147. The Big Bum Coconut

Fruit come in all shapes and sizes, no sizes greater however, than that of the Coco de Mer. This bizarre fruit is both rare and exotic, with more than a passing resemblance to a pair of buttocks, earning it the nickname of the ‘Bum nut’ This curiosity is only found on two islands in the Seychelles, Praslin and Cureuse. Also known as the ‘Seychelles Coconut’ it requires 7 years to mature and then another 2 to germinate.

Once it is finished with all of its growth it reaches phenomenal weights, the heaviest one weighed reached 42kg  the largest weight of any fruit ever recorded. Behind this also lies a small mythology, it’s latin name Lodoicea callipyge means in part ‘beautiful rump’ after sailors who saw the mysterious double coconut thought it resembled a pair of disembodied woman’s buttocks.Until the trees were found to be the source in 1768,  people believed their source to be a mythical tree at the bottom of the sea.                  

 

97. The Immortal Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Henrietta Lacks

In life Henrietta was a not particularly special person, she lived a fairly full and standard life as an African American woman in the 20th Century. Then in 1951 she was diagnosed with and died of, cervical cancer at the age of 31. Then came her claim to fame.

In her case, as in almost all cases of cancer there were tumours formed, and without any kind of knowledge or consent given by her, cells from these tumours was taken from her dead body and sent to a lab. This illicit taking of samples was an unfortunately common practice in the 20th Century, but in this case it was very fortunate, or at least interesting. The cells performed a task that the researcher tasked with them, George Gey, had never seen before. They stayed alive.

In fact they could be kept alive and grow, not dependent on a human body to provide their sustenance. They were grown and formed into more cells and they were still alive. It was a breakthrough, these cells were ‘immortal’ – this ability to produce unlimited amounts of itself meant that many tests and  experiments could be performed on the same genetic material. So they got growing; starting from the sample of cells they established the ‘immortal line’ of cells that came off of it, name ‘HeLa’ to protect the identity of Henrietta.

Now there is now almost no biomedical research clinic in the world that doesn’t contain something of Henrietta Lacks. You see, once the immortal cell line became available the demand was huge. The cells represented the opportunity for constant access to human cell cultures that had no defects. The demand was met and Henrietta Lacks has done much since her death.

The first thing was fighting polio, her cells were the testing ground for the effectiveness of the polio vaccine. From that start point she has been used to study cancer, AIDS and the effects of radiation on the human body amongst other things.

HeLa cells are involved in over 11,000 patents and she is heavier in death than in life. Estimates suggest that well over 20 tons of Henrietta Lacks have been grown in labs, a considerable amount more than her living weight.

There are additionally, problems. Thanks to her cells being ‘immortal’ they are quite good at surviving and reproducing, so good in fact that they are a pain to control and contain. So widespread are they that they now contaminate hundreds of experiments; in all actual fact her cells are contaminating as much as 20 percent of other, alternate cell lines. The effects of such widespread contamination?

Unknown. Long live Henrietta Lacks, now lacking in life, but not in substance.

 

68. Heavy Up There

FACT: We don’t notice how heavy air is.

So… how heavy is the air above us?

We are built for it, we can all cope with the pressure of the millions of cubic kilometres of air that are suspended about us, everyone from the great Pando down to the smallest bacteria and even Yoghurt. It is pushing down on you now, in fact, unless you have been to space you have had this force acting on you at almost every single moment in your life, the weight of the atmosphere pushing down on you, and you act as if it is nothing.

So how much is it, what is the atmosphere pushing down on us?

The answer is this, 101325 Pascals. That may mean nothing to you, so here it is in layman’s terms.

There are 10,330 kilograms of air pushing down on every square metre of your body. Over 10 tons. That is something everything you have ever seen, is fighting against. Think of a polystyrene cup, put it upside down, it has that enormous force acting across it, yet it doesn’t crumple. That applies to everything. Not even squirrels crumple under this immense pressure.

Talk about a weight on your shoulders. 101,325 Newtons of weight per metre squared to be precise.

 

50. Pando the Trembling Giant

MISCONCEPTION: The Blue whale is the largest organism in existence.

TRUTH: Many would say that Ant colonies count as one organism, but they are also just too small. What we are talking about now is a super-organism, and in the world of super-organisms, ant colonies are small fry.

The largest(known)  super-organism is called Pando, Latin for ‘I spread’. Pando is a tree, or not. It varies depending on your definition of a tree. Pando (a.k.a. the Trembling Giant) is a clonal colony of a single male, Quaking Aspen(Populus Tremuloides). It is located in Utah in the United States of America.

The way it works is this; when the Quaking Aspen wants to reproduce, it both flowers and produces a clone of itself. The cloning just means extending its network of roots and forcing them up through the ground, thus starting a new tree. This new tree has the same genetic makeup and even has genetic markers to say that it actually belongs to the first tree.

The new tree grows with the old one and together they establish a large root network which produces more and more Quaking Aspen, essentially causing the single tree to expand into a clonal colony with a vast root network.

Just how vast is it?

Normally clonal colonies are 0.1 hectares in size, Pando is 43 hectares in size, and weighs 6,000 tons. Now wait, there is more.

The trees on the surface die, the root network is the real Trembling Giant, and it does not die. It constantly sends up new shoots, renews dieing trees and stops supplying nutrients to those which are dead. The reason it cannot die is because the heart of Pando lies too far beneath the ground to be reached by the frequent forest fires. These forest fires are in fact a boon for Pando as it kills off the pesky invading conifers and frees up space for many more extensions of Pando to be sent up.

Due to this invulnerability and protection from competition the heart of Pando is considered the oldest known organism in existence. Experts pin it down to being approximately 80,00 years old. This impressive longevity makes it the oldest known living organism on our fair planet.

80,000 years ago the Trembling Giant was but a lone tree living in the perfect environment for it to spread, grow, flower and produce clones. However the environment has changed so much over time that it is much less hospitable towards Quaking Aspens. Experts believe that the changes in the environment have been so pronounced that  Pando has not successfully flowered in the last 10,000 years, meaning its survival is dependent upon producing more clones and hoping for forest fires to wipe out the pesky conifers.

This is impressive but there are many more super-organisms out there, many under-analysed or even unknown. So while this is good, it is almost certain that there are other things even more impressive than this.

It’s an interesting world out there.