Scientists have infused "life" into inanimate chemical compounds by flashing a blue-violet light that prompted them to assemble themselves into a crystal.
The feat, described in a study published online Thursday by the journal Science, marks an important step toward creating "active" materials that can repair themselves, such as a smartphone screen that fixes its own cracks or a Kevlar vest that fills a hole made by a bullet, experts said.
Showing that microscopic particles can be made to come together or break apart on their own "opens a new area for design and production of novel and moving structures," wrote the study authors, a team of physicists and chemists from New York University and Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
The researchers said they were inspired by the way flocks of birds and schools of fish are able to move as if they are a single living organism. The team wanted to see if they could duplicate — and control — that collective motion using non-living objects.
Â
A lower jaw bone and five teeth discovered on a hillside in Ethiopia are the oldest...
Light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. Since the days of Einstein, scientists...
Scientists at a British museum have worked out the living weight of Sophie, one of the...
Researchers in Palo Alto in the US state of California have developed the most powerful X-ray...
