Smithsonian.com

Yesterday, the Zoological Society of London launched the Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) Amphibians Web site. The site is part of the larger “Edge of Existence” conservation program started awhile back, focused on endangered species that have few living relatives and are morphologically or behaviorally unique. As its creators put it, EDGE sets out to save “the weirdest and most wonderful species on the planet.” (Check out the EDGE’s blog.)

And boy are these frogs weird. Take the axolotl, (that’s ACK-suh-LAH-tuhl, pictured above) the foot-long “water monster” native to Mexico. Unlike other salamanders, axolotls keep their larval features—like external gills and a dorsal fin—and always stay under water. EDGE hopes to protect the axolotl living in the Xochimilco and Chalco canals near Mexico City.

(Image from Flickr, by g-na)

On August 30, while metal-detecting in Djurhamn, Sweden, archaeologist Martin Rundkvist unearthed a real treasure: a 36-inch 16th-century sword. The double-edged, single-hand grip weapon was “unusually designed,” Rundkvist wrote on his blog, Aardvarchaeology, “but similar in details to the so-called rikssvärden, or ‘swords of the realm,’ ceremonial weapons commissioned by King Gustaf I.” (Read more about how his team dug it up.)

Since then, conservationists at the Studio Västsvensk Konservering, in Göteborg, have been cleaning up the sword, and in the process, learning more about its history. The photograph above was recently taken by the studio’s Vivian Smits. “The blade bears traces of at least three ‘fresh’ sword blows,” she told Rundkvist, indicating that the weapon was probably lost during combat (that is, before its owner had a chance to repair it.)

Moreover, since 16th-century Djurhamn was a large and busy harbor, Rundkvist guesses that the sword’s owner dropped it into water from a nearby bank. (Today the area is a marshy forest.)

Makes sense…though one of Rundkvist’s commenters proposed an intriguing alternate theory:

After a night of drinking and partying in the Atlantic City of 16th century Sweden, the owner of the sword found that he had lost his cabin key when he went abord his ship. In anger he banged the sword repeatedly on whatever he was nearest which awokened the big burly ship mate, who wrestled the sword from the inebriated aristocrat and hurled it overboard.

(Vivian Smits)

Yes, those are actual people on either side of the white part of this crashing wave. This was Saturday, at the big-wave break known as Mavericks just south of San Francisco. A surfing contest drew some 20 demented surfers from all over the world, where they took turns throwing themselves over the edge of a 30-foot-high wave.

If you missed it, you can get a recap and see up-close photos at a prominent surfing website – or watch the archived play-by-play on Myspace. Alternatively, well-spoken surfer Grant Washburn can give you a first-hand account without resorting to the word “gnarly” – listen to him on NPR here and here, describing an even bigger day earlier this season.

Wondering what it is about a place that makes waves lurch 30 or 50 feet out of the ocean, to crash ashore with enough force to register at earthquake sensors? Check out Quest, a show about science on San Francisco public television. They’ve put together a segment revealing how big waves come to be (watch it online). Turns out it takes a combination of storms hundreds of miles away, and rock ledges just a few feet below the surface.

If you’re curious about how to get a surfboard to do what you want, San Francisco’s Exploratorium museum has a primer on surfing and physics. The sport is a complex mixture of buoyancy battling gravity, but this piece breaks down the major ingredients of a ride. So hop into your wetsuit and grab your surf wax – you’re ready! Just promise me you’ll keep to waves one-tenth the size of Mavericks.
(Flickr: Jurvetson)

The photo above shows the Hope Diamond, a 45.52-carat “blue diamond” on permanent display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. When you see this King Of All Bling in regular white light, it looks blue. But if you see it under ultraviolet light, the Hope glows red. (In fact, the Hope will continue to glow—or “phosphoresce”—red even several minutes after the UV light is turned off!) Now scientists have found that this red phosphorescence may be the key to distinguishing all real blue diamonds from the fakes.

Diamonds are made of mostly carbon, and their exact color is determined by traces of other elements mixed in. Yellow diamonds, for instance, contain relatively large nitrogen impurities. Blue diamonds contain low levels of nitrogen and higher levels of boron.

Under UV light, the vast majority of blue diamonds look not red, but blue. So in the past, gemologists thought that the few blue diamonds that glowed red under UV light must have been children of the Hope (which, when originally mined from India in the 1600s, was 112 carats). But it turns out that all authentic blue diamonds contain a red phosphorescent component; it’s just that for most of them, the red light is overpowered by blue-green. The researchers think that it’s the precise mix of nitrogen and boron impurities that causes the lasting red glow.

The discovery was made by researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the Naval Research Laboratory. They used a portable spectrometer to analyze several dozen blue diamonds, including the Hope, and found a red component in all but five. They also tested three phony blue diamonds—of which none had the telltale red signature. They published their findings in the January issue of the journal Geology.

Most interesting to me is that the researchers never moved the Hope from its display location. “If you want to study the Hope diamond using spectroscopy, you need to bring the machine to the Hope diamond,” Penn State geoscientist Peter J. Heaney said in a press release. “You cannot bring the Hope to the machine.” Heaney’s team could only take measurements in the early mornings and evenings, when the museum was closed to the public.

(Flickr, via absolutwade)

Astronomers at a southern hemisphere telescope spotted this three-way collision of galaxies late last year, 650 million light years away. They nicknamed it the “Cosmic Bird,” though later observers pointed out a striking resemblance to a certain fairy famous for helping a band of boys defeat a hook-handed pirate.

As is all too common with fairies, this Tinkerbell is making a fleeting appearance as the galaxies whiz past each other at about 870,000 miles per hour. But intense gravitational interactions in Tinkerbell’s “head” are forming new stars at a rate of about 200 solar masses per year — leaving sort of a trail of fairy dust.

The discovery was made at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope array, a group of four telescopes in the Andes of northern Chile. A report will be formally published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

(European Southern Observatory)