🕸️ Primitive Hypertext: “Alien” Wow! Signal, Conspiracy Theory Generator, Human Eggs “Woo Sperm," “Glacier Mating," Ice Cores with Stories, + Glycerol=Better Bubbles, Underwater Bubbles for Survival
🕸️ Primitive Hypertext: “Alien” Wow! Signal, Conspiracy Theory Generator, Human Eggs “Woo Sperm," “Glacier Mating," Ice Cores with Stories, + Glycerol=Better Bubbles, Underwater Bubbles for Survival
Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.
Read more about the newsletter rhythm here.
☺️ Hello!
Table of Contents:
🏠 Back in Brooklyn!
🕸️ Primitive Hypertext (after Octavia Estelle Butler): The “Alien” Wow! Signal, AI-powered Conspiracy Theory Generator, and Eggs, Human Eggs “Woo Sperm” in a Post-Copulation Battle, Ancient Ritual of “Glacier Mating” in Pakistan’s Highlands, Ice Cores Hold Trapped Air with A Story, Glycerol Help Make the Perfect Bubble, Water Anoles, Alkali Flies, and Some Water Beetles Use Underwater Bubbles to Survive
🐇 🕳️ Another Rabbit Hole: Anti-Bubbles and Sonoluminescence
1. 🏠 Back in Brooklyn!
2. 🕸️ Primitive Hypertext (after Octavia Estelle Butler)
As a reminder, the Primitive Hypertext offerings are now modeled after Harper Magazine’s Findings, which focuses on “scientific progress—good, bad, or simply strange.” However, my version will include anything that piques my curiosity in a given week — which most likely will be science-adjacent...but not like always, but mostly 😬 😬
This Week! 20 January 2025
The Ohio State University Big Ear radio telescope detected the Wow! Signal in 1977, becoming one of the most noteworthy examples of alien intelligence. However, a non-peer-reviewed paper published on arXiv last year “hypothesize[d] that the Wow! Signal was caused by a sudden brightening of the hydrogen line in these clouds triggered by a strong transient radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR).” When prompting Bitlife, an AI-powered conspiracy theory text generator with the word “eggs,” we are given “[s]ome conspiracy theorists believe that eggs, particularly chicken eggs, hold mystical properties that are linked to alien civilizations.” In 2017, Joe Nadeau, principal scientist at the Pacific Northwest hypothesized that sexual selection happens after copulation when the egg attempts to “woo sperm” instead of “passively” awaiting random fertilization. Other fertilization approaches are found amongst farmers in Pakistan's highlands of Baltistan who are racing against climate change by attempting to produce “glacier babies” using an ancient ritual of “glacier mating” of mixing chunks of white glaciers (presumed to be female) with black or brown glaciers (presumed to be male) in order to create a new water source for farming. At the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, scientists store ice cores whose bubbles of Greenland air from more than two millennia can provide details on the progression of climate issues. Scientists have developed an optimized recipe for making giant bubbles which requires that the surface-active agent (a chemical compound that reduces the surface tension between two substances) must not be too high, the bubble solution must include long and flexible polymer chains, and glycerol provides stability and resistance to evaporation. Possibly to escape predators, water anoles, or semiaquatic lizards produce a bubble behind its nostrils that allows it to remain breathing underwater for 20 minutes. Alongside Lindsey Swierk’s water anoles research, other scientists have found that the alkali fly, (Ephydra hians) uses superhydrophobicity to create a bubble of air around its body (but not encasing the fly's eyes) while underwater in Mono Lake, California. And some water beetles form a temporary bubble to carry needed oxygen while underwater.