Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

Two Become One (Becoming Two)

Ashton writes, "My boyfriend and I wanted tattoos that looked good on their own but had significance when they were joined. It took a long time to find the right design; my doodles went nowhere. Then, in the course of research for the American Museum of Natural History where I'm a staff writer, I saw a picture of a cell during meiosis, and bingo! (visualize a membrane surrounding both sets of chromosomes on our forearms.) We love the way it looks, as well as the way it symbolizes both pulling apart and coming together. And it ended up being the catalyst for a book project about tattoos with a shared meaning ( http://www.tattoosfortwo.com/)."

Carl: If you forgot your high school biology, here's an elegant little refresher on meiosis.

Tagged

Paul writes, "I have a degree in Computer Science, and I work with RFID (or at least I did till recently)." On his Livejournal blog, he adds, "For the curious, this is an Alien Technology's European model Gen 1 Squiggle RFID tag. It's actually copper in color and about six centimetres long. I scanned it and blew it up to a bit over twice it's original size, and changed its color to black."

Carl: RFID stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags, which are embedded in many of the products sold today in stores, are programmed to store information about them. To get the information, you point an RFID reader at the tag and release a burst of radio waves. The energy from the waves powers up the tag, which then sends back a signal of its own. Paul's RFID tattoo says a lot about him now, but, if he wanted, it could say a lot more. Maybe too much.

Another Recruit To the DNA Army

Therese writes, "I teach molecular and cell biology at a University in Atlanta. Many of my students have commented on the tatoo, I think they think it makes me 'cool.' Haha!"

Carl: In honor of National DNA Day, here's another image of one of the most common images on this blog.

Things Come Together (By Falling Apart)

Abigail writes, "My first year of college, I wanted to be an English major, and I took Intro Chemistry to fill the science requirement. The brief unit on thermodynamics made me fall totally in love. Entropy made sense to me - scientifically, philosophically. I became a Chemistry major and love every second of it. I got the tattoo to mark my rite of passage - Entropy going both ways, with its symble delta-S in the middle, all supported in the roots of Yggdrasil, the world-tree of Norse mythology (harking back to my English-lit days)."

Who's Got The Best Trilobite?

Michael Ruse, a leading philosopher of science, writes, "Well, now I am starting to feel a little bit inadequate !!!"

Word of the Day: Astrarium

Lauren writes, "I'm not a scientist by trade, but I am, in fact, a huge nerd. I study 18th-century British literature, including scientific literature. It was a wild time to be in science. It was also the heyday of the orrery, which provided the initial impetus for my tattoo. (Orreries, as it turned out, involve too many circles to make them feasible for inking on a large scale.) Then I discovered & fell in love with the comprehensive diagrams in Giovanni de'Dondi's 1364 Il Tractatus Astarii--the plans for the first famous astrarium. My backpiece is of the Mercury wheelwork. Of course, you couldn't track Mercury with it--de'Dondi followed Ptolemy--but I find his Astrarium a lovely & impressive testament to human ingenuity & curiosity."

Carl: It took sixteen years for de'Dondi's astrarium to be built, but it was later destroyed. See a reconstruction here. And read about de'Dondi here.

Patented Ink

Abraham writes: "My fascination with Tesla started in elementary school, when my science teacher compared Tesla and Edison. I decided to pay my tribute to the wizard with a patent drawing on an electric magnetic motor, submitted by Tesla in the late 1800's."

One Way to Remember Your Discovery

A biochemist writes, "Here is a picture of my science tattoo, which is a stylized structure of glycolipid A, the preformed glycolipid membrane anchor precursor I discovered as a graduate student some 20 years ago. At that time, membrane proteins that were anchored via glycolipids, rather than transmembrane protein domains, had just been found and this was the first precursor to be reported. The structure is simplified but basically correct, although considerable artistic license has been taken with bond lengths and angles."

Older Than Dragons

Sarah writes, "My latest tattoo is a black-line representation of the Uffington White Horse in England. It's a huge earthwork carved into the countryside about three thousand years ago. I'm not really sure what compelled me to get it, since I'm a grad student in English and not archaeology or anthropology. But it's such a beautiful, simple design, and it represents a real feat of Bronze Age ingenuity."

Carl: There was a time when the Uffington Horse was thought to be a dragon--in particular, the dragon slain by St. George. But in fact, it is older than dragons. The Uffington Horse is three thousand years old, we now know, because that is the last time that light struck the buried soil around the figure. Some kinds of soil and sand contain radioactive elements that break down at regular intervals. The energy they release damages the crystal structure of the soil particles, creating traps in which electrons get stuck. Sunlight striking the soil has enough energy to jostle the electrons free, and they release a tiny burst of energy. Once this soil gets buried, however, the electrons become trapped again, and the longer it is buried, the more electrons are trapped. Scientists dug up buried soil around the Uffington Horse and shined a light on it. Electrons incarcerated for three thousand years escaped, and in a flash, the horse had an age.

Blue Trilobite

A trilobite from Lea, a graduate student in ecology.

It's the "-" in "Uh-Oh"

Luzius writes, "I'm a PhD student in Historical Linguistics in Zürich, and I've got a glottal stop tattoo on the pinkie of my left hand. It is one of the letters of the International Phonetic Alphabet and it designates a specific consonant occuring in many languages of the world. To articulate a glottal stop, you need to stop the airflow by pressing your vocal cords together, build up pressure from the lungs, and then release the vocal cords with an audible burst. Many dialects of English have a glottal stop instead of /t/ in words like /cat/ or /butter/. It is common in German, too, where you can hear it in front in front of words starting with a vowel, like /Anna/ or /Eis/. I chose this tattoo because it represents my passion for linguistics, and because typograhpy in general, and the shape of this letter in particular, appeals to my sense of aesthetics."