56 | New Scientist | 17 July 2021
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This way up
Feedback is relentless in our pursuit
of scientific truth, given breaks for
a nice cup of tea and a sit down. We
adopt this position, and our Serious
Science face, to consider further our
recent throwaway comment about
the moon looking different when
viewed between your legs (19 June).
Since then, we have been
inundated by a message from
Marc Abrahams, who reminds us
that Atsuki Higashiyama and Kohei
Adachi, respectively of Ritsumeikan
and Osaka universities in Japan,
received an IgNobel prize in 2016 for
furthering our understanding of this
phenomenon. He helpfully attaches
a paper entitled “Perceived size
and perceived distance of targets
viewed from between the legs:
Evidence for proprioceptive theory”.
To precis for those currently
on their tea break and/or without
a recently risen moon on their
horizon: from a typical vantage
point, our brains see such a moon
as abnormally large, even though
holding a forefinger up in front of it
will confirm it isn’t. Our best guess as
to why is that our brain has standard
size requirements for things on the
horizon – this moon is very close by,
so must be big, that sort of thing.
A brief survey of the relevant
literature, including the 1982
classic “The moon illusion:1. How high is the sky?”, confirms
that this interpretation remains
controversial, not least because
astronauts in orbit also report
seeing the illusion, despite having
no foreground objects on the
horizon to help generate it.
The point we are – slowly –
getting to is that viewing an
enlarged moon upside down
between your legs restores
cosmic order, somehow changing
our normal assumptions about
sizes and distances and reducing
the moon to its more normal size.
It seems this can broadly be
because our field of vision is rotated
by 180 degrees, or because our
visual cues are in the wrong position
in relation to the rest of our body.
Through cunning application
of vision-rotating googles and
of new ‘n’ unusual experiential
measurement comparisons are
now doing it for the free publicity.
Observing our fingernails
carefully, we see they have grown
by about the length of time it takes
to read that suggestion in print.This means spore
Dieter Britz writes from Åbyhøj,
Denmark, drawing our attention to
a news item unaccountably missed
by our esteemed organ. It concerns
the discovery of a parasitic fungus
bursting out of the rectum of a
50-million-year-old carpenter
ant – all, we hastily add, fossilised
and perfectly preserved in amber.
We admit to passing this on
partly for the joy of typing “Åbyhøj”,
but also as a reminder that stories
about the gruesome ways of
parasitic fungi never grow old. It’s
an inexplicable three years since ourown “Parasite fungus sends insects
on sex spree by loading them up on
drugs” (4 August 2018, p 18), and
frankly we are much the poorer for
the lack of articles simultaneously
referencing castration and chemsex.Solar system diplomacy
Exciting news on downbeach.com
as Ventnor premieres its new solar
system boardwalk. We are only
slightly less excited as we discover
the Ventnor in question isn’t our
familiar pearl of the Isle of Wight,
UK, but a spin-off in New Jersey.
No matter. “Every inch on the
boardwalk represents 100,000
miles,” the article informs us.
To assist our tireless subeditors
in their metric conversion, that
is 1 centimetre for the length a
fingernail grows in about 2 billion
years. The forces of reaction are
clearly strong in Ventnor City,
NJ, as the outer reach of its
solar system remain resolutely
delimited by Pluto. All of which
is rather incidental to the point
that piqued Michael Zehse’s
interest: the mention in the
article of the position of a
“NASA Solar System Ambassador”.
It turns out that there are many
of these, although sadly you must
be a US citizen or Green Card
holder to become one. But we view
this concept as a very good thing.
A Ventnor bordering the balmy
ocean lapping beneath Europa’s
crust might have a higher sea
temperature and only marginally
fewer hours of sunshine than
the English Channel original.
It would be as well to maintain
good diplomatic relations.Stayin’ alive
Nicola Hutchison confesses she had
already donned her antiviral flares
before discovering an email from
“New Scientist Disco” was just a
truncated version of New Scientist
Discovery Tours. As “Freedom Day”
in the UK fast approaches, Nicola, all
these things become possible, if not
wise. We note the interest, second
it and bear it in mind for a later
diversification of income streams. ❚volunteers positioned at a variety
of angles, the IgNobel-winning
research provided evidence for the
second hypothesis. The sight of
England fans before their recent
match with Italy adopting the
position to conduct their own lunar
research convinces us that this is far
from settled science, however. More
research, and more tea, needed.Nailed it
Underneath our chair, we
find a recent copy of The Week
magazine, which explains that
lasers imprint circuits on silicon
chips that are “just 12 nanometres
wide, the length a fingernail
grows in 12 seconds”.
Far be it from us to exaggerate
our humble column’s position
in the cosmic order, but we
can’t help wondering with Don
Wycherley whether the purveyorsGot a story for Feedback?
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