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Science
Over the Edge
A
Roundup of Strange Science for the Month
Applet credit:
Ed Hobbs
January
2013
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In the
News:
 Boys Find Mastodon Bone Behind Backyard - Two boys,
looking for crayfish in a branch of the Clinton River near
Shelby Township, Michigan, found a mastodon instead. Well,
not a whole mastodon, but a 13,000 year-old bone from the
spinal column of the extinct elephant-like creature. Eric
Stamatin and Andrew Gainariu, both 11, at first thought
the object was a rock, but then noticed a hole in it and
then conjectured that it might be a dinosaur bone. They
took it to Eric's home where his mother thought it might
be part of a cow. It sat on a shelf since the June discovery
until she recently sent an email describing the object to
John Zawiskie, a geologist and paleontologist at the Cranbrook
Institute of Science. He identified it as a specialized
part of a mastodon called an "axis." Mastodon's have been
extinct in the region for about 10,000 years. The boys are
not exactly sure what they will do with the bone in the
long run, but Eric took it into school where it was the
"coolest" show-and-tell item anyone's ever brought to sixth
grade.
Early Andersen Fairy Tale Found - Historians have
found what they believe is the first fairy tale written
by renowned author Hans Christian Andersen. The ink-written
manuscript was found by Danish researcher Esben Brage at
the bottom of an archive box. The story, titled The Tallow
Candle, has been dated to the mid-1820's when Andersen
was a teenager. The document is dedicated "To Madam Bunkeflod
from her devoted H.C. Andersen." Bunkeflod was a neighbor
of the young Andersen who often loaned him books from her
library. The story, about a neglected and dirty tallow candle,
is not up to the level of Andersen's later works, but shows
researchers that the author had an early interest in writing
fairy tales at least a decade before his career as a published
author began in 1835. In total Andersen wrote 160 stories
including classic like The Ugly Duckling and The
Little Mermaid.
Can We Tell If We are Living in a Computer Simulation?
- The idea that the universe we live in may actually
be a computer simulation has been bandied about for a while
now by such notables as British philosopher Nick Bostrom
(See "Are
We All Just Living in a Video Game"). Now a group
of scientists have suggested a test that might reveal if
this is true. Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi and Martin
J. Savage of the University of Washington have suggested
in a recent paper that if our universe is simulated on a
lattice (a form of computer simulation) we may be able to
detect it by finding a limitation in the energy of cosmic
rays. They would tend to move diagonally across the model
universe and not interact equally in all directions, as
they should if we are actually in a real world instead of
a computer world. The scientists didn't do a test that would
actually detect this, and even if it was done all other
causes would have to be ruled out before we could conclude
that we are really living in The Matrix.
Clever Nanoparticles Deliver Drugs in Disguise -
Researchers at the Methodist Hospital System Research Institute
in Houston have found a sneaky way to deliver drugs targeted
a certain types of tissue and avoid interference by the
body's immune system. Nanoparticles, bits of material smaller
than cells that carry a dose of drugs inside them have been
one of the most promising ways of getting medicine in the
body. These foreign objects, however, are usually attacked
by the body's immune system before they get to right body
tissues. As an experiment, scientists tried wrapping the
nanoparticles in the membrane normally worn by a white blood
cell. Because white blood cells are part of the immune system
the nanoparticles get ignored. As an extra bonus since certain
white blood cells use their membranes to target specific
tissues, picking the right membrane for the nanoparticle
can also get it to where it needs to go inside the body.
Asteroid Will Miss Earth - Asteroid 2011 AG5, which
will pass close by the Earth in 2040, is no longer considered
a threat to our planet. The 460 feet (140m) chunk of rock
would have created a 100 megaton explosion (twice as powerful
as the biggest H-bomb ever set off) if it had collided with
the Earth. New measurements of the asteroid's orbit made
in October 2012 by the Gemini 8-meter telescope in Mauna
Kea, Hawaii, now show that it will not come closer than
double the distance to the moon (553,000 miles). "An analysis
of the new data conducted by NASA's Near-Earth Object Program
Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California,
shows that the risk of collision in 2040 has been eliminated,"
NASA said in an announcement.
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Science Quote of the Month - "Science
can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and
outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain
necessary." - Albert Einstein
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What's
New at the Museum:
The Lost Porcelain Pagoda - "The
best contrived and noblest structure of all the East," said
theFrench mathematician, Le Comte, when he saw it. This
19th century visitor to China was referring to the astonishing
Tower of Najing, a wondrous temple that today is gone. >
Full Story
Mysterious Picture of the Month - What
is this this?
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Ask
the Curator:
Teleportation - Since scientists are able
to teleport light particles, could we use this teleportation
method to travel in space rather than a propulsion based
rockets? - Christal
When we talk
about teleportation what most people think about is Star
Trek. In this 1960's SciFi classic (as well as in the
new movie reboots) Captain Kirk was able to hop onto a little
pad and Scotty would beam him down from the Enterprise to
the planet below in a couple of seconds. This allowed the
Captain to avoid the trouble of climbing into a small "shuttlecraft"
and to take an hour or so ride down to reach the surface.
(More importantly it saved the show's producers money and
kept the pace of the story fast).
This scenario
is probably the one most people think about when they hear
that scientists are teleporting photons (bits of energy)
around: A photon gets plopped onto a pad on one side of
the lab, a switch is thrown and the same photon suddenly
appears on the other side of the lab.
That isn't quite
what is happening, however. What the scientists are teleporting
are the physical properties of the photon, not the photon
itself. They exploit quantum mechanics (specifically something
called "entanglement") to "read" the photon and transmit
the properties to another photon on the other side of the
lab and give it the same state as the original. Since you
can't tell the replica apart from the original (whose state
was destroyed in the process) for all practical purposes
the photon has been "teleported."
Being able to
do this is a very powerful technique that can be used in
quantum computing and we will probably eventually get ultrafast
computers out of it. However, it isn't clear that the same
process could be used for transporting solid objects. Scientists
have been able to teleport a single atom, but a human consists
of about a trillion, trillion atoms, which makes the problem
of teleporting them about a trillion, trillion times more
difficult. Some scientists think we might be able to pull
off teleporting something as complicated as a virus by the
end of the century, but even that may just be wishful thinking.
And if we were
actually able to teleport a human, it would raise some interesting
ethical questions. If a teleport machine works not by moving
the actual atoms that make up a person, but just recreating
the person's structure with new atoms, have we transported
the person or just made a duplicate? (The duplicate would
think it was the original because it would have all the
same thoughts and memories.) Also, if the original person
is destroyed in the process, have we just murdered him,
despite creating a duplicate in another location?
The idea that
you could switch out all the atoms in a person and still
have the same person isn't just a hypothetical situation
either. Studies at the Oak Ridge Atomic Research Center
found that 98% of the atoms in our body are replaced with
new ones each year. So in essence we are all undergoing
a slow teleportation and getting new bodies (though the
structure still remains the same, so we still age - sorry).
This raises an interesting question however. Are we actually
the same people we were a year ago, or just duplicates with
all the same memories?
There are also
some theological concerns with teleportation too. Some people
believe that humans have a "spirit." If a person we teleported,
would that "spirit" automatically jump to the duplicate
person?
Finally, suppose
that the original person wasn't destroyed and you wound
up with two of them? Who is the original if both of them
are exactly the same? Which one gets to go home to their
spouse and kids?
For some interesting
SciFi fiction on this dilemma check out Think Like a
Dinosaur a novelette written by James Patrick Kelly
and later turned into an episode on the seventh season of
The Outer Limits (2000). It available to watch on
Hulu for free.
Have a question?
Click here to send it to us.
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History:
The Fortean Society - January of 1931 marks
the founding of the Fortean Society. The Society, which
took its name from Charles Fort, a writer who chronicled
reports of unexplained phenomena, operated for 29 years
and published the Fortean Society Magazine (retitled
Doubt in 1944). Despite the organization being named
for him, Fort had little interest in the society, or its
founder Tiffany Thayer, and refused to be associated with
it. Thayer, for his part, used the society to support his
odd personal social crusades which did not always endear
himself to the rest of the membership. He was also widely
criticized by his own membership for allowing the most outlandish
cranks to author articles in the magazine. When Thayer died
in 1959, his widow decided to formally disband the society
the next year.
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In the
Sky:
Quadrantids - Catch the Quadrantids meteor shower
the first week of the month. The shower will peak on the
nights of January 3rd and 4th with the best viewing from
a dark location after midnight. The shooting stars will
appear to be coming from the constellation Bootes. The name
comes from the constellation Quadrans Muralis, which
is now considered part of Boötes. The shower was first noticed
by Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers about 500 years
ago.
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Observed:
Extraterrestrial Cemetery in Mexico? - Archaeologists
digging near Mexico's Sonora desert have found a graveyard
seemingly filled with what looks like extraterrestrial visitors
with elongated skulls and strange teeth. However, a closer
inspection shows that the site is actually a burial ground
for a Mesoamerican culture that practiced "Cranial deformation:"
the squeezing and binding of the skulls starting around
age 12 that changed the shape of the head. Although such
cranial deformation has been found in other places, the
site in Sonora is the most northern location where it has
been discovered. While some have suggested that the skulls
are from aliens or a human/alien hybrid, DNA tests done
on previously discovered remains with cranial deformation
have shown them to be completely human.
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On
the Tube:
Please
check local listing for area outside of North America.
Nova: Doomsday Volcanoe - Could the explosion of Iceland's ticking time bombs cause cold and
famine worldwide? On
PBS: January 2 at 9 pm; ET/PT.
Nova: Decoding Neanderthals - Shared DNA reveals a deep connection with our long-vanished human cousins. On PBS: January
9 at 9 pm; ET/PT.
Nova: Ice Age Death Trap - Scientists race to uncover a site in the Rockies packed with fossil
mammoths and other extinct ice age beasts. On PBS: January
16 at 9 pm; ET/PT
Nova: Who Killed Lindbergh's Baby? - Expert investigators reexamine one of the greatest murder mysteries
of all time. On PBS: January
30 at 9 pm; ET/PT
Mysteries
of the Deep - Explore the most beguiling parts of the sea, the very depths which have
never been seen and which we know very little about. On
The Science Channel: Jan 2nd 7:00am; ET/PT.
Prophets
of Science Fiction: Jules Verne - Jules Verne is the ultimate futurist, with a legacy of sci-fi adventure
stories predicting everything from fuel cell technology
to viral advertising. The extraordinary voyages of Jules
Verne span from the center of the Earth to the surface of
the Moon. On The Science Channel: Jan 6th 7:00am; ET/PT.
Ancient
Aliens: Aliens and Mega-Disasters - There are numerous historical, religious and mythic accounts of ancient
civilizations being wiped out by volcanoes, earthquakes,
floods, and meteors. Did god, or nature bring about such
disasters? Or is it possible that celestial beings had a
hand in the ancient world's catastrophic disasters? On The
History Channel: Jan 8th 10PM; ET/PT.
A New
Age of Exploration: National Geographic at 125: - Like characters from science fiction, humans are shattering boundaries
long considered unbreakable. We are exploring the deepest,
darkest regions of the planet as well as the edges of the
known universe. We're morphing with machines and eradicating
disease. Meet the trailblazers who are working on the frontiers
of exploration and innovation. On The National Geographic Channel: Jan 8th, 8PM & 10PM, ET/PT.
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LGM:
LGM
Archive 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008, 2009,
2010, 2011,
2012,
2013
Copyright Lee Krystek 2012. All Rights Reserved.
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