Slanted Science

Archive for August, 2009

Pentacene molecules imaged by IBM scientists

Those nanoscientists have done it again. Just a couple of weeks after showing us the power of small by making a cogwheel from DNA, scientists have now given us images of molecules resolved to the level of individual atoms. Read the rest of this entry »

I like it when my brain explodes.

Not literally, I am neither a suicidalist nor a dandelion. No, I mean that I like it – I love it – when scientists do something so fantastically beyond what I had thought of as possible that I can feel the big grey boy up there rattling the bars of his bony cage. Something like making gear wheels out of DNA.

I judge this sort of thing by applying a scientific method I have developed called The Grandad Test. Simply imagine (or actually do it, if yours is still with us) dropping the news into a normal conversation with the old fella.

Hydrogen-powered cars? Pfft, he’s seen the world move from horse to Hummer, hydrogen’s nothing. Incredible advances in increasing male fertility? Tsst, they called that stopping at five pints in his day. Try this one then, big guy: someone’s just made a cogwheel out of DNA. Yeah? That one got you? Choking on your weak tea, eh? What’s that? You’ve no idea what DNA is, and would I mind getting you a couple of HobNobs? Dammit.

The folks responsible for this phenomenal creation are Hendrik Dietz, Shawn Douglas and William Shih, working out of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University. Through directing the base pair sequence during assembly, they have shown that it is possible to introduce specific angles of twisting and bending into a chain of engineered DNA. The work is published in Science.

The excitement created in the field of nanomachinery comes from the extraordinarily tight twists these guys introduce into their chains: they have managed to get the radius of molecular curvature down to 6 nanometres. This has allowed them to produce the geared wheel shown above.

We can’t yet know where this type of research will lead us, but the ability to produce cogwheels smaller than Simon Cowell‘s modesty guarantees one thing: within a year, a Japanese company will be producing wristwatches for mice.

With thanks to my wife Tanya for the malapropic title, I declare this blog open.

My aim is to bring you news of the latest scientific research and results, salted with a grain or two of humour. Please feel free to leave comments, whether they be serious, silly, or links to videos of cats doing things that only humans normally do.

Because those things are filarious.

If you have questions (Who invented the colour green?) , suggestions (Hey loser why don,t you suck my dick you loser LOL!!!!!!!!!!1) or marriage proposals (Hi I am named Katrina Bzorgansky and I am live in Kiev. I would like marry you and be happy. Meet me and lots more of my hot Russian single girls at lonelymugs.com), then here’s where you need to send them:

PaulGibson@SlantedScience.com

Wishing us all the best of luck, and may we all learn something from this. While having a chuckle.