[HN Gopher] Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
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Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
Author : subharmonicon
Score : 660 points
Date : 2023-01-19 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I wish there were a way to "productize" this, or automate it at
| least.
|
| I'm imagining some sort of aquarium-like tank you stock with
| ocean water that is able to maintain the microscopic life, allow
| them to flourish. Meanwhile, some sort of slow or periodic pump
| draws aquarium water into an attached, miniature "photography
| studio" where an appropriate camera+lens feeds a constant live
| stream to a display or to the web or to a Bond-villain's giant
| projector in their lair.
|
| What a wonderful "screensaver" to have when the occasional
| appearance of a micro organism graces your screen. Perhaps too
| there are as-yet undiscovered species we might find with such a
| device?
| giloux314 wrote:
| There is an open hardware device you can build by yourself to
| do that: https://www.planktoscope.org/
| jpm_sd wrote:
| It's been done! Very niche market however. This is a tow-sled
| system for deployment from a research vessel.
|
| https://www.planktonimaging.com/
| dekhn wrote:
| I believe they operate one of these in the microscope exhibit
| at SF Exploratorium. They're right on top of the bay (literally
| on a pier) and sample the water all the time, and IIRC, they
| put the samples into accessible high-end microscopes.
| acomjean wrote:
| I think it can be done. Automated liquid handling and
| microscopes do exist.
|
| We had a confocal microscope in our lab with a robotic arm
| attached and can automatically image samples. I'm not of the
| details but the samples are big compared to its field of view
| so I believe it searches for images with cells before imaging.
| A lot of experiments are done on these plates with liquid
| wells.
|
| This isn't our model but shows a larger scope with automated
| robotic arm and a "plate hotel":
|
| https://confocal.ccr.cancer.gov/nci-microscopy-core-labs/bet...
|
| I'd go into why we switched from PerkinElmer and their
| proprietary image format to a GE but thats outside the scope.
| intrasight wrote:
| My daughter, 18 at the time, "productized" this for me - by
| buying me for Christmas a cheap digital microscope. We looked
| around the house for something to look at, and decided to try a
| drop of water from our aquarium.
| nwellinghoff wrote:
| We do this in the salt water aquarium hobby. It is not easy and
| requires a lot of equipment to keep the food chain flowing.
|
| 1. You have to grow a phytoplankton culture (the base of the
| food chain) https://melevsreef.com/articles/10-step-
| phytoplankton-cultur...
|
| 2. Then you have to map out to the zooplankton culture chain
| you want to grow. Usually in the aquarium trade the target are
| foods that larval fish will eat etc. There are only a few types
| commercially available. So you would never see the diversity
| you are seeing in the article.
|
| Conclusion, you can only do it with fresh sea water from the
| ocean. I would recommend taking a sample from 0 to 10ft on a
| reef during a full moon or where there is a lot of light. You
| will see much variety!
| amelius wrote:
| That device is called the internet ;)
| tlavoie wrote:
| I don't know the company, but there was one sold in a local toy
| shop some years ago. The idea was that this was essentially one
| "slice" of a pond, think of a very thin aquarium tank that was
| in the window. It had been seeded with a variety of small
| plants, algae, tiny critters and the like.
|
| Meant to be a closed system, where it was all what was inside
| the glass, plus the sunlight from putting it in the window.
| Very cool, you could see tiny things swimming around in there.
| dylan604 wrote:
| These pics remind me of an indy game way back on the PS3 called
| Flow[0]. It was designed as a low stress, low impact, and a
| fairly calming game. You were a small underwater creature that
| swam around collecting things to become a bigger creature. You
| used the 3-axis feature of the controller instead of the d-pad
| and joysticks.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(video_game)
| fdgdd wrote:
| Reminded me of Osmos: https://www.osmos-game.com/
| beefok wrote:
| Still to this day (since it was released), I listen to the
| soundtrack. I love it so much. :)
|
| The game idea itself is so original too!
| stevenhuang wrote:
| On the topic of calm games... there's one on my mind that I
| played years ago on PC but I forgot the name.
|
| It's a very simple but gorgeous 2d top-down "strategy" game. It
| has calming music and a soft colour pallet.
|
| You control these flying boids/bird things by ordering them to
| conquer other "planets". The goal of the game is to conquer all
| planets on the map, with progressively more difficult stages.
|
| Each planet you own periodically spawns more "boids". Every
| planet has a number which describes the amount of boids on the
| planet.
|
| The only actions given by the player are orders to move boids
| from one planet to another. If the destination planet is an
| enemy planet, the boids will attack. If the destination planet
| is friendly, the boids will combine in forces. If an enemy
| planet's boid number drops down to 0, it then becomes a
| friendly planet.
|
| Planets have trees that sprout, and the boids are like leaves
| that sprout from the trees.
|
| I think once you beat the game you unlock a dark mode.
|
| Does this game ring a bell to anyone? I now want to play it
| really badly again :)
| halestock wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eufloria ?
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Wow!! yes!! that is it, thank you so much <3
| bmitc wrote:
| If anyone is interested, thatgamecompany [sic], the studio who
| made _Flow_ , also made _Flower_ and _Journey_. Both are
| amazing and touching. I haven 't played their new game _Sky_.
|
| https://thatgamecompany.com/
| rodface wrote:
| I fondly remember and adored that game. It would be great to
| see an updated release of the Flash version
| https://www.crazygames.com/game/flow
| bondarchuk wrote:
| There was also a very nice PSP version which I'm sure you'll
| be able to emulate on PC easily (no idea what's the state of
| PS3 emu).
| [deleted]
| oboes wrote:
| If you like those pictures, you will probably also like this
| music video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPu-qPIwJcI
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Those are beautiful photographs. Makes you wonder if we'll find
| similar things on Europa if we stuck in a pipette.
| dekhn wrote:
| or the ice caps of mars.
| jaredstein wrote:
| What a great photograph. It is interesting how much life can
| exist within a single drop of water.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| needs a youtube video of his setup
| bennyelv wrote:
| I wonder that the commercial model is for endeavours such as
| this? I guess you collect royalties from people who want to
| publish the photos, but although you get a one-off wow factor I
| don't see there being a big market for these kinds of photos.
|
| Is it a hobby/pursuit or can you actually make a living doing
| this kind of thing?
|
| P.S. It's a fascinating thing and I love it!
| dylan604 wrote:
| People collect things of all sorts. Taxidermy animals posed
| doing human things. Preserved butterflies in a frame. Things
| with bones of animals and people. Artwork made from human hair.
| Photos of snowflakes. Photos of fish. Photos of people, the
| horror.
|
| Why would photos of something like this strike you as any
| different. Why shouldn't the artist making prints not be able
| to make money from the effort, experience, and skill of
| producing those prints in manner that are worthy of a print?
| It's like asking anybody can write code, why should someone be
| able to make money doing that. Hell, computers write code
| themselves now. What makes you special you feel you need
| compensation for it?
|
| Also, it could just start out as a hobby. Got anything you do
| on the side that started out as a curious nature, became a
| serious interest, then got good enough other people were
| interested in what you did?
| pvaldes wrote:
| To start, you need huge amounts of diesel to produce this work.
| Expensive technology. Hours or weeks of work identifying this
| things...
| vaidhy wrote:
| I have the same question over nature and wildlife photography.
| Maybe there is a royalty model when people license the images
| or publishing coffee table books. This is like open source
| work. You do it for the passion and maybe someone will give you
| enough contracts for a living.
| bennyelv wrote:
| It could well be a career for "people of means" only, I'd be
| fascinated if anyone here had any insight into this...
| pier25 wrote:
| Many photographers make a living with magazines like NatGeo.
| And you could also sell prints online.
| vaidhy wrote:
| You can win a project from NatGeo and/or other
| organizations.. but that is not permanent income.
| pier25 wrote:
| Well almost nothing creative does, unfortunately.
| munificent wrote:
| Lots and lots of people get by with unstable burst-y
| incomes like this.
|
| Those of us with well-paid salaried jobs have a luxury we
| easily take for granted.
| alejo1000 wrote:
| Reminds me of this old flash game called Flow:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(video_game)
| tillinghast wrote:
| Came here to say this exact same thing. It had a beautiful
| soundtrack, too. https://austinwintory.bandcamp.com/album/flow
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Which was later released on consoles, then the company made
| games like Flower, Journey and Sky (free on mobile platforms).
| If you're not into gaming, I'd recommend setting a few hours
| aside to go through Journey at least.
| bmitc wrote:
| Beautiful and interesting stuff! I have never heard of copepods
| before, but have now and will have to do some more reading.
|
| > Walter once got a call from an Orthodox Jewish organization
| wanting to know if there were pieces of non-kosher creatures
| floating in the New York City tap water. The answer was yes.
|
| Not to pick on them, but I found this illuminating on how
| religions present such a myopic view of life and what it means to
| be alive on Earth. Religions seems incapable of fitting their
| model over the apparent continuum of life. It was also somewhat
| humorous to read this.
| paragonia wrote:
| [dead]
| prpl wrote:
| Without going into religion, it's also mildly interesting for
| the defining veganism.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| I've been in discussions with vegans over the 9.1x10^2 to
| 1.3x10^8 bacteria in the average indoor m^3 of air.
| echelon wrote:
| Or the bacteria and fungi constantly living and dying
| within us. The self cells we continually turn over and
| instruct to die. The second order predation that balances
| the ecosystem that sustains us.
|
| Orcas that enjoy playing with their food. Lions that eat
| prey alive. Beautiful and terrifying. Our primate and
| hominid ancestors that ate the flesh of rival clans.
|
| I respect veganism and personal choices, but the world is a
| big place with lots going on that will forever escape our
| ability to control. That's how I frame my own decision, but
| I respect others' too.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| That is true, but factory farming is something that we
| decide to do. You bring up how our ancestors were
| cannibals, do you also eat human meat?
| stevula wrote:
| I guess I don't see the relevance. Vegans eat other life
| forms like plants and fungi (it's unavoidable). Their
| reservations are specifically about animals. Why would
| bacteria be an issue?
| dekhn wrote:
| I think a better example would be the buddhist who goes
| out of their way to not step on an ant, while
| simultaneously killing bacteria in his gut.
| prpl wrote:
| sure, but a copepod is a lot closer to a shrimp than
| bacteria.
| bruce511 wrote:
| >> Not to pick on them, but I found this illuminating on how
| religions present such a myopic view of life and what it means
| to be alive on Earth.
|
| You fall into a trap of using a single English word to cover a
| multitude of different world-views. It would be as useful to
| say that the quote "... how people present..."
|
| Within the broad category of "religion" you have thousands of
| different groups, most of which would find minor, or very
| major, things to disagree on. Judaism is massively different to
| say Druidism or Buddhist. Crumbs, _within_ Judaism you have a
| full spectrum from Ultra Orthodox to unpracticing.
|
| I would thus caution you from viewing the world as falling into
| either religious or irreligious. Ultimately that classification
| is not meaningful.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| You have AFAICS: religious
| atheist agnostic
|
| Is it even possible to be a religious atheist I wonder
| enchiridion wrote:
| For sure it is. Scientism is an example. It even has
| creation myths, the stories of the Big Bang and Copernicus
| being two examples.
|
| This idea is developed in depth by Bishop Robert Barron.
| Very interesting to consider.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| The guy is catholic, the wiki page of his doesn't mention
| Scientism, and you describe a belief in science, not any
| god. So I don't getcha I'm afraid.
| dekhn wrote:
| The big bang isn't a creation myth, it doesn't say
| anything about what existed beforehand, and if come up
| with enough evidence, the "theory" would be invalidated
| and replaced with one that is less inconsistent with our
| observations. I am not aware of- but would love to learn
| of- creation myths which are continuously updated as new
| data is available.
|
| Scientism is something that philosophers claim exists
| when they don't want to get in an argument with a
| scientist.
| bmitc wrote:
| It is not always possible to qualify every single word,
| especially in an Internet forum comment, so I might argue
| that the trap lies with the reader. As when one encompasses a
| generality, one should consider that it rarely applies to the
| totality of the categorical word. While the anecdote
| presented in the article involves a presumably particular
| sect of Judaism, I don't think one would be hard pressed to
| find similar analogs in most of the other major religions in
| the world. It's no surprise because the foundations of these
| religions were developed thousands of years ago, in which
| humanity's understanding of the world beyond itself was still
| infantile, at least more infantile than today's juvenile
| understanding. So I don't think it's much of a leap to
| generalize to religions rather than single out this
| particular one. Religion is more about culture and control
| than it is about searching for understanding, the latter of
| which you might find more in spirituality, art, and science.
| threads2 wrote:
| I like something Schopenhauer said about a lot of errors
| coming from either defining a concept too generally or too
| specifically. Something like that
| jrd259 wrote:
| Unless he has considerable rabbinic training, Walter is not
| competent to judge whether the (invisible) copepods are kosher
| or not. The categories in the religious laws have _some_
| connection to biology but are not determined solely by physical
| conditions either. At the risk of over-simplifying, these laws
| are meant to be _possible_ to follow. Nobody is going to decide
| that, henceforth, all strictly observant Jews must filter their
| water to remove microscopic animals.
| bmitc wrote:
| He was being asked by a rabbi, so I'm assuming they sorted
| that out, and it's not really his problem.
| teachrdan wrote:
| Here's my favorite story about scientists judging what's
| kosher, starring none other than Richard Feynman:
|
| One day, two or three of the young rabbis came to me and
| said, "We realize that we can't study to be rabbis in the
| modern world without knowing something about science, so we'd
| like to ask you some questions."
|
| Of course there are thousands of places to find out about
| science, and Columbia University was right near there, but I
| wanted to know what kinds of questions they were interest in.
|
| They said, "Well, for instance, is electricity fire?"
|
| "No," I said, "but... what is the problem?"
|
| They said, "In the Talmud it says that you're not supposed to
| make fire on a Saturday, so our question is, can we use
| electrical things on Saturdays?"
|
| I was shocked. They weren't interested in science at all! The
| only way science was influencing their lives was so they
| might be able to interpret better the Talmud! They weren't'
| interested in the world outside, in natural phenomena; they
| were only interested in resolving some question brought up in
| the Talmud.
|
| https://rabbisedley.blogspot.com/2012/08/richard-feynman-
| mee...
| irrational wrote:
| The followup anecdote in that same article was also fun:
|
| I decided to trap the students in a logical discussion. I
| had been brought up in a Jewish home, so I knew the kind of
| nitpicking logic to use, and I thought "Here's fun!" My
| plan went like this: I'd start off by asking, "Is the
| Jewish viewpoint a viewpoint that any man can have? Because
| if it is not, then it's certainly not something that is
| truly valuable for humanity... yak, yak, yak." And then
| they would have to say, "Yes, the Jewish viewpoint is good
| for any man." Then I would steer them around a little more
| by asking, "Is it ethical for a man to hire another man to
| do something which is unethical for him to do? Would you
| hire a man to rob for you, for instance?" And I keep
| working them into the channel, very slowly, and very
| carefully, until I've got them - trapped! And do you know
| what happened? They're rabbinical students, right? They
| were ten times better than I was! AS son as they saw I
| could put them in a hole, they went twist, turn, twist - I
| can't remember how - and they were free! I thought I had
| come up with an original idea - phooey! It had been
| discussed in the Talmud for ages! So they cleaned me up
| just as easy as pie - they got right out.
| bmitc wrote:
| While I agree with his observation here, if his narration
| can be assumed to be accurate, it is somewhat rich coming
| from Feynman who was famously dismissive of things he
| didn't find interesting. He saw the world from a very
| particular point of view.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. This post
| is about as congenial as religious flamebait gets, but it's
| still that.
|
| Admittedly the upvotes such a post gets are a bigger problem
| than the post itself, but there's not much we can do about
| those. (This post was upvoted to the top of the thread when I
| saw it. I've marked it off topic now.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bmitc wrote:
| I think I'll disagree that this is off topic. What I quoted
| is a literal quote from the article. I wouldn't have
| mentioned it or caught it if it wasn't. From my perspective,
| the entire point of the article is the beauty and smallness
| of things that we are otherwise unaware of. The idea that
| books thousands of years old didn't anticipate, and thus
| don't accommodate, such is interesting. And I thought the
| discussion was good.
| dang wrote:
| "religions present such a myopic view of life and what it
| means to be alive on Earth" etc. is generic religious
| flamebait. We don't want that on HN, because it leads (in
| the general case) to horrible threads that are as nasty as
| they are predictable. I'm sure that's not your intent, but
| we have to go by the effects these things generally have.
|
| You may be right about connections to the article (I
| haven't checked) but that is not as important as preserving
| the ecosystem in general, which is the motive behind
| moderating HN this way; not arbitrarily but based on many
| years of experience with how these things usually go.
| dekhn wrote:
| I'm gonna have to disagree here, I don't think the single
| line from the comment passes the threshold for flamebait.
| The comment wasn't offtopic, and the conversation it led
| to was both interesting and not really a flamewar.
|
| I don't often see comments replying to dang's moderation
| (from people other than the ones he's moderating), and
| generally, I think dang's influence is beneficial, but I
| would like to see the moderation be more tolerant (IE,
| slight adjustment of thresholds around "generic
| flamebait").
| dang wrote:
| Pejorative generalizations about religion are obviously
| religious flamebait. This isn't a borderline call. If
| this thread didn't erupt into a nasty conflagration,
| that's only by chance, the same way that not every lit
| match dropped in a dry forest starts a forest fire. It's
| still not cool to drop them.
| bmitc wrote:
| I suppose myopic can often, maybe more often than not,
| have a negative connotation, but it's just been a word on
| the tip of my tongue lately (I'm sure there's a word for
| that), and I generally mean it as having lack of
| foresight.
|
| I think there can be a bit of religious protectionism,
| because I don't see similar comments being labeled as
| scientific flame bait, because I have often provided much
| harsher myopia critique to non-religious topics.
|
| But I can see the general moderation point of view and
| that, maybe disappointingly so, comments referencing
| religion can be hot, so to speak, and that my comment
| train got lucky.
|
| Edit: I made the original comment somewhat in passing,
| and just commented on the part that caught my eye other
| than "wow, I need to read more about these things".
| TchoBeer wrote:
| Why does that strike you as myopic? Just the opposite, if the
| Rabbinate decided that they've never heard of these little bugs
| in the water and so they don't count, _that_ would be myopic.
| The fact that this is a question which was debated a bunch in
| the orthodox world shows a flexibility that I think is
| underrated in orthodoxy. Is religion incapable of fitting their
| model over the continuum of life, or does it continue to adapt
| to new information?
|
| I'm reminded of a discussion in the talmud. A rabbi says that
| he heard from an Athenian scholar that there is a type of...
| mouse? bug? The aramaic isn't clear, some kind of little
| animal. Anyway, there's this creeping thing which comes to live
| when the sunlight hits a certain type of mud at a certain time
| of day. There's a whole discussion about whether these things
| are really "alive", vis a vis whether or not you can "kill"
| them on shabbat (this discussion is had elsewhere about lice,
| which were thought to have generated spontaneously. Jewish law
| has always been flexible and adaptable and shifted along with
| changing understanding of ourselves and our surroundings. I
| don't see how this anecdote suggests any differently.
|
| P.S. most (probably like 98% of) orthodox rabbis I have talked
| to permit drinking tap water even though it has little bugs in
| it, because they're too small to see with the human eye and
| thus are not forbidden to eat. If they were big enough, you
| would have to filter them, just like you have to check for bugs
| before you eat lettuce.
| [deleted]
| eevilspock wrote:
| Makes me wonder about the impact of microplastics on microlife.
| It's a good thing their not intelligent otherwise they'd be
| pissed.
| thehours wrote:
| I clicked expecting it was going to be about tiny cameras taking
| pictures from within droplets. Stunning photos nonetheless!
| trumbitta2 wrote:
| Do you think copepods know humans exist?
|
| What about us knowing higher creatures exist, and we inhabit a
| droplet in their oceans?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Not --fortunately--. They didn't noticed us.
|
| Trust me. Some rooms in this group are top class nightmare
| fuel.
| irrational wrote:
| Put down the bong dude.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| During finals week in my undergrad at Berkeley, I remember
| seeing the squirrels and thought, "How nice it must be to be a
| squirrel and not worry about human affairs."
|
| My next thought was, "What looks at Humans in similar fashion?"
| tamaharbor wrote:
| I think that was a Twilight Zone episode?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Most humans believe in higher creatures of some sort. I am
| unwilling to bet one way or the other on it.
| jonathanoliver wrote:
| I probably shouldn't mention how much seawater I accidentally
| swallow whenever I'm in the ocean swimming.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Full of nourishing copepods!
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Maybe you missed the following, important part:
|
| "These tiny invertebrates can be found in the deepest ocean
| trenches and the highest alpine lakes, even in damp mosses and
| wet leaf litter. Walter once got a call from an Orthodox Jewish
| organization wanting to know if there were pieces of non-kosher
| creatures floating in the New York City tap water. The answer
| was yes"
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Just imagine, you could have been born as one of quadrillion of
| these guys, but instead you are a human, that's more than lottery
| luck we all got, if you can read this.
| manbash wrote:
| "you could have been born as" and the so-called "life-lottery"
| are a matter of philosophical and belief-system debate.
|
| The "you" (or: self) is a concept, a perception.
|
| I am just me, and couldn't have been something else, or born in
| another timeline, or to different parents.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Yes, but as a thought experiment it is considered by many as
| the only way to make unbiased decisions about moral
| principles and how society should be structured. Moral
| philosopher John Rawls's uses the terms _original position_
| and _veil of ignorance_. You can think of them as "What we'd
| all decide for the world if each of us did not know ahead of
| time which person they'd would be born as".
|
| https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/joh.
| ..
|
| _> The Veil is meant to ensure that people's concern for
| their personal benefit could translate into a set of
| arrangements that were fair for everyone, assuming that they
| had to stick to those choices once the Veil of Ignorance
| 'lifts', and they are given full information again._
|
| _> One set of facts hidden from you behind the Veil are what
| we might call 'demographic' facts. You do not know your
| gender, race, wealth, or facts about your personal strengths
| and weaknesses, such as their intelligence or physical
| prowess. Rawls thought these facts are morally arbitrary:
| individuals do not earn or deserve these features, but simply
| have them by luck. As such, they do not deserve any benefits
| or harms that come from them. By removing knowledge of the
| natural inequalities that give people unfair advantages, it
| becomes irrational to choose principles that discriminate
| against any particular group._
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
| icambron wrote:
| To elaborate this point a bit: the "lottery" concept requires
| you to believe there's like a queue of souls and they each
| get allocated to different bodies, and you're lucky you got a
| fancy one instead of a microscopic shrimp. A different -- and
| to me, more plausible -- way to look at it is that "you" are
| an emergent property of a specific complex organism. How you
| actually emerge is a fascinating and difficult discussion,
| but putting aside the mechanics, the implication of this
| framing is that "you could have been a microscopic shrimp" is
| meaningless, like asking "what if that cloud were instead a
| bowl of soup?"
| officeplant wrote:
| I'm gonna be reborn as microplastics and live eternally.
| enw wrote:
| What would be the "me" if I were to clone myself 1:1? Would
| there be two "me"s? Or a the same old "me", a single
| consciousness but two bodies?
| siwatanejo wrote:
| Two consciousnesses with the same origin. What's wrong
| with that?
| quchen wrote:
| The philosophical zombie might be an interesting rabbit
| hole for you!
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
| hugs_vs_toph wrote:
| That problem used to mindfuck me. Eventually I realized
| it's more of an emergent problem, that only exists in our
| brains. Problem goes away by taking a step back and viewing
| the world from a perspective greater than self.
| igiveup wrote:
| Now look at it from the other side. If it really was
| quadrillion times more probable to be born (hatched?) as a
| plankton, why exactly weren't you? Either tremendous luck, or
| something wrong with the assumption.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Imagine being one a trillion cells in a human body, born into
| slavery serving an unknowable entity called the _Mind_ that may
| as well be called _God_.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Slavery? I take extreme pains to keep them warm, happy, feed
| and hydrated at any time. My cells live better than me.
| pluijzer wrote:
| We are a creature that can think we won the lottery because if
| we were a creature that couldn't we would not be able to think
| it.
|
| Also we think being human is the best because we are humans.
| Right between the start and the end of time in the centre of
| the universe.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| This is basically the Hindu belief system where you can
| reincarnate into any of those life forms depending on your
| karma in your previous life.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I'm not really up on Hinduism, but one of the implications of
| "atman is brahman" would be that, reciprocally "brahman is
| atman".
|
| Therefore, also it's not the case that "you can reincarnate
| into any of those life forms" but rather that all those
| lifeforms, including you, are incarnations of the same over
| soul.
|
| So, you always already are both those forms and not, and have
| just forgotten it was so.
|
| And, then, finally, when you do bad things to those other
| incarnations you are doing them to yourself: it's not that
| you have to reincarnate to have someone else do shitty things
| to you, but rather the case that karma is always already in
| balance.
|
| Anyhow, just my shitty heterodox take based on a single
| poorly applied mathematical rule.
|
| Be well, other self.
| [deleted]
| uptown wrote:
| Or maybe it's all still just a matter of perspective:
|
| https://youtu.be/zyuYiehl2DM?t=173
| hbn wrote:
| It's been pointed out how in the Avenger movies, Thanos wiping
| out half of all life in the universe having the effect of
| disappearing half of humans didn't really make sense, cause it
| would probably mostly take out insects, or maybe there's a
| small handful of planets that contain majority of individual
| lifeforms that would take the brunt of that.
|
| I suppose it's implied it was "half of life" on a per-species
| basis. It's basically magic, so probably best not to think
| about it too much.
| igiveup wrote:
| Makes sense to me. If every living being has 50 % chance of
| survival, so does every living human being, no matter what
| minority we are.
|
| Not sure about the rest of Thanos's logic, of course...
| freetime2 wrote:
| This article reminds me that I've been meaning to buy a
| microscope to play around with. Any suggestions for an
| affordable, beginner-friendly microscope setup?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| My experience is USB digital microscopes are much better
| because you can look at the picture on a big screen. The
| eyepieces of most cheap microscopes are terrible in comparison.
|
| With a screen you can show the kids what's going on. It's a
| shared experience.
| cromwellian wrote:
| Copepods are pretty much everywhere, do you need some copium to
| cope with that? Sorry I couldn't resist.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Maybe I missed this in the article. How many single drops of
| water have life in them? Like what's the hit rate?
| zokier wrote:
| If you count bacteria etc single-cell organisms, then I'd
| assume close to 100% naturally occurring water has some amount
| of life in it.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The animals are captured one by one and placed carefully into a
| drop of water for viewing in an (inverted?) microscope. Is not
| a random sampling. You can spot all of those animals with the
| naked eye.
| pookah wrote:
| Ocean water is lively. A single drop has something like ten
| million viruses.
|
| https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2011/013097/decade-long-study-reve...
|
| But in the article the photographer said he'd come up empty on
| some of the dives. So it's fairly spread out.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you want to go down another order of magnitude or few,
| fluorescent microscopy of single-celled organisms is pretty
| interesting. This collection of images is stunning:
|
| https://www.canadiannaturephotographer.com/epifluorescencemi...
|
| These techniques also revealed the sheer scale of microbial life,
| as even the clearest ocean water from the most remote, nutrient-
| limited tropical seas will contain as many as 100,000 cells per
| mL. Below that there are the various viruses that infect or
| cohabit with these bacteria and small plants and animals, which
| are invisible to light microscopy.
| mncharity wrote:
| > the sheer scale of microbial life [...] ocean water
|
| There's also the sheer predation of it. IIRC, for some coastal
| surface biome I've long forgotten, viral half-life was like an
| hour, and a third of bacteria were virally lysed each day. A
| cup of beach water is not just teaming with life, it's a war
| zone.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Robert Hooke's "Micrographia" had a really profound effect on the
| history of science. Here is the book-- check out the letter to
| the king. I think people's minds were blown and were ready to
| accept some new realities.
|
| https://www.milestone-books.de/pages/books/003613/robert-hoo...
| nerdponx wrote:
| That letter is really something. I tend to think of grandiose
| flattery towards royalty as something that belongs in the
| ancient world. The puns on "small" and "least" at the end were
| also unexpectedly funny. I wonder how much people took this
| kind of flattery seriously, or if it was done with eyes rolled
| and tongue in cheek.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Keep in mind that this letter and book helped guarantee
| funding for the Royal Society!
|
| Edit: The text "...Philosophy and Experimental Learning have
| prosper'd under your Royal Patronage. And as the calm
| prosperity of your Reign has given us the leisure to follow
| these Studies of quiet and retirement, so it is just, that
| the Fruits of them should, by way of acknowledgement, be
| return'd to your Majesty. There are, Sir, several other of
| your Subjects, of your Royal Society, now busie about Nobler
| matters: The Improvement of Manufactures and Agriculture, the
| Increase of Commerce, the Advantage of Navigation: In all
| which they are assisted by your Majesties Incouragement and
| Example. Amidst all those greater Designs, I here presume to
| bring in that which is more proportionable to the smalness of
| my Abilities, and to offer some of the least of all visible
| things, to that Mighty King, that has establisht an Empire
| over the best of all Invisible things of this World, the
| Minds of Men."
| nerdponx wrote:
| Right, it's as much personal flattery of the king as it is
| a statement of allegiance to and gratitude for the
| institution of royalty! I'm sure the Civil War must've been
| quite a scary time, and I have no doubt that he's sincere
| about having greater peace and safety under the the
| restored monarchy. It's a really fascinating glimpse into
| that time period, beyond just the history of science.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > I wonder how much people took this kind of flattery
| seriously, or if it was done with eyes rolled and tongue in
| cheek.
|
| Probably everyone who wasn't an idiot knew it was kinda silly
| and the sentiments not genuine, or at least exaggerated, but
| did it anyway. Cf business English, resume cover letters, et
| c.
| 0daym wrote:
| too easy for the almighty
| vaidhy wrote:
| too easy - so not done by god? this statement confuses me.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > "Copepods are the most numerous animal on the planet," says
| Chad
|
| Just narrowly coming ahead of the Seethepods.
| sbt567 wrote:
| The "When The World Become Small" video[0] by zefrank is an
| amazing way to see the 'live' version of it (though by different
| artist).
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTLNXdG-sG4
| diimdeep wrote:
| There is amazing video version of this, Journey to the
| Microcosmos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS2mdmt4JPw
| insanitybit wrote:
| These videos are so great and chill
| daveslash wrote:
| My wife and I get into the ocean pretty often -- sometimes, every
| day. But when I leave my swimming attire hanging in the bathroom
| for more than a couple of days ( _I try not to do that, but
| sometimes forget_ ), it starts to smell really _fishy_. My wife
| asks why it smells so bad after 2 days, but not immediately after
| getting out of the ocean. I tell her _The ocean is a soup of
| life, and when you get out there are millions of living critters
| in the fabric -- it 's all alive. After 2 days... not so much_
| emblaegh wrote:
| I assume the stink come from chemicals excreted by other living
| things eating the dead ones. So the stink is not a sign that
| your trunks are less full of life, just that it got new
| tenants.
| anamexis wrote:
| Seems like a technicality. By that logic, _all_ stinky things
| are caused by living things instead of dead things.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Maybe not _ALL_ stinky things. But apparently humans
| evolved to be sensitive to, and repulsed by the the
| secretions of some bacteria, because the ones who weren 't
| died pretty early.
| mvindahl wrote:
| When I was a young kid in the early 1980s, my grandpa had a large
| book about Darwin's voyages and the Theory of Evolution. The book
| probably dated from the 1950s or 1960s and contained countless
| photos of fascinating creatures, reproduced with all the printing
| technology of the era.
|
| Whenever we visited him, I would flip through the book and marvel
| at the creativity of nature.
|
| These photos made me feel a little bit in the same way.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| At https://www.whoi.edu/what-we-
| do/explore/instruments/instrume... you can read about the VPR
| (video plankton recorder), which is towed behind a ship and takes
| photos of a small region. It's a great tool for seeing patterns
| of different species. The videos at the bottom of the site might
| be interested to folks reading this thread.
| dekhn wrote:
| When I was a kid, my school took us the boston science museum and
| I wandered off to the microscope exhibit. The museum collected
| and displayed a bunch of things from Boston Bay, and looking in-
| as a kid learning about computers- it seemed like some of the
| "animacules" behaved in complex ways- like a computer program
| with sensor input and mechanical actuators. Some would spiral
| endlessly while others would zip forward, then back, then turn
| and zip forward again. I decided then and there I would figure
| out how these things worked, applying my hacker knowledge of
| computers.
|
| That led to a career in biology although I don't think I really
| used microscopes much at all over the next 30 years. Recently I
| adjusted my hobbies and built a microscope from components and
| use it to apply object detection to tardigrades. Guess what- the
| state of the art is to collect enormous numbers of images of a
| microbiotic organism and cluster them into a small number of
| states (like a markov model) and estimate the transitions between
| them. I don't even want to solve any specific problem- I just
| love watching tardigrades. They're hilarious little animacules.
| maartenh wrote:
| If you ever visit Amsterdam for some time, and like to visit
| musea, check out Micropia [0]. It is a museam where they exhibit
| microbes, that you can explore using microscopes.
|
| [0] https://www.micropia.nl/en/
| notum wrote:
| Absolutely spectacular. The diversity of marine life is nothing
| short of astounding. More deep sea missions!
| pvaldes wrote:
| Oh, you had not even see the best parts.
| toephu2 wrote:
| Are there or were there ever copepods on Mars?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Nope. Life is exclusive from earth at this moment. No fossils
| or live animals, fungi or plants of any kind in Mars.
|
| But if there is still some subterranean water at the correct
| temperature in a deep Mars cave... who knows? They can stand
| huge pressures and extreme environments very well.
| zokier wrote:
| We have not found any evidence of life of any sort on Mars,
| much less of multi-cellular life. I imagine that even the most
| optimistic pan-spermic ideas would involve far more
| primitive/rugged life-forms than crustaceans.
| CommitSyn wrote:
| > These tiny invertebrates can be found in the deepest ocean
| trenches and the highest alpine lakes, even in damp mosses and
| wet leaf litter. Walter once got a call from an Orthodox Jewish
| organization wanting to know if there were pieces of non-kosher
| creatures floating in the New York City tap water. The answer was
| yes. It's hard to avoid these relatives of shrimp and lobster--
| Walter has studied them all over the world, in the Red Sea as
| well as Antarctica. Wherever there's water, copepods thrive.
|
| I'm wondering how this was handled in the end. Do Orthodox Jews
| drink the tap in NYC today?
| oboes wrote:
| An article about that question:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/nyregion/the-waters-fine-...
| aliqot wrote:
| I guess nobody's going to mention the elephant in the room,
| so I'll take the hit. Where the hell am I supposed to find
| tiny kosher cocktail sauces?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Guidance from rabbis varies (no central source of authority in
| Judaism). Some orthodox rabbis will view the copepods as not
| kosher and suggest filtering the water. Less orthodox rabbis
| will say the water is fine because the copepods are not visible
| to the naked eye.
| billiam wrote:
| Wonder how the rabbi feels about the mites and spiders that
| we all end up swallowing on a regular basis. What an absurd
| reductive view of life.
| mc32 wrote:
| That frees the vision impaired a bit relative to people with
| good eyesight from a few things!
| raphael_l wrote:
| Does that mean blind jews can use this as precedent to eat
| whatever they like?
| mc32 wrote:
| Looks like some rabbis might allow some liberal
| interpretation so I guess the answer is it depends...
| Flexibility is good.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| No, that would be silly. "The Naked Eye" is what normal
| human eyes can see without aid. There is a _lot_ of grey
| area there, but microscopic creatures that you can only
| see with specialized equipment invented in the past 100
| years certainly are not visable to the naked eye for any
| reasonable definition of naked eye.
| aliqot wrote:
| Within reason, it's nothing, or `betal bshishim` which is
| equated to one sixtieth. It's void, as a concept, in
| Hebrew tradition.
|
| It helps if you think about it in terms of historical
| hardships of the Hebrews. It means if you're hungry and
| your neighbor cooks for you and there's a tiny bit of
| non-kosher fat in the soup or something like that, or if
| you're starving, Yahweh will forgive you because it's
| such a small amount and you're so hungry it's not right
| to penalize you for that which you couldn't control.
| Something that is one sixtieth is colloquially so
| insignificant that it equates to nil.
| javajosh wrote:
| This general approach is true within all Jewish
| traditions. For example, if you get sick on Shabbat
| you're allowed to drive to the hospital (and doctors are
| allowed to help you), or if you're ill during Rosh
| Hashana you don't have to fast. It's a very nice aspect
| of Judaism: "follow the rules, yes, but don't be stupid
| about it."
| TchoBeer wrote:
| The short answer is yes, except a tiny minority who require a
| filter that can filter the tiny guys. But it's a whole
| discourse.
| hammock wrote:
| Cool photos, but this makes me not want to drink tap water
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Your body is host to about as many microorganisms as it is
| cells of its own DNA, and you'd probably die without them.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Free protein with every glass!
| lm28469 wrote:
| Wait until you learn about what's in your intestines/stomach or
| on your skin...
| hawski wrote:
| Wait a moment and think about how you are made of meat.
|
| https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...
| username135 wrote:
| We're all just sacks of flesh
| dekhn wrote:
| fleshy bags of mostly water
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| This sort of reflection can yield existential crisis!
| lm28469 wrote:
| There even is a spooky skeleton inside of each of us :|
| irrational wrote:
| Sometimes I look over at my wife sleeping in our bed and
| think about how I am sleeping next to a skeleton.
| kmfrk wrote:
| Time to drop the referral code for a Brita filter.
| jebarker wrote:
| > But copepods typically range from about 0.2 to 1.7 millimeters
| in length, just large enough to magnify using conventional lenses
| and equipment
|
| Does that mean conventional macro camera lenses or a microscope?
| ferdychristant wrote:
| There's a few 5:1 dedicated macro lenses. Around 2:1 and above
| though, handholding becomes near impossible and you almost
| always need focus stacking due to the very shallow depth of
| field. Not to mention powerful lights.
|
| So even this "conventional" option that you can readily buy is
| quite the niche.
|
| For a 0.2mm subject, 5:1 is not enough. Luckily, one can use a
| microscope objective on a camera, like this:
|
| https://c7.staticflickr.com/1/411/31944206126_fee397795a_b.j...
|
| It doesn't have to be a bellow, they can also be a fixed tube,
| but the idea here is that the camera's sensor is at a specific
| distance to the back opening of the microscope objective. It
| would be the same distance where normally the eye piece of the
| microscope goes.
|
| This way, you can do 10:1, 20:1, 50:1, 100:1. You'll have ever
| greater problems though the more you magnify (vibration, light,
| composition).
|
| The device in the bottom is an automated focus rail, a WeMacro
| in this case. You set a start point and end point, and it takes
| all photos in between. It can move by as little as 1 micron and
| is quite cheap.
| 0898 wrote:
| This line puzzled me. Surely, if each drop of seawater was
| filled with 1mm length creatures you'd notice?
| vaidhy wrote:
| Not every creature is 1mm.
| antongribok wrote:
| If we're talking simple math on magnification:
|
| It's very easy to find macro lenses that have 5:1
| magnification, meaning that an object is projected onto the
| sensor 5x it's size. Taking 1.7 mm and projecting that onto a
| Canon R5 45 MP sensor with 5x magnification gives us something
| that would be around 1934 pixels in length (just under 1/4th
| the width of the sensor that is 8192 effective pixels wide).
|
| I think you can convert 5x into 10x or 15x pretty easily
| without much loss in image quality.
|
| That's not the problem, the problem is getting enough light
| (without boiling your specimen, which they briefly mention) and
| nailing the focus. At such magnification, both problems are
| challenging.
| zokier wrote:
| > It's very easy to find macro lenses that have 5:1
| magnification
|
| That is bit of an exaggregation. Afaik there is for example
| exactly one 5:1 macro available on the Canon R series RF
| mount, and in general they are pretty rare.
| dekhn wrote:
| For that size I would use a 1X or 4X microscope objective
| attached to a camera (this is in fact how my DIY automated
| microscope at home for looking at tardigrades does it).
|
| I don't understand the part about needing high light intensity-
| at such low magnification, I have to attenuate my LEDs
| significantly and take extremely short exposures (like, running
| a 1A LED at 10mA and 1-10us exposures). But I can't fault his
| results.
| munificent wrote:
| For the light intensity, it's likely that he's using a much
| smaller aperture to increase depth-of-field than you are, and
| that will crank up the light requirements.
| gaudat wrote:
| Macro photography most likely. Microscope images tend not to
| have bokehs like the ones in the article. You can use
| flourescent microscopy to make those glow in the dark images
| but the field of view is about 2 or 3 orders of magnitude too
| small for this.
| dekhn wrote:
| at such low magnification, the depth of field (not field of
| view) is pretty big, you can usually see significant out-of-
| focus detail. But normally people just put the sample in a
| well and cover it with a coverslip, which makes a thin
| section.
| zokier wrote:
| It's not inconceivable that a conventional camera could work
| here, although it is borderline. Quick napkin math: Sony A7RV
| produces 9504x6336 pixel images from 35.7x23.8mm sensor,
| resulting roughly 266 pixels/mm. With a 2x macro lens (Laowa
| has some), it would mean that 0.2mm subject would be
| 266x0.2x2=106 pixels across. Not exactly HD, but possibly still
| usable.
| emptybits wrote:
| I think conventional camera gear will do it.
|
| If you enjoy this view into microworlds, here's one of my
| favourite macro photographers. This is a collection of garnets
| (sand grains) that are 0.2 to 0.3 mm across. That's basically
| dust IMO!
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/194954457@N05/sets/72177720296...
|
| He talks about his gear here. His technique and patience is
| extraordinary. His gear is fairly modest: Olympus OM-D EM-1
| Mark II camera, MC-20 Teleconverter, Olympus 60mm macro lens,
| Kenko 16mm extension tube, & Raynox 505 close-up lens. That's
| an older model of Micro Four Thirds camera (the format has
| magnification and depth of field advantages over fullframe) so
| you could probably acquire such a setup in the range of $1K
| used. And then spend a lifetime refining your art... :-)
|
| https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4690261
| temp0826 wrote:
| _In a handful of ocean water
|
| You could not count all the finely tuned
|
| Musicians_
|
| -Hafiz
| t3estabc wrote:
| [dead]
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