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Lyle Zapato

Future Humanity: Plant-Like Monsters?

Lyle Zapato | 2012-06-06.7150 LMT | Retro | Nature | General Paranoia

Some European scientists have recently made the startling assertion that our stock of oxygen has been materially lessened within the last fifty years. Stripping of forests from thousands of square miles of country and the outpouring into the air of enormous volumes of carbonic gases are, perhaps, the two great causes of its diminution—for both of which civilization is responsible. When our oxygen is gone in considerable quantities and its place is taken by carbonic gases, what will become of mankind?

Man is very adaptable; his present form is only the result of this adaptation to changing conditions.

One may try to reconstruct man under such circumstances. It is probable that he would first sinks on all fours to breathe the oxygen still remaining near the earth's surface. His skin subjected to constant heat—for there would be little moisture in the air—would grow thick and bark-like. The pores of the skin, acted upon more and more to help in the breathing process, would enlarge enormously into octopus-like suckers. The ears would, perhaps, form a hood-like covering to the head; the nose become more and more like a tendril or the suckers which certain vigorous plants send forth. As man became more and more a crawling thing his legs would become useless and would probably form themselves into a long root-like appendage. Finally to protect himself, he would grow spines—just as the cactus did—and these would be the last form of hair that once covered his body.

Here Artist Kerr shows what his idea of plant-man would look like in that distant time. For if such changes ever did come about, it is not likely that they could occur for another million years at least.


Lyle Zapato

Lord Kelvin and the Mosquito Effect?

Lyle Zapato | 2010-01-28.1050 LMT

Back in 2008, I stumbled upon a quote that suggested Lord Kelvin was the originator of the butterfly in the "Butterfly Effect" over fifty years before the supposed source of that name was published.

It now appears that the situation is more convoluted, and that I'm redoing the work of someone who also stumbled upon the quote -- 108 years ago!

In a letter published in Nature (July 3, 1902), Hiram Stevens Maxim -- the inventor of the automatic machine gun, the mousetrap, amusement-park airplane rides, and possibly the lightbulb -- asked the editors about the source of Kelvin's wing-beat-changes-the-Universe quote -- only in the version Maxim read (from William Stanley) it was a mosquito wing doing the Universe-beating:

Mr. William Stanley, an American philosopher and engineer, said a few days ago that the grandest words ever uttered by any man on this planet were spoken by Lord Kelvin when he said that if all the matter in the Universe were reduced to its ultimate atoms and equally divided through all space, the disturbance caused by the beating of the wing of one mosquito would bring about everything that we find in the material Universe to-day. I have written to Lord Kelvin asking him where I can find some account of this, but he denies that he ever said anything of the kind. However, as Mr. Stanley declares that it appeared in Nature, perhaps you can put me in the way of getting a copy of the paper which contains this remarkable utterance, which, by the way, is quite true, and if Lord Kelvin did not say it, I only have to say that he might well have been the author.

Hiram S. Maxim,
18 Queen's Gate Place, London, S.W., June 25.

A Google book search turned up nothing in Nature from Kelvin on this subject, but searching for a quote based on a paraphrase that may include the wrong order of insect isn't exactly a science, so I could be missing it. (Also, if I may gripe, Google treats issues of many older periodicals as if they are different editions of the same book, showing only the newest issue that matches the query, making searches aggravating.)

While this almost certainly excludes Kelvin from being the source of the Butterfly Effect's specific protagonist, and possibly his general insectile contributions to the field of chaos theory if his memory was correct, it still calls into question Ray Bradbury as the ultimate source of the lepidopteran imagery.

But more interestingly, the butterfly seems to have originated out of a paraphrased-quote-based game of telephone -- where the flap of a tongue can turn "tornado" into "Texas" -- making it an example of its own effect.

P.S. If you came here looking for the band called the Mosquito Effect, you are in the wrong place.

Lyle Zapato

Light Has Been Knotted!

Lyle Zapato | 2010-01-17.5140 LMT | Technology

A team of physicists from the universities of Bristol, Glasgow, and Southampton have succeeded in tying light into knots using holograms, a discovery that will lead to greater control over the flow of light, allowing advances in lasers and other optical technologies.

Diagrams of holograms showing knotted light

They were able to do this by designing the holograms using Knot Theory, a hitherto purely abstract mathematical field that was founded by Lord Kelvin in his quest to enlighten Humanity as to the knotted aetheric vortices that comprise material reality.

As Dr. Mark Dennis, the lead author of the research team, notes "This work opens a new chapter in that history" (of Knot Theory).

Once ridiculed for their strange fascination with tabulating different types of knots and their eccentric shoelace patterns, and only occasionally finding themselves in the news with the discovery of new aesthetic tie knots, Knot Theorists can now claim control over light itself, making their tangly passion key to Humanity's photonic future. What opportunities this creates -- the power, the prestige, the grants, being invited to all the trendy parties once only open to Chaos Theorists and Fractal Geometrists. Never again will a Knot Theorist be ashamed to walk the Halls of Science with the dawning of this, the Decade of the Knot!

Lyle Zapato

To Boldly Go Where Lord Kelvin Already Went

Lyle Zapato | 2008-11-19.1990 LMT | Entertainment

Speaking of J.J. Abrams and trivial entertainment news with minor connections to subjects on my site... Perhaps in acknowledgement of his service in the War of the Worlds, Lord Kelvin has been honored with a starship in his name in Abrams' upcoming Star Trek reboot.

USS Kelvin

The USS Kelvin (designation NCC-0514) was, according to one fan site's calculation, constructed in the 2220s -- predating both the USS Enterprise and James T. Kirk. George Kirk, James' father, apparently served as first officer on the Kelvin before it was destroyed by Romulans:

USS Kelvin blowing up

While the plot of the movie is closely guarded, might we suspect Kirk's father died in that explosion? Could this be the event that prompted Kirk to give up his misspent youth of driving Corvettes off of cliffs to follow in his father's footsteps by joining Star Fleet, thus setting him on the path to become the greatest Starship Captain in the history of the Federation, if not the Alpha-Quadrant, and save countless lives from a quadro-triticale famine on Sherman's Planet by averting the Tribble Menace? Sure, why not.

Obviously this ship is even more important than the Enterprise to the history of Star Trek. How fitting that it should named in Lord Kelvin's honor.

Lyle Zapato

Lord Kelvin & The Olympic Water Cube

Lyle Zapato | 2008-08-05.0220 LMT | Entertainment | Technology





The Water Cube during construction.

Lyle Zapato

Lord Kelvin & Color Codes

Lyle Zapato | 2008-07-29.1140 LMT | Technology | Crass Commercialism






Lyle Zapato

Lord Kelvin and the "Butterfly Effect"

Lyle Zapato | 2008-07-13.6760 LMT | Random Found Thing

While further researching Lord Kelvin, I came across an interesting quote. The Universe a Vast Electric Organism (George Woodward Warder, 1903) quotes Prof. Garrett P. Serviss -- the author of Edison's Conquest of Mars, which co-stars Lord Kelvin -- in the New York American, May 16, 1903 (bold mine):

"The undulatory theory of energy is carrying everything before it. It is not saying too much to aver that wave motion is concerned in nearly all the phenomena of physical life . . . Think for a moment of what is included in the science of waves. In the air all sounds, all musical harmonies are waves; in the solid globe, all earthquakes are waves; in the ether light, electricity and heat are waves. It is waves that make the stars visible, and yet more mysterious oscillations picture for us on photographic plates marvelous nebulous objects. Lord Kelvin has been credited with the statement that the fluttering of a butterfly's wing sets up vibrations that shake the universe." (p.288)

I've searched for the original quote by Kelvin but have come up empty. The only references to it I can find on the Internet are in Warder and a mention in passing in Science of the New Thought (Erastus Whitford Hopkins, 1904). If anyone can find what statement of Kelvin's Serviss was referring to, please contact me, as this would add chaos theory to the multitude of scientific fields that Kelvin influenced in some way.

According to the Wikipedia article on the "butterfly effect", the connection of butterflies to the idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions came from Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story "A Sound of Thunder". Granted it's Wikipedia, so it might as well say John Seigenthaler Sr. first came up with the idea, but if that's the accepted wisdom on the metaphor's origin, what shall we make of Kelvin's use of it half a century earlier? Time travel?

[UPDATE 2010-01-28: Looks like it was originally a mosquito, and Kelvin didn't recall saying it.]

Since I don't have Kelvin's original quote, I'll leave you instead with some entertaining figures from Hopkins' book above:


Lyle Zapato

Edison & Kelvin: A Contrast In Cruelty

Lyle Zapato | 2008-01-04.3520 LMT | Technology | Elephants



1895 International
Niagara Falls Commission

















"Now watch," he said.








Lyle Zapato

Start Hoarding Air Now

Lyle Zapato | 2007-06-15.9450 LMT | Nature | General Paranoia





























Lyle Zapato

An Open Letter To Archie McPhee

Lyle Zapato | 2007-02-01.6270 LMT | Crass Commercialism | Letters

Dear Mr. McPhee,

Your company, Accoutrements, is well known for its exclusive line of action figures based on famous historical figures, common folk of interest, and proud indigenous hominoids. However, I have noticed one glaring omission in your otherwise well-rounded collection:

Why is there no Lord Kelvin action figure?

Besides developing the science of Thermodynamics, being instrumental to the unification of diverse fields of science under the aegis of Physics, and mapping the way for Relativity and Quantum Mechanics with his identification in 1900 of the two "Nineteenth-Century Clouds" hanging over the field, Lord Kelvin was the Kevin Bacon of Victorian science and technology, playing roles both minor and profound in most important developments of his time.

Consider some of his many claims to fame:

  • Was admitted to university at age 10, published his first mathematical paper at age 16, and was appointed to the chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow at age 22, where he stayed until his death at age 83
  • Was a champion rower in his youth and later in life traveled the seas in his yacht, the Lalla Rookh
  • First person on Earth to have electric lighting installed in his home
  • Headed the commission that chose AC over DC for national power grids
  • Discovered the material property magnetoresistance, the basis for hard drives
  • Had 70 patents, including an inkjet printer in 1867
  • Invented the technology that allowed for transatlantic communication cables and supervised their laying, thereby fathering the global Information Age that we currently live in
  • Coined the terms "thermodynamic" and "chirality"
  • Has a unit of temperature (the Kelvin), a lunar ridge (Promontorium Kelvin), and a refrigerator brand (Kelvinator) named in his honor
  • Incidentally launched the mathematical field of Knot Theory while exploring the idea that atoms are made of swirling vortices of aether -- a full 100 years before String Theorists proposed similar ideas
  • Defended Panspermia, the theory that life on Earth was seeded by "moss-grown fragments from the ruins of another world"
  • Agreed with Tesla that life on Mars was trying to contact Earth via radio signals (UPDATE See: "On the Martians Signalling Earth.")
  • Is buried next to Isaac Newton

As can be plainly seen, it is a great injustice that someone as notable as Lord Kelvin does not yet have his own action figure. I dare say he even deserves a playset!

With December 2007 marking the Centennial of his passing, now would be an excellent time for you to take the lead and rectify this oversight.

Lyle Zapato
Humble servant of Lord Kelvin.