Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

Let Me Just Roll Up My Sleeves to Make Sure You're Not Dying

LTY writes, "The first is an ECG, single lead, called a rhythm strip, which shows a common and generally benign arrhythmia called second degree heart block, Mobitz Type I, also called Wenckebach. The interval between the P wave (atrial contraction) and the QRS (ventricular contraction) progressively increases till a QRS is dropped. The second is a three-lead ECG showing an acute inferior myocardial infarction, aka a heart attack."

Carl writes: When you stop to reflect on electrocardiograms, it is remarkable that we can peer within the heart simply by picking up tiny changes in voltage on the skin. The fact that muscles such as the heart use electricity to drive their contractions was inconceivable in the 1600s. Natural philosophers believed muscles might be inflated by "animal spirits," but the idea that the same power in a lightning bolt was at work in our hearts every second of our lives would have seemed absurd. Jan Swammerdam, a Dutch anatomist, tried to persuade his contemporaries in the 1660s that animal spirits did not drive the heart--he showed that a severed muscle twitched if he touched its nerve endings with the blade of a scalpel--but it would take well over a century for scientists to accept that our lives depend on a rhythm of sparks.

Contemplating The Skeletal Self

"Original art by Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy. Taken from Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. As student of social science, I find the concept of man studying himself awesome."

Carl: A skeleton gazes at a skull, its hand draped lazily over the cranial vault. This image signifies more than just an anatomy lesson. Andreas Vesalius, the anatomist who drew it and many others, created a visual fault line that divided the ancient and the modern. Medieval European anatomists looked back to ancient authorities such as Galen for enlightenment. Anything they saw for themselves that did not seem to fit into the ancient systems must be their own errors, to be resolved by more careful reading of the Greeks and Romans. After all, God had given Adam perfect knowledge of nature, and human understanding had declined ever since his fall. Galen and the other classical writers were closer to creation, and thus further uphill on the downward slope of knowing.

Galen certainly was a brilliant anatomist, but his limitations were forgotten during the Dark Ages. He never even dissected a human cadaver, for example, contenting himself with pigs and other animals. It was not until the sixteenth century that someone noticed these shortcomings for what they were. Vesalius created an original anatomical guide, filled with drawings of his own, made from his own observations. He also helped spur a new approach to the human body (and the bodies of other animals): to challenge old beliefs and to learn with one's own eyes.

Some may see this image as a morbid reminder of death, a skinned "Alas poor Yorick." But I see it more as an embodiment of science, of one skull (and its resident brain) learning from another.

Original flickr source

God, The Void, and A Tattoo

Helen writes, "I am getting married soon, and I wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate who I was before, something to remember my old name (as I am going to take my future husband's surname when I get married), but I also wanted it to be a secret. So this is what I got..."

Carl: Helen wrote her name in ASCII, the lingua franca of computers. Before ASCII was developed in the 1960s, computers often had no way to send text to one another, with dozens of different systems for representing letters and numbers. Even after ASCII was created, it didn't become common until 1981, when IBM used it for the first personal computers. Now ASCII is ubiquitous--a rare thing for such an old computer technology.

But Helen's hidden name has roots that reach much further back than the Kennedy administration--centuries, in fact. ASCII is a binary code, which can be represented easily by an electric current flipping between two levels, or, numerically, as a string of 1s and 0s. Letters, numbers, and symbols can be represented in ASCII by an eight-digit number. Instead of the base-10 system we are all familiar with, this is a base-two number. (So 3 can be represented by 11 [2+1], for example.) The power of binary codes was understood long ago. The I Ching, for example, is a series of symbols built up from solid and broken bars. In Western mathematics, the father of binary codes was Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz recognized that turning numbers into binary made them extremely simple to handly mathematically. In fact, he speculated, you could build a machine that would do math based on binary numbers by sifting marbles through slots--a dream of the computers that would come centuries later.

But Leibniz saw a deeper meaning in the binary. "One is enough to derive everything from nothing," he wrote. To Leibniz, 0 represented the void, and 1 represented God. Only by translating nature into binary numbers did Leibniz believe that we attain perfect knowledge of the divine, by seeing its underlying reality and beauty. It was no coincidence that seven--as in the seventh day of creation, when all was created--is 111.

To Leibniz, I'd imagine, a binary code tattoo would not say what we once were, but what will forever be.

(For those of you who want to decode Helen's surname, here's a handy converter.)

Five Kingdoms

Claire d'Alberto of the University of Melbourne writes, "I would like to share what my friends call my 'science nerd' tattoo with you! I am currently doing my PhD in Zoology and have been fascinated by the biological world for as long I can remember, so when I decided to get a tattoo it seemed logical that I look within my field for inspiration....It took 4.5 hours, and certainly didn't tickle, but I love that I have such a beautiful representation of evolution and the natural world with me all the time." [Tattooist's site: http://www.eternalinstinct.com/]

Carl: The tree of life has changed shape over the years. On another tattoo, you can see a nineteenth century version, its branches reaching upward through time. Today, scientists use DNA to draw the branches of thousands of species at a time. To make space for them all, the scientists must stretch the tree out into a wheel. Claire modeled her tree after a 3,000-species tree created by David Hillis at the University of Texas. She did not have all 3,000 species tattooed on her, obviously, but this simplified version captures the overall shape of the tree. The pictures around the tree represent the five kingdoms--Monera (bacteria), Protista (amoebae and other single-celled organisms), Plantae (plants), Fungi (illustrated here by yeast and the penicillin mold), and animals (a comb jelly, a mollusc, a starfish, and a seadragon fish). Of course, even 3,000 species is only a tiny fraction of the full diversity of life--1.8 million known species, and perhaps 10 or 20 million more to be discovered. If the current trends of discovery hold up, most of that diversity will be made up of bacteria. So future tattoos will need more microbes, and fewer seadragons.

Cousin to Pigeons

Jeremiah Drewel, a geology student at the University of Alaska writes, "This is my personal favorite Deinonychus!"

Carl: Deinonychus holds a special place in the history of paleontology. Its remains were first discovered in 1931 in Montana, but for decades they languished, unstudied, at the American Museum of Natural History. In the 1960s Yale paleontologist John Ostrom discovered a wealth of new fossils from the same species and began to contemplate what the animal was like in real life. At the time, dinosaurs were still widely considered to be sluggish scaly lumps. But Ostrom argued that Deinonychus was for more active, able to keep its stiffened tail straight out behind its body. He argued that they may have even been warm-blooded. Ostrom also noticed a number of similarities in Deinonychus's skeleton and those of birds. He revived an old theory that birds are dinosaurs, and argued they were closely related to Deinonychus. It's a connection now almost universally accepted by paleontologists.

Deinonychus changed the way we see birds, but birds have also changed the way we see Deinonychus. Many relatives of Deinonychus--non-flying dinosaurs--show evidence of primitive feathers. Velociraptor, a close relative of Deinonychus, had what look like quill knobs on its bones. It's plausible that Deinonychus itself was covered in feathers of some sort as well, which it might have used to attract mates. Depending on what paleontologists discover in years to come, Jeremiah may need to get re-inked.

Almost Human

"I thought I would send you mine : Paranthropus (Australopithecus depending on your school of thought) boisei."--Gabrielle Russo, Hunter Colllege.

Carl: Paranthropus boisei existed from 2.3 million to 1 million years ago--a good run. It stood upright like us, but had a small brain and powerful jaws for biting tough food like seeds and roots. Paranthropus boisei is not our ancestor, not even a close cousin. Instead, it belonged to a separate branch of hominid evolution--one that may have been wiped out by a changing climate. Now it is remembered in museums and on at least one tattooed arm.

Tuning In

Skip Arey writes, "I am very devoted to the radio art and decided to show my devotion by way of Body Art. The tattoo is a copy of a schematic diagram of a basic Crystal Radio taken from page 132 of Practical Wireless Telegraphy by Elmer Bucher published in 1921."

Darwin, "A Venerable Orang-Outang"

Kim writes, "This is my tattoo of Darwin. It's from a political cartoon published in the late 1800's. As I'm an anthropologist studying human evolution, it felt appropriate."

The original cartoon appeared in Hornet magazine in 1871, in the wake of Darwin's publication of The Descent of Man. Here is the magazine editor's note; if you then press "next" you can see the original. Wikipedia has a cleaner copy of the original.

Descent of Man

"A tattoo of human evolution on my leg. I think that explanation is pretty.... well, self-explanatory" --Krisko

Biohazard

"i send you my biohazard tattoo. obviously it's not about the band ^^ i'm a biology student and it represents my choice...." --Alesita

Lou Gehrig's Neuron

"This neuron tattoo was done a few months ago. When I was 18, my dad passed away from Lou Gehrig's, which is a disease of motor neurons that innervate muscles. His battle with neurodegeneration helped me decide on a career in medical research, and I am currently pursuing my PhD in Neuroscience."--Lindsay

Electronics

"I was hoping you could put this tattoo up as your flicker page is missing any tattoo's of electrical engineering.

This tattoo is the schematic for the reference point of electricity. I just think of it as the source of electricity. Its really either the point at which you consider voltage to be 0, or in this pictures case, the physical connection to the earth (hence the lower calf). Electronics has been my passion for as long as I can remember, and I feel like this tattoo doesn't do it justice. So I plan on getting another one to incorporate my passion for electronics and my trans-humanism beliefs."

Brittle Star

"This is another Haeckel- a brittle star. I am a physical chemist, but I've always admired Haeckel's obsessive use of visual and design analogy to bolster his (useful, but not entirely correct) ideas about evolution. " -Aurelia Honerkamp-Smith, PhD student, University of Washington.

Mitotic Spindle

"The mitotic spindle"--Dyche Mullins

Golden Spiral Shell

"here is a pic of my tattoo based on the golden spiral and a nautilus shell. i've wanted to get this done since high school and finally got up the courage to take the plunge earlier this year. it is now a constant reminder that mathematics is the language of nature."--Thom

Archaeopteryx

"Here is my archaeopteryx, the 'missing link' between birds and reptiles. It comes in handy as a visual tool during debates with creationists that like to visit campus sometimes! Yes, I know structural pigments probably had not evolved by this time..." --Jeremy Batten

Super alloy

"I got mine in grad school (PhD materials science and applied physics, 2004 Cal). The tatoo is a convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) image of 6-4 Ti alloy (hexagonal, or beta phase) one of the first 'super alloys'. Being light-weight, high-strength, and corrosion resistant, I felt it was appropriate to put on my back, to keep it strong."--Abraham

His and Her Science Tattoos

"The atom is on the left shoulder of Raychelle Burks, chemistry PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. She got the tattoo upon turning 18 and deciding to pursue a career in science. She got the tattoo in her hometown of Pomona, CA at The Body Shop. The Chinese characters tattoo says “Scientist” and is on the left ankle of Matthew Shortridge, chemistry PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. He got the tattoo upon turning 18 and deciding to pursue a career in science. He got the tattoo in his hometown of Lincoln, NE at Aavardaxx’s Tattoo. They met years later at UNL, started dating in the Fall of 2006, and soon learned they both had science tattoos. Two nerds meant to be together."--Raychelle Burks

Serotonin

Here is a picture of my serotonin tattoo. I don't know that it needs much more explanation than it's my favorite neurotransmitter.--Hayley

Fourier Transform

I got this tattoo, which encircles my left wrist, in 2000. The tat is described by this function

(1/n)*sin(nx)

with n from 1 to 6. I had done a lot of work with fourier transforms on the research project I was involved in as an undergrad physics student, and just find the entire concept very beautiful. At the time that I got the tat, I was a master's student in materials science and was taking a class on fourier optics. As music also plays a very large role in my life, the image/concept has a double meaning for me. As an added 'feature', the artist made a small mistake on the inside of my wrist (the n=4 line disappears for a bit). This really bugged me at first until I decided it was a good metaphor for how the messy reality of life is never perfectly represented by our mathematical theories.

--Andrea Grant (now a climatology PhD student in Switzerland, where nerdy tattoos are still pretty shocking....)