#because the flower's defense against terminal mutations triggered

[kingjackalope]

Look, either the people who made this are NOT cancer researchers, and would never have cured cancer anyway, or they ARE cancer researchers and are having a laugh while they develop skills and technologies that they believe will contribute to curing cancer eventually.

I know that physicists are probably not trying to cure cancer in the first place, but it really shows a lack of non-lateral thinking and dismissiveness towards creativity's role in science.

Curiosity and playfullness has lead us to so many surprising discoveries!

Why do peppers make our mouths sting? Why is horseshoe crab blood blue? Why do naked mole rats live so long? Asking questions, which starts by giving even half of a fuck about anything at all, leads you to previously unknown substances, the medical application of which might not be immediately obvious. But, in the right hands they can become major breakthroughs.

I do know a few cancer researchers, one of whom started as a marine biologist. We had a discussion once about the horrible feedback loop where we as a society don't care about anything (be it ideas or animals) that aren't obviously, immediately useful to us. Then, when it turns out some geothermal vent tube worm or something produces, like, an enzyme that suppresses tumor growth OOPS too late we dropped an oil rig on the only place on Earth where it lived because it was ugly and we didn't give a shit about it.

Can you really, REALLY, not possibly imagine any scenario where learning to build a microscopic structure might contribute to medical science? None?!

oh dang, it's gonna take them even longer to get home in that

[Image description a news screenshot reading "Physicists make tiny model of Star Trek's USS Voyager that's smaller than a human hair"]