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The 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler was the first to muse about the structure of snowflakes. Why are they so symmetrical? How does one side know how long the opposite side has grown? Kepler thought it was all down to what we would now call a "morphogenic field" – that things want to have the form they have. Science has since discounted this idea. But the question of why snowflakes and similar structures are so symmetrical is nevertheless not entirely understood.
Modern science shows just how fundamental the question is: look at all the spiral galaxies out there. They can be half a million light years across, but they still preserve their symmetry. How? In our new study, published in Scientific Reports, we present an explanation.
We have shown that information and "entropy" – a measure of the disorder of a system – are linked together ("info-entropy") in a way exactly analogous to electric and magnetic fields ("electromagnetism"). Electric currents produce magnetic fields, while changing magnetic fields produce electric currents. Information and entropy influence each other in the same way.
[...] This means that we don't actually need dark matter after all. According to our model, the galactic entropy gives rise to such a large quantity of additional energy that it modifies the observed dynamics of the galaxy – making stars at the edge move faster than expected. This is exactly what dark matter was meant to explain. The energy isn't directly observable as mass, but its presence is certainly supported by the astronomical observations – explaining why dark matter searches have so far found nothing.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @05:56AM (2 children)
if you ignore the idiotic press release and go directly to the paper (open access), it actually sounds plausible.
I'd need a couple of hours to do a thorough wishful-thinking check, but for now it still seems reasonable.
Luckily, with my background I should be able to go through some of the details.
I am worried about the symmetric snow-flake discussion though. That's obviously simply due to the fact that growth happens in an environment with constant water-vapor density, for the same amount of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @08:11AM (1 child)
Water vapor density is not constant nor uniform in the real world of snow formation. It is also affected by many things more than just the vapor pressure or fusion energy of the snowflake and the conditions are also very chaotic. In addition, in artificial experiments with drastic differences across snowflakes or artificially large snowflakes, they still form in a symmetrical pattern. You can even alter the structure on one side of the snowflake and the others will copy that symmetry as formation continues or the altered side copies the pattern on the others, a significant amount of the time.
Plus, if you think of it on a molecular scale, it doesn't make sense. For crystalline symmetry, the vast majority of molecules have to have hit the crystal with the same orientation and energy to be locked in the same pattern with its rotational symmetry buddies. Over and over again, an almost countless number of times, in a relatively unique pattern for each and every snowflake. Even in artificial conditions, most snowflakes don't come out identical unless you really tip the scales. But somehow the laws of nature demand rotational symmetry almost 100% of the time regardless of circumstances.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @01:29PM
Could it be due to gravity and rotational spin?