E2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 , 2019
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HEALTH & SCIENCEBY HANNAH KNOWLESJosh Lanik’s family was ready to
give up.
The gem-hunting novices were
“over” their search at Arkansas’
Crater of Diamonds State Park af-
ter a hot morning with nothing to
show but rocks and glass, Lanik
told The Washington Post. Every-
one thought it was time for lunch.
Then, the Nebraska teacher
stumbled on a shiny brown stone
about the size of a jelly bean.
He plucked it from the gravel
and took it back to the Murfrees-
boro park’s offices, making sure to
put it in his bag rather than his
pockets on the advice of park staff,
who had seen many visitors lose
their precious finds. A woman
took the gem into a backroom in a
pill bottle.
She emerged with a smile on
her face, Lanik recalled. At
2.12 carats, the diamond was the
biggest found in the park this year.
“They were all sorts of excited,”
Lanik said.
The Lanik family was less jubi-
lant. Tweeting about the family’s
vacation that day, Lanik didn’t
even mention the gem. The 36-
year-old from Hebron, Neb., fig-
ured it wasn’t that special at a
place where vacationers regularly
pay up to $10 to dig in a 37-acre
field atop an old volcanic crater.
Visitors have unearthed and
registered almost 300 diamonds
at the park so far this year, accord-
ing to the park, which says its
fields hide brown, yellow and
white gems. The total 2019 haul
amounts to about 54 carats, and 11
of this year’s diamonds weighed atleast one carat.
But Lanik’s find stood out for its
size. The average diamond found
at the park is about one-fifth to
one-fourth of a carat, the park says.
Heavy rainfall probably helped
Lanik’s search by uncovering
gems, which glint and catch the
eye of diggers, park interpreter
Waymon Cox told Arkansas State
Parks. Park staff found lots of dia-
monds at the ground’s surface af-
ter 14 inches of rain on July 16 but
nothing like Lanik’s 2.12 carats.
“Are you going to retire now?”
Lanik said one of his former stu-
dents texted him after seeing the
news.
But size is just one factor in a
diamond’s value, and when Lanik
had the gem appraised in Little
Rock, he found it’s “not worth near
as much as you’d think,” he said.
Uncut or “raw” gems, as well as
brown diamonds, are less valuable
than a cut or white gem, and the
Lanik family’s stone is marred by a
fissure. Lanik declined to share
the estimated value, but even cut
brown diamonds of similar size
can be found on eBay for less than
$1,000.
Lanik said he plans to put the
diamond into a ring for his wife to
wear and eventually pass down to
their sons. Finding the gem made
the long, hot day of digging worth
the effort for Lanik and his wife —
but he is not so sure about the
attitudes of his boys, ages 6 and 8.
“I think they were just hungry
at that point,” Lanik said.
[email protected] More at washingtonpost.com/
scienceCould nature be the ultimate
creative partner? “Nature — Coo-
per Hewitt Design Triennial,” at
the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian
Design Museum in New York
through Jan. 20, suggests the an-
swer is yes.
A tree that bears more than 40
different types of stone fruit. A
40-foot-long concrete “river” that
tells the story of Manhattan’s tran-
sition from jagged nature to con-
crete jungle. A room full of bulbs
that teem with insect reproduc-
tions. Those and other objects are
part of the exhibition’s complex
web of art, philosophy, science and
design.
Most of the displays were creat-
ed by 62 international design
teams with expertise in every-
thing from engineering to social
advocacy. The projects represent
attempts to understand, remedi-
ate, simulate, salvage, nurture,
augment or facilitate nature.
The show is saturated with dif-
ferent ways of seeing, drawing
inspiration from — and cooperat-
ing with — the natural world.Expect to see a biodegradable con-
cept tire, a proposed “Anthropo-
cene Museum,” a cotton burial suit
designed to replace cremation or a
casket, and more.
The exhibition features wildly
varied terrain. Part of the fun of the
show is seeing where the theme
took each design team. After all,
nature is nothing if not surprising
— and infinitely stimulating.
“Nature” was developed in con-
junction with Cube Design Mu-
seum in the Netherlands, which
has a concurrent show.
Many of the objects on display
are also online at http://www.cooperhe-
witt.org/channel/nature. A series
of “Nature Salons,” filmed conver-
sations with designers and cura-
tors about things such as biologi-
cal growth or architecture, are
also available.
— Erin BlakemoreSCIENCE NEWSA teacher dug up a 2.12-carat diamond —
and learned how much gems are really worthSCIENCE SCANENVIRONMENTAL FORMSNature as a creative partner: Design teams
show inventive and artful ways to use it
Nature — Cooper Hewitt Design
Triennial
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design
Museum, New YorkMATT FLYNN
An installation at “Nature — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial.”JOSH LANIK
Josh Lanik and his family found the 2.12-carat brown diamond
while digging in Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park.BY JOEY ROULETTEA small crowdfunded satellite
promoted by TV host and science
educator Bill Nye has been pro-
pelled into a higher orbit using
only the force of sunlight blowing
against its sail in space, a novel
propulsion developers say could
“democratize” spaceflight.
The LightSail 2 spacecraft,
about the size of a loaf of bread,
was launched into orbit in June
and unfurled a tinfoil-like solar
sail designed to steer and push
the spacecraft, using the momen-
tum of tiny particles of light
called photons emanating from
the sun, into a higher orbit.
The satellite was developed by
the Planetary Society, a space
research-and-education nonprof-
it group whose chief executive is
the TV personality popularly
known as Bill Nye the Science
Guy.
The technology promises a vir-
tually inexhaustible source of
space propulsion as a substitute
for finite supplies of rocket fuels.
“We are thrilled to declare
mission success for LightSail 2,”
program manager Bruce Betts
said last week on a call convened
with reporters to reveal that the
spacecraft had raised its own
orbit by one mile, sailing under
the pressure of light beams from
the sun.
Flight by light, or “sailing on
sunbeams,” as Nye said, could
best be used for missions carrying
cargo in space or on small satel-
lites with enough room for de-
ploying larger, and thus morepowerful, solar sails.
Other applications include
monitoring solar radiation that
interferes with Earthbound com-
munication networks.
The solar sail technology could
also reduce the need for expen-
sive, cumbersome rocket propel-
lants and slash the cost of navi-
gating small satellites in space.“We strongly feel that missions
like LightSail 2 will democratize
space, enable more people, more
organizations around the world
to send spacecraft to exciting and
remarkable destinations in the
solar system that will lead us to
answer that deep question:
‘Where did we all come from?’ ”
Nye said.
The LightSail project kicked
off in the 1990s, but its first
planned prototype, Cosmos 1, was
destroyed during a faulty launch
on a Russian rocket taking off
from a submarine in 2005.
The society’s next prototype,
LightSail 1, got into space in 2015,
but technical problems kept it
from climbing high enough to be
steered by sunlight.
LightSail 2 became the latest
spacecraft to demonstrate space-
bound solar sailing after Japan’s
experimental IKAROS spacecraft
in 2010.
The LightSail project grew
from an idea imagined by the
society’s co-founders — executive
director Louis Friedman and late
astronomer and author Carl Sa-
gan — to send a solar sail craft to
rendezvous with Halley’s comet
in the 1970s.
— Reuters‘Sailing on sunbeams,’ craft achieves Earth orbit
BY ALLYSON CHIUChase Dekker gripped his cam-
era with anticipation. A couple
hundred feet from his seat on a
whale-watching boat, the waters
of Monterey Bay in California
teemed with activity. A group of
California sea lions had just come
up for air after feeding on a
school of anchovies, and follow-
ing close behind them was the
main event: humpback whales.
But as a whale burst from the
waves, the wildlife photographer
told The Washington Post, he
instantly noticed something was
off. A sizable sea lion, weighing
about 400 to 600 pounds, was
teetering precariously above the
whale’s gaping mouth.
“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness,’ ”
the 27-year-old said, “and I lifted
my camera.”
Dekker, who was guiding the
tour on July 22, didn’t know it at
the time, but he ended up captur-
ing an occurrence so unusual that
many marine mammal research-
ers had never seen it before. The
photo shows the surprised-look-
ing sea lion, its mouth wide open,
appearing moments away from
being engulfed by the roughly
50-foot-long surfacing humpback
whale.
“It was capturing this perfect
moment when nature kind of
backfires a little bit,” Ari Fried-
laender, an ecologist at the Uni-
versity of California at Santa Cruz
who studies the foraging behav-
ior of marine mammals, said. “It’s
so anomalous to see something
like this because the animals are
so well-adapted and so good at
what they do.”
The unlucky sea lion was prob-
ably just in “the wrong place at
the wrong time,” Friedlaender
said.
“This was a once-in-a-million
time that the sea lion zigged
when it should have zagged and
kind of got taken for a ride,” he
said, noting that there was “no
intent by the whale to eat the sea
lion.”
When the Sanctuary Cruises
tour set out, Dekker said he knew
chances were good of seeing
enormous humpback whales, sea
lions and sea birds engaged in
“feeding frenzies.” Between late
spring and fall, ravenous whales,
along with other predators, are
often drawn to the bay by the
masses of schooling fish.
Though the group of animals
that Dekker’s tour came across
was on the smaller side with only
three humpback whales and
about 200 sea lions, he said there
was still an abundance of activity
at the water’s surface. As the boat
pulled up to the action, Dekker
said he grabbed his camera.
“I always have it ready for any
lunge feed,” he said, referencing
an eating technique used byhumpbacks and other baleen
whales in which they rapidly
move toward their prey, jaws
agape and take in mouthfuls of
food. They later use flexible struc-
tures in their mouths to filter out
the water, leaving behind small
fish and krill or plankton.
First, Dekker saw the sea lions
pop up. After years of observing
whales, he knew that meant the
massive creatures were about “10
to 30 seconds” behind, so he got
into position.
But unlike the countless other
times he’s watched a lunge-feed-
ing whale surface, this time one
sea lion couldn’t get out of the
way fast enough. Dekker said he
reflexively snapped a few shots,
but was so excited that he ini-
tially didn’t even bother check-ing his camera.
“I just ran around the boat
going, ‘Did everyone see that?’ ”
he said. “I was screaming at the
other boats that I know next to
us.”
A short while later, Dekker
returned to the camera and
clicked through the images to
find that he had somehow man-
aged to capture the fleeting mo-
ment.
“I was just ecstatic,” he said. “I
had actually taken it, gotten it.”
This isn’t the first time animals
other than fish and krill have had
the misfortune of accidentally
ending up in the mouth of a
humpback whale. Researchers
have found evidence of small
seabirds getting swallowed, while
larger creatures such as pelicansand harbor seals have had close
encounters. In March, a Bryde’s
whale, part of the same group as
humpback whales, even report-
edly scooped up a person.
The fate of the sea lion cap-
tured in this photo isn’t clear, but
Dekker said he’s “almost 100 per-
cent confident” that it escaped
unharmed.
A humpback whale’s esopha-
gus is “only about the size of
maybe a big grapefruit or small
melon,” he said, meaning the
chances of a sea lion that weighs
hundreds of pounds getting swal-
lowed and eaten are slim. He
added that an injured or dead sea
lion wasn’t spotted in the water
and the whale seemed to be be-
having normally a few minutes
later, which would not be the caseif it still had the mammal in its
mouth.
“If you had the equivalent of a
little field mouse inside your
mouth, you’d probably be a little
concerned,” he said. “You would
notice.”
The sea lion probably swam
away and continued feeding,
Dekker said.
Friedlaender said he also be-
lieves the sea lion emerged from
the ordeal unscathed, given that
the species is known to be “pretty
physical” with each other on
shore.
“I suspect the animal was prob-
ably pretty scared, but hopefully
it had a soft landing,” he said.
While the photo may be rare,
John Calambokidis, a research
biologist who has studied hump-
back whales along the West Coast
for more than 30 years, told The
Post he wasn’t shocked to hear
about the sea lion’s close call.
Underwater recordings of
feedings often show sea lions and
humpback whales going after the
same prey in “very close proximi-
ty,” said Calambokidis, one of the
founders of the Cascadia Re-
search Collective in Washington
state. The event of a sea lion
getting accidentally caught in a
lunging whale’s mouth may only
seem unheard of because people
usually can’t see beneath the sur-
face where most of the action
takes place, he said.
Calambokidis was surprised by
Dekker’s photo, however.
“I thought it was an amazing
photo,” he said, later adding, “I’ve
not seen a photo myself like that
before.”
For Dekker, the picture repre-
sents “a true once in a lifetime
moment” that he was able to
“immortalize so everyone can see
it forever.”
“It’s something I may never
witness and most likely will never
capture ever again,” he said.
[email protected] More at washingtonpost.com/
morning-mixSea lion gets taken for a scary ride
Amazing image shows marine mammal
landing in humpback whale’s mouthPLANETARY SOCIETY/ASSOCIATED PRESSA portion of LightSail 2 can be seen in this image. The tinfoil-like
solar sail propels the spacecraft, using the momentum of tiny
particles of light called photons emanating from the sun.CHASE DEKKER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESA California-based wildlife photographer captures the moment a humpback whale accidentally traps a sea lion while feeding in Monterey
Bay, Calif., last month. “This was a once-in-a-million time that the sea lion zigged when it should have zagged,” an ecologist says.
The fate of the sea lion isn’t clear, but the
photographer says he’s “almost 100 percent
confident” that it escaped unharmed.