With the advent of The Walking Dead, zombies are more popular now than ever before.
Interestingly enough, GiantFreakinRobot and the Huffington Post recently ran a story about biologists developing zombie cells.
No, this is not something out of I Am Legend where a virus gets out and created zombies everywhere, don’t panic, this was an experiment developed in Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico biology labs where they developed “zombie-like” cells.
As the Post tells us, mammalian cells are coated with silica, and it makes replicas that are nearly perfect to the original. The silica protects the cells, and they can keep living at higher temperatures and pressures than the first living cells. At 400 degrees, the protein of the cell evaporates, but a three-dimensional replica of the “formerly living being” is left behind, thanks to the silica.
The head researcher said, “Our zombie cells bridge chemistry and biology to create forms that not only near-perfectly resemble their past selves, but can do future work.” But as Robot tells us, this is not for the development of creating zombies, thankfully. This is to try and create fossils that we can create fuels from.
“That’s right,” writes Rudie Obias. “Zombie gasoline for cars, boats, and airplanes.” Could this eventually end all energy crises and we’ll never have to go to war with the Middle East over oil again? That would be cool, no? And we thought electric cars and going solar were going to save us.
In other undead news, you read our report on TG about hackers pulling a zombie prank in Montana. The pranksters got onto the local station KRTV, and played an emergency warning that the undead were attacking. This thankfully did not result in wide-spread panic, the TV viewers who saw the warning apparently got the joke, but the FCC didn’t find this very amusing.
In fact, according to Media Bistro, the Federal Communications Commission has been telling TV stations to “take immediate action” and make sure their Emergency Alert Systems are more secure after this zombie hacker prank.”
Again, people got the joke, but you never know. Without a disclaimer that the whole thing’s in fun, maybe there could be an undead panic down the road, especially if The Walking Dead stays on top in the ratings, and zombie cells becomes the energy source of the future.
