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Surprising Science

The Efficiency of Nature

“Biophysicists have calculated natural system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants.”
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The idea is gaining traction in the scientific community that: “certain key features of the natural world have been honed by evolution to the highest possible peaks of performance, the legal limits of what Newton, Maxwell, Pauli, Planck et Albert will allow. Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them the superb efficiency with which bacterial cells will close in on a food source; the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head; and the way a shark can find its prey by measuring micro-fluxes of electricity in the water.”

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