You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘white’ tag.
Back in college I took a course on planetary and atmospheric dynamics. Although I don’t recall the course as well as I should (the class was extremely mathematical for my taste), one concept which has remained with me is is “albedo”–how well the planetary surface reflects solar radiation back into space. Albedo was a strange wild card in everyone’s computer models of planetary temperature and climate. Small changes in planetary albedo could lead to big temperature changes across the globe (as say when high-albedo ice sheets melt or when reflective white clouds form). Albedo isn’t just important in astrophysics: how well a surface reflects or absorbs radiant energy has engineering and economic implications down here at a human scale as well.
This awkward lede is an attempt to contextualize the potentially enormous importance of today’s color-themed topic. Researchers at Purdue University have invented a very, very bright shade of white paint. The color is so white that it reflects 98.1 percent of visible light. The color (which lacks a name, but should be called something like “great white”, “polar bare”, or “super dazzle”) is so radiant that surfaces painted with the compound are cooler than the ambient temperature of things around them. It is the polar opposite (snicker) of the ultra-black developed a few years ago.
The secret to this color is a molecular engineering trick. Barium sulfate is a safe and commonly used white pigment for makeup and coated papers. Engineers created a range of microscopically sized barium sulfate particles and then combined these differently sized particles into a single coating. The result was this glistening mirror white.
Now I can’t show you this color in a photo (since it wouldn’t make any sense on the luminous medium of your computer screen), but I get the sense that, like that super black, it has an unearthly look to it in the real world. Speaking of the real world there is no news yet on practical or saleable applications of the incredible ultra white (which makes me think it might prove hard to produce at scale). Yet the fact that it exists is exciting for engineers (and artists too). Let’s get to work making some more of this stuff so we can find out if is any good…and so we know whether we can solve our climate problems by painting Nevada and the Kumtag Desert shiny white!
Although crowns are one of our main themes here, Ferrebeekeeper has largely resisted writing about the British crown jewels…until a week or so ago, when we looked at the strange history of a preposterous medieval spoon which is somehow part of the UK royal regalia. The massive popularity of that post has inspired our researchers to probe more deeply into the royal collection, and a shocking truth came to light. The crown which is arguably the most iconic (or at least the second-most-iconic) of all English crowns was not an “official” crown (in that it was a personal piece of jewelry rather than an item owned “by the crown”). Here is the somewhat touching story of Queen Victoria’s iconic “little crown” which is sort of a signature piece of the great monarch.
Queen Victoria was queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 until 1901 (an era which also witnessed the zenith of English wealth, power, and influence around the globe). For much of that time she was married to her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (he really was a rather debonair looking fellow when he was young). Sadly, the German prince died in 1861 (after making sure that the United States and the United Kingdom didn’t come to war over some vile confederate traitors who were plucked off of an English flagged vessel a trifle peremptorily–thanks, Albert!). Queen Victoria was devastated. She wore black mourning clothes the rest of her life and never remarried. Her already regal and aloof personality became even more solemn and remote. In 1870, the ministers, courtiers, and suchlike fancy folk who ran England begin to become alarmed at the queen’s prolonged absence from public life (and her noteworthy austerity). They begged her to return to royal duties and ceremonies. Naturally such things would require her best prop–her crown–however the Imperial State Crown (which is really, truly THE crown of the UnitedKingdom) was too heavy for the diminutive fifty something sovereign. (As an aside, Wikipedia tells us exactly how heavy this beeweled monstrosity really was: “It weighed 39.25 troy ounces (43.06 oz; 1,221 g) and was decorated with 1,363 brilliant-cut, 1,273 rose-cut and 147 table-cut diamonds, 277 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 4 rubies, and the Black Prince’s Ruby (a spinel).” Anyway, Queen Victoria did not want to wear such a thing while doing queenly things, partly so that her head did not fall off, but also because the giant Imperial State Crown would not fit on top of the widow’s cap which she wore until she died. But what is the point of being queen of half of the world if you don’t have a crown?
To solve the dilemma, Queen Victoria turned to the royal jewelers, Garrard & Co. and requested (i.e. commissioned and purchased) a solution. She had them make a tiny crown which would fit on top of her widow’s cap and which would not compress her spine with all sorts of fatuous gold and jewels. The tiny crown was made of plain silver and was a mere 9 cm (3 1⁄2 in) across and 10 cm (4 in) high. It was plainly and frugally fitted with 1,162 brilliant and 138 rose-cut diamonds which the queen had lying around. According to Victorian mourning tradition, white diamonds, (being white) were appropriate for mourning attire. The tiny crown of Queen Victoria was her own. She bought it and paid for it with her own money and it did not belong to the crown (a phrase which strikes me as funny in this instance). During the 30 years she wore it, the crown became part an iconic part of her brand. If we were to summon Terry Gilliam and have him animate queen Victoria, I am 100% certain she would be portrayed with her little crown (although I suspect she would prefer to have her little dog, Turi, a beloved Pomeranian, whose company is what she asked for when she was herself dying).
Queen Victoria willed her little crown to the crown, so it is now somewhere in the glittering stack of ermine, gold, scepters, rubies, emeralds, and er, spoons at the Tower of London. I have always though of Queen Victoria as something akin to the gold statue of Jupiter on Capitoline Hill–an inhuman symbol of inhuman power. The story of her little silver crown (a memento to someone she loved and lost and then mourned for the whole rest of her life) humanized her to a surprising degree. This is funny, because if anyone that I knew commissioned a crown made of 1300 diamonds that they could wear around all of the time it would have exactly the opposite effect. We will keep thinking about this hierarchy business.
Enough human fripperies, let’s meet some real bats! These adorable little characters are Honduran white bats (Ectophylla alba), AKA Caribbean white tent-making bats. Out of 1300 species of bats, this is one of only six varieties with all white fur, and yet that glistening snowy fur apparently serves them quite well. The bats roost under translucent leaves in their native rain forests. The green light shining through the leaves during the day colors the bats a vegetative green which is very hard to see. At other times of less bright light, they look like wasp’s nests, which their predators tend to assiduously avoid.
But wait, did somebody say these are tent-making bats? As anybody who has been in a Boy scout survival course/mishap can attest, it is not as easy as it sounds to make a tent. Are these bats actual building animals? Should I have included them in my building week special feature?
Well, the bats are not exactly weaverbirds, but they do go to great lengths to select perfect giant leaves of heliconia plants. Then working together a team of bats bite out the sideribs of the designated leaf and shape it in such a fashion that the leaf bends into a perfect tent. It sounds pretty snug & sophisticated to me (but maybe I am still aggrieved over that bad lean-to from scout camp).
Living almost exclusively on a single species of fig (Ficus colubrinae), the Honduran white bat is one of the two smallest fruit eating bats in the world. Speaking of size, the bats have a body length of 5 centimeters (2 inches) at most. Little is known about their habits or reproductive behaviors. Females an bear a single offspring twice a year. Despite their tiny size, they are capable of living for more than 20 years.
As you have probably noticed, the Honduran white bat is not exclusively white, its ears and its leaf shaped nose (it is one of the family of leaf nosed bats) are bright yellow. Interestingly, the yellowness of a bat’s appendages seems to be a sort of sexual selection trait, like the antlers of the Irish elk. The more yellow the nose, the more desirable the male bat is to discerning little lady bats!
This yellow pigment is not interesting only to amorous bats. The yellow coloration comes from lutein, an esterified protein which the bat synthesizes from carotenoids in its figgy diet. This molecular biology is of great interest to biomedical researchers since lutein plays an important role in retinal health in mammals such as primates (like, say, uh, humans, for example). Our inability to esterify luteins in our eyes seems to contribute to vision loss and macular degeneration as we age. Perhaps we could learn some things from the Honduran white bats (in addition to tent-making, I mean).
Happy Fourth of July! Our nation is going through a terrible patch (thanks to a combination of deeper structural problems, a criminal idiot for a president, and the novel coronavirus), however, in the past we have been able to bounce back from these sorts of disasters, reform the constitution, and get back on track. It is the most meaningful election I can remember this year and Ferrebeekeeper will have lots to say about that as we get closer to Fall!
For today though, let’s celebrate the finer aspects of America rather than the current (Republican-caused) governmental dysfunction. Independence Day in America is traditionally marked with ornamental novelty explosions AKA fireworks. I love fireworks, but I have already said all that I can think of to say about them in past blog posts. Fireworks are one of those things which are more fun in the real world than online or in pictures. They always look like sublime sea anemones made of radiant fire to me. That is as awesome as it sounds..in the vast July nighttime sky, however pictures of such a thing would look like little black and white cnidarians. Therefore, to celebrate this rough Fourth of July, let’s look at some actual cnidarians in patriotic shades of red, white, and blue. It is true that these pictures won’t set your topiary on fire or cause your house pet to cower under the bed, yet I think if you take a moment to really look at the sea anemones, you will be struck anew with their expressive otherworldly beauty. Then you can hold this undersea pulchritude in your heart and remember it this evening as you watch rockets detonate above you.
RED
WHITE
BLUE
Wow! Those are some good-looking and patriotic invertebrates. I can barely tell whether I am on the national coral reef (?) or on the national mall in Washington. I hope you are having a lovely day relaxing with your friends and family. Get some well-deserved R&R because when we get back from summer holiday we are going to have to roll up our sleeves and clean up this ghastly mess.
It’s no good hiding. Everyone is going to have to pitch in…
Ok, I’ll admit it, maybe I still have some “panda-monium” in my system from Tuesday’s announcement about the 2022 Olympic mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen, an adorable panda wearing some sort of ice hauberk. To follow up on that post, here is a picture of a baby panda in China which was just born with white and gray fur. What’s the story here?
Now everyone knows that pandas are black and white (except for the red panda, which is really a whole different sort of animal), however it turns out there are a couple of mysterious off-color giant panda clans out there in the bamboo forests. Apparently a family from Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding sometimes has gray and white cubs. Pandas from the so-called Gray family look wise beyond their years at first but then turn to normal white and black as they grow into adulthood. Here is Chengshi, another gray-and-white cub born a few years ago who matured into a lovely black-and -white goofball.
However, the Gray family of color-changing gray pandas is not the most dramatic clan of differently colored giant pandas.
This is Qi Zai, the world’s only captive brown and white panda. Qi Zai is from the distant Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi, where a subspecies of brown and white pandas appropriately known as Qinling pandas are known to reside. Qinling pandas are rarely spotted in the forest fastnesses of their remote home. The pandas are reputedly somewhat smaller (and more sensitive) than their black-and-white relatives. Zoologists are still arguing about how to classify the brown and white pandas (are they a true sub-species, or just an unusual family), but it seems like they are certainly the rarest of the rare. It is is estimated that only 200-300 exist in the whole world.
Of all of the world’s abalone species, the white abalone (Haliotis sorenseni) has the sweetest, whitest, most delectable meat…or so I am told: I have never eaten one. Indeed, it is increasingly unlikely that anyone will eat one again. A horrible thing happened to the white abalone in the seventies (and to lots of other people and things too, but we need to stay focused). A commercial fishery came into existence and, although it lasted for less than a decade 30 years ago, it seems to have dealt a nearly fatal blow to the white abalone.
White abalone are herbivorous gastropods which are not exactly white—they have an orange foot with tan sensory tentacles (!). They are herbivores which live on rocks surrounded by sand channels at about 25-30 meters of depth (80-100 feet). They can be found in Southern California and the northern parts of the Baja peninsula. White abalone are broadcast spawners. They release…uh, their gametes into open water in large numbers. The abalone fishery of the seventies and early eighties thinned their numbers so drastically that they do not exist in proximity to each other. White abalone live a maximum of about forty years, so the last natural specimens are dying off without reproducing. They are broadcasting their genetic information into the open ocean with no complimentary abalones nearby to produce offspring.
The NOAA is working with various partners to save the abalone. The administration and various mollusk lovers and malacologists have created a captive breeding program at the University of California-Davis Bodega Marine Lab. Although they have successfully spawned enormous numbers of white abalones, the larval shellfish do not do well in captivity and the species’ ultimate survival remains an open question. Fortunately, in pursuing the goal of saving the white abalone, the scientists have learned a great deal about abalone disease treatment and prevention and how to maintain water suitable for the young sea snails. The whole sad episode seems to indicate several troubling things about our (in) bility to manage marine resources—and yet, through extraordinary countermeasures we have forestalled complete disaster. I wonder if the white abalone will manage to come back based on all we have learned.
In America, the last Friday of April is traditionally Arbor Day, a day for planting and conserving trees. I probably should have written about the cherry tree today…but the blossoms have already largely fallen off so I am going to choose a different blossoming tree to concentrate on—the common hawthorn Crataegus monogyna. The Hawthorn is another of the most beautiful flowering trees of the northern hemisphere. Like cherry trees, hawthorns are members of the rose family. They are small to medium sized trees of great beauty which have thorns and grey-brown bark with orange fissures. Hawthorns bear red pome fruit which is said to taste like overripe apples (the fruit of North American species of Hawthorns was a major food source for North America peoples before familiar Eurasian fruit arrived). The common hawthorn tree was originally native to Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia.
The Hawthorn is known for beautiful glistening blossoms which appear in May or June and resemble five petaled roses (although the vase-shaped tree is lovely year-round. More prosaically, the trees have been used as hedges because of their dense growth, hard wood, and thorns.
The tree features prominently in the folklore of Europe and western Asia. The Greeks esteemed it enormously—it was the symbol of hope and blossoming boughs were carried in wedding processions. In Northern Europe, the Hawthorn was identified with ancient gods. For a long time, even after Europe was Christianized, hawthorn trees were reckoned to be found near entrances to the otherworld—the realm of elves, fairies, and magical folk. It was allegedly bad luck to kill—or even cut a hawthorn tree, and the misfortunes of Delorean motor company are said to have started when they cut down a grove to build their factory.
In Christian mythology, the crown of thorns of Jesus was putatively made from hawthorn wood. Despite this, Christians, apparently stayed fond of Hawthorn and there were medieval legends connecting it with various Saints and miracles. Hawthorn is certainly a miraculously beautiful tree. I would totally plant one for Arbor Day…if I had a sapling…or a place to plant it.
The roots of our third most popular topic go back 5500 years to pre-dynastic Ancient Egypt! In those times, the upper kingdom of Egypt (which spread along the Nile banks in the arid highlands to the south) was an entirely separate civilization from the fertile lower kingdom in the north. Sometime around 3100 the kingdoms were united under one ruler—the first pharaoh. The extremely silly yet very beautiful white crown of Upper Egypt—which looked like a narrow white flower bulb–was combined with the even sillier and even more beautiful red crown of Lower Egypt which looked like a flared cylinder with a spiral bee proboscis sticking out of it. The white crown was (and is?) the sacred emblem of the white vulture goddess Hedjet whereas the red crown was connected with Wadjet the pretty cobra goddess. Together these crowns became the emblem of the god king pharaoh for 3000 years.
The combined white and red crowns of upper and lower Egypt!
You can read all about the crowns and their symbolism in the original post, but perhaps you are asking why I write so much about crowns anyway (my mom, a stalwart free American citizen always wonders about it). I find it fascinating that humans endow so much status and power in individuals. The crowns of emperors, pharaohs, kings, princes, and sundry other royal conquerors/hucksters are the absolute embodiment of this tendency to invest mythical potency and authority in other people. Crowns are ancient storied jeweled symbols of the fact that we think other people are better than us. The sacred headdresses accumulate astonishing histories: yet, in and of themselves, they are also remarkably absurd. It boggles the mind that people will do anything just because someone is wearing a cylinder of metal with squiggles or shiny stones upon their head.
Yeah, this makes sense.
I’m sorry for the lack of posts for the last week: I was out of the city on a family visit in the bosky hills Appalachia. It was wonderful to get out of the city and spend some time on the farm recharging my mental and emotional batteries! One of the highlights of the trip was interacting with my parents’ flock of pilgrim geese–a heritage breed of medium sized geese noted for their mild manners and gender-selected colors: pilgrim ganders are white (with maybe a few dark tail feathers) whereas the female geese are medium gray with white bellies.
Pilgrim geese obtained their name because they allegedly came to America with the protestant refugees who founded New England—the pilgrims–but that dramatic historically interesting story may be an invention. The Live Stock Conservancy describes the various possible origins of the breed on its website:
[A poultry researcher] found numerous references to auto-sexing geese in colonial America, western England and Normandy, France, but the breed was never referred to by a name. According to some authorities, the Pilgrim goose is related to the now rare West of England goose, another auto-sexing breed, which could possibly have arrived with early colonists…But Oscar Grow, a leading authority on waterfowl in the 1900s, claims to have developed the breed in Iowa, and that his wife named them in memory of their relocation – or pilgrimage – to Missouri during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Authorities agree that the breed was first documented by the name “Pilgrim” in 1935, corresponding with the Grow family’s pilgrimage. The Pilgrim was admitted into the American Poultry Association’s Standard of Perfection in 1939.
Pilgrim geese are able to fly short distances and they have a long lifespan (of up to 40 years—not that such an age is particularly old for humans!). They are friendly birds and intelligence shines in their round gray eyes. Goose society is very lively with lots of political squabbling and jockeying for prime mates and nesting sites. Like other domestic geese they largely subsist on grass and green shoots which they avidly graze with their serrated beaks, but they are hungry, hungry birds and they love special treats. In order to socialize her goose flock, my mother gives the birds some corn and mash in the morning and in the evening. The geese all crowd around the galvanized bin where their food is kept and inquisitively nibble on the pockets of the goose tenders. If the food does not appear rapidly enough they will point their beaks upward toward their human keepers and open them wide hoping perhaps that we might funnel grain directly down their gullet. They are extremely hilarious standing around with their bills open like big feathery ridiculous Venus flytraps!
Spring Snowflakes (Leucojum vernum)
Although it is the first week of March, it is still deep winter here in Brooklyn…but the days are starting to grow longer and there is a certain fresh new quality to the sunlight. The birds in the backyard are getting feistier as they stake out territories & mates. Also, this year, like every year, the squirrels have eaten all of the Christmas lights (which they do as their winter provisions run out). Nature is taking a deep breath as it prepares for the coming spring (although I would hardly be surprised if there are a few more blizzards in the hopper this year).
My old enemies have at least survived the killing snows and ice
Every year at this time I begin looking around desperately for the first blossoms and blooms of the coming spring…and every year there is nothing for many more weeks (or months). The plants are not fooled and know to keep underground until the season is warmer, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking about the first flowers and trees to bloom. In years past I have blogged about crocuses, redbuds, hellebores, and primroses. To start out my garden topic for 2014, I will blog about a tiny inconspicuous flower I have not yet tried to grow, the spring snowflake (Leucojum vernum).
Spring snowflakes originally come from central and southern Europe. Their natural range starts in the Pyrenees and stretches east to Romania and Russia. Spring snowflakes sprout in March about a week or two after snowdrops (which are unrelated, despite the common name). They grow 15-20 cm tall (6-8 in) tall and sport a lovely white bell-shaped flowers which have tiny green or yellow spots at the end of each tepal. Spring snowflakes can naturalize in great drifts–which makes them popular to gardeners and they have been brought from Europe to other similar temperate regions (like the east coast of America).
Drifts of spring snowflakes
In the wild, however they live in deep fairytale forests of Germany and central Europe where the wistful beauty of the tiny bells has given them a place in art and folklore. Although the flowers are tiny and fragile, they contain the highly toxic alkaloids lycorine and galantamine—so they are not exactly unprotected among the witches, wild boars, and mad princes of their native range. I can hardly wait for the crucial juncture when actual spring snowflakes are replaced by the botanical variety! I hope you will join me in keeping your eyes on the ground as the winter slowly loosens its grip.
ferrebeekeeper 