The brightest take on this week’s science
Welcome to another week of asking the big questions!
Like: What if a spacecraft visited a black hole?
And: Are jellyfish on the brink of world domination? I mean… why else would they shut down a nuclear power plant?
Also in this issue:
🤯 A mind-blowing science fact
🔬 A microscope mystery
✨ A low-key genius breakthrough
Let’s see where the science takes us!
LOOK UP
What if a spacecraft visited a black hole?
(remotevfx/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
Astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi has conceived of a wild new way to study black holes.
“I realized that an interstellar mission to the closest black hole is not unrealistic – but nobody had ever proposed it,” Bambi from Fudan University in China told ScienceAlert.
In a boundary-pushing proposal, the astrophysicist has now laid out the long-term plans.
The first step is to find a suitable destination – a black hole that won’t take millions of years to reach.
The next challenge is to get there. A spacecraft would need to travel at a third the speed of light to reach a nearby black hole in a reasonable amount of time, Bambi calculates.
"It may sound really crazy, and in a sense closer to science fiction,” he says. “But people said we'd never detect gravitational waves because they're too weak. We did – 100 years later.”
Humans are not to be underestimated. We have a history of beating the odds and turning fiction to fact.
HEADLINES
What else we're watching
🏅This week’s most read: Wild pigs turn 'neon blue' in California, triggering warnings
LOOK OUT
Jellyfish shut down a nuclear plant
(Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
The largest nuclear power plant in western Europe was shut down last week by a swarm of jellyfish.
The sea creatures clogged so many ocean cooling pumps that officials were forced to turn off several reactors for immediate maintenance.
Thankfully, the situation is under control, and there’s no risk to personnel or the environment.
But this isn’t the first time that the jellyfish have turned off our power.
The same thing has happened at power plants in Sweden, the US, Japan, the Philippines, and China. Experts think that as human activity dramatically changes the makeup of our oceans, jellyfish will only continue to proliferate beyond control.
Where will they attack next?
ZOOM ZONE
Microscope mystery: What do you see?
(Choksawatdikorn/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)
A) Frosted glass
B) Cracked ice
C) Dragonfly wing
D) Leaf epidermis
Answer at the bottom.
LOW-KEY GENIUS
First video of a human embryo implanting
Human embryo compaction and invasion. (BIST)
You and I were once nothing more than a clump of cells in search of a home. But how did those cells become one with our mothers’ bodies?
A new platform has now for the first time enabled researchers to record the exact moment a human embryo implants, using an artificial matrix in place of a uterus.
"We've opened a window into a stage of development that was previously hidden,” bioengineer Samuel Ojosnegros of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) told ScienceAlert.
More than half of failed pregnancies happen during implantation or soon after. At last, scientists can begin to understand why…
WOW FACTOR
Science fact of the week
(Vitomir Maričić/Facebook)
Humans can accomplish some mind-boggling feats if we put our minds to it.
This year, on June 14, Croatian freediver Vitomir Maričić set a world record when he held his breath for 29 minutes and 3 seconds.
That’s longer than a bottlenose dolphin, and 5 minutes longer than the previous Guinness World Record holder.
Cool as a sea cucumber…
DOPAMINE HIT
Before you go…
Fly in the face of danger.
Microscope answer: A leaf epidermis.
The waxy coating on the outside of leaves isn’t just for protection. Evidence suggests that each epidermal cell acts as a ‘lens’, focusing light to the interior, like a bunch of little eyes.
That’s all for today… see you next week!
Over and out,
- Carly
