You've always been told that dogs are colorblind, but what does that really mean? Dogs can actually see colors, but they have problem distinguishing red as we do. That leads to another question: how do we know this? We can't just ask a dog, because they will tell us whatever we want to hear. And it will sound like a bark. In this video, we learn about a famous dog named Retina who was the first to take a color vision test. Retina may have been the first, but two other dogs were tested before the research paper was published, because they needed to find out whether she was an outlier, or if most dogs have the same color deficiencies. See, dogs only have two color cones in their retinas, while humans have three, and the vision test shows us how that translates into actual perception of color. But you don't have to mourn for our dogs over their eyesight. They have other talents that make them feel sorry for us, like our inability to distinguish odors the way they do.  -via Kottke

The Death of Vulcan

Few stories capture the interplay between science and culture as vividly as that of HD 26965 b, initially identified as a potential exoplanet in 2018.

It orbits the star 40 Eridani A, which is also the parent star of the planet Vulcan, the iconic home world… pic.twitter.com/9lWjt4lSBF

— Tree of Knowledge (@ToK_ScienceTree) May 29, 2024

Many mourned in 2006 when Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet. But Vulcan's fate is even worse- scientists have determined that the planet probably never existed at all! Mr. Spock would like to have a word, but he is processing the logic of millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Oh, wait, that was Alderaan.

In 2018, scientists detected an exoplanet orbiting the star 40 Eridani A, 16 light years from earth. The planet was designated HD 26965 b, but they soon started calling it Vulcan. In the Star Trek universe, the planet Vulcan revolves around the star 40 Eridani A. The exoplanet described in 2018 was bigger than earth, but smaller than Neptune, and orbited its star every 42 days. Vulcan was never seen, but was detected by the radial velocity method, which measures how stars wobble and extrapolates data about the gravitational body that caused a wobble.

In the six years since the discovery, new equipment has been developed to detect planets wobbling stars in finer detail. A new science paper throws water on the idea of Vulcan as a planet. The new data is is attributed to a flickering of something on the star's surface that occurs every 42 days. In other words, Vulcan is probably an illusion.

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— Miss Cellania (@misscellania) June 2, 2024

At least we still have Vulcan, Alberta. -via Metafilter

You most likely know the story of Pheidippides, the Greek courier who ran all the way from Marathon to Athens to deliver the news of the Greek victory in that battle, and fell down dead as soon as he delivered the message. While that story may be true or not, there's a real 20th century version from Nepal.

When Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return alive on May 29, 1953, the news of their achievement had to be relayed to the outside world. London Times reporter Jan Morris took the news from the camp at 21,000 feet and rushed it down to Base Camp. That's where the mail runners were, men who were part of the expedition charged with carrying news. A Sherpa mail runner, who was never named in news accounts, took that message on foot to Kathmandu, 200 miles away. He ran for five days, delivered the message, and then went home. Within weeks he was dead.

We now know that man was Ten Tsewang Sherpa, a 20-year-old father of four. His grandson, photographer Ang Pemba Sherpa, teamed up with journalist Peter Frick-Wright to run that route again. They were not able to do it, and hiked the 200 miles instead. In the fascinating account of that trip, we learn about Ten Tsewang Sherpa and his family, the 1953 British Expedition, the Sherpa people, low-altitude sickness, and the climbing culture of Nepal. -via Strange Company

Weird History tackles the subject of that Uruguayan rugby team that was stranded in the Andes in 1972. Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into a mountain in Argentina at an elevation of 11,710 feet. Search teams scoured the area, but eventually gave up. Of the 45 people aboard the plane, only 16 survived to make it home.

Being stranded on a high mountain in the snow for two months called for some hard decisions. They could melt snow for water, but there was nothing to eat -except for the frozen corpses of those who had already died. There's a huge difference in killing someone in order to eat them and taking advantage of someone who already died, but cannibalism is a deep-seated taboo either way. The survivors really had no choice, because otherwise they would have all perished. But their story stays with you, no matter how many times you've heard it.

The next time you're in Nashville, you might want to stay at the Dive Motel. It's got a bar and a pool, and we think the name is supposed to come from the pool instead of the bar, but either way it's a clever name. Anyway, the entire facility is furnished in mid-20th century splendor, so you'll feel like you're back in the 1960s or '70s throughout your stay. Each of the 23 rooms and suites in this motel has a unique retro decor in several categories, and you can take your pick of neon disco colors, rustic cabin themes, or even a puffy pink room. However, all rooms have a "party switch" that activates a disco ball and music! You've never seen so much shag carpet, at least since the 1970s. The pool is open to guests, and even if you aren't staying there, you can purchase a pool pass. Strangely, the Dive Motel pool prohibits diving. They also host a variety of food trucks and have a full calendar of special events. See lots of pictures of the Dive Motel in a mini-tour at The Awesomer.

Alanis Morrisette is going out on tour with Joan Jett & the Blackhearts this summer for the Triple Moon Tour. Master remixer DJ Cummerbund naturally celebrated this news by making a mashup. This song is a combination of Morrisette's 1995 hit "You Oughta Know" with Joan Jett's "I Hate Myself for Loving You" from 1988. There's also a cameo appearance by Randy "Macho Man" Savage. It's a double dose of rock 'n' roll and the fury of a woman done wrong. In case you aren't familiar with Alanis Morrisette's hit, there is one NSFW lyric. This is an officially sanctioned mashup, as Morrisette posted it to YouTube at about the same time DJ Cummerbund did.  -via Laughing Squid

This is a reverse Ishihara test, where the number is only visible to people who *are* colorblind.

Everyone who said "lol I know this isn't a number, you're just messing with me": congrats! You're not colorblind. :) https://t.co/81bOuMSfXs

— Isaac King 🔍 (@IsaacKing314) May 28, 2024

It's not a personality test, it's a vision test. Protanopia and deuteranopia are two specific kinds of color blindness that make it hard to distinguish red and green. No doubt you've seen a lot of these "colorblindness tests" on the internet, and they are usually taken from the Ishihara test. This one is, too. However, most of the images you've seen from the test are easy to decipher if you can see a full range of colors. Plate #19 looks like a mishmash of colored dots to most people. Only if you have some kind of red-green deficiency will you see a number. If you have deuteranopia, you are liable to see the number 73. If you have protanopia, you are more likely to see the number 23. Check out how others see this glob of colored dots, including some manipulations of the original image that shed more light on what you are seeing. -Thanks, gwdMaine!

When communities are abandoned, nature moves in and takes over. We've seen it happen all over the world, for different reasons, in Montserrat, Pripyat, Gagnon, Centralia, and the many Western mining towns that dried up after the ore played out. Mold moves in and weakens structures. Plants put down roots and tear buildings apart. Insects build nests. Animals soon follow, and before you know it, you've got a wilderness.

This video looks at how nature moves in when people move out. Their main example is Doodletown, New York, which was overtaken by Bear Mountain State Park. Doodletown reached its population peak in the 1920s, with about 350 people. About that time, the push to expand the state park began, and Doodletown homes were bought up by the goverment. Wooden buildings were deliberately dismantled, but stone foundations were left in place. The last building standing was a school made of stone, left in place as a shelter for hikers, but after too many incidents of vandalism left it dangerously damaged, it was demolished in 1980. -via Nag on the Lake

When I saw the headline at Cracked, "4 Debts That Really Should Have Been Forgiven," I immediately thought of Haiti. That story is not included, as this list is focused on things you probably don't already know about. They are pretty bad. First off, around 240 Dutch people who had been imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II returned home to Amsterdam to find bills for rent that had not been paid since they were arrested! And not just for the remainder of the lease, it was for the entire time they were gone. Those homes had meanwhile been empty, occupied by Nazis, or else were destroyed by bombs. And the landlord was the Dutch government, so you'd think they would have been aware of the situation. Strangely, some tenants paid their bills, and the situation wasn't corrected until 2015. Read that story, and three others that may leave your blood boiling, at Cracked.

(Image credit: Nationaal Archief)

Everyone has an anthroponym, but that's okay. It's just a big word for your name. The problem is how they come and go out of style. I recall hearing about someone naming their baby Layla around 1971 and even then I felt for the child, because she'd never be able to hide her age. The same for Shania and Daenerys. Silly me, although my name is not that common, even I have a name that came and went and only belongs to women my age (people just don't name their daughters "Miss" anymore). Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains why names become fashionable and then not. Both my daughters unintentionally ended up with very common names for their age group, even though I decided on a name for my youngest 30 years earlier. But hey, in 100 years or so, your anthroponym may come back into style! I personally know a family with a newborn named Mabel, and it seems perfect for her.

Remember back in the 1970s and '80s when you played Asteroids, Galaga, Missile Command, and Space Fury for hours? Here's a browser game from Pixeljam that will put you back into those days when graphics were simple and you didn't have to learn any fantasy history or consult maps or create a character to get started. Utopia Must Fall is an old-fashioned shoot-em-up in which you must protect your city from invading aliens, falling boulders, and bombs. There are nukes, too. After the first round, you can upgrade the physics of the game a little to improve your kill rate, or else launch a new strategy. The vector graphics are simple, but still attractive in all their neon glory. When was the last time you played a game on a black background?

In the first run through, I only managed to protect the population of London for three days, but I had a lot of fun doing it, and that's the whole purpose of a game, isn't it? Sorry, London. The browser game is just a demo for a full version that will be released in the next couple of months.  -via Metafilter

PS: If the game asks for a password, it is CEASEFIRE.

Earth gets heat from the sun, but also from its hot, molten core. The heat underneath keeps our surface active, with masses of land and sea moving against each other and reshuffling, a process called plate tectonic. The plates of land that move about on the planet's surface shift over time, giving us mountains, oceans, volcanoes, and earthquakes with their gradual but sometimes violent movement. This system as a whole creates living ecosystems and keeps certain gasses and minerals moving up and down through the atmosphere, surface, water, and deep underground. The effect as a whole is that of a thermostat, in a delicate balance that keeps the surface temperature in a range that supports all life.

But what if our world were static, with no plate tectonics? Then it would be more like Venus. A theory about that planet says that perpetual volcanic activity threw so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the higher temperatures caused the oceans to boil away, leaving the planet too hot and dry to sustain any kind of life. Once a planet's water is gone, there's no getting it back. But earth is a geologically active planet, otherwise we couldn't live here. Read up on how that works at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: USGS)

We've spent more than 100 years illuminating the darkness with electricity. Over time, those electrical systems got bigger and more automatic. Randall Munroe's What If series (previously at Neatorama) received the question, "If all humans died, when would the last light go out?" To answer the question, Munroe completely ignored the theoretical scenario of our demise and got straight to the lights. It comes down to the power source, since some are more automatic than others. Those relying on fuel delivery will go out first, but some kind of artificial lights will last for way longer than you might think. And then we must consider what we mean by "artificial lights." Enriched nuclear fuel gives off a light even though we don't use that light for everyday (or every night) activities. Commenters brought up even more lights, like the Voyager space probes, which have manmade lights, although they are not on earth. There's also the burning coal seams like in Centralia, Pennsylvania, which are natural, but were ignited by human activity. They can burn for thousands of years, but whether you term them as manmade or artificial lights is a matter of semantics.

There are some references in this video you might want to look up, like the Radium Girls, the future of nuclear danger, and Tom Scott. The Rhode Island sign is reference a previous What If video.

Submarine technology is older than you probably think. Cornelius Drebbel built one for the King of England in 1620! Early submarines were successful until they weren't, and the bottom of the ocean is not a good place for the preservation of a wooden submarine. American school children learn about the H. L. Hunley, an ironclad Confederate submarine that sank a Union ship, but was ultimately a failure because all the crew members on each of its three missions died. The sunken Hunley was found in 1970 and raised in 2000. But it is still not the oldest existing submarine.

That would be the Brandtaucher, shown above. This iron submarine was Germany's first, built by Wilhelm Bauer in 1850. It was 28 feet long and weighed 70,000 pounds. Believe it or not, it was powered by two men on a tread wheel! The Brandtaucher wasn't any more successful than earlier submarines, and sank during its first demonstration. However, Bauer learned from his mistakes and went on to design better submarines for the German military. Read about the Brandtaucher, the oldest existing submarine, at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Jan Rehschuh)

Leonard Solomon has made a career out of building and performing on his own musical instruments. We've featured videos of his bottle organ and his oomphalapompatronium in previous video. In this video, he demonstrates that 21st century music, too, can easily be played on his weird instruments. Listen as he recreates Skrillex's 2010 song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" on his instrument called a squijeeblion. It produces sounds that range from a nice melody to a foghorn fart to a crying beagle, and you better believe the bass drop is there, too. EDM will never be the same, although you can't really call it that, since this song was played with no MIDI involved. Also, the squijeeblion is powered by air, with both breath and bellows. Too bad you can't go down to the music shop and pick up your own squijeeblion. -via Metafilter, you'll find lots more of Solomon's music linked.