3 ms·
Finding things that we have never observed before tends to be its own kind of special property.
by scott_s 12y ago
Finding things that we have never observed before tends to be its own kind of special property.
- kazinator 12y agoI guess some people won't be impressed until a bug is found featuring a manual transmission with five fully meshed forward gears, sliding reverse, and synchronizers.
- teddyh 12y agoSimple question: Why is this a story and not many of the myriad of other clever biochemical solutions found in nature? I can only come to the conclusion I have already stated: Some people ascribe something special to mechanical constructs and consider them to be in some way non-natural.
- kazinator 12y agoLet me take a wild stab at what might underlie the fascination. Yes; it relates to the question of what kind of stuff can be encoded in nature's DNA, plus the mechanism that turns genotype into phenotype. Can it generate a wheel on an axle? A ball bearing? Mechanical constructs are non-natural because they have precise shapes which have to be developed on a macroscopic scale, and some of those shapes have to be detached (rotating parts versus stationary). There are constructs that come close: bones and joints. We see some perfect balls and discs in these, plus complex surfaces that articulate together tightly. Biochemical solutions are interesting, but less so because things are not alive at those scales. The joint between two bones is not only a mechanical structures, but it's living tissue. It has to be supplied with nutrients and so on.