Science News Review

Black Hole Machine, Clever Crows & Parisian Salmon

Aug 12 at 5:05pm by Aileen

In general science news this week there is some good news, some interesting news, and some not-so good news. First off, Alexander Higgins asks whether the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is worth what’s been poured into it. For the $10 billion it has cost so far, it has operated for a grand total of nine days and has yet to smash a single atom.

There were concerns as it neared completion over whether or not it might create a black hole that would eventually swallow the earth, but scientists are still insisting they MUST have this machine in order for them to understand the nature of the universe. Or to destroy it, whichever point of view one cares to hold. Since the dramatic failure of its superconducting supermagnets last September, 53 of them had to be dismantled, cleaned and repaired. Tons of supercold helium escaped from the system, and soot covered the vacuum tubes.

CERN has estimated repairs and expanded safety systems to cost another $37 million over several years, if nothing else goes wrong when the collider goes to half power in November. Just before being shut down again for the winter, so as not to irradiate the skiers. And despite doubts expressed by opponents, scientists still maintain that the LHC is perfectly safe. So long as it’s not operating while you’re on ski vacation, and you aren’t a particle physicist in the tunnel.

In other news, Atlantic salmon have returned to the Seine river in France, even though nobody’s done anything to extend a formal invitation. Hundreds of salmon have been reported swimming past the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame this year, after being entirely absent for nearly a century due to industrial pollution, agricultural pollution and dams.

The Atlantic salmon is listed as an endangered species throughout Europe, so their return can be considered a significant milestone in anti-pollution efforts – at least, in France. In addition to the salmon, at least 27 other species of fish have recently moved back into the river after a long absence.

Last but not least in the lineup, researchers studying the corvid bird species – that’s crows, ravens and jays – have managed to determine that their use of tools and ability to solve problems logically makes them at least the equal of great apes in intelligence. Of course, since ravens are known to quite readily learn to speak human languages and can put word-concepts together in novel ways to express themselves, some might argue that they’re quite a bit smarter than great apes.

One of these days we’re going to have to rid our store of epithets of the insult “bird brain,” as even though bird’s brains are not very much like mammalian brains, they do appear to be quite adept at all the things we human mammals consider signs of functional intelligence. Researcher Nathan Emery isn’t even very sure that young humans could accomplish one of the feats he and fellow researchers observed in crows – the dropping of stones into a bowl of water to raise the water level so they could easily drink…

“It’s not clear to me that even humans could do this without any knowledge of the properties of water or stones,” Emery said. “We will therefore be giving the task to young [human] infants.”