oldmanyellsatcloud:

We imagine making products “not found in nature”—but even natural microbes make molecules that organic chemists would never dream of. Look at thisantitumor agent discovered from a filamentous soil bacterium, the kind of bacteria that give soil that new smell in the springtime (Science 297:1170). Those sets of three parallel lines are each triple bonds, within a nine-carbon ring. Who would even think to draw such a thing, let alone make it? To make it, the bacteria use modular enzymes, nanoscale assembly lines that condense one functional part after another. The original nanotechnology.

People often forget that science doesn’t actually break the laws of nature: It uses them to help replicate very rare and hard to find results that could, theoretically, occur in nature.

Did you know theres even a naturally occuring nuclear fission reactor in Africa, that functioned perfectly in Precambrian times?

This is why I follow Kosh. I learn shit.