Bright flash of light marks incredible moment life begins when sperm meets egg

a reply to: TrueBrit

Maybe we get better a better education in this country Religious myths stay in RE lessons leaving science teachers feee to teach science.

cool, thanks for the post.. it's like a microcosm of the big bang

originally posted by: MrConspiracy
People's desperate and speedy attempts to discredit anything "spiritual" is funny to watch. And bordering on an obsession.
Interesting post OP, whatever the cause. Spiritual or chemical.

It's not discrediting anything spiritual. It's when people put spirituality and science in the same camp, suggesting spirituality can be explained and "evidenced" in the same fashion as science. It cannot.

And I'm not poo-pooing on spirituality. Far from it - I'm a very spiritual person. But, I would never say "It's a science" as so far there is no empirical testing methodology for spiritualism that stands up to scrutiny as your normal scientific model does.

Unless I'm wrong which I am happy to concede if true.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Krazysh0t

First off, what does "hiding behind science" mean?"

Everythng other than proven science is ladled "pseudo science". To those scientifically bound, this includes 'notions' of anything 'spiritual'.

Ah I see. Because I refuse to entertain ideas with flimsy evidence supporting them, it is "hiding behind science".

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Ah I see. Because I refuse to entertain ideas with flimsy evidence supporting them, it is "hiding behind science".

If you experience something like I have, then its no longer an idea or 'entertainment', if you deny the experience or dismiss it out of hand, thats hiding behind science.

How is science going to advance if we remain in denial?

a reply to: intrptr

Or you could take a step back from your bizarre experiences and realize you were not interpreting it rationally. I've had to do that a dozen or so times in life. You realize I could turn this around and say you're hiding behind a comfort of belief, right?

Don't bother responding, just something to chew on. Neither of us will convince the other. I write more for others to ponder.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

Or you could take a step back from your bizarre experiences and really you were not interpreting them it rationally.

You mean take your point of view? Then I'd have to say, I don't know, I wasn't there. Any other 'belief' is subjective to ones own biases. The difference between what you think I know and what I know is experience. Once you witness something that defies logic, its no longer about subjective belief. You know.

a reply to: intrptr

I'm gonna go with assumption. The difference between what I know and what you experience is belief. If you're failing to properly assess a situation and point your intuition where logic fails, then that's on you. I've not had a single experience in life that couldn't be rationally, or intuitively figured out in due time.

I hear of people getting tripped up on what seems to be supernatural on this site and in real life through the years... and it seems so strange that they can't eventually reach the proper conclusion, but then I realize... it's just the inevitable they fear the most. Then it all makes sense.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

The difference between what I know and what you experience is belief. If you're failing to properly assess a situation and point your intuition where logic fails, then that's on you.

What about the return echo? Keep not addressing that…

I would like to debunk my own experiences, if you see my content on here, you know I do that on a regular basis. The problem with my experience is there is always some corroboration, some real world aspects to it I can't debunk.

I know my dogs bark, I heard it innumerable times walking up to the house. I heard the return echo, our mailman also heard it, he also is familiar with it from delivering mail to the house every day for years. We only heard one bark the day after she died, I have not heard it since.

You can paint your very subjective belief over the actual occurrence, but frankly your own subjective bias is glaring.

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

It is kind of like the Big "Bang" Theory... Get it??? LOL

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Krazysh0t

Actually I don't enjoy dismantling people's anecdotes. They aren't evidence anything except that the person can tell a story.

Its anecdotal because you weren't there. So how could you know. See my earlier post about unproven fairy tales.

It's anecdotal because it is a story. ALL stories are anecdotal, even if I was there. That's what anecdotes are.

So sad there are those that dismiss everything that doesn't fit their proven reality. My brother is one of these. He even goes to Church. He lived in a haunted house for years and has a 'pseudo' explanation for everything that happened there. I was there for five days and nights house and dog sitting while they were away. Something bizarre happened every night. I could write a book about it. It was quite obvious to me what was occurring, but to my brother, who believes in Santa, the easter bunny, goes to Church and Disney land (where he was when I house sat for him), the real fairy tales are in his head and the reality is dismissed out of hand.

Yeah sorry that I demand evidence to believe things.

Here's some scientific explanations for hauntings:
6 Scientific Explanations for Ghosts

Just like you just did by calling me a 'story teller' susceptible to 'wishful thinking' and hypnotic suggestion.

When you relate an anecdote you are telling a story. That is just making a statement of fact. The other things were just assumptions I was making based on the little information you gave.

You still didn't explain the bark echoing back from distant wall. The echo means I heard the bark twice, hard to misidentify that, you think?

I never discounted you heard something. It's highly likely you DID hear something. But that doesn't mean it was a dog's bark or even if it was a bark, your dog's bark.

BTW, my brother sold his house without a good reason, sank a lot of money in to it to make it his dream home,then sold when the market was down losing tens of thousands, (he never does that), and still insists all the 'anomalies' everyone witnessed there didn't mean anything.

So it goes.

Double by the by, I'm a lousy story teller and a grammar and punctuation felon. Thing is you won't catch me telling tall tales, I don't have any reason to, these events really happened, I really witnessed them.

Here's the thing. You can be lying and not even know it.
Your brain lies to you

This is why anecdotes are unreliable as evidence.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Krazysh0t

Ah I see. Because I refuse to entertain ideas with flimsy evidence supporting them, it is "hiding behind science".

If you experience something like I have, then its no longer an idea or 'entertainment', if you deny the experience or dismiss it out of hand, thats hiding behind science.

How is science going to advance if we remain in denial?

I'm not denying that you experienced something. I'm saying that you assuming you know exactly what you experienced without a thorough investigation is dishonest. It's the same as a UFO hunter saying, "Hey I saw something in the sky. ALIENS" No you saw an unidentified flying object. Saying it was anything else was dishonest.

I don't see a "one or the other" situation here. My outlook is to take in new information and experiences with a sense of appreciation and leave the nitpicking to others. To me, it's a beautiful thing that this discovery will improve the odds for the people struggling to have a child.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I never discounted you heard something. It's highly likely you DID hear something. But that doesn't mean it was a dog's bark or even if it was a bark, your dog's bark.

Hog wash. People know the sound of their dog barking. Suggesting me and my post man don't know that sound from years of 'experiencing it directly' is ludicrous.

Adding; in fact, because of the echo, I heard it twice. Because the distance involved between the deck and the distant wall, the return is a measured distance consistent with the distance between the deck and the distant wall just like I used to hear it. As fast as you can say woof, woof.

If the sound came from somewhere else it would produce a different return, see? Because of our proximity to the deck we were able to pinpont the sound as coming from directly to our front, slightly elevated, i.e., the deck. When we heard it we both froze and looked right at the source, the deck. Then it was slack jaw amazement, did you hear that , the kind of look we both gave each other.

We didn't have to deny it, as much as I have tried, anyway.

This is the last response on this, its an off topic vein, I've beaten it to death sufficiently enough. Done throwing pearls before swine, as it were.

a reply to: intrptr

Because human perception is infallible, right?

Facts about zinc

www.livescience.com...

Zinc's role in life can't be understated. In fact, the element appears to be a crucial component of the meeting between sperm and egg.

A December 2014 video, published alongside a study in the journal Nature Chemistry, shows the fireworks of fertilization as an egg releases "sparks" of zinc after enveloping a sperm. Researchers are still exploring this phenomenon, but they have discovered that without the zinc eruptions, the egg cannot develop.

Zinc "might even be working as a master switch to tell the cell when to divide," study co-author Thomas O'Halloran, a chemist at Northwestern University in Chicago, told Live Science.

Cells typically concentrate zinc until there are about as many zinc atoms in the cell as there are base pairs in the organisms' genome, O'Halloran said. But some cells concentrate more than that.

In its last hours before full maturation, the egg cell starts taking in zinc, O'Halloran and his colleagues have found, going from about 40 billion zinc atoms to about 60 billion. About 15 percent of the total zinc ends up in vesicles, little packets squirreled away right under the cell's surface.

When the sperm and egg meet, these packets get ejected. It's possible that the zinc release creates a barrier against the entry of more than one sperm, which would be fatal to the developing embryo. But that's yet to be proven, said study co-author Teresa Woodruff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and fertility preservation at Northwestern University.

The zinc fireworks could have real-world applications for women dealing with infertility, Woodruff told Live Science.

"In IVF [in vitro fertilization], you need to be able to select which egg has the highest likelihood of giving rise to a healthy offspring," she said. The zinc "sparks" could potentially hint at the egg's vitality, allowing doctors to choose the best fertilized eggs for implantation in the uterus.

Cells in the brain, particularly the memory region known as the hippocampus, also hoard zinc, as do insulin-releasing cells in the pancreas, O'Halloran added.

"We think we've actually discovered something that will be broadly useful in understanding how cells work," he said. What's more, the research highlights how life uses the raw materials of the Periodic Table in order to thrive.

"We tend to think of inorganic things as not being alive," O'Halloran said. "But when they're found to play a central role in the way life works, it's really intriguing and kind of counterintuitive. Life, from its very earliest point has been adapting and using the minerals and inorganic components of nature, and has carried that on even at the highest stages of evolution."

"We tend to think of inorganic things as not being alive," O'Halloran said. "But when they're found to play a central role in the way life works, it's really intriguing and kind of counterintuitive. Life, from its very earliest point has been adapting and using the minerals and inorganic components of nature, and has carried that on even at the highest stages of evolution."

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: Krazysh0t

I never discounted you heard something. It's highly likely you DID hear something. But that doesn't mean it was a dog's bark or even if it was a bark, your dog's bark.

Hog wash. People know the sound of their dog barking. Suggesting me and my post man don't know that sound from years of 'experiencing it directly' is ludicrous.

This is the confirmation bias speaking.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: iTruthSeeker

So does that mean it's possible that animals have souls too? After all you just said that scientists have witnessed this in animals other than humans before witnessing it in humans.

Though I think it's just a byproduct of a chemical reaction of the sperm and egg combining. Newton's third law and all.

Can you not see it?

Life is sacred.

All of it.

originally posted by: iTruthSeeker
www.telegraph.co.uk...


I put this under Origins and Creationism because the flash reminds me of possibly the life spark or soul incarnating. Your thoughts ATS?

From the article:

The bright flash occurs because when sperm enters an egg it leads to a surge of calcium which triggers the release of zinc from the egg. As the zinc shoots out, it binds to small molecules which emit a fluorescence which can be picked up by camera microscopes.

Zinc with single displacement reaction


I am a spiritual person and do believe in the human soul..

But what is being observed here is a simple chemical reaction.

originally posted by: RadioKnecht

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: iTruthSeeker

So does that mean it's possible that animals have souls too? After all you just said that scientists have witnessed this in animals other than humans before witnessing it in humans.

Though I think it's just a byproduct of a chemical reaction of the sperm and egg combining. Newton's third law and all.

Can you not see it?

Life is sacred.

All of it.

Nope. I don't see that conclusion at all. If all life is so sacred as you say, why do lifeforms kill other lifeforms? Clearly it isn't sacred enough to sacrifice some lives for other lives since life depends on that mechanism to survive and go on.