What do you do if you're a physicist and want to get experiments done in microgravity, but can't drum up the cash to go to space? You use magnets to both get results and make a picture that looks like it came out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There's a limited amount of room out there on the International Space Station, and so there are only so many experiments that can be done there. This is unfortunate, because scientists have found that some interesting things happen in microgravity. One of them is the apparent self-organization of liquids and solids into something that looks like a bow on a Christmas packet going through a wormhole.

In regular gravity, when you put solids and liquids together, the most dense stuff sinks to the bottom of the container. Gravity pulls on all of it, and the dense material shoulders the lighter material aside to form a layer at the bottom. In microgravity, density doesn't really matter. The solid (in this case particles of bismuth and bismuth spheres) will just float around in the liquid. When the entire container is vibrated the whole thing self-organizes into a sort of flying knot of bismuth particles.

This picture was not taken in space. How did they get the particles to act like it was? Using powerful magnets, researchers simulated microgravity (magnets, by the way, have already been used to make a mouse levitate). We might not yet be to the point where we can make artificial gravity, but it seems that we can make artificial space.

Image: R. J. A. Hill/University of Nottingham/PRL

Via Physical Review Letters.

It's already official: There's going to be another Star Trek movie. But what elements of Trek lore should they put on the big screen next time? The first two Abrams films already mined Trek's rich history for ideas, but they also left out some stuff. Here are 10 classic Star Trek elements that we'd like to see take center stage in the next movie.

10. Tribbles

There are a lot of baddies lurking in the first two rebooted movies, all with the potential to be the big villain in the next film. But did you notice the tribbles? No, you didn't. Not really. Nobody suspects the tribbles. Which is the point of tribbles. They just sit there, looking cute, until they breed like crazy and overrun everything.

And what if they get... supercharged? Like, what if they're injected with nanobots and start eating metal? What if they acquire a taste for human blood and their cooing causes paralysis? What if there is a zombie tribble outbreak? (You know that it could happen.) They finally have a big-budget movie to work with! Let's see the real trouble with tribbles.

9. Harry Mudd

Most of the last two movies had to do with the Federation battling great threats and lifelong grudges. How about stepping away from the planet-destroying Romulans and the moral compromises of facing the Klingons, and look at what it's like to actually be on "the final frontier," with outlaws and smugglers and shady business dealings happening all around you? Basically, the return of Harry Mudd, or some other lawless smuggler types.

Taking this further, I'd like to see a movie that's basically Star Trek versus Firefly. What's going to win out — an enlightened yet stifling monolith, or a band of shady, but liberty-obsessed outlaws? You wouldn't buy a ticket to see the movie. You'd buy a ticket to see the brawl in the movie theater.

8. Evil Sexy Ladies

The Shatner-Kirk had trouble with women. Multiple ex-girlfriends tried to kill him, his ensigns kept mooning after him, and no sooner did you see an "alien" woman with a high pony tail and a shiny dress than you knew she was going to be twining her arms around his neck by the third act. And Shatner-Kirk was restrained compared to Pine-Kirk. Pine-Kirk is what would happen if Shatner-Kirk and Zapp Brannigan had a fumbling, contraceptive-free night in a gene splicer. If you're going to take a captain of a flagship and amp up his inner hound to eleven, you are going to have problems. Sexy evil alien ladies would both demonstrate that problem, and eliminate the need to show a crew member in her underwear. Two problems solved!

7. Redjac

Most of you will not remember Redjac. Some of you will remember him from the original series episode, "A Wolf In the Fold," in which the crew discovers an evil entity that feeds on fear and has been many of history's greatest serial killers, including Jack the Ripper. Redjac fools the crew, and the alien civilization that they're in contact with, for some time by framing a crew member as a serial killer. That doesn't sound too impressive, you say. It certainly doesn't deserve a higher position than Evil Sexy Ladies, you say. Why does Redjac get to be a villain, you ask.

Because, I patiently explain, the crew member that he framed was Scotty. And if you cast Simon Pegg in a film series, then by god, you use him. You don't just trot him around an engine room yelling about what he "canna" do. You find some way to put him front and center, and if that means we all have to spend a movie watching people hundreds of years into the future doing a retread of From Hell, then that's just what has to happen.

6. An Evil Computer

Many people complained that the first two Abrams films were missing the heart and soul of Star Trek: The Original Series — which is Kirk debating with evil computers. He does this in so many episodes of the show, it becomes one of the defining features. And we just had a huge hit movie based on Kirk's confrontation with Landru. So maybe the next movie should be about Kirk facing off against a computer that's gotten ideas above its station.

Or maybe you could even borrow from TNG and have an early prototype holodeck go awry. After all, they had holodecks in the semi-canonical Animated Series. We could see Montgomery Scott working on the holodeck — thus giving us the crucial Simon Pegg screen time — and then all holographic hell breaking loose. Whether it's Moriarty taking over the ship from its glorified entertainment center or, perhaps, holographic creations escaping into the ship and impersonating the crew, it's a classic. And it hasn't been done in a movie before!

5. Trelaine (or Q)

The last two movies should have come with warning: "people in the first four rows may have their retinas burned away by the intense stares of the villains." Wouldn't it be a nice change of pace to have a movie where Kirk was out-quipped by the evil-doer? More importantly, making the villain a mischievous all-powerful entity, like Trelaine or Q, would involve a refreshing change of motivation. Q was, in the series, a villain at worst and an annoying anti-hero at best, but he's never motivated by tired notions of revenge. He, quite literally, wants humanity to be better.

He wants humanity — or even just individual humans — to be able to, through their experience in space, grasp concepts that no human had ever understood before. For all that Star Trek is meant to be about discovering new worlds and new ways of life, many movies and episodes are actually about saying humans are the best in the universe. Humans have become the smartest, the most compassionate, the most organized, the most virtuous, of any alien species. To have a villain expose that for the lie it is, and for the humans (and humanoids) to realize that we have to push ourselves intellectually, not just jump around and keep stuff from exploding, would make for an amazing movie.

4. Space Madness

The last suggestion sounded kind of profound, didn't it? Don't worry, it doesn't keep going. As fun as forcing humans to transcend their limitations might seem, having the entire crew of the enterprise tripping out sounds like even more fun. Two different Trek episodes, "The Naked Time," and "The Naked Now," both dealt with a space madness that included someone taking a shower with their clothes on. (Realizing that link to the original Star Trek madness episode helped people in The Next Generation diagnose their own sudden space crazies.) I'd love it if the next movie started with someone taking a shower in their clothes and just Hunter S Thompsoned the rest of the way. I wouldn't even care if they found a way to cure themselves.

3. The Organians

And back up to the high ground. The TOS episode "Errand of Mercy" introduced us to the Organians, another set of all-powerful beings. The episode involves the Klingons occupying Organia, a little backwater planet. Kirk and Spock set up a resistance, blowing up weapons caches as the Federation and the Klingons edge closer and closer to war. The Organians are apathetic until the climax of the hostilities, at which point they reveal that they are so advanced that they need fear nothing, and are appalled at the primitive civilizations blowing each other up for no reason. They incapacitate the weapons of both sides, and, over the protests of both sides that they have the "right" to wage war, force a peace treaty.

The two most recent Star Trek movies, in the end, have been about might making right. Both sides draw their weapons and fire, and one side happens to be successful in the end, though both sides take losses. Perhaps a movie in which an entity simply says, "you can work this out peacefully and you will work this out peacefully," might be more of a commitment to a Star Trek ideal than armed conflict. Plus it's more of a challenge, and it leads to a lot of storylines in which Kirk has to use cunning, instead of might, against the Klingons.

2. R'Ver

Remember the first Star Trek movie? Remember what happened after the fifteen straight minutes of looking at shots of the outside of the Enterprise? If you got past that, there was a storyline about a massive entity called V'Ger that threatens both the ship and Earth. And it turns out to be Earth's own Voyager spacecraft, evolved into having its own consciousness somewhere out there in space, and returning with a vengeance. While the Voyager is still out there, we aren't as focused on it today. Today we look towards Mars, and the Mars Rovers. I think it would make a nice little twist if Earth finally faced invasion from its nearest neighbor. The terrifying R'Ver, evolved after being buried under the sands of Mars, has developed consciousness and set its sights on Earth. Kirk can battle little red robots.

1. The Evil Enterprise Crew

In the end, though, no threat can be as awesome as the power of good, old-fashioned evil twins. Whether they should come from the Mirror Universe or a transporter beam accident, it doesn't matter. I just know that I want Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and the rest of the crew to be fighting evil versions of themselves, and I want those evil versions of themselves to be wearing thick eyeliner. Not only do I think it would be great fun to see the actors play both parts, I would love to see a comparison of how this incarnation of Star Trek does Good and Evil. We've seen it in multiple different times. The earliest evil versions of the crew were slimy, manipulative, sexually-aggressive backstabbers by nature.

Later, in Star Trek: Nemesis, we see good and evil put more in terms of nurture. Picard's clone has been twisted into something evil by abuse, neglect, and civilization-wide injustice. So while this concept contains a lot of superficial stuff, like evil laughs and amazing fashions, it also has the potential to examine the heart of a lot of questions about human nature. What is good? What is evil? What is it about us that makes us one or the other?

There are a lot of scatterbrained, materialistic people out there.

Can you turn over a new leaf, go on a diet, learn a new language, and get up every morning at dawn to meditate and clean your house? The idea of ego depletion says, "no." And it has physical evidence to back that up.

I hope you wanted to click on this post, because if you didn't want to, you're not going to be able to do one of the things you actually needed to get done today. Psychologists now believe that a person's capacity for self-control (on an everyday level) is finite. After a certain amount of willpower is used up on one difficult task, there's nothing left over to get other things done.

What's interesting is that, in this model, the self-control is shared between multiple different areas. It's not that a scanty breakfast of salad will cause you to gulp down a chocolate muffin during your first coffee break. It's that a scanty breakfast of salad will keep you from concentrating on an important project. Or affect your ability to keep your temper with your coworkers. A mentally difficult task will, by the same token, cause you to give up on your diet in the evening.

The overall concept is called ego depletion, and there have been quite a few studies backing it up. In one study, people were asked to complete some basic puzzles, but some subjects were also asked to keep a four digit number in their head, remembering it for later. They were then put into a room with some healthy food, and some cookies. The people who had had to work to remember the number were more likely to eat the cookies than the other group. Another experiment worked things the other way around. First the subjects were put in a room with either cookies or radishes. Others were put in a room with cookies and radishes — but were told not to eat the cookies. They were then asked to work on a geometric puzzle, which, it turns out, was impossible to solve (scientists are mean like that). The point of the experiment was to see who would give up first. The radish eaters held out for 20 minutes, one minute longer than the cookie eaters. On the other hand, the people who had to resist the cookies gave up after eight minutes (I like to think the scientists gave them a cookie afterwards).

There is some speculation that ego depletion is a purely physical thing. The brain uses a surprising amount of calories; perhaps it tires like any other muscle does. One study had its subjects go from one difficult task to another, with a lemonade break in between. One half of the subjects got lemonade sweetened with glucose, and the other half got lemonade sweetened with a calorie-free sweetener. The ones that got glucose did better on the second test of willpower than the other group.

Then again, if sugar is the solution, why did the radish-eaters last longer on the problem than the cookie-eaters? And why can some people, with enough motivation, force themselves to keep to difficult tasks? If you run out of calories during a physical task, the body can't just rustle up more from nowhere. Some scientists turn away from what they call the "mechanistic" model of ego depletion and look at the process model. Simply put, after a grueling time spent on one activity, priorities often shift. Perhaps it's not as important to you to keep a pleasant face when you've been up since dawn cleaning. Maybe a after a tough day eating rabbit food, you realize it's not that important to have a clean house. Or maybe you're just lazy. Now pass me a cookie.

[Via You Are Not So Smart, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Thinking Fast and Slow]

Here's a reason to turn around when looking at the sunrise or sunset. At the far side of the sky might be another fake sunrise (or sunset), made from anticrepuscular rays.

Ever stood on a long, straight stretch of highway? Turn one way, and the sides of the road seem to flare out from a central point at the horizon. Turn the other way, and again, the sides of the road flare out from where they converge. We know that this is just the way perspective works. We are standing in a long stretch of road made by two edges that run parallel, and only seem to both converge at the horizon point.

Now look at a sunset that is partially covered by clouds. If there are rays of light streaming out, they two seem to be converging at the sun and flaring outwards. These are called crepuscular rays - from the Latin word, "crepusculum," for "twilight." Just like the edges of the road, they're not really streaking outwards. The shafts of light are running parallel to each other across the sky. This means, again like the road, they will seem to converge at the opposite horizon. If the conditions are right, you will see these rays, anticrepuscular rays, converge and seem to make a false sunset at the far side of the sky.

[Via AT Optics.]

In icy climates, it's possible to see "cloud maps." These are literally maps of the landscape reflected on the sky, in phenomena known as ice blink and water sky.

There isn't too much to block one's view in the frozen stretches of the arctic. Unfortunately, there isn't too much to guide one, either. When navigating across a wide expanse of ice - any part of which can change depending on temperature and season - it's easy to get lost.

And so it's helpful, and poetic, when a map is written across the sky. Above is a picture of water sky. Low-lying clouds are lit up by the light shining off the ice below. When there's a sudden dip in the level of reflected light, as there is when highly-reflective ice is replaced with water, the clouds look as though they have dark streaks painted across them.

Conversely, when the clouds are dark, but suddenly light up in the distance, it's called "ice blink." The reflective ice lights up the sky and provides a beacon. Although the conditions have to be right - with clear air, just enough sun, and low-lying clouds - a map of the surrounding landscape can be literally projected across the sky.

Via Athropolis

Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a gifted scientist, a dedicated conservationist, and a practical, grounded man who expanded everyone's understanding of animal husbandry. He also, for years, tried to make human-ape hybrids.

The post-revolution USSR was a nation that wanted to wholly embrace new technology and progressive science while reinforcing traditional nationalistic pride. It's no wonder that Ilya Ivanovic Ivanov fit right in. He was a biologist who wanted to split his talents evenly between innovation and preservation.

Ivanov got a lot of Soviet and international support because he'd been doing useful work for well over a decade when the revolutions came. In 1901, he'd set up a zoological station that examined exactly how animals, especially farm animals, reproduced. It's true that people had gotten the mechanics of the act down, but Ivanov studied the many hormones, processes, and secretions that went along with sex in order to see what exactly was necessary for conception. When he determined that all anyone really needed was a sperm and an egg, he found ways to extract, disinfect, and store animal semen. This might seem like a small thing, but much of the farming industry now runs using artificial insemination. Even during Ivanov's lifetime, millions of animals were selectively bred using these techniques.

And he wasn't just breeding farm animals. Ivanov used selective breeding and artificial insemination as techniques to preserve endangered species, such as the wisent - a kind of bison - and a local subspecies of horse. So when he did an occasional loony thing, like cross-species breeding solely to see what the results would be, he wasn't criticized. People just noted that zebras, donkeys, and horses could all interbreed. When, in 1910, at the World Congress of Zoologists, Ivanov described the idea of using artificial insemination to create human-chimpanzee hybrids to an auditorium full of what must have been some very uncomfortable scientists, some people actually were supportive.

In fact, in 1924, Ivanov obtained the support of Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov, the head of the Department of Scientific Institutions, and started traveling around the world to find subjects for exactly this type of experiment. It was relatively hard to obtain chimpanzees of any kind, and so Ivanov made quite a few failed trips before finally capturing a wild group of thirteen female chimpanzees to bring back to a primate research facility at Sukhumi. The female chimpanzees were repeatedly injected with human male sperm, but none became pregnant. (It was rumored that Ivanov used his own sperm or that of his son, but few people believe it.)

In 1927, discouraged by his first efforts, Ivanov put together a plan to inject male chimpanzee sperm into human female volunteers. He said they would need no less than five female volunteers, and that these volunteers would have to stay in isolation for a time to ensure no risk of impregnation by actual human males. It was at this time that rumors started leaking out about the experiments, though most were dismissed as too ghoulish to be believed. The rumors might have hampered Ivanov's efforts to obtain a male adult chimpanzee. He was still waiting for one in 1930, when the political mood turned against him. He was arrested and sent to what is now Kazakhstan to work at a veterinary station until he died of a stroke two years later. Some say that at least one woman was injected with chimpanzee sperm, but that no pregnancy resulted. This, however, is another rumor.

The Sukhumi primate research center survived the political fiasco, and continued to operate into the 2000s. Unfortunately, lack of repair led to multiple break-outs of primates. Locals in the area report seeing monkeys in the trees. Some monkeys may even have been the descendants of those early experiments.

[Via Frankentull, Britannica, Fate Magazine]

Curtis White's book, The Science Delusion, makes two broad points: that science is based upon 'assumptions that are deluded,' and that scientists can be real jerks. He provides ample proof for one of those claims.

The title of the The Science Delusion, published on May 28th, is an obvious reference Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. It's no surprise, then, when Dawkins is one of the many scientists that populate its pages. They're not an attractive bunch. Through anecdotes and commentary, Curtis White paints various scientists as dismissive snobs, smug pseudo-intellectuals, manipulative showmen, immoral politicos, and people who make bad faith arguments from behind a protective screen of elite supporters.

It's an unsavory picture, but - while it is fortunate that such people are rare in the world of art, religion, and philosophy - it doesn't support the title and premise of Curtis' book. Unpleasant people can have many failings without perpetuating a delusion, and the fact that the book digresses into personal sniping makes it seem less like an argument and more like one of those spiraling flame wars that are often seen on message boards. In fact, the book is less an argument and more a polemic aimed at other polemics, intensifying the sense of animosity, but not necessarily of credibility.

White's thesis states that scientist's "claims are based upon assumptions many of which are dubious if not outright deluded, and that the kind of culture their delusions support is lamentable." He urges people to use, in place of that science-oriented culture, the intellectual romanticism of the 18th century, particularly its focus on the need for individually-created meaning in the face of the loss of external sources of meaning like the church, the state, and the familial clan. White then claims that the culture of science actively discourages and scorns that search for meaning. While, in between insults, White makes some good points regarding the first two claims, he sabotages himself when it comes to the third.

The best parts of White's polemic come when he shows that certain intellectual traditions are largely used by scientists when they are convenient, and dismissed when they are not. He points out that scientists, from biology to astrophysics, adorn their discoveries with the trappings of meaning to guide people into thinking about these discoveries in certain ways. Evolution should be more impressive than creationism because of its marvelous time scale and simple driving principle. The nebulae and supernovae out there in the infinite universe are wonders. Quantum mechanics is revolutionary. However, when looking at the concept of "marvel," of "wonder," and of "revolutionary," and why they are intrinsically valuable - and thus might apply to other intellectual pursuits - they can be dismissive.

White also points out the bad habit scientists and science writers have of, when faced with a concept seemingly beyond the grasp of hard science, defining it as a measurable commodity, measuring it, and then announcing that they have a grasp on it. White puts it in terms of neuroscientists announcing that they're on the verge of understanding things like "intellect," and "creativity," by mapping certain parts of the brain. I would add to that scientists running personality experiments on different animals, but only after defining personality in a way that allows it to be measurable through experimentation. White argues that, from Richard Dawkins to Lawrence Krauss, many scientists pretend to have the answers to questions about meaning, but instead redefine the question to fit the answers they have.

Unfortunately, White does some redefining of his own. This happens often in the book, such as when White quotes Richard Feynman as saying, "all things are made of atoms, and . . . everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jigglings and wigglings of atoms." White calls this a "mechanistic claim," and goes on to talk about how the symbolic systems that humans create are not made of atoms. We are more than our physics. Feynman's over-reaching claim was misguided at best.

This is an expanded quote:

"Certainly no subject or field is making more progress on so many fronts at the present moment, as biology, and if we were to name the most powerful assumption of all, which leads one on and on in an attempt to understand life, it is that all things are made of atoms, and that everything that living things do can be understood in terms of jiggling and wiggling atoms."

It already looks less reductionist, with its qualifiers like, "in an attempt to understand life," and "at the present moment." More importantly, it's from Six Easy Pieces, a book intended to explain physics concepts to casual readers. Specifically, it is from a section that is meant to demonstrate how physics works in relation to other sciences. It's not a claim that Richard Feynman, in his capacity as physicist, made about all life on Earth, negating all other schools of thought. It's a way for Feynman to explain how physics relates to biology, and how fundamentally the study of physics could expand an understanding of biology.

The most egregious redefinition, though, is at the beginning of the book. The Science Delusion begins with an anecdote, told by Richard Dawkins, about Dawkins and Jim Watson having lunch together. They talk about how people claim that religion, unlike science, is meant to explain what the universe is for. Dawkins quotes Watson as saying, "Well, I don't think we are for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say, 'Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose,' But I'm having a good lunch."

White goes on to say that, if Watson and Dawkins are "just products," then a good lunch shouldn't mean anything to them. A good lunch and a bad lunch are equal products of the meaningless universe. For that matter, the Eagle Nebula can't mean anything to them, if they and it are merely products. This continues for the rest of the chapter, and pops up in subsequent chapters. If Watson and Dawkins were arguing that they truly are "just" products, it would be a good point. They weren't arguing that. They weren't even making an argument. They were making a counter-argument. People had said to Watson that his life was meaningless and grim unless a creator god had given it specific purpose. Watson and Dawkins refuted that idea by saying they believed they were alive by coincidence and nothing more, but still found meaning in good food and a good time with a colleague. To say that, in that anecdote, they pretended there was no meaning in life is ignoring the context.

What's maddening about this is this is exactly the kind of culture that White argues for when he talks about romanticism. He doesn't advocate for the soft definition of romanticism - the exaltation of emotion over everything else. Instead he explains the alienation of the romantics, the way they saw the corrupt and corrupting systems that ruled the world using dogma, and how they intellectually broke away from it all. Although they sometimes lost their faith and their sense of belonging, they chose to make their own mental framework for the world and how they should interact with it. This is what Dawkins and Watson were doing in that story. Although their conclusions might not be what everyone agrees with, they were finding meaning outside of the framework dictated by others. The only way to assert otherwise is to shear the quote of its contextual meaning. For a book that was written as an appeal to restore meaning to a mechanistic view of the universe, that's not the way to argue the point.

Have you ever dyed Easter eggs and thought that a slightly-different-colored egg wasn't worth the trouble? How about an egg filled with crystals? Try out a chemistry experiment that lets you turn eggs into geodes.

Geodes, as anyone who has ever wandered through an 'educational' toy store knows, are minerals that have air pockets in which multicolored crystals grow. Generally they're sold as lumps of rock which are cracked open by kids and will help them learn . . . something. Possibly how to use a hammer.

You might teach them a little more by showing them how to make their own "geode" with an egg, water, and a few chemicals. Eggs, with their shells of calcium carbonate, form pockets in which crystals can grow, if the appropriate solution is added to them. How amazing the effect will be depends on your skill with eggs. Cracking an egg carefully in half can let you fill both halves. Taking a little sliver of egg off the top will create a more impressive geode that can be cracked open. And then there's the gold standard of egg decoration, making a tiny hole in the top and bottom of the egg with a needle, puncturing and mixing the yolk, and blowing the contents of the egg out one of the holes.

However you open the egg, make sure it's clean inside before you proceed. You'll need a quarter cup of hot water, and some chemicals. One of the most common chemicals to use to make an egg geode is copper sulfate. You can find it in hardware or home improvement stores. It's used to keep algae out of pools and septic tanks. Dissolve the crystals in water, adding a little at a time until no more will dissolve. Remember, the hotter the water, the more crystals will dissolve and the better results you'll get. Pour the water into the egg shell, and leave it to dry. A layer of blue crystal should form over the next few days, after which you can pour out the extra liquid. If you leave it for a week or so, the entire thing will crystalize. After it crystalizes, it will need to be stored in a dry, sealed container. Or you could simply dissolve the copper sulfate in water again - after admiring your egg properly - and clean your septic tank.

If you don't want to work with copper sulfate, you can use epsom salts the exact same way. I suggest making clear crystals first, but you can also add some food dye to the solution and make green, red, or yellow crystals. People can make egg geodes with borax, with magnesium sulfate, and even with table salt. (That might be the ultimate way to serve the salt at your next hipster dinner.)

Then go back to the educational store and go ahead and buy a geode there. It's fun to use a hammer.

Top Image: Thinkoholic

[Via Instructables, Happy Scientist.]

This amazing image of a daisy shows the blossom, and a group of dry insects, below the water level. It's a striking image of the power of surface tension.

This photograph, which looks like a daisy going to warp drive, is actually a flower caught in a rising puddle. The water level rose around the blossom slowly enough that it lifted the petals. The multiple layers of the petals are thick enough to keep the water from leaking through - to what must be the great relief of the insects inside.

Another force is at work. The water molecules are more attracted to each other than the daisy petals. They pull into a kind of upwards slope all around the tips of the petals, so the entire flower is under the water level, but not submerged.

Image: William Connolley

One of the scariest medical conditions in the world, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, changes muscle and connective tissue into bone. Over the course of a few decades, it turns the entire body into one huge skeleton.

There are a lot of frightening medical conditions out there, but one of the most terrifying has to be fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Often starting in childhood, this condition turns muscles and tendons into bone, freezing a person over time. Recently scientists have figured out exactly what causes it, and a few treatments have been explored, but there is no known cure.

It starts with a mutation on the ACVR1 gene, which is the blueprint for a specific protein. It's one of the proteins that control the change of cartilage and muscle tissue into bone. This happens naturally, and in a limited way, as a baby grows to adulthood. Parts of the skeleton gradually harden until a person is full grown. In someone with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva that protein initiates the same process whenever a muscle or tendon is damaged. Whether it's overwork, bruising, or tearing, the tissue rebuilds as bone and freezes into place.

The process generally starts in the neck and shoulders, making a person unable to turn their head from side to side. As body parts are paralyzed and mobility declines, it's easier to cause damage to the rest of the body. Even minor stretches can cause ossification. One fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva patient describes going to bed feeling fine and waking up with body parts newly paralyzed. Eventually, damage around the mouth causes it to freeze into position, so eating becomes difficult. Damage around the rib cage ossifies the chest and prevents it from expanding, causing breathing problems.

Since almost any surgical treatment causes more damage, there are few options for fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva patients. For some time, protein from sharks, which have cartilage instead of bone forming their skeletons, was studied. Today, protein kinase inhibitors, which inhibit the function an enzyme that helps proteins function, have stopped ossification in mice. Because the ACVR1 gene causes the condition, it's hoped that sometime in the future gene therapy might help. Right now, it looks like the only real treatment is extreme caution to prevent tissue damage.

[Via NCBI, Genetics Home Reference, NCBI]