Maybe We Shouldn't Try to Block the Asteroid

I find this disquieting: the Amphibious Robot Turtle (ART). [bold added]

The robot features morphing limbs that can adapt their shape, stiffness, and behavior to the environment. The limbs use variable stiffness materials and artificial muscles to transform their shape when transitioning from one environment to another.

In its legged state, ART can traverse land with a variety of four-legged terrestrial gaits. Upon reaching a body of water, ART can then morph its legs into flippers, enabling it to swim with lift- and drag-based aquatic gaits.

“You can almost think of [adaptive morphogenesis] as a form of evolution on demand,” wrote Karl Ziemelis, chief physical sciences editor for Nature.

I saw the Transformer movies, and I know how this ends.

The rat brain with the human part glowing.

I'm actually more worried about this: Scientists Grow Human Cells in Rat Brains

Neuroscientists at Stanford University transplanted tiny blobs of neural tissue known as organoids into the brains of newborn rats. The human cells grew and made functional connections within the rat brain, generating hybrid neural circuits, the researchers said in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

...Such research could probe the molecular underpinnings of hard-to-study psychiatric conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, neuroscientists said.

That promise will need to be weighed against ethical concerns about animal welfare and how to classify animals with chimeric brains, or brains that have both human and animal cells, some researchers and ethicists said.

Don't worry about human-rat creatures growing in labs. Scientists would never let anything harmful escape. You're not a science denier, are you?