C. Elegans: The Worm That No Computer Scientist Can Crack

The Santa Ana winds were already blowing hard when I ran the first worm simulation. I’m no hacker, but it was easy enough: Open a Terminal shell, paste some commands from GitHub, watch characters cascade down the screen. Just like in the movies. I was scanning the passing code for recognizable words—neuron, synapse—when a friend came to pick me up for dinner. “One sec,” I yelled from my office. “I’m just running a worm on my computer.” At the Korean restaurant, the energy was manic; the wind was bending palm trees at the waist and sending shopping carts skating across the parking lot. The atmosphere felt heightened and unreal, like a podcast at double speed. You’re doing, what, a cybercrime? my friend asked. Over the din, I tried to explain: No, not a worm like Stuxnet. A worm like Richard Scarry. By the time I got home it was dark, and the first sparks had already landed in Altadena. On my laptop, waiting for me in a volumetric pixel box, was the worm. Pointed at each end, it floate ... Read full article.