Monday Science

This weeks sciency goodness:

• Geoff Nunberg at Language Log looks at the meaning behind a judge's pronoun: In the first sentence of her dissent from the California Supreme Court's ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, Judge Carol Corrigan, appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, explained that even though the marriages should not be legally sanctioned, "In my view, Californians should allow our gay and lesbian neighbors to call their unions marriages." Leaving aside the wondrous temerity of allow, think for a moment about what a reader will do with that our. Did Corrigan really intend to convey that Californians, or at least her sort of Californians, don't include gays or lesbians themselves among their number (though they may have some living next door)? Not really, I suspect, but the pronoun betrayed the thought even so.


• Phil at Bad Astronomy talks about J1903+0327 , which is a pulsar, but a strange one... it seems to have two many companions: If the pulsar is in a close orbit with another, more normal star, its gravity can draw material off the star. This adds energy to the spin of the pulsar, speeding it up. Some, called millisecond pulsars, rotate hundreds of times per second. We’re pretty sure this idea is correct, because almost* every time we see a millisecond pulsar we see a companion star. Not only that, but the pulsar has to be so close to the companion star that its orbit is almost a perfect circle; the rules of gravity and tides ensure that. But we’ve run into a problem: a millisecond pulsar has been found that has a wide, elliptical orbit. Worse, the companion star is the wrong kind.


• Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics talks about listening to jacarandas: The Southern California variety are blue jacarandas (Jacaranda mimosifolia, which Jen-Luc Piquant things sounds like an exotic dance, a la the macarena -- or perhaps a designer cocktail at a chic hipster club). Apparently blue is a very unusual color to achieve in the botanical realm, according to a local horticulturalist, David Lofgren, who told the Los Angeles Times that our local trees actually originated in Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil (where the flowers are even bluer than the LA variety). But they can be found all over the world; in fact, the city of Praetoria, in South Africa, is known as the Jacaranda City because the trees are so prolific in that region. They tend to flower right around the time of student exams, which might explain the local legend that if a flower from a jacaranda tree falls on your head, you will pass your exams with flying colors. Hey, students need all the hope they can get.


• Kim at All My Faults Are Stress Related blogs on the tectonics of the sichuan earthquake: The crust of Asia breaks in a number of different ways. Parts of it are squeezed out, especially to the east, where it can run over the subducting Pacific plate like a semi over a squirrel. Parts of it actually stretch east-west, creating features like Lake Baikal up in Russia. Parts are pushed over each other, making the height of the Himalayas and Tibet possible. And parts are squeezed over other parts of Asia. And that's what's happening on the northwestern side of the Sichuan basin - the edge of the Tibetan Plateau is running over eastern Asia, in this case, along a classic thrust fault, sloping about 30 degrees down into the ground beneath the edge of the mountains.


• Dave at Cognitive Daily blogs on how to make your eye feel like it's closed, when it's actually open: I could still see the towel rack and shower curtain with my right eye, which remained adapted to darkness. But my left eye could see nothing. In fact, my left eye felt as if it was closed. I made every effort to open the eye, but it seemed that some unstoppable force was keeping it closed. The only way to make my eye feel as if it was open was to cover it with my hand. I still couldn't see anything with the eye, but at least I could convince myself it was open.

Enjoy!