I’m off this week for an extended Fourth-of-July break. I won’t be writing any new posts here (except for a pointer to my “Matter” column in the New York Times on Thursday).
But with nearly ten years of archives, I can offer some old favorites to read in the meantime, from oldest to newest:
Continue reading “Some of My Favorite Loom Posts To Tide You Over”
I’ve lived in central Connecticut for ten years now, and so I missed their last emergence here in 1996. I was looking forward a June deafened by the songs of lovesick male cicadas, but my month turned out to be disappointingly quiet.
And yet, when my two daughters paid a visit to friends who live just seven miles away, they came home with a shoebox full of exoskeletons.
This year’s cicada emergence was anticipated by many millions of people in the eastern United States, but many of them missed it. But that doesn’t mean that the brood was a bust. Instead, it tells us something about they mysterious seventeen-year cycle of the cicadas.
In today’s New York Times I take a look back at Swarmageddon 2013, and look at what scientists learned about the bugs thanks to some newly invented tools. Check it out.
And see you next year in Iowa!
Originally published July 1, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.
Jon Clarke writes, “As an avid cyclist and physics teacher, I had a tattoo a few months ago on my calf, and wondered whether that would fit with your archive. Having been given a cycle computer a year ago, I was frustrated and surprised that no matter how hard I cycled–on a level road without a tailwind or fast-moving large vehicle to shadow–I could never reach the UK speed limit in built-up areas (30mph). After some thought, I concluded that the dominant effect, and therefore limitation, was the power required to overcome aerodynamic drag for turbulent flow.”
In this tattoo, v is the speed of a bicyclist, and P is the rate at which muscles have to do work in order to overcome air resistance. If you double your speed, you have to work eight times harder. It is, in other words, a tattoo of human limitation.
You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here or in my book, Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.
Originally published June 30, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.
The New York Times, June 30, 2013
If you are still waiting for Swarmageddon to break out in your backyard, it is time to stop. The great cicada invasion is winding down for 2013, and it will not be back for another 17 years.
After dwelling in the ground since 1996, the insects began to emerge in May from North Carolina to the Hudson River Valley. In yards, forests and fields up and down the coast, they trilled by the billions, mated, laid their eggs in branches and left exoskeletons on bushes and walkways. Now their song is fading.
But while many people were kept up at night by the roar of this arthropod flash mob, others were left to wonder what all the fuss was about.
Continue reading “Swan Song for Cicadas, but Many Missed the Show”
As you can tell from my recent posts, I am a bit obsessed about cancer–or more specifically something you might call the natural history of cancer. Cancers in the animal kingdom can get very strange–even giving rise to what I would call new species. Earlier this month, I gave a public talk in San Francisco as part of the International Evolution and Cancer Conference. The video is now up. I hope you find these strange cancers as spookily fascinating as I do.
In case the slides are hard to see, I’ve uploaded them via Slide Share:
Zimmer cancer 2013 talk from Carl Zimmer
Originally published June 27, 2013. Copyright 2013 Carl Zimmer.