I won’t say too much about it, save that it tells the story of a scientist who’s obsessed with the speeding up of time as he gets older. It features the vocal talents of the actor David Cann and backing music by Mikey’s brother Benedict Please, and it won gazillions of awards last year, including the BAFTA for Best Short Animation and the top prize at the Imagine Science Film Festival, .

So find yourself a spare 9 minutes, hit the maximise button, sit back (but don’t fall off your chair), and soak up the animated loveliness.

If you repeat the word ‘fly’ for long enough it sounds like you’re saying ‘life’. This is of no help to Peter. His answers lie in the brain of a beetle.

The upside of this mishap, though, was that Trouvelot turned to astronomy and began to draw what he saw in the night sky. For some of his illustrations – the close-ups of the planets and the Moon, for example – Trouvelot used some of the most powerful telescopes available at the time, such as the 26″ refractor at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.. For others, like his depictions of the comet and the meteor shower, Trouvelot just drew what he observed with his naked eye.

In 1882, the artist published fifteen of his drawings in a book – the Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings Manual. Here are some of my favourites, starting off with a stunning aurora and a Cyclops-esque Jupiter:

The aurora borealis (Northern Lights), observed 1st March 1872

The planet Jupiter, observed 1st November 1880

The November Meteors (the Leonids), observed between midnight and 5:00 a.m. on the night of 13th-14th November 1868

A group of sunspots and veiled spots, observed 17th June 1875

A star cluster in the Hercules constellation, from a study made in June 1877

A close-up of the Moon’s Mare Humorum (“Sea of Moisture”), from a study made in 1875

The Great Comet of 1881, observed on the night of 25th-26th June at 1:30 a.m.

The complete set of images is available to view in the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Probably the most accessible track on the album, though, is “Cosmogony”, a hymn-like song about the birth of the universe, built around a beautiful, heart-rending melody. Each of its four verses describes a different version of the creation story: Native American, Sanskrit, Aboriginal, and then, finally, the scientific version:

“They say back then our universe wasn’t even there / Until a sudden bang / And then there was light, was sound, was matter / And it all became the world we know.”

Here’s a performance of the song recorded for Jools Holland last November. It’s slightly different to the album track, with some extra backing vocals provided by an all-female choir, and some marching percussion in the final verse. I defy anyone not to get at least a little bit emotional watching this:

For more science-themed music, click the image below to read an article based on my Songs of Science posts, written for the new issue of Guru magazine. There’s even an accompanying mixtape (well, a YouTube playlist anyway).

Each speck of light represents a single molecule that has passed through the grating. If the molecules obeyed the laws of classical physics – the laws that describe the motion of everyday, macroscopic objects – we’d see a pattern corresponding to the slits in the grating, as if we’d thrown a load of blackcurrants through some railings (as you do).

Instead, we see an interference pattern, even though the molecules go through the grating one by one. This can be explained by each molecule having its own wavefront which goes through all the slits at once – it’s a bit like a blackcurrant turning into a wave (of Ribena?), rippling through all the railings, and combining again into a blackcurrant as it hits the wall. Crazy, I know.

This phenomenon is called wave-particle duality, and this movie is the first time it’s been captured on camera for large molecules. As physicists carry out these kinds of experiments with larger and larger molecules, they’ll be able to understand more about the differences between the world we see around us and the strange, surreal world of atoms and molecules.

If you’re interested in finding out more, I wrote an article about this movie for physicsworld.com – click here to have a read.

The two-week event sees scientists being grilled by hundreds of schoolchildren around the country. The students are assigned to a zone (e.g. “Space Zone”, “Quantum Zone”, “Energy Zone”) in which they can send questions to five scientists, as well as taking part in live chats. During the second week, one scientist is voted off each day, and each zone’s winner receives 500 shiny pounds to spend on a science engagement project of their choice.

My job as moderator was to help manage the questions and make sure the live chats ran smoothly (at least, as smoothly as you’d expect when a class full of hyperactive schoolkids is let loose on the internet). For this event, there were eight zones, plus another six zones in a sister project running for the first time (I’m An Engineer…). This meant A LOT of questions and live chats. In fact, working on the questions was sometimes like painting the Forth Bridge – you’d put a batch through only for the students to send through 50 more.

But the sheer brilliance of the questions prevented this from ever getting boring. There were questions about flying pigs, questions about ethics, questions about juggling, questions about Super Mario, and lots of questions about bodily fluids. There were questions about whether or not the world is going to end (general verdict: probably not anytime soon), and questions about whether or not aliens exist (general verdict: possibly, but the universe is so big that we might never meet them).

And there were also some brilliantly unique questions that only kids could come up with – the sorts of questions that are simple and profound at the same time. Here are some of my favourites from the past two weeks (click on the images to read the scientists’ answers):

Is there a gene for liking or disliking marmite?

Where does time go?

Is it true you can die from a broken heart?

If a turtle loses his shell is he homeless or naked?

For more great questions, read this lovely blog post by Adam Stevens, winning scientist in the Space Zone and one half of the legendary Team Tash.

“The meteorite is a source of the light / And the meteor’s just what we see / And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.”

The only problem is that Joanna’s got meteorites and meteoroids mixed up. Meteoroids are small chunks of rock and debris in the Solar System. In other words, they’re the “source of the light” because they glow if they fall through a planet’s atmosphere. If a meteoroid reaches the Earth’s surface and survives impact, it becomes known as a meteorite – a dull stone, “devoid of fire”. A meteor is just the visible path of a meteoroid as it passes through a planet’s atmosphere (a shooting star), so she got that one right.

But does anyone really care about this little mix-up? Probably not. And in any case, a small amount of artistic license is quickly forgiven when the song’s as beautiful as this one.

Click here to read all of the previous “Songs of Science” posts.

A Pilot Fish, guided by its fishy co-pilots (credit: Kaitlin Beckett)

For the past five years, Kaitlin Beckett has been bringing this nightmarish ecosystem to life. Based in Melbourne, Kaitlin makes artwork that is inspired by anatomy and the natural world, but with a distinctly dark and surreal twist. I couldn’t resist posting up some of her work, so scroll down for a selection of these weird and wonderful beasties, as well as an interview with Kaitlin herself.

Say hello to the Beetle Walker (credit: Kaitlin Beckett)

Kaitlin, when did you begin your magnificent bestiary?

I started painting seriously about 5 years ago, though I’ve been drawing and sketching all my life. I’ve always loved watching nature documentaries and sci-fi films so my bestiary started to develop from these. I’ve also been collecting gas masks and goggles for a while now so these pop up on my creatures all the time.

What’s your usual process for creating the artworks?

I normally turn an idea around in my head for a while before I sketch it out. Sometimes once it’s sketched I’ll work on it straight away. I create larger sketches, test colours and composition, and once I’m happy I’ll transfer it to canvas and ink in the outline. I add the colour next with my airbrush and some hand painting, then there are several layers of ink splats, pastel and ink linework before it’s finished.

A wise old Samurai Tubfish (credit: Kaitlin Beckett)

Do you have any favourite artists? Terry Gilliam sprang to mind when I first saw your work…

I am a fan of Terry Gilliam! A few of my all time favourite artists are HR Giger, Beksinski, Escher, Mucha, Lempicka, Kahlo, Bacon and of course Dali…too many to name!

Although the creatures are quite fantastical, their anatomy is often very detailed and intricate. What is it that appeals to you about mixing the real and the imaginary?

I think it’s an artist’s job to share a bit of their imagination and to look deeper into things, to reimagine and reinterpret. While I appreciate the technical skill behind photorealistic art, I can’t get excited about paintings that look like photographs, unless there’s a twist or a surprise, or some element of fantasy or surrealism. My creatures have an almost cartoon-like look, though I adore fine detail and texture so I’m trying to combine these elements in my work.

The Longhorn Octopus…possibly quite friendly (credit: Kaitlin Beckett)

If you were a mad scientist for the day, which of your creatures would you bring to life?

Perhaps not the fell beasts – they would eat me! I’d perhaps like to hitch a ride in my Pilot Fish shark helicopter, and my Longhorn Octopus could possibly be friendly.

Finally, what are your plans for 2012?

I had a crazy year last year with a solo show plus a few big group shows so in 2012 I’m taking it easy and focusing on getting better at airbrushing and sculpture. I’m taking part in a joint show in September with a very talented artist (my beasts meet vigilantes!), so I’m looking forward to that.

Frigate Bird – one of Kaitlin’s first sculptures

Now that Kaitlin’s beginning to work on sculptures, maybe it won’t be too long before the Curious Bestiary gets its own zoo. Let’s just hope the cages are securely locked…

Visit Kaitlin Beckett’s Curious Bestiary here!

Please listen carefully. There is life on Europa. I repeat: there is life on Europa…like huge strands of wet seaweed, crawling along the ground…Imagine an oak tree…flattened out by gravity…Tendrils, stamens, waving feebly…”

Tendrils, stamens, waving feebly (credit: George L Smyth)

Professor Chang is stranded on Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. His air supply is rapidly running out and he’s got no chance of being rescued; all he can do is die with dignity and hope that somebody hears his final radio message.

“I’ve only two requests to make…When the taxonomists classify this creature, I hope they’ll name it after me. And – when the next ship comes home – ask them to take our bones back to China.”

Fiction becoming fact

If this sounds like science fiction, well, that’s because it is. This gloomy scenario takes place near the beginning of 2010: Odyssey Two, Arthur C. Clarke’s sequel to his most famous novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In Odyssey Two, Clarke imagines Europa to be teeming with extraterrestrial life, sustained by a liquid ocean beneath the moon’s surface. He was undoubtedly inspired by images sent back by the Voyager space probes during the late 1970s, which revealed Europa’s surface to be covered with a smooth shell of ice, raising the possibility of an underground watery ocean.

Europa has since become one of our Solar System’s most enigmatic bodies. Evidence now points to a huge ocean under its icy surface, possibly containing twice as much water as all of the Earth’s oceans combined. And where there’s water, life is often not too far away. Suddenly, Arthur C. Clarke’s story doesn’t seem quite so outlandish…

A hidden ocean

Most of what we know about Europa comes from the Galileo spacecraft, named after Galileo Galilei, the discoverer of Jupiter’s four largest moons: Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and, of course, Europa, which is about the same size as our own Moon. Launched by NASA in 1989, Galileo (the spacecraft, not the man) took six years to make the epic journey to Jupiter, and went on to spend eight years orbiting the gas giant and making a series of daring flybys past Jupiter’s moons.

Thanks to this mission, we now have some stunning close-up shots of Europa. Although hardly any craters mark the moon’s surface – a sign of its young age – dark lines crisscross the entire globe, like veins and arteries under a translucent skin. These fractures in Europa’s crust are a result of Jupiter’s immense gravitational pull on its delicate moon.

Europa in all its glory (credit: NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk)

Europa’s skin is also freckled with rough, jumbled regions of ice known as “chaos terrains”. In November last year, a team of US astronomers led by Britney Schmidt at the University of Texas proposed that these terrains are formed above huge underground lakes. When water trickles into cracks in the overlying ice, floating icebergs are created, like ice cubes bobbing in a glass of water. According to the researchers, chaotic regions are formed when this floating ice refreezes.

Another piece of evidence for Europa’s underground water comes from Galileo’s measurements of fluctuations in the magnetic field around Europa, pointing to the presence of some kind of conducting layer below the surface. The most likely candidate? A salty ocean!

Life on Europa?

In Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, Europa’s life forms are dumb, plant-like creatures that spend most of their lives rooted to the seabed. But if we could travel to the real Europa and peer under its glacial shell, what might we expect to discover?

“We’re not going to be finding little green men, unless they can hold their breath for an awfully long time,” says Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at University College London. “The ocean on Europa is different from Earth’s oceans in that it’s sealed by an ice layer, so it’s dark and there’s no possibility for photosynthesis or growing by sunlight.”

Life on Europa? (credit: Dave Gray for Guru Magazine)

This means that any life in Europa’s oceans – most likely simple microbes such as bacteria ­– needs to get energy from somewhere else. One possibility is hydrothermal vents on the seafloor that spew out heated water. We already know that these exist in the shadowy depths of Earth’s oceans, and that they provide a habitat for “anaerobic” microbes which are able to survive without oxygen. This has led astrobiologists to speculate that similar life might be found in Europa’s oceans.

Indeed, Lewis Dartnell believes that Europa may now have overtaken Mars as the most likely habitat for extraterrestrial life in our Solar System: “A long time ago, Mars was warm and wet, but it’s very cold and dry now,” says Dartnell. “Life on Mars may well have been driven to extinction, or only survive deep beneath the surface of the planet. On the other hand, the evidence from Europa is that it still has a wet environment, so there might be life on Europa today.”

What’s next?

The Galileo mission ended in 2003 when NASA sent the spacecraft on a kamikaze dive into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Galileo’s fuel supply was nearly depleted, and NASA was desperate not to contaminate precious Europa with earthly bacteria.

Our next close encounter with Europa will probably not be for another fifteen years, possibly even longer. One campaign still on the drawing board is the Europa Jupiter System Mission, originally planned as a joint NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) project and scheduled for launch in 2020. However, NASA has since pulled out of the project due to budget cuts, so ESA may now go it alone with the renamed Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer mission.

Whenever it happens, the next mission will give us an even closer glimpse of our Solar System’s most intriguing moon. One day, it may be possible to send a probe down to analyse Europa’s ice – perhaps even a nuclear-powered “cryobot” that can tunnel all the way to the moon’s inky ocean.

The cutest little cryobot (credit: Dave Gray for Guru Magazine)

And who knows what we might find down there. Arthur C. Clarke’s exotic creatures? Probably not. But simple life? A lot of scientists wouldn’t bet against it.

Further reading:

Greenberg, R (2008). Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon. Praxis/Springer.

Kivelson MG, Khurana KK, Russell CT, Volwerk M, Walker RJ, & Zimmer C (2000). Galileo magnetometer measurements: a stronger case for a subsurface ocean at Europa. Science, 289 (5483), 1340-3 PMID: 10958778

Schmidt BE, Blankenship DD, Patterson GW, & Schenk PM (2011). Active formation of ‘chaos terrain’ over shallow subsurface water on Europa. Nature, 479 (7374), 502-5 PMID: 22089135

No surprises about which platforms are currently dominating the market, but let’s spare a thought for poor old Commodore 64 and Amiga, who both experienced a dramatic fall from grace in the early 1990s.

Scientists attributed this collapse to a series of warm summers, which led to increased air temperatures and the formation of meltwater ponds on the shelf’s surface. This water flowed down through cracks in the ice, helping to lever it apart and bring about its downfall.

The Larsen B ice shelf, before (left) and after (right) its collapse in early 2002 (credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

The lovably eccentric band British Sea Power paid tribute to this defunct ice shelf on their 2005 album Open Season. “Oh Larsen B” features the glorious lyrics: “You’re fractured and cold but your heart is unbroken / My favourite foremost coastal Antarctic shelf / Oh Larsen B, oh you can fall on me / Oh Larsen B, desalinate the barren sea”.

And the music is equally glorious – one of British Sea Power’s trademark anthems, all buzzsaw guitars and breathy vocals. In fact, it’s probably the best love song to a collapsed ice shelf ever written…

Click here to read all of the previous “Songs of Science” posts.