Table of contents for May 2024 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

PALAEONTOLOGY If you thought the megalodon was scary, think again. Scientists have officially identified an ancient creature whose jaws were probably as mighty as the prehistoric shark’s, but whose size makes it the biggest marine reptile ever discovered. The beast’s massive jawbone measured over 2m (6.6ft) long – allowing it an incredible bone-crushing biting force. The megalodon’s jawbone was around the same size, while the Tyrannosaurus rex wielded a comparatively puny 50cm (1.6ft) jawbone. Experts estimate the new species, an enormous ichthyosaur, was a whopping 25m (82ft) long – about the size of a modern-day blue whale. (Megalodons were around 15–20m, or 65ft). The fossilised remains of the creature were discovered on a beach in Somerset. Inspired by this, the research team named the new species Ichthyotitan severnensis, meaning ‘giant…

A new ‘atlas of ageing’ could explain why your muscles find it harder to cope as you get older – and may even lead to treatments to prevent it from happening. Published in Nature Ageing, the atlas reveals the complex changes caused by ageing to muscles at the cellular and molecular level. It also shows that our muscles fight ageing: a discovery that could help scientists develop new treatments to improve our bodies as we age. As we get older our muscles weaken, which can make everyday activities like standing and walking difficult, yet we still know very little about why this happens. As longevity expert Dr Andrew Steele explains: “Every year after the age of 30, we lose one per cent of our strength, and understanding why is critical…

ANALYSIS There’s a new space race underway, with missions to the Moon beginning to increase at a significant pace. In February, a spacecraft built by the company Intuitive Machines became the first from the US to land on the lunar surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972. China is due to launch Chang’e 6, its latest lunar mission, in May, and it’s hoped that it will return the first rocks from the far side of the Moon. One NASA study even predicts that as many as 22 international missions could reach the lunar surface by late 2026. Astronauts could well leave their bootprints on the Moon again before this decade is out. Yet, according to researchers Dr Alanna Krolikowski and Martin Elvis, there’s a danger that gets overlooked in…

THE HIDDEN GYM The great thing about exercising at home is that you really don’t need any equipment to get started. So when a good workout can be had for free, why would you spend $2,495 on a mirror to exercise in front of? This is a special mirror, however. Not special enough to tell you who is the fairest of them all, but special enough to help you get into shape. The Forme Studio is a full-length mirror that doubles as a Full HD, 4K touchscreen display. You can use it to access a wide range of exercise classes (everything from yoga to weights), personal trainers and personalised workouts, all from the comfort of your home. When you’re not using it to exercise, the Studio goes back to being…

FEATURE SEAGRASS RESCUE Shark Bay, in Western Australia, attracts tourists for its stunning scenery. Here, red rocks meet white sands meet blue waves. Perhaps the region’s greatest asset, though, is hidden beneath the waves: one of the world’s largest seagrass meadows. Spread across more than 180km2 (69 miles2) of seabed, this underwater forest is home to sea cucumbers, snapper fish, the endangered dugong sea cow and more. A little further south lies the 8,000km-long (almost 5,000-mile) Great Southern Reef, which provides a home for another submerged forest. Tall swathes of brownish seaweeds, known as golden kelp, grow from the coral. As in terrestrial forests, the canopy provides cover for a host of smaller species living below. Such marine forests form gigantic stores of ‘blue carbon’, but they’re threatened by rising…

It’s a technique that comes from ancient Japan - the 1980s to be exact - and is a therapeutic way to connect with nature. Shinrinyoku, or forest bathing, is a form of sensory relaxation where you spend restorative time in a forest or another natural environment. It’s mindful, it’s meditative, it sounds like absolute hokum. And yet… maybe the trees hold secrets that science is only just beginning to understand. To be fair, forest bathing isn’t quite as hippie as it sounds. For a start, you don’t get naked and you don’t submerge yourself in water or fallen leaves. You simply head to the woods, engage your senses, disengage your phone and spend a couple of hours as mindfully as you can, getting light exercise and a little time away…

Brown dwarfs, which are often referred to as ‘failed stars’, are a funny sort of celestial body. They’re too large to be classified as a planet, but too small to start the fusion processes required to be a fully fledged star. One such brown dwarf is named CWISEP J193518.59–154620.3 (or W1935 to its friends) and astronomers think they may have uncovered evidence for aurorae on it (illustrated below). The aurorae are similar to the Northern Lights we observe towards the north and south poles on Earth, although thousands of times brighter. The study, which was published in the journal Nature, used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe W1935, which is about 47 light-years from Earth. When the tennis court-sized space telescope was pointed in the direction of the…

The word ‘perfect’ is hard to find in the scientific world, but this image depicts conditions that come close to being described as such. A gigantic lenticular cloud surrounds the crater of the Villarrica volcano in Chile, while being illuminated by the volcano’s lava. For this to occur, the atmosphere must be stable and air flowing over the ground must find an obstacle: in this case, the volcano. On 29 March, the image won second place in the category ‘Planet Earth’s Landscapes and Environments’ at the World Nature Photography Awards.…

Scientists have revealed how they think the Solar System will probably die – and its demise looks gruesome. According to a study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), when the Sun becomes a white dwarf star, parts of the Solar System will be sucked into it, crushed up and ground into a fine dust. White dwarfs are what stars become in the final stage of their lives, once they’ve run out of fuel and become very dense – but not dense enough to become a black hole. Scientists think that the asteroids and moons around Mars and Jupiter will be shredded and pulverised by the Sun’s gravity. As for Earth, it’s likely the Sun will swallow us up before it becomes a white dwarf…

Alzheimer’s Research UK estimates that one in two people will be affected by dementia at some point in their lives, either as a carer, patient or both. This is a stark statistic, but hope is on the horizon as the first treatments proven to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease have recently been approved for use in the US. Here in the UK, two new trials have just been announced to investigate the possibility of using blood tests to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia in thousands of volunteers from all around the country. The first is to be carried out by scientists at the Dementia Research Centre at University College London and the second by a team from the research group Dementias Platform UK. Both will search…

…AN AESTHETIC AIR PURIFIER Air purifiers aren’t exactly the most interesting products. They’re usually intended to blend into the background, but this one is different. The PhotoSynthetica is as much an art project as it is an air purifier. It ditches the plastic that’s usually used in such devices and instead focuses on glass and wood. The filtered air produced by the machine is used to stimulate algae growth, which can be gathered and converted into a plastic substitute. We’re unlikely to have these in our homes any time soon, but it is an interesting example of how day-to-day tech can become more renewable and better for the planet. PhotoSynthetica £TBC, ecologicstudio.com …A DISCREET MICROPHONE Everyone is starting a podcast, YouTube channel or incredibly niche media business these days. And…

FEATURE NARCISSISM Narcissism appears to have reached pandemic proportions. Just the other day, my nine-yearold announced that kids are branding each other narcissists in the playground. And why wouldn’t children adopt the label? It’s become fashionable for adults to use it for exes, bosses, even family members. We all think we’ve met a narcissist, perhaps most famously Carly Simon, whose hit ‘You’re so Vain’ is about a cad so egocentric that in the chorus she sings “You probably think this song is about you.” But is narcissism always as obvious as someone walking into a party like they’re “walking onto a yacht?” Recent research suggests not. Although narcissism may be much more common than once thought. Fullblown, clinical narcissistic personality disorder is estimated to affect up to one in 20…

For most of our evolutionary history, intermittent fasting wasn’t voluntary. With food scarce and storage difficult, going for hours, or even days, without eating was a common occurrence. Fast-forward to today, though, and most people reading this will never be far from a quick snack. That stark contrast in eating habits has left people wondering if those food-free periods were beneficial. And if they were, whether we should reintroduce them. The quandary we face, however, is that we generally live a lot longer than our huntergatherer ancestors did, so intermittent fasting might have downsides for us that they never experienced. “Fasting helps you create ketones, a chemical that your liver produces when it breaks down fats, which your body can then use for energy” For the sake of clarity, intermittent…

ANN MOORE, VIA EMAIL WHY DO DOGS CIRCLE ROUND AND ROUND BEFORE POOPING? A 2013 study of 70 dogs of 37 breeds found that pooches circle before they poop, seemingly to align their spines with Earth’s north-south axis. The placement of 1,893 stools (and 5,582 pools of urine) were analysed and when the dogs stopped spinning, they avoided east-west and pointed their noses pole-ward. The effect was seen when Earth’s magnetic field was stable, but disappeared when solar activity caused it to fluctuate. Just like migratory birds and salmon, it seems that dogs can sense Earth’s magnetic field, but instead of using it for navigation, they use it for defecation! Why that is, nobody knows! WINNER The winner of next issue’s Question of the Month wins a pair of popular…

EYE OPENER What you’re looking at here is a map. Not of Earth, the Solar System, or even the Milky Way, but of the Universe on the most astronomical of scales. This sprawling multi-coloured web contains some 600,000 galaxies and is superimposed onto an image of NOIRLab’s Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope, which was used to capture the data. The map was put together as part of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, a five-year mission to create the largest 3D map of the Universe. So vast is this data set, and by extension, our Universe, that all the galaxies here represent less than 0.1 per cent of the full survey volume. Feeling insignificant yet? To map the cosmos, DESI breaks down the light from galaxies into their constituent…

DISCOVERIES HEALTH A woman’s existence begins in her grandmother’s womb, as an oocyte (an immature egg growing in her mother’s stilldeveloping ovaries) and from that moment on everything related to her fertility is fixed. But in the bright, open labs of the University of Cambridge, scientists are working to change that. Dr Staša Stanković is one of those scientists. Turning from her computer screen, Stanković explains the mysteries that she and her team are hoping to unravel. The biggest of which is the ovarian reserve, the limited supply of eggs contained in a woman’s ovaries, which is fixed before she’s even been born. Stankovic likens this aspect of female fertility to an hourglass: the sand (eggs) can only fall in one direction and when it’s almost run out, menopause hits.…

“Menstrual cycles usually have a monthly pattern, but the mechanisms that decide this pattern are mysterious” Many people believe that women’s menstrual cycles are governed by the Moon. Even Charles Darwin theorised that this lunar link came from our species’ time as seashore-dwelling creatures who lived in sync with the tides. But a new study, published in the journal Science Advances, reveals that these cycles likely don’t follow the 29.5-day cycles of the Moon and are instead governed by our bodies’ internal clocks. What’s more, the research found that any present lunar link varies by continent. The scientists observed that in Europe, for example, menstrual cycles tend to begin at the waxing crescent, but for North American women it often begins at the full Moon. Menstrual cycles usually have a…

On 6 April, scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US announced that work on the largest camera the world has ever seen was complete. The 3,200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera (LSST) is the size of a small car and weighs around 3,000kg (6,600lbs). It’ll soon be installed in the Vera C Rubin Observatory, being built in Chile, where it’ll be used to produce an amazingly detailed image of the sky visible over the southern hemisphere. “With the completion of the LSST camera at SLAC… we’ll soon start producing the greatest movie of all time and the most informative map of the night sky ever assembled,” said Prof Željko Ivezić, director of the Rubin Observatory construction. The camera is so big that it’ll be able…

It was recently reported that PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), also known as ‘forever chemicals’, were found in more than half of fruit and vegetable samples tested in the UK. This has led to calls for pesticides containing these chemicals to be banned. But what risk does eating fruits and vegetables containing PFAS actually present to our health? WHAT ARE FOREVER CHEMICALS? PFAS are a large group of more than 10,000 chemicals with very strong carbon-fluorine bonds. Examples include perfluorooctane sulfonate, perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorohexane sulfonate. They’re used to make products such as fabrics, food packaging, non-stick cooking surfaces and pesticides that need stability to resist heat, oil and water. But this stability also means the chemicals are less biodegradable and can persist in the environment, and in people, for…

…AN OVERPRICED ROBOT DOG Imagine a dog that, on your command, can chase its tail, backflip offa moving skateboard and even speak! Why imagine when, for $3,000, you can own just such a dog? Admittedly, it’s a robot, but at least you won’t have to walk or house-train it. Xiaomi’s CyberDog 2 is certainly capable in the tricks department, but it looks a lot less friendly than the typical, real-life pooch. Sure you’ll never come home to find it’s left a damp patch on the carpet, but you’re also unlikely to ever think of this as your best friend. Xiaomi CyberDog 2 $3,000 (approx £2,420), mi.com …AN OVER-ENGINEERED BARBECUE People seem intent on cramming artificial intelligence into everything from toasters to toothbrushes. The latest gadget to feature AI is a…

FEATURE COSMIC ANOMALIES Cosmologists are often wrong, but never in doubt,” remarked the Russian Nobel Prizewinning physicist Lev Landau. Perhaps he had a point. Perhaps cosmologists should have a little more humility. After all, in their investigations of the Universe, they’ve missed some pretty enormous things. Dark energy, for example. Although it accounts for 68.3 per cent of the mass-energy of the Universe, this invisible stuff that fills all of space and whose repulsive gravity is speeding up cosmic expansion, wasn’t discovered until 1998. Imagine not noticing the major mass component of the Universe until barely a generation ago! Then there’s dark matter, which makes up the lion’s share of the remaining 31.7 per cent of the Universe’s massenergy. Although its existence was initially suspected in the 1930s, this second…

ACROSS 1 Sailor’s headgear (6) 5 Freewheel by the shore (5) 9 Executioner’s game (7) 10 A profit once more (5) 11 Quiet desire to remove an unwanted feeling (5) 12 Cause pins to be misused with anger (7) 13 Discuss what young lady consumed (6) 15 First character turned Terry to a vital supplier (6) 18 Affair finds scoundrel in legal action (7) 20 Might pressure be put on debtor? (5) 23 Key to dire concoction - removed moisture (5) 24 Realised it was a small branch? (7) 25 Assesses council tax (5) 26 Writer to sample a particular style of writing (6) DOWN 2 Possessor of sundowners, in part (5) 3 A storm of a play? (7) 4 Managed to join detectives’ rank (6) 5 Church and a…