BEAUTY INSIDE ANCIENT CORES
You are looking at the inside of a recently discovered fossilized embryonic Lufengosaurus dinosaur femur. This cross-section shows rings of honeycomb embryonic bone tissue surrounding a center space, known as the medullary cavity, which channeled blood vessels, bone-making cells called osteoblasts, and other soft tissues.
The structure enabled rapid expansion, so fast, in fact, that the animals could become super-gigantic super-fast. As an added treasure, the inside heart of these baby bones filled with crystals that formed during fossilization.
Photo: Courtesy of the History Blog. Dinosaur embryo bone.
Though they could grow to be giant giants, the bones of these dinosaur embryos were less than a centimetre long. This bone was recently discovered in Yunnan, China, by a team of scientists led by paleontologist Robert Reisz from the University of Toronto. It was one of hundreds found in a bonebed formed when a nest was flooded out, then buried.
Photo: Courtesy of the History Blog. Lufengosaurus growth series of embryonic femora.
As published in Nature, the insides of these bones offer some of the first clues about how sauropodomorph dinosaurs, the biggest land animals that ever walked the earth, got so big.
Photo: Jeff Barton. Micrograph of the Allende Meteorite.
Astronomy photographer Jeff Barton has an extraordinary gift for finding beauty inside 4.5 billion year-old meteorites. Barton cuts a wafer-thin section of a meteor specimen, hits it with cross-polarized light, and shoots, using a digital SLR camera attached to a petrographic microscope.
Photo: Jeff Barton. Micrograph of the Allende Meteorite.
Meteorites tend to look rough and dull on the outside, but, in a series of micrographs, taken from Allende Meteorite specimens, Baron reveals that some have a jeweled core. He calls the insides “natural stained glass.” The pattern is formed by rocky spheres, called chondrules, likely formed when particles in the solar nebula were melted by heat flares.
Photo: Mike Miller. Glorieta Pallasite Meteorite.
Pallasite meteorites are perhaps the most beautiful of all inside. Their cores are studded with olivine, also known as peridot, crystals. They are encased with nickel and iron. This beautiful slice is from the Glorieta meteorite, originally discovered in 1884 in New Mexico.
Photo: Courtesy of Meteorite Guy. Mike Farmer. Fukang pallasite meteorite.
The Fukang meteorite, found in Xinjiang Province, China, is another remarkable pallasite. You can still purchase pieces from meteorite collectors and dealers such as Mike Farmer’s Meteorite Guy.
If you think extraterrestrial life is a beautiful thing, the insides of the Polonnaruwa meteorite, found this past year in Sri Lanka, will leave you awestruck. This carbonaceous meteorite served up fossilized diatom frustules which appear to support the theory of cometary panspermia, with living creatures that appear to have come aboard a comet from outer space.
Image: Courtesy of NASA. Ring Nebula.
We can now see more of what is going on inside this cosmic jelly doughnut. While scientists have studied the Ring Nebula for many years, new photos from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 offer more detailed images, of the hot blue helium core. It glows from the diminishing rays of the center white dwarf as it runs out of hydrogen fuel and starves to death.
Image: Courtesy of NASA. The Ring Nebula.
The inside of the Ring Nebula was thought to be empty, but Hubble is now showing it to be filled with material. Hubble also showed dark irregular knots of dense gas embedded in the nebula’s ring.
The original star was way bigger and stronger than our sun. But, after billions of years, running on the energy generated as it fused hyrdrogen atoms to form helium, the powerful insides gave way, first expanding into a red giant, then collapsing into a white dwarf.
Image: Mike Driscoll and Bob Kiselewski. The Ring Nebula.
The nebula is expanding at more than 43,000 miles an hour, but the inside is moving faster than the expansion of the main ring. The Ring Nebula will continue to expand for another 10,000 years.
Finding never before seen beauty inside prehistoric things, confirms our contention that beauty can be found anywhere. You just need to have a passion and the tools to find it.
Read more about Beautiful Insides, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact in our posts throughout this week.
Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Beautiful Insides. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 11.17.13.
Image: Courtesy of InterActiveMediaSW.
Also, check out our special competition: The Most Beautiful Sound in the World! We are thrilled about this effort, together with SoundCloud and The Sound Agency. And we can’t wait to hear what you’ve got!
