By Katie Vloet
Illustrations by Becky Sehenuk Waite unless otherwise noted
In this age of instant gratification, when answers to all of our questions are a click away, it’s tougher than ever to be surprised. Add to the equation the difficulty in knowing what to believe on the internet, and the premise of this story might seem dubious. But stick with us; it’s a good bet that at least a few of these facts will surprise you and that the range of expertise among LSA faculty and staff will wow you.
“Let’s start with the botanical definition of a fruit, which is the structure (a ripened ovary) that contains seeds in flowering plants. The fruits of a strawberry are actually the dry, hard little bits (called achenes) that coat the outside of the red part of the strawberry and often get stuck in your teeth,” explains Brad R. Ruhfel, research collection manager for vascular plants and an assistant research scientist at the U-M Herbarium.
“The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit that contains a few seeds. Each strawberry is coated with hundreds of fruits, and each fruit contains one seed,” he says. He adds that berries must develop from one flower that has one ovary, which means that strawberries aren’t berries because they grow from a single flower that has many separate ovaries. “The delicious red and fleshy part of the strawberry is the receptacle of the strawberry flower, the portion of the flower that the sepals, petals, and reproductive structures are attached to. When the fruits ripen, the receptacle swells, becomes very sweet, and turns red to attract animals that will then help spread the seeds.
“You know what is a berry, though? Bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins.” Not to mention a few less-surprising members of the berry family, including blueberries and cranberries.
Illustration by Chris Sehenuk
A Strawberry Isn’t a Berry. A Banana Is.“Let’s start with the botanical definition of a fruit, which is the structure (a ripened ovary) that contains seeds in flowering plants. The fruits of a strawberry are actually the dry, hard little bits (called achenes) that coat the outside of the red part of the strawberry and often get stuck in your teeth,” explains Brad R. Ruhfel, research collection manager for vascular plants and an assistant research scientist at the U-M Herbarium.
“The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit that contains a few seeds. Each strawberry is coated with hundreds of fruits, and each fruit contains one seed,” he says. He adds that berries must develop from one flower that has one ovary, which means that strawberries aren’t berries because they grow from a single flower that has many separate ovaries. “The delicious red and fleshy part of the strawberry is the receptacle of the strawberry flower, the portion of the flower that the sepals, petals, and reproductive structures are attached to. When the fruits ripen, the receptacle swells, becomes very sweet, and turns red to attract animals that will then help spread the seeds.
“You know what is a berry, though? Bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins.” Not to mention a few less-surprising members of the berry family, including blueberries and cranberries.
Illustration by Chris Sehenuk
The number of ways to order a deck of 52 cards is 52 × 51 × 50 × ... × 2 × 1, which is about 10^68, says Mark Conger, a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics. “That’s an immense number—about equal to the number of atoms in the Milky Way galaxy,” says Conger (who fact-checked this and the paper-folding item with his colleague Ike Tan, a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics).
“Playing cards were invented in China about 1,200 years ago, so if 10 billion people each shuffled a deck of cards once a second from that time until now, they would produce fewer than 10^21 different orderings,” Conger says.
“That means that if you shuffle a regular deck of cards fairly, the odds are very good that you will produce an ordering that has never before been seen on any deck of cards in the history of the world.”
Illustration by Chris Sehenuk
A team of astronomers, led by Brooke Kotten of LSA, has shown that a star has likely eaten one of its planets.
Although a star might seem like the ultimate incinerator for destroying evidence, the team still found telling clues in the chemical composition of TOI-5882, a Sun-like star located some 1,300 light-years away—specifically in its unusually high lithium concentration.
“You are what you eat, right?” says Kotten, a graduate student researcher in the Department of Astronomy and lead author of the recent report in The Astrophysical Journal. “We know that there’s much more lithium in planetary material than there is in stars. So if a star eats a planet, it’s going to take on a bunch of lithium.” When a star consumes a planet, astronomers call it engulfment—and it often happens too quickly for astronomers to observe it in real time. “That’s what makes this field so exciting. You really are solving a mystery,” says Kotten. “We can’t just watch the crime happen, so we have to work with all the clues we’re given to figure out whodunit.”
Illustration by Chris Sehenuk
The Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated in the year 44 BCE, on the Ides of March (fact) after saying “et tu, Brute?” (fiction). More than two millennia later, we are still breathing his breath.
Alexandra Deal, assistant professor of chemistry at LSA, explains: “Some problems are unsolvable (without doing way too much work), but we can treat them as ‘Fermi problems’ and get a good enough answer by estimation. For this problem: molecules are so tiny that a human breath contains 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [25 sextillion] molecules. In fact, there are 100 times as many molecules in a single human breath than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts on Earth,” Deal says.
“If we assume that all the air in Earth’s atmosphere has spread out evenly in the last 2,000+ years, those molecules in Caesar’s breath have gotten everywhere (like sand does!) and at least one of the 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in your next breath was once in Julius Caesar’s lungs.”
The Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated in the year 44 BCE, on the Ides of March (fact) after saying “et tu, Brute?” (fiction). More than two millennia later, we are still breathing his breath.
Alexandra Deal, assistant professor of chemistry at LSA, explains: “Some problems are unsolvable (without doing way too much work), but we can treat them as ‘Fermi problems’ and get a good enough answer by estimation. For this problem: molecules are so tiny that a human breath contains 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [25 sextillion] molecules. In fact, there are 100 times as many molecules in a single human breath than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts on Earth,” Deal says.
“If we assume that all the air in Earth’s atmosphere has spread out evenly in the last 2,000+ years, those molecules in Caesar’s breath have gotten everywhere (like sand does!) and at least one of the 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules in your next breath was once in Julius Caesar’s lungs.”
Built in 1929, the zoo—which really was known as the “Animal House”—was behind the Alexander G. Ruthven Building. Residents included four foxes, six raccoons, two porcupines, four skunks, four black bears, three coyotes, a badger, otters, bobcats, and opossums (though there is some disagreement about a few of the latter animals on that list). A wolverine named Treppy, short for Intrepidus, lived there for a bit after he was briefly a mascot for the athletic department. Maize and Blue, a pair of brown bears, arrived as cubs in 1957.
Expansion of what was then the Ruthven Museums Building led to the zoo’s closure. The animals were relocated to other zoos, and the facility was razed in 1962.
“Helium is the second lightest element in the periodic table, so light that, uncontained, it will escape Earth’s atmosphere and drift into space. Helium was discovered in the Sun’s corona (the Sun is roughly one-quarter helium and the name stems from the Greek “helios”), but it is a finite terrestrial resource. It is generated naturally through slow radioactive decay processes deep underground and cannot be synthesized by other means. It is estimated that we will expend known helium reserves within the next century,” explains Joshua Buss, assistant professor of chemistry.
“This means no more party balloons, no more blimps, and a much flatter Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But, more critically, helium has several specialized scientific applications associated with its unique chemical properties—helium can reach ultra-cold temperatures, approaching absolute zero, and is the lightest noble gas, a collection of relatively inert elements with closed-shell electronic structures. These implementations can be niche, such as keeping rocket fuel cool during liftoff, cooling nuclear reactor cores, and preventing deep sea divers from getting the ‘bends.’ But helium also impacts everyday life. It is used in MRI instruments to cool superconductive coils and likewise finds application in the manufacture of fiber optics, semiconductors, and arc welders. Helium is utilized in electronics manufacturing and computing, aerospace and chemical research. Be mindful of this ‘endangered element’ and pass on that next balloon.”
Illustration by Matt Vierling
“Helium is the second lightest element in the periodic table, so light that, uncontained, it will escape Earth’s atmosphere and drift into space. Helium was discovered in the Sun’s corona (the Sun is roughly one-quarter helium and the name stems from the Greek “helios”), but it is a finite terrestrial resource. It is generated naturally through slow radioactive decay processes deep underground and cannot be synthesized by other means. It is estimated that we will expend known helium reserves within the next century,” explains Joshua Buss, assistant professor of chemistry.
“This means no more party balloons, no more blimps, and a much flatter Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But, more critically, helium has several specialized scientific applications associated with its unique chemical properties—helium can reach ultra-cold temperatures, approaching absolute zero, and is the lightest noble gas, a collection of relatively inert elements with closed-shell electronic structures. These implementations can be niche, such as keeping rocket fuel cool during liftoff, cooling nuclear reactor cores, and preventing deep sea divers from getting the ‘bends.’ But helium also impacts everyday life. It is used in MRI instruments to cool superconductive coils and likewise finds application in the manufacture of fiber optics, semiconductors, and arc welders. Helium is utilized in electronics manufacturing and computing, aerospace and chemical research. Be mindful of this ‘endangered element’ and pass on that next balloon.”
Illustration by Matt Vierling
Not to sound too judgmental, but black holes are incredibly messy eaters. That’s one takeaway from research led by Jon Miller, the Douglas Richstone Collegiate Professor of Astronomy.
Black holes are famous for gravity so intense that not even light can escape—but that only happens very close to the event horizon, the black hole’s point of no return. Farther out, gravity behaves much more normally.
The mess begins when gas gets pulled in. Rather than falling straight down, it swirls into a hot, glowing disk that can shine brighter than all the stars in a galaxy. That intense radiation can blast powerful winds back into space, pushing away gas that might otherwise form new stars.
Miller compares it to a certain Sesame Street character: “They eat like Cookie Monster,” he says. “Some goes in. An awful lot comes out. The higher the rate you try to shove in the gas, the higher the fraction of the gas that’s getting shot out.”
Image credit: JAXA
“Non-avian dinosaurs (i.e., dinosaurs other than birds) were an incredibly successful group of animals that lived on Earth for about 165 million years, meaning, despite what pop culture suggests (looking at you, The Land Before Time), many of the best-known dinosaurs did not live in the same geologic period,” says Brittany Burgess, the U-M Museum of Natural History’s museum programs manager.
“The fossil record indicates Stegosaurus lived between 155 and 145 million years ago, during the Late Jurassic, but T. rex didn’t appear until about 77 million years later, in the Late Cretaceous. T. rex went extinct a mere 66 million years ago, putting humans far closer on the timeline to the ‘tyrant lizard king’ than Stegosaurus.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Burgess adds, “T. rex did live alongside Triceratops, and there is plenty of evidence suggesting the former preyed on the latter.”
Correction: Mushrooms are not people. But they aren’t far off. Indeed, fungi are more closely related to people than to plants.
“Fungi and animals diverged approximately 1.5 billion years ago from a common amoeba-like ancestor that was both motile and heterotrophic, obtaining nutrients by digesting other organisms,” says Timothy Y. James, the Lewis E. Wehmeyer and Elaine Prince Wehmeyer Professor in the Taxonomy of Fungi in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and curator of fungi at the U-M Herbarium.
“Along one evolutionary path, fungi specialized in external digestion, developing great rigid cell walls that separated them from their environment while generating turgor pressure to drive growth through their food source,” he says, in reference to the force within the cell that pushes plasma membrane against the cell wall. “Along the other path, animals evolved internal digestion by developing the all-powerful gut while retaining the capacity for active locomotion.”
Illustration by DaJaniere Rice
Correction: Mushrooms are not people. But they aren’t far off. Indeed, fungi are more closely related to people than to plants.
“Fungi and animals diverged approximately 1.5 billion years ago from a common amoeba-like ancestor that was both motile and heterotrophic, obtaining nutrients by digesting other organisms,” says Timothy Y. James, the Lewis E. Wehmeyer and Elaine Prince Wehmeyer Professor in the Taxonomy of Fungi in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and curator of fungi at the U-M Herbarium.
“Along one evolutionary path, fungi specialized in external digestion, developing great rigid cell walls that separated them from their environment while generating turgor pressure to drive growth through their food source,” he says, in reference to the force within the cell that pushes plasma membrane against the cell wall. “Along the other path, animals evolved internal digestion by developing the all-powerful gut while retaining the capacity for active locomotion.”
Illustration by DaJaniere Rice
If you’re picturing Little Shop of Horrors, then fear not. The carnivorous plants of Michigan have never said, “Feed me, Seymour.” But several native plants in the state are indeed carnivorous, says Brad R. Ruhfel, research collection manager for vascular plants and an assistant research scientist at the U-M Herbarium. One is the purple pitcher plant. “The ‘pitchers’ are in fact highly modified leaves that serve as traps for insects and other invertebrates,” Ruhfel says. “Once an insect falls into the trap, they have a hard time getting out due to downward-facing hairs on the interior of the pitcher that help keep the critters in.
“The fluid in the trap contains special enzymes that help digest the organisms, and turn them into nutrients that the plant can use to grow. Pitcher plants use this method to obtain nutrients as the habitats they grow in are typically nutrient poor.” Other carnivorous plants in Michigan include bladderworts (Utricularia spp.), butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris), and sundews (Drosera spp.), “all of which have different approaches to eating bugs,” Ruhfel adds.
Illustration by DaJaniere Rice
“Historical and archaeological research has shown over and over again that ancient Greek and Roman marble sculptures were painted in a variety of hues (including the skin!), and yet when many people picture ‘classical’ sculptures, they imagine gleaming white marble,” says Ian Moyer, associate professor of history.
“Over long centuries, painted colors on most ancient Greek and Roman sculptures faded away, and when they were rediscovered in the Renaissance, scholars and artists assumed that their whiteness was an intrinsic element of their aesthetic,” he says. Moyer points out that painted sculptures were discovered at Pompeii as early as the 1730s, yet the misconception of white marble persisted and was even reinforced by some art historians “who tied this ‘whiteness’ to Eurocentric and racialized ideals of beauty.
“Inaccurate ideas are often supplanted by new discoveries,” Moyer adds. “When they persist despite hard evidence to the contrary, something else must be sustaining them. In the case of white-marble classicism, historically inaccurate images and ideals have been sustained by aesthetic preferences developed over a long history of interpreting—and sometimes misinterpreting—the past.”
“Historical and archaeological research has shown over and over again that ancient Greek and Roman marble sculptures were painted in a variety of hues (including the skin!), and yet when many people picture ‘classical’ sculptures, they imagine gleaming white marble,” says Ian Moyer, associate professor of history.
“Over long centuries, painted colors on most ancient Greek and Roman sculptures faded away, and when they were rediscovered in the Renaissance, scholars and artists assumed that their whiteness was an intrinsic element of their aesthetic,” he says. Moyer points out that painted sculptures were discovered at Pompeii as early as the 1730s, yet the misconception of white marble persisted and was even reinforced by some art historians “who tied this ‘whiteness’ to Eurocentric and racialized ideals of beauty.
“Inaccurate ideas are often supplanted by new discoveries,” Moyer adds. “When they persist despite hard evidence to the contrary, something else must be sustaining them. In the case of white-marble classicism, historically inaccurate images and ideals have been sustained by aesthetic preferences developed over a long history of interpreting—and sometimes misinterpreting—the past.”
“Historical and archaeological research has shown over and over again that ancient Greek and Roman marble sculptures were painted in a variety of hues (including the skin!), and yet when many people picture ‘classical’ sculptures, they imagine gleaming white marble,” says Ian Moyer, associate professor of history.
“Over long centuries, painted colors on most ancient Greek and Roman sculptures faded away, and when they were rediscovered in the Renaissance, scholars and artists assumed that their whiteness was an intrinsic element of their aesthetic,” he says. Moyer points out that painted sculptures were discovered at Pompeii as early as the 1730s, yet the misconception of white marble persisted and was even reinforced by some art historians “who tied this ‘whiteness’ to Eurocentric and racialized ideals of beauty.
“Inaccurate ideas are often supplanted by new discoveries,” Moyer adds. “When they persist despite hard evidence to the contrary, something else must be sustaining them. In the case of white-marble classicism, historically inaccurate images and ideals have been sustained by aesthetic preferences developed over a long history of interpreting—and sometimes misinterpreting—the past.”
Squirrels were prized in medieval Europe for their fur, which was often used as a soft lining in clothing, says Tina Bawden, George H. and Ilene H. Forsyth Professor in the LSA Department of the History of Art. “They were thought of as quite crafty: Medieval encyclopedias describe them as able to cross the water by standing on a piece of wood and using their tail as a sail,” she says.
The squirrel later became something more akin to the Doodle and Corgi dog breeds of today. “In the late Middle Ages,” Bawden says, “tame squirrels were prized as pets among the nobility and given as gifts. Depictions on small luxury domestic objects such as ivory boxes and mirror cases show them being carried around or sitting on ladies’ laps as lovers play a game of chess. They were status symbols of noblewomen in particular, who fitted them with bell-studded silver collars and luxurious leashes, and had them live in miniature houses.”
Squirrels were prized in medieval Europe for their fur, which was often used as a soft lining in clothing, says Tina Bawden, George H. and Ilene H. Forsyth Professor in the LSA Department of the History of Art. “They were thought of as quite crafty: Medieval encyclopedias describe them as able to cross the water by standing on a piece of wood and using their tail as a sail,” she says.
The squirrel later became something more akin to the Doodle and Corgi dog breeds of today. “In the late Middle Ages,” Bawden says, “tame squirrels were prized as pets among the nobility and given as gifts. Depictions on small luxury domestic objects such as ivory boxes and mirror cases show them being carried around or sitting on ladies’ laps as lovers play a game of chess. They were status symbols of noblewomen in particular, who fitted them with bell-studded silver collars and luxurious leashes, and had them live in miniature houses.”
A group of butterflies flew across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping over about a week in October 2013. Painted lady butterflies are known as strong migrators, but this feat was astounding even for them. The flock appears to have crossed the Atlantic from West Africa to French Guiana in South America, aided by fat reserves and strong trade winds.
“It was probably an accidental migration,” says Oliver Keller, Research Museum collection specialist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “The butterflies divide their flight into about 15 percent where they actively flap and 85 percent where they just flap once in a while to adjust direction but otherwise just go with the wind. A bunch of butterflies probably died on the migration because they didn’t have the fat reserves. But for the butterflies that did make it across, it was rare, especially the east to west pattern that they flew. Their bodies are really not built to fly that far without landing.”
A group of butterflies flew across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping over about a week in October 2013. Painted lady butterflies are known as strong migrators, but this feat was astounding even for them. The flock appears to have crossed the Atlantic from West Africa to French Guiana in South America, aided by fat reserves and strong trade winds.
“It was probably an accidental migration,” says Oliver Keller, Research Museum collection specialist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “The butterflies divide their flight into about 15 percent where they actively flap and 85 percent where they just flap once in a while to adjust direction but otherwise just go with the wind. A bunch of butterflies probably died on the migration because they didn’t have the fat reserves. But for the butterflies that did make it across, it was rare, especially the east to west pattern that they flew. Their bodies are really not built to fly that far without landing.”
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