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A 1936 expedition through Australia's Simpson Desert, where Leichhart may have perished (via wikimedia commons)

When I was preparing to visit friends in Australia a few years ago, I read a book about all the ways the continent would kill you. The entry on scorpions, I remember, stood out because it said not to worry about them—their stings only hurt.

I was reminded of this while reading a story from Australian Geographic about the explorer Ludwig Leichhart, a Prussian naturalist who came to Australia in 1842 and, having studied everything from philosophy to medicine to natural sciences, began documenting the continent’s flora, fauna and geology. After six years, though, Leichhart disappeared. He was only 34.

Leichhart is renowned in Australia for an expedition he undertook in 1844. He set off from southern Queensland, near current-day Brisbane, and led a small group nearly 3,000 miles to Port Essington on the northwest tip of the continent. It was a grueling journey through horrible heat and humidity. They men had to eat rancid meat and became covered in boils. One was killed by Aborigines. When Leichhart arrived at his party’s final destination on December 17, 1845, after 15 months of traveling, he wrote, “I was deeply affected in finding myself again in civilised society, and could hardly speak.”

Although Leichhart didn’t succeed in his mission to find a good route to Port Essington, he was rewarded with gold medals from the geographical societies in London and Paris.

A second expedition, begun in December 1846, was less successful. Leichhart set out to travel from the east coast to the west coast (near the Swan River), but managed only about 500 miles before turning back, overcome by rain, malaria and a lack of food.

But it was the third expedition that was truly doomed. In March 1848, Leichhart again set out, this time with five other white men, two native guides, horses, mules, bullocks, pots, horseshoes, saddles, nails and plenty of other supplies. Again the goal was to traverse the continent from east to west. But after they left McPherson’s Station on the Darling Downs, they were never heard from again.

Theories have included: the party drowning in a river (which would account for the fact that no one has ever found a pile of bones and supplies), a massacre by Aborigines, assassination by the British colonial government with poisoned flour, and poor navigation skills.

The most likely answer might be that they simply ran out of water and died before they could find any more. Evidence of that includes a 6-inch-long brass plate, now at the National Museum of Australia, with Leichhart’s name and the year 1848 that was found in 1900 in the outback near the Western Australia/Northern Territory border. Though its history is somewhat murky, it seems to support the idea that the party managed to get as far as the Simpson Desert, some two-thirds of the way across the continent.

But water is scarce in that part of Australia, and even if they had decided to abandon their journey and travel up to Port Essington, they would have been out of luck—the settlement had been deserted.

And then there’s the story told by some Aboriginal people in 1889 or 1890, of four men on horses who came from the northeast but died, searching fruitlessly for water among the rocks.

Until someone finds a pile of 160-year-old bones and explorer supplies, though, the tale remains a mystery.

Way back in 1999, members of a brain trust called The Edge debated a fascinating question: What is the most important invention in the past 2,000 years? Some of the answers (much like the design of the archived discussion site) are dated now. Aspects of computer programming and artificial intelligence that seemed urgent and immortal at the time, such as public key cryptosystems or universal Turing machines, don’t hold up so well. But I find myself returning to this question again and again—it’s a great geeky conversation starter—and thinking about the merits of the various nominees and trying to come up with new ones. There was quite a range: calculus, the printing press, the steam engine, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem (yes, some of the discussants were just showing off), reading glasses, the contraceptive pill.

My favorite new nominee for a world-changing invention comes from Hans Rosling, the rock star of TED Talks. He’s a global health expert at the Karolinska Institute who uses data to dispute myths about the developing world. I think he makes a compelling case that the washing machine has been a force for human advancement and will be even more of one, if not not for the next 2,000 years, at least for the foreseeable global future.

I still think it’s hard to beat the birth control pill. But what do you think is the most important invention of the past 2011 years?

A silver Y moth (left) and a willow warbler migrate at the same speed (images courtesy of Ian Woiwod and Thomas Alerstam)

If you held a short race between a silver Y moth and a European songbird, the bird would win hands down. These birds, such as warblers, thrushes and flycatchers, can fly about three times as fast as the silver Y moth. But when it comes to long-distance migration, from northern Europe to the Mediterranean or sub-Saharan Africa and vice versa, the moths have no problems keeping up with the birds, say scientists in Sweden and the United Kingdom in a new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The researchers tracked silver Y moths in England and songbirds in Sweden during their nocturnal spring and fall migrations from 1999 to 2008, using a special kind of radar. They found that although the birds’ airspeed was about three times faster than the moths’, the two groups speed over the ground was about the same, ranging from 18 to 40 miles per hour.

“We had assumed that songbirds would travel must faster over the same distance,” said study co-author Jason Chapman, of Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom. “It was a great surprised when we found out the degree of overlap between the travel speeds—the mean values are almost identical, which is really remarkable.”

The moths and birds take different approaches when migrating over these long distances: The moths wait for a favorable tailwind, or seek out an altitude with the fastest air, to give them a push towards their final destination. The birds, however, aren’t so picky and rely on their wings to get them where they need to go.

The constellation Leo, as depicted on a constellation card c. 1825 (via wikimedia commons)

In my neighborhood, some of the street lamps aim their light directly down on the sidewalk and road. Others spew their illumination in a sphere of light, wasting it as it streams into the sky. All those poorly aimed lights add up to 17 billion kilowatt-hours of lost energy each year, costing us around $2 billion. And, of course, they drown out the awesomeness of the night sky.

The National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tuscon has been documenting this light pollution each spring for the past six years, and they are set to start the next round of GLOBE at Night tomorrow here in the Northern hemisphere, where it runs through April 4 (the program is March 24 through April 6 in the Southern hemisphere this year). Here’s how you can participate:

1 ) Determine your latitude and longitude (write it down). Options include using GPS, Google Earth, the GLOBE at Night webapp.

2 ) Go outside about an hour after sunset and find the constellation Leo (if you’re in the Northern hemisphere) or Crux (Southern). The GLOBE at Night website can provide you with a constellation finder, or you can use your own method. (I’ve got the Planets app on my iPhone, for example.)

3 ) Match your sky to one of the magnitude charts. (You can print them out or access them from your favorite device outside.)

4 ) Use the webapp to report what you saw (or how little you were able to see).

“All it takes is a few minutes for a family to measure their night sky brightness by noting how many stars are missing from an easy-to-find constellation like Leo or Crux,” says project director Connie Walker. “This tells us how much light is directed upwards into the sky.” And it helps to document the patterns of light pollution.

Mother's Love, by Ho Sung Wee (Banting, Malaysia)

Contrary to what Laura might have implied yesterday, I’m not anti-bird. And to prove it, I present to you one of the finalists in the Natural World category of Smithsonian magazine’s 8th Annual Photo Contest. The photographer, Ho Sung Wee, captured this moment, titled “Mother’s Love,” in an orchard near his home in Banting, Malaysia. These birds come to the orchards in Banting to build their nests and lay eggs, and when the baby birds are born, their moms are careful to feed them and protect them from strangers, the photographer wrote. (And if anyone can identify the species, I’d love to know.)

Voting is now open for the Reader’s Choice Award, and the winner of that category—along with the Grand Prize winners chosen by Smithsonian editors—will be announced July 1, 2011. If you’ve captured your own amazing image, consider entering it into the 9th annual photo contest, which is open for submissions until December 1, 2011.

And if you want a sneak peak into how the winners are chosen, check out “Smithsonian Spotlight: Picture Perfect” on the Smithsonian Channel.