I cannot believe the intricacies! Astounding!

Made from miniature ice? Even sides? Whaa? I mean fair enough having something beautiful from chaos, that is wonderful, but the evenness of the patterns, the exact matching elements do not in any way seem like random development.

I mean this is miniature frozen ice!! So it just happens that snow flakes, each individual snowflake, just happens to have exact matching sides, lines, shapes and patterns? By chance every frozen snow crystal has this unique order?

I'm sorry, but anyone who looks at these and tells me a creator being that loves beauty did NOT direct the enablement of such order within the random generation of snow crystals simply WANTS to believe no such being exists. ;) *grabs tin hat* :D

Seriously, I see design. Beautiful design.

And how wonderful for him that we can appreciate it. That we can sit back and observe his handiwork, astounded at the ordered intricacies in each crystal.

Amazing. I'm still looking at them. Amazing!

[ 01-14-2003, 01:38 AM: Message edited by: Yorick ]

Jorath, thankyou for posting this. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Chaos laws cannot be avoided, but they leave plenty of loopholes for stubborn dreams of order, life the gratest among them. In the end, however, chaos will prevail.

[ 01-14-2003, 04:58 AM: Message edited by: B_part ]

Wanting?
I know we've been here before Yorick, but I cant resist. There are so many zillions of beutiful things about this planet and the whole universe that is logically expainable with science, snow flakes are not going to convince me,
"sorry".
Maybe you, "want" to believe beuty like this is "created" the same way neandrathal beings wanted to explain out of fear, a shooting star, or fire.

No affence Yorick, but as you may think I just dont uncerstand god, dont assume what a nonbeliever "wants"

WHOA! They're perfect! Very pretty [img]smile.gif[/img]

Nice site Jorath [img]smile.gif[/img]

I believe in God and am, in fact, a christian. Seeing something like this always shows me how it is impossible for him not to exist. Another beautiful thing is a fish's scales up close. The perfection of each individual one is astounding!
Back to the snowflakes, look at the patterns! They almost look like things in our lives, with wings or identifiable heads. The texture is just incredible!

absoloutly beautiful and somewhat "hard-to-believe-yet-somehow-true" in my mind right now :D

Water molecules are, if described simply, roundish in shape.

Round objects pack best into hexagonal shapes (try it with some marbles all of the same size) and ice particles forming a snowflake do the same thing, in that case imagine the middle 'marble' as particle of dust, which is what causes the formation of snowflakes in the first place:


...O.O
..O.O.O
...O.O

The formation of crystals is not even across the whole surface - points sticking out will grow crystal faster than a flat surface hence this will develop from the above structure:

...O...O
....O.O
O.O.O.O.O
....O.O
...O...O

And about no two being alike? Well think about it, no two of *anything* are exactly alike. There is no such thing as a perfect sphere (except as a theoretical concept) for example, no such thing as two objects exactly the same, including marbles, coke cans, chewing gum sticks, or tiny ice particles. The minute imperfections in the initial microscopic particles of ice that form around an imperfectly shaped particle of dust would make it impossible for any two snowflakes to be the same, not so amazing when you think of it that way.

So for me it's science. Doesn't make it any less wondrous or beautiful. [img]smile.gif[/img] Thanks for posting the link.

EDIT: Sorry I had to put dots in my diagrams to make them hold their shape once posted - for some reason my carefully placed spaces collapsed upon posting! So 'O'= an ice particle (or any other basically round object) and '.' = just something I put in so the diagram would look right (sort of). Sorry, it looked better without the dots!

[ 01-15-2003, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: Epona ]

Beautiful, Jorath! Thanks so much for sharing it with us!