April 8, 2024: Send me your photos of the eclipse! Plus, birds that gesture to each other, and the next big cosmological event is coming up. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Many of us are fresh off the thrill of today's total (or partial) solar eclipse. But the next wondrous cosmological sight is just around the corner. T Coronae Borealis—often shortened to T CrB—what astronomers call a nova, is a white dwarf star 3,000 light-years away that's devouring matter from a nearby red giant star. Every 80 or so years, T CrB explodes in a dazzling stellar eruption, which will be visible to the naked eye in its namesake constellation sometime between now and September.
How it works: T CrB is such a dense white dwarf that its gravity sucks hydrogen away from its companion red giant star. All that hydrogen heats up and eventually ignites, sparking an unstoppable chain reaction that culminates in a nuclear explosion. Somehow it doesn't destroy the white dwarf itself.
What the experts say: "This is like a gigantic hydrogen bomb that blasts off the entire atmosphere of this Earth-size white dwarf," says Ole König, an astronomer at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen- Nuremberg in Germany. When T CrB goes off, most telescopes on Earth will be watching. | | | Wild Japanese tits apparently have a polite way of saying "after you." When returning to their nest boxes with food for their young, the chivalrous female bird ruffles her wings toward her mate to indicate that her partner should enter the nest box first. Why this is interesting: Plenty of animals, including great apes, ravens and even fish, use gestures to communicate. But the meaning behind these movements is usually pretty simple and relates to the animals' physical surroundings, like pointing at an object. Animals weren't thought to be capable of more " symbolic" gestures that convey abstract messages, such as a human thumbs up. But the Japanese tits' "after you" gesture is indeed symbolic, the researchers say, because it conveys an abstract message, isn't aimed at the nest box, is only present with a mate, and stops after the mate enters the nest box.
What the experts say: The new study is "a really strong support to the notion that it's a symbolic gesture. The [receiving bird] knows what it means, and it does what it's supposed to do," says Mike Webster, an ornithologist at Cornell University, who was not involved in the research. "It implies that birds have a level of understanding of symbolism that probably a lot of people wouldn't have given them credit for before." --Allison Parshall | | | Japanese Tit. Yasumasa Ochi/Aflo/Alamy Stock Photo | | | • Overhead cable lines, wireless charging roads and battery swapping are three exploratory technologies that could boost electrification of the trucking industry. | 4 min read | | | • These new books help parents explain climate disasters to kids. | 5 min read | | | • The ancient Egyptian goddess of the sky was Nut (pronounced noot), who, according to fables, gives birth to the sun every morning, and swallows it at the end of each day. But Nut may have been the personification of the Milky Way itself, according to research by Or Graur, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, and others. "I do think the two were linked, with the Milky Way highlighting Nut's arms during the winter and her backbone during the summer, thus making it possible for the ancient Egyptians to see her embodiment as the sky," he writes. | 4 min read | | | I'm so excited to hear about your eclipse viewing experiences! For any readers in Gander, Newfoundland, you're likely still under totality so I hope you're outside observing it and not reading this newsletter (yet!). If you captured photos you'd like to share with other readers of Today in Science, send them to me at newsletters@sciam.com. | Thank you for being part of our circle of science-loving readers! I hope today's solar eclipse was as special for you as it was for me. | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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