SPONSORED BY  | | | | April 9, 2024: What we saw in totality, the great American rat battle, and it's not your imagination, your allergies are getting worse. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | For yesterday's solar eclipse, a dozen Scientific American staffers spread out across the continental U.S. and much of the path of totality to witness the once-in-a-generation event. Some had better luck with the weather than others, but ALL of us had a unique experience. Below is a sampling of what we saw, and you can read about all of our experiences here. | | | Mason, Tex. Credit: Clara Moskowitz | When the moon finally crept fully over the sun and totality began, there were screams and cheers and many people crying, including some of the SciAm team. We all felt euphoric, relieved, exhilarated, overwhelmed. It was amazing! —Clara Moskowitz, senior editor, space and physics | | | Maidstone Lake, Vt. Credit: Lauren Leffer | The last line of the sunlight looked orangey red as it shrunk. At totality, it was about two minutes of a "360-degree sunset," with an amber glow over all the mountains. The sun was a perfect circle of iridescent white light around a dark marble. Baily's beads were little diamond sparkles along the sun's margin. People on a distant beach set off fireworks that we could hear but not see. Our own excited shouting mixed with the whoops from other crowds. —Lauren Leffer, contributing writer | | | Buffalo, NY. Credit:Mark Fischetti | One owl nearby let out a hoot and followed it with a second utterance. Another owl in the distance replied. We still caught a few haunting glimpses of a crescent sun when it happened to burn through! —Mark Fischetti, senior editor, sustainability | | | Scientists used archaeological remains of 311 rats from across eastern North America between the 1500s and early 1900s to show how newly-arrived brown rats outcompeted the more-established black rats. Along with establishing a timeline, the researchers analyzed the isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the rodents' bones and determined that the victorious brown rats preferred to eat more animal protein than black rats.
Why this is cool: Some of the rat remains came from seven shipwrecks. Scientists were able to date precisely when these shipwrecked rats were en route to America. While archaeologists frequently dig up rat remains, radiocarbon dating isn't precise enough to give dates of organic remains for this period of history. And worse, brown rats have a pesky habit of burrowing into the ground, so they could have contaminated archaeological sites after the fact.
What the experts say: Which rats win out and why is an important question not just for historians and ecologists but also for scientists studying disease. "In some ways you could say that brown rats saved us from the plague," says Johannes Krause, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Black rats were the notorious reservoir of the Black Death, but were outcompeted when brown rats arrived on the scene from Asia in the 1700s, and the plague outbreaks largely ended. And yet, brown rats carry diseases of their own, so it's important to track how these populations evolve over time. –Allison Parshall | | | • Last Friday, a 4.8-magnitude earthquake rumbled New York City. How prepared is the city for a big one to strike? | 5 min read | | | • It's not just you—seasonal allergies may be getting worse for everyone because of climate change. | 4 min read | | | • During the total solar eclipse, skywatchers saw ruby-colored prominences sticking out of the moon's shadow. Here's what that was. | 2 min read | | | A view of the April 8 total solar eclipse from Mason, Tex., shows several reddish solar prominences within the sun's white corona. Lucie McCormick | | | SPONSORED CONTENT BY HOWTHELIGHTGETSIN | The event you don't want to miss this spring | Fan of cutting-edge debate and putting ideas at the centre of public life? Then you won't want to miss HowTheLightGetsIn, the world's largest ideas and music festival. Returning to Hay-on-Wye from 24-27 May, the event will convene world-leading thinkers and Nobel Prize winners, including Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, John Lennox, Priya Natarajan and Avshalom Elitzur. A remedy to online echo-chambers, the festival unites speakers across disciplines to chart tangible solutions to the crises of our era. We're delighted to offer 30% off tickets with code SCIAM30. Get discounted tickets here. | | | • Climate activists portray our current climate crisis as a rapid careening toward a cliff after which it's game over, writes James K. Boyce, professor emeritus of economics and senior fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But this kind of thinking is nonsense: "Climate change does not end with a grand finale. Instead, it unleashes a cascade of mounting damages that will escalate exponentially over time," he says. | 3 min read | | | Folks, I just have to say WOW. So many of you sent me some truly incredible photos you were able to capture of the eclipse yesterday, and I've been having the best time looking at all of them. I hope to share many this week right here in Today in Science, starting with the two below, snapped by my very own brother in southern Vermont, about 50 miles south of the path of totality. | It's a pleasure to be a part of this science-loving community. Reach out and let me know what you think of this newsletter or how I might improve it: newsletters@sciam.com. See you tomorrow! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | Taken with a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra through a solar filter film. Credit: Stephen Gawrylewski | | | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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