The Universe Fits in a Jar

These are photos of a small jar of water, with different household oils dropped on top. The oil traps a pocket of steam between its belly and the water's surface. The droplets of water in the steam are so small that they bend the light into bright colors.

There are no tricks of editing here. This is simply one of the ways water and light interact with each other.

Some images have drops of rubbing alcohol added, whose reaction with water releases enough energy to disrupt the oil and send it across the surface of the water in explosive patterns.

The thought here is that the laws which govern the stars, planets, and cosmic dust are scalable, meaning they also govern the small scale of a jar of water. The movements of tiny drops of water under oil can look just like the huge cosmic scale because the laws by which they move are the same.

I chose to show this with water, because I believe that water has a long memory. The same water has run through the veins of every plant, animal, and land since before life even began here. Rivers, oceans, snow, sap, blood, the same water has been all of it.

The water has been everywhere, has been everything, yet has still been water through all these transitions. Even a small glass of water, then, is a deep well to plumb.