Tag: machine

How did life emerge on Earth? Are we the only ‘living’ planet in the universe? How can something as fragile as a living organism colonize an entire planet? Do all living beings on our planet descend from one and the same common ancestral cell?

An elegant installation of brass and American walnut stands on large black bird legs. Beautifully finished. The big glass sphere displays a turbulent ‘primordial soup’. Blue when cold, red when overheated.

The microscope shows what is happening inside the sphere. Four large sliders beg to be moved.
The Origin of Life takes you back 4 billion years, when the first life originated on Earth. Now it is up to you to create the right conditions…

Simulation

Here you can experiment with the Origin of Life simulation yourself:

Hydrothermal vents or tidal pools?

We know little for certain when it comes to something that happened 4 billion years ago. There are no clear theories explaining how the first life originated and where it happened. There are only ‘hypotheses’: possibilities. Currently, the “hydrothermal vents” hypothesis is the most prevalent in science, followed by the “tidal pools” hypothesis.
The Origin of Life lets you experiment with both possibilities: either at the sea surface near the coastline or deep underwater at the hot springs on the seabed. If you manage to get the conditions right, you see how molecules clump together into intricate constellations with a cell membrane and often specialized regions as well. But whether that is already life remains an open question.

Science Communication

The Origin of Life encourages visitors to actively reflect on a complex issue such as the origin of life, which took place on a timescale unimaginable to us. These are some of the recurrent themes in my conversations with visitors:

• When is something alive?
• What does a transition from ‘lifeless’ to ‘living’ look like? What was required for it?
• Did life emerge once and are we the result of that? Or did it happen billions of times and fizzled out billions of times?
• Why are scientists fairly certain that all life on Earth originated from one and the same ancestral cell?
• What would other, earlier forms of life have looked like?
• What changes has Earth undergone caused by all living organisms?
• What are the consequences of climate change for life on Earth?
• If there are billions of stars, each with many more planets, surely there must be one somewhere that is reasonably comparable to our planet?
• If we already find complex molecules, such as amino acids, on asteroids passing by by chance, what does that mean for the chances that there is life somewhere outside of Earth?

It’s not always easy to start a conversation with the wider audience, but the Origin of Life strikes a chord with every visitor: this has no resemblance to anything we encounter in daily life, so it must be interesting! And once engaged, the subject of the emergence of life turns out to be remarkebly fascinating for many people.

Origins Center

In the Netherlands we do a lot research into the origin of life. The Origins Center is the umbrella organization for the more than 380 Dutch researchers in this field: biologists, geologists, mathematicians, chemists, and astronomers. They have compiled a very nice, accessible brochure: Oorsprong.

On May 19, 2026, I presented my Origin of Life at the annual conference of the Origins Center in Kerkrade. To my surprise even serious researchers are enthralled by my unique visualization of their field.

Where are your emotions located? Where reside your fears? Where are you in love? Advances in medical technology have radically changed our perception of the brain. Have you ever had a CT scan? Or an MRI?

The Tehuti Brain Scanner shows in spectacular fashion how these new techniques map your brain layer by layer, searching for the precise locations of your emotions, decisions and control of your muscles.

In the “Full brain scan” mode, the laser starts at the bottom, at the brain stem. While the laser lights up a slice of the rotating brain, you see on the screen how the scan builds up. Once the picture is complete the scanner moves to the next layer. The menu dial offers 8 other modes that each simulate various types of scientific brain research, like “Emotion mapping”, “Brand recognition” and the “Trail-making test”.

When the Tehuti is not busy doing advanced brain science you can enjoy the intricate light patterns projected onto the ceiling.

For more information on the Tehuti Brain Scanner, visit the details page.

If you would like to see the Tehuti in action or have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Below, you can try out the new software for the Tehuti Brain Scanner. I’m working on a large variant that features a crystal ball with a diameter of 20 centimeters, twice the size of the standard Tehuti. However, a diameter twice as large means an increase in weight of about eight times. And then you suddenly have to start thinking carefully about stronger motors and a gradual acceleration and deceleration of the ball.

The new software (under construction)

Long before we all had access to the internet, there was a small group of people worldwide who were able to make worldwide contacts and communicate. Unfortunately, there was no one in my area who was interested in this, but the idea always fascinated me immensely. The threshold for learning Morse code is unfortunately high and broadcasting on short and medium wave radio frequencies requires permits and exams. Too much effort in a time when we can make free and easy video calls to the entire world.

But my interest in classic Morse keys, the button with which you generate the short and long signals, has always remained. What I find beautiful is the precise adjustment options with which everyone can adjust such a simple push button completely to their own wishes: more or less counter-pressure and a longer or shorter path to the switching point. My self-designed Morse key has these adjustment options and uses magnets to provide the counter-pressure.

In order to make this classic Morse key usable for a large audience, I decided to combine it with the simple one-button game ‘Flappy Bird’. This game was a huge hit on mobile phones in 2013 and was created by Vietnamese programmer Nguyễn Hà Đông. However, this developer was so shocked by the overwhelming attention and the addictive nature of the game that he decided to remove the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play in February 2014.

My version of the game is graphically much simpler because it works on a monochrome display and is controlled by a microcontroller, which has much less processing power than a mobile phone. But I still managed to make it work smoothly. And the best part: when you play the game, to untrained ears it seems as if you are typing Morse code with the greatest of ease!

The name “Marconi” is a reference to the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, who is considered in the Western world to be the inventor of radio.

Sigmund & Marconi in 3D

The Nautilus started with an online article by a German photographer on how he had wired a GoPro action cam with a big button and four lamps and put it in a plastic box to create a photo booth for a wedding. Shortly after I read this story, my sister announced that she was going to marry. Obviously I would shoot the wedding photographs – I was a photographer at the time – but such a photo booth seemed very appealing too, for guests to take their own pictures.

I didn’t have a GoPro lying around, but I had something better: an older Canon D40 DSLR camera, and a wide-angle lens. Wiring this was a bit more complicated though, especially when I thought it necessary to add a progress indicator, a tinkle bell and a smoke machine. I had heard about Arduino microcontrollers, but didn’t have any experience with them yet. Fortunately, it turned out to be quite easy to work with these. Adding some basic electronics wasn’t too hard either.

For some reason in my mind this machine needed to look like it was created by Jules Verne. So I created the body out of dark, curved wood panels with a supporting frame of copper tubes and brass couplings. The name is a direct reference to Jules Verne’s 1870 novel “20.000 Leagues Under the Sea”.

One of my favorite features of the Nautilus is the countdown block, formed by two numeric “nixie tubes,” old gas discharge tubes that contained the numbers 0 through 9. These number displays were used in NASA control centers, old nuclear power plants, and on the Wall Street stock exchange to display stock prices from the 1950s to the 1970s. They are difficult to combine with modern electronics because they operate on 180 volts DC, many times more than the usual 5 or 3.3 volts of modern microcontrollers. Also, nixies have not been manufactured for a long time. I bought mine in Ukraine, an old batch that had surfaced somewhere. I bought the 180 volt power supply in Switzerland and the special microchips to switch the high voltage of the letters on and off came from eBay. A nice story is that a young Czech started a small factory in 2017 to produce new nixies. He seems to be doing well.