Feedback is New Scientist’s a popular side view of the latest science and technology news. Items you think readers might find interesting can be submitted to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com
Doubling
If the internet is to be believed (it isn’t), an increasing proportion of celebrities have been replaced by clones.
The last person whose body was allegedly ripped out is actor Jim Carrey, the star of the film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and other cinematic wonders. Carrey attended the 51st Csar Awards in Paris on February 26, his first public appearance in a while, looking a little different than before. One might think that this would be attributed to some combination of aging and cosmetic procedures, but instead a conspiracy theory was formed that the person was not Carrey, but a clone.
Whatever he’s doing with all that celebrity body-stealing stuff, they’re busy: Paul McCartney (supposedly dead since 1966 and replaced by a stand-in) and Avril Lavigne (supposedly dead since 2003) will replace Carrey. You’d think they’d be better at hiding their nefarious activities by now.
Feedback tried to think through the logistics of creating a usable star clone Dumb and Dumber To. As far as we know, no one has ever successfully cloned a human, so there’s that. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume there’s an illegal cloning lab in Hollywood, maybe in a seedy apartment somewhere on Mulholland Drive, that can do it. There is still a big problem.
On a side note: if Carrey could somehow be cloned, perhaps his cells could be harvested from a set of upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 4that the clone emerges from the vat as a child. It would then take 64 years for him to grow up to look like Carrey does now, at which time he would be 128 years old and probably 6 feet under.
At the risk of adding to the trauma Star Trek Fans who just saw the synopsis of the latest TV series was once called a terrible movie Star Trek: Nemesis in which the villains created a clone of Captain Picard and planned to replace him. To make it work, they had to genetically engineer the clone to undergo accelerated aging. And it didn’t work properly even with 24th century technology.
Feedback infers that the current cloning plot may encounter technical obstacles.
Steel for lunch
Feedback is not for fancy restaurants. We feel that their main benefit is the enjoyment we get from reading a really biting download by a restaurant critic who has grown tired of his hunger for 18 perfectly gilded small portions.
Therefore, we were unaware of sonic seasoning, an emerging practice of using carefully selected sounds to enhance the dining experience. This builds on the science of sensory cross-modality: the fact that our senses connect in the brain to create special matches between, say, sound and smell. In some people, this leads to synesthesia, where colors can evoke tastes and so on. But even if you’re not a synesthete, the sounds a restaurant plays can affect your dining experience.
Writer Chris Simms alerts us to the latest offering in the field from Charles Spence and Tianya Zhang of the University of Oxford. They set out to identify a “musical match with a metal taste” that had not previously been identified, “nor sought.”
With graceful inevitability, the sound “strongly associated with a metallic flavor” was of course “the sound of a theremin, associated with old science fiction films”. For those unfamiliar with the theremin, it is an electronic instrument that a musician does not touch. Instead, there are two antennas and the musician moves his hands in the space near them. Thanks to the electromagnetism, it generates an otherworldly wail that’s perfectly suited for a creepier kind of sci-fi.
Feedback said that this explains why we taste lead whenever we hear the original theme Star Trekbut we double-checked and there’s no theremin on that recording, so it’s obviously just our brains. Then we fell down the rabbit hole of recordings that are widely believed to feature theremins but actually don’t and that feature the soundtrack Forbidden Planet and the Beach Boys Good vibes.
All this investigating has made Feedback hungry, so we go in search of lunch. What is the best sound match for leftover pizza?
Pass the bear
Just when we think there’s no more nominative determinism to be found, reader Richard Black comes up with a really tricky example.
It started when he read a recent column by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein asking “What is a galaxy? Chanda mentioned an article by astronomer Simon Smith that reported the discovery of a star cluster called Ursa Major III. It gets its name because, as seen from Earth, it lies in the constellation Ursa Major, or the big bear.”
Richard writes: “My mind (already at an advanced age) immediately jumped to the song [performed] by Alan Price called ‘Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear’ which is now instantly stuck in my head.” We’re not sure if this is really nominative determinism or just a giant game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but either way, it’s the connection in our head, and now it’s in yours too.
Regardless, to prevent any emails complaining that it doesn’t really count, reader Richard Bartlett has informed us that the head coach of Leicester City’s women’s football team is Rick Passmoor.
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