Using a computer-based genetic algorithm (selecting for an attribute after "mutating" variables), scientists trying to evolve a oscillator circuit managed to create one that turned into a radio receiver... serving up a nearby computer's signal as output.

Paul Layzell and Jon Bird at the University of Sussex in Brighton applied the program to a simple arrangement of transistors and found that an oscillating output did indeed evolve.

But when they looked more closely they found that, despite producing an oscillating signal, the circuit itself was not actually an oscillator. Instead, it was behaving more like a radio receiver, picking up a signal from a nearby computer and delivering it as an output.

In essence, the evolving circuit had cheated, relaying oscillations generated elsewhere, rather than generating its own.

And despite not being explicitly selected for, the circuit had also grown itself an "antenna."

This just tickles me.

It's somehow anxiety-provoking too. (Sometimes nature doesn't ask, "Would you like a side of fries with that?" ~ sometimes you just get the Meal Deal automatically.)

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