Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamps, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: what crosses your mind when you look at a snowy landscape?
Speaker 1: You know, whether we're talking an actual in person visit
Speaker 1: to a winter wonderland or you just looking at say
Speaker 1: an old Peter Brugle painting of a of a snow
Speaker 1: colored medieval landscape. Oh, an old Pete medieval landscape. Um,
Speaker 1: I think just obviously about the season. I don't think
Speaker 1: about the collective power of the ice crystals within. I
Speaker 1: just look at the the effect of the collective and
Speaker 1: how beautiful it is. Yeah, the most you're probably gonna say,
Speaker 1: look at all that snow. You're not gonna say, look
Speaker 1: at those snow flakes. Imagine how many there are. Imagine
Speaker 1: how many little bits of crystallized water have contributed to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this overall picture before us. Yeah, particularly if you're in
Speaker 1: the Midwest right now and you're getting a bunch of
Speaker 1: snow dumped on you and you have to shovel all that,
Speaker 1: you're probably not thinking about the majesty of these tiny
Speaker 1: little geometric crystal kingdoms within. Yeah, you're not celebrating the snowflake.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, here here in the South. I've
Speaker 1: always lived in places where there's snow, but definitely in
Speaker 1: the South and like Tennessee and Georgia, I've lived in
Speaker 1: places where the snow is rare enough to where you
Speaker 1: can get excited about it when it's not there and
Speaker 1: also make little cardboard snowflakes that end up going on
Speaker 1: the you know, the kindergarten wall. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: something you're right in the South. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever snowflake comes tumbling down from the sky. But we're
Speaker 1: going to take this sort of powers of ten approach today.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try to get um from the macro to
Speaker 1: the micro and really get into snowflakes and whether or
Speaker 1: not they are unique each snowflake, Is it unique? And
Speaker 1: what if anything it has to do with ripparologists and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things. All Right, so it begs
Speaker 1: a question what is a snowflake? Again, It's easy to
Speaker 1: take it for granted, to forget there there or did
Speaker 1: not think about them at all. It's just this funny,
Speaker 1: little beautiful shape that falls from the sky and it's
Speaker 1: made out of ice, and it piles up and forms
Speaker 1: a lot of snow. But but but when you stop
Speaker 1: and ask yourself, how does it form, Well, it's a
Speaker 1: little more complicated. Then it all begins with a little
Speaker 1: tiny speck of dust. Yeah, this is a possible hexagon
Speaker 1: based scenario. I mean, first, you have to have temperatures
Speaker 1: at thirty two degrees fahrenheit or lower in a cloud
Speaker 1: for water vapor to attach to that little dust grain. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's also known as a condensation nuclei because this is
Speaker 1: going to form the heart of everything that grows out
Speaker 1: from it, Yeah, which then crystallizes into ice. And once
Speaker 1: it does this, a prism forms with six faces and
Speaker 1: a top in the bottom. And if you guys can
Speaker 1: sort of imagine all that in your brain, You've got
Speaker 1: the top and the bottom and each has a side,
Speaker 1: six sides right, and a cavity forms in each prism
Speaker 1: face where ice grows fastest, and then six branches sprout,
Speaker 1: forming that hexagon. Now, where it's going to go from
Speaker 1: there depends again on the conditions in that cloud, because
Speaker 1: the vapor content is really important in terms of how
Speaker 1: that snowflake might grow. In size, in shape, and also
Speaker 1: again the climate. So if it if you know, things
Speaker 1: get warm, then you get a different shape from that
Speaker 1: ice crystal. But if things freeze up, like say high
Speaker 1: altitude sears cloud might produce, then you get that doily
Speaker 1: effect that really intricate beautiful snowflake falling down. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was reading about when they when they fall through the
Speaker 1: warmer air, their slower growth. But there's a there's a
Speaker 1: there's widening that occurs. So and as we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can even have red snow in some cases,
Speaker 1: this blood snow that is that has been seen to
Speaker 1: fall uh in various places throughout history. The idea being
Speaker 1: here that little speck of dust at the center of
Speaker 1: it all is red in color and therefore dictate the
Speaker 1: overall color of the snow. That would be just wonderful
Speaker 1: to have, like red snowflakes, wouldn't it be terrifying? But
Speaker 1: red Christmas? Yeah, I'm dreaming bloody Christmas. All right. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing. A tiny snowflake could actually affect the climate.
Speaker 1: Not on a huge scale here, but Hands Berlin, Associate
Speaker 1: Professor of Meteeralogy at Penn State, says that quote serious
Speaker 1: clouds are known to play a large role in energy
Speaker 1: budget enhanced climate. The molecular level processes determine the shape
Speaker 1: of the ice crystals, which then determine the characteristics of
Speaker 1: the clouds themselves, which control the radiative properties of clouds
Speaker 1: and the role of serrus in climate. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the And these guys should know. They have an
Speaker 1: awesome job. They're snowflake designers. They use the Penn State
Speaker 1: cloud chamber to to explore ice crystal growth in a
Speaker 1: in this environment that's designed to mimic the conditions that
Speaker 1: are similar to serious cloud environments. Yeah, and as she
Speaker 1: said that the actual cloud chamber and they inject you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit of vapor and there, and it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to watch. Now, you know, the idea that little something
Speaker 1: is insignificant seeming as a as a snow crystal could
Speaker 1: and lead to fast changes in effect climate. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because it's you know, very much that idea of the
Speaker 1: butterfly effect. And of course the butterfly effect has its
Speaker 1: heart in chaos theory, which actually stems for meteorology and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what is going to happen with
Speaker 1: the weather at any given time, and as we look
Speaker 1: into the future, there's so many factors in in our
Speaker 1: in our weather, in our climate, in our atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: the smallest thing does having enormous repercussions. Yeah, as the
Speaker 1: butterfly wings in this butterfly effect theory would dictate. Right,
Speaker 1: at least that's the idea behind it. But what we
Speaker 1: really want to get to is is the snowflake unique?
Speaker 1: Does it have a doppel gang or does it have
Speaker 1: a double out there? When we hear about this all
Speaker 1: the time, each snowflake is unique and beautiful. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's something we we hear growing up because the the
Speaker 1: obvious analogy to grow to draw there is not only
Speaker 1: is the snowflake unique and beautiful, but you are unique
Speaker 1: and beautiful. You are one of a kind. You, darling child,
Speaker 1: are unique and beautiful and there's no one else on
Speaker 1: this world like you. And as we grow older, we
Speaker 1: kind of realized that, yes, that is true, but it's
Speaker 1: not as true as your your mom may have made
Speaker 1: it out to be when you were younger. You're like,
Speaker 1: I I am distinctive, I am unique, but I might
Speaker 1: be a type. Yeah, if you've ever auditioned for for
Speaker 1: any kind of an acting gig, or really, if you
Speaker 1: if you've ever uh you know, gone after any job
Speaker 1: and uh and and had a glimpse of the other
Speaker 1: people going for the position, then you begin to realize,
Speaker 1: all right, I may be a unique snowflake, but there
Speaker 1: are similar snowflakes, and they are my enemies, right, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure that other snowflakes look at each other like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, on a molecular level, a snowflake, Verlin says,
Speaker 1: could be unique. And he says, let's be specific here
Speaker 1: and define a snowflake first of all as a single
Speaker 1: vapor grim crystal. And then he says that he would
Speaker 1: say with a great deal of confidence that all crystals
Speaker 1: are different on this molecular level purely because there are different, says,
Speaker 1: in the atomic structure of the atoms making up the
Speaker 1: water molecule, and hence in the water molecules themselves. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very basic level. And it's it's the same as the
Speaker 1: fact that me and the other person going after the
Speaker 1: same job we're composed of different atoms, where we're different
Speaker 1: things on a very physical, uh molecular level. But visually
Speaker 1: Verylin would say no, because there are only so many
Speaker 1: types of snowflakes out there or shapes. Yeah, and especially
Speaker 1: the case when you look at snowflakes in the early
Speaker 1: stages of their development. The earlier the snowflake is, the
Speaker 1: younger the snowflake is, the more possibility that you're gonna
Speaker 1: have repetition. And then as the snowflake develops over time,
Speaker 1: you know, imagine again the branching occurring, and the and
Speaker 1: the changes occurring as it goes through these the varying
Speaker 1: degrees of heat and cold. As time passes, there's less
Speaker 1: likelihood that you're gonna have deuvils. But there but but still,
Speaker 1: they're gonna have snowflakes that look a lot alike, at
Speaker 1: least to the macro level. Right, You're not gonna have
Speaker 1: pentagon an octagon shaped snowflakes. First of all. Let's just
Speaker 1: get that. Ever cut one of those out in a
Speaker 1: class school project, it's a complete lie. Does don't exist? Yeah, pretty,
Speaker 1: but don't exist. Um, And you will probably have the hexagon, right,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much like the bass structure here. And there
Speaker 1: are triangular snowflakes, and most people think about those is
Speaker 1: more like trying to find a four leaf clover, but
Speaker 1: they turned out to be more common than we thought.
Speaker 1: In the study Aerodynamic Stability and the Growth of Triangular
Speaker 1: snow Crystals, co authors Kenneth Librect and Hannah Arnold described
Speaker 1: the process as tiny impurities such as dust particles, can
Speaker 1: cause one edge of the falling snowflake to tilt up
Speaker 1: as it falls. The snowflakes sides that are pointed down
Speaker 1: grow faster as the wind blows by, leading to a
Speaker 1: stable triangular pattern which remains triangular despite any later bumps
Speaker 1: as it falls, which is kind of fascinating a little
Speaker 1: bit of aerodynamics going on here. We were looking at
Speaker 1: some of the various shapes that these snowflakes take on
Speaker 1: on and it's it's it's really a rich and very
Speaker 1: uh the world of of snowflakes that we often take
Speaker 1: completely for granted. I mean, because at heart we're talking
Speaker 1: about crystal formation. And like in the world of crystals,
Speaker 1: there's the human idea of crystals, the crystals that humans
Speaker 1: carve naturally occurring crystals into so they can put it
Speaker 1: on a ring or pinan or whatever, and then there
Speaker 1: is that the rich world of actual crystal formation, which,
Speaker 1: if you know, start doing a Google image search, you
Speaker 1: just go down the rabbit hole at all these different forms.
Speaker 1: And the same can be said at the snowflakes you see.
Speaker 1: I mean some of them look more like like you're
Speaker 1: looking at a bacteria or something, or some sort of
Speaker 1: strange um tip for a medical device. Yeah, machine parts.
Speaker 1: I love these. Most people think about their radiating dendrites.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones that have the six branches with
Speaker 1: tiny little branches coming off of it. But there are
Speaker 1: some amazing things like the scrolls on plates is a
Speaker 1: type of snowflake, and within that you see all sorts
Speaker 1: of different variations. And then you see the piling on
Speaker 1: of ice crystals, like the apped columns kind of look
Speaker 1: like a I guess you like a bolt. And if
Speaker 1: you look at like those big those big spools that
Speaker 1: good wire comes on and that sometimes becomes a coffee
Speaker 1: table and bachelors. My parents had one of this. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you will see if you look under an electron microscope,
Speaker 1: you will see the ice crystals on top of that
Speaker 1: six sided plate on the very top, and it's just amazing.
Speaker 1: They really are these crystal kingdoms of ice. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: there's one that particular shape called capped bullets that if
Speaker 1: you if you created this or drew this in you know,
Speaker 1: like a second grade classroom, and called it a snowflake,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling a lot of teachers would give
Speaker 1: you an f. But because it looks like three crystal
Speaker 1: shards joined at the point it does, it doesn't even
Speaker 1: look real, you know. But but at the at the
Speaker 1: at the micro level, this is how crystals formed together.
Speaker 1: This is one of the many structures they can take on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll try to um to post on this so
Speaker 1: that you guys have a vision a little reference to this.
Speaker 1: But if you wanted to look cut up, you could
Speaker 1: just say electron microscopes snowflakes and you will see just
Speaker 1: amazing imagery of this stuff. All Right, we're gonna break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, more snowflakes. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: And I should point out that designer snowflakes are possible. Uh.
Speaker 1: Cal Tech researchers have created flakes in the laboratory using
Speaker 1: electric needles placed in a diffusion chamber. In this good situation,
Speaker 1: the crystals grow on the needle's tip, and by altering
Speaker 1: the conditions of scientists are able to create different sizes
Speaker 1: and patterns of snowflakes, some uh, perhaps unnatural shapes for snowflakes.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's got to be one of the best
Speaker 1: jobs ever then and just yeah, I make I make snowflakes.
Speaker 1: That yeah. And and again, as we discussed earlier, when
Speaker 1: we're talking about pen States cloud chamber. Um, when by
Speaker 1: studying crystal formations in snowflakes, I mean we're we're getting
Speaker 1: down to some of the fine details of the overwhelming
Speaker 1: movements of climate. That's right, all these tiny little things
Speaker 1: that make up climate. And we will discuss this in
Speaker 1: a bit. There's also this idea that snowflakes can inform
Speaker 1: us about the universe. But first we have got to
Speaker 1: talk about what snowflakes have to do with rip parologists. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty fabulous stuff. And this idea
Speaker 1: comes to us from Alan Moore, who who wrote the
Speaker 1: amazing graphic novel from Hell Uh all black and white,
Speaker 1: big thick graphic novel about the Ripper murders, and it's
Speaker 1: it's really a great work of literature. If you haven't
Speaker 1: read it, uh, it deals with a lot of feminist issues.
Speaker 1: It deals with some of the grizzly details of the case,
Speaker 1: and in the epilogue, Alan Moore talks about the idea
Speaker 1: of the the Cox snowflake to illustrate his point about ripparologists.
Speaker 1: That's right. He compares the multitude of increasingly outland ripper
Speaker 1: theories to what is known as a cock snowflake, or
Speaker 1: a finite fixed location event and error. In this case,
Speaker 1: London late can have an infinite number of nooks and crannies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So with the with the actual fractal idea of the
Speaker 1: cock snowflake, this is what happens. You start with a
Speaker 1: triangle and then you remove the inner third of each side,
Speaker 1: building another triangle at the location where the side was removed.
Speaker 1: So now you have a star instead of a kind
Speaker 1: of like a star of David exactly. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you repeat this process indefinitely. The snowflake does not grow
Speaker 1: in size, but it grows in complexity. So Moore's point
Speaker 1: in all of this is that there's only so much
Speaker 1: about the Ripper murders that we know. There's only so
Speaker 1: much at this point that we will ever know for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, unless we actually develop a means of traveling
Speaker 1: back in time and spying on what happened. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen, so that there's a set amount
Speaker 1: of information. So the Ripper story as we know it
Speaker 1: will never expand beyond a certain threshold, but the complexity
Speaker 1: that we throw at it, that that can grow. So
Speaker 1: so the idea is that there are only so many
Speaker 1: facts that we have, and ripparologists those you know, they're
Speaker 1: obsessed with figuring out exactly who did it, why they
Speaker 1: did it, what kind of complex plots were involved, the
Speaker 1: d crafting intricate theory after theory, while our actual knowledge
Speaker 1: on the incident never expands beyond it, beyond what is
Speaker 1: currently known. I was just thinking about that in terms
Speaker 1: of conspiracy theory in general, and I was thinking about
Speaker 1: big folts. We recently talked about Yetti and Bigfoot. In
Speaker 1: the idea there is patterns, right, and seeing patterns, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about this whole lot with cognitive bias and
Speaker 1: all sorts of conspiracy theorists. But the overlaying of patterns
Speaker 1: and the symmetry in the in the cock snowflake, this fractal.
Speaker 1: But again, what you're doing is, you know, every time
Speaker 1: you put on another equal lateral triangle, it yields another space,
Speaker 1: and it's an infinite perimeter to just begin into putting
Speaker 1: on that same pattern right, that layering of that same
Speaker 1: equilateral triangle. So it's interesting, and I just want to
Speaker 1: point out to that the Cox snowflake is actually named
Speaker 1: after Swedish mathematician and his name is Niels Fabian von
Speaker 1: Koch who identified one of the earliest NEWN fractals. Here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a ko c H if you want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Um. Now, you're probably listening to that, and
Speaker 1: you're you're thinking, well that you're also talking about a
Speaker 1: creative process here. You sort of you have a set
Speaker 1: amount of information and then you're just plowing forward with
Speaker 1: all this complexity and making the existing information more and
Speaker 1: more complex in the way it relates to each other.
Speaker 1: And indeed you will find snowflake novel writing methods out
Speaker 1: there on the internet, which I've always found interesting. I
Speaker 1: haven't really ever tried to employ one, but I like
Speaker 1: the idea. And the idea is you start with a
Speaker 1: simple idea. You start with your your basic outline, you
Speaker 1: know you're and then you expand it, you create a
Speaker 1: snowflake out of it. Um. You know, you can think
Speaker 1: of various novels that sort of occupy the same space
Speaker 1: that if very basic level, I mean, how many fantasy,
Speaker 1: epic fantasy novels sound more or less the same, how
Speaker 1: many detective novels sound more or less the same. And
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, it's all been done before, right
Speaker 1: where it where stuff differentiates from the next book and
Speaker 1: the next book is in the details, is in the
Speaker 1: the the the intricate nature of the snowflake. Even if
Speaker 1: our existing literature and it is really only only gonna
Speaker 1: occupy the same space, It's not going to expand beyond
Speaker 1: its current threshold. Well, you know, as a fiction writer
Speaker 1: who comes to the blank page with a cacophony of ideas,
Speaker 1: I find that really seductive, this idea that you just
Speaker 1: create this triangle, this simple triangle of the plot, and
Speaker 1: then you begin to just fill it out from there,
Speaker 1: and that way you can sort of tame some of
Speaker 1: the ideas, some of the thoughts and the characters that
Speaker 1: are running around in your head. Yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: brings me back to the whole idea, right, what you know? Right,
Speaker 1: so there's a fixed amount of what I know. It
Speaker 1: comes down to how you implement what you know and
Speaker 1: how you how you range it on the page and
Speaker 1: how you create this snowflake. Uh, just to go off
Speaker 1: on a tangent here for a second, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this. I was thinking, I wonder if you can
Speaker 1: weave neuroscience into an actual writing class. And the reason
Speaker 1: is is because as readers, we have all sorts of
Speaker 1: neurons firing right mirror neurons as we read on the
Speaker 1: page what the character is doing. So if the character
Speaker 1: is weeping or playing baseball, then there are certain things
Speaker 1: going on our heads that are connecting with that. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking that one of the reasons why some
Speaker 1: characters work in some don't is because they seem like
Speaker 1: caricatures and we can't relate to them because it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel real. It's outside of the writer's experience perhaps when
Speaker 1: they're trying to render that character that's snowflake, so it's
Speaker 1: you know, it would be nice to see if some
Speaker 1: of the world of science could inform fiction writing. That
Speaker 1: would be interesting, That would be interesting. Shower thoughts by
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas. But anyway, let's get back to this, because
Speaker 1: I think the interesting idea that um that you could
Speaker 1: have this pattern making and in the sense of ripparologists
Speaker 1: or conspiracy theories in the Coke snowflake, you'd always have
Speaker 1: uncertainty no matter how much you layered it on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the remarkable thing about it is that
Speaker 1: again we'll never be able to say with accuracy this
Speaker 1: is what happened, and this is this is who is involved?
Speaker 1: Uh we but we just keep learing on the the
Speaker 1: complexity of our theories. I mean, you see a similar
Speaker 1: thing with the assassination of jfk uh. We have the facts,
Speaker 1: we have them arranged, and then we cannot help but
Speaker 1: continue to go back and try and create a more
Speaker 1: complex idea of what happened. Um. In large part I
Speaker 1: believe is William Manchester room of this argument pointed out
Speaker 1: that all right, we were pretty much know Oswald killed Kennedy,
Speaker 1: like the end that it was just a lone gunman situation.
Speaker 1: But when you compare the two, when you put them
Speaker 1: on the scale, you have such a an insignificant and
Speaker 1: easily person as Oswald on this level, and then you
Speaker 1: have a figure like Kennedy on the other. They don't
Speaker 1: balance out you and you would have to plut you
Speaker 1: would have to throw more complexity onto the Oswald side
Speaker 1: of the scale. To even things out to where it
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense in a more epic sense of
Speaker 1: the word, and then you're just further down the rabbit hole. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to make this sort of thread through snowflakes
Speaker 1: and zen and joy, and I don't know if we'll
Speaker 1: be able to fully get at this idea, but I
Speaker 1: did think one of the things about snowflakes is that
Speaker 1: when you pay attention to them, you really are paying
Speaker 1: attention to the details of the world. You're slowing things down.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this when we were discussing labyrinths
Speaker 1: and many other topics, that you're it's a meditative process
Speaker 1: and you're seeing things as they are as opposed to
Speaker 1: that blueprint in your mind, just creating memory for you
Speaker 1: and you know, creating your reality. Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: like about this idea about snowflakes is particularly the electron
Speaker 1: microscope when you're looking at them, because you really get
Speaker 1: to see all of those nooks and crannies and that
Speaker 1: that that snowflake, it is such an ephemeral object because
Speaker 1: it's gone in seconds. Well you know, it gets frozen
Speaker 1: into the uh, into a snowdrift, and then it's molecularly
Speaker 1: changed anyway. Yeah, it's been in a state of change
Speaker 1: its entire existence, and then it is and then it
Speaker 1: changes again into into mire water. And so I thought,
Speaker 1: this is really a good example of perhaps something called joy,
Speaker 1: one of these emotions, uh that we try to figure
Speaker 1: out and and categorize. And Zadie Smith, she's a writer.
Speaker 1: She has a really great essay on joy, and she
Speaker 1: goes through and she makes the distinction between pleasure and joy.
Speaker 1: She's a pleasure is like you know, eating a popsicle
Speaker 1: on a hot day and avoiding my work for seven
Speaker 1: minutes while I eat the popsicle. And Joy is my
Speaker 1: child who is a pleasure. Um, she says, though mostly
Speaker 1: she's a joy, which means, in fact, she gives us
Speaker 1: not much pleasure at all, but rather that strange admixture
Speaker 1: of terror pain into light that have come to recognize
Speaker 1: as joy and now must find some way to live
Speaker 1: with daily. And I thought, that is that is a
Speaker 1: in a sense of snowflake, because that's it's it's going
Speaker 1: to be gone. And anyway, she goes on and on
Speaker 1: about joy and parenting and uh, just the the existence
Speaker 1: of life. Really that that is a beautiful way of
Speaker 1: looking at it, and I can certainly relate to that,
Speaker 1: having recently become a parent myself, that parenting is not
Speaker 1: a a seven minute experience with a popsicle. It is.
Speaker 1: It's more in keeping how she framed it there as
Speaker 1: a as an as an overall joy, but but in
Speaker 1: the individual moment, uh, maybe not so pleasurable. Yeah, terrifying
Speaker 1: and beautiful and terrifying for the reasons because it is,
Speaker 1: as we all know, life on Earth is temporary existence
Speaker 1: and sort of uh underscores that point force a lot,
Speaker 1: just like a snowflake melting in the sun. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think that what's interesting again about snowflakes is that
Speaker 1: they do allow us to go macro and micro. And
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go macro on this, all you
Speaker 1: would have to do is look at the galaxies. And
Speaker 1: one guy by the name of Professor Duncan Forbes who
Speaker 1: says that galaxy formation is very similar to snowflake formation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes. I mean a lot of it comes down
Speaker 1: to the basic idea of accretion, which we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: when we've talked about the formation of planets and stars
Speaker 1: and solar systems and you know, on up to the galaxies.
Speaker 1: When you have just a very small, a little bit
Speaker 1: of a bit of matter, and it's the exerting gravitational force,
Speaker 1: it draws in another bit of matter, and then the
Speaker 1: graviltational force grows and grows. It's like a snowball going
Speaker 1: down a hill. It eventually gets bigger and bigger, draws
Speaker 1: in more matter from the surrounding area, and that's how
Speaker 1: you end up with a planet or a star or
Speaker 1: in these larger cases, um galaxies. Um starts out very
Speaker 1: small and than the galaxies, uh, than seed in this
Speaker 1: constant stream of other stars, other regions of other you know,
Speaker 1: vast tracts of of gas. Yeah, so these giants, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're being formed. But essentially it's the same process as
Speaker 1: a snowflake that has that seed, and then it grows
Speaker 1: the water vapor, and then that water vapor accumulates on
Speaker 1: the surface of snowflake, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a lovely thought to think that that
Speaker 1: snowflake has very much a lot of in common with
Speaker 1: this infinite universe idea. Yeah, snowflakes of the gods, if
Speaker 1: you will, I love that. If we could right now,
Speaker 1: we would just say, and happy holidays everyone, and then
Speaker 1: and whatever wherever place you are, in your car, in
Speaker 1: your room, at home, on the train commuting, snowflakes would
Speaker 1: fall down gently upon your head. Indeed, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a quote from Corn McCarthy, so so that
Speaker 1: that'll kind of deaden some of the joy. But still
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful quote. This is from the Border trilogy,
Speaker 1: um and this is one speaker up, an individual speaking
Speaker 1: to another character. He says, snowflake, You catch the snowflake,
Speaker 1: but when you look in your hands, you don't have
Speaker 1: it no more. Maybe you see this the shadow, this pattern,
Speaker 1: but before you see it's gone. If you want to
Speaker 1: see it, you have to see it on its own ground.
Speaker 1: If you catch it, you lose it. And where it
Speaker 1: goes there is no coming back from not even God
Speaker 1: can bring it back. Happy holidays. Have I have a
Speaker 1: nice CORNL. McCarthy Christmas, everybody, as you as you ruminate
Speaker 1: on that, but but also yeah, as you look if
Speaker 1: you were fortunate enough to experience a white Christmas, a
Speaker 1: pleasantly white Christmas, not a not one that is, you know,
Speaker 1: turning your area into a frigid waste land. But you
Speaker 1: get to look out on the snow. Think about those
Speaker 1: little snowflakes. Think about that tiny, intricate design and how
Speaker 1: it all spirals out from their affecting climate. And look
Speaker 1: up into the sky and think about these, uh, these stars,
Speaker 1: these planets that have formed and are you can continue
Speaker 1: to form and uh and the galactic formations that, in
Speaker 1: their own way are much the snowflake. Indeed, And if
Speaker 1: you want to check out some more of what we're
Speaker 1: doing out there on the Internet, you can do so
Speaker 1: at Stuff to Blow your Mind. Yes, Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. You can also check us out
Speaker 1: on social media. We're on tumbler one, on Twitter, We're
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Speaker 1: can also find us on YouTube where remind Stuff show
Speaker 1: and Julie. Where else can they find us? Well, they
Speaker 1: can send an email to blow the mind at discovery
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