Neil Gershenfeld
speaker
1,202 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2023
last heard May 2023
Neil Gershenfeld’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So molecular biology is dominated by geometry.
That's why the protein folding is so important, that the geometry gives the function and the
There's this hierarchical construction of, as you go through primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, the shapes of the molecules make the shape of the molecular machines.
And they really are exquisite machines.
If you look at how...
if you look at how your muscles move, if you were to see a simulation of it, it would look like a improbable science fiction cyborg world of these little walking robots that walk on a discrete lattice.
They're really exquisite machines.
And then from there, there's this whole hierarchical stack of once you get to the top of that, you then start making organelles that make cells that make organs through the stack of that hierarchy.
So studying thermodynamics, which is exactly the question of, you know,
that batteries run out and need recharging.
Equipment, cars get old and fail, yet life doesn't.
And that's why there's a sense in which life seems to violate thermodynamics, although of course it doesn't.
Right.
And so Maxwell, who helped give rise to the science of thermodynamics, posited a problem that was so infuriating it led to a series of suicides.
There was a series of advisors and advisees, three in a row that all ended up committing suicide, that happened to work on this problem.
And Maxwell's demon
is this simple but infamous problem where right now in this room we're surrounded by molecules and they run at different velocities.
Imagine a container that has a wall and it's got gas on both sides and a little door.
And if the door is a molecular sized creature,
And it could watch the molecules coming.
Showing 841–860 of 1,202 · page 43 of 61
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