by Tristan Wang Hollywood movies and horror novels have painted extraterrestrial life as green monsters, scouring the barren grounds of Mars and shooting any intruder with photon lasers. These disturbing imaginations, while far-fetched, do hold some truth about frightening outer space life forms, but not in the ways we imagine. During its orbit as theContinue reading “Astromycology: The “Fungal” Frontier”
Tag Archives: Tristan Wang
Astromycology: The “Fungal” Frontier
by Tristan Wang Hollywood movies and horror novels have painted extraterrestrial life as green monsters, scouring the barren grounds of Mars and shooting any intruder with photon lasers. These disturbing imaginations, while far-fetched, do hold some truth about frightening outer space life forms, but not in the ways we imagine. During its orbit as theContinue reading “Astromycology: The “Fungal” Frontier”
Slime Mold: The Small, Ugly, and Extraordinary
by Tristan Wang Slime molds are some of the world’s ancient mysteries. From the independent unicellular amoeba to the cooperation of many individuals, these globs of ooze share biological functions that few other species or even kingdoms exhibit. Even though they are not seen conspicuously in our day-to-day lives, slime molds may hold the keyContinue reading “Slime Mold: The Small, Ugly, and Extraordinary”
Psychoactive Fungi: The World Before and After Psilocybin
by Tristan Wang In 1960, on a summer day in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary and several friends ingested a bowlful of psilocybin mushrooms, an experience that Leary later described as “the deepest religious experience of my life.” Upon returning to Harvard, Leary and his associate, Richard Alpert, immediately formed the “Harvard PsilocybinContinue reading “Psychoactive Fungi: The World Before and After Psilocybin”
The Secret Life of Plants
by Tristan Wang On a night in 1966 interrogation specialist Cleve Backster taught how to perform lie detection to policemen. On a whim, Backster attached electrodes of a galvanometer to a nearby dracaena plant. A galvanometer is an instrument that detects minute electric currents, often used as a part of the polygraph lie detector. WhenContinue reading “The Secret Life of Plants”
Harvard Science Review 