Prof. Jean-Marie Len, who participated in the event in honor of 60 years of science in Israel that took place at the Technion last week, talks about creating materials that can organize themselves at a high level. He also refers to the anti-scientific trend prevalent in the world: "You can't stop wanting to know" * fifth article in the series
"In the beginning was the big bang, and the universe began," is how Professor Jean-Marie Len opened his lecture at the event in honor of sixty years of science held at the Technion this week. Len is one of those Nobel Prize winners who lecture with grace, and he led the captivated audience from the beginning of the universe to the amazing future that awaits us.
"If we look at what has happened since the Big Bang, it seems that the chemistry was not there to begin with. The universe cooled quite quickly, and when it was cold enough the atoms combined into molecules and chemistry began. The molecules began to connect together and aggregates of amazing molecules were formed, and finally partitions were formed that led to the primitive cells. And in a process that we don't fully understand, but I'm sure we will, life was created as we know it today. But life did not end with us. They continue."
"What is the basic question? Maybe not the most important, but the most basic?" Len asked passionately, and immediately answered, “How does matter become complex? How did matter become complex until the evolution of the biological world? What higher forms of composite matter may be formed or evolved?”
To answer these questions, Len reviewed the idea of self-organization. This is the way the universe works, and how life and thought were also created. Chemistry is the science that tries to understand the structure of matter and the way in which it can transform from one molecule to another. And of course, take molecules and create something else from them.
Len continued by reviewing various chemists in history who showed that the different elements combine to form different molecules, and that every body - inanimate or living - consists of such an arrangement of molecules. He especially emphasized Friedrich Waller's part in the thought revolution, after he succeeded in creating a biological substance in the laboratory - Urea - from non-living mineral substances. The real meaning of the experiment was that there is no real difference between the living and the non-living. Since then scientists have synthesized many complex organic molecules.
"What next?" Len asked with emotion, “Human cells do not appear to be chemistry at first, but there is a lot of chemistry in them. White blood cells stick to a cancer cell and kill it, but how do they know it's a cancer cell? The answer is that many proteins are attached to the cells that recognize each other. The question is no longer what the molecules are, but what happens when they come together. And that is already the science of supramolecular chemistry.”
The science of supramolecular chemistry deals, among other things, with understanding how molecules recognize each other and connect to each other in a specific way, similar to a lock and key. Chemistry can try to understand by manipulating the material, how it is possible to produce a key for a lock or a lock for a key.
"Once we know more about molecular recognition, we can think about using this understanding to create a material that can organize itself into a material of higher complexity." Len said. "A simple biological example is viruses, which are organized from building blocks. The tobacco mosaic virus consists of 2130 protein subunits. These subunits react with each other's surface, and can adapt to each other and gradually form a helical structure similar to a tower, which surrounds the RNA molecule of the virus. When the RNA is completely surrounded, the creation of the virus is complete."
In this case, Len explains, the production plan is molecular and emerges from the proteins that assemble with each other due to their structure. The simple binding between them - the supramolecular process - results in a more complex substance. The algorithm is the way of binding between the molecules, and if we change it we will get a different substance.
"All this shows that the ability to control self-assembly will be very important in nanotechnology. Until now, all the computers and things we have were created by changing the objects from which they are composed. We could compress more and more things, but we don't want compressions. We want complexity! The more we advance, the more we can make matter arrange itself." Len said and added that, "The most complex computer we have today is the one between our ears. He can even sort himself out, and does it quite well. I think in the future we can do something similar. There is still a long time until then, but - There's more room at the top."
According to Len, self-assembly works around planning. The engineer designs his bricks and they do the rest. But Len took self-assembly one step further, and asked, "Is it possible to create a material that is flexible enough to choose from the environment what it needs to build itself?" This self-organization is closer to what happens in biological processes... If you do this, you can create a material that will heal itself... It is also possible to create polymeric materials that can decompose and thus return to the ecological cycle."
For this we have to find the right ways to design molecules that can react with each other. How can this be done?
” If you know what the lock looks like, you can make the key, by planning ahead. But it takes a lot of time, so another way is by making millions of molecules and testing which one works. But it is not intellectually beautiful. So the third way is to create a variety of components - initial building blocks - that will make up the key. The building blocks will connect together to create many keys, and from them we can choose the right key, and then we can work on the key and improve it more and more.
In this way," Len concluded, "through dynamic chemistry based on building blocks and selection, we will reach a chemical evolution capable of developing and adapting itself. And even, we could say, Darwinist."
In the last minute of his lecture, Len chose to refer to the growing anti-scientific trend in Western countries.
"Prometheus conquered fire. We can't give it back. When you hear people say let's stop it, it's not possible. You cannot stop knowledge or not know it anymore. Our path leads us from the tree of knowledge to the control of our own destiny." The words that guide man are the same words engraved on the tombstone of the famous mathematician David Hilbert,
we must know,
we will know.
2 תגובות
Eyebrows:
Here too it is difficult to understand what you are trying to say, but one thing I will point out anyway: when you wrote "shirsh" you probably meant "the shrish". "Shirsh" is exactly the opposite
Trend in swing:
It is true that the phenomenon of the anti-scientific trend pushing through an entire era cannot be stopped; it has only a fundamental problem, in our time it falters in its characteristics and on a demanding basis, which eventually becomes selfish; by the way, in the historical past, humanity tolerated the phenomenon in a different way, when human ignorance admired the drawings The impressiveness of Ptolemy, who established the geocentric theory, and perpetuated the ignorance for about one thousand six hundred years, until Nicolai (actually a priest) arrived, and with the utmost caution, on his deathbed, dared to publish his book.