{"id":1236102,"date":"2025-03-01T07:15:26","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T12:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1236102"},"modified":"2025-03-01T07:15:26","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T12:15:26","slug":"weve-figured-out-the-basics-of-a-shape-shifting-t-1000-style-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1236102","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve figured out the basics of a shape-shifting, T-1000-style material"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The T-1000 in Terminator 2<\/em> could change shape at will, morph its hands into blades or turn parts of its body into a fluid to move through metal bars. \u201cI saw this movie when I was a child\u2014it was like, ‘Wow, can you imagine,’ I thought, ‘being able to do this?’\u201d says Otger Camp\u00e0s, a professor at Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. \u201cNow I work on embryos. And what we saw in The Terminator<\/em> actually happens in an embryo. This kind of shape shifting is what an embryo does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp\u00e0s and his team drew inspiration from processes called fluidization and convergent extension\u2014mechanisms that cells in embryos use to coordinate their behavior when forming tissues and organs in a developing organism. The team built a robotic collective where each robotic unit behaved like an embryonic cell. As a collective, the robots behaved like a material that could change shape and switch between solid and liquid states, just like the T-1000.<\/p>\n

Real-world and sci-fi alloys<\/h2>\n

The T-1000 was a marvel to behold, but the movie gave no clues as to how it worked. This is why Camp\u00e0s and his colleagues looked for clues elsewhere. Similar shape-shifting properties have been observed in embryos when you watch their development sped up using time-lapse imaging. \u201cTissues in embryos can switch between solid and fluid states to shape the organs. We were thinking how we could engineer robots that would do the same,\u201d\u00a0Camp\u00e0s says.<\/p>\n

Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The T-1000 in Terminator 2 could change shape at will, morph its hands into blades or turn parts of its body into a fluid to move through metal bars. \u201cI saw this movie when I was a child\u2014it was like, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology","category-unfiltered-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1236102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1236102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1236102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1236102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}