Skulls in the Stars

Time for your weekly dose of weird, courtesy of my Twitter #weirdscifacts!

501. July 27: Sand tiger shark: only shark known to adjust its buoyancy by burping! I don’t know about you, but I never thought to put the words “shark” and “burp” together.  (h/t @aliholden @natlaquarium)

502. July 28: Animating the dead — with soy sauce? A great explanation of a rather macabre Japanese delicacy, written by @NerdyChristie.

503. July 29: 1848: An execution, a painter, a hypnotist, and a question of whether a decapitated head remains aware.  The seems to have been a recurring interest in the physiological effects of decapitation through the 1700s and 1800s.

504. July 30: Drs using urbandictionary.com find man’s odd speech is Cockney slang not schiozophrenia.  h/t @discoveryplace

505. July 31: Infinity is weird… even in infinity mirrors!  Here I indulge in a little self-promotion, linking again to my post on the area and width of images in an infinity mirror.

506. Aug 01: Yesterday was anniversary of the worst shark attack in history — USS Indianapolis. The Indianapolis is known to most people because of the eerie description of the event by the shark hunter Quint in “Jaws”.  h/t @hectocotyli

507. Aug 02: Imagine if you could hear your own eyeballs moving – all the time.  (h/t @_ColinS_ and @laurenonizzle)

Here are the week’s #weirdscifacts from Twitter!  This marks the 500th weird fact I’ve done, as well!

494. July 20: A migration strategy for some snails: get eaten by birds? How did snails manage to spread across so many islands separated by vast seas?  It turns out that a surprising number can survive a passage through a bird’s digestive tract, suggesting they were eaten and pooped out at a new destination! (by @theatavism)

495. July 21: May earthquakes in Maine due to ground relaxing from weight of ice during last Ice Age!  During the Ice Age, massive sheets of ice a mile high stretched across Maine.  This compressed the ground, and since the ice has receded the ground has been expanding out, giving little tremors.

496. July 22: Sometimes, injured muscles grow back as … bones.  The origin of this odd complication to injury is only now being determined.  (h/t @erikmal)

497. July 23: Fishing spiders — hunt fish while walking on water!  I always find it particularly ghastly when arachnids or insects prey on “higher” animals.  (h/t @timrs2001)

498. July 24: Scientist Robert Cornish, who in 1934 worked on “raising the dead” — namely, dogs. A Time Magazine article written about the experiments at the time can be read here.  A “see saw” was used to circulate blood in the victims to be resurrected.

499. July 25: Coronal mass ejections from the sun can eject 220 billion lbs of material at 2 million mph! That is a *lot* of material!  Many of these ejections can happen every year.

500. July 26: The stone-age Tasaday tribe, “discovered” in 1971 — a complete hoax, authentic, or in between? The original 1971 Time Magazine article can be read online.

Back from Toronto, and working on some more posts.  In the meantime, here are the past week’s Twitter #weirdscifacts!

487. July 13: Half he, half she. A rare chimeric butterfly has been born in London.  (via @lucasbrowers)

488. July 14: Technicolour toad spotted after 87 years.

489. July 15: Lobsters that buzz?  (post by @doctorzen, h/t @jenlucpiquant)

490. July 16: Canadian physician Wilder Penfield, known for evoking vivid memories through direct brain stimulation.  (h/t to @Namnezia!)

491. July 17: French chemistry teacher and balloonist de Rozier became the 1st known air crash fatality in 1783. 

492. July 18: Apropos to recent journalistic scandals: the 1835 “great moon hoax“.  (via @beckyfh and @rmathematicus)

493. July 19: Temperatures on Mercury can range from -280 F to 800 F — in a single day.   Of course, a “single day” on Mercury is 58 earth days.  Nevertheless, the range of temperatures on Mercury is quite remarkable.

Currently out of town at a meeting in Toronto, as the following picture should hopefully demonstrate:

Nevertheless, the Twitter #weirdscifacts must go on!  Here are the previous week’s posted facts:

480. July 06: In 1875, William Lowthian Green, eventual Hawaiian Finance Minister, proposed shape of continents came from tetrahedral geometry.  Before the advent of continental drift and modern plate tectonics, this geometrical explanation for the arrangement of continents and oceans was seriously considered.  (h/t @nialldeacon)

481. July 07: The bizarre mathematical conundrum of Ulam’s Spiral.  Prime numbers, which superficially seem relatively random in their appearance in the integers, show surprising patterns with the proper arrangement. (h/t @jenlucpiquant)

482. July 08: First evidence of a fish using a tool??!! (via @carlzimmer)

483. July 09: How WW2 bombers inadvertently changed English weather.  So many bombers were traveling over Europe during the war that their contrails (vapor trails) may have changed the surface temperature.  The effect is small, and not certain, but interesting to contemplate.  (via @edyong209)

484. July 10: Scientists create touchable holograms? A number of people immediately (and sarcastically) noted what a boon this could be for the porn industry!

485. July 11: Canadian inventor Sandford Fleming developed standard time in 1876 after missing a train in Ireland.  My “welcome to Canada!” weird science fact!  Fleming missed a train due to a confusion between a.m. and p.m. on a train schedule.

486. July 12: Bad pine nuts leave behind bitter taste for weeks! (via @sciencegeist and @geernst ) This was also discussed in a great scicurious post!