Skulls in the Stars

Still going strong on the #weirdscifacts!  Here are the past week’s selections that appeared on Twitter.

424. May 11: The bombardier beetle: sprays boiling acid at any predators that attack it! 

425. May 12: Anophthalmus hitleri — a blind cave beetle that was named in honor of Adolf Hitler! The beetle was discovered and named by a scientist in honor of Hitler’s election as Chancellor of Germany, long before his infamy.

426. May 13: Soviet Dr. I.I. Ivanov’s bizarre attempts c. 1926 to breed a human-ape hybrid. 

427. May 14: The basilisk lizard, aka the “Jesus lizard”, can walk on water!  A video of the lizard in action can be viewed here.

428. May 15: “Blue Peacock“, the 1950s nuclear landmine project that planned to use live chickens to keep warm.  This sounds quite absurd, but it was probably considered a very simple and practical solution.  As opposed to more high-tech or complicated methods that could be difficult to implement or fail in the field, here they could just throw a few chickens in a box and run for it!

429. May 16: Character in Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” based on “indifferent” scientist Irving Langmuir.  Vonnegut’s brother worked with Langmuir; Kurt had the impression that Langmuir was a scientist who was indifferent to the implications or consequences of his research.

430. May 17: 1938 execution/experiment of John Deering, in which his heartbeat was monitored during firing squad.  Deering, a perpetrator of multiple murders, agreed to have his heart monitored during his execution as a scientific experiment, thought to be the first of its kind.

Still going strong with the Twitter #weirdscifacts!  Here are this week’s facts.

417. May 04: Aerogel: lowest-density solid with density almost as low as air: 1.9 mg/cm^3 for gel, 1.2 mg/cm^3 for air!  Aerogel is an amazing substance — it is also incredibly heat-resistant and shows Rayleigh scattering just like the atmosphere, appearing blue when looking at it with reflected light and yellow when looking at it with transmitted light.  Small disks can be purchased, as I did the other day:

418. May 05: The Malaysian ant — a suicide bomber that explodes when threatened, covering predator with poison! I happened across a couple of lists of “animal weapons” recently, so we’ll see a number of these in the ‘facts!

419. May 06: The Pythagoras cup — fill it too much, and it will completely drain from the bottom!

420. May 07: Chemist Linus Pauling did not get his high school diploma until age 61 — after winning 2 Nobel Prizes.  Pauling had enough credits to go to college at age 15, but didn’t have the required courses to graduate from high school.  As one might expect from a groundbreaking-scientist-to-be, he simply skipped out on high school!  After getting his second Nobel, for peace, he was finally awarded the long-delayed diploma.

421. May 08: The horned lizard has an unusual defense weapon — ability to squirt blood from its eyes up to 5 ft! 

422. May 09: Biggest fossilized poo ever discovered was found under the future site of a Lloyds Bank branch!  I leave it to others to decide on the symbolism of the discovery…

422a. Bonus fact! Venn-like diagrams go back to the mystic Ramon Llull in the 1200s!  (via @blakestacey)

423. May 10: The strange obsession in the 1920s-1930s with the invention of “death rays” by multiple researchers.  Nikola Tesla was the most famous of these “death ray” enthusiasts, but a surprising number of folks claimed to have developed prototypes, though none ever were demonstrated to a scientific audience.  I looked up the history of “death rays” after stumbling upon a commercial product dubbed such — actually a powerful infrared laser.

Whenever I think I’m running out of weird science facts, I stumble across a set of bizarre things that refills my queue!  Anyway, here are this week’s Twitter #weirdscifacts!

410. Apr 27: S. Morse (1791-1872), an art professor, built the telegraph partly with art supplies. The telegraph was such an important and practical invention in its time, it is hard to conceive that it was first constructed by a professor of art!  Morse used art and print shop materials to make his first prototype.  (h/t @amhistorymuseum)

411. Apr 28: Armadillos can pass leprosy to humans?  It is important to note, though, that people shouldn’t panic and start slaughtering the poor animals; the risks are relatively low.

412. Apr 29: Kifuka, Africa: world record holder of lightning intensity, at 158 strikes per square km per year! 

413. Apr 30: The Tully Monster — the fossil that nobody knows quite what it is!  (classic @laelaps post!)

414. May 01: Amorphous metals and the “atomic trampoline“! On an atomic level, metals typically have a crystalline structure, with regularly-spaced atoms forming a periodic array.  An amorphous metal does not possess this long-range structure, and has a disordered arrangement of atoms.  Such an unusual state of metal can be produced by, among other methods, rapid cooling of the material from its molten state.  Such amorphous metals can have unusual properties, including the “bounciness” of ball bearings.

415. May 02: Stealing… ahem… “borrowing” another #weirdscifacts from Grand Illusions: solids of constant width!  What kind of three-dimensional solid object has the same width from every direction?  If you guessed “sphere”, you know the familiar answer, but it turns out there are irregularly-shaped objects that also have the same width from all directions!

416. May 03: The pistol shrimp, which hunts with a sonic weapon that creates temperatures comparable to the sun!

Here are the Twitter #weirdscifacts for the previous week!

403. Apr 20: 150 yrs ago today, the government gave muskets to the Smithsonian for protection against the Confederacy!  (h/t @smithsonian)

404. Apr 21: Largest genome belongs to plant Paris japonica — *50 times* larger than human!  (h/t @anthinpractice)

405. Apr 22: The “electric kiss”, Venus electrificata, a 1700s electricity demo concocted by G.M. Bose.  The link is to a German article on Bose, so I should summarize!  In short, Georg Matthias Bose ended up joining in the furor over electricity in the early 1700s, creating a number of attention-getting demonstrations.  Among these was the Venus electrificata, in which a woman standing on an electrically isolated platform gets charged up with static electricity.  A grounded paramour ends up getting a strong shock when he steals a kiss:

406. Apr 23: Can an elephant paint? Short answer: yes!  The link is to an old blog post of mine.  Though the demonstrations of elephants painting portraits are the result of careful guidance from their trainers, elephants do enjoy putting paint on canvas.  In fact, a number of zoos offer paintings for sale by their elephants! (I have one.)

407. Apr 24: Non-transitive dice: very unusual odds in dice-playing! (From an old blog post of mine.)

408. Apr 25: The spinthariscope — see atoms decay before your eyes!

409. Apr 26: The “light flash” phenomenon, in which astronaut’s eyes interact with cosmic rays. (Scroll down in this link for explanation.)