Logolution and large celestial objects

Some measure words and others, birds. Some measure stars and others, Mars.
Some measure holes that can't be seen. I write about them with Charles Sheen.

I described the story about words in my last post. All I would add at this juncture is that I like to call the study of the evolution of words and languages logolution. Sadly this fondness was not shared by Professor Jim Hurford, from the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit at the University of Edinburgh, who I asked about the research. "I can't see the point of the neologism 'logolution'," he said. "For one thing it focusses too much on words, as opposed to other features of language." I've taken Jim's comments on board, and hereby propose lingolution as a legit solution. In five years when there's a journal called Nature Lingolution, I want acknowledgement, royalties, and a wikipedia entry. In five years...

There's also been some amazing research done on black holes. Y'see, they've just found the biggest ever stellar black hole. Before you go calling your mum, bear in mind that it's not the biggest black hole - just the biggest stellar black hole.

A stellar black hole is formed from a collapsed star (typically out of exhaustion or its own gravitational pull, or both) and weighs exactly between 3 and 13 times the mass of our sun.

Some educated people believe that all galaxies have superdupermassive black holes at their centre, which are thousands to millions of times as heavy as our sun. They are called supermassive black holes. I don't know how they are formed, but if it's not from collapsing stars, what is it? Huh? Answer me! (There's also a song by the band Muse called supermassive black hole, which I suspect the physicists have ripped off)

The black hole they've just found is 16 solar masses. Ok, so it's not supermassive, but it's still freakin' big right? I mean, if you were standing next to it in a photo, you'd look bloody tiny. And get this, it's also in tight, tight orbit with a 70-solar-mass star. That's some big celestial objects.

So the next time you look up at the sun, see it for what it is - a pitiful 1/16th the size of the biggest stellar black hole, and an embarrassing 1/70th the size of this SBH's companion star. I'm so ashamed.

Bugs in space

For the first time, scientists have paid attention to microbes (which are related to bugs, but not as much as humans are) IN SPACE!

This article is worth reading for a couple of reasons.

- the future of astronauts depends on it. Or so some would have you believe. Essentially they think that microbes may be more deadly in space. They figured this out by taking salmonella on a shuttle, then infecting mice on earth and finding they died more than controls. What I really would have liked to see is mice in space being infected. After all, it's astronauts in space they're worried about, not astronauts on earth.
- it mentions the word panspermia. This is a mildly funny word. But it's used with deadly seriousness, for famed panspermioso Chandra Wickramasinghe believes the experiment suggests bacteria are evolved for space travel

There they are. The couple of reasons, laid out for you in the English language. My next article will be about the shock revelation that words that are used more often take longer to morph into other words than words that are rarely used. Alas, this probably means panspermiosi will have changed by its second usage. In the same story, there's research about how more and more English words end in 'ed' in the past tense, even though they used to not! This process is called regularisation, and it's happening as we speak. What else is being regularised? Our minds? Our media? Our owls? The answer is all around us.

Finally, I was pleased to see that research I covered in exciting depth won an Ig Nobel prize. I am prepared to wager a doubloon that this research, about the anti-jetlag effects of viagra (and cialis walium? Further tests required) in hamsters, becomes the first to claim the Ig Nobel / Nobel Prize sweep. You heard it first here, folks.

Volcanoes, mice

Two more journal articles to relate.

Most recently, there's the miraculous story of burnt hairless mice saved by coffee and exercise wheel running. Scientists reckon that caffeine and exercise both promote apoptosis, or programmed cell death. This is a deal (I'm not sure how big a deal) because

1) The cells that are killed are those that have been damaged by UVB radiation (one part of the sun's radiation spectrum). It's good to kill these because if they live they could turn cancerous.

[This reminds me of my Win-Win Law of Pharmaceutical Research: Whatever illness you're trying to cure, if your drug / treatment works, you're happy. But, if the drug / experimental conditions kill all your cells, you're also happy, because you've identified a possible cancer-cell-killer!]

2) they act synergistically. The effect of the two combined is 5 times as effective as either on its own. There's still a jazillion variables that need to be explored (amount of caffeine, type of exercise, other types of radiation etc), but it's an interesting result. Poor little burnt hairless mice.

Less recently, there's the story of Italian volcanologists unearthing the mysterious inner workings of volcanoes.

It turns out that the rumblings of certain kinds of volcano, named after Mt Stromoli off the coast of Italy, emanate from deep within the earth. These big bubbles of gas, called gas slugs, were analysed after fizzing out of the volcano. Judging from their chemical composition, it was deduced that they must have come from deep down near the mantle, rather than a few hundred metres down where volcano-related earthquakes occur.

Imagine being a volcanologist.

Molten mercury, so what?

Mercury's wobble means it's liquid, alright. Alright? Really, it's amazing the deductions that can be made from movements in light bouncing off rocks millions of kilometres away.

Published at Cosmos 4 May 2007.