cellularity toward multi-cellularity.
As for mammals (which includes us humans), the placenta, which serves as an important barrier between the mother and the fetus (only letting nutrition pass through), is of viral origin. Placental syncytiotrophoblasts SCT-1, SCT-2 proteins are derived from endogenous retroviruses. Our genome is full of fossils of viral DNA - accumulated over several millions of years. If these viruses had not apt-get install-ed biological chroot jails, we would not have been born at all.. (obviously some other modes of reproduction may have been developed)
Carl Zimmer has some interesting write-ups on this topic:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/02/14/mammals-ma...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12paleo.html
For those interested in evolution of sexual reproduction and "viro-biome", I recommend Carl Zimmer's Planet of Viruses and Matt Ridley's Red Queen.
I agree the article is a bit sensationalist. Look at it in this way: had it been a boring, academic, science-journaly piece, many of us wouldn't have waded through the article at all... Obviously the target audience for that article (and the site) are general science-buffs and not only embryologists or molecular biologists. Personally I think some dramatisation (to make the content more appealing to general audience) is acceptable - so long as the subject matter doesn't deviate too much from reality.
PS: apologies for my broken english :)
PPS: Re: the chicken & egg question - the egg came first because reptilians laid eggs. Chickens, and birds in general, are descendants of dinosaurs.
- That's incredibly interesting! Do you know some (pop)science books that could help learn more about viruses? I found two that sound good from description: "Viruses: A Very Short Introduction" by Dorothy H. Crawford and "A Planet of Viruses" by Carl Zimmer. Would you recommend any of these or something else?
- > I don't think the tech will play out like in Diamond Age
Well (SPOILER ALERT!!!) the whole point of Diamond Age was that nanotech could play out in one of two ways: metered by a central authority to extract rents vs. imitating natural self-replicating systems. The deeper issue being control vs. wilderness.
That's really a psychological issue, and one we are already facing today: witness how the idea of building self-replicating 3D printers ("RepRap") to alter economic conditions became subsumed by companies trying to sell 3D printers to consumers. Most printers cost between $300 to $3000, when I should be able to go down to Noisebridge and print my own for $10.50. People have to make a living; Noisebridge is soliciting donations because their lease is up and they have to move. Can I really fault the folks trying to make a living selling printers?
Bucky Fuller pointed out that we would have the technology to take care of ourselves by sometime in the 1970's, no nanotech required, if we would just apply our resources and existing technology to our problems in an efficient manner.
> the book I mentioned was indeed 3BP but since I haven't finished the other two books my final thoughts have to wait. (Only thing I didn't like so far was the sudden FTL comms at the end...)
I've only read the first two, has the third been released in paperback yet? As for the FTL comms, I think it's really hard to make a hard-sci-fi story that's realistic and emotionally engaging over lots of light-years.
> I think your best metaphor is either cracking root access to the Matrix or simply becoming God. Very far removed from the "trusting trust" scenario. But also removed from physical systems. Using that sort of metaphor instead of "matter lock" will insulate any criticisms from hard science. It also reduces the existential concerns to the same level as the question of "what if we're living in a simulation?"
I don't think there's any hard science consideration preventing the development the machinery for "matter lock" (I'm getting tired of my own jargon at this point, lol.) At the most general level of analysis you have a decay rate and a regeneration rate and as long as the latter is sufficiently greater than the former you're golden. Keep in mind, you would control all atomic energy on the planet in this scenario.
I think it's physically, mechanically possible to suffuse the planetary envelope (the bubble-shaped space between the hard vacuum and the magma) with a communicating network of machines that could sense and affect conditions globally. (After all, life did it.)
The problem I foresee is command and control: could you coordinate it? How does one person (or group) receive, process, and transmit information to and from this system? Here we are pressed up against the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness, which of course is directly related existential question you mention! That's the weird thing about self-reflexive consciousness: it's still a problem whether your system is "hard science" or "metaphorical" or "I'm dreaming" or whatever.
> People do publish technical details on both MNT and non-MNT...
I didn't mean that they don't, I meant that the (theoretical) people researching how to use nanotech to become Robot King don't publish.
Attaining the "ML" would be akin to becoming a local god, but how would you have to transform yourself to manage it? I believe that is the barrier, if any.
In any event, after reading "A Planet of Viruses" by Carl Zimmer [1] I'm pretty sure that they already have things locked down. It's a non-fiction pop-sci covering recent discoveries in biology of viruses, only 109 pages and nearly every one mind-blowing.
[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Planet_of_Viruses.htm...
Read that, then "Blood Music", then Gregory Bateson's "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences)" I think the Matrix is rooted... ;-)
