Aaronson used to blog about instances where people thought they found nature solving a hard problem very quickly, and usually there turns out to be a problem like the protein misfolding thing; the last instance I remember was soap films/​bubbles perhaps solving NP problems by producing minimal Steiner trees, and Aaronson wound up experimenting with them himself. Fun stuff.
Aaronson used to blog about instances where people thought they found nature solving a hard problem very quickly, and usually there turns out to be a problem like the protein misfolding thing; the last instance I remember was soap films/​bubbles perhaps solving NP problems by producing minimal Steiner trees, and Aaronson wound up experimenting with them himself. Fun stuff.