Thursday Things: Groundhog Day Edition
2 February 2023. Vol 5 No 5. By Dan McGirt. #182
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“Shadow? What shadow? I only have eyes for you.” Photo by abdullah ali on Unsplash
Shadows on the ground
It’s Groundhog Day! And also Thursday, so this item was a gimme. The breaking news, rare for Thursday Things, is that famous northern groundhog Punxsutawney Phil of Pennsylvania saw his shadow, foretelling six more weeks of winter, at least in those areas under his sway. Southern groundhog General Beauregard "Beau" Lee of Georgia reportedly did not see his shadow, bringing hope of an early spring down South. I’m sure there are other regional and local groundhogs who also made their forecasts, but I have not done a comprehensive survey.
As for why we rely on burrowing rodents to predict the weather, History gives the scoop on the First Groundhog Day:
On February 2, 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, it gets scared and runs back into its burrow, predicting six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.
Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal—the hedgehog—as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.
I did not know that the groundhogs took over this duty from hedgehogs. Hedgehog Day has a nice ring to it!
But the real question for me is — how old is Punxsutawney Phil? This groundhog has been prognosticating the end of winter since 1887? The real story isn’t the weather predicting, it’s the immortal groundhog!
It turns out that is, in fact, the official story:
Despite their early practice of noshing on Phil’s family, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club avers that there has only been one Phil since 1886. He’s given an “elixir of life” every year at the summertime Groundhog Picnic, which “magically gives him seven more years of life,” the club said.
The more you know.
Meanwhile, at the Earth’s core…
Now let’s did a little deeper than a groundhog’s burrow goes and see what’s happening at the center of the Earth.
Earth’s inner core may have stopped turning and could go into reverse, study suggests
The rotation of Earth’s inner core may have paused and it could even go into reverse, new research suggests.
Oh. Oh my.
Well, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.
What they found was unexpected, they said. Since 2009, seismic records, which previously changed over time, showed little difference. This, they said, suggested that the inner core rotation had paused.
“We show surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning-back,” they wrote in the study.
In research published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Monday, Yi Yang, associate research scientist at Peking University, and Xiaodong Song, Peking University chair professor, studied seismic waves from earthquakes that have passed through the Earth’s inner core along similar paths since the 1960s to infer how fast the inner core is spinning.
You can get all the details in the article ‘Multidecadal variation of the Earth’s inner-core rotation’ at Nature Geoscience. Quick version is that the speed and direction of the inner core’s rotation varies over time, but the recorded changes don’t indicate any looming catastrophe. And even if it did, I’d like to think the groundhogs would give us a heads up!
“I’m spinning on the inside too.” Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
Really, scientists?
Proving once again that the classic science fiction films most of us view as cautionary tales of what not to do are instead taken by many scientist as a suggestion box, we have this:
Scientists invented a melting liquid robot that can escape from a cage
Yes, we’re all thinking the same thing.
This tiny robot can melt, escape from a prison by sliding through secure bars, and then reform into a solid and complete tasks.
The metal microbot, made out of liquid metal microparticles that can be steered and reshaped by external magnetic fields, has been widely compared to the character T-1000 in “The Terminator” movie franchise, a cyborg assassin played by Robert Patrick that could morph his way around solid objects before embarking on a murderous rampage.
Exactly.
But the scientists who invented this insist it will be used only for good, and never for evil.
[T]he inventors of this robot believe their discovery can be used for good — particularly in clinical and mechanical settings — by reaching hard-to-reach spaces.
Well, okay. Maybe.
The robot was presented as part of a study into the metal microparticles, known as a type of magnetoactive phase transitional matter, that can morph shape, move quickly, be controlled easily and carry many times its own body weight.
That’s the thing, though. They always think their creation can be “controlled easily”.
We’ll see.
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