Science Made Cool

Museums: Behind the Scenes

Amherst College has posted some "virtual tours" of some of the more unusual bits of the campus. One of them is a tour of some of the material that isn't on display at the Natural History Museum. Find it here.

Living Fast and Dying Young

In the grand scheme of things, tetrapods tend to live longer and reproduce slower than their fellow land-dwellers the insects. But a study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this summer describing a small Madagascarian chameleon with a mayfly-like lifespan. Mayflies, of course, are those ephemeral insects that live only a few hours as adults. But it’s important to remember that the adult stage is only a small part of the entire life of a mayfly: they spend quite a while as juveniles (up to a year in some species) before they mature, mate, and die all in a day. The lizard, Furcifer labordi, has clearly taken a page from the mayfly book: they spend eight to nine months as embryos inside their eggs. When the hatchlings emerge at the start of the wet season in November, they grow like crazy, reaching maturity by the end of December and mating by early January. Females lay their eggs in February, and the entire adult population is dead by the end of March. For those of you counting, that’s 9 months of development, and 3 months of scratching and fighting before dying. Not one reaches the ripe old age of two.

Reference:
Karsten, K. B. et al. 2008. A unique life history among tetrapods: An annual chameleon living mostly as an egg. PNAS 105: 8980-8984.

Big, Stinky Flower

The Titan arum at Smith College is blooming. It only happens once every 3 to 5 years, and only lasts a few days, so be sure to have a look at their webcam. But make sure it's daylight hours on the North American east coast first, or else you'll just see a lot of dark.

Many Happy Returns, With Variation

Yesterday marked the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. He first described it at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London, on July 1, 1858.

Darwin actually came up with the theory some years earlier, but he was a thorough, methodical man, and didn't want to rush into publication. He established his scientific reputation by writing books on coral reefs, the geology of South America and volcanic islands, and three works on barnacles. All the time he was gathering data for his theory of evolution, because he knew it was such a bombshell he would have to support it with masses of proof.

But in 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace more or less forced his hand, by advancing a similar idea. Darwin, ever a gentleman, gave Wallace joint credit.

And what a bombshell it was! Before Darwin everyone was pretty much what would nowadays be called a "creationist." Quite simply, there wasn't any good explanation for where living things had come from in all their variety. The Biblical book of Genesis was as good an account as any. Darwin changed all that -- and in the process began the estrangement of science and religion which continues to this day.

Crackpots of all stripes have been drawn to the Theory of Evolution like a magnet. Devoutly religious ones try to refute it, generally with faulty logic, bogus evidence, or simply "disproof by repeated assertion." But they're not the only ones: Marx believed his study of class conflict would do for history and political science what Darwin had done for biology. Wrapped in the mantle of "scientific truth," Marx's 20th-century ideological heirs killed millions trying to create a "New Socialist Man." Another German socialist wrongly applied Darwinian ideas to nations and wrecked half of Europe.

All of which would have horrified the humane, classically liberal Charles Darwin. As its originator he understood that evolution is a biological theory. It describes how things work in the natural world. It is not -- and, frankly, must not -- be a prescription for how people or societies should act.

So Happy Birthday, Evolution! Let's hope the lunatics find something else to fixate on.

Happy Birthday Superman!

Today is Superman's 70th birthday. As pretty much everyone on Earth knows, the character Superman is an alien from the lost planet Krypton, who gains super powers on Earth because of its yellow sun. Needless to say, this makes absolutely no sense. If the color of sunlight gives you superpowers, so would a string of colored Christmas-tree lights.

Which is not to say that an alien on Earth couldn't be superhuman in various ways. A creature from a high-gravity world would indeed be tremendously strong compared to ordinary humans. It would also be able to jump around like an astronaut on the Moon. This is about the level of super-ness that Superman exhibited in his original incarnation, created by science fiction fans Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster.

But later comic writers kept upping Superman's power level, giving him the strength to lift battleships or skyscrapers, the ability to fly, nearly complete invulnerability, and, of course, "X-ray vision." To compensate, they also gave Superman a weakness to Kryptonite, a mineral from his home planet. Kryptonite meteors began landing on Earth with remarkable frequency.

Surprisingly, all this can actually be made to make sense scientifically. The key is the Kryptonite. For so many meteors from Krypton to land on Earth, the lost planet's explosion must have filled this part of the Galaxy with debris. That means Krypton itself must have been extremely massive. Really extremely massive. How massive? Well, we assume it didn't collapse into a black hole, so the "planet" Krypton would have been a neutron star or quark star about four times the mass of the Sun.

Suddenly, it all makes sense. A humanoid like Superman capable of standing and walking on a neutron star would have to be made of degenerate matter himself. Now we understand why he's bulletproof -- he's effectively a single giant atomic nucleus shaped like an ace reporter. This also neatly explains his strength and even his flying ability. To a being used to conditions on the surface of a neutron star, it would be difficult to even notice terrestrial gravity. Neutronium eyes also explain how he can see x-rays.

This all works out quite well, except for one little problem:  Superman's weight. A man-sized blob of neutron-star matter would have a mass of about 100,000 tons. To such a being, the solid surface of the Earth would be like water -- just standing still he'd sink into anything, even hard rock. He couldn't even swim in rock, any more than a human can swim in air. He'd sink down to the core of the Earth and remain there, fighting a never-ending battle for truth and justice in the liquid iron.

So, to Clark Kent, alias Kal-El, in his comfortable refuge 4,000 miles below our feet, happy 70th birthday!

Mushroom Maniac

Here's a fascinating talk on how mushrooms and other fungi can Save The World. It's from the always-interesting TED series. This particular talk is by mycologist Paul Stamets, who is enthusiastic about fungi to the point of occasionally sounding like the villain in a horror movie.

Cool Tentacles

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is even now dissecting a 10 meter long colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) that was caught (and frozen) back in February 2007. They're working in a cold room and defrosting the squid in cold salt water to preserve it (and they're also dissecting a smaller specimen and a couple of merely giant squid (Architeuthis). You can follow along on their blog, and watch live on their SquidCam. They'll be working until April 30th, so have a peek.


Hat tip to Tam for the pointer!

Is That...A Dog Whistle?

Face it, you don't hear as well as you used to. Remember that high pitched whine the TV set used to make? It hasn't gone away -- you're just not hearing it anymore. Age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis, is a fact of life: after age 18, the sensory cells inside the ear start to slowly die off. Each of these cells translates sound waves from the outside environment into electrical impulses that can be understood by the brain. But each cell doesn't react to every possible sound. Instead, they're specific -- each cell only reacts to a narrow band of pitches, determined by its position inside the inner ear.  So when one of these receptor cells dies, the ear loses the ability to detect particular sounds. Typically, the high-pitched sounds go first.

Maureen McHugh found a site that lets you test the inevitable deterioration of your ears for yourself. It lets you test ultrasonic tones (as a prelude to downloading ultrasonic ringtones, natch), ranging from 8 kHz to 22.4 kHz. Typically, only people younger than 20 can hear the tones above 17 kHz. When I tried it out, I could hear up to 15.8 kHz without any problems, but at 16.7 kHz I had to turn the volume all the way up to hear a faint high-pitched noise. The program declared that my hearing indicated that I was "in my 20's," so I started  feeling a little smug. Hearing as good as someone 10 years younger than me! Take that, time and decrepitude!  Then I made my daughter try it out.

For her, the 16.7 kHz pitch that I could barely hear was an agonizing, annoying, loud whine. We kept raising the pitch. She heard them all until we got to the freakishly high 21.1 kHz pitch, which she described as "very soft and hard to hear." Ah, youth. 

Another Tangled Bank

The 99th edition of the Tangled Bank is up at Greg Laden's Blog. It's got lots of reporting on peer-reviewed articles, as well as a little thing from us.

Happy Darwin Day

Today is the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. What better time to go out and learn something new about evolution? If you live in a community that’s hosting a Darwin Day event, your task is easy – you’re sure to learn something there. If your poor benighted town isn’t participating, don’t despair – there are plenty of places on the Internet devoted to evolution education.

For a good general overview, start at Understanding Evolution, an excellent educational site from the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education. Like any good educational site should be, Understanding Evolution is engaging and clearly written – which becomes unsurprising when you poke down in the credits and find that Carl Zimmer was one of the writers on the project.

If you like to learn with a little more multimedia, PBS still maintains the site for its 8-hour Evolution series, where you can find animations and short videos on the subject.

And if you want to go the scholarly route, last month Springer launched Evolution: Education and Outreach, a new journal devoted to teaching evolution. And (at least for now) it’s open access, so you don’t need a university position to check it out. And it'll help you prepare for next year's Darwin bicentennial!