Looming Disappointment: Jupiter is Big, but it’s Not a Big Deal

Is it a bird?  A plane? A star? No, it’s a distant gas giant.

If you’re watching the night sky this month, you’ll see a bright spot rising in the east as the sun sets in the west.  It’s the planet Jupiter, and it’s making its usual pass by Earth at closer-than-usual distance, drawing much attention from the media.  Mention it to astronomers, however, and you be subject to bored stares.  

A Google search for “Jupiter” brings up over 400 articles for the month of September, many with phrases like “celestial treat” and “rare phenomenon.”  All the major news institutions have covered it, including the New York Times and National Geographic.  Telegram.com predicts, “It should be a stunning sight.”  

Professor Tom Bania of Boston University’s Department of Astronomy doesn’t see what the fuss is about.  His office sits just below the Judson B. Coit Observatory, where he’d have access to views of this “celestial treat,” if he’d bother.  The Earth comes relatively close to Jupiter every year, and although this year is a bit closer than most, Bania’s not expecting anything spectacular:

“Are we going to learn the secrets of the universe?  No.  Are astronomers throwing Jupiter-parties?  No. It’s a media hype thing.”  

Jupiter is the fifth planet from our sun, an enormous, whirling gas giant that has at least 63 moons, four of which were originally discovered by Galileo in 1610.  It is best known for its huge red spot, a centuries-old storm on its southern end that is physically larger than the planet Earth.  

(Artistic rendering.  The green ones are moons.)  

Once a year, the Earth lies right in the middle of a straight shot between the sun and Jupiter, and this is called Jupiter in “opposition.”  This year’s opposition happens to occur when Jupiter is orbiting closer to the sun, and thus closer to Earth than any year since 1963, but the difference is minuscule in planetary terms.  During last year’s opposition, Jupiter was 374,426,315 miles away, and this year it’s 367,547,580 miles away.  Ultimately, it’s less than a two percent difference.    

Professor John Clarke of the Center for Space Physics at the university compares the opposition event to a birthday.  “It’s significant as a historical marker, but nothing’s changed from the day before and nothing’s going to change the day after.”

While Clarke has focused much of his research on Jupiter, he’s far more interested in Jupiter’s ability to protect the Earth from interstellar asteroids, thanks to its much greater gravitational pull that draws objects toward it and away from us.   Scientifically, he says, this year’s opposition just isn’t a big deal.  

Bania worries that this type of hype draws attention away from new and important findings.  “We’re in a genuine age of discovery,” he says, but he’s afraid that real breakthroughs might get lost in the media cloud.

Did I do that? Research suggests that watching is as good as doing, as far as memory goes.

In a study published in Psychological Science, researchers have found that watching someone else perform an action can get jumbled in the mind and turned into a personal memory.  This study adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that human memory is surprisingly fallible. 

Isabel Lindner of the University of Cologne in Germany led a team of scientists at Jacobs University Bremen in a study probing the mechanisms of memory.  The study builds on previous research which suggests that passively watching an act creates neurological activity similar to actually performing the act.  Lindner and her team wondered whether passive watching could also turn into falsely remembering. 

They conducted studies on 57 participants to test whether they remembered performing an action, such as shaking a bottle.  Some participants watched a video in which a person shook a bottle, while others did not.  When questioned two weeks later, participants were much more likely to falsely remember having personally shook the bottle if they had watched the video. 

“We were stunned,” Gerald Echterhoff, a fellow scientist on the study, said in the press release from the Association for Psychological Science. 

The researchers noted that this sort of mental mix-up doesn’t happen all the time, and it’s no reason to distrust every recollection you have, but it’s important to understand the limits of human memory. 

“It’s good to have an informed doubt or informed skepticism about your memory performance,” Echterhoff, added, “So you don’t just easily trust whatever comes to your mind.” 

Images to come!

Read the original study ->

Read the press release from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) ->

Dancing in the Dark: Tree Frogs Illuminate the Art of Vibration as Communication

You and I may use “no trespassing” signs to deter would-be invaders from stomping on our turf, but what if we could use something much more primitive – and perhaps more jarring – to get our message across?  If we were male red-eyed tree frogs, we would shake invaders away.  

In a paper published in Current Biology in July, Michael Caldwell and his colleagues from Boston University were the first to establish shaking, or tremulation behaviors as a means of vibration-based communication among red-eyed tree frogs.  While decades of research have been dedicated to visual and acoustic signals among animals, scientists have generally overlooked vibration as a means of communication. Caldwell’s article demonstrates, for the first time, that the vibration in the male tree-frog’s aggression display is more important than the visual dance.   

Red-eyed tree frogs are among the most photographed animals in the world, thanks to their distinct appearance.  With bright red eyes, vibrant green skin, blue bellies, and orange hands and feet, they make for a compelling image.  And their rump-shaking territorial behavior makes for compelling video.

Under the cover of darkness, these colorful frogs stake their claim among the leaves and use a sound called a "chack" to call for females. If a second male frog should appear on the same branch, the contest is on and the shaking begins.  With hands and feet wrapped around the branch, the frog rises up on its limbs and begins shaking, engaging in what looks like a frog tantrum, as Caldwell puts it.  If the encroaching frog isn’t immediately deterred, a fearsome wrestling match ensues until one of the frogs gives in and hops away. 

Your trespassing will have consequences.  Adorable ones.       
 

According to Karen Warkentin, Boston University Professor and Senior Author on Caldwell’s article, frogs have long played an important role in research on animal communication, but research into vibrations as message-carriers is pretty new.     

Using infrared cameras to catch the choreography (the frogs are shy – they only dance in the dark), Caldwell found that the shaking is always at a constant rate of 12 hertz, or 12 times per second.  The regularity of the shaking secures it as a clear signal to the other frogs, so it’s not easily mistakable for the effects of wind or rain. 

Caldwell’s team made a robot with a faux-frog on it to test whether the real frogs were responding to the visual or vibrational aspect of the shaking.  They found that the frogs did not shake back when the robot frog moved but the branch didn’t, further establishing the vibrations felt in the branch are the cue to start the fight. 

“Michael showed that the adult frogs use vibrations in male-male aggression more than they use sound, and I’ll be really surprised if these are the only animals that do,” said Warkentin.  


Special thanks to Michael Caldwell and John Christy of the Smithsonian Tropical  Research Institute, Karen Warkentin of Boston University, Peggy Hill of the University of Tulsa, and Paul de Luca of the University of Toronto for helping inform this article.  

More images to come!  

See the frog dance caught on film at Nat Geo site.
Read the full study. 

Momma Was a Newt and Daddy Was a Weasel

Findings from the scientific community are leading some (mostly me) to wonder if perhaps legendary X-Man Wolverine might be half newt. That would certainly explain the fast healing, super immune system, and bone protrusion, although the abundant body hair is distinctly mammalian.

Pictured above: potential Wolverine genetic tree. Dare we wonder?

In 1879 a natural historian first noticed that Spanish ribbed newts (AKA sharp-ribbed newts) can use their ribs as a defense mechanism, piercing their bones through their skin to form super-sharp spines. More recently, Austrian scientists using scanning technology revealed that the newts are actually rotating their ribs forward up to fifty degrees away from their normal position against the spine.

The holes heal quickly thanks to fast regeneration, and a highly advanced immune system keeps the wounds from becoming infected. As far as researchers can tell, the newts are not particularly bothered by the protrusion of their ribs, despite needing to tear new holes each time.

The newts also have a secret weapon (as though concealed rib-shivs weren't enough). When the ribs protrude, the newts' skin secretes a poisonous substance that can cause severe pain, or even death, for the unlucky predator that tries to chomp down on it. Maybe this one skips a generation.

While the newt pictured above appears to be simply stretching its back, it is actually about to kick your ass. Arrows are pointing to the ends of ribs that are tearing through the skin.

"The combination of the poisonous secretion and the ribs as 'stinging' tools is highly effective," says Egon Heiss of the University of Vienna. The newts themselves seem to be immune to the poison, reabsorbing it once the threat is neutralized.

Scientists speculate that the rib-weapon mutation may be an adaptation that came from a more common lizard tendency: chest-puffing. Many salamanders have an ability to expand their ribs, puffing up to look larger and hopefully deter predators. The rib-joint mechanism for puffing-up is similar to that of the Spanish ribbed newts, suggesting an evolutionary relationship.

At the time of this writing, Zu's News is not aware of any studies done on the potential for wolverine-newt hybridization.


We were unable to find the original study to provide for our dear readers, but you can click here for Google's findings on this topic.

All drawings are (obviously) original creations and are the property of Zu's News. Images may not be reproduced without express permission from Zu's News, although you could just draw something better yourself.

Refute, Refuse, and Re-Justify

It seems that changing our minds is harder than we think, but only because we refuse to do so. A new study is suggesting that misinformation isn't just a result of government propaganda or media manipulation; people just get attached to what they think they know.

Pictured left: person attached to a false belief.

Human reasoning is not a perfect system (surprise!), and without careful supervision our minds can get caught in belief ruts that eventually disconnect us from reality. Many of us think that human reasoning operates in a fashion that scientists call "Bayesian updating," meaning that we incorporate new information into what we already know and change our minds accordingly.

The researchers behind a new study, published in the journal "Sociological Inquiry," beg to differ. They see human critical processes as a system they call "motivated reasoning," where people "ignore challenging information altogether, discredit the information source, or argue substantively against the challenge" when faced with contradictory ideas.

The new study is taking a closer look at how people (voters in particular) handle information that relates to things they erroneously believe. The researchers interviewed individuals about the notion that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9/11 attacks, a relationship that has been officially negated by the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and eventually Bush himself, but remains popular for some reason.

So why do polls continue to show that people think there was a direct relationship between al Qaeda and Hussein? The findings of this study have much to say about human reasoning in general, and force us to reconsider some of the beliefs we stubbornly hold.

Polls continue to show that a significant portion of the US population holds the false belief that Saddam Hussein was directly or significantly to blame for the attacks of 9/11.

The study included interviews of various people who claimed they believed that Saddam Hussein was either partly or largely responsible for the attacks on 9/11. The researchers then presented the participants with evidence pointing to there being no relationship. Despite having the facts in their hands, including a quote from Bush himself saying that there was no relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, all but one person insisted that the relationship must exist.

There were a few acts of mental gymnastics that the researchers noted among the participants that refused to change their minds. If any of these methods seem familiar, don't be surprised; they're ways that we all occasionally cope with cognitive tension, the name that scientists give to the discomfort that we feel when our view of reality is challenged.

One way participants handled the new information was through "counterarguing," or by disputing the facts themselves. One participant argued that there's not going to be evidence of a link between Hussein and al Qaeda because it's all very secretive. At least the believers in this category have a reason, but they are the exception.

The most popular strategy was "attitude bolstering," where the participants switched from answering the question of the link between Hussein and al Qaeda to other reasons that the Iraq war is justified. These participants answered that Saddam Hussein needed to be dealt with eventually anyway, or that Bush thought there were WMDs to worry about.

A third option was "selective exposure," where the new information was dismissed or brushed off. The participants refused to comment on it or consider it.

Study participants had various strategies for retaining their false beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence.

A fourth way that participants maintained their positions was by "disputing rationality." These believers did not produce a reason for continuing to believe, but maintained that they had their own opinions.

Finally, participants surprised the researchers by creatively justifying their belief through "inferred reasoning." These participants used a backward chain of reasoning to argue that there must be a reason that we went to war with Iraq and remain at war with Iraq, and that reason must be because Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.

While it's easy to criticize, it's best to take this information and use it to assess your own thinking. Without vigilance and honest self-analysis, it's all too easy to get caught up in these types of justifications when something we personally want to believe is challenged. But being open-minded means being able to consider new information and critique your own mind. It's not always easy, but it's the only way to get smarter.

Read the actual study, "There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification."

All drawing are (obviously) original creations and are the property of Zu's News. Images may not be reproduced without express permission from Zu's News, although you could probably just draw something better yourself.