Europa: Life in our Solar System?

2 Feb Europa: Life in our Solar System
This article first appeared in the February 2012 edition of an awesome new science magazine called Guru. You can download the magazine for free 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…”

Europing for a miracle

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… Continue reading →

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A very brief history of personal computing

22 Jan

Here’s a lovely little video (via Asymco)  showing the rise and fall of different personal computing platforms since 1975. On the vertical axis: number of units sold per year (note the log scale). On the horizontal axis: computing platform (in alphabetical order). Read more about the data analysis here.

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.

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Songs of Science #4: British Sea Power

20 Jan

In 2002, a huge chunk of the Larsen Ice Shelf – “Larsen B” – collapsed into the sea. In just over a month, an area the size of the US state Rhode Island vanished from the Antarctic Peninsula – the most dramatic ice shelf disintegration ever recorded.

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.

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When Google Doodles Scientists

13 Jan

Ever since 1998, Google has been brightening up its homepage with “Google doodles”, playfully customised logos which celebrate a current event or the birthday of a famous person. The first ever doodle was created when the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, attended the Burning Man festival and wanted to let Google users know that they were “out of office”.

Since then, the Google doodle has become a bit of a pop culture phenomenon. There have now been over 1,000 doodles, celebrating events ranging from the anniversary of the ice cream sundae to Freddie Mercury’s 65th Birthday (this one needs to be seen!).

A couple days ago, being the geek that I am, I got quite excited by a science-themed doodle – a strati-tastic version of the Google logo in celebration of Nicolas Steno, an important figure in modern geology.

So, noticing that Google keeps an archive of all of its doodles, I thought I’d find out which other scientists had been honoured by Google’s creative bods. Turns out there’s quite a lot… Continue reading →

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The Myth of the 27 Club

30 Dec

A few months ago, I turned 27. Had I been a famous musician, I may well have dreaded this moment and gone into hibernation for a year, because 27 is the age of the rock star death.

The membership list of the ’27 Club’ – those musicians who met an untimely end at the age of 27 – reads like a Who’s Who of influential rock stars: Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones…and so the list goes on. A rather morbid website dedicated to the phenomenon names many more, and this year saw the addition of another high-profile member: Amy Winehouse, who tragically died last July from alcohol poisoning.

Three members of the '27 Club' (l-r): Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse

So why do so many musicians seem to crash and burn at the age of 27? Is it all just a spooky coincidence, or do rock star deaths really group around this fabled age? A team of statisticians in Germany and Australia recently set out to solve the mystery of the 27 Club once and for all. Continue reading →

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Tomorrow’s World, today

14 Dec

During one of my recent procrastination-fuelled trips across the internet (the kind where you begin on Wikipedia and end up fifteen minutes later watching a video about bog snorkelling), I came across an undiscovered gem.

Up until 2003, the BBC broadcast a science-themed TV show called Tomorrow’s World. It was often a showcase for new inventions, giving a nation of goggle-eyed viewers their first ever glimpses of PCs, compact discs, mobile phones, and, errr, the Segway. So I was chuffed to find out that the BBC have uploaded some old Tomorrow’s World episodes to their archive, dating all the way back to 1965.

In the following clip, originally broadcast in 1967, Europe’s very first home computer terminal is introduced, featuring a businessman who seemingly likes to work in his pyjamas:

“Rex Malik sees a future world where…every home will have its own terminal plugged into a central brain.” Ring any bells? I think Tomorrow’s World may just have predicted the internet.

“He sees his son growing up in a world where eventually his very thoughts could be stored and perhaps assessed for his future use.” I’m not sure about this bit, but it does sound a little like Facebook.

And the next video, from 1979, showcases an experimental cordless mobile phone:

Texting must’ve been a nightmare with that rotary dialer. Keep watching for the outtake at the end…the first incorrect number dialed on a mobile phone.

But although Tomorrow’s World was usually ahead of its time, the show also featured some inventions that are now best forgotten. This clip, from 1968, introduces the plastic garden:

No more weeding! No more withered flowers!  No more mowing! That may be true, but does anyone really want a garden that’s a cross between an AstroTurf football pitch and a tacky restaurant? At least plastic garden chairs caught on…

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Sword Swallowers, Belly Buttons and Flatulent Fish: the Ig Nobel prizes

9 Dec The Ig Nobel prizes

In a world where high-speed neutrinos and melting ice caps hog the limelight, it’s sometimes nice to pay tribute to the sillier side of science. Because for every Einstein there’s a physicist trying to understand why toast always lands butter-side down; for every Darwin, a biologist who studies fish farts.

Once a year, scientists come together to honour the unsung heroes of science, awarding ‘Ig Nobel’ prizes to achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. A parody of the Nobel Prizes, these awards celebrate science that is eccentric, bizarre, or just downright ridiculous ­– studies “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced”.

The Ig Nobel awards – making people laugh, and then making them think (credit: Improbable Research)

I’ve been wanting to write a blog post about the Ig Nobels for a while. So, here it is at last – a rundown of my all-time favourite prizewinners. Happy holidays! Continue reading →

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