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Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#61

Post by acomjean »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #19

I wish there were a way to "productize" this, or automate it at least. I'm imagining some sort of aquarium-like tank you stock with ocean water that is able to maintain the microscopic life, allow them to flourish. Meanwhile, some sort of slow or periodic pump draws aquarium water into an attached, miniature "photography studio" where an appropriate camera+lens feeds a constant live stream to a display or to the web…

I think it can be done. Automated liquid handling and microscopes do exist.

We had a confocal microscope in our lab with a robotic arm attached and can automatically image samples. I'm not of the details but the samples are big compared to its field of view so I believe it searches for images with cells before imaging. A lot of experiments are done on these plates with liquid wells.

This isn't our model but shows a larger scope with automated robotic arm and a "plate hotel":

https://confocal.ccr.cancer.gov/nci-microscopy-core-labs/bet...

I'd go into why we switched from PerkinElmer and their proprietary image format to a GE but thats outside the scope.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#63

Post by amanaplanacanal »

trumbitta2 wrote: post #57

Do you think copepods know humans exist? What about us knowing higher creatures exist, and we inhabit a droplet in their oceans?

Most humans believe in higher creatures of some sort. I am unwilling to bet one way or the other on it.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#64

Post by manbash »

m3kw9 wrote: post #59

Just imagine, you could have been born as one of quadrillion of these guys, but instead you are a human, that’s more than lottery luck we all got, if you can read this.

"you could have been born as" and the so-called "life-lottery" are a matter of philosophical and belief-system debate.

The "you" (or: self) is a concept, a perception.

I am just me, and couldn't have been something else, or born in another timeline, or to different parents.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#65

Post by bmitc »

Beautiful and interesting stuff! I have never heard of copepods before, but have now and will have to do some more reading.

> Walter once got a call from an Orthodox Jewish organization wanting to know if there were pieces of non-kosher creatures floating in the New York City tap water. The answer was yes.

Not to pick on them, but I found this illuminating on how religions present such a myopic view of life and what it means to be alive on Earth. Religions seems incapable of fitting their model over the apparent continuum of life. It was also somewhat humorous to read this.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#66

Post by kerpotgh »

m3kw9 wrote: post #59

Just imagine, you could have been born as one of quadrillion of these guys, but instead you are a human, that’s more than lottery luck we all got, if you can read this.

This is basically the Hindu belief system where you can reincarnate into any of those life forms depending on your karma in your previous life.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#67

Post by icambron »

manbash wrote: post #64
m3kw9 wrote: post #59

Just imagine, you could have been born as one of quadrillion of these guys, but instead you are a human, that’s more than lottery luck we all got, if you can read this.

"you could have been born as" and the so-called "life-lottery" are a matter of philosophical and belief-system debate. The "you" (or: self) is a concept, a perception. I am just me, and couldn't have been something else, or born in another timeline, or to different parents.

To elaborate this point a bit: the "lottery" concept requires you to believe there's like a queue of souls and they each get allocated to different bodies, and you're lucky you got a fancy one instead of a microscopic shrimp. A different -- and to me, more plausible -- way to look at it is that "you" are an emergent property of a specific complex organism. How you actually emerge is a fascinating and difficult discussion, but putting aside the mechanics, the implication of this framing is that "you could have been a microscopic shrimp" is meaningless, like asking "what if that cloud were instead a bowl of soup?"

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#68

Post by rodface »

dylan604 wrote: post #54

These pics remind me of an indy game way back on the PS3 called Flow[0]. It was designed as a low stress, low impact, and a fairly calming game. You were a small underwater creature that swam around collecting things to become a bigger creature. You used the 3-axis feature of the controller instead of the d-pad and joysticks. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(video_game)

I fondly remember and adored that game. It would be great to see an updated release of the Flash version https://www.crazygames.com/game/flow

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#69

Post by hbn »

m3kw9 wrote: post #59

Just imagine, you could have been born as one of quadrillion of these guys, but instead you are a human, that’s more than lottery luck we all got, if you can read this.

It's been pointed out how in the Avenger movies, Thanos wiping out half of all life in the universe having the effect of disappearing half of humans didn't really make sense, cause it would probably mostly take out insects, or maybe there's a small handful of planets that contain majority of individual lifeforms that would take the brunt of that.

I suppose it's implied it was "half of life" on a per-species basis. It's basically magic, so probably best not to think about it too much.

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