Saturday, August 22, 2020

One Of Those Odd Coincidences

     A fanciful movie of a few years back, The Core, contained some of the most striking visual imagery I’d seen incorporated into an SF flick in some time. Have a gander at this scene in a “gem cave:” a postulated space about 700 miles below the Earth’s surface, filled partly by jagged nickel-iron crystals and protected by a cobalt shell from the pressure of the magma around it:

     I was impressed by the imagery, and found myself wondering where the director had come up with the idea. Then, just a few days ago, I stumbled upon this electron micrograph of the surface of a kidney stone:

     Quite a resemblance, eh?

4 comments:

3for3 said...

There is a real Crystal cave in Mexico. The video can be found by searching youtube or you can check the link I provided. Pretty cool cave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsIebVCr0zk

Mike Guenther said...

Having had a couple of kidney stones, I can relate. They are like mini sea urchins

Pascal said...

That looks painful.

Linda Fox said...

Any crystalline structure will have similar characteristics - the only difference is the particular crystal structure type.