March 8, 2024: The predictable behavior of snowflakes and the first woman to fly an airplane. Plus, do we live in a multiverse? —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Researchers tracking more than half a million falling snowflakes have uncovered a mathematical correlation between a snowflake's average acceleration (how much it swirls) and its Stokes number (how much it responds to changes in air turbulence). The team built a device that could measure the mass, density, area and shape of individual snowflakes that landed on a hotplate. They used lasers and video cameras to record how each flake's dance responded to air turbulence. What they found: Each may be a special snowflake, but they all align to a single mathematical pattern when it comes to how they swirl to Earth. The distribution of average snowflake swirliness fits a single, nearly perfect exponential curve—a fixed mathematical pattern—despite different degrees of air turbulence and diversity of snowflake shapes and sizes.
What's next: The turbulence may shape each snowflake and thus how it responds to movements of air, hypothesizes University of Utah atmospheric scientist Tim Garrett. For now, the precise reason for such predictable snowflakes remains a mystery. | | | Welcome to the Multiverse | Our known universe may not be the only one. Both quantum physicists and cosmologists have proposed that other universes exist in parallel to ours, which they call the multiverse. In the quantum version, at every moment of existence, with every move and decision we make, we stick to our one universe, while other "possible" universes branch off. In the cosmological version, in the moments after the big bang, our universe blew up alongside countless others, like the bubbles that pile up when you blow through a straw in your drink. Why this is interesting: The idea of a multiverse cannot be tested with our current tactics. "We use different tools, and one of those tools is theoretical physics; the other tool is direct observation. We hope that both of those methods match up, but sometimes there's a lag," says Paul Halpern, a physicist at Saint Joseph's University. Albert Einstein, for example, hypothesized the existence of black holes in 1916. It took 100 years for scientists to collect observational evidence that they actually existed.
What this means: Prominent physicists have argued that the chance that life arose in ANY universe is a slim one, and that fact serves as evidence that countless other universes exist without life (just by luck the conditions in ours turned out to be right for life). We may never know if other versions of the universe exist, so for now, we are unique. | | | • Last month, Alabama's Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people. Here's how that decision will impact in vitro fertilization. | 9 min read | | | • The demand for shark liver oil, which is used to make the squalene found in many beauty products, is endangering one in seven species of deepwater sharks and rays. | 3 min read | | | • This summer the James Webb Space Telescope will start a serious hunt for alien moons. | 8 min read | | | • It's the era of mega space observatories, like the James Webb Space Telescope, and the multi-billion-dollar planned Thirty Meter Telescope and Square Kilometer Array. But we shouldn't forget that smaller astronomy projects can also yield important findings and have an important role to play in space research, writes Paul M. Sutter, a visiting professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College at Columbia University. "Small projects can look in the unexplored corners and hidden depths. Ironically, small telescopes and projects can find the things that the giant instruments can't," he says. | 4 min read | | | OUR MOST-READ STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • 'Ring of Fire' Rocket Engines Put a New Spin on Spaceflight | 7 min read | • Rare Brown Panda Mystery Solved after 40 Years | 5 min read | • Why Do So Many Mental Illnesses Overlap? | 10 min read | | | In tough times, it can be comforting to fantasize that perhaps in some other universe, there's a version of Earth with no human suffering, a thriving planet, and we all live to 120 (or at the very least I write this newsletter from a bungalow in Hawai'i). Far-fetched as they are, such imaginings help us envision what kind of world we want to build. We may never be able to cross over into--let alone detect--a parallel universe, and so what choice do we have but to treat this existence as the precious thing that it is? | I hope you are able to enjoy your one, precious life this weekend. Write to me and tell me about it: newsletters@sciam.com. See you Monday! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | Galaxies from the depths of cosmic time appear in a small crop from "deep field" observations taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Every object in this image is a galaxy. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI | | | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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