Bright flash of light marks incredible moment life begins when sperm meets egg

originally posted by: Skid Mark
Chemical or spiritual, it's cool either way. We all start off as a flash of light in the darkness. By the way:

"Here's an old pic of me"

Yes, that spermatozoon is you. But -
you are NOT that!

It says clearly in the article that the burst of florescence is the reaction between calcium and zinc. Chemistry at work.

What i find the most mysterious and divine about conception is that any old sperm that reaches the ovum cannot fertilize it. It has to be a sperm that not only is able to finally bind to the oocyte, but also have the correct enzyme in order to penetrate and fertilize the egg.

Out of millions of sperm, that's like mega-million-lottery odds!

And in my humble opinion the fingerprint of God!

Why must western science always fight against the divine? They go hand in hand.

originally posted by: Istaywoke77
Out of millions of sperm, that's like mega-million-lottery odds!

For one sperm, yes. But when you have around 100 MILLION sperm with each ejaculation? Those "mega-million-lottery odds" become high probability.

originally posted by: Sublimecraft
a reply to: iTruthSeeker

Maybe this bright light is our "essence" or "soul" and from that moment onwards the biological and esoteric share a symbiosis where the final result is a sentient and self aware human being.

I love it when I learn something new, cheers.

Correct - Our soul is created by a magic-man who lives in the clouds. I know this FACT 'cos I read it in a 2000 year-old book written by itinerant goat-herders.

If you really want to learn something new; read a science-book. It's full of interesting stuff and it won't try to control you via intimidation and threats of eternal damnation.

So, it turns out that:

a) This was sperm enzyme, not sperm (so no egg was actually fertilised)

b) Phosphorus was added to make the spark actually happen

So no, no "spark of life", nothing of the sort.

a reply to: Atsbhct

Either that or they are dead and didn't know it.

a reply to: GetHyped

if no explanation is there, you are in your right to come up with a theory, saying bollocks to everything is not how the human race is at the stage of development that its at, if people did not dare to be different we would still be hunting under moonlight and dragging our knuckles along the ground.
judging by the amount of stars your comment received there are still a lot of knuckles getting dragged along the ground...

originally posted by: RuneSpider
Let's read the official report from Northwestern to clear up a couple of things:

Radiant Zinc Fireworks Reveal Quality of Human Egg

There are a couple of things that the many, many news reports didn't mention.
First is that this isn't actually from fertilization. The observation came from eggs having enzymes from sperm being inserted into the egg.
No actual fertilization occurred, no embryo was produced.
This is due to producing embryos for scientific research is illegal.
The second issue is something that every single paper left out, and is pretty important:
These flashes don't occur in normal conception.

As the zinc is released from the egg, it binds to small molecule probes, which emit light in fluorescence microscopy experiments. Thus the rapid zinc release can be followed as a flash of light that appears as a spark.

These molecule probes are inserted into the egg. It's in the paper, which is (of bloody freaking course) behind a paywall.
But if you were to simply take a sperm sample and an egg and combine them under a microscope there'd be no visible flash.
Keep in mind, IVF is new but not so new that actual flashes of light from producing embryos wouldn't be noticed.

Just want to point this out again. The flash isn't a natural occurance.