This gigantic comet is racing toward the sun. Plus, how COVID-19 attacks all five senses; building brainpower through another language; Nat Geo sets 3 world records
MASSIVE COMET IS HEADED
TOWARD THE SUN | |
| Wednesday, September 29, 2021 | |
In today’s newsletter, how COVID attacks all five senses; Nat Geo sets three world records; new benefits to learning a language … and the West's shrinking water supply.
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 | | ILLUSTRATION BY NOIRLAB, NSF, AURA, J. DA SILVA (SPACEENGINE) | | By Victoria Jaggard, SCIENCE executive editor
There’s a persistent trope in disaster movies: When scientists warn of impending danger, the people in power rarely listen. This has to happen in fictional settings or we’d be deprived of cinema gems from Jurassic Park to The Day After Tomorrow. Now it seems Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence will carry on that grand tradition in Don’t Look Up, in which they try (and presumably fail) to warn the world about a giant comet aimed at Earth. Unlike most disaster flicks, this movie is billed as a comedy, and a lot about it sounds screwball indeed. Still, that humor comes with a sharp edge because—also unlike most disaster flicks—so much of what I’ve seen in trailers feels entirely plausible.
To start, scientists really can tell when a giant comet is headed in our direction. As Michael Greshko reports today, real astronomers are eagerly watching as an actual comet sails toward the sun. Dubbed comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, this primordial iceball (illustrated above) is about 90 miles wide, making it possibly the biggest ever found in modern times. Experts have traced its origin back to the Oort cloud, the same place that Leo notes birthed the movie’s icy interloper. Fear not: This comet isn’t on a collision course with Earth, and even if it was, we’d have plenty of warning. It’s not due to make its closest approach until January 2031.
But if it were headed right for us, would politicians, pundits, and the public react much differently than their cinematic counterparts? Between record species extinctions, the climate crisis, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of scientists have issued warnings about global disasters that have gone unheeded. To be fair, there are many facets to communicating risk in the real world that make it hard to assign blame. There’s also the inherent problems our species has grasping risk, so perhaps this trope is inevitable in the real world too. Or maybe the sharp sting of comedy will help drive home a message that drama could not.
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| How volcanoes helped the dinosaurs: In Triassic news, researchers say massive volcanic eruptions aided dinosaurs in dominating the Earth. During mega-monsoons 230-some million years ago, other animals that couldn’t adapt went extinct, such as large reptilian herbivores, the New York Times reports.
What happened to those galaxies? Six massive galaxies seem to have died during the universe's most active period of star birth. The galaxies appear to have run out of the cold hydrogen gas needed to make stars while most other galaxies were producing new stars at a rapid pace, CBS News reports.
Building neural connections: If you’ve ever dismissed learning a language because you thought it was easier to do as a kid, that’s not so, new research shows. Plus, the benefits of learning a language can be multiplied if your family is learning it, too, Avery Elizabeth Hurt writes for Nat Geo.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY MYRIAM TIRLER, HANS LUCAS VIA REDUX | | How COVID-19 can damage all five senses: They survived. But their COVID-19 symptoms have continued for months—perhaps even permanently. Some are suffering through tinnitus, blurred vision, and numbness and tingling, or the better-known losses of taste and smell. “It’s disarming to lose any of these senses, especially as suddenly as happens in the context of this infection,” neurologist Jennifer Frontera tells Nat Geo. (Pictured above, a woman in Paris wearing a protective mask smells a rose.)
Have your senses been damaged by COVID-19? Read the many responses to our tweet on this and let us know.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK FISHER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC | | A world record: Actually, three of them. Guinness World Records has recognized a Nat Geo expedition with installing the highest-altitude weather station, collecting the highest-altitude ice core sample, and finding the highest-altitude microplastics on land. The 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition included placing this automatic weather station (pictured above) on Mount Everest’s Balcony, a ridge on the mountain’s “death zone,” 27,657 feet (8,430 meters) above sea level. Here’s more on the expedition.
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 | | ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW FAZEKAS | | The Coathanger? With the moon out of the evening sky this week, try finding a distinct star pattern known as the Coathanger asterism. Nestled within the faint constellation Vulpecula, the Coathanger lies along one of the sides of the Summer Triangle formed by bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair, making it easy to hunt in the southwest. This cluster consists of about 10 stars in the form of a coat hanger. — Andrew Fazekas
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| Falling water levels: Photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Pete McBride took this image of Lake Mead, the largest U.S. reservoir, which saw its water level fall to the lowest level since 1937. The level is projected to drop through 2022. McBride once followed the Colorado River from the source to the point it sputtered out, long before the sea. “It was a stark reminder of what happens when we ask too much of limited resources: They disappear,” McBride writes. “Today, this water supply continues to shrink, and yet we ask for more.”
Related: Megadrought hits water supply in the western U.S.
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This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams, and Jen Tse has selected the photos. Have an idea or a link? We'd love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading, and happy trails. | |
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