Excellent stuff as usual Horton!Regardin...

Excellent stuff as usual Horton!
Regarding Reply 404:

The WLC Hopper animation phenomena of soil falling in one place and accumulating in another is not so odd because it is just falling down...or it it? It does look very odd and suspicious, almost although the lower elevation material was being deposited (or was moving) before any higher elevation material began falling. Also, the falling material appears to accumulate in columns/stalagmite-like structures. Is it just a trick of light or a static/magnetic thing? Nice find.

The chunk of soil in the hopper appears to be layered and there appear to be small voids or pockets in the lower right quadrant of the image. Are these apparent small voids and is the layering real or are they image or processing artifacts that are not real? Can you tell Horton?

Hearty soup indeed! Boy I would love to sit down and pluck a few treasures out of that stuff. All kinds of stuff in there to look closer at.

The image that you call "this" best focus montage has been one of my favorites of your compilations. I see small rings here and there but it's hard to tell if they are material or the substrate the material is sitting on. Some rings are composed of grains that may have arranged themselves by static/magnetic forces. The particle crystal mineral grains are what talk to me in that image. There is particle that is screaming at me in your image..I can't make it go away. It is a small radial feature in the middle of the right half of that image.
It looks like lots of organic organisms that I've looked at under microscopes over the years. Many rocks and soils have root-like or branching structures within them. Some are plants, some are fungi, some might even be animals. A spider or shed spider skin can appear like this particle in the image. A plant root might look like this in the early stage of development.

I think it appears more like a fungal root fragment.

There are also many inorganic forms of mineral deposition and also arrangement of particles by a magnet that can generate structures like that one.