Insync-ufo.com - The Secret to the Sea Sapphire’s Colors and Invisibility

The sea sapphire (Sapphirinid Copepods) could be the most beautiful animal you've never seen.

Some of the tiny little known copepods appear to flash in and out of brilliantly colored existence to figure out the trick to their hues and invisibility researchers measured the light reflectance of live individuals and the distance between the layers of the crystal plates that cover their backs they found that changes of reflectance depended on the thickness of the spacing and when light hits the animal at a 45 degree angle reflectance shifts out of the visible light range and into the ultraviolet allowing it to practically disappear.

These tiny, little-known copepods appear to flash in and out of existence, and scientists are figuring out their trick. Their findings could inspire the next generation of reflective coatings and other optical technologies.

Known scientifically as Sapphirinidae, these colorful creatures seem to vanish in order to escape a predator, but still display their flashy colors when a female of the species – or possibly another male – is nearby.

Sapphirinidae belong to a subclass of crustaceans called copepods, and they live in fresh or saltwater. These animals are barely visible to the human eye, ranging from around one to several millimeters in length. It is the male Sapphirinidae that display striking, iridescent colors, whereas the female is transparent.

These colors are due to iridescence – the result of light reflecting off periodic (repeating) structures. These multilayer reflectors, known to scientists as photonic crystals, are composed of thin, transparent crystals of guanine. Guanine is more generally known as one of the nucleic acid bases found in DNA.

Guanine is one of the four main nucleobases found in the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, the others being adenine, cytosine, and thymine (uracil in RNA). In DNA, guanine is paired with cytosine. The guanine nucleoside is called guanosine. Adenine and guanine are found in RNA and DNA in terrestrial life, whereas thymine is only found in DNA and uracil only in RNA.

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The Secret to the Sea Sapphire’s Colors and Invisibility

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