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 Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:48 pm
I just thought this idea was neat enough that it should be released into the memesphere. My officemate and I were bullshitting one afternoon and we came up with this idea... well, I'd better be careful-- it's undoubtedly a synthesis of many, many peoples ideas... but it's what we were talking about.
The word "power plant" might someday be taken literally. Imagine genetically engineered plants (possibly combined with mechanical equipment) that generate spores/pollen/something-airborne. These spores can, under the appropriate conditions release LOTS of energy. Future technology (think cyborgs/cars/fill-in-the-blank) extract these spores from the air and use them as fuel; it's possible that sunlight is used to power the process that allows the energy to be extracted. This sort of distribution system makes sense if powered equpment is ubiquitous. We're sort of imagining that most people are cyborgs by this time-- and their bio-machinery also requires this extra energy.
Heavily populated areas would be DENSE with the stuff, and there would be all sorts of regulation systems for releasing the stuff into the air; collecting fallen pollen from the soil; etc.
A variant of This sort of scenario might also make sense for big projects like terraforming Mars-- but that involves a different distribution mechanism (and the steps that spring to mind are a bit too convoluted and involved to type up right now). Anyway... I hope people have fun playing around with this idea a bit.
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Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 5:26 pm
lol, it soudns actually a damn good idea, and who thought that the plants and animals would actually take over razz
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Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 11:20 am
but would they be safe towards you humans and various animals on this planet?? what if someone accidentaly inhaled some of these spores would they expplode (which by the way would be funny) or just die from the spore itself
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Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:42 pm
redeyes darkness dragon but would they be safe towards you humans and various animals on this planet?? what if someone accidentaly inhaled some of these spores would they expplode (which by the way would be funny) or just die from the spore itself To be useful they'd have to be relatively stable-- however I do expect they'd be fairly toxic. We, as a species, don't really seem to worry too much about such things. If the dominant group can safely make use of the technology, then there wouldn't be much incentive to change it... This idea is presupposing an awful lot of course.
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Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:38 am
Well you can have the spores go dormant if they enter the body, that way they'll just pass though the system or be broken down by the body. But that is one of the mean things in nanotech that we have to think about.
Or you can have the spores "talk"to the nanobots that maybe in your blood to tell you things like air quality and other thing about the atmosphere.
You can also change the system a bit to help spread medicine. Like spreading cold and flu medicine to stop so many people from getting them. And just like with terraforming they can be used to help keep the air clean.
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Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:37 am
yeah i had a similiar idea to archwarrior beforei read his post, instead the spores were the nanites, and therefore could be preprogrammed to shutdown when entering the body.... or thinking on a more molecular level, the spres could be genetically engineered so itll be benefitial any species breathing it in, and cleaning the DNA via transcription etc, but itll be unstable enough or have a high ionisation energy(close to the peak of an energy curve, sorry i didnt study ove the past 3 months and im rusty as hell razz ) im just hoping this is big enough razz , becuas ei did a thing in paint  but yeah its a good idea, and itr makes sense it you twist it around a bit
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Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:27 am
Hmm... but if it is going to "clean" D.N.A. what will happen our mutations? I have some mutations that are good for me and any offspring I may have. Will they try and "fix" those mutation? Yes, bad mutations should be stopped. But how will it know what is a bad mutation and what is a good mutation, if those mutations is not on record?
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Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 2:59 pm
OMG!
Thats a great idea!
There no reason why such a system couldn't be developed in the present.
All you need is for the plant to synthesize high contents of pretty much any high energy macromolecule that can be reduced to create a current.
I mean thats what our bodies our doing anyways.
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Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:43 pm
grey wanderer I just thought this idea was neat enough that it should be released into the memesphere. My officemate and I were bullshitting one afternoon and we came up with this idea... well, I'd better be careful-- it's undoubtedly a synthesis of many, many peoples ideas... but it's what we were talking about. The word "power plant" might someday be taken literally. Imagine genetically engineered plants (possibly combined with mechanical equipment) that generate spores/pollen/something-airborne. These spores can, under the appropriate conditions release LOTS of energy. Future technology (think cyborgs/cars/fill-in-the-blank) extract these spores from the air and use them as fuel; it's possible that sunlight is used to power the process that allows the energy to be extracted. This sort of distribution system makes sense if powered equpment is ubiquitous. We're sort of imagining that most people are cyborgs by this time-- and their bio-machinery also requires this extra energy. Heavily populated areas would be DENSE with the stuff, and there would be all sorts of regulation systems for releasing the stuff into the air; collecting fallen pollen from the soil; etc. A variant of This sort of scenario might also make sense for big projects like terraforming Mars-- but that involves a different distribution mechanism (and the steps that spring to mind are a bit too convoluted and involved to type up right now). Anyway... I hope people have fun playing around with this idea a bit. Dr. Ken Sauer, Prof. Emeritus at UC Berkeley and Research Fellow at Lawrence National Laboratories (Livermore and Berkeley) proposed a photosynthetic model as the only possible means for dealing with the CO2 buildup and to meet the growing energy demands at an ACS (American Chemistry Society) meeting in 2004 at Berkeley. He didn't say how it was to be accomplished, just that it was the only viable way to meet both requirements. He stated something to the effect that the projected energy consumption by humans for 2050 was 28 TW(terawatts) and that 1.2 x 10^5 TW of energy hits the planet, with 600 TW that could be gathered.
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Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:22 pm
It would be excellent as a Sci-Fi story, although there would be some issues you'd have to explain... see what the people above me wrote sweatdrop If you had this in a future society (or on a different planet), and posted this story on the internet or got it published, I'd probably read it. You'd be surprised how many Sci-Fis are just freakin' Star Wars or Star Trek revisited. *gags* I never really liked them in the first place, but now I'm dead sick of them.
Sorry if I offend the Trekkies.
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Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:43 pm
So you would have the plant sequester all the nitro it produces in it's pollen? wink Actually, the better storage site would be in the chloroplast or amyloplast or some such. There's the high copy plastid genome sitting right there to be transformed. High copy genome could lead to high protein content, high energy, etc. The problem is that if you screw with the chloroplast too much you kill the photosynthetic machinary. So it would be nicer if you could introduce genes that only become activated when the plastid develops into an amyloplast (starch storing plastid) or something. I wonder if here are any chloroplast encoded genes that are activated that way... probably not. And it'd be insane to engineer at this point in time... Maybe some day. Yeah, I'm not that crazy, I work on stuff like this. http://www.biocassavaplus.org/
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