the.com/double helix
Two strands gossiping in opposite directions, forever agreeing on the plot.
means The twisted-ladder shape of a DNA molecule, with two strands winding around each other and connected by rungs of paired bases.
from 'Helix' comes straight from Latin (itself from Greek 'helix'), meaning a spiral or coiled shape — the word used for everything from a snail's shell to a spiral staircase. 'Double helix' entered common use when Watson and Crick described the structure of DNA in 1953, borrowing the old geometric term to name the new discovery: two helical strands wound around a shared axis. The phrase caught on fast because the shape itself is so visually iconic — it's one of science's rare cases where the name and the picture arrived in the public imagination together.
- discovered
- 1953, Watson, Crick, and uncredited Rosalind Franklin's X-ray data
- shape logic
- antiparallel strands pair A-T and C-G only
- scale
- stretched out, your DNA would span billions of miles
- storage density
- one gram could hold roughly 215 million GB