Curio Cabinet

Icarus, eat your heart out! NASA’s Parker Solar Probe just flew closer to the sun than any other man-made object, and just in time for Christmas. One Christmas Eve, the spacecraft flew within 3.86 million miles of the sun’s surface at a speed of 430,000 mph. That may sound like it’s still a long way from the sun’s surface, but as Kelly Korreck of NASA’s heliophysics division told NBC News, “If you can imagine, it’s like going 96 percent of the way there to the sun’s surface.” Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe Mission Operations Manager said in a NASA press release, “No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory. We’re excited to hear back from the spacecraft when it swings back around the Sun.” As expected, the spacecraft remains out-of-contact after reaching its destination, and NASA is expecting the probe to transmit a beacon tone on December 27, which will allow them to reestablish connection with it. While it passes near the sun, the probe will collect valuable data about the star’s atmosphere, which consists of a bubble of hot plasma. Scientists are hoping that the probe’s data will help them understand some of the sun’s stranger features. For example, the atmosphere of the sun is actually hotter than its surface for reasons that aren’t fully understood. The mechanism behind solar cycles and the actual chemical composition of the sun are also a bit mysterious. Imagine shedding light on a star this bright.

 
[Image description: The sun in the sky surrounded by clouds, with a bird flying beneath.] Credit & copyright: Bradley Hook, Pexels
 

The ocean still holds a lot of mysteries, but sometimes they wash up on shore. Scientists were recently able to dissect and study the washed-up remains of a spade-toothed whale, a creature so rare that it has never been seen alive. There are 22 species of beaked whales, all of which are elusive despite their large size. Known for their distinct, long snouts (or “beaks”) that they use for hunting squid and small fish, these whales look very different from their rounder headed cousins. Moreover, they spend much of their time diving deep—very, very deep—in search of their favored prey, so little is known about their behavior. Of these incredibly rare whales, one stands out among them: the spade-toothed whale, considered the rarest whale in the world. So little is known about them that scientists can’t even make a rough estimate of their total population. They have only ever been spotted by humans six times in the past 150 years, and never alive. In several of those instances, they were washed up on land, but were far too decomposed to be dissected.
 
However, back in July, the remains of a spade-toothed whale washed up on the South Island of New Zealand, and this one was in good enough shape to be examined. The dissection was performed by researchers from New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, and it revealed several interesting facts about the mysterious creatures. For one thing, the whales have vestigial teeth in their upper jaw, possibly indicating that they favor suction feeding. Another interesting find was that the whale had nine stomachs, all filled with undigested squid beaks and lenses from squid eyes. Other bits of knowledge came from the Māori people, who call the whale “taonga” and consider it sacred. Researchers worked with members of local tribes who had cultural knowledge of the whale and used their own findings from the dissection to form a clearer picture of the whale’s behavior and characteristics. Science meets history to solve a mystery.

 
[Image description: The surface of water.] Credit & copyright: Matt Hardy, Pexels

Do you recall the most Christmasy critters of all? What better day than Christmas to learn about some of the most unique deer on Earth: reindeer. These hardy animals not only live in extreme conditions, where temperatures can reach as low as -97 degrees Fahrenheit, they also spend their lives evading dangerous predators, all while traveling around 3,000 miles a year.
 
There are seven subspecies of reindeer, also called caribou. Their range covers tundras and forests in northern countries like Greenland, Russia, and Canada. Reindeer are also found in Alaska. Reindeer are migratory, meaning that they move from place to place. Unlike some birds, which stay put for most of the year before flying south for the winter, reindeer are pretty much always on the move, crossing the tundra in summer and heading for boreal forests in winter. Reindeer herds usually have around 100 members, but during breeding season herds can come together to form super-herds of up to 500,000 deer. Reindeer calves are particularly prone to predation from powerful animals like wolves and bears, making it all the more important for adult reindeer to stick together. The fact that they can run up to 50 miles-per-hour shortly after being born also helps keep predators at bay.
 
Like all arctic animals, reindeer have plenty of adaptations to help them survive the cold. Their dense fur traps heat against the bodies, their milk is super rich to help their calves pack on fat, and they’ve even optimized vitamin D absorption so that they don’t become deficient in the necessary vitamin during long stretches of arctic night. These adaptations aren’t surprising since reindeer first evolved during Earth’s latest ice age, in the late Pliocene Epoch, around 3.6 million years ago.
 
A reindeer was first depicted pulling Santa’s sleigh in the 1821 poem Old Santeclaus with Much Delight. That one deer eventually turned into a whole team…though some may be surprised to find that Santa’s reindeer are all female. Unlike many deer species, both male and female reindeer have antlers. Males shed their antlers just before winter, while females don’t shed theirs until spring, so only female reindeer would have antlers at Christmas time! Of course, names like “Vixen” were already a pretty big giveaway.

 
[Image description: A Svalbard Reindeer eating grass.] Credit & copyright: iNaturalist, stevestevens. Public Domain, CC0 1.0 Universal.

Merry Christmas, let’s talk about math! The fact is, one of the most popular books in the 19th century wasn’t about pirate adventures on the high seas or romantic entanglements among the upper class. It was all about arithmetic. Cocker’s Arithmetick was a very important math textbook. In fact, it was one of Benjamin Franklin’s favorite pieces of literature. It’s hard to imagine one of America’s most famous founding fathers, who was a noted inventor and Renaissance man, struggling in school. When it came to math, though, he did. As a child, Franklin was made to prepare for an eventual printing apprenticeship by learning writing and arithmetic, and while he excelled in the former, he failed arithmetic not once, but twice. It seemed that for whatever reason, the future statesman just couldn’t wrap his head around numbers—that is, until he discovered Cocker’s Arithmetick. Sold for a shilling a copy, the book was based on the writings of Edward Cocker, an English mathematician and teacher in 17th-century England. Published in 1678, the book was an edited down version of Cocker’s body of work and was released after his death. It covered everything from basic arithmetic to calculating pre-decimal British currency. Due to its cheap price and comprehensive coverage of the subject, Cocker’s Arithmetick was the go-to math text for many people for well over a century. Franklin was so appreciative of the book that he famously wrote about it in his own autobiography. Its easy-to-digest format meant that the book wasn’t treated by readers like some esoteric academic treatise. Instead, it was seen as a piece of popular literature, despite its strictly instructional content. The book was so successful that there were over 70 editions by the end of the 1700s. It was one of the first math books that made the formerly intimidating subject approachable by presenting the world as a collection of quantifiable values that could be understood with a simple set of rules. It was a massively important text for anyone wishing to engage in commerce, but also set the standard for future textbooks. 19th-century bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin once said that it, “probably made as much stir and noise in the English world as any [book]—next to the Bible.” Now that’s a glowing review.

 
[Image description: Writing on a chalkboard that reads “1 + 1 = 3”.] Credit & copyright: George Becker, Pexels