Friday 14 December 2012

I Know It Is Quite Cold In The UK,

but it will have to get a lot colder if you want to see any of these,


they are frost flowers, blooming at the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, the phenomena is caused by temperatures reaching intense lows of -22C or -7.6F and the freezing of gases into ice, before they have the chance to turn into liquid,

while frost flowers are too harsh an environment for most life, they may have ironically played a role in the origin of life on Earth, formaldehyde, found in high concentrations in some frost flowers, is useful for making simple sugars including ribose. Ribose is an essential component of RNA, a molecule used to temporarily encode genetic information by every cell on Earth, although today DNA is the primary molecule for passing on genetic information from one generation to the next, RNA may have been the first molecule to do so, but -22C, crikey bring on the hot cocoa!

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