Jacko spotted in droplet, claims physicist

Polymer surgery Is the King of Pop in this mound?

By James Dacey

Just before Christmas, I caused a bit of a splash in the blogosphere when I spotted the face of Ringo Starr in a bouncing water droplet – an image captured by physicists at Duke University in the US.

Here is another physics experiment that contains a spooky resemblance to a human face, sent to us by David Fairhurst, a physicist at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.

The ugly-looking globular mound is a droplet of polymer solution, the kind of substance you might find in the ink cartridges of your printer. As the solution began to dry, Fairhurst noticed a number of small “spherulites” begin to crystallise on the droplet surface revealing what appears to be a tiny human face.

“I noticed it immediately and showed it to the other guys – we had a really good laugh about it,” Fairhurst told physicsworld.com.

The physicist and his group of PhD students reckon the face looks like a small girl, or possibly even the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.

I ran the image through an online face-recognition programme and the names that came out included: Rachel Carson, the American environmentalist; Marlene Dietrich the German-born actress; and (tenuously) Iggy Pop.

Oops, I think I’ve started something here!