Alan Turing's work once again saved millions of people

Millions of people around the world will no longer worry about the lack of clean water thanks to the new water filtration method, inspired by the research published by Alan Turing in 1952.

He is a famous mathematician in the 20th century. It is known that he successfully worked to decipher Nazi Enigma, contributing to shortening World War II by 2 years, and thus saving millions of lives. the innocent. He was also named the father of computer science and artificial intelligence with the creation of a test that bears his name.

But his dedication to science did not stop there. Now once again, Alen Turing will help save millions more lives, right in this era.

Specifically, everything comes from the mathematical work published by Turing two years before his death - in 1952. It inspired a group of Chinese experts to develop a completely new method of water filtration.

Alan Turing (1912 - 1954).

In the study, Turing showed an interesting chemical principle: in some unusual conditions, the two substances mixed together automatically separate from each other and create an extremely bizarre structure. It is named " Turing pattern " (Turing pattern).

This structure can be found on the bodies of many animals, plants, or in some natural structures such as honeycomb.

Turing structures are in nature.

But what about it? The problem is that scientists can control the shape, size and internal components, to create a structure with the desired properties. Based on this, the research team from Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China) has applied a chemical called polyamide to create a membrane that allows salt to be removed from the water.

Previously, wanting to separate salt from the water was an extremely strenuous process. But with the Turing structure, this new water filtration method proved to be much more effective than the traditional ways.

To visualize this superiority, imagine that you have to filter some salty water. Because salt dissolves in water, you must use extremely small membranes, but it also makes filtering very time consuming.

Thus, when choosing a filter method, you have to consider between one side to block the salt much with one side is much drainage.The new filter , with a system of tiny tubes of just a few tens of nanometers, will overcome that drawback.

Filter in the form of points and tubes under a microscope.

The method is still in development and it will take a long time to be applied on a large scale.

However, the potential it brings is huge. If successful, then millions of people around the world will escape the lack of clean water. All thanks to the work of genius cryptography nearly 65 years ago.

"It is a legacy that Turing has left," said Zhang.