Matilda's Lab Newsletter #42
This week we put bat to ball and have Smartie planets, healthy salt, decoding of indigenous languages, hybrid whales and a new potential home for alien life.
What we’ve been up to
We’ve been getting more acquainted to life a gym goers. This means that the kids have been trying lots of new thing, but I don’t necessarily see what those things are. Sports clubs, craft groups, dodgeball, Lego club, there’s all sorts going on.
One thing that I did see was Nathaniel having a taster session of tennis. Tennis for 3 year olds is not what I’m entirely familiar with, but I could completely see how it builds the foundation skills for the game. Most importantly, he loved it. There was a fair amount of throwing balls to start with, but to see the look of joy on his face when he was given a tennis racket to use. And use it he did!
For me the new lifestyle seem to involve my body aching most of the time. I’ve dialled things back for a couple of day so that I can recover as I don’t want to risk hurting myself.
I have continued to work on the science recordings. Track one is out, number two should be coming next week. 3 and 4 are ready to go and 5 and 6 are in production. I don’t often work on 2 at once, but track 5 has been so challenging that I needed to take a step away from it. So far, every track has had a moment where something gets laid down and everything just seems to click into place. Track 5 has not developed this way. It’s felt messy throughout and I’ve had to go through it in minute detail to pinpoint every element that was making it sound bad. There were quite a lot of issues but I finally feel like I’m getting towards a finished article, ironically just as track 6 is clicking into place. So good news: tracks are finally coming on and getting released. Bad news: I know that I have potentially more challenging tracks left to record. This is why I gave myself a bit of head start on the releasing. At least I know that I’m now good up until June.
New Blog content
The map of life has developed this week. Here is where we are up to:
From the Archive
My RNA cartoon re-surfaced this week:
Science News
It’s been quite a good week for science news:
Being round is a pre-requisite for being considered a planet, but they don’t start out that way. A new study has reported that infant planets are Smartie shaped.
Too much salt is not good for us. Now there’s a suggestion that swapping sodium chloride salt for potassium chloride salt can help with blood pressure.
There is much knowledge that has been lost from cultures where things are not written down, but all that knowledge may not be entirely lost. Indigenous languages contain clues about their environment that could be used to help protect them. English contains animal names like ‘flycatcher’ or ‘anteater’, other languages will contain their own clues.
Biology is breaking the rules again. One version of a species is a group a organisms that can breed together. Except when it’s not. Hybrids are produced when different species have young. But those can’t have young of their own. Except when they can. It’s been found that Blue Whales are hybridising with other whale species. Not only that, but those hybrid offspring are outmating the non-hybrid blue whales. Something that potentially could endanger the future of the species.
When Pompeii was consumed by the eruption of Vesuvius, it wasn’t just people who were petrified. A rolled up scroll from Pompeii has been scanned and analysied with artificial intelligence which has made it readable again!
The list of potential homes for life keeps on growing, and once again it’s a moon. Saturn’s moon Mimas appear to have a giant underground ocean.
Kicking back
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.