Interesting. Mind if I get a link to read up more on the subject? c:
All of these original animations were done by Drew Berry, Veritasium just packaged a few of them in an easy to digest format
I can't find an accessible video on the topic, but you want to look up photosystem II repair. You need to search up D1 replacement in photosystem II.
To get a flavour of the nanomachine aspect of it all, check out this video on electron transport across membranes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQmTKxI4Wn4).
Electron transport in proteins is crazy complex and actually amounts to molecular circuits where energy is guided to different spots inside proteins complexes in a unidirectional fashion. This guy is the grand daddy of the field (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7m9-PEiB8).
H2O + CO2 > O2 + CH4
That is water and carbon dioxide in, oxygen and methane out. Good for life support in space. If you had infinite free energy you can easily synthesize methane out of air and water.
it's almost as if nature evolved nano-machines that are far more complex than any we humans can envision today, even with our technology!
“If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel when we find him a stupid mechanic who imitated others, and copied an art which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving?“
From THE MEMORABILIA by By Xenophon, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1177/1177-h/1177-h.htm
“Socrates. But now if you had two sorts of things, the one of which presents no clue as to what it is for, and the other is obviously for some useful purpose—which would you judge to be the result of chance, which of design? Ar. Clearly that which is produced for some useful end is the work of design. Soc. Does it not strike you then that he who made man from the beginning (5) did for some useful end furnish him with his several senses—giving him eyes to behold the visible word, and ears to catch the intonations of sound? Or again, what good would there be in odours if nostrils had not been bestowed upon us? what perception of sweet things and pungent, and of all the pleasures of the palate, had not a tongue been fashioned in us as an interpreter of the same? And besides all this, do you not think this looks like a matter of foresight, this closing of the delicate orbs of sight with eyelids as with folding doors, which, when there is need to use them for any purpose, can be thrown wide open and firmly closed again in sleep? and, that even the winds of heaven may not visit them too roughly, this planting of the eyelashes as a protecting screen? (6) this coping of the region above the eyes with cornice-work of eyebrow so that no drop of sweat fall from the head and injure them? again this readiness of the ear to catch all sounds and yet not to be surcharged? this capacity of the front teeth of all animals to cut and of the "grinders" to receive the food and reduce it to pulp? the position of the mouth again, close to the eyes and nostrils as a portal of ingress for all the creature's supplies? and lastly, seeing that matter passing out (7) of the body is unpleasant, this hindward direction of the passages, and their removal to a distance from the avenues of sense? I ask you, when you see all these things constructed with such show of foresight can you doubt whether they are products of chance or intelligence?”
Then in «Against Physicists” by Sextus Empiricus this was cited as:
“Tell me, Aristodemus, are there some people you have admired for their wisdom? Yes, there are, he said. Who are they, then? Well, I have admired Homer for his poetry, Polyclitus for his sculpture, and Zeuxis of course for his painting. [93] And is it not because of the exceptional craftsmanship of their works that you approve of them? Yes, it is, he said. If Polyclitus’ statue, then, also took on life, would you not approve of the artist much more? Definitely. Well, given that when you saw a statue you said that it had been crafted by some skilled person, when you see a human being whose soul’s activity and whose body’s design are good, do you not think that he was crafted by some exceptional mind?”
Hello, fellow old!
I was hinting a bit to the lyrics of the song 'In the year 2525'.
Which is why we need tax credits for this
They are appropriate in the short term IF they cause sufficient innovation or economies of scale to kick in.
Often they cause more waste, because tax credits often benefit less efficient and more polluting solutions. Without a very deep and very careful analysis, your best proxy for measuring environmental harm is simply the amount spent.
For example: corn subsidies for ethanol production are significantly harmful for carbon dioxide pollution (via indirect effects like fertilizer production).
I’m being downvoted for suggesting we incentivize something that will help us get off fossil fuels
How much does abysmal efficiency matter when there are places in the world with virtually unlimited sunlight? Serious question.
That's food for thought... Even if we used all the forests and all the sea life we still wouldn't have enough energy. So we really need to be eat more efficient than natural systems.
This doesn't seem right. Estimates put total biomass at 500-600 billion tons of carbon, and annual biomass production at 100 billion tons of carbon. Meanwhile global carbon emissions from fossil fuels/industry are 35-40 billion tons per year.
Serious answer: Supplying sunlight isn't what's driving cost here.
The problem is that inefficient systems need to be large, and enlarging systems (even 'simple' ponds, etc) makes them more expensive.
gardeners replicate this type of thing daily.
my hunch is that the next big breakthrough will be when they can implement this machinery in a seed.
A big problem with these methods, besides abysmal efficiency is that the light that drives the photochemical processes has some probability of generating side reactions that destroy the artificial enzyme. Nature overcomes this with unbelievably complex protein repair structures that literally swap out defective proteins for new ones. We have zero chance of replicating this type of thing anytime soon.
Bio oil from algae is much closer to practical utility than this tech. And electrochemical CO2 reduction will be an even more scalable and practical solution in the near term in my opinion.