Strange Science

All right. I wanna see a show of digital hands.

Who has ever had a Sea Monkeys kit when they were growing up? Come on, don’t be shy!
Leave a comment and tell me about it!

I had a couple, if I remember well. I LOVED the little guys. I could sit and watch them for hours. I’ve been tempted to pick up another kit lately, but haven’t yet had the time.

Well, for any of you unfamiliar with the strange and fascinating world of Sea Monkeys, here’s a nice little shameless plug - I mean, official advertisement to show you how it’s done:

Aw, yeah - it’s a bit cheesy, but it sure looks easy, right?

Basically, these shrimp-like creatures live happily inside a custom tank with pure, clean water and yummy powder-food to keep them alive and well. They’re pretty cute from a distance, but they’re actually kind of creepy close up…

WHOA!

What I find most interesting is their locomotion - the way they move underwater. See how they move their many little legs? Lots of arthropods like shrimp and baby lobsters move like that, too. It helps direct microscopic food toward their mouths as well, so they basically eat as they go. Pretty cool, right?

Now, if these little chaps didn’t get your going “Ewww”, then this fellow might.

Enter the triops! It looks like something straight out of the days of dinosaurs, doesn’t it?

If you’ve got a hankering to get some of these pets for your own to observe and admire, be sure to go give the official Sea Monkeys website a look, and pick up some triops on your way. It’s well worth the money, especially if you love marine critters like I do. =P 

     “If a ‘religion’ is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one.”

– John Barrow

Did you know that nature, sweeping majestically and sublimely all around us, is just teeming with features of the mathematical realm, too? Symmetry, asymmetry, spirals, hexagons, circles, tessellations, and a huge bunch of other seemingly everyday math concepts are made alive and vibrant through snowflakes, rock formations, blossoming flower buds, chambered nautilus shells…just to name a few.

The Fibonacci sequence visible in the whorl of this seashell.

Now why not give math in nature a whorl? Er…”whirl.”

One of the starkest traces of math found in nature is something called the “Fibonacci sequence.”
“What in the world is a ‘Fibonacci’”, you ask? Well, the Fibonacci sequence (named after its discoverer) is a pattern of numbers that proceeds in this way, starting at 1:

1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34… and so on. The previous number adds on to the next number and on to the next, et cetera.

Skipping to the point, the pattern of these numbers ultimately creates an outward-reaching spiral that you can find fairly often if you just pause and take a closer look at a world that thrives all around us, even right at our feet.

A prime example, not unlike ornate common seashells, is the beautiful and ornate shell of the squid-like nautilus, which is a soft-bodied aquatic animal closely related to the squid and octopus. I lives snugly in a striped, curled shell, tucking itself inside when danger approaches.

The leaf-encircled stem of this plant can be divided in half, and the two halves mirror each other in symmetry!

It doesn’t stop there. Get a load of this - you can find magnificent spirals in the plant world - in sheer abundance. Most pine cones flourish this mathematical wonder, as is evidenced when you might turn one over and look at the flatter end. The spiky extensions (essentially, the seeds) branch out from the core in such a way that multiple spirals are formed and entwined.  The exquisite cone flower is also an excellent testament to the Fibonacci spiral. A handy number of succulent plants, which thrive by storing hearty supplies of water in their thick - almost rubbery - leaves, also show off their green glory in a twirling tapestry of top-notch beauty.

Oh, but there’s still more! It doesn’t end there, either. You’ll also notice another kind of math in the animal world - certain shapes, for instance.

Five-pointed flowers like this petunia are a great example of radial symmetry in nature - like slicing up an apple pie, this flower can be evenly divided into five "slices".

What is more familiar than the hexagonal home of the honeybee hive? Each of those little cells has six even walls that creates a mesh of hexagons - sturdy, strong, and safe. An excellent place for storing honey, and even the squirmy little larva that one day will become worker bees. Simple and elegant and precise.

So, now that you’ve seen a nice number of examples of numbers in nature, why not delve a little deeper? If you should, one day, be strolling out-of-doors and see beside you a potted array of flowers…just stop for a moment. Stop, and really look at what you’ve always seen.

Flowers can be taken for granted, simply because there are so many of them. Who thinks, the moment they see a massive field of poppies, “Gee, what a terrific sight. A true sea of petals, leaves, pistils, stamen, stems and roots.” It’s just as unlikely that someone staring at a common goldfish in its glass bowl will think, “Wow, just get a load of all those scales…the fibers of its fins…and the nerves on its back. It must be able to feel even really faint electric pulses with those nerves!”

An empty wasp's nest, with many round capsules for larva to grow inside.

 This second narrative actually has its roots in a story described by Southeastern University math teacher, Dr. Revell. His story was this: 
A college professor put a fishtank on a stand in front of his students. He told them to look at the fish, and to take notes. The students gave one another baffled looks and murmured amongst themselves, saying, “It’s just a fish.” But then, they understood. Their professor was not just asking them to stare at a little blob of fins and scales wiggling in a glass bowl. He was asking them to really look at it. Before long, the students were chattering about how the gleaming golden scales formed beautiful tapered patterns, and how delicate nerves formed a sensitive stripe along its back to sense predators in the sea.

The students had learned to look, and not just to see. We take the natural world for granted, making every leaf and every grain of sand into an oversight, caring only for the bigger picture and not for the parts of the whole.

“I believe that [even] young children can appreciate God’s handiwork in the spiders’ web,” stated the Director of Civil Engineering Services, Ken McCoig, 
“The older we get, we can appreciate the mathematical implications surrounding the creation of the nautilus shell and finally the balance displayed in our solar system and the ever expanding universe.”

The intricate and elegant spiral of silk, crafted diligently by the cunning spider.

With all the sheer majesty of nature, overwhelming and alluring the human race with its endless supply of thought-invoking solace and stunning diversity, we are left but to wonder of its very character…and of its source.

Below you’ll find an awesome video featuring scientist John Clayton, describing the properties of the Fibonacci spiral, as well as its application in all of nature - the the very daunting evidence that numbers in nature might hold more that we can even begin to imagine - or, heaven forbid…a divine Creator!

More images await your curious eyes here:

Whether or not you believe in a higher power, the big bang, evolution, or simply don’t care, there is something in nature for everybody. There is intricacy. There is simplicity. There are numbers. There are patterns. There is aesthetic beauty, for the sake of beauty. 

So, really.

Take time to stop and smell the flowers - don’t just see, but look. Really look. <3

 ”As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school.”
 - Cokie Roberts

Imagine this:

You’re a placid whale coasting gracefully in the sea without a care in the world.  One day, you’re swimming along in the ocean and decide to take a dive to around 3000 feet down.
A sharp pinch suddenly pokes you on the side of your back, and before you can even figure out what it is, a tiny pair of teeth has twisted out a circular chunk of skin. You’ve just been chomped by one of the tiniest sharks in the sea.

The cigar-shaped cookie cutter shark!

Just look at those teeth!

At a length of about 20 inches, this sneaky little shark takes a bite out of fish a lot bigger than itself. With the ability to leave bites the size of Oreos in its wake, this little guy usually leaves little more than an ugly scar on its prey, rarely enough to actually kill.

Cookiecutter bite on a dolphin's dorsal fin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides taking a bite out of whales, dolphins, fish and squid, cookiecutter sharks have also been reported sinking their nasty little teeth into the rubber coating of submarine sonar.

Bite mark in rubber sonar cover - teeth marks clearly visible.

 

If you’re chomping at the bit to learn more about these fiesty little fish, head on over to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s website, Elasmo-Research.org’s website, and MarineBio.org’s site.

 

If you’re just looking for shark cookie cutters…well, they have those, too.

Deep below the waves, at a depth of between 270 to 960 meters,  a frightening and elusive species of shark can be found slowly swimming along cliffs and outcroppings of deep ocean terrain. It can grow up to 11 feet in length and lives in various parts of the world’s oceans, from Australia, to Japan, and scattered through the eastern and western Atlantic.

It is the eerie and beautiful goblin shark.

Of course, most people would probably shy away from calling such a creature “beautiful”, and who can blame them? With pasty-white skin, beady eyes, and snaggle-toothed jaws that can completely dislodge and swing forward to snap up a meal…it’s rather grotesque. Yet, in spite of that, this slow-moving swimmer with extraordinary abilities deserves no small degree of respect and awe. 

A curious development in Tokyo Canyon has led scientists and ichthyologists on a camera-powered journey into the sunless fathoms of a world little known to humanity. In an environment simply abundant with nutrients, microorganisms, and mineral deposit runoff from Tokyo itself, young goblin sharks can thrive and mature. The adult sharks then migrate to the deeper reaches of Tokyo Canyon after spawning, allowing their young to grow up big and strong on the plankton-rich waters nearer to the surface.

Below is footage documented during the Japanese investigation, the first specimen captured alive on video, demonstrating its amazing jaw movement on a diver’s thick rubber bodysuit.

With jaws that seem to move independent of the shark itself, this goblin of the deep sea can hunt extremely well in spite of being unable to swim quickly after prey. As if a mouth that can grab with nearly the efficiency of a hand were not enough, this creepy fellow (like all other shark species) possesses special sensory nerves. These pores, which are known as the ampullae of Lorenzini, are able to sense the electromagnetic bursts produced by moving muscle tissue in other living animals. The goblin shark’s broad snout gives it an even higher count of ampullae of Lorenzini…and therefore, a keener ability to seek out prey. Once their food is found, they snap it up, and swim slowly away with a full and happy tummy.

If you’d like to find more information on these fascinating deep sea sharks, please check out Elasmo-research.com’s site, which offers a wealth of scientific knowledge on the goblin shark.

 Be sure to also look into the Shark Database - you’ll get a lot of the statistics and data on this amazing animal!