Quite a TINY post this week, as in, a lot of molecular, atomic, nano-ey stuff. So let's dig in, but with the teeniest spoon you can find:

Monday: Oxygen Rocks

Olivine. The names makes sense

Let me demonstrate how much you don't know about stuff you take for granted. One of many life's mysteries is where did air come from?, or more specifically, all this oxygen?

Although Earth had copious amounts of it, not much of it was 'free' oxygen; oxygen that is not bound to other elements in molecular form. For the same reason it's not a good idea to try inhaling water - H20 - we need the oxygen to be free in order to, like, be alive and stuff.

When there was some very primitive life in the form of cyanobacteria, there was still no free oxygen to be found for some reason, until about 2.4 billion years ago, when the concentration in the atmosphere increased magically 10,000 times over a period of 200 million years. I'd say don't hold your breath for oxygen but... ahem.

This period is called the great oxidation event and there are new ideas as to where it all came from: Rocks.

Back in the day, rocks were different. There was a hearty supply of a mineral called Olivine all over the world. This mineral reacts with water, steals and locks up the oxygen into the rock. This Olivine was stealing the oxygen being made by those hard-working cyanobacteria.

But things change, and the Earth matured. Oliving became substantially less abundant and the gas within rocks was allowed to either sit there or be released, and the oxygen made by cyanobacteria could finally be saturated within the oceans, creating the habitable world we enjoy today.

Pretty cool!

Read more here

Tuesday: Life as we know it...

RNA: A messenger for DNA, basically

Emerged out of pure luck, random chance, it was a fluke. Well, according to a bunch of people. But this is also wrong according to another bunch of people. What I'm saying is the premise of this news has a foundation of controversy.

Basically, when there was no life, just molecules, some molecules somehow connected together forming larger, complex molecules; RNA would join with other RNA through a process called ligation, enabling the ability to photocopy themselves, which would eventually work its evolutionary way to something soon defined as 'life'.

There are obviously a lot of holes in this story, which is more than enough 'proof' that God did it, in many people's minds. I say patience is a virtue, we're getting to it.

The most recent update comes from PhD students Nisha Dhar and Durand. The question raised was how, exactly, do these simple molecules come together to form complex ones?

Well, although the insistence is that life happened by chance, the actual rate of chance hasn't been defined, and it turns out that molecules had a tendency to lean to ligation regardless, and the ability to ligate can actually happen in much smaller molecules than previously thought. Not only that, but they are more flexible, able to become ligated to quite a general array of molecules.

This seems to be an ongoing pattern with the mysteries of life. We keep finding that, just when we feel nothing could be more miraculous, we discover its actually pretty normal, and in some cases, inevitable. Was life inevitable? I'll let you decide.

Read More Here

Wednesday: Molecular Robots

Good luck making sense of this picture

I've seen a lot of development in molecular machinery in the last few months, it seems to be booming with innovation. As scary as it sounds, when you think of blood-cell sized security cameras floating around the dust in your home or something (woah, awesome idea, @mobbs), it's mostly for medical purposes and incredibly advantageous to those who want to live forever (no thanks).

Well as it turns out, the first molecular robot has been created, with the ability to build molecules. That's a lot crazier than it first seems. For a start, these robots are a millionth of a millimetre, or 1 micron in size with an even tinier robotic arm. Any programming with modern technology can't possibly fit onto such a small size.

They get around this by having various chemical inputs that send simple commands, allowing the robot to manipulate molecules just 150 atoms in size.

I don't think you're really quite getting how insanely small these things are. Don't just take my word for it:

To put that size into context, a billion billion of these robots piled on top of each other would still only be the same size as a single grain of salt.
_Source

So when i was talking about blood cell-sized robots floating around, if anything I wasn't exaggerating enough...

Miniaturization is very important in general for us humans; it saves on resources, reduces power consumption, and in the case of these robots, can accelerate drug discoveries and a whole plethora of other applications so this really a big deal. You get me now??

Good. Moving on.

Read More Here

Thursday: Super-stable Tri-anion particles

Generic and very wrong interpretation of an atom

If you're anything like me, this title means little to you at first. So what is it all about?

Basically, a bunch of smart people created a really stable particle made up of several atoms, equating to something with 3 more electrons than protons - a tri-anion. This imbalance is typically really unstable, so such stable microstructures are incredibly rare, and this was the most stable yet made.

After I read that I was like 'whatever, What has a tri-anion ever done for me?' but it turns out there could potentially be a huge array of applications. One of the most exciting developments is the possibility to FINALLY replace Lithium-ion batteries with Aluminium-ion batteries.

Aluminium isn't very reactive, and a lot more abundant than Lithium, so it would be cheaper, and we wouldn't get those annoying 'phone explosion' videos on Youtube every 5 minutes.

But there are a lot of other potential uses, it's too early to tell, but similar particles have given rise to things like bacterial agents, salts, floor cleaners, air purification and so on. This should not be going under our radar!

Watch this space!

Friday: Sharks are basically Doomed

Some years ago, a documentary came out in China which was, of course, swiftly banned and censored. But not quickly enough. It managed to get shared around and go viral to an alarming rate until hundreds of millions had sat through it. The documentary wasn't about how the government sucks or how Mao sucks or whatever, but about sharks. It went into how Shark Fin soups were made, how the rest of the shark is callously tossed into the ocean, finless, to drown, in their millions each year to the point of extinction, and how they simply cannot breed and mature fast enough to sustain themselves.

This had a profound effect and sales of Shark Fin dropped something like 80% that year in China. However, it's still huge, and possibly grown back by this point. Hong Kong is one of the guiltiest culprits in this market, and it doesn't help that new research has found that sharks live longer than we previously thought. meaning a lot of conservation efforts around the world and estimations of numbers is based on faulty data.

Well, the good news is... not coming today. It turns out that the US is proposing the banning of shark fin fishing altogether (yes, Asia isn't the only guilty player here), but this could actually be detrimental to the survival of sharks. The problem is that in the US, such fishing is sustainably designed, and taking that away with a blanket ban leaves only the Asian style of relentless, arbitrary slaughter without limit.

It's unfortunate, but the only fool-proof solutions tend to be the ones that fool-proof society via education and distribution of ecological knowledge and respect. Humans have become almost entirely disconnected with nature, something that can be seen to the extreme in China where Xi JinPing wants at least 60% of the entire population to live in Cities by about 2020 (if I remember right).

It's a bleak note to finish things on, isn't it? Hmm, ok what about this:

Saturday: Zika rescue

It turns out that the Zika virus shouldn't be dissed, because it could actually be used in glioblastoma therapy. Woo! I'm too cheap to subscribe for $200 though, so Feel free to check it out yourself here

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