Quirks and Quarks

Sabre tooth cats had baby-tooth backup

The fearsome canines of saber-toothed cats were terrific weapons for stabbing unfortunate prey, but their impressive length also made them vulnerable to breakage. A new study by University of California, Berkeley associate professor Jack Tseng suggests adolescent California saber-toothed cat kept their baby teeth to buttress the adult sabers, and reinforce them while cats learned to hunt. This research was published in The Anatomical Record.

Global warming could swallow Antarctic meteorites

Over 60 per cent of all meteorites found on Earth are discovered in Antarctica, embedded in the ice. But a new study published in Nature Climate Change cautions that the warming temperatures are causing the dark space rocks to sink below the surface before researchers can get to them. Glaciologist Veronica Tollenaar, who is the lead author of this study, says it’s important to collect as many of these meteorites as possible to avoid losing the insights they provide about the space around us. 

This worm’s eyes are bigger than its — everything

A pair of high-functioning eyes is perhaps not something you would associate with the various worm species on our planet. But down in the depths of the Mediterranean sea lives a small, translucent worm with alien-looking eyes that weigh more than twenty times as much as the rest of its head. Now, a group of vision researchers have found that their size is not just for show. Their vision works about as well as that of some mammals. Michael Bok, a researcher in the Lund Vision Group at Lund University in Sweden, said they may be using it to detect prey at night. They report their findings in the journal Current Biology.  

We’re breathing out an environment in which respiratory viruses may thrive

One of the questions that’s been raised by the COVID-19 pandemic is just what conditions allow viruses carried in aerosol droplets to survive and spread. A new study in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface found that a CO2 rich environment — like a crowded room with poor ventilation — makes the aerosol particles more acidic, which allows the virus to remain stable and survive longer. Allen Haddrell, a Canadian aerovirologist at the University of Bristol, said this means that CO2 levels don’t just tell you how well ventilated a room is, but it also tell how healthy the virus is in that air. 

Why an essential subatomic particle plays the field

The detection of the Higgs boson particle by the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 was one of the great moments for modern physics. But while many celebrated the discovery of the “God Particle,” physicist Matt Strassler was a bit frustrated by the way the particle discovery overshadowed what he said was truly important for our understanding of the universe: not the Higgs particle, but the Higgs field. In his new book called, Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean, he explains how the Higgs field literally makes the universe — and our place in it — what it is today. 

Listener Question — Do mated animals reject others crashing their relationships?

We hear the answer from Sarah Jamieson, a behavioural ecologist and assistant professor at Trent University.