RP291 Synesthesia

RP291 Synesthesia

Is October yellow? Does your breakfast taste pointy? Is the smell of soap itchy? To a person with synesthesia, all these questions might make sense.

Synesthesia is a condition in which senses or perceptions are connected in unusual ways. In terms of the brain, it means when one sense is stimulated, an unrelated one is also triggered. These associations are automatic, not thought out or planned. Most people with synesthesia don't recognize that they are different for a long time.

A common form of synesthesia is grapheme-color synesthesia. For these synesthetes, letters or numbers are colored."A" may always be blue, while 1984 might be pinkish. "Linguistics is a grayish-purple-blue word," says Karen, one synesthete.

There are less common, more unusual versions as well. The Man Who Tasted Shapes is a book about different synesthetes, including one who indeed associated different shapes and tastes. People can connect sounds with odors or textures, or dates with places in space. A rare form of synesthesia links personalities with numbers, letters, or other concepts. Each synesthete is unique, so while many people may perceive numbers as colors, they will not agree, for example, that four is green.

No one is sure how synesthesia works. Scientists speculate that the brain becomes cross-wired, with parts of the brain that are supposed to stay in one area crossing into another. Synesthesia doesn't seem to have any negative effects on the brain. Synesthetes are as smart as everyone else. Indeed, many tests show that synesthetes have better memories than the average population for some reason.

Synesthesia seems to affect certain groups of people more than others. It seems to run in families. More women than men, and more people who are left-handed than right-handed have it. Many famous artists and composers have turned out to be synesthetes. Perhaps seeing the world in such a different way is inspiring!

RP279 Mystery of King Tut

 RP279 Mystery of King Tut

Tutankhamun—“King Tut,” as he is known—inspires fascination that is out of proportion to his actual historical significance. Somehow, this insignificant pharaoh has captured imaginations for centuries.

The young king is probably beloved for his tomb. Until Tut's tomb was found in 1922, archaeologists believed that all the great tombs had been robbed and stripped. Tut's tomb was spared because thousands of years ago, it was hidden by flooding and other buildings. Before the archaeologist Howard Carter and his workers discovered the stairs to the tomb, no one remembered that King Tut had ever existed.

For its discoverers, walking into the tomb was like walking into a dream. The burial chamber was painted with religious scenes. It contained a series of gilded shrines, which protected the carved granite sarcophagus. Inside, the mummy of the young pharaoh rested inside three carved, decorated coffins, one of which was made of pure gold. The mummy wore a beautiful gold mask and other adornments. Nearby, a treasury contained hundreds of funeral statues and sacred objects.

Tut's tomb, however, wasn't particularly extravagant for its time. In fact, it's rather small. Some experts believe Tut died suddenly (he was only 18 or 19 years old) and had to be buried before his royal tomb was finished.

Who was King Tut? Tutankhamun is believed to be the son of Akhenaten, a powerful and influential ruler. Akhenaten is famous for changing the religious system of Egypt, insisting that the country worship only one high god. When his son took the throne at only nine, he inherited a country that was in a state of turmoil over these changes.

Tutankhamun originally supported his father's beliefs, but over time he returned to the old ways. He reinstated old gods and returned to Egypt's ancient capital. In this way, he calmed some of the upheaval his father's reign had caused. The impact of his reign was slight, but with his tomb, King Tut brought ancient Egypt back to life for all the world.

RP245 The Missing Aviatrix

 RP245 The Missing Aviatrix

The first time Amelia Earhart saw an airplane, at age ten, she wasn't impressed. To her, it was "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting. "Years later, one would speak to her, and everything would change.

At an air fair in Toronto, a stunt pilot dove at Earhart and a friend. Earhart stood her ground. As the plane passed, something happened. Flying obsessed her. She took her first flight in 1920, at age 23. She took her first lesson a few days later, and soon saved enough money to buy her own plane. Then, she went on to a life of breaking records.

Earhart had some accidents at first, either through her error or faults in the plane. Some of her contemporaries doubted her skills. However, after only about a year of lessons, Earhart broke the women's altitude record, taking her plane up to 14,000 feet. In 1923, she got her pilot's license.

In 1928, a phone call changed Amelia Earhart's life. George Putnam, her future husband, rang and asked if she'd like to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. It turned out that Earhart didn't do any of the flying on that trip. Her male copilots did.

However, Earhart was inspired to do solo flights. In 1928, she flew solo from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across North America. In 1932, she flew across the Atlantic again—solo, the first woman to do so. That was the start of many firsts. In 1935, she flew solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland, from Los Angeles to Mexico City, and from Mexico City to New Jersey.

In 1937, Earhart attempted to fly around the world along the equator. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made it about two thirds of the way over a month of flights. Then, between New Guinea and Howland Island, something went wrong. Earhart and Noonan disappeared. Their plane has never been found. Though it is a sad ending to Earhart's life, her legend lives on.

RP228 Ghost Towns

 RP228 Ghost Towns

Scattered across the American Great Plains are little pockets of buildings, clustered together. The windows are usually broken. No water comes from the taps. Sometimes there are old cars rusting, abandoned in the tall grass. No one comes, no one goes. No one lives there anymore. These are the ghost towns of the USA.

These towns were abandoned when the industries supporting them died. Many towns in the Northern Plains grew around the building of a railway line, which was never completed. Others were left when the highway system replaced the rail system. In other areas, mining towns were abandoned when the ore ran out. Residents moved on to other jobs and other industries, leaving behind the structures they had made. Now, many of these ghost towns are historical sites, run as open-air museums.

Bodie, California, is one of the most well-known ghost towns in the USA. It began as a mining camp in 1859 and grew quickly. By 1880, Bodie had perhaps 7,000 residents, a telegraph, a jail, several newspapers, and even a Taoist temple! However, gold found in neighboring states lured miners away from Bodie. The town began to decline after the 1880s, and by 1920, only 120 people lived there. The town, however, still stands. Its wooden buildings nestle under greenish hills and a vast blue sky. Though no one lives there now, about 200,000 people a year visit ghostly Bodie.

Bannack, Montana, was also built and abandoned over gold. Founded in 1862, the town was briefly the capital of the Montana Territories, but prosperity didn't last. By the 1930s, there was little work to be had in the mines. The last of the residents left by the 1970s, abandoning 60 historic log-and-frame structures. Visitors can explore most of them. Bannack, like Bodie, is experiencing a second life as a National Historic Landmark. Perhaps there is life after death, at least for ghost towns.

RP211 Darkness on the Sun

 RP211 Darkness on the Sun

The sun isn't a uniform ball of fire. Instead, it bursts with flares and spots, and it has other phenomena, none of which are completely understood.

Sunspots are dark spots that appear on the surface of the sun. They can be specks or areas tens or hundreds of thousands of miles wide. They' re dark because they' re cooler than the surrounding areas. If these spots were seen anywhere other than on the sun, they would be very bright. Sunspots occur in pairs or groups, and can last from hours to several weeks, moving around the sun's surface.

Sunspots are caused when the sun's surface is disrupted. The surface, which contains all the sun's heated energy, breaks. Electrified material then leaks from the crack like a whirlwind, which appears as a spot. These spots release electricity into the air. This adds to the solar wind—a flow of charged particles that comes out of the sun's atmosphere because it contains so much energy. This flow of charged particles can reach the earth's atmosphere.

Solar wind affects power on Earth. It can interfere with satellite transmissions, radio waves, and GPS data. It can knock out power grids. It can also cause beautiful events like the northern lights, which occur when solar wind interacts with gases in our atmosphere.

A recent study confirms that sunspots also affect Earth's weather. Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research confirmed the theory that sunspots lead to heavier rains on parts of the earth. Energy from sunspots heats parts of the atmosphere, affecting high-altitude winds. This leads to a chain reaction that increases rain in the tropics. Meanwhile, the energy also warms the surface of the Pacific Ocean, starting another chain reaction that leads to more rain elsewhere.

Other theories say that more sunspots would lead to less energy and heat on Earth, causing a "mini ice age." True or not, the earth is strongly connected to its sun, spots and all.