•During hibernation, a bear’s heart rate drops to about 22 percent of the number of beats it needs when it’s active—about 19 beats per minute in hibernation versus the normal 84 beats per minute while it’s doing things like raiding your campsite looking for marshmallows.
Yuk, yuk
Q: Did you read that new book about antigravity?
A: Yeah, I couldn’t put it down!
MORE TREK*NOLOGY
STARBASE
Trek*nology: When the Enterprise needed repairs, or the crew needed some R&R (“rest and relaxation”), they set course for the nearest starbase—a floating space city that supported hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people with food, housing, and entertainment.
Technology: On May 14, 1973, the United States launched the space station Skylab, the home base in space for U.S. astronauts until February 1974. The Russian space station Mir circled Earth from 1986 to 2001. In 1998 the International Space Station began its service as Earth’s “starbase.”
SHUTTLECRAFT
Trek*nology: When Kirk and his crew needed to move people and equipment from the Enterprise to a planet’s surface, they often used the shuttlecraft—a small space vehicle that could go from ship to planet or starbase, and back again.
Technology: Fifteen years after the first Star Trek episode, NASA launched the first space shuttle. There were 135 space shuttle missions from 1981 through 2011, including 37 dockings at the International Space Station.
“Scientific” Theory:
CALIFORNIA ISLAND
In the 1620s, respected British mapmaker Henry Briggs published the most detailed map of North America to date. It became one of the most respected New World maps in Europe and helped to promote a theory that prevailed for more than a century: that California was a long, narrow island off the west coast of North America. (The error stemmed from Briggs trusting an earlier and equally wrong Spanish map.) And even though it was soon contested by explorers to the region—and by the early 1700s was proven to be wrong by people who actually went overland to California—the “California is an island” theory persisted well into the 1700s. It was finally dealt a death blow in 1747 when King Ferdinand VI of Spain formally decreed that California was not an island.
A Viking Surprise
Trying to figure out what life was like more than 1,000 years ago is extremely difficult…but science can make it easier. Take the case of 14 Viking skeletons that were discovered in England with items such as knives, swords, and shields in their graves. A casual observer might assume that these warriors were all men. Not so fast, says Shane McLeod, an Australian archaeologist who tested the skeletons’ DNA. His goal: to add light to a recent theory that the invading Vikings, who arrived circa A.D. 900, weren’t necessarily hordes of barbaric men, but rather married couples who (violently) colonized western Europe. So what did McLeod’s DNA tests reveal? Of the 14 Vikings, six turned out to be female, seven were male, and one was indeterminate. That finding, along with some recent discoveries of Viking-era Norse jewelry found in England, has led McLeod to “caution against assuming that the great majority of Norse migrants were male.” Of course, more research needs to be done on larger sample groups, but if he’s correct, a third to a half of the Vikings who invaded England were lady Vikings.
THE NUCLEAR
BOY SCOUT
In 1994 David Hahn, a 17-year-old from Detroit, Michigan, learned that it was possible to find small amounts of radioactive material in common store-bought items. Americium-241, for example, is found in most smoke detectors. The science-minded Boy Scout set his sights on earning the (now-discontinued) “Atomic Energy Badge”…by building a nuclear reactor in his mother’s backyard shed.
First, he had to create a “neutron gun” (the nuclear reactions that power most nuclear plants are set off by bombarding a radioactive element, usually uranium, with neutrons). Hahn collected americium-241 from hundreds of smoke detectors and packed them into a hollow piece of lead with a tiny opening. Radiation can’t pass through lead, so the radiation from the americium-241 could now only escape through that pinhole—as a focused beam. Hahn covered the hole with a thin strip of aluminum, which reacts to radiation by ejecting neutrons. He now had his “neutron gun.”
Over the next several months, Hahn attempted to create a nuclear reaction by shooting different radioactive substances with his neutron gun. That included thorium-232, which can be found in gas camping lanterns, and beryllium, which he stole from a chemistry lab. After that, he acquired some pitchblende, a type of rock that contains small amounts of uranium. Hahn never succeeded in creating a nuclear reaction…but he did create extremely dangerous levels of radiation—more than 1,000 times normal levels. The fiasco finally ended when police stopped Hahn one night in August 1994, and he told them he had radioactive substances in his car. The FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were immediately called, a Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan was initiated, and Hahn’s mother’s property was designated a hazardous materials site. The shed, along with all of its contents, was buried at a radioactive waste disposal site in Utah. Hahn refused medical evaluation, despite having been told that he had been exposed to more radiation than a person can safely endure…in an entire lifetime.
Postscript: In August 2007, the 30-year-old Hahn was arrested. He pled guilty…to stealing several smoke detectors. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Then, in 2016, he died. Cause of death: unknown.
WHISKER SCIENCE, Part II
•The width of a cat’s outstretched whiskers is usually the same as the width of the body. So cats use their whiskers to measure the diameter of holes or other openings to make sure they’re wide enough to enter without being trapped. When a cat overeats and gains too much weight, though, his whiskers stay the same size. So a fat cat may misjudge the size of its body and get stuck in a hole—one good reason not to overdo the treats.
•Cats also have whiskers on the backs of their two front paws. These are shorter than the ones on a cat’s cheeks and help it walk over uneven ground without stumbling and to determine the size and position of captured prey.
•A cat’s whiskers should never be trimmed because without its whiskers, a cat can get disoriented in the dark.
•The feline fetus develops whiskers before any other hairs. And when kittens are born, they’re blind and deaf, but the touch sensors on their whiskers are fully operational.
WHERE DID OUR
MOON COME FROM?
Not long after humans finally walked on the Moon and samples were brought back and studied, astronomers W. K. Hartmann and D. R. Davis proposed a new theory, called the giant impact theory. When Earth was just 50 million years old—some 4.5 billion years ago—a planetary object the size of Mars slammed into it (a slightly off-center hit, they said). The enormous impact resulted in a huge amount of debris—both from the object and from Earth’s mantle—being thrown into space. Much of it was affected by Earth’s gravity and fell into orbit. This material eventually coalesced into the Moon. This would explain not only the different makeup of the Moon but also its lack of a large iron core, since the Earth’s mantle was by this time largely free of iron (because the iron was in the core). Today, the giant impact theory is the most widely accepted.
THE BIRTH OF
E-MAIL
Ray Tomlinson was just goofing off at work one day when he created the way a lot of us communicate these days. After graduating from MIT in 1965, he went to work at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, the company that had contracted with the U.S. government to build ARPANET—the experimental military communications system that would later become the Internet.
In 1971 Tomlinson was trying to figure out a way to send messages to other engineers on the project. He knew of a program that could send messages between users of the same ARPANET machine, but he also knew of another program that could send files from one remote computer to another—so why not messages? He tinkered some more and figured out how to use them both to get what he wanted. And he chose
a symbol for message address lines to denote mail sent through ARPANET to remote machines: today’s ubiquitous @.
Electronic mail caught on like wildfire. It wasn’t the programming that was the breakthrough, it was the idea. Suddenly two users could send terse, information-filled messages to each another without the need for social niceties or for both to be available to chat at the same time. The number of e-mail messages sent grew by leaps and bounds on ARPANET. By 1973 a study found that 75 percent of all traffic on ARPANET was e-mail. Today we send millions of e-mails every day—it’s changed the way we do business, talk to one another, and even the way we think.
Tomlinson didn’t consider these messages to be a big deal; in fact, as Forbes reported in 1998, a BBN coworker said that when Tomlinson showed him his work, he said, “Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on.”
“Two years from
now, spam will
be solved.”
—MICROSOFT FOUNDER
BILL GATES, 2004
SUCCESS
in
DE FEET
A key to athletic success is hooking up the right athlete to the right sport, and even small structural differences in feet can determine whether someone can be a star at the 100-meter hurdles or a powerhouse on the tennis court. Talent scouts searching for speedy quarterbacks, sprinters, or base-stealing ballplayers might do well to examine a candidate’s big toe. For most of us, the big toe isn’t as long as the next one, but some people have big toes that protrude out beyond the second toe. These fortunate few have an advantage over the rest of us when they need speed. They can lean their weight onto their big toe to push off and get a fast start. The second toe is not as strong and can only exert about half as much force.
Others have a unique advantage in the first metatarsal bone, which is attached to their big toe. If the first metatarsal bone hangs lower than the other metatarsals (the bones to the other toes), then the big toe will also hang lower than their other toes. Athletes with a low first metatarsal can also put weight on their big toe, pushing off for a fast start.
If your feet tend to roll outward and make your arch more stiff and rigid, you might want to try out for track or volleyball. Rigid feet are good levers that make running and jumping easier. If your feet tend to roll inward and your arches are extremely flexible, that could give you an advantage at tennis or aerobic dancing. Flexible feet are better at handling constant changes in direction with quick, short pivots.
People with flat feet and lower arches have their own advantages. They usually fall in the category of flexible feet with good range of motion. Even just plain big feet can be an advantage in swimming (think flippers).
KINETIC SCULPTURE TRIATHLON
The only race in the United States (we think) whose participants are allowed help from interplanetary beings takes place every May in Humboldt County, California. The Kinetic Grand Championship requires that teams create moving sculptures and pedal them 42 miles from Arcata to Ferndale through water, mud, and sand. The #1 rule: It’s mandatory to have great fun. Rule #2: Sculptures must be powered by humans, but “it is legal to get assistance from the natural power of water, wind, sun, gravity, and friendly extraterrestrials (if introduced to the judges).” The contest has been going on since 1969, when sculptors Hobart Brown and Jack Mays raced their creations (one was a five-wheeled cycle) down Main Street in Ferndale. Today, each sculpture has a pilot to steer, a pit crew for maintenance, and “peons” who handle the rest, including any necessary bribing of spectators and judges. Past entries include a giant lobster, a dragon boat, and a Day of the Dead decorated taco truck. This contest doesn’t just recognize the team that is the fastest. Sculptures can win for taking the middle spot (the Mediocre Award), for being the first to break down (the Golden Dinosaur), and for not cheating (Ace the Race). However, the organizers make it clear that the race condones cheating only “if it is done with originality and panache.”
IT’S SCIENCE!
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
—Galileo Galilei
“Science is simply common sense at its best—rigidly accurate in observation and merciless to fallacy in logic.”
—Thomas Huxley
“There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That’s perfectly all right; they’re the aperture to finding out what’s right.”
—Carl Sagan
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
—Neil deGrasse Tyson
“The greatest discoveries of science have always been those that forced us to rethink our beliefs about the universe and our place in it.”
—Robert L. Park
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
—John Dewey
ANOTHER VIRGIN BIRTH
WHO? Sungai, a Komodo dragon
WHERE? The London Zoo, England
WHAT? Born and raised in captivity, Sungai had not interacted with a male Komodo dragon in more than two years. Even so, she laid a clutch of 22 fertilized eggs in 2005. Four of the eggs hatched, all male, and did not contain DNA that would have come from a daddy dragon. The birth stunned scientists, who had not known Komodo dragons could reproduce asexually. It is unclear whether this occurred through cloning—which, researchers note, should have produced all females, not males—or perhaps a process called selfing, in which an animal’s body stores some cells that act like sperm and others that behave like eggs.
WHY? Here’s what the scientists think: Komodo dragons are the biggest lizards on earth, but in the wild, they are confined to one small part of the world—a few volcanic islands in Indonesia. They are also endangered. All this makes survival a tricky business. But with this unique reproduction ability, females could produce offspring all on their own—even colonize a new island if necessary—all without the help of a partner and perhaps saving the species from total extinction.
WEIRD ENERGY:
SEWAGE
You are practicing good hygiene when you flush your toilet. You’re right to want to dispose of your body’s waste products as quickly and efficiently as possible. But your poop might have incredible economic and environmental value. Feces is a key resource in obtaining methane, a natural gas that could be used for heat and energy, similar to natural gas. Park Spark in Cambridge, Massachusetts, along with Norcal Waste in San Francisco, is testing out pilot programs designed to extract as much usable methane as possible from (for now) dog poop. The companies provide dog owners with biodegradable dog waste bags. The doggies provide the waste, the owners fill the bags, and then the energy companies feed the bags into a machine called a “digester,” where microorganisms process the dog poop. The byproduct: methane.
ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY:
SAFETY GLASS
In 1903 Édouard Bénédictus, a French chemist, was experimenting in his lab when he dropped an empty glass flask on the floor. It shattered, but remained in the shape of a flask. Benedictus was bewildered. When he examined the flask more closely, he discovered that the inside was coated with a film residue of cellulose nitrate, a chemical he’d been working with earlier. The film had held the glass together. Not long afterward, Benedictus read a newspaper article about a girl who had been badly injured by flying glass in a car accident. He thought back to the glass flask in his lab and realized that coating automobile windshields, as the inside of the flask had been coated, would make them less dangerous. Variations of the safety glass he produced—a layer of plastic sandwiched by two layers of glass—are still used in automobiles today.
SHOWERING
ON THE ISS
Astronauts live and work on the International Space Station for weeks or even months on end. The station has a shower, which is pretty fancy considering the astronauts who traveled on space shuttles years before the ISS had to make do with sponge baths and shampoo that didn’t n
eed to be rinsed out.
In the absence of gravity, the water used in a shower doesn’t fall to the floor. It just floats around inside the stall, which is sealed to prevent the water from escaping into the rest of the space station. Because the water doesn’t go down the drain, you don’t need as much to take your shower as you would on Earth. You use only about a gallon of water, and instead of moving in and out from under the showerhead, you just grab the floating globs of water and rub them on yourself. When you’re finished, there’s a vacuum hose attached to one wall that you use to suck up all the drops before leaving the shower. One thing to consider: the shower water is reclaimed water… from the astronauts’ sweat and urine.
STRANGE STUDY:
Spiders Get Personal
Most spiders lead solitary lives, but some species, such as Anelosimus studiosus, live socially in massive webs. Within these colonies, some spiders are docile and some are aggressive. If the ratio is off, too many docile spiders won’t be able to ward off predators, and too many aggressive spiders will cause too much infighting. Either way, the colony collapses. There’s a mechanism present to keep these ratios balanced, but exactly what it is has divided the scientific world for decades.
Strange Science Page 16