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. "That is exactly the kind of question that such works raise."
By: Brandon Keim, Edited by: Olivia Solon
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via Wired.co.uk
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/01/living-crystals
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