Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

PROJECTOR WHIRS

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

DRAMATIC MUSIC

Two teenagers see it first.

Like a falling star from outer space.

Boy, that was close!

1958. A terrifying extra-terrestrial jelly threatens to engulf Earth

and all its inhabitants.

In a horror B-movie, the Blob makes its first ever screen appearance...

Look out! Because soon, very soon, the most horrifying monster menace

ever conceived will be oozing into this theatre!

This creature out of science fiction has given its name

to an actual living organism.

One which has scientists baffled.

The Blob is neither plant, animal nor mushroom,

yet this single-celled organism has been around on Earth

for almost a billion years.

It's one of the world's most primitive, and most simple, beings.

And yet, behind its apparent simplicity,

it has some truly incredible capacities.

It has no eyes, no mouth, no stomach, no legs,

yet it can see, smell, digest, and move around.

It has neither nervous system nor brain,

but it's capable of solving complex problems and even making strategies.

Its scientific name is Physarum Polycephalum,

and now it's being studied by researchers all over the world.

Their discoveries are taking us on a very strange journey indeed.

Leading us into a whole new field of science -

one in which the word "intelligence" does not imply the need for a brain.

This is the true story of the Blob.

At the very beginning of life on Earth,

almost a billion years before Homo Sapiens,

and 500 million years before the plants,

were the very first single-celled organisms...

..and among them was the Blob.

In the great Tree of Life, Physarum Polycephalum has long been

grouped in with the fungi.

In fact, it is what's known as a slime mould.

But although the Blob shares a mushroom's liking

for dark, humid places

and is usually found in shadowy undergrowth,

it possesses one ability that's got mycologists

scratching their heads...

..it can move!

With no apparent means to do so -

no legs, no propulsion system - the Blob can get around

thanks to its network of veins at a rate of one centimetre an hour.

Yet when it's hungry, it can hit as much as four centimetres an hour.

Just like in the movie, the Blob is a glutton.

It gorges on bacteria, yeasts and mushrooms.

But the really impressive thing is that the Blob is just

a single cell - albeit an unusually large one -

that can double in volume every day

and can reach several metres in diameter.

It is one of the very rare cells that are visible to the naked eye.

Audrey Dussutour is one of the world's leading

specialists on the Blob.

She's a researcher at France's National Scientific Research Centre

in Toulouse, and a Doctor of Ethology,

the branch of biology that studies animal behaviour.

She started out studying ants, and their nutrition,

until she had an unexpected encounter.

The Blob had gone off in search of food.

Such an astonishing cell would be a fascinating research subject

for a specialist in animal behaviour.

Her first notable publication revealed that,

when it comes to nutrition, the Blob is a genius.

Audrey Dussutour's method enabled her to determine

what the Blob's ideal diet was, and create the very best pudding to help

it grow, before setting it a few nutritional challenges.

To observe the Blob's choices,

Audrey and her team used time-lapse photography.

Images taken over periods of 24, 48 or even 72 hours,

allowed them to see just how the Blob evolved

when faced with a particular turn of events.

The Blob gropes around for a bit,

ignores the less suitable puddings and goes for the optimal one.

If none of the puddings contain the perfect ratio,

the Blob combines two of the imperfect ones -

one of them too sugary, the other too high in protein.

In humans and animals, nutritional needs are handled by the brain,

working alongside the stomach.

The Blob doesn't have a brain or a stomach, yet its can optimise

the intake of those nutrients essential for its growth.

Another remarkable phenomenon is that when conditions are very bad

and there's no food left, the Blob just dries out and becomes dormant.

It can stay like that for up to two years.

To bring it back to life, you just sprinkle it with water.

When it wakes up, the Blob's full of youthful vigour again,

and ready for new adventures.

But Audrey Dussutour's not the first person to have studied

this extraordinary organism.

In Japan, they have a long tradition of studying slime moulds.

Professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki of the University of Hokkaido

is one of the third generation of Japanese researchers

to be thrilled by Physarum.

In the scientific community,

they think of Professor Nakagaki as the "Blobmaster".

He was the first to reveal the Blob's extraordinary ability

to move about.

For him, as a biophysicist,

single-celled organisms are fundamental to his work.

The Blob is not like any other cell.

Thanks to its sheer size,

unique experiments can be carried out on it.

That means that Professor Nakagaki and his assistant Daniel Schenz

can put it through tests usually reserved for animals,

such as the labyrinth test.

They place the Blob in a maze, along with a source of nutrition.

Will it find its way?

It deploys its network of veins to set off on the hunt for food.

It doesn't get lost in the labyrinth.

It finds what it's looking for.

In a second experiment, a Blob is meticulously positioned over

the whole surface of the labyrinth.

At the entrance and exit of the maze are some oat flakes,

there to test the Blob's ability to connect two different food sources.

The Blob's reaction is amazing.

One by one, it eliminates all the wrong pathways.

Soon, there's just one vein left,

linking the two food sources by the shortest route.

The Blob just passed the labyrinth test.

By choosing the shortest path,

it has optimised the transfer of nutriments into its organism.

In view of this incredible result,

Professor Nakagaki published an article in Nature magazine.

It made waves.

In 2008, he received the IgNobel Prize, an award given to

serious scientific research into the most unlikely subjects.

Research that makes you smile - then think.

But the Professor didn't stop at that.

He wanted to study the network of veins that Physarum

creates in order to hunt for food.

Now, Physarum is a particularly interesting organism to study

biological transportation networks, because it is, basically,

an adaptive transportation network, that's what it is.

So if you want to study how network geometries

and network layouts respond to the circumstances,

then Physarum is an ideal organism to study these kinds of things.

Professor Nakagaki and his teams decided to compare

the networks created by the Blob to an existing system -

the Japanese railway network,

unanimously recognised as one of the most efficient in the world.

On a map of the Tokyo region, the principal towns have been replaced

by oat flakes, while the Blob is placed on the capital itself.

Will Physarum be able to solve this one?

The Blob explores its environment and, as it discovers the oat flakes,

permanently reconfigures its network of veins.

It reinforces the links between the different food sources,

as the other links disappear.

The network the Blob created is just as efficient

and streamlined as the railway network.

When it comes to planning an optimal network,

the Blob's the equal of any engineer.

It makes the most efficient choices,

and finds its way around with astonishing ease.

Audrey Dussutour and her Australian colleagues have revealed

one of the secrets of the Blob's displacement mechanisms.

It's a strategy found in ants, who emit trails of pheromones

to mark where the food is and remember it.

Then other members of the colony use that "external memory"

to find the food.

Like the ants, the Blob can develop a kind of external memory,

thanks to its mucus.

For Audrey Dussutour and her colleagues, this discovery was

a giant step in their understanding of how the Blob behaves.

This creature just kept pushing back the limits of possibility.

For centuries, "intelligence" was thought of as being exclusive

to Homo Sapiens, the only creatures capable of reason and thought.

It wasn't until the 20th Century that researchers started to

discover the cognitive abilities of animals -

communication, memory, decision-making.

To this day, the scientific community tends to view

intelligence as belonging to "complex" living beings

that have a nervous system and a brain.

But for some years now, the study of cognitive processes in simpler

organisms has been breaking down barriers.

The idea of a form of "intelligence without a brain"

is being promoted by some of the true pioneers in the field.

To that end, in Florence,

the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology was created.

Frantisek Baluska and Stefano Mancuso are two of the world's

foremost specialists in vegetable intelligence.

Due to the fact that it is so tightly linked to the human beings,

it is very difficult now to speak about intelligence

in other organisms, but in fact it is just very simply

the ability of the organisms to survive,

and it requires really high intelligence

to survive outside in the harsh environment.

The notion of intelligence in the vegetable world

has always been controversial.

Charles Darwin himself faced ridicule when in 1870

he raised the possibility of intelligence in plants.

The father of the Theory of Evolution was already onto

the importance of roots and dared to make the analogy with the brain.

In 2005, together with Stefano, we started to argue that this theory

is really not crazy theory, but it has some really important message.

And since then, we have published several papers which are very

strongly supporting this theory.

Following up on Darwin's intuition, the two researchers have

shown the importance of the root tips in a plant's growth.

As it grows, the root advances bit by bit,

all the time making contact with the soil.

It feels its way, avoiding any obstacles,

and searching for the best possible environment in which to develop.

But if you cut off the end of the root,

it will grow much faster but totally straight.

It's no longer capable of analysing its environment.

Once they'd validated Darwin's beloved root-brain theory,

Frantisek Baluska and Stefano Mancuso went on to prove

that plants had another vital capacity - memory.

Plants are made up of millions of cells that all interact.

A root that processes information like a brain,

and has the ability to memorise -

these are characteristics that we thought were exclusive

to the animal world.

Seemingly, they exist in vegetables too.

Could such capacities be possible in a living creature

composed of just one cell?

Audrey Dussutour proved that the Blob is also

capable of retaining information.

The objective was to try and get the Blob used to a substance

it didn't like - salt.

Between the Blob and its favourite snack

is a bridge a few centimetres long.

Normally, the Blob would take under two hours to cross it.

But when, on day one of the test, the bridge was covered with

salt, it took ten hours to advance just one centimetre.

The Blob finally learnt to tolerate salt.

This experiment required enormous patience and a lot of precision.

Audrey Dussutour was the first to scientifically prove

habituation in a single-celled organism.

It was a revolution in the scientific community.

Audrey Dussutour's discovery pushed back the limits

of scientific knowledge.

After human beings, animals and vegetables, she showed that

a single-celled being was also capable of memory and learning.

But just how far could the Blob really go?

It's indestructible!

It's indescribable! Nothing can stop it!

This town is in danger!

How can it be stopped? Mob hysteria sweeps one city!

Before long the nation, and then the world,

could fall before the bloodcurdling threat of the Blob!

To find out, Audrey Dussutour started with the Blob's

remarkable ability to merge.

A blob cut into two equal blobs.

To find out if the Blob can transmit what it has learned,

Audrey Dussutour brought together thousands of blobs

that were accustomed to salt with other so-called "naive" ones.

The Blob is capable, not only of learning,

but also of developing a kind of communication

and sharing what it has learned - proof of its genius!

She injected salt directly into the venous system of a "naive" blob.

The blob's memory comes from storing a substance inside itself.

A memory specific to each blob that influences its behaviour

when it moves around or feeds.

Audrey Dussutour noticed that, depending where they came from,

Blobs didn't have quite the same abilities.

The Japanese Blob is the fastest.

The Australian Blob is slower, but more careful.

And the American Blob is the greediest.

Audrey Dussutour's discoveries were followed by others

from researchers all over the world, all keen to learn

more about cognition in so called primary beings.

They get together frequently to share their progress

on various organisms -

plants, bacteria, sea anemones, or aquatic worms called planarians.

When it comes to solving the mysteries of intelligence

without a brain, the Blob is the most promising of them all.

In the German city of Bremen, Professor Hans-Gunther Dobereiner

and his team are trying to decode

and simulate the Blob's guiding mechanisms.

Seen through an electronic microscope,

the Blob reveals more of its internal functions.

This network is... There is a stream

of what we call a protoplasm.

This is same as blood

flowing in our body.

You can see here that there is a flow within these veins.

Within these internal veins, we can't see it here

but there would be actin filaments, wrapping up these veins,

which causes contraction and relaxation,

which gives the force for this protoplasm to go back and forth,

and this is called "shuttle streaming".

Three steps forward, two steps back, like a tide,

the pressure on the membrane from this current pushes

the whole organism forward.

And the plasticity of its membrane allows it to take on

ever more diverse forms.

The form the Blob chooses depends on its environment,

as proven by Professor Dobereiner's team.

To understand how the Blob builds its network,

researchers used a centrifuge to obtain hundreds of "mini-blobs"

just 200 microns in diameter.

At this stage, the mini-blobs haven't established

any kind of connection.

Observing the creation of a vascular system allows them to analyse

how the connections that distribute the Blob's blood are made.

The Bremen teams are trying to establish a mathematical

model to describe the process.

A model that could help medicine to understand cancer.

Hans-Gunther Dobereiner observed that, to feed and develop,

tumours construct a vascular system similar to that of the Blob.

Computer modelling of the Blob's system, then,

can give some indication of how tumours grow.

And our genius without a brain

has plenty of other solutions to offer science too.

The Blob is an incomparable model organism in fields as varied

as biophysics, ecology and medicine.

But it hasn't revealed all its secrets yet.

And now, in Boston, at one of the epicentres of the study of primitive

intelligence, they're actually trying to get the Blob to talk.

Michael Levin, head of the Allen Discovery Center,

has a background in both computer science and biology.

He is trying to decode the language of cells.

To help crack the code of primitive intelligence,

he's drawing on his knowledge of the planarians, the little aquatic worms

that have been around on Earth for almost 500 million years.

Unlike the Blob, planarians do possess a rudimentary brain,

but that's not their most extraordinary characteristic.

One of the most important things about planaria is that they

regenerate every part of the body.

So if cut into pieces, every piece of a planarian knows exactly

what a standard planarian body should look like,

because it regenerates, it regrows, everything that's missing

in the correct location and it stops when it's done.

When a planarian is cut in two, its cells regenerate to rebuild

a head at one end and a tail at the other.

The memory of the planarian's form is therefore

stored in the whole of its body, at the very heart of its cells.

So we've been studying the question of how is this information

stored and processed.

And over the years we've discovered that part of this control is

an electric circuit that allows these cells to store this

kind of information.

And what we found is that if we temporarily -

just for 48 hours - disrupt this electric circuit and, in essence,

"wipe" the finely encoded pattern memory of these tissues,

when they regenerate they can regenerate as two-headed animals.

By disturbing the communication between the cells

and modifying the electrical signals they exchange,

Michael Levin has coaxed the planarian into growing

a second head in place of its tail.

It's an incredible result which opens up infinite possibilities.

What's at stake here are many applications in regenerative

medicine and basic biology, because if we understood how cells

specify to each other what is the structure that they're

working to build or repair, we could do many things.

We could fix birth defects, we could grow back limbs or eyes

or other structures that a patient might have lost,

and turn tumour tissue back towards the normal cooperative behaviour

that cells have in making coordinated structures

instead of tumours.

What determines the function of a cell?

This fundamental question may well be answered by the Blob.

That's Michael Levin's theory.

When he heard about Audrey Dussutour's work,

he decided to undertake new research on Physarum.

For us, the most important thing in physarum is to really

understand how specific information is encoded.

In other words, if the Physarum learns that crossing a salt

bridge is good or that a particular maze has a particular structure,

how is that represented in whatever is inside the Physarum.

His objective is to decode the language of cells to communicate

directly with them and perhaps, one day, influence their behaviour.

It's a whole new continent of cellular intelligence

that's opening, a land of great promise.

In Bristol, behind the doors of his Unconventional Computing Laboratory,

Andrew Adamatzky sees the Blob as a great opportunity

to develop new approaches to computer science.

His research sometimes takes unexpected turns.

Apart from this Blob Symphony,

Andrew Adamatzky has other plans as well

for the electrical emissions of Physarum.

He grafts blobs onto robots

which move to the rhythm of their electric pulses.

He can even make them change direction

by zapping the Blob with a laser beam.

Physarum is strongly repelled by light.

Inspired by the Blob's many talents,

his objective is to reinvent the robots of tomorrow,

and make robots as intelligent as the Blob,

capable of constantly adapting and reacting to their environment,

just as the Blob has been doing for millions of years.

Computers and robots, biophysics, ethology -

these scientists are all working on basic research.

Unlike applied research, it's about venturing into unknown

territories with no immediate application.

However, their discoveries could change the world.

The Blob has revealed some of the secrets

of its incredible longevity here on Earth -

nutrition, mobility, fusion, mapping, learning, memory...

But science isn't short of big ideas

and space could be the next field of investigation.

Physarum polycephalum could be joining the Blob

from that 1958 film, up in its cradle in the stars.

What new surprises has the Blob got in store for us?

What else can it teach us about the origins of "intelligence"?

This story is only just beginning.