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Video Technology Shows the Marvel of Fetal Development

Alexander Tsiaras, a mathematician and visual artist, uses special visualization software to explore the unseen human body. In a TED lecture, he explained how his technology has enabled him to scan the development of the fetus from conception to birth. Although we hear nothing about his faith or his views on abortion, throughout the lecture Tsiaras refers to what he calls the "marvel" and the "miracle" of an unborn baby's development. Tsiaras highlights the miracle of life with the following examples:

  • At 44 days the fetus has become "something that you can recognize."
  • At nine weeks it "is really like a kind of little human being."
  • At 25-28 days, the baby's heart, which resembles a "magnificent origami," is developing at a rate of one million cells per second.
  • At 32 days the arms and hands are developing.
  • Within five weeks you can start to see the heart's early atrium and ventricles. A week later the baby's heart is actually becoming mature.
  • At 52 days the retina, nose, and fingers are developing.
  • By the time the fetus is full-term, it has 60,000 miles of vessels inside its body—although only one mile of vessels are visible. The other 59,999 miles of vessels are quietly working to bring nutrients and dispose of waste.
  • Tsiaras calls a pregnant woman's body a "walking immunological cardiovascular system that … can actually nurture and treat this child with the kind of marvel that is beyond our comprehension."

Tsiaras summarizes his talk by saying,

The complexity of these [facts about human development], the mathematic models of how these are indeed done are beyond human comprehension. Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with marvel: How do these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us? It's a mystery; it's magic; it's divinity …. [It's] beyond any comprehension of any existing mathematics today.

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