Facts So Romantic - Nautilus

Scavenging Russia’s Rocket Graveyard Is Dangerous and Profitable - Facts So Romantic
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This might be one of the most remote places on earth, little accessible by road, but its peace is routinely broken by the oldest, largest and busiest spaceport in the world: the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Photograph by Alex Zelenko / WikicommonsThe Altai mountain region of Central Asia is a rugged and remote place. Right in the center of the continental landmass, it forms a crossroads between the Kazakh steppes, the snow forests of Siberia and the arid plains of Mongolia. It’s a landscape of granite, forced up by the inch-a-year collision of the Indian tectonic plate with Asia, then carved out over millions of years by streams of snowmelt. Siberian Ibex wander here along with musk deer feeding on the lichenous rocks and brown bears that follow the retreating snow fields in spring.This might (...)

Climate Change Is Making Plants Behave Like Costco Shoppers - Facts So Romantic
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Not having to endure costs radically changes behavior, in humans and in plants.Photograph by Thomas Hawk / FlickrPlants have their own form of money: carbon dioxide. For decades, our fossil fuel industry has been artificially inflating their currency. What happens to plants during inflation—when CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise?The same thing that happens if you drop money from the sky over Times Square, leaving everyone there with $1,000 in their pockets, says Hope Jahren, a geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Oslo, and author of Lab Girl, a personal memoir of her life in science.* “Some people would save it; some people would run out and buy clothes; some people would gamble it away within 5 minutes,” she told Nautilus editor in chief Michael Segal. Plants face similar (...)

Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness—But Time Just Might Do It - Facts So Romantic
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A city’s pace of life was indeed “significantly related” to the physical, social, and psychological well-being of its inhabitants.Photograph by Neta Bartal / FlickrWhile on vacation in distant locales, people often find that time moves quite differently than in the places they’re used to. In the tropics, we settle into the grooves of “island time” and relax thanks to a more leisurely rhythm. A trip to a big city can leave us exhilarated but also drained by the energetic whir of life there.The different paces of different communities also seem to be connected to other cultural characteristics. Robert Levine and his colleagues have studied the speed of life in cities around the world and across the U.S. In a series of experiments they measured how fast solitary pedestrians in a downtown core (...)

Why Social Science Needs Evolutionary Theory - Facts So Romantic
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The lack of willingness to view human cognition and behavior as within the purview of evolutionary processes has prevented evolution from being fully integrated into the social science curriculum.Photograph by David Carillet / ShutterstockMy high school biology teacher, Mr. Whittington, put a framed picture of a primate ancestor in the front of his classroom—a place of reverence. In a deeply religious and conservative community in rural America, this was a radical act. Evolution, among the most well-supported scientific theories in human history, was then, and still is, deliberately censored from biological science education. But Whittington taught evolution unapologetically, as “the single best idea anybody ever had,” as the philosopher Dan Dennett described it. Whittington saw me (...)

Desert Air Will Give Us Water - Facts So Romantic
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A partial solution to the problem of punishing droughts may be to snatch water from the air, Dune-style.Photograph by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center / FlickrLast year, after a punishing four-year drought, California lifted emergency water-scarcity measures in all but four counties. Residents could sigh in relief but not without resignation. “This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” California Governor Jerry Brown said at the time. “Conservation must remain a way of life.”He’s right. In April, a study in Nature Climate Change, based on climate model simulations, concluded that a 25 percent to 100 percent “increase in extreme dry-to-wet precipitation events is projected” for the rest of this century, “despite only modest changes in mean (...)

Evidence Found for a New Fundamental Particle - Facts So Romantic
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Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.An experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago has detected far more electron neutrinos than predicted—a possible harbinger of a revolutionary new elementary particle called the sterile neutrino.Photograph of nside the MiniBooNE tank, photodetectors capture the light created when a neutrino interacts with an atomic nucleus, by Reidar Hahn / FermilabPhysicists are both thrilled and baffled by a new report from a neutrino experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. The MiniBooNE experiment has detected far more neutrinos of a particular type than expected, a finding that is most easily explained by the existence of a new elementary particle: a “sterile” neutrino that’s even (...)

Larry David and the Game Theory of Anonymous Donations - Facts So Romantic
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What’s intriguing about anonymous giving, and other behaviors apparently designed to obscure good traits and acts, like modesty, is that it’s “hard to reconcile with standard evolutionary accounts of pro-social behavior.”Photograph by David Hume Kennerly / GettyIn a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode from 2007, Larry David and his wife Cheryl and their friends attend a ceremony to celebrate his public donation to the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group. Little does he know that the actor Ted Danson, his arch-frenemy, also donated money, but anonymously. “Now it looks like I just did mine for the credit as opposed to Mr. Wonderful Anonymous,” David tells Cheryl. David feels upstaged, as if his public donation has been transformed from a generous gesture to (...)

30 Weirdly Fascinating Health and Body Facts - Facts So Romantic
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The camera doesn’t often linger on all the severed heads in Game of Thrones. But if it did, might we see some sign of awareness—at least for a few seconds? A human head doesn’t lose consciousness until after about four seconds, post-decapitation. That’s resiliency of a kind. And the acid in your stomach? Strong enough to dissolve razorblades. It’s not a stretch to imagine that, if the torture-loving Northerner Ramsay Bolton knew this, he’d make use of it. Two facts down, 28 more to go. How many are there that you already know? Illustration by VapesterEllie Summers is a Graphic Designer at The Website Group, a UK based Digital Agency specializing in pay monthly business web design, SEO and Social Media Marketing.Brian Gallagher is the editor of Facts So Romantic, the Nautilus blog. Follow him (...)

To Persuade Someone, Look Emotional - Facts So Romantic
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David Pizarro and his colleagues argue that emotional expression functions as a signal to others that you’ve incorporated feelings into your moral decision. Without that signal, an audience might get the impression that you haven’t experienced any feeling at all—a possibility most people find pretty disturbing.Photograph by ArtFamily / ShutterstockAsked at the start of the final 1988 presidential debate whether he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered, Michael Dukakis, a lifelong opponent of capital punishment, quickly and coolly said no. It was a surprising, deeply personal, and arguably inappropriate question, but in demonstrating an unwavering commitment to his principles, Dukakis had handled it well. Or so he thought. “The reporters sensed it instantly,” (...)

Braces Have Made Snoring a Modern Health Problem - Facts So Romantic
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Over the ages our teeth and our tongue have become ever more crowded by the shrinking of the human jaw. Not only is this an aesthetic disaster, but it compromises our breathing, which in turn can disrupt sleep. And there, our problems really begin.Photograph by Lisa S. / ShutterstockThe apotheosis of my five-year orthodontic torment was a sad admission from the orthodontist: After thousands of dollars invested in what felt like medieval technology, my braces had not only failed to ameliorate a complex situation but created a new problem for which, even today, there is no solution. I won’t say it keeps me up at night, but my husband’s snoring often does—and it turns out the braces he wore as a child may be to blame for that.Suffering for the perfect smile has long been de riguer in (...)

The True Story of Medical Books Bound in Human Skin - Facts So Romantic
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Human skin books are the rare artifacts that prove that the practice of making leather goods from human skin is more than just a ghoulish legend.Photograph by voodoo willyIn 1868, on a hot, midsummer day, 28-year-old Mary Lynch was admitted to the Philadelphia Almshouse and Hospital, the city hospital for the poor, better known as “Old Blockley.” Lynch had tuberculosis, which was soon to be compounded by the parasitic infection trichinosis. She didn’t recover, dying in Ward 27 the following year, weighing just 60 pounds. The physician who performed her autopsy, John Stockton Hough, had an interest in rare and obscure books, and he was looking to rebind a trio of anatomical texts on human reproduction. So, he removed a section of skin from Lynch’s thigh, tanned it into leather in the (...)

The Psychological Challenges of Just Getting to Mars - Facts So Romantic
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Though space may be the quintessential I.C.E. environment, Musk appears to be aiming to make trips to Mars—aspirationally scheduled to commence in 2024—as far away from I.C.E.-y as possible.Photograph by NASALife outside Earth has its own Hobbesian description: isolated, confined, and extreme—or I.C.E. “Space is the quintessential ICE environment,” according to a new paper, published in American Psychologist. Space includes inhospitable planets like Mars, whose arresting vistas, canyons, and mountains beckon. But only humans sealed inside cumbersome suits, trained to weather such nerve-racking circumstances, can explore them. Just getting to Mars, says Lauren Blackwell Landon, the paper’s lead author and a behavioral performance researcher at NASA, presents a major challenge. “The (...)

This Man Memorized a 60,000-Word Poem Using Deep Encoding - Facts So Romantic
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Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree,” John Basinger said aloud to himself, as he walked on a treadmill. “Of man’s first disobedience…” In 1992, at the age of 58, Basinger decided to memorize Paradise Lost, John Milton’s epic poem, as a form of mental activity while he was working out at the gym. An actor, he’d memorized shorter poems before, and he wanted to see how much of the epic he could remember. “As I finished each book,” he wrote, “I began to perform it and keep it alive in repertory while committing the next to memory.”LuciferPhotograph by Felipe Gabaldón / FlickrThe 12 books of Paradise Lost contain over 60,000 words; it took Basinger about 3,000 hours to learn them by rote. He did so by reciting the piece, line-by-line out loud, for about an hour a day for (...)

How Brain Waves Surf Sound Waves to Process Speech - Facts So Romantic
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Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Decades ago, the noted computational neuroscientist David Marr observed that “trying to understand perception by understanding neurons is like trying to understand a bird’s flight by understanding only feathers.”PixabayWhen he talks about where his fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology have taken a wrong turn, David Poeppel of New York University doesn’t mince words. “There’s an orgy of data but very little understanding,” he said to a packed room at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in February. He decried the “epistemological sterility” of experiments that do piecework measurements of the brain’s wiring in the laboratory but are divorced from any guiding theories about behaviors and (...)

The Case Against Geniuses - Facts So Romantic
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The notion of genius as a capability a person can possess has come under attack recently in several ways.Pxhere / Public DomainOnce you’re called a “genius,” what’s left? Super genius? No, getting called a “genius” is the final accolade, the last laudatory label for anyone. At least that’s how several members of Mensa, an organization of those who’ve scored in the 98th percentile on an IQ test, see it. “I don’t look at myself as a genius,” LaRae Bakerink, a business consultant and a Mensa member, said. “I think that’s because I see things other people have done, things they have created, discovered, or invented, and I look at those people in awe, because that’s not a capability I have.”Yet the notion of genius as a capability a person can possess has come under attack recently in several ways. Megan (...)

Forget “Earth-Like”—We’ll First Find Aliens on Eyeball Planets - Facts So Romantic
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Artist’s conception of a hot Eyeball planet. The permanent day side is sun-baked and dry. The permanent night side is covered with ice. In between lies a thin habitat: the ring of life.Illustration by Beau.TheConsortiumImagine a habitable planet orbiting a distant star. You’re probably picturing a variation of Earth. Maybe it’s a little cloudier, or covered in oceans. Maybe the mountains are a little higher. Maybe the trees are red instead of green. Maybe there are scantily clad natives…OK, let’s stop there. That image may very well be completely off-base. There is good reason to think that the first potentially life-bearing worlds that are now being detected around other stars (see here for example) probably look very different than Earth. Rather, these planets are more likely to look (...)

What’s Worse: Unwanted Mutations or Unwanted Humans? - Facts So Romantic
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Three of the rare Przewalski’s horses that now roam the area near the Chernobyl nuclear plant.Photograph by Sergey GaschakAfter a fatal series of errors and malfunctions in the early morning of April 26, 1986, the core of the Chernobyl nuclear facility melted down and then exploded, killing 31 workers at the plant. The accident spewed massive amounts of radioactive material into the surrounding area, forcing a mass evacuation of the nearby villages. Many wild animals died from the direct toxicity of the radiation and almost 1,000 acres of the Red Forest—named for the unusual color its trees turned after the disaster—died within months. The most radioactive human settlements were bulldozed and buried. (See the related story about the most radioactive part of the nuclear plant: (...)

Are Healthcare Metrics Hurting Healthcare? - Facts So Romantic
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Performance metrics are supposed to financially incentivize hospitals to improve the healthcare system. And this is exactly where the trouble starts. The list of misapplied performance metrics could go on and on.Photograph by Luis Molinero / ShutterstockIn 1975, the British economist Charles Goodhart pointed out that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Goodhart’s Law, as it came to be known, is a ubiquitous phenomenon in regulatory affairs, like healthcare. Making healthcare better requires metrics which can be measured and assessed. But measuring the right metric is sometimes the wrong choice.In order to quantify and characterize health and healthcare, hospitals and government agencies collect massive amounts of data. Typically, this data is gathered by (...)

5 Things That Sound, Move, or Smell Like a Nuclear Explosion - Facts So Romantic
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The Licorne (“Unicorn”) thermonuclear test; Fangataufa, French Polynesia; 1970Photograph courtesy of Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization / FlickrAfter most of the world’s nations signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, in 1996, they set up a new commission to watch out for clandestine explosions. Since then the commission (CTBTO) has wired the world with hundreds of seismometers, infrasound detectors, radionuclide sniffers, and underwater microphones. The stations send their data to the CTBTO’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria, where it is analyzed for signs of a secret bomb. But the system keeps picking up other things, too—which is sometimes a problem for the system and sometimes a boon to science. Here are some of the things that can at first seem like nuclear (...)

How Social Media Exploits Our Moral Emotions - Facts So Romantic
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The architecture of social media exploits our sense of right and wrong, reaping profit from the pleasure we feel in expressing righteous outrage.Photograph by Kitja Kitja / ShutterstockA few years ago, Justine Sacco, then the senior director of corporate communications at the holding company InterActiveCorp, tweeted about the nuisances of air-travel during a long, multi-leg journey from New York to South Africa. She started with sardonic observations—one about a smelly passenger at JFK Airport, another about London’s peculiar food and predictably inclement weather. Then came this one, shortly before her final flight: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”As she settled in to sleep, she had good reason to expect that that tweet would fade away into the hectic (...)