IT training very interesting TruePDF march april 2019

ALying in the grave Bass founded the first human decomposition research facility at the University of Tennessee after recognising how misleading the decay process could be.. 25 MAY 1961

interesting VER

the quest for knowledge

World-famous author and physicist laid to

rest alongside Newton

A BRIEF HISTORY OF

STEPHEN HAWKING

p.55

LAZINESS

DEAD RIGHT

Plus:

• Brave South African filmmakers

take on rhino poaching

• Mimicking synapses to boost computers

• What would happen if everyone

on the planet went vegan?

Refresh your mind

Corpses can tell you a lot – if

you know how to read them

8 shortcuts your brain takes

Cognitive biases: when your brain

gets it wrong

p.60

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taking you to more new and exciting destinations

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Choose Airlink

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Fair and square

The highly organised fashion of

Barcelona’s bustling streets is only

revealed when the city is viewed

from above, as captured here by

a drone This district is known as

Eixample and was designed by

pioneering city planner Ildefons

Cerdà to maximise sunlight and

ventilation, while the chamfered

corners improve visibility at

junctions.

Focus

Corpses can tell you a lot – if

you know how to read them

of decay and fossilisation By monitoring how corpses decompose, she hopes to increase our understanding of the subtleties of the process and improve the accuracy with which we can locate and identify dead people and determine their time of death.

In order to do this, Williams, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Huddersfield, taphonomy facility in the UK

There are already nine such facilities – colloquially known

as ‘body farms’ – around the

14 46/2019

Corpses can tell you a lot – if you know how to read them And just like language, decomposition is dependent on location Which is why some researchers say we need to start studying the dialect of decay

7 TEXT: ROB BANINO

world: seven in the US, one in Australia and another in the Netherlands So why do we need one in the UK?

“What we know about decomposition has come out of the American facilities,”

explains Williams “Before the first one opened in 1981, we really didn’t know very much

in different conditions The research that’s been going on since then has really boosted our knowledge.

“And one of the things we’ve learned is that decomposition

is incredibly dependent upon local conditions: the surrounding temperature, rainfall, humidity, soil type, ecology, insects, scavengers – it’s all dependent on these variables So, the information

coming out of the existing facilities is very useful but it’s not directly applicable to forensic cases in the UK.”

In short, people in the UK don’t decay in the same way as they do elsewhere In fact, people don’t always decay the same way in the same country

And we wouldn’t know that if

it wasn’t for the pioneering work of forensic anthropologist

Dr William Bass

ALying in the grave

Bass founded the first human decomposition research facility

at the University of Tennessee after recognising how misleading the decay process could be The realisation came

in 1977 after local police contacted Bass and asked him to examine some

Students excavate a corpse

at the body farm at Texas State University.

7 TEXT: HAYLEY BENNETT

MAKING LIGHT WORK Koppert Cress greenhouse, Netherlands

Under the neon pink glow of hundreds of LED lights, workers at the Koppert greenhouse in the Netherlands tend to their micro-vegetables

While the lighting may suggest they’ve been sucked into a 1980s

videogame – like Tron but with more cress – it’s actually a cost-saving

measure A combination of red and blue light is cheaper to run than the normal colour and the micro-veg don’t mind it

Covering 10 hectares, Koppert’s range includes 33 varieties of cress, wheatgrass, edible flowers and other indoor crops, which are shipped all

be grown without soil, on a wet felt pad, and sold as a living crop.

6 Spoor in the Skye

Dinosaurs left only footprints, took only photographs in Scotland

SPACE

7 Holiday in the heights

Start saving – holidays above the atmosphere are almost here

BODY

10 Why is stretching such a pleasure?

One reason to go to gym…

FOOD

11 Can you unboil an egg?

Useful if your order was wrong at the restaurant

CULTURE

12 Why can’t everyone roll their ‘r’s?

This is rrrrrreeeaaally important to know

ENVIRONMENT

13 Why do countries a long way from a plate boundary still get earthquakes?

Giant moles, possibly

This year marks half a century since

the first man walked on the moon,

with NASA – the foremost

innovators in the field of space

exploration – having their 60th

birthday last year (go to page 26 for a

celebration of that journey)

The pace of innovation has sped up

considerably since 1969, with the

result that we spend considerably

more time looking forward now than

we do looking back To that end,

even our bodies become useful tools,

whether dead (Down on the body

farm, page 14) or alive (Brain gain,

page 22) Making sure the latter is

the more prevalent condition is one

of the driving forces behind some of

the spectacular advances in farming

and food production (The seeds of

change, page 44).

Sadly, many of the markers of where

we may end up if we’re not careful

about the way we manage our

resources are living creatures,

including the remaining rhino

populations (the South African film

poaching crisis, page 52), and South

Africa’s magnificent but vulnerable

crane species, whose populations are

some of the first to suffer when their

habitats are affected (see page 40)

In happier news, part two of our

examination of the positive effects of

laziness (page 60) begins with the

headline Lazy ways to save the

planet So we just might be okay…

Keep your questions coming to

VI@panorama.co.za If you’d like to

subscribe, or to give a gift that keeps

on giving, take advantage of our

special deals at www.coolmags.co.za/

29 JULY 1958 President Eisenhower creates the agency

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, it fell to President Eisenhower (centre) to soothe the fear that was gripping his nation Knowing space could soon become a battleground in the burgeoning Cold War, he decided to establish a civilian space agency such that space exploration could be a peaceful endeavour for humanity

He signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on 29 July 1958, formally putting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the leadership of administrator T Keith Glennan (right) and deputy administrator Hugh L Dryden (left).

With 2019 marking 50 years since the fi rst moon landings, we look back at NASA’s illustrious history, through 20 of its most iconic moments

7 TEXT: AMY SHIRA TEITEL PHOTOGRAPHY: NASA

TH

MOON AND BACK 11 OCTOBER 1958

NASA launches fi rst spacecraft, Pioneer 1

later, the agency launched its fi rst spacecraft:

Pioneer 1 This probe was designed to study the ionising radiation, cosmic micrometeorites in the space around the Earth and moon A mechanical problem meant that it never reached the moon, but it did return useful data on the environment around the Earth.

9 APRIL 1959 NASA announces its fi rst astronauts, the Mercury 7

NASA’s unoffi cial goal when it was conceived was to put an American in space before the Soviet Union launched a cosmonaut For this, America needed astronauts Exhausting and thorough medical and psychological testing found seven men – all experienced military pilots with combat experience – to be the best suited for the job When they were introduced to the public in April 1959, they were immediate heroes.

25 MAY 1961 President Kennedy announces goal

of landing a man on the moon

The Soviet Union scored a series of

fi rsts over the United States, including putting the fi rst satellite and the fi rst man into space Seeking

to level the playing fi eld, President learned that all studies said a moon landing within the decade was possible With 15 minutes of suborbital spacefl ight under America’s belt, he publicly promised

a man on the moon in a famous address to Congress.

World-famous author and physicist laid to

rest alongside Newton and Darwin

A BRIEF HISTORY OF

STEPHEN HAWKING

p 55

Plus:

• Brave South African fi lmmakers take on rhino poaching

Mimicking synapses to boost computers

on the planet went vegan?

• Can plants communicate with insects?

Refresh your mind

60 YEARS IN SPACE

TO SAVE THE PLANET

Sure, you could convert your house into a solar-panelled, rainwater- harvesting no-waste eco paradise But doesn’t that all require a bit too much… well… effort? Never fear, these tips can help you greenify your life without breaking a sweat

7WORDS: LUIS VILLAZON ILLUSTRATIONS: ADAM GALE

1 Don’t wash your clothes

Or at least, not so often A single load of laundry generates 600g of CO2, even if you wash at 30°C and dry it on the washing line Tumble-drying triples this

Levi’s jeans both agree that you can wear trousers and skirts at least fi ve times before washing them

The same goes for wool and synthetic sweaters, jackets and sweatshirts If every household in the UK alone saved a whole laundry load per week, they would slash CO2 emissions by 840,000 tonnes a year For ordinary laundry, halving the amount of detergent will leave your clothes just as clean while reducing the phosphates that end up in our rivers

These cause algal blooms that kill fi sh and inhibit the natural biodegradation of organic substances.

fi ve times, generate 17% less CO2 per litre of milk than single-use plastic jugs This rises to 60%

savings after 20 uses You can even extend your breakfast laziness and get fruit juice delivered in glass bottles, too.

3 Use a dishwasher

Washing up by hand can use less energy than running a dishwasher, but only with an effi cient technique If you rinse the plates and dishes under a hot tap and change the water in the bowl a few times, your handwashing session can generate 8kg

of CO2, compared with 1kg for a dishwasher cycle at 65°C Using the dishwasher’s ‘eco’ cycle will drop the washing temperature to 55°C and this reduces the carbon footprint by another 20% Loading and unloading the dishwasher also takes just a quarter of the time of doing the washing up Remember, though, that dishwashers are only effi cient when they are fully loaded Soak dishes in cold water or run a cold rinse cycle while you wait for enough dishes to run a full load.

LAZIN ESS

IS GO OD FOR Y OU!

PART TWO

A brief history

of him

p.26

p.60

PLUS

fell in one giant drop?

modules for a Mars mission?

hydrogen at once and explode like

an H-bomb?

make fragrance-free products?

insects?

between an identical twin and

a clone?

the planet suddenly went vegan?

Acoustics and the wind p.79

Making headway

All the questions you didn’t know you wanted the answer to including:

52 On the horns of a dilemma

South African film investigates the rhino-poaching trade

MEDICINE

73 Start your En-genes!

A unicycle made of DNA? Why not?

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the quest for knowledge

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of addiction, due to the areas in the brain that govern decision- making, judgement and self-control are still developing Most drugs affect the brain’s reward circuit by flooding it with dopamine This reinforces the pleasurable feeling gained from drug use and encourages repeated use It also puts addicts at risk of overdosing, as the pleasurable high received is felt less intense with repeated exposure, leading to more frequent use or larger dosages, putting the addict at risk of overdosing.

There is no known single factor capable of predicting addiction

A combination of any or all of the above factors increases the risk of addiction, but still doesn’t guarantee it.

Predicting addiction

addicted to drugs?

Amani Ngwendun, Boksburg

Sadly, there is no simple answer Drug addiction is a complex disease with the drugs themselves changing the way the brain functions, making quitting even more difficult.

There are a number of factors that dictate why some people become addicted and others don’t.

Biology: Genetic makeup contributes half the risk of addiction Other factors such

as mental disorders, gender and ethnicity are also contributary factors.

Environment: This includes family and friends, finances and quality of life Poor parenting, abuse, peer

Questions, suggestions or observations? Share them with us:

A Editor, Very Interesting, Private Bag x4, Kyalami, 1684 A Twitter: @V_I_mag

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Most golf balls have between 300 and 500 dimples, which have an average depth of about 0.25mm

The dimples on a golf ball have been tested to reduce drag on the aforementioned spherical spinning body The dimples create a thin turbulent boundary layer of air that clings to the ball’s surface

This allows the smoothly flowing air to follow the ball’s surface a little further around the back side

of the ball – this reduces the pressure from drag and the size of the wake The dimples also add to the ball’s lift, allowing it to travel greater distances.

Research on this topic in 2009 looked at a car accessory called Fastskinz MPG-Plus, which claimed to mimic a golf ball’s pitted appearance and improve fuel consumption In a test, a car treated with the product actually showed slightly worse fuel consumption Two vehicles (one

Scooby Doo

found grass

hilarious

to an increase of cavity-causing bacteria Streptococcus mutans.

We live longer, and they say getting old is not for sissies Our teeth prove that! Apart from healthier eating habits, animals also don’t smoke, and species such as sharks and many rodents renew their teeth in their lifetime

And animals such as horses have teeth which grow permanently.

Fangs for nothing!

7 Why are animals’ teeth so

much better than humans’

teeth? They don’t have to see a

dentist or brush their teeth – it’s

not fair!

Volker Wesso, via email

Our lifestyle and civilisation

have to answer for the decay of

the human tooth Processed,

greasy convenience foods and drinks high in sugars and acids weaken our teeth Animals, on the other hand, eat (by and large) unprocessed, raw, natural, healthy fibrous food, which actually cleans the animals’ teeth.

Like us, animals have bacterial flora

in their mouths, some good some bad Unlike us, animals don’t eat bad carbohydrates, which can lead

canine teeth, at 0.91m (3 feet).

toads do not.

sharp edges on its proboscis that help to cut through skin.

Shorts

More than that, there is not much information regarding specific licence discs or registration processes other than the Government’s list of “Motor vehicles exempt from registration” Reg 5 This includes:

tracks.

its dimensions or the mass thereof or the mass of a part thereof, may not be operated

on a public road in terms of the Act, and which is not so operated.

Department of Defence is the title-holder and owner  

Hollow promises

the dimples on a golf ball

creates a wave of air in front of

it, reducing the friction on the

ball Why is that design not used

on cars, helmets and airplanes?

Wouldn’t we save energy and

petrol? 

Ehren Momberg, Cape Town

The key factor seems to be the

words ‘spherical spinning body’

with and one without Fastskinz) were driven from the same starting point on cruise control with regular monitoring of the fuel readings They were driven until the fuel light came on and then both filled up and information compared.

There is also the consideration of how a car with dimples would look – buyers would likely think it’s ugly.

Army surplus

vehicles have licence discs?

Teddy Ndlazi, Nelspruit

Old military registration plates used to start with the letter ‘R’, followed by a sequential number

on a plain white background

Post-1980 the letter changed to an

‘M’ followed by a sequential number on a plain white background.

Spoor in the Skye

dating back around 170

million years have been found in

a shallow lagoon on the coast of

the Isle of Skye in Scotland’s

Inner Hebrides Researchers from

the University of Edinburgh

measured, photographed and

analysed about 50 footprints in a

tidal area at Brothers’ Point on

Skye’s Trotternish peninsula

The find is globally important as

it’s rare evidence of the Middle

Jurassic, from which few fossil

sites have been found, they say

In order to overcome the tidal conditions, the researchers used drones to photograph and map the site They then used a paired set of cameras, along with specialised software, to produce 3D models of the footprints They identified two defined trackways and many other isolated footprints

“This new site records two different types of dinosaurs – long-necked cousins of the

Brontosaurus and sharp-toothed

cousins of the T rex – hanging

around a shallow lagoon, back when Scotland was much warmer and dinosaurs were beginning their march to global

dominance,” said the University

of Edinburgh’s Dr Steve Brusatte

By analysing the clearest prints, the team was able to determine the overall shape of the track outline, the shape and orientation of the toes, and the presence of claws

such as E coli and C diff

200

HOURS

The time we need to spend with an acquaintance before they become a true friend, according to a study carried out at the University

of Kansas

30%

The amount of plastic bags found in marine litter in UK seas has dropped by this

Natural polymers from planted trees

hemicellulose, lignin and extracts (waxes, fatty acids, resin acids and sugars) Their various properties make them suitable ingredients in countless bio-products One example is cellulose, the most abundant organic compound on Earth and the major component of wood Cellulose can

be spun into textiles like viscose and rayon Extracted from wood and added to foodstuffs,

detergents and cosmetics after chemical modification, microcrystalline cellulose acts as

an abrasive, absorbent or adhesive;

an anticaking, binding or bulking agent It can stabilise emulsions or increase viscosity It is applied as a filler in low-fat yoghurt, tablets and washing powders and is used to make cellophane wrap and other biodegradable plastics, among other things

thepaperstory.co.za

California cyclin’

has collaborated with

Vintage Electric on the Jeff Clark

Signature Cruz – an electric bike

that’ll make you feel like you’re

cruising down the sunny

Californian coast, even if you’re

just battling Tuesday morning

traffic in Durban

Powered by a 52V battery,

Vintage Electric claims its

direct-drive hub motor is

completely silent and takes only

two hours to recharge It has a

56km range, and a top speed of 57km/h The Signature Cruz also has Shimano hydraulic disc

brakes with a regenerative function that pumps power back into the battery when you brake

The Signature Cruz’s surf vibe is all in the accessories The handlebars, seat and removable surfboard rack are wrapped in leather The rear rack is mounted with insulated panniers that double as cooler bags and there’s even a bottle opener attached

Front and rear LED lights mean you can set out before dawn and return after dusk

Vintage Electric Jeff Clark Signature Cruz

R75,000, vintageelectricbikes.

com

institutes in Korea designed Fribo, a robot for your home, to foster interaction between young people living alone Revealed in March 2018, Fribo listens for activity in your house and reports it to your friends in an effort to encourage chat Fribo recognises activities such

as someone opening a door or turning on a light (it doesn’t record voices) and shares those updates with your network, prompting friends to reach out

to each other by texting or calling Users can also respond

to an update by clapping near their Fribo, which can send a message back, such as

‘welcome home’ to someone arriving to an empty flat

you might want to consider

the Aurora Station for your

holiday in 2022 Your trip will

start in Cape Canaveral,

Florida, where you’ll be

launched 320km above the

Earth’s surface to board the

Aurora Station for a 12-day

stay Orion Span, a Californian

space technology start-up, is

running the station, which they

describe as the world’s first

luxury space hotel It’s being

developed by the company’s

team of space industry

veterans, who have 140

years of space experience

between them

The holiday will set you back a

whopping R120 million per

person, but you only need to

put down a R1.1 million

deposit to secure a spot

That’s much cheaper than

previous holidays to space –

to date, eight people have

taken trips into orbit as

tourists, each paying an estimated R280 to R560 million

Planning is essential

Holidaymakers will need to complete three months of training before leaving, most

of which can be done online

The four guests on each trip will be joined by two crew members, both of whom are ex-astronauts Once in space,

you’ll be able to float around

in zero gravity and take part in experiments, such as trying to grow food in orbit The Aurora Station will complete an orbit

of Earth every 90 minutes, so you’ll have hundreds of opportunities to gaze down – you can post any snaps you take to Instagram via the station’s high-speed internet connection

LENGTH: 13 METRES

their rivals

THE BILINGUAL

Ukhuluma isiZulu? A study at Montreal’s Concordia

University has found that speaking a second language may help to protect you from age-related cognitive decline by boosting tissue density in brain

areas associated with memory

UNDERGROUND COMMUTERS

Sound levels on some London Underground journeys can reach upwards of 85 decibels, leaving passengers at risk from potential hearing loss and tinnitus, researchers at University College London have found

BAD TIMES GOOD TIMES

It looks like Groucho Marx was onto

something: mobile, expressive

eyebrows help humans to communicate

subtle emotions and may have played a

crucial role in the survival and success

of human ancestors, research from the

University of York suggests

Our early ancestors sported

pronounced brow ridges, which, like the

antlers on a stag, were seen as a signal

of dominance and aggression In

contrast, modern humans have a much

smoother forehead with eyebrows

capable of a much greater range of

movement, able to express a range of

subtle emotions This allowed humans

to establish large social groups and

may have been key in allowing us to

out-compete the now extinct

Neanderthals

The team used 3D-scanning software to

map the pronounced brow ridge of

Kabwe 1, a skull belonging to a species

of archaic hominin, Homo

heidelbergensis, who lived between

600,000 and 200,000 years ago

It has previously been proposed that the strong ridge was either to fill in the

space between Homo heidelbergensis’s

brain cavities and eye sockets, or to help stabilise their skulls while they chewed However, computer simulations suggested neither of these to be the case, leaving the team to conclude that the ridges became less pronounced to help our ancestors communicate

“Eyebrow movements allow us to express complex emotions as well as perceive the emotions of others A rapid ‘eyebrow flash’ is a cross-cultural sign of recognition and openness to social interaction and pulling our eyebrows up at the middle is an expression of sympathy Tiny movements of the eyebrows are also a key component to identifying

trustworthiness and deception,” said study co-author Dr Penny Spikins

“Eyebrows are the missing part of the puzzle of how modern humans managed

to get on so much better with each other than other now-extinct hominins.”

Mobile eyebrows may have helped

early human ancestors to survive

Modern human skull

(white) compared to

Homo heidelbergensis

(brown), which has a

much more prominent

brow ridge.

After a night’s sleep or an afternoon spent staring at a computer, there’s little

better than a good stretch to release tight muscles Not only does stretching

clear your mind by allowing you to focus on your body, but it also releases endorphins

Blood flow to the muscles increases after a long stretch Muscles are controlled by the

nervous system, which has two main components: ‘sympathetic’ (fight or flight) and

‘parasympathetic’ (rest and digest) Static stretching increases activity in the

parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation Although the heart rate may

rise during a stretch, it tends to decrease after

tough roots and grasses They have an extremely slow digestion that takes up to 14 days to complete Sitting in the tightly packed stack of intestines for so long, the faeces form a roughly cuboid shape because it fits better into the available space By the time they exit, the droppings are so dry and hard that the circular anus isn’t strong enough to squeeze them into a rounded shape

Why is stretching such a pleasure?

Peter West, Ferndale

Why do wombats make cube-shaped poos?

Lily Mabona, Hammanskraal

Do dogs recognise their own breeds?

Sam Govender, Chatsworth

Although stars cannot form in the voids between galaxies (since the density

of matter is far too low), there are in fact large numbers of ‘intergalactic

stars’ It has been estimated, for example, that 10% of the mass of the Virgo

galaxy cluster is in the form of these stellar interlopers How they got there is

still a matter of debate, but there are two possible processes, both resulting

from gravitational interactions First, stars can be expelled from their parent

galaxy if it collides, merges or passes close to another galaxy Second, if a star

has a close encounter with a supermassive black hole (usually residing at the

galactic centre), it can be accelerated to extremely high velocities, eventually

leaving its parent galaxy altogether

Are there any stars

between galaxies?

Leigh Baker, Benoni

around for years? Very Interesting answers them! Mail your questions to VI@panorama.co.za

there are around 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

contain only a few hundred or thousand stars

contains over 100 billion stars.

FLASH

1 MASSIVE DROP

The UK receives around 1,200mm of rain

– more than four times the volume of

every lake and reservoir in the UK If you

could form it into a single drop, it would be

8km across From a typical cloud height of

2,000m, this raindrop would take about

30 seconds to fall and would be travelling

at 300km/h when it hit the ground

What would happen if a country’s annual rainfall fell

in one giant drop?

2 INITIAL IMPACT

The kinetic energy of 291 billion tonnes of water impacting at this speed is about one terrajoule This is equivalent to 250 megatonnes of TNT, or almost half as much as the combined energy of every nuclear weapons test in history If it fell in the middle of the country, Leicester would

be instantly incinerated and then smashed flat by a superheated bow wave of compressed air beneath the water bomb

3 FLOODWATER

As the drop hits the ground, its upper edge

is still at an altitude of 8,000m, and as the water falls inexorably downwards it is forced sideways to form a supersonic tidal wave over a kilometre high Every tree and building in its path for at least 100km in every direction is torn up The whole of the Midlands, East Anglia and much of the south of England is flooded to a depth of

at least a metre

Microgravity, such as that experienced on the International Space Station, has no effect on the menstrual cycle In the 1960s, some experts warned against sending women into space over fears that menstruation and PMS could affect their ability to work There were also concerns that blood might flow back into the body, pooling in the abdomen and causing peritonitis The fears were unfounded However, the issue of storing sanitary items, together with limited washing water, means that women in space tend to take oral contraceptive pills

to prevent menstruation during their mission

When an egg is boiled, the transparent liquid (albumen) around the yolk

turns white That’s because the heat has caused the proteins within it

to tangle up randomly In 2015, a team of chemists in the US and Australia

showed they could reverse the process They added urea to liquefy the boiled

egg whites, then put them in a vortex device to pull apart the proteins and

return them to their original state It may sound like a party trick, but the

technique has important applications in repairing faulty proteins used in

medicine and industry

What effect does microgravity have on menstruation?

Harriet Lester, Sandton

Can you unboil an egg?

Brian Mbambo, Muizenberg

It’s a misconception that some people are

destined never to roll their ‘r’s In countries

with ‘r’-rolling languages, many people learn

the skill in childhood Spanish is an example of

one such language However, those yet to

master the skill need only to practise The key

is to tuck your tongue behind your upper front

teeth, resting the tip on the ‘alveolar ridge’ –

the small, bony protuberance just behind the

teeth It’s also important to relax the tongue so that it vibrates as the air flows past Rolling an

‘r’ is strikingly similar to blowing a raspberry In fact, some language experts suggest beginning training by blowing a raspberry while humming,

or doing a lip trill while moving the tongue up

Be prepared for hours of practice, but perhaps not in the office, unless you have

understanding colleagues!

Why can’t everyone roll their ‘R’s?

Awa Pillay, Cape Town

Air is mostly nitrogen (N²) and oxygen (O²), with an average density of 1.225kg/m³ A water vapour molecule is much lighter with just one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms (H), so its density (at standard temperature and pressure) is only 0.804kg/m³ This is why water that evaporates from the sea rises up into the sky in the first place

At a certain height, the air cools enough for the water vapour to condense into droplets and form visible clouds The droplets are liquid water, and therefore denser than air, but they are tiny, so they have a low terminal velocity and fall very slowly A typical cloud only has about 0.5g

of water per cubic metre in it, and if the droplets are small enough, they will be kept aloft by the thermals in the cloud as warm air rises from below Once the droplets have fused together and grown large enough, gravity dominates over buoyancy and they fall as rain

Large clouds can weigh tonnes How do they stay up?

Terry Lukhele, via email

If we were able to dig to Australia, at

what point would you stop digging down

and start digging up?

Clare Johnston, Westville

To dig from, say, London to Sydney, you would actually need to angle

about 15° off the vertical, in a roughly easterly direction, so technically

you are never digging straight down Your tunnel would reach its closest point

to Earth’s centre after about 6,150km and would slope upwards after that

Assuming, of course, that we ignore all the physical impossibilities inherent

in such a project

Do animals go through puberty?

Ben Chelsea, Newcastle

reproductively functional It is characterised by the physical, chemical and sometimes social changes that occur during sexual maturity Some animals like the Cabrera’s hutia (a rodent that lives

in Cuba) reach this point when they get to an exact weight of 360g for females, or 300g for males But for most other animals, the timing of puberty is

around for years? Very Interesting answers them! Mail your questions

to VI@panorama.co.za

It’s extremely unlikely The ISS components were not designed for the kinds of accelerations, or the amounts of radiation, experienced during interplanetary travel, and do not have adequate life support, power supply, fuel storage, docking systems or lander components It would actually be much cheaper in the long run, and simpler, to build a Mars expedition vehicle from scratch.

In February, parts of southwest England and Wales were rocked by the strongest earthquake in a decade By global standards, it was pretty weak

It measured just 4.4 on the Richter scale and caused no major damage, yet it still shocked many After all, the UK is far from the edge of any of the tectonic plates which make up the Earth’s crust, and where most quakes occur.Propelled by the heat of the Earth’s interior, the Eurasian plate beneath the UK

is moving in a westerly direction by around 10mm per year and is riddled with fault lines These often slip slightly, triggering tremors detectable only with specialist equipment Around once a decade, however, there’s a bigger shift, resulting in a quake that makes the headlines This principle is the same around the world

Why do countries that are a long way from a plate boundary still get earthquakes?

Scott Pretorius, Port Elizabeth

Could we reuse any International Space Station modules for a Mars mission?

Frank Naude, Pretoria

hailstone weighing nearly a kilogram – it was almost as large

as a soccer ball – fell during a storm in South Dakota.

have an iridescent sheen because of the ultra-fine ice crystals

of which they consist.

10 to 14 days as a chrysalis before emerging as a butterfly.

age-related Insects and amphibians experience

‘metamorphosis’, going through two or more distinct

stages of their development to move from hatching

or birth to adulthood Meanwhile, some aphid and

mite species speed things up by being born

pregnant, hatching with the next generation of eggs

already growing inside them! So puberty, in some

form or another, is a shared and necessary evil

across the whole of the animal kingdom

Students excavate a corpse

at the body farm at Texas State University.

Dr Anna Williams

wants to watch you

rot It’s nothing

personal; it’s for

science,

specifically the science of

taphonomy, which is the study

of decay and fossilisation By

monitoring how corpses

decompose, she hopes to

increase our understanding of

the subtleties of the process

and improve the accuracy with

which we can locate and

identify dead people and

determine their time of death

In order to do this, Williams, a

forensic anthropologist at the

University of Huddersfield,

wants to establish a human

taphonomy facility in the UK

There are already nine such

facilities – colloquially known

as ‘body farms’ – around the

Corpses can tell you a lot – if you know how to read them And just like language, decomposition is dependent on location Which is why some researchers say we need to start studying the dialect of decay

world: seven in the US, one in Australia and another in the Netherlands So why do we need one in the UK?

“What we know about decomposition has come out of the American facilities,”

explains Williams “Before the first one opened in 1981, we really didn’t know very much about how bodies decompose

in different conditions The research that’s been going on since then has really boosted our knowledge

“And one of the things we’ve learned is that decomposition

is incredibly dependent upon local conditions: the

surrounding temperature, rainfall, humidity, soil type, ecology, insects, scavengers – it’s all dependent on these variables So, the information

coming out of the existing facilities is very useful but it’s not directly applicable to forensic cases in the UK.”

In short, people in the UK don’t decay in the same way as they do elsewhere In fact, people don’t always decay the same way in the same country And we wouldn’t know that if

it wasn’t for the pioneering work of forensic anthropologist

Dr William Bass

Bass founded the first human decomposition research facility

at the University of Tennessee after recognising how

misleading the decay process could be The realisation came

in 1977 after local police contacted Bass and asked him to examine some

human remains they’d found

in a disturbed grave The

corpse’s head was missing, but

based on the remaining flesh

and bones it was originally

determined that the remains

belonged to a white male in his

mid-to-late 20s who’d been dead

for about a year

However, Bass’s examination

revealed something astounding:

the corpse was older than

everyone thought A lot older It

was actually the body of the

Confederate soldier, Colonel

William Shy, who’d been dead

for over a century The remains

were so well preserved because

they’d been embalmed and

buried in an airtight coffin

What the police had found

wasn’t a killer’s attempt to hide

the body of a recent victim, but

the remains of a corpse that had

been dug up by graverobbers

The confounding nature of Colonel Shy’s corpse led Bass to

an epiphany: we needed a far better understanding of human decomposition and the factors that affect it We needed to study it closely, and to do that we’d need decomposing bodies and somewhere to watch them fester

That place ended up being a 10,000m² fenced-off wooded area in Knoxville, Tennessee, which today is known as the outdoor decomposition research facility of the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center In the 37 years since it opened, Bass and his colleagues have scrutinised the decay of thousands of cadavers in various states:

buried, unburied, whole,

accurately infer their time of death, is unquantifiable

A Death from above

The progress made at Tennessee inspired other US universities,

Students at Texas State University clean bones after the soft tissue has decomposed The bones will

be sent to the university’s permanent skeletal

collection.

Dr William Bass pioneered body farms

as a way to increase our knowledge of decay.

Left unburied and uncovered, here’s what happens to a body…

The fresh stage can last a few days to

a week Rigor mortis initially sets in

and cells break down as the lack of

oxygen and nutrients prevents them

from replenishing themselves

When bacteria in the gut can no longer be kept in check, they start to reproduce and feed on the body This produces gas that causes the abdomen to bloat

Gas building up increases pressure within the body, pushing fluids

in between the layers of skin and causing the outer layers to slough off

With no oxygen to bind to, haemoglobin in the blood binds to sulphur instead, filling the arteries and veins with a greenish-black substance This gives the flesh an appearance known as ‘marbling’

Chemicals released by the body attract flies, which lay eggs in and around the orifices Soon after, maggots hatch and begin feeding on the body’s flesh and organs

Other insects, such as beetles, are attracted to the body, as well as small birds looking to feed on them Local scavenging animals will also appear to pick the flesh off the bones

The final stage is skeletonisation, when the soft tissue is fully lost Wind, rain, erosion and abrasion take over and the bones are disarticulated over the following months and years

Medicine

Increasing pressure forces the body’s

fluids and liquefied organs out of any

available orifice Eyeballs can be

dislodged and bodies have even been

known to explode

“A skeleton’s not going

to give out heat, but we

can use near-infrared to

pick up a ‘cadaver

decomposition island’.”

like Texas State University,

to build on Bass’s example

Dr Daniel Wescott is the current

director of the Forensic

Anthropology Center at Texas

State (FACTS), which opened in

2008 “We have lots of graduate

students researching different

aspects of decomposition, such

as what happens if you wrap a

body in a specific material,” he

says “Tarps and carpets tend to

accelerate the rate of

decomposition as they retain

heat and moisture and provide

protection for the insects so that

they feed a little faster Typically,

wrapping a body will accelerate

the decomposition, but it also

depends on if it’s buried or not.”

They’re also looking at ways to

use drones to find bodies Until

now, searches for missing bodies

have relied on manpower,

specially trained sniffer dogs

and ground-penetrating radar

devices But, as Wescott explains, FACTS is testing ways

to locate corpses using drones

“In the early stages of decomposition, you’ve got a lot

of chemical reactions going on, you’ve got bacteria proliferating, you’ve got maggot activity… and all that generates heat We can use infrared cameras on the drones to pick up that heat

“Later on, a skeleton’s not going

to give out heat, but we can use near-infrared photography to pick up what’s called a ‘cadaver decomposition island’ This is what you get when the fluids seep out of a decomposing body into the surrounding soil We can pick up the areas of enriched soil because it reflects light differently.”

But as useful as this research is,

no one can pretend the climate

in the US is anything like that of the UK “Environmental

variables have a big influence on the rate at which a body decomposes So, when you’re talking about trying to calculate how long somebody’s been dead, the basic principles that come out of Texas apply but the specific rate probably wouldn’t apply to Europe,” says Wescott

Which brings us back to Williams and the need for a human facility in the UK

A Cemeteries and sensibilities

Williams has already taken steps

to advance the understanding of

decomposition in the UK by opening an animal taphonomy facility in Cranfield University

in 2011 But recent studies have shown that the pigs, rabbits, mice, sheep and deer used in such labs aren’t suitable analogues for humans because they have different gut bacteria, medical conditions, diets and lifestyles To put it another way, pigs don’t smoke, get diabetes or overindulge on fast food, alcohol

or drugs, all of which can affect the way a body breaks down And if the information generated using animals isn’t

At Texas State University, some corpses are kept inside cages to protect them from scavengers.

“Before the first one

opened in 1981, we

really didn’t know very

much about how bodies

decompose in different

conditions.”

comparable to humans, aside

from the doubt it casts on any

research, it can also be more

easily undermined if it’s used in

testimony during a trial

Hence the need for a human

facility in the UK But in order

to get one, Williams needs to

raise the funding for it (to the

tune of about R18m), find a

suitable site and generate

support from the UK’s

universities, the Human Tissue

Authority and the public All of

which is a tricky proposition

given the delicate nature of what

Williams intends to study and

people’s perceptions of how she

might study it But there are

ways to mitigate any offence an

outdoor lab containing rotting

corpses may cause “One thing

that we might do is try a

staggered approach so that we

start with a facility more like the

one in Amsterdam, which is

called a ‘forensic cemetery’

because the bodies are buried,”

she says “You can’t see the

bodies as they’re not on the

surface and that’s perhaps less

objectionable, more readily

acceptable.”

In such a scenario, monitoring

equipment and possibly even

viewing windows would be

installed underground to study

the cadavers as they decompose

But it may actually be the

perception of the public’s

attitude towards such a facility

that’s mistaken

A survey carried out by Williams

suggests people are in favour of a

human taphonomy facility in the

UK, and she’s already getting

offers from people wishing to

donate their bodies and has

support from the Home Office

Were such a facility to eventually

open, aside from the research

and training benefits it could provide, Williams believes it would also enable more people’s dying wishes to be granted

“At the moment lots of people want to donate their bodies to anatomy schools for teaching and dissection, but often they’re turned away because they have conditions that mean they’re unsuitable We think that at a taphonomy facility we’d turn away fewer people because it wouldn’t matter so much what conditions they had or what state their body was in.”

In an ideal world, Williams hopes that donors will be able to choose not only what sort of research their body is used for, and for how long, but also what happens to their remains afterwards – whether they’re kept as part of osteological collections or returned to their families for burial or cremation

“[If we get one in the UK]

there’ll be a lot of setting up at the beginning,” says Williams

“It will be probably months or even years before you get the first experiments underway because there’s so much testing

to do at the site… You’ve got to find out what everything is like – the soil type, the vegetation, the humidity, the temperature, the shade, even the number of worms, birds and snails – we need to know about all that before we put the bodies in.”

Whatever happens, there’s still a lot of work to be done, even if a

UK facility does get the ahead 7

go-veryinteresting@panorama.co.za Rob Banino is a Bristol-based writer and editor, specialising in science, technology and cycling.

CRASH CARS

Car manufacturers like to demonstrate the efficacy of their vehicles’ safety features by showing you slow-motion video

of dummies getting thrown about during a collision What they’re less keen to publicise is that they’ve probably put dead bodies through the same tests

to see how the impacts affect their internal organs

OTHER THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU’RE DEAD

Donating your body to medical science is one way to make yourself useful after death But what if you want to do something that’s not so

‘run of the mill’?

PUT ON A SHOW

Body Worlds exhibitions feature real corpses and organs that have been preserved through

plastination, a technique invented by German doctor Gunther von Hagens If you’re willing to go on display after your bodily fluids and soluble fat have been replaced by liquid plastic, you could donate your body to the Institute for Plastination

GROW A TREE

You can still make yourself useful after you’ve been cremated, depending on what happens to your ashes

Scattered on soil, they’ll act as

a general fertiliser, but if you want something more specific you can have them added to a Bios Urn, a biodegradable container that’s packed with soil and used for tree seed germination

RELEASE A RECORD

An audio recording of your voice

or music that held a special meaning for you is one way that loved ones can treasure your memory If, however, you’d like the keepsake to bear slightly more of your physical presence, you can get andvinyly.com to press your ashes into the vinyl

on which your voice and music

is printed

Building blocks

are prototypes for the next generation of 3D-printed lattice structures

The blocks were made at the University of Nottingham using a process called ‘selective laser melting’, which makes the structures strong but light That’s good for a lot of things: fuel efficiency of cars and planes, for example, increases when vehicle parts are lighter

It’s the patterns that make these blocks so effective “You can align patterns to create strength in the direction you need it, but not

in others,” says BBC presenter and materials scientist Dr Mark Miodownik

“Sometimes you want things to collapse to absorb impacts, like a helmet or body armour You can make structures weak in a particular place, so they’ll crumple and absorb energy.”

As 3D-printing costs decrease, use of these structures will become even more widespread

“Anywhere you need to save weight and increase performance, these 3D-printed structures will be used Planes, bicycles, body armour – everywhere really,” says Miodownik.

What is the idea behind

creating an artificial synapse?

have a connection between

two neurons, whether or not

one triggers the next is

determined by the synapse

This mechanism is believed

to be responsible for things

like memory Lots of

neurons are connected and

the strength of their

connection is varied by

synapses We wanted to see

if we could make physical

devices that match that, as

opposed to the transistors

and switches used in

traditional computing

BRAIN GAIN

Devices that mimic synapses – the junctions between neurons –

could help us to produce more powerful computers

7PHOTOGRAPHY: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, NIST ILLUSTRATIONS: DAN BRIGHT

architecture If you look to the human brain for inspiration for computing, it’s very impressive: you have

100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses, and yet it consumes just 20 watts of power And it excels at tasks that our modern computers, which are fantastic at multiplying and dividing numbers, don’t do very well

How did you build an artificial synapse?

The structures we have are based on niobium, a metal, with the synapse itself made from silicon and

nano-clusters of manganese We’re running everything at 4 Kelvin [-269°C], the temperature

of liquid helium When you get niobium cold, it

a break in it using an electrical insulator There

are all kinds of interesting properties about them, but people have proposed that they could be used as an artificial neuron element because they produce a voltage surge that looks like the spike at a synapse, except it’s much faster and

in lower energy These artificial synapses could be put into machines modelled after the brain

How could such ‘neuromorphic’ computers be used?

We are living in very exciting times where computing is concerned,

Innovation

“If you look to the human brain for inspiration, it’s very impressive.”

with artificial intelligence and machine learning

Within the latter, you have algorithms written in software starting to solve problems that have traditionally been very difficult, like image recognition or language translation These have a large ‘state space’ – the number of possible solutions

to a problem For image recognition, that’s roughly the number of all possible pixel configurations, which

is far too large to calculate explicitly Over the past few years, deep ‘neural

networks’ have made huge inroads

What if we could make hardware that could run these algorithms sort of natively?

The operations in the algorithm map well to neurons and synapses, so if you make a more efficient implementation, you can attack more complex

veryinteresting@panorama.co.za

Dr Mike Schneider is a physicist at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Algorithms can make disordered artificial synapses function in

a more orderly fashion.

Nerve synapses at work

in the human brain.

1 DIAPHRAGM (THEORY A)

Running on a full stomach may jolt the ligaments

supporting the abdominal organs, which strains

the diaphragm But stitches are also common in

swimmers, where there’s no jolting

4 PERITONEUM (THEORY C)

This membrane surrounds your abdominal organs

and may become irritated as it rubs against your

side Sugary drinks seem to exacerbate this

5 RIGHT SHOULDER BLADE

Stitches often cause a phantom or ‘referred’ pain

in the shoulder, because the phrenic nerve from the diaphragm also connects the shoulder

3 LIVER (THEORY B)

Likewise, the liver also blocks blood flow as it swells The liver sits on the right, which may explain why stitches are mostly on that side of

the body

What happens in my body when I get a stitch?

Is it better to walk or run

in the rain?

Tony Sithole, Alexandra

It’s a question many of us ask when caught in a downpour: is it

better to run and get to shelter quicker, or does running mean we

encounter more raindrops and get wetter?

The amount of rain striking the top of your head each second depends

only on how hard it’s raining So, although running faster won’t change

the rate at which you get wet, it will get you to shelter quicker,

minimising your exposure to the rain and keeping you drier

Meanwhile, as you head for shelter, the front of your body also cuts

through rain and gets wet But the total amount of rain you travel

through depends only on the distance between you and shelter and

has nothing to do with your speed

Things do get more complicated as you add in the effect of wind

speed and direction, but as a rule of thumb, the intuitive answer is

right: run towards the nearest shelter as fast as possible

IN NUMBERS

The size, in km², of the hydrocarbon sea Kraken Mare, located on Saturn’s moon Titan (For comparison, South Africa is aground 1.2 million km².)

400,000

The mass, in tonnes, of waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

79,000

A stitch is a sharp, stabbing pain just under the ribcage It strikes when exercising and is twice as likely to occur on the right side of the body as the left Remedies for stitches are mentioned as far back as Pliny the Elder, but so far the exact cause has only been narrowed down to three main possibilities: a) strained diaphragm ligaments, b) restricted blood flow, and c) irritation of the membrane surrounding the abdominal organs

around for years? Very Interesting answers them! Mail your questions

to VI@panorama.co.za

It takes 285kWh of gas and 15kWh of electricity

to cremate a single person The CO² this

generates is roughly the same as an 800km car

journey Cremation also accounts for 16% of the

mercury pollution in the air, from dental fillings But

burial pollutes, too Formaldehyde used for

embalming, and in the chipboard veneer used in

89% of coffins, eventually leaches into the

groundwater Concrete vaults also take a lot of energy to manufacture The greenest option is currently to forego embalming of the corpse and opt for a woodland burial in a biodegradable cardboard

or wicker coffin

Which is better for the environment: burial or cremation?

Angel Ndlovu, Rondebosch

Yes, but not like we do! Birds get rid of excess nitrogen

by converting it into a paste-like substance called uric acid This is less toxic than the urea we produce, and for good reason – unhatched chicks wouldn’t be able to tolerate the urea building up inside their shells Also, doing away with the need for a bladder is beneficial to birds because it reduces their load when flying Birds have just one waste opening, the cloaca, and this is why you see the white, chalky uric acid mixed in with the dark faecal matter Interestingly, reptiles deal with their waste in the same way

Do birds wee?

Violet Swart, Kyalami

How do scientists weigh a planet?

Paul Richards, Bloemfontein

We can weigh a planet (or, more correctly, find its ‘mass’) by using Newton’s

Law of Gravitation This law tells us that a planet exerts a gravitational pull

that is proportional to its mass If the planet has a moon, then this gravitational pull

must be balanced by the centripetal force that keeps the moon in orbit In this case

we only need to measure the moon’s orbital period and the distance between the

planet and its moon to reveal the planet’s mass For planets without moons, we can

still use their effect on other planets to infer their masses

like their coffins to represent their lives,

so their custom-made caskets might be shaped like expensive cars, or a favoured item of clothing.

FLASH

*Please check with relevant authorities

regarding local burial regulations

29 JULY 1958

President Eisenhower creates the agency

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, it fell to President Eisenhower (centre) to soothe the fear that was gripping his

nation Knowing space could soon become a battleground in the burgeoning Cold War, he decided to establish a civilian

space agency such that space exploration could be a peaceful endeavour for humanity

He signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on 29 July 1958, formally putting the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration under the leadership of administrator T Keith Glennan (right) and deputy administrator Hugh L Dryden (left)

With 2019 marking 50 years since the first moon landings, we look back at

NASA’s illustrious history, through 20 of its most iconic moments

TO

T HE

NASA launches first spacecraft, Pioneer 1

Less than two months later, the agency launched its first spacecraft: Pioneer 1 This probe was designed to study the ionising radiation, cosmic rays, magnetic fields and micrometeorites in the space around the Earth and moon A mechanical problem meant that it never reached the moon, but it did return useful data on the environment around the Earth

Space

9 APRIL 1959

NASA announces its first astronauts, the Mercury 7

NASA’s unofficial goal when it was conceived was to put an American in space before the Soviet Union launched a cosmonaut For this, America needed astronauts Exhausting and thorough medical and psychological testing found seven men – all experienced military pilots with combat experience – to be the best suited for the job When they were introduced to the public in April 1959, they were immediate heroes

25 MAY 1961 President Kennedy announces goal

of landing a man on the moon

The Soviet Union scored a series of firsts over the United States, including putting the first satellite and the first man into space Seeking

to level the playing field, President Kennedy consulted with NASA and learned that all studies said a moon landing within the decade was possible With 15 minutes of suborbital spaceflight under America’s belt, he publicly promised

a man on the moon in a famous address to Congress

20 FEBRUARY 1962

First American in orbit

NASA originally planned a slow and

steady approach, with each

astronaut making a suborbital flight

before anyone would go into orbit

But with the Soviets taking such big

steps forward, NASA changed its

plan The third of the manned

Mercury missions was its first orbital

flight John Glenn made three loops

around the Earth in a journey that

lasted four hours and 56 minutes,

before splashing down in the North

Atlantic Ocean

3 JUNE 1965 First American spacewalk

In early 1965, the Soviets scored another first with the first spacewalk

In response, NASA secretly trained astronaut Ed White to walk in space, before adding it as an official mission objective not two weeks before the launch of the manned Gemini 4 flight During his 20 minutes outside the spacecraft, White manoeuvred around by using a compressed oxygen gun

27 JANUARY 1967 Apollo 1 fire

By the late 1960s, NASA was moving from launch to launch like clockwork But during a routine launch rehearsal test for the first Apollo mission, a fire broke out in the pure-oxygen environment, killing astronauts Gus Grissom,

Ed White and Roger Chaffee It was

a sobering event for NASA and America: a grim reminder that spaceflight is difficult and dangerous Following a months-long investigation wherein the spacecraft was disassembled piece-by-piece, NASA almost entirely rebuilt the command module into a far safer and more reliable spacecraft

Space

20 JULY 1969 First humans on the moon

Everything that NASA had been working on for nine years came together on Apollo 11 Though America was wrapped up in the Vietnam War and protesters slammed NASA for spending money on a project many considered frivolous, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon the nation was briefly united as President Kennedy’s promise was fulfilled

14 NOVEMBER 1971 Mariner 9 reaches Mars

In the background of NASA’s more visible push to send people to the moon was the intense interest in sending spacecraft to other planets Among the first targets was Mars with the Mariner programme After a handful of failed and partially successful missions, Mariner 9 revealed our planetary neighbour in stunning detail The first spacecraft to orbit another planet, it mapped 70% of the Martian surface

13 APRIL 1970

Apollo 13’s ‘successful failure’

During NASA’s third lunar landing

mission, Apollo 13, things quickly

got interesting after an oxygen

tank ruptured 55 hours into the

flight Trusting their instincts and

one another in equal measure, the

crew and mission controllers

repurposed the lunar module into a

lifeboat Here, Jack Swigert can be

seen holding the makeshift

apparatus that the astronauts

assembled in order to remove

excess carbon dioxide from the

lunar module, keeping them alive

When they returned safely, the

world rejoiced

14 MAY 1973 Launch of Skylab

The short-term Apollo missions were never NASA’s long-term goal From the start, the agency knew a more permanent base in space was the key to exploration The first iteration of this goal was Skylab Essentially a hollowed-out rocket stage, the station hosted three crews between 1973 and 1975, who ran

experiments to prove that humans could adapt to microgravity and live in space for months at a time

5 SEPTEMBER 1977

Launch of Voyager 1

Another part of NASA’s early interest in planetary exploration were the four

distant gas giants Engineers realised that these planets were aligning so

perfectly that all four could be explored with one mission, so this

once-in-175-years chance was too good to pass up Launched in 1977, the twin

Voyager spacecraft both flew by Jupiter and Saturn, with Voyager 2 passing

Uranus and Neptune as well

18 JUNE 1983 First American woman in space

Another change at NASA as it developed the Space Shuttle was the inclusion of women in the astronaut corps Six women were admitted into the 1978 astronaut

class, and in June 1983, Dr Sally

Ride became the first American

woman in space, flying as a mission specialist on STS-7

AT A GLANCE

29 JULY 1958: President Eisenhower creates the agency

11 OCTOBER 1958: NASA launches first spacecraft, Pioneer 1

9 APRIL 1959: NASA announces its first astronauts, the Mercury 7

25 MAY 1961: President Kennedy announces goal of landing a man on the moon

20 FEBRUARY 1962: First American in orbit

3 JUNE 1965: First American spacewalk

27 JANUARY 1967: Apollo 1 fire

20 JULY 1969: First humans on the moon

13 APRIL 1970: Apollo 13’s ‘successful failure’

14 NOVEMBER 1971: Mariner 9 reaches Mars

14 MAY 1973: Launch of Skylab

5 SEPTEMBER 1977: Launch of Voyager 1

12 APRIL 1981: First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle

18 JUNE 1983: First American woman in space

28 JANUARY 1986: Challenger disaster

25 APRIL 1990: Hubble Space Telescope deployed

6 DECEMBER 1998: Construction of the International Space Station begins

1 JULY 2004: Cassini enters orbit around Saturn

6 AUGUST 2012: Curiosity rover lands on Mars

14 JULY 2015: New Horizons flies by Pluto

Space

12 APRIL 1981

First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle

With the lunar landing missions done and deep-space missions unlocking planetary secrets, NASA returned to a pre-Apollo vision: routine spaceflight The agency needed a relatively cheap, reusable spacecraft and the result was the Space Shuttle, a new workhorse that promised to make spaceflight as routine as air travel The first mission (STS-1) marked NASA’s triumphant return

to manned missions

28 JANUARY 1986

Challenger disaster

The 25th mission of the Space Shuttle programme (STS-51-L) was

capturing imaginations On the crew was Christa McAuliffe, set to become the first teacher in space Teachers across the nation put their lessons on hold so students could watch the launch live But excitement turned to horror as, 73 seconds into its flight, Challenger broke apart The crew of seven was killed and the grotesque, Y-shaped explosion dominated the news for days to come

25 APRIL 1990

Hubble Space Telescope deployed

Once the Shuttle resumed flying, science missions

were back on The Hubble Space Telescope launched

as the payload of STS-31 in April 1990 From its

position in orbit, floating some 547km above Earth,

Hubble can see things in the universe that we could

previously only dream of One of the most famous

examples is this picture that Hubble took of the

distant Carina Nebula, where radiation and streams of

charged particles shape and compress the pillars of

gas and dust

1 JULY 2004 Cassini enters orbit around Saturn

NASA hasn’t limited its international collaborations to the International Space Station Planetary missions are benefitting from partnerships, too Notably the Cassini-Huygens mission, a joint flight

to Saturn with the European Space Agency (ESA) The Huygens probe successfully landed on Saturn’s moon Titan while Cassini, in addition

to gathering data for 13 years at Saturn, took some of the most stunning images of the ringed planet

Space

6 DECEMBER 1998 Construction of the International Space Station begins

After decades of competition, the United States and Russia began a truly collaborative era in space with the construction

of the International Space Station The Russian Zarya module was the first to reach orbit in November 1998, and then in December the crew of STS-88 arrived with the US-built Unity node (seen here) Over 55 missions later, the station has hosted more than 220 astronauts from 18 countries

6 AUGUST 2012

Curiosity rover lands on Mars

NASA never lost its early

fascination with Mars After first

landing on the surface in the

1970s, the agency delivered the

car-sized Curiosity rover to the Red

Planet in 2012 This roving

chemistry lab, which can also take

incredible selfies, has the most

advanced suite of instruments ever

sent to another planet Analysing

rocks and dust, it’s still working to

determine whether ancient Mars

was a habitable planet

14 JULY 2015

New Horizons flies by Pluto

Whether or not you consider Pluto to be a planet,

finally visiting this icy world was an exciting moment

for planetary enthusiasts The nine-year New

Horizons mission was the first time we had not only

explored but also seen the distant Kuiper Belt

object up close, finishing the first generation of

solar system exploration

2ORBITING CARBON OBSERVATORY 3 (OCO-3)

Launch date: TBC 2019

The third in a series of space instruments, OCO-3 will study the distribution of

carbon dioxide on Earth, showing us the real impact of growing urban

populations and increasing fossil fuel combustion NASA plans to assemble the

instruments from spare parts of its predecessor, OCO-2, before hosting it in

the Japanese Experiment Module on board the International Space Station

3MULTI-ANGLE IMAGER FOR AEROSOLS (MAIA)

Launch date: Early 2020s

This instrument, carried aboard a satellite stationed in low-Earth orbit, will

analyse the sunlight scattered by polluting particles in our planet’s

atmosphere

This will allow scientists to determine the sizes, compositions and quantities

of these particulates, which will then be combined with population health

records in order to build up a picture of how air pollution affects human

health on a global level

4ORION SPACECRAFT

First unmanned launch: June 2020

The first spacecraft purpose-built to leave low Earth orbit since Apollo, Orion

will carry humans farther than we’ve ever gone before, to Mars and beyond It’ll

launch on NASA’s own Space Launch System: the modular heavy-lift rocket that

will outpower the Saturn V The first test flight was in December 2014, with an

uncrewed lunar orbital flight planned for 2020

Launch date: Early 2019

Though we see it (almost) every day, the sun is still a mystery The

Parker Solar Probe will take our first up-close look of our nearest star,

approaching to within 6.1 million kilometres of the surface – more than

seven times closer than any spacecraft has been before This will take

it through the sun’s corona and should revolutionise our understanding

of solar weather.

Launch date: March 2021

The largest telescope ever sent into space, JWST will usher in a new era of space exploration Once it arrives at its final destination some 1.5 million kilometres away, it’ll begin to look at the universe in infrared light (unlike Hubble, which sees in visible light), allowing us to look further back in time than ever before

Space

7MARS 2020 ROVER

Launch date: Summer 2020

Based on the highly successful Curiosity rover, the Mars 2020 mission will

carry more sophisticated science instruments and upgraded hardware Not

only will it look at whether Mars is a habitable environment now, it’ll be the

first mission to look directly for signs of ancient life on Mars

5WIDE FIELD INFRARED SURVEY

TELESCOPE (WFIRST)

Launch date: Mid-2020s

WFIRST is a new space-based

observatory designed to answer a host of scientific questions Its primary mirror is 2.4m in diameter – the same size as Hubble’s – and this will feed data to two instruments: a high-resolution camera and a coronagraph As well

as studying dark energy, measuring the expansion of the cosmos, WFIRST will be looking for exoplanets, finishing the work begun

by NASA’s Kepler telescope

a dedicated exploration of the icy moon while orbiting Jupiter With its suite of nine science instruments, including cameras and

spectrometers, it’ll investigate whether the moon’s oceans contain the right conditions to support life

9EUCLID

Launch date: 2021

An ESA mission, but with significant contributions from NASA, Euclid will investigate dark matter and dark energy – critical components of our universe that are shrouded in mystery Using its 1.2m-diameter telescope, as well as infrared detectors, Euclid will attempt to measure the accelerating expansion

of the universe, in the process shedding light on these phenomena

Launch date: 2022

Psyche (pictured below) is a mission to visit a metal asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter

The first world examined that isn’t made of rock or ice, scientists suspect that the asteroid is actually the exposed nickel-iron core of an

early planet – a remnant from the birth of our solar system Using an imager, magnetometer and a gamma-ray spectrometer, this mission promises to provide insight into the formation of terrestrial planets 7

veryinteresting@panorama.co.za Amy Shira Teitel is a spaceflight historian and author of

Breaking The Chains Of Gravity.

The sun is powered by the energy released when the nuclei of its hydrogen atoms slam together so hard they fuse together As these nuclei are protons with the same positive charge, they repel each other, so it takes

incredibly high temperatures in excess of around 15,000,000°C to persuade them to fuse together But such conditions exist only in the sun’s intensely hot, dense core, which makes up barely 1% of its total volume

Why doesn’t the sun fuse all its hydrogen

at once and explode like an H-bomb?

Edward Brown, Umhlanga

In January 1912, the German meteorologist

and explorer Alfred Wegener unveiled an

astonishing new vision of the Earth’s past

According to Wegener, the world we see today

is the result of the break-up of a colossal

landmass into separate continents, which

have been moving around ever since

The theory of continental drift provoked

outrage, despite the idea having been in

circulation for centuries As long ago as

1596, the Flemish mapmaker Abraham

Ortelius had pointed out what doubtless

others had already noticed: that the Americas

and Africa seem to fit together like jigsaw

pieces He argued this was no coincidence,

and that the Americas had been “torn away

from Europe and Africa… by earthquakes and

floods” In 1858, the French geographer

Antonio Snider-Pellegrini went further,

pointing out that fossils of similar plants

appeared on both sides of the Atlantic

Presaging Wegener, Snider-Pellegrini argued

that there had once been a single landmass

which had disintegrated; he ascribed the

cause to the biblical Great Flood

Wegener himself never found a compelling

explanation for the driving force of

continental drift But we now know it’s

down to the roiling motion of vast convective

loops of hot rock beneath the Earth’s

shattered crust

Who really discovered continental drift?

ABRAHAM ORTELIUS

ALFRED

WEGENER

How are fragrances removed to make fragrance-free products?

Carolyn Roberts, Bryanston

product doesn’t smell of anything It means that it doesn’t have any fragrance chemicals in it These might be synthetic fragrances, but they could also be certain natural compounds, such as fruit oils However, labelling regulations only affect compounds that could cause skin irritation Other ingredients such as olive oil or shea butter have a mild scent, but they don’t count as fragrances for the purposes of product description Cosmetics referred to

as unscented have been formulated to remove any smell, but they do this by adding masking chemicals, such as phthalates, rather than removing the scent molecules

Soviet Union detonated the Tsar Bomba on the Sukhoy Nos Peninsula The blast broke windows in Norway and Finland, 2,300km away!

people threw night parties to coincide with the backdrop provided

all-by atomic bomb tests 80km outside Las Vegas in the US.

FLASH

around for years? Very Interesting answers them! Mail your questions

to VI@panorama.co.za

We’ve long known that flowering plants use colour and

scent to attract insects, but scientists have recently

discovered that flowers also use electricity to communicate

with their pollinators Flowers tend to have a negative

electric charge, while bees tend to be positively charged A

2013 study at the University of Bristol found that a bee’s

visit will change a flower’s electric potential, which may be

the flower’s way of telling other bees that its nectar

reserves have just been snaffled What’s more, some

flowers are able to electrically ‘fire’ pollen at bees as they

fly past, without even being touched

Plants use this fungal network to tell each other about the dangers around them When

a plant is infested with sap-sucking aphids or other insects, a chemical signal is produced that is transmitted through the Wood Wide Web Nearby plants respond by pumping anti-insect toxins into their sap, reducing the chances of an attack Family is important to plants, too Mustard seedlings send signals that identify themselves to their siblings, helping them to grow without competing with each other for root space But there’s also a dark side to this network The phantom orchid, for example, is known

to hack the system in order to steal carbon from nearby trees

Plants may not seem particularly chatty, but there’s a silent

stream of information passing between them Beneath the

soil, the roots of most plants interact with tiny branching

strands of fungi, known as mycorrhiza It’s a two-way deal:

fungi provide nutrients from the soil, while the plants provide

sugars made in their leaves through photosynthesis But the

fungi don’t restrict their interactions to individual plants:

they form a network that spans entire forests Botanists now

know that plants can pass nutrients and chemicals back and

forth through this network, known as the ‘Wood Wide Web’

What do plants talk about?

We teamed up with the folks behind BBC World Service’s CrowdScience to answer your questions on one topic

Listen to the podcast at http://veryinteresting.co.za

Can plants talk?

Rory Galloway is the producer of Do

Plants Talk About Sex? – an episode

of CrowdScience airing on 29 June.

Can plants talk to

each other?

Can plants communicate

with insects?

Q&A Questions & Answers Got questions you’ve been carrying

around for years? Very Interesting answers them! Mail your questions

to VI@panorama.co.za

How big could a black hole get?

Victoria Taylor, Nottingham Road

There is no theoretical upper limit to the mass

of a black hole However, astronomers have

noted that the ultra-massive black holes (UMBHs)

found in the cores of some galaxies never seem to

exceed about 10 billion solar masses This is

exactly what we’d expect from the rate at which

we know black holes grow, given the time that’s elapsed since the Big Bang Furthermore, recent studies suggest that UMBHs cannot physically grow much beyond this anyway, since they would then begin to disrupt the accretion discs that feed them, choking the source of new material

Why do we make eye contact with

strangers as we pass them?

Samuel Chaabane, Heidelberg

social interactions – even two-day-old babies

prefer to look at those faces that are gazing straight

at them If someone is looking at you, it indicates

social interest and a possible desire to

communicate, but of course you cannot know if

someone is looking unless you, in turn, attempt to

meet their gaze Hence why when we pass strangers

we will often automatically glance at their faces A field study on a university campus in the US found that making eye contact with strangers leaves us feeling more socially connected, whereas if someone avoids our gaze, we are more likely to feel disconnected This feeling is captured beautifully by the German expression ‘wie Luft behandeln’ – ‘to be looked at as though air’

Incoming projectile vomit in 3… 2… 1…