SITH HAPPENS
Do the names Mikhail Lukin and Vladan Vuletic sound like Star Wars characters? They’re actually Earth-based physicists (Lukin from Harvard, and Vuletic from MIT) who announced in 2014 that they found a way to “bounce” photons off each other. That’s right—photons are light particles that have no mass. But when the physicists placed two photons into a special type of vacuum chamber, where they interacted with laser beams and a cloud of rubidium atoms cooled to near absolute zero, the light particles suddenly took on very different properties. “What we have done,” said Lukin, “is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they begin to act as though they have mass, and they bind together to form molecules.” Or, in other words, “It’s not an inapt analogy to compare this to light sabers.”
•When he was little, Einstein didn’t talk much, and the family’s maid referred to him as “the dopey one.”
•For years, he thought of his work in physics as a hobby and regarded himself as a failure…because he really wanted to be a concert violinist.
•As a teenager, he failed his college entrance exam. He tested well in physics and math, but his scores in other subjects, such as language and botany, were too low.
•While Einstein (who was Jewish) was living in Berlin, the Nazis burned his treatises and seized his belongings, including his violin. He fled Germany in 1932, just before Adolf Hitler came to power.
•He bequeathed the rights to his name to Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which trademarked it and made $10 million from licensing fees annually, for many decades.
WHERE THE OCEAN
MEETS THE SKY
Atmospheric gravity waves are a rare force of nature. They re-create the motion of the ocean, but in the sky. Waves of air move up and down as they roll through the atmosphere, fueled by buoyancy (the force that makes air rise) and gravity (which makes it fall). Meteorologist Tim Coleman explains: “Gravity is what keeps them going. If you push water up and then it plops back down, it creates waves. It’s the same with air.” Gravity waves begin when a stable layer of air is displaced by a draft (from a storm, for instance), causing air to ripple across the sky. It’s similar to the rings that emanate outward when a stone is thrown into still water. Clouds develop high on the crest of each gravity wave and dissipate near the trough. So, to a person on the ground, gravity waves look like rows of clouds with clear sky between them. Their actual movement across the sky can really only be seen in time-lapse video.
MICROCHIP MAN
In July 1958, Jack St. Clair Kilby had been at his job just a few months at Texas Instruments. The entire plant shut down for a companywide two-week vacation, but Kilby hadn’t earned a vacation yet. Virtually alone in the lab, he worked feverishly to come up with something to justify his employment.
At the time, the current that ran through electronic devices was conducted by transistors, which required workers to solder wires to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of microscopic gizmos, which—as you can imagine—was labor-intensive, expensive, and prone to errors.
Kilby managed to etch the entire circuit into a single sliver of germanium crystal. These “integrated circuits” made room-sized computers obsolete. And they were cheap enough to create a proliferation of electronic devices, including radios, microwaves, cell phones, VCRs, and TVs. Not only that, but Kilby and a colleague invented the handheld calculator—the first mass-market usage for the microchip.
Kilby snagged a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work. When CNN asked him if he had any regrets about what his work produced, he answered, “Just one…electronic greeting cards that deliver annoying messages.”
SULFONAMIDE TESTS
In 1942 doctors at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northeastern Germany were ordered to test the effectiveness of a new kind of drug—an antibacterial called a sulfonamide. The Nazi government’s goal was to reduce troop losses due to infection after injury, especially from gunshot wounds. To make conditions as true to life as possible, doctors at Ravensbrück were supplied with prisoner test subjects, most of them Polish women. Doctors cut long incisions into the women’s calves, dabbed the wounds with virulent strains of bacteria, tied off the blood vessels at either end of the wounds—in order to simulate gunshot wounds—and then stitched up the incisions. Some of the women were given sulfonamide, some weren’t; some were given small doses, some large. Their wounds were observed over the following weeks. Before the experiments ended in September 1943, 74 women had been subjected to the experiments. Eleven died. The rest suffered injuries to their legs that affected them for the rest of their lives.
THE HUMAN BODY AND
THE EARTH’S CRUST
The 20 most prevalent chemical elements in the human
body, and in the Earth’s crust, by percentage.
HUMAN BODY EARTH’S CRUST
1. Oxygen: 65% 1. Oxygen: 46.71%
2. Carbon: 18% 2. Silicon: 27.69%
3. Hydrogen: 10% 3. Aluminum: 8.07%
4. Nitrogen: 3% 4. Iron: 5.05%
5. Calcium: 1.5% 5. Calcium: 3.65%
6. Phosphorus: 1% 6. Sodium: 2.75%
7. Sulfur: 0.25% 7. Potassium: 2.58%
8. Potassium: 0.2% 8. Magnesium: 2.08%
9. Chlorine: 0.15% 9. Titanium: 0.62%
10. Sodium: 0.15% 10. Hydrogen: 0.14%
11. Magnesium: 0.05% 11. Phosphorus: 0.13%
12. Iron: 0.006% 12. Carbon: 0.094%
13. Fluorine: 0.0037% 13. Manganese: 0.09%
14. Zinc: 0.0032% 14. Sulfur: 0.052%
15. Silicon: 0.002% 15. Barium: 0.05%
16. Zirconium: 0.0006% 16. Chlorine: 0.045%
17. Rubidium: 0.00046% 17. Chromium: 0.035%
18. Strontium: 0.00046% 18. Fluorine: 0.029%
19. Bromine: 0.00029% 19. Zirconium: 0.025%
20. Lead: 0.00017% 20. Nickel: 0.019%
Ramming Speed
“Imagine traveling three kilometers in one second,” said Michael Smart, an Australian aviation pioneer who has spent more than a decade developing a plane that’s hypersonic (faster than five times the speed of sound) and can reach Mach 15. How fast is that? 11,509 mph! By contrast, the Concorde “only” traveled at about Mach 2. Smart’s scramjet can achieve these speeds thanks to air being “rammed” through a super-efficient hypersonic engine so fast it creates intense heat that burns the fuel.
Initial tests have been promising, but there’s still a lot of work to do. One holdup is that Smart’s plane (which looks like a 1960s drawing of a futuristic rocket ship) requires a traditional jet engine to reach the speed that will allow the hypersonic engine to kick in. Another snag is finding an inexpensive material that won’t burn up at such high speeds. But Smart is optimistic. He maintains that hypersonic planes—which will allow intercontinental travel in mere minutes, or even take people and equipment into space—will be flying through the upper atmosphere “in our children’s lifetime.”
TYPES OF COLOR BLINDNESS
You learned about color vision on page 108. Here are the conditions that can affect the way you see color.
1. PROTANOPIA. This is the lack of long-wavelength (red) cones, the effect being that reds look more like beiges and appear darker than they are; colors like violet and purple are seen as shades of blue because the red in them can’t be seen.
2. DEUTERANOPIA. “Second blindness,” or “red-green blindness,” is the lack of the medium-wavelength, green-detecting cones; green and red appear identical to people with deuteranopia.
3. TRITANOPIA. “Third blindness” is the lack of short-wavelength cones (the blues). It makes blues and greens difficult to distinguish, and yellows can appear as shades of red.
4. BLUE CONE MONOCHROMACY. Also called “one color,” only one type of cone, the blues, functions properly. A cone monochromat can see next to no color but otherwise has good vision in normal daylight.
5. ROD MONOCHROMACY. This is the condition of having only rods—and no functioni
ng cones at all. It’s the only condition for which the term “color blindness” is completely accurate—red monochromats can’t see any color at all.
MYTHUNDERSTANDINGS
FIRESTARTER
MYTH: A lit cigarette carelessly tossed into a puddle of gasoline is likely to start a fire.
THE TRUTH: A mixture of gasoline vapor and air is highly explosive, but liquid gasoline will be wicked up by the cigarette paper and extinguish the burning ember.
GETTING SHOT
MYTH: When shot, a person is propelled backward.
THE TRUTH: Because a bullet is much lighter than a person, it doesn’t have enough force to propel a person backward.
IS YOUR HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE?
MYTH: The heart is on the left side of your chest.
THE TRUTH: It’s actually more in the center of your body. What makes people think the heart is to the left is that the heart’s left ventricle, a chamber that pumps blood, is larger than the right ventricle. This gives the heart its left-leaning shape, so that the heart intrudes farther into the left side of the body than to the right. It also gives the sensation of the heartbeat coming from left of center.
SMITHSONIAN BY THE NUMBERS
You haven’t experienced the wonders of science until you’ve visited the Smithsonian Institution. Enjoy a numerical snapshot of this American must-see.
0
Number of firearms or dangerous weapons you’re allowed to bring.
1
Exception to the above policy, per the Smithsonian website: “Kirpans (ceremonial knives) are religious articles of faith often worn by Sikhs. These knives are permitted in the museums as long as the blades are 2.5 inches or less in length.”
2
Percentage of the Smithsonian Institution’s holdings on display at any given time.
3
Number of one-cent stamps affixed to the first piece of mail flown across the Atlantic, which is housed in the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum.
4.8
Millions of botanical specimens housed by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
19
Number of museums that make up the Smithsonian. Among others, these include the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Asian art).
37.2
Weight, in tons, of a section of Route 66 delivered to the Hall of Transportation in the National Museum of American History for an exhibit.
45.52
Number of carats in the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. It glows in the dark after exposure to UV rays and is semiconductive, too!
100,000
Amount of money, in British pounds sterling, that James Smithson originally willed upon his death in 1829. This eventually became the financial start of the Smithsonian.
154,000,000
Approximate number of objects, works of art, and specimens in the Smithsonian Institution.
CELEBRITY DISEASE
Jon Hamm, who starred in Mad Men, has vitiligo, a disease that causes the patient’s skin to gradually lighten. (Michael Jackson famously suffered from it.) The cause is unknown, and there is no real treatment. Hamm said it only affects his hands, that it comes and goes, and that it was brought on by the stress of doing the award-winning show.
Green City:
CURITIBA
POPULATION: 3.5 million
HOW GREEN IS IT? Curitiba is the capital of the Parana state in Brazil, and despite facing severe poverty and overcrowding, it consistently wins recognition as one of the most beautiful, livable, and green cities in the world. In 1968 the city had less than 10 square feet of greenery per person, but careful urban planning—minimizing urban sprawl, planting trees, and protecting local forests—has turned that into 500 square feet for each inhabitant. Curitiba now boasts 16 parks, 14 forests, and more than 1,000 green public spaces. Curitiba is also internationally famous for its Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system. Reliable and cheap, the BRT vehicles run as often as every 90 seconds in dedicated bus lanes. Eighty percent of the residents use the buses—that’s more than two million riders a day. Also famous for its garbage disposal system, the city provides an alternative for low-income families who don’t have garbage pickup: They can bring in bags of trash or recycling, and exchange them for bus tickets, food, school supplies, or toys. The result: A clean city where the poor live better and more than 70 percent of the waste is recycled.
“Professor Goddard does not know
the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have
something better than a vacuum
against which to react. He seems to
lack the basic knowledge ladled out
daily in high schools.”
—NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL, 1921
(about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work)
STRANGE MEDICAL CONDITION
SUBJECT: Alexandra Allen of Mapleton, Utah
CONDITION: An allergy to water
STORY: When she was 12 years old, Alexandra was on vacation and went for a swim in a pool. She woke up in the middle of the night, most of her body covered in incredibly itchy hives. Her doctor initially diagnosed her as having a chlorine allergy and told her to stay out of pools. But it got worse as she got older—almost all physical contact with water was causing her skin to break out in hives and welts. Although the human body is about two-thirds water, it’s still possible to be allergic to water (at least on the skin). Allen is one of a handful of cases of water allergy, or aquagenic urticaria, on record. Allen has to avoid being submerged in it, and can only take brief, cold showers. The main treatment? A topical application of capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers.
JURASSIC FARTS
In 2012, two British scientists, Dave Wilkinson and Graeme Ruxton, revealed a startling discovery about dinosaur times. They were trying to figure out why the climate was so warm and wet when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Their conclusion: sauropod farts. The scientists announced their theory in the journal Current Biology: “Our calculations suggest that sauropod dinosaurs could potentially have played a significant role in influencing climate through their methane emissions.”
Sauropods were the biggest land animals to ever live on Earth. They had huge bodies, long necks, and puny heads. They first appeared in the late Triassic period (about 230 million years ago), had a heyday in the Jurassic period (200 to 145 million years ago), and went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period (about 65 million years ago). Among the many sauropods were Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Argentinosaurus, which weighed up to 100 tons. (African elephants, the largest land animals alive today, average about 4 to 6 tons.)
Sauropods were herbivores. Scientists think they probably ate ferns, gingkoes, conifers, and similar plants. To maintain their size, they had to eat fast—they gulped their food without chewing it—and they had to eat a lot. An 11-ton elephant can eat about 1,000 pounds of plant matter a day. Scientists say a 77-ton dinosaur would have had to eat at least four times that much, or 4,000 pounds of plants every day.
Scientists believe a sauropod’s digestive system was a lot like a cow’s. Because they don’t chew, cows have four special stomachs to help digest their food. The long digestive process produces methane gas, and some of that gas comes out as burps and farts. Wilkinson and Ruxton did the math: given their size, giant sauropods could have produced more than 500 million tons of methane gas per year. “Our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources—both natural and man-made—put together,” said Wilkinson.
In the early 1800s, English scientist John Dalton proposed that each element—oxygen, gold, uranium, etc.—has a unique kind of atom. This began the modern era of atomic theory.
The Flowers of the Black Sea
In 2016 archaeologists were looking for the effects
of climate change on ancient peoples, but instead they made the discovery of a lifetime: 44 well-preserved ships, some more than 1,000 years old, resting on the bottom of the Black Sea.
In most of the world’s oceans, after a wooden ship sinks, sea creatures and barnacles feed on its hull until it’s more reef than ship. But the Black Sea is different. It used to be a lake. At the end of the last ice age in 10,000 B.C., the Mediterranean rose and flooded it with saltwater, which settled on the seafloor in a layer so thick that there’s very little sunlight and even less oxygen. Those conditions have created an eerie graveyard of well-preserved ships.
The crown jewel of the find is a nearly intact vessel from the Ottoman Empire that sank around 300 years ago. Archaeologists nicknamed it the Flower of the Black Sea because of its ornate carvings—even the ropes are still intact. Tethered robots were sent down to take high-resolution photos of the exteriors, but scientists won’t explore the interiors until they can do so without damaging the wrecks. When they do, they could find all sorts of “flowers,” or treasures. “You might find books, parchment, written documents,” said archaeologist Brendan P. Foley. “Who knows how much of this stuff was being transported? But now we have the possibility of finding out. It’s amazing.”
TWiNS DAYS
Every summer for more than 40 years, identical and fraternal twins have been gathering in Twinsburg, Ohio, to celebrate twinhood at a festival called Twins Days. They can participate in the festival’s parade, talent show, charity walk, and a variety of contests—from the best movie-themed costumes to the most similar- and dissimilar-looking twins.
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