Saturn's rings are disappearing

Hello, friends!

Quite the bumper edition this week talks-wise, with topics as far reaching as memory in humans and animals, the marriage of art and science, and the impacts of a phenomenon called ALAN. We also meet a planetary scientist with the ultimate response to the question “why aren’t you married?”.

NB: Parts of this edition were finalised during a journey on the Elizabeth Line, which is the most In The Future I’ve ever felt.

What will you discover this week?

This week’s kicks

(Note: Prices for events exclude booking fees where they apply.)

Monday 20 May

🪺 What can bird nests teach us about evolution?, hybrid event held by the Linnean Society and the British Ornithologists’ Club, 18.00, free: Dr Catherine Sheard presents recent research on global bird nest diversity and discusses whether nests have had a role in shaping birds’ evolution.

🤔 Living in the past: exploring memory in humans, animals, and artificial agents, hybrid event held by LSE, 18.30, free: A panel of psychologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers ponder the point of memory, discussing why we devote so much mental power to storing information about the past and whether animals do the same.

Tuesday 21 May

🪐 A planetary scientist’s unexpected (animated) journey, hybrid event held by the Royal Astronomical Society, 18.00, free: In 2018, Dr James O’Donoghue published a paper with NASA confirming that Saturn is losing its rings at a rapid rate (in geological terms), which he illustrated in this (slightly chilling) animation. In this talk, he shares his start in animated science communication and how useful it’s been for explaining how planets work.

💪 Let’s hear it for the ring leader: Carolyn Porco is a planetary scientist and scholar of Saturn’s rings who led the imaging team for NASA’s Cassini mission, which studied Saturn and its ring system for more than a decade. She also worked with Carl Sagan to create the Pale Blue Dot image, which in 1990 pictured Earth from more than 3 billion miles away.

🙄 Despite these staggeringly impressive achievements (more than enough for one lifetime, if you ask me), there’s only one ring some newspaper editors are concerned with according to this interview with Porco:

💅 “When New York Times editors insisted their journalist ask Porco why she never married, Porco... gave them two options to print, ‘Just tell them I have a different man every night and I like it that way,’ or ‘There are no high maintenance items in my house of any kind – pets, plants or husbands.’” 

💡 Artificial light at night environmental impact, online event held by the Institute of Physics, 19.15, free: Physicist Dr Chris Baddiley considers the effects of artificial light at night (or ‘ALAN’) on the natural environment, and discusses efforts to protect our dark skies so we can continue to study and enjoy what’s in them.

Wednesday 22 May

📈 Logarithms: mobile phones, modelling and statistics?, hybrid event held by Gresham College, 18.00, free: Information theory professor Oliver Johnson looks at logarithms’ important role in modern life, from modelling the Covid pandemic to making sense of Cristiano Ronaldo’s huge Instagram follower numbers.

🧮 Research suggests that humans instinctively think of numbers logarithmically (not linearly), so if you were to ask a young child what number is halfway between 1 and 9, they might say 3 rather than 5. It appears our perception of numbers on a linear scale – where the spaces between the numbers are all the same – is baked in by formal education.

Thursday 23 May

🌃 Crackle and pop – Northern Lights everywhere, hybrid event held by Nottingham Trent University, 20.00, free: If you missed the spectacle of the Northern Lights last weekend, don’t worry – NTU has you covered on the best bit: the science. In this talk, Dr Ian Whittaker explains the science behind the aurora borealis and why we got to glimpse it this far south earlier in the month.

Friday 24 May

🧑‍🎨 Beyond the perception envelope, hybrid event held by the Royal Institution, 19.20, pay what you can and up: Here’s something a little different, and as a big fan of the creamy, yielding interface between art and science, I am here for it. Artist Conrad Shawcross explores the connection between art and science and how human curiosity fuels both in this talk, also unveiling pieces from his most recent body of work.

Saturday 25 May

 👀 Quick! Spot a swift: For the last month or so, swifts have been arriving in the UK from sub-Saharan Africa to breed. To spot them, look up – they rarely touch the ground – around dusk. According to the Woodland Trust, swifts mate for life and return to the same nest site every year, often in the UK’s oldest buildings.

🎥 Tune into this livestream to see how a pair of nesting swifts, back for their fourth year on the site, has been faring. (Sometimes the swifts get really close to the lens which feels a bit weird and intimate and kind of like a Prodigy video.) The first egg of last year’s brood came on this day (17 May) last year, so we might get a lay soon.

🪂 Throwback, 2008: NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft lands on Mars to explore the planet’s arctic region. Its parachute descent was captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, marking the first time one spacecraft photographed another during a landing.

Sunday 26 May

👩‍🚀 Throwback, 1951: Birth of Sally Ride, who became the first American woman to fly in space in 1983. In 2001, she founded Sally Ride Science with the goal of promoting equity and inclusion for all students – especially girls – in science, technology, engineering and maths.

We need answers

Last week I asked:

The answer is... the Natural History Museum.

Until next week...

What substance, found in at least 80% of UK households, did German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt affectionately call “concentrated sunshine”?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x