ICYMI: Highlights from the week that was March 18 – March 24, 2018
No one can keep up with everything, so let us do it for you. We’ll gather the top Smithsonian stories from across the country and around the world each week so you’ll never be at a loss for conversation around the water cooler.
There were new discoveries in the deeps and new threats from the heavens this week, but we spent most of our time watching Michelle Obama dance with a toddler.
There’s no place like home, but don’t get too attached (Review)
The Washington Post, March 22
Do Ho Suh’s “Almost Home” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum features partial simulations of his lodgings in Asia, Europe and the United States that are made of gauzy colored fabric. (Gene Young/Smithsonian American Art Museum)
There is no one place like home in Do Ho Suh’s exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. There are many. The variety represents the artist’s experience of relocation, transience and rootlessness. It also suggests, less directly, the contemporary age of mass migration, whether forced or voluntary.
The Korean-born Suh’s “Almost Home” features partial simulations of his lodgings, past or present, in Asia, Europe and the United States. The full-scale models are very specific, complete with details such as an apartment inspection placard. Yet they’re also imprecise and even spectral, because they’re made of gauzy colored fabric rather than wood, brick or plaster. Read more from Mark Jenkins for The Washington Post.
Some dogs were royalty, others were dinner in ancient Mayan culture
Science, March 19
Dogs that lived in the ancient Mayan city Seibal resembled those depicted in pottery from Colima state in Mexico. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
If you were top dog in Mayan Latin America, you might be an honored guest at the king’s feast. But if not, you’d likely end up as the main course of someone else’s. That’s the conclusion of a new chemical analysis of animal bones found in a 3000-year-old Guatemalan city, which provides the earliest picture yet of how the ancient Mayans domesticated animals and treated those in their care.
“It’s a well-done study,” says Henry Schwarcz, an anthropologist and professor emeritus who researches paleodiets at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, though he notes more work will be needed to confirm the findings. And the study may solve another mystery, he says: how the Mayans produced enough protein to feed the thousands who thronged their cities. Read more from Michael Price for Science.
Smithsonian moves Michelle Obama portrait due to ‘high volume of visitors’
CNN, March 20
Michelle Obama was so popular she needed more space.
The distinctive Amy Sherald painting of the former first lady, unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery last month, has relocated to a different part of the museum due to demand.
“We’re always changing things up here. Due to the high volume of visitors, we’ve relocated Michelle Obama’s portrait to the 3rd floor in our 20th-Century Americans galleries for a more spacious viewing experience,” the National Portrait Gallery tweeted. Read more and watch the story from Betsy Klein for CNN.
The Controversial ‘Humanity Star’ Is Coming Back to Earth Early
A shiny satellite launched in January will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere a few months ahead of schedule.
The Atlantic, March 20
Humanity will come crashing down earlier than expected.
The Humanity Star, a satellite launched into space in January, will reenter Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate sometime this week, according to websites that track the movement of objects in orbit around the planet. The satellite was always going to come back down. But it was supposed to remain in orbit for nine months, according to Rocket Lab, the U.S. spaceflight company, based in New Zealand, that built the satellite.
SatView and Space-Track, databases that track all artificial satellites and space probes around Earth, forecast that the Humanity star will reenter the atmosphere sometime on Thursday, March 22. (See SatView’s page here, and Space-Track’s page here.) Rocket Lab’s own tracker shows that the satellite’s altitude is already steadily dropping.Read more from Marina Koren for The Atlantic.
A hidden ocean ‘Twilight Zone’ has been discovered that’s filled with new species
Newsweek, March 21
One of the new fish species discovered in the Rariphotic, Haptoclinus dropi, was named for the Smithsonian’s Deep Reef Observation Project. Very little is known about deep reefs which are only observable using submersibles.
The world’s oceans cover more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface—but despite decades of scientific research, we still know precious little about them. In fact, estimates suggest humans have explored only five percent of the marine environment, according to figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Now, in a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers have investigated a zone of the ocean in coral reef ecosystems where life is so different from the regions above and below that an entirely new category is required to describe it. Read more from Aristos Georgiou for Newsweek.
Five things you should know about trees and forests
In honour of the International Day of Forests, Tim Wallace presents some fascinating lesser-known facts about our arboreal companions.
Cosmos, March 21
A global map of tree density.
Credit: CROWTHER ET AL.
Until 2015 no one really had any idea how many trees there are. The best global estimate was about 400 billion. When researchers from Yale University were asked to come up with a more accurate figure by the organisers of a UN-launched tree-planting initiative called the Billion Tree Campaign, they discovered this number was dramatically on the low side.
The conclusion of the research (led by Thomas Crowther, now with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) was that there were more than 3 trillion trees. This result was found by collating data including satellite tree inventories verified by on-the-ground counting, to compute tree numbers down to the square kilometre.
The study also delivered a recalibrated estimate of the number of trees being destroyed by humans – more than 15 billion a year. The total tree population had been halved as a consequence of human activities over the past 5,000 years or so.Read more from Tim Wallace for Cosmos.
Will the Spirit of Burning Man Art Survive in Museums?
The New York Times, March 23
At the end of the summer, for one week only, hundreds of giant fantastical sculptures and whimsical roving vehicles appear, then disappear like a shimmering mirage in the Nevada desert. We’re talking about Burning Man, the notoriously free-spirited annual spectacle that has occupied a dry lake bed outside Reno for nearly 30 years.
Depictions of Burning Man tend to focus on the hedonistic antics of attendees, but from the beginning, when its co-founder, Larry Harvey, burned a wooden effigy as a summer solstice ritual on a San Francisco beach in 1986, art has been part of its DNA, and increasingly the museum world is taking notice. When Burning Man started selling tickets in the mid-1990s, it began giving away artist grants. That support, now totaling around $1.3 million annually, plus quiet funding from Silicon Valley, has allowed Burning Man’s art projects to grow in ambition and quality. Read more from Brian Schaefer for The New York Times: Will the Spirit of Burning Man Art Survive in Museums_ – The New York Ti.._
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Posted: 26 March 2018
