This week in science is absolutely blowing my mind.
Earlier this week scientists announced that they had created the first living synthetic cell.
The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.
Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr
We don't really know what all this means right now. There are some interesting hypotheticals on what can be achieved. But the ones forefront, it seems, are engineering awesome cancer-killing lifeforms, unique drugs, and cleaning up the crap we love dumping into the oceans and air.
People are questioning the negative impact, but I agree with commenter dagfooyo over in the BoingBoing discussion:
We humans are always so worried that we can doom the planet by creating some genetically anomalous creature. But we fail to consider that nature has been randomly creating new mutant creatures for billions of years - and the only ones alive today are the baddest of badasses. No way are we gonna accidentally create something in a lab that can beat out billions of years of evolution and take over the planet. I mean unless we somehow combined influenza, velociraptors and cockroaches to create a constantly reproducing and mutating vicious intelligent killing machine that is impossible to kill. THEN we'd be in trouble.
Then, in news from the quantum computing front, there is some fantastic news. Scientists were able to transfer information simultaneously across 10 miles of space.
Quantum teleportation has achieved a new milestone or, should we say, a new ten-milestone: scientists have recently had success teleporting information between photons over a free space distance of nearly ten miles, an unprecedented length. The researchers who have accomplished this feat note that this brings us closer to communicating information without needing a traditional signal, and that the ten miles they have reached could span the distance between the surface of the earth and space.
Pairing this with the recent advancement in using lasers to prolong the life of quantum data, and we have a recipe for awesome. The life of the data, and the distance of travel for quantum information have long been the 2 main points of failure for quantum computing. Looks like we may be putting those stumbling blocks behind us.
(Thanks Technoccult)
