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20100719

It's not a coincidence

I've long been obsessed with the spiral, for no other reason than its ubiquity. It truly is everywhere. Here, above, in the form of a galaxy, and a hurricane.

Here's a spiral you may not have considered before:
The good old double helix of DNA - a double helix being two 3D spirals, intertwined. DNA is, ultimately, the building block of life, and in fact, life could be defined as "DNA replicating itself".

This process of replication - a miracle - happens when the double helix unwinds itself, with one strand heading off to the new cell, where it is rebuilt into the same double helix by proteins. Thus, one cell becomes two, two become 4, and this how we grow.

It only recently occurred to me that the spiral is not only emergent in all life, indeed, most systems, but is the very basis of life. 

When something keeps repeating itself, over and over in all manner of situations, there's something to it. Clearly, the spiral is a default form in our reality. Perhaps the default? I'll think about it more.

Why a spiral? I have an answer! Because, as I've said before, everything is falling.

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