Smithsonian Institute/Smithsonian Institution, via Reuters; Don Hurlbert/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A facial reconstruction of a 14-year-old girl from the Jamestown colony site in Virginia, whose skull, left, shows evidence that her remains were dug up and eaten.
So many piquant tidbits this week: We were able to see a revival of the world's first Web site (which had no funny cat photos), watch the first movie starring tiny atoms, and view the first images of a surprisingly Earth-like hurricane swirling over Saturn.
Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An image of the first Web site, which was posted April 30, 1983, by a physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Princeton University Art of Science
An inverted hanging shell built with plates of chocolate and welded with liquid chocolate, by Alex Jordan, Sigrid Adriaenssens and Axel Kilian, part of an exhibit at Princeton.
Developments
Computer Science
Happy Birthday, WWW!
The world's first Web site, posted on April 30, 1993, was — fittingly enough — about the World Wide Web itself. The site, bare bones by modern standards, was both a primer and tool kit, giving such information as how to set up Web servers on the Internet, which was well established by then. Tim Berners-Lee, the British physicist who devised the project at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, had originally thought to call it "Mesh," but changed his mind while writing the code, which he did on a modest-looking NeXT computer. Last week, on the 20th anniversary of this debut, CERN reposted the original site, which had been taken down at some point, as part of a larger effort to preserve digital history. A journalistic footnote: The first newspaper article to discuss the World Wide Web ran in this newspaper, on Dec. 8, 1993, with Mr. Berners-Lee explaining how he created the Web as a way to share work with fellow physicists: "I realized that if everyone had the same information as me, my life would be easier."
The World's Smallest Movie
Using "thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action," scientists from IBM Research were able to create a brief movie, "A Boy and His Atom," in which the figure of a boy, arranged out of atoms, prances and jumps on a trampoline, also made of atoms. The black-and-white short is low on suspense but technologically breathtaking: Using a microscope that magnifies the atoms more than 100 million times, the researchers painstakingly arranged carbon monoxide molecules and took still images of them, which were strung together to produce the animation. For the most part, IBM plays with atoms to "explore the limits of data storage," as the movie explains, but a short documentary on YouTube shows another side of the story. "If I can do this by making a movie and I can get 1,000 kids to join science rather than going to law school, I would be super happy," says Andreas Heinrich of IBM Research.
Video by IBM
A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie
Archaeology
Evidence of Cannibalism
Things were indisputably miserable for the early colonists of Jamestown, Va., who sailed from England expecting to find gold and instead suffered famine, disease and attacks from American Indians. There was written evidence that the settlers turned to cannibalism as a last resort, but not until last week did archaeologists step forward with physical corroboration: "Cut marks on the skull and skeleton of a 14-year-old girl show that her flesh and brain were removed, presumably to be eaten by the starving colonists during the harsh winter of 1609," as The New York Times reported. The bones of the girl, whom the archaeologists dubbed "Jane," were found in a trash pit; she was probably not murdered, the scientists say, and most likely arrived at the colony at a particularly luckless moment, in the summer of 1609, right before the period known as the Starving Time. "It appears that her brain, tongue, cheeks and leg muscles were eaten, with the brain likely eaten first, because it decomposes so quickly after death," Smithsonian magazine noted.
Astronomy
Suddenly, Saturn
The eye of the hurricane is 1,250 miles wide — at least 20 times larger than those typically experienced on Earth — and the winds blow at 300 miles an hour. Fortunately, this storm is far from human habitation, hovering over the north pole of Saturn. "We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth," said Andrew Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology, who works on NASA's Cassini spacecraft team, "but there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale." Cassini, in orbit around Saturn for nine years, has been watching an enormous hexagon-shaped weather pattern over the north pole, but only recently was able to peek inside and see the vortex. "Unlike a terrestrial hurricane, there's no ocean underneath, and that's one of the puzzles we're trying to figure out," NASA explains in a video.
Psychology
Children These Days
"Today's Teens: More Materialistic, Less Willing to Work," announced San Diego State University in a headline that was surely catnip for baby boomers. The conclusions came from a study comparing the attitudes of three generations of American high school seniors, from 1976 to 2007, based on responses to a survey. "Kids surveyed from 2005 were most materialistic and least willing to work hard: 62 percent said that having lots of money was important, compared with 48 percent of those surveyed between 1976 and 1978," as New Scientist put it. "However, only 25 percent said they thought hard work was important, compared with 39 percent of those asked in the '70s." Jean M. Twenge, the psychologist who led the study, offered this take: "That type of 'fantasy gap' is consistent with other studies showing a generational increase in narcissism and entitlement."
Coming Up
Artful Science
A Princeton University art contest, soliciting "images produced during the course of scientific research that have aesthetic merit," mustered some pretty cool stuff: an oblique photograph of an architectural structure built of chocolate, a highly intimate look at cells of the fruit fly ovary, and so forth. An exhibit opens this Friday, with a free reception on campus and the victors receiving their spoils. "The top three entrants will be awarded cash prizes in amounts calculated by the golden ratio (whose proportions have since antiquity been considered to be aesthetically pleasing)," Princeton said, "First prize, $250; second prize, $154.51; and third prize, $95.49."
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