While I would never say that scientific advancement is bad, I am tentatively suggesting that now might be an opportune moment to remind our esteemed scientists and engineers that machines taking over the world would be bad—because a team of chemical engineers at the University of Pittsburgh have just designed a synthetic gel that could bring us one step closer to objects self-repairing.
I repeat: BAD .
Regardless of its potentially horrifying role in creating self-repairing cyborg overlords (which I’m not saying is an eminent threat like the Zombie Apocalypse, just that we should at least be prepared for the possibility), Pittsburgh Engineering’s synthetic gel certainly represents a huge step forward in the field of materials science. According to a statement made in a university press release by chemical and petroleum professor Anna Balazs, their gel represents a breakthrough in one of the “holy grails of materials science.”
Scientists have already created materials capable of small, limited repairs, but large-scale regeneration has since remained elusive. Through the study of regenerative biological processes in amphibians such as salamanders, Balazs and her team were able to significantly bridge this scientific rift.
Study of amphibians provides key to larger self-repair
Remember we want to make it difficult for the machines to take over, not hand it to them on a silver platter. But I digress:
For more details, you can find the team’s findings where they were published in the journal Nano Letters.
Source Discovery News
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