A review of The Species Seekers, by Richard Conniff
464 pages, W. W. Norton 2010

Last week brought word of several new discoveries in the animal kingdom: leaf-cutter bees in Texas, transparent fish in Brazil; mouse-like lemurs in Madagascar; spiders in Sri Lanka described (worrisomely, to this reader at least) as “face-sized.” It should hardly come as a surprise that novel forms of life continue to crop up. Scientists identify over 15,000 new species each year, making it highly likely that another fascinating critter will have been uncovered in the time it takes you to finish reading the morning newspaper.

And yet, no matter how many times we hear of such discoveries, each one still carries a thrill, a small feeling of delight. For who doesn’t enjoy it when another exotic member of our teeming menagerie is uncovered? This instinct is an old one; humans have long sought to compile encyclopedic knowledge of all creatures great and small. From Aristotle’s earliest biological sketches, to the richly illustrated bestiaries of the Middle Ages (which included fantastical sea monsters and unicorns drawn from apocryphal stories), to the sixteenth century zoological work of Swiss physician Conrad Gessner, progress was consistent if uneven up until Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus published his first rigorous taxonomical classifications in 1735. Full Review »

In January 1932, British physicist James Chadwick made a discovery that revolutionized the scientific conception of atomic structure. It had long been known that atoms were composed of positively-charged protons and negatively-charged electrons, but Chadwick had found the first direct evidence of something else: a neutral particle with no electrical charge of its own residing in the nucleus and containing slightly more mass than a proton. This mysterious counterweight had been previously theorized, but never before observed. Fittingly, Chadwick dubbed his find the “neutron.”

As it turns out, the neutron facilitates the energy-producing chain reactions that occur deep within stars. Stars are the veritable furnaces of the universe. They smash together prodigious amounts of hydrogen atoms in order to produce helium, creating thermonuclear energy in the process. A star can power itself for billions of years using this time-tested formula.

But eventually, an aging star’s supply of hydrogen fuel runs out. Desperate to sustain enough heat to push back against crushing gravitational pressure, it will begin fusing its helium atoms as a stopgap while its super-hot core contracts, almost as if entering a defensive crouch against the forces that would seek to tear it apart. Full Article »

On October 16, 1969, MIT professor Henry Melson Stommel, in characteristically straightforward fashion, wrote to the members of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research to propose an experiment of unprecedented scope: an international initiative that would definitively measure the general circulation of the Atlantic Ocean. The plan involved an eighty-square-mile patch of rough water, five overlapping equipment systems, round-the-clock air support, multiple research vessels, and data reported in real-time. Just months after men landed on the moon, the most ambitious marine science project to date was hatched. It came to be known as the Mid-Ocean Dynamic Experiment.

Well into the mid-twentieth century, conventional theory held that ocean currents were slow, deep, and relatively constant given the rotation of the earth. Stommel, however, suspected otherwise. As a research associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) during the 1940s and 1950s, he published widely on the fluid dynamics of deep-sea phenomena and found the ocean to be a violent and turbulent place, subject to the chaotic effects of swirling eddies, pressure zones, and uneven seafloor topography. He saw that the seas experienced non-linear “weather” patterns, similar to those in the atmosphere, and surmised that some of the tools and methods previously developed for meteorology could be appropriated for his work as well. Full Article »

Like a celestial nomad wandering through space, a newly discovered “lonely planet” has no star to call its own.

The meandering object, estimated to be up to seven times the size of Jupiter with similar gas-giant properties, does not orbit a sun and is believed to be the first observational evidence of a “free-floating” world. The discovery will provide astronomers with valuable clues about how orbit-less objects behave and further the search for other worlds like our own.

Free-floating objects are part of the broader search for extrasolar (“exo”) planets, a hunt that has accelerated recently thanks to advances in remote sensing technology and the launch of the Kepler space telescope in 2009. Full Article »

As the HMS Investigator edged through the frigid waters off Banks Island, Canada, in September 1851, the lookout offered this grim assessment:

Ice, Captain – nothing but ice as far as the eye can reach…
I do not see a spoonful of water, and yet we advance.

The ship was seeking the fabled Northwest Passage. Instead, like many of its predecessors, it was trapped by floes and abandoned.

One hundred sixty-one years later, mariners’ polar odds have improved dramatically. On September 16, Arctic ice cover reached an all-time low of 1.32 million square miles, eighteen percent below the 2007 record of 1.61 million square miles. Compared to the 1979 – 2000 average minimum (2.59 million square miles), this year’s summer ice is missing an area roughly eight times the size of California. Full Article »

Currency, electronic devices, and other frequently counterfeited items may soon be secured by “invisible ink” nano-barcodes.

The high-tech codes, created with fluorescent-dyed nanoparticles, are undetectable under normal lighting and can be sprayed on to any solid surface in just minutes.

Those who know where to look can authenticate the codes using a particular infrared laser, just as someone might use a smart phone to scan the black-and-white Quick Response (QR) codes commonly seen in print advertisements.

A 2006 U.S. Treasury report estimated the value of fake currency in circulation to be between $70 million and $200 million. U.S. Customs officials also recorded 24,172 counterfeit goods seizures from October 2010 through September 2011 (up 24 percent from the previous year) with a total value of $178.9 million. Consumer electronics made up 22 percent of those forgeries, trailed by footwear, pharmaceuticals, computer software, and luxury perfumes. Full Article »

Adventurous gardeners, take heart: a warming climate will mean greater planting flexibility in the years to come.

Average minimum temperatures across the United States have risen by as much as 2° F since 1970, according to new findings published in the journal Advances in Meteorology. This increase will push traditional planting zones higher than currently indicated on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2012 Plant Hardiness Zoning Map.

This could mean fig trees appearing in upstate New York and magnolias in northern Maine sooner rather than later. Minnesota’s largest garden center is currently advertising zone 5 Japanese Red Maples, despite most of the state rating zone 4 and below.

But experts warn that you may not want to run out and buy those coveted warm-weather specimens just yet. It can be dangerous to extrapolate into the future, says Christopher Daly, professor and director of the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University. He says that the map is painstakingly constructed to capture reliable long-term precedents, not short-term averages that might be misleading. Full Article »

The Olivetti Lettera 35 typewriter is a bona fide endangered species these days. The clunky clack-clacking word processor that filled Italian offices circa 1960 is now relegated to curio shops, hobbyist attics, and eBay. I hadn’t seen one in years, and yet as I enter a darkened corner of the M.I.T. Museum, one appeared before me like a phantom from thin air. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m coming around to holograms.

My brain knew, on some level, not to trust my lying eyes. It understood that what I’m seeing is actually a light interference pattern transposed on to a reflecting surface by a split laser beam. Yet the spectral image is so tantalizingly lifelike that it isn’t so hard to imagine an author’s fingers tapping away at its keys. A single page—crinkled, ink-stained, and the only “real” thing about the exhibit—rests above the ribbon spool; it contains the faded text of a Jorge Luis Borges poem. Borges would certainly recognize the motif; the plot of his 1942 story “Death and the Compass” turns on a cryptic page found in a murdered man’s typewriter.

Suffice to say, Dora Tass’s Perturbing Object casts a spooky spell. As mixed media art, it’s a commentary on modern day communication, a riff on the notion that words and ideas are transmitted via intangible means. As science, it’s an example of holography’s enduring power to entice the eye as it interacts with that most fickle substance, light. The artist has clearly gone to great (wave)lengths to calibrate the 3D image fidelity; this is no cheap parlor trick like Pepper’s Ghost, which uses lights and mirrors to create a hologram-like effect. Unlike two-dimensional media, each piece of a transmission hologram, no matter how small, contains the entire image. I tilt my head and the refraction contorts, adjusting to my glance. A half step to one side and it dissipates entirely. I play with other angles, searching for the precise point where my brain sees a typewriter instead of an empty wall.

Tass’s artwork is surrounded in the hall by holography displays from other international artists. Wandering through, I admire a bust of Aphrodite; a cascade of color-morphing leaves; a molten obelisk; and the most prominent display, a tight-lipped visage of Queen Elizabeth. But walking home, I keep returning to that typewriter; it takes up quiet residence in my thoughts. We think of holograms as vaguely futuristic (even though they’ve been around for the better part of six decades). But will they become the way that humans experience the recent past, too? Our cultural artifacts preserved in virtual verisimilitude? The bulkiness of an Olivetti transformed into pure light?