Curio Cabinet

Your living space can never be too clean…right? According to a team of American researchers, it actually can, and their proof lies in the International Space Station (ISS). They found that the space station is far more sterile than most environments on Earth, and that could be a bad thing considering the way that human immune systems function.
 
Researchers began by collecting more than 800 samples from various areas aboard the ISS. When they compared the samples to ones taken from buildings on Earth, like homes and office buildings, they found that microbial diversity on the space station was severely lacking. On Earth, microbes from soil, water, dust, and other sources keep our immune systems robust by exposing them to different stimuli, allowing them to build immunities to common bacteria and other harmful microscopic matter. But on the ISS, almost all of the bacteria comes from human skin shed by the astronauts who live and work there. Also worrying was the fact that chemicals from cleaning products used on board seemed to have built up, since fresh air and sunlight can’t help break them down over time, as they would on Earth.
 
Even on our planet’s surface, environments that are too sterile are known to cause health problems. These include immune dysfunction, cold sores, and spontaneous allergic reactions. As with many things in space, there is no obvious, simple solution. Certain bacteria could be purposefully added to the ISS, but as of right now there’s no way to know if that’s safe. After all, bacteria are living things capable of evolving. Just because they behave and adapt a certain way on Earth doesn’t mean they’d do the same thing in space, and unchecked bacterial growth could lead to all sorts of new health problems. For now, space will likely remain a largely microbe-less place. Hey, at least ISS astronauts don’t have to worry about pandemics.

 
[Image description: A starry sky with some purple visible.] Credit & copyright: Felix Mittermeier, Pexels

Sure, they’re stuck to your fridge, but they also power high-speed trains and even help you pay for things. Magnets have been an endless source of fascination since the dawn of humanity, but they've also played a subtle role in some of the most transformative parts of human history. Without them, we might never have explored the planet or attained the ability to mass-produce things.
 
Like gravity and electricity, magnetism is a natural force that existed long before humans appeared on Earth. In fact, the planet itself has its own magnetic fields. Magnetism is caused by the movement of electrons, tiny particles that constantly spin inside of atoms. The electrons inside any given atom always generate a magnetic field, but what we commonly think of as magnetism only occurs in certain materials, like iron, where electrons align in one direction to generate an observable magnetic force. This magnetism will attract or repel other objects in a way that can be seen and felt. While it’s impossible to know who first discovered magnetism in nature, it probably happened in prehistoric times, before the first true city had even been built. At least 2,500 years ago, magnetism was known to people in India and China. By the time of the ancient Roman Empire, magnetism was already being written and theorized about. In fact, the word “magnetism” probably comes from Magnesia, an area in modern-day Turkey where lodestones (magnetized pieces of magnetite) were common.
 
It’s no understatement to say that the invention of the compass changed the course of human history. People had been using stars to navigate for centuries before then, even on the open ocean, but it was a dangerous undertaking, as foul weather could unexpectedly block the sky at any point, leaving boats stranded far from land. The first compass was invented in China around 206 B.C.E., but it was originally used for religious purposes, not navigation. Spoon shaped lodestones were placed on plates that had certain words and characters etched into them, and the lodestones would spin to point at certain ones and supposedly divine the future. As this technology improved, people naturally noticed that spinning lodestones would always end up pointing north. They didn’t realize that this was because it was aligning with Earth’s magnetic north pole, but they did quickly learn that it was useful for navigation. By the 11th century, Chinese soldiers were using compasses for navigational purposes, and in the following two centuries, the practice spread all over the world. Suddenly, people could more easily cross vast oceans, discover new continents, and establish connections with other civilizations—all because of magnets.
 
In 1600, English physicist William Gilbert published De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth). Gilbert theorized that the Earth itself was magnetic with an iron core, and that there was a relationship of some kind between magnetism and electricity. In fact, Gilbert’s novel use of the neo Latin term “electricus” (which previously had been used to describe the properties of amber) eventually led to our modern word "electricity." The industrial revolution of the mid-1700s might have come much later if not for Gilbert's work, since an understanding of electromagnetism—the relationship between magnets and electricity—was key to the creation of motors and generators, which allowed for mass production in factories.
 
Magnets are integral to almost every part of life in the digital age—in fact, the digital age could never have happened without them. Most computers use magnets to store information inside their hard drives. Metal plates inside of hard drives create computer code based on whether each one is magnetized or not. This code is then turned into data. The average smartphone alone contains between 5 and 14 magnets. There are magnets in the tiny motors that make smartphones vibrate, and magnets are essential for phone speakers, since the magnetic field they create is what makes the phone’s voice coil vibrate against the speaker cones, thus producing sound waves. Just as they store information in a hard drive, magnets also store information on the surface of credit and debit cards in the form of magnetic stripes. These stripes contain magnetized patterns that are decoded by card readers any time the card is swiped. Of course, magnets can also be used to stick your grocery list to the fridge…but that seems a little low-tech in comparison.

 
[Image description: A red-and-silver horseshoe-shaped magnet] Credit & copyright: Zureks, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

You can stop construction on that underground bunker. An asteroid that recently made headlines due to its near-Earth trajectory now seems to have almost no chance of striking our planet. Originally discovered on December 27, 2024, in Río Hurtado, Chile, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) the asteroid caused an immediate stir. Known as Asteroid 2024 YR4, the space rock’s trajectory meant that there was a small chance, around 3.1 percent, that it would strike Earth in the year 2032. Officials were quick to point out that a three perfect chance still wasn’t especially high, and that Asteroid 2024 YR4 isn’t nearly as large as asteroids that have caused massive extinction events in the past, such as the one that killed the dinosaurs. Still, with an estimated diameter of 130 to 300 feet, the asteroid is powerful enough to take out an entire city, as impact would release energy comparable to that of 7.8 megatonnes of TNT.
 
Luckily, further observation has now dropped the likelihood of a potential impact down to a paltry 0.0017%. It’s not unusual for a near-Earth asteroid’s chances of impact to drop the longer scientists observe it. More time means more observation and calculation as to an asteroid’s exact trajectory. Should a near-Earth asteroid ever threaten the planet, though, we humans do have a few tricks up our sleeves. In 2022, NASA successfully completed its DART mission, which slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid in order to divert its orbit. A similar tactic could be used to divert an Earth-bound asteroid, as long as it's spotted in time. Hey, it’s always good to have a backup plan!

[Image description: A starry sky with some purple visible.] Credit & copyright: Felix Mittermeier, Pexels
 

Maybe these lizards aren’t so monstrous after all. Gila monsters are the only venomous lizards in the United States, but their venom has done much more good than harm lately. In fact, without Gila monsters, we wouldn’t have GLP-1s, the medications that have revolutionized diabetes treatment and weight management in the last few years. In the 1990s, Dr. John Eng discovered a hormone in Gila monster venom that regulates hunger, just like the human hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) does for us. But the Gila monster hormone lasted for hours, while the human version only lasted for a few minutes. Using this information, medical researchers were eventually able to create a synthetic version of GLP-1 that lasted longer, like the Gila monster’s hormone.
 
When they’re not changing the global medical landscape, Gila monsters spend their time in desert habitats from the southwestern United States to northwestern Mexico. In fact, they’re named after the Gila River basin. They’re fairly hefty for lizards, reaching lengths of up to 22 inches and weighing up to five pounds. Their tails are nearly the same size as their heads, which confuses predators like coyotes and birds of prey, but also helps them survive their harsh environment in a less obvious way. Gila monsters store fat in their tails, which can help them go for long periods in between meals (think of their tails as their “camel humps.”) The fat stores also help Gila monsters survive hibernation, which they undergo from November to February each year.
 
When Gila monsters do eat, they generally consume anything that they can get their mouths on. This includes other lizards, rodents, and small birds. Most of their time isn’t spent hunting, though, but hiding from the desert heat by sheltering in bushes or under shady rocks. Predators rarely approach Gila monsters, since their bold, orange-and-black pebbled skin signals that the lizards are venomous. If a predator does chomp down, though, Gila monsters will bite back with venom as toxic as that of diamondback rattlesnake. With such incredible adaptations, it’s no wonder that Gila monsters can live up to 30 years in the wild. With their help, a lot of people will be living longer too.

 
[Image description: A gila monster lizard with pebbly, black-and-pink skin. Its pink tongue is sticking out.] Credit & copyright: U.S. National Park Service photo, Asset ID: 01DFE671-155D-451F-67A0314752E8DA30. Public domain: Full Granting Rights.

You could say that these researchers discovered something fishy. Recently, in the Mediterranean Sea near the island of Corsica, scientists went diving to study fish behavior. There was a problem, though. Every time the researchers went in the water, they took food with them to give to the fish as rewards for following certain commands. However, the seabream in the area always seemed to know who was carrying the food and would swarm that person immediately. The researchers even used other divers as decoys to no avail, and it seemed that their research progress was more or less halted by the hungry, keen-eyed fish.
 
Instead of giving up, the team simply pivoted a bit and took their research in another direction. Katinka Soller, one of the researchers, spent 12 days training two different types of seabream to follow her around by enticing them with food. She also started out wearing a red vest, but gradually shed the bright color over the course of the experiment. Then she had another diver join her wearing different colors. At first, they were both swarmed by fish, but when it was clear that only Soller was giving out food, the fish ignored the other diver. It seems that humans have been largely underestimating fish cognition, as the seabream were able to differentiate between people based on what those people were wearing. To confirm this, the researchers went down again, this time wearing identical gear. They found that the fish weren’t interested in either of them, since they couldn’t tell which person might have food. Yet even small clothing differences, like variations in the divers’ color of flippers, were enough for the fish to distinguish between each person. These brainy fish must be breaming with pride.

 
[Image description: Two seabream fish against a black background.] Credit & copyright: Beyza Kaplan, Pexels