December 24, 2013 • 25 mins
Snowflake Doppelganger: Are snowflakes really one of a kind? How do they form and what do they have to do with grade school art projects, personal identity, climate change and Jack the Ripper? Find out in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. And be sure to explore the accompanying gallery, Miniature Crystal Kingdoms, for mind-blowing macro snow flake images.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamps, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what crosses your mind when you look at a snowy landscape?
You know, whether we're talking an actual in person visit
(00:23):
to a winter wonderland or you just looking at say
an old Peter Brugle painting of a of a snow
colored medieval landscape. Oh, an old Pete medieval landscape. Um,
I think just obviously about the season. I don't think
about the collective power of the ice crystals within. I
just look at the the effect of the collective and
how beautiful it is. Yeah, the most you're probably gonna say,
(00:45):
look at all that snow. You're not gonna say, look
at those snow flakes. Imagine how many there are. Imagine
how many little bits of crystallized water have contributed to this, uh,
this overall picture before us. Yeah, particularly if you're in
the Midwest right now and you're getting a bunch of
snow dumped on you and you have to shovel all that,
you're probably not thinking about the majesty of these tiny
little geometric crystal kingdoms within. Yeah, you're not celebrating the snowflake.
(01:09):
I feel like, yeah, here here in the South. I've
always lived in places where there's snow, but definitely in
the South and like Tennessee and Georgia, I've lived in
places where the snow is rare enough to where you
can get excited about it when it's not there and
also make little cardboard snowflakes that end up going on
the you know, the kindergarten wall. Yeah, I mean it's
something you're right in the South. It's like, you know,
(01:31):
whenever snowflake comes tumbling down from the sky. But we're
going to take this sort of powers of ten approach today.
We're gonna try to get um from the macro to
the micro and really get into snowflakes and whether or
not they are unique each snowflake, Is it unique? And
what if anything it has to do with ripparologists and
(01:53):
all sorts of other things. All Right, so it begs
a question what is a snowflake? Again, It's easy to
take it for granted, to forget there there or did
not think about them at all. It's just this funny,
little beautiful shape that falls from the sky and it's
made out of ice, and it piles up and forms
a lot of snow. But but but when you stop
and ask yourself, how does it form, Well, it's a
little more complicated. Then it all begins with a little
(02:15):
tiny speck of dust. Yeah, this is a possible hexagon
based scenario. I mean, first, you have to have temperatures
at thirty two degrees fahrenheit or lower in a cloud
for water vapor to attach to that little dust grain. Yeah.
That's also known as a condensation nuclei because this is
going to form the heart of everything that grows out
from it, Yeah, which then crystallizes into ice. And once
(02:38):
it does this, a prism forms with six faces and
a top in the bottom. And if you guys can
sort of imagine all that in your brain, You've got
the top and the bottom and each has a side,
six sides right, and a cavity forms in each prism
face where ice grows fastest, and then six branches sprout,
forming that hexagon. Now, where it's going to go from
(03:00):
there depends again on the conditions in that cloud, because
the vapor content is really important in terms of how
that snowflake might grow. In size, in shape, and also
again the climate. So if it if you know, things
get warm, then you get a different shape from that
ice crystal. But if things freeze up, like say high
(03:21):
altitude sears cloud might produce, then you get that doily
effect that really intricate beautiful snowflake falling down. Yeah, I
was reading about when they when they fall through the
warmer air, their slower growth. But there's a there's a
there's widening that occurs. So and as we've discussed before,
I mean, you can even have red snow in some cases,
this blood snow that is that has been seen to
(03:42):
fall uh in various places throughout history. The idea being
here that little speck of dust at the center of
it all is red in color and therefore dictate the
overall color of the snow. That would be just wonderful
to have, like red snowflakes, wouldn't it be terrifying? But
red Christmas? Yeah, I'm dreaming bloody Christmas. All right. So
(04:04):
here's the thing. A tiny snowflake could actually affect the climate.
Not on a huge scale here, but Hands Berlin, Associate
Professor of Meteeralogy at Penn State, says that quote serious
clouds are known to play a large role in energy
budget enhanced climate. The molecular level processes determine the shape
of the ice crystals, which then determine the characteristics of
(04:26):
the clouds themselves, which control the radiative properties of clouds
and the role of serrus in climate. Yeah, I mean,
it's the And these guys should know. They have an
awesome job. They're snowflake designers. They use the Penn State
cloud chamber to to explore ice crystal growth in a
in this environment that's designed to mimic the conditions that
are similar to serious cloud environments. Yeah, and as she
(04:50):
said that the actual cloud chamber and they inject you know,
a little bit of vapor and there, and it's fascinating
to watch. Now, you know, the idea that little something
is insignificant seeming as a as a snow crystal could
and lead to fast changes in effect climate. It's interesting
because it's you know, very much that idea of the
butterfly effect. And of course the butterfly effect has its
(05:11):
heart in chaos theory, which actually stems for meteorology and
trying to figure out what is going to happen with
the weather at any given time, and as we look
into the future, there's so many factors in in our
in our weather, in our climate, in our atmosphere, and
the smallest thing does having enormous repercussions. Yeah, as the
butterfly wings in this butterfly effect theory would dictate. Right,
(05:33):
at least that's the idea behind it. But what we
really want to get to is is the snowflake unique?
Does it have a doppel gang or does it have
a double out there? When we hear about this all
the time, each snowflake is unique and beautiful. Yeah, it's
it's something we we hear growing up because the the
obvious analogy to grow to draw there is not only
(05:54):
is the snowflake unique and beautiful, but you are unique
and beautiful. You are one of a kind. You, darling child,
are unique and beautiful and there's no one else on
this world like you. And as we grow older, we
kind of realized that, yes, that is true, but it's
not as true as your your mom may have made
it out to be when you were younger. You're like,
(06:14):
I I am distinctive, I am unique, but I might
be a type. Yeah, if you've ever auditioned for for
any kind of an acting gig, or really, if you
if you've ever uh you know, gone after any job
and uh and and had a glimpse of the other
people going for the position, then you begin to realize,
all right, I may be a unique snowflake, but there
are similar snowflakes, and they are my enemies, right, and
(06:37):
I'm sure that other snowflakes look at each other like that. Um.
But yeah, on a molecular level, a snowflake, Verlin says,
could be unique. And he says, let's be specific here
and define a snowflake first of all as a single
vapor grim crystal. And then he says that he would
say with a great deal of confidence that all crystals
are different on this molecular level purely because there are different, says,
(07:00):
in the atomic structure of the atoms making up the
water molecule, and hence in the water molecules themselves. Yeah, yeah,
very basic level. And it's it's the same as the
fact that me and the other person going after the
same job we're composed of different atoms, where we're different
things on a very physical, uh molecular level. But visually
Verylin would say no, because there are only so many
(07:23):
types of snowflakes out there or shapes. Yeah, and especially
the case when you look at snowflakes in the early
stages of their development. The earlier the snowflake is, the
younger the snowflake is, the more possibility that you're gonna
have repetition. And then as the snowflake develops over time,
you know, imagine again the branching occurring, and the and
(07:45):
the changes occurring as it goes through these the varying
degrees of heat and cold. As time passes, there's less
likelihood that you're gonna have deuvils. But there but but still,
they're gonna have snowflakes that look a lot alike, at
least to the macro level. Right, You're not gonna have
pentagon an octagon shaped snowflakes. First of all. Let's just
get that. Ever cut one of those out in a
(08:07):
class school project, it's a complete lie. Does don't exist? Yeah, pretty,
but don't exist. Um, And you will probably have the hexagon, right,
that's pretty much like the bass structure here. And there
are triangular snowflakes, and most people think about those is
more like trying to find a four leaf clover, but
they turned out to be more common than we thought.
In the study Aerodynamic Stability and the Growth of Triangular
(08:28):
snow Crystals, co authors Kenneth Librect and Hannah Arnold described
the process as tiny impurities such as dust particles, can
cause one edge of the falling snowflake to tilt up
as it falls. The snowflakes sides that are pointed down
grow faster as the wind blows by, leading to a
stable triangular pattern which remains triangular despite any later bumps
(08:52):
as it falls, which is kind of fascinating a little
bit of aerodynamics going on here. We were looking at
some of the various shapes that these snowflakes take on
on and it's it's it's really a rich and very
uh the world of of snowflakes that we often take
completely for granted. I mean, because at heart we're talking
about crystal formation. And like in the world of crystals,
(09:12):
there's the human idea of crystals, the crystals that humans
carve naturally occurring crystals into so they can put it
on a ring or pinan or whatever, and then there
is that the rich world of actual crystal formation, which,
if you know, start doing a Google image search, you
just go down the rabbit hole at all these different forms.
And the same can be said at the snowflakes you see.
I mean some of them look more like like you're
looking at a bacteria or something, or some sort of
(09:35):
strange um tip for a medical device. Yeah, machine parts.
I love these. Most people think about their radiating dendrites.
Those are the ones that have the six branches with
tiny little branches coming off of it. But there are
some amazing things like the scrolls on plates is a
type of snowflake, and within that you see all sorts
of different variations. And then you see the piling on
(09:58):
of ice crystals, like the apped columns kind of look
like a I guess you like a bolt. And if
you look at like those big those big spools that
good wire comes on and that sometimes becomes a coffee
table and bachelors. My parents had one of this. But yeah,
you will see if you look under an electron microscope,
you will see the ice crystals on top of that
(10:20):
six sided plate on the very top, and it's just amazing.
They really are these crystal kingdoms of ice. Yeah, the
there's one that particular shape called capped bullets that if
you if you created this or drew this in you know,
like a second grade classroom, and called it a snowflake,
I have a feeling a lot of teachers would give
(10:40):
you an f. But because it looks like three crystal
shards joined at the point it does, it doesn't even
look real, you know. But but at the at the
at the micro level, this is how crystals formed together.
This is one of the many structures they can take on. Yeah,
and we'll try to um to post on this so
that you guys have a vision a little reference to this.
(11:01):
But if you wanted to look cut up, you could
just say electron microscopes snowflakes and you will see just
amazing imagery of this stuff. All Right, we're gonna break
and when we come back, more snowflakes. All right, we're back,
And I should point out that designer snowflakes are possible. Uh.
(11:24):
Cal Tech researchers have created flakes in the laboratory using
electric needles placed in a diffusion chamber. In this good situation,
the crystals grow on the needle's tip, and by altering
the conditions of scientists are able to create different sizes
and patterns of snowflakes, some uh, perhaps unnatural shapes for snowflakes.
I mean, that's got to be one of the best
(11:44):
jobs ever then and just yeah, I make I make snowflakes.
That yeah. And and again, as we discussed earlier, when
we're talking about pen States cloud chamber. Um, when by
studying crystal formations in snowflakes, I mean we're we're getting
down to some of the fine details of the overwhelming
(12:04):
movements of climate. That's right, all these tiny little things
that make up climate. And we will discuss this in
a bit. There's also this idea that snowflakes can inform
us about the universe. But first we have got to
talk about what snowflakes have to do with rip parologists. Yes, now,
this is this is pretty fabulous stuff. And this idea
(12:25):
comes to us from Alan Moore, who who wrote the
amazing graphic novel from Hell Uh all black and white,
big thick graphic novel about the Ripper murders, and it's
it's really a great work of literature. If you haven't
read it, uh, it deals with a lot of feminist issues.
It deals with some of the grizzly details of the case,
(12:47):
and in the epilogue, Alan Moore talks about the idea
of the the Cox snowflake to illustrate his point about ripparologists.
That's right. He compares the multitude of increasingly outland ripper
theories to what is known as a cock snowflake, or
a finite fixed location event and error. In this case,
(13:07):
London late can have an infinite number of nooks and crannies. Yeah.
So with the with the actual fractal idea of the
cock snowflake, this is what happens. You start with a
triangle and then you remove the inner third of each side,
building another triangle at the location where the side was removed.
So now you have a star instead of a kind
of like a star of David exactly. Yeah, and then
(13:28):
you repeat this process indefinitely. The snowflake does not grow
in size, but it grows in complexity. So Moore's point
in all of this is that there's only so much
about the Ripper murders that we know. There's only so
much at this point that we will ever know for sure.
I mean, unless we actually develop a means of traveling
back in time and spying on what happened. Uh, that's
(13:52):
not going to happen, so that there's a set amount
of information. So the Ripper story as we know it
will never expand beyond a certain threshold, but the complexity
that we throw at it, that that can grow. So
so the idea is that there are only so many
facts that we have, and ripparologists those you know, they're
obsessed with figuring out exactly who did it, why they
(14:14):
did it, what kind of complex plots were involved, the
d crafting intricate theory after theory, while our actual knowledge
on the incident never expands beyond it, beyond what is
currently known. I was just thinking about that in terms
of conspiracy theory in general, and I was thinking about
big folts. We recently talked about Yetti and Bigfoot. In
the idea there is patterns, right, and seeing patterns, and
(14:35):
we've talked about this whole lot with cognitive bias and
all sorts of conspiracy theorists. But the overlaying of patterns
and the symmetry in the in the cock snowflake, this fractal.
But again, what you're doing is, you know, every time
you put on another equal lateral triangle, it yields another space,
and it's an infinite perimeter to just begin into putting
(14:57):
on that same pattern right, that layering of that same
equilateral triangle. So it's interesting, and I just want to
point out to that the Cox snowflake is actually named
after Swedish mathematician and his name is Niels Fabian von
Koch who identified one of the earliest NEWN fractals. Here. Yeah,
(15:18):
it's a ko c H if you want to check
that out. Um. Now, you're probably listening to that, and
you're you're thinking, well that you're also talking about a
creative process here. You sort of you have a set
amount of information and then you're just plowing forward with
all this complexity and making the existing information more and
more complex in the way it relates to each other.
And indeed you will find snowflake novel writing methods out
(15:41):
there on the internet, which I've always found interesting. I
haven't really ever tried to employ one, but I like
the idea. And the idea is you start with a
simple idea. You start with your your basic outline, you
know you're and then you expand it, you create a
snowflake out of it. Um. You know, you can think
of various novels that sort of occupy the same space
that if very basic level, I mean, how many fantasy,
(16:02):
epic fantasy novels sound more or less the same, how
many detective novels sound more or less the same. And
to a certain extent, it's all been done before, right
where it where stuff differentiates from the next book and
the next book is in the details, is in the
the the the intricate nature of the snowflake. Even if
our existing literature and it is really only only gonna
(16:23):
occupy the same space, It's not going to expand beyond
its current threshold. Well, you know, as a fiction writer
who comes to the blank page with a cacophony of ideas,
I find that really seductive, this idea that you just
create this triangle, this simple triangle of the plot, and
then you begin to just fill it out from there,
and that way you can sort of tame some of
the ideas, some of the thoughts and the characters that
(16:45):
are running around in your head. Yeah, you know, it
brings me back to the whole idea, right, what you know? Right,
so there's a fixed amount of what I know. It
comes down to how you implement what you know and
how you how you range it on the page and
how you create this snowflake. Uh, just to go off
on a tangent here for a second, I was thinking
(17:06):
about this. I was thinking, I wonder if you can
weave neuroscience into an actual writing class. And the reason
is is because as readers, we have all sorts of
neurons firing right mirror neurons as we read on the
page what the character is doing. So if the character
is weeping or playing baseball, then there are certain things
going on our heads that are connecting with that. And
(17:27):
I was thinking that one of the reasons why some
characters work in some don't is because they seem like
caricatures and we can't relate to them because it doesn't
feel real. It's outside of the writer's experience perhaps when
they're trying to render that character that's snowflake, so it's
(17:47):
you know, it would be nice to see if some
of the world of science could inform fiction writing. That
would be interesting, That would be interesting. Shower thoughts by
Julie Douglas. But anyway, let's get back to this, because
I think the interesting idea that um that you could
have this pattern making and in the sense of ripparologists
or conspiracy theories in the Coke snowflake, you'd always have
(18:10):
uncertainty no matter how much you layered it on. Yeah,
I mean, that's the remarkable thing about it is that
again we'll never be able to say with accuracy this
is what happened, and this is this is who is involved?
Uh we but we just keep learing on the the
complexity of our theories. I mean, you see a similar
thing with the assassination of jfk uh. We have the facts,
(18:35):
we have them arranged, and then we cannot help but
continue to go back and try and create a more
complex idea of what happened. Um. In large part I
believe is William Manchester room of this argument pointed out
that all right, we were pretty much know Oswald killed Kennedy,
like the end that it was just a lone gunman situation.
But when you compare the two, when you put them
(18:56):
on the scale, you have such a an insignificant and
easily person as Oswald on this level, and then you
have a figure like Kennedy on the other. They don't
balance out you and you would have to plut you
would have to throw more complexity onto the Oswald side
of the scale. To even things out to where it
kind of makes sense in a more epic sense of
(19:17):
the word, and then you're just further down the rabbit hole. Right. Yeah,
I want to make this sort of thread through snowflakes
and zen and joy, and I don't know if we'll
be able to fully get at this idea, but I
did think one of the things about snowflakes is that
when you pay attention to them, you really are paying
attention to the details of the world. You're slowing things down.
(19:40):
And we talked about this when we were discussing labyrinths
and many other topics, that you're it's a meditative process
and you're seeing things as they are as opposed to
that blueprint in your mind, just creating memory for you
and you know, creating your reality. Yeah, that's what I
like about this idea about snowflakes is particularly the electron
(20:02):
microscope when you're looking at them, because you really get
to see all of those nooks and crannies and that
that that snowflake, it is such an ephemeral object because
it's gone in seconds. Well you know, it gets frozen
into the uh, into a snowdrift, and then it's molecularly
changed anyway. Yeah, it's been in a state of change
(20:23):
its entire existence, and then it is and then it
changes again into into mire water. And so I thought,
this is really a good example of perhaps something called joy,
one of these emotions, uh that we try to figure
out and and categorize. And Zadie Smith, she's a writer.
She has a really great essay on joy, and she
(20:45):
goes through and she makes the distinction between pleasure and joy.
She's a pleasure is like you know, eating a popsicle
on a hot day and avoiding my work for seven
minutes while I eat the popsicle. And Joy is my
child who is a pleasure. Um, she says, though mostly
she's a joy, which means, in fact, she gives us
not much pleasure at all, but rather that strange admixture
(21:09):
of terror pain into light that have come to recognize
as joy and now must find some way to live
with daily. And I thought, that is that is a
in a sense of snowflake, because that's it's it's going
to be gone. And anyway, she goes on and on
about joy and parenting and uh, just the the existence
(21:30):
of life. Really that that is a beautiful way of
looking at it, and I can certainly relate to that,
having recently become a parent myself, that parenting is not
a a seven minute experience with a popsicle. It is.
It's more in keeping how she framed it there as
a as an as an overall joy, but but in
the individual moment, uh, maybe not so pleasurable. Yeah, terrifying
(21:52):
and beautiful and terrifying for the reasons because it is,
as we all know, life on Earth is temporary existence
and sort of uh underscores that point force a lot,
just like a snowflake melting in the sun. Um. But
I think that what's interesting again about snowflakes is that
they do allow us to go macro and micro. And
(22:12):
if you wanted to go macro on this, all you
would have to do is look at the galaxies. And
one guy by the name of Professor Duncan Forbes who
says that galaxy formation is very similar to snowflake formation. Yeah,
it comes. I mean a lot of it comes down
to the basic idea of accretion, which we've talked about before,
when we've talked about the formation of planets and stars
(22:32):
and solar systems and you know, on up to the galaxies.
When you have just a very small, a little bit
of a bit of matter, and it's the exerting gravitational force,
it draws in another bit of matter, and then the
graviltational force grows and grows. It's like a snowball going
down a hill. It eventually gets bigger and bigger, draws
in more matter from the surrounding area, and that's how
(22:54):
you end up with a planet or a star or
in these larger cases, um galaxies. Um starts out very
small and than the galaxies, uh, than seed in this
constant stream of other stars, other regions of other you know,
vast tracts of of gas. Yeah, so these giants, I mean,
they're being formed. But essentially it's the same process as
a snowflake that has that seed, and then it grows
(23:16):
the water vapor, and then that water vapor accumulates on
the surface of snowflake, and so on and so forth.
It's kind of a lovely thought to think that that
snowflake has very much a lot of in common with
this infinite universe idea. Yeah, snowflakes of the gods, if
you will, I love that. If we could right now,
we would just say, and happy holidays everyone, and then
(23:38):
and whatever wherever place you are, in your car, in
your room, at home, on the train commuting, snowflakes would
fall down gently upon your head. Indeed, but I'm going
to read a quote from Corn McCarthy, so so that
that'll kind of deaden some of the joy. But still
it's a beautiful quote. This is from the Border trilogy,
um and this is one speaker up, an individual speaking
(24:01):
to another character. He says, snowflake, You catch the snowflake,
but when you look in your hands, you don't have
it no more. Maybe you see this the shadow, this pattern,
but before you see it's gone. If you want to
see it, you have to see it on its own ground.
If you catch it, you lose it. And where it
goes there is no coming back from not even God
can bring it back. Happy holidays. Have I have a
(24:23):
nice CORNL. McCarthy Christmas, everybody, as you as you ruminate
on that, but but also yeah, as you look if
you were fortunate enough to experience a white Christmas, a
pleasantly white Christmas, not a not one that is, you know,
turning your area into a frigid waste land. But you
get to look out on the snow. Think about those
little snowflakes. Think about that tiny, intricate design and how
(24:46):
it all spirals out from their affecting climate. And look
up into the sky and think about these, uh, these stars,
these planets that have formed and are you can continue
to form and uh and the galactic formations that, in
their own way are much the snowflake. Indeed, And if
you want to check out some more of what we're
doing out there on the Internet, you can do so
(25:07):
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(25:31):
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamps, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what crosses your mind when you look at a snowy landscape?
You know, whether we're talking an actual in person visit
(00:23):
to a winter wonderland or you just looking at say
an old Peter Brugle painting of a of a snow
colored medieval landscape. Oh, an old Pete medieval landscape. Um,
I think just obviously about the season. I don't think
about the collective power of the ice crystals within. I
just look at the the effect of the collective and
how beautiful it is. Yeah, the most you're probably gonna say,
(00:45):
look at all that snow. You're not gonna say, look
at those snow flakes. Imagine how many there are. Imagine
how many little bits of crystallized water have contributed to this, uh,
this overall picture before us. Yeah, particularly if you're in
the Midwest right now and you're getting a bunch of
snow dumped on you and you have to shovel all that,
you're probably not thinking about the majesty of these tiny
little geometric crystal kingdoms within. Yeah, you're not celebrating the snowflake.
(01:09):
I feel like, yeah, here here in the South. I've
always lived in places where there's snow, but definitely in
the South and like Tennessee and Georgia, I've lived in
places where the snow is rare enough to where you
can get excited about it when it's not there and
also make little cardboard snowflakes that end up going on
the you know, the kindergarten wall. Yeah, I mean it's
something you're right in the South. It's like, you know,
(01:31):
whenever snowflake comes tumbling down from the sky. But we're
going to take this sort of powers of ten approach today.
We're gonna try to get um from the macro to
the micro and really get into snowflakes and whether or
not they are unique each snowflake, Is it unique? And
what if anything it has to do with ripparologists and
(01:53):
all sorts of other things. All Right, so it begs
a question what is a snowflake? Again, It's easy to
take it for granted, to forget there there or did
not think about them at all. It's just this funny,
little beautiful shape that falls from the sky and it's
made out of ice, and it piles up and forms
a lot of snow. But but but when you stop
and ask yourself, how does it form, Well, it's a
little more complicated. Then it all begins with a little
(02:15):
tiny speck of dust. Yeah, this is a possible hexagon
based scenario. I mean, first, you have to have temperatures
at thirty two degrees fahrenheit or lower in a cloud
for water vapor to attach to that little dust grain. Yeah.
That's also known as a condensation nuclei because this is
going to form the heart of everything that grows out
from it, Yeah, which then crystallizes into ice. And once
(02:38):
it does this, a prism forms with six faces and
a top in the bottom. And if you guys can
sort of imagine all that in your brain, You've got
the top and the bottom and each has a side,
six sides right, and a cavity forms in each prism
face where ice grows fastest, and then six branches sprout,
forming that hexagon. Now, where it's going to go from
(03:00):
there depends again on the conditions in that cloud, because
the vapor content is really important in terms of how
that snowflake might grow. In size, in shape, and also
again the climate. So if it if you know, things
get warm, then you get a different shape from that
ice crystal. But if things freeze up, like say high
(03:21):
altitude sears cloud might produce, then you get that doily
effect that really intricate beautiful snowflake falling down. Yeah, I
was reading about when they when they fall through the
warmer air, their slower growth. But there's a there's a
there's widening that occurs. So and as we've discussed before,
I mean, you can even have red snow in some cases,
this blood snow that is that has been seen to
(03:42):
fall uh in various places throughout history. The idea being
here that little speck of dust at the center of
it all is red in color and therefore dictate the
overall color of the snow. That would be just wonderful
to have, like red snowflakes, wouldn't it be terrifying? But
red Christmas? Yeah, I'm dreaming bloody Christmas. All right. So
(04:04):
here's the thing. A tiny snowflake could actually affect the climate.
Not on a huge scale here, but Hands Berlin, Associate
Professor of Meteeralogy at Penn State, says that quote serious
clouds are known to play a large role in energy
budget enhanced climate. The molecular level processes determine the shape
of the ice crystals, which then determine the characteristics of
(04:26):
the clouds themselves, which control the radiative properties of clouds
and the role of serrus in climate. Yeah, I mean,
it's the And these guys should know. They have an
awesome job. They're snowflake designers. They use the Penn State
cloud chamber to to explore ice crystal growth in a
in this environment that's designed to mimic the conditions that
are similar to serious cloud environments. Yeah, and as she
(04:50):
said that the actual cloud chamber and they inject you know,
a little bit of vapor and there, and it's fascinating
to watch. Now, you know, the idea that little something
is insignificant seeming as a as a snow crystal could
and lead to fast changes in effect climate. It's interesting
because it's you know, very much that idea of the
butterfly effect. And of course the butterfly effect has its
(05:11):
heart in chaos theory, which actually stems for meteorology and
trying to figure out what is going to happen with
the weather at any given time, and as we look
into the future, there's so many factors in in our
in our weather, in our climate, in our atmosphere, and
the smallest thing does having enormous repercussions. Yeah, as the
butterfly wings in this butterfly effect theory would dictate. Right,
(05:33):
at least that's the idea behind it. But what we
really want to get to is is the snowflake unique?
Does it have a doppel gang or does it have
a double out there? When we hear about this all
the time, each snowflake is unique and beautiful. Yeah, it's
it's something we we hear growing up because the the
obvious analogy to grow to draw there is not only
(05:54):
is the snowflake unique and beautiful, but you are unique
and beautiful. You are one of a kind. You, darling child,
are unique and beautiful and there's no one else on
this world like you. And as we grow older, we
kind of realized that, yes, that is true, but it's
not as true as your your mom may have made
it out to be when you were younger. You're like,
(06:14):
I I am distinctive, I am unique, but I might
be a type. Yeah, if you've ever auditioned for for
any kind of an acting gig, or really, if you
if you've ever uh you know, gone after any job
and uh and and had a glimpse of the other
people going for the position, then you begin to realize,
all right, I may be a unique snowflake, but there
are similar snowflakes, and they are my enemies, right, and
(06:37):
I'm sure that other snowflakes look at each other like that. Um.
But yeah, on a molecular level, a snowflake, Verlin says,
could be unique. And he says, let's be specific here
and define a snowflake first of all as a single
vapor grim crystal. And then he says that he would
say with a great deal of confidence that all crystals
are different on this molecular level purely because there are different, says,
(07:00):
in the atomic structure of the atoms making up the
water molecule, and hence in the water molecules themselves. Yeah, yeah,
very basic level. And it's it's the same as the
fact that me and the other person going after the
same job we're composed of different atoms, where we're different
things on a very physical, uh molecular level. But visually
Verylin would say no, because there are only so many
(07:23):
types of snowflakes out there or shapes. Yeah, and especially
the case when you look at snowflakes in the early
stages of their development. The earlier the snowflake is, the
younger the snowflake is, the more possibility that you're gonna
have repetition. And then as the snowflake develops over time,
you know, imagine again the branching occurring, and the and
(07:45):
the changes occurring as it goes through these the varying
degrees of heat and cold. As time passes, there's less
likelihood that you're gonna have deuvils. But there but but still,
they're gonna have snowflakes that look a lot alike, at
least to the macro level. Right, You're not gonna have
pentagon an octagon shaped snowflakes. First of all. Let's just
get that. Ever cut one of those out in a
(08:07):
class school project, it's a complete lie. Does don't exist? Yeah, pretty,
but don't exist. Um, And you will probably have the hexagon, right,
that's pretty much like the bass structure here. And there
are triangular snowflakes, and most people think about those is
more like trying to find a four leaf clover, but
they turned out to be more common than we thought.
In the study Aerodynamic Stability and the Growth of Triangular
(08:28):
snow Crystals, co authors Kenneth Librect and Hannah Arnold described
the process as tiny impurities such as dust particles, can
cause one edge of the falling snowflake to tilt up
as it falls. The snowflakes sides that are pointed down
grow faster as the wind blows by, leading to a
stable triangular pattern which remains triangular despite any later bumps
(08:52):
as it falls, which is kind of fascinating a little
bit of aerodynamics going on here. We were looking at
some of the various shapes that these snowflakes take on
on and it's it's it's really a rich and very
uh the world of of snowflakes that we often take
completely for granted. I mean, because at heart we're talking
about crystal formation. And like in the world of crystals,
(09:12):
there's the human idea of crystals, the crystals that humans
carve naturally occurring crystals into so they can put it
on a ring or pinan or whatever, and then there
is that the rich world of actual crystal formation, which,
if you know, start doing a Google image search, you
just go down the rabbit hole at all these different forms.
And the same can be said at the snowflakes you see.
I mean some of them look more like like you're
looking at a bacteria or something, or some sort of
(09:35):
strange um tip for a medical device. Yeah, machine parts.
I love these. Most people think about their radiating dendrites.
Those are the ones that have the six branches with
tiny little branches coming off of it. But there are
some amazing things like the scrolls on plates is a
type of snowflake, and within that you see all sorts
of different variations. And then you see the piling on
(09:58):
of ice crystals, like the apped columns kind of look
like a I guess you like a bolt. And if
you look at like those big those big spools that
good wire comes on and that sometimes becomes a coffee
table and bachelors. My parents had one of this. But yeah,
you will see if you look under an electron microscope,
you will see the ice crystals on top of that
(10:20):
six sided plate on the very top, and it's just amazing.
They really are these crystal kingdoms of ice. Yeah, the
there's one that particular shape called capped bullets that if
you if you created this or drew this in you know,
like a second grade classroom, and called it a snowflake,
I have a feeling a lot of teachers would give
(10:40):
you an f. But because it looks like three crystal
shards joined at the point it does, it doesn't even
look real, you know. But but at the at the
at the micro level, this is how crystals formed together.
This is one of the many structures they can take on. Yeah,
and we'll try to um to post on this so
that you guys have a vision a little reference to this.
(11:01):
But if you wanted to look cut up, you could
just say electron microscopes snowflakes and you will see just
amazing imagery of this stuff. All Right, we're gonna break
and when we come back, more snowflakes. All right, we're back,
And I should point out that designer snowflakes are possible. Uh.
(11:24):
Cal Tech researchers have created flakes in the laboratory using
electric needles placed in a diffusion chamber. In this good situation,
the crystals grow on the needle's tip, and by altering
the conditions of scientists are able to create different sizes
and patterns of snowflakes, some uh, perhaps unnatural shapes for snowflakes.
I mean, that's got to be one of the best
(11:44):
jobs ever then and just yeah, I make I make snowflakes.
That yeah. And and again, as we discussed earlier, when
we're talking about pen States cloud chamber. Um, when by
studying crystal formations in snowflakes, I mean we're we're getting
down to some of the fine details of the overwhelming
(12:04):
movements of climate. That's right, all these tiny little things
that make up climate. And we will discuss this in
a bit. There's also this idea that snowflakes can inform
us about the universe. But first we have got to
talk about what snowflakes have to do with rip parologists. Yes, now,
this is this is pretty fabulous stuff. And this idea
(12:25):
comes to us from Alan Moore, who who wrote the
amazing graphic novel from Hell Uh all black and white,
big thick graphic novel about the Ripper murders, and it's
it's really a great work of literature. If you haven't
read it, uh, it deals with a lot of feminist issues.
It deals with some of the grizzly details of the case,
(12:47):
and in the epilogue, Alan Moore talks about the idea
of the the Cox snowflake to illustrate his point about ripparologists.
That's right. He compares the multitude of increasingly outland ripper
theories to what is known as a cock snowflake, or
a finite fixed location event and error. In this case,
(13:07):
London late can have an infinite number of nooks and crannies. Yeah.
So with the with the actual fractal idea of the
cock snowflake, this is what happens. You start with a
triangle and then you remove the inner third of each side,
building another triangle at the location where the side was removed.
So now you have a star instead of a kind
of like a star of David exactly. Yeah, and then
(13:28):
you repeat this process indefinitely. The snowflake does not grow
in size, but it grows in complexity. So Moore's point
in all of this is that there's only so much
about the Ripper murders that we know. There's only so
much at this point that we will ever know for sure.
I mean, unless we actually develop a means of traveling
back in time and spying on what happened. Uh, that's
(13:52):
not going to happen, so that there's a set amount
of information. So the Ripper story as we know it
will never expand beyond a certain threshold, but the complexity
that we throw at it, that that can grow. So
so the idea is that there are only so many
facts that we have, and ripparologists those you know, they're
obsessed with figuring out exactly who did it, why they
(14:14):
did it, what kind of complex plots were involved, the
d crafting intricate theory after theory, while our actual knowledge
on the incident never expands beyond it, beyond what is
currently known. I was just thinking about that in terms
of conspiracy theory in general, and I was thinking about
big folts. We recently talked about Yetti and Bigfoot. In
the idea there is patterns, right, and seeing patterns, and
(14:35):
we've talked about this whole lot with cognitive bias and
all sorts of conspiracy theorists. But the overlaying of patterns
and the symmetry in the in the cock snowflake, this fractal.
But again, what you're doing is, you know, every time
you put on another equal lateral triangle, it yields another space,
and it's an infinite perimeter to just begin into putting
(14:57):
on that same pattern right, that layering of that same
equilateral triangle. So it's interesting, and I just want to
point out to that the Cox snowflake is actually named
after Swedish mathematician and his name is Niels Fabian von
Koch who identified one of the earliest NEWN fractals. Here. Yeah,
(15:18):
it's a ko c H if you want to check
that out. Um. Now, you're probably listening to that, and
you're you're thinking, well that you're also talking about a
creative process here. You sort of you have a set
amount of information and then you're just plowing forward with
all this complexity and making the existing information more and
more complex in the way it relates to each other.
And indeed you will find snowflake novel writing methods out
(15:41):
there on the internet, which I've always found interesting. I
haven't really ever tried to employ one, but I like
the idea. And the idea is you start with a
simple idea. You start with your your basic outline, you
know you're and then you expand it, you create a
snowflake out of it. Um. You know, you can think
of various novels that sort of occupy the same space
that if very basic level, I mean, how many fantasy,
(16:02):
epic fantasy novels sound more or less the same, how
many detective novels sound more or less the same. And
to a certain extent, it's all been done before, right
where it where stuff differentiates from the next book and
the next book is in the details, is in the
the the the intricate nature of the snowflake. Even if
our existing literature and it is really only only gonna
(16:23):
occupy the same space, It's not going to expand beyond
its current threshold. Well, you know, as a fiction writer
who comes to the blank page with a cacophony of ideas,
I find that really seductive, this idea that you just
create this triangle, this simple triangle of the plot, and
then you begin to just fill it out from there,
and that way you can sort of tame some of
the ideas, some of the thoughts and the characters that
(16:45):
are running around in your head. Yeah, you know, it
brings me back to the whole idea, right, what you know? Right,
so there's a fixed amount of what I know. It
comes down to how you implement what you know and
how you how you range it on the page and
how you create this snowflake. Uh, just to go off
on a tangent here for a second, I was thinking
(17:06):
about this. I was thinking, I wonder if you can
weave neuroscience into an actual writing class. And the reason
is is because as readers, we have all sorts of
neurons firing right mirror neurons as we read on the
page what the character is doing. So if the character
is weeping or playing baseball, then there are certain things
going on our heads that are connecting with that. And
(17:27):
I was thinking that one of the reasons why some
characters work in some don't is because they seem like
caricatures and we can't relate to them because it doesn't
feel real. It's outside of the writer's experience perhaps when
they're trying to render that character that's snowflake, so it's
(17:47):
you know, it would be nice to see if some
of the world of science could inform fiction writing. That
would be interesting, That would be interesting. Shower thoughts by
Julie Douglas. But anyway, let's get back to this, because
I think the interesting idea that um that you could
have this pattern making and in the sense of ripparologists
or conspiracy theories in the Coke snowflake, you'd always have
(18:10):
uncertainty no matter how much you layered it on. Yeah,
I mean, that's the remarkable thing about it is that
again we'll never be able to say with accuracy this
is what happened, and this is this is who is involved?
Uh we but we just keep learing on the the
complexity of our theories. I mean, you see a similar
thing with the assassination of jfk uh. We have the facts,
(18:35):
we have them arranged, and then we cannot help but
continue to go back and try and create a more
complex idea of what happened. Um. In large part I
believe is William Manchester room of this argument pointed out
that all right, we were pretty much know Oswald killed Kennedy,
like the end that it was just a lone gunman situation.
But when you compare the two, when you put them
(18:56):
on the scale, you have such a an insignificant and
easily person as Oswald on this level, and then you
have a figure like Kennedy on the other. They don't
balance out you and you would have to plut you
would have to throw more complexity onto the Oswald side
of the scale. To even things out to where it
kind of makes sense in a more epic sense of
(19:17):
the word, and then you're just further down the rabbit hole. Right. Yeah,
I want to make this sort of thread through snowflakes
and zen and joy, and I don't know if we'll
be able to fully get at this idea, but I
did think one of the things about snowflakes is that
when you pay attention to them, you really are paying
attention to the details of the world. You're slowing things down.
(19:40):
And we talked about this when we were discussing labyrinths
and many other topics, that you're it's a meditative process
and you're seeing things as they are as opposed to
that blueprint in your mind, just creating memory for you
and you know, creating your reality. Yeah, that's what I
like about this idea about snowflakes is particularly the electron
(20:02):
microscope when you're looking at them, because you really get
to see all of those nooks and crannies and that
that that snowflake, it is such an ephemeral object because
it's gone in seconds. Well you know, it gets frozen
into the uh, into a snowdrift, and then it's molecularly
changed anyway. Yeah, it's been in a state of change
(20:23):
its entire existence, and then it is and then it
changes again into into mire water. And so I thought,
this is really a good example of perhaps something called joy,
one of these emotions, uh that we try to figure
out and and categorize. And Zadie Smith, she's a writer.
She has a really great essay on joy, and she
(20:45):
goes through and she makes the distinction between pleasure and joy.
She's a pleasure is like you know, eating a popsicle
on a hot day and avoiding my work for seven
minutes while I eat the popsicle. And Joy is my
child who is a pleasure. Um, she says, though mostly
she's a joy, which means, in fact, she gives us
not much pleasure at all, but rather that strange admixture
(21:09):
of terror pain into light that have come to recognize
as joy and now must find some way to live
with daily. And I thought, that is that is a
in a sense of snowflake, because that's it's it's going
to be gone. And anyway, she goes on and on
about joy and parenting and uh, just the the existence
(21:30):
of life. Really that that is a beautiful way of
looking at it, and I can certainly relate to that,
having recently become a parent myself, that parenting is not
a a seven minute experience with a popsicle. It is.
It's more in keeping how she framed it there as
a as an as an overall joy, but but in
the individual moment, uh, maybe not so pleasurable. Yeah, terrifying
(21:52):
and beautiful and terrifying for the reasons because it is,
as we all know, life on Earth is temporary existence
and sort of uh underscores that point force a lot,
just like a snowflake melting in the sun. Um. But
I think that what's interesting again about snowflakes is that
they do allow us to go macro and micro. And
(22:12):
if you wanted to go macro on this, all you
would have to do is look at the galaxies. And
one guy by the name of Professor Duncan Forbes who
says that galaxy formation is very similar to snowflake formation. Yeah,
it comes. I mean a lot of it comes down
to the basic idea of accretion, which we've talked about before,
when we've talked about the formation of planets and stars
(22:32):
and solar systems and you know, on up to the galaxies.
When you have just a very small, a little bit
of a bit of matter, and it's the exerting gravitational force,
it draws in another bit of matter, and then the
graviltational force grows and grows. It's like a snowball going
down a hill. It eventually gets bigger and bigger, draws
in more matter from the surrounding area, and that's how
(22:54):
you end up with a planet or a star or
in these larger cases, um galaxies. Um starts out very
small and than the galaxies, uh, than seed in this
constant stream of other stars, other regions of other you know,
vast tracts of of gas. Yeah, so these giants, I mean,
they're being formed. But essentially it's the same process as
a snowflake that has that seed, and then it grows
(23:16):
the water vapor, and then that water vapor accumulates on
the surface of snowflake, and so on and so forth.
It's kind of a lovely thought to think that that
snowflake has very much a lot of in common with
this infinite universe idea. Yeah, snowflakes of the gods, if
you will, I love that. If we could right now,
we would just say, and happy holidays everyone, and then
(23:38):
and whatever wherever place you are, in your car, in
your room, at home, on the train commuting, snowflakes would
fall down gently upon your head. Indeed, but I'm going
to read a quote from Corn McCarthy, so so that
that'll kind of deaden some of the joy. But still
it's a beautiful quote. This is from the Border trilogy,
um and this is one speaker up, an individual speaking
(24:01):
to another character. He says, snowflake, You catch the snowflake,
but when you look in your hands, you don't have
it no more. Maybe you see this the shadow, this pattern,
but before you see it's gone. If you want to
see it, you have to see it on its own ground.
If you catch it, you lose it. And where it
goes there is no coming back from not even God
can bring it back. Happy holidays. Have I have a
(24:23):
nice CORNL. McCarthy Christmas, everybody, as you as you ruminate
on that, but but also yeah, as you look if
you were fortunate enough to experience a white Christmas, a
pleasantly white Christmas, not a not one that is, you know,
turning your area into a frigid waste land. But you
get to look out on the snow. Think about those
little snowflakes. Think about that tiny, intricate design and how
(24:46):
it all spirals out from their affecting climate. And look
up into the sky and think about these, uh, these stars,
these planets that have formed and are you can continue
to form and uh and the galactic formations that, in
their own way are much the snowflake. Indeed, And if
you want to check out some more of what we're
doing out there on the Internet, you can do so
(25:07):
at Stuff to Blow your Mind. Yes, Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. You can also check us out
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can send an email to blow the mind at discovery
dot com for more on this and thousands of other
(25:31):
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