Sometimes Nature is cool! Sometimes Science can be cool too!
Here’s a video where both are cool together.
Dutch director Jan van IJken filmed a beautiful microscope timelapse of a newt being born - from single-celled zygote to a complete organism.
It's six minutes (and you can skip around). Check it out.
It's amazing to watch how complex growth is, and even more amazing that we get through without serious malformations.
The blueprints and templates, and the ability to make it happen, exist in such simple cells. For something so complex and "natural" to be so organized blows my mind.
For another impressive show of the organization and complexity of these fleshy prisons, here's a series of animations on DNA.
via WEHI
Look how organized we are at the cellular level. Think how that organization grows into organs, and then brains, and then bodies ... and then communities, and societies.
Imagine what we'll be able to accomplish when we grasp genetic engineering and regenerative medicine. Even our failures like diseases and cancer are systems - as we identify and understand them better we can fix and modify them (see CRISPR).
Crazy stuff!