Oakenwulf
Paranormal Maven
Interesting a bit...
Mysterious Desert Fairy Circles Share Pattern with Skin Cells
Mysterious Desert Fairy Circles Share Pattern with Skin Cells
Fairy circles in the Namibian desert (left) and the microscopic skin cells on a zebrafish lens (right) are entirely different systems, but researchers have found that they have similar patterns.
Credit: OIST
View full size image
Dotting the arid grasslands of Namibia, fairy circles have long baffled scientists as to how these round grassy patches form and why they disappear for seemingly no reason. Their mysterious nature has perhaps deepened with a new finding that the circles share a mathematical pattern with the skin cells of zebrafish.
"It's a completely amazing, strange match," one of the study's researchers, Robert Sinclair, a professor of mathematical biology at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
Graduate University in Japan, said in a statement.
It's unclear how these fairy rings, which are different from mushroom rings, form in the desert. But they're impossible to miss; each barren patch of earth is surrounded by short grass, and they speckle the desert like
craters on the moon, the researchers said. Scientists are racing to figure out this strange phenomenon, and have offered several still-unproven theories of what creates the circles, including that of rolling zebras, differences in soil nutrients and termites.
Mysterious Desert Fairy Circles Share Pattern with Skin Cells
Mysterious Desert Fairy Circles Share Pattern with Skin Cells
Fairy circles in the Namibian desert (left) and the microscopic skin cells on a zebrafish lens (right) are entirely different systems, but researchers have found that they have similar patterns.
Credit: OIST
View full size image
Dotting the arid grasslands of Namibia, fairy circles have long baffled scientists as to how these round grassy patches form and why they disappear for seemingly no reason. Their mysterious nature has perhaps deepened with a new finding that the circles share a mathematical pattern with the skin cells of zebrafish.
"It's a completely amazing, strange match," one of the study's researchers, Robert Sinclair, a professor of mathematical biology at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
Graduate University in Japan, said in a statement.It's unclear how these fairy rings, which are different from mushroom rings, form in the desert. But they're impossible to miss; each barren patch of earth is surrounded by short grass, and they speckle the desert like
craters on the moon, the researchers said. Scientists are racing to figure out this strange phenomenon, and have offered several still-unproven theories of what creates the circles, including that of rolling zebras, differences in soil nutrients and termites.