38. Design and nature
The best designs comes from nature. Sometimes we think we invented something, but actually we just found what already exists in nature.
An example is gears. They seem like a great invention to transfer power and synchronize a mechanical system. Some grasshoppers have gears to synchronize their legs when making a jump. These gears were not designed, they evolved. They existed all along, we just didn’t look hard enough.
Another example is the virus bacteriophage T4. It resembles the Lunar Lander that was used in the 70’s by the Apollo space program. The virus evolved to ‘land’ on bacteria and infect them. It has a landing system, duplicates of one protein in the head and a tail used to pass that DNA to infect the bacteria. (~Humans would be the disease infecting the moon if you keep the comparison going).
If you are looking for the best design, nature is the perfect place to start.
