Friday 13 May 2011

Blackberries and Viruses

Neither Blackberries nor Viruses have anything to do with computers in this context though.

From Daily Galaxy, another example of how natural substances self-organise under random perturbations.
Researchers at Lehigh University have discovered high-level molecular self-recognition in dilute aqueous solutions, a level of “intelligence” previously considered achievable only by biological molecules. The researchers studied the structures of the two macroion clusters and discovered that in mixed dilute aqueous solutions, the clusters self-assemble into distinct blackberry structures (and do not form mixed species).
...
Despite being water-soluble and carrying the same type of charge, macroions tend to attract each other with surprising strength and to form very stable, uniform, single-layered hollow spheres known as “blackberry structures.” The structures are common when ions become large, and mimic some biological processes, such as shell formation in the capsid virus.




Life, don't talk to me about Life... except I will. The more evidence we have of how the Universe works, the more Life seems an inevitable outcome. Not just possible, not just probable, but inevitable. Self-organisation is a property of more molecules than we thought.

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