Planet moons! Chemistry labs! Sleep news! Bee buzz! Elephant house! Coral reefs! Falling robots! And a small request from a very furry friend! It’s your Friday Science Watch, where we watch science—from afar!
- Tell me... what’s your favorite of Saturn’s moons? Ha ha ha. Forgive me. I know you can’t name a single moon. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I myself couldn’t have named a single one of Saturn’s moons before I read this story about Enceladus. The truth is I was just looking for a pretext to approach you. You’re Jessica Biel, right? You’re not? You really look like her. You’re a man?
- Officials at the University of Virginia have unearthed an ancient chemistry lab on campus that may have been used by Thomas Jefferson himself. Anything he might have discovered in the lab, of course, would be old news to chemists by now, if it wasn’t hopelessly wrong in the first place. He also owned slaves.
- Have you heard the new news about sleep, and how much of it you need to get? I don’t mean to ruin the moment but this just made me flash on the thought of like, you were a scientist and you were gonna have a press conference to announce this sleep science news, and you missed it because you forgot to set your alarm clock (you were asleep). It’s such an obvious prank no one would believe you, and all the media in attendance would be peeved. Anyhow. You can’t always control the thoughts that pop into your head.
- Bees like caffeine. What else do they like? Ask a bee.
- A little happy news for all of you: the elephants that used to be in the circus? Now a buch of em live at an elephant retirement home in Florida. I’m not making this up! Hey, I bet they play elephant shuffleboard there—with truck tires for the little disk things that you use to play shuffleboard! I’m kidding. But I bet they do walk from one side of the enclosure to the other a lot.
- Coral reefs all over the world are threatened by “bleaching,” a process of them getting whiter due to bleaching processes of the sun and other chemicals. What would you do if you met a coral reef? Act like nothing was out of the ordinary, or go ahead and point out the “elephant in the room” by asking the reef a tactful question about how it deals with bleaching? Now, which option do you think your friend Les would go for? Yeah, that Les.
- The latest advancements in robotics are allowing us to create robots that fall down gracefully, not just terminate things like old robots.
- When you’re out spelunking this weekend, steer clear of bat hibernation sites—you don’t want to wake up the bats. Again: caving enthusiasts in the state of New York, please adhere to the wishes of state official and do not venture into caves where bats are hibernating. Let the bats rest. Promise me. Caving is fine—we all like exploring new caves, or just wandering the dark paths of a familiar hole in the ground—but do me a favor and just stick to the caves that don’t have bats hibernating inside of them. Bats don’t ask for much, and neither do I. It’s a small thing for you to do, but it could have a big effect on an important species: bats. Allowing them to hibernate for the winter free from human interruption helps to ensure the smooth functioning of countless ecosystems. The bats can get their rest, and you can go home knowing that you’ve done your part to help bats in the state of New York. They’re not as big as we are but I think it’s fair to say that all creatures great and small have a right to exist. So just don’t go into their caves—at least not during the season through which they hibernate, which would be the season we’re currently going into. You could consider it a small annoyance, but I assure the bats would thank you, if they could speak. When you get home from your adventure you can tell your kids, “Hey Timmy,” or “Hey Suzy,” or what have you, “I did something good this weekend, and I want you to know about it, and learn from it.” It’s an opportunity for a good deed and a chance to demonstrate responsibility for a younger generation that will be walking through caves many years from now. You don’t like being woken up. Neither do bats. So please don’t go caving in their hibernation habitat. Feel free go to in the other caves.
[Photo: Flickr]