Ancient Beer, Butterfly Memory And A Space Telescope Rescue

Our resident Science Contributor Joe Johnson recently brought us three stories that span thousands of years — from ancient brewing to the possibility of inherited memories, and a NASA mission designed to rescue an aging space telescope.

Old beer discoveries

In northwestern China, archaeologists have identified a grain-based alcoholic beverage dating back about 2,300 years, to the Warring States Period. The liquid was found inside a sealed bronze vessel at a Qin-era cemetery in Ningxia. Researchers extracted about 3,740 milliliters of clear, light blue-green liquid along with a small amount of sediment.

Scientific analysis found starch grains, phytoliths and yeast, as well as organic acids associated with brewing. Researchers determined that the beverage was made from grains and say the discovery provides new information about brewing techniques of the period.

The ancient drink isn’t the only old beer attracting scientific attention. A separate story involves a bottle of Guinness Extra Stout recovered from the wreck of a ship that sank in the English Channel in 1864. According to the discussion, researchers are analyzing the contents, including its yeast, with an eye toward understanding — and potentially recreating — the historic beer.

Can a butterfly remember being a caterpillar?

The story involves a 10-year-old boy in Japan who raised Asian swallowtail butterflies and noticed that butterflies he had raised behaved differently around him than wild butterflies. He worked with entomologist Martha Weiss of Georgetown University on an experiment involving caterpillars exposed to lavender scent along with a mild electrical stimulus. The resulting butterflies were then given a choice between a lavender-scented path and an unscented one. The trained butterflies overwhelmingly avoided the lavender.

Even more intriguingly, the account says the butterflies’ descendants continued to avoid lavender for at least two generations. But the significance of that finding remains an open question: whether it represents memory, inherited behavior or another biological mechanism requires more research.

NASA is attempting a very different kind of rescue

The agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has spent more than two decades studying gamma-ray bursts and other cosmic phenomena. Increased solar activity accelerated the spacecraft’s orbital decay, putting it on course to eventually re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. (NASA)

To save it, NASA contracted Katalyst Space to build LINK, a robotic servicing spacecraft designed to rendezvous with Swift, capture it with three robotic arms and raise it into a higher orbit. LINK launched July 3 aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket. The mission is expected to take several months. (NASA Science)

Image: Diver Stefan Panis with a 162-year-old bottle of Guinness brewed during the reign of Queen Victoria found at the shipwreck of the Mindoro. (Stefan Panis)