SNAPSHOT OF SCIENCE
MOON MAN
July 20, 1969
Most people can tell you who was the first man to set foot on the Moon. It was U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969. As he lowered himself onto the lunar surface, Armstrong immortalized the moment with his famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” When it comes to iconic photos of a man on the Moon, however, one picture stands out from the rest. It isn’t of Armstrong. Rather, he was the photographer. He snapped the photo of fellow Moon man Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step on the surface.
Armstrong took the famous photo of Aldrin saluting the American flag firmly planted in the dusty surface, with a dunelike mountain rising up behind him into the ink-black cosmos. In the reflection of Aldrin’s lowered helmet visor is the image of Armstrong and the lunar lander Eagle.
“I think there is
a world market
for maybe five
computers.”
—THOMAS WATSON,
CHAIRMAN OF IBM, 1943
PUTTING THE “BYE”
IN ANTIBIOTICS
In 1918 the Spanish flu killed more people than died in the entirety of World War I. Between 50 million and 100 million people succumbed, roughly 5 percent of the world’s entire population at the time. So it was nice when scientists discovered antibiotics shortly thereafter! Some of the most effective disease killers, antibiotics (such as penicillin and amoxicillin) have helped prevent infections like the flu from turning into devastating global pandemics. It’s really too bad that they just stopped working.
Antibiotics work by killing bacteria, while usually leaving safe, healthy human cells mostly unharmed (as opposed to more extreme disease-and-healthy tissue-killing treatments like radiation or chemotherapy). They’re basically poison for bacteria, but over the past 70 years, the bacteria have developed a tolerance.
Mutation guarantees that a small percentage of bacteria would eventually become antibiotic-resistant. But when antibiotics have been added to everything from hand soap to animal feed (which gets passed on to the humans who eat those animals), mutation and evolution accelerated. While many strains died, some of those that didn’t became supergerms that are resistant to traditional drugs.
MOHS HARDNESS SCALE
In 1812 German mineralogist Friedrich Mohs developed a scale to measure the hardness of different materials. He based it on ten commonly used minerals. Here they are, from softest to hardest:
1.Talc: used in talcum powder
2.Gypsum: used in plaster of Paris
3.Calcite: found in limestone
4.Fluorite: used in the manufacture of steel and glass
5.Apatite: found in tooth enamel and most types of rock
6.Feldspar: found in granite
7.Quartz: quartz crystals
8.Topaz: gemstone
9.Corundum: found in sapphires and used in abrasives
10.Diamond
The scale works by determining the hardest material on the list that another material can scratch. For example, a human fingernail can scratch gypsum (#2) but can’t scratch calcite (#3). Human fingernails therefore have a hardness of 2.5 on the Mohs scale. Window glass can scratch apatite (#5) but not feldspar (#6)—and has a hardness of 5.5. Because the relative hardnesses of the minerals are not mathematically proportional, the Mohs scale is very simplistic. Topaz is twice as hard as quartz, but diamond in nearly four times as hard as corundum. The scale is still used today as a relative hardness measurement.
Used-Less Inventions
“HIGH FIVE” SIMULATOR
PATENT NUMBER: 5,356,330
INVENTED IN: 1994
DESCRIPTION: Essentially a spring-loaded arm mounted on a wall, the “High Five” Simulator is always ready for a good slap. A fake hand attached to a forearm piece is connected to a lower arm section with an elbow joint for pivoting. When the hand is struck, the raised arm bends backward briefly before returning to the ready position. This invention is perfect for the lonely or excessive high-fiver.
TOO MANY MUMMIES
Pharaohs weren’t the only ancient Egyptians who were mummified—nearly everyone in Egyptian society who could afford it had it done. By the end of the seventh century A.D., the country contained an estimated 500 million mummies. Egyptians from the 1100s onward thought of them more like a natural resource than as the bodies of distant relatives, and treated them as such.
For over 400 years, mummies were one of Egypt’s largest export industries. By 1600 you could buy a pound of mummy powder in Scotland for about 8 shillings. As early as 1100, Arabs and Christians ground them up for use as medicine, which was often rubbed into wounds, mixed into food, or stirred into tea.
By the 1600s, medicinal mummy use began to decline, as many doctors started questioning the practice. “Not only does this wretched drug do no good to the sick,” the French surgeon Ambrose Pare wrote, “…but it causes them great pain in their stomach, gives them evil smelling breath, and brings on serious vomiting which is more likely to stir up the blood and worsen hemorrhaging than to stop it.” He recommended using mummies as fish bait.
By the 1800s, mummies were imported only as curiosities, where it was fashionable to unwrap them during dinner parties.
Mummies were also one of the first sources of recycled paper: During one 19th-century rag shortage (in the days when paper was made from cloth fibers, not wood fibers), one Canadian paper manufacturer imported Egyptian mummies as a literal source of raw materials. He unwrapped the cloth and made it into sturdy brown paper, which he sold to butchers and grocers for wrapping food. The scheme died out after only a few months, when employees in charge of unwrapping the paper began coming down with cholera.
4 MAJOR TYPES
OF VERTEBRATE TISSUE
1.Epithelial tissue
2.Connective tissue
3.Muscle tissue
4.Nerve tissue
WEIRD SCIENCE NEWS
THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE
In 2013 Japanese scientists reported findings of a study in which they observed 108 pairs of sea slugs having sex. The researchers reported that after mating, a male sea slug wanders off—and its penis falls off…and another penis grows back in just 24 hours. (This can happen at least three times!) The findings also showed that the sea slugs being studied—Goniobranchus reticulata, gathered from the East China Sea—are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both female and male sex organs and can impregnate another sea slug and be impregnated simultaneously.
WHO CARES?
German psychologist Thomas Goetz of the University of Konstanz concluded a study in 2013 that showed there aren’t four types of boredom, as previously believed—but five. (Goetz also conducted the study that concluded there were four types of boredom.) The five types: indifferent boredom; calibrating boredom; searching boredom; reactant boredom; and, the latest, apathetic boredom. “We did not expect this type of boredom at all,” Goetz said of his latest boring discovery.
WEB WEAVER
The World Wide Web might not have happened if Tim Berners-Lee had kept better office files. In 1980 the man who would create the ubiquitous “www” that sits in that topmost bar on your computer screen was into a six-month job as a software developer at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He’d left some of his notes at home in England. Wouldn’t it be great, he thought, if there was a piece of software that kept track of all the details in all his documents “that brains are supposed to be so good at remembering but that sometimes (his) wouldn’t”? There wasn’t such a program—so he wrote it himself and called it “Enquire.” Of course, it only worked on his own personal files.
But Berners-Lee could see that Enquire had possibilities beyond that. He envisioned a system of open documents, all written in a common language and all linked together…which turned out to be those underlined words or phrases that we click on to take us to a different page or site.
He wrote a coding system called HTML (hypertext markup langua
ge); came up with an addressing system that gave each file on his “web” a unique address, which he called a URL (uniform resource locator); and wrote a program that allowed documents with a URL to be accessed by computers across the Internet: HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). Finally, Berners-Lee took the step that would bring the whole world to what he would name the World Wide Web—the browser. By 1996, the number of Internet users had hit 40 million. At one point the rate of users was doubling every 53 days.
Berners-Lee himself hasn’t profited at all from his creations. He manages the nonprofit W3 Consortium (which oversees development of web technology standards) from a plain, tiny office at MIT. The protocols he created are a household name—but Berners-Lee is content to keep working behind the scenes.
PROGERIA
This is an especially depressing disease that causes small children to physically age far more rapidly than normal. A young child afflicted with progeria can look 80 or 90 years old, and can already show symptoms regularly associated with old age, including wrinkled skin, hair loss, arthritis, loss of vision, and debilitated organ function. Progeria is caused by a mutation to a specific section of a specific gene, the full function of which scientists have yet to determine, although part of its function is obviously related to aging. (For that reason, the gene has been the subject of intense study by geneticists all over the world since its discovery in 2003.) Progeria is very rare, occurring in only about one in 8 million births. There is no known cure, and victims seldom live past their early teens.
PROJECT
BLUE BEAM
Ever heard of Project Blue Beam? It’s a conspiracy theory that, strangely enough, may have been inspired by a Star Trek movie that was never made.
In 1994 a biography was released called Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek. The book told of a botched 1975 deal to put the canceled TV show on the big screen with a story about a flying saucer in Earth’s orbit that sends down false gods in order to fool humans into servitude. No one had heard about that plot before. Not long after the biography was released, a Canadian journalist named Serge Monast started writing about a supposed secret plot called “Project Blue Beam” in which a shadow government masquerading as NASA fools humans into believing in aliens and gods. Monast said that there would be four steps to this dastardly plan:
1)The conspirators would set off a series of man-made earthquakes that would reveal (planted) archaeological discoveries proving all the major religions are false.
2)They would use top-secret holographic technology to make it appear as if gods and aliens were flying in the skies and in space.
3)“Telepathic Electronic Two-Way Communication” would be projected into every human’s brain in which the “antichrist” will inform humanity about a glorious “New Age” to come (using some other type of advanced technology).
4)Finally, they would stage a simulated space battle/rapture, during which thousands of people would be whooshed up into the sky (using still more top-secret technology).
After that, the theory goes, the human race would fall in line with the New World Order. Even though Monast died from a heart attack in 1996 (or, as some maintain, he was murdered by the Canadian government), there are still many believers who claim that the ongoing Project Blue Beam can explain everything from an uptick in alien abduction reports to the 9/11 attacks to the holographic resurrection of Tupac Shakur at a 2012 concert.
Did Monast merely repeat a fictional Star Trek plotline, or did he unveil a nefarious conspiracy? You be the judge.
•No one knows why, but foods microwaved in a round container cook better than in a square one.
•In 1968 the Walter Reed Hospital tested microwave ovens to see if the waves (called microwaves) leaked out. They did—and the U.S. set the first federal standards for microwave ovens.
•Irregularly shaped foods, such as a leg of chicken that is thick at one end and thin at the other end, cook unevenly. That’s because the microwaves penetrate completely through smaller pieces of food, but not through larger pieces.
•Aluminum foil reflects microwave energy the same way mirrors reflect light energy. That’s why you can’t use foil in a microwave.
•According to legend, shortly after Raytheon produced its first microwave oven in 1947, Charles Adams, the chairman of Raytheon, had one installed in his kitchen. But as Adams’s cook quickly discovered, meat didn’t brown in the oven, French fries stayed limp and damp, and cakes didn’t rise. The cook, condemning the oven as “black magic,” quit.
SEEING
CLEARLY
Hans Lippershey was a 17th-century maker of eyeglasses. One morning, having just completed a pair of lenses, he stood in his shop doorway and inspected his work for imperfections. As a final test, he held both lenses up to the light and checked for minute flaws. What he saw next caused Lippershey to stagger back in amazement. Shaking his head in disbelief, he put the lenses up to his eyes once more. Again it happened—the church tower in the distance leapt out at him!
Hans had stumbled upon a way to make distant objects appear as if they were right in front of you. Lippershey had looked through two lenses at the same time—one concave (curved inward), the other convex (curved outward). Seeing a quick buck, he mounted the two lenses on a board and charged his customers to take a closer look at the distant church tower. After some experimentation, he mounted the lenses inside a hollow tube, dubbing the nifty device his kijkglas (“look glass”).
We know it as the telescope.
THE MEANING OF LI-FI
If you’ve ever tried to access a wireless router, you know most Wi-Fi networks have pretty boring names…but some people go for laughs when naming theirs.
The LAN before time
Area 51
Your Bathroom Shower Needs New Tiles
Help Me Pay For It
The Meaning of LiFi
Secret CIA Intelligence Underground Military Base
Why Phi?
Holy *$#% We’re Online
The Dingo Ate My Wi-Fi
It Hurts When IP
Mom Click Here For Internet
Alien Abduction Network
Global Thermonuclear War
SHUT YOUR DOG UP OR I WILL CALL THE COPS
IP Freely
Caitlin stop using our Internet!
HeyUGetOffMyLAN
.– .. ..-. .. (Morse code for WiFi)
I’m Under Your Bed
Nuclear Launch Detected
Secret Federal Witness Protection Safehouse
I’m cheating on my WiFi
John Wilkes Bluetooth
c:virus.exe
Router—I Hardly Know Her
Bill Wi the Science Fi
If You Guess My Password I Have To Rename My Dog
LAN of Milk and Honey
FECAL MATTERS
Since 1991, the Ig Nobel Awards honor the world’s most ridiculous research and scientific undertakings. Here’s one of our favorites.
The 2014 Ig Nobel award for biology went to a group of scientists from the Czech Republic and Germany who studied if dogs can sense the Earth’s magnetic field. The team examined dozens of dogs while they went to the bathroom, theorizing that the average pooch aligns its body along a north-south axis while they do so…or at least they do when a solar storm isn’t messing with the magnetic field. After studying over 70 dogs and 1,893 “doggy dumps,” they published their findings in Frontiers in Zoology. (This same group once conducted a similar study that proved that cows also align themselves on an axis during times of relief, but they studied that by examining Google Earth satellite images.) Why do dogs and cows prefer to poop in this fashion? The scientists have yet to figure that out.
IT’S ELEMENTARY
Remember the periodic table? Let’s hope so…
1.Which extremely flammable element (atomic #1) was used to fill the Hindenburg instead of the element it was designed to use—helium?
2.The famed Anaconda mine in Butte, Montana, pro
duced 94,900 tons of which element (#29) between 1881 and 1947?
3.Which element (#13), the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, is extensively used in compact discs, kitchen utensils, and house exteriors?
4.This metallic element (#22), strong as steel but 45 percent lighter, is primarily used in aircrafts and missiles, yet also finds its way into golf clubs and tennis rackets.
5.Which element (#36) is more widely known as the birthplace of Superman than as the rare gas used in specialized high-speed photographic flashlamps?
6.Can you name this common element (#6) that has an isotope that has been used for years to date archaeological finds?
7.What is the rare and shortlived element (#102) that is named after the inventor of dynamite?
8.Which element (#27) has been used for centuries to impart a permanent rich blue color into glass, porcelain, pottery, and enamels?
9.What is the second most abundant element (#14) on earth (exceeded only by oxygen) and is the principal ingredient of glass?
ANSWERS: 1. Hydrogen 2. Copper 3. Aluminum 4. Titanium 5. Krypton 6. Carbon 7. Nobelium 8. Cobalt 9. Silicon
THE MATRIX HAS YOU
“The Matrix is everywhere,” Morpheus explains to Neo. “It is all around us. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television.” What is the Matrix? It’s a computer simulation that we are all living in, according to the cult movie, anyway. But what if we actually are living in simulation? It’s more likely than you think.
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