Matilda's Lab Newsletter #38
This week we pack up Christmas (boo), go back to school (yay), we have wild jaguars on the loose in the USA, 10 foot tall primates and the limitations of our social networks.
Back to normal
What we’ve been up to
2024 can now get settled into a rhythm. The family is all back together home again and (praise be) the schools have reopened. This is a slightly bigger deal this term than usual; especially for Nathaniel. We took him out of nursery before we went to America in November and he has been out ever since, but this week he has started nursery at the big school. The same one that Matilda goes to and he’s been so excited about it.
The sad things about early January is having to pack away all of the Christmas decorations for another year. But I did have a little helper was all too keen to clean up the fallen tree needles.
January may be cold and dark, but the solstice has past now so we are halfway out of the dark. Whilst it is cooler in the northern hemisphere at this time of year, the Earth itself is at something called “Perihelion”. This means that it is at its closes point to the sun in our annual circuit. To be precise, this happened on the 3rd of January this year. The Earth isn’t a fixed distance from the sun, and we will continue to drift away from the sun until we reach Aphelion on the 5th of July, when we will be about 5 million kilometres further away from it than we are now.
But a New Year also brings new developments. For example, did you know that Matilda’s Lab has it’s own theme tune? Well it does…now. I’ll be releasing it into the big wide world this month on streaming platforms. Of course, I’ll keep everyone updated here. The plan is to try and release a new sciencey track each month of the year. I’ve nearly finished recording April’s release so I should be good up until then at least. Fingers crossed I can keep up with such a demanding schedule.
New Blog content
This year I am making a concerted effort to populate the new Map of Life. Here is how far we’ve got at the end of this week.
From the Archive
This week, we’ve reviewed the rise of human numeracy:
And a number named after one of my old university lecturers.
Science News
Let’s see what’s been exciting the world of science this week:
Some words are more resistant to change over time. You can have a gay old time keeping up the amazeballs changes to our language over time. A new study has found what it takes for words to endure within our languages. The key appears to be getting learnt early in life and be associated with strong emotions.
Jaguars now appear to be resident wild species in the USA.
After decades of scientists puzzling over why Neptune and Uranus are such different colours, it turns out that Neptune and Uranus are not different colours at all.
It has now been decided that the largest species of primate ever discovered probably dies out due to climate change. In other news (for me at least) there used to be primate 10 feet tall!!!
A lovely story from BBC science this week, which is actually about science (I know). A summary of new plants and fungi discovered in 2023.
Kicking back
Fun time…click the links to brighten your day with fun things that I’ve found elsewhere.
Mammal mass on Earth: it’s us and the cows
Actual aerial photograph of farmland in Kansas
That’s it for this week.
Please feel free to get in contact with any questions, suggestions or comments either via Substack or at matildaslab@gmail.com.
Please share this with anyone who you think will appreciate it. And remember to share with me any cool sciencey stuff that you find to make sure that I can pack this newsletter with 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 breath-taking, no matter how many people have seen it before you.