mathoda.com

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, gas and plasma. They often come in a spiral shape or an amorphous blob. However, about 300 light years away from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, there is an 80 light year long nebula, which appears to be in the shape of a double helix. I believe this is the first double helix nebula to be discovered. There may be many more, it’s just that the instruments used to detect nebula weren’t sophisticated enough yet to detect their double helix structure. Most of our genetic information is encoded in strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which also takes the shape of a double helix.

Isn’t it nice to see archetypal shapes repeat? Maybe it’ll spawn a religion or two. I wonder if the similar structure is because electromagnetic force on a cellular level has a similar effect (diminishing by the square of distance) to gravitational force on a large scale.  Of course DNA in your body doesn’t have a spinning centerpiece.

For more, see http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060315/sc_space/cosmicdnadoublehelixspottedinspace

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