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    The Silent Sea review: South Korean series is a slice of space horror

    From a parched Earth, Song Ji-an joins a lunar mission to find out how her sister died. With nods to the 1972 Solaris and Alien, word-of-mouth hit The Silent Sea is an intriguing show, says Bethan Ackerley

    Humans

    7 September 2022

    By Bethan Ackerley
    Song Ji-an (Bae Doona) joins a mission that finds a terrifying truthNetflix
    The Silent Sea
    Director Choi Hang-yong
    Netflix
    IF YOU live in Europe, this seems an appropriate time to watch The Silent Sea. With even rainy nations touched by what may be the continent’s worst drought in 500 years, it is easier than ever to imagine an arid future for Earth.
    This South Korean sci-fi thriller debuted on Netflix in December last year to little fanfare, but its acolytes have spread the word and it is now a word-of-mouth … More

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    Two new books about sharks reveal how and why we should conserve them

    Paul de Gelder’s Shark and David Shiffman’s Why Sharks Matter aim to turn the all-too-common public panic about the predator into interest in their conservation

    Humans

    7 September 2022

    By Elle Hunt
    A bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) swimming in the Pacific Oceanshutterstock/Leonardo Gonzalez
    Shark, Paul de Gelder (HarperCollins) and Why Sharks Matter, David Shiffman (Johns Hopkins University Press)
    BY FEBRUARY 2009, Paul de Gelder had spent thousands of hours in the water as part of his job as a diver in the Australian Navy.
    Early one morning, he was conducting a counterterrorism trial, swimming solo around Sydney Harbour, when he was attacked by a 3-metre-long shark. The fish slammed into him with its jaws, pinning de Gelder’s right hand to his leg. He recalls … More

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    Child’s foot was removed 31,000 years ago in earliest known amputation

    A 31,000-year-old Stone Age skeleton has been found with the lower part of its leg cleanly removed, and the bones reveal that the child survived for several years after it happened

    Humans

    7 September 2022

    By Clare Wilson
    The left tibia and fibula end suddenly (on the left) where they were cutTim Maloney
    A Stone Age child living 31,000 years ago in what is now Borneo seems to have had their leg carefully amputated above the foot and survived for several years afterwards.
    This suggests that the hunter-gatherer community the person was part of had the medical skills to stop someone bleeding to death or dying from infection – both common hazards of amputation before modern medicine, says Maxime Aubert at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.
    Before the latest finding, … More

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    Here’s the James Webb telescope’s first direct image of an exoplanet

    This is the first picture of an exoplanet from the James Webb Space Telescope.

    “We’re actually measuring photons from the atmosphere of the planet itself,” says astronomer Sasha Hinkley of the University of Exeter in England. Seeing those particles of light, “to me, that’s very exciting.”

    The planet is about seven times the mass of Jupiter and lies more than 100 times farther from its star than Earth sits from the sun, direct observations of exoplanet HIP 65426 b show. It’s also young, about 10 million or 20 million years old, compared with the more than 4-billion-year-old Earth, Hinkley and colleagues report in a study submitted August 31 at arXiv.org.

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    Those three features — size, distance and youth — made HIP 65426 b relatively easy to see, and so a good planet to test JWST’s observing abilities. And the telescope has once again surpassed astronomers’ expectations (SN: 7/11/22).

    “We’ve demonstrated really how powerful JWST is as an instrument for the direct imaging of exoplanets,” says exoplanet astronomer and coauthor Aarynn Carter of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

    Astronomers have found more than 5,000 planets orbiting other stars (SN: 3/22/22). But almost all of those planets were detected indirectly, either by the planets tugging on the stars with their gravity or blocking starlight as they cross between the star and a telescope’s view.

    To see a planet directly, astronomers have to block out the light from its star and let the planet’s own light shine, a tricky process. It’s been done before, but for only about 20 planets total (SN: 11/13/08; SN: 3/14/13; SN: 7/22/20).

    “In every area of exoplanet discovery, nature has been very generous,” says MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, who was not involved in the JWST discovery. “This is the one area where nature didn’t really come through.”

    In 2017, astronomers discovered HIP 65426 b and took a direct image of it using an instrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. But because that telescope is on the ground, it can’t see all the light coming from the exoplanet. Earth’s atmosphere absorbs a lot of the planet’s infrared wavelengths — exactly the wavelengths JWST excels at observing. The space telescope observed the planet on July 17 and July 30, capturing its glow in four different infrared wavelengths.

    “These are wavelengths of light that we’ve never ever seen exoplanets in before,” Hinkley says. “I’ve literally been waiting for this day for six years. It feels amazing.”

    Pictures in these wavelengths will help reveal how planets formed and what their atmospheres are made of.

    “Direct imaging is our future,” Seager says. “It’s amazing to see the Webb performing so well.”

    While the team has not yet studied the atmosphere of HIP 65426 b in detail, it did report the first spectrum — a measurement of light in a range of wavelengths — of an object orbiting a different star. The spectrum allows a deeper look into the object’s chemistry and atmosphere, astronomer Brittany Miles of UC Santa Cruz and colleagues reported September 1 at arXiv.org.

    That object is called VHS 1256 b. It’s as heavy as 20 Jupiters, so it may be more like a transition object between a planet and a star, called a brown dwarf, than a giant planet. JWST found evidence that the amounts of carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere of the orb are out of equilibrium. That means the atmosphere is getting mixed up, with winds or currents pulling molecules from lower depths to its top and vice versa. The telescope also saw signs of sand clouds, a common feature in brown dwarf atmospheres (SN: 7/8/22).

    “This is probably a violent and turbulent atmosphere that is filled with clouds,” Hinkley says.

    HIP 65426 b and VHS 1256 b are unlike anything we see in our solar system. They’re more than three times the distance of Uranus from their stars, which suggests they formed in a totally different way from more familiar planets. In future work, astronomers hope to use JWST to image smaller planets that sit closer to their stars.

    “What we’d like to do is get down to study Earths, wouldn’t we? We’d really like to get that first image of an Earth orbiting another star,” Hinkley says. That’s probably out of JWST’s reach — Earth-sized planets are still too small see. But a Saturn? That may be something JWST could focus its sights on.  More

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    Who is Ancestor X? The biggest mystery in human evolution

    The search for the direct ancestor of humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans has been protracted and puzzling. Now, fresh clues are adding a surprising twist to the tale

    Humans

    31 August 2022

    By Colin Barras
    Martin O’Neill
    THE year is 1933, and China is partly under the control of invading Japanese forces. During construction of a bridge near Harbin in the north-east, a local man working for the Japanese makes a stunning discovery: an ancient human skull. He recognises the skull’s value right away. Determined not to hand the fossil over to the occupiers, he buries it in an abandoned well.
    There the skull remained until 2018, when, shortly before his death, the man told his family of its existence. In due course, the Harbin skull came into scientific hands. It was worth the wait, not least for the clues it offers those searching for the enigmatic Ancestor X – the species that gave rise to humanity.
    For as long as researchers have been finding ancient human-like fossils, one question has been nagging away in the back of their minds: how are we related to other prehistoric groups and species? In particular, how do we fit in with the Neanderthals and Denisovans who shared Earth with us for most of our existence? It is this question that the discovery of Ancestor X promises to answer. However, the hunt for it has been fiendish, with major twists and turns along the way. In recent years, it has also led to some surprising discoveries, including the revelation that we had misunderstood the way our species, Homo sapiens, evolved. Now, with the re-emergence of the Harbin skull, the search for Ancestor X looks set to get easier in some ways – and a lot more difficult in others.
    When it comes to the big picture of human evolution, universal consensus … More

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    How miracle berries turn sour foods sweet

    The fruit of Synsepalum dulcificum, a plant native to West Africa, doesn’t taste sugary on its own, but any sour food you eat afterwards will turn miraculously sweet

    Humans

    31 August 2022

    By Sam Wong
    Wirestock, Inc./Alamy
    MOST people find sugar hard to resist, and with good reason. Our big brains need lots of energy and sugary foods provide plenty of it. But when calories are too readily available, it is easy to overdo it.
    There has been no shortage of research on sugar substitutes that trigger a sweet sensation without the calories, such as aspartame and sucralose, but these compounds also taste slightly bitter for many people. What’s more, evidence from animal and human studies has linked some to glucose intolerance and weight gain.
    One promising alternative is found in the fruit of Synsepalum dulcificum … More

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    Don’t Miss: A fantastical journey through The Science of Middle Earth

    New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss

    Humans

    31 August 2022

    Ast Freelancer/Alamy
    Visit
    The Science of Middle Earth is a live talk, based on the eponymous book, that explores the role of science in the writing of J. R. R. Tolkien. Take an unexpected journey to the Royal Institution in London at 7pm BST on 8 September.

    Read
    Sweet in Tooth and Claw is a new attempt to rebalance our view of evolution. Author Kristin Ohlson argues that, despite appearances, cooperation plays as big a role in survival and adaptation as competition. On sale from 8 September.

    Read
    Seasons of Storm and Wonder by nature writer … More

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    Planting Clues review: Intriguing tales about plants’ role in crime

    From working out a dead person’s last meal to the possible poisoning of the Buddha, a new book from David J. Gibson has some great tales about how plants help solve crimes – and are used to commit them

    Humans

    31 August 2022

    By Kate Douglas

    Forensic botany can be a key witness in cases of murder or rapemladenbalinovac/Getty Images
    Planting Clues: How plants solve crimesDavid J. Gibson (Oxford University Press)

    THEY called him the Sherlock Holmes of France – and, in fact, his antics did inspire the novelist Arthur Conan Doyle.

    When Edmond Locard established his forensic science lab in 1912, the world had never seen anything like it. The place wasn’t much to look at – cramped quarters on the fourth floor of the Palais de Justice in Lyon – but there Locard set about laying … More