New Scientist - USA (2019-12-21)

92 | New Scientist | 21/28 December 2019

The back pages Quiz of the year

1 How do staff at the Port

Macquarie Koala Hospital in

New South Wales revive young

koalas badly burned in wildfires,

as we reported in June?

A Apply butter

B Run them under cold water

C Feed them a poo shake

D Apply a eucalyptus compress

2 In April, we joined acoustic

researcher Unto Laine in

the Arctic circle as he listened

for the sound of what?

A Penguins birthing

B Polar bears feeding

C Icebergs calving

D Northern lights flickering

3 In March, NASA embarrassingly

had to cancel the first all-women

spacewalk because of a lack of

suitably sized suits. As of July 2019,

what percentage of all space

You have made it to the final few pages of the last New Scientist

issue of the year, so it is time to test whether you have been paying

attention to the science stories that truly matter. You will find the

answers to all of these questions in stories we have published this

year – but how many can you get without cheating?

This was 2019 (really)

travellers had been women,

did we report?

A 5.2 per cent

B 10.3 per cent

C 15.4 per cent

D 20.5 per cent

4 Staying in space, in January, we

looked at the concept of “space

elevators”. How thick a steel cable

would be needed for an elevator

to transport people and goods to

a satellite 100,000 kilometres up?

A About 1 kilometre

B About 100 kilometres

C About 100,000 kilometres

D About 1 light year

5 What reward did researchers

give crabs to entice them to find

their way through a complex maze,

did we discover in October?

A A single crushed mussel

B Worm meal

C Prawn crackers

D Crab sticks

6 We celebrated the first picture of

a black hole in April by asking what

would happen if you fell into one.

Which of these scenarios do

physicists consider plausible?

A Emerging the other side

through a black hole in reverse

B Burning to a crisp

in a cosmic firewall

C Discovering it wasn’t

a black hole after all

D All of the above

7 In May, deep-life researcher

Cara Magnabosco shared with us

her estimate of the proportion of

all microbial life on Earth that lives

in the “dark biosphere” deep

underground. What was it?

A 10 per cent

B 40 per cent

C 70 per cent

D 99 per cent

8 A study in August showed that

people with children are happier

than people without children

under what circumstances?

A When their children are young

B When their children move out

C When they get grandchildren

D Never

9 The scourge of microplastics

made huge headlines in 2019.

How many microplastic particles

are released from a single plastic

teabag steeped in water at 95°C,

according to Canadian research

published in September?

A More than 10,000

B More than 10 million

C More than 10 billion

D More than 10 trillion

10 If tea is too dangerous,

try alcohol. In February, German

researchers reported that to avoid a

bad hangover, you should do what?

A Drink beer before wine

B Drink wine before beer

C Either

D Neither

11 In June, we went on a fact-

finding mission to Mars to assess

the prospects for human habitation

there. Which of these did we

consider a plausible first home?

A Lava tubes

B Dust craters

C Methane ice igloos

D Modified shipping containers

FA carried there by Elon Musk’s rockets

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