In Bill Gates Office, There’s a Wall with the Entire Periodic Table with Samples of Each Element

in Science | December 11th, 2018

Just a fun fact…

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via Ed Yong/Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Shows How the Ele­ments Actu­al­ly Get Used in Mak­ing Every­day Things

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Scaled to Show The Ele­ments’ Actu­al Abun­dance on Earth

Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship!: A Fun Way To Learn the Ele­ments

“The Peri­od­ic Table Table” — All The Ele­ments in Hand-Carved Wood

World’s Small­est Peri­od­ic Table on a Human Hair

“The Peri­od­ic Table of Sto­ry­telling” Reveals the Ele­ments of Telling a Good Sto­ry

Chem­istry on YouTube: “Peri­od­ic Table of Videos” Wins SPORE Prize

Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

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How Music Can Awaken Patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia

in Health, Life, Music, Psychology, Science | December 10th, 2018

In the late 1950’s, pio­neer­ing free jazz band­leader Sun Ra played a gig at a Chica­go men­tal hos­pi­tal, booked there by his man­ag­er Alton Abra­ham, who had an inter­est in alter­na­tive med­i­cine. The exper­i­ment in musi­cal ther­a­py worked won­ders. One patient who had not moved or spo­ken in years report­ed­ly got up, walked over to the piano, and yelled out, “you call that music!”

The anec­dote illus­trates just one expe­ri­ence among untold mil­lions in which a per­son suf­fer­ing from a debil­i­tat­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion responds pos­i­tive­ly, even mirac­u­lous­ly, it seems, to music.

As famed neu­rol­o­gist and writer Oliv­er Sacks puts it in his book Musi­cophil­ia, “musi­cal per­cep­tion, musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty, musi­cal emo­tion and musi­cal mem­o­ry can sur­vive long after oth­er forms of mem­o­ry have dis­ap­peared.”

This med­ical fact makes musi­cal ther­a­py an ide­al inter­ven­tion for patients suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer’s dis­ease and demen­tia. In the short video above, Sacks describes his vis­its to patients in var­i­ous old age homes. “Some of them are con­fused, some are agi­tat­ed, some are lethar­gic, some have almost lost lan­guage,” he says, “but all of them, with­out excep­tion, respond to music.”

We can see just such a response in the clip at the top, in which the bare­ly respon­sive Hen­ry Dry­er, a 92-year-old nurs­ing home res­i­dent with demen­tia, trans­forms when he hears music. “The philoso­pher Kant called music ‘the quick­en­ing art,’ and Henry’s being quick­ened,” says Sacks says of the dra­mat­ic change, “he’s being brought to life.” Sud­den­ly lucid and hap­py, Hen­ry looks up and says, “I’m crazy about music. Beau­ti­ful sounds.”

The clip comes from a doc­u­men­tary called Alive Inside, win­ner of a 2014 Sun­dance Audi­ence Award (see the trail­er above), a film that shows us sev­er­al musi­cal “quick­en­ings” like Henry’s. “Before Dry­er start­ed using his iPod,” notes The Week, “he could only answer yes-or-no questions—and some­times he sat silent­ly and still for hours at a time.” Now, he sings, car­ries on con­ver­sa­tions and can “even recall things from years ago.”

Sacks com­ments that “music imprints itself on the brain deep­er than any oth­er human expe­ri­ence,” evok­ing emo­tions in ways that noth­ing else can. A 2010 Boston Uni­ver­si­ty study showed that Alzheimer’s patients “learned more lyrics when they were set to music rather than just spo­ken.” Like­wise, researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah found music to be “an alter­na­tive route for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with patients.”

As senior author of the Utah study, Dr. Nor­man Fos­ter, says, “lan­guage and visu­al mem­o­ry path­ways are dam­aged ear­ly as the dis­ease pro­gress­es, but per­son­al­ized music pro­grams can acti­vate the brain, espe­cial­ly for patients who are los­ing con­tact with their envi­ron­ment.” See the effects for your­self in this extra­or­di­nary film, and learn more about Sacks’ adven­tures with music and the brain in the 2007 dis­cus­sion of Musi­cophil­ia, just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Dis­cov­er the Retire­ment Home for Elder­ly Musi­cians Cre­at­ed by Giuseppe Ver­di: Cre­at­ed in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

The French Vil­lage Designed to Pro­mote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to the Pio­neer­ing Exper­i­ment

In Touch­ing Video, Peo­ple with Alzheimer’s Tell Us Which Mem­o­ries They Nev­er Want to For­get

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear the Very First Sounds Ever Recorded on Mars, Courtesy of NASA

in Astronomy, Science | December 10th, 2018

Pre­dict­ing the state of the world in 2014 after a vis­it to the 1964 World’s Fair, Isaac Asi­mov wrote that “only unmanned ships will have land­ed on Mars, though a manned expe­di­tion will be in the works and in the 2014 Futu­ra­ma will show a mod­el of an elab­o­rate Mar­t­ian colony.” While we haven’t seen a Futu­ra­ma show in some time (oth­er than the one cre­at­ed by Matt Groen­ing), he was cer­tain­ly right about those unmanned ships, the lat­est of which, four years after the one about which he proph­e­sied, has just picked up the first sounds ever record­ed on the Red Plan­et. You can hear it, prefer­ably with the use of a sub­woofer or a pair of capa­bly bass-repro­duc­ing head­phones, in the video above.

“That’s the sound of winds blow­ing across NASA’s InSight lan­der on Mars, the first sounds record­ed from the red plan­et,” writes the New York Times’ Ken­neth Chang. “It’s all the more remark­able because InSight — which land­ed last week — does not have a micro­phone.”

Instead it picked up this rum­ble, which NASA describes as “caused by vibra­tions from the wind, esti­mat­ed to be blow­ing between 10 to 15 mph (5 to 7 meters a sec­ond),” with its seis­mome­ter and air pres­sure sen­sor right there on Mars’ Ely­si­um Plani­tia where it land­ed. “The winds were con­sis­tent with the direc­tion of dust dev­il streaks in the land­ing area, which were observed from orbit.”

Sci­ence fic­tion enthu­si­asts will note that InSight’s record­ing of Mar­t­ian wind, espe­cial­ly in the more eas­i­ly audi­ble pitched-up ver­sions includ­ed in the video, sounds not unlike the way cer­tain films and tele­vi­sion shows have long imag­ined the son­ic ambi­ence of Mars. NASA did­n’t launch InSight to test the the­o­ries implic­it­ly pre­sent­ed by Hol­ly­wood sound design­ers — rather, to col­lect data on the for­ma­tion of Mars and oth­er rocky plan­ets, as well as to check for the pres­ence of liq­uid water — but they will equip the next Mar­t­ian lan­ders they send out in 2020 with prop­er micro­phones, and not just one but two of them. Among oth­er sci­en­tif­ic tasks, writes Big Think’s Stephen John­son, those micro­phones will be equipped to “lis­ten to what hap­pens when the craft fires a laser at rocks on the sur­face.” Back here on Earth, one ques­tion looms above all oth­ers: which musi­cian will be the first to sam­ple all this?

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

Video: The Min­utes Before & After the Land­ing of the Mars Curios­i­ty Rover

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Anatomy of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Painting by Jackson Pollock (or Any Other Artist)

in Art, Chemistry, History, Science, Technology | December 3rd, 2018

In the old days, deter­min­ing an art forgery was most­ly a mat­ter of nar­ra­tive deduc­tion, a la Sher­lock Holmes.

Thi­a­go Piwowar­czyk and Jef­frey Tay­lor, founders of New York Art Foren­sics, employ such tech­niques to estab­lish prove­nance, trac­ing the chain of own­er­ship of any giv­en work back to its orig­i­nal sale by research­ing cat­a­logues, title trans­fers, and cor­re­spon­dence.

But they also bring a num­ber of high tech tools to the table, to fur­ther prove—or in the case of the alleged Jack­son Pol­lock drip paint­ing above, disprove—a work’s authen­tic­i­ty.

In the WIRED video above, these experts, whose pedi­gree includes degrees in Chem­istry, Foren­sic Sci­ence, and Com­par­a­tive His­to­ry, a Visu­al Arts Man­age­ment text­book, and two Frick Col­lec­tion Fel­low­ships, break the sleuthing process down to five crit­i­cal steps:

1. Estab­lish prove­nance

Obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy has a place in the process too, in the form of a high­ly unre­li­able fax, alleged­ly sent in 1997. It pur­ports to be a pho­to­copy of a type­writ­ten let­ter from 1970, writ­ten by a gallery own­er who talked one of the artist’s for­mer girl­friends into part­ing with a num­ber of works after his death.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the painting’s cur­rent own­er, Piwowar­czyk and Tay­lor could find no proof that the gallery or its own­er ever exist­ed. The let­ter also botch­es Pollock’s death date and odd­ly, there’s a blank where the sender’s num­ber would nor­mal­ly be.

Due dili­gence reveals noth­ing resem­bling this paint­ing in the cat­a­logue raison­né of Pollock’s work.

2. Close up visu­al analy­sis

This can be accom­plished with tools as sim­ple as the flash­light and plas­tic caliper Tay­lor uses to exam­ine the sta­ple holes found at reg­u­lar inter­vals along the unsigned can­vas’ edges. In the 1940s, artists start­ed grav­i­tat­ing toward sta­ples over tacks as a method for secur­ing their can­vas­es to stretch­er bars, but would Pol­lock have done so? Like­ly not, to hear him tell it:

I hard­ly ever stretch my can­vas before paint­ing. I pre­fer to tack the unstretched can­vas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resis­tance of a hard sur­face.

Piwowar­czyk and Tay­lor draw on their oth­er sens­es, too, when per­form­ing this in-depth visu­al inspec­tion. A deep sniff reveals that teabags were used to dis­col­or the can­vas, in hope of mak­ing it appear old­er than it is.

3. Pho­tog­ra­phy with a mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing cam­era 

This camera’s abil­i­ty to see the Ultra-Vio­let spec­trum allows our foren­sic experts to spot restora­tions, under­draw­ing, and pen­ti­men­ti. Here, the cam­era revealed an under­ly­ing paint­ing whose geo­met­ric lay­out is unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of Pol­lock, as well as a sus­pi­cious­ly ama­teur­ish patch job on the back of the can­vas, anoth­er attempt to make the paint­ing appear old­er than it is.

4. Exam­i­na­tion with an X‑ray flu­o­res­cence spec­trom­e­ter

It looks like a cool Star Wars prop, and allows the exam­in­ers to iden­ti­fy ele­ments in the pig­ment. Here, our “Pol­lock” gets a pass. There’s tita­ni­um (as in Tita­ni­um White) in evi­dence, but that’s per­mis­si­ble for any­thing paint­ed from the 30s onward.

5. Mol­e­c­u­lar Imag­ing and Analy­sis by Raman Spec­troscopy

The forg­er might have got­ten away with it if it weren’t for those med­dling kids and their Raman Spec­tro­scope! The minus­cule sam­ples of paint Piwowar­czyk har­vests from the can­vas reveal all sorts of organ­ic debris that have no place in a Pol­lock, such as dry­wall dust and an acrylic that didn’t come into use ‘til the 1960s.

In con­clu­sion, exer­cise cau­tion and con­sult the experts before pur­chas­ing a high val­ue drip paint­ing this hol­i­day sea­son! Accord­ing to Piwowar­czyk, the fakes—over 100 and pre­sum­ably still counting—outstrip the num­ber of drip paint­ings Pol­lock cre­at­ed through­out his life­time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edi­tion of Galileo’s Sci­en­tif­ic Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC from Decem­ber 6 — 20 for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Psilocybin Could Soon Be a Legal Treatment for Depression: Johns Hopkins Professor, Roland Griffiths, Explains How Psilocybin Can Relieve Suffering

in Health, Psychology, Science, TED Talks | November 23rd, 2018

Much of the recent sci­en­tif­ic research into psy­che­delics has picked up where researchers left off in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, before LSD, psilo­cy­bin, and oth­er psy­choac­tive drugs became coun­ter­cul­tur­al means of con­scious­ness expan­sion, and then banned, ille­gal sub­stances the gov­ern­ment sought to con­trol. Sci­en­tists from sev­er­al fields stud­ied psy­che­delics as treat­ments for addic­tion, depres­sion, and anx­i­ety, and end-of-life care. These appli­ca­tions were con­ceived and test­ed sev­er­al decades ago.

Now, thanks to some seri­ous invest­ment from high-pro­file insti­tu­tions like Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, and thanks to chang­ing gov­ern­ment atti­tudes toward psy­choac­tive drugs, it may be pos­si­ble for psilo­cy­bin, the active ingre­di­ent in “mag­ic mush­rooms,” to get legal approval for ther­a­py in a clin­i­cal set­ting by 2021. “For the first time in U.S. his­to­ry,” Shel­by Hart­man reports at Rolling Stone, “a psy­che­del­ic drug is on the fast track to get­ting approved for treat­ing depres­sion by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”

As Michael Pol­lan has detailed in his lat­est book, How to Change Your Mind, the pos­si­bil­i­ties for psilo­cy­bin and oth­er such drugs are vast. “But before the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion can be peti­tioned to reclas­si­fy it,” Brit­tany Shoot notes at For­tune, the drug “first has to clear phase III clin­i­cal tri­als. The entire process is expect­ed to take about five years.” In the TEDMED video above, you can see Roland R. Grif­fiths, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at Johns Hop­kins, dis­cuss the ways in which psilo­cy­bin, “under sup­port­ed con­di­tions, can occa­sion mys­ti­cal-type expe­ri­ences asso­ci­at­ed with endur­ing pos­i­tive changes in atti­tudes and behav­ior.”

The impli­ca­tions of this research span the fields of ethics and med­i­cine, psy­chol­o­gy and reli­gion, and it’s fit­ting that Dr. Grif­fiths leads off with a state­ment about the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and sci­ence, sup­port­ed by a quote from Ein­stein, who said “the most beau­ti­ful and pro­found emo­tion we can expe­ri­ence is the sen­sa­tion of the mys­ti­cal. It’s the source of all true sci­ence.” But the work Grif­fiths and oth­ers have been engaged in is pri­mar­i­ly prac­ti­cal in nature—though it does not at all exclude the mystical—like find­ing effec­tive means to treat depres­sion in can­cer patients, for exam­ple.

“Six­teen mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from depres­sion and approx­i­mate­ly one-third of them are treat­ment resis­tant,” Hart­man writes. “Depres­sion is also an epi­dem­ic world­wide, affect­ing 300 mil­lion peo­ple around the world.” Psy­chotrop­ic drugs like psilo­cy­bin, LSD, and MDMA (which is not clas­si­fied as a psy­che­del­ic), have been shown for a long time to work for many peo­ple suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness and addic­tions.

Although such drugs present some poten­tial for abuse, they are not high­ly addic­tive, espe­cial­ly rel­a­tive to the flood of opi­oids on the legal mar­ket that are cur­rent­ly dev­as­tat­ing whole com­mu­ni­ties as peo­ple use them to self-med­icate. It seems that what has most pre­vent­ed psy­che­delics from being researched and pre­scribed has as much or more to do with long-stand­ing prej­u­dice and fear as it does with a gen­uine con­cern for pub­lic health. (And that’s not even to men­tion the finan­cial inter­ests who exert tremen­dous pres­sure on drug pol­i­cy.)

But now, Hart­man writes, “it appears [researchers] have come too far to go back—and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is final­ly rec­og­niz­ing it, too.” Find out why this research mat­ters in Dr. Grif­fiths’ talk, Pollan’s book, the Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies, and some of the posts we’ve linked to below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Use Psy­che­del­ic Drugs to Improve Men­tal Health: Michael Pollan’s New Book, How to Change Your Mind, Makes the Case

New LSD Research Pro­vides the First Images of the Brain on Acid, and Hints at Its Poten­tial to Pro­mote Cre­ativ­i­ty

Artist Draws 9 Por­traits While on LSD: Inside the 1950s Exper­i­ments to Turn LSD into a “Cre­ativ­i­ty Pill”

When Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD, Expe­ri­enc­ing “the Most Serene, the Most Beau­ti­ful Death” (1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Laurie Anderson Creates a Virtual Reality Installation That Takes Viewers on an Unconventional Tour of the Moon

in Art, Science, Technology | October 24th, 2018

Next year, NASA will cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of the moon land­ing, and as part of the cel­e­bra­tion will restore the orig­i­nal beige and green con­trol pan­els from the late 60’s Mis­sion Con­trol. “We want to take you back to July 20, 1969,” says direc­tor of the non-prof­it Space Cen­ter Hous­ton, the offi­cial vis­i­tors cen­ter for the John­son Space Cen­ter. “You’re going to expe­ri­ence the final few moments before Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin land­ed on the moon for the first time.”

But the agency isn’t only look­ing back to half a cen­tu­ry ago. It’s also look­ing for­ward to launch­ing more moon expe­di­tions—in part­ner­ship with com­mer­cial and inter­na­tion­al agencies—next year. And while those of us who aren’t astro­nauts or bil­lion­aires are unlike­ly to ever see the moon up close, Lau­rie Ander­son, NASA’s first artist-in-res­i­dence, can trans­port view­ers there for the cost of a tick­et to Den­mark.

Start­ing last month and run­ning until Jan­u­ary 2019, the country’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art fea­tures Anderson’s new moon-themed vir­tu­al real­i­ty project as part of its exhi­bi­tion The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Out­er Space.

Cre­at­ed with mul­ti­me­dia artist Hsin-Chien Huang—with whom Ander­son col­lab­o­rat­ed on anoth­er beau­ti­ful VR expe­ri­ence last year—this project trans­ports vis­i­tors to a vir­tu­al moon, where they can view con­stel­la­tions invent­ed by Ander­son, sym­bols of things that have, or that seem poised to, dis­ap­pear: a dinosaur, a polar bear, democ­ra­cy. “All of those things that you think are so sta­ble are so frag­ile, and can be lost,” she says in the video intro­duc­tion to her project above.

So, okay, it’s not the moon Arm­strong and Aldrin plant­ed their country’s flag on in 1969. It’s also pop­u­lat­ed by dinosaurs, birds, and oth­er crea­tures cre­at­ed from a lat­tice­work of DNA mol­e­cules.

Not only did Ander­son and Huang depict a thrilling fan­ta­sy VR moon, but they also cre­at­ed a “’hideous’ ver­sion,” reports CNN, “in which peo­ple had dumped all the radioac­tive mate­r­i­al from Earth. “We did dif­fer­ent phas­es of the moon,” says Ander­son, “dif­fer­ent aspects, looked not just at the roman­ti­cism of the moon but dystopias.” This isn’t her first for­ay into moon-themed art. As artist-in-res­i­dence at NASA since 2003, she has had some time to reflect on the agency’s mis­sion.

After her first year with NASA, she debuted a 90-minute per­for­mance piece called “The End of the Moon,” the sec­ond in a tril­o­gy she described as an “epic poem” about con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cul­ture. She is not the obvi­ous choice to work for a gov­ern­ment agency. Her work has been fierce­ly crit­i­cal of the country’s wars and its repres­sion on the domes­tic front. “Frankly, I find liv­ing in Amer­i­can cul­ture at the moment real­ly prob­lem­at­ic,” she said back in 2004. “But when I think of NASA, it’s the one thing that feels future-ori­ent­ed in a way that’s inspir­ing.”

Look­ing both back­ward and for­ward, next year’s anniver­sary of the moon land­ing will give us all rea­sons to think about humanity’s past and future in out­er space. Will it include “unbe­liev­able aspi­ra­tions,” as Ander­son mused, like “the green­ing of Mars,” or the dystopi­an dump­ing of radioac­tive waste on the Moon? Giv­en the trash and trea­sure of our cur­rent rela­tion­ship with the cosmos—not to men­tion our own planet—probably both. See more 2‑D excerpts from Ander­son and Huang’s piece in the scene test above, and, if you can score a tick­et, enter the full VR expe­ri­ence at the Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art.

via @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lau­rie Ander­son Intro­duces Her Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Lets You Fly Mag­i­cal­ly Through Sto­ries

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Lau­rie Anderson’s Top 10 Books to Take to a Desert Island

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Stephen Hawking’s Final Book and Scientific Paper Just Got Published: Brief Answers to the Big Questions and “Information Paradox”

in Astronomy, Physics, Science | October 18th, 2018

How did it all begin?  Is there a god? Can we pre­dict the future? Is there oth­er intel­li­gent life in the uni­verse? For decades, many of us turned to Stephen Hawk­ing for answers to those ques­tions, or at least supreme­ly intel­li­gent sug­ges­tions as to where the answers might lie. But the cel­e­brat­ed astro­physi­cist’s death ear­li­er this year — after an aston­ish­ing­ly long life and career, giv­en the chal­lenges he faced — took that option away. It turns out, though, that we haven’t actu­al­ly heard the last of him: his last book, Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions (whose trail­er you can watch just above), came out just this week.

“The book is quin­tes­sen­tial Hawk­ing,” writes physics pro­fes­sor Marce­lo Gleis­er at NPR. “He starts by address­ing the ques­tions in physics and cos­mol­o­gy that he ded­i­cat­ed his intel­lec­tu­al life to answer, using easy-to-fol­low argu­ments and draw­ing from every­day images and thought exper­i­ments.” Hawk­ing’s answers to the big ques­tions fig­ure into his view of not just the world but all exis­tence: he believes, writes Gleis­er, “that human­i­ty’s evo­lu­tion­ary mis­sion is to spread through the galaxy as a sort of cos­mic gar­den­er, sow­ing life along the way. He believes, even if not with­out wor­ry, that we will devel­op a pos­i­tive rela­tion­ship with intel­li­gent machines and that, togeth­er, we will redesign the cur­rent fate of the world and of our species.”

In par­al­lel with his career as a pub­lic fig­ure and writer of pop­u­lar explana­to­ry books, which began with 1988’s A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Hawk­ing per­formed sci­en­tif­ic research on black holes. The Guardian’s sci­ence edi­tor Ian Sam­ple describes it as a “career-long effort to under­stand what hap­pens to infor­ma­tion when objects fall into black holes,” capped off by a posthu­mous­ly pub­lished paper titled “Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair.” “Toss an object into a black hole and the black hole’s tem­per­a­ture ought to change,” writes Sam­ple. “So too will a prop­er­ty called entropy, a mea­sure of an object’s inter­nal dis­or­der, which ris­es the hot­ter it gets.” In the paper Hawk­ing and his col­lab­o­ra­tors show that “a black hole’s entropy may be record­ed by pho­tons that sur­round the black hole’s event hori­zon, the point at which light can­not escape the intense grav­i­ta­tion­al pull. They call this sheen of pho­tons ‘soft hair’.”

If that sounds tricky to under­stand, all of us who have appre­ci­at­ed Hawk­ing’s writ­ing know that we can at least go back to his books to get a grip on black holes and the ques­tions about them that get sci­en­tists most curi­ous. Much remains for future astro­physi­cists to work on about that “infor­ma­tion para­dox,” to do with where, exact­ly, every­thing that seem­ing­ly gets sucked into a black hole actu­al­ly goes. “We don’t know that Hawk­ing entropy accounts for every­thing you could pos­si­bly throw at a black hole, so this is real­ly a step along the way,” Hawk­ing’s col­lab­o­ra­tor Mal­colm J. Per­ry tells Sam­ple. “We think it’s a pret­ty good step, but there is a lot more work to be done.” As Hawk­ing sure­ly knew, the big ques­tions — in physics or any oth­er realm of exis­tence — nev­er quite get ful­ly answered.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawk­ing (RIP) Explains His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary The­o­ry of Black Holes with the Help of Chalk­board Ani­ma­tions

Stephen Hawking’s Ph.D. The­sis, “Prop­er­ties of Expand­ing Uni­vers­es,” Now Free to Read/Download Online

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Watch Stephen Hawking’s Inter­view with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Record­ed 10 Days Before His Death: A Last Con­ver­sa­tion about Black Holes, Time Trav­el & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Learn Anatomy Through a Pictorial History of James Bond 007

in Art, Biology, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Science | October 15th, 2018

Remem­ber the scene in Tomor­row Nev­er Dies when sexy dou­ble agent Wai Lin hand­cuffs James Bond to the show­er and leaves him there?

Alter­nate­ly, remem­ber “Table 9” from anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albi­nus’ 1749 Tab­u­lae sceleti et mus­cu­lo­rum cor­poris humani?

Kri­o­ta Will­berg, an edu­ca­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, and author of Draw Stronger: Self-Care For Car­toon­ists and Oth­er Visu­al Artists, is suf­fi­cient­ly steeped in both Bond and Albi­nus to iden­ti­fy strik­ing visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties.

That show­er scene is just one icon­ic moment that Will­berg includ­ed in her mini-com­ic, Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007.

Agent Bond’s sar­to­r­i­al sense is a cru­cial aspect of his appeal, but Will­berg, a Bond fan who’s seen every film in the canon at least five times, digs below that cel­e­brat­ed sur­face, peel­ing back skin to expose the struc­tures that lie beneath.

Sean Connery’s Bond exhibits a vet­er­an artist’s mod­el’s still­ness wait­ing for the right time to make his move against Dr. No’s “eight-legged assas­sin.” Even before Will­berg got involved, it was an excel­lent show­case for his pecs, delta, and ster­n­ocleit­o­mas­toid mus­cles.

Leav­ing her flayed Bonds in their cin­e­mat­ic set­tings are a way of pay­ing trib­ute to the antique anatom­i­cal illus­tra­tions Will­berg admires for their dynamism:

…sit­ting in a chair, tak­ing a stroll, hold­ing its skin or organs out of the way so that the read­er can get a bet­ter look at deep­er struc­tures. Some of the cadav­ers are very flir­ty. The pic­tures remind us that we are the organs we see on the page. They do stuff! 

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine select­ed Will­berg as its first Artist in Res­i­dence, because of the way she explores the inter­sec­tions between body sci­ences and artis­tic prac­tices. (Oth­er projects include an intri­cate needle­point X‑Ray of her own root canal and Stitchin’ Time!, a fic­tion­al encounter in which Aulus Cor­nelius Cel­sus (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), author of  De Med­i­c­i­na, and sur­geon Aelius Galenus (129  – c. 200 CE) team up to repair a dis­em­bow­eled glad­i­a­tor.

Is there a squea­mish bone in this artist’s body?

All signs point to no.

Asked to pick a favorite Bond movie, she names Goldfin­ger for the mythol­o­gy con­cern­ing the infa­mous scene where­in a beau­ti­ful woman is paint­ed gold, but also 2006’s Casi­no Royale for keep­ing the tor­ture scene from the book:

I didn’t think they’d have the balls! Sor­ry! Poor taste but I couldn’t resist. Although Tim­o­thy Dal­ton phys­i­cal­ly resem­bled Bond as described in the books, most of the movies make Bond out to be smarter than Flem­ing wrote him. I think Judy Dench called Daniel Craig, Casi­no Royale’s Bond, a “blunt instru­ment” which is pret­ty much how he’s writ­ten. He’s tough and lucky and that’s why he’s sur­vived. Plus the machete fight is great. 

Some­times peo­ple get too pris­sy about the body. I am meat and liv­er and sausage and so are you. Your body is inescapable while you live. You should get to know it. Think about it in dif­fer­ent con­texts. It’s fun!

When From Rus­sia With Love’s Rosa Klebb punch­es mas­ter assas­sin, Red Grant, in the stom­ach, she is squish­ing a liv­ing liv­er through liv­ing abdom­i­nal mus­cles.

Hard copies of Kri­o­ta Willberg’s anato­my-based comics, includ­ing Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007, are avail­able from Bird­cage Bot­tom Books.

Lis­ten to an hour-long inter­view with Comics Alter­na­tive in which Will­berg dis­cuss­es her New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine res­i­den­cy, anatom­i­cal research, and the ways in which humor informs her approach here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Spell­bind­ing Art of Human Anato­my: From the Renais­sance to Our Mod­ern Times

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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