This week’s biggest stories
Last week, we gazed up the sky and sized up the Milky Way as never before, this week we are at the bottom of the sea peering down at 2,000-year-old human bones found at the famous Antikythera shipwreck site. Ever since 1901 when the shipwreck was first discovered near the Greek island, it has had many a mention in science journals. Among its treasure trove of finds was an extraordinary geared device – the Antikythera mechanism – which modelled the heavens. But archaeologists have now recovered bones from a nearly complete skeleton, giving hopes of sequencing DNA from the 1st century BC shipwreck victim. In other news, a DNA study has confirmed that indigenous Australians are the most ancient civilisation on Earth. The analysis shows that their ancestors were probably the first humans to cross an ocean, and reveals evidence of prehistoric liaisons with an unknown hominin cousin.
Also this week, the Ig Noble prizes were announced. Among those recognised were researchers who made trousers for rats, lived like goats and foxes, and studied personalities of rocks, and philosophers for their work on pseudo-profound bullshit!
And finally, the European Space Agency expresses its vision for the next human outpost in space: a village on the moon, but not like the one you’re thinking of.
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Straight from the lab – top picks from our experts on the blog network
Could the Higgs boson have been discovered by accident? | Life and Physics
The Higgs boson is produced when particles are brought into collision with each other at high energies, as was done at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern. The Higgs boson could, and I think probably would, have turned up by accident, nevertheless. And the theorists would have told us what it meant, eventually.
Grants, cupcakes and the delicate balance of being a scientist mother | Occam’s corner
Working parents often talk about how they struggle with the idea that they aren’t doing either role well. And I am no different. I want to win the Scientist Mum Nobel. I want to earn a steady grant income, publish good papers, and be the sort of mother who can whip up a dozen cupcakes and take them out on a tray into the back garden.
From concrete to coral: breeze blocks make a splash regenerating reefs | Notes & Theories
Nowadays, you can have your ashes added to the concrete which makes artificial reefs, and even have a plaque attached in memorial. More recently we’ve seen news stories of 3D printed reefs. These small-scale projects are entirely laudable, although with climate change currently blamed for the biggest mass coral bleaching event in history, we can only hope that it’s not too little too late.
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Monday Mind Games
The optical illusion in the above image is apparent. It’s too good to be real. But this week mind gamers were asked why a picture of Margaret Thatcher was so important for understanding the human visual system.
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Science Weekly podcast
Has string theory become too fashionable? Do we place too much faith in quantum mechanics? And does mathematics exist in the external objective world? Ian Sample talks to Sir Roger Penrose, above, about his new book Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe.
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Eye on science – this week’s top video
Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft filmed Saturn for almost 44 hours in April 2016 to create this video showing four Saturnian days as the planet turns. A day on Saturn is about 10-and-a-half hours. Cassini captures storms on Saturn’s surface and its many rings as they unfold. In April 2017, Cassini will move towards Saturn’s rings and then to the planet itself.
