Science Made Cool

It All Fits Together

I may need to use all the subject tags on this one. It's got Giant Rocks From Space, DARPA mad scientists, killer robots, parasites, pirates -- oh, and it just may answer some of the Big Questions about life, the universe, and everything.

Weirdness fans may recall that last autumn a group of Somali pirates hijacked an Iranian vessel on the high seas, but then started becoming mysteriously sick. At the time, radiation sickness was suspected, but that was later ruled out.

Now a team of DARPA researchers have identified the culprit in the mystery illness: a parasite infection. Apparently the pirates (and some of the Iranian crew) show signs of a "systemic parasite infestation" similar to our old friend the Sacculina barnacle. Similar, but not identical: the pirates' infestation is an unknown type.

But that's not the weird part. The weird part is what was discovered when investigators used robots (see, I told you there'd be robots) to examine the possibly-radioactive cargo hold of the captured ship. The good news: it wasn't radioactive. The WEIRD news: the hold contained "4.1 tons of stone and iron, identified as meteoritic material from the Nubian desert."

So, to sum up: the pirates have an unknown brain-controlling parasite and a ship full of meteor fragments. It doesn't take H.G. frickin' Wells to see what this means.

They're here.

Martian Mud?

A while back I discussed the interesting new findings about methane in the Martian atmosphere. (For those joining us already in progress, the short version is that the amount of methane in the atmosphere of Mars periodically jumps, and nobody's sure why.)

Well, a couple of researchers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston were going over images of the Martian surface and noticed some odd-looking mounds on the northern lowlands of Mars. They look like "mud volcanoes" on Earth. Moreover, when viewed in infrared light, the mounds cool off at night as if they're sediment, not rock.

Terrestrial mud volcanoes emit large amounts of methane gas. Are the Martian mounds the source of the mysterious methane spikes? And if they are mud volcanoes, that means liquid water, the Holy Grail of astrobiology research. Are there microorganisms deep under the Martian surface? Maybe someone should go check.

It's ALIVE!

There's a long but interesting article in NewScientist about efforts underway to create artificial life. You can read the first part here and the second part here. I'll wait.

What I find interesting is how utterly dependent on existing biology this all is. They're creating "artificial life" by combining components derived ultimately from living things. It's like building a homemade clock by taking apart a bunch of clocks you got at the store and using parts from them.

I'd like to see a totally new approach based on pure chemistry and nanotechnology. Design from first principles -- pick some suitable long-chain molecule as an information-storing analog to DNA. Why a chain, even? Why not some carbon compound that forms large sheets so you can have whole "pages" of genetic information? Find ways to extract and store energy at the molecular level to power this artificial life. Maybe think "outside the box" about features of natural life: does your artificial life form have to be an enclosed cell? Does it need water as a solvent?

Such a project would be more than just cool. (It would, of course, be VERY cool.) By trying to create a living or quasi-living system without using the existing terrestrial-life toolbox, it would teach us a lot about what features of our own biology are necessary, as opposed to those which are historical accidents.

Anyone out there have a university-class chemistry lab, a dedicated corps of researchers, and a couple of billion dollars to throw at the project?

The Alien Question

There's an interesting article in New Scientist by Michael Hanlon, science editor of the Daily Mail. In it, Hanlon argues that NASA and other space agencies shouldn't treat the search for extraterrestrial life as the "crazy aunt in the attic" but rather make it their primary, openly acknowledged objective.

The equally interesting question, which Hanlon doesn't really address, is why the space agencies are so gun-shy about looking for aliens. I suspect there are two reasons.

The first is the hard lesson of experience. During the waves of flying saucer sightings in the 1950s, some scientists were drawn to the topic, curious about the possibility that there might be some genuine phenomenon behind the sightings. Unfortunately, the level of crackpotdom in the UFO field quickly got so high that any serious science got overwhelmed.

A significant example is the career of Dr. James E. McDonald, a physicist who advocated increased study of the UFO phenomenon. That advocacy ultimately destroyed him: when he testified before Congress about potential dangers of high-altitude supersonic airliners, a hostile congressman used his interest in "little green men" to question his credibility. McDonald, depressed and suffering personal problems, killed himself. Small wonder that few scientists want to risk getting branded a nut by supporting anything which could be so easily mocked.

The second is the "put up or shut up" problem. If NASA stakes the future of space exploration on the search for extraterrestrial life, that means that failure to find any could endanger the future of human spaceflight. This is sort of happening now -- does anyone doubt that we'd have retreated to low Earth orbit if there were real Martians and Venusians to go visit? I think basing the rationale for space exploration on a variety of reasons is ultimately more prudent.

Late Hits on Darwin: Getting It Wrong

I know, Darwin's bicentennial was last Thursday, but the guy's too big a topic to cover in one weekend, even a long weekend with no mail delivery to distract us with bills and colorful catalogs.

One interesting feature of the theory of evolution by natural selection is how closely it is linked to its originator. We don't refer to electrodynamics as "Maxwellism" or quantum mechanics as "Planckism." The only parallel -- and it is strikingly close -- is the way Albert Einstein came to personify the theory of general relativity. Both Einstein and Darwin are honored like intellectual saints by physicists and biologists respectively. Moreover, both men have seeped into the public discourse as iconic figures. But that's where they diverge. Einstein is a generally benevolent figure with his basset-hound eyes and unruly hair, a symbol of scientist as pacific sage, perfect fodder for bumper sticker slogans about war and technology. Darwin is the scientist as rebel, still a controversial figure after 200 years, and a villain to biblical literalists.

Unfortunately Darwin doesn't lend himself to good bumper sticker slogans. He lived and wrote in an era when sentences, as expressions of complete thoughts, were long and often exceedingly complex, containing many dependent and subordinate clauses, a great deal of punctuation, and frequently words of a polysyllabic nature, all organized according to the most formal strictures of grammar in the service of clarity rather than felicity of expression or brevity. In other words, Darwin didn't do sound-bites.

Which hasn't prevented people from trying to extract them from his work. Here is a piece by Marlowe Hood on bogus Darwin quotations, generally invented by people who admired him but didn't have buildings big enough to engrave a genuine Darwin quote over the portico.

Meanwhile, people who disagree with Darwin are no slouches at making up bogus quotes, either, as this story about Lady Hope and her imaginary deathbed conversation with the founder of evolution indicates. I was interested to note that her lie first saw the light of day at Northfield Academy, which is just a few miles as the Galapagos finch flies from Science Made Cool World Headquarters.

Finally, both his admirers and detractors have not only misquoted Darwin over the years, many of them have flat out misunderstood him. Arch-skeptic Michael Shermer describes how the terminology we use to express Darwinian ideas includes a great many semantic land-mines -- "natural selection" implies that someone or something is doing the selecting, while the idea of competition among species suggests to some people a ruthless, deadly battle. We even use the word "Darwinian" to describe life-or-death struggles.

Let's hope this year's frenzy of Darwin biographies and celebrations leaves everyone with a slightly better understanding of the man and his work, so that some of these misinterpretations and outright falsehoods can perhaps go extinct.

Marking Lamarck

Charles Darwin's bicentennial is coming up, and biologists all over the Web are getting ready for an orgy of Darwinania. We'll be participating, too. But amid all the love for the father of evolution by natural selection, let's spare some attention for his distinguished predecessor, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

Lamarck is the original hard-luck story of biology. He was born a French aristocrat, which meant he got to go off and get shot at in the service of the King, eventually suffering a permanent disability. Then France had a revolution and he wasn't an aristocrat anymore, just a scientist with a meager pension. He spent the next several decades struggling to make ends meet and still find time to write down his theories about the evolution of organisms. And since his death he's mostly been used as a strawman opponent for Charles Darwin in triumphalist accounts of the history of biology.

That's too bad, because M. Lamarck was a truly important thinker in the evolution (heh) of biological thought. He was an advocate of the idea that cells are the basic building blocks of living things, he was a genuine pioneer in the concept of environmental influences on living things, and he was an expert on the classification of invertebrates. He deserves better than to be known in his own right, rather than as a supporting character in the epic of Darwin. During the upcoming bicentennial celebrations, lift a glass of Picardy cider in memory of the other father of Evolution.

Evolution In Action

One perennial argument used by Creationists is "if evolution happens, why don't we ever see it?" In vain the biologist answers that we've only been systematically observing species for a couple of centuries, and speciation is something which normally takes place on geological timescales.

Well, now there's a better answer:  the hawthorn fly.  In the four centuries since apples were introduced to North America, one lineage of the native hawthorn fly adapted to the new opportunity and began laying its eggs on apples. The apple flies became genetically distinct from the more traditionalist hawthorn flies.

Better yet, a parasitic wasp which feeds on hawthorn fly larvae has now also diverged and adapted in response to this change in the fly's behavior. So that's potentially two new species originating in response to the introduction of apples to America. Evolution in action.

Most Disappointing Headline of 2009

This one, from Discovery Channel News:  Great Lakes Facing Wide Alien Species Invasion. Turns out they mean things like zebra mussels and blueback herring, not Martians or Triffids. Darn.

To be sure, invasive species are a big problem -- though interestingly one hears of it more in North America and Australia than in other continents. My suspicion is that since the human societies in North America and Australia are wealthy and trade a lot, there's more opportunity for species invasion. But is there also something Darwinian going on here? Are the organisms of the Europe-Asia-Africa island more competitive? Or is it simply that millennia of human activity and species transplanting in those lands have already eliminated the native species vulnerable to invasives?

There's also an oddly aesthetic component to this issue:  we worry over zebra mussels and lampreys in the Great Lakes because they clog pipes and kill fish we like. But we're also taking great pains to preserve the "invasive" species of honeybees in North America. Not that I'm complaining -- but we shouldn't fool ourselves that we're preserving the "natural" environment so much as we are weeding a garden. 

Quick Parasite Fix

Our Science Guru is busy with her real job(s), so here's the mighty Carl Zimmer with a lovely post about one of our favorite topics, brain-controlling parasites!

What's interesting is that the parasites are bad for their host fish only because they make them feel good. The hosts don't feel stress in situations where they probably should be a little worried -- which makes them easy prey for fish-hunting birds. Carl even specifically draws a parallel to Prozac. That raises an interesting question: in our drive to alleviate depression and anxiety in people (because of the real, measurable bad effects of those conditions) are we missing some potential hazard? Are unhappy people perhaps more attuned to danger?

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.