Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• First, Ethan at Starts With A Bang tackles a tough question: I get a certain question every so often, and it's one of the most difficult questions any cosmologist faces. Today, I try to tackle it. It goes something like this: "If the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and nothing can go faster than the speed of light, how is it that we see things that are 46.5 billion light years away?" First off -- and I want to clarify this -- everything in this question is legit.


• GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life offers a classic video: In this video, world famous astronomer and astrophysicist, the great Carl Sagan, explains the 4th dimension. I wonder if Carl knew how funny he was?


• Erik at Eruptions has the next in his series of (potentially) active volcanoes, Mt Erebus: The next up in my Volcano Profiles Series, is one of the most remote volcanoes on the planet, yet also one of the more closely studied and monitored (albeit from afar). Joining Vesuvius, Hood and Rabaul is Mt. Erebus, an active volcano on Ross Island in Antarctica and it definitely has some unique features.


• At Tetrapod Zoology Darren winds up his look at "Inside Nature's Giants" with giraffes (and you can look at parts 1-3, too): For me this was the most impressive episode; partly because they covered just about everything you could think of, and partly because I haven't seen inside a giraffe before. Graham Mitchell was on-hand as their giraffe expert (is this the same Graham Mitchell who also publishes on crocodile farming?). They showed us the enormous, yellow nuchal ligament, the neck musculature, the lungs (again, very bizarre), the anatomy and role of the tongue, the enormous, phenomenally thick-walled heart, the tightly adhering leg skin, the dense lower limb bones, the vasculature associated with the skin blotches, the capillary network at the base of the brain (this prevents high-pressure blood from the heart rushing in and damaging the brain), and more. That's a lot of detail.


• And Carl at The Loom goes small with a bizarre fungus: When I first learned about the fungus Cordyceps, I refused to believe. I was working on a book about the glories of parasites, so I was already in the parasitic tank, you could say. But when I read about how Cordyceps infects its insect hosts, I thought, this simply cannot be. The spores penetrate an insect’s exoskeleton and then work their way into its body, where fungus then starts to grow. Meanwhile, the insect wanders up a plant and clamps down, whereupon Cordyceps grows a long stalk that sprouts of the dead host’s body. It can then shower down spores on unfortunate insects below. I mean, really.