What are the ingredients needed to create life? Meet the people who claim they are about to find out
YOU might think Norman Packard is playing God. Or you might see him as the ultimate entrepreneur. As founder and CEO of Venice-based company ProtoLife, Packard is one of the leaders of an ambitious project that has in its sights the lofty goal of life itself. His team is attempting what no one else has done before: to create a new form of living being from non-living chemicals in the lab.
Breathing the spark of life into inanimate matter was once regarded as a divine prerogative. But now several serious and well-funded research groups are working hard on doing it themselves. If one of them succeeds, the world will have met alien life just as surely as if we had encountered it on Mars or Europa. That first alien meeting will help scientists get a better handle on what life really is, how it began, what it means to be human. [New Scientist]
February 11, 2005
The Race to Create Life From Scratch
What are the ingredients needed to create life? Meet the people who claim they are about to find out
YOU might think Norman Packard is playing God. Or you might see him as the ultimate entrepreneur. As founder and CEO of Venice-based company ProtoLife, Packard is one of the leaders of an ambitious project that has in its sights the lofty goal of life itself. His team is attempting what no one else has done before: to create a new form of living being from non-living chemicals in the lab.
Breathing the spark of life into inanimate matter was once regarded as a divine prerogative. But now several serious and well-funded research groups are working hard on doing it themselves. If one of them succeeds, the world will have met alien life just as surely as if we had encountered it on Mars or Europa. That first alien meeting will help scientists get a better handle on what life really is, how it began, what it means to be human. [New Scientist]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment