Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 202 posts

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#191

Post by Eisenstein »

igiveup wrote: post #91
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.

Now look at it from the other side. If it really was quadrillion times more probable to be born (hatched?) as a plankton, why exactly weren't you? Either tremendous luck, or something wrong with the assumption.

I don't understand that logic. Asking 'why aren't you part of the other thing' is answered 'because something has to be not part of it', not 'because luck'.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#192

Post by bb101 »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #73
kerpotgh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not really up on Hinduism, but one of the implications of "atman is brahman" would be that, reciprocally "brahman is atman". Therefore, also it's not the case that "you can reincarnate into any of those life forms" but rather that all those lifeforms, including you, are incarnations of the same over soul. So, you always already are both those forms and not, and have just forgotten it was so. And, then, finally, w…

Andy Weir's short story "The Egg" deals with similar topics.

https://www.paullowe.org/the-egg/

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#193

Post by igiveup »

Eisenstein wrote: post #191
igiveup wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now look at it from the other side. If it really was quadrillion times more probable to be born (hatched?) as a plankton, why exactly weren't you? Either tremendous luck, or something wrong with the assumption.

I don't understand that logic. Asking 'why aren't you part of the other thing' is answered 'because something has to be not part of it', not 'because luck'.

I admit I don't understand it fully either. If you want to read about it from more famous people than me, it is called "self-sampling argument". I'll try explain what I think I know.

Why some group is not empty is different from why it is me who is in that group, when I could very well be in the other one, like almost everyone. When the other group is much larger, then most potential "me"s will observe that they are in the larger, more typical group. The others will be surprised because they get the less common result, but most will not.

There are more intuitive examples than being human versus insect. Let's say, vast majority of people are not members of a royal family, so, knowing nothing else about myself, I should expect not to be, either. (Fits, afaik.) There are also some counterexamples, like that most people live elsewhere than in my town, but these are often tailored to me.

Going back to the plankton problem, I observe the equivalent of being a prince. Someone has to be, for sure, but is there a reason why me?

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#194

Post by anthk »

dekhn wrote: post #141

When I was a kid, my school took us the boston science museum and I wandered off to the microscope exhibit. The museum collected and displayed a bunch of things from Boston Bay, and looking in- as a kid learning about computers- it seemed like some of the "animacules" behaved in complex ways- like a computer program with sensor input and mechanical actuators. Some would spiral endlessly while others would zip forward…

Get 'The computational beauty of nature's among the repo:

https://github.com/gwf/CBofN

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#195

Post by pvaldes »

sam_goody wrote: post #170

Copepod females do not need to mate to reproduce. So one of the most abundant life forms on the planet has a trick to keep their edge. One wonders why they need it.

Most (all?) Copepod species have males and females and need both sexes to reproduce

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#196

Post by pvaldes »

floppydiskette wrote: post #184
TheRealPomax wrote: post #176

This title is about as close to a lie as you can get without being a lie. "Meticulously staged photos capture highly selectively curate life presented through bespoke drops of seawater". Cool? Absolutely! Accurate title? Hell no.

It’s literally life - a living thing - inside a drop of water. What is the problem here? The title doesn’t imply anything about how curated it is or isn’t.

Just to be pedantic. The title is equivalent to:

"Photos capture tigers, elephants and giraffes that live in the broom room"

The "drop of seawater" is just a literary construction here. This animals don't live "in a drop of seawater", they live in the ocean. They are superfast also for animals so small. I had photographed some of them and you need to apply a restrain of some type to be able to take a clear photo. They are extremely migratory animals. Even more active than birds probably, if we take in mind their relative size.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#197

Post by daveslash »

rcpt wrote: post #182
daveslash wrote: post #60

My wife and I get into the ocean pretty often -- sometimes, every day. But when I leave my swimming attire hanging in the bathroom for more than a couple of days ( I try not to do that, but sometimes forget ), it starts to smell really fishy . My wife asks why it smells so bad after 2 days, but not immediately after getting out of the ocean. I tell her The ocean is a soup of life, and when you get out there are milli…

You're already married it's ok to admit that you peed in your wetsuit while walking to the car.

Heh, well, yes. I've peed in my wetsuit. But some people are really serious about such things. like this guy....

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/16/ebay-wetsuit-bear-urinal/

[1] Original 2011 Ebay posting. https://web.archive.org/web/20110317032911/http://cgi.ebay.c...

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#199

Post by shellfishgene »

alejo1000 wrote: post #23

Reminds me of this old flash game called Flow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(video_game)

Just tried to find out where to buy it for PC, but could not. This page https://thatgamecompany.com/flow/ has a little PC icon next to the OS ones, but maybe that version doesn't actually exist.

Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater

#200

Post by pvaldes »

dekhn wrote: post #141

When I was a kid, my school took us the boston science museum and I wandered off to the microscope exhibit. The museum collected and displayed a bunch of things from Boston Bay, and looking in- as a kid learning about computers- it seemed like some of the "animacules" behaved in complex ways- like a computer program with sensor input and mechanical actuators. Some would spiral endlessly while others would zip forward…

It sounds absolutely fascinating
Post reply on HN