Watch a nervous system developing.
(Science Week, day 1!)
Welcome benevolently to Science Week, beginning this year with a spectacular full moon.
When deciding what to share on Darwin Day, I naturally look to biology and the animal world. Today's selection is an incredible short microscopic video of a developing zebrafish credited to Dr Elizabeth M Haynes and Jiaye Henry He, dubbed the winner of a past Nikon Small World In Motion competition.
This video shows the actual nervous system in embryonic development over sixteen hours, complete with visibly growing strands and branches, and seeming entities puttering among them. Out of context, it looks almost like pure imagination. In context, it strikes up questions about how much like our own nervous system this one is. It's a reminder that an ordinary physical feeling – a bruise or breeze on our limb or face – is in theory fully explicable and calculable, and that doing so would involve and reveal similar complexity in ourselves, that every participating nerve and signal could theoretically be labelled and measured.
The Small World site has many more contest-winning microscopic stills and videos. I'll be bookmarking it and returning when I could use a momentary adventure.
Until tomorrow!