Can you see sounds and hear shapes?

Synaesthesia is a rare condition that results in a blending of the senses. For example, some people can ’see’ sounds, in the sense that sounds evoke certain colours in their mind.

While this condition affects around 1% of the population, according to Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, everybody is a “synaesthete” to one degree or other. Try the test above and see if you can associate sounds and shapes.

Got it right? Most people do. The real question is why. Read more about synaesthesia and try out some more tests in this BBC article.

Size does in fact matter if you are a male beaked whale - the size of two of your teeth that is!

Actually, according to a recent study, it is also the shape of the two teeth that male beaked whale have on the outside of their jaws that is important. DNA analysis has shown that the teeth are probably a secondary sexual trait that evolved to help female beaked whales select a mate of the right species. Bite me honey!

In the words of Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, “Beaked whales are among the least known, least understood and, frankly, most bizarre whales in the ocean.” No kidding! They get the hots for a pair of teeth.

Read the full BBC article about the study here: Whales’ teeth are an aid to mating.

photo credit: LoreleiRanveig

Fancy an extra brain to do some of the thinking for you? Imagine having your very own artificially intelligent assistant at hand to provide answers to those all important questions - from choosing the best stocks to invest in, to deciding what movie to watch tonight!

All that could become reality sooner than you might think if IBM’s latest artificial intelligence project pans out. The $4.9 million Cognitive Computing via Synaptronics and Supercomputing (C2S2) project teams up IBM with five US universities to create a neural network computer system that can feel, think and make decisions just like a brain does.

The idea behind the C2S2 project is to mimic the very highly interconnected network of neurons found in real brains, in order to build a machine that can analyze vast amounts of data in a flash and make split second decisions. This sounds like something straight out of a science fiction movie, but may soon be science fact.

Such an artificial intelligence computer brain would use much less power than your PC, and IBM’s researchers hope to make it even more efficient than an actual brain by using nanotechnology components to make synapses and neurons that are even smaller than those found in nature.

Those of you looking forward to your own artificial friend will have to settle for something simple at first - C2S2’s long-term goal is to create a brain with the complexity of a cat’s. Very impressive nontheless!

If you think the Internet was invented in the 80s or 90s, you could not be more wrong!

Did you know that a Belgian visionary called Paul Otlet had already come up with the concept of the Internet way back in 1934, and also imagined computers with a windowed working environment where the screen shows several documents at once? The first time I heard this, I had to double check it to make sure it was not a hoax.

Well, I just came across this short video about Paul Otlet’s futuristic visions as he explains them in his ‘Treatise on Documentation’, and thought I’d share. Prepare to be amazed as Otlet predicts a multimedia-rich experience complete with video, text and audio at a time when few people had ever used a telephone and even crappy black and white TV was still a good way off!

Makes you wonder what will technology look like 60 or 70 years from now!

I guess I forgot to mention in my first post that the spark behind this science blog was the ignorance and fearmongering that led many to believe that the Large Hadron Collider would or could destroy the word.

Well, now that the LHC is sadly out of action for a couple of months it is a good time to put your mind at rest that all the scientists at CERN are fully aware of the comprehensive safety procedures at the Large Hadron Collider (also known as ‘What to do if a black hole is about to swallow the Earth’) and know what steps to take in case of an emergency.

Enjoy courtesy of Funny or Die. Hope it helps you sleep at better night once the LHC is up and running again!

And while you’re still alive, make sure to get one of our hilarious ‘I survived the LHC experiment’ t-shirts.

I Survived the Large Hadron Collider

photo credit: rpongsaj

Science was my first love.

Ever since I was a small child, science had me completely captivated. Children are naturally curious, of course, but in my case, I had this insatiable desire to devour anything I could lay my hands on that was about science. I guess I simply wanted to know how the world worked, and this was the way my questions were going to be answered.

So, every Saturday morning, my dad used to take me off to the library to hunt for another little pile of books full of intriguing facts and all sorts of fun experiments to try out. And that was how I whiled away much of my time.

As I grew up and continued my studies, my love for science deepened - especially for physics, because I saw it as a subject so intimately connected with our everyday life experiences. On the other hand, I just could not stand biology simply because of the way it was presented to us at school as a bunch of facts that had to be memorized and diagrams to be drawn flawlessly. You see, memory was never one of my strong points and, back then as a clumsy teenager, I could not draw smooth steady line to save my life. The rote-learning of biology could never compare in my mind with the elegant logic that pervaded the other sciences.

Now, the picture is wholly different, and with an understanding of Evolution, biology fits in perfectly as fascinating science with a real and extraordinary power to explain not just how, but the deeper question of why things are the way they are. Luckily form me, I gave biology a second chance and realised that logic and deduction apply to it as much as anywhere else.

I was hoping to get off to a more interesting start to this blog than just talking about myself, but I’m keeping this post because there is a lesson to be learned here. As I look back, I realise how easy it is to misunderstand science - how easy it is to be influenced by parents, teachers and people around us to not see the beauty and value that science brings to our world.

My main aim with this blog is to address this. In a world where science has taken pretty much a back seat in classrooms and even among people in general, I want to show that it is more relevant than ever. Science is not only for geeks. It can be made accessible to all. And it is immense fun!

I plan to share with you the awe and wonder with which I look at the world. I want to show you that if you love life, you just have to love science for the incredible way it openes a window into who we are and where we come from, and for the power it gives us humans to advance as a species and to satisfy that burning quest for knowledge that sets us apart from all other life.