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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.'"
So now we have a way to link snowflakes and cryptography.
Sam ty sig.
"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.'
I am special. And I'm going to be famous.
...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.
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.
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!
-- Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
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
If someone tells you "You're one in a million," there are 6,571 people exactly like you.
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$
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
proving that a watched pot does indeed boil
Hoorah for science!
1 voice in a sea of voices
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
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.
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.
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!"
So you're saying all snowflakes are exactly the same?
They don't taste the same.
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.
Mod dupe snowflake -1 redundant
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 )
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