Useless scientific factoid of the day: the ‘zombie palm’

Posted on June 16, 2008 by skullsinthestars

In my previous post, my friend Personal Demon asked the following question, when I referred to the ancient palm as ‘Lazarus’:

or it could be a MUMMY palm tree… or a ZOMBIE palm tree…

Why WHY don’t scientists ever think about the consequences of their actions?

As my fiancée pointed out, it can’t be a zombie palm tree because there is already a ‘zombie palm’, which by pure serendipity we stumbled across while wandering Daniel Stowe Gardens yesterday. Why is it a ‘zombie palm’? A brief description after the fold…

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Posted in General science | Leave a comment

Ancient palm tree resurrected!

Posted on June 16, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Via Science Magazine, we learn some fascinating news:  a group of biologists and botanists have managed to grow a palm tree from a 2000-year old seed!

In 1963, archaeologists excavating King Herod’s fortress near the Dead Sea uncovered a small number of date palm seeds.  The seeds waited 40 years more in storage until a research team decided to date them and, seemingly almost on a whim, plant one.  After 8 weeks, the ancient seed germinated into a date palm, named “Methuselah” after the oldest person in the Bible.

Even more intriguing is the possibility that the palm may represent a species which had officially gone extinct!  By the time of the Crusades, date palms had vanished from the Dead Sea region, and the missing palm may have been a distinct species.  (In which case, the regrown palm should probably be renamed “Lazarus“.)  Tests are ongoing to determine if the date palm is a distinct species.

Hmm… using science to recreate extinct species?  Don’t these people watch movies?  Don’t they realize that the plants will inevitably turn on their creators and attempt to eat Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern!!??

Posted in Science news | 2 Comments

Unconventional skydives: beach jumps!

Posted on June 15, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Over Memorial Day weekend, i went with a group of friends to a skydiving party (‘boogie’) at the Emerald Coast Skydiving Center, which is near the Gulf Coast. The fun of this particular boogie is the ability to skydive over the Gulf and land on the beach, right in front of the Flora-Bama Bar (which is on the coastal border between Florida and Alabama). My friend Terry did some nice videos of our jumps, and I post one of them below the fold!

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Posted in Sports, Travel | 1 Comment

Irony

Posted on June 13, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Last week I got a traffic ticket, and opted to do the ‘defensive driving course’ to save myself the insurance and license penalties.  The course was the usual thing: most accidents are rear-end collisions, caused by people distracted by, for instance, talking on cell phones.

On the way home, I was stopped at an intersection when my car was severely rear-ended by a guy who was distracted by his ringing cell phone.

Irony.

Bonus irony: I only have two payments left on my car.

Posted in ... the Hell? | 1 Comment

You-tube Generation

Posted on June 13, 2008 by cairochemist

I like to watch you-tube videos at work, am I alone?

There are so many great and not so great videos out there. I often show clips I find on-line in my classes to initiate class discussions. I had the idea of making our own little documentary a few weeks back. We posted it on You-tube this morning. I can’t take credit for it, since a very talented graduate student actually put it all together. Now that we have a first attempt at a “science documentary” I am interested to get your feedback. See what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nERw8d1xj4Q

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Optics basics: Polarization

Posted on June 11, 2008 by skullsinthestars

In a previous ‘basics’ post, I discussed the three major branches of optical science. My specialty, physical optics, involves the study of the wave properties of light. In particular, there are three major phenomena in physical optics: interference, diffraction, and polarization. We’ve talked about the first two of these in earlier posts, and it is time at last to say some words about polarization!

In essence, “polarization” is a fancy way of saying that light is a transverse wave; with that in mind, we begin with a brief discussion of transverse and longitudinal waves.

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Posted in Optics, Optics basics | 13 Comments

Richard Marsh’s The Goddess: A Demon

Posted on June 10, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I’ve been on a bit of a Richard Marsh kick lately (I already discussed his books The Beetle and The Joss), reading everything of his that’s available in print. He’s almost completely unknown today, even though he was a highly successful author in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

I’ve almost run out of his books available in hardcopy, and have now turned to Google books to find more of Marsh’s work. I recently finished reading his 1900 horror/mystery novel The Goddess: A Demon, and I give a summary and some impressions of the book after the fold…

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Posted in Horror | 4 Comments

Mathematicians on Mortgages

Posted on June 9, 2008 by skullsinthestars

In a nice little coincidence, recently two mathematics bloggers have decided to give a bit of a description of the subprime mortgage market crisis.  Neither is an economist, but that’s probably okay, even preferable, considering it was the economists who got us into this mess.

Ben Allen of Plektix has written a two-part discussion here and here, and

Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math, Bad Math has written a two-part discussion here and here.

All of these articles are worth a read!

Posted in Mathematics | 6 Comments

Lost divers shamelessly rip off ‘Lost’ and ‘Land of the Lost’!

Posted on June 8, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Last Thursday, a group of divers went missing on what was supposed to be a routine tour dive in Indonesia. On Saturday, all five were rescued from the island of Rinca near Komodo Island, having spent two days surviving on the abandoned island (a more British-centric description can be found here). They ate raw shellfish while waiting to be rescued, and all are in good condition, apart from some dehydration.

The story gets better, though, as anyone familiar with the native inhabitants of Komodo Island might suspect: they had to fend off a Komodo dragon that was showing a little too much interest in them!

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Posted in Animals, Science news | 1 Comment

“Aether Drag” and Moving Images: A different sort of “twin paradox”

Posted on June 7, 2008 by skullsinthestars

ResearchBlogging.org

Note: I’ve bumped this post in a probably futile attempt to get it aggregated by Research Blogging.

It’s a little challenging to blog about contemporary optics research, as much of the work being done, though interesting, is of an extremely technical nature and not of much excitement for a general blogging audience.

There are a few research groups out there, however, that work on fundamental optical problems which are conceptually simple but surprisingly subtle in their implications, and one such group, based in Glasgow, recently had a paper come out with the provocative title, “Aether Drag” and Moving Images.

The title is provocative because one hardly expects to see papers with the word ‘aether’ appearing in prestigious journals like Physical Review Letters anymore. ‘Aether’, of course, refers to the incorrect and obsolete idea that light is the vibration of a mysterious, ethereal mechanical substance which permeates all space. The term ‘aether drag’ is a historical holdover, and now is used to refer to the behavior of light fields in moving media. The Glasgow group has taken a fascinating new look at this phenomena, and I provide some details below the fold…
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Posted in Optics, Physics | 15 Comments