Herbaceous dialects and dialectical materialism: how plants communicate with their pollinators

The inspiration behind this post stems from reading two of the giants of science popularisation during my formative years. The first component is from Carl Sagan's book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, which remarks that the emotional lives of plants are an example of pure pseudoscience. The second is Stephen Jay Gould's essay on Pyotr Kropotkin, a nineteenth century Russian anarchist who wrote the essay collection Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. What joins them together is recent research that uncovers an astonishingly complex relationship between certain plants and animals.

Kropotkin's hypothesis was that cooperation between species was as fundamental to life on our planet as natural selection. Although his socialist-motivated ideas have been somewhat downscaled by the evidence of the succeeding century, there are still some truths to be learnt about the mutual aid - or symbiosis if you prefer - between fundamentally different life forms.

I recently read about some experiments in Israel and Germany, which involved such esoteric boffinry as placing laser microphones close to tobacco and tomato plants in order to pick up any ultrasonic noises that they might emit. The plants were heavily pruned or moved into parched soil, in other words, subject to physiological stress.

Analysis of the recordings revealed high-pitch sounds (or in the researchers' words, 'squeals') emanating from their herbaceous guinea pigs. Not only did the sounds vary depending on whether the plant was suffering from mutilation or lack of moisture, but each species (both members of the Solanaceae family) had differing numbers of repetitions and time intervals between each sound. What's even more interesting is the noises differed according to the local invertebrate life, specifically the potential pollinating insects.

In addition to the scientists' equipment, animals such as bats and rodents were placed in the vicinity of the subjects and reacted to the sounds as they were being produced, verifying the shrieks as emanating from the plants. The physiological cause appears to be the movement of air bubbles within liquids such as sap, but how are plants able to perceive the problems, let alone respond to them?

It's been known for some years that plants can communicate with other members of their species via emitting chemical compounds; just think of the odour of freshly cut grass. Forest trees even share nutrients via a symbiotic root system in order to allow smaller members of their species to grow faster - so much for selfish genetics here!

Communication between plants by all three methods, namely direct contact, sound, and chemical odour, suggests purpose and awareness, only without a central nervous system to guide it. This might sound impossible, but then the marine bacteria species Bacillus subtilus uses potassium ions to communicate across its colonies and few would argue that bacterium are more advanced life forms than the kingdom Plantae. We should also remember that in even in animals, brains aren't the be-all and end-all: there are neurons in vertebrate (including human) stomachs and in the arms of cephalopods.

The symbiotic relationship between angiosperms (flowering plants) and pollinating insects evolved in the late Cretaceous, so natural selection has had over sixty-five million years to work on the communications systems between these collaborators. Could it be that plants have evolved a specialist messaging service for their pollinating symbionts, despite having no equivalent of neurons to coordinate it?

Some of the recent Israeli research seems to verify this – and how! When endangered by being cut or deprived of water, the specific noises were not only picked up by pollinating insects, they were acted upon. Insects such as hawk moths flew away from the plants that were suffering drought or mutilation to control specimens on the farthest side of the greenhouse laboratory and laid their eggs upon those plants. Meanwhile, other insects that were known pollinators on the same plant species but not local the region ignored the audio signals. Somehow, there is a level of fine-tuning going on that reveals the sensory world of plants is far superior to what is usually credited.

Parallel experiments successfully tested for the opposite effect. Individual tobacco plants with mature flowers sent messages that attracted the attention of local pollinators such as stilt bugs. All in all, it appears that certain plant species – at least of the Solanaceae family - engage in a form of mutual aid that Kropotkin would be proud of. Not only do plants use ultrasonics to target useful insects, they have developed a messaging service that is regionalised towards those insect species, essentially a dialect rather than a universal language.

While tobacco and tomato plants might not be screaming in pain every time they are cut or lacking water, it seems that they cannot be as easily dismissed as the poorer relation to us animals. The time may be due for a complete reappraisal of their perception capabilities, although amateur researchers would do well to remember that both tomato and tobacco are from the same family as the mandrake and as any Harry Potter fan should know, you wouldn't want to hear those scream!

The day of the dolphin: covert cetaceans, conspiracy theories and Hurricane Katrina

One of the late, great Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels mentions a failed attempt by King Gurnt the Stupid to conduct aerial warfare using armoured ravens. Since real life is always stranger than fiction, just how harebrained are schemes by armed forces to utilise animals in their activities?

Large mammals such as horses and elephants have long been involved in the darker aspects of human existence, but the twentieth century saw the beginnings of more sophisticated animals-as-weapons schemes, including for example, research into the use of insects as disease vectors.

Some of the fruitier research projects of the 1960s saw the recruitment of marine mammals, reaching an apotheosis - or nadir - in the work of John Lilly. A controversial neuroscientist concerned with animal (and extraterrestrial) communication, Lilly even gave psychedlic drugs to dolphins as part of attempts to teach them human language and logic: go figure!

Whether this work was the direct inspiration for military programmes is uncertain, but both the Soviet and United States navies sought to harness the intelligence and learning capabilities of marine mammals during the Cold War. Besides bottlenose dolphins, sea lions were also trained in activities such as mine detection, hardware retrieval and human rescue. Although the Russians are said to have discontinued their research some years ago, the US Navy's Marine Mammal Research Program is now in its sixth decade and has funding up until at least next year.

Various sources claim that there is a classified component to the program headquartered in San Diego under the moniker the Cetacean Intelligence Mission. Although little of any value is known for certain, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have been named as one of the groups who have used naval funding to train dolphins - plus design a dolphin equipment harness - for underwater guard duty. A more controversial yet popular claim is for their use as weapon platforms involving remote-controlled knock-out drug dart guns. If this all sounds a bit like Dr. Evil's request for "sharks with lasers" then read on before you scoff.

In the aftermath of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, it was discovered that eight out of fourteen bottlenose dolphins that were housed at the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi, had been swept out to sea. Although later recovered by the United States Navy, this apparently innocent operation has a bearing on a similar escape that was given much greater news coverage soon after the hurricane.

Even respected broadsheet newspapers around the world covered the story generated by a US Government leak that thirty-eight United States Navy dolphins had also gotten free after their training ponds near Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, were inundated by Hurricane Katrina. Apart from the concerns of animal rights groups that: (a) dolphins shouldn't be used as weapons platforms; and (b) how would they cope in the open ocean of the Gulf of Mexico (vis-a-vis its busy shipping lanes)? another issue was the notion that the dolphins might attack civilian divers or vessels.

It would be quite easy here to veer into the laughable fantasies that the Discovery Channel tries to pass off as genuine natural history, if it weren't for a string of disconcerting facts. The eight dolphins that escaped from the Marine Life Oceanarium were kept by the navy for a considerable period before being returned to Mississippi. This was explained at the time as a health check by navy biologists, but there is a more sinister explanation: what if the dolphins were being examined to ensure that they were not military escapees from Lake Pontchartrain?

The latter half of 2005 into early 2006 saw the resumption of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, following the destruction of almost ninety per cent of the region's commercial fleet in the hurricane. However, many of the smaller boats that did make it back to sea returned to port with unusual damage, or in some cases, had to be towed after failing to make it home under their own power. Much of this was put down to hasty repairs in order to resume fishing - a key component of the local economy - as soon as possible.

Reports released by boat yards during this period show inexplicable damage to rudders and propellers, mainly to shrimp boats. Fragments of metal, plastic and pvc were recovered in a few cases, causing speculation as to where this material had come from. The National Marine Fisheries Service requested access to the flotsam, which was subsequently lost in the chain of bureaucracy; none of the fragments have been seen since. It may not be on the scale of Roswell, but someone in the US military seems to be hiding something here.

It's been over half a century since Dr. Lilly's experiments inspired such fictional cetacean-centred intrigue as The Day of the Dolphin. Therefore, there has been plenty of time for conspiracy theorists to cobble together outlandish schemes on the basis of threadbare rumours. What is certain is that the enormous reduction in the region's fishing that followed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina would have been a boon for the Gulf of Mexico's fish stocks. This would presumably have carried on up the food chain, allowing dolphin numbers to proliferate throughout 2006 and beyond.

Whether the US Navy was able to recover some or all of its underwater army is not known, but it doesn't take much imagination to think of the dolphins enjoying their freedom in the open ocean, breaking their harnesses upon the underside of anchored fishing vessels, determined to avoid being rounded up by their former keepers. The Gulf in the post-Katrina years would have been a relative paradise for the animals compared to their military careers.

Although the United States Navy is said to have spent less than $20 million dollars per annum on the Marine Mammal Research Program, a mere drop in the ocean (you know that one's irresistible) compared to the mega-budgets of many Department of Defense projects, the low cost alone suggests the value of attempting to train dolphins for military purposes. Perhaps the truth will emerge one day, once the relevant files are declassified. Or alternatively, a new John Lilly may come along and be finally able to translate dolphinese. In which case, what are the chances that descendants of the Lake Pontchartrain escapees will recall the transition from captivity to freedom with something along the lines of "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"

Engagement with Oumuamua: is our first interstellar visitor an alien spacecraft?

It's often said that fact follows fiction but there are times when some such instances appear to be uncanny beyond belief.  One relatively well-known example comes from the American writer Morgan Robertson, whose 1898 novella The Wreck of the Titan (originally entitled Futility) eerily prefigured the 1912 loss of the Titanic. The resemblances between the fictional precursor and the infamous passenger liner are remarkable, including the month of the sinking, the impact location, and similarities of size, speed and passenger capacity. I was first introduced to this series of quirky coincidences via Arthur C. Clarke's 1990 novel The Ghost from the Grand Banks, which not incidentally is about attempts to raise the Titanic. The reason for including the latter reference is that there may have just been an occurrence that involves another of Clarke's own works.

Clarke's 1973 award-winning novel Rendezvous with Rama tells of a 22nd century expedition to a giant interstellar object that is approaching the inner solar system. The fifty-four kilometre long cylinder, dubbed Rama, is discovered by an Earthbound asteroid detection system called Project Spaceguard, a name which since the 1990s has been adopted by real life surveys aiming to provide early warning for Earth-crossing asteroids. Rama is revealed to be a dormant alien spacecraft, whose trajectory confirms its origin outside of our solar system. After a journey of hundreds of thousands of years, Rama appears to be on a collision course with the Sun, only for it to scoop up solar material as a fuel source before heading back into interstellar space (sorry for the spoiler, but if you haven't yet read it, why not?)

In October last year astronomer Robert Weryk at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii found an unusual object forty days after its closest encounter with the Sun. Initially catalogued as 1I/2017 U1, the object was at first thought to be a comet, but after no sign of a tail or coma it was reclassified as an asteroid. After another week's examination 1I/2017 U1 was put into a class all by itself and this is when observers began to get excited, as its trajectory appeared to proclaim an interstellar origin.

As it was not spotted until about thirty-three million kilometres from the Earth, the object was far too small to be photographed in any detail; all that appears to telescope-mounted digital cameras is a single pixel. Therefore its shape was inferred from the light curve, which implied a longest-to-shortest axis ratio of 5:1 or even larger, with the longest dimension being between two hundred and four hundred metres. As this data became public, requests were made for a more familiar name than just 1I/2017; perhaps unsurprisingly, Rama became a leading contender. However, the Hawaiian observatory's Pan-STARRS team finally opted for the common name Oumuamua, which in the local language means 'scout'.

Various hypotheses have been raised as to exactly what type of object Oumuamua is, from a planetary fragment to a Kuiper belt object similar - although far smaller than - Pluto.  However, the lack of off-gassing even at perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) implies that any icy material must lie below a thick crust and the light curve suggests a denser material such as metal-rich rock. This sounds most unlike any known Kuiper belt object.

These unusual properties attracted the attention of senior figures in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Project Breakthrough Listen, whose leadership includes SETI luminaries Frank Drake, Ann Druyan and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, directed the world's largest manoeuvrable radio telescope towards Oumuamua. It failed to find any radio emissions, although the lack of a signal is tempered with the knowledge that SETI astronomers are now considering lasers as a potentially superior form of interstellar communication to radio.

The more that Oumuamua has been studied, the more surprising it appears. Travelling at over eighty kilometres per second relative to the Sun, its path shows that it has not originated from any of the twenty neighbouring solar systems. Yet it homed in on our star, getting seventeen percent nearer to the Sun than Mercury does at its closest. This seems to be almost impossible to have occurred simply by chance - space is just too vast for an interstellar object to have achieved such proximity. So how likely is it that Oumuamua is a real-life Rama? Let's consider the facts:

1. Trajectory. The area of a solar system with potentially habitable planets is nicknamed the 'Goldilocks zone', which for our system includes the Earth. It's such a small percentage of the system, extremely close to the parent star, that for a fast-moving interstellar object to approach at random seems almost impossible. Instead, Oumuamua's trajectory was perfectly placed to obtain a gravity assist from the Sun, allowing it to both gain speed and change course, with it now heading in the direction of the constellation Pegasus.
2. Motion. Dr Jason Wright, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, likened the apparent tumbling motion to that of a derelict spacecraft, only to retract his ideas when criticised for sensationalism.
3. Shape. All known asteroids and Kuiper belt objects are much less elongated than Oumuamua, even though most are far too small to settle into spherical shape due to gravitational attraction (the minimum diameter being around six hundred kilometres for predominantly rocky objects). The exact appearance is unknown, with the ubiquitous crater-covered asteroid artwork being merely an artist's impression. Astronautical experts have agreed that Oumuamua's shape is eminently suitable for minimising damage from particles.
4. Composition. One definitive piece of data is that Oumuamua doesn't emit clouds of gas or dust that are usually associated with objects of a similar size. In addition, according to a report by the American Astronomical Society, it has an 'implausibly high density'. Somehow, it has survived a relatively close encounter with the Sun while remaining in one piece - at a maximum velocity of almost eighty-eight kilometres per second relative to our star!
5. Colour. There appears to be a red region on the surface, rather than a uniform colour expected for an object that has been bombarded with radiation on all sides whilst in deep space for an extremely long period.

So where does this leave us? There is an enormous amount of nonsense written about alien encounters, conspiracy theories and the like, with various governments and the military seeking to hide their strategies in deliberate misinformation. For example, last year the hacker collective Anonymous stated that NASA would soon be releasing confirmation of contact with extraterrestrials; to date, in case you were wondering, there's been no such announcement. Besides which, wouldn't it more likely to come from a SETI research organisation such as the Planetary Society or Project Breakthrough Listen?

Is there any evidence to imply cover-up regarding Oumuamua? Here's some suggestions:

1. The name Rama - already familiar to many from Arthur C. Clarke's novel and therefore evocative of an artificial object - was abandoned for a far less expressive and more obscure common name. Was this an attempt to distance Oumuamua from anything out of the ordinary?
2. Dr Wright's proposals were luridly overstated in the tabloid media, forcing him to abandon further investigation. Was this a deliberate attempt by the authorities to make light of his ideas, so as to prevent too much analysis while the object was still observable?
3. Limited attempts at listening for radio signals have been made, even though laser signalling is now thought to be a far superior method. So why have these efforts been so half-hearted for such a unique object?
4. The only images available in the media are a few very samey artist's impressions of an elongated asteroid, some pock-marked with craters, others, especially animations, with striations (the latter reminding me more of fossilised wood). Not only are these pure speculation but none feature the red area reported from the light curve data. It's almost as if the intention was to show a totally standard asteroid, albeit of unusual proportions. But this appearance is complete guesswork: Oumuamua has been shoe-horned into a conventional natural object, despite its idiosyncrasies.

Thanks to Hollywood, most people's ideas of aliens are as implacable invaders. If - and when - the public receive confirmation of intelligent alien life will there be widespread panic and disorder? After all, the Orson Welles' 1938 radio version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds led some listeners to flee their homes, believing a Martian invasion had begun. Would people today be any different? The current following of dangerous fads such as paleo diets and raw water, never mind the paranoid conspiracy theories that fill the World Wide Web, lead me to expect little change from our credulous forbears.

The issue of course, comes down to one of security. Again, science fiction movies tend to overshadow real life space exploration, but the fact is that we have no spacecraft capable of matching orbits with the likes of Oumuamua. In Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, colonists on 22nd century Mercury become paranoid with the giant spacecraft's approach and attempt to destroy it with a nuclear missile (oops, another spoiler there). There is no 21st century technology that could match this feat, so if Oumuamua did turn out to be an alien craft, we would have to hope for the best. Therefore if, for example, the U.S. Government gained some data that even implied the possibility of artifice about Oumuamua, wouldn't it be in their best interest to keep it quiet, at least until it is long gone?

In which case, promoting disinformation and encouraging wild speculation in the media would be the perfect way to disguise the truth. Far from being an advanced - if dead or dormant - starship, our leaders would rather we believed it to be a simple rocky asteroid, despite the evidence to the contrary. Less one entry for the Captain's log, and more a case of 'to boulderly go' - geddit?

The moons of Saturn and echoes of a synthetic universe

As fans of Star Wars might be aware, George Lucas is nothing if not visually astute. His thumbnail sketches for the X-wing, TIE fighter and Death Star created the essence behind these innovative designs. So isn't it strange that there is a real moon in our solar system that bears an astonishing resemblance to one of Lucas's creations?

At the last count Saturn had 53 confirmed moons, with another 9 provisionally verified - and as such assigned numbers rather than names. One of the ringed planet's natural satellites is Mimas, discovered in 1789 and at 396 kilometres in diameter about as small as an object can be yet conform to an approximate sphere. The distinguishing characteristic of Mimas is a giant impact crater about 130 kilometres in diameter, which is named Herschel after the moon's discoverer, William Herschel. For anyone who has seen Star Wars (surely most of the planet by now), the crater gives Mimas an uncanny resemblance to the Death Star. Yet Lucas's original sketch for the battle station was drawn in 1975, five years before Voyager 1 took the first photograph with a high enough resolution to show the crater.

Okay, so one close resemblance between art and nature could be mere coincidence. But amongst Saturn's retinue of moons is another with an even more bizarre feature. At 1469 kilometres in diameter Iapetus is the eleventh largest moon in the solar system. Discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1671, it quickly became apparent that there was something extremely odd about it, with one hemisphere much brighter than the other.

As such, it attracted the attention of Arthur C. Clarke, whose novel 2001: A Space Odyssey described Japetus (as he called it) as the home of the Star Gate, an artificial worm hole across intergalactic space. He explained the brightness differentiation as being due to an eye-shaped landscape created by the alien engineers of the Star Gate: an enormous pale oval with a black dot at its centre. Again, Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to photograph Iapetus close up…revealing just such a feature! Bear in mind that this was 1980, whereas the novel was written between 1965 and 1968. Carl Sagan, who worked on the Voyager project, actually sent Clarke a photograph of Iapetus with a comment "Thinking of you..." Clearly, he had made the connection between reality and fiction.

As Sagan himself was apt to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Whilst a sample of two wouldn't make for a scientifically convincing result in most disciplines, there is definitely something strange about two Saturnian moons that are found to closely resemble elements in famous science fiction stories written prior to the diagnostic observations being made. Could there be something more fundamental going on here?

One hypothesis that has risen in popularity despite lacking any hard physical evidence is that of the simulated universe. Nick Bostrum, the director of the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute has spent over a decade promoting the idea. Instead of experimental proof Bostrum uses probability theory to support his suppositions. At its simplest level, he notes that the astonishing increase in computing power over the past half century implies an ability in the near future to create detailed recreations of reality within a digital environment; basically, it's The Matrix for real (or should that be, for virtual?)

It might sound like the silliest science fiction, as no-one is likely to be fooled by current computer game graphics or VR environments, but with quantum computing on the horizon we may soon have processing capabilities far beyond those of the most powerful current mainframes. Since the ability to create just one simulated universe implies the ability to create limitless - even nested - versions of a base reality, each with potentially tweaked physical or biological laws for experimental reasons, the number of virtual realities must far outweigh the original model.

As for the probability of it being true in our universe, this key percentage varies widely from pundit to pundit. Astronomer and presenter Neil deGrasse Tyson has publicly admitted he considers it an even chance likelihood, whilst Space-X and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk is prepared to go much further, having stated that there is only a one in a billion chance that our universe is the genuine physical one!

Of course anyone can state a probability for a hypothesis as being fact without providing supporting evidence, but then what is to differentiate such an unsubstantiated claim from a religious belief? To this end, a team of researchers at the University of Bonn published a paper in 2012 called 'Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation', defining possible methods to verify whether our universe is real or virtual. Using technical terms such as 'unimproved Wilson fermion discretization' makes it somewhat difficult for anyone who isn't a subatomic physicist to get to grips with their argument (you can insert a smiley here) but the essence of their work involves cosmic rays. The paper states that in a virtual universe these are more likely to travel along the axes of a multi-dimensional, fundamental grid, rather than appear in equal numbers in all directions. In addition, they will exhibit energy restrictions at something called the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cut-off (probably time for another smiley). Anyhow, the technology apparently exists for the relevant tests to be undertaken, assuming the funding could be obtained.

So could our entire lives simply be part of a Twenty-Second Century schoolchild's experiment or museum exhibit, where visitors can plug-in, Matrix-style, to observe the stupidities of their ancestors? Perhaps historians of the future will be able to run such simulations as an aide to their papers on why the hell, for example, the United Kingdom opted out of the European Union and the USA elected Donald Trump?

Now there's food for thought.

Hollywood's natural history hobbit hoax: did Peter Jackson create Homo floresiensis for publicity purposes?

Judging by the limited ingredients of contemporary blockbusters, cinema audiences are fairly easy to please. Or are they? Peter Jackson's magnum opus The Lord of the Rings trilogy made an absolute mint at the box office and garnered seventeen Oscar wins besides critical acclaim. In contrast, The Hobbit trilogy received but a single Oscar accompanying some rather lukewarm reviews.

The reason for the critical indifference and lack of awards has been put down to franchise fatigue, although to be fair stretching a children's book over three long movies whilst partly improvising the script at a late stage couldn't have helped. So if you are a world-renowned film maker well aware that you are judged by many of your fans and much of your peer group on the success - and possibly the quality - of your latest film, it wouldn't be surprising if you go to great lengths to maximise that success. Just how far Peter Jackson went for The Hobbit trilogy is astounding...so read on...

It's been some years since I visited Weta Cave in Wellington, where close-up views of various costumes and props from movies including the LOTR trilogy leaves you in no doubt about the superb workmanship the effects house is capable of. Some of the exhibits and merchandise included non-human characters from Middle Earth and District 9, the quality of which got me thinking. Peter Jackson is known to have visited the Natural History Museum when in London recording the soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings. This in itself is not suspect, except that the museum was at the time hosting an exhibition about the infamous Piltdown Man.

For anyone who knows anything about science scandals, Piltdown Man has to be among the most notorious. The 1908 discovery in southern England of a hominin skull of unknown species was rapidly followed by numerous associated finds, all touted as genuine by professional scientists. In fact, by 1913 some palaeontologists had already suggested what was finally confirmed forty years later: the entire assemblage was a fraud, the skull itself including an orang utan jawbone with filed-down teeth! The fact that so many specialists authenticated the remains is bizarre, although it may be that patriotic wishful thinking (to confirm prehistoric hominins had lived in Britain) overrode any semblance of impartiality.

Back to Peter Jackson and his hobbit conundrum. Although LOTR trilogy did the bums-on-seats business (that's an industry term, in case you were wondering), Jackson's next film was the 2005 King Kong remake. Included in the record-breaking US$207 million production costs was a $32 million overspend which the director himself was personally responsible for. Having already been put into turnaround (that's cold feet in Hollywoodese) in the previous decade, Jackson was determined to complete the film to his own exacting standards, thus resulting in the financial woes surrounding the production.

So just how do you get the massive budget to make a prequel trilogy that's got a less involved storyline (sound vaguely familiar, Star Wars fans?) directly after you've made the most expensive film in history, which is not even a remake but a second remake? How about generating tie-in publicity to transfer from the real world to Middle Earth?

Around the time that Peter Jackson's production company Three Foot Six was being renamed (or if you prefer, upgraded) to Three Foot Seven, worldwide headlines announced the discovery of a small stature hominin of just this height. The first of the initial nine specimens found on the island of Flores, labelled LB1, would have been a mere 1.06 metres tall when alive, which is three feet six inches give or take a few millimetres.

Coincidence? When in doubt, adherents of scientific methods should follow the principle of parsimony, A.K.A. Occam's razor. Which in this case has led to me putting my conspiracy hat on.

Consider this: the new species rapidly became far better known by its nickname the 'hobbit people' than as Homo floresiensis. Which was handy for anyone about to spend US$225 million on three films involving hobbits. In addition, it was discovered at the perfect time for Jackson to get maximum publicity (admittedly not the release of the first hobbit film, but for purposes of convincing his American backers of the audience anticipation).

The smoking gun evidence for me is the almost comical resemblance the remains bear to Tolkien's creations. For example, the feet are said to be far longer and flatter than any other known hominin species. Remind you of anything you've seen at the movies? It's just a shame that hair doesn't survive as long as the alleged age of the specimens - which based on the stratigraphy has been estimated from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago.

In addition, how could such creatures have built the bamboo rafts or dug-out boats necessary to reach the island in the first place? When sea levels dropped during glaciation periods Flores was still convincingly isolated from the mainland. Braincase analysis shows that Homo floresiensis had an orange-sized brain. Since the tools found with the semi-petrified organic remains were simple stone implements, the idea of real-life hobbits sailing the high seas appears absurd in the extreme.

Several teams have attempted to extract DNA from the water-logged and delicate material but after a decade's effort none have been successful. This seems surprising, considering the quality of contemporary genetic replication techniques, but perhaps not if the material consists of skilfully crafted fakes courtesy of Weta Workshop. Some of the fragments appear similar to chimpanzee anatomy, but then Peter Jackson has always tried to make his creatures as realistic as possible. Indeed, he even hired a zoologist to ensure that his King Kong was anatomically correct (I recall hearing that some of his over-sized gorilla's behind needed reworking to gain accuracy. Now that's dedication!)

There has also been some rather unscientific behaviour concerning the Homo floresiensis remains which appears counter to the great care usually associated with such precious relics. At one point, the majority of material was hidden for three months by one of the Indonesian paleoanthropologists, only for what was returned to include damaged material missing several pieces. All in all, there is much about the finds to fuel speculation as to their origin.

In summary, if you wanted to promote worldwide interest in anything hobbit-wise what could be better yet not too obvious? Just how the much the joint Australian-Indonesian archaeology and palaeontology team were in the know is perhaps the largest mystery still remaining. I've little doubt that one day the entire venture will be exposed, perhaps in a documentary made by Peter Jackson himself. Now that would definitely be worth watching!