New Scientist - USA (2021-02-20)

20 February 2021 | New Scientist | 21

Geology

Space Psychology

Very meaty cat food

may deter hunting

A 12-week trial found that

pet cats in the UK brought

home 36 per cent less prey

if they were given cat food

with a high animal protein

content. Most cat food

contains some plant-

derived protein: this

may leave cats missing

key micronutrients and

encourage hunting (Current

Biology, doi.org/fvdp).

Ozone layer may

recover sooner

Researchers feared healing

of the ozone layer would be

delayed following a surge

in emissions of a banned

chemical between 2014

and 2017. But the latest

figures suggest emissions

of this CFC were lower in

2019 and perhaps also in

2020, putting ozone layer

recovery back on track

(Nature, doi.org/fvdr).

Stone Age shell can

still make music

An 18,000-year-old conch

shell found in a French cave

in 1931 may have been a

musical instrument. The

pointed tip of the shell has

been carefully removed to

make a perfectly round

hole: a modern horn player

was able to produce three

distinct notes by blowing

through the hole (Science

Advances, doi.org/fvdt).

Reflected whale calls

provide seismic data

FIN whale songs, one of the

loudest animal calls in the ocean,

can be used to learn about the

structure of Earth’s crust.

Václav Kuna at the Institute

of Geophysics of the Czech

Academy of Sciences in Prague

and his colleague John Nábĕlek at

Oregon State University thought

of the idea while recording seismic

activity from earthquakes.

Between 2012 and 2013, the

researchers deployed 54 ocean-

WE HAVE spotted a galaxy we know

is young, but which has features

typically seen only in older galaxies.

It challenges current understanding

of how quickly galaxies form.

Galaxies are thought to begin as

chaotic structures, with clouds of

cold gas, stars and dust travelling

through space. They grow by

colliding and merging with smaller

galaxies and can form a disc-like

structure with a central cluster of

stars known as a bulge. This can

take up to a few billion years to

complete. Unless it is the galaxy

known as ALESS 073.1.

Using the Atacama Large

Millimeter/submillimeter Array,

Federico Lelli at Arcetri Astrophysical

Observatory in Italy and his team

imaged this object, which is nearly

12.5 billion light years away.

We see it as it was just 1.2 billion

years after the big bang.

They examined the distribution

and movement of cold gases in the

galaxy and found it formed a disc

rotating in a regular way. There

were hints of spiral arms, another

trait of mature galaxies (Science,

doi.org/fvdk). Lelli says that this

disc rotation implies the presence

of a central bulge that couldn’t be

seen in the images, suggesting that

bulges may form over less time than

previously thought. Ibrahim Sawal

bottom seismometer (OBS)

stations to record activity. Four

stations recorded six fin whale

(Balaenoptera physalus) songs.

“The calls travel through the

water and penetrate into the

ground,” says Kuna. “They then

bounce off the layers within the

oceanic crust and come back to

the surface where we record

them at OBS stations.”

These returning sound waves

allow geologists to determine the

make-up and the thickness of

Earth’s crust as they refract and

reflect through different layers.

The researchers tested this on

Avatar can boost

speaking confidence

OBSERVING a virtual-reality

version of yourself confidently

delivering a speech with bold body

language can improve your public

speaking – if you are a man.

Marianne Schmid Mast at

the University of Lausanne,

Switzerland, and her team took 76

people – mostly undergraduate

students, around a third of whom

were women – and asked them to

give a 3-minute speech to a virtual

audience. The subjects then

watched a virtual talk given

confidently by either an avatar

made to look like themselves or

an avatar of the same gender that

didn’t resemble them. They were

then asked to give a second speech.

The team found a pattern

among men who had said they

weren’t good speakers. Those that

then watched their doppelgänger

were, on average, 22 per cent more

persuasive in the second speech –

based on an assessment by an

external viewer – than those

who watched the unfamiliar

avatar (PLoS ONE, doi.org/fvdx).

There was no observable effect

on women. Schmid Mast believes

this is down to women being

generally more expressive than

men, and therefore benefiting

less from the cues in the virtual

speech. Matthew Sparkes

the sea floor surrounding the OBS

stations and found that the whale

songs could show the thickness

of the top sediment layers. Their

results matched thickness values

previously observed by geologists

for layers of the same crustal age

(Science, doi.org/fvdz).

Studies of Earth’s crust usually

use seismic airguns, which are

more effective as they emit a wider

range of frequencies at a higher

resolution than the whales, but

there is potential to use the songs

of other whales, such as sperm

whales, which have a broader

frequency range. Karina Shah

Freakish young galaxy rips

up the astrophysics rule book

CH

AL
AB
AL

A/G

ET
TY

IM
AG

ES

CA

RD

IFF

UN

IVE

RS

ITY

Really brief

New Scientist Daily

Get the latest scientific discoveries in your inbox

newscientist.com/sign-up