From Molecule to Supercomputer to Second Life

Here's mixed reality taken to an atomistic level: the whiz kids within IBM's Second Life labs took the data describing a protein molecule generated on a supercomputer, then imported that into SL, where a scripted building engine dynamically recreated the molecule as a 3D model the size of an auditorium.  IBM's epredator Potato (perched on the molecule in the video he took above) writes about this on the IBM-SL blog Eightbar, and points to an interview with two of its creators, Zha Ewry and Rez Tone, on SLNN.  This is actually just one protein molecule in many-- in fact, there's an entire wiki devoted to them, with nearly twenty in-world now or with data available for deployment.  The obvious practical application is in education, but it's easy to imagine engineering uses down the road, too-- for example, what if the data of this simulated molecule were linked up with nano-bots which could interact with the real one?

Comments

[Fleep Tuque]

Thanks for this post and the link to the wiki, I'm always giving SL demos to educators and this is great list to explore for biochem faculty.

[Hiro Sheridan]

There has been a lot of chemistry done on Second Life. For a brief synopsis look here: http://slusage.com/chemistry.asp