Even if you're not a physicist, chances are that you're familiar with Erwin Schrödinger's cat.
In his famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, a cat inside a box is both dead and alive until the box is opened, and illustrates (just one of the) paradoxical things about quantum mechanics.
But what if instead of one cat, there are two cats?
Find out what happens in this article by Davide Castelvecchi over at Nature.
Reminiscence Therapy is often used in nursing homes and adult-care facilities to help patients with Alzheimer's and dementia. In this type of therapy, the patients are encouraged to talk about their past - and that act of remembering seemed to help improve their mood and cognition.
The George G. Glenner Alzheimer's Family Center took RT one step further: they created a fake town taken straight from the 1950s. Called the Glenner Town Square, it's built inside a 11,000-square-foot former warehouse and comes complete with a local diner, city hall, gas station, beauty salon and even a library.
Why the 1950s? From the website's FAQ:
Why is Town Square® designed from the era 1953-1961?
Studies have shown that our strongest memories are constructed from the ages of 10-30. The reason being is that this is when the most significant life events occur – graduation from high school, college, first job, weddings, birth of children. That said, a majority of our participants are now in their early eighties. Our participants, who are currently 82 (in 2017), were born in in 1935 and would have been 18 in 1953.
Now you can enjoy your breakfast with happy little toasts every morning! Better yet, this Bob Ross Toaster will burn a portrait of the famous painter onto the bread.
Military parades are usually a stuffy kind of affair featuring tanks and things like that, but not in Chile! In their annual military parade in Santiago, the Chilean military featured uniformed officers carrying a bunch of puppies that will be trained to be police dogs.
Let's find out, neuroscientists Gul Dolen of Johns Hopkins University and Eric Edsinger of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, said.
And find out they did:
The researchers knew from previous tests that an octopus would normally stay far, far away from a second octopus that was confined to a small cage inside the first one's tank. But an octopus on MDMA would get up-close and personal with the new neighbor.
"They spent significantly more time in the side of the tank, the chamber, that had the other octopus in it," says Dolen.
What's more, without the drug, any octopus that approached the stranger at all would remain very reserved, perhaps only reaching out one arm to tentatively touch the other animal's cage.
"After MDMA, they were essentially hugging," says Dolen, who explains that the octopuses were "really just much more relaxed in posture, and using a lot more of their body to interact with the other octopus."
Nell Greenfieldboyce of NPR has the story.
Photo: Tom Kleindinst/Marine Biological Laboratory
Meet the 558-million-year-old fossil of Dickinsonia, a type of Ediacaran organism, that may just be the first animal species on Earth:
The first large complex organisms – known as the Ediacarans – appear in the fossil record about 570 million years ago, just before the Cambrian explosion of modern animal life. Their alien body shapes have created confusion over whether they were primitive animals, other complex lifeforms like lichen or giant amoebas, or failed experiments of evolution.
Now, Jochen Brocks at Australian National University and his colleagues have found fat molecules in 558 million-year-old fossils of Dickinsonia – a type of Ediacaran – that confirms it was an early animal.
The researchers collected the fossils from sandstone cliffs in a remote area of the White Sea region of Russia. The cholesterol-like molecules preserved in them are found in almost all of today’s animals, but have low abundance in other lifeforms like bacteria, lichen and amoebas. “It tells us this creature in fact was our earliest ancestor,” says Brocks.
Read the rest over at NewScientist.
(Photo: Ilya Bobrovskiy / Australian National University)
This is "open carry" in the UK. Etsy seller LeatherHeds created a teacup and saucer belt holster for the tea-loving gentleman who's always ready for high noon ... and high tea.
via Boing Boing
All clothes sure look good on a buff model, but what would it really look like if you've got a dad bod?
Thankfully, there's now a dad bod mannequin like in this pic by u/tanzki012.
Back in 2008, archaeologists discovered a set of rounded stones in the high desert near the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. They thought that the stone tools were used to grind nuts and seeds - but intriguingly, the stones didn't have the right grinding marks.
Fast forward a decade, when archaeologist Marilyn Martorano identified them as something else completely ... they're actually musical instruments!
Brad Turner of Colorado Public Radio has the story:
The stones were clearly shaped by human hands but didn’t have the right wear marks around the edges to indicate they’d been used for grinding. So she set out to find a better explanation. About a decade later, Martorano believes she’s identified some of the earliest musical instruments ever played in Colorado.
“You really have to hear them,” said Martorano, who grew up in the San Luis Valley where the dunes sit. “That’s when you believe it.”
(Photo: Brad Turner/CPR News)
Usually, when you know how an illusion works, it stops being an illusion.
But not the Ames Window illusion. In this YouTube clip by CuriosityShow, they show you exactly how the Ames Window illusion works ... and your brain will still insist that you're seeing the impossible.
Previously on Neatorama back in 2009.
The years 1793 and 1794 during the French Revolution were known as the "Reign of Terror." During that time, there were over 16,000 official executions by beheading using the guillotine.
And in a macabre way, fashion and style followed the events of the day, and guillotine earrings became all the rage.
From Cult of Weird:
Barbaric or not, people loved the guillotine. When the Reign of Terror began taking heads on an average of 46 per day, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the terrifying instrument of swift death became part of everyday life. It was the subject of art, music, and fashion.
“It was depicted, recounted, and bandied about by popular songs with their series of refrains on ‘the widow,’ ‘the national razor,’ ‘the patriotic haircut,’ ‘the sword of equality,’ and ‘the altar of the nation,'” says Murat. “People no longer referred to ‘being guillotined’ but spoke of ‘sticking your head through the cat-flap,’ ‘poking through the window,’ or ‘sneezing into the basket.'”
“Like tricolor skirts and nosegays, or jewelry set with chunks from the Bastille,” Jane Merrill and Chris Filstrup write in I Love Those Earrings, “the guillotines testified to a person’s daring (unmistakably they were symbols of castration) and being on the winning side.”
( Photo: @hannahtraining )
I'm loving these wonderful geometric art by Vancouver-based artist Laura Bifano. In her series "Altars," Bifano drew local vistas and mountains of British Columbia, Canada.
via Booom
(Artwork: Laura Bifano)
The Cingino Dam in Italy is a 160-foot tall dam with rock walls made with stones that just happen to have salt-crust that Alpine Ibex goats love to lick.
The fact that the dam wall is nearly vertical, with teeny tiny toeholds for climbing, doesn't seem to faze these goats at all!
Alaska-based artist Ryota Kajita took some amazing photos of natural ice formations in the waters of Fairbanks, Alaska. The alien-like structures are formed as rivers and lakes freeze from the surface down, trapping bubbles that formed in the water.
Check out Kaijta's series Ice Formations over at his website - via Brain Pickings
Above: Frozen Bubbles#2, Ice Formations (all images by the artist)
Frozen Bubbles#26, Ice Formations
Frozen Bubbles #27, Ice Formations
This apple cake looks as delicious as the fruit but yummier as it's made of mousse with Callebaut gold chocolate, apple vanilla compote, almond sponge cake, shortcrust dough and raspberry sauce.
It's created by pastry chef Dinara Kasko (previously on Neatorama).
