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 Why is it so
difficult to ask
for help? –› p78

FROM THE
EDITOR CONTRIBUTORS

Dark matter really is an awkward thing to explain to anyone who DR KATIE MACK
doesn’t follow science. Even if you do follow science, it still Katie explains how studying
sounds kind of silly when you try and make sense of it. Any radio bursts that originate
attempt to do so usually ends up sounding something like this: from unknown sources
“So, as far as we can tell, normal matter – the stuff that makes outside the Milky Way could
lead to exciting new
atoms, planets and stars, as well as mundane things like tables
discoveries. –› p26
and chairs – only accounts for one-fifth of the physical ‘stuff’ in
the Universe. The rest of it, the other 80 per cent of all matter everywhere, is
something we call dark matter. Why dark? Because we’ve never actually seen
it. Not only is it invisible, but it’s also totally intangible – at least, it is as far as DR BENYI CAO
we’re concerned. In fact, while you read this, millions of particles of dark Britain’s roads are cratered
matter will probably pass through your body without so much as an ‘excuse with 750,000 potholes. Civil
me’. So how do we know it’s there? Well, when we look out at other galaxies, engineer Benyi takes us
our current understanding of the Universe and the way it works suggests that through the cutting-edge
they shouldn’t exist. They’re spinning so fast that, strictly speaking, they solutions that could fix them
once and for all. –› p36
should have torn themselves apart, hurling their contents out into the void
COVER: ANDY POTTS THIS PAGE: BERNARD LEONARDO, GETTY IMAGES X2, ALAMY

like a Catherine wheel. And yet, something is holding them together.

Something that’s providing the gravity needed for galaxies to hang onto their
innards. That something is what we call dark matter.” DR CLAIRE ASHER
I mean, it reads like the scribblings of someone who wears tin-foil headgear. After 800 years of slumber,
Mercifully though, cosmologists – the people who really know how to Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula
explain dark matter – could be about to shed a whole new light on it. Head has awoken and is entering a
to p56 to find out how we could finally make sense of the dark Universe. new phase of volcanic activity.
Claire looks into what has
caused this awakening. –› p48

Daniel Bennett, Editor

DR ALEXANDRA AMON
Alexandra, a leading
cosmologist, reveals why the
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ON THE BBC THIS MONTH... of dark matter. –› p56

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CONTENTS
REGULARS
06 EYE OPENER
The best science images
from around the world.
12 FEEDBACK
A selection of the physical
and electronic mail that
has arrived this month.
15 DISCOVERIES
All the month’s biggest
news, including: Black hole’s
tantrum unbalances an
entire galaxy; Scientists see
colours through animals’
eyes; Water found buried on
Mars; The megalodon may
not have been quite so
mega; Breakthrough
anti-ageing cell could help
you stay younger for longer;
AI analysis discovers
fingerprints aren’t unique;
And more…
26 DR KATIE MACK
Fast radio bursts from
beyond the galaxy are
striking Earth a thousand
times a day. But what’s
causing them?
46
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4
15
DISCOVERIES
32
REALITY CHECK
28 DR DEAN BURNETT
Finding it difficult to keep
hitting the gym? You’re
not lazy – it’s your brain
that’s to blame.
30 DR MICHELLE
GRIFFIN Astronomers spot a black hole You can banish bad breath by
Scientists are on the brink
of unravelling the mystery
in a distant galaxy throwing a
truly epic wobbler.
scraping your tongue, say TikTok
influencers. Are they right?
of morning sickness.
32 REALITY CHECK
78
The science behind the
headlines: Can tongue
scraping put an end to bad
breath?; Is your reusable
water bottle harbouring
Q&A
dangerous bacteria?; And
the high-tech solutions
that could fix the potholes
in Britain’s roads.
39 INNOVATIONS
A roundup of the hottest
tech trends that emerged
from CES 2024.
78 Q&A
Our experts answer your
questions. This month:
Why is it so difficult to ask
for help? How many
tentacles does an octopus
have? Why do we pick
favourites? And more…
89 CROSSWORD
Engage your grey matter!
89 NEXT MONTH
A sneak peek at the
upcoming issue.
90 BETTER LIVING
THROUGH SCIENCE
Should you shell out for a
DIY test kit that could
determine your risk of
heart disease?
 FE AT URE S WANT MORE ?

48 IN THE LINE 56 Don’t forget that BBC Science

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The recent eruptions in A NEW DAWN iOS app for the iPad and iPhone.

Iceland signal the start of

a new phase of volcanic
activity. And no one
knows how long it
could last.

56 DARK MATTER:
A NEW DAWN
Cosmologists are on the
verge of shedding new Can’t wait until next month to get
light on the Universe’s your fix of science and tech?
most enigmatic mystery. Our website is packed with
news, features and Q&As to
keep your brain satisfied.
66 THE POWER sciencefocus.com

OF THOUGHT
A psychologist
explores the trend for
manifestation and its
potential for bringing
you success .

INSTANT
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COSMOS Our bite-sized masterclass in
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How science has been you listen to your podcasts.
deployed over the years
to see beyond the tricks
our senses play on us.

39 72
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OF NATURE IS
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5
 EYE OPENER

EYE OPENER
A monster in
deep space
CASSIOPEIA A

The emerald horseshoe shape

lurking near the centre of this
image is known as the ‘Green
Monster’. And with good
reason: it’s enormous –
around 10 light-years wide,
according to estimates. To put
that figure in context, consider
that Proxima Centauri, the
next nearest star to Earth
(after the Sun), lies around four
light-years away.
The Green Monster was
discovered in data collected
by the James Webb Space
Telescope (JWST) in April
2023. It sits in Cassiopeia A
(Cas A), the wreckage
of a massive star in the
Cassiopeia constellation that
exploded around 340 years
ago creating the supernova
remnant we see today.
By combining data from the
JWST and the Chandra X-ray
Observatory, astronomers
have been able to uncover
new details about the Green
Monster’s creation. They think
a powerful shockwave was
unleashed when Cas A went
supernova, slamming into
debris the star had already
lost. The energy in the
shockwave was enough to
heat the debris, pushing it
outwards in a searing hot
ball of matter and light, to
gradually form the horseshoe
shape visible here.
NASA/ESA/CSA

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 EYE OPENER

EYE OPENER
Ant fusillade
MALDEN, NETHERLANDS

What looks like a tiny firework

display watched by hundreds
of insects is, in fact, more like
a giant game of spitball. These
wood ants (Formica rufa) are
shooting formic acid at a
potential predator – in this
case, the Dutch photographer
and biologist René Krekels.
The spray is said to smell
like the vinegar you put on
your chips. It’s not ant saliva
you’ll be pleased to hear, but a
spray released from their
abdomens. According to
entomologist Prof Adam Hart,
it can cause “irritation and
pain (but rarely any lasting
damage) to the eyes and
noses of any animals trying to
dig up the ants’ nests to reach
the nutritious larvae inside.”
While it may look like the
ants’ fusillade is going in
every direction and at nothing
in particular, Hart says:
“Individual ants can be quite
accurate with their sprays,
and a large group of ants
spraying can make any
predator think twice.” Such
predators include birds and
even badgers.
The ants are carnivorous,
eating other insects and
invertebrates such as
caterpillars and spiders. But
their favourite meal is the
sweet honeydew secreted by
aphids when ants stroke their
bellies with their antennae.

RENÉ KREKELS/CLOSE UP
PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

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 EYE OPENER

EYE OPENER
Quick,
but quiet
PALMDALE, CALIFORNIA, USA

NASA’s biggest achievements

usually occur beyond Earth’s
atmosphere, from launching
satellites and space telescopes
into orbit, to landing
astronauts on the Moon and
rovers on Mars. But the
NASA-branded plane seen
here has been built to
achieve something within our
planet’s atmosphere: quiet
supersonic flight.
Non-military supersonic
flights are currently banned
in a number of countries, due
to the thunderous ‘sonic
booms’ they generate. But it’s
thought the noise of these
booms can be significantly
reduced if the aircraft is
shaped to decrease the air
pressure that builds up around
it when travelling faster than
the speed of sound (approx.
1,235km/h or 767mph).
The X-59, a collaboration
between NASA and aerospace
company Lockheed Martin
that was officially unveiled on
12 January, has been designed
to see if that’s possible.
“With the X-59, we want to
demonstrate that we can
reduce the sonic booms to
something much quieter –
‘sonic thumps’,” said John
Wolter, the lead researcher on
the X-59 project. If it works, “it
could result in new rules for
overland supersonic flight.”
GARRY TICE/LOCKHEED MARTIN

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 LE T TERS

reply@sciencefocus.com

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Bristol, BS1 4ST

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SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
AND OUR MAGAZINE @bbcsciencefocus

LETTER OF THE MONTH Carbon-neutral transport

In your article about the best innovations
of 2023 (New Year, p49), you mention the
world’s first net-zero carbon shoe: the
Allbirds M0.0NSHOT – a very commendable
feat. However, the shoes are made from
material produced in New Zealand and will,
presumably, be sold all over the world. I’m
intrigued to know how the shoes will get to
shops and customers in countries outside
New Zealand without using any carbon.
That’s the tech we really need!
Elizabeth Mullenger, via email

Gender pain gap

I found Dr Michelle Griffin’s column on the gender pain gap (New Year, p38)
very interesting and it got me wondering: has anyone considered the
extent to which different languages or cultures might play a part? We lived
outside the UK for 40 years and found that German and Dutch doctors, for
example, considered British healthcare’s attitude to all sorts of medical These boots were made for walking… and shipping
issues to be completely potty.
In the UK, my wife was often dismissed with phrases such as: “it’s your An enormous catch
age” or “you’re a woman”. However – and this is worth thinking about – The news story about a big planet orbiting
when she went to a German or Dutch doctor, they would consider these an ultracool star (New Year, p24) got me
views as nonsense. Age and sex didn’t come into the way she was listened thinking. As the protoplanetary disc doesn’t
to and subsequently treated, unless there was a physiological reason for seem to have enough mass to form such a
doing so. Perhaps linguistic and cultural differences factor into the way that large planet, what if the planet was captured?
women are, or aren’t, treated when visiting a doctor. Roaming rogue planets have been found,
Tom, via email what are the chances of this happening?
WORTH Steve Duggan, Ebbw Vale, Wales
OVER
WRITE IN AND WIN! £35
The writer of next issue’s Letter of the Month wins
They can’t all be clouds, right?
In your ‘Best science images of 2023’ feature,
a pair of hardback popular science books. Put pen
you claim that many UFO sightings are a
to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) and you could
get your hands on Tales From a Robotic World by
direct result of lenticular cloud formations
Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo, and The Spirit (New Year, p19). In other words, observers
of Mathematics by David Acheson. mistakenly think that they’re seeing a UFO,
when, in reality, it’s just a cloud. I was

12

“OVER THE LAST 500 YEARS,
ICELAND’S VOLCANOES HAVE
EJECTED ONE THIRD OF ALL
THE LAVA THAT HAS FLOWED
ACROSS EARTH’S SURFACE”
DR CLAIRE ASHER, p48
wondering how this phenomenon explains
the increased number of UFO sightings since
the mid-20th century – particularly in certain
US states such as Nevada?
Jawad Akram, Reading
The maths of music
Another answer to the “Why are there
12 notes in an octave?” question in the Q&A
(December, p79) is that the standard musical
scale uses eight notes made up of whole
notes (tones) and half notes (semitones). In
the scale of C, there are two semitones, B to C
and E to F. In other keys, the semitones
ALAMY, PENN STATE UNIVERSITY
occur in different positions, and some whole
notes consist of two half notes either side
of the notes in the C scale.
To play in any key, all 12 semitones are
essential. Known as the ‘equal-tempered
scale’, it ensures each note has a consistent
pitch increase, derived from the lower
note by multiplying the frequency by
L E T T E R S M AY B E E D I T E D F O R P U B L I C AT I O N
Could the giant planet orbiting star
LHS 3154 have came from elsewhere?
the 12th root of 2 (1.059463). It’s this
common relationship that enables any
instrument to play in any key and allows
fret positions to be easily derived for any
fretted instrument.
Eddie Green, via email
Luis Villazon replies: You’re absolutely
right. The eight-note octave is a compromise
between what’s beautiful mathematically
and what’s beautiful acoustically. The
relationship between the two is as
complicated as it is fascinating.
Follow us on
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 DISCOVERIES

“If we give [the T cell

treatment] to aged
mice, they rejuvenate.
If we give it to young
mice, they age slower”
Asst Prof Corina Amor Vegas p21

SPACE

BLACK HOLE BLUES

ESA space telescope spots a black hole throwing a
tantrum big enough to unsettle an entire galaxy p16

TECHNOLOGY
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
Advanced camera allows us to see the world
through the eyes of other animals p18

SPACE
WATER ON MARS
Orbiting probe finds huge deposits of water
ice buried beneath Red Planet’s equator p19

PALAEONTOLOGY
THE GIANT SHRINKING SHARK
New study suggests the megalodon wasn’t
quite as big as previously thought p20

BIOLOGY
THE YOUTH TREATMENT
Breakthrough therapy is able to reduce
ageing and prolong youth in mice p21

PSYCHOLOGY
STOP THE RINGING
Can a smartphone app help people with
tinnitus filter out the ringing in their ears? p22
The black hole that
TECHNOLOGY lies at the centre of

FINGERPRINTS AREN’T UNIQUE

Markarian 817 has
been throwing its toys
AI analysis suggests patterns are shared out of the pram on a
between fingers on the same hand p23 truly epic scale
ESA/ATG

15
 DISCOVERIES

SPACE

W
e all have bad days, committing to a
monumental strop here or a display of

BLACK HOLE anger there. But have you ever had a

tantrum so bad that you threw an entire

UNBALANCES ENTIRE galaxy off balance?

Well, that’s what one particularly badly behaved
ESA/ATG, NASA/ESA/HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE

black hole has done and its outburst has been witnessed

GALAXY WITH by t he Europea n Space Agency’s XMM-New ton

space observatory.

MASSIVE TANTRUM
The XMM-Newton space observatory has
spotted a black hole going ‘full toddler’
Zoom in on the centre of every large galaxy and you’ll
find a supermassive black hole, drawing in matter
from its surroundings with its immense gravity. As
the material spirals inwards, it’s crushed into what’s
known as an accretion disc – a flat disc of dust and
gas that orbits the black hole’s event horizon.
Over time, all the material closest to the black hole
crosses the event horizon – the point of no return – and

16

“Occasionally, a black
hole doesn’t just spit
out a bit of gas – it spits
out its entire meal”
gets devoured by the black hole. But there’s a twist:
black holes only consume a fraction of the gas they
take in, spitting the rest of it back out into space.
Occasionally, just like the temperamental black hole
the XMM-Newton spotted, a black hole doesn’t just
spit out a bit of gas – it spits out its entire meal. Gas
in the accretion disc gets flung out in all directions
at such high speeds that it completely clears out the
surrounding interstellar gas.
The effects of this are massive, the gas blasting an
area through space where new stars can no longer
form. This completely changes the landscape of the
galaxy surrounding the black hole.
Normally, it’s only black holes with extremely
bright accretion discs, due to being at the limit of
how much matter they can draw in, that throw gas
back out with these ultra-fast ‘black hole winds’.
DISCOVERIES
ABOVE A photo “It’s very uncommon to observe ultra-fast winds,
of the galaxy and even less common to detect winds that have
Markarian 817 enough energy to alter the character of their host
galaxy,” said Elias Kammoun, an astronomer at the
ABOVE LEFT An
artist’s impression
Roma Tre University in Italy and co-author of the
of the black hole report announcing the observation.
at the centre of “The fact that Markarian 817 (the galaxy in question)
Markarian 817 produced these winds for around a year, while not
and the gases it’s being in a particularly active state suggests that black
ejecting holes may reshape host galaxies much more than
previously thought.”
For scientists, this research adds to our understanding
of how black holes and the galaxies around them
influence each other. Many galaxies appear to have
large regions around their centres where few new
stars form. This could be explained by black hole
winds clearing out the star-forming gases.
17
 A selection of butterflies
as they would be seen
by some species of
birds (above) and other
butterflies (below and
above right)

TECHNOLOGY

H
umans differ greatly from Due to the photoreceptors in their eyes,
NEW CAMERA ot her a nimals in a huge
number of ways, but one of the
different animals perceive the world
differently. Honeybees and some birds,

TECH SEES THE most intriguing differences

WORLD THROUGH
ANIMALS’ EYES
Advanced video camera reproduces
animals’ eyesight capabilities with
over 90 per cent accuracy
is vision. Eyesight varies a great deal
between species, but now, according to
a report published in the journal PLOS
Biology, we have the means to see the
world through other animals’ eyes.
A team of ecologists and filmmakers
used a new camera system to produce a
series of videos that accurately replicate
the colours that different animals see
in natural settings.
for example, can see ultraviolet (UV)
light, which is beyond the capabilities
of human eyesight.
By reconstructing the colours that
animals actually see, scientists can better
understand how they communicate,
navigate and build survival tactics.
False-colour images give us a glimpse
into this colourful world, but traditional
methods, such as spectrophotometry,
which measures the reflective properties

18
 DISCOVERIES

SPACE

WATER FOUND BURIED

UNDER MARTIAN EQUATOR
New observations reveal what’s inside the mysterious deposits
hidden beneath giant formations on the Red Planet

“We’ve long been
fascinated by
how animals
see the world”
of materials, are time-consuming,
require specific lighting conditions
and only produce still images.
“We’ve long been fascinated by how
animals see the world,” said Daniel
Hanley, an assistant professor at George
Mason University and a senior author
on the report. “Modern techniques
in sensory ecology allow us to infer
how static scenes might appear to an
animal. However, animals often make
crucial decisions on moving targets.
“Here, we introduce hardware and
software tools that can capture and
display animal-perceived colours
in motion.”
The camera records in four colour
channels: blue, green, red and UV.
This data can then be processed into
what the researchers call ‘perceptual
units’. It all comes together to create
an accurate video of how colours are
perceived by animals, based on existing
k nowledge of t he photoreceptors
in their eyes.
When the team tested the system
against existing technology that used
spectrophotometry, they found the
new system perceived colours with
an accuracy of over 92 per cent.
The system is built using commercially
DANIEL HANLEY X4, ESA/DLR
S
cientists have finally figured
out what’s hidden inside
mysterious deposits buried
beneath Mars’s equator. Using
new data gathered by the European
Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter,
scientists have discovered pockets
of water ice that stretch for several
k ilomet res underneat h t he Red
Planet’s surface.
The water ice was found beneath
the Medusae Fossae formation. Mars
Express has examined this part of the
planet before, but when the orbiter
last carried out observations of this
area, 15 years ago, the results raised
more questions than they answered.
Back then, Mars Express revealed
t hat t here were massive deposits
estimated to be 2.5k m (1.6 miles)
under the formation, but no one knew
what these deposits might be. Now,
new results show that the deposits
are water ice and that they’re thicker
than previously thought: an incredible
3.7km (2.3 miles) thick.
In fact, there’s so much ice buried
there that, if it all melted, it would cover
Mars in a layer of water
1.5-2.7m (4.9-8.9f t)
deep. That’s enough
water to fill Ea r t h’s
Red Sea.
Published in t he
journal Geophysical
Research Letters, the
f indings ma rk t he
discovery of the most
water ever found in
t his pa r t of t he Red
Pla net. The water
“While this news of finding water
ice wit hin t he dusty subsurface
of Ma rs doesn’t provide a ny new
optimism for finding alien life on
the planet, it could help humans be
the aliens on Mars in the future,”
Dr Darren Baskill, astronomy lecturer
at t he University of Sussex, told
BBC Science Focus.
“Mars was once a wet planet, but
liquid water no longer exists there. So
while this large source of water ice is
hundreds of meters underground, its
location near the equator is convenient
and raises the prospect of it being
mined in the future, making human
exploration of Mars a bit more viable.”
Since the ice is sitting at the planet’s
equator, it couldn’t have formed in
Mars’s present-day climatic conditions.
This suggests the ice is a remnant
of a previous epoch – challenging
what scientists currently understand
about the Red Planet’s climate history
and raising even more questions for
future research.
The Medusae Fossae formation on Mars

available cameras housed in a modular, could be key to future

3D-printed casing, while the software huma n missions to
it runs on is open-source, so t hat Ma rs, which would
other researchers and photographers land near the equator
can reproduce the tech and see the rather than the ice-rich
animals’ views for themselves. polar caps.

19
 DISCOVERIES

PALAEONTOLOGY

MEGALODON MAY NOT

HAVE BEEN QUITE SO MEGA,
CONTROVERSIAL STUDY SUGGESTS
Shark experts now disagree over the apex predator’s shape and size

A
bold new study claims we’ve
had the megalodon all wrong.
According to t he study, t he
prehistoric predator Otodus
megalodon may have been more of a long
and slender shark than the chunky beast
we imagine today.
Nose to tail, the megalodon is generally
thought to have been 15-20m (50-65ft) long.
It dominated Earth’s seas between 15 to 3.6
million years ago, but very little evidence
of it exists in the fossil record – with only
teeth and vertebrae available rather than
“It claims the any complete skeletons.
That’s why some estimations of its
animal was more dimensions have been based on that of
the modern great white shark (Carcharodon
comparable to the carcharias), giving megalodon a thick and
rounded figure. But the new study, published
much slimmer, in journal Palaeontologia Electronica, argues
that the megalodon wasn’t just a bigger
modern-day version of the great white. In fact, it claims
the animal was more comparable to the
mako shark” much slimmer, modern-day mako shark.

20

Phillip Sternes, biologist at the University of California,
Riverside, led the new study on the megalodon’s shape
The new study, led by a team in the US,
used CT scans of a live great white shark
to make comparisons with the megalodon’s
reconstructed spinal column.
“This new finding marks a major scientific
breakthrough in the quest to decipher what
megalodon looked like,” said the study’s first
author, Phillip Sternes, a biologist at the
University of California, Riverside.
A longer shape would have given the
megalodon a longer digestive canal, which
would have made it easier to absorb nutrients,
and meant the ancient shark wouldn’t have
had to eat so often.
These latest findings a re contested,
however, as an earlier study, published in
Science Advances in 2022 by a UK team,
reached a different conclusion. The UK team
used advanced 3D modelling to compare the
bodies of several shark species, including
ALAMY, DOUGLAS LONG/CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, GETTY IMAGES
the great white, mako and salmon sharks. By
pooling together measurements from these
species, they estimate that the megalodon
was bigger than previously thought, with
dorsal fins as tall as an adult human.
Speaking to BBC Science Focus, the UK
team said: “While alternative hypotheses
should be, and are, welcomed in science,
this new study’s proposal suffers from a
circular logic.” The finding is “based on a
single observation… and lacks statistical
tests. More critically, several aspects of the
study are impossible for future researchers
to verify or replicate as the authors don’t
provide the raw data.”
BIOLOGY
BREAKTHROUGH ANTI-AGEING
CELL DISCOVERY COULD HELP YOU
STAY YOUNGER FOR LONGER
A white blood cell in our bodies could give extended youth
T
he ‘fountain of youth’ is not
locked away in a sorcerer’s
stone or mythical water
source, according to new
research. In fact, scientists in the
US say the key to slowing ageing
is hiding in our bodies.
Published in Nature Aging, the new
research reveals that the trick to anti-
ageing lies within the white blood
cells, known as T cells. The scientists
behind the research discovered that
they can reprogramme these cells
to turn them into ageing-cell killing
machines, called chimeric antigen
receptor (CAR) T cells.
When they tested the treatment
on mice, the mice went on to live
healthier lives, with lower body
weights, improved metabolism and
glucose tolerance, and increased
physical activity. And all without
any tissue damage or toxicity.
“If we give it to aged mice, they
rejuvenate. If we give it to young
mice, they age slower. No other
therapy right now can do this,”
said Corina Amor Vegas, one of the
researchers and Assistant Professor
at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
in Long Island, New York.
The researchers are calling this
treatment the ‘living drug’. That’s
because, when genetically modified,
the CAR T cells actively attack a
group of cells known as ‘senescent
DISCOVERIES
cells’. Senescent cells are responsible
for many of the conditions and
diseases we get as we grow old,
such as obesity and diabetes. We
accumulate more of them as the years
go by and this builds up harmful
inf lammation. The CAR T cells,
however, could remove them and
therefore slow the impacts of ageing.
The treatment has already been
approved in the US to tackle blood
cancer (illustrated below, with T
cells in purple and the cancer cells in
green). This is the first time scientists
have shown that CAR T cells can
also slow – and even reduce – the
effects of ageing, however.
While there are already drugs that
can eliminate senescent cells, these
have to be taken repeatedly. The
effects of CAR T cells, though, are
long-lasting – one dose at a young
age protects you for life.
“With CAR T cells, you have
the potential of getting this one
t reatment, and then that’s it,”
said Amor Vegas. “For chronic
pathologies, that’s a huge advantage.
Think about patients who need
treatment multiple times per day
versus getting an infusion [that
means] they’re good to go for years.”
Next, the scientists will investigate
whether the cells will not only make
your life healthier, but also help you
live longer too.
21
 DISCOVERIES
PSYCHOLOGY
NEED TO TUNE OUT THE RINGING OF
TINNITUS? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT
Initial trials of MindEar suggest it can help tinnitus sufferers
filter out the ringing in their ears
T
innitus, a condition that
causes a ringing in the ears,
can be debilitating for anyone
who suffers from it. But an
international team of researchers say
they may have found a possible solution.
Publishing their findings in the
journal Frontiers in Audiology and
Otology, the researchers were able to
reduce patients’ tinnitus symptoms in a
few weeks with an app they developed,
called MindEar.
The initial trial focused on 30
sufferers, with almost two-thirds
experiencing a ‘clinically significant
improvement’ while using the app.
Now, the researchers plan to run larger
trials in the UK alongside the University
College London Hospital.
“Cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT]
is known to help people with tinnitus,
but it requires a trained psychologist.
That’s expensive and often difficult to
access,” said Suzanne Purdy, Professor
therapy, to help you train your brain
to tune out tinnitus. The sound you
perceive fades in the background and
is much less bothersome.”
Our brains start learning to filter
out sounds that we determine to be
irrelevant (the sound of blood rushing
past our ears, for example) before we’re
born. As we grow, our brains continue
to do this, filtering out noises like busy
roads or the sound of a kettle boiling.
Sounds like alarms can bypass this
filter, triggering a sense of alertness even
when we’re asleep. Unlike an alarm,
however, tinnitus occurs when a person
perceives a sound in their head.
There’s no external sound source, or
associated risk, and yet the brain reacts
to it with a fight-or-flight-style response.
This causes the brain to focus on the
sound. The new app aims to equip
patients with the tools they need to
suppress stress hormones and responses,
reducing the brain’s tendency to focus
TECHNOLOGY
AI ANALYSIS
SHOWS YOUR
FINGERPRINTS
AREN’T UNIQUE
The findings could lead to the
reopening of many criminal cases
A
n artificial intelligence (AI) has
made a surprising discovery: our
fingerprints aren’t unique. Well, at
least not when compared to other
fingers on the same hand.
It has long been believed that every digit
has its own pattern of whorls, loops and
arches, unlike those of any other finger – so
your index finger’s print would be unlike
that of your ring finger. This assumption of
‘intra-person fingerprints’ being unique has
had a huge impact on forensic science. For
instance, if a perpetrator left prints from
different fingers at separate crime scenes,
it would be difficult for police to link them
to one person.
However, a new ‘deep contrastive network’
AI built by scientists at Columbia University,
in New York, could leave a big mark on
future crime scenes. After training it on a
database of 60,000 fingerprints, the researchers
discovered they could predict if any two
prints were f rom the same person with
77 per cent accuracy.
This figure would rise even higher if the
AI was fed other fingerprints from the same
hand – a breakthrough that, the researchers
say, could potentially make forensic science
ten times more efficient than it is now.
“Just imagine how well this [AI] will
perform once it’s trained on millions instead
of thousands of fingerprints,” said Aniv Ray,
of Columbia Engineering.
Dr Hod Lipson, who oversaw the study, said:
“If this information tips the balance, then I
imagine that cold cases could be revived and
that even innocent people could be acquitted.”
So, what did the AI spot that forensic
“The AI didn’t focus on the branchings and New insights
into fingerprint

endpoints in fingerprint ridges. It honed in characteristics have

been made thanks to
artificial intelligence
on the angles and curves of the whorls and
loops in the centre of the fingerprint”

the branchings and endpoints in fingerprint knowledge,” Lipson said. “But this research
ridges. Instead, it honed in on the angles and is an example of how even a fairly simple AI,
curves of the whorls and loops in the centre of given a fairly plain dataset that the research
 DISCOVERIES

SPACE

PEEK INSIDE WHAT

COULD BE THE
FIRST HUMAN
SETTLEMENT ON
THE MOON
The Sun will never set on this
lunar habitat that could double
as an exclusive tourist destination

A
rchitecture studio Hassell
has unveiled plans for what
could be the first permanent
huma n settlement on t he
Moon. Designed in collaboration with the
European Space Agency (ESA), Cranfield
University and Format Engineers, the
Lunar Habitat Masterplan is intended to
initially accommodate a colony of 144
people, but its modular design will allow
the settlement to grow and evolve with
its inhabitants.
The Lunar Habitat Masterplan will
have to confront the same challenges
that humans have always faced when on
the Moon, most notably the exposure to
high levels of radiation due to the lack of
atmosphere. But Hassell says the habitat’s
exterior – constructed from 3D-printed
lunar soil to form a protective shell – will
solve the radiation problem.
The proposed location for the habitat is
1
the lunar south pole because of the near-
constant sunlight (for generating solar
1. The Masterplan’s 2. Created with 3. Unlike the different parts of Earth-made parts
power) and the potential access to frozen proposed location help from International the Masterplan will of the structure
water in the shaded craters there. But it’s near the lunar anthropologists Space Station, allow inhabitants will be inflatable to
South Pole means and psychologists, inhabitants of the to move between make getting them
not solely about survival; the habitat also the Sun will never the bar is just one Masterplan will them without to the Moon easier.
contains recreational, social and active set, providing ideal of the Masterplan’s have private being exposed When these parts
conditions for recreational areas, rooms. The seating to the extreme come together,
spaces, such as restaurants and sports harvesting solar and has been and storage units environment they’ll form a
arenas, as well as giant greenhouses. energy. The base designed to bring will be made out of outside the base. robust modular
Hassell says the habitat is intended for will have the base’s bamboo to provide inner structure,
 HASSELL/ESA X5

4
2

25
 COLUMNISTS
COMMENT
RADIO WAVES OF UNKNOWN
ORIGIN HAVE SCIENTISTS PUZZLED
Fast radio bursts originating from outside the Milky Way
were first detected almost 20 years ago. But what are they?
Y
ou would think they would have been
harder to miss: unimaginably powerful
bursts of cosmic radiation, so bright they
can blast our radio telescopes from billions
of light-years away and occurring perhaps as often
as a thousand times a day.
But fast radio bursts (FRBs) went undetected until
2007, and despite a decade and a half of investigation,
remain one of the most enticing mysteries in
astrophysics. Recent studies are providing new and
promising hints about their origins, while at the same
time illustrating why these cosmic firecrackers are
so confounding in the first place.
When I first started hearing about FRBs in seminars,
the big question wasn’t so much: “What astrophysical
source is causing this?”, but rather: “Are we sure this
isn’t just a blip in the machine?”
After all, whatever it was, it looked pretty suspicious.
An FRB is a burst of radio radiation that lasts around
a millisecond and spreads out in frequency in a
way that looks an awful lot like a blip from a pulsar
(a rapidly spinning core of a collapsed massive
star, known as a neutron star, that’s left after
a supernova explosion).
The thing is, FRBs don’t come from any known
pulsar, don’t repeat like a pulsar and are apparently
far more powerful than any pulsar pulse we’ve
ever seen. To make matters worse, for years there
was only one telescope – the Parkes Observatory in
Australia – that had seen any FRBs at all. The debate
got even more heated when it was discovered that
some fraction of FRB-like bursts seen by Parkes were
not from astronomical sources.
Called ‘perytons’, these bursts had always been
suspected to be of terrestrial origin, but the case
was closed after some clever detective work led by
astronomer Dr Emily Petroff. She and her colleagues
showed that perytons were strongly correlated with
“It’s still possible that
fast radio bursts are more
than one kind of thing”
26
DR KATIE MACK
(@As troKatie)
Katie is a theoretical
astrophysicist. She currently
holds the position of Hawking
Chair in Cosmology and
Science Communication at
the Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics.
local lunchtime and were, in fact, radiation leakage
from the observatory microwave when the door was
opened too early. Could FRBs also be some kind of
technological mistake?
It eventually became clear that FRBs are definitely
coming from the distant Universe. More radio
telescopes were configured to be able to record very
short radio bursts and the detection rate skyrocketed.
Those bursts were coming from all over the sky,
which hinted that they didn’t originate in our galaxy
(where they would have been concentrated toward
the centre). In the first decade after their discovery,
theorists produced a huge number of papers describing
possible origins for the bursts, including powerful
supernovae, exploding primordial black holes
and cosmic strings.
The plot thickened in 2012 when one FRB was found
to be repeating, thus ruling out any origin (at least for
this burst) that required complete destruction, such
as a supernova or other cataclysmic explosion. Soon,
more bursts were found to repeat, though still only
a small minority and mostly in confusing, irregular
intervals. As more bursts were discovered, evidence
was building that FRBs might be related to unusually
powerful magnetars: spinning neutron stars with
extremely strong magnetic fields.
Bolstering this hypothesis was the discovery of a
strong, short burst of radiation from a known magnetar
in our galactic backyard. It wasn’t as powerful as the
observed FRBs, but it looked like it might be something
in the same class of event – a missing link between
FRBs and the kinds of radio outbursts we routinely
see from pulsars.
In the last few months, even more evidence in favour
of at least some FRBs having a magnetar origin has
come from a study of more than a dozen relatively
nearby FRBs detected with the CHIME (Canadian
Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio
telescope in British Columbia. The researchers were
able to determine that all the FRBs in their sample
came from spiral galaxies, which tend to have a lot
of star formation, rather than elliptical ones, which
tend to have mostly ageing stars. They say their
study proves that for the bulk of FRBs, whatever
makes them is probably produced in a core-collapsed
supernova: the explosive death of a short-lived massive
star (preferentially found in locations of active star
formation) that can leave a magnetar as a remnant.
Competing origin proposals either don’t occur
often enough to account for the number of FRBs,
ILLUSTRATION: MATTHEW HOLLAND
or wouldn’t be so likely to be found in only spiral
galaxies. Of course, it’s still possible – and perhaps
likely – that FRBs are more than one kind of thing.
Some have suggested that collisions of old stars
could produce magnetars in elliptical galaxies, which
could explain why some FRBs have been found
there. For now, astronomers will just have to keep
gathering clues.
27
COMMENT
STRUGGLING TO FIND THE MOTIVATION
TO EXERCISE? BLAME YOUR BRAIN
We all know that working out makes us feel better.
So why do most of us find it so difficult to actually do it?
H
umans aren’t the fastest or strongest species. We
have no wings, fangs, claws, venom or armour.
Physically, we’re largely nature’s also-rans.
‘Also-ran’ is an ironic term, though, because
humans do physically dominate all other species in one area:
long-distance running. Our bipedal gait and unique sweat
glands mean humans can keep running long after other species
collapse from exhaustion.
Basically, humans evolved to spend long periods physically
exerting themselves – that is, exercising. But while many
people do indeed enjoy exercising, the less crowded gyms
and abandoned New Year resolutions of mid-February reveal
they’re in the minority. Even though, as a species, we’ve
evolved to do it.
Why? The baffling complexity of the human brain is to blame.
Evolving a n ability doesn’t automatically mea n we’ll
want to use it; after all, creatures with armour don’t actively
want to be attacked. Granted, physical exercise isn’t that bad,
but it’s still typically unpleasant and uncomfortable. It has
to be. You’re pushing your body to its physical limits, which
28
leads to significant discomfort – they’re limits
for a reason.
Another issue is that the human brain is highly
sensitive to wasted effort. Studies have shown
that it contains dedicated circuits, within the
insula cortex, that calculate the effort required
for actions, the likely reward we’ll get from
them, and ask “is it worth it?”
It’s an evolved tendency to stop us squandering
vital resources on pointless endeavours
(for example, walking 20 miles for a handful
of berries). But regular exercise, to get in shape,
requires consta nt, considerable effor t, for
gradual progress and uncertain rewards (it’s
impossible to guarantee ahead of time that you’ll
succeed). So, your brain’s tendency to ask, “is
it worth it?” will be hard to ignore.
This trait also means we typically prefer
things that offer minimum effort for maximum
reward. So, we take the path of least resistance,
stick to routines, dwell within our comfort
zones and so on.
Taking up exercise means changing all that for
uncertain results. And our brains typically tend
to put more significance on risk over potential
ILLUSTRATION: OLLIE HIRST
reward (in other words, we prefer to play it safe),
meaning we’re even more reluctant to take up
physically demanding activities.
So, while our bodies may be adapted to constant
exercise, our brains have, in many ways, adapted
to avoid it. And we’ve built a world for ourselves

“The human brain is
a complex organ, so
has a few tricks up its
metaphorical sleeve”
where avoiding physical activity is a viable option.
It’s often encouraged, if anything.
Thankfully, the human brain is a terrifyingly
complex orga n, so has a few t ricks up its
metaphorical sleeve.
Most obviously, it isn’t ruled by t he more
primitive, immediate instincts and drives. While
many species’ thought processes are limited to:
“Food… Eat it!”; “Danger… Run!”; “Pain… Avoid!”
and so on, we’ve evolved beyond that.
Human brains can form, and adhere to, multiple
long-term goals and ambitions. We’re rarely content
with just day-to-day survival: we can simulate a
desirable future scenario, figure out how we’d
achieve it, and do that. Or at least work toward it.
This directly impacts how our brain processes
motivation and willpower, in many interesting
ways. For one, it makes us capable of delayed
gratification: we can recognise that rejecting
a reward now can lead to a greater reward later,
and act accordingly. In this case, we understand that eating
four family bags of crisps while bingeing Netflix shows will
be enjoyable right now, but going to the gym, while altogether
less enjoyable, will mean we’re fitter, stronger and healthier
later. And we decide accordingly.
There are also things like the ‘just-world fallacy’, where
we inherently assume the world is fair, so studies provide
the idea that discomfort and ‘suffering’ will surely lead to
rewards. In short, this means that ‘no pain, no gain’ is a widely
accepted concept.
Our brains frame these various motivational factors in a
variety of forms. The self-discrepancy theory suggests we
have several ‘selves’ active in our minds at any given time;
our ‘actual’ self, our ‘ideal’ self and our ‘ought’ self.
Your ‘actual’ self is your current state, how you are right
now. Your ‘ideal’ self is what you want to be. And your ‘ought’
self is the self that does all the stuff required to become your
ideal self. It’s the self that does what you ought to be doing;
it’s the road between points A and B.
So, if your ideal self is a professional footballer and your
actual self isn’t, your ought self is the one that spends a lot of
time training, exercising and getting better at football. DR DEAN
That’s just one framework for how motivation works when
it comes to physical exercise. There are, of course, many other
BURNETT
Neuroscientist
factors that play an important role, such as time constraints, Dean explores
body image and mobility. the nature of
But as far as your brain is concerned, there are processes dreaming in
that discourage exercise and processes that encourage it. Ideally, his latest book
Emotional
you’ll end up putting more weight on the latter than the former.
Ignorance
And moving weights around is a go-to type of exercise, so it (£14.99, Guardian
helps to start somewhere. Faber).
29

COMMENT
ONE HORMONE COULD BE THE
KEY THAT UNLOCKS A CURE
FOR MORNING SICKNESS
The nausea and vomiting that, in extreme cases, can
endanger mothers and babies might soon be just a memory
W
e’ve all experienced vomiting at some
stage in our lives, whether it’s from
a nasty bout of food poisoning or the
well-known norovirus that periodically
spreads through the population. And everyone can agree
that it’s horrendous.
But imagine if ongoing nausea and vomiting was
expected for a significant phase in your life, and how that
would affect you physically, mentally and emotionally.
This is the reality for the four in five women who
develop nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Even
in milder cases this means unpleasant symptoms, such
as queasiness, lack of appetite and throwing up.
For the three per cent of women who develop a
condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, things are
even worse, requiring hospital admission and treatment.
Hyperemesis gravidarum is a collection of symptoms
including such severe nausea and vomiting that a woman
“Her doctor was dismissive,
suggesting she was exaggerating
her symptoms to get attention”
can’t normally eat or drink, resulting in dehydration,
nutrient deficiency and weight loss – putting the lives
of both mother and baby at risk. According to the Office
of National Statistics, this led to nearly 20,000 women
being admitted to hospital in 2022.
Yet despite it being very common, until recently
hardly anything was known about the cause of nausea
and vomiting in pregnancy. Anecdotes or ‘old wives’
tales’ suggest that the more sickness you experience,
DR MICHELLE the ‘healthier the pregnancy’ and that it even relates to
ILLUSTRATION: KUBA FERENC
the number of babies you’re pregnant with.
GRIFFIN
Michelle is the director
Real-world evidence, however, shows there’s no truth to
this. In fact, there’s a wide range of severity and patterns
of MFG Health of nausea and vomiting throughout pregnancy.
Consulting, as well as a
Although it’s often called ‘morning sickness’, nausea
women’s health expert
and strategy advisor in and vomiting in pregnancy can occur at any time
women’s health tech. day or night. It’s typically worse in the first 12 weeks
COLUMNISTS
and then settles down, but for many women it persists
throughout the whole pregnancy.
Fortunately, after over 20 years of work trying to
determine the cause, there has now been a breakthrough.
This has been driven by Dr Marlena Fejzo, a geneticist
at the Keck School of Medicine of USC in California.
Dr Fejzo was motivated to do this work after suffering
from nausea and vomiting during her second pregnancy
in 1999. She was unable to eat or drink without vomiting,
rapidly lost weight and became too weak to stand or walk.
Yet her doctor was dismissive, suggesting she was
exaggerating her symptoms to get attention. She was
eventually hospitalised and miscarried at 15 weeks.
Working with private company 23andMe, which enables
individuals to supply their own DNA sample to determine
health and ancestry insights, Dr Fejzo conducted a genetic
study with women who had previously been pregnant.
She found a connection between those women who
suffered from severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy,
requiring intravenous fluids (a key medical treatment),
and a variant in a gene coding for a protein named GDF15,
a hormone that acts on the brainstem.
This association pinpointed where further research was
needed to understand the role of GDF15 in pregnancy.
It’s secreted from the placenta in the first two trimesters
of pregnancy. It likely plays a role in preventing the
mother from biologically rejecting the baby and so is
vital in enabling the pregnancy to continue.
GDF15 has also been shown to be a regulator of
physiological body weight and appetite via the brain,
however. It’s overproduced in people with cancer suffering
from severe appetite and weight loss.
In a collaborative, global research effort led by Dr Fejzo
and Prof Sir Stephen O’Rahilly, from the University of
Cambridge, high levels of GDF15 were found in women
with severe nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.
The hormone’s effect seemed to be dependent on the
women’s sensitivity and pre-pregnancy exposure to
GDF15, however. Those women who had high exposure
prior to becoming pregnant had no nausea or vomiting
symptoms despite having high levels of GDF15 hormone.
It’s hypothesised that prolonged exposure to GDF15
before pregnancy could have a protective effect,
making women less sensitive to the sharp surge in the
hormone caused by the developing baby. This exposure
relationship is quite uncommon and provides not only
more understanding, but also suggests a potential
treatment. Women could be desensitised to prevent such
severe nausea and vomiting by increasing exposure of
the hormone before they become pregnant. Much like
how some people are treated for dietary allergies through
controlled exposure therapy.
Like nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, many common
conditions affecting women are poorly understood despite
their incidences being very high. The healthcare of women
is not niche, and there’s so much more to understand
and learn through this type of research.
31
 RE ALIT Y CHECK REVIEW

REALITY CHECK T H E S C I E N C E B E H I N D T H E H E A D L I N E S

Tongue scraping | Water bottles | Potholes

REVIEW

TONGUE SCRAPING: CAN THE LATEST TIKTOK

TREND PUT AN END TO BAD BREATH?
Advocates of tongue scraping claim it’s an effective
way to remove odour-causing bacteria

32
 REVIEW RE ALIT Y CHECK

“Bad breath that isn’t related to eating garlic, onions or

other odorous foods can be hard to shift. It comes down to
the particulars of a person’s mouth bacteria”

“We don’t know if it’s a genetic predisposition, but

For more fact-checking news,
visit the BBC’s Verify website at
bit.ly/BBCVerify
earch for the term ‘tongue scraper’ on TikTok
there’s no cure for it,” says Dr Saliha Saad, associate
professor in biomedical sciences at the University
of the West of England, whose research focuses on
oral malodour. According to Saad, the only way to
manage it is good oral hygiene, including brushing,

S and you’ll be met with an avalanche of videos

extolling the virtues of small tongue-cleaning
devices that resemble a cross between a
vegetable peeler and a bottle opener.
Perhaps, in pursuit of a brighter, fresher gape, you’ve
had a go with a tongue scraper yourself. But what
flossing and potentially tongue cleaning.
Even if you’re not someone who routinely suffers
from bad breath, these techniques could be useful
when ‘smelliness’ increases due to, say, an infection.
Everyone’s breath is expected to get worse in old age
as declining mobility makes it harder for us to be
does the science say about these tools? Should you be fastidious about our oral health.
spending extra time scraping bacteria off your tongue? One of Saad’s studies shows that in people with
And will it help you if you’re prone to bad breath? noticeable bad breath, combining tongue brushing
with an antibacterial spray can be an effective way
WHAT’S THE IDEA BEHIND TONGUE SCRAPING? to reduce tongue bacteria and bad breath for at
The thinking is straightforward: cleaning your tongue least six hours.
helps reduce the build-up of debris and bacteria that More widely, research suggests that as the bacterial
can give it an unpleasant tinge and cause bad breath. tongue coating is the main cause of halitosis, removing
A healthy mouth contains around 700 species of it is probably a safe bet, although recent studies on
bacteria. But as Dr Zoe Brookes, associate professor tongue cleaning are rather limited.
BELOW Bad breath can
of dental education and research at the University of
be a sign of a bacterial
Plymouth, explains, poor oral hygiene and build-up WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO CLEAN MY TONGUE? imbalance in your
of bacterial coatings or films on the tongue can drive Specialist tongue-cleaning devices range from metal mouth. Tongue scraping
down diversity and allow anaerobic species (those or plastic scrapers to soft, silicone brushes. Many may help restore that
that grow without oxygen) to dominate. These species toothbrushes also have a ridged patch on the back balance to a less
thrive in pits at the back of the tongue, where they of the head that can work as a tongue cleaner. ´ odorous state
break down proteins in food and saliva to produce the
smelly, sulphurous compounds linked to bad breath.
“The more mature this film is, the more anaerobic
bacteria there are – the more smell-producing bacteria,”
says Brookes. “So, the idea is that these tongue scrapers
are going to pull this film off, get rid of all the smelly
bacteria and then you get a healthy microbiome.”
While tongue cleaning has been around for centuries,
some cultures are more enthusiastic about it than
others. But in the UK, there are no clear guidelines
for dentists to follow on tongue cleaning, according to
Brookes. “Maybe we need to do a bit more research, so
we’re well-informed when patients ask us,” she adds.

CAN TONGUE CLEANING REDUCE BAD BREATH?

Bad breath that isn’t related to eating garlic, onions
GETTY IMAGES X2

or other odorous foods can be hard to shift. It comes

down to the particulars of a person’s mouth bacteria;
some people seem naturally prone to harbour the
smellier sorts.

33
 ANALYSIS
WATER BOTTLES: HOW SAVING
THE PLANET COULD MAKE YOU SICK
Reusable water bottles reduce waste from single-use plastic,
but without regular cleaning become havens for bacteria
ABOVE Tongue scrapers are designed to remove the film of
bacteria that can build up on your tongue
´ In a 2022 study, researchers compared tongue
scrapers and toothbrushes for reducing tongue bacteria
and the smelly compounds they produce. Although
both worked, there was no clear winner.
“There’s not a huge weight of evidence to say one’s
better than the other,” says Brookes. “But perhaps
if you’re a bit of a ‘gagger’, a scraper might be more
comfortable than a toothbrush for getting right to
the back [of your tongue].”
It’s whatever you feel comfortable with, agrees
Saad, although she recommends soft bristles over
hard tools. Cleaning your tongue once daily or a few
times a week is enough, she adds, or just occasionally
if you’ve never suffered from bad breath.
SOUNDS LIKE IT CAN’T DO ANY HARM, RIGHT?
It depends. You do need to take care, cautions Saad,
who warns against ‘aggressive’ use of tongue-cleaning
tools that could damage your tongue, make it bleed
or let infections slip in.
“It’s like when we wash,” she says. “We don’t scrub
until we see our skin turn red – and the tongue
is much more sensitive, so we have to be careful
to protect it.”
Some researchers think trauma to tongue cells could
be linked to changes that lead to mouth cancers. In
recent years, it’s also been suggested that disrupting
the tongue microbiome could destroy bacteria that
keep our blood pressure in check by helping to
convert nitrogen-containing compounds in leafy
green vegetables into nitric oxide – a vasodilator,
meaning it dilates our blood vessels.
Partly due to these concerns, one of Brookes’s
studies suggests dentists recommend mouthwashes
that help to maintain a balanced microbiome. But she
thinks it’s presumptuous to say that cleaning your
tongue may detrimentally affect your blood pressure.
Like any decision we make about our health, we
must weigh the risks against the benefits. So, if bad
breath is affecting your social life, you could try
some (gentle) tongue cleaning.
by H AY L E Y B E N N E T T
Hayley is a science writer based in Bristol, UK.
34
ake a walk around any local park, office
T or city centre and there’s a good chance
you’ll see a number of people drinking from
reusable water bottles.
They’ve become something of a fashion
accessory, as well as a means to help us meet the
NHS health recommendations of drinking 6-8 glasses
of water per day and reduce our environmental
footprint by cutting down on the need for single-use
plastic bottles.
But, while using a water bottle might be a noble,
health-improving and planet-protecting act, the bottles
may be carrying a hidden risk. Research carried out
by US water filtration company WaterFilterGuru has
shown that if you don’t regularly wash your water
bottle thoroughly, bacteria and moulds can build up
– both on the inside and outside – that, if swallowed,
have the potential to make you very ill.
Water, even f rom a kitchen tap, isn’t usually
sterile, and bacteria begins growing naturally in all
non-carbonated waters only a few days after a bottle
is filled. The longer that water is stored in a bottle
at room temperature, the more bacteria will grow.
(Refrigerating filled water bottles can help limit
microbial numbers, however.)
Some of a water bottle’s microbes will come from
the water itself, but mostly they come from the person
drinking from it. Our bodies are naturally covered
with millions of microbes (microflora), including
the insides of our mouths.
Microbes found inside a typical water bottle
unsurprisingly include skin and oral microbes, such
as Staphylococcus and Streptococcus. Although these
bacteria are normally part of the human microflora,
they can cause skin and respiratory infections.
The bottle will also contain microbes present in
the environment around it, which could be of a huge
variety. While they might land on the exterior of
your bottle initially, they may later find their way
onto the interior after being transferred by you. And
each time you drink from the bottle you’ll be adding
bacteria from your mouth, which is home to millions
of microbial cells.
GETTY IMAGES X3
If you don’t wash your hands after going to the
toilet, bacteria that typically live in your intestines,
such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) may also make their
way onto, and into, your bottle.
 ANALYSIS RE ALIT Y CHECK

“The levels of intestinal bacteria, such as E. coli,

found in the typical water bottle were
similar to those found on toilet seats”

ABOVE Reusable The WaterFilterGuru study, mentioned above, found

bottles allow you to that the levels of intestinal bacteria, such as E. coli,
stay hydrated found in a typical water bottle were similar to those
throughout the day found on toilet seats.
without having to buy Drinking water that’s been contaminated this way
water in single-use can harm your health, causing diarrhoea and vomiting,
plastic bottles and, if moulds are present, possibly allergies. Pregnant
women, the very young, the elderly or those who are
LEFT Carbonated
water can inhibit the
immuno-compromised are most at risk of becoming
growth of certain ill from drinking water contaminants.
bacteria, such as The type of drink you keep in your bottle also has
Pseudomonas a major effect on what grows inside it. Drinks that
aeruginosa nourish you also nourish microbes, so it’s best to
avoid filling your bottle with anything other than
water. Fluids to particularly avoid include protein
shakes, energy drinks, f ruit juices or anything
containing sugar, as this can stimulate the growth
of any bacteria or mould present. ´

35

ABOVE Bottles must be cleaned regularly to remain hygienic
´ Interestingly, carbonated (fizzy or sparkling)
water tends to be antimicrobial. Research has found
that adding carbon dioxide to bottled water inhibits
the growth of water-associated pathogens, such as
E. coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa – both of
which can cause nasty infections in humans. Even
bottles filled with carbonated water still need to
be cleaned regularly, however, to prevent bacteria
from building up on the interior surfaces.
Although your bottle may be reusable, it doesn’t
maintain its own hygiene. This means that you
can’t refill and reuse the bottle without cleaning it.
If you don’t wash out your water bottle regularly,
any bacteria and moulds that may be present will
grow and contaminate whatever liquid you put in
it. Then, when you next drink from your bottle,
you may notice an odd taste or texture due to the
waste products released by the growing microbes.
It’s therefore important that you regularly clean
your bottle, just as you would any other item you
use that comes into contact with anything you eat
or drink, such as saucepans, crockery and cutlery.
Cleaning your water bottle is necessary, but,
thankfully, straightforward. Use hot water (over
60°C/140°F, as this temperature kills most pathogens),
add washing-up liquid, swirl it around for a few
seconds, then leave it for ten minutes. Afterwards,
rinse it with hot water and allow it to dry – overnight
is best, as thorough drying will also help to protect
against the growth of microbes.
For more heavy contamination (after a long period
of use without washing), use a half vinegar/half
water mixture and soak the bottle for several days.
Then clean it using the method outlined above.
To avoid getting ill from your water bottle, you
should ideally clean it with detergent after each use,
or at least several times a week. It’s also important
to clean any lids or attachments, such as straws,
as these can also harbour microbes.
There’s no need to be alarmed, however. Humans
have a very powerful immune system, which protects
us against all kinds of infections that evolved when
we lived in much less hygienic conditions, rarely
washed our hands and drank dirty water.
by DR PRIMROSE FREESTONE
Primrose is an associate professor in clinical microbiology
based at the University of Leicester.
36
COMMENT
POTHOLES: HIGH-TECH SOLUTIONS
COULD FILL THE CRACKS IN UK ROADS
Britain’s roads are cratered with 750,000 potholes. Bacteria
and self-healing asphalt could make them smooth again
s the world grapples with the accelerating pace
A of climate change, the UK’s expansive network of
roads, which stretches over 400,000km (250,000
miles), is becoming increasingly vulnerable to
the effects of extreme weather.
From tarmac melting during intense heatwaves to the
proliferation of potholes due to repeated freeze-thaw
cycles, the challenges facing the UK’s road infrastructure
are growing in both scale and complexity.
A recent survey conducted by climate change group Round
Our Way has shed light on the severity of the situation.
Based on information provided by 60 per cent of Britain’s
local authorities, the survey reported that there was a
staggering total of 750,000 potholes peppering the roads
of England, Scotland and Wales in 2023. Surrey County
Council, responsible for the area below southwest London,
topped the list with an alarming count of 68,000 potholes.
The economic cost of potholes is substantial, as reflected
in the UK government’s decision to divert £8.3 billion from
the HS2 railway extension project to local road repairs
last November. The Asphalt Industry Alliance estimates
that a comprehensive solution to the UK’s pothole problem
over the next decade would cost £14 billion, however.
As a result, there’s an urgent call for research into
innovative solutions that can adapt to climate change and
contribute to the net-zero emissions goal.
Understanding the science behind pothole formation
and the potential impact of climate change on our roads
is the first step towards a solution.
Potholes are primarily the result of three compounding
factors: water, traffic and freeze-thaw cycles. As vehicles
traverse the roads, they exert pressure on the surface, causing
small cracks to form and then gradually expand. These
cracks allow water to seep in, accelerating its deterioration.
The freeze-thaw cycle (in which water within the road
freezes, expands and subsequently thaws) further weakens
the surface, eventually leading to potholes.
Climate change, with its associated increase in extreme
weather conditions, is set to exacerbate this issue. The
UK has been experiencing more intense and frequent
ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES
outbreaks of rainfall in recent years, resulting in more
water infiltrating the roads.
What’s more, the fluctuating extremes of summer heat
and winter cold increase the number of freeze-thaw cycles,
accelerating the creation of potholes.

“As well as new materials, there are innovative technologies
that can play a pivotal role in improving road resilience”
We need innovative and sustainable solutions to address
these challenges, such as robust, eco-friendly road materials.
The good news is they exist.
For example, self-healing asphalt – a groundbreaking
(no pun intended) material infused with steel fibres and
epoxy capsules – can repair any small cracks that may
appear and prevent water infiltration. By heating the steel
fibres using electromagnetic induction, the mortar in the
asphalt is able to melt and repair the fractures.
Another potential solution is incorporating bacteria into
cement-based road materials to create self-healing roads.
The bacteria, contained within tiny capsules, are mixed
into the cement used for road construction. When a crack
appears in the road surface, the capsules break, releasing
the bacteria. The bacteria then begin to produce calcite,
a form of limestone, as a byproduct of their metabolic
process. The calcite fills the cracks, effectively healing
the road. This not only extends the lifespan of roads, but
also reduces the cost of regular maintenance work.
Also rather promising is the use of graphene-reinforced
asphalt. Graphene, a one-atom-thick layer of carbon
atoms, is renowned for its exceptional strength and
COMMENT RE ALIT Y CHECK
flexibility. When incorporated into
asphalt, it significantly enhances the
material’s resistance to wear and tear,
making it less susceptible to cracking
and potholes.
As well as new materials, there
are innovative technologies that can
play a pivotal role in improving road
resilience. Ground-source heating and
cooling systems, for example, can
help to regulate road temperatures
and reduce damage.
In the winter, these systems can
prevent ice from forming on the road,
reducing the risk of accidents and
the need for salt and grit treatments.
During the summer, they can keep
the road cooler, preventing asphalt
from softening and deforming due
to high temperatures.
While the initial investment for
these technologies may be substantial,
the long-term benefits of reduced
maintenance costs and increased safety make them a
worthwhile consideration. Adopting these innovative
solutions needs to be part of a broader climate change
mitigation strategy, however.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to
renewable energy and promoting sustainable transport
options, such as public transport, cycling and electric
vehicles, are all crucial steps towards a more resilient
and sustainable future for UK roads.
While the escalating severity and frequency of extreme
weather events due to climate change pose a significant
threat to the road network, by harnessing innovative
materials, technologies and mitigation strategies, we can
build a more resilient and sustainable road infrastructure
for the future.
The time to invest in
these solutions is now,
as the consequences by DR BEN Y I CAO
of inaction will only Benyi is lecturer in civil and environmental
become more severe engineering at the University of Surrey, and
and costly in the years is working on a project to develop roads
to come. that can withstand extreme weather.
37
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 INNOVATIONS

AI BREAKOUT CES TECH

TECH A brief history of the landmark tech
that made its debut at CES

Yes, artificial intelligence. Who would have guessed that tech’s biggest
talking point would be the preeminent trend at this year’s CES?
Appearing on nearly every label, poster and product description, AI Atari
didn’t just pop up here and there, it was a near-inescapable presence introduces
1979 the Pong
One thing was abundantly clear at CES 2024: tech companies are console
willing to cram artificial intelligence into everything. There were AI
pillows to stop snoring, AI pet doors to prevent your pet from bringing
dead animals into your home (the Flappie, below) and even an AI toilet
that, despite its $11,500 (approx £9,000) price tag, doesn’t do much that
you can’t do yourself.
There were seas of products that either integrated ChatGPT or
Sony
produced AI art. There were cars and TVs with ChatGPT installed, and unveils
every version of AI art generator you can imagine.
But that’s not to say that all the AI tools unveiled at the event weren’t
its first 1981
compact
worth getting excited about. The Rabbit R1 device gobbled up people’s disc player
attention at CES.
Resembling an up-to-date Game Boy device, the R1 is a palm-sized
gadget that has a screen, a camera, a button and a scroll wheel. It’s
expected to cost $199 (approx £150) and is intended to be ‘a pocket
companion’, able to respond to your queries, order food, play music, The
check bus times and more. Commodore
It does all of this through AI and a connection to a host of apps. 64 is
Simply ask it to do something and the R1 will complete the command. 1982 introduced,
kicking
In any situation where you’re going to spend money, it even checks the
off mass-
details with you first, so you don’t accidentally book an eight-hour Uber
market
ride because of an AI mistake. gaming
But many of the AI applications at CES were more subtle, such as
laptops with advanced task management, webcams that adjust to your
face and even a barbecue that figures out how to cook food to the Sony,
perfect temperature more quickly. Thomson
and
Panasonic

The Flappie
showcase
the first
1998
cat flap uses high-
AI to prevent definition
your moggy
television
bringing
sets
unwanted
‘presents’
into your
home Microsoft
launches
2001 the first
Xbox
GETTY IMAGES X3, EVAN AMOS/WIKIPEDIA X2

The first
3D TV
intended
for home 2010
use is
unveiled

40

TRANSPARENT
TECH
Televisions have taken a number
of evolutionary steps: high-
definition (HD), Ultra-HD, 4K and
even 8K. But now they’re taking
a step in a different direction:
transparency. Both Samsung and
LG used CES 2024 to show off
their new see-through TVs
Transparent TVs may sound
like a bad April Fool’s joke, but
these new devices, while quite
gimmicky, are still impressive.
In their transparent modes, the
TVs act like holograms, showing
INNOVATIONS
images floating against the
background of the area behind the
device. Then, when you actually
want to watch a film or some TV,
you drop a contrast screen in
behind to turn the set back into a
high-quality TV.
If you’re thinking this sounds
like a pricey sci-fi dream, you’re
right. While prices haven’t been
announced yet, they’re likely to
exceed what most would people,
besides the keenest and wealthiest
viewers, would consider normal
for a television.
41
 INNOVATIONS
ROBOT TECH
The robot uprising is here, but don’t worry,
it’s much more adorable than you might think.
A sea of robot assistants was unveiled at CES
2024, all set up to resemble a more adorable
and less annoying version of R2-D2
Samsung chose to reveal its ‘Ballie’ robot at
this year’s CES. At first glance, the bot
resembles a high-tech, Day-Glo hamster ball,
aimlessly rolling around your house, but Ballie
does more than provide transport for rodents.
Kitted out with a projector and sets of
cameras, Ballie can follow you around your
home and project workout videos or Zoom calls
onto your walls, as well as welcoming messages
onto the floor when you arrive back from being
out. But Ballie’s not just an over-engineered
projector, it can also control lights, adjust smart
devices and monitor your home, sending you
updates through the day about your pets and
general home safety.
42
“You will be
assimilated.
Resistance is
futile… also,
you left the
TV on in your
bedroom”
LG took a similar route with its smart home
robot (above and right). Rolling around on two
legs and staring at you with two digital eyes, it’s
equal parts adorable and strangely terrifying.
It can gather information about your home’s
temperature, humidity and air quality, but its
main use is as a security robot. While it won’t
fight off intruders, it can check for open windows
or lights that have been left on, as well as switch
off TVs that nobody is watching.
Not every bot unveiled at CES was designed to
be a rolling butler, though. Yarbo, for example,
unveiled a robot with caterpillar tracks for
taking care of gardens. The yard-care robot can
do everything from blowing snow, to spreading
seeds, watering plants and cutting grass.
There was even a robot designed solely to park
your car in tight spaces, by lifting the vehicle
into the gap. Thank goodness robots don’t have
consciousness, because realising that was the
purpose of your existence would be… tough.
 INNOVATIONS

HEALTH
TECH

“While it won’t
fight off
intruders, it can
check for open
windows and
lights that have Fancy a
3D-printed
been left on” sweet tailored to
your nutritional
needs? Talk to Elo

43
 INNOVATIONS
HIDDEN TECH
The idea of hidden technology probably
makes you think of James Bond, and
the weapons and surveillance devices
he had hidden in his pens and shoes.
The concealed tech at CES was less
exciting (and lethal) than those, but
possibly more useful to people not
engaged in espionage…
A growing trend championed by the
likes of Ikea and Sonos, hidden tech
is a way of blending devices into your
home so that they’re unnoticeable.
Think speakers concealed in lamps and
wireless chargers built into tables.
This year’s CES was filled with this
sort of technology, the stand-out device
being Samsung’s Music Frame. Inspired
by Samsung’s existing Frame TV (a TV
that looks like a painting when it’s not
in use), the Music Frame is a way to
hide your sound system’s speakers.
Smaller and squarer than the Frame
TV, the Music Frame contains an array
of unseen speakers and is ready to
connect to music players via Bluetooth
or other speakers to create a surround
sound system.
44
The picture in the Frame can be
switched to display different art, album
covers or a generic record player image.
Samsung isn’t the first to come up
with this idea (Ikea has been selling
the Symfonisk, a picture frame with
a built-in Wi-Fi speaker, for years),
but this is one of the most elegantly
executed examples we’ve seen so far.
Elsewhere, projector company XGIMI
earned plaudits for its new product,
Aladdin – a 4K smart projector hidden
in a ceiling lamp. Despite doubling as
a light, the Aladdin is still powerful
enough to project images up to
100in-wide (250cm) onto a wall.
But how do you control all this
new hidden tech? Instead of adding
more remotes to your ever-growing
collection, the Mui Board Gen 2,
another product revealed at this year’s
CES, offers a subtle solution.
What looks like a decorative wooden
accent hanging on a wall, is actually
TOP The Mui Board
Gen 2 lets you control
your tech without
looking like a smart
home control device
ABOVE Samsung’s
Music Frame conceals
speakers in artwork
MAIN The Aladdin
projector, from XGIMI,
is integrated into a
sleek ceiling lamp
 INNOVATIONS

ACCESSIBILIT Y
TECH

The past few years have seen

significant progress in the field of
accessibility tech, with boundaries
being pushed in everything from
gaming to getting dressed in the
morning. CES 2024 pushed these
boundaries even further

GyroGlove, a $5,899 (approx £4,650)

device, has a simple, but important
goal: minimising hand tremors in
people living with Parkinson’s.
Using gyroscopic stabilisation, the
glove is able to counteract tremors,
making it easier for people affected by
Parkinson’s to complete daily tasks.
Also making headlines during
CES was MouthPad, a custom-made
controller intended for people who
can’t use their limbs. The device sits
across the roof of a person’s mouth,
enabling them to operate smartphones,
tablets and laptops using gestures
made with their tongue.
The TranscribeGlass spectacles for
live transcribing of conversations
(as seen in January’s issue) were also
shown off at CES. For anyone who is
deaf or hard of hearing, the glasses COOKING
can display exactly what’s being said
in a conversation, presentation or TECH
movie – subtitles for real life.
There was even accessibility tech
for gaming. One product, called Audio Over the years, some revolutionary kitchen gadgets have been
Radar, takes sound cues that give introduced at CES, as well as a number of bizarre, expensive
away an unseen character’s location accessories that get used once and then disappear into the cupboard
in games and converts them into never to be seen again. This year saw plenty of both
different coloured lights arranged
around the screen, so that hearing- If you’re a budding DIY meat smoker, but live in a flat, apartment or
impaired gamers can tell when any type of home with no outdoor space of your own, GE Appliances is
something is sneaking up on them. coming to your rescue.
The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker (above) is a smoker that doesn’t
let any smoke out into the world. Instead, the smoke needed to preserve
and flavour your meat is converted into hot air that’s slowly released out
of the back. This means you can set it up inside your home – perfect for
anyone without a garden or those who simply don’t fancy embracing a
cold evening to check on their smoked sausages.
Chef AI released a gadget with the aim of turning even the worst
cooks into Michelin-starred chefs. A one-touch air fryer, it uses artificial
intelligence to detect the food you put in and adjusts the cooking time
and temperature to ensure the best results. And it only costs $250
(approx £195).
Other cooking gadgets making their debut at CES were a bit more
GETTY IMAGES

niche, such as a super-fast ice cream and protein shake maker, a giant
robot designed solely to make stir-fries, and a smart fridge that scans
GyroGlove aims to stabilise hand tremors your ingredients to offer possible recipes.

45
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 FE ATURE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS

AFTER THREE YEARS OF FIERY

ERUPTIONS, EXPERTS ARE
NOW CONFIDENT THAT ICELAND’S
REYKJANES PENINSULA HAS
ENTERED A NEW PHASE
OF VOLCANIC ACTIVITY
by D R C L A I R E A S H E R

48
 VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS FE ATURE

fiery beast has awoken from centuries

of slumber. The past three years have
seen it create cracks in Earth’s crust
on the southwestern tip of Iceland and
belch fountains of lava up through
them. It’s captivated people worldwide
and inspired a mix of awe and fear.
Experts say that after 800 years of quiet, this beast –
the Icelandic fault line – has entered a new period of
activity that could last decades.
Located in the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland is a
hotspot of volcanic activity, with over 30 active
volcanoes distributed across the 100,000km 2
(38,600-mile2) island. On average, an eruption
occurs here once every three to five years, although
they’re not evenly distributed over time and tend to
come in clusters of activity, punctuated by periods
of relative calm. Over the last 500 years, Iceland’s
volcanoes have ejected one-third of all the lava that
has flowed across Earth’s surface.
Its volatile temperament is a product of the
GETTY IMAGES

island’s geological context. Iceland lies on the Mid-

Atlantic Ridge, a rift between the North American
and Eurasian tectonic plates, which are slowly ´ 

49
 FE ATURE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS

´ moving apart at about 1cm (0.3in) each year,

creating a growing crack in Earth’s crust. Iceland is
also situated directly above an upwelling of molten
rock, known as a mantle plume.
“Iceland is very volcanically active because there’s a
[tectonic] plate boundary, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
and there’s a mantle plume that comes from deep
[below it],” explains Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson,
professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland.
The plume is thought to originate in the lower part
of Earth’s mantle, more than 2,000km (1,240 miles)
below the surface. “It’s one of the only places
[on Earth] where you have the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
and a mantle plume,” says Guðmundsson. This
unusual convergence of geological features has built
Iceland, he adds.

This is an island of contrasts. As well as being an area

of volcanic activity, its location at the edge of the
Arctic Ocean means Iceland definitely lives up to its
name. Around 11 per cent of the land area is covered
by ice. Many of the country’s volcanoes lie directly
beneath glaciers and ice sheets, which makes for a
tumultuous combination.
The island’s most infamous recent volcanic event
was the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in
southern Iceland in 2010. When lava meets ice – as it
did during this eruption – it reacts violently, creating
a plume of ash. The tiny particles it released into the
atmosphere caused huge disruption around the globe.
Tourists everywhere were stranded as over 100,000
flights were cancelled over safety concerns. The
recent eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula haven’t
produced ash plumes like this because they’re not
ejecting magma under an ice sheet.
Another ice-covered volcano that has gained global
notoriety is Katla, one of the largest volcanoes in
Iceland, which lies under a glacier hundreds of metres
thick. A major eruption of Katla would melt huge
quantities of ice and cause potentially devastating
floods. Katla’s last major eruption occurred in 1918
and the area is closely monitored for any new activity.
The Reykjanes Peninsula sits directly above the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge that cuts across Iceland. The area
is home to four volcanic systems, which each go
through periods of activity, usually with an interlude
of around 800 to 1,000 years. ejecting large amounts of magma and producing
“The activity is episodic, meaning that there are vast lava fields. This series of eruptions marked the
periods of volcanic activity… that may last four end of a sustained period of volcanic activity on
SHUTTERSTOCK, GETTY IMAGES X3

to five centuries, with eruptions every 20 to 30 years
on average,” says Guðmundsson.
Before 2020, the last eruptions on the Reykjanes
Peninsula took place during the 12th century. Known
as the Reykjanes Fires, volcanism occurred on the
peninsula every few years between 1211 and 1240 AD.
Both the Reykjanes and the Eldvörp-Svartsengi
volcanic systems were active during this episode,
the peninsula, which is thought to have started
around 800 AD.
After 1240 AD, activity on the peninsula ceased.
“Reykjanes Peninsula was quiet for 800 years,” says
Guðmundsson. Until now.
When the current period of activity on the
Reykjanes Peninsula began in early 2020, scientists
measured earthquakes and uplifting land near Mount

50
 VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS FE ATURE

Icelandic volcano erupts,

spewing lava toward Grindavík
A fissure opening near the town of Grindavík
caused lava to flow into the area. All the Stóra Skógfell
residents of Grindavík have evacuated.

Svartsengi

Sýlingarfell
Svartsengi
Geothermal
Power Plant

ICELAND

Hagafell Grindavík
Þorbjörn

Lágafell

Grindavík

Þorbjörn, around 40km (25 miles) south of the
country’s capital, Reykjavík. Experts speculated that
this could be the beginning of a new phase of volcanic
unrest in the region.
These suspicions were strengthened by the
dramatic eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano in
March 2021. After weeks of intense earthquake
activity, a 500m (1,640ft) fissure opened up in the
mountain, ejecting fountains of molten rock and
creating a spectacle that went on for nearly six
months. Then followed a brief period of calm, before
Fagradalsfjall erupted again in August 2022. In the
summer of 2023, a 900m (2,950ft) fissure opened on
the mountain of Litli-Hrútur, north of Fagradalsfjall,
spewing rivers of lava across the countryside.
Following the Litli-Hrútur eruption last summer,
activity on the peninsula resumed in late October.
Magma rising towards the surface near another
mountain, Þorbjörn, created enough pressure to lift
the land by 6cm (2in) in a matter of just 12 days. In ´

51
 FE ATURE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS

52
 ´ early November, a swarm of thousands of small
earthquakes near the fishing town of Grindavík
signalled that another eruption might be imminent.
Icelandic authorities declared a state of emergency,
and the town’s 3,800 inhabitants were evacuated.
Weeks of uncertainty followed, as locals anxiously
waited to discover the town’s fate. On 18 December,
a 4km (2.5-mile) fissure opened to the north
of Grindavík, forming lava fountains that ejected
hundreds of cubic metres of lava per second.
Although the recent Reykjanes eruptions have been
relatively small (by Icelandic standards), they’ve
raised major concerns because of their proximity to
towns and key infrastructure, including the
Svartsengi geothermal power station, which supplies
electricity and hot water to the peninsula.
“It’s serious because it’s so close to where people
live and lots of infrastructure, not because of its sheer
magnitude,” says Guðmundsson.
Iceland’s international airport, Keflavík, is also on
the Reykjanes Peninsula, although experts say it’s not
at direct risk from the lava flows, hence it has
remained open during the recent activity. One of the
country’s most popular tourist attractions, the Blue
Lagoon, is also situated on the Reykjanes Peninsula,
close to the recent eruptions. But, unlike the airport,
this has been closed throughout much of the latest
activity due to safety concerns.
Just a few kilometres northeast of the peninsula is
GETTY IMAGES X2, REUTERS
the capital, Reykjavík, which around a third of
Iceland’s population call home. Like Keflavík airport,
it lies outside the current danger zone, but its
proximity to the eruptions has helped tourists and
volcano enthusiasts access the sites with relative ease,
resulting in some truly spectacular imagery.
In Iceland, where people have lived alongside
explosive volcanic power for millennia, volcanic
eruptions that are relatively low volume, predictable
and easy to access are often referred to as ‘tourist
eruptions’. When faced with an erupting volcano,
many people would feel compelled to travel in the
opposite direction as quickly as possible, but in
Iceland, these events can be a major tourist draw.
The 2021 and 2022 Fagradalsfjall eruptions were
considered to be tourist-friendly eruptions – in
addition to being easy to access and fairly safe to
watch, they went on for weeks or months at a time,
giving tourists plenty of notice to organise a trip.
Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the
region to witness the mesmerising lava flows.
In contrast, the eruptions this winter have been
more explosive and much shorter, and experts have
largely advised tourists to stay away. The eruption
that occurred on 18 December was “a very different
beast,” says Guðmundsson.
As concerns about an imminent eruption grew in
November last year, the authorities began taking
precautionary measures to protect key infrastructure,
starting with a defensive barrier to safeguard the
geothermal power plant. The barrier wall was
completed in December, after which attention
switched to protecting Grindavík. At the start of this
year, construction began on a 2km (1.2-mile) barrier
north of the town, which it was hoped could deflect
and redirect lava flows away from homes and
businesses. The barrier was still under construction
when the next eruption hit.
After a cluster of over 200 small earthquakes on
14 January, two new fissures opened to the north of
Grindavík town. The fissures formed further
south than expected, catching experts and locals ´
53
54

´ by surprise. The first fissure encroached on
the new barrier wall, but the second, smaller fissure
emerged to the south of the barrier, leaving the
town exposed to an unstoppable lava flow. One
official described the events as the “worst-case
scenario” for Grindavík.
Three houses were destroyed by the lava flow,
while shifting land damaged hot and cold-water pipes
and knocked out power cables, leaving the
community of Grindavík in shock. Fortunately, the
barrier was able to deflect the majority of the
lava, which flowed from the larger, more northerly
fissure, and it protected the western part of the town
from destruction.
Scientists use sophisticated technology to help them
monitor activity in volcanic hotspots, such as the
Reykjanes Peninsula. Nevertheless, predicting
exactly where and when an eruption will occur is
extremely difficult.
The most recent volcanic events in Reykjanes have
been fissure eruptions, which occur when lava breaks
through the crust, forming a long, thin crevasse. The
location of fissure eruptions are much harder to
predict than eruptions from the more ‘traditional’
conical mountain vent volcanoes often depicted in
popular culture.
By estimating the movement of magma beneath the
crust – often signalled through a rising of the land
above and by earthquakes propagating through the
area – it’s possible to identify areas at higher risk of an
imminent eruption. This is what happened in the area
around Grindavík in November and led to the town’s
evacuation. This predictive science doubtlessly saved
lives. But the precise location and timing of an
eruption can’t be predicted with any certainty. After a
magma intrusion is detected, it’s impossible to say
GETTY IMAGES, REUTERS
whether an eruption will occur in a matter of days,
weeks, months or not at all.
Scientists in Iceland use various types of equipment
to try and predict future eruptions. Seismometers are
one of the most important types, which the scientists
use to measure earthquake swarms that can indicate
VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS FE ATURE
the location of magma flowing under the ground.
Earthquakes often give advance warning hours, days
or even weeks before an impending eruption.
Further clues are obtained via a network of GPS
stations, which allows scientists to detect uplifting
land caused by magma movements beneath the crust.
Ground-level GPS stations “show where magma is
accumulating underground,” says Guðmundsson.
Satellite imagery can also reveal regions where the
land is rising as a result of magma flowing and
accumulating underneath it.
Despite this sophisticated technology, what the
future holds for Grindavík, and the Reykjanes
Peninsula, is difficult to predict.
About one per cent of the population of Iceland has
been displaced by the recent eruptions. Although
some Grindavík residents had started to return to the
town, they were forced to evacuate again when
volcanic activity resumed in early January, with no
clear idea of if, or when, they may be able to return.
For Icelanders, this is a difficult and sometimes
devastating feature of life in a volcanic hotspot, where
towns and cities are built on top of ancient
lava fields. “The town of Grindavík is partly built
on the lava flow that formed about 2,000 years ago,”
says Guðmundsson.
What seems clear is that Reykjanes has entered a
new period of activity after an 800-year dormancy.
The Icelandic Met Office says that seismic activity on
the Reykjanes Peninsula over the past four years has
been more intense than anything measured in the
region since scientists began recording. But
predicting exactly what this period of volcanism
holds for Icelanders in general, and for Grindavík
residents in particular, is impossible. “We may
see several events in the coming months or years,”
says Guðmundsson.
Experts expect that the intense period of activity
we have witnessed over the last few years will
eventually calm, once magma close to the surface has
been exhausted. But, if history is anything to go by,
the reawakening of the Reykjanes fault line could last
several decades or longer, with alternating periods
of volcanic activity and earthquake swarms, before
the beast finally returns to its rest once more. No one
can say for sure.
by D R C L A I R E A S H E R
Claire is a science journalist and has
a PhD in Genetics, Ecology, and Evolution.
Her first book, Brave Green World:
How Science Can Save Our Planet,
was published in 2021.
55
 FE ATURE DARK MATTER

+ + iny, fuzzy blobs. I’ve spent But there’s an elephant in the room: our theory
. . a lot of time in the last few of the Universe hinges on the existence of dark
+ +
. . years looking at images of matter, and we have no idea what dark matter is.
+ + tiny, fuzzy blobs. They’re In fact, less than one-fifth of the matter in the
. .
only ever a few pixels wide, Universe is made up of particles whose physics
+ +
. . like smudges on a photo, we understand.
+ + but they could be the key Do you feel confident admitting that you only
. .
that unlocks the mystery understand 20 per cent of something?
+ +
. . of dark matter. Yes, we can be proud that we’ve honed a standard
+ + The blobs a re gala xies: model of cosmology: a physical and mathematical
. .
+ +
swirling pools of stars and description of the Universe. It’s a major achievement.
. . planets suspended in space, But, thanks to this dark matter elephant, we can’t
+
.
+
.
millions of light-years away be absolutely sure that it makes any sense at all.
+ + from Earth. The images were Perhaps we could just ignore the elephant. Maybe
. . collected by an advanced dark matter is simply something we’ve invented
+ + camera wit h a 1m (3.3f t) out of a misinterpretation of the theory. Maybe
. .
+ + lens mounted on the giant it’s not really out there at all.
. . Victor M Blanco Telescope, Sadly, not. Because one thing we do know is
+ +
. . 2,200m (7,200ft) up in the that something is out there. We can’t see it and
+ + mountains of the Coquimbo we don’t know what it is, but since Dr Vera Rubin
. .
Region of Chile. Astronomers first observed the effects it was having on stars in
+ +
. . have spent yea rs using it the late 1970s, there’s no denying it’s there.
+ + to scan the sky, gathering Rubin set out to study the motions of stars in

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X3, GETTY IMAGES, ESA

. .
images of the cosmos. I, and spiral galaxies, but her measurements suggested
+ +
. . my colleagues in the Dark that the stars weren’t moving as expected.
+ + Energy Survey, have pored over these images of Her hypothesis was that stars at the edge of a by P RO F
. .
+ +
millions of tiny fuzzy blobs in the hope that they galaxy would travel more slowly than those near ALEX ANDR A
. . reveal a vital missing piece in our understanding the centre. But Rubin observed that the outer stars A MON
+
.
+
.
of the Universe. We’re on the edge of our seats, were moving just as fast as the inner stars, and that Alexandra is a leading
+ + because this piece fills the gaping hole in our they were all orbiting more quickly than expected. cosmologist who has
. . understanding of the cosmos. It could even turn The only thing that could explain this finding spent the last six years
+ + that understanding completely upside down. would be if there is a tremendous amount of working on data
. .
+ + invisible matter in the outer regions of galaxies gathered by the
. . beyond the inner clump of visible stars. This was Dark Energy Survey.
+ +
. . You might t hink t hat cosmologists have t he important evidence for dark matter, which had been
+ + Universe sussed. And it’s true that we have learnt proposed by Prof Fritz Zwicky back in the 1930s.
. .
a lot about it and how it works. Zwicky coined the term after his observations
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +
. .
+ +

58
suggested that the visible mass of a cluster of
galaxies was too little to prevent the galaxies from
escaping the hold they had on each other, and that
therefore something else – something abundant
and unseen – must be holding them together.
Dark matter, Zwicky was suggesting, was the
missing mass of the Universe. Rubin’s observations
seemed to confirm it. So, we know it’s there and that
there’s a lot of it. But even though we can’t see it,
we can’t ignore it, because without knowing what
dark matter is, we can’t understand the Universe.

The Standard Model is an undeniable success

story. It describes the origin, content, evolution
and date of the Universe using six numbers. These
values have been used to investigate the forces that
govern matter – and they have explained how we
came to have a sky teeming with galaxies from a
soup of particles 13.8 billion years ago.
Our experiments have cemented its success.
We’ve launched missions into space, like the
Planck satellite, to peer back to the very first light
of the Universe and measure the differences in the
temperature of the radiation in different directions
of t he sky, t he so-called cosmic microwave
background. This ‘baby picture’ of the Universe
supports the evidence that the cosmos is composed
predominantly of dark matter.
So what, if anything can we say for sure about
it? Certainly, that dark matter is the key ingredient
in the recipe for the Universe. Despite being
invisible, it comprises more than three-quarters
of all of the mass in galaxies, like our Milky Way.
Dark matter dominates the mass in a galaxy and,
through gravity, binds the stars together in an
orbiting whirlpool.
If we zoom out for a better view of the cosmos, we
see that the galaxies aren’t evenly distributed, but
arranged in a web-like pattern. Our observations
tell us that dark matter is the invisible scaffolding
of the cosmos: it forms a cosmic web of clusters ´

59
 Distant galaxy

Invisible dark matter The Dark Energy

Survey uses the Victor
M Blanco Telescope and
the 570-megapixel Dark
Energy Camera mounted
on it (below) to chart the
distribution of dark
matter in the
southern sky
+ + + . +
. . . . + .
+ + + + . +
. . Gravitationally distorted . . .
view of distant galaxy +
+ + + + . +
. . . . + .
+ + + + . +
. . . . + .
+ + There’s so much invisible dark + + . +
. . matter clustered in parts of the . . + .
+ + Universe that it has sufficient gravity + + . +
. . to warp the passing light coming from . . + .
+ + distant galaxies. These distortions can + + . +
. . make galaxies that would otherwise be . . + .
+ + hidden from view visible to observers on + + . +
. . Earth. Not only that, but the characteristics . . + .
+ + of the distortions can also help the observers + + . +
. . infer the distribution of the otherwise . . + +
+ + undetectable dark matter. Earth + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ +
. . ´ and filaments, with enormous voids in-between, see – those tiny fuzzy blobs I and my colleagues
+ +
. . that guide the location of galaxies. spend so long looking at. The way the shapes are
+ + Imagine a view from space of Earth at night, distorted inscribes faint signatures of dark matter
. .
where the lights we see illuminate the towns and throughout the night sky.
+ +
. . cities where humans live. Just like dark matter, we Those signatures are what we’re looking for
+ + can’t see the humans, but we know they’re there in t he Da rk Energy Survey. We measure t he
. .
because of the light. alignment of distant galaxy shapes to extreme
+ +
. . The existence of dark matter is crucial for how precision and use those measurements to map
+ + galaxies are built and withstand time, and it’s the distribution of matter between those galaxies
. .
+ +
crucial for how matter in the Universe clumped and our telescope.
. . together in the first place. In other words, dark The Dark Energy Survey is an international
+
.
+
.
matter is crucial for our existence. But how do we collaborative effort to map hundreds of millions
+ + uncover its nature, and put a face to the theory? of galaxies in order to find patterns in the cosmos
. . That’s where the Dark Energy Survey and weak and test the Standard Model. I’m immensely
+ + gravitational lensing come in. proud to play a leading role in it, as I co-lead the
. .
+ + team searching for these patterns by using weak
. . gravitational lensing.
+ +
. . Although we can’t see dark matter directly, we When we observe a distant galaxy, we collect
+ + can detect its influence. Dark matter induces a its light in our telescopes after it has journeyed
. .
distortion in the shapes of the galaxies we can for billions of years across the cosmos. According . .
+ + + +
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .
. . . . + +
+ + + + . .

60
 +
.

NGC-253 (aka
the Sculptor Galaxy),
imaged in April 2016,
using the Dark Energy
Camera on the Victor
Blanco Telescope
In a way, we’re hoping that our results don’t
+ .
. . + +
agree with the prediction from the Standard
+ + . . Model, because it might serve as a clue for the
. . +
.
+
.
next breakthrough.
+ +
. . + + But, in reality, it’s not as simple as that. For
+ + . . one t hing, t he distortions caused by weak
. . + +
. . gravitational lensing are significantly smaller
+ +
. . + + than the distortions that arise as a galaxy’s light
+ + . . passes through Earth’s atmosphere.
. . + +
+ + . . It’s for this reason the Dark Energy Survey’s
. . + + Victor M Blanco Telescope sits high atop the
. .
+
.
+
.
Cerro Tololo mountain in Chile, where the light
+ +
+ + . . from distant galaxies has less atmosphere to pass
. . + + through before it reaches the telescope. Still, we
+ + . .
. . have to carefully model these effects, and account
+ +
+ + . . for the imperfections of the telescope and detector.
. . + + Unwanted distortions due to Earth’s atmosphere
+ + . .
. . + +
and our instruments aren’t the only issue. Further
+ + . . complications a rise due to t he simple fact
. . +
.
+
.
that galaxies are complicated structures. Their
+ +
. . complex processes must be modelled as precisely
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, REIDAR HAHN/FERMILAB X2, ALEXANDRU TUDORICA

+ +
+ + . . as possible, if we’re to discern the distortions dark
. . + +
to our theory of gravity, any massive structure, . . matter is causing.
+ +
whether it’s visible or not, will warp the space- . . + +
time fabric of the Universe. That warping alters the + + . .
. . + +
path that a galaxy’s light journeys along and, as a + + . . While gravitational lensing is a powerful technique
result, the galaxy image that we capture appears . . + + on paper, it’s extremely technologically challenging.
. .
slightly distorted, or ‘lensed’ (see ‘How gravity +
.
+
.
As the term ‘weak’ suggests, the typical distortion
+ +
lenses light’, above left). + + . . induced by dark matter is less than a one per cent
For galaxies that are near to each other, their light . . + + alteration to the observed shape – smaller than a
+ + . .
travels past similar structures in the dark matter . . strand of hair wrapped around a tennis ball.
+ +
web. We observe their images to be skewed along + + . . In order to detect such a tiny signal, we need
the same direction due to gravitational lensing. . . + + extensive samples of galaxies. This data challenge
+ + . .
Assuming those galaxies are, in reality, randomly . . + +
necessitates rapid processing of petabytes of
oriented, stronger distortions in the images indicate + + . . data (one petabyte is roughly equivalent to the
. .
a region that’s densely packed with dark matter. +
.
+
.
information held in 20 million four-drawer filing
+ +
Similarly, weaker or no distortions indicate a . . + + cabinets filled with files).
region with relatively little or no dark matter – a + + . . The Dark Energy Survey has confronted these
. .
gap in the scaffolding +
.
+
. challenges. We’ve spent years examining the images ´
+ +
. . + +
+ + . .

61
+
.
+ . . +
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .

THE VERA RUBIN OBSERVATORY

. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . Hop one peak over from the Dark Energy The camera is 1.8m (6ft) long, weighs two When the data from the Vera Rubin + + . .
. + . . + +
. Survey on Cerro Pachón and you’ll find the Vera tonnes and has 3.2 gigapixels; it’s the biggest, Observatory starts rolling, it’ll deliver images . .
+ + +
. + Rubin Observatory – the new queen of the most powerful digital camera ever built – of millions of galaxies every night, which will . . + +
+ . mountain. When it opens, it’ll scan the entire capable of seeing a golf ball from 25km (15.5 provide more precise measurements for us to + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . southern sky every few nights, building the miles) away – and even has its own extra-large test against the Standard Model. + + . .
. + deepest and largest map of our cosmos. It’ll lens cap to protect it. To complement this data, ESA’s Euclid and . . + +
+ . + + . .
.
catalogue the properties of tens of billions of The observatory’s 8m (25ft) primary mirror NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman telescopes will . .
+ + +
+ . galaxies as they looked billions of years ago. is already at the mountain and the camera is survey the sky from space, eradicating the + + . .
. + How will it deliver such a mind-boggling going through its final tests ahead of its distorting effects caused by Earth’s . . + +
+ . + + . .
. dataset? Imagine a regular digital camera and journey to Chile via a jumbo jet that’s been atmosphere. This trio will be game-changing . .
+ + +
+ . then blow it up to enormous proportions. chartered for the trip. for the study of dark matter. + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
. The . .
+ + +
. Vera Rubin . .
+ + +
. Observatory, . .
+ + +
. currently . .
+ + +
. under construction in . .
+ + +
. the Chilean Andes, is . .
+ + +
. expected to begin . .
+ + +
. observing in . .
+ + +
. 2025 . .
+ + +
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ . + + . .
. + . . + +
+ + . .
 ´ and have made precise measurements of the positions,
shapes and distances between over 100 million galaxies. With
this data, we’ve conducted the most statistically powerful
weak lensing analysis.
But given t he high stakes concerning our current
understanding of the Universe, even that might not be
enough. Humans are fallible and we need to be certain, so
we can’t risk that any bias, conscious or unconscious, might
influence the process. So, to tease dark matter secrets from
these exceptionally tricky measurements with minimal
human bias, we do the experiment blindly. While calibrating
our measurements and turning the dials in our analysis, we
use data that’s been intentionally tampered with.
The blind data could agree with the Standard Model, or it
could not. The analysis is complex and multi-faceted, and
we do every step without looking at the final answer. We
focus on doing the step in the best way possible, without
thinking about how it influences the outcome. Once we’re
absolutely convinced of our experimental choices, we reveal
what the Universe is really like.
To set the scene: there are several teams performing weak
lensing measurements independently. We each use vast
datasets and we’re desperate to see whether what we find is
consistent with the Standard Model or if it highlights new
cracks in the grand picture.
NASA/JPL, ESA/EUCLID X2, RUBINOBS/NSF/AURA/H STOCKEBRAND
And the results that we’re getting are intriguing.
What we’re seeing in all those images of tiny, fuzzy blobs
are hints of something funny. Like our colleagues at the ESO
Kilo-Degree Survey and Japanese Hyper Supreme Camera,
the Dark Energy Survey found that weak lensing predicts a
Universe that’s slightly less clumpy than would be expected
based on the prevailing model of cosmology.
This hint of a discrepancy with the Standard Model isn’t
the only one – other types of measurements point to cracks
too, like the expansion rate of the Universe.
What could these hints mean? Either they herald a call
for new physics, or they point to challenges in the analysis
that are unsolved. With more data, we can scrutinise the
findings with better statistics. It’s compelling to think
that the time has come for a new landmark moment – a
call for some modification to our peculiar model of a dark
matter-dominated Universe. In the scenario that we’re able
to say convincingly that there is a real discrepancy with a
measurement compared to the prediction from our Standard
Model, we would overturn decades of thinking.
Revolutionising our idea of the Universe is certainly an
exciting prospect, but the case for doing so must be watertight.
We must have independent teams confirm the results and
be able to build a consistent model. This piece of the puzzle
must be able to fit the wider picture.
There’s an exceedingly bright future ahead for the Dark
Universe. Experiments like the Dark Energy Survey are epic,
but they’re mere training grounds for a coming decade that
will totally knock cosmology’s socks off.
We’re at the dawn of several major international projects
that will observe the sky more deeply and in more detail
than ever before: our tiny, fuzzy blobs are on the brink of
bringing great clarity. It’s impossible to imagine what our
understanding of the Universe will look like in a decade.
With these epic experiments opening new, more-powerful
eyes onto the sky, we aren’t about to be spoiled with data –
the truth is, we’re about to be fire-hosed with it. We are on
the brink of making big discoveries.
It’s humbling to work in a field that asks what the Universe
is made of and how its structure evolved to form galaxies
and planets like Earth. In years to come, scientists who are
young students now will look at the data delivered by these
experiments and put more pieces of the puzzle together.
My only hope is that our views will be turned upside-down
once again to reveal that our cosmos is even more beautiful
than we had imagined – and unleash yet more questions
that keep us looking up.
(@astroalexamon)
Alexandra is an observational cosmologist at Princeton University in
New Jersey, US.
63
The vehicle is not available for purchase.
Trained in Vegas.
Ready for the world.
The driverless IONIQ 5 robotaxi.
FE ATURE MANIFESTATION
 MANIFESTATION FE ATURE

IS MANIFESTATION PURE
PSEUDOSCIENCE OR COULD
THERE BE SOMETHING TO IT?
by D R C H R I S T I A N JA R R E T T

hen the Australian television

producer R honda Byrne hit
rock bottom in 2004, she found
salvation after discovering what
she calls ‘the secret’ – the title
she gave to her multi-million-
selling book and film released a
couple of years later. Apparently
known and guarded by highly
successful people for generations,
the secret is that your thoughts
shape your life.
“Remember that your thoughts
are the primary cause of everything,” Byrne wrote,
citing the ‘Law of Attraction’ as the underlying
mechanism, which is the notion that your thoughts
communicate with the cosmos and, in return, it
gives you what you want. Through a process of
‘manifestation’ or ‘manifesting’, if you devote
time to imagining that you already have what you
want and even feeling grateful, as if you already
have it, then “you will attract everything that you
require,” Bryne wrote.
Byrne cites an early 20th-century book on getting
rich as among her influences, while the roots of
manifestation go back at least as far as the late
19th-century New Thought movement, which
placed an emphasis on the power of the human
mind to influence external events.

A POPULAR TREND
 FE ATURE MANIFESTATION

´ Manifesting might be popular, but surely any scientist will

scoff at the notion that the Universe is somehow listening
to your thoughts and waiting to respond in kind. Yes, but
at the same time, rational psychologists with no interest
in manifestation will tell you there are genuine benefits to
practices and mindsets that look and sound like commonly
touted parts of the manifesting process. These include:

Being optimistic Studies suggest optimistic people tend to live

longer and enjoy better health.

Believing in your own capabilities The psychological concept

of ‘self-efficacy’ is associated with career success and other
positive outcomes.

Practising affirmations Reminding yourself of your values and

goals can boost self-esteem and reduce stress.

Being grateful for what you already have Positive psychology

recognises gratitude exercises as being good for mental health.

Perceiving things in a positive way For instance, seeing opportunities

instead of threats.
Setting clear goals for what you want
Indeed, cognitive behavioural therapy – a mainstay of
contemporary psychotherapy – is partly grounded in the
idea that the key to better mental health is appraising your
circumstances and thinking about the future in a more
positively slanted and constructive way.
“If [belief in manifestation] makes people more optimistic
about the future, then that’s probably no bad thing,” says
Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of
Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and a researcher
on the psychology of luck.
Christian Busch, a business professor at The USC
Marshall School of Business in California and author of The
Serendipity Mindset, agrees: “There are some truths hidden
in [manifestation],” he says. “For example, by setting goals
and imagining how to get there, we
make it more likely that other people
know how they can help us and that we
can connect the dots more effectively.”
THE DOWNSIDES
So, should we bury our scepticism and
start following the wisdom of Byrne and
her ilk? It probably isn’t a good idea.
In a study published online last year,
a team of psychologists led by Dr Lucas
Dixon at the University of Queensland
surveyed over a thousand people about
their beliefs in manifestation and their
outcomes in life. Although the team
cautioned that they can’t infer causality
f rom their results, they found that
people who believed more strongly in

“YOU CAN’T JUST SIT BACK AND WAIT FOR THE COSMOS
TO SERVE UP WHAT YOU WANT ON A PLATE, NO MATTER
HOW STRONG YOUR POWERS OF VISUALISATION ARE"
68

TECHNIQUES TO
TRY INSTEAD OF
MANIFESTING
The ‘best-possible self’ intervention is
probably the most evidence-based
way to increase your optimism.
Unlike manifestation, it’s not about
communicating with the cosmos in the
hope that it’ll give you what you want.
Rather, it’s about getting into a positive
frame of mind that’ll make you feel
more motivated to put the effort into
achieving your goals. To practise the
‘best-possible self’ intervention, spend
a little time each day imagining yourself
in the future, after you’ve worked hard
and achieved all that you desire.
To maximise your luck in life, don’t
waste time manifesting, instead
adopt what Prof Christian Busch calls
a ‘serendipity mindset’ – this is about
opening yourself up to random
opportunities in a constructive way.
For instance, when you meet new
people at a party or networking event,
“don’t ask, ‘What do you do?’; ask,
‘What do you enjoy doing?’, ‘What
brings you here?’, ‘What book are you
reading at the moment?’ or, ‘What did
you find most interesting about…’
These questions get us out of our
usual autopilot responses and help
to open up conversations that might
lead to intriguing (and often
serendipitous) outcomes,” he says.
When it comes to reaching your
targets in life, a useful distinction
to make, according to Justin Kompf,
an author and the fitness director at
weight-loss programme Sequence,
is between goals and commitments.
The latter will help you reach your
goals and represents the bare
minimum effort that you pledge to
put in, to get where you want to be.
For instance, if your goal is to run a
marathon this year, your commitment
might be to go running at least once a
week, every week. Rather than trying
ILLUSTRATION: ADRIA VOLTA
to manifest your goals, be realistic and
spend some time considering what
commitments you need to make in
order to achieve them.
MANIFESTATION FE ATURE
manifestation (for example, agreeing with statements like:
If I think about achieving success, those thoughts alone
make success more likely) were more inclined to consider
themselves successful. But crucially, they were also more
likely to have experienced bankruptcy, to be drawn to risky
investments, and to think they could achieve unlikely career
and financial success in a short space of time.
These findings aren’t too surprising. Although positive
thinking is generally beneficial, it’s not enough on its own.
When it becomes untethered from reality, it’s a form of
‘magical thinking’, according to Dixon. “Realistic hope and
optimism… stem from confidence in being able to use your
knowledge, efforts and abilities to make the best of whatever
comes your way in life,” he says. “Whereas magical thinking
involves believing you can influence events in the future
without a known physical explanation.”
A related problem with manifestation is that it doesn’t
emphasise enough (or at all), that you need to act on your
goals. You can’t just sit back and wait for the cosmos to serve
up what you want on a plate, no matter how strong your
powers of visualisation are. What’s more, wildly unrealistic
goals can backfire because they’re the road to disappointment
and a sense of failure.
“Positive thoughts are no more likely to make good things
happen than negative thoughts are to make bad things happen,”
says Kevin Dutton, Professor of the Public Understanding
of Psychology at the University of Adelaide. “Sufferers of
Generalised Anxiety Disorder are constantly thinking the
worst. Does it ever happen? 99.99 per cent of the time, no, it
doesn’t. So, if that’s the case, why should it be any different
for thinking positive thoughts?”
In fact, there are reasons to worry that believing in
manifesting could be harmful in many contexts. Dixon sees
it as part of a larger problem with extreme and unrealistic
positivity, especially as presented in misleading ways on
social media by manipulative influencers. “For example,” he
says, “The Secret claims that all events in life are caused by
your thoughts and desires. This is potentially damaging. What
if someone neglects their debts for fear of manifesting more
debt through negative thoughts? What if a parent believes
the cure to their child’s cancer is to prescribe them positive
affirmations rather than medical treatment? It’s important
to challenge such extremes.”
SEEING THE LINKS
If the so-called ‘Law of Attraction’ is bunkum and practising
manifesting is more likely to lead to financial ruin than
a future of untold wealth and prosperity, what should we
do instead? What would it look like if we took the alluring
positivity of manifestation and applied it in a way that had
more scientific grounding?
The first thing to bear in mind is that fostering a generally
positive, hopeful and optimistic mindset is likely to be
beneficial if it’s grounded in reality. Feeling more positive
about the future is less stressful than fearing the worst,
and if you’re optimistic, you’re more likely to notice and
seek out opportunities in life. Busch thinks of this in ´ 
69
 “WOOP IS A FRIEND
´ terms of serendipity or what he calls ‘active luck’ (as
opposed to blind or random luck, such as being born to rich
parents). “It’s about the interaction of randomness and human

HELPING YOU TO
action,” he says. For example, exploiting chance encounters
or seeing the associations between different ideas or people.
To help get into this kind of generally positive mindset,
Wiseman recommends spending a few moments each night

MASTER THE BUMPY

jotting down the most positive thing that has happened to you
in the last 24 hours and one thing in your life for which you
have a sense of gratitude. “Over time, this journal becomes a
source of evidence of the more positive things in a person’s

WAY TOWARD
life and can help to change [your] attitude,” he says.
But, as we’ve heard, thinking positively isn’t enough on its
own to help you achieve your aspirations. “Nobody gets lucky

FULFILLING
just by sitting on the couch manifesting something. It’ll take
work,” says Busch. “Shaping your reality is a mix between
imagining a future, thinking positively and visualising how
it’s possible, and then executing.”

THE WOOP APPROACH

One of the leading researchers on effective goal setting and
fulfilment is Gabriele Oettingen, Professor of Psychology at YOUR WISHES”
70

New York University. Contrary to the
message of manifesting, her research has
shown that simply visualising what you
want to achieve isn’t enough and can
backfire by encouraging false confidence
and complacency. Instead, she’s shown
the importance of ‘mental contrasting’,
which is about paying attention to all
the potential practical obstacles standing
between where you are now and where
you’d like to get to. She’s translated her
research into an accessible programme
called WOOP, which stands for Wish,
Outcome, Obstacle, Plan.
The basic idea is to spend some time
ILLUSTRATION: ADRIA VOLTA
deciding on a specific Wish (a particular
goal or outcome you want to achieve),
then imagining and visualising what
your life will look like if you achieve
that Outcome (this will help boost your
motivation). Next you consider any actual
or potential Obstacle in your path, and
MANIFESTATION FE ATURE
finally craft a realistic ‘if/then’-based Plan for how you’ll
deal with the obstacle (an ‘if/then’ plan takes the form of
“if X happens, then I’ll do Y”).
“Manifestation won’t make your dreams come true and
people might feel like failures when manifestation doesn’t
work for them,” says Oettingen. “We need to actively go
the cumbersome way to wish fulfilment. WOOP is a friend
helping you to master the bumpy way toward fulfilling your
wishes and dreams.”
DIFFERENT MINDSETS
The appeal of manifesting is easy to see – you can get what
you want without moving a muscle. In contrast, if we follow
the psychologists’ advice, things are bound to get messy at
some point. It’s going to take effort and inevitably there’ll
be some proverbial mountains to climb. How can we stay
determined and motivated rather than clicking on another
misleading manifestation video?
The real psychology of positive mindsets can help here,
thanks to a distinction – widely deployed in sports – between
seeing hurdles as a threat or challenge. Prof Marc Jones is a
sports and exercise psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan
University and he explains it like this: “Individuals who
have a challenge mindset… have greater levels of perceived
control and are focused on what can be achieved, while
those with a threat mindset have lower levels of perceived
control and are focused on what might go wrong.”
Some ways to foster a challenge mindset include focusing
on things you can control in a given situation and reminding
yourself of times that you’ve done well in the past. You could
even use written or spoken affirmations to remind yourself
of past successes, of the training and preparation you put
in, and the deeper reasons underlying why you’re doing
what you’re doing. “A challenge mindset is associated with
a number of benefits,” says Jones, “including a more helpful
emotional state for performance and greater task engagement
– for example, a soccer player may call for the ball more
often and get involved in the game as much as possible.”
There are parallels here with other mindsets recognised by
psychology, such as a ‘growth mindset’, which is when you
see people’s abilities as malleable, as opposed to innate and
fixed; a ‘mastery mindset’, which is seeing a challenge as a
chance to learn and practise; and a ‘performance mindset’,
which is when you’re fixated on the outcome rather than the
process. These various forms of positive mindset will help
you get through difficult times, learn through failure and,
paradoxically, even though you’re less outcome-obsessed,
make it more likely that you’ll achieve your goals.
It’s going to be harder than a few minutes of manifestation-
based meditation, but far more likely to be effective. Remember,
effort and persistence will be key. “It’s not enough just to
think positively,” says Dutton, you also need to “act positively,
and act persistently positively.”
by D R C H R I S T I A N JA R R E T T
Christian is a cognitive neuroscientist, science writer and author.
His books include Be Who You Want (£14.99, Robinson).
71
72
 COUNTERINTUITIVE COSMOS FE ATURE

ur view of reality is severely limited. The reason

for this is simple: we evolved on an African plain
three million years ago. And so we have the senses
necessary to survive on an African plain: eyes that can see
far enough to spot a predator approaching, ears sensitive
enough to hear a rustling in the long grass… Those senses
have revealed only an infinitesimal fraction of the world
and provided us with a certain ‘common sense’. But, at
every level, we’re deceived by our ape-like intuition. Most
of nature is deeply hidden from us and the world isn’t what
it seems. So many things that seem obviously true are not.
And here are just a few…

1
EARTH IS FLAT
Apart from the lumps and bumps of mountains, Earth
certainly seems flat. But there are several clues that not only
is it curved, but in fact it’s a large ball. For one thing, receding
ships drop below the horizon before dwindling to a dot.
Also, during an eclipse of the Moon, when Earth passes
between the Moon and the Sun, the shadow of Earth on the
Moon is clearly curved.
Even stronger evidence that Earth is round came from the
first circumnavigation of the world in a ship sailed by the
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. Though he was
killed in the Philippines, the voyage was completed by the
Basque navigator Juan Sebastián del Cano in 1521. But, of
course, the easiest way to see that Earth is a sphere is from
space. And there’s no doubt that what the Apollo 8
astronauts photographed rising above the grey desolation
of the Moon half a century ago was a sphere.
Measuring the size of Earth is a bit more difficult. But on
a sphere, the mutual distances between four cities are
different from what they would be on a flat surface (in fact,
the American physicist Steven Weinberg, in his 1972 book,
Gravitation and Cosmology, used JRR Tolkien’s distances to
deduce that Middle Earth isn’t flat!). By this means, it’s
possible to determine Earth’s magnitude from airline
mileage tables and confirm that it’s a sphere.
The first estimate of the size of Earth, however, was made
around 240 BC by Eratosthenes, chief librarian at the
Museum of Alexandria. He knew that at midday on
Midsummer’s Day, a vertical pillar at Syrene (modern-day
Aswan) cast no shadow because the Sun was directly
MARCUS CHOWN overhead, whereas one in Alexandria cast a shadow because
the Sun was 7° from the vertical. Knowing the distance
between Syene and Alexandria, and using geometry,
Eratosthenes deduced that Earth must be round with a
ALAMY

circumference of about 40,000km (24,855 miles), which is

remarkably close to the modern value.

73
 FE ATURE COUNTERINTUITIVE COSMOS

2
THE STARS TURN
AROUND EARTH
It seems patently obvious that the stars are wheeling around a
stationary Earth rather than the stars are still and it’s Earth that’s
turning. For one thing, it’s the way it looks. And for another thing, it’s
the simplest explanation. It’s much more complicated to believe that
it’s the Earth that’s turning because that requires explaining how the
planet can possibly be in motion without any of us noticing.
That conundrum was only explained by 17th-century Italian
physicist Galileo Galilei. He realised that if you threw a ball on the
deck of a ship moving at a constant speed, it would loop through the
air just as it would if you were stationary and standing on dry land.
If it wasn’t obvious you were on a ship, you might think you were
stationary. Similarly, we can easily be hoodwinked into thinking that
we’re stationary even though Earth’s surface is moving – at
1,670km/h (1,038mph) at the equator.
Evidence that Earth is turning came from the trajectories of
long-range artillery. They’re deflected to the right (with respect to
the direction of travel) in the northern hemisphere and to the left in
the southern hemisphere. This is because the ground beneath the
projectiles moves at different speeds at different latitudes. For
instance, a projectile travelling north from the equator constantly
moves into latitudes where the speed of the ground is slower. From
the ground, it therefore appears deflected eastward.
But proving that Earth is rotating still required the invention of
the Foucault Pendulum (below) – one of which swings at London’s
Science Museum. It’s a simple device named after French physicist
Léon Foucault, who, in Paris in 1851, came up with the idea of
suspending an iron ball on a steel wire from the dome of the
Panthéon. The extremely long pendulum, free to swing any way it
likes, appears to change its direction. In fact, it maintains its direction
while Earth turns beneath it. Ultimately, however, the proof that
Earth is spinning came from seeing the planet turning against the
inky backdrop of space from the vantage point of Earth’s orbit.

3
CREATURES ARE
DESIGNED FOR
THEIR HABITATS
This seems obviously true. After all, we all know that
sharks are the perfect ocean predators, pine trees are
GETTY IMAGES X2, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

the perfect trees for snowy conditions and so on. As

biologist Richard Dawkins says in his 1986 book, The
Blind Watchmaker: “Biology is the study of complicated
things that give the appearance of having been designed
for a purpose.”
But no design is at play. It’s simply that ‘mutations’
of DNA, the molecule that in a loose sense transmits
blueprints of an organism between generations,
producing an enormous variety of different creatures. The
majority turn out to be unsuited for their environments

74
 COUNTERINTUITIVE COSMOS FE ATURE

4
YOUR TIME
IS THE SAME
AS SOMEONE
ELSE’S TIME
This seems obviously true. After all, we can
synchronise clocks and, some time later,
confirm that they’ve ticked along at the same
rate. However, time flies at the same rate
everywhere only because we live in nature’s
ultra-slow lane and in weak gravity. Were we
travelling at close to the speed of light or in
strong gravity, we would see something
radically different.
Mysteriously, the Universe is constructed
in such a way that the speed of light plays the
role of infinite speed, so the speed appears
the same to everyone. If everyone is to
measure the same speed for light, then
something must happen to their rulers and
clocks, as speed is the distance something
travels in an interval of time. The thing that
happens, as Einstein discovered in 1905, is
that rulers shrink in the direction of motion
and clocks slow down. Someone passing you
close to the speed of light flattens like a
pancake while appearing to be moving
through treacle. In short, the speed of light is
the rock on which the Universe is founded,
and space and time are but shifting sand.
And it’s not just high-speed travel that
affects the flow of time. Anyone who moves
under gravity is in fact moving through the
valleys and hills of ‘warped space-time’.
Because we didn’t realise this (it took
Einstein in 1915 to do that), we invented a
‘force’ called gravity.
The simplest
imaginable clock consists
of a laser travelling
parallel to the ground and
bouncing back and forth
between two mirrors,
and die of hunger before reproductive age. Only a producing a ‘tick’
minority are suited – or ‘naturally selected’, in the jargon whenever the light hits a
– and leave offspring to further the process of adaptation mirror. Nearer to Earth,
to their environment. where gravity is stronger,
Think of a machine that makes random keys. The vast space-time is more
majority don’t fit a particular lock. But one or two do. warped so the light must
Would you say they have been ‘designed’ for the lock? No. take a more curved path
Nevertheless, the illusion of design in the natural world between the mirrors.
is very powerful and, even now, creationists refuse to Traversing such a path
believe it’s an illusion. “It’s almost as if the human brain takes longer, revealing
were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism that time slows down
and find it hard to believe,” says Dawkins. in strong gravity.

75
 FE ATURE

5
THE MOON IS
NOT FALLING
The Moon is in fact falling, though it
took the genius of Isaac Newton to
realise it. He imagined a cannon that
fired a cannonball horizontally across
the ground. Gravity would gradually
curb its trajectory downwards and after
say, a kilometre (just over half a mile) it
would strike the ground. Then Newton
imagined an even bigger cannon and a
cannonball that would travel say, 10km
(six miles) before it hit the ground. Finally,
he envisioned a super-cannon that
could fire a cannonball at 18,000km/h
(11,185mph). In this case, the curvature of
the Earth is crucially important. As fast as
the cannonball falls, the surface of Earth
curves away from it. So, it never hits the
ground. It falls forever – in a circle. And
this is what the Moon is doing.
A related fact is that if something is
in free fall, it feels no gravity, just as
you would feel no gravity if you were in
a lift and the cable snapped (until the
safety mechanism cut in, of course).
And this is the case of astronauts on the
International Space Station, where gravity
is about 89 per cent of that on the ground.
They experience ‘zero-g’ not because
they’re beyond gravity, but because, like
the Moon, they’re falling in the circle.
 COUNTERINTUITIVE COSMOS FE ATURE

7
WE CAN KNOW WHAT
THE UNIVERSE IS ‘NOW’
You would think this is obviously
true. But ‘now’ is a meaningless
concept in the Universe. The
problem is that, while light is fast,
the Universe is huge. As Douglas
Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker’s
miles) per second, but only 100m
(328ft) per century. Depending on
where you are in the world, 100m
away you might see a street scene
of 1924; just over a kilometre away
you would see the Battle of

6
Guide to the Galaxy: “Space is big. Hastings mid-battle; 4.5km
You just won’t believe how vastly, (2.8 miles) distant and near the
hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. horizon, you’ll see the pyramid of
I mean, you may think it’s a long Khufu still being built. In reality,
THE STARS ARE way down the road to the when we look out into the
PINPRICKS IN THE chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts Universe, we see the Moon as it
CELESTIAL SPHERE to space.” Consequently, light was 1.25 seconds ago; the nearest
crawls like a snail across this big galaxy, Andromeda, as it was
They certainly look that way. They don’t look like suns – cosmic vastness and, as it’s by 2.5 million years ago; and the most
unless they’re an astonishingly long way away. But, in fact, means of light that we gain distant galaxies as they were
they are – although it was extremely hard to prove. The key knowledge of the cosmos, we see 13 billion years ago.
was to observe a nearby star from one side of Earth’s orbit everything as it was at an earlier While we can’t know what the
and then, six months later, from the other side. Just as your time. To understand what this Universe is like now, telescopes
finger observed from one eye and then the other shifts means, imagine the speed of light show us its entire history, all the
position, so too should a star. It’s such a small effect, even for was not 300,000km (186,400 way back to the Big Bang.
the nearest stars, that this shift, or ‘parallax’, was only first
observed in 1838. German astronomer Friedrich Bessel found
that the star 61 Cygni was 10 light-years away – more than These are just a handful of ways we’ve discovered that the Universe
600,000 times farther away than the Sun. is not the way it seems to a three-pound ape brain made of jelly and
The definitive proof that the stars are other suns actually water. Our great triumph is to have enhanced and extended our senses,
came from studying their light. In 1835, French philosopher to have created artificial ones that enable us not only to see farther
Auguste Comte declared: “Never, by any means, shall we be and hear better, but also to detect ‘light’ no human eye has ever seen
able to study the chemical composition or mineralogical and hear the faintest whispers of vibrating space-time. Our genius is
structure of the stars.” He was totally wrong. Nature has to have exposed more and more of that which is deeply hidden.
GETTY IMAGES X2, NASA

been kind to us. Each element emits light at characteristic

colours, or wavelengths, which amounts to a fingerprint.
In the spectrum of the Sun – its light fanned out into the
colours of the rainbow – such fingerprints manifest
themselves as dark bands, much like supermarket barcodes.
Lo and behold, the spectra of stars contain such dark bands.
by MARCUS CHOW N
Marcus is an award-winning science writer and
journalist. His latest book is The One Thing You
Need to Know (£16.99, Michael O’Mara).

77
 Q&A

PETE DR CHRISTIAN
LAWRENCE JARRETT
Astronomy Psychology

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

SALLY GARDNER, VIA EMAIL

WHY IS IT
SO DIFFICULT
TO ASK
FOR HELP?
There are many understandable reasons
why you might find it difficult to ask for help
when you need it. And you’re far from the
only one. Psychologists have been interested
in this question for decades, not least
because people’s widespread reluctance to
ask for help has led to some high-profile
failures, such as the problems that afflicted
the Hubble Space Telescope after its launch,
or the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. These
failures and many others were exacerbated
by the unwillingness of key players to seek
help and advice.
Asking for help takes courage. It involves
communicating a need on your part – there’s
something you can’t do, or that you don’t perhaps they’ll take over, or get credit for relationships), you might find it especially
know enough about. In other words, you’re your earlier efforts. Yet another factor that difficult to reach out for help because you
broadcasting your own fallibility, which can you might be worried about is being a have the added worry of the other person
be uncomfortable. You might worry about nuisance or inconveniencing the person declining your request. You might see such
coming across as incompetent. You might you go to for help. refusals as implying something negative
have concerns about losing control of, or If you struggle with low self-esteem or about the status of your relationship with
responsibility for, whatever it is you’re asking have an anxious attachment style (you find them. To overcome these difficulties, try to
for help with. Once someone starts to help, it difficult to feel safe and secure in your remind yourself that everyone needs help

78
 Q&A

AMY DR HELEN IAN DR NISH LUIS DR HELEN HAYLEY

ARTHUR PILCHER TAYLOR MANEK VILLAZON SCALES BENNETT
Health & wellbeing Biology Human body Medicine Technology Marine biology Nature

“RELUCTANCE TO ASK FOR FAYE MARTINEZ, MANCHESTER

WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE AND ANIMALS

HELP HAS LED TO SOME LACTOSE INTOLERANT, DESPITE DRINKING
HIGH-PROFILE FAILURES, THEIR MOTHER’S MILK WHEN YOUNG?

SUCH AS THE PROBLEMS It’s normal to be lactose intolerant. Mammals evolved to be able to drink
their mother’s milk until weaning, when the gene that breaks down lactose

THAT AFFLICTED THE

into simpler sugars that can be readily absorbed is switched off. Around
70 per cent of the world’s adults are lactose intolerant and the remainder
who aren’t owe their fortunes to two key events.

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE”

The first is the emergence of dairy farming some 9,000 years ago, which
gave ready access to nutritional dairy products. The second is the appearance
of a handful of mutations, which kept the relevant gene switched on beyond
infancy, making milk drinking a lifelong possibility. HP
sometimes. Nobody on the planet knows
everything and can do everything all by
themselves. And while you might fear coming
across as incompetent, there’s actually
JAIME MIRANDA, VIA EMAIL
research that shows that advice-seekers are
perceived as more competent, not less. HOW MANY TENTACLES DOES
Other research suggests that help-givers
generally come to like a help-seeking person AN OCTOPUS HAVE?
more after they’ve helped them. There are
also studies that suggest people are more None. Octopuses are named for their eight limbs,
likely to respond to requests for help than known generally as arms. Their cousins, the
you might think. squid and cuttlefish, have eight arms plus two
Perhaps most encouraging of all is a paper tentacles. These two limb types look and
from 2022 by researchers at Stanford behave very differently.
University, in California, that involved a mix Tentacles shoot out and
of contrived help-seeking interactions and catch prey with suckers at
asking people to recall times they’d sought the end. Arms have
help in the past. The findings showed that suckers all the way along
help-seekers generally underestimate how and are used to sense the
GETTY IMAGES ILLUSTRATION: BERNARD LEONARDO

willing other people will be to help and how surroundings, search for
good it’ll make the help-giver feel (for most food and sometimes walk.
people, having the chance to help someone It’s too simplistic to claim
is highly rewarding). that octopuses have six
So, bear all this in mind the next time you arms and two legs. All eight
need to ask for help. Also, take care over are multipurpose tools.
who you ask and when you ask them (some However, octopuses tend
consideration on your part will smooth the to reach out to touch
whole process). And if someone can’t help things with a preferred
right now, avoid taking it personally. They front arm and use two
might just be too busy, or they might not feel rear arms when they
confident about their ability to help. CJ go for a walk. HS

79
 Q&A

NATURE’S WEIRDEST CREATURES

THE SAIGA ANTELOPE

A saiga antelope walks into a bar. “Why the long
face?” asks the bartender. “Because my long nose
helps to filter out dust during the summer months,
and warms the cold air I breathe in during the
winter,” replies the saiga. “Also, lady saigas dig
a big hooter.”
It’s not much of a punchline, but nor is the saiga’s
bloated, double-barrelled proboscis even the
weirdest thing about it.
The weirdest thing about the saiga antelope
is what happened in May 2015. It was their
breeding season and vast herds of saiga antelope
were just hanging around, chewing the cud, in the
grasslands of central Kazakhstan. Mothers were
giving birth to twins, and sometimes singletons.
Then, one by one, the animals started to wobble,
fall down and die. Adults and youngsters were
affected. Over the space of a few short weeks,
around 200,000 saiga – equivalent to 60 per cent

80
 Q&A

ASA MCINT YRE, VIA EMAIL

of the global population – went hoof up. IF GENES ONLY MAKE UP AROUND
Saiga have lived in the remote Eurasian
Steppe grasslands of central Asia for TWO PER CENT OF OUR DNA, WHAT
thousands of years. In the 19th century,
numbers declined when the German MAKES UP THE OTHER 98 PER CENT?
Shepherd-sized herbivores were poached
for their distinctive ridged horns.
Conservationists spent decades bringing
them back from the brink, so when the
mass die-off happened, they were both
devastated and mystified.
Autopsies were performed, and blood
and tissue samples were sent for analysis.
Viruses were mooted as a possible cause,
as was poisoning from the toxic rocket fuel
used at Kazakhstan’s Baikonur
Cosmodrome. In the end, the antelope
were found to be infected with a bacterium
called Pasteurella multocida. That, in itself,
was not unusual. The microorganism is
often found in healthy animals, including
antelope, cattle and goats, where it’s
usually harmless. Something must have
caused the bacterium to multiply out of It was barely a generation ago – during the these DNA sequences to volume-control
control and seep into the antelopes’ spring of 2003, in fact – when scientists at buttons for how our genes are expressed.
bloodstream, which led to blood poisoning The Human Genome Project completed For example, enhancer sequences increase
and internal bleeding. their work sequencing the human genome. the transcription of genes from DNA to
Two smaller mass die-offs happened in But even for the world’s leading geneticists, RNA. Silencers do the reverse.
Kazakhstan back in the 1980s. So, the ‘Book of Life’ is a heavy read. Large swathes of the dark genome
researchers analysed historical data and Researchers are still making sense of it. are also made up of long, repetitive
found that both events were preceded by It was a landmark moment, of course, sequences of DNA known as transposons.
an unusually hot and humid patch of not just in science, but in life on Earth – the These too play a critical role in the way our
weather. This, they suspect, created the first time an organism catalogued the very genes are expressed, and they’re linked to
perfect conditions for the bacteria to building blocks that it’s made of. It sparked momentous evolutionary steps and our
thrive, and caused the previous die-offs. the genetic revolution that we’re currently ability to adapt to our environments.
Now, the researchers are concerned that living through, but it also raised some Also known as ‘jumping genes’,
similar weather conditions caused the 2015 serious questions. Questions like, ‘Why is transposons can move from one section
event and that mass die-offs like this could there so much of it?’ of a genome to another. This ability can
One of the strange and startling things trigger seismic genetic mutations and
become more common in a warming world.
about the completed human genome was reversals. Scientists believe, for example,
Meanwhile, the hardy saiga have
how little of it seemed to be doing that transposons are linked to the
bounced back. Under the watchful eye
anything. There are around three billion development of opposable thumbs in
of the conservationists who care for them, nucleotide pairs in the human genome humans and the loss of tails in our species
there are now an estimated two million (the ‘letters’ in our DNA: A, C, G and T). Less and other great apes.
or so saiga roaming the grasslands of than two per cent of those (around 20,000) They may also be responsible for tumour
Kazakhstan, Russia and Uzbekistan, as well represent protein-encoding genes that development in some circumstances, as
as a related subspecies that lives in give the cells in our bodies their marching well as certain hereditary diseases.
VALERIY MALEEV/NATUREPL.COM, GETTY IMAGES X2

Mongolia. Anti-poaching and law orders. So, what’s the rest of it doing? Haemophilia and Duchenne muscular
enforcement measures, habitat protection, Some called it junk DNA. Genetic dystrophy are two examples thought to
population monitoring and local gibberish – a pile of leftovers from millions arise from repetitive DNA sequences linked
community engagement have all paid off. of years of evolution or an impossible word to transposons.
In December 2023, the International Union search where very little makes sense. And That’s just one reason why the dark
for Conservation of Nature downgraded it seems that at least some of it is indeed genome is now a hotbed of medical
the saiga from ‘Critically Endangered’ to non-functioning. But not all of it. research. Scientists hope that in the
‘Near Threatened’. But researchers caution Scientists are beginning to shed light next two decades, our growing
that such a remarkable recovery doesn’t on this dark matter of the human genome. understanding of these once-ignored
mean the species is bulletproof. Much like Far from a junk heap, it performs a crucial chapters from the ‘Book of Life’ will lead
so many species, the future of the saiga regulatory or modifying function for the to a new generation of therapies for
antelope remains uncertain. HP protein-encoding genes. Some have likened treating genetic disorders. IT

81
 Q&A
DELORES NIXON, SHEFFIELD
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN ASPIRIN,
PARACETAMOL
AND IBUPROFEN?
Aspirin, paracetamol and ibuprofen are
painkillers with different mechanisms.
Aspirin reduces inflammation and acts as
a blood thinner. It’s used for pain, but also
heart conditions and belongs to a class of
drugs known as nonsteroidal anti-
inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).
Ibuprofen is also an NSAID. It’s an
anti-inflammatory drug that also alleviates
pain and reduces fever.
Paracetamol relieves pain and reduces
fever, but lacks anti-inflammatory effects.
Aspirin and ibuprofen may cause stomach
irritation, while paracetamol is gentler on
the stomach. For severe pain, you can take
ibuprofen and paracetamol together, as they
have different mechanisms of action and
typically don’t interact negatively. NM
ALE X ANDRA ROWL AND, VIA EMAIL
HOW CLOSE ARE WE
TO HAVING TRACTOR
BEAMS, LIKE IN
STAR TREK?
82
A beam implies a stream of something
travelling from a source to a target. Whether
it’s a stream of photons or some other
particle, it will tend to push the target rather
than pull it. On Earth, you can use a vacuum
cleaner to pull something towards you, but
what you’re really doing is removing some of
the air molecules on the near side of the
object, so that the molecules remaining on
the far side will push it. This doesn’t really
count as a beam though, and it wouldn’t
work in space anyway because, in a vacuum,
there are no molecules to remove.
But there are ways to pull things in space
that don’t use beams. A ‘gravity tractor’ is a
proposed design for a spacecraft that hovers
or orbits close to an asteroid and uses
mutual gravitational attraction to draw the
asteroid off its course. Ordinarily, the much
larger mass of the asteroid would pull the
spacecraft into the asteroid, but a gravity
tractor counters this by using efficient ion
thrusters that always keep it ahead of the
asteroid as it gently tugs it forward.
GETTY IMAGES, ALAMY ILLUSTRATIONS: BERNARD LEONARDO, PETE LAWRENCE
Gravity is convenient because it’s a
ubiquitous force between any objects with
mass, but it’s also extremely weak. Hence,
the European Space Agency has looked into
the feasibility of using electrostatic
attraction instead, which is a much stronger
force, but because it comes in both positive
and negative flavours, the charges on an
object usually cancel out to almost nothing.
The ESA study considered charging up a
suitable asteroid in various ways and one of
them was to spray it with electrons.
Provided you also keep the spacecraft
charged to about 20,000 volts this would
work and you could consider that stream of
charging electrons as a sort of tractor beam.
But it would still be much slower than the
tractor beams in science fiction. LV

HE ATH BOWEN, VIA EMAIL
WHY DO WE
PICK FAVOURITES?
At the root of favouritism is the fact we all have
preferences – for certain colours, tastes, faces,
places and much more. These preferences are
partly driven by our evolutionary past.
For instance, there’s evidence we favour
brighter hues associated with positive things like
sky and water, while disliking darker hues that
have connotations of dirt or disease. We also
generally prefer geographic settings that provide
a good balance of shelter, resources and outlook
(presumably because our ancestors were more
likely to survive in such places). And we tend to
perceive symmetrical faces as more beautiful,
perhaps because they’re a sign of healthy genes.
Layered on top of these basic preferences are
cultural influences and personal experiences.
Many of us grow up being asked to name our
favourite colour, country, film star and so on. To
arrive at these favourites, we’ll draw on our basic
evolutionary-driven preferences, but also what’s
personally meaningful to us, from the colours of a
football team to a cherished holiday experience.
We learn these answers and have them to hand
whenever a conversation turns to favourites.
Into this mix, you can also factor in a role for
laziness (or efficiency). There’s so much choice
in the world, so much complicated decision-
making, that it’s too tiring and impractical to keep
a live, accurate update of our preferences. As a
shortcut, or heuristic, your brain uses favourites
– it makes it much easier to choose where to
book dinner, go on holiday or which podcast to
listen to, if you default to your favourites. This is
convenient, but not so great for open-mindedness
or adventure. And where it can become especially
problematic is in relationship contexts – when
parents have a favourite child or a manager has
a favourite employee, this can be the source of
unfairness and division. CJ
ASTRONOMY FOR BEGINNERS
TRICKS OF THE LIGHT
WHEN: FEBRUARY–MARCH
The early lunar crescent phases that
follow the new Moon are well positioned
in the early spring evening sky. As we
head from February into March, the
spring crescents look very beautiful
against the glow of evening twilight.
If you have binoculars or a small
telescope, there are things to look out
for. Known as a clair-obscur effect, or
trick of the light, recognisable shapes
appear among the Moon’s jumbled
regions of light and shadow. Two
popular examples are known as the
Lunar X and V. These occur at the same
time in different positions along the
Moon’s terminator – the line dividing
night from day. Spot them on 17
February at around 00:40am and again
on 17 March in a daylight sky at 2:20pm.
The effects only last for a few hours.
Another impressive clair-obscur effect
is the Jewelled Handle. This occurs a
couple of days after the first quarter
Moon, when the peaks of the curved
Montes Jura (Jura Mountains) are
illuminated during the lunar dawn.
WATCH THE SKY AT NIGHT ON BBC FOUR AND BBC IPLAYER
Q&A
Their distinctive arc appears to extend
into the lunar night. This can just be
noticed with sharp eyes, but it’s best
seen with optical aid. The Jewelled
Handle is best viewed on 19 February,
in daylight at 3:50pm.
If it’s clear on the evening of 13 March,
the waxing crescent Moon appears near
bright Jupiter – a lovely sight if you have
clear skies and one you can see with
just your eyes.
Speaking of eyes, if you have a
small telescope, look at the southern
portion of the Moon a few days later on
18 March. Just before 8pm, the elliptical
appearance of the large crater Clavius is
mostly dark and bathed in shadow. Two
exceptions are the elevated crater rims
illuminated within it. These form
another clair-obscur effect known as
the Eyes of Clavius. PL
by P E T E L AW R E N C E
(@Avertedvision)
Pete is an astronomy expert and
presenter on The Sky at Night.
83
 staggering: it suggested an undiscovered
ninth planet in our Solar System. However,
Batygin urges scepticism towards presuming
the planet’s existence from this data alone,
cautioning that “all we have now is an echo.”
Clues in the Kuiper Belt
The objects that Batygin and Brown
studied are in the Kuiper Belt, a huge
disc-shaped region of space populated by
trillions of icy objects from the early days
of the Solar System, as well everyone’s
favourite planetary underdog, Pluto. The
astronomers found 11 objects, the orbits
and inclinations of which couldn’t be
explained by the influences of known
objects. The odds of this orbital behaviour
happening by chance: 0.007 per cent.
Searching our Solar System
The night sky has played an important role throughout
human history. Over time, myth and mystery have
given way to wonder and discovery, as we build an ever
clearer picture of our celestial neighbourhood…
84
Sedna
Discovered in 2003, Sedna is a dwarf planet
with one of the largest known orbits in our
Solar System. Every trip around the Sun
takes Sedna around 11,400 years; the last
time it was in its current position, humans
were in the process of domesticating
livestock. Surprisingly, it also appears to
be red, with a colour almost the same as
Mars. A notable discovery in its own right,
Sedna’s unusual, elongated orbit is also one
of our strongest hints towards the possible
existence of a ninth planet.
Babylonian astronomers
The first records of our Solar System
come from the second millennium BC,
when Babylonians identified Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
2012 GB174
Other than Sedna, most of these
objects currently only have provisional
designations; an identifying code which
includes the year of discovery, a letter
denoting the half-month in which it was
discovered, and another letter and number
placing it within a list of other discoveries
within that time period.
The moons of Jupiter
The next major discovery wasn’t until
thousands of years later when, in 1610,
Galileo Galilei glimpsed Jupiter’s four
largest moons for the first time.
 Q&A

A ninth planet... or something else? The data suggests the existence of a new planet. But what would it look like? And are we sure it’s even a planet?

Rocky super-Earth
A ‘super-Earth’ is a planet with a greater
mass than Earth, but less than ice giants like
Neptune. If so, Planet Nine would likely have
a composition of rocky or metallic elements.
Gaseous mini-Neptune
Planet Nine could be more like our
Solar System’s ice giants. In this case, a small
iron core might be surrounded by ice and
an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium.
Primordial black hole
Some believe that Planet Nine is actually
a tiny black hole. If so, it might only be the
size of a grapefruit, but would still have
a mass five to 10 times that of Earth.
A new theory of gravity
Modified Newtonian Dynamics seeks a better
understanding of how gravity works and
accounts very well for the inconsistencies
that infer the existence of Planet Nine.

Hypothetical history
If the object is a planet, where did it come
from? There are a couple of theories. It
may have been formed alongside the four
gas giants – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and
Neptune – until a close call or collision
saw it ejected into the outer reaches of the
Solar System. Or even more tantalising,
perhaps it was a rogue planet captured by
the gravitational pull of the Sun. This would
make Planet Nine an exoplanet, located
right on our Solar System’s doorstep.
Planet Nine
If such a planet exists, it would be located
in the far reaches of the Solar System, The search continues
up to 800 astronomical units1 (AU) from the Planet Nine’s presumed location in the
SUN
Sun (compared to Pluto’s 39 AU). There’s outer edges of the Solar System means that
some information about Planet Nine that it’ll be easier to detect through infrared
we can glean simply from it’s interaction radiation rather than reflected sunlight. So,
with other objects in the Solar System... infrared space telescopes like the Wide-
field Infrared Survey Explorer will be our
MASS RADIUS
best bet at finding the planet. Back on Earth,
10x Earth 3.7x Earth
scientists have also conducted searches
ORBITAL PERIOD using Hawaii’s 8.2m-diameter (27ft) optical-
10,000–20,000 years infrared Subaru Telescope, which sits
atop a dormant volcano.

Or have we already found it?

In 1983, NASA* launched the Infrared
Astronomical Satellite (IRAS); the first
space telescope to study the sky in infrared
light. During its mission, IRAS detected
350,000 infrared sources and revealed
the core of our galaxy for the first time.
Over 40 years later, IRAS may be able
to take credit for another discovery as
* IRAS was a joint mission between NASA, the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes and the Science and Engineering Research Council historical data from the mission revealed
1
One astronomical unit (AU) is roughly the distance from Earth to the Sun (approx. 150 million km/93.2 million miles) PLANET TEXTURES NASA and ESA an intriguing and still unexplained point of
SOURCES NASA, JPL, The Conversation, Caltech, The Independent, Science Alert, Wikipedia, BBC Earth, Space.com, Inverse and The Center for Astrophysics light. Could this be the elusive Planet Nine?

Uranus Neptune Pluto

The ice giant was discovered in The first planet found through Discovered in 1930 by Clyde
1781 by William Herschel, who first mathematical prediction, Neptune’s Tombaugh, Pluto was our Solar
thought it was a comet. Six years later, existence was confirmed by Johann System’s ninth planet until it was
he also found its two largest moons. Gottfried Galle and Urbain Le Verrier. demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006.

85
 Q&A
MYTHBUSTERS
IS THERE ANY SCIENCE BEHIND
‘LOVE LANGUAGES’?
You’ve probably come across the five
‘love languages’ at some point, either in
an online dating profile or a glossy
magazine. The theory behind them,
created by American couples’ counsellor
Gary Chapman, asserts that there are
five ‘languages’ romantic partners use to
communicate their love: words of
affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of
service and physical touch. Problems in a
relationship, according to Chapman, can
stem from not communicating in the
same love language.
But is there any science
behind the theory? Do
couples need to have
compatible love
languages to
be happy?
There’s a
lack of scientific
support for
Chapman’s
theory. No
evidence wholly
supports the
existence of five
languages and there are
other theories that
suggest there may be three, six
or even seven of them.
It’s also unlikely that we have one set
preference. Sometimes we want physical
touch, but in other circumstances, we
would prefer quality time with a partner.
Furthermore, we’re not necessarily
that good at knowing which language
we want, either. In one study from 2013,
participants chose the love language
that they thought most applied to
themselves, then answered a series
of questions designed to elicit their
preferences for each of the languages.
86
But the relationship between what
language people said they preferred, and
their answers, wasn’t significant:
someone could say their preferred love
language was ‘physical touch’, for
example, but their answers would
suggest they felt more loved when they
received a gift from their partner.
This same study also found nothing
significant when the researchers
compared couples with matching or
mismatching languages and their
satisfaction with the relationship.
So sharing a love language
doesn’t necessarily
mean you’ll be
happier (another
study from 2017
came to the same
conclusion).
Similarity in
relationships is
associated with
better outcomes,
though. If you
clash when it
comes to your
values, or deal with
conflict in very different
ways, you’re less likely to
report relationship satisfaction. But
given that our romantic relationships are
influenced by other things that affect life
satisfaction and wellbeing, it makes
sense that similarity alone can’t
guarantee a happy relationship (or life).
Despite the lack of evidence to support
Chapman’s theory, it’s still useful for us
to think about our own wants and needs
in a relationship, and talk to our partners
about theirs. Especially as ‘love’ can
mean different things in different
contexts and different cultures. AA
JEREMY FRY, FELIX STOWE
SCIENTIFICALLY,
WHAT’S THE BEST
WAY TO CUT A
SANDWICH?
The consensus view favours cutting
sandwiches diagonally to form two
triangles, although hard science to back
this up is difficult to find. One hypothesis is
that a triangle allows you to take your first
two bites from the two 45° corners. These
only have crust on one side and give faster
access to the middle of the sandwich where
the filling is most concentrated.
After the corners have been tackled, you
may have between one and three bites
along the diagonal, which is crust-free and,
depending on the size of the sandwich, may
leave you with another smaller triangle.
Eventually, of course, each triangle is
reduced to a single 90° nubbin of crust,
but if you try this with a sandwich cut
rectangularly, you’ll end up with two crusty
corners for each half, instead of one.
Another argument for triangles is that
they’re neater to eat. Only children and
cartoon characters take their first bite from
the middle of the cut face, because doing
so inevitably deposits mayonnaise or jam
on the sides of your mouth. Starting from
one of the corners allows for a cleaner bite
and the 45° angle of a triangle maximises
the depth of the bite.
Taking this to its logical extreme, we
could cut a sandwich into four triangles
that can be eaten in three neat bites.
You often see this strategy adopted for
children’s parties, but in my experience,
children rarely eat the 45° corners first.
When it comes to children’s parties, the
optimal cutting strategy is probably to
slice the crusts off altogether. LV
 Q&A

TAMMY GILES, VIA EMAIL

IF YOU SHOT A
BULLET STRAIGHT
UP, HOW FAR
WOULD IT TRAVEL?
The formula for an object
thrown straight up is v2/2g,
where v is the initial velocity
LE WIS C ASEY, PORTSMOUTH of the bullet and g is the
WHY DO SNAILS MOVE SO SLOWLY? acceleration due to gravity
(9.81m/s2). The muzzle
IS THERE AN EVOLUTIONARY velocity of a 9mm
ADVANTAGE TO THEIR LACK OF PACE? handgun is roughly 380m/s,
so this works out to 7,360m
(about 4.5 miles). The
Slugs and snails use a ‘ventral foot’ – a long, slime- 5.56mm NATO round used in
covered muscle on the underside of their bodies – to British Army rifles has a bit
move at speeds of around one metre per hour (three feet more oomph and would
per hour). The foot, or muscle, ripples to send the animal reach over 43,000m
sliding over its own slime. This system is inherently quite (27 miles). But that’s in a
slow and is limited by their rate of slime production. vacuum. Air resistance
However, being slow is not necessarily a problem for drastically reduces
slugs and snails, because they rely on stationary food (and complicates) this
sources (plants and dead stuff) and on other strategies calculation, so maximum
besides running away to escape predators – their muted heights might be no
colours keep them camouflaged and snails can simply more than a fifth of
shrink into their shells to protect themselves. HB these figures. LV

QUESTION OF THE MONTH

K ARL STE WART, LEICESTER

WHY DOES PROTEIN MAKE ME FART?

Speak to dieticians, intolerance. Protein sources
gastroenterologists or like lentils and beans often
nutritional scientists and come with fibre and a type of
they’ll say that carbohydrates sugar called oligosaccharides. W IN NE R
are more likely to turn you into Neither of these are easily The winner
of nex t issu
Question of e’s
a natural gas factory than digested and can also cause pair of har
the Month
wins a
protein. When undigested flatulence. A lot of meat and dback pop
books: The ular science
carbs ferment in the gut, they dairy products contain sulphur, Warped Side
Universe an of Our
release gas. If you’re taking which turns into hydrogen d A City on
worth ove M ars,
GETTY IMAGES X4 ILLUSTRATION: BERNARD LEONARDO

protein supplements, check sulphide as it passes through r £55!

the ingredient lists for things
like fructose, lactose, xylitol or
stevia. These sugars and sugar
substitutes are likely the real
culprits. If you’re taking a
protein powder with milk or
other dairy products, you may
have an undiagnosed lactose
the body and smells like rotten
eggs. Farting is as natural as
breathing but if you want to
reduce the frequency of your
emissions, try experimenting
with your protein sources or
diet in general. Also, chew your
food and eat slowly. IT

EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO QUESTIONS@SCIENCEFOCUS.COM

87
This was
Sylvia’s
promise
to you...

A generation ago, a woman named Sylvia made But it doesn’t have to be like this. You can change
a promise. As a doctor’s secretary, she’d watched the story, just like Sylvia did, with a gift in your Will.
stroke destroy the lives of so many people. She was All it takes is a promise.
determined to make sure we could all live in a world
You can promise future generations a world where
where we’re far less likely to lose our lives to stroke.
researchers discover new treatments and surgeries
She kept her promise, and a gift to the Stroke DQGHYHU\VLQJOHVWURNHVXUYLYRUKDVWKHEHVWFDUH
Association was included in her Will. Sylvia’s gift rehabilitation and support network possible, to help
helped fund the work that made sure many more of them rebuild their lives.
us survive stroke now than did in her lifetime.
Will you make that promise to generations to
Sylvia changed the story for us all. Now it’s our turn come? Please, leave a gift in your Will to the
to change the story for those who’ll come after us. Stroke Association.

Stroke still shatters lives and tears families apart.

And for so many survivors the road to recovery is
still long and desperately lonely. If you or someone Find out how by calling 020 7566 1505
\RXORYHKDVEHHQDƦHFWHGE\VWURNHƇ\RXƊOONQRZ or email legacy@stroke.org.uk
just what that means. or visit stroke.org.uk/legacy

Rebuilding lives after stroke

The Stroke Association is registered as a charity in England and Wales (No 211015) and in Scotland (SC037789).
Also registered in the Isle of Man (No. 945) and Jersey (NPO 369), and operating as a charity in Northern Ireland.
 NEXT ISSUE

CROSSWORD RANDOM ACCESS

MEMORIES
PENCILS AT THE READY! Big tech has big plans for your brain
     

 



 



  

   

 

 

 

ACROSS
1 Feigned to go back inside
DOWN
1 Transport people to annual
PLUS
4
coach (5)
Hidden nuisances include 2
event (4,4)
Initially generating space for
THE UNIVERSE’S
8
boredom (5)
A ring from coral reef (5) 3
husband (5)
Fruit for ruler’s wife (7)
STRANGEST PLACES
9 Valid among the police (2,5) 4 Delicate and fine, swimming Snapshots from the spots in space
10 Twitch, somewhat sticking (3) around lake (5) where normal rules don’t apply
11 Dance with strange graduate 5 Romans improved after new
(5) invaders (7)
12 State king, as an alternative, to 6 Time to change something (4)

14
son (6)
Get in touch with man with
7 Protester and dodgy dealer
seen around the garden (6,5)
BUST YOUR GUT
directions for visual aids (7,6) 13 Hitman finding fools The secret to losing weight
17 Posh fur that’s functioning (6) fashionable (8) from your waist
19 Country at home with aid 15 Sodium smell emerging (7)
distribution (5) 16 Elegy involved pipe and hat (7)

ON SALE 19 MARCH
22 Part of one tampering with 18 Bitterness about British holy
trap (3) book (5)
23 Sarcastic expert assembled 20 Pretty timid after I had
crib (7) returned (5)
24 Ordinary people not initially 21 Cry for social gathering, upon
donkeys (5) hearing (4)
25 Illuminated, chap becomes
GETTY IMAGES

graceful (5)
26 Handy sort of tunesmith (5)

ANSWERS For the answers, visit bit.ly/BBCFocusCW

Please be aware the website address is case-sensitive.

89
 BETTER
LIVING
THROUGH
SCIENCE
A MATTER OF
THE HEART
A little-known health test
could save your life… for a price
U
nless you’re a lipids researcher
or a fan of health podcasts, you’ll
be forgiven for not knowing what
Apolipoprotein B-100 is. The protein
(ApoB to its friends) is created in the
liver. It helps shift dietary fat and
cholesterol around the body, and bind
them to cells where they can be used,
stored or removed.
But it’s also something of a celebrity:
the focus of online chat, at-home health
tests and biomedical research. All
because measuring ApoB is a highly
accurate way of predicting a person’s
risk of cardiovascular disease – more
so than traditional cholesterol tests.
A 2021 paper in The Lancet Health
Longevity said ApoB was emerging as
the “crucial lipoprotein trait” in working
out how cholesterol contributes to your
risk of a broken heart. Researchers
concluded that “higher ApoB shortens
by I A N
lifespan, increases risks of heart disease,
TAY L O R
stroke … and diabetes.”
Ian is a
freelance Right now, measuring LDL cholesterol
science is one of the standard ways to test
writer and somebody’s cardiovascular risk. LDL
the former is ‘the bad one’, but it’s not the only
deputy
editor of bad one. LDL cholesterol tests, while
BBC Science accurate, don’t always give us the full
Focus. picture. A person could return a low
“WHAT’S INTERESTING ABOUT APOB IS
THAT THERE’S A SINGLE MOLECULE OF IT
ATTACHED TO ALL LIPOPROTEINS THAT
AMASS IN OUR ARTERIES”
90
LDL test, but the picture inside their
arteries could still be concerning.
What’s interesting about ApoB is that
there’s a single molecule of it attached
to all lipoproteins that amass in our
arteries. That includes LDL, but also
VLDL (very-low-density lipoprotein), IDL
(intermediate-density lipoprotein) and
LP(a), a very sticky lipoprotein, which
may be more likely to cause blockages.
“ApoB is attached to these four
important lipid entities,” says Dr
Catherine Lunken, a consultant at
University College London Hospitals
and an expert in lipid disorders. “So
it’s a direct measure of the number of
circulating atherogenic lipoproteins.
It’s a more accurate indicator of
cardiovascular risk.”
Another paper, this one from 2022 in
the journal Nutrition, Metabolism and
Cardiovascular Disease, tried to tease
out the difference between regular
cholesterol tests and ApoB tests. Often,
the two deliver similar results. But in
some cases, the same person who scores
low on LDL, scores high on ApoB – and
those people are still at an increased
risk of cardiovascular problems.
“You have people with heart attacks
with so-called ‘normal’ LDL,” says
Lunken. “So ApoB may be part of what
people aren’t looking at.”
ApoB tests aren’t routinely offered
on the NHS. Lunken suspects they will
be one day, but they’re considerably
more expensive than cholesterol tests.
And as the science is still emerging on
ApoB, some clinicians may not even
understand it.
That hasn’t prevented businesses from
selling ApoB tests direct to consumers.
A quick internet search turns up plenty
of options, many promising results in a
few days and advice on how to interpret
them. They cost between £50-£180.
Another option is visiting a private
clinic that’ll test for ApoB specifically
or as part of a wider health check.
Whether you actually need one or not
is the question. Lunken says that ApoB
scores are more insightful for young
people. It tells them about their long-term
risk, but also if there’s a more imminent
danger of a heart attack. For that reason,
the tests might appeal to those who take
a proactive and preventative approach
to their health.
The flip side is whether private tests
like these exploit the ‘worried well’ and
contribute to health anxiety, especially
as researchers are still working to
understand the correlation between
ApoB scores and heart health.
It’s not known, for example, what the
best way to reduce your ApoB score is,
but the lifestyle advice generally follows
other heart health recommendations:
eat a Mediterranean diet, lose weight,
don’t smoke or drink too much.
Lunken says her heart sank when she
discovered that DIY ApoB tests were
becoming popular, but she also says
ILLUSTRATION: JOE WALDRON
that ApoB tests are the best predictor
of long-term cardiovascular risk.
“I wouldn’t even expect GPs to know
about ApoB,” she says. “It’s a good test.
[But] my worry is that the people who
have it, don’t yet have the support to
follow up with.”