Monday Science Links

It's Monday Science, on Tuesday again... vacations. What're you gonna do? Not take one? At any rate, here's some sciency goodness to ease you (me) back into the daily grind.

• At Cocktail Party Physics Jennifer tackles (gasp!) cocktails: While Bond and Nick Charles might like their martinis shaken, the debate still rages among bartenders as to whether this is the "proper" way to prepare the drink. Many consider it an abomination, like W. Somerset Maugham, who declared, "Martinis should always be stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously one on top of the other." (If it comes down to fisticuffs or a duel at dawn, Jen-Luc Piquant's money is on Bond.) ... What's the difference? Well, the pro-stir crowd prefers a delicate blending to a rapid shaking, although the latter technique is great for cocktails with ingredients that are harder to mix (eggs, dairy, fruit juices and the like). Shaking also tends to make the drink cloudy due to something called a "chill haze": a shaken drink is colder and particularly in the 19th century martini, this would cause certain compounds in the vermouth to separate and form droplets in the glass. And David Wondrich, author of an excellent new book on the history of mixology called Imbibe, claims that "Shaking introduces a plethora of tiny bubbles that disrupt the silken, thick texture that results from stirring." ... So there's definitely a science to the art of mixology, and right now that science is hot. Heck, even that venerated science museum, San Francisco's Exploratorium, is holding an evening event later this month on the science of cocktails, where it will explore the pressing issue of shaken vs. stirred, among other topics.



• At Skulls in the Stars, a look at Lord Kelvin vs. the aether: The more I study the history of aether physics, the more I feel that modern physicists underappreciate both the huge influence the theory had on the development of physics and how it indirectly spurred many positive scientific discoveries, even though it is an incorrect theory. The “aether”, for those not familiar with it, was a hypothetical substance theorized in the early 1800s to be the medium in which light waves propagate, just as water waves travel through water and sound waves travel through air. Many papers were written speculating on the nature of the aether before Einstein’s special theory of relativity (1905) argued convincingly that the aether was unnecessary.



• At Save Your Breath for Running, Ponies Bec examines the temptations of being venomous dinosaur: Arguments aside, Sinornithosaurus, say you did actually have this venomous bite afterall. I’d imagine it’d be the kind of thing you could easily get carried away with, but much to your own peril, I’d wager. Like, you’ll be playing Battleships at Chirostenotes‘ house because your housemate and his girlfriend are fighting about Mario Kart (again, Sinornithosaurus) all like, “Oh my god, did I not tell you last time I wasn’t going to play with you if you’re going to do those shortcuts? No I don’t want to learn how to do them. Fuck,” when Chirostenotes will be like, “I’m going to make a sandwich. If you cheat when I’m gone I’ll totally know.”



• At Tetrapod Zoology, Darren looks at one weird ape: Jenkins and Gadsby thought that the animal might be a gorilla-chimp hybrid. I can't help but get this impression too, mostly because the eyes look gorilla-like while the rest of the animal is obviously chimp-like. Apparently little known is that there is a long history of debate over the existence of an alleged gorilla-like chimpanzee, known as the kooloo-kamba (an onomatopoeic reference to its call). W. C. Osman Hill was supporting the distinction of this form (as a Pan troglodytes subspecies) as recently as the late 1960s (Hill 1967, 1969).



• And at Backreaction, Bee defines, in her own inimitable way, scientific predictions: In the last decade in high energy physics one could notice a trend towards more phenomenology. While I welcome this for obvious reasons, here as in any aspect of life one can desire too much of a good thing. I've read quite a few of papers where the word "phenomenology" was used merely as decoration, and in other cases "phenomenological" is essentially an excuse for inconsistency. Such fashion trends in the community and their side-effects however aren't really surprising. What is surprising though is that the demand for "predictions" has been picked up by the public and has been used sometimes inappropriately as a measure for scientific quality. Thus I thought it would be worth clarifying what a scientific prediction is and isn't.

Enjoy!