The Last Word On Nothing

Returning to my roots

By: Christie Aschwanden | July 5, 2013

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of spending a few days at a place that nurtured my interest in science. The Mountain Research Station was where I conducted my first independent research project (funded by an REU grant from the NSF). As I’ve written previously, my experience studying the evolution of an alpine plant’s reproductive strategy was hugely influential. It taught me how science is done and introduced me to the highs and lows of the scientist’s pursuit. Most importantly, it gave me an opportunity to take a project from conception to completion. My advisor, Pam Diggle, gave me a chance to present my research at a scientific meeting and publish the results in a well-respected journal.

They say you can’t go home again, and it’s true that the place feels different. The station itself has hardly changed. Sure, there’s a new classroom and lodge, but the Megaron still has a dance floor and a pingpong table, and, except for the computer lab, the Marr Lab remains much like it was when I worked there in the early 1990’s. It’s the landscape that’s shifted. Continue reading →

Science Writer Stares Out Window

By: Ann Finkbeiner | July 4, 2013

Why are the clouds moving so fast? Is the wind that’s pushing the clouds faster than the wind that’s blowing the trees? I remember, back when I lived in tornado country, hearing that when the winds aloft and the winds on the ground were moving in different directions, a tornado could form. Was that true? Why don’t I know that?

What should I write about for an LWON post on the Fourth of July? How did those guys, Washington and Adams and Jefferson, think they’d ever get away with declaring independence? Did they really expect Mother England wouldn’t smack them down? Did they really think they could make a living out on their own? Why don’t I know that?

Or should I write about fireworks? What is it about fireworks that makes people think “JOY!” rather than “DUCK!”? the rise into the sky like Gothic arches, maybe? Why have people been celebrating with fireworks for so long – seventh century, Wikipedia says? Fireworks’ different colors are caused by compounds made of certain elements – that’s sweetly right, isn’t it? if you want blue, go copper. Are the element colors in fireworks the same as the element colors in atoms that astronomers use to figure out what stars are made of? what the sun is made of? Why don’t I know that?

Speaking of sun colors, I saw a double rainbow the other day. Part of its doubleness was an indisputable second rainbow. But the first rainbow also seemed to repeat itself, ROY G. BIV — that is, once it got to violet, it started over with red and orange again. Is that even possible? Why don’t I know that? Continue reading →

Searching for the World’s Worst Glass of Water

By: Erik Vance | July 3, 2013

It takes a few days to adjust to life at 13,300 feet in Potosi, Bolivia. As soon as I touched down in the tiny airport, I remembered the time I climbed Mt. Whitney and got desperately sick in camp at 13,000 feet. Whitney is the highest point in the lower 48 at 14,500. To visit Bill Strosnider’s research sites here, I’ll have to go way above 15,000.

I was sent here by Rotarian Magazine for an assignment to look at mining discharge. Strosnider, an environmental engineering professor from Saint Francis University who studies water pollution here, takes me around to a few pools whose pH gets down to the mid twos (about equal with lemon juice or vinegar). Their water is a deeply disturbing orange and and any fish are long since dead. But on the last day Strosnider takes his students to another site, far from his standard research area, on a quest to find something very special. Continue reading →

AG: The Lucasian Throne

By: Ann Finkbeiner | July 2, 2013

1) The Lucasian throne is the Lucasian Chair, a funded and highly honored academic position at Cambridge University that is famous, partly because it’s currently held by Stephen Hawking and partly because its first holder was Isaac Newton. 2) Who, as you know, invented/discovered the law of gravity. Translating that equation up there, the force by which Mass #1 is attracted to Mass #2 depends on their distance, their radius, apart and on some entity called G. 3) G’s name is the gravitational constant, meaning it’s everywhere and always the same number.

4) Finding that number is not the job of theorists, like Newton, but of the “half-human creatures doing their bidding” (a quote from a physicist), the experimentalists. 5) Experimentalists have the dirty job of dealing with reality, in this case, the reality of trying to measure a small gravitational constant while stuck in the earth’s large gravitational field. “Just take the earth away,” say the theorists. 6) So finding G took experimentalists over a century — “Experimentalists, get your shit together,” says AG’s little mouseover.

7) G turns out to be tiny and experimentalists are still fussing about its details, measuring it to higher and tinier accuracies. 8) Next problem: finding how gravity actually does it. You know how light is carried by particles moving in waves? Gravity should follow the same plan but they can’t find the particles and they can’t find the waves. 9) Sorry, Newton. It’s not getting better, is it.

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http://abstrusegoose.com/510

A half-million-year-old horse? Yawn. Show me a warm summer day in San Francisco.

By: Erika Check Hayden | July 1, 2013

San Francisco is in the midst of a heat wave this week, and the ability to walk the summer streets without a parka is having a regrettable effect on our workforce. For once, the shorts-sporting tourists are properly dressed, and office workers are lingering alongside them on the downtown sidewalks, noticing that it actually feels more pleasant to be outside than in.

But the havoc that heat plays on our productivity is nothing compared to its catastrophic effects on DNA. Which is why, last week, when researchers announced that they had sequenced the oldest-ever genome of a living thing, scientists were almost blase about the feat. The genome in question came from a horse that was at least half a million years old, whose bones were found sticking out of the frozen Arctic ground in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Freezing DNA is the best way to protect it from decay, so to scientists in the ancient DNA field, sequencing the genome of very old, cold things is no longer all that noteworthy. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: Sally Adee | June 29, 2013

June 24 – 28

In light of all that happened this week, Erik looked at what the animal kingdom teaches us about being gay, and wonders why we insist on looking to the animal kingdom for lessons at all.

So that mermaids show was a hoax, but Roberta had some good news about real mermaids.

The next Big One — whether it’s sneeze-able bird flu or some horrible new bat disease that infects humans — will likely come to you courtesy of the best person you know, says Jessa.

I explained why I will never sit comfortably again.

And we reposted one of LWON’s classic posts, Cassie’s rumination on “Hubble moments.”

Watching your back

By: Sally Adee | June 28, 2013

Half a lifetime bent over peering into people’s mouths had left Martha Podleschak with spine problems.

One of the job requirements for a dentist is a constant, slightly sideways forward tilt. According to her x-ray technician, Podleschak’s particular leftward lean had compressed the discs between her vertebrae, causing a pattern of extreme wear on the left. By the time she was 40, the pain was constant and unbearable and forced her into early retirement. Desperate for relief, Podleschak tried several avenues. After yoga proved unsuccessful, she went to a chiropractor. He broke her neck.

She spent the next 18 months in a neck cast. When it came off, she was partially paralyzed and the pain was far worse. There was no position she could lie, sit or stand in that was not excruciating. The only way she could sleep was by injecting narcotics. The wheelchair that she’d probably be committed to for the rest of her life was on its way. Continue reading →

The True Mermaids

By: Roberta Kwok | June 27, 2013

One night in May, I idly watched a scene from a rerun of an Animal Planet show called Mermaids: The Body Found. An affable-looking biomechanics researcher named Stephen Pearsall was recounting an analysis of a mysterious marine mammal carcass. In what appeared to be a dramatic re-enactment, the camera zoomed in on torn animal tissue, then showed men in lab coats staring at a CT scan of the creature.

“I realized that this was like no tail we had ever seen before,” said Dr. Pearsall. “It became clear that this creature once walked on two legs. And there is only one animal that walks upright on two legs.”

Cut to another scientist, Rebecca Davis, who had studied the animal’s bones. “Hands,” she said. “They were hands.”

What the hell? I thought. Has Animal Planet found some fringe scientists who think they’ve discovered mermaids? Continue reading →