How do non-
green plants
photosynthesise?
What has the
discovery of the Higgs
boson taught us?
Most reports of the discovery of the
Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in
Geneva in 2012 focused on its role in
explaining the origin of mass. But for
physicists, the real excitement lay in how it
confirmed their beliefs about how the
Universe is put together. For decades
they’ve been searching for a ‘theory of
everything’ to explain all the forces in the
Universe. To guide their ideas, they’ve
looked for similarities, or ‘symmetries’,
between disparate forces. The problem is
that these similarities are sometimes very
well hidden. In the 1960s, several theorists,
including Peter Higgs at the University of
Edinburgh, argued that the apparently radical
differences between the weak nuclear force
and the electromagnetic force would vanish
if a particle with certain properties existed.
Later dubbed the Higgs boson, its discovery
boosted the confidence of physicists in their
strategy for unifying the forces of nature. RMAll plants have chlorophyll in their
leaves but the green colour in plants such
as copper beech trees is masked by other
pigments. These carotenoid and
anthocyanin pigments don’t interfere with
photosynthesis and in fact can actually
help, by capturing the energy from some of
the wavelengths of light that chlorophyll
doesn’t absorb. LVPeter Higgs
visits the
LHC, where
the particle
bearing his
name was
discoveredDolphins and whales don’t have a
sneezing reflex, to prevent them from
accidentally taking a lungful of water if
they sneeze underwater. And amphibians
don’t have a diaphragm, so they can’t
expel air powerfully enough for a proper
sneeze. But most birds, reptiles and
mammals sneeze. There are also some
odd animals that can sneeze. Hagfish
sneeze when mucus clogs their nostrils.
Even sponges, which lack any brain or
nerves, will compress their whole body to
suddenly expel water in response to
strange chemicals. LVDo all animals sneeze?
The colour of
beech leaves helps
photosynthesisNo one knows, but the record for the
longest ‘wakeathon’ was set in 1965 when
a 17-year-old Californian student, Randy
Gardner, stayed awake without stimulants
for 264 hours. We cannot know whether
he had micro-sleeps, the very brief
moments when brain waves shift from
alpha (8-13Hz) to theta (4-7Hz) as they doin normal sleep, but by the end of his
ordeal he was described as like a
vegetable with its eyes open. In recent
experiments, others have stayed awake
for 8 to 10 days. Sleep deprivation causes
serious cognitive decline and is highly
unpleasant, but no one is known to have
died purely from lack of sleep. SBWhat’s the longest a person
can survive without sleep?
Randy Gardner’s
(left) 1964 record
has yet to
be beaten