sagansense:

The physics of beauty requires math. The sunflower has spirals of 21, 34, 55, 89, and - in very large sunflowers - 144 seeds. Each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. This pattern seems to be everywhere: in pine needles and mollusk shells, in parrot beaks and spiral galaxies. After the fourteenth number, every number divided by the next highest number results in a sum that is the length-to-width ratio of what we call the golden mean, the basis for the Egyptian pyramids and the Greek Parthenon, for much of our art and even our music. In our own spiral-shaped inner ear’s cochlea, musical notes vibrate at a similar ratio.

The patterns of beauty repeat themselves, over and over. Yet the physics of beauty is enhanced by a self, a unique, self-organizing system. Scientists now know that a single flower is more responsive, more individual, than they had ever dreamed. Plants react to the world. Plants have ways of seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing.

Rooted in soil, a flower is always on the move. Sunflowers are famous for turning toward the sun, east in the morning, west in the afternoon. Light-sensitive cells in the stem “see” sunlight, and the stem’s growth orients the flower. Certain cells in a plant see the red end of the spectrum. Other cells see blue and green. Plants even see wavelengths we cannot see, such as ultraviolet.

Most plants respond to touch. The Venus’s-flytrap snaps shut. Stroking the tendril of a climbing pea will cause it to coil. Brushed by the wind, a seedling will thicken and shorten its growth. Touching a plant in various ways, at various times, can cause it to close its leaf pores, delay flower reproduction, increase metabolism, or produce more chlorophyll.

Plants are touchy-feely. They taste the world around them. Sunflowers use their roots to “taste” the surrounding soil as they search for nutrients. The roots of a sunflower can reach down eight feet, nibbling, evaluating, growing toward the best sources of food. The leaves of some plants can taste a caterpillar’s saliva. They “sniff” the compounds sent out by nearby damaged plants. Research suggests that some seeds taste or smell smoke, which triggers germination.

The right sound wave may also trigger germination. Sunflowers, like pea plants, seem to increase their growth when they hear sounds similar to but louder than the human speaking voice.

In other ways, flowers and pollinators find each other through sound. A tropical vine, pollinated by bats, uses a concave petal to reflect the bat’s sonar signal. The bat calls to the flower. The flower responds.

Sharman Apt Russell | Anatomy of A Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers [x]

(via proofmathisbeautiful)

sundaylatte:

enpointe:

When we think of bee nests, we often think of a giant hive, buzzing with social activity, worker bees and honey. But scientists recently discovered a rare, solitary type of bee that makes tiny nests by plastering together flower petals.

Each nest is a multicolored, textured little cocoon — a papier-mache husk surrounding a single egg, protecting it while it develops into an adult bee. (NPR)

(via mizisham)

mzteeeyed:

inlovewithgeosciences:Silver, Ag Locality: Colorado, USA

(Source: tumblr.com, via alizarin--crimson)

artandsciencejournal:

Isabel Moseley

In this work, Orographic, Isabel Moseley imagines clouds that develop in response to the Earth’s topography. Many of Moseley’s pieces work with subjects that are unexplainable or perhaps even invisible; such as weather conditions, the chemical make up of certain materials or even natural occurrences such as sunrise and sunset. In this work, Moseley interprets the makeup of clouds in the language of topography. An unusual combo with beautiful results! To check out more of her work, click here. 

- Lee Jones

(Source: )

magicalnaturetour:

“xx Mantis xx” by Mustafa Öztürk :)

(via mzteeeyed)

catertothehollow:

malformalady:

Urodid moth cocoon. According to entomologist and Amazon explorer Phil Torres, “It has a really beautiful woven lattice structure that hangs about a foot below a leaf on a thin silk string. This is an unusual structure because the pupa, resting inside the cocoon, seems fairly exposed to the elements. The hanging likely helps to prevent predation from ants, and the bright orange color may serve as an aposematic signal to predators to prevent it from getting eaten. The tube part at the bottom is the ‘escape hatch’ from which it eventually will exit as an adult moth. There is not a lot of research that has been done on the evolutionary origin structure - this is one of the many mysteries of the Amazon you can come across.”

Photo credit: Jeff Cremer

how perfect ;__;

(via catherinewillis)

samsaranmusing:

SACRED GEOMETRY: An Introduction

What is meant by “sacred geometry”? Well, in its simplest terms it is the geometry which underlays all creation.  There are repeating geometric forms which can be seen in all existence from the atomic to the cosmic. They range from the simple and familiar such as circles, squares, triangles, spheres, cubes to the more complex such as hexagons, pentagons, spirals, toroids, fractals, helix to fourth dimensional  forms such as the hypercube and the hypersphere.  These forms make up all of our visual reality and their repetition and their combinations speak to the nature of reality and the underlying symmetry and order of the universe which may be at first indiscernible to the naked eye.

Once we have learned to recognize these forms and to understand a bit about the mathematical relationship between them a whole new world dawns for us. You’ll recognize these patterns everywhere.  You will see them in the arrangement of atoms within a crystal.  In the forms of the virus and cell.  In flowers, seeds and leaves.  In the structure of an insects eye.  You will see them in the cream in your coffee and in the shape of geological structures on the broad face of the Earth.  You will see them in clouds and weather patterns.  You will see them in the structure of planets, their orbits in galaxies and in the fourth dimensional shape of the universe itself. 

The shapes are a language.  They speak of relationships and patterns and those patterns are meaningful no matter what the scale.  The spiral in your coffee cup has the same relationship as the spiral of the galaxy. You see these patterns are not “things” as we are accustomed to think of things that exist in our three dimensional realm. A baseball is a “thing” it approximates a sphere but it is not a sphere.  A sphere is an ideal that exists independently of the crude world of our perception.  However, because a baseball approximates a sphere we can use what we know of the ideal of a sphere to predict how a baseball will act in three dimensional space and in the fourth dimension of time. This is the world of ideals and their relationship to the outward world of forms.

☯ Samsaran ॐ

Read More About Sacred Geometry Here

“To understand is to perceive patterns.”

— Isaiah Berlin

“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”

— G. H. Hardy

(via catherinewillis)

outopie:

Nabokov’s system developed to map patterns on butterfly wings.

brainpickings.org

(via catherinewillis)

artandsciencejournal:

Nikki Graziano

“Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics… and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music… Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.”(Paul Lockhart via Nikki Graziano)

In this series titled Found Functions, New York photographer Nikki Graziano superimposes graphically-rendered functions on photos of objects and spaces in nature. The images are elegant, poetic reminders of the inextricable relationship between the natural beauty we see every day and the conceptual possibilities of math and science. While art bears a kind of mathematical skeleton, mathematics reveals its artistic applications.

See more of Graziano’s work at her website here.

- Erin Saunders