Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · 2d

Was delighted to discover this titbit about Tom Lehrer, the mathematician who put the chemical elements to music:

(Original article here: www.economist.com/prospero/201...)

A screenshotted part of an article that reads: When 2 Chainz, a rapper, asked to sample “The Old Dope Peddler” in one of his tracks, Mr Lehrer was keen to help. “I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this,” he supposedly answered. “Please give my regards to Mr Chainz, or may I call him 2?”

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · 10d

Asian elephants work out we’re paying attention to them by observing how our face and body are oriented: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#scicomm 🧪

Two images sit side by side: one shows a TV screen with the word “Netflix” on it with a male viewer in the foreground and a brick wall in the background, while the other shows an advancing Asian elephant with vegetation in the background. Each has the caption: “big, long memory, knows when you’re watching”.

Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · 11d

Oh dang. This is an excellent analogy.

Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 12d

The mystery of medical diagnosis!

Anyone: Why are there suddenly so many AHDH diagnoses?
Dr. Jen: Same reason there are suddenly more stars after we built telescopes.

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Vagina Museum @vaginamuseum.bsky.social · 13d

Big congratulations to Chunk for taking the crown as this year's #FatBearWeek winner! Today feels like as good a day as any to tell you all about a little trick that bears have to ensure pregnancy takes place during OPTIMAL FATNESS.

A very fat bear standing in a river. He is brown and furry, with a broken jaw which makes his tongue stick out.

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · 13d

I fell hard for diamonds reporting this feature for #Ingenia – did you know they could play a role in destroying forever chemicals, diagnosing infectious diseases, and making our data centres less energy-hungry?

It's all here: www.ingenia.org.uk/articles/not...

#chemsky #materialsscience 🧪

Not just a pretty face: lab-grown diamonds in engineering

Diamond is an incredibly versatile material that can help us solve some of our biggest problems – from diagnosing diseases earlier to making the electronics underpinning data centres more efficient. L...

www.ingenia.org.uk

Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Dr. Laci Brock 🪐 @stellerarts.com · 14d

Sometimes your ideas fail, and other times they turn out better than expected! #sciart

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · 15d

Mind blown

Marcus Chown @marcuschown.bsky.social · 16d

Gustav Holst was the school music teacher of Cecilia Payne, who discovered the chemical composition of the stars. He tried to get her to become a musician but she ignored him. She went on to write the most important astrophysics PhD of the 20th century and become the first woman professor at Harvard

New Leibniz @newleibniz.bsky.social · 24d

#classicalmusic #opera When I see "Gustav Holst" I can't help but wishing that he had stopped writing "The Planets" long before he got to Neptune. 🤮

Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Duncan Mackay @theduncanmackay.bsky.social · 26d

#OTD 19 September 1991, walkers in the high Ötztal alps on the Italian border, found a body melting out of the ice. It turned out to be the remains of a c.5200 year old man preserved with all his kit.
Of course, it was essential to replicate him in Playmobil.
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#PlaymobilÖtzi
#PlaymobilInfestation

Playmobil figure kitted out as prehistoric iceman Ötzi.

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · 26d

Gah, forgot my alt text! Here it is: A photo of two of the Crystal Palace dinosaur statues, with a speech bubbles appearing above each. One speech bubble reads: “Everything is…”, while the other reads: “Awesome!”

Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · 26d

This week's newsletter lands in about 5 minutes! This week's edition features:

✂️ A couple of Galileo's severed fingers
📐 That time trigonometry saved farmers' bacon
🌿 The scientific reason why those who like coriander are wrong

Subscribe here: kicksfromscience.beehiiv.com/subscribe

#science 🧪

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Puzzmo @puzzmo.com · Sep 15

If a group of crows is called a murder then a group of bird watchers should be called an investigation.

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Leah Shaffer @leahshaffer.bsky.social · Aug 23

The only dating advice book published in the invertebrate world is "How to win friends and protect your sperm during mating"

Tips and life hacks:

Give her a tasty protein tubule for snack

Surrender your own flesh to her gaping maw

Do a sexy dance
🧪🦗

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Dr Dan Jones @hookean.bsky.social · Aug 23

I didn't realise that there was a precursor to Powers of Ten, made in Canada and called Cosmic Zoom 🙂
#PhysicsEd
#iTeachPhysics
#Science 🧪

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgfw...

Cosmic Zoom

YouTube video by NFB

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Shanil Virani @shanilv.ca · Aug 12

💫 Who taught us that the calcium in our bones and the iron in our blood were born in stars — and then fought to open observatories to women?

Born #OTD in 1919, Eleanor Margaret Burbidge changed both science and who gets to do it. 🔭🧪 #Astronomy #WomenInScience

Astronomical Society of the Pacific @astrosociety.org · Aug 12

Born #OTD in 1919 Margaret Burbidge helped reveal one of the great truths of the cosmos — that the atoms of life were forged in the hearts of stars. She then broke barriers to ensure women could study them.

We are made of starstuff & all deserve the chance to discover it. #Astronomy #WomenInScience

Some lives leave constellations in their wake.

Born on this day in 1919, Eleanor Margaret Burbidge helped reveal one of the great truths of the cosmos — that the atoms of life were forged in the hearts of stars. Her work on stellar nucleosynthesis, through the landmark B²FH paper, showed how hydrogen and helium became the oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood.

But Margaret’s legacy is not only written in the language of the stars. She fought to open observatory doors to women, challenged the limits society placed on who could do science, and inspired generations to follow curiosity wherever it leads.

Today, we remember not just her science, but her courage — and the truth she embodied: we are made of starstuff, and we all deserve the chance to discover it.

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · Aug 5

#Onthisday in 1888, Bertha Benz took the first ever long-distance car journey.

She solved snags as they arose, using a hat pin to clear a blockage, and replacing the brake blocks with leather, effectively inventing brake pads.

More here: kicksfromscience.beehiiv.com/p/live-from-...

#histsci

A crudely assembled image of an old motor car, which looks like little more than two bicycles with a seat in the middle, upon a background of a rolling German countryside with different trees. In the foreground is an autobahn sign along with another sign that reads “Nope no autobahn yet. Come back in 40+ years. Danke.”

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @cosmicrami.com · Aug 5

Hahaha! This preprint! 🔭🧪

Chance of event happening to you or the planet, and if so, chance it will be lethal?

Turns out .... we are more likely to be hit by an impactor 140m and greater than:

- being struck by lightning
- getting killed by elephants and coyotes

arxiv.org/abs/2508.02418

Plot that shows a one-in-X chance of an event occuring to someone or the planet over a human lifetime on x-axis and then the one in X chance of a fatality if that event occurs. Several events are plotted such as contracting rabies, influenze, being hit by a car, being attacked by a coyote or elephant, being struck by lighting, carbon monoxide poisinging and the Earth being struck by an impactor greater than 140m in diameter

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · Aug 4

Need to go to bed but can’t tear myself away from this stream, live from 3,623m under the sea.

Watch this research team 🧪 searching for various invertebrates who call the seafloor home: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uL0...

Lance 36 Mar Del Plata Canyon | SOI Divestream 820 Part 2

YouTube video by Schmidt Ocean

www.youtube.com

Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · Aug 1

The teaser from last week's newsletter.

Get the answer here: kicksfromscience.beehiiv.com/p/neurotic-r...

The following text on a purple background: Under what system does mathematics = DX, logic = CLX, and medicine = DCX?

Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · Aug 1

A delicious piece of #scicomm that just makes me want to go out and learn everything about bats

Michael Freeman @afreeparticle.com · Jul 31

🍎🧪🎢🧬 Any excuse to share this masterpiece: Mustached Bats Vs The Doppler Effect

Congratulations Tom!

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · Jul 30

In this week's newsletter, why some astronomers thought there were canals on Mars as late as the 1950s: kicksfromscience.beehiiv.com/p/neurotic-r... #histsci #mars

Crudely assembled image of a magnifying glass hovering over the planet Mars showing a Venetian vista complete with canals and gondolas through the lens

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

⚡️🔩Felsenstein's Monster🔩⚡️ @josephwb.bsky.social · Jul 27

I am sorry to report to all vying for the title, but the "Best Article Subtitle" award for 2025 has been snatched early by Lauren Wolf with their subtitle "Arsenic and old lakes" www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Controversial ‘arsenic life’ paper retracted after 15 years — but authors fight back

The journal Science retracts a headline-grabbing study, but the authors vigorously defend their data and say the retraction is unwarranted.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Dr Jamie Gallagher @jamiebgall.co.uk · Jul 27

Buffy is so old there were only 103 named elements, we’re at 118 now.

(Yes I pause every show that has a periodic table to see if its period accurate)

Photo of a tv. Onscreen a woman holds an axe with a periodic table visible behind.

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · Jul 25

birb of the day

New Scientist @newscientist.com · Jul 25

Painters often prime a canvas with a layer of white to make it smoother, stronger and to enhance the colours they will later layer on, but it seems this is a mechanism that birds were using long before humans picked up paintbrushes.

The secret to what makes colours pop on dazzling songbirds

Hidden layers of colour in the plumage of tanagers and some other songbirds explain what makes them so eye-catching

www.newscientist.com

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Leonie Mercedes @leoniemercedes.bsky.social · Jul 25

In 1955, a researcher flew bees from a lab in Paris to an identical lab in New York to test their sense of time.

Find out what happened when they arrived: kicksfromscience.beehiiv.com/p/space-rice...

#histsci #bees #scienceexperiments

A crudely assembled image of nine flying bees in the foreground, each with a tiny yellow alarm clock hovering over its head, and an out-of-focus New York skyline in the background

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Reposted by Leonie Mercedes

Dr Jasmine Janes @jazjanes.bsky.social · Jul 24

Found this slug having a good munch on this puffball mushroom yesterday.

🍄🧪

A big black slug has eaten its way inside a puffball mushroom.

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