Early birds catch partial lunar eclipses

Hello, friends!

I’ve just put my winter coat away and I don’t plan on getting it back out until October!

On the slate this week, consider going sleeveless for talks and lectures on:

• saving ancient art with maths

• disease-fighting proteins

• the best science demos of the past 200 years.

There’s also an early morning spectacle definitely worth getting out of bed for. Let’s go!

🍿 online talks and events 🐧

All times are GMT.

Monday 10 March

🧑‍🎨 How algorithms can rescue damaged works of art

Professor Ingrid Daubechies looks at how mathematical algorithms have helped art historians and conservators save destroyed frescos, “virtually” remove artefacts before restoration, and learn about paintings hidden under visible ones.

How can maths unlock art’s hidden secrets?, hybrid event by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 18.00, free

Tuesday 11 March

🚀 (Take 3) Watch a NASA mission launch… live!

Let’s try this again! After a couple of postponements, NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions will launch just after 2 on Tuesday morning. Fingers crossed.

SPHEREx and PUNCH launch, official NASA broadcast, 02.15, free

🧬 What can DNA tell us about mental illness?

Professor Karoline Kuchenbaecker discusses whether genetics can help predict who might develop depression, and why it’s so important to include people from diverse ancestral backgrounds in mental health research.

Genes, depression, and diversity, online lecture by UCL, 13.00, free

Wednesday 12 March

🤺 Mobilising proteins – “tiny machines” – to fight disease

Professor Doryen Bubeck discusses her research visualising proteins in stunning detail, and how understanding how pathogen proteins interact with proteins in human defence systems can help us develop new and effective ways to prevent disease.

Big questions, tiny machines, hybrid event by Imperial College London, 17.30, free

Thursday 13 March

🌋 Looking inside volcanoes to unlock their geothermal energy

Professor Martyn Unsworth describes his work mapping underground molten rock and hot water, and how this data can be used to locate geothermal energy sources as well as better understand eruption risks.

Using geophysics to understand volcanic eruptions and search for geothermal energy resources, hybrid event by Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, 12.30, free

📚 Science stories are messier than “beginning, middle and end”

Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser discusses how linear narratives, while useful when telling stories, can cloud what’s actually happening in science, perpetuating problematic ideas like the “lone genius”.

Science: changing the story, online lecture by Wolfson College, University of Oxford, 18.00, free

Saturday 15 March

💥 “Flames, loud bangs, wow moments, lots of science”

The Royal Institution looks back on 200 years of explosive history to recreate some of the best demonstrations that ever graced its lecture hall. Don’t forget your goggles.

The greatest science demos of all time!, hybrid event by the Royal Institution, 14.00, from £3.73

🌕 in a sky near you… 🔭

Views from London. See Stellarium for a personalised view of your night sky after setting your location and time.

Catch a partial lunar eclipse: Set your alarms. Early on Friday morning the Moon will start moving through the Earth’s shadow, which we’ll see as a darkening of the Moon’s surface – a lunar eclipse.

While we in the UK won’t see the entire lunar eclipse, which would turn the Moon red – the Moon will have set by about half 6 – we’ll still get something of a spectacle.

In the western sky, the Moon will breach the Earth’s shadow just before 4am, and by about 5am, you may be able to see this shadow travelling across the Moon’s surface.

Lunar eclipses appear red for the same reason sunsets do – it’s the way sunlight scatters in the Earth’s atmosphere. During a sunset, when the Sun is low in the sky, its light has to travel through more atmosphere. On this longer journey, the blue light scatters away, leaving just the yellow, orange and red light.

During a lunar eclipse, it’s only the red light from the Sun that makes it through the atmosphere and onto the Moon’s surface. “It’s as if all the world’s sunrises and sunsets are projected onto the Moon,” says this lunar eclipse explainer by NASA Science.

🐦 closer to Earth 👀

Chiffchaffs make a comeback: Chiffchaffs are coming back to the UK after their wintering in warmer climes, migrating overnight and hiding in dense undergrowth.

You’ll probably hear them before you see them – their repeating squeaky “chiff-chaff-chiff-chaff” call is a hard one to miss (and ever-so-satisfying to spot for the novice birder).

If you do stumble into one’s realm, you’ll find a small, light brown warbler tinged with olive green, flitting about branches and wagging its tail, truly one of the birbiest of the birbs.

💫 we need answers

Last week I asked:

The answer is... spring! A study from Coventry University, in collaboration with the Woodland Trust, British Science Association and BBC Springwatch, found that the season of spring moves across the UK at an average speed of 1.9 miles per hour, taking nearly three weeks to get from south to north.

Professor Tim Sparks analysed more than 20,000 records of seven spring events, including swallows arriving and hawthorn flowering, to arrive at this result, though also concluded that spring may be moving faster now than before.

🤔 until next week…

Here’s another from the archive:

In 1969, 49 years after printing an editorial mocking a scientist, the New York Times ran a correction reading:

“Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Isaac Newton in the 17th century and it is now definitely established that a ____ can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error.”

What event prompted the correction, and what word fills the blank?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x