Forcing a White Christmas: Can humans control the weather?

When I was a kid, I can distinctly remember going to bed on December 24 – on more than one occasion – feeling anxious that there would not be snow for Christmas. Ultimately, I ended up having pretty good luck and the majority of my Christmas mornings included a fresh layer of powder in the yard, even if the day before had been greener than a sack of unripe bananas. But what if we didn’t have to rely on luck? Can science guarantee white Christmases?

Setting aside the issue of whether or not we could get people on board with the idea (Santa is historically unprepared to do his work in blizzards, if TV specials are to be believed), the issue of whether it is technically possible to control the weather has piqued the interest of people for thousands of years. Countless cultures around the world have rain dances or other, mostly dubious, means of coaxing favourable meteorological conditions, and that urge has carried over into the labs of enterprising scientists as well.

At the heart of the matter is building clouds. Whether you are looking for rain to water crops or just sleddable snow, clouds are where you have to start. Fortunately, back  in 1946, a couple of guys named Irving Langmuir and Vincent Schaefer were working at a General Electric research lab and discovered that if you tossed some dry ice into a super-cooled cloud, you could produce massive amounts of ice crystals in relatively short order. The key is finding a substance that can seed the formation of the precipitation you are looking for. It turns out that the hardest part about producing rain drops or snowflakes is getting them started. If you can find some material that water or ice can latch onto to give them a head start, you might be able to get the ball rolling.

Note: the actual experiment took place in a cloud chamber, not an actual cloud. But where's the fun in that?
Geoff's Side note: It totally happened.

The materials that are used most often are silver iodide for ice crystals and very fine salt particles for water droplets, with the results varying depending on who you ask. The Chinese government is extremely confident about its ability to control the weather. So much so that officials in Beijing guaranteed clear skies for the opening ceremonies at the 2008 Olympics by encouraging rain in the lead up to the event (to essentially drain the atmosphere of moisture). Whether the 1,104 cloud seeding rockets they shot into the sky in the lead up to the event actually made a difference in the clear skies that ultimately came together can’t be known for certain, but there is some evidence to support it.

An eight-year long research project conducted in Texas and Oklahoma suggested that cloud seeding increased rainfall, cloud height, length of storms, and the area in which rain fell. That said, the US government doesn’t kick in any money for states that want to address droughts by pumping chemicals into the sky.

So if we can potentially make it rain, how do we turn that rain into snow? Even the ice crystals formed by seeding with silver iodide will fall as rain if the air temperature is too warm; climate change only adds to the problem. Fortunately there may be a solution for that too - the trick is in mimicking volcanoes.

When a big volcano erupts, it throws a lot of material into the atmosphere and the effect can be significant cooling over a wide area. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it led to around 0.5 degrees C of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere for up to 2 years afterwards. The bulk of the cooling is the result of sulphur compounds getting into the atmosphere. They operate like a zillion little mirrors and reflect sunlight away from the Earth. Scientists have suggested that pumping a relatively small amount of sulphur into the sky using planes or balloons for dispersal could have a similar effect. It wouldn’t be enough to stop climate change, but it might be enough to make the weather outside a little more frightful.

Obviously, there are ethical questions that go along with performing unchecked experiments on the weather and putting Santa at risk. Should humans play god with systems we don’t fully understand? I guess it depends on how good you are with a GT snow-racer.

Sketchy Fact #109: Family Feasts

Sharing a meal with family around the holidays is an evolutionary instinct to build strong bonds by
offering your most valuable food stuffs. Anthropologists believe that even 2 million years ago, Homo ergaster (an ancestor of modern humans) gathered food for feasts.

Chasing Z’s: How to Fall Asleep on Christmas Eve

It is the eve of Christmas Eve (December 23) and around the world children are on their best behaviours in anticipation of the night that Santa will travel to every house on the planet, delivering gifts using his advanced stealth technology and potentially a super-fleet of military aircraft. However, the anticipation of Christmas morning is counterproductive to the means by which we bring it closer. Put simply, we can all relate to getting so damn excited about the holidays that it becomes impossible to sleep the night before. Not only does this make the time pass more slowly; it prohibits Santa from working his techno-magic and breaking into our houses undetected. With that in mind, we have four methods you can use to get yourself to sleep and out of the fat man’s way:

Drugs!

The most obvious solution to the problem is to pop a few sleeping pills or down a bottle of Nyquil. Sleep medications work in a few different ways. For some medications (allergy meds in particular), drowsiness is just a side effect of their main purpose. These medications are appealing because they are easy to acquire and are generally less dangerous than prescription sleep aids. The drugs that are harder to get, however, tend to be more targeted in their strategies. Most sleeping pills bind to your brain’s GABA receptors. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. In layman’s terms, it is a chemical produced naturally in your brain that dials down activity.  Some prescription sleep aids are able to bind to GABA receptors in regions of the brain specifically associated with sleep, leaving other areas unaffected. Other, newer medications can even target the part of your brain that produces your body’s natural sleep-wake rhythms (the hypothalamus). These solutions aren’t perfect, though. They can lead to memory loss, hallucinations, and even instances of sleep-walking. Also, some people have an “issue” drugging their kids for something as trivial as getting them to sleep on a non-school night, so let’s explore some other options and try to find a kid-friendly one.

Booze!

When in doubt, break out the eggnog. Truly, words to live by. As many of us are aware, part of the process of gradually poisoning yourself with alcohol is that, at some point, you might pass out. Alcohol is a depressant, meaning that it impairs function in certain parts of your brain. We all know the impact this can have on coordinated motor functions like walking and talking, but it also applies to the deeper, more primal regions of your brain that control very basic things like keeping you conscious. As alcohol spreads through your brain it naturally wants to equally disperse itself. That means, while you may only want to turn off the parts of your brain that are preventing you from talking to the attractive intern at the office Christmas party, eventually the booze will work its way into your brain’s alertness centre. When that happens, your body will basically shut down. This may be a good thing if your goal is to suddenly find yourself waking up in a bathtub on Christmas morning, but it does have its drawbacks. Completely ignoring the prospect of an absolutely epic hangover (turn down the Christmas carols, please) you may overshoot your target level of intoxication and end up dead from alcohol poisoning. Sorry, kids.

Trauma!

Simple and to the point, a well-placed blow to the head will send you off to dreamland in a snap. Ask any boxer to describe getting knocked out and you will quickly understand the process. Over the course of a fight, as punches pile up, boxers often describe feelings of numbness, stumbling, loss of coordination, trouble thinking and eventually total collapse. Basically what is happening is that as your head snaps around in response to impact, your brain smashes up against your skull. When that happens, normal function gets scrambled in the same way it does when you drop your cell phone from an uncomfortable height. This is potentially the worst way to put yourself to sleep. First off, if Santa finds you unconscious and bloody, he might infer reasons to put you on the naughty list. Second, concussions are damaging and – given enough of them – fatal. Definitely not worth the risk.

Exercise!

In the end, the best solution to our sleep dilemma is the one you least want to hear at this relaxing time of year. As it is for basically every other physical problem, exercise is the safest answer. Exercise fatigues your body and mind at the same time that it produces melatonin, a neuro-chemical that controls sleep and repairs muscles. For the average person, regular aerobic exercise is one of the simplest ways to ensure a better, more restful night’s sleep. Even people with insomnia benefit from exercise, albeit at a slower pace. Research has shown that regular exercise over a period of four months can begin to restore normal sleep cycles in even the most sleep deprived people. So if you routinely have trouble sleeping and want to be prepared for Christmas, start running on Labour Day.

So there you have it! Plenty of options to help you get to sleep. This list isn’t exhaustive, though. There are many other ways to overcome the urge to stay up all night, including not ingesting sugar or caffeine before bed (lay off the cocoa), and lowering the temperature of your room (crack the window, it’s only a minor blizzard). See you on Christmas morning. Sweet dreams!

Sketchy Fact #108: The Speed of Santa

If Santa weren’t magic, the G-forces needed to move fast enough to deliver presents to every child in the world would be 17,500 times more powerful than gravity and crush him into a singularity.

Stealth Santa: Ramping up the sneak-factor

‘Twas the night before christmas, and all through the house,

not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  

The stockings were hung, on the chimney with care,

in the hopes that St. Nicholas would soon arrive and use his advanced knowledge of science and technology to break into your house.  

OK, perhaps Santa won’t pull a total Ocean’s Eleven style heist, but let’s face it, most burglars use the door or window when trying to infiltrate your home. It takes a special kind of crazy to try to break into a house, totally unseen, through the chimney. Luckily, Santa keeps up to date with his weekly Sketchy Science reading, and understands how to use the laws of nature to craft the ultimate stealth entrance.

The first hurdle Santa needs to overcome is ensuring the reindeer-powered flight to your home is totally undetectable. Since the 1940’s, radar technology has been used by the military to track objects moving on land, air, and sea. As radar technology becomes more advanced, so does the technology used to thwart it. A radar blasts out a high powered radio wave and waits for it to bounce off of things and come back to the receiver - kind of like an echo. When surfaces are round, like a typical airplane fuselage, part of the wave will reflect back to the receiver, making it very easy to spot. Stealth airplanes, on the other hand, have very sharp, angled, and pointed surfaces, which deflect the radio waves and scatter them in many different directions. They are also made of materials which help to absorb the radio waves. With some slight modifications to his sleigh, Santa can easily deflect most of the radar, while I’m sure his top notch R&D team has investigated the configuration of reindeer fur which best maximizes radar wave absorption.

Now that santa is able to get around at altitude without being spotted, how does he manage to land on the roof undetected? Could Santa become invisible to the naked eye? There are already successful examples of invisibility paneling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqwxNQyFbZA), which essentially place cameras all around the object meant to become invisible, then project each image onto LCD panels on the opposing side. Each LCD panel shows an image of whatever is directly behind it, creating the illusion of invisibility. While these invisibility panels work well for nice, planar surfaces, like Santa’s stealth sleigh, how would he go about hiding the reindeer? In these cases, it’s best to use flexible materials which are able to distort light. In fact, a team at UC Berkeley have created an 80 nanometer thin material that can be wrapped around odd shaped surfaces and make them invisible in certain wavelengths of light (http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-tiny-invisibility-cloak-gold-metamaterial-20150917-story.html). This technology can be used to make invisibility cloaks for the reindeer or Santa himself, though unlike Harry Potter, Santa doesn’t need magic to make his stuff work. If only Hogwarts taught classes in nanomaterials.

With Santa safely on the rooftop undetected, how does he manage to squeeze his portly body down the chimney? This seemingly impossible feat is made possible by the highly skilled elves at the north pole who specialize in genetic engineering, and managed to splice some octopus DNA in with Santa’s. Without the burden of bones or air sacks, octopi upwards of 600 pounds are able to fit through holes the size of a quarter (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/01/octopus-weighing-600-poun_n_775632.html). With that kind of squeezing savvy, Santa could get into your house through a poorly sealed window, let alone a gaping chimney-sized hole in the roof.

Once inside, all he has to do now is drop off a few presents in complete silence. So, how does he manage to creep around without making a peep? Of course, there are some military grade sneaking shoes he could use, which help to absorb sounds when creeping about, however, such technology wouldn’t help with creaky floor boards. Instead, Santa opts for a more complete solution, such as a hoverboard made from liquid nitrogen cooled superconductors (http://www.wired.com/2015/06/lexus-hoverboard-slide/). Such a device leverages the Meissner effect, which describes how placing a superconductor near a magnetic field induces an electric current, which in turn creates a magnetic field around the conductor. The two magnetic fields interact and apply opposing forces on each other, allowing Santa to levitate off the ground and hover around the living room. It should be noted, however, that for the hoverboard to work, the floor needs to also contain some kind of magnetic material. While that’s not typically the case for carpeted or hardwood floors, let’s just say Santa and his team have a far advanced understanding of material science and has figured that one out.

With the presents safely and silently delivered under the tree, Santa can now relax and enjoy some of the delicious eggnog and baked goods left out on the counter. However, with the all the cookies he inevitably eats along his nightly journey, hopefully he’s aware of any nutmeg added to all the delicious food he’s consuming, as in high doses, nutmeg can actually act as a hallucinogen (http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/03/24/the-hallucinogen-in-your-kitchen-the-chemistry-of-nutmeg/). Such a misstep would be disastrous to his otherwise perfectly executed stealth mission.

So when out on the lawn there arises such a clatter,

and you spring out of bed to see what’s the matter,

hopefully you don’t find Santa Claus arguing with your christmas decorations.

Sketchy Fact #107: Bombs Away

The word "mistletoe" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning "little dung twig" because the seeds are spread through bird droppings. How romantic...

Burn Baby Burn: The Science of a Perfect Yule-time Fire

The holidays are about ambiance. If you can’t surround yourself with the right festive atmosphere, then it will take much more of an effort to get into the spirit of the season. Obviously, decorations and a Christmas tree (or menorah or Festivus pole, depending on your leanings) go a long way to setting the mood; but nothing quite matches a crackling fire for creating warm and cozy feelings in the cockles of your heart.

The problem with fire is that it is difficult to manage and generally a pain in the butt. If you don’t keep it under control, it will burn up your presents and send you to the hospital. If you don’t constantly stock it, your fire will burn itself out and leave you shivering in the cold. That is probably why as human civilization has developed, we’ve outsourced our fire-making to power plants. But even if we are a lazy bunch of spoiled brats, we’ve never lost our love for just being in the presence of flames. Why else would they have an endless loop of a burning log on Netflix during December?

Streaming may be more convenient, but starting your own fire brings a sense of accomplishment and the effect is much more authentic. With that in mind, let’s dive into what makes a good fire.

First, most of us know that fire needs three elements: heat, fuel, and oxygen.

The interesting thing about fire is that it is not a thing by itself; rather, it’s more of an event. It is the outcome of taking a piece of matter containing compounds that react with oxygen and then heating them up enough so that they can combust. These compounds generally include hydrogen and carbon. Flames themselves are just super-heated carbon atoms that give off light as they rise away from the base of the blaze.

For our purposes, a fire starts when you heat up a piece of wood to a temperature where cellulose (the stuff wood is made of) begins to break down. As it does so, it releases gases containing reactive compounds. As heated molecules in cellulose are exposed to the oxygen in the surrounding air, they break apart and create new bonds, generally producing water and carbon dioxide. As atoms recombine, they rise and give off heat. The reason flames taper off into a point is that as the gases in the fire rise, they gradually spread out and begin to cool down. The tip of a flame is the last point at which they are close enough together for some atoms to still glow (incandesce).

Okay, so now we know what fire is, but how to we get one started? First, you have to pick the kind of wood you want to burn, as not all woods are created equal. Hardwoods like ash, oak, beech, and apple are dense, so they burn hot and last a long time; however, they are tough to heat to ignition temperature and they lack the satisfying crackle that a good Christmas fire needs. The reason they are dense is because the trees from which these woods come grow slowly with few air or water pockets between the wood fibers. By contrast, softwoods like pine, light easier and crackle like a cereal elf, but they burn quickly and the liquid sap they contain can create a flammable build-up in your chimney. The best choice for Christmas, then, is fir. Woods like Douglas fir are moderately dense, they crackle, and they have less sap.

The key to getting your fire going is in the shape of the wood, and the key factor in shape is surface area. To heat up enough cellulose to start the self-perpetuating chemical reaction we’re going for, we’ll want to start with pieces of wood with a larger surface area. This means that as much of their mass as possible is exposed to the oxygen with which we are trying to get it to react. To help you visualize what I’m talking about, imagine a piece of paper so large that it weighs 10 lbs (4.5 kg). It has a large surface area and will burn much faster and light much easier than a block of wood that weighs 10 lbs.

Once you get your fire going and it is generating enough heat on its own, you can throw in pieces with decreasing surface areas until eventually you can burn a big yule log. A big, slow burning piece of dense wood will keep you warm and entertained for hours as you drink your eggnog and revel in holiday cheer.

Now, get to roasting those chestnuts.

Sketchy Fact #106: Teenage Tree Dream

It takes, on average, fifteen years for a Christmas tree to grow to just the right size for your living room.

The ‘Nog Dog Spills the Truth about a Holiday Classic

Hey you cool cats, I’m the ‘Nog Dog and the daddios at Sketchy Science have asked me to fill your glasses with truth about the silky smooth holiday concoction we call eggnog. While it may only be socially acceptable to down this tasty beverage for one month of the year, some jive turkeys have tried to take even that away from us ‘nog aficionados, claiming that this nectar of the gods is in fact a bacterial gut bomb waiting to happen. It’s time to set the record straight and get back into the Christmas spirit, if you catch my drift.

First up, let’s lay down what true eggnog is made up of. Contrary to the name, the key is dairy. Milk, cream, heavy cream, or the whipping kind - the choice is yours, but we can thank cows for the bulk of our ‘nog foundations. Beyond that, all you need is some combination of eggs, sugar, spices (nutmeg for purists such as myself), and booze (bourbon is the modern go-to, but I prefer the colonial staple: rum).

The Hurdles of Curdles

The trouble with this formula is acid. Milk, it turns out, is 87% water with the rest being a hip party with fats and proteins forming the conga line. Most (80%) of those proteins are casein –the rest are whey – and when casein meets acid, it binds up into uncool chunks - most of us know as curdles. Water is a neutral liquid with a pH of 7, smack dab in the middle of the scale; but thanks to all the other stuff in milk, we are starting off on the acid side of true with a pH of around 6.7. That isn’t quite enough to make casein lump up (that’s why all milk isn’t full of curdles). The problems start when booze crashes the party.

If we were making our ‘nog with rocket fuel (100% ethanol), things would stay as cool as the other side of the pillow; but spirits like bourbon and rum are only about 40% alcohol with the rest being an acidic mix of compounds with a total pH way down around 3 or 4. Try mixing that kind of booze with milk and you’ll end up with a tub of not-quite-cheese.

To solve the problem, use fattier dairy products like cream or heavy cream. Believe it or not, fat is the friend of smooth ‘nog, as the lipids that make up fats slow down the formation of curdles. The higher the concentration of fat, the smoother the end product will be. That’s why I cozy up with heavy cream this time of year and it’s 36% fat profile.

Science v. Salmonella

The other constant criticism of Christmas in a cup is that raw eggs have a risk of bringing salmonella to the party, turning your holiday mixer into a race for the bathroom. For starters, salmonella is about as common as a chocolate snowflake. Only around 8% of modern henhouses are salmonella carriers and only 0.012% of eggs from contaminated flocks carry this party pooper – pardon the pun. But let’s pretend that salmonella is everywhere. Even then, eggnog is a safer bet than Rudolph saving Christmas.

Researchers at Rockefeller University have spent the past 40 Decembers studying salmonella in ‘nog and their findings should set your mind at ease. Where booze was the villain in our first ‘nog-conundrum, it’s the hero this time around. The alcohol in rum, bourbon, or brandy can zap salmonella back to October, if you give it enough time. Researchers Vince Fischetti and Raymond Schuch sampled ‘nog brews after one day, one week and three week intervals to see how much salmonella hung around once booze was in the mix. After one day and one week, purposely contaminated batches (containing the same amount of salmonella as in ten raw eggs) would still leave you feeling sorry, but by three weeks their petri dishes were as clean as your grandma’s couch and totally safe to drink.

So it ends up that the key to totally safe ‘nog is slow aging. The booze will keep the bacteria at bay and fuel some passionate sing-alongs come Christmas Eve – provided you start your batch by the end of November. Obviously this can’t work for virgin ‘nogs, so use cooked or pasteurized eggs for the batches you whip up for anyone too young to drink. Just another reason why Christmas isn’t just for kids.

I hope I’ve set your mind at ease as we move into ‘nog-season. Until next year, this is the ‘nog dog signing-off.

Sketchy Fact #73: Tall Trees

The tallest Christmas tree ever recorded was a 221 foot (67 meter) tall Douglas Fir cut down and displayed in Seattle, Washington in 1950. The tallest potential Christmas tree in the world is "Hyperion" a 379 foot tall (115 meter) coast redwood... It's illegal to cut it down, though, so you would have to have a Christmas camp-out.

The Immaculate Conception: How to have a baby without getting busy

Special thanks to Denis "the Menace" Lanno for suggesting this festive topic.

Of all the Christmas stories calling out for a scientific explanation, the virgin birth stands in a league of its own. While science and religion so often choose to avoid each other completely the immaculate conception all but demands a closer look. Whether or not you believe that a couple thousand years ago a middle eastern woman got pregnant while still a virgin, the question of whether or not such a thing is possible is undeniably interesting. There may even be an off chance that this sort of thing is fairly common. In a recent self-report study, 1% of US women reported having children without ever having had sex. We wouldn’t want to dismiss their claims without giving the subject a fair, open-minded glance. So come along with us on this magical Christmas Eve as we dig into the science of unilateral reproduction!

Virgin birth is a biological problem that involves things we actually know a good amount about. In normal reproduction an egg is produced by a women which contains copies of half of her 46 chromosomes. When that egg and its 23 chromosomes meet up with a sperm, containing 23 chromosomes from the man who produced it, the result is a “zygote” which eventually divides into a cluster of cells called and embryo and on into a baby somewhere down the line. If we are looking to explain a virgin birth we somehow need to find a way to get that second set of chromosomes into an egg and give it the ability to divide using only the resources available in a normal woman’s body. It’s like that part of Apollo 13 where they have to fix the air filter with duct tape and coffee filters.

When we take a look at the tools we have available there is one fairly important thing that is missing: A Y-chromosome. As it turns out, the biggest problem with the story the Bible provides is that Mary (a woman… presumably) gives birth to Jesus (a male). The thing is, chromosomes come in pairs. The pair of chromosomes that determine gender in humans can be either X or Y. Women have two X chromosomes (XX) and men have one of each (XY). As you can see, Mary doesn’t have a spare Y chromosome to provide her baby with.

If Mary were a reptile, we might have something to work with. In fact, asexual reproduction has actually in observed in boa constrictors, komodo dragons, a few birds, and a couple other kinds of vertebrates. The process basically amounts to cloning since the genetic material involved is all identical to what is found in the mother. The cool thing about reptiles is that females are defined by their ZW sex chromosomes while males have a ZZ combination. That means that it is actually theoretically possible for a female snake to give birth to male offspring without mating, by giving an egg 2 Z chromosomes. What makes the whole situation mind-blowing is that, in practice, when scientists first observed this process in nature, all the offspring tested had 2 W chromosomes, meaning that they were an entirely new gender! This process is called parthenogenesis and it is useful when an animal is cut off from potential mates.

That doesn’t really help us explain Jesus, though. Fortunately, we are left with one pretty cool, albeit slightly complicated, possibility. To understand it we need to appreciate why parthenogenesis doesn’t happen in mammals. To put things very simply, the genes that a growing mammalian egg cell is provided with do not allow it to develop past a certain point. This is called “genetic imprinting” and you can think of it as a sort of cellular traffic signal. Under normal conditions, eggs cells grown in female mammals contain a “stop” code that prevents them from growing into embryos on their own and it is only when a male sperm cell containing the green-light “go” code arrives that things can get underway.

Research from Japan and South Korea has shown that a good part of the stop and go process is controlled by two genes called Igf2 and H19. In experiments with mouse embryos, researchers determined that the H19 (stop) gene normally blocks the growth-stimulating Igf2 (go) gene in egg cells. When scientists, who were very keen to play god in the most literal sense, mutated the H19 gene, deleting 13,000 of its bases, they managed to produce 26 viable, unfertilized eggs (out of around 600 eggs they started with) that led to 10 live mouse babies. Only one of those pups survived to adulthood, but to back up the Christmas origin story we only really need one anyway.

So what are we left with? Is the Immaculate Conception a scientific possibility? The short answer is maybe.. but not exactly as written in the Bible. First, we need to assume that human reproduction is similar enough to mouse reproduction that we have any evidence at all to go on. Next it would require a genetic mutation so precise and so unlikely that the scientific method has never in modern history found evidence for it ever happening naturally. Then, and only then, might we concede that after having produced an egg with a crippling mutation on its H19 gene, and having suffered no other mutations that would damage it beyond repair, that a woman named Mary might have given birth to baby without having sex… but we still don’t know where she would have gotten that Y chromosome.

Sketchy Fact #72: Santa's Sherry

In the UK children leave Santa a glass of sherry. Assuming Santa weighs around 250 lbs, he is too drunk to drive his sleigh after the 6th house. Good thing he has DD elves.

Frosty the Slime Mold: How to Create a Living Snowman

I was a pretty dumb kid. I remember once I put orange juice in my morning cereal when we were out of milk and watched in horror as my mini-wheats swelled to 4 times their normal size and took on a taste that can only be described as gut-wrenching. But dumb as I was there was one Christmas story that bugged be for it’s implausibility: Frosty the Snowman. You all know how it goes. A bunch of kids make a snowman, wish him to life, and have wacky adventures all over town. Anyone who has ever made a snowman knows that the wacky adventures are in the building of the thing. If you’re expecting to build a new friend that you can melt away with a hair dryer when he gets annoying, you are in for a harsh reality check.

As I’ve grown older, however, and learned about the supremely weird things that can happen in nature, I’ve begun to rethink my harsh critique. As it turns out, under just the right set of circumstances (involving tonnes of unrealistic assumptions and the invention of a whole new “maybe it could exist” species) you might just be able to create a passably intelligent snowman.

Okay so here we are in a field near a forest. There is a fresh blanket of snow on the ground and we’ve set to work making our snowman. Unbeknownst to us, however, those aren’t just plain old ice crystals we’re balling up, they are loaded with amoebas! We pop in a corn cob pipe, a button nose, throw on a top hat and are amazed when our new frozen friend begins moving around the field on an apparent unspoken mission… He may not be singing or dancing but something weird is going on. Is it magic? Not quite.

It turns out that some amoeba’s can play a pretty neat trick. When food is scarce or conditions are bad these single celled organisms can come together and create a sort of slug. That slug can slide around in search of food and even displays an intelligence that goes beyond what is possible for a single amoeba. Scientists call these slugs slime molds and they have shown that, when working together, amoeba colonies can solve mazes in search of food. One imaginative researcher even created an experiment where the amoebas designed a railway system for the United Kingdom that turned out to be more efficient than the one humans created. I am not making this up.

For this to even be partway plausible we need to imagine a slime mold that is also an extremophile. Extremophiles are organisms that make our assumptions about life look just plain silly. As the name suggests, extremophiles love extreme environments. They live in boiling geyser water in Yellowstone National Park and can survive and thrive at the bottom of the ocean where temperatures are incredibly low and pressures are incredibly high. It isn’t much of a stretch then to imagine a slime mold extremophile that thrives in frozen water. Maybe it could even use the structure of the crystals to strengthen the structure of the multicellular organism it forms when individual amoebas come together. Maybe when you form the snow it lives in into balls, that structure is at its strongest and becomes the perfect skeleton to do some exploring with.

Unfortunately even in our wildest imagination, a talking slime mold is going a little too far. Frosty would likely be a lot less chatty and rely on sign language a lot more. As for the singing and dancing… Well, music might actually help our amoeboid Frosty become a little more lively. Research has shown that exposing microbes to music actually improves their ability to do work. One German sewage plant actually makes a point of playing Mozart through its pipes to help bacteria break down waste faster.

Christmas is a time for improbable things, and we live in an improbable world. Santa delivers presents to every house in the world. Bioluminescent Reindeer fly through the sky. Who's to say in this crazy world of giant squid and ipads that a slime mold couldn’t evolve a way to warm the cockles of your heart. Here’s to you Frosty, and all your frozen, slimey, amoeba buddies.

Sketchy Fact #71: Oh Deer...

Deer antlers are one of the fastest growing tissues in the animal kingdom. They can grow as much as 1/2 an inch per day, assuming Santa gives his crew a balanced diet.