Kebaldo

New Quanta article looks at one of the coolest tiny machines in biology - the bacterial flagellar motor. It’s basically a microscopic spinning engine that bacteria use to move. After decades of trying to fully understand it, scientists are finally figuring out how it actually works. The motor is powered by a flow of charged particles (kind of like a tiny battery), which creates force and makes it rotate. So what looks like something alive and mysterious is really just an incredibly advanced microscopic machine running on the same basic rules as everything else. More broadly, the article addresses the idea of a "life force." It argues that no special force is needed to explain life. Instead, biological activity arises from physical processes that operate far from equilibrium, where constant energy flow keeps the system active and organized. The flagellar motor shows that living systems can be understood as energy driven, self organizing systems. What appears to be uniquely "alive" can be explained by standard physical laws, such as thermodynamics and molecular interactions. Physics pushed to an extreme level of complexity.

Bacteria move around using a molecular machine called the flagellar motor that rotates faster than the flywheel of a race car engine and switches directions in an instant. After 50 yrs, scientists have finally figured out how it works. “My lifelong quest is now fulfilled.” Link⤵️