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Sarcofungus | Moody Spidey | Space Donut

Sarcofungus | Moody Spidey | Space Donut

Issue #103

Steve Burgess
June 03, 2023

Quick reminder for those that missed last week: “The Convo Kit” rebranded to "casualSTEM”. Same stemmy puns, more descriptive name.

On a hot day in Boston, Mark Rober and I independently posed the same question to MIT’s graduating class: “How has the greatest engineering school not built a way to keep graduations cool, temperature-wise?”

I have a few ideas. What do you think would work?

-Steve

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photo by Rachel Horton-Kitchlew

Sarcofungus

Living coffins carry humans to the afterlife. Loop grows final resting places from dehydrated mycelium, dubbed “Living Cocoons”.

Mycelium = root-like structure of a fungus
Living Cocoon fungi are rehydrated upon burial
Leading to full earthly absorption in 60 days

Loop claims this will reduce body decomposition from decades to 2-3 years. More testing is needed before we start seeing fungal funerals, but living caskets offer sustainable transport to the great unknown. And way too many “fun guy” jokes.

How mushroom is in the box?

Moody Spidey

Happy spider bites may hurt less. Researchers found Australian funnel-web spider’s moods correlate with how their venom is brewed.

Australian funnel-web = deadliest spiders in the world
4 species monitored for heart rate and other reactions
Only Hadronyche cerberea showed lethal mood swings

H. cerberea could be the only spider customizing cocktails, or other species may just have different triggers. Research continues trying to ID venom compounds and how this could create better antivenoms. Hearing a lotta “where are spiders?” and not any “how are spiders?”...

I’ll do you one better: why are spiders?

Space Donut

Let’s go to Saturn, they have donuts. Well, its moon Enceladus made a really big watery one.

JWST tracked the moon’s largest known water plume
Jets nearly 6k miles into space (20x wider than Enceladus)
30% of this H₂O settles into a donut orbit around Saturn

That other 70% finds its way onto the ringed planet and other moons. Astronomers are studying the donut to learn more about Enceladus’ chances for supporting life. Just to be safe, they ordered an extra dozen…for science.

Nom nom nom