Blogs / Discoblog

Another study–this one analyzing the largest social network ever–has found that people are connected by about 6 degrees of separation. Here, the sample consisted of 240 million people on Mircrosoft’s instant messaging service. And lo, when scientists finished with them, the “average path length” among the IMers was 6.6.

Nature News’ story on the study (login required for full access) finds this to be “spookily close” to Stanley Milgram’s original small-world study in the 1960s that started the whole six-degrees mania. But as DISCOVER wrote in February, Milgram’s experiment wasn’t replicated, suffered from an abysmally low response rate, and looked at people on mailing lists who were probably of similar socioeconomic status and thus more likely to share connections. (more…)

A design student at University of the Arts London created this useful work of sci-art by putting unfamiliar units—such as “as many grains of flour as people on the planet”—on a measuring cup. The piece is part of his Domestic Science collection, which aims to help people “better conceptualize certain scientific constructs”—although the designer, Harry White, noted in an e-mail that “the measurements vary from being quite accurate to almost a joke, a reflection on the nature of measurement in science.”

His other pieces include evo-cut, a “set of cutlery designed according to the principles of population genetics and natural variation,” and You’re one in a million, “containing a million dots, one of which is yellow,” to help people “feel what a million and a millionth are like.”

The German Beer Purity Law
has been on the books
for 500 years. Thank God.

Last Thursday we published an article about the 7 Most Exciting Moments in Science. Since then a number of readers have written in to point out (politely) that I missed the boat on a bunch of fantastically exciting moments on the list, such as Neil Armstrong’s one small step, Watson and Crick’s double helix and (my favorite) the German Beer Purity Law. What I maybe should have disclosed were the three criteria we used to judge the reputed exciting moments:

First, the stories couldn’t be of dubious veracity. That excluded Isaac Newton staring up at the moon through the boughs of an apple tree and Kary Mullis’s PCR epiphany while driving down Highway 1. (One should be skeptical of anyone who converses with glowing raccoons.)

Each discovery had to be a bolt from the blue. This excluded situations where years, and even decades, of hard work culminated in one shining moment, like the moon landing or the invention of the radio.

Finally, we gave extra credit to discoveries proven in the real world as opposed to just theoretical ones. Einstein’s theory of general relativity was exciting, fast, and important, but it wasn’t confirmed in the real world until 14 years later, when Arthur Stanley Eddington showed that the Sun bent the light of stars behind it. Einstein lost some points because the excitement of that moment was split in two.

… after Mr. Wizard died. I fondly remember watching “Mr. Wizard’s World” on many an afternoon when I was a kid.

RIP Don Herbert.

On Tuesday, February 13, the NY Salon will host a discussion, discourse, dialogue, and—okay, I’ll say it—a debate called The Human Footprint—Has Civilization Gone Too Far? DISCOVER’s fearless leader, Corey Powell, will take part in the debate, and judging by his position paper, he should have some good things to say. The event will be webcast from NY Salon’s Web site.

As for the other participants, they include Ronald Bailey, the science correspondent for Reason, an outspoken and intelligent libertarian magazine. If you think Corey is fearless, check out Reason, and Bailey in particular—his views on environmentalism probably don’t line up exactly with most DISCOVER readers (basically: it’s a load of bull), but he makes some interesting, iconoclastic arguments.

In the spirit of keeping public television public, PBS is putting its viewers in power by allowing them to pick the station’s newest science show.

Whittled down from 19 solid submissions, PBS will air its three finalist pilots throughout January on Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. If all of you democratic Web denizens out there can’t wait a month to give informed feedback, log on to pbs.org/science to view streaming versions of each pilot (all of them are currently awaiting your opinions).

Now, announcing the three candidates:

• Wired Science (airs January 3)—Essentially Wired Magazine repackaged for TV, the show will cover the latest developments in space exploration, biomedicine, robotics, military technology and more in a fast-and-furious hour of entertainment.

• Science Investigators (airs January 10)—This investigative number delves into mysteries such as 30,000-year-old Neanderthal DNA and the physics of a knuckleball baseball pitch—but it also aims to keep viewers up-to-date with new technologies like electric NASCAR stock cars and bacteria-powered iPods.

• 22nd Century (airs January 17)—The “what if” show for science television. A group of actors play out the possibilities to far-off scientific futures, starting with the new World Wide Web—not one of computers, but linked-up human brains.

While there is no “vote,” per se, viewers can offer feedback that runs on the Web site for all to see. Using this digital deliberation collected by the end of the month, PBS will pick a winner to graduate into a 10-week series that debuts this fall. But what about the losers? The station offers no word on this touchy subject, but DiscoBlog predicts plenty of YouTube spoofs in the future.

Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall—best known, of course, for her online chat on Discover.com—appeared on the Charlie Rose Show last Tuesday. It should be clear which one is her and which one is Kissinger.

Discover’s fearless editorial leader, Corey Powell, appeared on NPR’s Science Friday last week (at least his voice did). The show’s subject was best science books of 2006. But to get some truly deep context, they brought on Corey to talk about the best science books of all time, which we covered in our December issue and asked readers about online. Needless to say, he did Discover proud.

In a man-eats-pig world, the pigs are now eating man. The Hindustan Times reported today that a three-year-old boy named Ajay in Delhi, India was recently eaten alive by a herd of domestic pigs. If you have a weak stomach for gore, don’t read this nugget we pulled from the story:

“Ajay’s skull, eyes, face and torso had been ripped open and eaten. Only his limbs could be recovered.”

Yesterday we discovered sea lions are increasingly attacking people—were these pigs just hungry, or has DiscoBlog scratched the surface of an Animal Farm uprising?

(We hope this doesn’t incline anybody to use pigs for dead-body disposal, as per the movie Snatch:

Something is making a very low-pitched sound that is annoying people with acute hearing in Auckland, New Zealand. What’s making this rumble? Well, that’s million-dollar question—no one knows. Scientists (like those pictured at right) have been using funny-looking devices in an effort to find the source of this “Unidentified Acoustical Phenomenon.” This story may seem silly (especially when we see one ingenious scientist cupping his hand to his ear), but for those who can’t get away from the insistent noise, it can apparently be horrible:

Dr Moir said one sufferer, a man, was so desperate to stop hearing the sound that he deliberately tried to damage his own hearing by cranking up a chain saw close to his ears. “He said it was so bad, he couldn’t stand it. It was driving him mad.”

One scientist says he suspects it’s “gas pipes, sewerage pipes, [or] factories in the distance,” but we’ve not heard any confirmation on that. Stay tuned, as DiscoBlog will bring you the exciting conclusion of Unidentified Acoustical Phenomena as soon as we “hear” something…