In 1952, Ivy Mike created the then largest man-made fireball.

5km across, the fireball erupted from the island of Elugelab and engulfed the sky. The shock wave vaporised everything within 5km, and scraped the neighbouring islands clean, no buildings or plants remained. 2 hours later some helicopters flew over what used to be Elugelab. The island was gone. In its place was a dark blue welt in the ocean, 2km across, and deep enough to hold a 17 story building. The island had been vaporised. It was 1952, and the largest bomb in the world had just been detonated.

The United States made the bomb because it was afraid. In late 1949 the Soviet Union had created and detonated ‘First Lightning’ – a nuclear bomb just like those dropped at the end of World War II. The United States was no longer the only nuclear superpower. Tensions escalated, and they needed something new. They were going to need a bigger bomb.

In January 1950, President Truman announced that the United States would develop a new bomb, superior to the A-bomb. A hydrogen bomb that would push the United States into the Thermonuclear era. Unfortunately nobody knew how to make the H-bomb.

H-bombs are thermonuclear, meaning nuclear fusion. They make heat in the same way the sun, and billions of others stars make their energy. Two small atoms like hydrogen hit each other and combine to make a larger atom, at the same time they release large amounts of energy. The problem is that fusion needs immense heat and pressure. That difficulty is why it was happening easily in the sun, but not so much on Earth.

In 1951 Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller overcame that barrier. With their combined ideas, thermonuclear bombs were possible – in theory. To test the theory, they needed an experiment. Project Ivy was started, and it was the perfect opportunity to test.

The Building Bomb

Project Ivy was aimed at improving U.S. nuclear weapons in two ways. The first was the H-bomb, the other was making a larger, A-bomb. The H-bomb was Ivy Mike, at its construction it was the largest, heaviest and most powerful bomb in existence. I say bomb, it was closer to a factory-sized nuclear fridge.

Mike was not a bomb ready to be dropped from a plane, it was designed purely as an experiment, so it looked like an aircraft hangar or factory. It was assembled in the Pacific proving grounds, on Elugelab, a small island on Enewetak atoll. The main bomb assembly was over 6 metres tall and 2 metres wide. Covered in metal case 30cm thick, it was very large, shiny and cold. They nicknamed it “Sausage.” Sausage weighed a dainty 56 metric tonnes.

‘Sausage’ and the cooling equipment next to it. The man on the right gives a sense of how large it was.

The idea behind the Teller-Ulam design was to put a bomb on top of the bomb. The first bomb was a traditional nuclear weapon power, this would blow up and for a very small amount of time be held in by the casing. The heat and force of it would head downwards and hit the store of hydrogen beneath. If the force was enough, fusion would begin and the H-bomb would be born with a death-laced burst of fire.

To keep everything nice and cool, 18 tonnes of cryogenic cooling were attached to Sausage. This was to stop the liquid deuterium (a type of hydrogen) evaporating. All in all, Ivy Mike weighed 74 metric tonnes. In October they were ready, but they needed conditions to be right. There were up to 20,000 people at risk on distant islands, and they also wanted to be able to collect samples from the mushroom cloud.1st November, 1952, the weather was in their favour. Just before dawn the ships assembled to watch, 48km away, just beneath the horizon.

Just before detonation four F-84G fighter jets were launched towards Elugelab, ready for work. At 7.15am the countdown began. Everyone on the ship decks put on protective goggles or turned their backs. Then Ivy Mike broke the world.

Amongst The Boiling Clouds

Ivy Mike’s mushroom cloud.

It had the strength of 11 megatons, the strength of millions of tons of TNT. The Thermonuclear age had come to the world, announced with the largest fireball yet made by humans. Radioactive coral rained down like nuclear confetti on the ships, having covered all that distance.

Above, the mushroom cloud grew hungrily, pushing up 33km in 2 minutes and eventually spreading out to cover 7,500 square kilometres of sky. What had happened? The four jets would find out. Each was equipped with radioactive sampling boxes on their wing tips, they would scoop up any particles and then they would be sent back to the U.S. for testing. They were going to fly into the mushroom cloud.

They arrived 90 minutes after detonation, dwarfed by the colossal stem of cloud 32km across. The umbrella of the mushroom loomed over them, beyond the reach of their engines and fuel. The stem beckoned, and the first 2 jets dove in, specks among the maelstrom. Bathed in nuclear radiation they hit their limits 5 minutes in, and turned 90 degrees to exit the cloud. They both successfully burst into light, and were bathed in the Sun’s own thermonuclear glow.

The remaining 2 jets plunged in, and misfortune struck. One jet stalled during a turn and plummeted for 6km down the boiling shaft. The pilot managed to regain control and exit, but couldn’t find either the fuel tanker or another craft. Eventually he located the radio beacon for Enewetak and headed for it. The island was in sight but the jet caught fire mid-air and he ran out of fuel. The jet went down over the water, and the pilot couldn’t escape, his lead-lined vest made movement too difficult. Later searches couldn’t find the sunken plane or the body of its pilot, Captain Jimmy Robinson.

Boy Fallout

Before and after Ivy Mike. Notice Elugelab, or at least, where it was.

The shock wave from Ivy Mike was conducted through Earth and picked up back in the U.S. by some seismometers. Edward Teller, co-creator of the bomb was one of the first to know. Back in America it was Halloween, but he had an extra reason to celebrate. Overjoyed, he sent a telegram to his colleagues. For security reasons it said only: “It’s a boy.”

As for Elugelab, it had been entirely vaporised, it doesn’t appear in modern Atlases. Over the next 30 years the U.S. put hundreds of millions of dollars into decontaminating the atoll. In 1980 the announced areas safe to live in, and residents moved back the same year. Ready to live their lives in their own space.

News of Ivy Mike was leaked within hours of detonation and were widely reported, but the government kept very tight-lipped over the entire thing. It was presidential election season after all, and they had been ordered to mention nothing at all. Admittance finally came in 1954, by which time the Soviet Union had independently created its own H-bomb ‘Sloika.’ Sloika, as well as being named after a layered puff-pastry, could be carried and dropped from planes. The nuclear game had changed once more, the U.S. was on the back foot again. The nuclear situation would remain unstable over the next few decades, but never again would a clear leader exist. At least until the Soviet Union itself began to decay.

Something Old, Something New

Ivy Mike was a success in many ways. It proved the concepts, if not designs for the world of thermonuclear weaponry. Nuclear power is all around us though, ever-present. Every star in the sky is a thermonuclear powerhouse, giving light, heat, and life to their faithfully orbiting spheres. Nuclear fission provides 90% in the earth’s core, keeping the continents moving and volcanoes erupting. Not everything was catching up with nature though, from the ash came new forms.

The 3 surviving jets brought back radioactive particles, when analysed they revealed two surprises. Elements, not found anywhere on Earth, had been created in the fiery heart of Mike. Einsteinium and Fermium, synthetic elements only found as the results of experiments, decaying slowly with time. They were the first synthetic elements ever created, later nuclear tests would reveal more unexplored elements.

Vaporizing an entire island was also quite impressive.

All images public domain, courtesy of the US Department of Energy.
Oh, and apologies for the delay. Content should now be updated in matters of weeks, not months.

Further Reading and Viewing:

• Short Film on Ivy Mike by the U.S. Military
• Cartage: Ivy Mike Design Details
• Nuclear Weapons Archive: Ivy Mike
• Nuclear Secrecy: Ivy Mike Secrecy and Leaks
• Smithsonian: Radioactive Sampling
• Wikipedia: Teller-Ulam Thermonuclear Designs
• Wikipedia: Soviet Atomic Bomb Project
• PhysOrg: Heat in Earth’s Core

If a slave becomes “sulky and dissatisfied without reason,” then they may have drapetomania and be about to flee. Cartwright recommended “whipping the devil out of them” until they became submissive again, the state to which they belonged. An alternative remedy was to make running away impossible by having the big toe from both feet severed. Hence curing the disease.

Looking at it from what is technically “the future” we can easily see that something strange is afoot here. Instead of treating black slaves a people, Cartwright assumed that the place of a slave, was to remain a slave. He used the bible as evidence, taking sections talking about the faithfulness of a servant to master to justify his assertions that slaves should be treated as little more than children. Children to be whipped that is. This viewpoint led him to make some suspect, pseudoscientific contributions to the body of scientific racism. He even believed that lazy saves weren’t upset, they too were ill.

Dysaesthesia aethiopica, or “rascality” as it was referred to by slave owners explained the apparent lack of will to work shown by slaves. This mental illness was unique though, in that it had physical symptoms shown on the body. A decreased level of skin sensitivity and lesions across the body were present in all the cases of rascality. Cartwright ignored the possibility that “whipping the devil out of them” had caused this, and came up with a resourceful cure for the disease.

“The best means to stimulate the skin is, first, to have the patient well washed with warm water and soap; then, to anoint it all over in oil, and to slap the oil in with a broad leather strap; then to put the patient to some hard kind of work in the sunshine.”

Whipping for the whipped.

The medical association of Louisiana found his case to be reasonable and his findings were published in Debow’s review and widely circulated. The Southern United States agreed with his findings and slaves felt the results. In the Northern United States his “findings” were ridiculed in the northern united states. Frederick Law Olmsted even published a counter paper pointing to evidence that white indentured slaves had escaped from captivity, jokingly suggesting that drapetomania was a white European disease that traders had introduced to Africa.

The reason for the split opinion across those United States was a product of the time. The southern united states wanted slavery to continue and help fuel their booming cotton industry. The northern united states stood to benefit less from the continuation of slavery and claimed it was damaging to humanity. Back then, as now, people performed poor, biased science to create false evidence to back their viewpoints. Then came a most uncivil war.

Afterwards came some freedom, and an epidemic of drapetomania the likes of which the United States had never seen.

Further Reading

• Excerpt of Debow’s Review at pbs
• Scientific Racism article by Vanessa Jackson
• Image Credit: Fixcas

Deserted in the desert

Two dusty tracks cross in the sun-blasted Mojave Desert; there, perched on the edge of nowhere are concrete blocks where a famous phone booth used to stand. It was there for miners in the 1960s with its hand-cranked convenience, in the 1970s it was upgraded to the newfangled touch-tone technology and it was there for no-one. The area around was abandoned by all but dust, and the phone booth waited. The phone booth was shot, no-one knows when. After the unfortunate incident it began to live a full life, going from a lone watcher to an obsession and a small icon.

Phone Found

Decades passed it by uneventfully until 1997, a map, and a character known only as ‘Mr N’ decided to meet. The anonymous Los Angeles resident was absently scanning a map of the nearby area when he noticed an anomaly – a blemish, a dot in the Mojave. Printed next to it, the word ‘telephone’.

Taking the discovery as a call to action Mr N set off in a Jeep and in pursuit, wearing a fine pair of wingtip shoes. He navigated to the nearest bit of tarmac, 15 miles away, then turned off into the dust, following the faint track and the mark on a map. Surprisingly enough he found the thing and decided to test it.

‘It works’

Eventually he returned home and wrote about the discovery in a letter to a small underground magazine he subscribed to. He finished by writing ‘it works’ and included the number so that anyone could call the desert. The number was (760) 733-9969. In spite of all chances the phone company had left the thing connected despite the minuscule number of people it could service. Fortunately for the phone company a lot more people started to use it. Some used it more than others.

26^th May 1997, Godfrey Daniels read the letter and became fixated upon it. His house slowly gathered notes to remind him. “Did you remember to call the Mojave Desert today?” blared the note stuck to his mirror. He had the equipment he needed to tape ever single call. Recording him repeating the time and date of the call while the phone rang out over an empty desert. He made every visitor to his house call the booth at least once, and he said he was ‘prepared to call for years.’ Years were not necessary, the desert sent some ears.

20^th June 1997 and Godfrey was making his daily call when he heard something other than idle ringing out. A busy tone. Must be the wrong number, Godfrey hung up and tried again, and the same tone rushed down the line into his ear and onto magnetised spools of recording tape. Years he was prepared for, but less than a month was phenomenal luck.

He called the phone repeatedly over 3 minutes until it finally rang normally. Then a female voice answered. After a hurried introduction he quizzed the local and found out much, starting with her name, Lorene Aiken. Over the constant clicking on the line he learnt that she lived out in the desert and mined volcanic cinder to make into cinder blocks. Additionally he found out that she rarely visited the booth and she disliked Vegas. After some minutes Godfrey finished with a single remark.“If the phone’s ever ringing again, pick it up. It’ll be me.”

“I’ll do that.” Lorene responded. Then the line went dead.

Godfrey considered things. The encounter only increased his focus on the booth. He would keep calling, and on his way to the Burning Man festival he would make a visit. Riding the high of his success he began to spread the news that would make the booth famous, and ultimately destroy it.

The Line to Fame

Dark fell over the edges of day, and on the 27^th August 1997 and Godfrey followed a line of telephone poles. At the end he found it, the booth was waiting and he felt as though he might never leave it. The feeling left him when the skies opened on the trio. With Godfrey in the dramatic downpour was his friend Mark and a marble bust of 19^th Century German composer Richard Wagner.

Two of the three took it in turns to make their calls to every conceivable person they knew the numbers for, then they passed on. Burning Man was calling them, and they would return anyway. then they moved on.

Coming back from the phenomenon of Burning man they did much more, cleaning it up and then partially covering it with glow-in-the-dark paint. Then they finally left for an extended period of time, taking pictures and a bucket full of broken glass with them. That was it, until fame struck.

The internet heard of the booth, that combined with word of mouth and together the world came to know of the shot-out box. It and Godfrey became minor celebrities and people began to contact him. So in 1998 he returned to the booth, this time he would receive calls, not dial them. Being a good sport, Wagner went along with him.

The event was announced in the LA Times newspaper and hundreds of people tried to call. When Godfrey arrived on site he had a surprise in store though, another person was at the booth, receiving calls from people expecting to talk to Godfrey. They got along famously and the pair answered 171 calls that day. In high spirits they used pieces of quartz to spell out ‘PHONE’ in letters 15 feet long. Then they, with Wagner, celebrated in the freak snowstorm that struck them in the desert. The Mojave then pulled in others.

One of the new figures to turn up claimed to have been sent by the Holy Spirit. In his personal mission he answered 500 calls over 32 days, including repeated ones from a person claiming they were from the Pentagon; apparently they said the phone booth was a ‘military installation’. The news travelled around the world; the phone never stopped ringing. A housewife in New Zealand, bored German Teenager and a proud skunk owner were among the people to whom the news spread. The booth was even discussed by the New York Times and was featured on the television networks NBC and CNN. That was the end of it.

Wireless, Boothless

Amid the furore, the hustle and bustle, crowds were tramping through previously isolated areas of the Mojave desert, marking it, polluting it with light and noise. In this gaggle of human communication the phone company announced plans to remove the booth. They claimed that the high number of visitors was damaging the environment. Devotees cried foul.

The damage was minimal, they were careful to clean up after themselves, and no-one had even come to check what had happened to the environment around the phone. Some suspected people living nearby had complained to the phone company. Either way the backlash didn’t stop the inevitable. 17^th of May 2000 the phone booth was removed and destroyed. Leaving only a few concrete blocks in its place. Soon after a colourful tombstone was placed on the site with its name and life span inscribed on the front. Godfrey Daniels was enraged but there was nothing he could do, it was done.

The headstone was removed soon after by the phone company. There ends the tale. People got on with their lives. The booth was destroyed and its number permanently decommissioned. Ring the number now and there is no reply, wait for year even, and no-one will answer you. The silence goes on.

Further Reading:

• The Original Mojave Phone Booth Site
• BBC article

Alexei Leonov on his spacewalk.

Voskhod 2 was a deadly mission. It was the final space race victory for Soviet Russia before NASA finally claimed its lead and ultimately won with the lunar endgame of 1969. This peak of the Soviet Federal Space Program nearly killed its two cosmonauts but was ultimately successful – it began on the 18th March 1965 when Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev were launched.

The setting was the gulf of space, the event was a secret. Soviet policy was that no-one outside of the space program and government knew the flight was taking place, so as to spare any shame and guilt after any mistakes. Even the families of those involved didn’t know the mission existed; at least until it was broadcast nationwide on television and radio. Fortunately the mission began well, and so ends the good news.

Voskhod 2 was ambitious, it was the first mission to attempt EVA (Extravehicular activity) in recorded history. EVA means a space walk. 30-year-old first-time cosmonaut Alexei twisted and turned in his stiff, customised space-suit before climbing into the ships first-of-a-kind inflatable airlock. Pavel lowered the airlock pressure and Alexei met the vacuum of space – it was not a pleasant meeting. Back at ground control they judged the mission was going well, so the camera feeds were sent out across Soviet Russia, and Alexei’s family found out that he was floating around outside of his spaceship. His young daughter reacted immediately:

“What is he doing? What is he doing? Please tell Daddy to get back inside.”

The purpose of the mission, other than annoying Americans, was to show that humans could survive independently in space, outside of a craft, given an appropriate suit. This escaped the notice of his father who was far more concerned with Alexei’s safety than scientific progress:

“Why is he acting like a juvenile delinquent?” he shouted in frustration. “Everyone else can complete their mission properly, inside the spacecraft. What is he doing clambering about outside? Somebody must tell him to get back inside immediately. He must be punished for this.”

Suddenly a new voice was heard through the televisions and radios of Russia. A message of congratulations from President Leonid Brezhnev: “We members of the Politburo are here sitting and watching what you are doing. We are proud of you,” Brezhnev said. “We wish you success. Take care. We await your safe arrival on Earth.” Both cosmonauts, and Alexei Leonov’s father, were cheered by the message. It was the last piece of good news for the entire mission.

10 minutes had passed, 10 minutes of entirely unknown experience; it was time to return. The Earth span beneath them, filling the void between themselves and the sun. Time was of the essence, they needed to flee humanity’s shadow.

Alexei reluctantly retreated from space and wandered to the airlock which was filled with trouble. The emptiness of space means there are few particles to hit surfaces and exert pressure upon them. Alexei’s spacesuit was filled with air, and so the internal pressure had caused the whole thing to expand and become near immovable at the joints. He had 40 minutes of oxygen left and he couldn’t fit into the airlock. The radio and television transmissions were cut by mission control and replaced with Mozart’s Requiem playing on loop. Nobody knew anything.

The Voskhod 2 mission insignia.

Deciding it was better not to worry anyone he refused to radio mission control, after all he was the only one who could deal with it. Alexei released the oxygen from his suit, venting precious minutes of life into the cosmos. It partially worked, the drop I pressure made his elbow and shoulder joints more mobile. So, he moved.

As his legs weren’t mobile enough he had to enter the airlock head first. He crept along, releasing small amounts of oxygen until he was entirely inside the airlock, marinating in his own sweat.

The immense effort of pulling himself down the airlock had caused Alexei to get dangerously hot in his space suit, the whole process was taking too long and he teetered on the precipice of heatstroke. Now in the airlock he had to twist and contort himself so that he could reach out and close the airlock. His heated body poured out sweat at an alarming rate but through the near-immobility, dangerous lack of oxygen and excessive body heat he managed it. After 2 minutes and 9 seconds he was let in from the cramped airlock to the cramped Voskhod cabin.

The previous Voskhod craft, Voskhod 1, held 3 cosmonauts and set two firsts. It was both the first craft to hold multiple people in space and the first craft to contain cosmonauts in shirt-sleeves, not space suits. The shirt sleeve uniform was not due to any explicit design though. It was due to the fact that the cabin was too small for all 3 to wear spacesuits – they simply wouldn’t have all fitted inside.

Alexei clambered in from the airlock and closed the hatch behind him before the airlock was detached from the spacecraft and left to float in space. Alexei forced himself over to his seat, glad to be free of danger. He was wrong to think danger was done, there was still plenty of space for mistakes. First of all, the airlock hatch wasn’t secure.

The seal was not complete, leaking oxygen into space, so the cabin reacted by flooding the cabin with oxygen. There was more than enough oxygen to survive back to earth, but the oxygen had could kill them. The cabin air was 45% Oxygen, more than twice the concentration of Earth’s atmosphere – a serious fire hazard that Voskhod 2 wasn’t designed to deal with. One Valentin Bondarenko had died of flames in a high Oxygen endurance test 4 years prior. Then to cheer themselves up they checked the instruments.

Five minutes before they were going to be pushed out of orbit by their engines it turned out that the automatic guidance system was broken. They switched it off and cursed their luck. They needed to select a new landing site and aim for it manually. A task that was impossible to perform within 5 minutes – they needed to orbit Earth once then make their selection.

Once they emerged from the shadow of humanity they began to work. Alexei being the navigator selected a new site 1,500 kilometres from the first one. A site near the Ural mountains in the worlds largest biome – the taiga forest of Siberia. Crimea passed beneath them and a message was received, asking where they had landed. Pavel, as calmly as he could manage, explained the technical failures. They were still in orbit, he explained, and he asked them to go into emergency mode for the landing.

Next came aim. Aiming for the taiga meant they had a low risk of harming anyone, but a chance of quick rescue as they would land near to the city of Perm. Pavel being the pilot aimed the craft using an optical device. He had to lean horizontally over both their seats and as Alexei supported him he adjusted themselves until they faced their destination. Then they started the engines. On the morning of the 19^th the began to fall, and continued to fail.

Pavel rushed back to his seat, navigating the cramped module to restore the centre of gravity to the middle of the cabin. 10 seconds after the firing of the engines the felt a jolt as the orbital module separated from their cabin, but something was wrong. They felt a tugging force pulling them back.

Alexei craned out of a window and saw the orbital module was still connected by a communications cable. The centre of gravity was at the cable, meaning both modules were spinning rapidly as they plummeted to Earth. The forces enacted on both their bodies were unprecedented. The blood vessels in their eyes burst and their vision became impaired. The force on them was 10Gs, the highest G-force ever survived by human beings. Meanwhile at the expected landing time Radio Moscow was playing cheerful music before being interrupted, as if an announcement were expected. When none came it went back to music, the music became sombre and ever sadder over the hours as bad news became ever more possible. The music was punctuated by silent interruptions for expected news that didn’t come.

100 kilometres above Earth the heat and forces in action burnt through the cable and the landing module separated, the parachutes were deployed. The ripple and jolt of the deceleration was alarming, but it soon gave way to the gentle swaying caresses of the wind which bore them gently to a place called home. The wind whistled against the outside and Oxygen levels returned to normal, ten they punctured the cloud layer and all went dark.

The landing engine flared up and their descent was slowed until the module settled on, and sank into the humongous drifts of snow. The whirling calamity had cast them 200 kilometres from Perm and into deepest Siberia. Then they tried to leave the module. They tried.

They set off the explosive bolts which rocked the cabin and filled it with acrid smoke, but little else. A large birch tree was in front of the hatch, but they continued to struggle. The two of them rocked the hatch back and forth with all of their strength until they pushed it off the charred remains of the bolts and it slid back, falling into the snow. They felt the cool air rush over their tongues and into their lungs, in joy they embraced and to each other they clung.

Still encased in their bulky space suits they squeezed out of the hatch and plummeted through the snow, sinking up to their chins in snow that went down at least 2 metres deep. Above them the numerous wooden peaks of the taiga clawed at the sky. It was spring, that meant mating season for wolves and bears – that meant two deadly animals at their most dangerous. The sky darkened and it began to snow. The temperature dropped and the tree trunks began to crack with the sheer cold.

No-one outside of a spacesuit knew where they were, but that didn’t stop the Soviet Space Agency telling their wives that they had landed safely. They were asked to write letters, and in the mean time Moscow listened for the landing module’s emergency signal. Moscow never received the signal, but others soon began to answer the call.

Listening stations as far as Germany received the signal, but the first response was from a civilian plane and its eager crew. They enthusiastically cast down a flimsy rope ladder and bade the cosmonauts to rise. Unfortunately their space suits were both too stiff and too heavy for the climb. Then as soon as they left more planes gathered in the sky, bunched dangerously close and offering dangerous help.

One person threw a bottle of cognac from their aircraft, the bottle broke; a blunt axe was tossed casually down along, two pairs of wolf-skin boots and a few jackets, all of which became entangled in the towering trees. They eventually retrieved the boots but they didn’t have the time to revel in their comfort. The temperature was still plummeting and the light was passing; there was be no rescue that night. One of the aircraft was a helicopter which reported their safety and health, 45 minutes later it was announced over Radio Moscow and the Soviet’s celebrated.

Alexei felt the sweat in his space suit sloshing up around his knees, if it got any colder the moisture would cause frostbite. They both stripped and wrung the moisture out from all of their clothes before putting on their underwear again. They then drew out the softer inner layers of the space suits and pulled them on as quickly as possible, all the while wary of wolves.

The hatch was gone and the module was as cool as the outside. They spent all of their efforts trying to pull down the vast and twisted parachute which lay draped over the forest. It was not possible and they retreated to the open module. Inside the huddled, and held the emergency pistol along with the many spare bullets.

From then it was much easier, the next day a search party of cross-country skiers found them and helped set up a fire, bringing meals and company. They even brought a special bath which they filled and heated so as Alexei and Pavel could finally bathe. The forest around was too dense and took a whole day to cut down enough trees for a helicopter to land, so they spent one more night in the taiga, a night of final celebration. The next day they were flown to meet with their government officials and make their reports. Alexei Leonov’s report was thus:

 “Provided with a special suit, man can survive and work in open space. Thank you for your attention.”

Further Reading:

• http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/Voskhod2/Voskhod2.htm
• http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/voskhod.html
• http://www.astronautix.com/flights/voskhod2.htm

All images public domain.

Decision making has been fine-tuned by evolution to the point that anything with a decently large brain uses the same method, it is simple debate. Neurons zip around the brain, collecting information and forming plans, ideas to be considered. Then the neurons gather together, each with their own opinion. What happens next is you ‘thinking’. If you’ve ever felt that you were in two minds about making a decision,you had good reason for believing as such, because that’s exactly what happens.

Neurons find those sharing the same idea and send positive signals to each other, which is nice of them. Then they find those who disagree with them and send inhibiting signals, the equivalent of telling someone to shut up. As time passes the numbers supporting each decision vary, smaller, less considered ideas are removed and slowly the best decisions grow in popularity. Once a large enough percentage of neurons has decided on a course of action the process stops. Congratulations, you’ve made a decision.

As was previously mentioned this is a technique that we use because it works, in fact every creature with a complex brain uses it. Bees do not have complex brains, they are fuzzy little balls that fly into flowers and build hexagons; yet they use the same technique. They form the hive mind.

When a group of bees are ready to leave and build a new colony they need the best location possible. Hundreds of scout bees fly out into the world, collect information and return with their favourite location in mind. The bees then gather and have their equivalent of the neuron debate. Each scout bee performs a dance to indicate the location of its preferred site, but opinion is always split. To stop the spread of what bees consider inferior ideas they need to find the equivalent of a neuron ‘inibiting signal’. Now, it is unlikely that you have tried, but if you had you might know it is rather difficult to inhibit a bee. So instead they headbutt each other — repeatedly.

In the face of being headbutted repeatedly some bees change their decision and dance out the new location. When consensus is reached the headbutting ceases and the scout bees indicate the location with a victorious waggle dance. A decision was made.

The similarity between bee-butting in a hive and decision-making in the brain is alarming as bees and humans, as you may have guessed, have followed rather different evolutionary paths. Humans evolved as individuals whereas bees have evolved as whole hives. So why the similarity? Because, it seems, group discussion and headbutting are the best ways to make decisions. That is why you are a hive mind.

Photograph from infocage.com

Further Reading

• Ars Technica article
• Science Mag Article

Instead of leaving with the petty cash they stayed, settling into the house while the land around was picked clean by the excavating vehicles. The ground around the house slowly disappeared but the couple stayed. Slowly the house appeared to rise on its earthen plinth until it sat raised, 10 metres above the ground below. Then water and electricity were cut. The developers were far from pleased.

A pair of thugs were sent up to intimidate the couple but Yang Wu, a local martial-arts champion, was not threatened. Over the three years things escalated and news spread. The towering two-storey house was a showcase for the struggle between citizens and rich developers in an aggressively growing China. A China that didn’t protect its citizens. As Wu Ping said:

“I’m not stubborn or unruly, I’m just trying to protect my personal rights as a citizen.”

Over 3 years the developers took the case to court to have them evicted and the house demolished, the eviction notice was maintained, but the court refused to grant a demolition notice. Still fearful for the house at least one of the two was in the house at any one time. While Wu Ping held conferences and raised awareness, Yang Wu helped in his own way using martial arts.

Yang Wu threatened to use his martial-arts skills to beat up any authorities that scaled the mud mound. Then, with the violent and thorough application of his personal nunchuks to the soft, bruised earth, he cut stairs leading up the ten metres to the house. All for simple convenience.

After the completion of the nunchuk-stairs he placed a Chinese flag on the roof to claim his case as a case for all the people of China. The lack of utilities took its toll but the couple still carried on, enjoying the moral and physical high ground. Yang Wu protected the building while Wu Ping conducted interviews and the like. A system of ropes and pulleys was implemented so that food, water and blankets could be sent up to Yang in the house.

Compensation offers were made but the couple declined. Their demands were called “unreasonable” and the housing authority ordered that the house be demolished. In the face of 85% public support for the continued existence of the house, the courts refused to enforce any demolition order.

At the end of the three years, in 2007, it ended. China passed a landmark law which would protect private property. The couple, now satisfied that their steep demands had been met accepted an apartment of similar size nearby in Chongqing. The ‘nail house’ has since been destroyed.

Further Reading:

• Asia Times Article

• China Daily Article

• Futility Closet Article

As a group they had loosened a few sections of track the day before, moving them enough to destabilise the train, then they lay in wait. Unfortunately for the fellows some section hands had wandered across the damage and immediately repaired it. The train was safe. The train moved past them and wasn’t derailed and so they aborted the robbery, but they weren’t clear.

The section hands immediately reported the tampering to the authorities. Two men set out to investigate, Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and Special Railroad Detective Harry ‘Tip’ Vincent. The gang fled to a temporary camp in the nearby ‘Rattlesnake Canyon’ but the investigators were hot on their tracks and discovered them within days. Upon entering the camp they found a pile of embers. When blown upon they glowed, they were still hot.

The gang was lying in wait, then they leaped out. Anything up to twenty shots rang out through the canyon and the two investigators lay dead. Shot by Parrott’s cruel collective.

The group partially buried the bodies and then split, but while they fought the law, the law won. Surveyors near the canyon reported hearing the sounds of gunshots rebounding off the rock faces and 20 men were assembled to handle the incident when they realised the two men weren’t coming back. So off they went, to find the bandits and bring about justice.

Riding and tracking they eventually found the now abandoned encampment, along with the bodies of two men, the parts that hadn’t been shot to pieces at least. Widdowfield’s corpse had 7 bullet holes in the skull alone. The two rapidly decomposing bodies had been loosely covered in dust and gravel the week before, so with 7 days of catching up the hunt for the gang began. A prize of $10,000 was offered for their capture of the group. Almost immediately afterwards Union Pacific doubled that offer.

The first of the group to die was ‘Dutch Charlie.’ Once caught he was put on a westbound train to Rawlins where he would stand trial, if he had ever arrive. When the train passed through Carbon County a lynch mob was waiting. They crowded the rails and stopped the train before boarding it. Dutch Charlie was hauled out and dragged to a nearby telegraph pole.

Upon arrival a tough rope noose was place around his neck while the rest of the rope was tossed over the cross arm of the telegraph pole. He was stood upon a barrel and the rope was secured. Then, according to the reports, Mrs Elizabeth Widdowfield kicked away the barrel, shouting:

“This will teach you to kill my brother in-law!”

In 1880, Big Nose George was found, drunk and boasting about an attempted train robbery back in Wyoming. He was captured in July of that same year and was sent by train to Rawlins for trial. He arrived and was told that he would be sentenced to death if found guilty. Three days into the trial he pleaded guilty in a bid for his life, describing the murders and the other gang members in detail. His plea was accepted and his life was spared.

Imprisoned George was a restrained George and he needed to break free, so he did just that. March 22nd 1881 he made a break for freedom, assaulting a warden who held the keys. He was only stopped by a combination of the warden’s wife and the loaded pistol she brandished about.

That night George was back in his cell and under the careful eye of Deputy Jailer Simms. Then near the midnight dreary as Mr Simms was nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at the Jailer’s door. Just some visitor, he thought, tapping at the prison door, only that and nothing more.

“Who’s there?” Simms asked. “Friends,” came the reply. Simms politely told these ‘friends’ that they could not enter. They then proved him wrong.

The gang of vigilantes broke through and pointed guns at Simms, helplessly he watched as Big Nose George was wrenched out of his cells and dragged into the night. So the same events transpired, the same lynch mob, 200 strong, gathered for the ending of Big Nose George. The same method was employed, barrel, noose and a telegraph pole adjacent to the rail-road track. Noose tight around his neck the barrel was kicked out from under George and he fell.

The first rope broke and George collapsed to the ground, begging to be shot while fervently trying to loosen the knots tying his hands together. A thicker rope was selected and tied around his neck. He was then forced to climb a 12 foot ladder and stand atop the barrel.

He was verbally abused, spat at, and hanged. As the barrel was kicked out beneath him he freed his hands from their knots and pushed them into the noose. Desperately he held on, pulling up and supporting his neck, screaming while the rest of his body writhed and squirmed. As time and gravity bore upon him his strength waned and he collapsed, now slowly choked to death by the rope. So he was left, head, and the rest of his body, hanging in shame.

By no means was that the end. When his body was later cut down it was also cut up. Local Physician T.G. Magee took his head and performed a crude autopsy to gain an insight into the workings of the criminal brain. Then came Dr John Osborne with his slightly less scientific hopes. Here George Parrott added to his list of notable achievements. Banditry, murder and being made into a pair of shoes.

Dr John Osborne had George Parrott’s skin removed, tanned and made into a special pair of shoes just for him. He was never punished for this, and in fact was even elected as territorial governor for Carbon County in 1893. At his inauguration he wore a fine suit and those very shoes made from the tanned skin of Big Nose George.

Further Reading:

Elk Mountain Hotel Article

Robert Widdowfield Profile

Carbon Country Museum Article

Olympus Mons

The highest mountain we know of has yet to be visited, it’s on Mars. We call it Olympus Mons. At 27km from its base to its peak, over 3 times the height of Everest, it is the greatest mountain in the solar system.

More than just tall, it is 550km wide, and is bent around the curvature of Mars itself. So pronounced is the effect that were you to stand on the peak of Olympus Mons, you wouldn’t be able to see the bottom of the mountain, as it would be hidden beyond the horizon. This size is a grand thing indeed, the whole mountain is surrounded by a moat up to 3km deep in some places. Nothing dug it, the sheer weight of it is great enough to literally dent Mars.

Olympus Mons on Wikipedia. Thanks to Tom Williams for this fact.

 The phrase ‘bla bla bla’ isn’t English, it’s translated directly from Spanish as a shortened version of ‘habla habla habla’ meaning ‘speak speak speak.’

Fact provided by Nancy Dennis, thanks!

The four suits of cards have peculiar origins, they were initially designed to represent the four major feudal classes of the middle ages. Hearts represents the church, spades represents the military, clubs represents agriculture and diamonds represented the merchant class.

Wikipedia Article

Another quirk of playing cards is the very ornate ace of spades (or ‘spadille’). This comes from the 18^th Century where cards would be hand stamped on the ace of spades to show that stamp duty had been paid. Later the ace of spades was stamped in different methods until 1862 when card-makers were free to do what they wanted with their cards due to stamp duty changes. They just left the ace of spades ornate, and so we reach playing cards today.

White Knuckle Cards Article

To finish, let’s talk about sharks. How do you attract a shark? The answer is sound. For a long time it has been known that sound can have a very powerful effect on sea creatures, with sonar from ships being the main cause of whales getting confused, lost and eventually beaching themselves. However new research has shown that some sounds truly entice.

After extensive trial and error it has been found that lower frequencies are much more appealing to great white sharks. Particularly effective is AC/DC, and the most stimulating track of all is the aptly named ‘If You Want Blood’. So, if you’re planning to serenade a great white shark, you know what to do.

Treehugger Article

If you have any facts which you think would make good articles then feel free to send them to me via the Contact page along with sources if you have them. Have a nice day.

Powered, as all good things are, by lasers.

In 2009 a helicopter hovered 900m above the Mojave Desert, Andrew Petro was watching. Dangling from the helicopter was a tethered steel cable and a tripod-mounted laser. As Mr Petro watched a small, square robotic device rose upwards, powered by the laser; its ascension was smooth and rapid along the cable, 600 metres up it slowed and stopped. On behalf of NASA, Andrew Petro handed the semi-successful team behind the robotic square a cheque for $900,000 – they had just won a competition about the future of space travel.

Getting to space is expensive, but it becomes a lot cheaper when you don’t use rocket fuel. How to escape the planet without using rocket fuel has been a bit of a conundrum though, but we are approaching the answer steadily. The answer involves a powerful laser, a cable long enough to wrap around earth 8 times, a large steel ball and finally a very big metal box.

First described in 1895 as a ‘celestial castle’ attached to earth by a tether on the top of something like the Eiffel tower. It was more accurately presented in 1979 by Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘The Fountains of Paradise.’ The answer is a Space Elevator.

The competition was the 2009 Space Elevator Games, a NASA-run competition to encourage innovation into prototype space elevators. The reasons for the sudden interest and investment from NASA are two-fold. Firstly in 1990 the first carbon nanotubes were successfully manufactured; and secondly, high-strength lasers are rapidly increasing in power. The thing is becoming possible. So now, it seems, the space elevator concept could finally be getting off the ground.

The concept is this: out in space is a large steel ball, attached to this is a tether which spans some 100,000 kilometres to Earth. As Earth spins around, the steel ball tries to fly off into space but is held back by tension in the tether, this pulling between the tether and the steel ball keeps the tether taut. On the tether is an elevator bearing loads, or loads of people. It then proceeds to elevate them in the same way as a ski lift, a series of rollers against the tether spin and pull the elevator up.

It is quite simply a revolution, once built the elevator could carry goods, equipment and people to space for the cost of providing electricity. It would allow for things such as orbital solar farms which people could go up and repair themselves. Visiting space would be easier, and much cheaper, and that’s only domestic. The problem is that very little of what has been said so far is possible. Yet.

Impossible thing number 1 is the tether, it would need to support its own weight plus around 20 metric tons of space-bound goods. Only one material can handle those stresses, carbon nanotubes; 180 times stronger than steel and much lighter. To get an elevator to space would require a single cable only 6.5 millimetres across. Something too difficult to make today, but many expect it to become possible in the next 20 years. The Spaceward Foundation says it would be a:

“thin black line, almost like the trace of a film-scratch on a picture. The tether reaches straight up and quickly disappears from view into the clear blue sky.”

Impossible thing number 2 is power. If you used batteries, you would not get enough power out of them to lift their own weight. So the solution is power beaming. This means firing a big laser at a big solar cell on the elevator. This, and power from the sun allows the elevator to elevate. We just need more powerful, more reliable and more efficient lasers.

Impractical would be the most appropriate word at the moment, however hope is at hand. Progress must go on, for that is the definition of progress. In addition to NASA, the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, is looking into developing their own large prototype. The Spaceward Foundation expects at least one Space Elevator to be functional by 2025, with a commercial, possibly even tourist one in place by 2035.

The expected journey is several days long but would be a sedate affair as the elevator slowly rises. Well technically the elevator doesn’t rise, it is falling, upwards. On Earth it will be upside down, and in space it will be the right way up, but that shouldn’t matter.

There are grand plans for the elevator, the Spaceward Foundation predicts the first Space elevator will mainly carry up parts for the first zero gravity factories for nano-machines and space hotels where space tourists shall enjoy their space holidays, in space. Also they see another use.

You have a space elevator, spinning around the Earth attached to the end of a tether, what happens when it is released?

If done accidentally it would be a new kind of problem, but if you aimed, the whole system would fly out into space, maybe heading for the Moon, or Mars perhaps. Suddenly we have a safe and cheap, if rather slow method of space travel.

Settlers with their belongings arrive in a large corporate building. They file into a large, cylindrical chamber and the select their seats. Farewells dealt with they settle down and one person reaches for the buttons. A wandering finger passes by the numbers and pauses, before firmly prodding the button labelled ‘Space.’ A slight whirr and they set off upwards, first out of the rather tall building, past the clouds and Earth, coasting on top of a laser.

When they reach the end of their tether they simply let go of Earth and are flung into space. Several weeks later they step, rather ruffled, out of the crash-landed elevator and onto Mars. Among them, a confused office worker who got into the wrong lift.

Of course this would not happen, current proposals suggest the base building for the tether would be 50km high. The rest, may be accurate. With the push of a button and the firing of a laser you could reach space. So removed from the spectacle and furore of a rocket launch that it is a wonder they lead to the same place. The appeal of the idea is that it would be both safe and easy, a combination which lifts the spirit.

Space would finally seem not just possible, but attainable. Then perhaps we could all gaze down at the blue marble of the earth, stretched out beneath our feet. Space would become a place, not just a concept.

Just don’t expect to spot the ‘Space’ button in an elevator any time soon.

Further Reading:

NASA article on the 2009 Space Elevator Games

NASA article on the Space Elevator concept

Good.is article on the JAXA Space Elevator plans

The Spaceward Foundation

The jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa) is a bright, iridescent creature; one with a particular way of making sure its larvae get food. A mixture of hunting, poison and mind control make up its impressive repertoire. It starts when a female wasp finds a cockroach.

Mild electric shock does the same things to cockroaches as it does to humans, namely causing twitching, mild annoyance and allowing balloons to stick to them. A small chamber was set up where about half of the floor could be electrified, when the shock put through it was enough to make a cockroach leg twitch, cockroaches normally scuttle to safety. Not so with the stung cockroaches.

4 hours after being stung, the cockroaches needed 10 times the normal shock to get them to move, even though their legs seemed to be just as responsive. Not only that but they needed about 4 of the strong shocks to make them move reliably. They felt the same shocks, but weren’t responding.

They could move just fine, when provoked they could fly perfectly normally, and when put on their backs they wiggled just as vigorously to get back onto their legs. Their motor control was fine, the only difference was in their brain, in the venom.

The venom is very precise, tailored so specifically to the cockroach brain that it only affects  the specific neural circuits associated with walking. It made them not want to walk, enforcing such extreme laziness that they let themselves be eaten alive. A true feat of evolution and precision engineering. The venom only lasts for three days but that is no help to a cockroach, by then in the wild, they would be as dead as dinner.

Further Reading:

Not Exactly Rocket Science Article

Wikipedia Article