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Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere
"The Cave of Swallows, also called Cave of the Swallows (Spanish: Sótano de las Golondrinas), is an open air pit cave in the Municipality of Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The elliptical mouth, on a slope of karst, is 160 by 205 feet wide and is undercut around all its perimeter, further widening to a room approximately 995 feet by 440 feet ) wide. The floor of the cave is a 1,094-foot freefall drop from the lowest side of the opening, with a 1,220-footdrop from the highest side, making it the largest known cave shaft in the world, the second deepest pit in Mexico and perhaps the 11th deepest in the world."
Angel Oak (John's Island, South Carolina)
"Reportedly the oldest thing -- living or man-made -- east of the Rockies, Angel Oak is a live oak tree aged approximately 1,500 years. Some locals simply call it The Tree. It stands in a wooded area along Bohicket Road of John's Island outside Charleston, South Carolina.
Angel Oak is a live oak (Quercus virginiana). It is native to the low country and is not very tall but has a wide spread canopy. Lumber from the live oak forests in the sea islands was highly valued for shipbuilding in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Angel Oak stands on part of Abraham Waight's 1717 land grant. The City of Charleston now owns Angel Oak. There is no charge to view the tree and is a must see when visiting Charleston, South Carolina
Towering over 65 feet high, the Angel Oak has shaded John's Island, South Carolina, for over 1400 years, and would have sprouted 1000 years before Columbus' arrival in the New World. Recorded history traces the ownership of the live oak and surrounding land, back to the year 1717 when Abraham Waight received it as part of a small land grant. The tree stayed in the Waight family for four generations, and was part of a Marriage Settlement to Justus Angel and Martha Waight Tucker Angel. In modern times, the Angel Oak has become the focal point of a public park. Today the live oak has a diameter of spread reaching 160 feet, a circumference of nearly 25 feet, and covers 17,100 square feet of ground" angel oak tree.org/
"A new technique using microscopic ocean organisms could lead to cheaper, greener methods for producing iridescent cosmetics, paints and holographic plastics.
"The whole industrial process has a low carbon footprint when compared to conventional [methods]," said Andrew Parker, a professor of biology at Green College, at Oxford University in England.
The new method, developed by Parker and his team, enlists the light-altering properties of diatoms — plant-like microorganisms that live in oceans, fresh water and soil.
A diatom's ability to alter light comes from the silica shell encasing it. Each shell is comprised of a complex network of tiny holes — called photonic structures — that allow some colors in the rainbow spectrum of light to pass through, while rejecting others.
We see the rejected wavelengths of light. And when viewed from different angles, the colors seem to shift and become opalescent. Different species of the tiny phytoplankton have differently shaped shells, which in turn reflect light in a unique way.
The idea is to use specific species of diatoms to produce iridescent colors in consumer products.
By immersing a few living diatoms in a nutritious solution that encourages them to divide and multiply, Parker says his team can produce up to a ton of the single-celled organisms per day.
Once enough diatoms are grown, the researchers raise the temperature of the solution or introduce a weak acid to kill off the organic matter, leaving the light-reflecting structures behind.
Those structures can then be added to a transparent paint mixture, for example, to produce anything from iridescent car paint to opalescent cosmetics. The structures could also be added to a polymer solution and used to make holographic security codes on credit cards."
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