Jet streams sprinkle North African dust over the Amazon, providing the rain forest with much needed nutrients. Changing wind patterns and increasing smoke may shift the system.
Monthly Archives: March 2022
Science: Subgiant Stars Age, Yellowstone’s Hot Water, Birds & The Moon
Precisely ageing subgiant stars gives new insight into the Milky Way’s formation, and uncovering Yellowstone’s hydrothermal plumbing system.
In this episode:
00:45 Accurately ageing stars reveals the Milky Way’s history
To understand when, and how, the Milky Way formed, researchers need to know when its stars were born. This week, a team of astronomers have precisely aged nearly a quarter of a million stars, revealing more about the sequence of events that took place as our galaxy formed.
Research article: Xiang and Rix
News and Views: A stellar clock reveals the assembly history of the Milky Way
09:53 Research Highlights
Archaeologists reveal an ancient lake was actually a ritual pool, and how the Moon’s phase affects some birds’ altitude.
Research Highlight: Ancient ‘harbour’ revealed to be part of fertility god’s lavish shrine
Research Highlight: These birds fly high when the full Moon hangs in the sky
12:34 Uncovering Yellowstone’s hot water plumbing
Yellowstone National Park’s iconic geothermal geysers and volcanic landmarks are well studied, but very little was known about the ‘plumbing system’ that feeds these features. Now a team of researchers have mapped the underground hydrothermal system, showing the specific faults and pathways that supply the park.
Research article: Finn et al.
19:27 Briefing Chat
We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, 0why an Australian university has been suspended from winning a research foundation’s fellowships, and the ongoing debate about the cause of ‘COVID toes’.
Nature: Funder bars university from grant programme over white-male award line-up
Rainy Day Views: Place du Tertre, Montmartre, Paris
Situated in the very heart of Montmartre, one of the most famous squares of all of Paris is that of Place du Tertre, which is world-famous for its painters, cafés, and ambiance.
The area known as Montmartre is located in the 18th arrondissement or district of Paris, due north of the Louvre. It can be easily reached by metro, stations Abbesses (line 12), Pigalle (lines 2 and 12) or Anvers (line 2). The classic way to get up to the top of the hill of Montmartre, known in French as La Butte Montmartre, is from the Anvers metro station. From here walk up the Rue Steinkerque until you reach the gardens at the end. From here you can either take the funicular railway up to the top, or walk up more than 250 steps to the basilica at the top. The exact number of steps depends on the path you take.
Preview: New Scientist Magazine – March 26, 2022
Michelin Guide: Slovenia’s ‘Restaurant Mahorčič’
The MICHELIN Guide takes you on a trip to Slovenia to discover the treasures of this country, its chefs, its products and its producers. Following the launch of the MICHELIN Guide Slovenia in september 2021, we take a closer look at Mahorčič, run by chef Ksenija Mahorčič.
Chef Ksenija’s cuisine is a real homage to these brave women farmers, influenced by the traditional ways to preserve and ferment fresh produce. Her plates are strictly local and seasonal. Thanks to her new MICHELIN Green Star, she hopes to convince more and more food industry professionals, including hygiene inspectors, that there are alternatives to plastic and aluminum in a restaurant’s kitchen.
Morning News: NATO Allies Gather, Eastern Europe, Belgrade-Budapest By Rail
We’ll have the latest as Biden and European allies gather in Brussels for a high-stakes Nato summit. Plus, Estonia calls for Nato to build up a permanent force in Eastern Europe, a flick through today’s papers, and Monocle’s Balkans correspondent, Guy De Launey, boards the Belgrade-Budapest railway.
Front Page View: The New York Times – March 24
Cover Preview: Science Magazine – March 25, 2022
Cover Previews: Nature Magazine – March 24, 2022
Volume 603 Issue 7902, 24 March 2022
Star dater’s guide to the Galaxy
The cover image shows a view of the Milky Way captured at Nambung National Park in Western Australia. To understand how the Galaxy formed requires precision age dating of the stars that it contains. In this week’s issue, Maosheng Xiang and Hans-Walter Rix of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, present an analysis of the birth dates for nearly 250,000 stars in their subgiant evolutionary phase, when they can serve as precise stellar clocks. The researchers found that the individual ages of the stars ranged from about 1.5 billion to more than 13 billion years old. Tripling the age-dating precision for such a large stellar sample allowed the researchers to infer the sequence of events that initiated our Galaxy’s formation. Using this information, Xiang and Rix were able to determine that the oldest part of our Galaxy’s disk had already begun to form about 13 billion years ago, just 800 million years after the Big Bang, and that the formation of the inner Galactic halo was completed some 2 billion years later.
Boomers Daily 