Why You Have Snail Shells in Your Ears

The inner ear has a part, the cochlea, that resembles a snail shell.  Why is that?  First, let’s talk about iPods and stereos.  In recent years, manufacturers have hyped “mega-bass” and other buzzwords that boast about how their devices beef up the bass frequency for that sound that rocks.  Scientists have wondered if the cochlea was coiled up just to save space, but no: there’s a reason.  It pumps up the bass.  That’s what a team of scientists found, reported Science last week.¹  A mathematical analysis demonstrated that the spiral shape effectively makes the outer edge of the basilar membrane twist and jive, pumping up the bass by up to 20 decibels.  Puzzle solved: the cochlea is our megabass feature.
    Another story in Science Daily said that our ears provide an “optimal code” for sound transmission.  Scientists at Carnegie Mellon went beyond the usual Fourier transforms, and found that a highly efficient “spike code” is at work in the ear, yielding “the most efficient way to process the sounds we hear.”  The researchers are all excited about the possibilities of adapting this new code, detected in the ear, for improving digital stereos and cochlear implants.

¹Adrian Cho, “Math Clears Up an Inner-Ear Mystery: Spiral Shape Pumps Up the Bass,” Science, 24 February 2006: Vol. 311. no. 5764, p. 1087, DOI: 10.1126/science.311.5764.1087a.

Neither of these articles mentioned evolution.  The Darwinists run scared from stories like this because they have “design” written all over them.  Not only were the researchers astonished at the design of the ear, they were excited to learn more so that they could produce intelligently-designed products to improve our lives.  Need we say more?  Yes; see next story.