geekosystem

A lab at the University of Minnesota is home to a newly created artificial enzyme that could offer researchers new insights into the origins of life on Earth. That's because rather than being assembled by researchers one step at a time, this enzyme was created in a test tube by directed evolution. The result is a loosely shaped enzyme that may resemble the collections of molecules in the primordial soup that preceded life on the planet.

There's a number of puzzles about the beginnings of life on Earth that continue to evade scientists. One of them was a pretty fundamental question about how life made the jump from single-celled organisms to the multicellular marvels we're familiar with today. Researcher Will Ratcliff at the University of Minnesota wanted to look at how that process may have occurred and discovered that it might not have been so big a leap after all.

So, some guys got together and figured out a way to take down the entire Internet as we know it. One guy was like, "Dude -- remember that time we were talking about conquering the Internet? ... Wanna try it?" And his buddy was all, "Pssssssht, come on, man! ... You think we could?" So the first guy, totally seriously says, "Totally." And they did! Okay, maybe this isn't exactly how it went down, but Ph.D. candidate Max Schuchard of the University of Minnesota and his colleagues did have the idea to design the ultimate cyberweapon, an attack that would render the Internet dead, useless, and blacked out, for at least a few days before it could even start to be repaired. And then save it for a rainy day. They don't see anyone trying to wage this kind of attack any time soon, so in the meantime, they are going to work on how to defend against it. But here is what they came up with: