Let's Learn Everything! 43: Gravitational Waves, The Loneliest Animal, and Graffiti
Last Calls: The Kauai ʻŌʻō
- Recordings of the Kauai 'Oo captured what might be the last individual's mating call, symbolizing extinction's loneliness.
- Such cases highlight humans' role in species loss and our impulse to personify solitary survivors.
Lonesome George's Second Act
- Lonesome George was the last Pinta Island tortoise and became a conservation icon after rediscovery.
- He lived at a breeding center with related tortoises but produced no fertile offspring before dying circa 2014.
Albert The Misplaced Albatross
- Albert the Albatross was blown off-course to the Northern Hemisphere and spent decades attempting to mate with other seabirds.
- He became famous as a symbol of misplaced migration and prolonged solitude.
How long have we been searching for Gravitational Waves? What is the loneliest animal, and what does it mean to be lonely? And what really makes graffiti... graffiti?
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Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:04:26) Gravitational Waves
(00:41:01) The Loneliest Animal
(01:14:17) Graffiti
(01:45:21) Outro
We also learn about:
Invisible ripples in spacetime that move at the speed of light and squeeze and stretch spacetime, Aristotle would have lost his mind at gravitational waves, Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravity is bends in spacetime, Einstein’s 1915 prediction, gravitational waves are stupid… unless? pulsars are cosmic lighthouses, binary pulsars are two bowling balls dropped in a lake that we think are big enough to ripple to our shore, Einstein predicted them and then we found them, I found a math drawing in space, LIGO finding gravitational waves 100 years after Einstein’s theory, thank you Yano, gravitational waves click with Caroline, LIGO can measure 1/10,000th the width of a proton, measuring the collision of 2 black holes 1.3 billion years ago, International Pulsar Timing Array, the hum of the universe, the background hum of hundreds of thousands of black holes merging, hypothetical one dimensional cosmic strings, i thought you said this was silly, have you ever been alone in a crowded room, "I want to know what loneliness is to you Ella”, the elusive snow leopard, “just tell me how snow leopards fuck Caroline”, lonely ants live 11 times shorter, giving mirrors to make cows less lonely, the song of the Kauai Oo, lonesome George sold out, Albert the Albatross’s theme song, Albie the Albatross, finding 52 Blue the whale from declassified hydrophones, capitalism isolates animals too! are we projecting and processing loneliness onto conservation, Tom’s contractual Carly Rae Jepsen mention, graffiti used to only mean ancient graffiti, farts for the old man, I am Hiyya! Lysias is Handsome, is graffiti art? Kilroy was here, Faulkner wants to write a Kilroy was here, remember the writer and the reader and me, transient and permanent graffiti, NYC Subway Graffiti, “How did they do that?!”, graffiti as high art, Ivan + Hayley, local graffiti, Taki 183, Warren Robinett’s Atari graffiti, fuck you I was here
Sources:
LIGO: What are gravitational waves?
The History of Gravitational Waves
Pulsars
What is LIGO
LIGO 2015 Discovery
Cosmic Chirps
NANOGrav
International Pulsar Timing Array
Pulsar Timing Arrays
The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set
Cosmic Strings
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Snow Leopard Trust
2022 Paper: Neurobiology of Loneliness, Isolation, and Loss: Integrating Human and Animal Perspectives
2015 Paper: Social Isolation Causes Mortality by Disrupting Energy Homeostasis in Ants
2019 Paper: Can Access to an Automated Grooming Brush and/or a Mirror Reduce Stress of Dairy Cows Kept in Social Isolation?
Forbes: Companion Parrots May Be Less Lonely When They Phone Their Feathered Friends
Galapagos Conservancy: Lonesome George
Smithsonian: Spix’s Macaw
The Call of the Kauai Oo
BBC: No Romance for Lovesick Albatross
RSPB: The Black-browed Albatross, Albie, at RSPB Bempton Cliffs
The Guardian: Albie the Albatross
NOS: Why Do Whales Make Sounds?
Smithsonian: Maybe the World’s Loneliest Whale Isn’t So Isolated, After All
The Guardian: The Search for the Loneliest Whale in the World
PBS: Ship Noises Mute the Songs of Humpback Whales
2018 Paper: Change in Singing Behavior of Humpback Whales Caused by Shipping Noise
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UCL Jeanine Ancelet on History of Graffiti
Penn Museum on Mayan Graffiti
ASOR on Ancient Near East Graffiti
Smithsonian Mag on Pompeii Graffiti
IAS on the Athenodoros Graffiti
Boston College Pompeii Graffiti Translation
Museum of Cycladic Art
Tim O Gorman on Kilroy
William Falkner at UVA Q&A Transcript
History of American Graffiti Authors on PBS
Colosseum Graffiti
Harvard International Review on Banksy
NYT Interview with Taki183
Adam Clayton's Letter to Atari
Robinett on Adventure Easter Egg
Wired Interview with Robinett