On: Bacteria upcycle carbon waste into valuable chemicals

[candyman]

Nothing matters unless and until it scales. There are scores of these little examples of doing this sort of thing in a lab.

[VBprogrammer → candyman]

Surely the converse is true: nothing ever happened at scale which didn't start off as a little example on a lab bench?

[troymc → VBprogrammer]

The vast majority of the living things on Earth didn't start off on a lab bench, they just mutated and evolved "out there," in nature.

Therefore the converse is not true.

[countvonbalzac → troymc]

Mutations don't happen at scale, they occur in single organisms. Therefore the converse is true!

[Maarten88 → candyman]

I think the publication describes they scaled it to a 120L pilot reactor and ran the process continuously for 3 weeks feeding it 11 to 23 L of gas per min.

[SantalBlush → candyman]

And this is a useless, low-effort point to make. If we waited for a technology to scale before posting about it on HN, it would already be old news.

[etrautmann → SantalBlush]

The cautionary statements occasionally make sense for announcements around battery tech in particular. Here I agree it’s not useful