Behold, the Worm Blob and Its Computerized Twin
The New York Times
It wriggles. It pulls. It falls apart and comes back together. It is everything you wish for and everything you fear.
In the wild, a worm blob looks like any other mud ball lolling around the bottom of a pond. But if you poke an unassuming worm blob, it will respond in a way a mud ball never would, wriggling out into a noodly shape that a Pastafarian might mistake for something divine.
This is how Saad Bhamla discovered his first worm blob, in a pond in California. “As you poke it with a stick, it comes alive,” said Dr. Bhamla, a bioengineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s school of chemical and biomolecular engineering. Dr. Bhamla’s encounter with the worm blob haunted him for years (in a good way, he says) until he started his own lab and needed a first project.
California blackworms, soft and slender ropes as surreally red as grocery store meat, often live in seasonal pools. When times are good, a worm is simply a worm, wiggling about on its own. When times are bad, a worm must become a blob, entangling with hundreds or thousands of other worms into a slimy, writhing ball. And, like an animated ball of yarn, the worm blob can move as one unit, meandering away from predators or stress.
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