Category:
Science

Are we swallowing other universes?

An unusual cosmological hypothesis was recently published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. At least, it's an idea I haven't heard before.

It suggests that our universe has been swallowing "baby universes," and that this eating habit is the cause of the observed accelerating rate of expansion of our universe.



The article, authored by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, quickly veers off into mathematics that's incomprehensible to me. But I can extract a few interesting ideas. For instance, what if the initial "Big Bang" of our universe was caused by us (when we were still a baby universe) being swallowed by a larger universe?

the fact that the universe has expanded from, say, a Planckian size to 10−5m in a very short time, invites the suggestion that this expansion was caused by a collision with a larger universe, i.e. that it was really our Universe which was absorbed in another "parent" universe.

And what would happen if, now that we're an adult universe, we collided with another adult universe? The researchers don't answer this question, but I'm guessing the outcome wouldn't be good.

While a continuous absorption of microscopic baby universes probably can be accommodated in a non-disruptive way in our Universe, it is less clear what happens if the "baby" universe is not small, since we have not suggested an actual mechanism for such absorption.

More info: "Is the present acceleration of the Universe caused by merging with other universes?"

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 06, 2024 - Comments (3)
Category: Science, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Weird Theory

Fatigue Vaccine

I wonder what was this "vaccine against fatigue" that scientists in the 1920s thought they had discovered. Methamphetamine perhaps? I know that the Nazis thought it was an anti-fatigue wonder drug.

More info: Robert Armstrong-Jones (wikipedia)

Nottingham Evening Post - Nov 29, 1923



Daily Mirror - Nov 30, 1923



Shreveport Times - Nov 30, 1923

Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 20, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Science, Sleep and Dreams, 1920s

As Above

Very trippy. How much of the six minutes can you stand, without chemical assistance?

Posted By: Paul - Mon Feb 12, 2024 - Comments (4)
Category: Science, Video, Abstract, Non-figurative, Non-representational

The science of shaking Christmas presents

Researchers at the University of Michigan have been studying people shaking boxes in order to shed light on "epistemic action understanding." Or rather, "Can one person tell, just by observing another person’s movements, what they are trying to learn?"

In other words, as you watch someone shake a box, can you figure out what information they're trying to gather about the contents of the box (i.e. the shape or quantity of things in it)?

More info: "Seeing and understanding epistemic actions"

Posted By: Alex - Sat Dec 30, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Science, Experiments, Psychology, Christmas

Twin Telepathy

1965: Two eye doctors published an article in the journal Science detailing what appeared to be a form of telepathy found in two sets of twins. The brainwaves of the twins seemed to be linked. When the brainwaves of one changed (by having him close his eyes), the brainwaves of the other twin would change also, even though the two were in separate rooms.

The doctors examined 16 sets of twins, but only found the linked brainwave phenomenon in two of them. Why these two? The doctors speculated that they were "serene" whereas the other twins demonstrated "impatient anxiety and apprehension about the testing procedure."

It's surprising the doctors got their article published in Science, since that journal doesn't usually consider anything that smacks too much of parapsychology.

You can find a copy of their Science article ("Extrasensory Electroencephalographic Induction between Identical Twins") here.

More info about twin telepathy at Psi Encyclopedia.

Los Angeles Times - Dec 22, 1965



Science - Oct 15, 1965

Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 12, 2023 - Comments (5)
Category: Paranormal, Science, Psychology, Twins, Lookalikes & Doppelgangers, 1960s

Female mate avoidance behaviors in the European common frog

We posted recently about "misdirected amplexus," which is the phenomenon of male frogs attempting to mate with inappropriate objects (different species, fish, inanimate objects, etc.).

Turns out that the weird frog sex behaviors don't end there. Male frogs, in their excitement, will occasionally form "mating balls" — "several male frogs cling to a single female – often killing her in the process."

Some German researchers have now found that female frogs, in turn, have developed defense strategies to protect themselves from over-excited males. They rotate to try to escape the male's grasp; they emit "release calls"; and if those strategies fail to work, they play dead:

to protect themselves against swarms of sexually aroused male frogs, the female frogs stiffly extend their arms and legs away from the body, keeping incredibly still until the male releases them from its grasp.

More info: "Drop dead! Female mate avoidance in an explosively breeding frog"technologynetworks.com

(Thanks to Gerald Sacks)

Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 13, 2023 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Nature, Science, Sex

Ultrasonic Postejaculatory Song of the Male Rat

We posted recently about some odd sexual behavior demonstrated by frogs (their frequent attempts to mate with inappropriate objects). Male rats also display an odd behavior. When they need to rest from mating, they sing an ultrasonic "leave me alone" song.

More info: PubMed

New Scientist - July 6, 1972

Posted By: Alex - Sat Oct 07, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Nature, Science, Sex

The Chimpomat

In one of our recent posts, there was a reference to the Chimpomat, a token-operated vending machine for chimpanzees created at the Yerkes Laboratories in the 1930s. Here's more info about it.

"Subject Kambi is shown about to drop a token into the slot of the chimpomat to 'purchase' food."



Info from The Ape People (1971) by Geoffrey H. Bourne:

The Yerkes Laboratories eventually developed a device known as a Chimpomat. This Chimpomat would receive either metal or plastic disks and would dispense some form of food reward in return for the insertion of a disk. Animals were eventually taught to pull the box of weights up to the cage in return for plastic or metal disks which they could then take and put in the Chimpomat to get their reward.

By the process of lengthening the time between which they could earn the reward and when they could actually receive it by using the Chimpomat (by making the Chimpomat available only certain times of the day), the animals could be trained to collect plastic disks, in other words, to work for money. They would store up this money until the time came for them to spend it. Eventually they were trained to earn the money one day and spend it in the Chimpomat the following day.

On these occasions the animals used to walk around clutching their earnings to their breasts, sleeping on them at night so they would not be stolen, and getting very hysterical if any other animal came near their earnings or tried to take any of them away—a very human side of their actuvity and the dawn of ownership of private property and capitalism, a thought that has intriguing implications.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 02, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Science, 1930s

Musical Tones of Waterfalls

The "A. Heim" referred to below was the Swiss geographer Albert Heim. (Perhaps the E. Heim was his brother?) His studies of the musical tones of waterfalls led him to formulate the hypothesis that Beethoven wrote the sound of a waterfall into his "Pastoral" symphony. Details from wqxr.org:

Heim concluded that if you listened closely enough to the running water, you could hear a C-major chord with an added F — the very harmony used in the opening bars of the symphony’s final movement. "It seems," Heim wrote, "that Beethoven had got this chord from listening — consciously or unconsciously — to the sound of water, which flowed away in large swaths after his storm [in the third movement]."

You can read Heim's article about the musical tones of waterfalls here (but it's in German).

Scribner's Monthly - Apr 1875

Posted By: Alex - Sat Sep 30, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Music, Science, Nineteenth Century

Misdirected amplexus

"Misdirected amplexus" is the scientific term for the curious phenomenon of male frogs attempting to mate with inappropriate objects. Details from the New Scientist

Mating frogs may have been occasionally getting it wrong for hundreds of millions of years. We know that males today will sometimes select an inappropriate partner during the breeding season – a frog from a different species, a turtle, a fish or even an inanimate object. Now there is evidence that these mistaken attachments could be an ancient feature of frog reproduction, arising early in the amphibians’ evolution.

Frog mating is often hard to miss. In most species it involves a process called amplexus, in which males grip onto a female tightly for hours or days at a time until the eggs are fertilised. But there are plenty of records of male frogs grappling an unpromising target such as a frog from a different species or a dead individual. One explanation is that such mistakes are more likely to happen in species that breed in large numbers with a low ratio of females to males, and where multiple species occupy the same breeding pond.

I briefly discussed the subject of misdirected mating in the animal kingdom in my book Elephants on Acid. Here's the relevant text:

Konrad Lorenz once observed a Shell Parakeet who grew amorous with a small celluloid ball. And many other animals exhibit mating behavior toward what researchers refer to as "biologically inappropriate objects." Bulls will treat almost any restrained animal as a receptive cow. Their general rule in life seems to be, "if it doesn't move away and can be mounted, mount it!"

During the early 1950s, researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center surgically damaged the amygdala (a region of the brain) in a number of male cats. These cats became "hypersexual," attempting to mate with a dog, a female rhesus monkey, and an old hen. Four of these hypersexual cats, placed together, promptly mounted one another.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Sep 26, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Nature, Science, Sex

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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