{"id":516,"date":"2015-04-04T07:38:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-04T12:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=516"},"modified":"2015-04-04T07:38:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T12:38:05","slug":"intelligent-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/04\/04\/intelligent-metal\/","title":{"rendered":"Intelligent Metal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><\/em>&#8216;s (14 March 2015) Michael Slezak <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn27127-liquid-metal-brings-shapeshifting-robot-a-step-closer.html#\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"infuse\">The device is surprisingly simple: just a drop of metal alloy made mostly of gallium \u2013 which is liquid at just under 30\u2009\u00b0C \u2013 with some indium and tin mixed in. When placed in a solution of sodium hydroxide, or even brine, and kept in contact with a flake of aluminium for &#8220;fuel&#8221;, it moves around for about an hour. It can travel in a straight line, run around the outside of a circular dish, or squeeze through complex shapes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"infuse\">&#8220;The soft machine looks rather intelligent and [can] deform itself according to the space it voyages in, just like [the] Terminator does from the science-fiction film,&#8221; says Jing Liu from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. &#8220;These unusual behaviours perfectly resemble the living organisms in nature,&#8221; he says, adding that they raise questions about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg19225780.071-the-big-questions-what-is-life.html\">definition of life<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"infuse\">Hmmmmm.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t get excited about definitions of life until we see some reproductive capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NewScientist&#8216;s (14 March 2015) Michael Slezak reports: The device is surprisingly simple: just a drop of metal alloy made mostly of gallium \u2013 which is liquid at just under 30\u2009\u00b0C \u2013 with some indium and tin mixed in. When placed in a solution of sodium hydroxide, or even brine, and \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/04\/04\/intelligent-metal\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}