Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 9, 1995 TAG: 9502090044
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A: This is not to suggest that the squirrels are to blame when they are smushed. This is not some blame-the-victim thing. But you have to admit that it's amazing how squirrels can leap around in a tree, elude cats, scramble across rooftops and power lines, bury nuts in the ground and sometimes actually find them later, and yet still have a hard time just crossing the street safely.
The obvious answer is that squirrels evolved long before the automobile age, and don't know how to deal with cars. But it's not simply that cars befuddle them. The amazing thing is that squirrels really cannot see the car at all. The motion of the car is so bizarre, compared to other things in nature, that the squirrel's brain can't even register it.
``They don't appreciate the movement toward them of these objects,'' says Richard Restak, author of ``The Modular Brain.'' He says he pondered the squirrel paradox for 25 years before figuring it out. ``They can't appraise speed and movement coming at them like that. There's nothing in their life to correspond to that.''
Tree branches don't move. Cats don't come at them from a block away. As for power lines, squirrels probably just think they are a new variety of vine.
The point is, the brain of a squirrel, or any creature, including a human being, is a carefully calibrated sensorium. It doesn't just suck in the whole world and discern it. Each creature's brain is evolved, in tandem with sensory organs, for a particular environment. We might think we discern the world around us perfectly, but we lack the kinesthesia of squirrels, the sonar skills of dolphins, the keen vision of owls, and the brilliant olfaction of dogs.
Squirrels might think it's weird that we can't remember where we put our eyeglasses.
Q: Why do scientists think space might be curved?
A: We've noticed that space is curved within our own home. We walk into the kitchen and - space warp! - we're suddenly bending toward the refrigerator to rummage for snacks. It's weird. (At work, space is so severely bent around the boss' office that we just stay away from it, for our own safety.)
Physicists often say that space is curved. Indeed, they argue that if you start zooming in one direction you'll probably eventually come back to where you are. This is because the universe has wacky geometry, with possibly four spatial dimensions, and although it appears to be finite - maybe 125 billion light-years in diameter or so - it has no edge, because space is curved, either with ``positive'' or ``negative'' curvature.
We have a hard time visualizing a negatively curved object (a saddle is the usual example) but we grasp that a sphere has positive curvature. We also can't quite picture how a finite object could be edgeless, or have four spatial dimensions, so we resort to an analogy: A two-dimensional creature on the surface of a sphere would live in a finite but edgeless world.
We spoke to Robert Osserman, author of ``Poetry of the University: A Mathematical Exploration of the Cosmos,'' who offered another interesting reason for suspecting the universe has curved space. He said the night sky, as seen through powerful telescopes, makes no sense unless space is curved.
The Big Bang theory says that long ago the universe was very small and very dense. But when we look ``back in time'' at the light just reaching us from the ancient universe, it looks huge. Something here is wrong.
In the far reaches of space we see old galaxies. Beyond that, quasars. Beyond that, nothing except some very old radiation. And beyond that is the edge of time itself. If we could see all the way back to the origin of the cosmos it would be a tiny little thing. But the early universe we perceive doesn't look tiny at all. It looks gigantic, all spread out.
Solution: Space must be curved. The curvature of the universe acts like a reverse funnel. It's kind of like someone shined a flashlight at us and we were surrounded by a sphere of light.
``It's funneled in all directions, which is a hard thing to visualize,'' says Osserman. ``Definitely the universe we're looking at doesn't obey the ordinary laws of Euclidean geometry.''
So don't let the night sky trick you: It's the ultimate hall of mirrors.
The Mailbag:
Julie S. of Southgate, Mich. asks, ``Why are both men and women referred to as blondes - but only women as brunettes? Also, why is there the term `mistress' - but not a comparable term for men?''
Dear Julie: By definition a brunette is a woman, because the ``ette'' is a feminine diminutive (a horrible grammatical term, but there it is). A man with dark brown or black hair is a ``brunet.'' Men are rarely called brunets because it sounds like the feminine form of the word. At some unconscious level we understand that words have masculine and feminine qualities.
We'd point out that guys aren't usually labeled by their hair color - how often is a guy really called a ``blonde''? - because women are more often identified by superficial characteristics.
The masculine counterpart to the word mistress is ``master.'' A mistress isn't necessarily a girlfriend; she can be a teacher, an employer, a ``mistress of ceremonies,'' whatever. It's true that there's no good word for the toothy hunk seen on the sly by a married woman; only if he's rich can he be a ``sugar daddy.''
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