Pointy or blunt: Which end of the egg comes out the chicken first?

Hello friends! This week I’ve enjoyed getting to know (through articles, not IRL) Michel Talagrand, who on Wednesday won the Abel Prize (the maths version of the Nobel) for his formulas that make random processes more predictable.

Talagrand was born with a condition that makes his retinas prone to detachment. After losing sight in his right eye at the age of 5, and suffering multiple retinal detachments at the age of 15, he “lived in constant terror that there will be a next retinal detachment,” he told New Scientist. “To escape that, I started to study.”

He continues: “I started to study hard mathematics and physics… to fight the terror… when you start studying, then you become good at it and once you become good, it’s very appealing.”

It truly is one of life’s greatest joys – following your curiosity and getting to really, deeply, learn something new. So... what will you discover this week?

Coming up...

• This week's talks and events

• Why did the New York Times run a correction for a 49-year-old article?

• Your brainteaser for this week

This week’s kicks

(Note: All listings are correct at the time of send but are subject to change, so please check before you travel! Prices exclude booking fees where they apply.)

Monday 25 March

🌕🪱 Worm Moon rising: Early birds can get a look at March’s full moon today, which gets its name from earthworms’ tendency to liven up and peek their heads out at the end of winter. Catch this year’s Worm Moon just before it reaches its fullest in the early hours of the morning.

☠️ Lead: A toxic legacy, hybrid event held by Gresham College, 18.00, free: Although leaded fuel was finally eradicated in 2021 – a public health success story for sure – historic emissions in the environment may still be having an impact on health, as Dr Ian Mudway explains in this lecture.

🔭 Throwback, 1655: Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. 350 years later a lander bearing his name touched down on the moon’s surface. See this 2.5-minute video for a view of Huygens’ landing.

🌃 Glimpse Mercury after sunset: See if you can catch Mercury – often difficult to see as it’s so near the Sun – just before it sets at dusk. Look west, near the horizon, at about 7pm – you’ll have about half an hour before it turns in for the night.

Tuesday 26 March

🧠 Consciousness in humans and other things, hybrid event held by The Royal Society, 18.30, free: Professor Anil Seth sheds light on the nature of consciousness, how subjective experiences arise from our brains and bodies, and what defines the ‘self’, through the idea of the brain being an embodied ‘prediction machine’ in this Michael Faraday Prize Lecture.

Wednesday 27 March

🔍 Space oddities with Harry Cliff, hybrid event held by the Royal Institution, 19.20, pay what you can (online) to £20 (in-theatre): CERN physicist Harry Cliff explores the cosmic anomalies scientists are tussling with, including particles of astonishing energies from beneath the ice of Antarctica, and the enigmatic forces that tug at the fundamental building blocks of matter. 

Thursday 28 March

🌺 Pathless Forest: The quest to save the world’s largest flowers, hybrid event held by the Linnean Society, 18.00, free: Botanist and lecturer Chris Thorogood tells the story of his journey to study and protect Rafflesia, an enigmatic plant with the world’s largest flowers (one metre across!). The talk promises thrilling adventure as well as an inspirational call to action. (I know, that emoji is a hibiscus. Sorry, botanists.)

Friday 29 March 

🌸 Good Friday is good for blossom: Spring has arrived! and trees across the land – botanically speaking, those stone fruit trees in the family Rosaceae – are starting their annual burst into blossom.

According to the Woodland Trust, it’s the blackthorn (which bears the fruit that gives us sloes for gin), cherry plum (ancestor of the domestic plum), pear (delicious), and plum blossom (also delicious. What an excellent family) that come out in March, each producing white blossoms. The pink varieties (crab apple, hawthorn, domestic apple) will come later.

🎮 Identify some tree flowers and let your knowledge blossom with this interactive quiz.

Saturday 30 March

🪺 Eggcam! Tune into peregrine falcon nesting season: See how a pair of peregrine falcons, having returned to Leamington Spa Town Hall’s bell tower for another spring, are getting on with their clutch of eggs in this livestream by the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust.

Peregrine falcons lay about four eggs a year. After building a nest, the female lays one egg every other day and only starts incubating (read: sitting on them to keep them warm) when the next-to-last one is laid, so that they all hatch at roughly the same time. How neat is that? 🐣

Sunday 31 March

🥚 This Easter Sunday, ponder a chicken and egg question (not that one): Pop quiz: what way do eggs come out of the chicken? Is it pointy or blunt end first? Surprisingly, it’s the blunt end. But that’s not the whole story. The egg starts pointy end facing out, then rotates 180 degrees in utero before being laid.

Fabricius of Padua worked this out in the 17^th century, though visual evidence arrived some time later in 1946 when a radiographer named J.A.F. Fozzard X-rayed a Rhode Island Leghorn at different intervals of the egg incubation cycle.

🤔 I once heard a story about a scientist who had discovered this oological about-face by drawing a cross on one end of the egg while it was still inside the chicken and finding that the un-crossed end came out first. (This is a patchy memory, it’s possible some of those details aren’t entirely accurate.)

I heard the story at a talk at the Natural History Museum, so it must be kosher, but I’ve not found any evidence of it online… yet. Maybe it was Fabricius of Padua who did it. I’m going to keep looking and will report back next week.

We need answers

A couple of weeks ago I asked:

Answer: The correction ran on 17 July 1969, a day after the launch of Apollo 11 which landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. The word filling the blank is... ‘rocket’. 🥧

Until next week…

Which consumer product, manufactured in Cumbernauld and Milton Keynes, and of which about 6.5 litres are sold every second in its country of origin, is said to contain 0.002% ammonium ferric citrate?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x