Cosmos Computed

In the realm of science, there are many things which are not fully understood. The mechanism behind the formation of a snowflake crystal is one of these things. It would seem that something so common would have been completely figured out by this time; after all, scientists have even studied atoms, the building blocks of all matter in the universe. But no, snowflakes remain a mysterious subject. So what have we figured out about snowflakes so far? They form when water vapor condenses around an ice particle, and they form six sides due to the shape of an individual water molecule. But there's still a lot we don't know. This snowflake has definite, albeit slightly imperfect, symmetry. One problem with our current knowledge is that snowflakes tend to form six-sided shapes which are symmetrical . The odds of two snowflakes sharing the same pattern is unimaginably small, and yet the snowflake itself contains 6 copies of the same pattern. Why does each arm develop the same way? Scien...

This is a simple Snake video game I wrote over the past few days. For the graphics, I used my Firetools.js library, which I also mentioned in my Pong post. To play the game, use the arrow keys on the keyboard (you might need to click on the game to give it focus). The world loops, so you can go out one side of the screen and come in the other. Eat 50 green pellets to win the game. Each time you eat a pellet, you will get longer and your score will go up; the longer you are, the more points you get for each pellet. If you don't eat enough pellets, you'll begin to starve, and get shorter. Cherries make you longer, but do not prevent starvation. I did not add the ability to track high scores, but I might add that feature later on. Meanwhile, you can post your scores in the comments. Have fun! New posts every month - subscribe for free !

The year of 2014 is over; the year of 2015 has begun. Over the past year, I took a lot of pictures - more than 1200 photos of clouds, bugs, plants, rocks, and more. I deleted most of the low-quality and repetitive photos. Then, I selected 20 of the remaining photos which I thought were the most interesting or significant. In this post, I'll include those photos, in chronological order. Spring 1. Cold Hummingbird I took this photo after a late snowstorm in Spring. In the days leading up to the storm, it was warm and sunny and the fields were green, so the snow came rather unexpectedly. During the storm, one of the hummingbirds at our feeder was covered in ice and could barely fly. This hummingbird was more fortunate, but unlucky nevertheless. 2. Green Landscape I took this photo on the side of a biking trail. I didn't edit or crop the photo - this is how it looked. 3. Indian Paintbrush The Indian Paintbrush is an unusual flower. What appear to be flower petals are actually brigh...