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The Peacock Parade
By Harun Yahya
It is Allah who arranged the crystal-like structures in the peacock feather and produced such marvellous patterns from them.
Anybody looking at the patterns in peacock feathers will be amazed at their beauty. One of the latest pieces of research by scientists has revealed that there is an astonishing design at the basis of these patterns.
Chinese scientists have discovered a delicate mechanism of tiny hairs in peacock feathers filtering and reflecting different wavelengths of light. According to a study conducted by Fudan University physicist Jian Zi and colleagues, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the feathers’ bright colours are produced not by pigments, but by tiny, two-dimensional crystal-like structures.
Zi and his colleagues used powerful electron microscopes to reveal the basis of the colours in the feathers. They examined the barbules of the male green peacock, in other words the even smaller micro hairs that come off of barbs emerging from the central stem of the feather. Under the microscope, they encountered the lattice design. This consisted of rods made of melanin, a protein, bound together with keratin, another protein. The researchers observed that these two-dimensional structures, each with a width hundreds of times thinner than a human hair, were arranged one behind the other on the micro hairs. Using additional optical examinations and calculations, the scientists examined the spaces between the crystals and their effects. As a result, it was revealed that the dimensions and shapes of these spaces in the lattice led to light being reflected at slightly different angles and thus to a variation in color.
“The male peacock tail contains spectacular beauty because of the brilliant, diversified, colourful eye patterns,” said Zi, who continued, “when I watched the eye pattern against the sunshine, I was amazed by the stunning beauty of the feathers.” Zi stated that until their study, the exact physical mechanism producing the colours in peacock feathers had not been known, and that although the mechanisms they had revealed were simple, they were absolutely ingenious.
If we were to encounter marvellous patterns made out of coloured stones as we walked beside the edge of a river, and if we also saw that there were eye-like designs arranged like a fan, then we would think that these had been laid out in a conscious manner, and not that they had appeared by chance. It would be evident that these patterns, reflecting an artistic perspective and addressing human aesthetic tastes, had been made by an artist. The same thing applies to peacock feathers. In the same way that pictures and designs reveal the existence of the artists who produced them, the patterns in the peacock feather reveal the existence of the Creator Who made them. There can be no doubt but that it is God who brought together and arranged the crystal-like structures in the peacock feather and produced such marvellous patterns from them. God reveals His flawless creation in a verse from the Qur’an: “He is God - the Creator, the Maker, the Giver of Form. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. Everything in the heavens and Earth glorifies Him. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise”. (Qur’an, 59:24).
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