Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Eerie. Weird. Cool. Reminiscent.

THIS is just plain beautiful--although one could almost say 'eeray'. The patterns are quite striking, and make me wonder if there's a ideal packing density solution descriptive of the pattern they form en masse. Perhaps it's just conjecture, but maybe there's a dodecahedral KISSING PATTERN if you treat each ray as swimming in a spherical 'bubble' of space? Yeah, at least a Kepler conjecture.


My wife and I had an experience like this when on a trip out to the Channel Islands 12 years ago. Our boat was swarmed by a pod of Dolphins, estimated by our whale watching guide to be around 10,000 strong: easily the largest pod he'd ever seen. Whatever the true number, as far as you could see they were leaping out of the water. 100s were in front of and to each side of the boat, with 30 in the air at any one moment. It was breathtaking.

4 comments:

Ignoramus said...

I recall wading at the beach in Naples once when suddenly I was surrounded by a flock of rays "flying" through the water. They swept past in a matter of seconds, but the image of that moment stays with me. It was almost frightening--but way cool.

The Vitruvian Duck said...

Wow. That would be really neat. Yet, having been stung by a stingray and knowing the level of pain they inflict, I'd be scared out of my mind to experience that.

"Father Barry" said...

...I'm going to spend the rest of my day trying to figure out why you said "erie" instead of "eerie."

(Or "eeray," for that matter.)

The Vitruvian Duck said...

Far be it from me to keep you from such exciting endeavor, but:

Typo on the first.

You should know better on the second.