Matilda's Lab Newsletter #48
This week we get a trim, face our fears and visit Hogwarts. There have been 4 dimensional observations, the 2 speed universe is further confirmed & a 200+ mile wide volcano has just been noticed.
What we’ve been up to
Nathaniel and I had a father son weekend as the girls were away. He had his first trip to a barbers. So far his grandmother, who is a retired hairdresser, has been cutting his hair; but she does live a couple of hundred miles away, so it’s not really the most practical of solutions. He was nervous to start with, but I think the general ticklyness of the experience won him over.
We also took a long overdue trip to the zoo; on the worst possible day. We live about a 15 minute drive from the zoo. This day, it took us nearly an hour to get there and parked. The zoo occasionally does something called a “Members’ day”. This is a day where members can bring some non-members with them who get in a reduced prices and unbeknownst to us, we chose to go on one of these days. But, we got there and spirits remained high. Nathaniel had a hit list of things that he wanted to see. The monkeys, penguins, wild dogs, elephants, giraffes but definitely NOT the bats. Bats are scary, apparently. I died a little inside. The bat cave is one of my favourite parts of the zoo; but that’s fine, it’s not all about me.
We made good progress through his list with some unplanned extras like the giant anteater, a babirusa and golden headed tamarin monkeys. We got particularly lucky with the African Wild Dogs as a keeper was laying out food when we arrived so we got to see the whole pack come out and feast.
Unfortunately, we did not get see the giraffes. There had recently been a baby giraffe born and on a day and busy as this, the queue to get into the giraffe house was too much.
After we saw the penguins I asked Nathaniel if he wanted to see anything else. “I may want to go and see the bats.” I checked with him to see if he was sure, because he didn’t have to. He said that he was, so off we went. And thankfully he seemed to really enjoy it (as he has done in the past). But he didn’t require carrying this time. Which was probably just as well, as on this occasion I received a wing beat to the head! I don’t know if was actual wing or just air pressure from a very close wing, but it was close, and this is why I love the bat house so much. It is completely immersive. At least I didn’t get pooed on again.
The girls had gone to London. Matilda and a friend of hers received Christmas present that involved a trip to see the musical “Six” on the West End followed by a trip to Harry Potter studios. So much fun, but little to no scientific relevance. I suppose that’s fine on occasion, but don’t make a habit of it!
New Blog content
I was going to add something that wasn’t just an update to map of life this week, but work this week has been a complete stinker, so that hasn’t happened. But we do have the T. rex joining the party, so let’s celebrate that.
Then, there is the reminder that '“Immortality” is still out there in the world. I think a completed record deserves more than a week’s worth of attention. Having said that, I’m producing records quicker than written posts at the moment. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It means that it doesn’t leave me enough time to do both.
The good news is that I appear to be keeping up the schedule. Aside from tweaks I believe that I’m now good for tracks up until August. I only need to do 4 more to see out the year!
From the Archive
This week I dug out a cartoon that felt a lot more relevant back during the lockdown days of 2020.
Science News
Humanity has always been fascinated with the planet Mars meaning that it always been studied to be best of our abilities. No other planet has had more pieces of Earth tech’ set to it. All this makes is even more remarkable that we’ve only just discovered a 280 mile wide volcano on the Red Planet.
One of the biggest problems for physics these days is that there are two ways of calculating how fast the universe is expanding, and they don’t agree with each other. Now we have the James Webb Space Telescope which will help, which it’s far better accuracy. Now, JWST has confirmed that we have 2 different speeds for universal expansion.
Some species are known as living fossils, because they appear experience very little evolution over long periods of time. It’s now been discovered that this isn’t to do with a environment stability or a lack selection pressure but living fossils appear to be chemically hard-wired to evolve slowly.
It’s tempting to think that quantum physicist just make stuff up to make their numbers work (and effectively they do), but light speed electrons have just been seen moving through 4 dimension for the first time. So the things that are made up for the sake of maths are often legitimate discoveries awaiting confirmation.
Kicking back
And now the silliness can begin…
Chimps are actually better at this game than humans.
The touching bond between a sea-goer and their boat
I never realised that you could have so much fun with magnets and sand
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.