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Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180001B
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00:04 Welcome back to The Creator Revealed.
00:06 Today we're talking about Molecular Machines, 00:10 the little machines in molecules. 00:12 And who better than a nanochemist 00:17 to have on the second half of the program. 00:19 Exactly, Dr. Ryan Hayes teaches chemistry 00:22 at Andrews University. 00:24 He is a nanochemist, that means a chemist who makes 00:29 really tiny, tiny, tiny little things. 00:32 Now, we've been talking about nano machines really, 00:37 when we're talking about those machines, 00:39 those molecular machines inside the cells. 00:44 So let's meet Dr. Hayes. 00:46 Let's ask him a little bit 00:47 about what exactly a nanochemist does, 00:50 and then we can get into some nano machines stuff, yeah. 00:56 Hi, Dr. Hayes. Thanks a lot. 00:57 Welcome. 00:59 Thank you, thanks for having me 01:00 on this program. 01:02 This is exciting. 01:03 Now, we got to be careful about the term nanochemist 01:06 'cause some people might think that this means, 01:07 I'm a really, really small chemist 01:11 and that's not the case. 01:12 I've met you, you're completely life size, yes. 01:15 That's right. 01:17 But I do study and we actually have a company 01:21 that I'm a part of, where we make nano materials. 01:27 And so to a chemist actually, nano materials are quite large 01:31 but to our eye and to everyone else, 01:33 nano materials are very, very small, 01:37 so small that you can't see them. 01:40 But they are a collection of atoms and molecules to form 01:45 large chemical structures to us. 01:48 But they're usually precisely engineered and controlled 01:54 to give you the right size and functionality 01:57 to do really interesting things. 02:00 And a nanoscientist, nanochemist, 02:03 there's some out there trying to build little nano cars 02:05 and nano sized batteries. 02:08 And I like to build nano sized versions 02:12 of this little suction ball cup, 02:14 can say more about that 02:16 as a little shout out to my students, 02:18 you know, I like to talk about nano materials 02:20 that look like this. 02:21 And, but inside our body, 02:24 there's just an amazing amount of nano sized structures 02:28 doing amazing things there. 02:30 So maybe you can tell us... 02:32 Yeah, maybe you can tell us a little bit about 02:34 what precisely it takes to make these really small structures. 02:39 First of all, are they something 02:40 that you can see under a microscope 02:42 or how would you... 02:44 Are they smaller than that even? 02:49 Well, they're definitely smaller 02:51 than what you can see with the microscope, 02:53 people have been able to... 02:54 Scientists, many of them visualize them 02:56 with things like an electron microscope 02:59 or atomic force microscope. 03:01 And so we have ways of actually getting visualization of them, 03:06 getting their structures, but to build them, 03:09 boy, this is a real tough job. 03:12 And it takes a lot of knowledge of chemistry 03:14 and the rules of how chemicals react with each other 03:18 to overcome thermodynamics. 03:21 These things wanna just spread out, 03:23 but we want to bring all the molecules together. 03:25 So there's some organization 03:28 that needs to be thought of in advance 03:31 to bring these things together. 03:33 So I do this on a daily basis. 03:36 So what you're saying then is, 03:38 there has to be a plan when you start, 03:41 you can't just sort of walk into a lab and say, 03:45 "Let's see what happens when I mixed together 03:47 these chemicals today?" 03:50 That's exactly right. 03:52 Now, my students 03:53 would hope it would be like that. 03:54 Let's just make some things together 03:56 and hopefully get some great nanostructures 03:59 but, no, we have to go in with a plan and a recipe. 04:03 And even with that, even with our best recipes, 04:06 we still struggle to make pure products 04:10 with the desired purpose that we have in mind. 04:13 So yeah, definitely need a plan, 04:16 a good recipe and a good laboratory space, 04:20 that's usually needs to be clean, 04:24 you need to be able to run your reactions 04:27 without interference, 04:28 and all at the right time and temperatures. 04:31 There's a lot of factors that we think about 04:33 to get to the right structures that we're trying to build. 04:36 And we're trying to build, we build some really simple 04:38 nanostructures here, 04:40 especially, compared to what we see 04:42 in living creatures. 04:44 Well, let me ask you about that. 04:46 I mean, you're a smart guy 04:51 and you have all of this equipment, 04:56 if you set out 04:57 to make one of these little nanostructures, 05:00 this relatively simple little nanostructures, 05:03 about how long would it take you to make one? 05:05 Is this something that you can have a good idea 05:08 in the morning and have by the afternoon 05:10 or is it something that takes considerably longer than that? 05:17 That's a great question. 05:19 And it depends on, 05:20 how elaborate you want your structure. 05:22 Now, the ones that we make, they can take weeks and months 05:29 to make the structures that we're looking for. 05:32 And these are relatively simple ones 05:35 that have a lot of repetitive structures to them. 05:39 Yeah, in fact, that's kind of a problem 05:41 is how long it can take and that drives up the cost, 05:46 and these things can be kind of expensive, 05:48 And so, yeah, it can take weeks and months. 05:52 And that's not just letting them sit in a pot 05:54 and stir like a pot of spaghetti. 05:56 We actually have to go in, 05:58 it will do that part for little bit, 06:00 then we have to pull out the materials, clean them up, 06:03 and maybe do some purification, 06:06 and then get them ready for another step. 06:09 We spend a lot of time doing that. 06:10 There is some shortcuts you can take, 06:12 but then you lose out on the structure. 06:15 You won't get the beautiful structures, 06:17 if you try to take some shortcuts. 06:20 It's quite a challenging time, takes quite time. 06:22 And what you're saying, doctor, 06:24 is that this takes intelligent design in a plan 06:30 that has to be carried forward. 06:34 Oh, absolutely. 06:35 And even with simple, 06:37 if there's such a thing as simple nanostructures, 06:40 you definitely need a plan. 06:43 You need an extreme amount of knowledge 06:46 about how these molecules, these chemicals, the atoms, 06:50 the electrons, how all of these things work? 06:54 And without a plan, you're gonna get a mess. 06:57 And as one of my advisors said, 06:59 you put garbage in, you get garbage out. 07:01 We need really clean materials, and you need a good plan, 07:05 you need awesome intelligence to think about 07:08 all of the side reactions that can happen, 07:11 and all the ways to go wrong, 07:12 so that you can prevent those from happening, 07:15 as much as we would like chemistry to just happen. 07:19 Being in the lab is proven to me 07:21 that this is quite a challenge 07:22 to make even simple nanostructures. 07:26 So what do you think about Darwin's theory 07:28 of the warm pool 07:31 and the chemicals coming together 07:32 for this little amoeba like structure? 07:37 Yeah, that's a great question. 07:39 It's important to know the history right there 07:40 and I won't go all into that 07:42 but much of Darwin's thoughts were formulated 07:45 well before chemistry was even established 07:48 in the way that it is in the modern scientific way, 07:50 that we know how chemicals reacting. 07:52 He thought there was just, 07:54 you know, a couple, four or five chemicals 07:56 that came together in a little bubble to make life 07:58 and we know now it's thousands of chemicals 08:01 coming together in a complex not bubble, 08:04 but a surrounding 08:06 and an amazing amount of nanostructures 08:09 that have come together. 08:10 Not just one nanostructure, but many of them 08:13 that have come together 08:15 to form a working living system. 08:18 So warm little pond, I think we would love it, 08:21 if it was that easy. 08:23 But the more we know about life in the nanostructures, 08:25 in the nano materials that life is made out of, 08:28 we understand the complexity that's there. 08:31 And I think, there is a desire or you know, 08:34 that scientists think, well, maybe we're missing something. 08:37 There's some theory that's going to come along 08:39 and change all of this. 08:40 Well, the more we look, the more complicated it gets. 08:43 So this problems not getting any easier. 08:45 So it's getting worse and not better. 08:47 Let me ask you this. 08:50 If you think about these nano machines, 08:53 these complex nano machines 08:54 that we find inside living things. 08:57 If... 08:59 I mean, you're making 09:00 relatively simple 09:01 nano chemicals, 09:07 would there be any realistic expectation 09:10 that we would even have the technology 09:12 to make something like these kinds of complex machines 09:18 that we find inside cells? 09:20 Or what would that really take? 09:24 Well, doing it from scratch, 09:28 I'd say that we're decades and decades away from that, 09:32 perhaps centuries from figuring that out, 09:34 maybe not, but it's a long time. 09:38 You know, what a lot of scientists do now, 09:40 is we just copy. 09:41 We just copy what we see in the cell. 09:44 We take things out 09:46 and we try to change them a little bit, 09:48 to give them some new functionality. 09:50 But all we're doing is modifying the master plan 09:53 that's already been enacted there. 09:55 So people are finding it easier just to mimic, 09:59 what we see in life rather than trying this over. 10:02 So basically, we were plagiarizing. 10:07 Absolutely. 10:08 It's so much easier to just use what's there 10:11 and tweak it for some of our own designs, 10:14 that's there. 10:16 And... 10:18 I'm sorry, we're just running out of time. 10:19 But it's fair to say that you absolutely believe 10:23 that God is our Creator. 10:28 Absolutely. 10:30 I can see it the handiwork, 10:33 when I see the chemicals coming together... 10:36 When we look at a house, we don't go, wow, 10:39 those pieces of wood and nails just blew together 10:41 with the right temperature and wind speeds. 10:44 So there's no question 10:45 when we look at a house that someone built it. 10:47 But when we look at molecules, we say, "Oh! 10:49 I have no idea how that happened." 10:51 So chance can do that. 10:53 But when we understand the chemistry, 10:55 and the mechanisms there, 10:57 we start to see the hand of a designer. 11:00 I absolutely believe that God is the designer 11:03 and the head chemist that put all of this together, 11:05 so that we can have life and have life abundantly. 11:09 Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Hayes, 11:11 that's been a real pleasure. 11:13 And there've been some pretty deep insights there. 11:15 Yes. Amen. 11:16 And it's just exciting to think about that. 11:19 Yeah, I cannot imagine that this particular point, 11:24 how you could put a living thing together 11:26 from scratch, 11:28 even if you did have, 11:29 all of those parts that are necessary. 11:33 It's truly a triumph of a kind of technology 11:40 that we certainly haven't mastered. 11:42 And it's certainly points towards 11:43 an incredible brilliance that's there. 11:45 And when you think about it, I've heard this example before. 11:48 If you have a junkyard and you throw a bomb out there, 11:52 you don't end up with a shuttle. 11:54 And that's what many scientists to support Darwin's theory 11:59 seem to be trying to tell us. 12:00 Well, we hope that you've been encouraged 12:03 to understand that God created you 12:06 and He loves you. |
Revised 2019-03-11