The original cell was not completely “synthetic,” but its DNA was. So this is not quite the ultimate realization of the project of organic chemistry, i.e. to create living matter from completely lifeless matter, but it is a giant step in that direction.
Then again, if Calla lilies replaced each new brick on the planet, it would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 800 million tons a year. But we’d also be living in a world without useful new bricks to build stuff with. It is probably reasonable to expect that Dosier’s “Bacteria Bricks” will fare better as a construction material than Calla lilies, but whether they are truly comparable to conventional masonry in mechanical properties, durability, and weather resistance still remains to be proved. Also, her bricks take weeks to harden, compared to traditionally-fired bricks which can be manufactured in two days.
Very cool trick from anaglyph: Apply powdered iron oxide to the magnetic stripe on a card to visualize the encoded data. [via Boing Boing]
This surprisingly accurate and destructive mini cannon proves that you don’t need a lot of powder to inflict damage. Looking back on age 10 when I was burning more black powder than Kit Carson, things could have worked out much worse. [via boingboing]
I have been reading the Picture of the Day feed from Wikimedia Commons for about a month, now, and it is fast becoming one of the best parts of my daily newsreader experience. Every day there’s a gorgeous new publicly-licensed photograph pre-selected for quality by a vote amongst Wikimedia community members.
That’s how I happened upon the work of German inorganic chemist and photographer alchemist-hp (English-language page). She or he takes amazing photographs of element, mineral, and chemical samples and has a stated goal (badly translated by yours truly) “to create special pictures of all naturally occurring elements.”
Need something to do with those pesky 3-liter bottles, cinder blocks, and lumps of dry ice lying around? Combine them! [Via EMSL’s always-excellent linkdump.]
As hard as it may be to believe, I see a lot of nerdy stuff in this job. But I have to tell you, these atomic orbital cookies from Evil Mad Scientist Labs may take all-time top honors in that department. You’re looking at a chart of the orbital wave functions of a single hydrogen […]
