Why we have hungry bears to thank for cider

Hello, friends!

Some more highbrow talks lined up this week, so let’s… proceed in an orderly fashion.

🍿 online talks and events 🐧

All times are BST.

Monday 21 October

Celebrating the contribution of viral sequencing to the COVID-19 pandemic response, hybrid talk by the Cambridge Society for the Application of Research, 19.30, free: Professor of Public Health and Microbiology Sharon Peacock explains how genomic data guided our response to the pandemic on a national and global scale, and what drives viral evolution.

Friday 25 October

Future of transplantation – from machines to 3D printing, hybrid talk by the Royal Institution, 19.20, pay what you can: Surgeon and scientist Pankaj Chandak shows us the future of organ transplantation, covering novel technologies and innovations including 3D printing, which allows for more personalised treatments.

🔭 in a sky near you… 🪐

Catch a falling star: The Orionid meteor shower peaks tonight (October 21-22), so if you have access to a lot of dark sky, and don’t mind staying up late, you could catch some shooting stars this week.

The meteors, debris from Halley’s comet burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere, appear to radiate from the constellation of Orion but can appear all over the sky. In the best conditions, you can expect to see about 25 meteors an hour.

👀 closer to Earth 🍎

Let’s get ready to crumble: I’m usually a bit dubious of national days but am happy to acknowledge Apple Day today as it’s a) an event established to celebrate the variety of UK-grown produce, b) an excuse to eat pudding, and c) an opportunity to tell the story of how apples came to be delicious.

Domestic apples hail from the Tian Shan mountains of Central Asia. We have brown bears to thank in part for the large, sweet fruit we enjoy today – like us, they prefer a sweeter apple, and would choose bigger ones to keep them going through hibernation.

Seeds from those specially selected, bear-eaten apples emerged from those ursines unscathed and ready to germinate, and were more widely distributed over thousands of years. Humans would eventually pick them up, bringing them to their culinary pinnacle in the aforementioned crumble and Apple Sourz.

🤔 until next week…

Let’s not kid around with this one. What do 10¹⁰⁰ , the solar system’s largest dwarf planet, and the Natural History Museum’s new bronze diplodocus have in common?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x