What Lex from Jurassic Park and an Edwardian magician have in common

Hello, friends!

Smell that? Summer is right around the corner and I am so full of foraged elderflower it’s not even funny.

I’ve also been enjoying the aerial displays of the swifts that have been going nuts over Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. (And wondering *why* is no one else looking up? WHY?! Sure, swans are great if you like your birds with the imminent threat of violence, but they’re here all year round. Look up, I beg!)

If you can tear yourself away from the great outdoors, on the lecture slate this week we have medical miracles in the form of womb transplants, conservation efforts in Kyrgyzstan’s Alai mountains, and a journey inside the minds of invertebrate creatures.

What will you discover 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 10 June

☠️ Throwback, 2000: The Millennium (aka Wobbly) Bridge opens in London, provides lesson about oscillation. On this day in 2000, the first river bridge to open in central London for more than a hundred years took its first passengers, though due to its alarming sway, had to close two days later.

🎻 What happened? The Millennium Bridge is a suspension bridge, constructed with shorter cables than the usual to create a lower profile (read: not spoil the view). The tension in cables, 2,000 tonnes’ worth, effectively tuned the bridge to 1 Hz, roughly the same frequency at which people walk.

🍌 For years it was thought it was the pedestrians’ tendency to walk in step as the bridge swayed that caused this greater oscillation. However, a 2021 paper argued that the swaying was caused not by this synchronisation of pedestrians’ footsteps, but by the ‘negative damping’ effect of them trying not to fall over.

🤢 “The bridge’s designers say it was built to allow some movement,” our correspondent notes in this BBC report from the day of its opening (please enjoy the early-‘00s fashions in the VT). “I feel sick,” says one brave bridge walker. “It’s great,” says another, before noting “but it’s moving.”

Tuesday 11 June

🍿 It’s the swift egg drop… live: The swifts have been arriving from Africa to breed since early spring. Tune into the progress of this brooding swift in Lancashire, whose first egg of three hatched on Wednesday.

🪲 Get a load of this cuckoo spit: As spring begins to come to close, keep an eye out for bubbly blobs adorning plant stems. Not the output of cuckoos at all (though tending to arrive around the same time we start hearing the bird), this froth is produced by froghopper nymphs, we think as a form of protection.

Wednesday 12 June

🌨️ 🐆 Safeguarding the snow leopard in Kyrgyz-Alai, online event held by the Linnean Society, 12.30, free: Fatima Mannapbekova explores the role of local communities in helping protect the snow leopard and other species, and explains why grassroot-level conservation efforts are so important.

Thursday 13 June

☀️ Perceiving climate change: heat, online event held by the Royal Geographical Society, 19.00, free: Sheffield Hallam University’s Space & Place Group present this third session with the RGS about how to make climate change understandable and intelligible to human senses. This session focuses on how we detect and experience the heat effects of climate change.

Friday 14 June

🎁 The first human womb transplant, hybrid event held by the Royal Institution, 19.00, from £5: Surgeons Richard Smith and Isobel Quiroga tell the story of a 25-year-long journey of research and collaboration that culminated in the UK’s first ever human womb transplant last year. While this was the UK’s first ever transplant of this nature, there have been about 100 worldwide, with 50 babies born after such procedures since 2013.

Saturday 15 June

💭 Invertebrate minds: from spiders to octopuses, hybrid event held by LSE, 14.00, free: Human beings are just one of the world’s sentient creatures, and societies are becoming more conscious of issues of animal welfare. However, the inner worlds of invertebrates including bees, arachnids and octopuses are often overlooked and underestimated. This panel discusses the steps that can be taken to protect their welfare.

Sunday 16 June

🌓 ⭐ Watch the Moon sidle up to Spica… At about 10pm, look for the Moon in the southern sky and catch Spica, the brightest star in Virgo, right by its side.

✨ 📐 …then try some astronomical trigonometry. Spica is one of the three bright stars making up the Spring Triangle, a group of stars (or asterism) made of Arcturus, in the constellation Boötes, and Regulus, of Leo. From Spica, trace a 1 o’clock line up to Arcturus, then from there, a 4 o’clock line to the right to arrive at Regulus, and you’ve made yourself a scalene in the sky.

🤓 If you prefer your Spring Triangle a bit more equilateral (as late astronomer George Lovi apparently did), swap out Regulus for Denebola, a dimmer star also in the constellation Leo that’s about halfway along that path you drew from Arcturus to Regulus.

We need answers

A couple of weeks ago I asked:

The answer is hacking.

In 1903, as physicist John Ambrose Fleming prepared to demonstrate Guglielmo Marconi’s long-distance wireless communication system at the Royal Institution in London, a magician called Nevil Maskelyne took over the frequency, sending the repeated message ‘rats’ by Morse code as well as this naughty poem from a nearby music hall.

Marconi, poised to send his message from 300 miles away on a clifftop in Cornwall, had hoped the demo would show that information could be securely sent over long distances.

Until next week...

As of 2021, a certain vehicle had been travelling for more than 15 years at an average cost of 17 cents per mile. What was this vehicle’s primary destination?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x