Half machine, half jellyfish. The latest thing in ocean exploration

CYBORGS, PART-MECHANICAL human beings such as the Cybermen in “Doctor Who”, are a long-established feature of science fiction. But the word itself is short for “cybernetic organism”, a definition not self-evidently limited to the mechanisation of humans. Extend it to part-mechanical animals and cyborgs already exist. They have been created in the form of insects that have had chips implanted in them to bring them under the whim of human controllers, who are thus able to direct the ways that their charges either scuttle or fly.This week sees the idea extended still further. Nicole Xu and John Dabiri, a pair of researchers at Stanford University, in California, have announced in the creation of the first cyborg jellyfish. That might sound a joke. But it opens the possibility of using jellyfish as cheap propulsion systems for underwater probes.