The Universe Truly IS in a Grain of Sand

          You may have noticed I've been a bit sand-obsessed since my trip to Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado in October. Discovering these individual sand grain images magnified 250 times has blown in a fresh look at sand. The sea urchin spines in the right part of the image are particularly striking in this calcium carbonate-rich sand:

      The three-pronged sponge spicule in this image from a Maui beach is but one sand grain; "sand" is defined as a size of sedimentary particle ranging from 1/16 to 2 mm, rather than composition (I.e., quartz).

     Sand grains may also be glacially deposited as these grains of garnet, agate, epidote, quartz, magnetite, and hematite, in Lake Winnibigoshish, WI.

      Sand grains of gypsum from the White Sands area in New Mexico, are some of the most uniform in color, though they are quite soft (hardness of 2 on Moh's Hardness Scale):

      And the hydraulic fracturing sands in western and southern Wisconsin are quite uniform, hard (hardness of 7 on Moh's Hardness Scale) quartz grains:

      "Puffy stars," calcium carbonate forams on Okinawa beaches are quite uniform in size and have a distinctive shape:

     Note the rounded, smooth shells, foraminifera, piece of coral, and the volcanic fragment (in the lower right.)

     Check out these colorful, luminescent, rounded bits of foraminifera, shells, and quartz in this sand mix.

And, to tie things back to where we started this week, here are rounded, smoothed, sea urchin sand fragments from Hawai'ian sand; these are essentially cross sections of the long, green spines seen in the first image.

Take this all with a grain of calcium car- bonate or quartz or gypsum salt or. . .

Steph

There are GLOSTA lovers in Colorado!

Trilobite Eyes, Pixels, Surgery, and your Smart Phone

      Trilobite compound eyes have always intrigued me. The calcium carbonate of the eyes of these Paleozoic-aged marine arthropods (similar to those of horseshoe crabs and insects) are often well-preserved:

     These extinct creatures have a three-lobed body:

     Their eyes contain many individual lenses (akin to each one creating a pixel) 

unlike those of humans, which is a useful adaptation used in laparoscopy and which may be used in Smart Phones, if/when the technology gets small enough:

Surgery, Smart Phones, and Compound Eyes

     Compound eyes are especially useful in low light situations and in order to be able to see 360 ° to be aware of predators:

     Experience seeing like an insect (it's NOT what you think)


      A recent paper describes discovery of the not-usually-fossilized soft parts of the trilobite eyes as flower like:

          Discovery of trilobite eye soft parts

     I think it might make me see a little buggy though.

     To end today: Tri a lo' bite of this quote: 

     "I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false." -Lawrence M. Krauss, theoretical physicist (b. 1954) 

What do you think?

Steph
(aka Word Woman)