small discoveries
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
You are listening to music, evolved.
I don’t mean that in the sense that it’s tomorrow’s next big electronica style, but rather that the music itself has undergone Darwinian selection.
DarwinTunes is a project of Bob MacCallum and Armand Leroi from Imperial College London. They wondered if music might evolve by means similar to the way natural selection acts on genetic traits, with the best bits surviving and remixing into a more fit future tune.
They began with this cacophony, a real mess of dissonance. Then they let listeners pick their favorite bits and allowed those loops to “mate”. What you hear above is the result after 3,000 generations of musical replication, and clear tendencies toward beat and harmony are evident. Of course, listeners come into this experiment with modern notions of what pleasant sounds mean, and real musical evolution took place over thousands of years and with hugely differing cultural influences.
Still, it’s a supremely cool melding of science and music, and a reminder that whether its cultural or genetic, everything is a remix. Check out Ed Yong’s writeup at the link below, hear the whole evolution here, and visit DarwinTunes for more.
I can’t help but consider that applying Darwinian theory to music is like the This American Life episode that lent physics equations as explanations for family dynamics.
Art of science: extremely small, incredibly close
A diatom resembling a radioactive symbol. From the Wellcome Image Awards 2012, a gallery of beautifully small science that you will want to check out.
(via The Observer)
Illustrated here is a geologic map of Venus’s northern hemisphere, based off radar data from the Venera 15 and 16 orbiters, Pioneer Venus orbiter, and Earth-based radar telescopes. The colors indicate various features on the surface, such as plains in yellow and light green; mountains in purple, green and blue; and volcanoes in light red and pink. (View More Planetary Maps at the Telegraph)
If you can handle the temperatures hot enough to melt lead and the caustic acid atmosphere, Venus really does look like a nice place to visit and sightsee.
What we’re actually seeing in the ocean is this kind of chowder of plastic – these tiny particles that are the size of plankton. It’s plastic that has been weathered and broken down by the elements into these little bits and it’s getting into the food chain.
Edward Humes met with scientists who study the 5 massive gyres of trash particles swirling around in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Created by the convergence of ocean currents and wind, the gyres contain masses of litter that aren’t entirely visible by the human eye. (via nprfreshair)
I spent most of the day sitting before my beautiful window looking out on Spanish Harlem, writing a piece on Indian medicine in the 19th century. I do love it when I can spread intellectual curiosities across multiple semesters, fold my interests into each other, and carve new ideas into words. But, here, this manifestation is just a wall of post-it notes on an armoire door—carrying words that bode arguments I may successfully pose or fail trying.
I do love the act of working all day. From noon to evening, from morning until night. It is far preferable to working through the night. Here’s to more productive days such as these.
A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.
Susan Sontag (via curiositycounts)
Maria Grønlund: A World In A Vector
This. Is. Too. Good.
Two cells + 2x23 chromosomes = You.
