Information from the novel "Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments" by Alex Boase.
I am heavily loaded with work today, so here's an article taken from the New Scientist magazine.
Scientists walk on the thin line between reality and fiction, brilliance and madness. The following 10 science experiments are all real; they are based on sudden and insane stokes of genius. I find them all particularly entertaining, I hope you do too.
The Top Ten
1) Elephants on Acid
A curiosity-led experiment from the 1960s, in which Warren Thomas decided to inject an elephant named Tusko with 297 milligrams of LSD — about 3,000 times the typical human dose — to see what would happen. The idea was to determine whether the hallucinogenic drug could induce musth — the state of temporary madness in which male elephants become aggressive.
The result was a public relations disaster: Tusko died. The scientists claimed in their defence that they had not expected this to happen — two of them had taken plenty of acid themselves, they said.
2) Terror in the Skies
Another 1960s experiment, in which ten soldiers on a training flight were told by the pilot that the aircraft was disabled, and about to ditch in the ocean. They were then required to fill in insurance forms before the crash — ostensibly so the Army was not financially liable for any deaths or injuries.
They were actually unwitting participants in an experiment: the plane was not crippled at all. It revealed that fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual when filling in forms.
3) Tickling
In the 1930s Clarence Yeuba, a Professor of Psychology at Antioch College in Ohio, formed the hypothesis that people learn to laugh when tickled, and that the response is not innate. He tested it on his son — the family was forbidden from laughing in relation to tickling when he was present.
Leuba’s wife, however, was caught some months later bouncing the boy on her knee while laughing and saying: “Bouncy, bouncy.” By the time the boy was seven, he was laughing when tickled — but that did not stop Leuba trying the experiment again on his sister.
4) Headless rats and painted faces
In 1924 Carney Landis, of the University of Minnesota, set out to investigate facial expressions of disgust. To exaggerate expressions, he drew lines on volunteers’ faces with burnt cork, before asking them to smell ammonia, listen to jazz, look at pornography or place their hands in a bucket of frogs.
He then asked each volunteer to decapitate a white rat. While all hesitated, and some swore or cried, most agreed to do so — showing the ease with which most people bow to authority. The pictures, however, look quite bizarre. “They look like members of a strange cult preparing to offer a sacrifice to the Great God of the Experiment,” Mr Boese wrote.
5) Raising the dead
Robert Cornish, of the University of California at Berkeley, believed in the 1930s that he had perfected a way of raising the dead. He experimented by placing corpses on a see-saw to circulate the blood, while injecting adrenalin and anticoagulants.
After apparently successful experiments on strangled dogs, he found a condemned prisoner, Thomas McMonigle, who was prepared to become a human guinea pig. The state of California, however, refused permission, for fear that it would have to release McMonigle if the technique worked.
6) Slumber learning
In 1942 Lawrence LeShan, of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, attempted subliminally to influence boys into stopping biting their fingernails. While they were asleep, he played them a record of a voice saying: “My fingernails taste terribly bitter.” When the record player broke down, he stood in the dormitory repeating the phrase himself.
It seemed to work: by the end of the summer, 40 per cent of the boys had stopped biting their nails. Mr Boese, however, has another explanation: "'If I stop biting my nails,’ they probably thought, ‘the strange man will go away.’”
7) Turkey turn-ons
Martin Schein and Edgar Hale, of Pennsylvania State University, devoted themselves to studying the sexual behaviour of turkeys in the 1960s, and discovered that the birds are not choosy. Taking a model of a female turkey, they progressively removed body parts until the males lost interest.
Even when all that remained was a head on a stick, the male turkeys remained turned on.
8) Two-headed dogs
Vladimir Demikhov, a surgeon from the Soviet Union, revealed his surgical creation of a two-headed dog in 1954. The head of a puppy had been grafted onto the neck of an adult German shepherd. The second head would lap at milk, even though it did not need nourishment — and though the milk then dribbled down the neck from its disconnected oesophagus. Both animals soon died because of tissue rejection — but that did not stop Demikhov from creating 19 more over the next 15 years.
9) The vomit-drinking doctor
Stubbins Ffirth, a doctor training in Philadelphia during the 1800s, formed the hypothesis that yellow fever was not an infectious disease, and proceeded to test it on himself. He first poured infected vomit into open wounds, then drank the vomit. He did not fall ill — but not because yellow fever is not infectious. It was later discovered that it must be injected directly into the bloodstream, typically through the bite of a mosquito.
10) Eyes wide open
In 1960 Ian Oswald, of the University of Edinburgh, sought to test extreme conditions for falling asleep. He taped open volunteers’ eyes, while placing a bank of flashing lights 50cm in front of them, and attached electrodes to their legs that administered electric shocks. He also blasted very loud music into their ears.
All three subjects were able to fall asleep within 12 minutes. Oswald speculated that the key was the monotonous and regular nature of the stimuli.
If you are one of the many people who believe that America's moon landing in 1969 is fake, you are not alone. I for one, didn't believe it either until recently. The potential of human intelligence is vast, and many only underestimate it.
One reason that made me believe in the moon landing was that after the astronauts returned, they were able to produce dust and rocks extracted from the surface of the moon - these samples were composed of the same elements as those later produced by the soviets with unmanned landings. A small piece of rock was gifted by president Nixon to various countries soon after the completion of the first trip. Among these countries were Russia and China.
The other and the most convincing reason, and the point of this post, is of an element that is embedded in those rocks. This magical element is Helium 3 - a byproduct of the sun's violent nuclear reactions. He3 gushes away from the sun in the form of gas, and when it reaches the earth (you guessed it) it is deflected off our atmosphere, but when it reaches the moon, it is stored on its layered surface. Over the course of billions of years, a rich deposit of this pricey material is available.
Just how pricey? Due to Earth's natural low abundance of He3, a moon rock the size of an unpopped popcorn can buy you 5 extravagant estates in California; I'll leave it to you to imagine the cost of pure He3. Why so pricey? He3 can replace hydrogen in nuclear power plants, this means that the power plants will be 80% more efficient and durable for hundreds of years - in other words, solving the global fuel crisis.
So what does this have to do with whether man landed on moon in 1969?? Well, ok. Here's the part that sounds crazy. Recall in an earlier paragraph when i mentioned that China and Russia also got hold on some moon rocks? Well, the realization of the importance of He3 is almost instant. The desire to control the moon comes the instant right after - because whoever controls the moon controls the fuel for earth, or basically, whoever controls the moon controls earth.
This sounds like some crazy evil villain's super plot in a Marvel comic book, and it practically is. All over the world, leaders of the major powers are gearing up for the second moon race - this time, it isn't just about fame. It is about ultimate domination and survival of human kind.
China, Russia, and the United States have all been preparing for many years. It is not clear who is the real vanguard of the troop, but the launch time have been set to around 2020. This time, man is ready to establish a colony on the moon, and the once so mysterious object in the sky will be under our disposal.
*Note*
There is a movie coming out Nov 2 called "In The Shadow of the Moon" which stars the retired astronauts who once walked on the moon. They recount their experiences from the Apollo mission - this will definitely be very powerful and memorable film.
Thousands of years ago, a foolish old man predicted the world to be composed of four elements: fire, water, wind, and earth. Of course, his theory was soon eradicated and replaced with our general insane knowledge of atoms, and how they are composed of neutrons, electrons, and protons. In recent years, scientists stepped further into the unknown and discovered quantum physics. This mind bobbling theory states that all matter are made of waves, and all matter communicate inside the "Higgs Field" (the very reason matter is matter). Not confusing enough? Well take this, electrons are of the lepton family, which can be divided down into muons and neutrinos. Hadrons (or protons and neutrons) on the other hand, can be divided into 6 quarks: up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange. These are believed to be the smallest indivisible units of matter.
What? Indivisible? That's total bs. Yes, that's what the scientists thought too. Well, their theory is a little different. Some actually believe that these "indivisible units" contain zero mass (according to string theory, the faster an electron moves, the less mass it has. When it reaches the speed of light, its mass is practically zero). This is the biggest, newest, and the most up-to-date scientific question today. And guess what? It could be answered within your lifetime.
On November 26th 2007, the $8billion dollar experimental facility will have its first run. The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is the biggest particle accelerator of its kind, as you can see on the picture above. Putting it into simpler words, the experiment will consist of two guns blasting hadrons directly at each other so fast that the hadrons will split, reenacting a mini big-bang. So what happens when they split? Either the scientists may observe and solve the ultimate question of science "where do we come from? " Or a black hole will form and the earth will be swallowed in a split second (at least it's painless).
Coming Soon November 26th.
