[HN Gopher] The highest-resolution photos of snowflakes (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
The highest-resolution photos of snowflakes (2021)
Author : mhb
Score : 74 points
Date : 2023-12-30 04:54 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| ggm wrote:
| I increasingly find the _no two alike_ thing exasperating. Almost
| nothing in nature above the subatomic /atomic/molecule level is
| "alike" in crystals or anything else. Making BIPM spheres of
| counted atoms does not truly make them identical. Cubic crystals
| of salt will have differences.
|
| At the level of detail most people can discern, I suspect many
| morphological forms of ice crystal are very alike, and we have to
| resort to the small imperfections to get to not alike.
|
| Nothing is exactly the same. That's what discrete countable
| things are: distinct.
|
| (Of course it's semantics. And poetic license. Most snowflakes
| are trivially unlike, and those which are nearly alike have
| discernible difference if you go looking for them. As do cells,
| flowers, grains of sand.. )
| topherclay wrote:
| That's a fun thought experiment: to imagine what level of
| detail of snowflakes most people are able to discern.
|
| Reminds me of a little bit of that one xkcd.
|
| https://xkcd.com/2501/
| zafka wrote:
| Thanks! Your comment compelled me to look up olivine and then
| feldspar to check their formulas. Becoming much more aware of
| the makeup of minerals is on my list of things to do.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Do we have evidence or proof about "no two alike" or is it more
| like an educated guess?
| j4yav wrote:
| There's a whole class of factoids where it seems some people
| are unable to resist bringing it up even when the connection to
| the current discussion is quite tenuous, and a reactionary set
| of people who are unable to resist a stock reply to the mention
| (which varies depending on the topic, but generally it's an
| "actually" calling out some exception to the first statement).
| In reality, everyone has read both the factoid and the stock
| reply a million times.
|
| It would be interesting to document and track these. They are
| almost like little autonomous programs that run on people's
| consciousness, which I guess is a just a meme per the original
| definition.
| cwillu wrote:
| Obligatory xkc... nevermind.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2021)
|
| Related from then:
|
| _Photos of Snowflakes Like You 've Never Seen Them Before_
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/science/snowflakes-photos...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Highest resolution photos ever taken of snowflakes_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25939169 - Jan 2021 (26
| comments)
|
| _Ultra High Resolution Photos of Snowflakes_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25414579 - Dec 2020 (88
| comments)
| OJFord wrote:
| > device, which stands at about five feet in height off the
| ground when placed on a table
|
| And is about the length of three football fields when dismantled
| and spaced equally across them?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Good catch, that's a remarkably poor description. A table can
| easily be anywhere from like two to four feet tall, so this
| device is anywhere from one to three feet tall, neither of
| which sounds nearly as impressive as five feet.
| tempodox wrote:
| Related:
|
| How big can a a snowflake get?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38797629
|
| Earliest Snowflake Photos From 1885
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38816521
| hooloovoo_zoo wrote:
| Hehe snowflakes should prove a patent challenge worthy of
| Myrvhold.
| julieturner99 wrote:
| HN title should note this article is from 2021.
| valiant-comma wrote:
| Are these really higher resolution than the 2010 scans from an
| electron microscope[1]?
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/2010/12/snowflakes-by-microscope/
| technojamin wrote:
| Probably not, but those aren't photographs.
| technojamin wrote:
| Here's a fantastic Veritasium video about snowflakes with a
| scientist that basically figured out all of the ways they can
| form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao2Jfm35XeE
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I don't understand how snowflakes are different to each other and
| yet also symmetric. Are they always symmetric?
| tim333 wrote:
| The symmetry is imperfect.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I don't understand how they are even close to symmetric. The
| 'seed' seems unlikely to be symmetric. There is no way for
| one 'arm' to communicate directly with another. And the
| conditions (temperature etc) is unlikely to be completely
| uniform around that seed.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| > The ice crystals that make up snowflakes are symmetrical
| (or patterned) because they reflect the internal order of
| the crystal's water molecules as they arrange themselves in
| predetermined spaces (known as "crystallization") to form a
| six-sided snowflake.
|
| https://www.noaa.gov/stories/how-do-snowflakes-form-
| science-...
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Because each arm experiences the same atmospheric
| conditions, the arms look identical.
|
| Thanks. But I'm still not convinced. If it is just that
| the microclimate around the seed is the same, why aren't
| adjacent crystals identical?
| clintfred wrote:
| Maybe they are? Has this been tested?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-30 23:01 UTC)