Are snowflakes are all different?
There is a widely-held belief that no two snowflakes are alike, but that claim has not been proven. Strictly speaking, it is extremely unlikely for any two objects in the universe to contain an identical molecular structure; but there are, nonetheless, no known scientific laws which prevent it. In a more pragmatic sense, it’s more likely – albeit not much more – that two snowflakes are visually identical if their environments were similar enough, either because they grew very near one another, or simply by chance. The American Meteorological Society has reported that matching snow crystals were discovered by Nancy Knight of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The crystals were not flakes in the usual sense but rather hollow hexagonal
