Philippa Kaur

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    in Humans

    Inside the ISS: Astronauts tell their amazing tales of living in space

    Real-life accounts of International Space Station crew members Samantha Cristoforetti and Terry Virts capture the extraordinarily ordinary life of an astronaut

    Space 2 September 2020
    By David Silverberg
    Samantha Cristoforetti went from being a fighter pilot to an ISS astronaut
    ESA/NASA

    FROM experiencing the sublime beauty of the blue planet through the porthole of a spacecraft to worrying about what happens if someone dies onboard, everyone wants to know what it is like to be an astronaut. It is, after all, quite literally like nothing on Earth.
    New books by two fighter pilots who set out to discover how much of “the right … More

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    in Humans

    Don't Miss: Netflix's Away sees Hilary Swank on perilous Mars mission

    Watch
    Away stars Hilary Swank as an astronaut leaving her husband and daughter to lead a mission to Mars. This Netflix sci-fi series is inspired by an article in Esquire about a mission of astronaut Scott Kelly.

    Read
    Written in Bone by forensic anthropologist Sue Black shows how the skeletons we leave behind us can be read for clues about virtually everything we eat and do, and everywhere we travel. Every bone has a tale to tell.

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    Myriam Ménard/Ars Electronica

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    In Kepler’s Gardens is Ars Electronica’s bullish response to the covid-19 lockdown: a festival “measuring the new world” online and (where possible) in real life at 120 global locations, from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
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    in Humans

    David Attenborough helps podcast bring climate crisis centre stage

    So Hot Right Now podcast looks to David Attenborough and Ellie Goulding in bid to make climate crisis more real for millions and push it up the media agenda

    Humans 2 September 2020
    By Anna Turns
    Hosts Lucy Siegle and Tom Mustill talk to influential guests on climate
    Zoë Law

    Podcast
    So Hot Right Now
    12 episodes, all podcast providers

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    THE way that we communicate the climate crisis needs a rethink, from the language used in daily conversations to the frequency it makes front page headlines.
    The So Hot Right Now podcast goes to the heart of the issue. Far from detailing climate science, species extinctions or innovative technical fixes, the show questions the status quo and shares refreshing insight from experts, campaigners and front-line presenters.
    “We tend to focus on gaps in our climate science knowledge and there’s so much to learn, but what people are less alert to is this massive gap in coverage and that’s hampering our chances of mainstreaming these topics. We need more airtime, more screen time for climate and nature,” says co-host, journalist Lucy Siegle. “We’re pushing the agenda, uncovering the barriers and exploring why the gatekeepers are not opening the gates, but also speaking to some of our heroes and asking them ‘what should we do?’.”
    Siegle and wildlife film-maker Tom Mustill interview A-list guests such as Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, UN climate negotiator Christiana Figueres and singer Ellie Goulding, who believes activism jeopardises her job. “I lose followers [on social media] every time I post about climate change. I lose at least a thousand followers,” says Goulding during a podcast. She continues to speak up regardless.
    In the first episode, David Attenborough says he has no idea why Blue Planet II sparked such an extreme public reaction to plastic pollution when he had been “plugging away” at the issue for years. “Suddenly, there was an unprecedented response, possibly down to the scheduling or the mood of the nation. Audiences are very hard to predict,” he says.

    Successful communication hinges on finding new avenues of storytelling that connect us to the natural world. As BBC Springwatch presenter Gillian Burke concludes in a later episode: “I’m really starting to play with the language, storytelling, identity and labels. If we’re looking at the climate crisis through the lens of an Aboriginal person in Australia, how will that story be different? Language for me is a gateway to revealing more about the way we see the world.”
    Nuance exists in every word we use, suggests Siegle: “If language is too comfortable, it can minimise threat and the need for action, it can sometimes be downright dismissive or it can be too technical, forgetting that we respond to emotion, or it can be too emotional and not precise enough.” Or, as Mustill adds, “it can be really boring. Part of the aim of communication is surely to entertain. No one wants to be a climate bore.”
    With a curious yet informal tone, some episodes last more than an hour and might work better as shorter, more finely tuned pieces. But there are no set rules and So Hot Right Now embraces the freedom to be experimental.
    At times, the hosts seem starstruck (David Attenborough is thanked repeatedly for all he has done to inspire generations) but, generally, Siegle and Mustill enthusiastically arm listeners with a toolkit of useful strategies to articulate big ideas about climate and trigger more discussions.
    Whether you are addressing world leaders about the environment, connecting with social media followers about the issue or arguing with relatives about it, So Hot Right Now is well worth a listen.
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    in Humans

    We are living in the middle of a fantastic Star Trek renaissance

    Star Trek, which began in 1966, is experiencing an extraordinary renaissance in the year 2020. Is this a golden age for the show, asks Emily Wilson

    Humans 2 September 2020
    By Emily Wilson
    Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Spock (Ethan Peck) in Star Trek: Discovery
    Jan Thijs/CBS

    Star Trek
    Various

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    THE very first episode of Star Trek, entitled The Man Trap, aired on 8 September 1966. Right from the start, all the key ingredients of Star Trek were there: an alien planet with air that was perfectly OK to breathe and strange lumps of rock on its surface that are good to hide behind in a firefight; very closely fitted colour-blocked uniforms; a key gang of ship’s officers, including the captain, the Vulcan and the ship’s doctor; and, of course, a really big spaceship, with that lift leading down from the bridge to the other decks.
    There are a few things in that first show that have since disappeared, such as female crew members wearing skirts so short they barely covered their bottoms. But all the elements of Star Trek‘s success were present in that story about an alien that killed people because it was badly short of salt.
    What no one working on the show back then could possibly have imagined is that 54 years later, and in a very different world, Star Trek would not only still be in production, but that it would be thriving and, indeed, multiplying. Whether or not this is a new golden age of Star Trek is for each fan to decide for themselves, but it is certainly an exciting period of renaissance.
    “Star Trek: Lower Decks, I’m informed by a US colleague, is ‘being watched by all the cool people’”
    My personal favourite of the crop of new series is Star Trek: Discovery, which kicked off in 2017. Discovery was the first new Star Trek TV series since Star Trek: Enterprise ended in 2005. It centres around science specialist Michael Burnham, played brilliantly by Sonequa Martin-Green. Burnham is largely sombre and angst-ridden, and yet you end up not only rooting for her but caring about her.

    The rest of the show is rammed full of great ideas as well as other strong characters, including the fabulous Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou in a role that warps in very interesting ways as the show goes on. The second season came out late last year, and the third is due to be released this October, and if that happens, hurray!
    Elsewhere in this renaissance is Star Trek: Picard, which was released in January, with Patrick Stewart reprising the role he played in Star Trek: The Next Generation (a hugely popular iteration of the franchise that ended in 1994). Picard is a slower show than Discovery and, in my view, is less successful as a piece of storytelling, but it isn’t without its pleasures. A second and third season are on their way.
    Then there is Star Trek: Lower Decks, an adult animated series that is only available to watch in North America right now. I am informed by a US colleague that it is “being watched by all the cool people”.
    These three are only one part of the new wave of Star Trek, though. So much more is coming, including, apparently, a live-action show based around Yeoh’s rumbustious character in Discovery that is tentatively titled Section 31.
    All these new shows harness the very best modern effects and all the narrative tricks learned from the masters of binge-watchable TV, and the Star Trek franchise has definitely come a long way since The Man Trap.
    But the latest shows remain, indubitably, Star Trek. At their heart, there is still a bunch of people in tight uniforms, on a big spaceship, visiting alien worlds and taking with them Star Trek‘s particular brand of tolerance and hope. What’s not to like about that?

    Emily also recommends…
    TV
    Stargate SG-1
    Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner
    The Stargate franchise has a central simplicity to it that is quite Star Trek: humans going forth to strange new worlds to find and help others. It was kicked off by the 1994 film Stargate and now has a number of massive spin-off shows. For me, the 10 seasons of SG-1 are the main event. Aliens, jokes, great characters, pyramid ships, intergalactic narrative arcs – the show has everything.

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    in Space & Astronomy

    Record-breaking gravitational waves reveal that midsize black holes do exist

    The biggest. The farthest. The most energetic. A new detection of gravitational waves from two colliding black holes has racked up multiple superlatives.
    What’s more, it also marks the first definitive sighting of an intermediate mass black hole, one with a mass between 100 and 100,000 times the sun’s mass. That midsize black hole was forged when the two progenitor black holes coalesced to form a larger one with about 142 solar masses. It significantly outweighs all black holes previously detected via gravitational waves, ripples that wrinkle spacetime in the aftermath of extreme events.
    “This is the big guy we’ve been waiting for, for the longest time,” says Emanuele Berti, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved with the research. One of the behemoth’s two progenitors was itself so massive that scientists are pondering how to explain its existence.
    Detected on May 21, 2019, the gravitational waves originated from a source about 17 billion light-years from Earth, making this the most distant detection confirmed so far. It’s also the most energetic event yet seen, radiating about eight times the equivalent of the sun’s mass in energy, says astrophysicist Karan Jani of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. “I hope it deserves its own entry in the record book.”

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    The new event dethrones the previous record-holder, a collision that occurred about 9 billion light-years away that radiated about five solar masses worth of energy, and created a black hole of 80 solar masses (SN: 12/4/18).
    Researchers with LIGO, or the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, in the United States and Advanced Virgo in Italy reported the new detection September 2 in two papers in Physical Review Letters and the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
    While scientists know of black holes with tens of solar masses and others with millions or billions of solar masses, the intermediate echelon has remained elusive. Previous purported sightings of intermediate mass black holes have been questioned (SN:1/22/16).
    But, for the new event, “there’s no doubt,” says astrophysicist Cole Miller of University of Maryland at College Park, who was not involved with the study. “This demonstrates that there is now at least one intermediate mass black hole in the universe.”
    The black hole’s two progenitors were themselves heftier than any seen colliding before — at about 85 and 66 times the mass of the sun. That has scientists puzzling over how this smashup came to be.

    Normally, physicists expect that the black holes involved in these mergers would each have formed in the collapse of a dying star. But in the new event, the larger of the pair is so big that it couldn’t have formed that way. The known processes that go on within a star’s core mean that stars that are the right mass to form such a big black hole would blow themselves apart completely, rather than leaving behind a corpse.
    Instead, it might be that one or both of the colliding black holes formed from an earlier round of black hole mergers, within a crowded cluster of stars and black holes (SN: 1/30/17). That would make for a family tree that began with black holes lightweight enough to form from collapsing stars.
    But there’s a problem with the multiple-merger explanation. Each time black holes merge, that coalescence provides a kick to their velocity, which would normally launch the resulting black hole out of the cluster, preventing further mergers.
    However, mergers as massive as the new event seem to be very rare, given that LIGO and Virgo have detected only one. That means, Miller says, “my gosh, you’re allowed to invoke a tooth fairy,” a relatively unlikely process. Perhaps, he says, the kick might sometimes be small enough that the black holes could stay within their cluster and merge again.
    The May 21 gravitational wave event had previously been publicly reported as an unconfirmed candidate, to allow astronomers to look for flashes of light in the sky that might have resulted from the collision. Some researchers had suggested that the waves might have been associated with a flare of light from the center of a distant galaxy (SN: 6/25/20). But that galaxy is significantly closer than the distance now pinpointed in the new papers, at about 8 billion light-years from Earth rather than 17 billion, making the explanation less plausible.
    The longer LIGO and Virgo observe the heavens, the more the bounty of unusual events can be expected to grow, Miller says. “We are going to have a set of ‘gosh, didn’t expect that’ type of events, which are thrilling to think about and extremely informative about the universe.” More

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    in Humans

    How defining women as baby-makers backfired spectacularly on science

    In Guynecology, Rene Almeling argues that moving away from gendered ideas about reproduction could improve our health and transform our societies

    Health 26 August 2020
    By Jessica Hamzelou
    Men’s reproductive health is affected by their age and diet
    Jaunty Junto/Getty Images

    Guynecology: The missing science of men’s reproductive health
    Rene Almeling
    University of California Press

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    MALE bodies have long been seen as the norm when it comes to science. It is men and male animals that have been studied to understand what good and poor health looks like, as well as how to treat disease – except, that is, when it comes to reproduction.
    Historically, baby-making has been viewed as the defining function of women’s bodies, so much so that other aspects of their health have been neglected. For example, heart attacks are less readily identified in women, who are 59 per cent more likely to be misdiagnosed despite the fact that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women.
    Meanwhile, research into men’s reproductive health has lagged behind. Attempts to understand their contribution to fertility, miscarriage risk and long-term risk of a child developing some mental health conditions, for example, have only recently gained ground.
    In Guynecology, Rene Almeling, a sociologist at Yale University, explores how attempts to kick-start the study of men’s reproductive health failed. Even now, as the role of health in sperm function and in the well-being of future children becomes clear, information is still scarce and gendered notions about a woman’s role in making babies persist, she writes.
    Take the age-old notion of the coming together of “aggressive” sperm and “passive” eggs. The idea that conception is largely the role of the sperm cell is still a very popular one, but it isn’t true. We now know eggs release chemicals to sperm when they are ready to be fertilised, and recent research suggests that these might help select some sperm over others.

    When it comes to men’s role in reproduction, the focus has been on sex rather than fatherhood, centring on sexually transmitted infections and conditions like erectile dysfunction. While women’s reproductive health has long been seen as key to their well-being, “men’s genitals were never seen as core to their health and psychology as women’s genitals were [to women]”, says Almeling.
    “Shifts in how we understand gender might transform how reproduction and fertility are studied”
    Her book tackles an important subject, but there are some dry sections. Best to skip to her coverage of recent research. One of the most important findings is how lifestyle choices significantly influence the health of sperm, and consequently of children. Men, too, have a “biological clock”, and their age, diet and smoking habits have been linked to issues such as miscarriage and risks of low birth weight.
    These factors seem to have lasting “epigenetic” effects, conferring changes to the genome that mean new genetic risks of disease can be passed on to children. The field is still young, but there does appear to be a link between certain “paternal effects” and the risk of schizophrenia, for instance.
    Yet while dietary advice abounds for women trying to conceive, men may be less aware of the dos and don’ts, warns Almeling. She points out that there is little to no information on paternal effects offered to these would-be parents by US federal bodies and health agencies.
    Almeling rounds off her book with recommendations for scientists, healthcare providers and policy-makers. She thinks part of the problem is seeing gender as binary, with men and women as opposites, and that shifts in our understanding of gender might transform how reproduction and fertility are studied and treated.
    A greater understanding of men’s reproductive health could also “reshape gender politics in surprising ways” and change gendered expectations of women about reproduction, she writes. Almeling suggests such changes may help reduce the gender pay gap and inequalities caused by the assumption that women (but not men) with children are less committed to their jobs.
    Nice theory, but considering how long it has taken for women to get this far, I won’t hold my breath.

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    in Humans

    Don't Miss: Time loop horror film I'm thinking of ending things

    Mary Cybulski/NETFLIX
    Watch
    I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a time-looped psychological horror from cinema’s greatest living magician, Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). It will be on Netflix from 4 September.

    Read
    Net Zero: How we stop causing climate change sees economist Dieter Helm arguing that a carbon pricing system – one that applies to everything from flights to farming to food – is the only fair and sustainable way out of the climate crisis.
    Listen
    Science for the People, a long-running interview radio show and podcast, devotes a recent instalment to Eva Holland discussing her book Nerve: Adventures in the science of fear, inspired by her own traumas and phobias.
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    in Humans

    Netflix's John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is amazing and moving

    John Was Trying to Contact Aliens is a 16-minute film that brilliantly captures the eccentric 1970s world of UFO hunter John Shepherd, who built kit to hunt aliens, playing jazz and reggae to lure them

    Humans 26 August 2020
    By Simon Ings
    Beyond the UFO folk hero, Shepherd emerges as both sad and inspiring
    Courtesy of Netflix

    John Was Trying to Contact Aliens
    Matthew Killip

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    Netflix
    YOU have to admire Netflix’s ambition. As well as producing Oscar-winning short documentaries of its own (The White Helmets won in 2017; Period. End of Sentence. won in 2019), the streaming giant makes a regular effort to bring festival-winning factual films to a global audience.
    The latest is John Was Trying to Contact Aliens by New York-based UK director Matthew Killip, which won the Jury Award for a non-fiction short film at this year’s Sundance festival in Utah. In little over 15 minutes, it manages to turn the story of John Shepherd, an eccentric inventor who spent 30 years trying to contact extraterrestrials by broadcasting music millions of kilometres into space, into a tear-jerker of epic (indeed, cosmological) proportions.
    Never much cared for by his parents, Shepherd was brought up by adoptive grandparents in rural Michigan. A fan of classic science-fiction shows like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, Shepherd never could shake off the impression that a UFO sighting made on him as a child, and in 1972 the 21-year-old set about designing and constructing electronic equipment to launch a private search for extraterrestrial intelligence. His first set-up, built around an ultra-low frequency radio transmitter, soon expanded to fill over 100 square metres of his long-suffering grandparents’ home. It also acquired an acronym: Project STRAT – Special Telemetry Research And Tracking.
    “In 1972, 21-year-old John Shepherd set about building equipment to hunt for extraterrestrials”

    A two-storey high, 1000-watt, 60,000-volt, deep-space radio transmitter required a house extension – and all so Shepherd could beam jazz, reggae, Afro-pop and German electronica into the sky for hours every day, in the hope any passing aliens would be intrigued enough to come calling. He could also monitor any returning signals and UFOs.
    It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Killip to play up Shepherd’s eccentricity. Until now, Shepherd has been a folk hero in UFO-hunting circles. His photo portrait, surrounded by bizarre broadcasting kit of his own design, appears in Douglas Curren’s In Advance of the Landing: Folk concepts of outer space – the book TV producer Chris Carter says he raided for the first six episodes of his series The X-Files.
    Instead, Killip listens closely to Shepherd, discovers the romance, courage and loneliness of his life, and shapes it into a paean to our ability to out-imagine our circumstances and overreach our abilities. There is something heartbreakingly sad, as well as inspiring, about the way Killip pairs Shepherd’s lonely travails in snow-bound Michigan with footage, assembled by teams of who knows how many hundreds, from the archives of NASA.
    Shepherd ran out of money for his project in 1998, and having failed to make a connection with ET, quickly found a life-changing connection much closer to home.
    I won’t spoil the moment, but I can’t help but notice that, as a film-maker, Killip likes these sorts of structures. In one of his earlier works, The Lichenologist, about Kerry Knudsen, curator of lichens at the University of California, Riverside, Knudsen spends most of the movie staring at very small things before we are treated to the money shot: Knudsen perched on top of a mountain, whipped by the wind and explaining how his youthful psychedelic experiences inspired a lifetime of intense visual study. It is a shot that changes the meaning of the whole film.

    Simon also recommends…
    Films
    The Diatomist (2014)
    Matthew Killip
    An introduction to Klaus Kemp, whose fascination with German microscopist J. D. Möller inspired him to recreate the Victorian art of arranging diatoms in extraordinary patterns.
    Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
    Steven Spielberg
    Ufology was a global phenomenon by the time this blockbuster arrived. Countless imitations followed, but none with the charm and sincerity of the original.

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