Josie Ford
Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can share items that might entertain readers by contacting Feedback at feedback@newscientist.com.
In the Name of…
Receiving an honor from the scientific community often comes in the form of having something named after you. A notable example is geographer Alexander von Humboldt, who has had legacy preserved through a penguin species, a Californian county, and even a mountain range.
Our congratulations go to Harvard astronomer Abraham “Avi” Loeb, as a new scale may bear his name. Loeb has dedicated much of the past ten years to examining the interstellar objects that traverse our solar system. This began with the enigmatic ‘Oumuamua’ in 2017, and has continued with the recent interstellar visitor, comet 3I/ATLAS.
Loeb gained notoriety for suggesting that these interstellar objects could be artificial, perhaps probes or machinery sent by extraterrestrial civilizations, a claim that has raised eyebrows among his peers. Skepticism has grown since 2023 when Loeb claimed he discovered pieces of an interstellar meteor on the ocean floor, only for evidence presented to indicate that the seismic signals he cited may have originated from a passing road vehicle instead of a meteorite impact.
The significance of tracking interstellar objects has led to a proposed classification scale outlined in a recent preprint. This scale aims to evaluate these objects based on their likelihood of being artificial and their potential for impact on Earth. It ranges from 0 (an object that can be explained by known natural phenomena) to 10 (an object confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origin, with a trajectory that poses global risk).
Feedback finds itself puzzled as the scale seems to measure two distinct factors at once, which is not typical for standard scales. If we disregard the impact aspect, levels 8 and above assume unequivocal extraterrestrial origins. The intrigue lies between levels 2 to 7, which provide increasing evidence pointing to artificial origins, such as “non-gravitational acceleration” and “unusual shape,” leading to indications of operational capacity and responsive behavior.
It raises eyebrows how one might evaluate some of these characteristics. For instance, consider an unusually shaped rock. Mimas, Saturn’s moon, bears a striking resemblance to the Star Wars Death Star, yet it is not an alien craft. Similarly, distinguishing artificial electromagnetic signals from natural origins presents a challenge, explaining the numerous reports of potential extraterrestrial communications.
In our quest for clarity, Feedback looked into the creators behind the Loeb Scale. Among them are sports psychologists from Reichman University, Israel, entering uncharted territory, along with Loeb himself.
Dog Utility Vehicle
Our ongoing contemplation of unconventional measurement units has yielded an amusing new case, courtesy of reader William Dockendorf. He brought our attention to a US-based vehicle known as Slate, advertised as “a two-door electric pickup truck” whose design claims considerable versatility, able to adapt into various configurations, including an SUV. Dockendorf humorously remarks that this particular design may not attract buyers.
On the vehicle’s website, the FAQ section includes the question, “How much junk can I fit in the frunk and the cargo bed?” And, no, “frunk” is not a typo; it denotes the additional storage area at the front of electric vehicles. Among the dimensions provided are various common items like “a 55 in. flat-screen TV (in the box),” but intriguingly, it also states that the cargo bed can accommodate “about 30 dachshunds.”
Dockendorf has since become obsessed with measuring everything in approximate units of dachshunds, and Feedback is curious if these are live measurements or if they refer to something more compact and less lively, such as freeze-dried dachshunds packed tightly together.
Latest Acronym Laughs
After receiving information about the amusingly named Flavor Analysis and Recognition Transformer (FART), we invited readers to share examples of entertaining or overly contrived acronyms. Here are a few worthy of mention:
First up is a contribution from Thomas Kläger regarding the Regional Bus and Rail Company of Ticino, located in the only Swiss canton with Italian as its solitary official language. In Italian, it is called Ferrovie Autolinee Regionali Ticinesi SA. Feedback confirms this is a real establishment with the amusing website fartiamo.ch.
Moreover, physicist Paul Davies recounts an anecdote from the opening of a collaboration between Australia and Japan on a cosmic ray experimental project near Woomera. It was known as the Collaboration between Australia and Nippon for a Gamma Ray Observatory in the Outback, or simply CANGAROO. “Full marks for creativity!” comments Davies.
The crown for creativity, however, goes to palaeoanthropologist John Hawks, who shared that an article in The American Journal of Human Genetics details a method for gauging mutation rates and demographic data from extensive samples. They refer to their tool as Diffusion for Rare Elements in Variation Inventories that are Large, an acronym aptly summarizing it as “DR EVIL.”
“Well played,” remarks Hawks, and Feedback can only conclude, “Yeah, baby!”
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