You’ll notice that today the Google logo looks very special, it’s in honor of the 115th anniversary of the discovery of X-ray radiation. The twin ‘O’s in the Google logo, an animated GIF, pulse gently with a radioactive glow.
The search-engine’s logo is shown as an x-ray with bones forming the six letters, with other items such as keys and coins shown.
The doodle, which pulses with an animated radioactive glow, also references Google’s ‘Pigeonrank’ April Fool’s joke from 2002.
The second g in the Google logo is made up of pigeon feathers and bones, a nod to the joke that the search-engine’s page ranking system was determining by pigeon pecks.
X-rays were first discovered by German scientist Conrad Roentgen in 1895.
Roentgen had been experimenting with cathode rays when he made the discovery, although it remains unclear exactly how he did so as he ordered all his papers and lab books to be burned after his death.
However, scientists believe he made the breakthrough after covering a vacuum tube with black cardboard and switching on an electric current. He was then surprised to see a greenish yellow glow appear on a cardboard screen several feet away.
Within a week he had managed to take an X-ray photograph of his wife’s hand.
While he was not the first to observe the phenomenon, that occurred in 1875, he was the first to study its effects and came up with the name ‘X-rays’.
Other recent Google Doodles include an interactive Pac-Man logo, which is believed to have wasted over five million work hours and a ‘bouncing balls’ logo to herald the release of Google Instant, alongside a ‘colour as you type’ version of the classic Google logo.
The Flintstones’ 50th anniversary was celebrated in September with a colourful cartoon, with Tchaikovsky, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley and John Lennon also being recognised by the search engine in recent months.
