"When winter arrived and star-shaped crystals started to fall from the skies, she fell to an old land from the sky with a glint of moonlight caught in her eyes. Carrying a scent of wilderness from a pearl feathered wisdom; residue from last night. Every step she took felt like the embodiment of a breath. A step towards the idea of being alive." / If you were to sit outside of a moonlit night and were very quiet, you might see an owl fly past, but you probably wouldn’t hear it. Thanks to their special feathers, many owls fly almost silently. The outer edges of their forward wing feathers have a stiff fringe, like the teeth of a comb. The rear wing feathers have a soft, hairlike fringe. These fringed edges soften the flow of air as it moves over the wings. The fine velvety surface of the flight feathers absorbs the noise the feathers make as they slide over one another. / Alan Lightman: One physical experience that governs nature over and over is the "energy principle": nature evolves to minimize energy. Snowflakes have six-sided symmetry because of the angles that two hydrogen atoms make with the oxygen atom in each water molecule. Those angles minimize the total electrical energy of the water molecule. Any other angles would produce greater energy. Large bodies, like the planet Saturn, are round because a spherical shape minimizes the total gravitational energy. If we think of nature as a vast ongoing experiment, constantly trying out different possibilities of design, then those designs that cost the least energy or that require the fewest different parts to come together at the right time will take precedence, just as the principle of natural selection says that organisms with the best ability to survive will dominate over time.