Unsuspected wonders that a hidden egg

"I believe that if they forced me, on pain of death, to instantly name the most perfect thing in the Universe, I would risk my fate in the egg of one." bird, "said the American abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1862.

Maybe I would not be the only one.

Beautiful, fragile, mysterious, they are the symbol of a new life, a transformation that speaks to us of great truths beyond pure biological.

They are a metaphor for the origin of the Universe and food since we were on Earth.

Eggs have been essential to the existence of humanity for thousands of years.

And not only because It has the perfect blend of amino acids needed to build human tissueonly surpassed by that of breast milk, but because many of the characteristics of its form and content are astonishing.

Not for nothing many religions and multiple traditions – like the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Incas – They have eggs at the center of their creation stories.

In southern California, for example, the original story of the Cahuilla tribe compares the creation of the Universe when an egg is split.

A little further east, the Omaha tribe of Nebraska and Iowa tells of the fall of an egg in the world's oceans.

Protected by a snake bird, inside this egg sleep all mothers and fathers of all those who are not yet born.

But they are legends.

In its shell, calcium carbonate and irregular texture and granular, a single shell can hold up to 17,000 small craters and is semi-permeable to allow air and moisture to cross.

Surround the yellow, this sphere full of food, and of course, the colorless substance called albumin, one of the most extraordinary and mysterious materials of nature.

Act as a biological and physical barrier.

For a microbe, traveling through the white to reach the yellow is like a human being crossing a desert: nothing supports life.

But the albumen contains a lot of other things.

They were found and identified more than 100 antimicrobial proteins Until here, and there seems to be much more to discover.

So, this clear in breakfast eggs is a miraculous defense system.

All this protection is provided by one of the most fragile creations of nature.

Eggs do not stand up to uneven forces, so they crack easily when you hit them next to a bowl.

Although this seems to make you vulnerable, this weakness is necessary for the chick; If it was not so, it could not cross the shell with its tingling, uneven force directed to a single point of the egg.

However, the shape of the eggs, on the other hand, is the pinnacle of architectural design.

Because it's about a structure without solid internal support and yet strong enough to protect a life in her from the outside world.

An egg is able to bear the full weight of an adult animal -and sometimes two- during incubation but it is so fragile that it allows young people to free themselves.

And although the eggs are stronger at the ends, even if you press on other parts of the shell, its curved shape spreads the entire weight evenly and minimizes stress and tension.

That's why, if you completely surround the egg of the hand, no matter how hard you press it, it will not break.

How to reproduce the perfect aerodynamic design of nature?

An egg There is no obvious beginning or endSo where to start?

Although some previously curved buildings benefited from the strength of this form, it was only until the twentieth century that architects managed to build large egg-shaped structures.

One of them is "The Egg" in Beijing. It can accommodate 5,452 people in three rooms and more than 1,000 square meters.

In the Philippines, from 1521 to 1898, in the Spanish colonial era, the relationship between architecture and eggs was of another nature.

The Spaniards came to evangelize and built many churches … with egg whites.

They used them to form a kind of mortar, called mortar, which agglutinated and protected building materials.

Egg whites made the blend "more durable", and historical records attest to this widespread practice.

"The records show that the dome of Manila Cathedral was sealed in 1780 with a layer of lime, brick powder, duck eggs and bamboo sap," says the culinary historian of Philippines Pia Lim-Castillo in a document titled "Eggs in the architecture of the Philippine church and its cuisine".

"Fray Mariano Gomes de Cavite included duck eggs as a mortar in his 1824 spending list, and his predecessor in 1808 also used duck eggs."

That's why, say experts like Lim-Castillo, that Filipino cuisine offers many dessert recipes based on large quantities of egg yolks.

By the way, in several languages, we say: "He does not even know how to cook an egg" to indicate that someone does not know how to cook.

And yet, by looking for "how to boil an egg," Google offers you millions of results.

It may not be as simple as you think. Like the egg