Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Phil at Bad Astronomy waxes enthusiastically about pictures of an extrasolar planet: This is incredible: For the first time, ever, astronomers have captured an optical image of a planet orbiting a star like our own. And that’s not all: we also have a second picture showing TWO planets orbiting a second star! (Calm down. Breathe, breathe.) The first picture is from Hubble. Ready? Here it is.


• Over at Archaeoporn, archaeoknits waxes skeptically about ancient Muslim sailors in pre-Colombian America: In a recent issue of Skeptic, Tim Callahan discusses the issue of ancient astronauts and lost civilizations. This is perhaps one of the most frequent and popular theories of pseudo-archaeology, and certainly an area of concern ripe for a skeptical assessment. Overall, Callahan does an admirable job in addressing the common theories of hidden secret civilizations, and it is good to see the inclusion of more recent Raelian ideas, which are generally seen as too off base for archaeologists to even bother discussing them. However, Callahan’s discussion of pseudo-archaeology takes a long diversion into another popular area of fictitious history, using it as an argument against lost civilizations. I refer to his theory that Muslim cultures were in direct contact with the Americas before Columbus, only one of many unsupported propositions of Pre-Columbian exploration of the New World.


• Carl at the Loom talks (yes, I couldn't keeping working in "waxes") about bluffing by fiddler crabs: Nature lies. Organisms send signals to each other, and often those signals are honest–in other words, when another organism receives the signal, it can reliably use it to figure something out about the sender. Male fiddler crabs, like the one shown here, send a big, loud signal with their oversized claw. Often, that signal esentially says, “Do not mess with me.” And in many cases, that’s good advice. Sometimes, though, it’s a major bluff.


• JL at Analyze Everything talks about mosasaurs: There are few animals in real life that can capture our imagination the way some fossilized animals are able. Take for instance, the Tyrannosaurus rex, which has been fictionalized again and again to represent our more primal understanding of 'monster'. Take also, the beast that once roamed Kansas as the unquestioned top predator: The Mosasaur. What? You've never heard of a Mosasaur? Imagine a crocodile with flippers and you're superficially there. See, way back around 100 million years ago the North American continent was split by a vast epeiric sea (a shallow, salty, inland sea) called the Western Interior Seaway (really creative science people).


• Ed at Not Exactly Wonder Science tells us about octopuses that you can recognize by their color markings: Many naturalists become so familiar with the animals they study that they can recognise individuals within a population using just their shapes and patterns. If that's too difficult, animals can be ringed or tagged. These tricks give scientists the invaluable ability to track the fates of individuals, but try using them on octopuses.

Enjoy!