An astronaut's lecture, fresh off the Moon

Hello, friends!

This one goes out to the spider that landed on my shoulder while I was reading in bed the other night. Appreciate your thirst for knowledge, little spider (it wasn’t little), but you need to work on your approach.

Right. You’re busy, I’m traumatised, let’s get to the science! In this edition, find talks about:

• 🛰️ how origami is inspiring spacecraft design

• 🐦‍⬛ what our descriptions of birdsong can tell us about language

• 🧑‍🚀 lunar geology, from a real Apollo astronaut.

Let’s go!

🍿 online talks and events 🐧

All times are GMT.

Tuesday 18 February

From blood to bioreactor, hybrid event by UCL, 17.30, free: In this inaugural lecture, Professor Qasim Rafiq discusses his work developing solutions that bring cell and gene therapies from the laboratory to the clinic. He also explores the engineering and manufacturing advances that are shaping the future of healthcare.

Why do people work in space?, hybrid talk by the Royal Astronomical Society, 18.00, free: Dr Heidi Thiemann shares some of the insights from last year’s Space Census (yep, new one on me), to help us understand what ignites our curiosity and inspires us to reach for the stars.

From Apollo to Artemis, hybrid lecture by the Geological Society, 18.00, free: *Astronaut alert!* In this two-parter, the society will play a recording of Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmidt’s 1973 lecture on the geology of the Moon, having put boots down there just a year before. Dr Giulia Magnarini will then discuss the legacy of the Apollo missions, and how knowledge from the programme has prepared us for future lunar exploration.

The science of the multiverse: do parallel universes exist?, hybrid event by Seed Talks, 19.00, from £12: CERN particle physicist Dr Harry Cliff takes us on a tour of the multiverse, discussing why many scientists are taking it seriously, and whether we’ll ever be able to explore these other worlds.

Wednesday 19 February

Botanical University Challenge, 14.00, free: 22 botanist teams with brilliant names (including Xylem Asylum of Aberystwyth, Pain in the Grass of Portsmouth, and The Leguminati of Edinburgh) battle it out in round 2 of this epic tournament. They’ll be answering questions like What is the name of this tree bark? What is this part of a flower called? and What botanical term could describe this moustache?

Packing for a trip to space, hybrid event by Imperial College London, 17.30, free: Aeronautics professor Matthew Santer discusses his work figuring out how to launch huge things into space by packing them tightly before lift off and unfurling them once they’re in orbit (e.g. the JWST). He’ll note how origami, and even tape measures, are influencing their design.

Keon West on The Science of Racism, hybrid event at Rhodes House, University of Oxford, 18.00, free: Social psychology professor Keon West sits down with writer and historian Klarke Stricklen to discuss the themes of his book, The Science of Racism, which presents a rigorous examination of racism to reveal truths that are shocking and tragic, but also, somehow, “funny and entertaining”.

Physics in the Indian subcontinent: Abdus Salam, online event by the Institute of Physics, 18.00, free: In the third of this series of webinars covering the history of physics in the Indian subcontinent, Hamza Waseem looks at the life of theoretical physicist Abdus Salam, whose work paved the way for the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson.

Friday 21 February

From birds to words: onomatopoeia, metaphor, and the language of birdsong, hybrid lecture by the University of Birmingham, 16.00, free: Linguistics and communication professor Bodo Winter discusses how sound imitation and metaphor combine to convey the intricate qualities of birdsong, and what this can tell us about how new words emerge.

Saturday 22 February

Physical Origins from the Big Bang to Earth, day-long conference by the St Cross Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics, 10.30-17.00, free: A constellation of star speakers take turns at the helm in this day-long conference telling the story of our physical origins. They’ll be starting all the way back at the Big Bang and concluding with a look at how the Earth’s continents and oceans were formed.

🐶 in a sky near you… 🔭

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

Track down the dog star: This week find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, from about 9pm. Sirius forms the ‘tag’ on the ‘collar’ of the constellation Canis Major, the great dog. Follow the three stars of Orion’s belt down to find it in the southern sky.

How come it’s so bright? It’s both intrinsically bright – 20 times brighter than the Sun – and it’s pretty close in space terms, at just 8.6 light-years away. (By comparison, our nearest non-Sun star neighbour is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years away, but too faint for us to see with the naked eye.)

🐦 closer to Earth 👀

Seek out some sparrows: A fairly common sight in the UK’s parks and gardens, though writing in the lovely book Nature’s Calendar, Kiera Chapman asks you to look for the size of the black patch on the chests of squabbling males – the more dominant birds have bigger ones.

She also notes the following, which will stay with me: As the days get longer, female sparrows’ ovaries get 50 times bigger while the testicles of the males grow to 100 times their previous size. That’s a lot of gonad.

☕ one for the sofa 🐕

A day at dog school: Lauren Leffer follows some very special boys and girls learning how to become working dogs in search and rescue, as well as in disease detection. Did you know doggy strength training was a thing?

💫 we need answers

Last week I asked:

The answer is… Antarctica. Each of these describe the names of different penguin species that can be found on the continent: emperors (Japanese rulers), chinstraps (fastenings for headwear), Humboldts (named for 19th-century explorer Alexander von Humboldt) and macaronis (some pasta).

🤔 until next week…

What word can you add to a supercomputer to make a ’90s server of Breakfast at Tiffany’s?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x