From Wikimedia Commons: Picture of the Pitch Drop Experiment from University of Queensland featuring the current (2007) custodian, John Mainstone (picture taken in 1990), two years into the life of the 8th drop.

On what is quite likely the most boring webcam ever, you can stare in rapt dumb awe as a drop of Australian pitch (a petroleum product used in waterproofing, among other things) very, very, very slowly drips out of a funnel. How slowly? Well, only eight drops of pitch have fallen since the experiment began in 1927. However, according to this table, the 8th drop fell on November 28, 2000 (12.3 years after the previous drop in 1988), so we’re due for another drop any time in the next, oh, year or so. Or not. You see, the pitch drops are quite variable because the experiment is subject to changing room temperatures, and the installation of air conditioning in 1988 in the experiment’s home building has really slowed things down.

This pitch funnel currently holds the Guinness World Record for the longest continuously-running experiment. There are two other notable experiments that almost make the grade — the 1840 Oxford Electric Bell and 1864 Beverly Clock — they haven’t been running continuously, but nearly so. Better luck next time, Nineteenth Century scientists!

From The University of Queensland’s page on the experiment:

The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid – even brittle – and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It’s quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid!

In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel – so slowly that now, 80 years later, the ninth drop is only just forming.

If that isn’t exciting enough for you, go watch grass grow in real time (warning: plays sound). (Update, 10:30am Pacific: Mr. Grass has added red lawn chairs to the lawn; things are heating up!)

(Story via DVICE; Image courtesy of John Mainstone at The University of Queensland.)

(Originally published on September 21, 2009 and quite possibly my most famous post on this blog.)

What if you finished reading this article and remembered every detail of it for the rest of your life? That’s the problem people with super-autobiographical memory face—and yes, it’s often referred to as a problem, not a gift. Their minds are like a computer hard drive that retains everything: dates, middle names, license plate numbers, even what they eat for lunch on a daily basis. There are only four confirmed super memory cases, a disorder experts say is somewhat related to OCD, though no doubt there are plenty others who haven’t been identified yet.

So who are the four individuals who’ve all recently been the subject of a study at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine? Let’s meet them and find out…

1. Bob Petrella

A Los Angeles based producer for the Tennis Channel, Bob Petrella may remember every number in his cell phone, but it’s his ability to recall sporting events that’s most remarkable. Give him a date, like March 30, 1981, and he could tell you not only that it was the day Reagan was shot, but also that Indiana beat North Carolina for the NCAA championship that evening. Even more impressive: when it comes to the Pittsburgh Steelers, his favorite team, you can show him a single freeze frame from most any game that he’s seen, and he can tell you not only the date of the game, but the final score.

According to a piece on ABC news, Petrella “remembers all but two of his birthdays since he turned 5. He recalls where he was and what he did with high school buddies. Grainy images of the 1970s are vivid pictures in his head. ‘I remember all my ATM codes,’ he said. ‘I remember people’s numbers. [I] lost my cell phone Sept. 24, 2006. A lot of people, if they lost their cell phone, they would panic because they have all these numbers. I didn’t have any numbers in my cell phone because I know everybody’s numbers up here [in my head].’

2. Jill Price

Probably the best known of the four, Jill Price has described her ‘gift’ as “nonstop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting.” She was the first to be diagnosed with the condition, and recently published a memoir, The Woman Who Can’t Forget. Price remembers most details of nearly every day she’s been alive since she was 14 and compares her super memory to walking around with a video camera on her shoulder. “If you throw a date out at me, it’s as if I pulled a videotape out, put in a VCR and just watched the day,” she has said.

Like Bob Petrella, Price calls California home, though working as an assistant at a Jewish religious day-school, she’s about as far from Hollywood as you can get. And although people she meets at parties are impressed with her ability to remember everything from the date of the Lockerbie plane bombing (December 21, 1988) to the last episode of Dallas (May 3, 1991), in her memoir, she describes super memory as a nuisance, partly because she can’t seem to forget painful events, like when someone she was crushing on rejected her.

3. Brad Williams

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Everyone knows all about dolphins and whales, and even dolphins that pretend to be whales (the orca! coughcough). But there are over 100 species of marine mammals in the world, and most of them have as much cool stuff going for them as any old Moby Dick.

1. Leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx)

Image via Wikimedia Commons

You’ve probably heard of the leopard seal, well-known for being one of the world’s fiercest undersea predators; its name comes from its spotted coat, and from its huge mouth full of extremely sharp, terrifying teeth. Unlike other seals, which eat mostly fish, leopard seals feed on warm-blooded animals like seabirds, penguins and, yes, even other seals. Their diverse and surface-dwelling diet allows them to find plenty of food without needing to dive very deep.

2. Amazon River dolphin (Inia geoffrensis)

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Staring woman image via Shutterstock

You’d think watching pornography would be a turn on. But a new study suggests it actually causes part of the brain to turn off, at least in women. 

A team of researchers from the Netherlands studied brain activity in 12 heterosexual, pre-menopausal women on birth control while they viewed “female friendly” pornography. As a control in the study, the women also viewed a non-sexual video about marine life in the Caribbean. 

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Adam’s apple photo via Shutterstock

Touch your fingers to the front of your throat and start humming. Feel around until you can feel vibration directly under your fingers. That’s your larynx, or voice box. It houses your vocal cords and is involved in breathing and vocalization.

Surrounding the larynx is the laryngeal prominence, better known as the Adam’s apple. The “apple” is simply protective cartilage. As your voice changes and your larynx grows during puberty, the cartilage enlarges and moves with it. Depending on the size of your larynx, the apple can seem barely there, or be very prominent.

Despite common misconception, women do have Adam’s apples, and both boys and girls have similarly sized apples when they’re young. Come puberty, though, boys’ vocal cords tend to become longer and thicker, and the larynx and laryngeal prominence both need to grow differently to accommodate them, so males’ apples will generally be more noticeable.

Adam Who?

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It took 70 years, but scientists have finally discovered how an injured fish notifies his peers when he is hurt, giving them the signal to bolt. It turns out that the mystery substance is chondroitin sulfate, a compound basically made up of sugar.

The fish release the substance after they’re injured, and when others smell it, they immediately swim away. Scientists tested their theory by releasing chondroitin sulfate into tanks of zebra fish and watching them go crazy. Interestingly though, different fish respond to different versions of the chemical, so it’s unlikely that dropping some chondroitin sulfate directly across from a net will help fishermen scoop up any record catches.

For more on the finding, don’t miss this fascinating article over on io9.

[Image courtesy of Tom Weilenmann's Flickr stream.]

Brain image via Shutterstock

Scientists have long known that our genetic makeup influences our intelligence. But now, thanks to the largest brain study of its kind, they’ve pinpointed one gene in particular that may be responsible for our IQ levels. Meet HMGA2. You can call it the “Intelligence Gene” — that’s what Paul Thompson, professor of neurology at UCLA and the leader of the massive study, has dubbed it.

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In the early 1900s, Forrest Mars, Sr., the son of Chicago candy maker and Snickers bar creator Franklin Clarence Mars, worked his way through Europe learning the ins and outs of the candy business. He worked for Nestle. He worked for Tobler. He started his own little factory in England. He sold some of his father’s brands. Most importantly, he found inspiration. According to confectionery lore, Mars was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and noticed treats frequently placed in soldiers’ rations. They were chocolate pellets coated with a hard candy shell that kept them from melting (these might have been, or been inspired by, the “chocolate beans” made by Rowntrees of York, England since 1882).

Upon his return to the U.S. in 1940, Mars sought out another son of a famed candy man to put his own spin on the Spanish candies. (more…)

Bug image via Shutterstock

It doesn’t happen to every single bug, but if you stumble upon an expired roach in the bathroom or a downed fly by the window, you’ll find that they’re frequently flat on their backs, legs in the air. It’s such a familiar death pose that it’s omnipresent in a Google image search and name-checked in an ab exercise.

One reason this happens so often is the way in which most bugs in our homes meet their untimely end: poison. Insecticides usually work by disrupting nerve impulses and shutting down communication in a bug’s nervous system. In a one-two punch, the poison ravages a bug’s coordination and also causes spasms and convulsions. Once a bug stumbles and lands on its back or spasms so hard that it flips itself over, it usually can’t handle the intricacies of righting itself again. There it’s stuck until death takes hold.

Even without a blast of bug spray to nudge it off this mortal coil, dead or dying bugs often land on their backside simply because of their small size. A stiff breeze, a human rushing by or a curious pet are all enough flip a tiny corpse, or an injured bug too weak to flip itself back over.

On March 26, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson participated in a talk on “Cosmic Quandaries” in St. Petersburg, Florida. The talk was wide-ranging and lengthy (a little over an hour with NDT himself), but one clip caught my eye: a twelve-minute segment in which the good doctor presents us with some pretty Deep Thoughts on the nature of the universe, and humankind’s place within it. This is classic NDT, and I won’t say much to give it away — as his “fascinatingly disturbing thought” isn’t revealed until late in the video. This frankly is a fascinating micro-lecture, delivered in a way that hooked me and kept me engaged. Carve out a little bit of your lunch break and enjoy:

See also: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Pluto and “We Stopped Dreaming.”