Slashdot Mirror
Two Snowflakes May Be Alike After All
An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting that it may be possible for two snowflakes to be alike after all. For anyone who studies probability, this seems reasonable, given that the article mentions that 10^24 snowflakes fall in any given year. The article contains links to fascinating snowflake pictures. From the article: 'A typical snow crystal weighs roughly one millionth of a gram. This means a cubic foot of snow can contain roughly one billion crystals ... "It is probably safe to say that the possible number of snow crystal shapes exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the known universe," Nelson said. Still, while "no two snowflakes are alike" might hold true for larger snowflakes, Nelson figures it might ring false for smaller crystals that sometimes fall before they have a chance to fully develop. "How likely is it that two snowflakes are alike? Very likely if we define alike to mean that we would have trouble distinguishing them under a microscope and if we include the crystals that hardly develop beyond the prism stage--that is, the smallest snow crystals," Nelson said.'"
So now we have a way to link snowflakes and cryptography.
Sam ty sig.
u should only go by snowflakes that u can actually SEE :) not lil microscopic ones that u cant see. i dont think those r really snowflakes
--Carrie
"It is probably safe to say that the possible number of snow crystal shapes exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the known universe..."
This sort of thing does my head in. Anyone else trying to keep up?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Now how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
[
I am special. And I'm going to be famous.
It's finally snowing in DC. I'm psyched. 2 inches...is not much. (I used to live in upstate NY...) But it's something.
Have you seen the arrow?
...and of course, I can't find it... a scientist published a picture of two identical snowflakes in, I'm almost sure, Science or Nature. And, no, I'm not talking about Snowflake Bentley. It was a byproduct of some kind of meteorological research, they were flying a plane through clouds where snow was being formed, and, as you'd expect, if two flakes of snow form under virtually identical conditions you end up with two virtually identical flakes.
I think this was in the 1990s.
It made the mainstream news at the time.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I've always wondered what physicists were doing when they were busy not discovering cold fusion. Seriously though, what I got from this was that while still incredibly unlikely it is possible for two snowflakes to be the same. Just like everything else that is extremely unlikely but not quite impossible.
I was actually thinking about this a few days ago. Would snowflakes be good for use in encryption somehow, since they are (infrequently at best) alike? I know one of the harder things to do is get a random seed for your number generators. Would these be potentially a good source of random information?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
What goes up must come down. (suspected true)
Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. (obviously false (ouch!))
A watched pot never boils. etc...
This is like numerology. You take a bunch of squishy data (aphorisms) and attempt to rigorously evaluate them.
I am reminded of Charlie Brown's answer to the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" His answer: Eight if they're skinny, four if they're fat.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
I would have thought.
Since, as the diameter of the flake increases, the circumference does too.
So, the more possible paths there are around the edge - equivalent to more shapes.
Am I wrong?
Myth Busted?
A typical snow crystal weighs roughly one millionth of a grama cubic foot of snow can contain roughly one billion crystals...
Most snowflakes are less than one-half inch across. The smallest may be only about one-tenth of a millimeter across...
I think, if you're talking about the myth that Americans do science in metric, then yes: Myth Busted.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Sorry kids, just like snowflakes, some of you really aren't special or unique, you'll grow up to be just like everybody else...
...unless you become the next Bill Gates or Ted Bundy
"Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake..." - Tyler Durden, Fight Club
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
In other news--it is very likely that two people will have identical fingerprints. If by fingerprints we mean the part of the fingerprint that cannot even be distinguished as a whorl. That is, a couple of cells constituting a tiny fold of skin.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Does anyone know why all the fully formed real snowflakes I've seen pictures of have a hexogonal shape with six main "branches?" Might it have something to do with the H20 molecule being triangular or polar?
Thanks
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedis play/img_display.php?pic=ig35_snowflakes_10_02.jpg &cap=
If that's a snowflake it really is amazing - of course I haven't actually looked at millions of them as individuals either, so maybe it is a normal snowflake...
But is sure looks out of place.
And blue. Very blue.
If someone tells you "You're one in a million," there are 6,571 people exactly like you.
We need to find the exception which negates the rule. I propose we spend some tax dollars to find the matching pair of snow flakes.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
A typical snow crystal weighs roughly one millionth of a gram. This means a cubic foot of snow can contain roughly one billion crystals ...
:-)
Who made one cubic foot equal to 1000 grams? I'll smash him with one cubic foot of lead!
(ps for the metric vs imperial system: one cubic decimeter of water is one liter, and one liter of water weights one kilogram, so one cubic decimeter of water weights one kilogram
bash$
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1784760. htm
Basically, she found two hexagonal prisms that exhibited the same crystal-formation pattern. Molecule-for-molecule, they weren't identical, but they both had formed in the same lattice config (which is enough for me to say that they're dupes of each other).
-- Posting AC 'cause I was itchy with the modding stick.
Nancy Knight, 1988
3 95.htm
"The old saw that no two snow crystals are identical was disproved in 1988, when National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Nancy Knight found two that apparently were. The twin crystals were found by accident when Knight was examining samples collected at 6 kilometers (20,000 feet) over Wisconsin for a cloud-climatology study. Thick, hollow, and columnar, the crystals seem to have been Siamese twins that grew attached to each other. No satisfying explanation has yet been found." -
http://www.proquestk12.com/curr/snow/snow395/snow
You mean...I'm not a unique snowflake after all?!
See Cecil Adams at the straightdope http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_392.html
..only in really cold places. They wouldn't be very useful in Florida..
proving that a watched pot does indeed boil
Hoorah for science!
1 voice in a sea of voices
Who counted 10^24 snowflakes? Doesn't that make them a bit flakey? Maybe they had too much time on their hands or something...
C|N>K
The National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has a pic of the identical (attached) snowflakes on their kid's page.
They look more like nanopumps than snowflakes to me!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Check out the flake in pic #8.
Last winter, I saw one just like that. I swear!
bla
keep on thread!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't see why this is a surprise. Snowflake formations are realistically independent of each other, so if it's possible for one it should be possible for any other. The odds of randomly selecting two that are exactly the same may be very small, but...
What possible argument could even exist as to how no two could EVER be the same, ever?
Magical snowflake factory in heaven that molds each flake, and after each flake they break the mold, never to use it again? Or what?
Pwned by the Pauli exclusion principle.
Since threads are moderated by many people, it's likely that some threads will be moderated as "Trolls" or in a negative fashion early on, by moderators who do indeed consider it to be a Troll thread. However, as time goes on, more moderators will pass by and in the end the person will receive the rating/label that they deserve.
Also note that while there may be moderators that go out and toss around negative mods freely, their decisions get moderated through meta-moderation. In other words, meta-moderators go through their mods and decide whether they made a fair decision or not. This will result in more fair moderators and less negative moderators.
On a final note, there are many moderators that look at spelling and grammar with a critical eye, and while your sister may have made a good point, her writing may have swayed the moderator to a negative decision. Overall, spelling and grammar shouldn't count towards moderation points (as much as it grieves some), since not everyone is as deliberate when they type.
A watched pot never boils, eh? I never tried that one. But I have watched enough eMule downloads to know that a watched progress bar never fills. It always stops at 99% with 30K left and sits there for a few days.
I bet a scientist has never said no two snowflakes were alike. It was probably somebody's grandmother. After all, it's all about probability. It snowed all day here and it's very possible that every snowflake on the ground is the same. Improbable, but possible.
Two snowflakes alike? Bah!
For those who don't know, this possibility was discussed in France two centuries ago, where this and many other troubling discoveries were dealt with.
The plan put in place was considered absurd, but doable. To somehow or another change the very climate of the world, to make it use the flakespace at a slower pace until a new dimension could be discovered.
So, along with European clocks moving a head a second every few years, there world temperature too was set to become warmer. The phenomina today which we call "Global Warming" is actually there to save us from the disasturous effects of two similar snowflakes.
The official Snowflake Registry in Paris has concluded, after a full investigation of the matter, that no two snowflakes have ever been alike, and each flake fallen is actually recorded with an id. Should you happen to generate a snowflake on your own, please register it, and do the world a favor.
Have you read my journal today?
...would be more along the lines of "as alike as any two arms of a typical snowflake are"
Since we generally assume snowflakes to be radially symettrical, that implies a degree of "alikeness" within the snowflake. Intuitively, that is what would make two snowflakes alike (to me)....if you could look at their individual arms (i.e. 1/6th of the snowflake) and not be able to match them up to the correct snowflake.
If you were just talking about atom-to-atom alikeness, given that snowflakes are far from perfect in their symettry, well that is just dumb.
Obviously, lots of snowflakes would be alike by my definition.
I have to ask, is there really any reason a scientist would spend time studying this? I hope he moves on soon, the scientific world must hurry and overanalyze the next cliche.
We finally got snow today. It changes you're mood so even identical snowflakes can have vastly different effects.
DUST OF SNOW
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Robert Frost
or
It's snowing, It's snowing!
The cry is out
That stopped up our lips
The whole grey day.
At the dark window
New flakes dance in the street light.
-yt
Regardless of snowflakes, no two poems are exactly alike.
Wait, you mean emule downloads actually ever download? I thought they were all scheduled to start 50 years into the future, when they reach the front of the queue.
For anyone who studies probability, this seems reasonable...
And for anyone who studies quantum mechanics, this seems unreasonable.
Look at any two things from far enough away, they begin to look alike.
Look at any two things sufficiently closely and they begin to look different.
...if you define "alike" as "looks the same from 3 feet away," and include people in the "embryo" phase, or the simplest form of human before it fully develops.
I mean, really, leave it to eggheads to suck the soul out of a beautiful saying with accurate symbolism. I think the point is that if you scritinize them at certain levels, but they way they LOOK is not the way they ARE. This whole 'announcement' is announcing that if you change the criteria by which you judge something, the description of the thing changes. Which is why people think that George W Bush is "evil," and still others believe he is "the decider." Or a better yet, why some people believe there "is" a God, while others maintain there "isn't" a God.
God existing or not existing doesn't actually make a difference, because whether or not he exists, the universe is how it is. Or not. Anyway, I'm off-topic. I'll shut up now. The point is I hate this article.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Once I didn't apply a stitch in time, and was shocked that I only had to make five stitches to fix it back up, instead of the expected nine.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
I live in the mountains of Colorado just northwest of Boulder. It wouldn't surprise me if there are 10^24 snowflakes in my driveway right now.
Seriously, It's only January and I'd be fine if we didn't see another snowflake this year.
After the first 2 feet ALL snowflakes look the same.
So you're saying all snowflakes are exactly the same?
They don't taste the same.
what's so damn hard to understand about that?
The hard to understand part is why you would want to. It's Occam's Shaver: don't introduce unnecessary complexity.
OMG duh, its cuz when u talk stupid, ppl think u r stupid :) and theirs no stupid mod, theirs only troll.
But do the math...
Approximately 10^24 snowflakes each year, and they say more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe. There are 10^75 atoms in the universe, which means that there is at least 10^51 times more possibilities for snowflakes than there are actual snowflakes in any given year. Considering the universe is not even 10^11 years old, I think it's a safe bet that no two snowflakes have ever *actually* been alike.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You get lots of powder in colder climes/high elevations. With those, it is likely for crystals to be alike.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Voyager 1 hasn't come down... yet. And it doesn't seem likely to.
According to a book that i'm reading "It ain't necessarily so ...bro" by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki (Ignoble award winner, Radio host on Triple J (Australia)).
"In 1988 the scientist Nancy Knight (at the National Center for Atmospheric research in Boulder, Colorado) was studying cirrus clouds. During a snow storm in Wisconsin her research plane collected snowflakes on a chilled glass slide coated with sticky oil. Two of the snowflakes where identical (atleast under a microscope, atleast)." page 148
What goes up must come down. (suspected true)
Oh yeah... tell that to Voyager. Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. (obviously false (ouch!)) Well after lightning strikes the first time, that place (ouch) is never going to be the same again.A watched pot never boils. etc...
There's actually some truth to that... If you take the lid of a pot that you're trying to boil, the escaping steam carries away heat and helps to cool the pot -- It also lowers the vapour pressure of the steam, which allows more steam to be generated (allowing the water in the pot to cool faster).That way, a watched pot boils a lot slower than an unwatched pot -- and if the heat is low enough, then removing the lid actually will make the differnce between boiling, and just evaporating at a high temperature.
This message brought to you by the society for the anal retentive (I had to say that, or they'd browbeat me to death).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Now I know what to do the next time I get stuck in a -40C blizzard. I'll just pull out my magnifying glass and Halogen light and .... wait....
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
so even Mother Nature believes in cloning :)
Eclipse PDE and Me
We actually know who first said it, or at least where most people first heard it from. A Jericho, Vermont, farmer named Wilson Bentley. Bentley lashed together a Microscope and a (quite expensive) Camera and took thousands of pictures of snowflakes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He published a number of papers, articles, and a book on the subject of snow crystals. Since he was the first person to successfully take a photograph of a snow crystal, and was clearly a serious investigator, I'd rank him as a scientist -- albeit a self trained one.
See http://snowflakebentley.com/
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Mod dupe snowflake -1 redundant
Use the Preview Button!
bad spelling? Isn't that what spell-check is for? There is NO excuse for piss-poor spelling...
Use the Preview Button!
...the SIGnificance of inSIGnificance is SIGnificant...
If the only thing that makes two things different is that one contains an extra H2O2 molecule instead of a H2O, then that's already breaking even the original metaphor. You can find bigger differences than that in machine-stamped assembly-line-produced pieces, hence the concept of "tolerance" or the six sigma hype. Yet noone would consider them unique. I've yet to hear anyone say "I'm unique like a standardized run-of-the-mill 5mm radius, 31 teeth, brass cog." And if you heard someone saying that, you'd think of it as sarcasm at best.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Can anyone explain why snowflakes are symmetrical? Salt crystals growing in water don't arrange themselves into these long-armed patterns nor are they entirely symmetrical. Why should one arm of a snowflake grow to exactly the same shape as the other arms?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Poor snow flakes. You are all different! Just like everyone else.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
in other news: This article may be exciting... if we define exciting relative to grass watching (and quite possibly plaigiarism since I saw no credit given to Captain Obvious (tm), who I'm sure was involved in some way)
watch "the money masters" on google video
You spellededed your name wrong.
which is totally what she said
as i prepare to leave and face the day, i ponder this deep subject for only an instant, as i have this mundane task of making a living looming on the horizen. you can BET i WILL rush home this evening to see if this mystery has been solved
"you may disagree with me, but i would lay down my life to defend your right to do so..."
Can't hypothesize your way out of a paper bag? Whip out Slick WIllies "what is is" approach...
Well... It depends what you call a snowflake/planet/god/hybrid vehicle. *sigh*
Wow, revisionist history sanitation theories in application!
Didn't we just do this last year with planets?
That was it. Thank you for finding it.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
can see the fnords!
Mod parent -1, troll: everyone is singular, and thus requires a singular possessive pronoun.
*cough*
For all we know the moon may be as conscious as a poet or a realtor, and extremely weary of its monotonous round. - HLM
. .
[/sarcasm]
Leave the snowflakes alone, try to research if we can get something to fuel our cars after a decade or two or try to find the cure for utter stupidity. Hearing something useful coming out from science is rather rare these days, probably because really interesting stuff is not published or wouldn't interest the business giants like oil producers.
. .
Believe it or not the largest payout from research is generally not directly the target of the research. We call this serendipity
Off the top of my head the study of this subject would require the researcher to apply his efforts (described here as apparently useless) on the details of crystal formation, manipulating factors of said formation, crystalline structure, and the statistical analysis of crystal formation, besides who knows how many other details that we will never know because we weren't involved.
Let me see if I can come up with some "useless" applications for knowledge in this research track. How about crystalline formation in metals? I bet the aerospace industry has no need for this type of knowledge as they try to come up with ways to grow single crystal blocks of titanium to form turbine blades or anything else that requires insanely high strength. As an example (from memory): the tensile strength of cast iron is a little more then 10,000 psi. The tensile strength of iron formed as a single crystal is somewhere around 100,000 psi! If I remember correctly, the single crystal tensile strength of carbon is 500,000 psi. The reason for these amazing numbers is that the primary weakness is always the crystalline boundaries. (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_crystal )
Another "useless" application of this type of research is crystalline formation as it relates to pharmaceutical research. Did you know that the (apparently unimportant and profitless) pharmaceutical companies actually sent an experiment up into orbit just so they could see how crystals grow in zero G? That sounds like it must be an incredibly lavish waste of their shareholder's money (by one of the greediest industries in the world (personal opinion)).
Fun facts:
- When you analyze a crystal you can tell the strength of the gravity field it was formed under.
- Crystalline formation is a state change and controlling this can allow you to do all sorts of interesting things from scalding the hell out of yourself heating water in a microwave, to creating so called meta materials.(reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_materials )
- And finally: Utter stupidity is often caused by not looking any deeper then the surface of a subject. (reference: http://www.suck.com/daily/97/11/12/1.html )
There's actually some truth to that... If you take the lid of a pot that you're trying to boil, the escaping steam carries away heat and helps to cool the pot -- It also lowers the vapour pressure of the steam, which allows more steam to be generated (allowing the water in the pot to cool faster).
So use a glass lid.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Another one is the belief that the rifling pattern engraved on a fired bullet can be used to positively identify the gun from which it was fired. This assumption rests in turn on the assumption that no two gun barrels are exactly alike. How do we know?
These two examples are a bit more serious than the case of snowflakes, because they're used as evidence in criminal trials. I suppose there must be scientific, peer-reviewed studies out there somewhere about the uniqueness of fingerprints and rifle barrels. But I don't see how they could do any more than establish the probabilities of any two of these objects being sufficiently alike as to be practically indistinguishable. I'd sure like to know what these probabilities are...they're certainly never mentioned in a courtroom.
DNA matching is probably on firmer ground, right?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Nike inc. has just submitted a patent application for an optimized snowflake configuration. Licensing plans are available for any Ski Resort wishing to use Nike's branded Sport Snow and the Nike Schuss logo.
so much as it went out. And there's no aphorism about what goes out must come in.
all snowflakes are alike in the desert
Don't try time this is at light home, but.
If you don't like the moderations... make sure you meta-mod whenever possible (which undoes some of the damage).
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?