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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Synthetic Life


Scientists have created the first synthetic cell. I don’t know how anyone else feels about this type of science but it gives me a chill. I remember reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Chessmen of Mars where one race on the Red Planet consisted of heads that scuttled around on tiny legs switching already grown bodies they could control. Would this new ‘immaculate creation’ result in eventual body switching? I don’t know but I hope I’m not around long enough to find out. I can handle the ‘Multiverse’ experiments but this synthetic cell creation stuff is one step too many for me. When science can’t seem to figure a way to cure the common cold it’s hard for me to think of them working with bacteria cells to create synthetic life. I have the same reservations about these people working the particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider. There’s a reason they call 23% of the universe Dark Matter and no, I don’t need to shed light on the subject. I’m not comfortable with scientists creating black holes every second while colliding protons at astronomical speeds just to see what tumbles out. I guess now I can be uncomfortable with something new.

4 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

It is scary. We are close to being able to control our own genetics now and who knows what that'll bring. Probably some good. probably some bad, some very bad.

BernardL said...

Or I can even imagine a synthetic plague let loose to finally give everyone the zombie apocalypse that's so popular today, Charles. :) I agree. I see a few good possibilities and a whole lot of plunges into the abyss.

Bernita said...

"What that'll bring"--and who decides...

BernardL said...

Yeah Bernita, and we all know whose in charge of the funding going to these cutting edge scientific experiments.