Scientific Gossip (38-4a)
Contains 100% gossip from concentrate
The Race to the Pole
Oddsmakers in London expect that this will be the year when human beings finally set foot on the East Pole. Located at the earth’s easternmost extreme, the Pole has been the object of dreams and speculation since Sir Francis Drake of England set sail for it in 1586. Locating the Pole has been easier said than done. Recent advances in understanding the earth's magnetic fields have contributed to a technology that seems on the verge of finding “true east.”
Carpet Reaction Frenzy
Once again a scientific discovery has touched off a frenzy in the fashion world. A decade ago, Charles J. Waschler and his colleagues at Bell Communications Research in Red Bank, NJ, published their finding that ozone interacts with nylon carpets and carpet backings. The report, in the research journal Environmental Science and Technology, described a carpeted stainless steel reaction chamber whose ventilation system changed the air once per hour. Since the report appeared, interior designers and architects have besieged environmental scientists with requests to purchase carpeted stainless steel reaction chambers.
The Time is 2:96
Some people adjust to time change better than others. So concludes Rogelio Campaneris of the Advanced Research Institute in Venezuela. Campaneris and his colleagues built special digital clocks which counted and displayed one hundred minutes per hour and ten hours per day. Test subjects were exposed to the clocks continuously for periods of several weeks. Some subjects easily and rapidly accepted the altered time, others were confused during the entire period.
Disagreeable Gas
While studying ancient Chilean moss, James White and his colleagues at the University of Colorado concluded that 12,700 years ago the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide gas jumped precipitately. Many paleontologists are upset at the acclaim that has come to White; they believe his finding was intuitively obvious.
Psycho Distillation
The financial success of the Commercial Channel and the spinoff Children's Commercial Channel (reported here several months ago), which broadcasts all commercials all the time, has inspired yet another spinoff. The Psycho Channel, a satellite-distributed channel which debuts next month, will broadcast a mix of MTV-style music and distilled essence of talk show. The heart of it will be the most combative five-to-ten minute segments edited from the popular popular television talk shows. The channel was inspired by a paper that was published two years ago in the research journal Abnormal Psychology.
© Copyright 2003 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
This is a HotAIR classical feature. For a complete listing
of AIR features, see What's New.