From Nature news I came across an interesting news about voyager 2 it goes like this:
“On 30 August, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft — which has been sailing through space since 1977 — crossed the 'termination shock', the boundary between the bubble in space dominated by the solar wind coming from the Sun and the transition region beyond that lies between Earth and interstellar space.
Voyager 2's twin, Voyager 1, crossed this same boundary in December 2004. The twin Voyagers headed out of the solar system in different directions, with Voyager 1 taking a northern path and Voyager 2 a southern one.
Radioactive generators aboard each spacecraft, powering their electrical systems, may allow them to transmit through the transition and beyond.
Voyager 1 is currently nearly 10 billion miles from the Sun, traveling nearly a million miles a day. Voyager 2 is nearly 8 billion miles away and moving just slightly slower. ”
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Entirely New Life Form for the First Time: Man becoming god?
Craig Venter, has built an entirely synthetic chromosome, a sequence of genes, and plans to implant it in an existing cell. If they are successful they will be credited with the breakthrough of creating an almost entirely new life form for the first time.
For the research, Venter assembled a team of 20 top scientists, who constructed a synthetic chromosome, known as Mycoplasma laboratorium that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code. In the final step of the process, the chromosome will be transplanted into a living cell where it should "take control", effectively becoming a new life form. The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing the cell's species. Venter said that he was "100 per cent confident" the same technique would work for the artificially created chromosome. The new life form would depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolize on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form.
The main thing puzzled me is that, if man is able to make a life, it is near to become God like. Any way the breakthrough is leading to the usual controversies.
[Source:medindia]
For the research, Venter assembled a team of 20 top scientists, who constructed a synthetic chromosome, known as Mycoplasma laboratorium that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code. In the final step of the process, the chromosome will be transplanted into a living cell where it should "take control", effectively becoming a new life form. The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing the cell's species. Venter said that he was "100 per cent confident" the same technique would work for the artificially created chromosome. The new life form would depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolize on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form.
The main thing puzzled me is that, if man is able to make a life, it is near to become God like. Any way the breakthrough is leading to the usual controversies.
[Source:medindia]
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