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From Rapping Robots to Glowing Frogs: Our Favorite Fun Stories of 2020

It has been a tough year, but science still brought us some weird, cool and quirky findings

NGC 6302, known as the Butterfly Nebula, viewed by Hubble (left). Alpine newt (top right). Musical robot Shimon (bottom right).

Credit:

NASA, ESA and J. Kastner (RIT) (Hubble image); Jennifer Y. Lamb and Matthew P. Davis (alpine newt); Gil Weinberg (robot)

To say it has been a tough year would be a gross understatement, and reading the news—even on a science-focused Web site—can be a little depressing.

But while Scientific American has been providing in-depth coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, devastating natural disasters and the presidential election’s implications for science, we have also shared stories that show how the fun side of science still thrives. Here, we’ve gathered some of our favorites from the year, from the truly amazing to the downright weird and quirky. We hope you enjoy them and come back for more coverage of cutting-edge science in 2021.

Fight! Fight! Fight!


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Acorn woodpeckers fiercely defend territories of granary trees stuffed with supplies, and when a vacancy opens up, rival teams swoop in to fight for it. Biologists enjoy watching such fierce spectacles, but they’re not the only ones—other acorn woodpeckers quickly learn of the fights, and they fly in from kilometers away to watch the action.

Robo-Curler Gets in South Korean Athletes’ Hair

AI is pretty good at chess and Go. It’s the real world, and the challenge of translating a simulation to reality, that throws a robot for a loop—until now. A robot named Curly won three of four games against leading human rivals from South Korean curling teams.

Amphibians Would Make Good Ravers

Some frogs and other amphibians sport bright colors and striking patterns, while others have a drabber appearance. But it turns out many of them are hiding a secret that was revealed when scientists turned on blue and ultraviolet lights: They glow. Technically speaking, they biofluoresce. We don’t know why, but one possibility is to attract mates (presumably without the EDM).

Voice of the Dead

Advanced imaging techniques help researchers examine ancient remains, such as the 3,000-year-old mummy of an Egyptian scribe, without damaging them. But why just look when you can listen? Scientists used CT scans to image the mummy’s vocal tract, 3-D print a replica and run air through it, thus resurrecting the corpse’s voice.

Never Be Late to Meet a Bumblebee

Bumblebees need nectar and pollen to feed themselves, which means they need the plants they frequent to be in bloom. But plants aren’t always on the same schedule—and in that case, the bumblebees take matters into their own hands. They bite a plant’s leaves, which forces it to flower, on average, 30 days earlier than it would have otherwise.

Move Over Jay-Z, the Robot Rappers Have Arrived

Computers have been making music since the 1950s, yet it wasn’t until this year that they learned to rap in real time. Using deep learning and data sets of both words and units of pronunciation, a musical bot called Shimon can improvise responses to a human rapper.

The Duckbill Dino, the Michael Phelps of Its Day

Fossils of duckbill dinosaurs are so common in North America that paleontologists often just ignore them. But they were shocked to find the 66-million-year-old jawbone of a previously undocumented duckbill species in Africa, where no duckbills had been found before. Given that Cretaceous Africa was isolated by high seas, scientists deduce the dinos must have swam hundreds of miles from Europe.

A Snack-Bag’s-Eye View

If you capture video or photographs of a mirror, you can use the images that appear on the glass to figure out what the surrounding room looks like. Researchers developed a mathematical model that reconstructs the environment in a similar way but using footage of any reflective object—including a bag of potato chips.

I Think, Therefore I Am Part of a Simulation?

Is reality real? Or are we unwitting participants in a computer simulation, à la The Matrix? A study this year put the odds either way at 50–50. So have fun bending your brain around that one for a while.

Kentucky Fried Pheasant?

The 23 billion chickens alive today may not know it, but the world’s most numerous bird may not have been humanity’s first pick for domestication. New research suggests that early evidence of birds that lived alongside people year-round, thought to be the remains of chickens, were actually pheasants.

QED Bees

Molyneux’s problem, named after the philosopher William Molyneux, examines whether our minds are wired to recognize shapes so that a blind person, suddenly able to see, could instantly identify an object. But what about a bumblebee’s mind?

From Barbershop to Cargo Ship

Spinning smokestacklike columns, called Flettner rotors, could propel future sustainable cargo ships. The smooth, towering cylinders pull a ship forward by creating a pressure difference as they whirl.

Who Are You Calling Birdbrained?

Scientists have long known that ravens and other corvids are very smart, but new work this year really underscored that fact. Even birds as young as four months performed just as well as adult great apes on a range of social and physical tasks meant to test general intelligence.

A Rose by Any Other Name Would Sting as Much?

From the spines of a cactus to a narwhal’s long tusk, nature has got stingers and other pointy, ouch-inducing objects down. Despite the range of geometries such features could have, most have a particular narrow design. A new model suggests this happens because evolution pushes species to economize: a narrower design means using less material to make stingers and similar structures.

Blow Out the Candles, Hubble!

We’ll let the 30-year-old telescope take this one: “I have seen 160,000 sunrises and sunsets, more than anyone could hope for. Circling hundreds of miles above the surface of our big blue marble for 30 years, I’ve had a remarkable view of the universe. I haven’t always been comfortable up here, but thanks to many of you I have outgrown a host of problems and found a purpose far more expansive and satisfying than anything my creators envisioned.”

Andrea Thompson is an associate editor covering the environment, energy and earth sciences. She has been covering these issues for 16 years. Prior to joining Scientific American, she was a senior writer covering climate science at Climate Central and a reporter and editor at Live Science, where she primarily covered earth science and the environment. She has moderated panels, including as part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Media Zone, and appeared in radio and television interviews on major networks. She holds a graduate degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University, as well as a B.S. and an M.S. in atmospheric chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Gary Stix, Scientific American's neuroscience and psychology editor, commissions, edits and reports on emerging advances and technologies that have propelled brain science to the forefront of the biological sciences. Developments chronicled in dozens of cover stories, feature articles and news stories, document groundbreaking neuroimaging techniques that reveal what happens in the brain while you are immersed in thought; the arrival of brain implants that alleviate mood disorders like depression; lab-made brains; psychological resilience; meditation; the intricacies of sleep; the new era for psychedelic drugs and artificial intelligence and growing insights leading to an understanding of our conscious selves. Before taking over the neuroscience beat, Stix, as Scientific American's special projects editor, oversaw the magazine's annual single-topic special issues, conceiving of and producing issues on Einstein, Darwin, climate change, nanotechnology and the nature of time. The issue he edited on time won a National Magazine Award. Besides mind and brain coverage, Stix has edited or written cover stories on Wall Street quants, building the world's tallest building, Olympic training methods, molecular electronics, what makes us human and the things you should and should not eat. Stix started a monthly column, Working Knowledge, that gave the reader a peek at the design and function of common technologies, from polygraph machines to Velcro. It eventually became the magazine's Graphic Science column. He also initiated a column on patents and intellectual property and another on the genesis of the ingenious ideas underlying new technologies in fields like electronics and biotechnology. Stix is the author with his wife, Miriam Lacob, of a technology primer called Who Gives a Gigabyte: A Survival Guide to the Technologically Perplexed (John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

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Sophie Bushwick is tech editor at Scientific American. She runs the daily technology news coverage for the website, writes about everything from artificial intelligence to jumping robots for both digital and print publication, records YouTube and TikTok videos and hosts the podcast Tech, Quickly. Bushwick also makes frequent appearances on radio shows such as Science Friday and television networks, including CBS, MSNBC and National Geographic. She has more than a decade of experience as a science journalist based in New York City and previously worked at outlets such as Popular Science,Discover and Gizmodo. Follow Bushwick on X (formerly Twitter) @sophiebushwick

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Sarah Lewin Frasier is Scientific American's assistant news editor. She plans, assigns and edits the Advances section of the monthly magazine, as well as editing online news. Before joining Scientific American in 2019, she chronicled humanity's journey to the stars as associate editor at Space.com. (And even earlier, she was a print intern at Scientific American.) Frasier holds an A.B. in mathematics from Brown University and an M.A. in journalism from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. She enjoys musical theater and mathematical paper craft.

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