Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
When I first saw today’s Google Doodle, with the initial animation of a goose nurturing its young, I thought it must be Konrad Lorenz’s birthday. But then the cheetahs and rabbits appeared, and I knew Lorenz didn’t study those. Then I had my “aha” moment: it’s Mother’s Day.
What I like about the Doodle is its depiction of a connection between maternal behavior in taxonomically diverse species which, to me, means a commonality of natural selection promoting that behavior: kin selection. Behaviors promoting the nuture of relatives also promote the replication of genes fostering those behaviors. So, though I don’t know if Google intended it, there’s an evolutionary lesson.
Here’s the animated Doodle:
My own mother is long gone, but for those of you who still have one, or are mothers yourself, remember that the celebration of Mother’s Day is also a celebration of the power of evolution to mold behavior!
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 360th birthday of Bartolomeo Cristofori (could he be an ancestor of Astronaut Sam?). You know who he is, right? (I didn’t.) But we all should, for he invented the piano. As the Guardian explains,
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the instrument Cristofori invented was referred to during his lifetime as a harpsichord that plays soft and loud, from which its name is derived. In Italian, the phrase is gravicembalo col piano e forte.
It added: “Being able to change the volume was a major breakthrough. And that’s exactly what doodler Leon Hong wanted to highlight in this interactive doodle.”
Cristofori’s entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that little is known of his life and that his invention was not well known in his lifetime, even if it has since become ubiquitous.
It reads: “Cristofori apparently invented the piano around 1709, and, according to contemporary sources, four of his pianos existed in 1711.”
The Google page features an interview with creator Leon Hong. One Q&A:
What is your favorite part about the finished doodle?
My favorite part of the doodle is the animation of Cristofori playing when the volume is set on forte. If I had more time I would have put even more bounce to his bottom. I hope people decide to do more research after playing with the doodle and learn more about him.
Click on the screenshot below to go to the page and listen to “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring“. You can vary the speed and volume (and the player’s vigor and bottom-bouncing) by moving the slider on the right:
Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970, and I well remember that first celebration, which took place when I was a junior at The College of William and Mary. Since then it’s become an annual reminder for all of us to protect our Pale Blue Dot, though I wonder if college students celebrate it as assiduously as we hippies did, grokking on the Earth and dancing around in tie-dye outfits (GET OFF OF MY LAWN!). And the Earth stands precious little chance against corporate and government depredation.
At any rate, Google celebrates today with an animated Doodle showing the Earth rotating.
See all the organisms in the letters? You could be one of them! For if you click on the screenshot above, you’ll go to a special Earth Day Quiz that will determine, based on your personality and habits, what kind of animal you are. I took it, and here’s my result:
Readers are required to take the quiz and post their animal equivalent in the comments.
The Guardian also has a 10-question Earth Day Quiz that tests your environmental awareness (I got 7 out of 10), and you should take that quiz, too.
Today’s Google Doodle, which contains this amusing animation, commemorates the 81st anniversary of a photograph (see below) that was long taken to be “proof” of the Loch Ness Monster. First the animation:
As the Torygraph notes:
The release of the images coincides with the anniversary of the publication of the renowed “Surgeon’s Photograph” of the Loch Ness Monster, in the Daily Mail, on April 21 1934 – a photo that was revealed to be a fake by The Sunday Telegraph in 1975.
Here’s that famous photo, which I’m sure you’ve all seen:
Eighty-one years ago, Colonel Robert Wilson snapped a grainy photograph of what appeared to be a prehistoric sea creature raising its head out of the depths of Scotland’s Loch Ness — inspiring the legend of one of earth’s most infamous monsters, Nessie. On Tuesday, Google honored the anniversary of that celebrated photo with an animated Google Doodle.
Wilson said he took the shot of the Loch Ness Monster, printed in the Daily Mail in 1934, when he was driving across the northern shore and noticed something in the water. But Wilson himself never claimed the photo as proof of a monster and disassociated his name from the picture by calling it the “surgeon’s photo.”
In 1994, then 93-year-old Christian Spurling confessed that he had built the neck and attached it to a toy submarine. The toy was then photographed by a big-game hunter named Marmaduke Wetherell to spite the Daily Mail for a perceived injustice from a previous Loch Ness Monster search.
The Torygraph’s article reports that Google spent a week in the Loch Ness area, photographing it with Google Streetview, including a camera attached to a boat (you can see all the Streetview images here):
Photo: Google
And, sure enough, they turned up an image that Nessiephiles will take as evidence for the monster (photos by Google):
And an enlargement:
There’s no wake, and that’s a strange profile for bits of a plesiosaur sticking out of the water! At any rate, Wikipedia has a good article on the long and fruitless search for Nessie, and the many hoaxes and false sightings.
Resident writer Greg Mayer teaches a course on pseudoscience and cryptozoology, and I expect he might have something to add.
There are two Doodles today, but only one is visible in the U.S. This is the one celebrating the 155th anniversary of the Pony Express. If you’re not a Yank, you likely haven’t heard of it, but the story of the Express was taught to all schoolkids when I was a youngster. The Pony Express was a horseback mail service connecting Sacramento, California with St. Joseph, Missouri: it was the fastest way to get letters across the U.S. before there was a railroad. Using the Express, one could get a letter from the East coast to Calif0rnia in only 10 days—not too much longer than it takes now!
Most Americans don’t realize, however, that the service was short-lived: only 18 months—from 1860-1861, until the Civil War brought it to a close. But it carries the romantic image of the Wild West, mainly because of the intrepid riders and the short-stage horse gallops needed to deliver mail rapidly. Wikipedia explains:
In 1860, there were about 157 Pony Express stations that were about 10 miles (16 km) apart along the Pony Express route.[6] This was roughly the distance a horse could travel at a gallop before tiring. At each station stop the express rider would change to a fresh horse, taking only the mail pouch called a mochila (from the Spanish for pouch or backpack) with him.
The employers stressed the importance of the pouch. They often said that, if it came to be, the horse and rider should perish before the mochila did. The mochila was thrown over the saddle and held in place by the weight of the rider sitting on it. Each corner had a cantina, or pocket. Bundles of mail were placed in these cantinas, which were padlocked for safety. The mochila could hold 20 pounds (9 kg) of mail along with the 20 pounds (9 kg) of material carried on the horse. Included in that 20 pounds (9 kg) were a water sack, a Bible, a horn for alerting the relay station master to prepare the next horse, and a revolver.Eventually, everything except one revolver and a water sack was removed, allowing for a total of 165 pounds (75 kg) on the horse’s back. Riders, who could not weigh over 125 pounds (57 kg), changed about every 75–100 miles (120–160 km), and rode day and night. In emergencies, a given rider might ride two stages back to back, over 20 hours on a quickly moving horse.
Here’s the Doodle, and it is also an animated game! You can move the rider’s horse up and down on the screen using the arrow keys, collecting letters along the way; the object is to get as many letters to St. Joe as you can. But beware of the cacti, where you could get badly hung up and lose all your mail! As one reader wrote me this morning:
Did you see [the Google Doodle] yet? It’s a game and some of my coworkers and I think we’ll get nothing done today. We have a lot of mail to deliver!
Click on the screenshot to see the Doodle and play the game—if you’re within the ambit of the Doodle (see below):
Below is an actual letter delivered by the Pony Express; it must be worth a fortune, as there were only 35,000 transported this way, and most were surely lost or discarded. Note the Pony Express postmark. It was expensive to send mail this way: the prices varied between $1 and $5 for a regular letter, and, for comparison, $1 in 1860 is the equivalent of $26 in 2013. Wikipedia has a really nice article on the service, along with stories of some colorful and heroic riders, who risked being killed by Native Americans.
Here’s one of several U.S. commemorative stamps, this one from 1940:
This Doodle is visible in only the following places:
If you live in any of the countries below, you’ll see a different Doodle, one of an Indian hero/politician, B. R. Ambedkar. Had he lived, today would have been Ambedkar’s 124th birthday. (The distribution of this Doodle is weird: I can understand India and the UK, but Ireland, Chile, Argentina, and Peru, as well as Sweden and Poland? Is Ambedkar well known in South America?
Regardless, Ambedkar (1891-1956) is known to me, for I’ve spent a lot of time in India, where he is a much admired figure and one of the most important politicians to create the Indian nation after it became independent in 1947. Here’s his Doodle:
Ambedkar was the primary drafter of India’s constitution and its first Law Minister. One of the reasons for his fame is that he worked his way up despite being born a dalit (the term Indians now use for “untouchable”), which would normally have doomed him to a life of drudgery and discrimination. After being the only dalit in his primary school, he went on to get degrees from both Columbia University in the U.S. and the London School of Economics. During his tenure in government he worked tirelessly for the rights of dalits, and much of the “affirmative action” they receive today reflects his doings. Later in life Ambedkar became a Buddhist. Today he’s a national hero in India, a well deserved status, and one shown by the photo below:
People paying tribute at the central statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University in Aurangabad.
Today’s Google Doodle (screenshot below, click on it to go to it) celebrates the 126th anniversary to the day of the opening of the Eiffel Tower. And it’s a particularly lovely one, isn’t it?:
Construction of the iron lattice structure, named after engineer Gustave Eiffel, began on Jan. 28, 1887. Despite the early protests, the tower was an instant hit, with an estimated 30,000 people climbing its steps in the first weeks — before even an elevator was installed.
Eventually, it grew into a worldwide landmark; as TIME wrote during last year’s 125th anniversary celebrations, “the tower became more than a tower, and more than a symbol of Paris.”
At 1,063 ft. high, it was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over four decades, until it was surpassed by New York City’s Chrysler Building in 1930.
The Doodle itself features a group of supposedly French painters hanging precariously from the tower as they beautify the Grande Dame of Paris.
But they left out the artist, which The Guardianhelpfully supplies:
The doodle, by French visual development artist Floriane Marchix [JAC: Her website is here], shows the tower being painted by cheery workmen in berets and overalls, swinging from the tower.
I have to confess that although I must have lived in Paris for a year in the three long stints I was there, I never went up the tower, nor had the desire to (there’s also a restaurant, the Jules Verne, halfway up, and it’s said to be good). And if you’re somewhat morbid, you’ll want to know that jumping off the Tower is the third most popular means of suicide in France, after hanging and poisoning. A happier note: one woman who jumped survived after landing on the roof of a car, and later married the owner of the car!
Google Doodles these days to be concentrating on the contributions of women in science and technology, and today’s features Emmy Noether, a mathematician born on this day in 1882 (died 1935). If you click on the screenshot below, it will take you to the Google page, and there clicking on the picture itself takes you to a page of references about Noether.
I’m not a mathematician and hence hadn’t heard of her, but Wikipedia describes her as a big macher:
an influential German mathematician known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, Norbert Wiener and others as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she revolutionized the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether’s theorem explains the fundamental connection between symmetry and conservation laws.
I’m sure we have some math-y readers who can explain more in the comments. Noether was in the math department at Göttingen until 1933, when the Nazis expelled her because she was Jewish:
The following year [1933], Germany’s Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, and Noether moved to the United States to take up a position at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 1935 she underwent surgery for an ovarian cyst and, despite signs of a recovery, died four days later at the age of 53.
How many people (and how much talent) did we lose that modern medicine could have saved?
When I first started tackling this doodle, I originally drew several concepts attempting to visualize Noether’s Theorem due to it’s [JAC: the unfortunate “artist’s apostrophe”!] revolutionary impact on the way people approach physics. But after discussing my ideas with a few professionals in the field, I decided that the doodle should include references to her mathematical work too. Noether was passionate about math, despite living in an era where women were often excluded from these subjects. While studying at the University of Erlangen as just one of two women at the school, Noether was only allowed to audit classes and needed to obtain permission from her professors in order to attend. After passing her graduation exam, she taught at the school’s Mathematical Institute for seven years without pay, frequently covering her father’s classes when he was out sick and publishing her own papers.
But there weren’t any obstacles that would stop Noether from her studies. In this doodle, each circle symbolizes a branch of math or physics that Noether devoted her illustrious career to. From left to right, you can see topology (the donut and coffee mug), ascending/descending chains, Noetherian rings (represented in the doodle by the Lasker-Noether theorem), time, group theory, conservation of angular momentum, and continuous symmetries–and the list keeps going on and on from there! Noether’s advancements not only reflect her brilliance but also her determination in the face of adversity.
