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Gaia 2025has the last word...SF & science oddities, gossip, exotica and whimsy from the past year to Easter 2025
The 2024 IgNobels have been presented.
The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that make people laugh, and then
think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative
-- and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology. Each winning team was given a cash prize — of a 10 trillion dollar bill from
Zimbabwe.
Quality journals more likely to engender reader paper cuts. This is possibly one of the more mundanely exotic academic papers Gaia came across the past year. Since you didn't ask, all down to the rigidity and thinness of the paper used. Don't let this put you off reading good science. (See Arnbjerg-Nielsen, S. F. et al (2024) Competition between slicing and buckling underlies the erratic nature of paper cuts. Phys. Rev. E 110, 025003.) How do you cook the perfect boiled egg? Well, if you did not know, Italian science to the rescue. Because the white and yolk of an egg cooks at different rates, the researchers used mathematical modeling and subsequent simulation to design the novel cooking method, namely periodic cooking. For this you need two pans: one of simmering water and one kept at exactly 30°C. The trick is to transfer the egg between each pan every two minutes for a total of 32 minutes... Now, Gaia likes to go to work on an egg but will probably stick to the four-minutes-in-boiling-water method for medium sized eggs method. 32 minutes of flaffing around first thing in the morning is just too much hassle. (See Di Lorenzo, E. et al. (2025) Periodic cooking of eggs. Nature Communications Engineering, vol.4, 5.) There has got to be an IgNobel somewhere in all of this... And does the engineered perfect boiled egg method work? There were two attempts to check whether the Italian scientists' method works carried out by BBC Radio 4. The first was on Inside Science and, alas, the 32-minute alternate simmering/30°C every two minutes method produced a hard-boiled egg. To be fair, those attempting this admitted that they had not properly kept the cooler, 30°C, pan of water exactly at that temperature. The second attempt was by Radio 4's Sunday morning magazine programme Broadcasting House. They took great pains to keep the 30°C pan at that temperature as every time they transferred the eggs from the 100°C simmering pan the temperature of the 30°C pan went up, but with the judicial addition of cool water the temperature was largely maintained. The results... Two of the testing subjects, on a blind tasting, guessed that the normally cooked eggs were the 32-minute eggs but prefered what turned out to be the 32-minute eggs, and a third tester preferred what turned out to be the 32-minute eggs. In short, it seems that the 32-minute, with two-minute alternations between 30°C/100°C, method works.... but what a palaver. Reading bed-time fairy tales has health benefits. A good time to get a side-ways look at science comes every year with the various, two-week. Christmas editions of journals, and sometimes we are even treated to a story with science fiction & fantasy relevance. This year's Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal did not disappoint with a paper from Canadian clinicians on optimising children’s health through bedtime stories. This is not a trivial problem as healthy sleep is a public health priority, with at least a third of children and adults reporting insufficient sleep... It says that some traditional fairy tales and classic children’s fiction may also include information about the benefits of sleep and the characteristics of sleep disorders, providing accessible and engaging ways for parents or carers, healthcare providers, and educators to discuss healthy sleep with children... Examples of childrens' fantasy stories given are: Snow White, The Princess and the Pea, and Peter Pan and Wendy. (See Thomas, M. et al (2024) Good nights: optimising children’s health through bedtime stories. British Medical Journal, vol. 387. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.q2548) New Madagascar tree frogs named after Star Trek. It is always good news when new species have been discovered, and last autumn seven new species of tree frogs were found in Madagascar. Special was their chirping sounds which are remniscent of Star trek sound effects. So the zoologists who discovered them decided to name them after Star Trek command officers: Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer, Burnham and Pike. All these newly found species are under threat from both climate change and deforestation. In naming the species with names relating to Star Trek -- a popular media franchise with arguably a conservation ethos -- the researchers hope that there will be publicity to help the species protection. (See Vences, M. et al. (2024) Communicator whistles: A Trek through the taxonomy of the Boophis marojezensis complex reveals seven new, morphologically cryptic treefrogs from Madagascar (Amphibia: Anura: Mantellidae). Vertebrate Zoology, vol. 74, p643–681.) Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) closes! Who could have foreseen that? Well, that was perhaps a little unfair as, when it was set up, the FHI, based at Britain's Oxford University, the Institute was meant to run for just three years but instead has run for 19. Often ridiculed for what some consider its to science fictional discussions, one of its successes was its early discussion of the implications (moral, ethical and societal) of artificial intelligence. Today, such discussion is now taking place in many quarters and by nearly all nations. The other topics it covered included: global catastrophic risk, grand futures, information hazards and human enhancement ethics. Its more SFnal topics included the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the attributes and implications of key future technologies. Key books spun out of the Institute include Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers and Strategies and Global Catastrophic Risks. 2024 election prediction...! 2024 was for billions of people the year of elections. Britain, the US, France and India were among those that held them. And in the process a number of animals were brought out in advance and some seemingly predicted their outcome. However, there was one prediction made nearly a quarter of a century ago, back in 2000, that Kamala Harris would stand for Presidential election. The prediction was made in an episode of the The Simpsons called 'Bart to the Future'. The Major Cities Chiefs Association in N. America has issued guidance on on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). UAPs is the new term for UFOs and Major Cities Chiefs Association represents police forces in major Canadian and US cities. The 11-page UAP reference guide to outline procedures for managing these unusual encounters... While this is an interesting, brief summary, its bottom line seems to be: 'Currently, there is no known official UAP reporting mechanism or common procedure for local law enforcement to report UAP incidents. It’s not yet determined what type of reporting mechanism and analysis is necessary.'... The truth is out there... Apparently. Around the World in Eighty Days was written by H. G. Wells according to Viking Classics (no relation to Penguin's Viking imnprint). Who knew.... The book was being republished by them as it is now in the piblic domain. Viking Classics sees that books' ‘spelling and grammar are carefully edited’ and in this case has Wells' name on the cover of their Kindle release. The Ansible report has a picture of the cover. It also states that to be fair the correct author is cited on the inside title page... Can Spider-Man ever look too young? Apparently, yes! Spider-Man actor Tom Holland (28 uears old) was stopped from buying beer from Target for looking too young. The shopkeeper would not accept his English ID and so a work colleague had to make the purchase for him. And what sort of beer was it...? Non-alcoholic! Which brings us neatly on to our never-changing end-of-Gaia column regular…The 2025 Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year shortlist and winner have been announced.
The shortlist for the 2025 award for 2024 works included:- And the winner… The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire by Matthew F. Jordan. There were just five percentage points separating the top three titles. You can check out Gaia's previous Diagram Prize news reported in earlier Gaia columns includes that for works from: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006. See you in 2025 with more sciencey whimsicality and SF frivolity. [Up: Gaia Index | Concat': Home Page | Recent Site Additions] [ Year's Film & Convention Diary | One Page SF Futures Short Stories | SF Convention Reviews] |