Makes me wonder about the impact of microplastics on microlife. It's a good thing their not intelligent otherwise they'd be pissed.
Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
81–90 of 202 posts
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#82These 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)
If anyone is interested, thatgamecompany [sic], the studio who made Flow, also made Flower and Journey. Both are amazing and touching. I haven't played their new game Sky.
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#83> "Copepods are the most numerous animal on the planet," says Chad
Just narrowly coming ahead of the Seethepods.
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#84Beautiful 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…
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Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#85Just 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.
Yes, but as a thought experiment it is considered by many as the only way to make unbiased decisions about moral principles and how society should be structured. Moral philosopher John Rawls's uses the terms original position and veil of ignorance. You can think of them as "What we'd all decide for the world if each of us did not know ahead of time which person they'd would be born as".
https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/joh...
> The Veil is meant to ensure that people’s concern for their personal benefit could translate into a set of arrangements that were fair for everyone, assuming that they had to stick to those choices once the Veil of Ignorance ‘lifts’, and they are given full information again.
> One set of facts hidden from you behind the Veil are what we might call ‘demographic’ facts. You do not know your gender, race, wealth, or facts about your personal strengths and weaknesses, such as their intelligence or physical prowess. Rawls thought these facts are morally arbitrary: individuals do not earn or deserve these features, but simply have them by luck. As such, they do not deserve any benefits or harms that come from them. By removing knowledge of the natural inequalities that give people unfair advantages, it becomes irrational to choose principles that discriminate against any particular group.
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#86I 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…
There is an open hardware device you can build by yourself to do that: https://www.planktoscope.org/
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#87My 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…
I assume the stink come from chemicals excreted by other living things eating the dead ones. So the stink is not a sign that your trunks are less full of life, just that it got new tenants.
Seems like a technicality. By that logic, all stinky things are caused by living things instead of dead things.
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#88Just 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…
Makes sense to me. If every living being has 50 % chance of survival, so does every living human being, no matter what minority we are.
Not sure about the rest of Thanos's logic, of course...
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#89There is amazing video version of this, Journey to the Microcosmos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS2mdmt4JPw
Re: Photos capture life inside a drop of seawater
#90> But copepods typically range from about 0.2 to 1.7 millimeters in length, just large enough to magnify using conventional lenses and equipment Does that mean conventional macro camera lenses or a microscope?
I think conventional camera gear will do it.
If you enjoy this view into microworlds, here's one of my favourite macro photographers. This is a collection of garnets (sand grains) that are 0.2 to 0.3 mm across. That's basically dust IMO!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194954457@N05/sets/72177720296...
He talks about his gear here. His technique and patience is extraordinary. His gear is fairly modest: Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark II camera, MC-20 Teleconverter, Olympus 60mm macro lens, Kenko 16mm extension tube, & Raynox 505 close-up lens. That's an older model of Micro Four Thirds camera (the format has magnification and depth of field advantages over fullframe) so you could probably acquire such a setup in the range of $1K used. And then spend a lifetime refining your art... :-)