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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Interesting science tidbits

I attended an interesting MIT Enterprise Forum presentation this evening on the topic of "revolutionary thinking." One of the visionaries behind the space elevator project, Brad Edwards, talked about that idea. He presented it as something that, basically, can be constructed with current technology, although the state of the art in carbon nanotubes doesn't seem to be there yet. In theory, it should be possible to create a carbon- nanotube composite material that is 75 times stronger than steel and 40 times stronger than any material ever created. They don't have that yet, though. What they have is no stronger than regular carbon-fiber composite. I'm not sure we'll see the space elevator, but this material will probably raise Roger Federer's game to a still-higher level. (By the way, if you don't think Roger Federer is the most talented tennis player you've ever seen, then you've either watched a lot more or a lot less tennis than me.)

Another interesting presenter was a cave biologist, who claimed that the bulk of the world's genetic diversity is below ground in the form of cave organisms, mineral-eating microorganisms, etc. I'd like to learn more about this. It's not intuitively obvious that this would be so, although individual caves would be regions of reproductive isolation and thus the organisms in them would probably be considered unique species under the biological species concept. She also said that whereas maybe one to two percent of the microorganisms in garden soil produce novel compounds (the sort of interest in developing new drugs and such), for cave microorganisms the figure is more like eighty percent. I assume this reflects lack of study as well as biodiversity.

So there you have a completely non-negative entry, as promised. You are starting to like me better already. But what of the tapenade recipe? I think I will post it anyway. You've earned it.


posted at 11:46 PM

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