Metal Bits Self-Assemble into Lifelike Snakes

I just read this this article and was looking to see if anyone else had seen it. Yes, very interesting and hopefully will open up new areas of scientific research.
 
Hmm...

Meteorites are thought to have been a key source for amino acids in the primordial soup.

Most meteorites are also rich in iron-nickel, and likewise ferromagnetism.

Hmm...

:eusa_think: :xcool

Very cool link, Dorian, thanks -- y' never know, they may be onto something there.
 
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The best part of science is that every day some researcher finds out something new about our world. And yet people wonder why I'm so happy being a science journalist.

While speculation is always fun I'm not sure one can draw the conclusion that this phenomena was involved in the abiogenesis on our world. Why would it?
 
Reading the comments forced me to add mine to the article:

I had been under the impression that the readers of wired would be scientifically literate and reasonably intelligent. I see by the responses to this article that I am only slightly correct in that assumption.

Posted by: fuelair | Mar 9, 2009 8:00:21 AM
 
This comment was a bit unnerving:
Asshat commenter Neil said:
Our Universities and National Labs are nothing but havens of grandiose mediocrity. During the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", Mao Tse-Tung ordered the executions of unknown thousands of the intellectual elite in Chinese universities and laboratories. He might have been on to something there.
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I'm not convinced that "lifelike" means " life like" if you know what I mean.

Worth finding out though.
 
Though Snezhko tried hard to kill the snakes when they first started forming during an unrelated experiment, they soon became more interesting than the experiment they were ruining.
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:D

One of the strangest things I've come across is the growth of tin (Sn) "whiskers". We don't know what causes those to grow.
 
That is the nature of my problem with so many of the commentors in the Wired article. Science often is at it's best and finest tracking down little oddities, finding their secrets and making use of them in other areas.
 
Wauthan said:
The best part of science is that every day some researcher finds out something new about our world. And yet people wonder why I'm so happy being a science journalist.

While speculation is always fun I'm not sure one can draw the conclusion that this phenomena was involved in the abiogenesis on our world. Why would it?
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Hmm...

On rereading, it wouldn't be. (AC's pretty hard to come by in nature). :p

I was imagining the assemblies as sort-of tugboats and traffic cops for simple protein building, pre-RNA, but the researchers see them as tools for studying the sort of emergent motility that might be required for abiogenesis, not part of the process. (Was tempting to link them as meteorites, with their overabundance of left-handed amino acids, the same found in all cells save a few bacteria, seem the prime candidate for supplier of these.)

:eusa_think: :cool:
 
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I guess I'm less impressed by this. It's only comparable to life the same way crystal structures are.

I hope this isn't all about how like living things these appear to the naked eye in the beaker.
 
dudalb said:
At least the commentator has picked a accurate term for himself.
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Well.....let's just say I took some liberties with that commentators name. I felt some accuracy was needed.
 
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