Fingerprints of Time

Isaac Asimov thought of himself a "professional explainer;" and, even without Youtube and the Internet, I always thought he undoubtedly must be the world's greatest. Since Asimov's death in 1992, it seems clear that his mantle has fallen on Richard Dawkins.

I can only wish I had that kind of talent, knowledge, and ability to explain science simply and interestingly. And I do wish it. Desperately.

It's an Exciting Time in Astronomy

Astronomers image planet orbiting Sun-like star

At least, that's what we think it is. Further study will tell us for sure. The dot near the top left of the picture is believed to be the first photograph of a planet orbiting any other star than our sun.

More than 300 planets (called exolanets) have been discovered orbiting other stars, but we haven't been able to actually see or photograph them. Another photograph several years ago produced a tiny, almost invisible dot that might be a planet; but it is now thought to be something in the background.

At least a year or two of additional observations will be necessary to make certain this new "planet" is actually in orbit around the star, and not just something in the background, too. At interstellar distances like this, it's not easy to be sure.

The other known exoplanets have been discovered by several different methods; most of them by measuring the wobbles of their parent stars as they move through space. A rhythmic back-and-forth element in a star's motion indicates the gravitational pull of a companion. Most likely a planet.But we've never actually seen them before.

Photographing these planets is incredibly difficult, because they tend to be close to their stars, and the stars are so much brighter than the planets. This one -- if it turns out to really be a planet -- is at least 330 times farther from its star than earth is from our sun. This separation made it easier to photograph than most.

This newly discovered planet is estimated to be eight times more massive (think heavier) than Jupiter, or 2,500 times more massive than earth. We don't have the technology yet to even detect exoplanets earth's size, much less image them; but this should change soon. In the next five to ten years, we should have images of many earth-size planets, photographed by new space telescopes and other new technologies. But we'll have to wait and see.

This newly discovered planet appears to orbit a young star that's slightly less massive than the Sun and about 500 light years away from us.It is so far from its parent star that it creates questions about our understanding of the ways planets form. This is another exciting thing for scientists, because they look for new questions to answer. As I've said before, science is not about knowing everything. It is about learning new things.

Science thrives on questions.

Source: http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14737-astronomers-image-planet-around-sunlike-star.html

Both Elephants and Magpies Show New Signs of Intelligence

First Evidence To Show Elephants Recognize Themselves In Mirror

Science News

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2006) — Elephants have joined a small, elite group of species-including humans, great apes and dolphins-that have the ability to recognize themselves in the mirror, according to a new finding by researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York. This newly found presence of mirror self-recognition in elephants, previously predicted due to their well-known social complexity, is thought to relate to empathetic tendencies and the ability to distinguish oneself from others, a characteristic that evolved independently in several branches of animals, including primates such as humans.

Science News http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061030183310.htm

Evidence of Self-Recognition in the Magpie

Public Library of Science (PLoS)

Comparative studies suggest that at least some bird species have evolved mental skills similar to those found in humans and apes. This is indicated by feats such as tool use, episodic-like memory, and the ability to use one's own experience in predicting the behavior of conspecifics. It is, however, not yet clear whether these skills are accompanied by an understanding of the self. In apes, self-directed behavior in response to a mirror has been taken as evidence of self-recognition. We investigated mirror-induced behavior in the magpie, a songbird species from the crow family. As in apes, some individuals behaved in front of the mirror as if they were testing behavioral contingencies. When provided with a mark, magpies showed spontaneous mark-directed behavior. Our findings provide the first evidence of mirror self-recognition in a non-mammalian species. They suggest that essential components of human self-recognition have evolved independently in different vertebrate classes with a separate evolutionary history.

Public Library of Science (PLoS), http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0060202&ct=1

This fascinates me because the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror has never been found in non-human animals other than apes and dolphins before. Now two separate studies have just found this ability in the largest land animal and in a noisy, obnoxious bird.

The test is to put a mark on the animal in a spot it can't see. Like the yellow spot of paint below the magpies chin. The animal knows you've done something to it, but it doesn't know what. The magpies first turned and twisted their necks trying to see what had been done to them. When that didn't work, they went to the mirror and checked themselves. Upon seeing the dot of paint in the mirroe, they tried to touch it with their beaks and feet. This was considered evidence that they used the mirror intentionally and recognized themselves in it.

This is especially important, because it had been thought that only humans, apes, and dolphins (all mammals) had this ability. Bird brains are so different from mammal brains that few scientists thought any of them might have this ability. For one thing, bird brains have no neocortex, which had been thought to be necessary for this kind of cognition.

In a different study, three female elephants at the Bronx Zoo in New York were given a huge mirror (8'x8') in their enclosure. They had time to examine it, look behind it, and get used to it. They spent a good deal of time examining the insides of their mouths in the mirror and touching spots in their mouths with their trunks. Without the mirror, elephants cannot see inside their mouths; so this was impressive to begin with. (I have no idea why they only studied female elephants with the mirror, and no males. I'm just reporting what I read. OK?)

Then, a large colored spot was painted on each animal above her eyes, and a spot of clear paint on one cheek. When they examined themselves in the mirror, they touched only the colored spots above their eyes, indicating they were seeing them in the mirror and recognizing the images as themselves. Not just responding to the human touch or the smell of the paint.

All other known species either ignore their image in a mirror or treat it like another animal. (Or they haven't been tested yet, of course.) The working hypothesis now is that this ability requires an animal with a relatively large brain and a comples social system. Elephants have the largest brains on land. Magpies and their relatives in the corvid family -- crows, jays, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, nutcrackers, and others -- have the largest brains in the bird class (aves). Both elephants and the corvids have complex social systems that require them to recognize others of their species and at least remember friend from foe.

eBay insect fossil is new species

A scientist who bought a fossilised insect on the web auction site eBay for £20 has discovered that it belongs to a previously unknown species of aphid.

Dr Richard Harrington, vice-president of the UK's Royal Entomological Society, bought the fossil from an individual in Lithuania.

He then sent it off to an aphid expert in Denmark, who confirmed the insect was a new species, now extinct.

Dr Harrington and his team thought they had identified the bog down to genus level (one step above species), but they had no idea what species it was. Professor Ole Heie, a fossil aphid expert in Denmark, discovered it had not been described before.

Dr Harrington said he "had thought it would be rather nice to call it Mindarus ebayi." "Unfortunately," he said, "using flippant names to describe new species is rather frowned upon these days." Professor Heie named the new species Mindarus harringtoni after Dr Harrington.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7572052.stm