Matilda's Lab Newsletter #13
This week, we have a science incident at home, sticky Neanderthals, supermountains, a star sized diamond, slowed ageing, octopuses killing cancer, a baby batfish and a giraffe with horns.
The regular celebration of music, which is the Glastonbury festival, kicks off in earnest today. Here, we will continue our weekly celebration of all things sciencey.
Please feel free to get in contact with any questions, suggestions or comments either via Substack or at matildaslab@gmail.com.
What we’ve been up to
I had a brief homecoming last weekend. Half of my family come from North Devon and now none of my generation live there anymore. We’re not even all in the same country, one of my cousins now lives just outside Las Vegas. But last weekend, both of my cousins went back home, so how could we not go down too? I’d not been back to North Devon for too long and I’ve been missing it.
This was a big deal for Matilda and Nathaniel too. This is the first time that the 2nd cousins have got together since the onset of COVID. Matilda can’t remember the last time that they met (she was younger than Nathaniel is now) and Nathaniel never has.
My family appears to be good a making boys. In my generation there are 3 boys and 1 girl. Among the 2nd cousins there are 6 boys and only 2 girls and one of them lives in the USA. I went out to visit them last year and quickly realised how much the 2 girls had in common, so I excited for them to meet. I could not have been more right. It wasn’t so much of a house on fire scenario as a full runaway climate meltdown. They been exchanging message ever since.
It looks like we’re going to have to organise a family trip to Las Vegas now…
As something of an epilogue, we had a bit of a science mishap this week. Matilda discovered a science activity kit in her room and this resulted in two unfortunate outcomes. 1) Whole sections of her room got covered in dark blue food colouring and 2) Expanding water crystals ended up going down the bathroom sink, where they did what expanding water crystals do, and very effectively plugged the pipework.
Thanks Matilda.
New Blog content
I finally got around to finishing a new animal fact sheet:
After the delays of last week, the new episode of Lab Spectacles is finally available (yes, there is an uninvited collie in that thumbnail below):
From the Archive
This week we revisited a subject that is highly variable:
And one that is a bit more fixed:
Science News
As promised, I do have a non-biological story for you this week:
The theory goes that Jupiter was a failed potential sun. The are plenty on systems with 2 stars (binary systems). After 6 years of searching, no Jupiter-like planets have been found around smaller suns, which adds weight to the current theory.
Medical solutions are still hiding out in nature. A compound from octopus ink has been made in the lab and found to kill cancer cells.
It’s not just insanely big animals that go extinct. There used to be ‘supermountains’ that have appeared and disappeared over Earth’s geological past. Most recent supermountain periods have been linked to major developments in the evolution of life.
To everyone’s surprise, the cannabis active ingredient, CBD, which is of great medical interest, has just been discovered in a very common South American “weed”.
More progress has been made in the search for a way to slow the aging process.
Astronomers have found a star that is turning into a star sized diamond!
It has just been revealed that humans have far less gut bacteria than other similar species. Which is telling us something about the lives of our ancestors.
Kicking back
Fun time…
A woman’s motto, “…nevermind, I’ll do it!”
Meanwhile, only 65 million years ago…
I’d still say that Dracula was a procrastinator
A wonderful visual guide to data, like all things, made better with Lego
Somehow, BBC Science are always the first to the big news stories
Where’s the baby fish? Here it is, a baby batfish for you.
In case you didn’t know (I didn’t) giraffes had a horned ancestor.
And I’ll leave you with some gently floating, peaceful, blossom.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. I’ll have more for you next week.
Remember to share this with other and to share with me any cool sciencey stuff that you find to make sure that I can bring people the best new science content each week.
Until next time, remember that one person’s old news is another’s revelation. So explore. Sometimes it’s not about being the first up the hill. The view’s still going to be breathtaking, no matter how many people have seen it before you.