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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.'"
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.
Am I the only person to think this guy has too much time on his hands?
You must be a new snowflake here.
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
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.
This isn't news. No truism is 100% true.
including that one?
my pet machine
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?
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.
...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.
Nuke 'em from orbit. Then you (a population living off the earth) win.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
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.
. .
[/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 )