Yes, if a recent experiment is to be
believed. In an attempt to locate the source
of an epileptic patient’s seizures, doctors
at George Washington University, USA,
inserted electrodes into her brain. One
electrode was positioned close to the
claustrum, a thin sheet of tissue below
the cortex with a role akin to that of an
orchestra’s conductor – coordinating the
many different things that go on in the brain
at once. Consciousness typically involves
sights, sounds, thoughts and feelings all
coming together. Could the claustrum be
what makes this possible?
When the doctors stimulated this
electrode the woman stayed awake but lost
consciousness. She stopped what she was
doing, stared blankly into space and would
not respond to them. When the stimulation
stopped she regained consciousness. It
seems a whole, complex brain is needed
for rich experiences, but it also needs the
claustrum ‘switch’ to bring everything
together. SBCan consciousness
be switched on
and off?
In Numbers1,0 24
is the number of tiny robots in a swarm
created by Harvard scientists that is
capable of self-organising into any
number of different shapes.New research suggests that a single brain region
may function as an ‘on/off switch’ for consciousnessAt moisture levels above 15 per
cent, the bacteria and fungi in hay start
growing, and their metabolisms release
heat. Hay is a good insulator, so if the
micro-organisms are growing rapidly,
that heat doesn’t have a chance to
conduct to the edge of the haystack.
As the temperature rises, the micro-How does wet hay
spontaneously combust?
organisms will be killed off but they are
replaced with extremophile species
that can survive up to 88ºC. After that,
purely chemical reactions take over
that drive the temperature even higher.
As the haystack dries out, oxygen
diffuses through it and the hot hay will
burst into flames. LVOnce they’d put the fire out,
the needle hunt could beginStars emit light over a whole range of
wavelengths (or colours). The wavelength
where the amount of light peaks determines
the colour we see, although they will also
emit plenty of light at other wavelengths. In
general, cooler stars appear red and hotter
stars appear blue, with orange, yellow
and white in-between. There are no green
stars because the ‘black-body spectrum’
of stars, which describes the amount of
light at each wavelength and depends on
temperature, doesn’t produce the same
spectrum of colours as, for example, a
rainbow. A star whose peak light emission
is at a wavelength we might call ‘green’
actually produces almost as much red light,
and our eyes interpret this combination as
white, not green. For our eyes to see it as
green, a star would have to emit only green
light, which is not possible. AGWhy aren’t there any green stars?
M101, the Pinwheel galaxy. Here, as elsewhere in the
Universe, green stars are noticeable by their absence PHOTO: ALAMY, GETTY X3, THINKSTOCK, NASA