I Never Did Believe It Was Science
After nearly 30 years of operation, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory will be closing its doors forever. Researchers at the lab have spent their time studying the interaction between human consciousness and physical machines, investigating such phenomena as telekinesis and ESP. Some scientists have, perhaps unsurprisingly, called PEAR an embarrassment to both science and Princeton University. PEAR's founder, professor emeritus of engineering Robert Jahn, said the lab is closing not because of the controversy it's created, but because it has already generated all the necessary data. "If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced," Jahn told the New York Times, "then they never will." One such result came from an experiment where people sat in front of a machine that would randomly generate numbers just above or below 100. Participants were instructed either to "think high" or "think low," and researchers observed whether the numbers corresponded to people's mental instructions. The study concluded that people could affect about 2 to 3 numbers out of 10,000. The results were not accepted for peer review; one editor apparently told Jahn he would review the paper "if you can telepathically communicate it to me." Zing!
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First Date
The date tree is named "Methuselah," but while the Biblical figure died at age 969, this plant's still alive and kicking nearly 2,000 years after its seed was tossed into a jar by an inhabitant of Ancient Rome. The seed was discovered during a series of excavations in the 1970s. Soloway revived it by soaking it in warm water and fertilizers and then planting it. In 2005, the seed was finally germinated, and last week Carbon-14 dating confirmed that it probably originated between 66 and 73 C.E. The seed is the oldest to ever germinate. While those who see the sapling claim it looks like any old palm tree, germinator Elaine Soloway notes that the first leaves it sprouted are unusually long. She does not yet know whether the tree is male or female, but if the tree is a female, within a few years she will be able to taste fruit nobody has known in thousands of years. She has reason to be psyched: Historical sources claim the dates were especially sweet and delicious. Soloway is also growing other Biblical plants, such as frankincense and myrrh. That's cool and all, but until her green thumb turns up a burning bush, I remain unimpressed.
Not A Fairer Pharaoh
Of all the real people portrayed on film by beautiful stars, perhaps none has received as big a boost in the looks department as Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen played by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film baring the Pharaoh's name. Researchers at Newcastle University have studied a Roman denarius depicting Cleopatra and concluded that the queen who much later came to be known for her beauty was actually, to put it tastefully, the ripest fruit ever to fall from the ugly tree. All right, she wasn't that unattractive, but the coin does depict Cleopatra with a pointy nose, thin, tight lips, and a witch-like protruding chin. Antony doesn't fare much better: The flip side of the denarius shows him with a hooked nose and a thick neck. Lindsay Allason-Jones, the director of the Archaeological Museums at Newcastle, noted that Roman writers describe Cleopatra as intelligent and charismatic and as having a seductive voice, but physical beauty isn't on any of their lists. It was only centuries later that writers invented the gorgeous Cleopatra we imagine today. Well, go, Mark Antony for being seduced not by her "wibbly, wobbly, wiggly dance," but by the fact that she was smart and cool.