Science to Inspire Sci-Fi

Let’s cut to the chase. Below is a short list of modern science discoveries that could jump start ideas for your next sci-fi story.

Breeding Bricks

Scientists made a new form of concrete that can heal itself and reproduce. It’s a living material.

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE/UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER

Researchers mixed bacteria that get their energy from the sun with sand and a few other components. The mix allowed the bacteria to live and survive as they essentially “shat bricks” (calcium carbonate), allowing more material to be made as the bacteria grew. The living material is as strong as a cement-based mortar and can heal itself when damaged. The bacteria-based brick was also able to reproduce and create more bricks (under humid conditions).

There are also other kinds of living materials developed previously that can sense pressure or different colors of light (which tells them what patterns to grow in).

These creations could make for an interesting story where a city “outgrows” its citizens. Or a material used to build structures on planet colonies (mentioned in the reference article). Or it could be used more practically to explain why the damage in your sci-fi cities gets addressed so quickly after a major incident.

Brain Shrink

Researchers found out a certain type of shrew can shrink and regrow its brain! For the Etruscan shrew, it happens every winter. During this time, a special brain area—involved in processing information related to their senses—decreases in size. Scientists think its a way for them to save energy during the winter months, as their brains regrow after the winter season.

This could work as a peculiar trait for an alien species or be the result of a genetic modification gone wrong in designer babies.

Xenobots

Last year, scientists created tiny living “robots” called xenobots. They have no machinery whatsoever. These programmable creatures were made using frog stem cells.

An edited video summary of the Xenobot experiments. Publication: “A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

How’d they do it? Scientists mushed together frog stem cells and heart muscle cells. They forced them into different arrangements using tweezers and some electricity. Sounds a little too simple though, right?

It worked because they also made an algorithm that was good at guessing what arrangements of the stem cells (teal in vid) and heart muscle cells (red/green in the video) could make a tiny being that performs certain tasks. Their algorithm told them “Psst, if you mush the cells together like in design 1, you’ll probably make a tiny being that walks, or if you mush the cells together like in design 2, you’ll probably create a tiny being that can carry objects…” (You can find more info in the edited video based on their experiments.)

Just like scientists in the first 20 minutes of an AI disaster movie, they listened. Using the algorithm-inspired designs, they created organisms that performed simple tasks: move or carry objects, remove debris and other tasks. Unlike normal robots, when xenobots get damaged they automatically repair themselves. They also go for about a week without needing sustenance—after which they die. When they last reported on this, they could only live in liquid-filled petri dishes and don’t have real organs or parts to make them viable on land (though an article suggests the scientists may be considering designing them to have parts like blood vessels, brain cells, and other structures in future versions).

The researchers say xenobots could do a lot of good: cleaning up microplastics in the ocean, remove plaque from people’s blood vessels, or deliver drugs into the body.

As interesting as they are, I bet you can practically smell the philosophical issues that would help build a solid sci-fi story. Are they really living? Is it “right” to create organisms who are born to serve us (then “die” after completing their tasks)? Thinking about how this could be used (or misused in the future) could make great fodder for a story. It’s an idea that I played with in my published short story, The Xenobot Paradox.

Let me know what you think about this or any of the other topics in the comments section below.

Thanks for reading!