Nest in mouth
Curious items lurk unnoticed in large museums. The photo above shows one of them: a bird鈥檚 nest seated in the mouth of a large, ancient, carved stone human face.
Feedback recently had the joy of accompanying the director of one of the Netherlands鈥檚 great natural history museums when he paid a first visit to the National Roman Museum, an archaeology repository that occupies what once were Rome鈥檚 great ancient thermal baths. The previous day, a professor from University College London had visited the same site, noticed this unusual object-inside-an-object 鈥� and alerted his Dutch colleague.
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The professor remarked that it was hanging high on a wall in a dusty section of a large, open-air garden known as Michelangelo鈥檚 Cloister. It looked, he said, as if nobody had even glanced at it in recent times. Surely, he said, if the museum had become aware that a bird had homesteaded in that historical mask, the nest would have been removed immediately.
The Dutch museum director suspected it was the work of an Italian sparrow (Passer italiae) and hoped to acquire the deserted nest for his museum, in lieu of having the Roman museum destroy or discard it. He inquired of an official, who was obviously a little shocked at hearing of the nest鈥檚 existence. The official grew visibly sad, and said: 鈥淲e have bigger problems. We also have cats inside.鈥�
Several higher levels of official were consulted, each quickly deciding that everyone would be delighted if the Dutch visitor would remove the nest. They sent for a ladder. This triggered the arrival not of a ladder, but of a still higher-level official. He instantly expressed what the non-Italian visitors interpreted to be neck-wringing rage. Not a twig, he declared, not a pebble, must ever leave his museum.
And so the nest remained in the mask on the wall of the cloister.
Feedback would now enjoy a report from someone who ventures to visit the northernmost corner of Michelangelo鈥檚 Cloister to observe whether the nest is still there.
Little big battery
In the spirit of 鈥渨hatever they can do I can do better鈥�, Espen Gaarder Haug sent us a copy of the study he and Gianfranco Spavieri published in High Energy Density Physics: 鈥溾��.
Haug says: 鈥淚 see you wrote about the Schwarzschild Black Hole Battery (13 January 2024). [Our paper] goes a few steps forward: 鈥榓 battery weighing just one kilogram could provide approximately 470 million times the energy of the most efficient 200-kilogram lithium battery at the time of writing鈥�.鈥�
The paper explores a possible future: 鈥淸This involves] a cellular battery composed of micro black holes鈥� [It] is not inconceivable that battery technology development could follow a trajectory similar to that of computer technology鈥� [It] is possible that battery efficiency could double or even quadruple every few years following different types of breakthroughs.鈥�
Haug displays a fascination for potency and value at tiny extremes. In 2020, he published a solo paper about 鈥溾��. He wrote: 鈥渨e demonstrate that there is an absolute physical limit on how small the smallest money unit can be鈥� [It] seems to be directly linked to the smallest possible energy unit needed to store one bit.鈥�
This is small stuff. No one is thinking universally big. As yet, there are no published papers by anyone identifying the largest possible electrical battery or money. (None, anyway, has come to Feedback鈥檚 attention.)
Whodunnit?
鈥淲hodunnit?鈥� is a question answered, starkly, in every published research study. The answer is: the authors. The authors dunnit. The authors wrote the study. But a new study tries to answer a jarringly different question: who 诲颈诲苍鈥檛 do it? How many distinguished persons listed as authors are not, in fact, authors?
Scientific Reports published this . The detectives try to ascertain how often academic big shots grab a full share of official authorship credit for research work they did not do.
This is potentially nasty stuff. 鈥淭he practice of [automatically] listing a senior member(s) of a department, who did not qualify for authorship, as a co-author on all or most submitted articles,鈥� the sleuths explain, 鈥渃an be an efficient way to boost the scientific output of these individuals.鈥� After considering the evidence, the team concludes that the goings-on 鈥渕ay be common in the health sciences, with those admitting to this practice finding it unjustified in most cases鈥�.
Feedback notes two colourful, minor facts about this study. First, disappointingly, there is no direct indication as to whether any of its authors are senior members of a department. Second, reassuringly, the paper specifies that 鈥渁ll 5 authors鈥� participated substantially in all research steps鈥�.
Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and聽co-founded聽the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is聽
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