Back to the Future… in the Present?

Does anyone remember the Large Hadron Collider? Yeah, me neither. All I remember is that it was big, it was going to create black holes which would suck the Earth into another dimension and that it broke after its first run.

Only two of these things are true, by the way.

So apparently, the LHC is all fixed up and ready to go again in December. Good, right? I mean, I always wanted to know what my evil twin looked like (she’s probably way hotter than me- all evil twins are). Will sent me an NYT article on its restoration and… I think my brain just broke reading it.

In this article by Dennis Overbye, he writes:

“A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.”

I’m not a physicist but I read that to mean that scientists believe that the experiment they want to conduct is sabotaging their chances of conducting the experiment in the first place. Or that the results of an experiment in the future is sabotaging their current trials now.

Dr. Holger Bech Nielsen, who’s quoted in the article along with a Dr.Masao Ninomiya, states: “It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck.” They also blame the somewhat turbulent (could it be JINXED?!) past of the LHC on the Higgs boson. Uh, what's wrong with chalking things up to being a coincidence? I mean, things happen and sometimes the timing of certain events is eerie but... seriously? You might as well blame your last bad haircut (the one that just so happened to take place a day before a blind date) on the LHC too. "It's trying to sabotage my date!"

That’s my simplified version of the article and their claims. Science, especially physics, is full of weird, crazy theories that on the surface, sounds…. well, crazy. You dig a little deeper and it almost makes sense. I mean, did you hear the thing about the strings and eleven dimensions? Or that story about the undead cat in a box?

Anyway, read the article and have your mind explode- or laugh your ass off, whatever.

In the meantime, I’ll be outside waiting for the DeLorean DMC-12 to pick me up so I can save my mom from marrying Marty or Biff…

Weird Animal Day

Because I have nothing else I want to post about. Seriously- I could have written about Swine flu, the new HIV vaccine or climate change or something else more serious and relevant. But you know what? It’s Friday and when I mentioned the shark with a member on its head (no really, read further), everyone on this side of the office had a strong reaction.

So today’s fluff post brings you animal oddities for your viewing pleasure:

…Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?:

I came across an i09.com post on a new species of cartilaginous fish called chimaera that has a (rhymes with weenus) on its forehead. Right. New species- always cool. But I dug a little further and found that Chimaeras are cool little freaks of nature. They’re distantly related to sharks but unlike sharks, male chimaeras have retractable sexual appendages on their foreheads.

Above is an image of the Hydrolagus melanophasma- the new species. I couldn’t find a picture of a Chimaera with the retractable, um, member but you can search for one yourself with a nifty thing called the Intertubes.

…His Friends Call Him Hop:

Uh, yeah. This one is pretty self explanatory. The backstory is that an old woman in Suining, a region in China found a snake “clinging” to her wall. I’m not exactly sure how anything could “cling” to a wall with one foot and no Gecko-like fingers but whatever.

Check out the rest of the pictures from the  Unbelievable Stuff blog and be horrified. I’m trying to figure out if it really is possible for a snake to grow a freaking FOOT- yes, there are mutations but dude. It’s a snake with a foot. It’s not another head (which is a rather common mutation… common in the loosest sense of the word) or another tail, but a foot. As in, a feature the animal does not have normally. Not trying to make the case for evolution here, but uh, clearly something was going in this snake’s past…

Anyway, I pose you fine readers with this question: Photoshopped or real?

…What I Wanted for my Fifth Birthday:

Last year in a nature preserve in Italy, a deer was born with a single horn on its forehead. Park officials named the deer “Unicorn”… which is pretty uncreative if you ask me. Personally, I would have named my unicorn (if mom had ever come through on the birthday, sheesh), Giggles.

 …You Thought Jaws was Scary?:

By now most of you have heard of the Anglerfish (another sea creature with a stylish forehead accessory) via the Discovery, Travel or Animal channels... or Finding Nemo. If you haven’t, Anglerfish are basically bony fishes with a fleshy, glowing “lure” on their foreheads to attract and catch prey (similar to the method of fishing called angling).  Note that only the females have this accessory.

It’s not a very big fish (average size is about a foot) but OMG check out the freakshow of a thing this fish calls a face:

Not something you’d want to run into in a dark alley… underwater. But the cool thing about this fish is the way it mates.

Remember how I said only the females have that cool rod? Well, the males don’t need this adaptation because they’ve become almost like parasites when they mate. They are fed and cared for by the much larger female.

Once the male of the species finds a mate, he latches onto her with his sharp teeth.  The male Anglerfish then physically fuses his own body with that of the female’s own. Their bloodstreams fuse as well… and everything else pretty much. He loses his eyes and all of his internal organs except for  the testes, and remains there for the rest of his life.

The female fishes have permanent mates and can/will carry as many as ten males on their bodies. The average is about five or six though.

What a lazy bum the male Angler is, right? But consider this: when mature, the male's digestive system shuts down, rendering him unable to feed independently. So he has to find a mate or else he dies.

Anyway, that’s it from me. Have a great weekend, folks!

There’s something in my eye…

…like my tooth.

Seriously, file this under WTF?

A woman who’s been blind for 9 years is now able to see with one eye after her doctors inserted her tooth into an eye socket. Nope, this isn’t science fiction (although, yeah, The Corinthian comes to mind) but like, something that happened over Labor Day.

The woman suffered from damaged corneas but was able to regain her sight after a procedure in which surgeons removed one of her teeth, drilled a hole in it, inserted a lens and used it as a living scaffold.

The procedure took over six months and the steps were pretty, uh, eye-opening (bad pun is bad):

• The woman’s doctors took her eyetooth (seriously, I did not make that up), shaved it flat and drilled a hole in it
• An acrylic lens was inserted in the hole
• It was then implanted under in the skin in the woman’s cheek with the intention to leave it there for a few months so that the combination could *grow* together
• The woman developed an infection so the tooth had to be removed
• It was implanted in a pouch in her upper chest
• After a month, a patch of skin was removed from the inside of the woman’s cheek and placed over her cornea
• Two months later, the tooth/lens combo was inserted into the woman’s eye

It’s much more involved than I described it but yeah. Bottom line: the woman can see through her tooth.

The best part is the quote from one her doctors:

For now, he won't try to fix Thornton's other eye.

``We're keeping it as a spare tire. If something goes wrong with the first eye, we can do the other. That way she will always have a chance at vision -- as long as she takes care of her teeth.''

Ain’t science grand?

Lions and tigers and... Nepenthes attenboroughii? Oh. My.

This past weekend, I went camping in California (right outside Saratoga) and all I could think of, outside of EwNature! and OMG I don’t have 3G? was-  there sure are a lot of trees out here. Like seriously, lots of green stuff all around me. Several of my friends warned me about bears and other dangerous animals that could potentially eat me (deer, for example) but I came across an entry from i09.com that talked about mammal-eating plants. These plants were found in the Philippines, the land of my birth.

 

Right now, the plants are limited to eating insects and small rodents but it’s easy to imagine a situation in the future going down as such:

Tim: Hey Todd, have you seen Kristin, our little 4’11” friend who hates nature but joined us on our camping adventure anyway?

Todd: No I have not, Tim. I believe she walked off by herself in that direction though.

Tim: Hey, check out that freaky looking plant. Looks like a giant fleshy green plant pocket.

Todd: Yes, a 4 ‘11” sized fleshy green plant pocket.

Tim: Oh. No.

Todd: ...

So just a few quick science tidbit for you kids today:

• The plants mentioned in the i09.com article are called Nepenthes attenboroughii (after David Attenborough, oddly enough) and are found in the highlands of the central Philippines
• It’s a ‘pitcher plant’ – a carnivorous plant with a prey-trapping mechanism featuring a deep cavity (like a pitcher, you think?) filled with liquid (called phytotelmata)
• An insect that enters a pitcher plant is usually lured by nectar or colors... or by its wonderful singing voice.
• Once an insect (rodent or very small person) hops into a pitcher plant, it can’t get out- some plants have grooved sides, some have, uh, slimy sides and some have bristles... or all three.
• The trapped insect is drowned in the phytotelmata at the bottom of the pitcher and its body is eventually... dissolved.

Now for the brilliant tie-in to PR...

 ...oh, my apologies. Is that my phone ringing? I have to go... get that. Right now.

 (Have a good weekend!)

Getting something stuck in your head- literally

Ever heard of the earwig syndrome? According to urbandictionary.com, an earwig is a “ridiculously catchy song that gets stuck in your head, whether you like it or not.” Imagine getting Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” song stuck in your head for a day and you’ll see (hear) how painful an earwig can be.

But, um, recently I discovered earwigs really aren't that bad.

Imagine getting something stuck in your head... that eventually starts controlling your behavior, sucks you dry of nutrients, kills you and then bursts out of your dead body to spread its spores. I came across a fungus named Cordyceps that does just that- to insects. It’s an endoparasitoid, which is a fancy way of saying it gets inside of you and does really nasty stuff. One of my favorite authors/bloggers, Carl Zimmer, wrote about the fungus in detail at his blog, The Loom.

So to illustrate what happens to an insect infected with Cordyceps, allow me to introduce you to a little ant named Fred. Fred is scurrying happily on the jungle floor one day, eager to meet up with his ant friends when spores from this fungus penetrate his exoskeleton. These spores then work their way into Fred’s wee little body, where the fungus begins to grow. Instead of hanging out and partying with the rest of his ant homies, he climbs up a plant to a very specific point and hangs on tight (with his jaws). Stuff happens, Fred dies and then Cordyceps grows a long stalk that pops out of the now dead!Fred’s body. It then tries to infect dead!Fred’s insect friends below him by "showering" spores down on them.

 Check out the video below. If David Attenborough narrates something about it, then it must be true. And cool.

 Seriously though, how creeptastic is that?

I was going to tie Cordyceps with viral marketing because really, isn’t the goal of going “viral” to “infect” people and change their behavior (*cough* just like this fungus *cough*). But that would have been too obvious, don’t you think? I was going to wax poetic about the parallels of parasites and viral campaigns, lessons PR people can learn from the animal kingdom and deep thoughts by Jack Handy but you know what? No.

I wanted to tell the world about this fungus because it was damn cool.

And with that, I hope everyone has a great weekend!

(Credit to Youtube for the video and to Carl Zimmer for his article and for being a bad ass)