Skulls in the Stars

It’s that time of week again for Twitter #weirdscifacts!

585. Oct 19: Thanks to Georg Cantor, we know that some infinities are bigger than others!  The concept of “infinity” is a tricky business and very non-intuitive, in large part simply because none of us have any experience with infinity in our lives.  Cantor was the first to point out the unusual observation that the infinite set of real numbers is infinitely larger than the set of positive integers (1,2,3,…).  Cantor’s proof of this has been a lightning rod for mathematical cranks, who are constantly trying to prove him wrong (and failing).

586. Oct 20: Biologist Élie Metchnikoff (1845-1916) drank sour milk every day; he believed lactic acid prolongs life.  This is another case for the file of “intelligent scientists can still believe silly things”.

587. Oct 21: Female monkeys indulge in synchronised sex.  Wha? Why, you ask?  To thwart the alpha males, and allow every male a chance at reproductive success.  (h/t to @prancingpapio)

588. Oct 22: Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of UK, was trained as a chemist.  Science is probably one of the last things that comes to mind when thinking of Thatcher, but she not only trained in chemistry but worked under the eventual Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin.

589. Oct 23:  The unconventional anthropology of the Etoro, favoring homosexuality over hetero.  (Warning: somewhat graphic descriptions at the link!)  Tip o’ the hat to @mjrobbins.

590. Oct 24: Science buzz of the day: deep-sea giant (4-inch) “amoeba”! It’s not technically an amoeba, but it is a single-celled organism that is comparable in size to a person’s hand!  We tend to think of single-celled creatures as being necessarily small, but this is clearly not the case.  (The movie “The Blob” may one day turn out to be a documentary!)

591. Oct 25: Meet the tiny bumblebee bat: 2g, and only about an inch long!  Our impressions of the “normal” size of creatures can often be way off, as the giant “amoeba” of the last fact demonstrates.  On the other end of the scale, most of us would probably think of mammals as being no smaller than a mouse.  The bumblebee bat, however, is essentially the size of a human finger-joint! (via @ejwillingham and @scifri)

(Picture via TalkingScience)

Time for Twitter #weirdscifacts!  I found a few minutes at the Frontiers in Optics meeting to get the post up.

578. Oct 12: Via @DiscoverMag, Fish have been jumping on land for 150 million yrs & hiding it from the fossil record.  You might think that the flopping of a fish out of water is a simple act of desperation, but some species have used it as a genuine motion technique to escape water-bound predators.  Because this motion doesn’t leave tell-tale footprints, it wouldn’t appear in the fossil record, but has probably gone on for quite some time.

579. Oct 13: Check out Cox’s 1760s-era clock powered by atmospheric pressure and later related clocks. (Also, check out the Beverly Clock, which hasn’t been rewound since 1864!)  Such devices were originally thought to be true perpetual motion machines, but they in fact draw in energy from the atmosphere.

579a. Bonus #weirdscifacts via @plutoniumpage: The cheeseburger cook who witnessed the first atomic bomb explosion.  How cool is this?  Due to his position as the cook for the nuclear engineers, he was tipped off to see one of the most significant and frightening events in history.

580. Oct 14: Did you know there’s a technical term, “petrichor“, for the smell after it rains?  (h/t @discoveryplace)

581. Oct 15: Champollion (1790-1832), first translator of heiroglyphics, had mastered 12 languages by age 16 & given an academic talk. (Champollion was also an assistant professor by age 19.) Champollion isn’t the first young prodigy we’ve discussed in these facts, but his mastery of languages is mind-boggling.

582. Oct 16: The world’s longest continuously running experiment: the pitch drop experiment (84 yrs!).  There’s some controversy in calling it the “world’s longest continuously running experiment”, even though certified by Guinness: at least two biology-related experiments have been in existence far longer!  There is the Park Grass experiment, which has been running for 155 years, (h/t @BobOHara) and there is the Beal seed viability experiment, which has been running for 132 years (h/t @Glethnohistory)!

583. Oct 17: The blobfish. Enough said.  This fish is odd in both its appearance and its manner of buoyancy.

584. Oct 18: Islamic biologist al-Jahiz (781-869) allegedly died when books in his library toppled and crushed him.  Like many stories from that early era, it is possible that the story is a legend; however, it does seem to be widely accepted.

Right on schedule, here is the latest week’s crop of Twitter #weirdscifacts!

571. Oct 05: The most used & successful medicine of BAYERCorp. is not Aspirin – it’s Heroin. (h/t @rmathematicus)

572. Oct 06: The peacock spider — the male has great skills to impress the ladies!  The name “peacock spider” is quite accurate! I find these little fellas cute.  (video)

573. Oct 07: Sarcophagus sat in museum for yrs before owners realised it was ancient & valuable.  It was noted by a visiting archaeologist to be 1000 years older than previously thought and therefore far more valuable. The re-use of many items, including coffins, by the ancient Egyptians can muddy the identification of an object.  (via @Bennu)

574. Oct 08: The 47 sins of Isaac Newton, as recorded by himself.  It is easy to forget that, though Isaac Newton was one of the greatest physicists of all time and a founder of all modern physics, he was also a very pious man.  (post by @ptak)

575. Oct 09: Returning from the Moon, Apollo 11 astronauts had to fill out customs forms!  The forms themselves were mostly a joke, but there were serious concerns about the Moon trip that mirror the usual concerns of customs officials.  In particular, there were concerns that dangerous bacterial/viral life might exist on the Moon that could be brought back by the astronauts and contaminate the Earth.  (Think John Carpenter’s “The Thing”!) (h/t @kashfarooq)

576. Oct 10: Snails ship out on scrambled eggs.  Not only does the snail Janthina janthina float around on a raft of bubbles, but those bubbles evolved from the “nets” of goo the snail uses to secure its eggs.  (Via @miriamgoldste)

577. Oct 11: Actual 1965 patent: using centrifugal force to aid in childbirth.  If I were to start including crazy scientific patents in these “facts” posts, I would no doubt have an endless supply of bizarre contraptions to choose from!  This one stands out as a particularly odd technique for aiding childbirth that applies elementary physics.  The proposed device essentially spins the woman, “exit” first, to use centrifugal force to help swing the baby out.  Two immediate problems come to mind with this contraption.  First, you would have to spin the woman pretty darn fast to give a significant birthing force.  Second, that force would act on all of the woman; I would expect that the potential “bunching up” of internal organs might hinder the birth as much as help it.  (h/t @jenlucpiquant and @io9)

Update: diagram of device added below the fold!  It should be noted that the woman in the figure would have no problems reaching things on really tall shelves.

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