10/29/2005: "Our Thought For The Weekend"

Well it's that time of the year when we truncate a perfectly sensible nychthemeron cycle (Oh stop it, you got something better to do on a rainy day than learn a new word?) by -for all practical purposes- being forced to change the hands of time.

If the nighttime anxiety of "Did I or did I not turn back the clock?" causes you to toss and turn and count sheep, or ponder the size of the universe, or -my favorite- contemplate the question of what is "nothingness"? (I mean, if you remove all "things" from the universe, there is all that space where the stuff used to be…so that must "be" something, don't you think?), anyway here is something new for you think about that really should make you drop off, or bring you right up to full consciousness.

WALKING MOLECULES. Yup, you read it right, according to the American Institute of Physics: Ludwig Bartels at UC Riverside made a molecule with two legs that can walk. And walk a lot. In one test it took 10,000 steps without faltering.

So if the thought of millions of molecules dancing on the head of a pin doesn't lull you to sleep, we suggest you entertain this thought: What are the possibilities for good and bad once Ludwig and crew give their little Ludwigstein molecules hands… with opposable thumbs? Hmmm?

( Ludwig Bartels webpage)