SXC.HUTo human denizens of the Northern Hemisphere who live near enough to the ocean, the dog days of summer bark out the message to head for the beach. Apparently, the term derives from the Latin dies caniculares, coined by the ancient Romans, who saw the star Sirius (in the constellation Canis Major) as a harbinger of summer’s heat. Aristotle seems to have used the term even earlier, though, in his Physics, discussing our recognition of an inherent order in nature: “We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dog-days, but only if we have it in winter.” (Book II, Part 8)
So, you’ve deserted your lab for the beach, because a running dive into the waves is the perfect antidote to the sweltering days of July and August. After you’ve toweled off from your dip in the sea, pull the July issue of The Scientist out of your beach bag and turn to page 34 (or click here) to learn that you’ve just been swimming in “An Ocean of Viruses.” In their feature article, Joshua Weitz and Steven Wilhelm explain that “a liter of seawater collected in marine surface waters typically contains at least 10 billion microbes and 100 billion viruses—the vast majority of which remain unidentified and uncharacterized.” Most of these ocean viruses infect other marine microorganisms and “may turn over as much as 150 ...
