Indice dei contenuti per December 2021 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

Galaxy smash-up NGC 5953 & NGC 5954 Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, these two galaxies are caught in a dangerous dance that will culminate – at some point in the very, very distant future – in their merging. They’re likely to have been dancing for the last billion years and it could be another billion before they become one. “These are two galaxies having a bad day,” says Prof Chris Lintott, astronomer at the University of Oxford and presenter for BBC Four’s The Sky At Night. “Named NGC 5953 and NGC 5954, these two spiral galaxies are colliding, and you can see material from NGC 5954 being twisted and distorted by the gravitational pull of its neighbour.” While these collisions are common between smaller galaxies in the Universe, a…

Since entering Jupiter’s orbit in 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has completed 37 flybys of the giant planet, shedding light on the unseen processes raging beneath its clouds with each pass. Now, scientists studying data taken by the spacecraft’s microwave radiometer (MWR) and NASA’s Earth-based Deep Space Network tracking antenna have made new insights into the structure of one of Jupiter’s most iconic features, the Great Red Spot. With its bright crimson hue and diameter wider than the Earth, this enigmatic anticyclone has captured the imagination of astronomers since its discovery two centuries ago. Data from the MWR shows that cyclones – large-scale air masses that rotate anticlockwise around a centre of low atmospheric pressure – within the giant planet’s atmosphere in the northern hemisphere are warmer near the top and…

SCIENCE BEHIND THE HEADLINES Super colds | Pedestrian crossings | Tuskless elephants “While there’s no specific super cold that we should be worried about, viruses like the flu continue to change and evolve during the course of the year” WHY DO WE GET A ‘COMMON COLD’ SEASON AND TYPICALLY WHEN DOES IT OCCUR IN THE UK? Every winter we have the ‘cold and flu’ season when cases of respiratory virus infections increase. These winter respiratory viruses include the flu virus, which can cause severe infections, and rhinoviruses, which causes more mild ‘colds’, though there are many other respiratory viruses that spread in the winter. In the UK, the cold and flu season is typically between October and March and coincides with the onset of winter weather. It is thought that…

Biologists tend to split monogamy into social monogamy (a pair living together to mate, share resources and care for young) and genetic monogamy (a couple exclusively having sex and reproducing with each other). While we may prize monogamy in many human cultures, it’s pretty unusual among mammals, with just 3 to 5 per cent of species being socially monogamous. These include a few bats, grey wolves, some primates, prairie voles and Eurasian beavers, among others. In birds, monogamy is far more common with some 90 per cent of species exhibiting social monogamy. It is rare in fish, reptiles and amphibians. Crucially, the definition of ‘social monogamy’ does not mean that the two animals in a pairing will be faithful to each other. In fact, many will have flings on the…

Emotional manipulation has been referred to as the dark side of emotional intelligence by psychological scientist Prof Elizabeth Austin at the University of Edinburgh. But what does that mean? Austin and her colleagues created the Emotional Manipulation Scale in 2007. According to the scale, people who are high on emotional manipulation say yes to behaving in ways that have obvious negative consequences such as ‘I know how to embarrass someone to stop them behaving in a particular way’, and ‘I know how to play two people off against each other’. Less obviously negative behaviours can also result in a high score, including agreeing with statements like ‘I can pay someone compliments to get in their good books’, and ‘I am good at reassuring people so that they’re more likely to…

Humans have been using yeast to make bread for at least 3,000 years. For most of that time we didn’t understand a lot about it, let alone know how to purify and grow it. In fact, until the mid-1800s, few people even thought that yeast was a living creature. Yeast is a type of fungus that grows pretty much everywhere - in soil, on leaves, plants, flowers, and it even floats around in the air. By happy coincidence, a handful of yeast types will ‘eat’ sugars and starches, turning them into alcohol (something we call fermentation) and belching out carbon dioxide gas. When some of our ancient ancestors experimented in their prehistoric kitchens by heating cereal grain in water with herbs to make a nourishing drink, they realised that the…

This creature is a misnomer wrapped in a cloak of punky, white fuzz. It’s a misnomer because the unusual critter is not an ant, it’s a parasitic wasp that’s native to the desert regions of the American Southwest. The white, fluffy females are wingless, and so superficially ant-like. In contrast, males have wings and a classic wasp livery of orange and black. This vibrant attire warns potential predators that the wasps are not to be crossed - velvet ants have one of the longest stingers (relative to body length) of any bee or wasp. However, the female’s appearance has been something of an enigma. Females look like the fuzzy seeds of the scrubby creosote bushes that grow where the wasps live, so experts had presumed that the insects had evolved…

PENCILS AT THE READY! ACROSS 1 Picture small boat (6) 4 Imagine daughter getting a lot of paper (5) 8 Inclined to have meagre time (5) 9 Weapon had set out as a carved ornament (7) 10 Attorney takes sheep to a play (5) 12 Captive has got terrible English (7) 13 Making pencil useless at toughest moment (8,5) 15 Critical terror halved, initially, in animal (7) 17 Calling out about jargon (5) 19 Footwear for idle people (7) 20 Time for some music (5) 22 Feed injury (5) 23 One insect let off another (6) DOWN 1 Food as ordered by boy (5) 2 Time of underachievement (3) 3 Pet decree returned to king in a fashionable way (7) 4 Fruit days (5) 5 Cautioned about tuition (9) 6…

Steelheads A new fictional radio drama inspired by true events sees Jessica Barden’s terminally ill character cryogenically frozen, but she doesn’t wake up to the cure she was hoping for. Radio 4 and BBC Sounds From 31 December Winter Walks Experience breathtakingly beautiful walks across Yorkshire and Cumbria accompanied by some famous faces, including broadcaster Alastair Campbell and the Yorkshire shepherdess Amanda Owen (pictured). Now available on BBC iPlayer The Forum: Algae A celebration of these wonderfully slimy, life-creating organisms. Algae are all around us, Rajan Datar learns, and their evolution has implications for all life on Earth. BBC World Service 9 December, 10am…

According to the World Health Organization, immunisation currently prevents four to five million deaths every year. However, an additional 1.5 million deaths could be avoided through the use of more effective vaccines. Vaccines work by training the immune system to respond to infection by a specific pathogen, such as a virus, parasite or bacteria. At the heart of every vaccine is an antigen – a small, safe molecule based on part of the pathogen, which triggers the protective immune response. However, most vaccine antigens are based on a single pathogen component, such as the spike protein of the COVID SARS-CoV-2 virus, which limits their effectiveness and ability to cope with new variants. Now, Oxford-based biotech start-up Baseimmune has developed an algorithm-based system capable of creating antigens containing all the parts…

The streets of London are notoriously colourful, and even more so now that some local authorities have joined the Asphalt Art Initiative and decided to dress up pedestrian crossings in Pride colours or other equally bright designs. Some of these ‘colourful crossings’ being installed by councils around the UK are created with more than just aesthetics in mind, focusing instead on preventing pedestrian casualties. These upgrades have been done in the name of behavioural science. Two cities in England that have just finished a pilot experiment with the vibrant aesthetics are Liverpool and Hull. The former had 99 adult deaths or serious injuries per 100,000 people in 2019 – making it the worst place in the UK that year – while in Hull, 44 casualties per 100,000 people were recorded.…

A NEW DAWN WILLKAKUTI CELEBRATION, BOLIVIA Roman pagans celebrated the shortest, darkest day, or winter solstice, on 25 December, welcoming the longer daylight hours ahead. This is probably why we celebrate Christmas on this date; not because it was Jesus’ birthday. As astronomy presenter Colin Stuart explains: “Before temples made way for telescopes, many civilisations saw the Sun as a god. On the winter solstice… they figured that the deity was furthest from the Earth and so did all they could to beckon it back again to warm and sustain them for the year ahead.” We now know the astronomical reason for the solstice: the Earth is tilted on its axis. On 21 December, in the northern hemisphere, the Earth receives the least light it will get all year because…

OVEN DECIDED TO BREAK ON CHRISTMAS EVE? DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES THE QUESTIONS THAT WE’VE BEEN PONDERING IN 2021 ANSWERED BY EXPERTS AND THE BBC SCIENCE FOCUS TEAM Some 10 million turkeys are eaten every Christmas in the UK alone, yet it is a meat that many of us love to hate. After all, the line between tender succulence and a mouthful of dried sawdust can be wafer thin. Oven roasting, spatchcocking, spit roasting, deep fat frying… each cooking method has its pros and cons. But part of the issue with cooking the perfect turkey is down to the birds themselves. Since the 1930s, turkeys have ballooned – more than doubling in weight as farmers have bred only the biggest, leanest birds. And because they can be so…

NFT stands for ‘non-fungible token’. The non-fungible part means unique and non-replaceable. No swapping like for like. The token part means it’s digital and protected using blockchain technology, like cryptocurrency. NFTs make a lot of sense when used for selling digital art – a digital image can be sold as an NFT, much as you would sell a physical painting, allowing you to own the ‘original’ version, and the artist continues to benefit every time the NFT is resold. But the idea of NFTs feels questionable when anyone can also have a copy. Nevertheless, NFTs may have a future. They’ve been used for digital marketing, where an NFT was auctioned for a whisky company alongside an expensive cask of scotch, and in gaming, where you can win digital assets in…

John Keats might have described autumn as the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” but for many arachnophobes it’s also the season of spiders. As evenings draw in, large spiders scuttling across the floor become a common sight. They are a reliable source of the ‘nature scare’ stories so beloved of the UK media, but are these spiders really getting bigger, as some reports claim? The big spiders we often see in our homes are commonly called ‘house spiders’ but scientifically they belong to two genera, Tegenaria and Eratigena. There are several different species that are broadly similar and, when fully grown, pretty impressive. A couple of species can reach a leg span in excess of 10cm, which is more than big enough to give most people a scare. The…

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), aviation is responsible for 3 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. This may not seem like a lot, but while most economic sectors are shrinking their carbon footprint, aviation’s is rising. Without significant action, the contribution to global emissions could soar to 22 per cent by 2050 as passenger numbers rise. In 2021, global airlines, convened by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), committed to reversing this trend to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. While greener air travel is possible, it will be a challenging task, particularly at a time when airlines are still reeling from the financial losses they have incurred during the pandemic. Perhaps the most straightforward path to greener flights is to swap out traditional kerosene jet fuel for…

SNOWED IN Nick and his sleigh are stranded in the woods. He is desperate to get back to his cabin in time for Christmas to deliver presents to his children. His usual route would take him in a straight line directly to his cabin, but a snow drift is blocking his way. Instead he must take a lengthy diversion. Nick sledges three kilometres east to the frozen lake, before turning his sleigh 135° clockwise and travelling 1,300 metres to the reindeer stable. According to his sat-nav he is now 500 metres further south than the frozen lake. Nick then rotates his sleigh 45° clockwise, and travels 1,275 metres to his cabin. How much further has Nick had to travel due to the diversion? COLD AS ICE Samuel is captaining an…

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Elon Musk has made no secret of his intention to found a settlement on Mars, but his latest venture is to establish a city on Earth. Sited around SpaceX’s launch site at Boca Chica, in Cameron County, south Texas, Musk’s idea is to call the city ‘Starbase, Texas’. It would house all those who work at the launch site, those who intend to launch from it, and be a tourist destination for people wanting to witness the awesome power of a launch. Eventually, Musk hopes, it will be the point of departure for people travelling to Mars, with each mighty ‘Starship’ vehicle capable of transporting around 100 people at a time to the Red Planet. As they prepare for their flight, they will require the kind of living space and…

HUMAN CELLS IMPLANTED INTO MONKEY EMBRYOS A bold and controversial study, published in the journal Cell in April, reported how researchers at the Salk Institute in San Diego had inserted human stem cells into the embryos of monkeys. The embryos survived in the lab, outside of an animal, for up to 20 days – longer than in any similar experiment. The researchers also noticed communication pathways form, which may explain how human cells could better integrate with non-human cells in future experiments. Work on this kind of hybrid organism, known as a chimera, is conducted for two main reasons. First, it could allow researchers to create ‘model’ human cells to study disease and new drugs, without breaching the ethical codes that prevent the same work being carried out on actual…

“As tusklessness existed before the war, the trait probably isn’t caused by new mutations, but by rare genetic variants that are now more common in the gene pool” List an elephant’s most iconic characteristics and tusks should be right behind the long trunk, and arguably ahead of big ears and thick skin. Tusks are elongated teeth that grow continuously and are used to dig for food and nutrients, clear paths through vegetation, mark or remove tree bark, and for fighting between males. The tusk can serve those diverse purposes thanks to the properties of its main material, ivory, which makes it strong and tough. Ivory’s impressive properties make it attractive to humans. Traditionally used to make art and ornaments of cultural value, ivory has become a valuable status symbol. But…

As the New Year approaches, one resolution I am determined to make and stick to is to spend less time on Zoom and other forms of video-conferencing software. What started out as a great way to keep in contact with other people during lockdown has turned into a brain-draining, bottom-numbing experience that has sapped a lot of joy out of my life. So what is it about spending way too many hours doing video calls that is so soul destroying? For enlightenment, I turned to Prof Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL). Earlier this year, he published a study that outlined the theoretical arguments for the causes of Zoom fatigue and why we experience it. He also offered some solutions. First, when you are…

According to the Sleep Foundation in America, a conservative estimate is that 10 to 30 per cent of adults experience chronic insomnia or problems with sleeping. One common way this manifests is through difficulty falling asleep in the first place, especially due to anxious thoughts whizzing about. Indeed, a study from the University of Oxford found that a key difference between insomniacs and controls was the content of their thoughts at bedtime, with the problem sleepers being more focused on worries and concerns as compared with the healthy controls who tended to think about nothing in particular. Anecdotally, many of us have had the experience of falling blissfully fast asleep in front of the TV, only to find that when we stir and take ourselves to bed, we lie there…

We’re streaming more and more of the content that we watch - an Ofcom survey found that video-streaming services and other non-broadcast content were up 70 per cent more in 2020 compared to 2019. But what impact does this activity have on the environment? There’s no single answer to this question, but we can make a few assumptions and scribble on the back of an envelope to figure something out. (There has been some controversy about these kinds of numbers - here we’ll use the detailed estimates made by carbonbrief.org.) First, what are we going to watch on our marathon binge? Let’s pick one of the highest rated shows of all time: Breaking Bad. That’s 3,678 minutes, or about two and a half days of solid viewing, assuming no adverts…

TAURUS THE BULL WHEN: LATE AUTUMN Taurus the Bull is a prominent late autumn constellation. It outlines the head, horns and upper torso of a swimming bull, the form taken by Zeus to win the affections of a Phoenician princess. Its primary star is the red-giant Aldebaran, the 14th brightest star in the night sky. Extend the line of Orion’s belt up and right from the UK and Aldebaran is the first bright star you meet, its orange hue being very obvious. Aldebaran lies at the end of the southern arm of a sideways V-shaped pattern of stars formed from stars in the Hyades open cluster. Born out of the same cloud of material 625 million years ago, many Hyades stars have turned reddish due to their great age. Located…

WHAT IS BLUE LIGHT? The Sun bathes us daily in light, which is one of many types of electromagnetic radiation, along with radio waves, microwaves and gamma rays. We can’t see the vast majority of these energy waves flowing through space, but we can measure them. The light that human eyes can see, as it bounces off objects, has wavelengths of between 380 and 700 nanometres. Within this spectrum, running from violet to red, blue light vibrates with almost the lowest wavelength (400 to 450nm) but almost the highest energy. There couldn’t be anything more ordinary than blue light. It’s the reason the sky looks blue – because it bounces off the molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere more readily than the rest of the visible light spectrum. Most of us…