Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

Everyone's heard the saying that no two snowflakes are ever alike, and this is probably true.

This has been called the no-to-al-like conjecture, and it goes something like this.

A snowflake is a crystal, and this type of crystal begins with nucleation around a dust

particle and continues to increase in size and an unpredictably infinite number of variations

thanks to uneven crystal growth as the flake is subjected to a variety of temperatures.

Did you get that?

Let's say a snowflake is made of 100 water molecules.

The number of combinations you can make with 100 water molecules is very, very big.

Think of the number one followed by 158 zeros.

Now consider that the number of atoms in the known universe is the number one,

followed by just 70 zeros. So we're talking really big numbers here. However, the node two

alike conjecture only applies to large snow crystals. Before snowflake can get big, it has to be small.

They're called nano snowflakes,

and consist of just a tiny number of water molecules.

And scientists who studdle crystallography,

which is the study of crystals,

believe that yes, it is possible

for two nano snowflakes to be alike.

Okay, now let's apply the node-to-alike conjecture to music.

If we're going to get into metaphors, a classical symphony would be like a fully formed

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