UK Scientist Inches Closer To Living Metal

[ZephrC]

But you know what did happen when a bunch of scientists were just given complete free reign to dick around with a technology they didn't fully understand for no more reason than "because they could"?

Chernobyl happened.

My jaw actually dropped from the stupidity of that comment. Please enlighten me what you think caused the Chernobyl disaster. I could use a laugh.

Alright then, since you asked nicely (/sarcasm)

A group of people working on the power plants reactor were ordered by their superiors to basically push the core to its absolute limits, literally just to see what happened and potential risks be damned. Result, the core went critical and blew up in their faces, killing many people and still affecting their children and grandchildren to this day, all because somebody somewhere decided to go all "FOR SCIENCE" without thinking about what he was doing.

This isn't exactly true. They were doing a routine maintenance check, "FOR SAFETY", but they had poorly measured the failsafes, including most of all, the scheduling. They did the test under a night crew (because of less power demand) with few senior staff on hand. If they had staffed the night crew properly, or simply scheduled it during the day (scheduling a brown out perhaps), it likely never would have happened.

It's actually even worse than that. The night crew wasn't even trained to perform the experiment. It was scheduled to be done during the day, but it got delayed because there were brownouts that day, and the experiment involved turning the reactor output way down.

Also, this was the fourth time they'd attempted the same experiment. The first three had failed, but it was totally safe, because the people performing them knew what they were doing. The catastrophic failure that made Chernobyl famous was caused by repeated terrible errors and the experiment continuing despite them because nobody knew what was going on well enough to know they were fucking it up.

 

[Psychedelic Spartan]

I couldn't really understand it but cool nonetheless.

 

[Venats]

As a chemist, I'd like to point out that what they've done is make little ionic salt baggies. A far cry from metallic life. But the best way to advance ones career as an academic researcher is by getting press. Selling science, if you will. I'm taking the "I'M BUILDING SKYNET FOR THE LULZ" approach to selling science. I hope to one day have my work detailed on this website.

I'm going to quote this just so that I can further ask, what is news here? Someone made salt pods, woohoo. From the biology perspective, as far as I am aware, carbon has a very good reason for being the basis of organic life, silicon being similar enough can also form the chains and rings needed to create stability for everything that makes you work. However, the issue with silicon is that it is bigger, heavier and would require much more energy to function as a lifeform. If you were to make a life-form out of silicon it would move slower and react slower than your slowest sloth+snail cross breed of slowness while requiring much more energy intake to function.

Now, how exactly is a ball of ionized metal going to accomplish forming complex protein structure? Folding mechanics? Genetic mechanics? And I can go on and on... This is cool but it is not what it is being made out to be. Just because ionized balls of metal can stick together like cells doesn't mean they can replicate the nature of what cells do... baffling really.

 

[McMullen]

But you know what did happen when a bunch of scientists were just given complete free reign to dick around with a technology they didn't fully understand for no more reason than "because they could"?

Chernobyl happened.

My jaw actually dropped from the stupidity of that comment. Please enlighten me what you think caused the Chernobyl disaster. I could use a laugh.

Alright then, since you asked nicely (/sarcasm)

A group of people working on the power plants reactor were ordered by their superiors to basically push the core to its absolute limits, literally just to see what happened and potential risks be damned. Result, the core went critical and blew up in their faces, killing many people and still affecting their children and grandchildren to this day, all because somebody somewhere decided to go all "FOR SCIENCE" without thinking about what he was doing.

A five-minute detour to Wikipedia would have helped you avoid posting the shameful paragraph above.

Chernobyl exploded during a test of improved safety features for the plant, in which a long list of small fuckups by many entities, both on and off site, led to unforeseen consequences. It was the result of bad management, poorly planned procedures, people not following instructions to the letter, a reactor design that allowed things to happen simultaneously that should not, and just plain bad luck. Basically, a whole bunch of well-meaning people rolled natural ones in rapid succession and TPK'd. Of course, they did it at a really bad place and time, and the whole region was affected by the consequences. "For Science!" never entered into it.

Also, the main problem came about because the power output of the reactor was too low for a while, not too high. No one was "pushing it to its absolute limits".

 

[madmatt]

Chernobyl disaster happened in the days of "Perestroika". Communistic soviets going capitalistic russians (they didn't know that at the time) couldn't care less about some nuclear reactor in the Ukraine. They had two decades of Brezhnev stagnation behind their backs, as a result the infrastructure suffered greatly.

Chernobyl was no product of an ambitious experiment, but rather a product of negligence.

Ahhhh, actually while they were absolutely incompetent, the circumstances it was being put under were very unusual and ill advised. The linking of the general political and economic situation as the direct cause is a bit artificial I fear - they are related of course, but the direct cause was a series of experiements using new methods to increase safety procedures in the event of emergencies on the sole authority of the director. General political dictatorship is tangentially related to a power plant problem at best - it was incompetent management (as well as some bad luck)that was the real reason - and that of course is not restricted to any political or economic system. This was more a lack of restraint and understanding.

I hat to be that guy but... How can this possibly benefit us? Is it really a good idea?

Trolling perhaps?

Or do you genuinely fear progress.

also im pretty sure Chernobyls experiments prior to meltdown were quite important safety wise.

of course the experiments were the reason. But lets not fling accusations of trolling so easily shall we? Obviously it's a crap comparison but the point of general oversight in relation to things like chenobyl is common sense (although how that is connected to this is beyond me)

 

[McMullen]

UK Scientist Inches Closer To Living Metal

This is Hollywood chemistry.

Replacing the oxygen atom in water with, say, a sulfur atom will not give you liquid sulfur. It gives you a poisonous and foul-smelling gas. Similarly, building certain cellular components using metal atoms instead of the traditional ingredients does not give you the T-1000.

 

[arealperson]

But you know what did happen when a bunch of scientists were just given complete free reign to dick around with a technology they didn't fully understand for no more reason than "because they could"?

Chernobyl happened.

My jaw actually dropped from the stupidity of that comment. Please enlighten me what you think caused the Chernobyl disaster. I could use a laugh.

Alright then, since you asked nicely (/sarcasm)

A group of people working on the power plants reactor were ordered by their superiors to basically push the core to its absolute limits, literally just to see what happened and potential risks be damned. Result, the core went critical and blew up in their faces, killing many people and still affecting their children and grandchildren to this day, all because somebody somewhere decided to go all "FOR SCIENCE" without thinking about what he was doing.

This isn't exactly true. They were doing a routine maintenance check, "FOR SAFETY", but they had poorly measured the failsafes, including most of all, the scheduling. They did the test under a night crew (because of less power demand) with few senior staff on hand. If they had staffed the night crew properly, or simply scheduled it during the day (scheduling a brown out perhaps), it likely never would have happened.

It's actually even worse than that. The night crew wasn't even trained to perform the experiment. It was scheduled to be done during the day, but it got delayed because there were brownouts that day, and the experiment involved turning the reactor output way down.

Also, this was the fourth time they'd attempted the same experiment. The first three had failed, but it was totally safe, because the people performing them knew what they were doing. The catastrophic failure that made Chernobyl famous was caused by repeated terrible errors and the experiment continuing despite them because nobody knew what was going on well enough to know they were fucking it up.

Ah, that makes a bit more sense. Chalk it up to a case of "keeping cool under pressure". Or, instead of incurring minor costs, they "went nuclear".

 

[TheDooD]

I hat to be that guy but... How can this possibly benefit us? Is it really a good idea?

Because its interesting?

Really that is all the justification you need to do something.

Nnyahh... I'm not so sure.

I love science (even though I'm not particularly good at it), and there are few things I despise more than unnecessary scaremongering about science, especially when people use the 'Frankenstein' comparison (because for one thing, Frankenstein never actually happened).

But you know what did happen when a bunch of scientists were just given complete free reign to dick around with a technology they didn't fully understand for no more reason than "because they could"?

Chernobyl happened.

Like I said, I love science. But I also acknowledge that science with no restraints and no real point could be just as bad as no science at all.

this is why STALKER is such a great series

OT

INB4 T1000's and Necrons harvest our women...

 

[Aprilgold]

I hat to be that guy but... How can this possibly benefit us? Is it really a good idea?

Imagine if we could implant that into bones, IMAGINE IT, MOTHER FUCKER! *That sware was directed at me for not imagining it, sorry about that.*

If this could be perfected to a extent, we could have metal bones, kids that are parlized can run again. The only thing that would have to happen is reconnecting, thats it.

 

[Phoenix_XIII]

I hat to be that guy but... How can this possibly benefit us? Is it really a good idea?

If we can create new life that isn't normal, we can finally tell all those people who doubted the existence of other life to go suck a willy.

But seriously. It IS questionable, but we're humans. If we can do it, we will to find out what happens.

 

[Baresark]

As someone else pointed out, they did not explain any mechanism that shows any way in which they could be self replicating. The process of cellular reproduction isn't exactly short and sweet and easy to reproduce. Also, you can't compare one so called "metal cell" to a human cell. And there is not a mechanism for mutation. Fun stuff still I guess. Good luck to him.

 

[ninetails593]

I accidentally read it as US instead of UK, and went "Ha, balls no." ... And I'm American.

 

[Versuvius]

I for one welcome our new Necrontyr overlords!

Edit: Someone beat me to the punch

 

[zehydra]

If non-carbon life is possible, then I suppose that the dudes over at SETI might be looking incorrectly if they're just looking at planets that have water (when looking for life)

 

[cookyy2k]

But you know what did happen when a bunch of scientists were just given complete free reign to dick around with a technology they didn't fully understand for no more reason than "because they could"?

Chernobyl happened.

My jaw actually dropped from the stupidity of that comment. Please enlighten me what you think caused the Chernobyl disaster. I could use a laugh.

Alright then, since you asked nicely (/sarcasm)

A group of people working on the power plants reactor were ordered by their superiors to basically push the core to its absolute limits, literally just to see what happened and potential risks be damned. Result, the core went critical and blew up in their faces, killing many people and still affecting their children and grandchildren to this day, all because somebody somewhere decided to go all "FOR SCIENCE" without thinking about what he was doing.

The Chernobyl disaster happened more fundamentally because of soviet reactor design as opposed to american designs. The disaster never would have occurred if the reactor was as an American design even if the same set of circumstances existed. Soviet reactors had positive void coefficients whereas American designs had negative void coefficients.

In simple terms this means in the soviet design as the heat of the coolant increased so did the nuclear reaction rate forcing a cycle that was always going to lead to a disaster, the American (and now all reactors) however slows the reaction as the heat rises causing the coolant to cool again and the reaction to raise and cycle in that fashion.

The Chernobyl disaster as did happen just wouldn't have if the soviets used the safer but less efficient American designs, the reaction rate would have slowed and everything would have righted itself. The whole thing was a result of the government putting power over safety. Every soviet reactor of the time was a ticking time bomb and really anyone could have set a positive feedback cycle in motion, the control rod design of the soviet reactors was also shoddy but cheap.

OT, this is nothing more than a metallic cell that simulates life, sorry to tell you all but new scientist sensationalises everything so much you'd think they were starting a tabloid.

 

[The Night Shade]

Oh no! They're creating Dr Nye's Bronze men from that movie, Clones of Bruce Lee!

Someone get me some poisonous grass!

I can't believe you referenced that movie

OT: Next Step T-1000

 

[Dorian6]

Oh no! They're creating Dr Nye's Bronze men from that movie, Clones of Bruce Lee!

Someone get me some poisonous grass!

I can't believe you referenced that movie

OT: Next Step T-1000

Ha! You scoff now, but we'll see who's laughing when you're getting punched to death by bronze men and I'm shoving deadly deadly grass in their faces which they inexplicably eat.

I'll then retrieve the gold I've been smuggling (by hiding it in the ground) and I'll live like a king!

 

[The Night Shade]

Oh no! They're creating Dr Nye's Bronze men from that movie, Clones of Bruce Lee!

Someone get me some poisonous grass!

I can't believe you referenced that movie

OT: Next Step T-1000

Ha! You scoff now, but we'll see who's laughing when you're getting punched to death by bronze men and I'm shoving deadly deadly grass in their faces which they inexplicably eat.

I'll then retrieve the gold I've been smuggling (by hiding it in the ground) and I'll live like a king!

That's not gold smuggling that's gold hidding