STUXNET and the Rise of the Digital Weapon

When we think of weapons of war doing damage to physical things, we tend to think of solid objects, whether they be spears, swords, guns, bombs, tanks, or aircraft. But in June of 2010, a group of computer programmers stumbled on one of the most innovative of a new type of weapon that had recently emerged: one made up of nothing more substantial than lines of ones and zeroes, but every bit as precise and destructive to certain physical objects as any laser-guided bomb. It was an opening shot in a new, shadowy theatre of warfare that threatens the very foundations of our digital, connected society. This is the story of STUXNET, one of the world’s first digital weapons.

On June 24, 2010, Sergey Ulasen and Oleg Kupreev, analysts for Minsk-based anti-malware firm VirusBlokAda, received a set of suspicious files which were causing computers in Iran to enter an endless reboot loop. Even wiping the computers and reinstalling all the software didn’t seem to help; the files somehow always managed to reinfect the system. At first Ulasen and Kupreev thought little of the assignment; after all, VirusBlokAda dealt with thousands of new pieces of malware every year. But as soon as they looked closer at the code, they realized that this was something very different indeed.

For one thing, it was big: 500 kilobytes compared to 10-15 for most viruses. And when the files were uncompressed this ballooned to a colossal 1.2 megabytes. The next surprise came when Ulasen transferred the files to his work computer; not only did they install and run themselves automatically, but they did so without triggering any alarms or warnings. This could only mean one thing: the worm had a kernel-level rootkit that allowed it to burrow deep into the computer’s operating system and evade detection by virus-scanning software. But the biggest shock came when Ulasen looked at how the worm installed itself. Most viruses exploit Windows’s AutoRun feature, which automatically detects and opens flash drives and other devices. But this exploit is easily thwarted by simply disabling AutoRun. Instead, this worm used a series of .LNK files, used by Windows to automatically display files and applications as icons. It was a fiendishly clever exploit, and one Ulasen and Kupreev had never seen before. A quick check of VirusBlokAda’s malware registry confirmed their suspicions: they had stumbled upon the holy grail for malware hunters – a zero-day exploit.

Zero-day exploits are software vulnerabilities which neither manufacturers nor antivirus companies are yet aware of. So-named because such companies would have zero days’ warning of an attack, zero-days are highly coveted by hackers, cybercriminals, and intelligence agencies, and can fetch rather hefty prices when ordered on illicit markets. Given the danger they pose, true zero-day exploits are exceedingly rare; of the 12 million new viruses discovered each year, you can generally count on two hands the number of zero-day ones from that number. So try and imagine Ulasen and Kupreev’s shock when they discovered not one, not two, but three more zero-day exploits hidden in the worm. A single zero-day was rare enough; four was unheard of.

And the surprises didn’t end there. The worm contained four separate .LNK files to allow it to infect every version of Windows since Windows 2000, and appeared designed to spread not via the internet like normal viruses but via flash drives. It also featured what appeared to be genuine digital certificates signed by Realtek Semiconductor in Taiwan – a highly valuable security feature almost impossible for most hackers to obtain. But strangest of all, the worm was programmed to specifically seek out SIMATIC Step 7 or WinCC software on Siemens Programmable Logic Controllers, or PLCs – small computers used in industry to control things like robotic arms on automated assembly lines. If the machine the worm infected didn’t have this software installed, the worm would shut itself down and leave the machine alone. Ulasen and Kupreev were baffled; not only was the worm designed to seek out an extremely specific target, but the target itself made no sense. Most malware is designed to steal credit card numbers, passwords, and other information with the intent of making money, but this worm seemed specifically designed to attack industrial systems. But what systems, and for what purpose? Unfortunately by this time Ulasen and Kupreev had been assigned to other projects. But before moving on, they announced their discovery on the company website and a cybersecurity forum. They also gave the mysterious worm a name, derived from one of its system files: STUXNET.

And there the story of STUXNET would have ended, were it not for the perseverance of another pair of malware hunters: Liam O’Murchu  and Eric Chien of California firm Symantec. Upon receiving the STUXNET files on July 16, 2010, the pair immediately spotted an unusual feature: whenever STUXNET infected a new computer, it sent a confirmation message with the machine’s IP address to a pair of IP addresses masquerading as soccer fan sites, allowing its creators to track its progress as it hopped from machine to machine. O’Murchu and Chien diverted the DNS of these sites to a sinkhole – a dedicated server in their office – and watched as the pings started flooding in. Within four days STUXNET had infected over 38,000 machines – 3700 in India, 6700 in Indonesia, and 22,000 in Iran. A quick internet search revealed the connection between these countries: the 2700 – kilometre-long Peace Pipeline stretching from the South Pars Oil Field in Iran through Pakistan and India. The attack had apparently begun in Iran and spread via infected flash drives along the pipeline. But what was being targeted in Iran? Despite gaining a better understanding how STUXNET spread and operated, O’Murchu and Chien were no closer to determining its purpose than Ulasen and Kupreev.

The final piece of the STUXNET puzzle would be uncovered by Dutch programmer Ron Hulsebos, who in November 2010 discovered in the worm’s payload an application designed to attack two specific models of frequency converters – devices for controlling extremely precise electric motors. When Hulsebos looked up these devices, to his surprise he found that they were regulated for export by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Putting together all the pieces, Hulsebos came to the only reasonable conclusion: STUXNET was designed to interfere with the nuclear program of Iran. But how, exactly? Little did Hulsebos realize, but the answer had already been revealed some eleven months before.

In January 2010, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency began noticing some strange activity at Iran’s Natanz Uranium enrichment complex. The complex, located 320 kilometres south of Tehran, was completed in 2008 at a cost of $300 million. Covering 100,000 square meters and buried 50 meters underground, in 2010 Natanz operated some 8700 gas centrifuges. Gas centrifuges are devices used for separating the rare Uranium-235 isotope – which can be used to fuel nuclear reactors and build atomic bombs – from the more common Uranium-238. Refined uranium is converted into Uranium Hexafluoride gas and passed through a set of concentric high-speed rotors; centrifugal force causes the slightly heavier U-238 to move towards the wall of the rotor while the U-235 moves towards the centre and is tapped off. This slightly enriched gas is then passed through a series of centrifuge cascades, becoming more and more enriched in U-235 as it goes along. Gas centrifuges spin at such high rates that  the outside of the rotors exceed the speed of sound, requiring all air to be pumped out of the casing. This speed also makes centrifuges extremely delicate and easily unbalanced, with the weight of a single human fingerprint being enough to make a rotor shake itself apart. Given this fragility, a facility like Natanz  is expected to burn through a certain number of centrifuges per year – in this case,  around 10% or 900 units. But starting in November 2009, IAEA cameras installed outside the facility began seeing a sharp increase in centrifuges being removed and replaced; by January the number had reached an astonishing 2000 units. But under the IAEA’s inspection agreement with Iran, the inspectors had no right to ask why – and no way of knowing that what they were witnessing was the handiwork of  none other than STUXNET.

Based on what has been learned about STUXNET in the past 10 years, let us take you on a tour of how this sophisticated digital weapon carried out its devious mission.

Sometime in June 2009, STUXNET was introduced to the computer systems of 5 companies closely involved with Iran’s nuclear program. The worm’s creators assumed that at some point, an engineer from one of these companies would travel to Natanz and use an infected flash drive to program a PLC controlling the gas centrifuges, allowing STUXNET to slip aboard. STUXNET then lay low, monitoring and recording the flow of data between the PLC, centrifuges, and plant operators. Then, after 13 days, the worm performed a trick straight out of Ocean’s Eleven, cutting off the flow of data from the centrifuges to the plant operators and replacing it with the data it had collected over the past 13 days. With the operators believing everything to be running normally, STUXNET sprang into action, spinning the centrifuges up to 1410 Hertz for 15 minutes before returning to normal. Then the worm went dormant again, waiting 26 days before dropping the frequency down to 200 Hertz. These wild swings in frequency served to induce vibrations and distortions in the centrifuge rotors, eventually causing them to destroy themselves. Over the course of a year, STUXNET gradually wore out up to a fifth of the centrifuges at Natanz, all while leaving the plant’s operators oblivious to the digital havoc being wrought.

But the question remains: who created STUXNET, and why? The why is rather straightforward. Ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution which saw the West-friendly regime of the Shah deposed and replaced by the theocracy of Ayatolla Komeinei, Western powers and neighbouring countries like Israel have feared that Iran might use its nuclear infrastructure to build an atomic bomb. These fears seemed confirmed when in 1987 Iran secretly began a program of Uranium enrichment using centrifuge designs stolen from Pakistan. Tensions further increased in 2005 with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, under whose administration the massive Natanz enrichment plant was constructed. However, given the slow nature and timing of the STUXNET attack, it is believed that the worm was not intended to destroy Iran’s enrichment capability outright but rather to delay it until a diplomatic solution could be found to the Iranian nuclear problem. This solution finally came in 2015 with the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran Nuclear Deal.

As for who created STUXNET, its creators may have left clues within the worm’s code itself. One line of code which serves as an inoculation value – a safety device to prevent STUXNET from infecting its creator’s computer – appears to refer to May 9, 1979, the date prominent Jewish-Iranian businessman Habib Ehghanian was executed by firing squad in Tehran. Another file is named “myrtus”, a possible reference to the biblical story of Esther, who saved the Jewish people from being massacred by the Persians. This would indicate that at least some of STUXNET’s programmers were from Israel. However, most evidence  points to STUXNET having largely been programmed in the United States, with collaboration from Israel, Germany, France, the UK, and the Netherlands. Based on the types of exploits used and other signatures in the code, the Kaspersky Lab, a prominent Russian cybersecurity organization, has concluded that STUXNET is likely the work of the Equation Group, a cyber attack division of the US National Security Agency or NSA.

But the importance of STUXNET goes far beyond who created it and the specific damage it caused. Its creators demonstrated that using only a few lines of code it was possible attack physical infrastructure in a manner that previously would have taken an air strike or a human saboteur – and all without the attackers having ever set foot inside the Natanz facility. In the past such an attack would have been nearly impossible, as most companies used their own custom-built PLCs with proprietary software. But today the use of off-the-shelf PLCs running Windows is widespread, and these devices control an alarming amount of our modern infrastructure, from sewage plants to electrical grids to nuclear power plants. And more alarming still, many of these systems are connected to the internet, meaning a digital weapon in the wrong hands has the potential to inflict far more damage than any conventional terrorist attack. The ancient world saw warfare move from the land to the sea, while the twentieth century took it to the air and into space. The twenty-first century will see warfare expand into the unknown frontier of cyberspace.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• Who Invented Computer Passwords?
• Why “C” is the Default Hard Drive Letter in Many Computers
• Who Invented the Computer Mouse?
• Who Invented the Internet?

Bonus Fact

On March 4, 2007, the Idaho National Laboratory conducted the Aurora Generator Test, launching a prototype worm composed of only 21 lines of code against a PLC controlling a 5000-horsepower diesel generator. Within three minutes, the code had reduced the giant machine to a smoking ruin, vividly demonstrating the potential of such a digital attack on physical infrastructure.

But the history of digital attacks on physical infrastructure goes back further still. In 2003 the Sobig virus interrupted railway signalling systems along the US East Coast, while the Slammer virus forced the Davis Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio to shut down for 5 hours. In 2000, disgruntled employee Vitek Boden hacked a sewage plant in Maroochy Shire, Australia, unleashing 750,000 gallons of raw sewage into the city water supply. Earlier still, in March 1997 a hacker known as “Jester” hacked into the Bell Atlantic switching system at Worcester Airport, Massachusetts, forcing air traffic to shut down for 6 hours.

But perhaps the oldest digital attack in history reportedly took place in 1982. The year before, Lt. Col. Vladimir Vetrov of the KGB’s Line X Technology Directorate had defected to the West, bringing with him a collection of classified documents known as the “Farewell Dossier.” The dossier revealed the existence of a Soviet spy ring dedicated to stealing Western technology – including industrial control software. According to former Secretary of the Air Force Thomas C. Reed, in response the CIA created a special piece of software for controlling natural gas pipelines, with the intention that it would be copied and used by the Soviets. As expected, the software was stolen and installed on the trans-Siberian pipeline. After a certain amount of time, the Trojan horse hidden in the software kicked into action, closing valves and ramping up pump speeds to produce extremely high pressures. The CIA had only intended for this to cause broken welds, leaks and other minor damage, but instead the pipeline proceeded to explode, creating a massive 3-kiloton blast bright enough to be picked up by American spy satellites.

But while this makes for an amusing story, Reed’s version of events has been called into question. No intelligence agency has independently confirmed the existence of the blast, and former KGB operative Vasily Pchelintsev points out that while there was a pipeline explosion in 1982, it was far smaller in scale and in a different location than Reed reports. Furthermore, at the time the Soviet Union did not employ digital controls on its pipelines, making such a cyberattack impossible.

Expand for References

Zetter, Kim, Countdown to Zero Day: STUXNET and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon, Broadway Books, NY, 2014.

Anderson, Nate, Confirmed: US and Israel Created STUXNET, Lost Control of It, Are Technica, June 1, 2012 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/confirmed-us-israel-created-stuxnet-lost-control-of-it/

Falliere, Nicolas et al. W.32 Stuxnet Dossier, Symantec November 2010 https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/11/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf

Kushner, David, The Real Story of Stuxnet, IEEE Spectrum, February 26, 2013 https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet

Equation Group: Questions and Answers, Kaspersky Lab, February 2015 https://ift.tt/3m0cIy4

Markoff, John, Old Trick Threatens the Newest Weapons, The New York Times, October 26, 2009, https://ift.tt/33a2YbK

The post STUXNET and the Rise of the Digital Weapon appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - October 21, 2020 at 12:47AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-

That Time Albert Einstein Invented a New Refrigerator

The name Albert Einstein has become a byword for genius – and rightly so. The German physicist’s theories of Special and General Relativity fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the uni-verse to a degree not seen since Isaac Newton, while his groundbreaking 1905 papers on Brownian Motion and the Photoelectric Effect laid the groundwork for modern atomic and quantum theory. Yet despite his status as a giant of theoretical physics, one thing Einstein is not commonly associat-ed with is hands-on mechanical innovation. It may thus come as a surprise that Einstein actually held over 50 patents for practical devices ranging from hearing aids, cameras, gyrocompasses, and even a stylish vest with an adjustable elasticated waistband. But the vast majority of Einstein’s pa-tents covered an altogether unexpected device: a new kind of refrigerator.

The origins of Einstein’s long-forgotten foray into practical mechanics lay in a tragic accident. In 1926 Einstein read a newspaper article about a Berlin family who had died in their sleep when their refrigerator sprung a leak. Refrigerators at the time ran on a variety of refrigerants such as Ammonia, Methyl Chloride, and Sulfur Dioxide, all of which were highly toxic or even explosive. Moved by this tragedy, Einstein set out to design a safer refrigeration system. To aid him in this en-deavour he enlisted the help of former student Leo Szilard, an acclaimed Hungarian physicist who in 1933 would invent the concept of the nuclear chain reaction. They proved to be an ideal team, Szilard having written his doctoral dissertation on the thermodynamics of fluctuating systems and Einstein having worked for many years as a clerk at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern, granting him intimate knowledge of the patent system. However, the presence of Einstein’s name on the patent applications raised more than a few eyebrows, with several patent clerks writing back to confirm that this was indeed the Einstein.

In total Einstein and Szilard were granted 45 patents covering three different refrigerator designs. Their first design was an improvement on the vapour-absorption cycle invented in 1922 by Swe-dish engineers Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters. Unlike regular vapour-compression refrigera-tors which use a mechanical compressor, Einstein and Szilard’s system had no moving parts and was completely sealed, eliminating the need rotary seals and other components that could potential-ly leak. The refrigerator used a complicated circuit to circulate a combination of water, ammonia, and butane refrigerants and was powered from the outside by a gas flame, much like the propane refrigerators used by many campers and RV-ers.

But while this is the best-known of the Einstein-Szilard refrigerators, it is the pair’s second design which most excited Einstein. Dubbed the Volks-Kühlschrank or “people’s refrigerator”, this was an ingeniously simple device that could be powered by water pressure from an ordinary household tap. Water running through a Venturi generated a mild vacuum, which caused methanol stored in a tank to evaporate. This vapour then absorbed heat from the food compartment before dissolving in the outgoing water, carrying the heat with it. While this process eventually consumed the Methanol, requiring it to be regularly topped up, Einstein reasoned that Methanol was cheap enough for this to not be an issue. Indeed, Einstein had high hopes for this design, which he believed could bring reli-able refrigeration into the homes of even the poorest families.

The pair’s third design was by far their most technologically advanced, but also their most impracti-cal. This system was largely identical to a regular vapour-compression fridge except that instead of a mechanical compressor it used a series of powerful electromagnets to pump liquid metal through a circuit. The liquid metal was then used to compress regular refrigerant gases. At first the pair used liquid Mercury, but when this proved insufficiently conductive they switched to a liquid Sodium-Potassium alloy, which was not only highly corrosive but had a nasty habit of bursting into flames or even exploding on contact with air and water. Despite this rather significant hazard, however, as the system was completely sealed Einstein and Szilard were confident this would not be a serious problem.

Yet despite the ingenuity of these designs, in the end very little came of the Einstein-Szilard refrig-erators. In 1927 Swedish Electrolux bought the absorption refrigerator patents for around $750 (about $11K today), but this was mainly to retain control on their existing Munters/von Platen pa-tents; the Einstein-Szilard design was never incorporated into any commercial refrigerator. Further-more, while more efficient than other absorption cycles, the system was far less efficient than regu-lar vapour-compression fridges, and the discovery in 1930 of the non-toxic, non-flammable refrig-erant Freon nullified the safety advantages of the Einstein-Szilard design.

The ingenious water-powered refrigerator also turned out to be a dead end. Not only did Methanol turn out to be far more expensive than Einstein had anticipated, but water pressure in German apartments was notoriously weak and inconsistent. And while the electromagnetic pump was an impressive technological achievement, its sodium-potassium working fluid was far too dangerous for household use. It was also loud: in the words of Szilard’s friend, Hungarian Physicist Denis Ga-bor, the prototype “howled like a jackal.” Interestingly given Einstein’s more famous work in phys-ics, the Einstein-Szilard pump did eventually find a niche use in certain types of nuclear reactors, which use liquid sodium-potassium as a coolant.

While Einstein’s practical inventions never made as much of an impact as his theoretical work, 90 years since it was patented the Einstein-Szilard absorption refrigerator may be poised to make a comeback. An improved version called the Isobar is currently under development by UK inventor William Broadway for transporting vaccines in developing countries with limited electrical infra-structure – an application that would have delighted the famously humanitarian Einstein.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• Albert Einstein Did Not Fail at Mathematics in School
• The Theft and Half Century Journey of Einstein’s Brain
• One of the Greatest Scientists of the 20th Century You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
• The Large Number of Human Remains Found In Ben Franklin’s Basement

Bonus Facts

#1: While far less well-known than Einstein, Leo Szilard was nonetheless a prolific and important physicist and inventor in his own right. Born in Budapest in 1898, Szilard spent the early part of his career in Germany, where in addition to helping Einstein design refrigerators he also independently invented and patented the linear particle accelerator, the cyclotron, and the electron microscope.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Szilard, a Jew, fled to London, and it is here that he made perhaps his most important discovery: the nuclear chain reaction. On September 12, 1933, Szilard read an article in the Times summarizing a speech by physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford on the work of his students Ernest Walton and John Cockcroft, who had recently succeeded in splitting Lithium atoms. In the speech, Rutherford dismissed out of hand the notion of using nuclear fission to pro-duce energy, a claim that so annoyed Szilard that he stormed out onto the rainy London streets to come up with a rebuttal. According to legend, the answer came to him in a flash of inspiration as he waited for the stoplight to change at the corner of Southampton Row and Russell Square. Szilard realized that when an atom fissions or splits it gives off several free neutrons, subatomic particles with no electric charge. If these neutrons could be directed to strike other atoms, more fissions would ensue, each giving off more neutrons and so on, creating a self-sustaining chain reaction. Szilard patented his concept in 1936, and in 1938 moved to New York to work with Italian physi-cist Enrico Fermi on building a practical nuclear reactor.

When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, Szilard feared that with its head start in nuclear physics Germany could be the first to develop an atomic bomb. He thus drafted a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt arguing that the United States should start its own atomic bomb project. But as Szilard was completely unknown to the American establishment, he decided to have the letter signed by the one physicist famous enough to get the President’s attention: Albert Einstein. In addi-tion to lending his famous name, there was another reason for involving Einstein. Nuclear reactors and bombs required Uranium, the primary source of which was Czechoslovakia, then under Nazi occupation. The only other known source was the Belgian Congo. As it happened, Einstein was close friends with Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, and it was hoped that this friendship could be used to secure a supply of Uranium for the Allies. While in the end nothing was made of this connec-tion, the Szilard-Einstein letter had the intended effect. In January 1942, President Roosevelt offi-cially approved what came to be known as the Manhattan Project, which a mere three years later succeeded in building the world’s first atomic bomb.

After the war, the ever-versatile Szilard switched from physics to biology, where he made numer-ous contributions to cell culture techniques, participated in the first cloning of human cells, and helped found the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He also became an ardent anti-nuclear activ-ist, warning against the possible development of cobalt-salted bombs which he feared could bring about the end of life on earth. Indeed, this concept formed the basis of the fictional “doomsday machine” in the classic 1964 film Dr. Strangelove.

In 1960 Szilard was diagnosed with bladder cancer which, in characteristic style, he proceeded to treat with a regimen of radiation therapy he designed himself. Amazingly, the treatment worked, and the cancer never returned. Four years later, however, Szilard died in his sleep from a heart at-tack on May 30, 1964. Of Szilard, Dennis Gabor, longtime friend and Nobel-Prize winning inventor of the hologram, would later say: “He used to discuss all his inventions with me. I was so full of admiration that I felt quite stupid in his presence. Of all the many great men I have met in my life, he was, by far, the most brilliant. Had he pushed through to success all his new inventions, we would now talk of him as the Edison of the twentieth century.”

Expand for References

Kean, Sam Einstein’s Little=Known Passion Project? A Refrigerator. Wired.com July 23, 2017 https://ift.tt/2vxLepi

Strauss, Ilana How Einstein’s abandoned refrigerator design could feed the hungry and save the planet From the Grapevine, September 12, 2016 https://ift.tt/2Hii2gF

Zyga, Lisa, Einstein’s green refrigerator making a comeback phys.org September 25, 2008 https://ift.tt/2Hii7AZ

Einstein’s Fridge University of Melbourne, September 5, 2013 https://ift.tt/3g7q4Em

Dannen, Gene The Einstein-Szilard Refrigerators https://ift.tt/3m7AQ0R

Dannen, Gene Leo Szilard the Inventor https://ift.tt/1Fd97UP

The post That Time Albert Einstein Invented a New Refrigerator appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - October 20, 2020 at 05:45PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-

Did Andy Warhol Leave a Dick Pic on the Moon?

The six Apollo missions that landed on the moon between 1969 and 1972 left an extraordinary amount of equipment behind on the lunar surface. This included Lunar Module descent stages, Lunar Roving Vehicles, ALSEP experiment packages, American flags, and over 800 items jettisoned to save weight – from EVA boots to cameras to waste bags. But among these thousands of items lies a truly unique and unusual object. Hidden in the gold mylar foil wrapping the landing legs of Apollo 12’s Lunar Module Intrepid is a tiny ceramic chip, just 19 x 13mm, bearing six sketches by leading American artists. This is the Moon Museum, the only art gallery on another world.

The idea of sending art into space is almost as old as the space age itself. On September 13, 1959, the Soviet Luna 2 probe impacted the lunar surface, becoming the first manmade object to reach another celestial body. Aboard the spacecraft were two metal spheres divided into pentagonal pennants stamped with the Soviet crest and the year of launch. An explosive charge in each sphere was designed to detonate just before impact, scattering the pennants across the lunar surface, but as Luna 2 impacted the lunar surface at 3.3km/s, it is likely that they were vaporized. 10 years later, during the historic Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left behind a gold olive branch as a symbol of peace as well as a stainless-steel plaque fixed to one of the Lunar Module legs, bearing the image of the earth’s two hemispheres and the signatures of the crew and then-President Richard Nixon. But all these pieces were officially sanctioned by their respective governments; the Moon Museum was a far more…shall we say, independent project.

The Moon Museum was the brainchild of American artist Forrest Myers, best-known for his monumental sculptures such as The Wall in SoHo, New York. In early 1969 Myers put out a call to his fellow artists for submissions to his space art gallery, of whom five eventually responded. Myers himself drew the intersecting figure on the lower left of the museum, which he titled “Interconnection”. Robert Rauschenberg drew a single minimalist line, David Novros a black square with white lines, Claes Oldenburg an interpretation of Mickey Mouse, John Chamberlain another geometric grid pattern, and Andy Warhol…a penis. Despite the rather obvious nature of his contribution, the Bad Boy of the art world nonetheless maintained that it was actually just his initials in the shape of a rocket ship. Sure it is, Andy…

All six sketches were miniaturized and printed on a ceramic wafer using integrated circuit technology by technician Fred Waldhauer at Bell Laboratories. In total 20 wafers were made, one destined for the moon and the rest for the artists and others who contributed to the project.

At first Myers tried to contact NASA and obtain official approval for the project, but the Agency dithered on the proposal, giving Myers the runaround for months. Unable to get a straight answer, Myers finally decided to take matters into his own hands. Fred Waldhauer, who had printed the wafers, contacted a technician he knew at Grumman Aircraft, who were assembling the Lunar Module for the upcoming Apollo 12 Mission. The technician agreed to smuggle the Moon Museum onto the LM and send a telegram to Meyers confirming it was aboard. Smuggling items onto Lunar Modules was a common practice among the Grumman staff, with technicians often slipping family photos or small messages into the layers of Mylar insulation covering the descent stage. Yet despite this ubiquity it was still strictly against regulations, and the few who were caught were summarily fired.

On November 12, 1969, Myers received a telegram reading YOUR ON A.O.K. ALL SYSTEMS GO and signed JOHN F. Two days later, the crew of Apollo 12 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, touching down on the moon on November 19. On November 22, when Apollo 12 was on its way back to earth, an article in the New York Times revealed the Moon Museum’s existence to the public for the first time, though in the accompanying photo Warhol’s sketch is hidden by conveniently-placed thumb.

Yet despite the telegram it is unknown whether the Moon Museum actually made it to the moon, and to this day the identity of “John F”, the Grumman technician who allegedly smuggled it aboard Intrepid, remains a mystery. No technicians with that name worked at Grumman at the time, though it is believed the name was a pseudonym and a reference to President John F. Kennedy, who launched the Apollo Program.

Whether or not the Moon Museum currently sits on the Lunar surface, it would not be the last work of art to make the journey. On August 1st, 1971, Apollo 15 Commander David Scott placed a small 3.5 inch aluminium sculpture called Fallen Astronaut on the lunar surface. Created by Dutch sculptor Paul van Hoeydonck, the sculpture was accompanied by a plaque bearing the names of 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had died in the line of duty.

But depending on one’s definition of art, there is another candidate for inclusion in the list of works on the moon, this one also left behind by the crew of Apollo 12. To help them make efficient use of their limited EVA time, astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean had detailed mission checklists strapped to their wrists. These lists, around 30 pages long, were prepared by backup crew members David Scott and James Irwin, who managed to sneak in some extra reading material. When Al Bean flipped to page nine of his checklist, he was presented with the unexpected sight of Cynthia Myers, Playboy’s Miss December 1969. She was joined by Miss January Leslie Bianchini, as well as Miss September Angela Dorian and Miss October Reagan Wilson on Conrad’s checklist. They remain on the lunar surface to this day, the first – and thus far only – Playmates to reach the moon.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• The Bizarre Story of the Man Who Sold the Moon
• The Secret Race to the Moon
• That Time the U.S. was Going to Build a Massive, Death Ray Equipped, Military Moon Base
• Why the Same Side of the Moon Always Faces the Earth
• Whatever Happened to the Flags on the Moon?

Bonus Fact:

While dick pics, fallen astronauts, and Playboy Playmates might seem hard to beat, these are only a few of the stranger objects that have made their way to the moon. Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin took with him a miniature chalice, wafer, and bottle of sacramental wine which he used to take holy communion shortly after landing on the moon on July 20, 1969. Following the ritual, Aldrin read aloud from John 15:5: “I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.” Aldrin had intended to broadcast the reading live to the world, but due to the controversy over the crew of Apollo 8 reading aloud from the book of Genesis the year before, he decided to keep his ceremony a secret.

Alan Shepard, Commander of Apollo 14, took along some decidedly less holy objects: two golf balls and a 6-iron head, which he affixed to the end of a lunar soil collection tool to create a makeshift golf club. On February 5, 1971, swinging one-handed due to the bulk of his spacesuit, Shepard became the first – and thus far only – person to play golf on the moon, famously quipping that in the reduced lunar gravity his balls flew for “miles and miles.” Joining in the fun, Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell threw a tool handle like a javelin, thus inaugurating the first “lunar olympics.”

While Shepard and Mitchell’s antics were received with good humour, the crew of the next mission would not be so lucky. Prior to their mission, Apollo 15 crew members David Scott, Alfred Worden, and James Irwin struck a deal with German stamp dealer Hermann Sieger to carry 400 postal covers – commemorative envelopes – to the moon and back. In return, each astronaut would receive $7000. The covers were postmarked with the July 26, 1971 launch date, spent four days on the moon, then were postmarked again when the crew returned to earth on August 7. 100 were sent to Sieger, with the rest being divided among the astronauts to do with as they pleased. But when NASA found out about the arrangement, they were furious. As a public agency, they couldn’t be seen letting astronauts profit personally off missions funded with taxpayer dollars. So, amid widespread media scrutiny, Scott, Worden, and Irwin were pulled from flight crew rotation and called before a closed session of the Senate Committee on Aerospace and Space Sciences. Though by then they had already returned their $7000 fee to Sieger, they were nonetheless reprimanded by NASA over the affair. As this reprimand made it unlikely they would ever be selected for spaceflight again, all three astronauts retired from NASA soon after. None ever flew in space again.

But perhaps the objects with the longest legacy were carried into space by Apollo 14 Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa: 500 tree seeds. The seeds, consisting of 100 each from the Redwood, Sycamore, Douglas Fir, Sweetgum, and Loblolly Pine, were carried at the behest of Edward Cliff, then Chief of the Forest Service, and orbited the moon between February 4 and 7, 1971. Following the return of Apollo 14 to earth, the seeds were germinated by the Forest Service and given away to various state forestry departments and foreign governments, with many being planted in 1976 to celebrate the United States’ bicentennial. Today, around 80 of the so-called “Moon Trees” are still alive and well across the country.

Expand for References

Wilford, John Noble, We Reach the Moon The New York Times Companym NY 1969

Shepard, Alan & Slayton, Deke, Moon Shot Turner Publishing Inc. Atlanta 1994

Stinson, Liz We Sent a Dick Pic to the Moon – and We’re Doing it Again wired.com May 7, 2015 https://ift.tt/2sX1H5v

The Moon Museum Museum of Modern Art https://ift.tt/2NRDaIw

Glueck, Grace New York Sculptor Says Intrepid Put Art on Moon, New York Times, Nov 22, 1969 https://ift.tt/2HadARe

PBS Press Release: PBS’ History Detectives Puts a Question to the Nation: is Andy Warhol’s Art on the Moon? pbs.org June 6, 2010 https://ift.tt/37pWCZv

Moye, David, Warhol in Space: Apollo 12 Secretly Carried Art to the Moon https://ift.tt/35lnzer

Connelly, Richard, Apollo 15, 40 Years On Houston Press, August 2, 2011 https://ift.tt/31tkAiP

Apollo 15 nasa.gov https://ift.tt/261Qsci

The “Moon Trees” https://ift.tt/2mPKrhS

The post Did Andy Warhol Leave a Dick Pic on the Moon? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - October 20, 2020 at 05:39PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-

How is Stalin Taught in Russia?

Joseph Stalin was born in December 1878 to a Georgian family and served as the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1952. After the death of Lenin, he initially shared power over the Soviet Union with other officials, but he managed to gradually consolidate his position and by the 1930s became the country’s de facto dictator. As a sign of his absolute rule he bore the title of premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 until his death in 1953. During his time in power, he was faced with the challenge of stabilising the new regime in the turbulent 1920s and then, famously, dealing with the Nazi invasion during the Second World War.

After the victory, he found himself leading a global empire with vast influence, arguably equalled and balanced only by the Americans.

The Soviet Union was shaped under his leadership, which was not exactly democratic. First, he turned towards closer allies, removing them or causing their deaths, as in the case of Trotsky. Broadening the scope, he ensured to clear the party as well as most positions of importance in society from any voice that was less than extremely enthusiastic towards his own opinions.

The culmination of this effort was the Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror, which was a period of two to three years in the late 30s, where this prosecution reached its peak. This campaign did not just focus on the cleansing of suspected political rivals from the Communist Party, positions within the government, and the Red Army leadership, but it was included to repress of people on account of them being wealthy (kulaks), or belonging to certain non-regime-friendly ethnic groups. These persecutions included imprisonment, mass deportations, exile in remote areas or even slave labour in work camps *(Gulags), widespread police surveillance and, of course, executions. From this small period alone, the deaths possibly reached more than a million. As one can imagine, after this period any opposition towards his power was deemed as very unhealthy.

Summing up this side of his career, in the few decades he was in power, the deaths from executions or death in captivity alone are estimated to more than three million officially recorded victims. This does not include the victims of the Ukrainian famine or deaths during the deportation processes, nor does it consider random executions that were not officially counted.

However, despite this bloody history, due to official propaganda, as well as lack of opposition and freedom of speech, the following administrations kept and keep the main focus on the fact that under Stalin’s rule, his country became a world power. This fact, but most importantly stressing his role in the war effort, made him a wildly popular figure.

After the war, Russia experienced a kind of personality cult, with Stalin being heralded as father of the people. He encouraged this development, which was not unlike the cult of Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible, both of whom he admired. The title he was known with, however, was vozhd, the “leader”, which actually bears resemblance to the equivalent titles of Mussolini and Hitler, duce and führer respectively.

After his death in 1953, his body was embalmed and then placed on display in Moscow’s House of Unions for three days. Indicative of the grief of the Russian public to this news is that around 100 people were trampled to death during the massive crowd attendance to pay their respects. *(Thus very slightly raising Stalin’s death toll post-mortem.)

After his death however, Stalin was criticised in particular in references to his purges. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev gave his “Secret Speech” (known as “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”) which ushered in an era of de-Stalinisation within the Soviet state. This can be seen within the general reforms of the Soviet state that made Stalinism gradually obsolete.

Of course this does not mean that in the course of this process or even after, Stalin was portrayed as evil in schools and the media. Far from it. Views of his early comrades, such as that of Trotsky that promoted the idea that Stalin was a mediocrity were still being suppressed in the Soviet Union. The main effort lay in ending the personality cult; his status approaching that of a living messiah was no longer the case, rather, the focus was put on his reforms and military achievements.

A prominent example is that of reforms undertaken by Stalin that enforced the education system in accordance with Article 121 of the Soviet Constitution, providing the right to education. This was of vital importance, as at the time when Stalin rose to power, illiteracy was prevalent amongst the people. Even before the war, educational programs were initiated thanks to which allegedly 40 million people learned to read. These reforms also influenced the ability to attend higher education and were accompanied by university reorganisation. Similar efforts in agriculture or industry are attributed to Stalin’s leadership, recognising the Marxist principles which Lenin was planning on initiating, but ultimately did not have the time to institute.

This brings us to how Stalin is taught in schools.

In modern-day Russia, unlike, say, the U.S. where the different states have varying requirements for the information students are taught in school, Russian students receive the same instruction about history nationwide, whether they live near the borders of the EU or at the Pacific ocean.

Generally, Stalin “the Military Leader” is emphasized more than Stalin “the Communist”. After all, today’s Russia is a capitalist country. His authoritarianism and strong will are seen as necessary traits in times of crisis. The massacres and gulag sendoffs during his time are not omitted but they are not front page material. Like, say, the war crimes in the Japanese school system, they are inferred to but not explicitly dealt with. In some cases, even genuine atrocities are considered to be harsh but necessary actions during times of war.

The overall portrayal of Stalin is seen as positive in the Russian schools . Of course, there are many varieties of books, historical, literature and others, in which different aspects of his life and sometimes his flaws are put on the frontline. In Russian schools, the books available for studies are categorised into three lists, the third one being books that are recommended but not mandatory. One of the books that has been on this list since 1994 (shortly after the Soviet Collapse) is ‘The Book for Future Admirals’ (aimed at 10- to 14-year-old kids) in which Stalin is portrayed as a good leader who brought stability and order to the army and to his country, during very harsh conditions, and in doing so saved it from the brink of collapse.

A very interesting source for understanding how the subject of Stalin is treated in schools in the post-communist era is a teachers’ manual for educating Russian high school students in history. The book is called ‘A Modern History of Russia, 1945-2006: Manual For Teachers’ and it instructs Russian educators on how to approach Stalin in the classroom: “It is important to show that Stalin acted in a concrete historical situation…entirely rationally—as the guardian of a system, as a consistent supporter of reshaping the country into an industrialized state”. Within this context, the political purges of the 30s and other atrocities such as the infamous gulag work camps are not omitted or excused but are in fact addressed. The attitude to be instilled in students, however, is rather that of justification. Stalin’s choices are portrayed as necessary actions for bringing stability, without which the war effort would have had a different outcome.

The tone of modern teaching can be summed up in a quote from this teachers’ manual: “We must make every school-child aware of the grandeur of our struggle and our victories; we must show him the cost of these great successes in labor and blood; we must tell him how great the people of our epoch—Lenin, Stalin, and their companions in arms—organized the workers in the struggle for a new and happy life.”

All in all the tendency of actually addressing the negative aspects in contrast to the post-war tendency of glossing over the dark side of Stalin is a positive step. For example, in Moscow one can visit the Gulag Museum. However, at the school level, there are still problematic points. What is taught of the Stalin era prosecutions is focused solely on those receiving the death penalty, thus conveniently omitting the many more who lost their jobs, were deported or died in labor camps because of political reasons. Furthermore, within Russia’s turn to patriotic driven narratives, open criticism towards Stalin especially in school textbooks is being discouraged. Recently, such a book published in 2015 was blacklisted on accounts of it being “dangerous to the health of children”, suggesting an age restriction of 18+, because we guess students cannot handle learning about acts of violence?

Regarding less…provocative aspects, students do learn details that can be characterised as negative regarding Stalin’s personality – here in direct contrast to the former cultish adoration. Bad character traits and attitudes are pointed out, such as his obstinacy and the disregard he showed towards his generals’ opinions. Stories and characteristic anecdotes are told, for example of how the war commanders like Zhukov had to fight Stalin to get what they wanted. By accounts of many generals in the war, he often demanded the impossible from his people, but was not completely unreasonable when given mass rebuttal.

As a further example of the negative aspects being approached: In the epic novel ‘Life and Fate’ by Vasily Grossman, the Stalinist repression of the time is referenced – a book that does have a place in the Russian curriculum.

These character flaws, however, can be perceived as humanising and don’t necessarily portray a harsh dictator, as is opinio communis in many western countries. To illustrate different perceptions: Stalin ordered to shoot retreating soldiers in the back, an order that was short-lived after suggestions of his generals that this would send the wrong message. This action can be received either as resolve or harshness, depending on which side of the debate one stands.

Stalin’s persona as well as communist symbolism is therefore far from removed from everyday life *(unlike Nazi imagery in western Europe which is heavily frowned upon if not forbidden entirely) and one can see portrayals of Stalin in protests or other political activities .

In contrast, in the West, Stalin, as well as the Soviet Union in general, is not seen favourably. His era or rule is treated as a dictatorship, focusing on the lack of freedom and human rights violations. Stalin himself is viewed as one of the most notorious figures in history, whose crimes were left unanswered as he was on the winning side of the war and within his lifetime, continued to stand victorious, shaping his own legacy.

Differing from the Russian perspective, his harsh actions are not downplayed at all, and in the case of former Warsaw pact countries, the Soviet victory is often seen less as liberation and more as another type of occupation.

This is highlighted when one looks at how the same historical event is treated differently in Russia and in other former communist countries. Regarding the 1932–33 Ukrainian famine, teachers in Russia are encouraged to say that the number of deaths was not close to 10 million, as Ukrainian historians write today, but no more than 1 or 2 million. It is further handled as a physical disaster, with no mention of possible political motivation, which according to many modern and particularly Ukrainian historians was a vital part of it. Specifically, a popular view in the Ukraine is that Stalin consciously did little to help in the famine crisis as a means to suppress national desires among the Ukrainian people.

This is maybe one of the best illustrations of the differences in understanding the approach that Russia is currently taking toward Stalin in the classroom, compared with how it is perceived in former Soviet republics.

In any case, it is interesting how well over a half century after his death, the references to Stalin are still politicized and relevant to modern politics, even if the political system he envisioned is no longer around.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• How Do German Schools Teach About WWII?
• Stalin’s Diminutive Size
• The Badass WWII Squadron of Female Pilots Known as the Night Witches
• Why People Stuck One Hand in Their Jackets in Old Photographs

The post How is Stalin Taught in Russia? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Nasser Ayash - October 20, 2020 at 05:32PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-

Why Don’t You Just Keep Growing Taller?

Childhood development is largely defined by vertical growth. For generations, parents have kept a story pole or even marked a door jamb with their kid’s height every birthday, or perhaps even several times per year. Whatever your height may be, and whatever height you’d like to be, one thing is certain: we can lose weight, we can dye our hair, and we can have drastic cosmetic surgery, but as adults most all of us are powerless to grow any taller. To understand how tall each of us ultimately becomes and why we stop growing, we must first understand the biology of how we grow.

We humans start out as one tiny cell. Sperm meets egg, and we become a zygote. The zygote then forms new cells at a fever pitch. One cell becomes two, two become four, then eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and on into the billions and even trillions of cells as we transition from an embryo to a fetus. But the newborn is ultimately not a giant mass of similar cells. Along the way we develop complex, specialized tissues, organs, and organ systems. Among these are your bones, and your greater skeletal system.

As the embryo forms organ systems in its later stages, the template of a skeleton is laid down. Yet it does not form solid bones at the outset. Instead, it forms a template for the skeleton made out of cartilage. Cells known as osteoblasts then migrate to these areas and perform a process known as ossification, or the laying down of calcified bone in place of the cartilage. After nine months the fetus is ready for its close up, and birth arrives.

Growth of flat or “intramembranous” bones in the body, such as the bones in the skull, ossify in their own special way. Their contribution to height is of minimal consequence.  And as we become larger human beings as we age, our long bones will grow in thickness to support the additional weight. As this happens, the insides of bones will actually be torn down in a process known as resorption, by cells known as osteoclasts. At the same time, new bone tissue is added to the exterior of the bone. Think of it as bricks being removed on the inside while being laid down on the outside. This is literally called bone remodeling. If this were to not happen, our bones would be dreadfully thick and heavy, making movement much more difficult. Referring to a friend as “big boned” would be accurate in that case.

To achieve significant growth in height to get us spiking a volleyball, the long bones must grow in length. These include the humerus in the arm, the radius and ulna in the forearm, the femur in the upper leg, and the tibia and fibula in the lower leg. To achieve this growth, we need our old friend cartilage to start the process. The ends of long bones have a cartilage disc known as an epiphyseal disc, or more simply, a growth plate.

The grown plate is made of a type of cartilage that migrates towards the shaft of the bone at is multiplies. This cartilage then becomes ossified by our old friends the osteoblasts, and in turn, the bone has grown longitudinally. Thus, the growth plate is essentially a factory to make the bones longer. It gets its marching orders from the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland is also known as the master gland, because it produces hormones that tell so much of the body what to do and not do. In this case, the main pituitary hormone acting in bone growth is called, big surprise, growth hormone, or GH for short.

As long as GH is being produced, the growth plates will continue to produce new bone and the person will grow taller. This is especially in play during puberty, when the pituitary is pumping out GH at breakneck pace. But there becomes a tipping point as puberty rambles on. As we advance through that years-long process, we don’t look like giant children – though many of us continue to act like it. No, we also mature physically. This is called the “complete growth effect.” Other pituitary hormones, thyroid hormones, pancreatic hormones, and so forth, act in concert to make us not only taller, but physically mature.

Here is where trade-offs begin to occur. Levels of sex hormones also begin to increase as puberty continues. Two among these, estrogen and testosterone, cause the growth plates in our bones to ossify and fuse. Estrogen has a strong effect on growth plate fusion, resulting in women being generally shorter than men. When the growth plates are fused, which can be seen plainly on an X-ray, it’s game over for growing taller. Our cartilage-to-bone factory has been mothballed, and we stop gaining height. This usually occurs in the late teens, but can stretch until the mid-20s depending on the individual.  So, the sex hormones that were maturing and waking up our happy tissues, have now locked in our height.

However, issues with the growth plates can arise along the way. As we’ve discussed, the amount of GH plays a pivotal role in the growth of long bones. Under normal circumstances, the amount of GH produced stays within normal ranges throughout our youth, and tapers off as we reach adulthood. But we can produce too much of it, known as hyper-secretion, before the growth plates fuse. The body can grow literally too fast, with maturation lagging behind. This is called gigantism. If too little GH is produced, or hypo-secreted, the individual will remain short, which can lead to the condition known as dwarfism.

Too much GH can be produced after the growth plates fuse. In this situation, other cartilage in the body will respond to the excess GH and grow abnormally. This leads to distorted facial features with longer hands and feet, and is known as acromegaly. Young athletes using anabolic steroids to gain muscle and enhance performance can induce premature fusion of the growth plates and permanently stunt growth. Youngsters who break the end of a long bone can damage the growth plate. In these cases, the bone must be set with extra care to avoid problems with future bone growth. If the damage is extensive and the bone not set perfectly, that arm or leg can end up being shorter than the other.

And some parents, concerned about their child’s lack of growth, often ask a physician to prescribe GH. Under a doctor’s supervision, the hormone can be effective for the child. But while some additional gain in height may occur, it is rarely a panacea, and side effects can mitigate the growth benefits. Without the other hormones involved in the complete growth effect present in proportionally higher amounts, or even if they are actually present in proportionally higher amounts, maturation of other tissues and organs can be negatively affected. These complications can start a cascade of other health and psychological problems for the child.

Though cases are rare, GH deficiency in adults is possible, and a doctor might prescribe it. In recent years, GH has been rumored to have anti-aging effects. Many aging men are taking GH in hopes of adding years to their lives and muscle to their bodies. Instead of sitting in a pool with giant Cocoons and the likes of Don Ameche and Jessica Tandy, these men think they can reverse the aging process by what’s in the syringe. GH is a controlled substance, but can be obtained on the black market. While some studies have shown that lean muscle mass can be increased in adults who take GH, side effects such as carpal tunnel syndrome, fluid retention, joint pain and breast enlargement have been observed.

Hormone therapy aside, genetics play a huge role in determining out height. And it’s not a simple equation. One might think that there’s one gene on one chromosome that determines if we end up 4’10” or 6’10” tall. This is hardly the case. The scientific literature now shows that there are dozens of genes that play a role in how tall we become, known as a polygenic trait, and nearly 700 variations in those genes, known as alleles. Which of these genes and what variations an individual receives from his or her parents will have an additive effect on height. This results in the characteristic bell curve for average height in the human population, with most being between about 65 and 71 inches tall.

Nonetheless, average height can vary widely from country to country and even within sub-populations of countries. The Netherlands usually checks in as the country with the tallest population on average. Some Scandinavian and Slavic countries are also on the tall side. Indonesia and several countries in southeast Asia and western South America have relatively short populations. Some African countries have regional populations that are well above average height, and have been mobbed by college basketball recruiters for decades.

It should be noted that good nutrition and solid overall health throughout our childhood can also play some environmental role in how tall we become.  Ultimately, though, like so many aspects of the human experience, we are at the mercy of heredity. Simply stated, if one or both of your parents are taller than most, all else being approximately equal, you’re likely to be taller than most. Our only physical guarantee as adults is growing outward if we don’t control our habits, rather than any guarantee of growing upward. So, for now, if you want to add a few inches to your height, you’ll have to buy taller shoes.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• Why are People so Much Taller Today than Historically?
• Lord Minimus- the Knight Who was Two Feet Tall
• The Man Who was a Dwarf and Later a Giant
• Marilyn Monroe was Not Even Close to a Size 12-16

Expand for References

Why many women want to be with tall men. Psychology Today online. June 15, 2013. Accessed August 8, 2020.

Stulp, G., Buunk, A. P., Verhulst, S., & Pollet, T. V. (2013). Tall claims? Sense and nonsense about the importance of height of US presidents. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 159-171. doi: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.09.002
Stulp, G., Buunk, A. P., & Pollet, T. V. (2013). Women want taller men more than men want shorter women. Personality and Individual Differences. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2012.12.019
https://ift.tt/3hm4gGz (accessed August 8, 2020).

Herlihy, B. 2018. The human body in health and illness. 6th ed. Elsevier.

Mader, S. and M. Windelspecht. 2018. Essentials of Biology. 5th ed. McGraw Hill.

The post Why Don’t You Just Keep Growing Taller? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Kent Cubbage - October 20, 2020 at 05:24PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-

Did Cavemen Ever Really Exist?

A popular perception of our far distant ancestors is that they lived in caves. But did humans ever really live in caves en masse or is this just something that exists only in popular consciousness and not in reality?

To begin with, when you think of cavemen, you probably picture thick browed simpletons clad in tattered furs, sitting around a fire in a cave. This caricature of the dawn of humanity has been around since before the first fossils of prehistoric people were even found. When finally the first human fossils were found in the 19th century and recognised as the remnants of prehistoric people at the end of the 19th century, they were often found in caves, seemingly reinforcing this stereotype.
Since then, scientists have found out a lot about these supposed cavemen. Research was especially intensive in Europe, Siberia and the Middle East. This is why we know a lot about the people of this region during the time period we now know as the Stone Age, and more precisely: The Old Stone Age, also called the Palaeolithic.

It is an extremely long stretch of time dating from about three million years ago to about twelve thousand years ago. It is characterised by the use of stone tools by humans. Humans here being understood in the very broad sense of different human species like Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and modern humans. In short, all species classified in the genus Homo, yes this is the scientific term, are considered as being human. We today are considered “anatomically modern humans” or Homo sapiens sapiens. To sum things up, different types of people from prehistory were lumped together into a group we call humans.

So did these people of the palaeolithic live in caves? The answer is yes, our ancestors lived in caves. At least some did, though not permanently. And they also used other forms of dwellings at the same time.

For example, besides caves, another option that offers natural protection from the elements are rock shelters. A rock shelter is a shallow cave-like hollowing of a rock face that is thus open on most sides. It is usually formed when a layer of rock erodes while the rest of the rock face stays intact on top, thus creating a cut-out in the rock. It is, essentially, a natural roof. To palaeolithic people, it gave limited shelter against the elements. Both Neanderthals and modern humans built structures inside caves and at rock shelters to make the place more comfortable.
But here is the problem with caves and rock shelters: Palaeolithic people were hunter-gatherers. They went from place to place to hunt and gather food and other supplies.

Hunter-gatherers follow herds of prey animals, gather berries and seafood, hunt small game and fish to nourish themselves. They also produce leather and gather resources such as wood and stones. That’s right. Stone was an important resource to people of the, well, Stone Age. Shocking, I know.
So, people had to move a lot. But caves are quite stationary. So what do you do when you get somewhere, you need to shelter from the elements and there is no cave in sight? Why, camping, of course! The archaeological record points to the fact that palaeolithic people moved from place to place to camp sites that were known to them and used over many generations.

Ongoing research in south-western France, in a region known for its many and rich archaeological sites in caves and rock shelters, shows that even in such an environment where a lot of caves were present and used, dwellings were still made on open terrain. This shows that even in a place where natural shelters were abundant, palaeolithic people felt the need to create dwellings out in the open to suit their needs.2

If caves were not quite as important as was portrayed by the caveman stereotype, why did we find so many traces of palaeolithic life in caves? The answer to that is two-fold: On the one hand, the already existing stereotype of the caveman and early finds in caves naturally oriented more research in caves. It is a selection bias. On the other hand, the conditions for the preservation of fossils in caves are extremely good. Caves not only shelter humans from rain and wind, but also all other kind of things that are left behind in them. Adding to the protection from the weather, many caves accumulate sediment steadily over time burying archaeological traces. They are ideal grounds to conserve a glimpse of the past.

Outside of caves, in open terrain, the chances for the preservation of archaeological traces are dire as the exposure to weather, scavenging animals, flooding, burrowing animals and many other things like soil composition can destroy them partially or completely.

Adding to this problem, the further back in time we go, the more difficult the access to sites will be. As millenia of sediment pile on, access to relevant layers gets more difficult.

Furthermore, finding a palaeolithic archaeological site requires a lot of knowledge, skill and sheer luck. It’s the old needle in a haystack problem. Often sites get discovered by accident.

As many palaeolithic dwellings will have been made with perishable material, all that can indicate the presence of a campsite might be some holes in the ground for posts which were inserted to support a structure. These post-holes are visible to archaeologists in the earth as the hole will be coloured slightly differently than the surrounding soil even after the post has been removed or rotten away.

Aside from post-holes, there is a wide variety of things that can indicate a palaeolithic campsite, like rocks and remnants of coal from a hearth or campfire, concentrations of animal bones indicating hunting, trapping or fishing, stone tools or scraps left from stone tool making. Pits were also features of dwellings. They were landfill sites where all kinds of trash was discarded.

Together, all these traces can give archaeologists clues as to how a campsite may have looked. You can imagine that campsites that were used only briefly would have left very few traces whereas campsites used over longer periods of time were more elaborate and left behind more traces.

While it’s likely that some form of artificial shelter has been used for a much longer time, the first unambiguous archaeological evidence is from the Upper Palaeolithic, a period dating from about 50,000 to 12,000 years ago. It coincides with the arrival of early modern humans in Europe and what is today the Middle East. However, Neanderthals were already living in the region by that time. There are some hints that Neanderthals used some simple tents besides living in caves. The evidence, though, is sparse. Structures found inside caves inhabited by Neanderthals show that they were capable of building shelters.3 They were, however not as sophisticated as those of modern humans. This probably limited their possibilities to expand into landscapes with few caves. At that time, the climate was very cold. After all, it was called the Ice Age for a reason. A form of shelter was a prerequisite to live in the cold landscape of Europe at the time if no caves were available.

Two very interesting archaeological sites are located in western Germany. They are campsites dated into a relatively mild era of the Ice Age around 13,000 years ago,4 overlooking a part of the Rhine that was then very wide at that location, akin to a big lake. The two camps were placed on the opposite sides of the Rhine, one in today’s Gönnersdorf, the other in Andernach. The sites are thought to have existed at the same time.

Both sites are especially well preserved as we owe their conservation to a volcanic eruption. The campsites are located in a now dormant volcanic region. The eruption covered the whole region with pumice stones thus protecting the sites from erosion and other adverse effects to its preservation.5

The campsites show evidence of dwellings. They were round tents of about six to eight metres across with stone paved floors. A wooden frame was probably covered by horse hides, which were hunted by the dwellers. There are signs pointing to the use of fire inside the structures. Some of the stones might have been used to cook on, but only one dwelling had evidence of an actual hearth. It is likely that fires were made on the paved surface and the fire’s remnants were carefully removed after each use. These dwellings were probably used over a long period of time. The campsite could have been a base camp and smaller secondary camps were used as needed.
The campsites also revealed palaeolithic art. Besides jewellery made from seashells or animal bone and teeth, the most spectacular finds are slates engraved with figures. One famous depiction has been interpreted as dancing women. Other slates include horses, a mammoth, woolly rhino, an aurochs, a wolf, several types of birds, a seal and a few more animals.

So these dwellings were from a time and place with a relatively mild climate for the Ice Age. Let’s have a look at dwellings from a different time and place- Ukrainian Mammoth Huts.

Imagine you are in a cold steppe like the tundra in modern-day northern Siberia. There is plenty of game to hunt, but hardly any wood to build a shelter or make fire. How do you protect yourself from the cold wind blowing over the open plains?

Our inventive ancestors had a surprising answer to that: Build a hut out of mammoth bones. Yes, you heard correctly. In a place called Mezhirich in Ukraine the remnants of huts built of mammoth bones were discovered. Jaw bones of the mammoth made up a circular wall about five metres across and the top was made of branches, probably supporting hides. Inside the huts, hearths burning mammoth bones offered warmth. These dwellings are thought to have taken ten men over five days to build. Much like the campsites in Germany, these huts were thus not used to camp for the night, but for long periods of time. The mammoth huts were likely reused season after season according to the demands of the nomadic lifestyle of their builders.7

It is not the only place known to have used bones as building material, but it is certainly one of the most spectacular. Other dwellings from the open steppe were, much like the huts in Mezhirich, dwellings made to last for longs periods of time. In Mezin, also located in Ukraine, remnants of a hut have been reconstructed as a sort of tent, conical in shape, made of mammoth bones and reindeer antlers, covered with hides. Large bones might have been used to weigh down the hides onto the frame of the hut. In Pushkari, also in Ukraine, a rectangular depression in the soil was used as a dwelling, probably covered by a tent-like structure.

Moving on from there, we have the site of Ohalo in Israel revealed six huts in what appears to have been a year-round habitation. It is dated to 23,000 years ago, placing it well within the palaeolithic era. The site contained the earliest recorded brush huts, which are huts made of small branches. They were two to five metres across with an oval layout. The site also shows signs of cultivation of plants millenia before agriculture became widespread during what is known as the neolithic revolution. But the most interesting aspect of the site is likely the preservation of beds made of grass in the huts, the oldest evidence of bedding.9 Its extraordinary preservation of grass and wood is due to it being on the shores of a lake, called the Sea of Galilee, that submerged the site. Such waterlogged sediments make for excellent preservation of organic matter as the usual decomposition processes are hindered by a lack of oxygen. As the Sea of Galilee’s water level dropped dramatically in 1989, the submerged site was exposed and was thus made accessible for archaeological research.

So to sum up, yes, there really were so-called “cavemen”, but as we can see from the preceding examples, they did not all live in caves, or at least not all the time. Far from being the rock-bashing simpletons they might be sometimes portrayed as, people of the Stone Age had a multitude of types of dwellings that were adapted to the needs of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the climate they lived in, and the materials at their disposal.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• Did the Warrior Women Known as the Amazons Ever Actually Exist?
• Did Booby Traps Really Exist in Ancient Egyptian Tombs
• Did People Ever Really Put Crocodiles In Moats?
• Could You Really Legally Kill Someone with a “Wanted: Dead or Alive” Bounty on Their Head?

Expand for References

Boriskovskij, P.I. “The Study of Paleolithic Dwellings in the USSR [in Russian].” Sovetskaya Arkheologiya 1 (1958): 3–19. https://ift.tt/2EoKtbv (accessed on 2020-07-18)
Bosinski, Gerhard. Eiszeitjäger Im Neuwieder Becken : Archäologie des Eiszeitalters am Mittelrhein. 3., erw. und veränd. Aufl. Archäologie an Mittelrhein und Mosel. Koblenz am Rhein: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz, Abt. Archäologische Denkmalpflege Amt Koblenz, 1992.
Freeman, Leslie G., and J. Gonzalez Echegaray. “Aurignacian Structural Features and Burials at Cueva Morin (Santander, Spain).” Nature 226, no. 5247 (1970): 722–726.
Gladkih, Mikhail I., Ninelj L. Kornietz, and Olga Soffer. “Mammoth-Bone Dwellings on the Russian Plain.” Scientific American 251, no. 5 (1984): 164–75.
Isabella, Jude. “The Caveman’s Home Was Not a Cave.” Nautilus, December 5, 2013. https://ift.tt/IUwE2j. (accessed on 2020-07-18)
Klein, Richard G. The Human Career : Human Biological and Cultural Origins. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Lavail, Frédéric: “ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS PEYRE BLANQUE”, Youtube-video, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x187BWCjgvI. (accessed on 2020-07-18)
Moore, Jerry D. The Prehistory of Home. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Nadel, Dani, Ehud Weiss, Orit Simchoni, Alexander Tsatskin, Avinoam Danin, and Mordechai Kislev. “Stone Age Hut in Israel Yields World’s Oldest Evidence of Bedding.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101, no. 17 (April 27, 2004): 6821–26. https://ift.tt/3lsG9IW.
Street, Martin, Olaf Jöris, and Elaine Turner. “Magdalenian Settlement in the German Rhineland – An Update.” Quaternary International, The Magdalenian Settlement of Europe, 272–273 (September 12, 2012): 231–50. https://ift.tt/3gzPUBg.
________________________________________
1. See interview of Meg Conkey by Isabella Jude for Nautilus ; see for example Street, Jöris & Turner p. 243.
2. Nautilus-Interview; https://ift.tt/1PIp2jE (accessed on 2020-07-18); “ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS PEYRE BLANQUE”, Youtube-Video (accessed on 2020-07-18)
3. See for example Freeman & Gonzales Echegaray 1970.
4. Street, Jöris & Turner 2012, p. 235.
5. Bosinksi 1992, p.86.
6. Bosinski 1992, pp. 64–67, p. 86–88; Street, Jöris & Turner 2012 p. 234, 240.
7. Moore 2012, pp. 115 sqq.; Gladikh et al. 1984.
8. Klein 1999, p. 535–540; see Boriskovskij 1958 for the original reconstruction drawings.
9. Moore 2012, 106 sqq. Nadel et al. 2004

The post Did Cavemen Ever Really Exist? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Pierre-Louis Blanchard - October 20, 2020 at 02:13PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-

Medieval Times [Part 2]

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how soap actually works to get rid of microbes.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor NordVPN. Get 68% off NordVPN! Only $3.71/mo, plus you get an additional month FREE at https://nordvpn.com/brainfoodshow Or use coupon code: brainfoodshow

Next up, we have the main course discussing whether or not Medieval Europeans actually didn’t bathe that much or not.

As for the desert for today, we look at whether castles in Medieval times actually ever had things like crocodiles in them or not.

On another note, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using (including hopefully giving us some feedback related to the new format), we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Medieval Times [Part 2] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Daven Hiskey - October 19, 2020 at 09:11PM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-

Indie Game Releases of the Week: 19th to 25th October 2020

Indie Game Releases of the Week: 19th to 25th October 2020 This week in indie games, we have the spooky platformer Pumpkin Jack, horror adventure Amnesia:...

The post Indie Game Releases of the Week: 19th to 25th October 2020 appeared first on IND13.

from IND13
by Rahul Shirke October 18, 2020 at 08:20AM

Indie Game Releases of the Week: 12th to 18th October 2020

Indie Game Releases of the Week: 12th to 18th October 2020 This week in indie games, we have the management game Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!, revolution...

The post Indie Game Releases of the Week: 12th to 18th October 2020 appeared first on IND13.

from IND13
by Rahul Shirke October 11, 2020 at 08:32AM

Smart Sweets: Low Sugar Candy is the Future

Something can be chewy, sweet, sour and good for you?

from Candy Gurus
by Matty October 06, 2020 at 08:02PM

Review: Starburst Duos

We've long held Starburst in high esteem as among the best of all fruit snacks, but generally they've been conservative about expanding into new flavors. ...

from Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
by October 04, 2020 at 12:49PM

Indie Game Releases of the Week: 5th to 11th October 2020

Indie Game Releases of the Week: 5th to 11th October 2020 This week in indie games, we have the espionage card game The Solitaire Conspiracy, witchy...

The post Indie Game Releases of the Week: 5th to 11th October 2020 appeared first on IND13.

from IND13
by Rahul Shirke October 04, 2020 at 07:08AM

Review: Lay's Mieng Kam Krob Ros

These chips had a flavor based on a Thai dish called Mieng Kam Krob Ros, but when I Googled it, most things pointed were just about this very snack, so the circular reference didn't help me to understand the intended flavor. ...

from Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
by October 02, 2020 at 10:47AM

Medieval Times [Part 1]

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at why the toilet is called the “Crapper” and the “John”.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor Skillshare. For a limited time, use the following link to get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: http://skillshare.com/brainfood

Next up, we discuss all about what Medieval Europeans did with all their bodily expulsions and whether they really did just toss it out the window. This all culminates in the Great Stink of 1858 and how that was finally resolved.

On another note, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using (including hopefully giving us some feedback related to the new format), we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Medieval Times [Part 1] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

from Today I Found Out
by Daven Hiskey - October 01, 2020 at 02:37AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
-