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Ants... In... Space
Ant writes "The Fowler students picked an experiment with ants, rather than plants, because they wanted to see some activity in space. They have been following the ants' progress on the web. The students and their teachers also have learned that sometimes the best thought-out hypothesis does not pan out in reality. 'We predicted that the ants would tunnel a lot slower in microgravity, but we're finding out they're moving a lot faster,' said Golash. The students have a control group of ants at their school, living in a similar environment except with gravity. After the shuttle returns from its scheduled 16-day flight in early February, the young scientists will have 30 days to put together a preliminary report. Their "Ants in Space" experiment was sponsored by SPACEHAB, an aerospace company that has worked with NASA for many years to design and build hardware for space experiments."
How can they lift anything in microgravity?
Can they sort tiny screws?
Ants in space, pigs in zen. What's the world coming to?
What's next, SimAnts in Space?
The ending to Ender's Game came to mind when I read this. Creepy.
YOU all look like ants!!!
If the shuttle crashes during re-entry, they can blame it on a bug in the system?
Because things don't weigh much. (The things are also in microgravity...)
I can never tell if people are joking.
Ownyourphone.com. Custom ringtones, cheap and easy
I wonder if it would even be possible for an ant to build a hive in low or no gravity situations. Maybe someone who passed physics can tell me if I'm wrong. I thought that if an ant pushed a stone up, it would keep going until it hit another stone, which would receive the first's momentum, absorb a little bit and pass it on, making all of the tunnels above what you just dug collapse upward.
It would really suck if those ants got loose into the shuttle! Though they might find it to be a shocking experience to meet the electrical system (*cheap rim shot*)
I bet that guy from *NSync is really pissed now that even the lowly ant has beaten him out.
Uhhh... It's really late & I'm drunk.
In Soviet Russia, ants launch you into space.
Profit.
==
And for my next trick, I will disappear.
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
SpaceAnts returned to Earth. Hastily dug, but severely weak tunnel systems collapsed. Ants all dead. What a bummer....
1. The ants were confused and scared. 2. The ants were confused and scared. 3. The ants were confused and scared.
Launch Preparations: $130 million
Anti-Grav Ant Colony: $2000
The fact that 30 years after we put man on the moon, this is the best NASA can come up with: Unfathomible.
You know, how about we try seeing how ants tunnel in Lunar Regolith, or Martian soil. That would be intersting.
This is great for the kids, but I think it just shows how far NASA has NOT come.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I could only attribute this to concepts based on hinderences to human's movements in space. They probably assumed that since Humans have a harder time coordinating while in space suits on different worlds that Ants would have a harder time coordinating in small tunnels in a controled environment.
This of course has so far been proved false, because the Ants have several legs and movement through said tunnels would probably be easier with lower gravity in the same way humans could probably move faster in tunnels on the moon than we could here on earth. Think of it this way, we could jump down a cooridor on the moon far faster than we could walk run or crawl through it on earth.
I think what we're suffering from here is a DSJ - Distributed Simpson's Joke - attack. Fer crying out loud, people - enough already ;^)
Even heroes have the right to dream
Season 6 Episode 7: "The Simpsons already did it!".
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home
No knowledge is bad knowledge. Perhaps ants have an optimal body structure for 0g tunneling? Could be useful to know for asteroid mining operations, perhaps. Then again, it could just be useless.
I think slash needs a new mod point (weird) anyways..
When I was 12-14 I was really into model rockets. I lived with my grandmother at the time and her yard had all kinds of newts and salamanders in it.
"OOH ASTRONEWTS!" Was the first thing that popped into my head.
I forget the model number, but it was an estes rocket with a clear payload chamber on it. I placed my "ASTRONEWT!" into the payload chamber, taped the fuse on the bottom of my C6-7 engine and then backed up for safety.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, BEGINNING FINAL COUNTDOWN FOR LAUNCH!" I could see the little critter had no idea he was about to be launched into the stratosphere as he wiggled and squirmed inside of his cramped quarters.
"5-4-3-2-1 MAIN ENGINES ARE GO YOU HAVE CLEARED THE TOWER" This was about the 10th rocket I had built that year, everything on it was perfect, the wings had been sanded down and painted in 2 coats, same went for the body. This thing had to be the most arodynamically sound rocket I had ever built in my life because it just kept climbing and climbing.
"HOUSTON THIS IS MISSION CONTROL, WE ARE SHOWING YOU HAVE DEPLOYED YOUR RE-ENTRY PARACHUTES"
The rocket had flown so high I had to hop on my bike and chase it down. It ended up about 1/2 mile from where it had launched.
"HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM"
I looked at the rocket, and inside the poor newt wasn't squirming anymore. I don't know if he had died from shock, g forces, or what, but he was dead. I would have guess G forces from the condition of the corpse.
Well, after that I ended the astronewt program. Yeah it was a fucked up thing to do, and I regret it as an adult, but we were talking about animal experiments in space right?
It wasn't until Buzz Aldrin's EVA during the last Gemini mission that they had worked out a set of maneuvers and restraints to make sure that when an astronaut turned a knob, he didn't turn instead.
Now, an ant is never free floating. She always has something to hold onto, the tunnel. But if we have learned anything in space, you really can't assume anything. You have to observe it and see how it actually behaves.
Take fire for instance. You take it for granted here on earth that you can see the flames. Well, flames are caused by convection, which does't happen in micro-gravity. Hot air has the same "weight" as cold air. Instead the plasma forms a sphere that is tricky to see. Smoke does not rise from the fire for the very same reason.
With that sort of information, NASA found they had to design completely new fire detection systems for the ISS.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This is of these experiments where scientist make perverted experiments with animals which are totally useless and provide no advances for the problems of this worlds.
Most animal experiments can be done these days with artificial cell pads and simulations. There is definitely no need to use animals anymore. Furthermore the above mentioned experiment doesn't provide any new information. And it covers a niche of science which is partially useless for real world application anyway like feeding the hungry, stopping wars or curing illnesses.
I think our society has come to a very bad point when scientists make sick experiments with animals just for curiosity or to feel power.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
2. We probably wasted thousands of tax dollars on this experiment.
You're nothing; like me.
"Eh, its a job." one beetle was reported as saying, before munching on a space turd.
Seriously, I'm all for getting kids involved in science and mathematics, but this is probably one of the dumbest experiments I've ever heard of. Unless the ants evolve into giant mutant space ants before the shuttle returns, I don't see how this can be of any practical value.
I'm trying and I really can't think of any solid benefits from trying this. Couldn't they have tried to design something a little more practical, or was this just dumbing down the project for lower-level students, like all schools do?
I imagine some of the smarter students had some more interesting ideas, but they weren't accepted, cause lil john and jane wouldn't have a clue what was going on. God forbid we actually challenge kids to learn something advanced.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Are the effects of space travel and microgravity on ants inherently more interesting for Nerds than the same effects on the web weaving of spiders, or cocoon spinning of silkworms, or the growth of crystalline filaments, or the eggs, development and taxis of Medaka fish, or the tunneling habits of carpenter bees?
Kids from 6 countries participate with 6 projects in this. WTF is so special with ants that hasn't been done before? Is it because "Fowler Highschool" is more easily pronounced than "Liechtenstein Gymnasium" for some people, or what?
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
I have done some reading on this experiment. The ants are going to be living in a agar based colliodal suspension. The agar (red sweed) will be mixed with sucrose (sugar), and some antifungals and of course water. You can buy the similar habitat at http://www.beachworld.it/eng/antquarium.html Or you can mix your own.. agar.. sometimes (agar-agar) is used as a gelatin replacement.. and is often used in asian cooking..
I thought the point was to get the bugs OUT of the system. Dubugging in micro-g won't be fun at all!
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Kent Brockman reports on Channel Six.
Kent: We're just about to get our first pictures from inside the
spacecraft with "average-naut" Homer Simpson, and we'd like to
-- aah!
[Camera shows a close-up of an ant floating in front of the
three astronauts]
Kent: Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but,
uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft
has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master
race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this
vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men
or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no
stopping them; the ants will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to
remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful
in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar
caves.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
-- the last time I visited a site that ended in .cx, I was in trouble.
:-P
Oh, that's just great. Now you made me imagine ants crawling down another kind of tunnel... After poking put my eyes, will somebody please burn my occipital lobe cortex?
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
I'm trying and I really can't think of any solid benefits from trying this.
This statement could have two interpretations. One, that there are no direct benefits to what could be derived from this experiment. Two, that there are no benefits at all, scientific or otherwise.
I agree with number one. I disagree with number two. And furthermore, I think the assumption behind number one is faulty.
I believe there are practical, non-scientific benefits from doing this. You mention that you are in favor of getting kids involved in science. What better way then having them directly involved in real science? With real scientific equipment? This appears to me to be a valid scientific effort, albeit of little practical value. But is will no doubt have an immense effect on the self esteem of the kids involved. And don't tell me that you went through high school as a geek and couldn't have used a boost to your self esteem. (Another post in this thread complained of wasted tax dollars for field trips from NY to CO. I see no differnce between this and elite sports teams travelling for interstate games.)
The faulty asssumption is that scientific research needs to have immediate practical application. Because this assumption is so widely held, and in many cases not recognized as such, we have the situation where funding for basic fundemental research continues to shrink.
Consider the fate of the Superconducting Supercollider. The SSC designed to answer questions in physics that would have little or no immediate practical applications. But because of the assumption that all science has to be for something now, it failed to secure funding.
What that Newton, Maxwell, or Faraday had been forced to work under such constraints? Can you imagine Newton in a publish or perish environment? I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall for Newton's response to, "Yes, yes Issac, we all know prisms make pretty colors. But as to giving you money to play with such toys, well ...". And I believe it was Faraday who when asked what use his work was replied, "Of what use is a newborn baby?" (I have seen this quote attributed to both Faraday and Ben Franklin.)
But without the basic work done by Faraday, Maxwell, et al, we would not have had the understanding of electromagnetism that many years later allows us to use computers to post comments on /.. Without the work done early in the last century on quantum mechanics we wouldn't have transistors or integrated circuits.
Consider the Michelson-Morley experiment. No immediate practical benefit at all. And furthermore, one that obtained a negative result. They expected to measure the effect of the ether and did not. Imagine how it would be reported today? Experiment to measure ether a failure, no effect found. It was Edison who said, "I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that don't work." No well thought out and performed scientific experiment is ever a 'failure'. Unless your assumption is that all experiments should have the predictable result for practical benefits, stated in advance as justification in the funding grant request.
The faulty assumption of immediate practical benefit precludes doing fumdemental research of possible long term benefit. So what knowledge that we haven't gained because the SSC was canceled would have been useful in 2050?
There is a difference between basic research and applied research. The faulty assumption is that all research is/should be applied. This has the practical (i.e. in practise) result that in general, only those projects that have immediate payoffs get funded. This is a bad thing.
Steve M
While reading the various slashdot posts, I was struck by the thought that apparently, MOST of these kids have never just spent an afternoon watching ants. What sort of deprived childhood was that??!
Cripes, I'm 47, and I still enjoy watching ants. These kids don't know what they're missing.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The only point of the shuttle in actual perfect free fall (and thus zero-G) is the exact center of gravity. All other points experience tidal forces, which, while minute, are measurable and may (or may not) affect experiments.
Thus the term "microgravity." It's not bad science at all, you just don't know what you are talking about.