Science Made Cool

Flying Jellyfish!

Back in 2007 we reported on the swimming blimp. Now a German outfit called Festo (I don't speak German, so I'm unclear if it's a company, an artists' collective, an educational organization, or a one-name supervillain planning to conquer the world) has created a flying robotic jellyfish. Video of it is here.

A tip of the jellyfish-shaped hat to David Szondy's Ephemeral Isle.

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!

Japanese Vesalius

The good folks over at Pink Tentacle have posted a wonderful set of early 19th Century Japanese anatomical drawings by the Kyoto physician Yasukazu Minagaki. They're great art, and great anatomy, rivalling the earlier Western work published by Andreas Vesalius. Go have a look.

Wired For It

Utopia is impossible. Humans will never live in a society of complete equality, tolerance, and cooperation. We're not wired for it.

Here's a study by NIMH which examined people's brains in a situation which put them into an arbitrary hierarchy. Certain parts of the forebrain were highly affected by where the players seemed to be in the game's imaginary hierarchy.

We are social animals. This is known. Our ancestors apparently lived in small troops, more or less the way our close relatives the chimps live today. Troops are intensely social, with constant jockeying for position. It may well be that our intelligent brains evolved in part to handle the demands of primate troop politics.

What does this mean for human society? It means we'll never reach some ideal stasis of equality and cooperation. Our brains are literally wired to make us compete socially and sexually. Life will always be fraught with tension, rivalries, and disagreements. Utopia is off the table.

And you know what? That's a good thing.

We Can Talk to the Aliens

Communication with non-human minds is an enduring topic in science fiction -- and in science, too. At the most basic level there's the question of how to make a message which aliens might actually be able to detect. Nowadays it's assumed to be some kind of radio signal, but in the past proposals included cool ideas like building a giant flaming Pythagorean Theorem in the Sahara desert.

But there's also the more troubling question of whether we can ever actually communicate with non-human minds. How much of our own intelligence is tied to our language and the way our brains are wired? Perhaps alien minds would be just so alien that communication just can't happen.

Happily, that may not be an issue. A story in New Scientist suggests that there may always be a basis for translation, simply because languages do ultimately describe the physical world. Since we and aliens do live in the same real universe, we would have terms and concepts in common. Marvin Minsky reaches the same conclusion in this essay, coming at it from the direction of mathematics.

In other words, while language may affect how we think about the world (and it probably doesn't), that still doesn't change the fact that there is a world out there, and different languages or methods of communication must ultimately be about that world.

Now if we could just find someone to talk to . . .

Friday Parasite: How is a sheep like a rat?

                  

They both get infected by microscopic parasitic protists that form cysts inside their tissues. The parasites aren't reproducing inside these tissues -- they're waiting for their host to get eaten by the parasite's final carnivorous host. But Sarcocystis tenella isn't the creepy brain-encysting behavior-changing parasite that Toxoplasma is to rats. Instead, it forms cysts inside muscle (especially in the heart and esophagus), and waits for the sheep to die of natural causes. Canines that scavenge off the dead sheep eat the S. tenella cysts with the meat and get infected.

Photograph by S.J. Upton, Kansas State University.

Churning Maelstrom Update

The Midwest got a good shaking-up early this morning when an earthquake estimated at magnitude 5.2 on the Richter scale struck southern Illinois. A couple of months ago we marked the anniversary of the great New Madrid earthquake of 1812, a far more powerful quake on the same fault complex. Happily, it seems that this morning's quake didn't cause any major damage or injuries, but it's likely that Transportation Department crews all over the Midwest are going to spend a busy weekend inspecting bridges.

Good News For Saturn

In a move of startling good sense, NASA has decided to extend the Cassini probe's ongoing mission to study Saturn and its moons. The project was slated to end this summer, but since Cassini is still chugging along in good condition, sending back data and pictures, and dramatically improving our knowledge of the Saturnian system, they've decided to let it run until 2010.

This is one of those bits of space program budget card tricks I honestly don't understand. Shouldn't every mission like this include some sort of "automatic extension as long as the probe keeps running" clause in the appropriation? When the Federal government can find money for every Congressman's pet pork-barrel project, surely learning about a whole planet is worth some bucks? Especially given that they've already paid for the expensive part -- building and launching the probe. Extending the mission basically means finding some quarters under the seat cushions to keep the grad students running the thing in ramen noodles and Jolt for another semester.

Rocket Racers Go!

The Rocket Racing League has announced their first scheduled exhibition race, on August 1-2 at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. 

Rocket Racing is an interesting offshoot of the burgeoning private space business. The reasoning goes like this:  to build popular support (and earn some extra money) for space rockets, the rocket jockeys make small manned craft for racing. Since people seem willing to spend more money on sports than on space, why not leverage your orbital-launch research budgets with some of that fat sports endorsement money?

So will rocket racing displace NASCAR? Hard to tell. Still -- anything fast, loud, and dangerous is bound to be popular.

Friday: PARASITE!

It's here! Not on a boat, not in a Customs inspection warehouse, not even on a truck stalled near Des Moines. PARASITES UNLEASHED is HERE!

Which means you can BUY IT!!

UPDATE: For all you folks that preordered through Amazon, this means that your games will be on their way soon. We shipped the Amazon order this morning, and it'll head out to you as soon as the USPS gets it to their warehouses. Thanks so much for being so patient through all the frustrating printing delays.