Skip to content

Does a Sunflower Really Always Follow the Sun? The Body Clock That Settles Facing East, and the Golden Angle in Its Seeds

이탈리아의 한 해바라기 밭. 여름이면 수많은 머리가 일제히 같은 쪽으로 고개를 든다.

The belief that sunflowers always follow the sun is only half true. Only young, growing sunflowers track the Sun; once mature, they stop and settle facing east. We trace two design principles — the circadian clock behind heliotropism, the ‘single flower’ that is really thousands of florets, and the golden angle (about 137.5°) that fills the seed head with Fibonacci spirals — drawing on the primary research.

How Saharan Dust Delivers Phosphorus to the Amazon: The Earth’s Design That Links Continents

사하라에서 피어올라 대서양으로 밀려 나가는 거대한 먼지 기둥(2020년 6월, 통칭 '고질라' 먼지). NASA 위성이 포착했다.

Each year, dust from the Sahara crosses the Atlantic and delivers phosphorus to the Amazon rainforest. By NASA satellite measurements, the amount is comparable to the phosphorus the Amazon loses to rain and flooding — and the very same dust can also calm Atlantic hurricanes. We trace its journey from the ancient lake bed of Chad’s Bodélé Depression across a continent: an intricately designed Earth system linking desert, ocean, and rainforest.

Hunminjeongeum: The World’s Only Script Whose Creation Principle Survives in a Book

훈민정음 해례본 첫머리의 어제서문(御製序文). '나라의 말이 중국과 달라…'로 시작해 백성을 위해 새로 스물여덟 자(二十八字)를 만든 뜻을 밝혔다.

Most of the world’s scripts emerged gradually, with no record of who made them or when. The Hunminjeongeum is different: an explanatory book, the Haerye, survives that sets out the very principle by which the letters were made — consonants imitating the speech organs, vowels imitating heaven, earth, and human. This is the story of its creation, the near-lost Haerye found in 1940, and the precise meaning of calling it ‘the world’s only’.

Jikji: The Oldest Surviving Book Printed with Movable Metal Type, 78 Years Before Gutenberg

직지심체요절 하권. 1377년(고려 우왕 3년) 청주 흥덕사에서 금속활자로 찍은, 현존하는 세계에서 가장 오래된 금속활자 인쇄본이다.

Printed with movable metal type at Heungdeoksa temple in Cheongju, Goryeo, in 1377, the Jikji Simche Yojeol is the oldest surviving book in the world printed with movable metal type — 78 years before Gutenberg’s Bible. Yet it is not ‘the world’s first’, and we follow that subtle boundary, the beeswax casting method, its journey to France, Dr. Park Byeong-seon’s rediscovery, and its UNESCO listing.

Aurora: The Curtain of Light the Solar Wind Paints Across the Sky

밤하늘을 가르는 녹색 오로라 커튼이 호수에 비친다(미국 글래시어 국립공원).

The light of an aurora is, in fact, a picture drawn by particles that traveled some 150 million km from the Sun to meet Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere. From the solar wind to color, shape, viewing spots, and ancient records, here is the science of the aurora told as a story.