3 ms·
Can these surfaces "get cancer"? As in, for some reason, the reaction continues way beyond simply healing the crack?
by Odenwaelder 8y ago
Can these surfaces "get cancer"? As in, for some reason, the reaction continues way beyond simply healing the crack?
- super-serial 8y agoHope not - otherwise an alien civilization might find us someday with everyone frozen in carbonite like Han Solo.
- WhompingWindows 8y agoCancer is unregulated growth. Since the authors are moving towards non-biologically derived catalysts, there will be no life-derived chloroplasts like they are currently using. So, you're asking can a non-biologically derived material spread indefinitely beyond the filling in of small cracks in its surface? I don't think there's a risk of that based on the article. Is there another non-biological material that spreads in the manner you've described?
- derefr 8y agoI think cancer is a more specific concept than just "unregulated growth." Cancer is a phenomenon that occurs when a valid "self-replicate then die" program has a similar encoding to a "self-replicate indefinitely" program, such that random-noise damage to the program's stored representation can result in the former being rewritten into the latter. Whether or not the substrate is biological, I would think that you'd still have to worry about ensuring your program is encoded in such a way that the part of it that turns it off can't be damaged without disabling the program as a whole.