My Science School

According to Google, the World Wide Web is made of more than 60 trillion individual pages – more pages than the number of neurons in your brain.

The Internet is a busy place. Every second, approximately 6,000 tweets are tweeted; more than 40,000 Google queries are searched; and more than 2 million emails are sent, according to Internet Live Stats, a website of the international Real Time Statistics Project.

But these statistics only hint at the size of the Web. As of September 2014, there were 1 billion websites on the Internet, a number that fluctuates by the minute as sites go defunct and others are born. And beneath this constantly changing (but sort of quantifiable) Internet that's familiar to most people lies the "Deep Web," which includes things Google and other search engines don't index. Deep Web content can be as innocuous as the results of a search of an online database or as secretive as black-market forums accessible only to those with special Tor software. (Though Tor isn't only for illegal activity, it's used wherever people might have reason to go anonymous online.)

 

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The same way your refrigerator chills your soda. Both your fridge and your house’s A/C absorb heat into coils filled with special refrigerant chemicals. The coils remove the heat from the house (or fridge), leaving the air inside comfortably chilly.

When hot air flows over the cold, low-pressure evaporator coils, the refrigerant inside absorbs heat as it changes from a liquid to a gaseous state. To keep cooling efficiently, the air conditioner has to convert the refrigerant gas back to a liquid again. To do that, a compressor puts the gas under high pressure, a process that creates unwanted heat. All the extra heat created by compressing the gas is then evacuated to the outdoors with the help of a second set of coils called condenser coils, and a second fan. As the gas cools, it changes back to a liquid, and the process starts all over again. 

 

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Introduced in the late 1960s as a faster way to fix supper, microwave ovens use a special frequency of radio waves – called microwaves – that causes the atoms in liquids and fats to vibrate. That vibration creates heat and cooks food much faster than a conventional oven.

Microwave ovens cook food by generating intermolecular friction between the molecules of the food. The microwaves cause water molecules to vibrate; the increased friction between the molecules results in heat. Microwaves could affect your tissue in a similar way if they were able to escape from the microwave oven. Modern microwave ovens are designed to allow essentially no leakage of microwaves, however. The only time for concern would be if the door is broken or damaged, in which case the oven should not be used.

 

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Researchers discovered something interesting from watching young horses – called foals – at play: Foals that frolicked in the fields were more likely to survive to their first birthday. That must mean such “purposeless activity” plays some role in an animal’s survival. One theory, tested on lab rats, showed that rodents allowed to play were less stressed. (Rats that wrestle make chirping sounds that might be the rodent equivalent of gut-busting laughter.) Rats raised with playmates and fun objects developed bigger brains than rats that grew up in empty, boring cages. Just goes to show: Goofing off is good for you!

 

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It might seem obvious why kitties pounce on mouse-shaped toys and puppies nip at each other’s ears in play battles. Many species of animals – particularly in the mammal and bird kingdoms – engage in such “purposeless activities.” Surely they’re practicing skills that will help them later in life, right? But that convenient theory doesn’t survive scientific scrutiny. Kittens forbidden from frolicking in lab experiments (by some seriously coldhearted scientists, no doubt) were no worse at catching mice as adults than cats that enjoyed a play-filled kittenhood. Same goes for coyotes, rodents, and other animals that engage in playful activities. Playtime doesn’t appear to reinforce social bonds in studies of closely knit animals such as meerkats or lions, either. Researchers are at a loss for why animals waste precious energy engaging in purposeless activities – especially since those activities might result in injury.

 

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Software company Microsoft is working on a “universal translator” right now. This high-tech program not only translates your speech into the language of your choice, but it also plays your words aloud in your own voice when you make calls over the Internet using a smartphone or computer.

The existence of a universal translator is sometimes problematic in film and television productions from a logical perspective (for example, aliens who still speak English when no universal translator is in evidence and all characters appear to hear the appropriately translated speech instead of the original speech, the ability to speak in the language when direct translation is possible), and requires some suspension of disbelief when characters' mouths move in sync with the translated words and not the original language; nonetheless, it removes the need for cumbersome and potentially extensive subtitles, and it eliminates the rather unlikely supposition that every other race in the galaxy has gone to the trouble of learning English.

 

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The dolphin might be signaling that it’s getting ready to charge. The S-posture is not unique to dolphins in the Bahamas. It’s been documented in other species during intense aggressive situations, including in male humpback whales in Hawaii and captive beluga whales.

 

In addition to displaying a threat, Dolphins use the S-posture during courtship or mating. Denise Herzing has observed that a male will approach a female in an S-posture, and orient his rostrum to the female’s genital area while also buzzing that region with his echolocation. This genital buzz is a kind of foreplay from a distance, and its possible could even have a physical effect on the recipient female!

 

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They’re trying to get a date. Pairs of male dolphins will develop elaborate underwater routines to impress females. Bottlenose dolphins that engage in synchronized swimming with their peers tend to see the glass as being half full.

Some of these dolphins frequently swim in tight-knit groups, and they’re the ones who appear the most optimistic, according to a study of eight captive animals.

In the experiment, individual dolphins were trained to swim towards one of two targets. They were taught that when they reach the left one, they receive applause and eye contact, while the one on the right delivers herring – the jackpot – and dolphins swim faster towards it.

 

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They are yelling “back off!” dolphins sometimes snap their jaws when staking out territory, warning other dolphins to keep away. Dolphins can produce extremely loud sounds by rapidly clamping their jaws together. This behavior bangs their teeth together, producing an acoustic signal that transmits large distances. Jaw claps are generally understood to be an aggressive signal, used as a threat. But jaw clapping also occurs during play – the difference between real aggression and play aggression is often very subtle, just like in the case of humans.

 

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They’re saying hi. Dolphins meeting up will caress each other’s pectoral (or side) fins. Researchers think it’s a greeting, like when we shake hands. Dolphins are known to rub their bodies up against each other, but also to engage in intricate rubbing behaviors using the pectoral fins. Dolphins will rub their fins into the fins of other dolphins, engaging in a behavior that looks a lot like holding hands. They will also rub the bodies of their friends, moving their fins rapidly over the face, flank or genital region, producing what is likely to be a pleasurable sensation. Sometimes dolphins will seek out rubs by positioning their bodies under the fin of their friend. Researchers have observed a behavior where dolphins will rest their fin on the back of their friend, holding it in place for hours at a time – likely a signal to other dolphins of their friendship.

 

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Depends on where you eat ’em! While eating sounds are considered uncouth in many countries, noodles slurping is actually a respectful sign of enjoyment in Japan. Some Japanese justify their slurping because they say that slurping cools off hot noodles when the noodles come into full direct contact with one’s tongue and ultimately makes it easier to consume them. This group of people also remarked that as time got on, their habit of slurping noodles became so ingrained that regardless of the temperature of the noodles (i.e. hot or cold), they would still slurp their noodles.

 

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Stretching your arm in front of neighbors at the table disrupts their meals – and is a good way to accidentally upend the gravy boat. It is impolite to reach over someone to pick up food or other items. Diners should always ask for items to be passed along the table to them. In the same vein, diners should pass those items directly to the person who asked. Always scoop food, using the proper utensil, away from you. Always use serving utensils to serve yourself, not your personal silverware.

 

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Dinnertime is also meeting time for most families, when everyone can discuss the day without smartphones and laptop screens getting in the way. Phones and other distracting items should not be used at the dining table. Reading at a table is permitted only at breakfast, unless the diner is alone. Urgent matters should be handled, after an apology, by stepping away from the table. Should a mobile telephone (or any other modern device) ring or if a text message is received, the diner should ignore the call. In exceptional cases where the diner feels the call may be of an urgent nature, they should ask to be excused, leave the room and take the call (or read the text message) out of earshot of the other diners. Placing a phone, keys, handbag or wallet on the dinner table is considered rude.

 

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This rule goes back to medieval times, when diners eat shoulder-to-shoulder at narrow feasting tables with no elbow room to spare. Imagine a big old medieval feast given by a ruler or lord. Everybody and their mother wants to go to it, and boast about how they dined with such and such. Most of these feasts would have been served on long tables with benches instead of seats. People would pack in like sardines and there simply was no room to have your elbows on the table without jostling your neighbor and disrupting his ability to eat. Allowing your elbows to nudge the guy next to you and hit his arm while he’s bringing some food to his mouth would be obviously rude. As well, such accidents could cause quarrels, or even violence to break out.

 

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NASA is planning to capture one. Its Asteroid Redirect Mission may attempt to nab an asteroid in a space probe’s “capture bag” and release the roving rock into lunar orbit. NASA hopes to begin landing astronauts on its captured asteroid by the mid-2020s.

Smaller asteroid impacts may be less catastrophic, but they can still cause significant damage. The space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was only 62 feet (19 m) wide, and it injured more than 1,200 people while damaging thousands of buildings as far as 58 miles (93 kilometers) away from the site of impact. NASA is starting to look for more of those smaller asteroids, now that most of the larger ones have already been cataloged.

 

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