I came across an interesting article about using isotope levels in ancient clamshells to get a better idea about climate change. Turns out the level of certain isotopes varies depending on the temperature of the water in which the clamshell is growing. The colder the water, the more you get of the heavy oxygen isotope, oxygen-18.
A team of scientists used 26 ancient clamshells obtained from a bay in Iceland. The life span of a clam is 2 to 9 years, so by shaving very thin layers from each growth ring, measurements could be taken of the variations over a 2-9 year period. It provides a novel way of independently verifying other accounts of palaeoclimate.
This reminded me of a story my mother told me several decades ago. It really has nothing to do with climate change but I think it is kind of interesting.
My mother had a very close friend who was a technical artist working for some office or another at a world-class university in Boston. His latest project was drawing was the growth rings on some sort of mollusk, I honestly can't remember which. It seems that each year this particular mollusk makes a new ring, each one of which is extremely small.
These drawings - all made by hand in ink -- were to be scanned. Bear in mind, this was back in the 1960's when this technology was relatively new. The goal was to find a scanner sensitive enough to accurately read the growth rings my mother's friend was recreating in his drawings.
When my mother asked her friend why the scientists were going to all this trouble to scan the growth rings, he answered that they really weren't at all interested in the growth rings. They simply needed a very sophisticated scanner for a project they were working on. The idea was that a scanner good enough to handle these growth rings would be good enough for their work.
So what was the project? "Oh," he said in an offhanded way, "it's some sort of artificial brain they are working on." This was in the 1960's. I've always wondered whatever became of it. More importantly, I wonder who was paying for the research.
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