Category Archives: Science

Canadia-Cabina

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While only five centimeters in length, it lived over half-a-billion years ago. Now extinct, the remains of this segmented worm were found in 1911, within Canada’s Burgess Shale deposits. While the actual fossil, etched in stone is black and white, the iridescent blue setae or bristles have been modeled, because its hair-like structures were thought to act as diffraction gratings.

Meanwhile, fast-forwarding to the present. What was supposed to take only three hours to dry, finally dried by day three. We’re talking powder-post beetle spray here. It had dried well on the unfinished surfaces by soaking in like it is supposed to, but on any finished surface that is relatively impermeable the liquid had beaded up into now tacky droplets. This includes the floors, treated walls, furniture and electrical outlets. We have only surveyed about half the cabin at this point, because when not actively cleaning, we retreat to the kitchen porch, as much because of the cold as the bug spraying. Cleaning consists of wet mopping the floor, parts of which have been done three times by now but still show the exterminator’s footprints. Furniture and outlets are being cleaned with wet paper towels. Frankly, it feels like cleaning up an oil spill, like with the Exxon Valdez, complete with oil glycol-soaked birds. We made the mistake of leaving out Bubs’ whirly-birds, but we can probably hose those off when the time comes. Moved on to using Mop & Glo, which didn’t do squat with either the footprints or the tackiness.

Extinct vs. Extant

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Last week in Toronto, we visited the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Where we toured its paleontology exhibit that focuses on the very most ancient forms of life that once lived in what is now Canada. Imagine, it is about 565 million years ago. The ocean is dark and quiet, but there is life. There mysterious creatures huddle along the muddy seafloor. But then something happened—volcanic ash rained down, suffocating the organisms under a soft, grey cloud making fossils.

Today, this land is known as Mistaken Point, a jagged cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also the oldest site in the world to show fossil communities of large and complex multicellular life. These fossils mark a shift in Earth’s history—when life went from microscopic and got big.

This post deals with in particular two forms of early terrestrial plant life, cooksonia and clubmoss. Both of which lived around the same time during the early colonization of land. While cooksonia is now extinct, it represents the foundational baseline of early vascular plants. Clubmosses represent a more advanced, and more importantly surviving extant branch of these ancient vascular plants. Above are two photos from ROM, one showing a cooksonia fossil and the other showing a model representation of this plant. Below is some living clubmoss from down the beach. Still going strong after 400M years on this planet.

Meanwhile, in the here-and-now, Jay, Anne and Bill left this morning, heading south towards the warmth. Leaving two old souls to shiver here alone. Jay lit a nice fire before she left, but since we want to do some things today, we have let it go out. While the fire is extinct, we are extant.

Clubmoss – Living Fossil

Release the Kraken

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Jaws, octopus jaws, giant octopus jaws, cretaceous giant octopus jaws. Recently, a Japanese archeologist using a novel technique has found the jaws of giant cretaceous octopus in the fossil record, an animal that otherwise is composed of soft tissue. Searching the ocean floor for sedimentary nodules, then first microplanning these nodules and then reconstructing these slices like in a CT scan, images of these jaws have been revealed. Based upon the size of these jaws, scientists estimate the octopus’s size as large as fifty feet long. Fanciful artist’s impressions soon accompanied this discovery. 

Down through the ages octopuses have been reimagined as giant sea monsters, capable of attacking sailing ships. In reality the more modestly sized Giant Pacific octopus is as big as they get nowadays. Pictured above is one, with a hand for scale. One such octopus is the star of a new movie that dropped on Netflix today, Remarkably Bright Creatures. Starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman as an aquarium’s odd couple. In this show, octopus Marcellus (voiced by Alfred Molina) coaxes these two humans together, so that they may heal each other in this shmaltzy melodrama. Both humans are wounded when they begin treatment. Comparable to another Netflix movie, the pandemic favorite, My Octopus Teacher, this movie could have been called My Octopus Therapist. 

My God, it’s full of stars!

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Artimis Stage Separation

Yesterday, after months of delay Artemis II finally launched to the moon. It will not land on but circle the moon, much like Apollo 8 did almost sixty years ago. This back to the future (or is it the past?) flight occurs against a backdrop of our latest so-called Mission Accomplished war against Iran and closer to home, there are the problems with Anne’s iPhone.

She has been complaining for days about problems with her phone. I have offered to help but have been rebuffed. Lately, though they seem to have multiplied. New problems include Google not being able to access the microphone and the calendar app not being able to add new events. When she tries, she gets an error message saying, “Calendar does not have permission to access your calendar.” I googled these errors and found online solutions.

Equipped with this advice I was able to convince Anne to allow me to assist her. Unfortunately, none of the menu trees called out by Google’s AI matched what was available on the phone. With mounting frustration, I tried calling the Apple Genius Bar to make an appointment. All I got was a lot of run around, but eventually in lieu of an appointment, their AI suggested that we reboot the phone. We did this and voilà! Like magic everything was working again.

I guess it was my bedside manner or lack thereof, but Anne was not happy with me. Words were had and at that point I wisely baled. Returning later, ruffled feathers were smoothed and peace reined over the land. Well, at least here.

iPhone Astrophotography

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Jet Streaks and Star Trails

Last night I did some stargazing and used my iPhone to take pictures of the night sky. It was a clear night, and it is only a couple of days past the new moon, so conditions were pretty good. In preparation for a night such as this I had purchased a combination selfie stick and tripod. Using it as a tripod, I could take long exposures like the one pictured here. I ran this one for about twenty minutes, long enough to see the rotation of the stars as they circle around the north pole. You can plainly see where the pole is at the center of all these arcs. At first, I thought that the straight lines that crisscross the image were satellites, but then I figured out that they must be jets. There are two tells. In the lower left corner, there are several lines that are dotted. That must be caused by the plane’s blinking lights. Most puzzling though were the hooks at the lower end of the main lines that pass nearest to the pole. For a while, I thought that these lines were caused by orbiting satellites, but the artifact of the hooked lines puzzled me. Then I figured that the hooks were from when the aircraft turned, as they lined up on either San Francisco or LA.

Later, when we were getting ready for bed, we looked to the west, out of our bedroom window and saw Orion, then Tarus with its Pleiades and Jupiter too. The sky was very dark by then. Looking through binoculars, I could see the moons of Jupiter and Orion’s nebula. The low relative humidity out west here makes the stars look so clear. It was cold by then, but the spring peepers were out croaking. In conditions permit, maybe I can do this again tonight.