Amazing Science Discoveries

Here are three amazing science discoveries which caught my eye today …

Thunderstorms Make Anti-Matter

NASA announced today:









Click to view the three steps thunderstorms must take to produce bursts of anti-matter. [more]



Science News adds the following quote:


Scientists Store Data in E. Coli Bacteria

Agence France-Presse reported Sunday:

A group of students at Hong Kong’s Chinese University are making strides towards storing such vast amounts of information in an unexpected home: the E.coli bacterium better known as a potential source of serious food poisoning.

“This means you will be able to keep large datasets for the long term in a box of bacteria in the refrigerator,” said Aldrin Yim, a student instructor on the university’s biostorage project….


The group has developed a method of compressing data, splitting it into chunks and distributing it between different bacterial cells, which helps to overcome limits on storage capacity. They are also able to “map” the DNA so information can be easily located.


As a storage method it is extremely compact — because each cell is minuscule, the group says that one gram of bacteria could store the same amount of information as 450 2,000 gigabyte hard disks.

They have also developed a three-tier security fence to encode the data ….

“Bacteria can’t be hacked,” points out Allen Yu, another student instructor.


The team have even coined a word for this field — biocryptography — and the encoding mechanism contains built-in checks to ensure that mutations in some bacterial cells do not corrupt the data as a whole.


The Hong Kong group’s work may have a more immediate application.

The techniques they use — removing DNA from bacterial cells, manipulating them using enzymes and returning them to a new cell — are similar to those used to create genetically modified foods.

But rather than changing the building blocks of an organism, the Hong Kong group allows extra information to piggyback on the DNA of the cell, after checking their changes against a master database to make sure they do not have accidental toxic effects.


So is it possible that a home computer could one day consist of a dish filled with micro-organisms?

The group dismisses concerns that this could be dangerous, pointing out that despite E.coli’s poor reputation, they use an altered form that cannot exist outside a rich synthetic medium.

In fact, says Chan, while safety rules are strict, more measures are taken to protect the bacteria from contamination than to protect the researchers from the bacteria.

However, Yim admitted that while the group’s work is a “foundational advance”, a petri dish PC is not likely to be on the market in the coming years, not least because the method of retrieving the data requires experts in a laboratory.

“It’s possible,” he said, “but there’s a long way to go.”

Half Animal, Half Plant

And Live Science reported last January:

A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant. It’s the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll.

The sneaky slugs seem to have stolen the genes that enable this skill from algae that they’ve eaten. With their contraband genes, the slugs can carry out photosynthesis — the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy.

“They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything,” said Sidney Pierce, a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.


“This is the first time that multicellar animals have been able to produce chlorophyll,” Pierce told LiveScience.



The babies of thieving slugs retain the ability to produce their own chlorophyll, though they can’t carry out photosynthesis until they’ve eaten enough algae to steal the necessary chloroplasts, which they can’t yet produce on their own.

The slugs accomplishment is quite a feat, and scientists aren’t yet sure how the animals actually appropriate the genes they need.

Here’s a photo of the slug:

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