Physicists find a new 'state of matter' in the eyes of chickens

[Beachwood]

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An unusual arrangement of particles has been discovered in the cells of chicken eyes. It's the first time scientists have seen such a system in a biological system — one that allows materials to behave like both a crystal and a liquid.

The unique arrangement is called "disordered hyperuniformity," and it could help researchers design advanced materials, such as optics that can transmit light with the efficiency of a crystal and the flexibility of a liquid.

When matter is organized into states of disordered hyperuniformity, it exhibits order over large distances and disorder over small distances. At one level, it's like a crystal that greatly suppresses differences in the density of particles across large spatial distances. But at another scale, it's liquid-like in that it exhibits similar physical properties in all directions.

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Entire review for subscribers here:

http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.89.022721

[rhett o rick]

1. Yeah, I knew that. The disordered hyperuniformity thing. I just didnt think to mention is. nm

[Beachwood]

2. Did you bring up this issue before somewhere? I'm a bioscience novice here

So I just post what I come across that I find interesting.

Nothing implied about what you may have posted elsewhere, I obviously didn't read it.

[rhett o rick]

3. No, I was just being flip. Thanks for posting. nm

[Jackpine Radical]

16. Hi, Flip. Welcome to DU.

[enough]

4. A fabulous headline, and very interesting article. Thanks. (nt)

[bvar22]

5. Always KNEW there was something special about our birds!

[Beachwood]

6. I thought there was something special about the way my cats

looked at me.

I wonder if they will find out something special about them next.

I just always knew my cats looked at me as more special than the rest of the world looks at me, just a common ordinary person, but the cats always like to look at me more than the rest of humans do. Could it be that they see more than the rest of humanity does?

Just kidding, I feed them, that's got to be it.

[bvar22]

7. How do I get that magic crystal shit out of our chicken's eyes

...and how much will it bring on the Open Market????
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.
.
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Just kidding.
Cats are pretty special too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x3235248

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=243&topic_id=2668&mesg_id=2668

[Scruffy Rumbler]

8. Sooo that's why the ocd chicken crossed the road, "disordered hyperuniformity,"

She was disordered where she was and needed that order on the other side!

[jtuck004]

9. And the research subject was tasty as well. n/t

[Wounded Bear]

10. So that's what makes those chicken nuggets taste funny...nt

[Dollface]

11. YES! At last, a use for chicken eyes.

[arendt]

12. This was done 30 years ago.

The reported article:

Avian photoreceptor patterns represent a disordered hyperuniform solution to a multiscale packing problem

The 30 year old article

Science 22 July 1983:
Vol. 221 no. 4608 pp. 382-385
DOI: 10.1126/science.6867716
REPORTS
Spectral consequences of photoreceptor sampling in the rhesus retina

"...a novel spatial sampling principle that introduces minimal noise for spatial frequencies below the Nyquist limits implied by local receptor densities, while frequencies above the nominal Nyquist limits are not converted into conspicuous moire patterns, but instead are scattered into broadband noise. This sampling scheme allows the visual system to escape aliasing distortion..."

The pattern discovered in 1983 was called a "Poisson Disk". It allows cell centers to be randomly (Poisson) distributed within a circle of radius r, but never approaching closer than some minimum r.

This discovery was the basis of a lot of psuedo-random dither algorithms that are still used in computer graphics.

-----------

Scrape away the jargon, and "disordered hyperuniformity" sounds a lot like "Poisson disk"

[yuiyoshida]

13. Just think...if they collected over a Billion of them...

It might some day power a STAR SHIP!

[A Simple Game]

14. That's why the aliens are always over the farm land instead of the cities. For fuel!

This may also explain the crop circles; to attract the chickens.

[chknltl]

15. Well du-uh!

That is why you need to listen to us when it comes to all things happening in the sky!

[Z_California]

17. This is new?

Gibby Haynes explained this thoroughly in 1985.

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