Bacteria works for us now!
We humans are nothing but not resourceful - and now we've harnessed the might of microbes for our own ends.
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory working in collaboration with Northwestern University have developed bacteria-powered microgears to further develop "hybrid biomechanical systems".
According to Green Diary, the boffins utilized hundreds of Bacilus subtilis to form minuscule gears of just 380 microns, four times thicker than the human hair.
They then made them swim in a nutrient-rich solution along with lots of identical bacteria.
The microgears have slanted spokes that help them swim around the solution.
Their direction changes as the organisms collide with the spokes of the gear. Depending on the oxygen supplied, the machine turns on and off.
Weird Science Factoid: The average person walks the equivalent of twice around the world in a lifetime. Probably in circles, though.
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
