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Scientific American Presents: Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk [Video] Neil deGrasse Tyson is the host of StarTalk, which is both a top-rated podcast and a television series on National Geographic Channel Scientific American editor Lee Billings interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson in his office at the American Museum of Natural History. The transcript is below. [Tyson: I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I’m an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York City....

The historic first image of a black hole unveiled last year has now been turned into a movie. The short sequence of frames shows how the appearance of the black hole’s surroundings changes over years as its gravity stirs the material around it into a constant maelstrom. The images show a lopsided blob of light swirling around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy M87. To create them, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration — which harnesses a planet-wide network of observatories — exhumed old data on the black hole and combined these with a mathematical model based on the image released in April 2019, to show how the surroundings have evolved over eight years....

Before he ever took a formal algebra class, Arthur Benjamin got a lesson he never forgot. The future mathematician’s father said, “Son, doing algebra is just like arithmetic, except you substitute letters for numbers. For example, 2x + 3x = 5x and 3y + 6y = 9y. You got it?” The young Arthur replied that he grasped the concept. After which his dad said, “Okay, then what is 5Q + 5Q?...

Wind speeds are getting faster worldwide, and that’s good news for renewable energy production — at least for now. A study published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change finds that winds across much of North America, Europe and Asia have been growing faster since about 2010. In less than a decade, the global average wind speed has increased from about 7 mph to about 7.4 mph. For the average wind turbine, that translates to a 17% increase in potential wind energy....

Just like in bodybuilding, the bruising world of shopping operates by the same maxim: no pain, no gain. The “must-have” painting, the washer and dryer or the CD we stand to gain, will always come with the pain of reaching into our wallets and bidding farewell to a few bucks. A research team led by Stanford University neuroscientist Brian Knutson has identified the parts of the human brain that respond when presented with a product and those that then act as we decide on whether or not to purchase it....

As a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, Jacqueline Parchem, an assistant professor at the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), cares for many people with high-risk pregnancies. But before the COVID-19 pandemic, she had rarely seen the kind of illness that has since become a devastating part of her practice: young patients, who would otherwise have uneventful pregnancies, requiring oxygen, being intubated or even put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which temporarily replaces the function of the heart and lungs....

Mark A. W. Andrews, professor of physiology and director of the Independent Study Pathway at the Lake Erie College of Osteo­pathic Medicine, replies: Generally speaking, heaviness of the muscles around the eyes, including the levator muscles that open the upper eyelids, is similar to fatigue of any muscle of the body. Ocular and brow muscles are especially prone to fatigue because they are active for most of our waking hours. Over the course of the day, they gradually grow leaden with extended use, as our arms and legs do....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Consider, for a moment, the paper cut. It happens suddenly and entirely unexpectedly, usually just as you are finally getting somewhere on that task you had been putting off. Recall your sense of relief to finish that thank-you note to your aunt for the lovely sweater she sent you three months prior when, at the crucial moment, your hands failed you in their familiar task and the paper’s edge slid past its restraints into the flesh....

Whenever I smell the pages of a brand new book, I am reminded of all the late night reading I did as a kid. I can even feel the soft fabric on the arms of my favorite reading chair and sense the quiet of a house where everyone else is asleep. The stresses of the day start to give way a bit to feelings of calm and focus. We have an armchair in my daughter’s room very similar to my childhood reading chair, but sitting in it doesn’t quite conjure up those memories as effectively as that new book smell....

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) arrival into Martian orbit, on a mission that would revolutionize our views of the planet. Ancient river valleys and flow channels first seen by orbiters in the 1970s told scientists Mars had briefly been a warm, wet world nearly four billion years ago. But after that short spate of activity the planet had apparently lapsed into senescence, becoming little more than an inert, rusty rock....

Researchers often toil away for years in a lab without any promise that their research will result in anything meaningful for society. But sometimes this work results in a breakthrough with global ramifications. Such was the case for Katalin Karikó, who, along with her colleague Drew Weissman, helped develop the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that was used to produce the highly effective COVID vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. Karikó, who is now senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement therapies at BioNTech (the company that co-developed a COVID vaccine with Pfizer), and Weissman, a professor of vaccine research at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, have just been awarded a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for their work on modifying the genetic molecule RNA to avoid triggering a harmful immune response....

A 580-million-year-old fossil is casting doubt on the established tree of animal life. The invertebrate, named Eoandromeda octobrachiata because its body plan resembles the spiral galaxy Andromeda, suggests that the earliest branches in the tree need to be reordered, say the authors of study in Evolution and Development . The researchers, led by paleontologist Feng Tang of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, believe that Eoandromeda is the ancient ancestor of modern ocean dwellers known as comb jellies — gelatinous creatures similar to jellyfish, but rounder and with eight rows of iridescent paddles along their sides....

By Julie Steenhuysen Infecting mosquitoes with a strain of bacteria known as Wolbachia significantly reduced their ability to transmit the Zika virus, Brazilian researchers said on Wednesday, raising hope for this biological method of blocking transmission of the deadly virus. The bacteria has been released in several countries including Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam as part of strategies to control dengue, and the new finding shows the method also works with Zika, a close relative of dengue....

The disease caused by the novel coronavirus has a name: COVID-19. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, announced the name Tuesday, giving a specific identifier to a disease that has been confirmed in more than 42,000 people and caused more than 1,000 deaths in China. There have been fewer than 400 cases in 24 other countries, with one death. In choosing the name, WHO advisers focused simply on the type of virus that causes the disease....

We seem to have entered a rather murky phase of the pandemic here in the United States. Most states have lifted indoor mask mandates, restrictions on the size of public gatherings, and vaccination requirements to enter business- es. Shows, concerts and awards ceremonies have recommenced. But make no mistake, this global scourge is by no means over, despite a seeming return to normal. In the United States, we passed one million COVID deaths in the second week of May....

Soon, the jeep-size rover Curiosity will trace its first six-wheeled tracks over the Martian surface. Over the next 23 months, Curiosity will scoop dust and drill into rocks for clues to the Red Planet’s past. Although those samples won’t make it back to Earth, some Martian rocks are already catalogued and preserved here as part of NASA’s astromaterials collection. Astromaterials are fragments and particles from planets, asteroids, stars and other extraterrestrial bodies....

A newborn immune system responds to HIV infection less effectively than a more mature one, so an HIV-positive baby should be started on antiretroviral therapy as soon after birth as possible, new research suggests. Although treatment early in life was known to be advantageous, the study, published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine, shows the immune system’s response in detail for the first time. The study could energize efforts to treat newborns with HIV, several experts say, and it may help pave the way for an eventual long-lasting treatment or even a cure....

An infant child possesses an amazing, and fleeting, gift: the ability to master a language quickly. At six months, the child can learn the sounds that make up English words and, if also exposed to Quechua and Tagalog, he or she can pick up the unique acoustic properties of those languages, too. By age three, a toddler can converse with a parent, a playmate or a stranger. I still marvel, after four decades of studying child development, how a child can go from random babbling to speaking fully articulated words and sentences just a few years later—a mastery that occurs more quickly than any complex skill acquired during the course of a lifetime....

Before a cluster of cells can develop into an embryo, it must first decide which end is up. But that process had never been observed in humans—until now. For the first time, researchers have watched human ‘organizer’ cells direct the formation of an embryo’s top, bottom, front and back. They did so by developing a technique that sidesteps restrictions on research with human embryos by grafting human cells onto chicken embryos....

The day Phil Mackenzie decided to expose his almost naked body to gas colder than the lowest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth started like any other day. The professional rugby player woke up and headed to the playing field in Manchester, England, for his usual grueling workout. He ran passing and kicking drills. He was repeatedly tackled. He lifted weights. By the end of practice he was exhausted. Usually Mackenzie would head back to the locker room and soothe his sore body with a hot shower....