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Turn Yourself Into A Diamond
Tips From Science On A
Good Life, And Death

By Martin Wainwright
The Guardian - UK
11-30-4
 
A thinktank of British scientists has come up with a new way of quickening the national intellect - a brain-taxing spin on the old formula of 100 things to do before you die.
 
The group, which includes the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield and the inventor James Dyson, urges us all to take samples of our own DNA, measure the speed of light with chocolate, and solve the mathematical mystery of the number 137.
 
The list, compiled by New Scientist magazine, suggests booking to see Galileo's middle finger (preserved in Florence) or ordering liquid nitrogen to make the "world's smoothest ice-cream" at home.
 
More complicated options include joining the 300 Club at the South Pole (they take a sauna to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, then run naked to the pole in minus 100 F) or learning Choctaw, a language with two past tenses - one for giving information which is definitely true, the other for passing on material taken without checking from someone else.
 
The appeal to scientists of such native American precision runs through the whole collection, but the compilation's editors, Valerie Jamieson and Liz Else, also want participants to have fun.
 
"You've only got one life, so make the most of it," they say. "Swim in a bioluminescent lake, boil an egg with a mobile phone, or have a new species named after you." With a little practice - carefully explained - you may also be able to achieve multiple orgasm, or, for £35,000, clone your pet cat.
 
The scientists also offer five things to get organised for your remains after death. These include leaving your body for use in car crash research, which has saved an estimated 8,500 casualties since 1987, or having the carbon in your ashes turned into a diamond.
 
 
The list is "the best science has to offer in the way of new experiences," say Ms Jamieson and Ms Else, who have tried to include a number of easy options. Lives may be transformed by watching the night sky or simply going out at night and adjusting to the low levels of light - two of the 100 - or assisting at the birth of an animal. "This is one of life's most surprising and moving experiences and pretty accessible," says the booklet. "Farmers are often only too happy to have help, and if you want something more exotic, ask a zookeeper if you can be involved in the birth of a camel, zebra or giraffe."
 
Like all scientific experiments, the list comes with a clutch of warnings about taking care, especially when making the nitrogen ice cream (wear goggles and gloves) or touching a tiger. The mathematician Ian Stewart who suggests the latter after two "awesome" goes at it himself, adds: "Do not attempt it without professional assistance."
 
There is also, inevitably, some crossover with the more banal lists of things to do before you die, even if the scientists' equivalent of visiting Everest is much more interesting. The Earth's rotation causes a 20-kilometre bulge at the equator, making Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador the highest mountain above sea level. If you want to win the lottery meanwhile, enter a proof for one of seven conjectures which so frustrate mathematicians that there is a million US dollar prize for cracking any of them.
 
The mystery of the number 137 requires prolonged "brain gym", according to its proposer Paul Davies, theoretical physicist and author of Einstein's Unfinished Revolution. There must - probably - be a reason why the number describes the strength of electromagnetism through calculations involving the charge of the electron, Planck's constant - the fundamental constant of nature arising in quantum mechanical problems - and the speed of light. But no one has yet discovered what it is.
 
Before you die: 100 things you simply must do
 
Personal choices
 
Nobel prizewinner John Sulston, who led Britain's publicly funded effort to unravel the human genome
 
"Visit Shark Bay in Western Australia to see fossil mounds of algae which were among the earliest living things on Earth. Seeing them, I can marvel at how human thought transcends the here and now.They act as a ruler of time stretching back into the past"
 
James Dyson, the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner and the two-drum washing machine
 
"I'd like to see our society focusing less on how things look and more on how they work. Children should be taught to consider engineering and science as cool - not the preserve of boffins"
 
Patrick Moore, the unofficial national astronomer
 
His entry, the shortest in the book, suggests "scouring the night sky for comets, with the chance of following Halley or Donati. It would be great to see Moore's comet blazing across the sky"
 
Pick of the list
 
Extract your own DNA by spitting gargled salt water into diluted washing-up liquid and slowly dribbling ice-cold gin down the side of the glass. Spindly white clumps which form in the mixture are, basically, you
 
Link your home computer to the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico (via setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu) and you could be the first person to spot messages from aliens for which the telescope constantly checks. If your computer gets the first, the Americans promise to give you the credit
 
Measure the speed of light by melting chocolate in microwave oven hotspots and measuring the distance between globs. Various calculations produce the answer and you can still eat the chocolate afterwards
 
Be a gecko. Researchers in Manchester have almost succeeded in developing Velcro-like pads to fix to the feet of volunteers who will then be able to scuttle over the town hall or the Guardian's northern headquarters like lizards, with no risk of falling
 
Write your name in atoms at IBM's Almaden research laboratory in San Jose, California - and, while you're saving up to go, simply see an atom by befriending a physicist at one of Britain's many university labs with the equipment to trap and cool atoms. Barium is best.
 
Use your excreta to enter the amazing world of the dung beetle. Much more basic but just as fascinating for some. If you are ever caught short in the open, says New Scientist, turn the accident into an opportunity by lingering nearby and watching what happens. "It won't take long for the beetles to appear, scuttle boldly up to your deposit and begin rolling balls of it away, head-butting it and pushing it with their forelegs." Reassuringly, it gets used as food and a beetle breeding nest
 
Inhale helium and start singing. Old hat but a must for anyone who's never done it. But don't take too much and never use a pressurised source. If you do, in New Scientist's words, "you probably won't be singing anything. Ever"
 
When you've gone
 
Help nail a murderer. You can register ahead with Tennessee's body farm. Donated corpses are left out in the open to decompose before trainee forensic scientists get to work on them. An estimated 100 murderers have been convicted as a result
 
Become a diamond. LifeGem of Chicago, Illinois, the book reveals, will take a few grains of your cremated remains, subject them to high pressure and temperature, and you will emerge from the process, 18 weeks later, as a sparkling one-carat diamond
 
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1361763,00.html?=rss
 

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