biophysics

How Do Cells Manage To Obey The Laws of Physics?

You know what’s absolutely impossible? A system going from chaos to order. You know what cells do? Turn a chaotic universe into organized, channeled motion, again and again and again. How can that be? Physics, Thermodynamics, and Cells We know a few things about all physical systems. We know that, in the aggregate, they have…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jan 22

Scientists Prove That Even Dead Geckos Stick To Walls

Geckos, being master of the van der Waals force, climb up glass walls like it’s no big thing. But can they do it when they’re dead? Scientists have found out that they can, and that has important implications for technology. Geckos can climb pretty much anything, no matter how smooth the surface. Scientists at first…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Dec 4

You Can See Your Own White Blood Cells Flowing Through Your Eye!

If you look up into the blue sky long enough, and with enough attention, you should be able to see tiny blue-white dots flashing around the sky.The phenomenon was so well-known that it acquired the nickname “blue-sky sprites,” but they’re actually white blood cells moving through your eye. White blood cells make up a very…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Oct 29

Frozen Ant Rafts Could Teach Us How to Make Self-Assembling Robots

A writhing mass of fire ants floating across the water is thing of horror and a marvel of engineering. But how do you study the architecture of ever-squirming ants? By flash-freezing them and coating in glue, as scientists did for a recent study. Ant rafts, it turns out, are more complicated than you might think,…

Tech News Sarah Zhang Jun 12

Physicist proposes a thermodynamic explanation for the origins of life

A 31-year-old researcher from MIT believes he’s figured out the basic physics behind the origin and evolution of life in the universe, a provocative new theory of life that borrows heavily from 19th century science. According to physicist Jeremy England, the origin and evolution of life are processes driven by the fundamental laws of nature…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 23

Researchers Find the Proteins in Your Body are Vibrating Constantly

The proteins in your body are positively abuzz with energy. Now, physicists claim they have the measurements to prove it. The millions of proteins in humans and other living things vibrate in different patterns like the strings on a violin or the pipes of an organ, according to a new study in Nature Communications. Scientists…

io9 Jennifer Viegas – Discovery News Jan 19

New evidence that plants get their energy using quantum entanglement

Biophysicists theorize that plants tap into the eerie world of quantum entanglement during photosynthesis. But the evidence to date has been purely circumstantial. Now, scientists have discovered a feature of plants that cannot be explained by classical physics alone — but which quantum mechanics answers quite nicely. https://gizmodo.com/are-plants-really-using-quantum-entanglement-in-photosy-5452755 The fact that biological systems can exploit…

io9 George Dvorsky Jan 10

Why are plants attracted to radium?

A 1909 issue of Popular Science Monthly contains a piece about how plants react to radium. Since radium emits gamma radiation, which kills cells and mutates DNA, they don’t generally respond well. So why are these plant roots curving towards it? We’ve already established that radium’s overall effect on the world is mixed at best,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jul 12

Atomic tests help prove that we grow new neurons in our brains

We used to think that the human brain was unchanging once a person reached maturity. Not true. One of the things that helped debunk this idea was the most destructive weapon ever created. This is what nuclear bombs proved about the human brain. Early brain research indicated that, although other cells in the body regenerated…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jul 11

The women who took radium from savior to killer

The famous radium girls took the reputation of radium from the savior of the sick to the killer of the poor. Working in a factory at a time when radium was considered the best way to improve health, by the time they died, they were exhaling radon gas and their hair glowed in the dark.…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jul 5

The guinea pig that proved we have an internal combustion engine

Technically, it was Antoine Lavoisier that proved we have an internal combustion engine, but let’s give the guinea pig credit. It nearly froze in Lavoisier’s special calorimeter to prove something new about biophysics. In 1774, Joseph Priestley managed to get a hold of a pure sample of the gas we now call oxygen. At last,…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jun 23

Bugs can survive space-like vacuums with “nano-suit”

By bombarding insects with electrons, Japanese researchers formed a microscopically thin layer that protected them from the ravages of a vacuum. The discovery suggests a way that microbes might survive the harsh conditions of outer space — and perhaps humans as well. Insects don’t fare well in a vacuum. When exposed to severely reduced pressure,…

io9 George Dvorsky Apr 16

Is your DNA wrecked? Find out, with the hyperchromic effect.

Your body, and even your DNA, are under constant assault from ultraviolet light. Sometimes that’s just an unpleasant fact of life. Sometimes, though, the hyperchromic effect and UV light help scientists know when there’s a problem – like when DNA has been destroyed. The energy from the sun gives us the energy we need to…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Mar 29

Scientists engineer a light-controlled worm

Scientists have engineered a worm with neurons that respond to light, making it a living bio-bot. Scientists at Harvard, The University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School were pleased to announce on January 18th that humanity has begun its long decline into soulless, mindless, miserable flesh-puppetry. A worm has been engineered so…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jan 22

A simple model could explain how the first cell came into being

How did a bunch of lifeless molecules transform themselves into living cells, turning the ancient, dead Earth into a planet teeming with life? It’s an incredibly difficult question to answer, but a new model might explain part of the story. Before you can have life, complex organic molecules have to start replicating themselves in much…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Jan 10

Print New Organs With Bioink

Our donut and fizzy sugar water consumption aside, we’re working hard on keeping our arteries from clogging these days, but we must admit to being somewhat more reassured about our prospects of longevity whenever we read stories about tissue engineering like this: Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, described his…

Health Gizmodo.com Apr 14

How Do Cells Manage To Obey The Laws of Physics?

Scientists Prove That Even Dead Geckos Stick To Walls

You Can See Your Own White Blood Cells Flowing Through Your Eye!

Frozen Ant Rafts Could Teach Us How to Make Self-Assembling Robots

Physicist proposes a thermodynamic explanation for the origins of life

Researchers Find the Proteins in Your Body are Vibrating Constantly

New evidence that plants get their energy using quantum entanglement

Why are plants attracted to radium?

Atomic tests help prove that we grow new neurons in our brains

The women who took radium from savior to killer

The guinea pig that proved we have an internal combustion engine

Bugs can survive space-like vacuums with “nano-suit”

Is your DNA wrecked? Find out, with the hyperchromic effect.

Scientists engineer a light-controlled worm

A simple model could explain how the first cell came into being

Print New Organs With Bioink

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