Tabla de contenidos para Issue 173 en How It Works

“First make people laugh, and then make them think” Since 1991, the Ig Nobel Prize has handed out awards for achievements in science and literature that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”. Nominees for its debut ceremony included the medicine prize for the inventor of anti-gas liquids that prevent bloating and embarrassment, the biology prize for the man who developed a sperm bank exclusively for Nobelians and Olympians and the peace prize for the father of the hydrogen bomb for his efforts in changing the meaning of peace. You can discover more of these often ludicrously tongue-in-cheek experiments in this issue, and learn how some of them aren’t quite as frivolous as they first seem. Enjoy! FOR EXCLUSIVE HIW NEWS AND OFFERS, SIGN UP TO OUR MAILING…

A special type of radioactive meteorite could have seeded life on Earth. Carbonaceous chondrites, a type of radioactive meteorite chock full of water and organic compounds, produce energetic gamma rays that can drive the chemical reactions to synthesise amino acids, the building blocks of life. Meteorites are leftovers from the formation of the young Solar System’s rocky inner planets, which first clotted from the hot clouds of gas and dust billowing near the Sun roughly 4.6 billion years ago. At the time, the planets were too close to the Sun to form oceans and so couldn’t harbour life, leaving scientists puzzling over how Earth transformed into an oasis of life from its initial barren state. A previous study suggested that water could have been brought to Earth by carbonaceous chondrite…

Using a weighted blanket at bedtime may boost the body’s production of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin. At this point, it’s unclear why the hefty blankets might increase melatonin levels and whether this significantly improves people’s sleep quality. “This is a very interesting study, but it would be nice to see it replicated in a second cohort because it’s not an obvious thing that melatonin should increase with a weighted blanket,” said Håkan Olausson, a neuroscientist at Linköping University in Sweden. Melatonin helps the body transition into sleep mode, during which body temperature falls, metabolism slows and levels of the stress hormone cortisol decrease; melatonin also increases drowsiness in the hours before bed. Melatonin levels generally increase in the evening, peak at night and decrease as morning approaches. That’s because part…

Greenland’s glaciers are melting 100 times faster than previously calculated according to a new model that takes into account the unique interaction between ice and water at the island’s fjords. The new mathematical representation of glacial melt factors in the latest observations of how ice gets eaten away from the stark vertical faces at the ends of glaciers in Greenland. Previously, scientists used models developed in Antarctica, where glacial tongues float on top of seawater, a very different arrangement. “For years, people took the melt rate model for Antarctic floating glaciers and applied it to Greenland’s vertical glacier fronts,” said Kirstin Schulz, a research associate at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences. “But there’s more and more evidence that the traditional approach produces too-low melt rates at Greenland’s…

With massive tails studded with spikes, ankylosaurs were armoured herbivores that could do real damage in a fight. Palaeontologists once thought that these tank-like dinosaurs used their tail clubs solely to fight off predators, but a new study reveals that they also bashed each other in a show of dominance. Researchers examined Zuul crurivastator, the most complete fossilised ankylosaur, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Canada. Measuring six metres and weighing 2,500 kilograms, the 76-million-yearold specimen from the Cretaceous period contains several broken spikes along its flanks. Sections of fossilised skin on its flanks also show that Zuul’s side wounds healed while the dinosaur was still alive. “The fossilised skin preservation over the damaged bony plates blew me away. Seeing the healing reflected in the soft…

1 GATHER YOUR MATERIALS The first items you will need are a balloon and a funnel. If you don’t have a funnel, you can create one by making a cone shape from a piece of paper or card. 2 ATTACH THE BALLOO Place the opening of the balloon over the narrow part of the funnel. You might need another person to hold this in place for the next step. 3 FILL THE BALLOON Pour the baking soda into the funnel. The funnel will direct the powder neatly into the balloon. Then place the balloon gently to one side. 4 FIND A BOTTLE You’ll need to find a bottle that will house the chemical reaction. Make sure that the top of the bottle is narrow enough to fit over the balloon’s…

50 BILLION The estimated number of galaxies in the known universe PHONE MANUFACTURER NOKIA USED TO SELL TOILET PAPER 500 MILLION Half a billion tweets are tweeted on Twitter every day 7.7 billion MOBILE PHONE OWNERS OUTNUMBER THOSE WHO HAVE A WORKING TOILET BY NEARLY 2:1 1890 The world’s first biofuel, peanut oil, was invented by Rudolf Diesel 40% Nearly half of the world’s freight is transported by train $9,100 It costs a lot to send a bottle of water into space 635 kilograms Jon Brower Minnoch, the heaviest recorded person, once weighed as much as a water buffalo THE MOON ISN’T ROUND – IT’S MORE LEMON-SHAPED It’s possible for water to boil and freeze at the same time 1,243 MILES The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure…

There’s a frozen soup of viruses, bacteria and fungal spores lurking beneath the frigid Arctic soil. Unlike the icy leftovers in the back of your freezer, some of these microbes haven’t interacted with a cell since well before ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids of Giza. As climate change continues to cook the planet, however, these permafrost-locked germs are beginning to thaw. But can newly defrosted microbes ‘wake up’ and infect anything? And how much of a potential threat do they pose to human and environmental health? Those are the questions an international team of scientists began to probe in a recent study. The researchers isolated 13 newly described viruses from seven permafrost samples and two water samples taken from Siberian rivers. Three of the viruses, named Megavirus mammoth, Pithovirus mammoth…

The British Museum and the Greek government are in talks about returning the Parthenon Marbles, also called the Elgin Marbles, to Greece. The marbles are a series of sculptures that once decorated the exterior of the Parthenon, a temple on the acropolis of Athens that was built between about 447 and 432 BCE and is dedicated to the goddess Athena. The 2,500-year-old sculptures were brought to Britain in the first decade of the 19th century by Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which at that time included Greece. Bruce received permission from the Ottoman Sultan to investigate the Acropolis, although the Acropolis Museum in Greece disputes that he had permission to remove the Parthenon’s sculptures. Bruce shipped the artefacts to London, where…

The US government’s new UFO-tracking office has been open for half a year, but business is booming. Over the last six months, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has received ‘several hundred’ new UFO reports from US military personnel. This adds to more than 140 UFO sightings reported by the military between 2004 and 2021. The new reports, filed this year by personnel in the Army, Navy and Air Force, describe unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, the government’s preferred name for UFOs, sighted in the air, underwater and in space. None of the reports show any hint of alien activity. AARO’s mission is to consolidate and investigate UFO reports filed by branches of the US military. By definition, a UAP is “anything in space, in the air, on land, in…

Scientists spotted something exciting on Saturn’s moon Titan in images taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in early November: clouds. Specifically, clouds in Titan’s northern hemisphere. To a casual observer, clouds might be a dime a dozen. But to scientists, clouds can reveal a lot about the atmosphere of a planet, or in this case, a moon. Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a thick atmosphere, so studying clouds helps scientists understand how Titan’s atmosphere works, and why it has an atmosphere in the first place. The clouds further validate weather models that predict the appearance of clouds in Titan’s northern hemisphere during its summer, when the region is bathed in sunlight. Scientists have eagerly been awaiting observations of Titan since NASA’s Cassini mission ended…

CHINA’S EXPANSION The Han dynasty saw the Chinese go further south, down the Yangtze River. The success of this empire meant that towards the end of this growth, China had a population of around 60 million. This was a quarter of the total world population at the time – around 2 million greater than the Roman Empire. COMPASS NAVIGATION By the 1300s, compasses were in widespread use, helping sailors travel overseas with higher accuracy. In turn, this meant shorter and more predictable voyages. Europeans used this device to explore, colonise and trade in other continents. ROMAN RULE The Roman Empire grew to be 1.93 million square miles in size and is estimated to have contained more than one-fifth of the world’s total population. The empire grew largely by offering citizenship…

MULLING IT OVER Dear HIW, Does mulled wine actually have alcohol in it? I like the taste of it, but to me it tastes similar to juice. Is this because the heat burns all the alcohol off? Annabel Cushin When cooking with wine, boiling it will cause most of the alcohol to evaporate. Around 85 per cent of alcohol can be removed from a beverage when boiled. However, when preparing mulled wine, the aim is not to leave the wine boiling. The drink is brought to a simmer and is then left on a low heat. Some of the alcohol may evaporate during the mulled winemaking process, but the majority of it will remain, so don’t treat it as a soft drink! The reason you may think it tastes like…

In the case of NASA’s GeoCarb mission, some good things must end before they really begin. NASA has cancelled the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCarb), a collaboration with the University of Oklahoma and Lockheed Martin that intended to put a greenhouse gas–monitoring satellite into geostationary orbit. GeoCarb would have measured levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere about 4 million times per day. The mission was selected by NASA in 2016. “Decisions like this are difficult, but NASA is dedicated to making careful choices,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “We look forward to accomplishing our commitment to state-of-the-art climate observation in a more efficient and cost-effective way.” The decision to end GeoCarb was due to “technical concerns, cost performance and availability of new…

Some American black bears in the western US have evolved to have cinnamon-coloured fur. The new hue is likely due to a genetic variant similar to one that causes albinism in humans. Researchers from the US and Japan analysed DNA samples from 151 American black bears (Ursus americanus) across the US and Canada and found that those residing in western states such as Nevada, Arizona and Idaho were more likely to exhibit reddish coats than the black fur for which the medium-sized bears are named. They identified a mutation known as R153C in a gene called tyrosinase-related protein 1 (TYRP1) that causes an alteration in the coat’s pigmentation that makes its fur the same colour as a copper penny. “TYRP1 is a known pigmentation gene that ultimately produces either eumelanin,…

Unnerving new videos show how gross it can be to flush toilets without a seat cover, particularly when using public bathrooms. The stomach-turning footage shows how aerosol plumes shoot out of toilet bowls like a rocket when they are left uncovered. When a toilet is flushed it doesn’t just wash away the solids and liquids that we leave behind; it also ejects a near-invisible cloud of microscopic droplets that in the past have been shown to spread harmful pathogens found in faeces, including bacteria and viruses, that can remain in a toilet bowl even after several flushes. In a recent study, researchers used vibrant green lasers to illuminate aerosol plumes given off after flushing a lidless toilet, similar to those used in public bathrooms. Once these plumes were illuminated, the…

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One of the most common words used to describe smelly feet is ‘cheesy’. But in actual fact it’s cheese that takes on the stench of unclean feet. The type of bacteria naturally found on the foot which is responsible for foot odour is called brevibacterium, and this is also a vital component in cheese-making. Brevibacterium is present in animal milks and is specifically added to the surfaces of cheeses to develop a strong flavour and texture. It’s the bacteria that gives many cheeses a smell comparable to sweaty feet. This powerful smell is much less enticing when it’s emanating from a pair of feet. It’s caused by bacteria that feed on salts released by the body to produce a rancid-smelling acid. Another example of a bacterium that multiplies on sweaty…

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Sudoku Complete the grid so that each row, column and 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9 EASY MEDIUM HARD Word search Find the following words GUM SCORPION HUMANS BALLOON ELECTRIC JET OLYMPUS CANNIBAL ROBOT TYRE TOBACCO FEET What is it? Hint: A feline view of the road A Spot the difference See if you can find all six changes between the images below QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS Q1 The oldest artificial Christmas tree that’s still in use was made in… • 1886 • 1926 • 1956 • 2006 Q2 How many muscles are in an elephant’s trunk? • 40 • 400 • 4,000 • 40,000 Q3 How do International Space Station astronauts do their laundry? • A space laundrette • It’s sent to Earth • It burns on re-entry •…