Strange Science

by Editors of Portable Press

  4. The End Triassic Extinction (200 to 215 million years ago) came soon after dinosaurs and mammals first evolved, and is the most mysterious of the five mass extinctions. In addition to the 75 percent of all species that were lost, an unknown number of land-dwelling vertebrates also went extinct. Causes similar to the previous Permian-Triassic Extinction are suspected, including volcanic lava floods, shifting continents, and meteor impacts.

  5. The Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction (65 million years ago) is the most recent and best known of the five mass extinctions. One or several meteor impacts are probably to blame, which caused lava floods that so completely disrupted Earth’s ecosystems that many terrestrial and marine species rapidly went extinct. The extinction killed 75 percent of all species, including—most famously—the dinosaurs.

  RANDOM ORIGIN

  CELL PHONES

  AT&T first tested mobile phones for use in Swedish police cars in 1946. To develop the technology in the United States, they needed approval from the FCC—which controls the radio waves. The FCC didn’t think mobile phones would work and repeatedly turned down AT&T…until 1968, when AT&T unveiled its plan: offer phone service via many low-powered broadcast towers, each covering a “cell” of a few miles. As the car phone user traveled, calls passed from tower to tower uninterrupted.

  Meanwhile, rival Motorola had secretly developed their own mobile phone, only theirs was a handheld model. (AT&T had concentrated on car phones.) In 1973 one of Motorola’s engineers, Dr. Martin Cooper, used a prototype to make the first cell phone call—to AT&T, to gloat. But AT&T was the first to get FCC approval, and had a trial cellular network set up in Chicago by 1978. The FCC authorized nationwide commercial cellular service in 1982 and just five years later there were over one million cell phone users in the United States.

  HOW TO MAKE A MUMMY

  Scientists have yet to unlock all of the secrets of Egyptian mummification, but they have a pretty good idea of how the process worked:

  •When a king or other high official died, the embalmers slit open the body and removed nearly all the organs, which they preserved separately in special ceremonial jars. A few of the important organs, like the heart and kidneys, were left in place. The embalmers apparently thought the brain was useless and in most cases brain matter was shredded with small hooks inserted through the nostrils, pulled out through the nose using tiny spoons, and thrown away.

  •Next, the embalmers packed the body in oil of cedar (similar to turpentine) and natron, a special mineral with a high salt content. The chemicals slowly dried the body out, a process that took from 40 to 70 days.

  •The body was then completely dried out and “preserved,” but the process invariably left it shrunken and wrinkled like a prune. The next step was to stuff the mouth, nose, chest cavities, etc. with sawdust, pottery, cloth, and other items to fill it out and make it look more human. In many cases the eyes were removed and replaced with artificial eyes.

  •Then the embalmers doused the body with a waterproofing substance similar to tar, which protected the dried body from moisture. In fact, the word mummy comes from the Persian word mumiai, which means “pitch” or “asphalt,” and was originally used to describe the preservatives themselves, not the corpse that had been preserved.

  •Finally, the body was carefully wrapped in narrow strips of linen, and a funerary mask resembling the deceased was placed on the head. Afterward it was laid in a large coffin that was carved and painted to look like the deceased, and the coffin was placed in a tomb outfitted with the everyday items that the deceased would need in the afterlife.

  “One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose, and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.”

  —Stephen Hawking

  GOVERNMENT WASTE

  HIGH-TECH BUS STOP

  In 2013 Arlington County, Virginia, received funding to build a bus stop complete with Wi-Fi, heated benches and sidewalks, and “a wall made of etched glass that opens the rear vista to newly planted landscaping.” Too bad the slanted glass roof doesn’t do much to keep out rain and snow, or provide shade in the summertime.

  Cost to taxpayers: $1 million

  SILLY SOLAR PANELS

  A federal grant was used to install solar panels on the parking garage at the Manchester-Boston airport. One problem: The reflective panels were blinding the pilots, so 25 percent of the panels had to be removed. But the remaining panels, say officials, will generate “$2 million in savings over 25 years.”

  Cost to taxpayers: $3.5 million

  UNSCIENTIFIC STUDY

  Executives from various independent music labels received an all-expenses-paid trip to Brazil in 2013 “to compare the record stores, club districts, and facial expressions of locals at the mention of their bands.” While the execs reportedly enjoyed their trip, one of them said he “didn’t ink any deals.”

  Cost to taxpayers: $284,300

  MORE DREAM DISCOVERIES

  THE SEWING MACHINE

  Elias Howe had been trying to invent a practical lockstitch sewing machine for years, but had been unsuccessful. One night in the 1840s, he had a nightmare in which he was captured by primitive tribesmen who were threatening to kill him with their spears. Curiously, all the spears had holes in them at the pointed ends. When Howe woke up, he realized that a needle with a hole at its tip—rather than at the base or middle (which is what he’d been working with)—was the solution to his problem.

  THE BENZENE MOLECULE

  August Kekule, a German chemistry professor, had been working for some time to solve the structural riddle of the benzene molecule. One night while working late, he fell asleep on a chair and dreamed of atoms dancing before him, forming various patterns and structures. He saw long rows of atoms begin to twist like snakes until one of the snakes seized its own tail and began to whirl in a circle. Kekule woke up “as if by a flash of lightning” and began to work out the meaning of his dream image. His discovery of a closed ring with an atom of carbon and hydrogen at each point of a hexagon revolutionized organic chemistry.

  HOCKEY SCIENCE

  •“Fast ice” is hard, cold, and smooth and makes skating and passing easier. Over the course of a hockey period the ice warms up, becomes softer, and its surface gets rougher—“slow ice.” The puck starts to bounce a little. Players become a little more careful and try to make a safe play instead of a finesse play. A warm puck stores more energy and bounces higher, which gives the player less control.

  •The puck is a rubber compound mixed with other materials to give it strength and to make it less elastic. It’s frozen in a bucket of ice before a game and between periods to reduce some of the bounce. Freezing keeps the puck lower to the ice, where the action usually is.

  •A hockey stick has to be just flexible enough to store as much energy as possible, and then release it when needed. (A stick that’s too flexible wouldn’t store enough energy.)

  •A slap shot can send that puck toward the goal at well over 100 mph (160 kph). Three factors are involved:

  1)The energy produced by the weight the player transfers to the stick by leaning into it.

  2)The “stored elastic energy.” In hockey, the shaft bends slightly during the swing—the end can’t keep up with the handle. The stick stores this energy and releases it when it hits the puck. The result is a greater launching speed than you could get from a nonflexible stick.

  3)The snap—a slight snap of the wrists at the end of the motion—releases the puck from the stick. The snap is crucial. It sets the puck to spinning, which makes it more stable in flight. If it wasn’t spinning it would roll side over side, which would make it follow a more erratic path.

  •Stick-meets-puck isn’t the only source of energy on the floor of a rink. Don’t forget about hockey players themselves, who have been clocked at more than 20 mph (32 kph) in a rink that’s just 200 fe
et (61 m) long.

  A JIFFY

  A jiffy is a slang term for a very brief amount of time. Its earliest known use dates to the 1780s, though its exact origin is unknown. It’s commonly used loosely, as in, “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” but can also be a term for quite specific amounts of time.

  •In electronics, a jiffy is sometimes used as the name for the time required for one alternating current power cycle, 1/60 of a second.

  •In computer science, it’s sometimes used to describe a microprocessor’s “clock cycle,” which isn’t an absolute interval of time—it decreases as the microprocessor’s speed increases. With modern computers, a jiffy used this way could be measured as parts of nanoseconds (billionths of a second).

  •In physics (particularly in quantum physics and often in chemistry), a jiffy is the time taken for light to travel the radius of an electron. It’s also used in physics as the name for the amount of time it takes light to travel the width of one nucleon (a proton or neutron), which would make it by far the jiffiest of all jiffies.

  CLONING JOHN LENNON

  Sometime between 1964 and 1968 (she doesn’t remember when), housekeeper Dot Jarlett was given an extracted molar by her boss, John Lennon. Lennon asked her to throw it away for him, but then jokingly suggested she keep the tooth instead and give it to her daughter, a huge Beatles fan.

  In 2011 Omega Auction House acquired it from that lucky Beatles fan and sold it at auction. They expected it to sell for about 9,000 pounds, or around $16,000, which would have been an absurd amount to pay for an old tooth. Omega didn’t get that amount for it—it brought in nearly double, 19,500 pounds, or around $31,200.

  The buyer was a Canadian dentist named Dr. Michael Zuk. Why’d he buy it? Zuk describes himself as a huge Beatles fan, but that’s an understatement considering what he wants to do with the tooth. He is prepared to spend however much it takes to extract Lennon’s DNA from the tooth, “fully sequence” it, and then make a clone of John Lennon. Two things are holding back Zuk’s plans: cloning science is to the point where a cat or a sheep can be cloned, but not a human. Also, the tooth is so old and so fragile that it was too brittle to be subjected to DNA extraction tests. Zuk is confident that neither of these factors will matter much in the near future. “With researchers working on ways to clone mammoths, the same technology certainly could make human cloning a reality,” Zuk told reporters, referring to a dubious report by Russian scientists.

  CLONING AROUND

  In the meantime, Zuk allowed his sister to break off a piece of the tooth (presumably one without much precious DNA in it) and use it in an art project—a clay sculpture of John Lennon. The sculpture toured England to raise awareness of mouth cancer.

  As for the future Lennon clone, Zuk plans to raise him like a son. He says he’d make him fully aware of his legacy (“Guitar lessons wouldn’t hurt anyone, right?”), but introduce some changes, too. “He would still be his exact duplicate, but you know, hopefully keep him away from drugs and cigarettes,” Zuk told England’s Channel 4.

  •The word ecology means “study of the house,” from the Greek eco for “house” or “environment.”

  •In 2003 Alaska’s Iditarod dogsled race had to be moved 300 miles north—the usual location wasn’t cold enough (because of global warming).

  •Rain forests cover only 6% of Earth’s surface, but they contain more than half the plant and animal species on the planet.

  •Almost 70% of Earth’s surface is water, but only 1% is usable: 97% is in the ocean and 2% is frozen.

  •A group of NASA engineers and American astronomers believe that moving Earth into a new orbit would solve the problem of global warming—or at least add another 6 billion years to its life.

  Your Fantastic Feat…Er, Feet

  On a mile run, your amazing feet endure about 1,500 heel strikes at a force over two times the body’s weight. To a climber, they’re grippers and levers. To a skater, they’re accelerators, steering mechanisms, brakes, and shock absorbers. To a high jumper, they’re levers and launching pads. In most other sports, feet are the literal foundation of performance as they balance, support, and propel an athlete.

  Our feet are mobile miracles made up of 26 bones, 33 joints, and 112 ligaments, not to mention the nerves, blood vessels, and tendons that combine to form your personal transportation network. Your feet have three bony arches: a tall one along the inner edge of the foot, a smaller arch on the outer edge, and the curve that runs the width of the foot between the ball and heel. Together they form an arched vault that not only distributes your weight, but is also flexible enough to help you move.

  The ligaments that bind the bones of your arch are elastic, so they can flatten out, then spring back to shape. When you take a step, your foot rolls outward and your arch flattens and stiffens into a lever to push your foot off the ground. Then your arch springs back to a curve with an added bounce that propels you along. When you set your foot down, your arch rolls outward and becomes flexible to absorb impact. With every step your foot propels you, stabilizes you, and absorbs shock—all while supporting your weight.

  Bad Movie Science

  The moral: When movie characters use scientific-sounding words, remember that some Hollywood screenwriter probably made that stuff up.

  THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)

  PREMISE: The Gulf Stream, an Atlantic ocean current that helps regulate Earth’s temperature, has become so affected by global warming that it essentially stops. The ocean suddenly rises and massive icy tidal waves flood New York City. Within days, North America is a frozen wasteland.

  BAD SCIENCE: Global warming can have a detrimental effect on the oceans, but it can’t stop the Gulf Stream that fast. Even if it could, in order for New York City to flood like it did in the movie, the entire continent of Antarctica would have to melt. For that to happen, all of the sunlight that hits Earth would have to be collectively beamed at the South Pole…for three years.

  THE MATRIX (1999)

  PREMISE: After the machines take over the world, the human resistance “scorches the sky” to block out the machines’ power supply—sunlight. So the machines use the humans for power, keeping them alive in a vegetative state while subjecting their brains to a life simulation. The machines “liquefy the dead so they can be fed intravenously to the living.”

  BAD SCIENCE: Neither the machines nor the humans know much about sustainable energy production. Blocking out the Sun would just destroy Earth’s biosphere; the machines could easily build solar panels in space to get all the power they need. Second, human energy is inefficient—only about 35% of the energy from food converts to mechanical energy. And feeding humans to humans can lead to a disease called kuru, which causes insanity—and would screw up the simulation.

  WATER WORLD (1995)

  PREMISE: The surface of Earth has been completely covered in water. In one scene, the Mariner (Kevin Costner) swims around an abandoned underwater city that’s revealed to be none other than Denver, Colorado, once known as the “Mile High City.”

  BAD SCIENCE: If the temperature of Earth increased 8°F, sea levels would rise by three feet due to melting polar ice caps, which would be ecologically catastrophic. But sea levels could never rise to the point where Denver was completely submerged—the city’s elevation is 5,280 feet. If all the world’s ice melted, the ocean would rise 250 feet, submerging many coastal cities, but not Denver.

  EINSTEIN’S

  BLOUSE

  Another patent from our

  “Dressed By Geniuses” files.

  Scientist: Albert Einstein

  Patent No. US D101756 S: “A new, original, and ornamental blouse”

  Story: A former patent clerk, Einstein was familiar enough with the process to get his own good idea patented in 1936. “The design is characterized by the side openings A-A which also serve as arm holes; a central back panel extends from the yoke to the waistband as indicated at B.” According to PatentYogi.com, “It’s an expandable suit jacket
that has two sets of buttons, one for skinny Albert and one for hefty Albert.”

  “UNIT 731”

  EXPERIMENTS

  In 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese government built an enormous military complex in the puppet state of Manchukuo, in what is now northeast China. Called Unit 731, the facility was headed by General Shiro Ishii, the Japanese army’s chief medical officer. Over the course of the following eight years, Ishii directed hundreds of doctors in an unimaginable nightmare of experiments on humans, mostly Chinese and Korean prisoners. This included exposure to biological and chemical warfare agents (such as plague, cholera, and mustard gas), unnecessary amputations, and surgery without painkillers. The experiments were done in the name of medical research, but many had no discernible medical purpose whatsoever. With military defeat in sight, in 1945 General Ishii ordered the executions of all remaining prisoners and fled back to Japan. During his time as the head of Unit 731, more than 10,000 people were experimented upon; roughly 3,000 of them died in the process. Ishii was arrested by U.S. occupation authorities in 1945. He was granted immunity in exchange for information about Unit 731 and received no punishment for his crimes.

  UPDATE: Ishii died at home in 1959 at the age of 67.

  JULES VERNE, FUTURIST

  Our story introducing the futurists is back on page 9.

  In 1828, when French writer Jules Verne was born, ocean voyages took months, and there were hardly any railroad tracks. Three decades later, steam-powered ships and locomotives were taking people across oceans and continents in only a week. Knowing that the rate of change was increasing, in 1863 Verne attempted to track it in a book called Paris in the 20th Century. Among Verne’s predictions for the 1960s: glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, gas-powered cars, air-conditioned houses, fax machines, and corner stores. His publisher rejected the manuscript as being too “far-fetched.”