Research engineers at Cornell University are opening up new opportunities for scientific and technological progress in the field of robotics. In their project, the researchers followed the path of creating a new material with the characteristic features of a living organism. Primary information about this in the form of a video clip appeared on the MIRTESEN TV channel. However, in the video, the title of which betrays the authors' claims to an outstanding discovery of modern science, only computer graphics are shown, drawing color schemes, and not the biological material itself, which is being railed about. The authors of the publication, speaking about their research, are very modest in assessing the significance of the work they have done.
But all subsequent messages about this event in the world of science and technology are clearly colored by the desire to pass off wishful thinking. It is directly stated that this biological material exhibits the ability for self-organization, metabolism and can develop in the desired direction. Ramis Ganiev, who published a message about this achievement on the Hi-News.ru website, reports that such material blurs the line between artificial and living organisms. Such an interpretation of the essence of the development of American scientists can be regarded critically already because the concept of "line" between an artificial and a living organism needs to be concretized and clarified. The article deals with the ability of the material to move spontaneously by building up mucus filaments in front and dying off from behind. It is argued that such a function is provided by DNA,laid in the foundation of this artificial material. In other words, the material knows where the front is to grow and the back is to die off.
It is at least strange that the described phenomenon is interpreted as a manifestation of the properties of a living organism. After all, the growth of the anterior edge and the death of the posterior one in the course of some physicochemical process can also be detected on completely inanimate, inorganic materials. Thus, the process of zone melting in metallurgy is carried out, as a result of which metal alloys are purified from impurities. The SHS process is carried out in the same way, as a result of which a new structural material with special properties is obtained. And no one perceives such a phenomenon as a sign of self-organization, and even more so, the "liveliness" of the material.
Perhaps the author of the article on the Hi-News.ru site did not quite understand the sources of information published by scientists from Cornell University. After all, Dan Luo, one of the developers of the new material, directly states:
By the way, similar results in the field of creating new materials were obtained by engineers at the University of California at Irvine (USA), who have developed a material on the basis of which it will be possible to make space blankets of a new generation that can control how much heat passes through them. Co-author of the development - Alon Gorodetsky, assistant professor of chemistry and biomolecular engineering at the California Institute of Irvine (UCI), says: "We have created a new version of the material, the feature of which is the ability to change its properties, allowing you to regulate the retention or release of heat."
This is more true. Imitation of a living does not blur the line between an artificial and a living organism.
