Physicists create near-living crystals. Three billion years after inanimate chemistry first became animate life, a newly synthesised laboratory compound is behaving in uncannily lifelike ways.
The particles aren't truly alive -- but they're not far off, either. Exposed to light and fed by chemicals, they form crystals that move, break apart and form again. "There is a blurry frontier between active and alive," said biophysicist Jérémie Palacci of New York University. Lee Cronin: Making matter come alive. Scientists take first step towards creating 'inorganic life' Scientists at the University of Glasgow say they have taken their first tentative steps towards creating 'life' from inorganic chemicals potentially defining the new area of 'inorganic biology'.
Professor Lee Cronin, Gardiner Chair of Chemistry in the College of Science and Engineering, and his team have demonstrated a new way of making inorganic-chemical-cells or iCHELLs. Prof Cronin said: "All life on earth is based on organic biology (i.e. carbon in the form of amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars, etc.) but the inorganic world is considered to be inanimate. "What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology. "