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The Blob A Genius without a Brain (2020) [Full Movie] [Full Episodes]Full EP - Full
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00:14Two teenagers see it first, like a falling star from outer space.
00:20Boy, that was close.
00:221958. A terrifying extraterrestrial jelly threatens to engulf Earth and all its inhabitants.
00:31In a horror B-movie, The Blob makes its first-ever screen appearance.
00:37Look out, because soon, very soon, the most horrifying monster menace ever conceived will be oozing into this theatre.
00:49This creature, out of science fiction, has given its name to an actual living organism.
00:57One which has scientists baffled.
01:02The Blob is neither plant, animal nor mushroom.
01:07Yet this single-celled organism has been around on Earth for almost a billion years.
01:15It's one of the world's most primitive and most simple beings.
01:23And yet, behind its apparent simplicity, it has some truly incredible capacities.
01:31It has no eyes, no mouth, no stomach, no legs.
01:36Yet it can see, smell, digest and move around.
01:41It has neither nervous system nor brain, but it's capable of solving complex problems and even making strategies.
01:51It's scientific name is phisarum polycephalum, and now it's being studied by researchers all over the world.
02:02Their discoveries are taking us on a very strange journey indeed, leading us into a whole new field of science.
02:11One in which the word intelligence does not imply the need for a brain.
02:41One in which the word intelligence does not imply the need for a brain.
02:47One in which the word intelligence does not imply the need for a brain.
02:59At the very beginning of life on Earth, almost a billion years before Homo sapiens,
03:05and 500 million years before the plants, were the very first single-celled organisms.
03:13And among them was the blob.
03:19In the great tree of life, Physarum polycephalum has long been grouped in with the fungi.
03:27In fact, it is what's known as a slime mould.
03:37But although the blob shares a mushroom's liking for dark, humid places,
03:41and is usually found in shadowy undergrowth,
03:44it possesses one ability that's got mycologists scratching their heads.
03:50It can move.
03:58With no apparent means to do so, no legs, no propulsion system,
04:03the blob can get around, thanks to its network of veins, at a rate of one centimetre an hour.
04:11Yet when it's hungry, it can hit as much as four centimetres an hour.
04:18Just like in the movie, the blob is a glutton.
04:22It gorges on bacteria, yeasts and mushrooms.
04:29But the really impressive thing is that the blob is just a single cell,
04:34albeit an unusually large one, that can double in volume every day,
04:39and can reach several metres in diameter.
04:42It is one of the very rare cells that are visible to the naked eye.
04:52Audrey Dussetour is one of the world's leading specialists on the blob.
05:07She's a researcher at France's National Scientific Research Centre in Toulouse,
05:12and a Doctor of Ethology, the branch of biology that studies animal behaviour.
05:21She started out studying ants and their nutrition, until she had an unexpected encounter.
05:30The first time I met Phyzarome Polycephalome,
05:33it was when I was in post-doctorat in Australia.
05:36My research director at the time, Steve Simpson, who is a great specialist in nutrition,
05:40was writing a book on the nutrition that went from the insect to the human.
05:44And he told me, during a conversation,
05:46that it would be great to write a book on the cellulose to the human.
05:49And we discussed a little bit about the multicellular organism that we could test.
05:51And it needed a multicellular organism enough large to be observed.
05:58The first time he arrived in the laboratory,
06:00we were all a little disappointed,
06:02because it looked more like a old omelette,
06:03with browned eggs, than a multicellular organism.
06:06We took it, put it in a basket, and we forgot it until the end of the day.
06:10And then I understood the interest of such an organism,
06:12because when I opened the basket,
06:13the blob had escaped and started to cover the bottom of the basket.
06:23The blob had gone off in search of food.
06:28Such an astonishing cell would be a fascinating research subject
06:31for a specialist in animal behaviour.
06:37Her first notable publication revealed that when it comes to nutrition,
06:42the blob is a genius.
06:47In laboratory, the most scientists in the world feed it with the blocs.
06:52However, when we want to study how an animal regulate its nutritional needs,
06:56working on a unique food, the blocs of the blocs were a problem.
06:59So we had to create special recipes for blocs.
07:08So at the beginning, we had a little bit of a tartan,
07:10and we created the flans.
07:11We call them the flans,
07:13a kind of burnt cream,
07:14in which we will be able to modify the quantity of protein and sugar.
07:19And so, we created 35 different recipes,
07:22each characterized by a particular protein ratio of protein and sugar.
07:26We also created the concentration of nutrients in the flans.
07:32Audrey Dussetour's method enabled her to determine what the blob's ideal diet was,
07:38and create the very best pudding to help it grow,
07:44before setting it a few nutritional challenges.
07:58To observe the blob's choices,
08:03Audrey and her team used time-lapse photography.
08:09Images taken over periods of 24, 48 or even 72 hours
08:14allowed them to see just how the blob evolved
08:16when faced with a particular turn of events.
08:45The blob gropes around for a bit,
08:47ignores the less suitable puddings,
08:50and goes for the optimal one.
08:53And we saw in this experiment
08:54that Physarum Polycephalum was a little bit of a genius of nutrition,
08:57because it was directed towards the flans
08:58that would maximize its growth.
09:03If none of the puddings contain the perfect ratio,
09:07the blob combines two of the imperfect ones,
09:10one of them too sugary,
09:12the other too high in protein.
09:36In humans and animals,
09:38nutritional needs are handled by the brain
09:41working alongside the stomach.
09:45The blob doesn't have a brain or a stomach,
09:48yet it can optimize the intake of those nutrients
09:51essential for its growth.
09:59Another remarkable phenomenon
10:01is that when conditions are very bad
10:04and there's no food left,
10:06the blob just dries out and becomes dormant.
10:12It can stay like that for up to two years.
10:18To bring it back to life,
10:20you just sprinkle it with water.
10:23When it wakes up,
10:25the blob's full of youthful vigour again
10:27and ready for new adventures.
10:39But Audrey de Soutour is not the first person
10:42to have studied this extraordinary organism.
11:04In Japan, they have a long tradition of studying slime moulds.
11:10Professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki of the University of Hokkaido
11:14is one of the third generation of Japanese researchers
11:18to be thrilled by Faisaru.
11:30In the scientific community,
11:32they think of Professor Nakagaki as the blob master.
11:37He was the first to reveal the blob's extraordinary ability to move about.
11:44For him, as a biophysicist,
11:47single-celled organisms are fundamental to his work.
12:14The blob is not like any other cell.
12:18Thanks to its sheer size,
12:20unique experiments can be carried out on it.
12:22That means that Professor Nakagaki
12:24and his assistant, Daniel Shentz,
12:27can put it through tests usually reserved for animals,
12:32such as the labyrinth test.
12:40They place the blob in a maze along with a source of nutrition.
12:45Will it find its way?
12:53It deploys its network of veins to set off on the hunt for food.
12:59It doesn't get lost in the labyrinth.
13:03It finds what it's looking for.
13:15In a second experiment,
13:17a blob is meticulously positioned over the whole surface of the labyrinth.
13:32At the entrance and exit of the maze are some oat flakes,
13:36there to test the blob's ability to connect two different food sources.
13:47The blob's reaction is amazing.
13:52One by one, it eliminates all the wrong pathways.
13:57Soon, there's just one vein left,
14:00linking the two food sources by the shortest route.
14:07The blob just passed the labyrinth test.
14:11By choosing the shortest path,
14:13it has optimised the transfer of nutrients into its organism.
14:21In view of this incredible result,
14:25Professor Nakagaki published an article in Nature magazine.
14:28It made waves.
14:32In 2008, he received the Ignoble Prize.
14:36An award given to serious scientific research into the most unlikely subjects.
14:42Research that makes you smile, then think.
14:52But the professor didn't stop at that.
14:54He wanted to study the network of veins that Physarum creates in order to hunt for food.
15:08Now, Physarum is a particularly interesting organism to study biological transportation networks
15:13because it is basically an adaptive transportation network.
15:17That's what it is.
15:20So, if you want to study how network geometries and network layouts respond to the circumstances,
15:26then Physarum is an ideal organism to study these kinds of things.
15:32Professor Nakagaki and his teams decided to compare the networks created by the blob to an existing system.
15:40The Japanese Railway Network, unanimously recognised as one of the most efficient in the world.
15:48On a map of the Tokyo region, the principal towns have been replaced by oat flakes,
15:54while the blob is placed on the capital itself.
16:01Will Physarum be able to solve this one?
16:09The blob explores its environment,
16:12and as it discovers the oat flakes,
16:14permanently reconfigures its network of veins.
16:21It reinforces the links between the different food sources,
16:25as the other links disappear.
16:31The network the blob created is just as efficient and streamlined as the railway network.
16:47When it comes to planning an optimal network,
16:50the blob's the equal of any engineer.
16:53It makes the most efficient choices,
16:57and finds its way around with astonishing ease.
17:08Audrey Dussetour and her Australian colleagues have revealed one of the secrets of the blob's displacement mechanisms.
17:23When we look at Physarum polycephalum moving,
17:26what we see is that Physarum polycephalum never happens twice in the same place.
17:30So the question we asked is,
17:32is the blob not using a chemical trace to remember its environment?
17:41It's a strategy found in ants,
17:43who emit trails of pheromones to mark where the food is and remember it.
17:51Then other members of the colony use that external memory to find the food.
18:01If we look at the blob moving,
18:03we see that behind him,
18:04he leaves a strain of mucus,
18:06a kind of gel,
18:07a little bit like the eggs.
18:08And we realized that this mucus was repulsive,
18:11that the blob didn't want to jump twice on his mucus.
18:15So we made an experiment to show that this mucus could be used as a form of external memory.
18:24So you have a cage in form of U,
18:26you have the blob at a certain place,
18:28which must join a source of food that he can perceive at a distance,
18:32because the food is diffuse in the environment,
18:34but between it and the food,
18:36there is something that he can't see,
18:37there is a cage in form of U.
18:38So what will the blob do?
18:40Forcedly, it's to move forward to the food,
18:42and to be found in the U.
18:44So the task is to contour the U and find the source of the food.
18:57So once we showed that the blob was able to do this,
19:00we did a second experience,
19:02but this time we covered the environment with the mucus.
19:04We finally made believe that the blob had already explored everything.
19:08And in this situation,
19:09the blob was no longer able to find its source of food.
19:12So we had thus proven that for the blob,
19:14its mucus is repulsive,
19:16and it's used to mark the areas already explored.
19:22Like the ants,
19:24the blob can develop a kind of external memory,
19:27thanks to its mucus.
19:31For Audrey de Sautour and her colleagues,
19:34this discovery was a giant step in their understanding
19:37of how the blob behaves.
19:41This creature just kept pushing back the limits of possibility.
19:49When we see the capabilities of Phyzarone polycephalum,
19:53he can go out of a labyrinth,
19:55create optimized networks,
19:56go out of a U,
19:58balance its food regime,
19:59we can ask ourselves the question of
20:01is this organism intelligent?
20:16For centuries, intelligence was thought of as being exclusive to Homo sapiens,
20:21the only creatures capable of reason and thought.
20:24It wasn't until the 20th century
20:27that researchers started to discover
20:29the cognitive abilities of animals,
20:32communication,
20:33memory,
20:34decision-making.
20:40To this day,
20:41the scientific community tends to view intelligence
20:44as belonging to complex living beings
20:46that have a nervous system and a brain.
20:57But for some years now,
20:59the study of cognitive processes in simpler organisms
21:02has been breaking down barriers.
21:07The idea of a form of intelligence without a brain
21:11is being promoted by some of the true pioneers in the field.
21:19To that end,
21:20in Florence,
21:22the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology was created.
21:34Frantisek Baluska and Stefano Mancuso
21:37are two of the world's foremost specialists
21:39in vegetable intelligence.
21:46Frantisek Baluska and Stefano Mancuso
21:47The question of intelligence,
21:50if plants or other organisms are intelligent or not,
21:56depends on the definition.
21:59How we define intelligence?
22:02I believe that the correct definition of intelligence
22:07is the ability to solve problems.
22:10The notion of intelligence in the vegetable world
22:12by the fact that the human beings
22:15is very difficult now to speak about intelligence
22:17in other organisms.
22:19But in fact,
22:20it is just very simply the ability of the organisms
22:23to survive.
22:24And it requires really high intelligence
22:27to survive outside in a hard environment.
22:31The notion of intelligence in the vegetable world
22:34has always been controversial.
22:37Charles Darwin himself faced ridicule
22:40when in 1870 he raised the possibility
22:43of intelligence in plants.
22:49He says Darwin that every living organism
22:53has two poles,
22:55a cognitive pole and a reproductive pole,
22:58which are placed on the two sides of the organism.
23:03And then, the plants are like
23:05like human beings,
23:06who have the head under the ground.
23:09What we see, the flowers,
23:11are the reproductive part.
23:13We really need to look at plants
23:15like something similar to this vase here.
23:22The father of the theory of evolution
23:25was already on to the importance of roots
23:27and dared to make the analogy with the brain.
23:32And then Darwin says that in the root of the root,
23:39in his opinion,
23:40there is the equivalent
23:41of a kind of small brain,
23:43like the brain of an insect,
23:45that guides the plant.
23:51In 2005, together with Stefano,
23:54we started to argue that this theory
23:57is really not crazy theory,
23:59but it has some really important message.
24:02And since then,
24:03we have published several papers
24:05which are very strongly supporting this theory.
24:09Following up on Darwin's intuition,
24:11the two researchers have shown the importance
24:14of the root tips in a plant's growth.
24:26As it grows,
24:28the root advances bit by bit,
24:30all the time making contact with the soil.
24:33It feels its way,
24:35avoiding any obstacles
24:36and searching for the best possible environment
24:39in which to develop.
24:42But if you cut off the end of the root,
24:44it will grow much faster,
24:47but totally straight.
24:48It's no longer capable of analysing its environment.
25:03Once they'd validated Darwin's beloved root brain theory,
25:07Frantisek Maluska and Stefano Mancuso
25:10went on to prove that plants
25:12had another vital capacity,
25:14memory.
25:17We published a work
25:19in which we showed
25:20that the Pudica
25:22was able to memorize
25:25different stimuli
25:27and to differentiate
25:28between a dangerous stimuli
25:30and a non- dangerous stimuli
25:32and to respond in the right way.
25:39plants are made up of millions of cells
25:41that all interact.
25:45A root that processes information like a brain
25:48and has the ability to memorize,
25:50these are characteristics
25:51that we thought were exclusive to the animal world.
25:55Seemingly they exist in vegetables too.
26:03Could such capacities be possible in a living creature
26:06composed of just one cell?
26:11Audrey Dussetour proved that the blob
26:14is also capable of retaining information.
26:39The objective was to try and get the blob used to a substance it didn't like.
26:44Salt.
26:59Between the blob and its favorite snack
27:02is a bridge a few centimeters long.
27:06Normally the blob would take under two hours to cross it.
27:12But when, on day one of the test,
27:14the bridge was covered with salt,
27:17it took ten hours to advance just one centimeter.
27:47The blob finally learned to
27:50tolerate salt.
27:57This experiment required enormous patience
28:01and a lot of precision.
28:08The first thing is that the experiment lasted for nine days.
28:11So you have to follow the same blob for nine days.
28:14Secondly, this experiment was done on four thousand different blobs.
28:19Because when you want to prove a learning
28:22at an unicellular,
28:23which is a little bit exceptional,
28:26you must be sure to be able to convince your colleagues.
28:29And that's why we repeated, repeated, repeated the experience
28:32in all four thousand times.
28:42Audrey Dussetour was the first to scientifically prove
28:46habituation in a single-celled organism.
28:49It was a revolution in the scientific community.
28:59The support of the community was very warm.
29:02We received many messages from neuroscientists
29:04who were very interested in our experience.
29:06Of course, there were sceptics
29:07because we broke a dogma.
29:09The learning was no longer reserved for organisms with a brain.
29:16Audrey Dussetour's discovery pushed back the limits of scientific knowledge.
29:22After human beings, animals and vegetables,
29:26she showed that a single-celled being
29:28was also capable of memory and learning.
29:32But just how far could the blob really go?
29:35It's indestructible. It's indescribable.
29:38Nothing can stop it.
29:40This town is in danger.
29:42How can it be stopped?
29:44Mob hysteria sweeps one city
29:46before long the nation
29:47and then the world could fall
29:48before the blood-curdling threat of the blob.
29:55So, after the discovery that the blob was able to learn,
29:59the question that came to us was
30:00whether a blob who learned something
30:03could transfer this learning to another blob.
30:08To find out, Audrey Dussetour started with the blob's remarkable ability to merge.
30:17When we take a blob and we cut it in two,
30:20we usually have two autonomous blobs.
30:23How does it work?
30:24In reality, the blob is an unicellular organism
30:27but it contains plenty of needles,
30:29that is, it has plenty of copies of its genetic material.
30:33So, when you cut the blob in two,
30:35each part has a part of the genetic material
30:37and can work autonomously.
30:41A blob cut into two equal blobs.
30:49Then, if you take these two blobs,
30:51you put them side to side,
30:52they will fusion.
30:54In fact, the blob 1 plus 1 is 1.
30:58So, how does this fusion happen?
31:00In reality, the membranes are stuck,
31:02open, and then we will have a connection
31:04to the brain cells
31:05and we will have a unique blob, autonome.
31:11To find out if the blob can transmit what it has learned,
31:15Audrey Dussetour brought together thousands of blobs
31:18that were accustomed to salt,
31:19with other so-called naive ones.
31:39The blob is capable not only of learning,
31:43but also of developing a kind of communication
31:45and sharing what it has learned, proof of its genius.
31:55According to these discoveries,
31:57the blob could learn and transfer these technologies,
32:00we asked the question,
32:01what is the support of this memory?
32:03The fact that it could transfer it from one blob to the other
32:06has given us a little bit of an indication.
32:09In fact, it seemed that the memory was circulated
32:11within the VENU network.
32:17She injected salt directly into the VENU system of a naive blob.
32:40The blob's memory comes from storing a substance inside itself,
32:46a memory specific to each blob that influences its behaviour
32:50when it moves around or feeds.
32:53Audrey Dussetour noticed that, depending where they came from,
32:56blobs didn't have quite the same abilities.
33:18The Japanese blob is the fastest.
33:22The Australian blob is slower but more careful.
33:26And the American blob is the greediest.
33:32For a little anecdote,
33:34when we received the American blob,
33:36we had a lot of bio bio flocons in the laboratory
33:39because it's good for the planet.
33:41That's how we raised our Australian blob.
33:43And when the American blob arrived,
33:45we gave it the same food.
33:46And he refused it.
33:47He preferred to get out of the box.
33:49He doesn't like bio bio flocons.
33:51He preferred a little American brand.
33:56the most female loopholes and animals.
34:01Audrey Dussetour's discoveries were followed by others
34:04from researchers all over the world,
34:07all keen to learn more about cognition in so-called primary beings.
34:16they get together frequently to share their progress on various organisms plants bacteria
34:22sea anemones or aquatic worms called planariums when it comes to solving the mysteries of
34:34intelligence without a brain the blob is the most promising of them all in the German city of
34:51Bremen professor Hans Gunther Dürburayner and his team are trying to decode and simulate the
34:57blobs guiding mechanisms
35:09les recherches de Hans Gunther Dürburayner se concentre sur la mise en place du réseau
35:13veineux au sein des blobs pour cela il se focalise sur des blobs de toute petite taille il va utiliser
35:18un microscope pour voir comment se génère ce réseau veineux donc en réalité Hans Gunther il fait de
35:24l'étologie microscopique or que nous fait l'étologie beaucoup plus macroscopique seen through an
35:31electronic microscope the blob reveals more of its internal functions this network is that there
35:43is a stream of what we call a protoplasm this is same as blood flowing on our body you can
35:51see here
35:52that there's a flow within these veins within these internal veins we can't see it here but
35:59there will be actin filaments wrapping up these veins which causes contraction and relaxation which
36:09gives the force for these protoplasm to go back and forth and this is called the shuttle streaming
36:21three steps forward two steps back like a tide the pressure on the membrane from this current pushes
36:28the whole organism forward and the plasticity of its membrane allows it to take on evermore diverse forms
36:39the form the blob chooses depends on its environment as proven by professor derbereiner's team
36:50manyrands
36:50Alex Goud forte
36:51Ein Hund ist immer ein Hund, ja und ein Bakterium ist immer Bakterium aber Physarum
36:57das ist wie ein Transformer sozusagen der biologische der natürliche Transformer der Natur sozusagen
37:06so sagen
37:18To understand how the blob builds its network,
37:21researchers used a centrifuge to obtain hundreds of mini-blobs,
37:25just 200 microns in diameter.
37:32At this stage, the mini-blobs haven't established any kind of connection.
37:47You can see that these objects are more and more connected to each other.
37:53And that's what we're studying.
38:01Observing the creation of a vascular system allows them to analyze
38:05how the connections that distribute the blob's blood are made.
38:09The Bremen teams are trying to establish a mathematical model to describe the process.
38:18A model that could help medicine to understand cancer.
38:26Hans-Gunther Derbereiner observed that, to feed and develop,
38:30tumours construct a vascular system similar to that of the blob.
38:35Computer modelling of the blob's system, then,
38:38can give some indication of how tumours grow.
38:47And our genius without a brain has plenty of other solutions to offer science, too.
38:52We can see other applications in the blob.
38:55The first, it's an ecological application.
38:58In fact, the blob, when it moves into its environment,
39:01it incorporates all kinds of substances.
39:03And we discovered that,
39:04at a cousin of the blob,
39:06at Fuligo septica,
39:07also called vomi de chien,
39:09or caca de luna,
39:10this organism was able to accumulate
39:12heavy metals,
39:14such as zinc or manganese.
39:16So, we could use blobs
39:18to be able to pollute certain soil.
39:22The second application that we can see in medicine,
39:25is that the blob is nourishing
39:26of bacteria and champignons.
39:27And for that,
39:28it will secrete
39:30antibiotics
39:30and antifongiques.
39:32And so,
39:32it allows us to discover
39:34new molecules
39:35to fight against our own diseases.
39:47The blob is an incomparable model organism
39:50in fields as varied as biophysics,
39:53ecology and medicine.
39:55But it hasn't revealed all its secrets yet.
40:08And now, in Boston,
40:10at one of the epicenters
40:11of the study of primitive intelligence,
40:14they're actually trying to get the blob to talk.
40:19Michael Levin,
40:20head of the Allen Discovery Center,
40:22has a background in both computer science
40:24and biology.
40:26He is trying to decode the language of cells.
40:38to help crack the code of primitive intelligence,
40:42he's drawing on his knowledge of the planarians,
40:44the little aquatic worms
40:45that have been around on Earth
40:47for almost 500 million years.
40:54Unlike the blob,
40:56planarians do possess a rudimentary brain.
40:58But that's not their most extraordinary characteristic.
41:06One of the most important things about planaria
41:08is that they regenerate every part of the body.
41:12So if cut into pieces,
41:13every piece of a planarian knows exactly
41:15what a standard planarian body should look like
41:18because it regenerates,
41:19it regrows everything that's missing
41:21in the correct location
41:22and it stops when it's done.
41:36When a planarian is cut in two,
41:39its cells regenerate to rebuild a head at one end
41:42and a tail at the other.
41:46The memory of the planarian's form
41:48is therefore stored in the whole of its body,
41:50at the very heart of its cells.
42:00So we've been studying the question
42:01of how is this information stored and processed?
42:05And over the years we've discovered
42:07that part of this control is an electric circuit
42:09that allows these cells to store this kind of information.
42:12And what we've found is that
42:14if we temporarily, just for 48 hours,
42:17disrupt this electric circuit
42:19and in essence wipe the finely encoded pattern memory
42:24of these tissues,
42:24when they regenerate,
42:26they can regenerate as two-headed animals.
42:37By disturbing the communication between the cells
42:40and modifying the electrical signals they exchange,
42:44Michael Levin has coaxed the planarian
42:46into growing a second head in place of its tail.
42:50It's an incredible result
42:52which opens up infinite possibilities.
42:57What's at stake here are many applications
42:59in regenerative medicine and basic biology
43:02because if we understood how cells specify to each other
43:05what is the structure that they're working to build or repair,
43:08we could do many things.
43:09We could fix birth defects.
43:11We could grow back limbs or eyes or other structures
43:14that a patient might have lost
43:15and turn tumor tissue back towards the normal cooperative behavior
43:20that cells have in making coordinated structures
43:22instead of tumors.
43:28What determines the function of a cell?
43:31This fundamental question may well be answered by the blob.
43:36That's Michael Levin's theory.
43:38When he heard about Audrey de Satorre's work,
43:40he decided to undertake new research on Physarum.
43:44For us, the most important thing in Physarum
43:46is to really understand how specific information is encoded.
43:51In other words, if the Physarum learns that crossing a salt bridge is good
43:55or that a particular maze has a particular structure,
43:58how is that represented in whatever is inside the Physarum?
44:04His objective is to decode the language of cells to communicate directly with them
44:09and perhaps one day influence their behavior.
44:14It's a whole new continent of cellular intelligence that's opening,
44:18a land of great promise.
44:28In Bristol, behind the doors of his unconventional computing laboratory,
44:33Andrew Adamatsky sees the blob as a great opportunity to develop new approaches to computer science.
44:42His research sometimes takes unexpected turns.
44:46I grew on Steinmode on the set of electrodes
44:49and then recorded the potential difference between neighboring electrodes.
44:54And then, after recording the electrical activity,
44:57I encoded it into the sounds
44:59and decompressed nine days of recording into five minutes of the sound.
45:27In the signification of the Steinmode lifetime,
45:31it's reflected, first of all, enuculation
45:34and like adolescent growth of the Steinmode
45:38when it covers all electrodes,
45:40then maturation,
45:42and then when humidity goes down,
45:44aging and decay,
45:46beating of the electrical potential of the Steinmode
45:49becoming slower and slower
45:50until the Steinmode goes to sleep.
46:06Apart from this blob symphony,
46:08Andrew Adamatsky has other plans as well
46:11for the electrical emissions of Physarum.
46:13By using mechanisms of Slimmode,
46:17adaptation for example,
46:19we can develop new hardware and new protocols for soft robots.
46:26He grafts blobs onto robots
46:29which move to the rhythm of their electric pulses.
46:35He can even make them change direction
46:38by zapping the blob with a laser beam.
46:41Physarum is strongly repelled by light.
46:48Inspired by the blob's many talents,
46:51his objective is to reinvent the robots of tomorrow
46:55and make robots as intelligent as the blob,
46:59capable of constantly adapting and reacting to their environment,
47:04just as the blob has been doing for millions of years.
47:13Computers and robots,
47:15biophysics, ethology,
47:16these scientists are all working on basic research.
47:22Unlike applied research,
47:24it's about venturing into unknown territories
47:27with no immediate application.
47:30However,
47:31their discoveries could change the world.
47:38We need fundamental research
47:39to uncover some kind of lateral knowledge
47:43and go deeply in the mechanics of nature.
47:48And indeed,
47:49benefits will be like in the next 25, 50 or 100 years,
47:53but it still should be done.
47:59In reality,
48:00we do the fundamental research
48:01and it's true that people
48:02are more focused on the applied research.
48:06But we need to see them
48:07as indissociable one from the other.
48:09It's like a flower.
48:11The fundamental research would be the root of this flower
48:13and the floral part would be the applied research.
48:16If you don't have roots,
48:18you don't have a flower.
48:29The blob has revealed some of the secrets
48:32of its incredible longevity here on Earth.
48:35Nutrition,
48:36mobility,
48:37fusion,
48:38mapping,
48:39learning,
48:40memory.
48:47But science isn't short of big ideas,
48:50and space could be the next field of investigation.
48:57According to our numerous discoveries on the blob,
48:59we've been contacted by astrophysicians from Grenoble
49:02who had an idea a bit saugrenue
49:04which was to send the blob to space.
49:06The goal of this mission
49:08was to put the blob in a nanosatellite,
49:11to send it to space,
49:12and to be able to see in live,
49:14by putting cameras and captures,
49:16how a cellule reacts to the conditions of space,
49:21that is,
49:21in zero gravity,
49:23face to the electromagnetic rayons,
49:24face to all the cosmic rayons.
49:34Physarum polycephalum could be joining the blob
49:37from that 1958 film,
49:39up in its cradle in the stars.
49:54What new surprises has the blob got in store for us?
50:01What else can it teach us about the origins of intelligence?
50:09This story is only just beginning.
50:47If you're falling from this building
50:49You cannot see there,
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