Scientific Observations

“I view the cosmological constant as the energy
of the vacuum, or the energy of nothing. And
thinking about nothing occupies a lot of people.

I try to get my students to think about nothing;
some of them are pretty good…. According to the
principle of quantum uncertainty, particles and
antiparticles can appear from the vacuum out
of nothing [and] exist for a brief instant of time
before disappearing into the vacuum. So nothing
is something. Sort of a Zen-like quality to nothing.” — COSMOLOGIST ROCKY KOLB OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, AT THE AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY MEETING IN JANUARY

SN Online

www.sciencenews.org

BODY & BRAIN Neurons in prenatal brains as young as 20 weeks old fire like those in sleeping adults. Read “Brain cells start sending signals early.”

Science Past | FROM THE ISSUE OF MARCH 11, 1961

CHICKS LIKE BRIGHT COLORS — Chickens tend to like bright
colors and dislike dull or drab colors and black, a poultry
scientist said. However, chickens, like people, are individu-
als and also show individual preferences
for different colors, Dr. George D. Quigley
of the University of Maryland, College
Park, Md., told Science Service. For in-
stance, yellow is generally “disliked” by
the chickens Dr. Quigley is testing for color
recognition and preference. Nevertheless,
some of the chickens apparently “think” it is prettier than
all other colors by the preference they show for yellow. Dr.
Quigley said he has had the nests of the chickens he is test-
ing painted pink, red, blue, orange, yellow, tan, brown, black
and metallic gray.… When the poultry scientist finds out
where a hen lays its eggs the two nest boxes on either side of
the one the hen uses are painted in colors different from the
dull neutral gray of the unpainted nest. If the hen changes
its egglaying to one of the painted nests, it has recognized
the color and shown preference for it.

Science Future

March 15 Learn how brain-immune battles may lead to diseases like Alzheimer’s. In Portland, Ore. Go to www.omsi.edu/events

March 15–27 The 19th annual Environmental Film Festival screens at venues across Washington, D.C. See www.dcenvironmental; lmfest.org

March 21 Join science-minded chefs in exploring experimental gastronomy in New York City. Go to www.nyas.org/Events

ATOM & COSMOS A frictionless fluid core may explain temperature changes in the youngest known neutron star. See “Supernova to superfluid.” Scientists spot stellar crumbs (pink) from the Milky Way’s most recent bout of cosmic cannibalism. Read “Milky Way munched on galactic snack.”

March 25–July 6 In Los Angeles, view Small World photo-taken-through-a-microscope winners. See www. californiasciencecenter.org

How Bizarre

A long-standing perceptual illusion of objects’ weights may be related
to humankind’s rise on Earth. Researchers have known for a while
about the size-weight misperception, in which a person holding two
objects of equal weight but different sizes thinks the smaller object
weighs more. Now, Qin Zhu of the University of Wyoming and Geoffrey
Bingham of Indiana University in Bloomington suggest that the illu-
sion might actually be related to humans’ unique ability to throw long
distances, which many scientists argue helped Homo
sapiens rise to dominance. The researchers suggest online
January 12 in Evolution and Human Behavior that the
weight illusion, which even toddlers experience, helps
people pick good projectiles and marks a readiness for
throwing akin to the readiness to learn language.

SCIENCE & SOCIE T Y Video game consoles did 25 percent of the world’s computing in 2007, a recent study concludes. See “The numbers prove it: This is a data age.”

Science Stats | SCIENCE SCORES Eighth-grader science proficiency, 2009

Sixty-three percent of eighth-graders in the United States performed at or above “basic level” on a science knowledge and skills test. Basic level required students to recognize the role of decomposers in an ecosystem and identify how some lunar surface features are formed, among other facts.