Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s get the week off to a great start by catching up on the latest science news.
We’ll start about 3 billion years ago, when scientists say a giant space rock may have helped jump-start life as we know it. In a study published last Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe a meteorite called S2 as being four times the size of Mount Everest—that makes it as much as 200 times more massive than the rock we associate with the death of the dinosaurs.
When S2 crashed into our planet about 3.26 billion years back, the study authors say, life was just getting started. So, only single-celled organisms were around to experience the chaos wrought by the up to 36-mile-wide meteorite, the researchers say that that likely included a tsunami, some boiling oceans and skies darkened with thick dust across the globe. So, yeah, pretty spooky stuff.
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But in studying tiny particles called spherules, which are glassy or crystalline beads left behind in sedimentary rock layers after major meteorite impacts, the researchers found evidence that this apocalyptic collision paid off in the long run. They see signs that the big crash stirred up elements such as iron and phosphorus that made the planet more hospitable to life.
The study authors say it probably wasn’t an awesome day to be a bacterium living on Earth, but those organisms bounce back pretty quickly—and they actually thrived in the aftermath. In fact, collisions like this one may have played a major role in turning our planet into a place where complex life could evolve.
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Speaking of life, let’s catch up on some public health news. Bird flu is, unfortunately, very much still a thing. On October 20, the Washington State Department of Health announced that four agricultural workers had tested presumptively positive for H5N1. That means they’ve been diagnosed locally, but the CDC hasn’t yet confirmed the results with their own tests. This makes six states that have reported human cases of the strain this year.
The concern here is that the longer H5N1 circulates in animals that come into close contact with humans, the more likely the virus is to mutate in ways that make it spread to us more easily and maybe even spread between us. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently considers the risk to the general public to be low, folks who regularly interact with birds, cattle, and other potential animal carriers are advised to wear protective equipment while doing so.
But lest we think that diseases need to be brand-new or zoonotic to deserve our attention. A new case report reminds doctors to be on the lookout for an old classic: scurvy—yeah, the pirate-y one.
Scurvy, which is caused by vitamin C deficiency, was historically associated with a lack of access to fresh fruits and veggies. But in modern times, the advent of fortified foods and multivitamins means even people who don’t eat many plants tend to avoid it.
Now the authors of this case report only have one recent scurvy patient to highlight, but they say the circumstances of his illness raise some red flags that made them worry about a potential uptick in the diagnosis.
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The authors treated a middle-aged man who presented with anemia, blood in his urine and a painful rash consisting of red-brown pinpricks—but all of his tests and scans came back negative. Then the doctors learned that he was no longer taking the nutritional supplements prescribed to him after his weight-loss surgery. He said they’d been too expensive, and he’d been skipping meals to save money, too. His blood tests revealed no detectable vitamin C, which cracked the case and fortunately made his treatment pretty straightforward.
The authors point out that people who have had bariatric surgery are at risk of experiencing micronutrient deficiency and malnutrition in general, as this procedure limits the amount of food a person can eat and sometimes lowers the gastrointestinal tract’s ability to absorb nutrients. And the authors didn’t make this connection in their report, but other experts have warned that popular GLP-1 medications can also raise malnutrition risk by lowering appetite. The case report warns that these factors combined with the fact that high costs of living might increase the number of people who are eating poorly or not eating enough, means that doctors should keep scurvy in mind as a rare but possible diagnosis.
Let’s move on to some climate news. A study published last Thursday in Science suggests that when it comes to wildfires, speed might matter more than size. The researchers studied the progression of more than 60,000 fires that took place between 2001 and 2020, and they say rapid growth rates are becoming more common.
These speedy flames are also incredibly destructive: blazes that grew more than 4,003 acres in the span of one day were responsible for 88 percent of fire-related home damages in the U.S. over the nearly 20-year span the researchers evaluated, even though they made up fewer than 3 percent of the total fires they studied.
Scientists already know that warmer temperatures and drier conditions can provide more fuel for wildfires, but it’s still unclear whether climate change is impacting the winds that help fires spread rapidly.
And now for something completely different: “Well-man,” the Norse superhero you never knew you needed. During a military raid about 800 years ago, according to a text from the time, someone threw a body into a well at a castle called Sverresborg —possibly to poison the local water source. Why do we care, you ask? Because scientists think they’ve found the well-man in question. And how is he doing? Not very well.
His bones actually turned up back in 1938 in said well, but it was only about a decade ago that scientists were able to confirm the body came from an adult male who lived during the appropriate time period to have been part of a well poisoning pilot. Of course, they can never know for sure if this is the guy that was being written about in this historical text, but everything seems to line up.
Now, by grinding up one of the well-man’s teeth to access uncontaminated DNA, researchers say they’ve confirmed that his ancestors likely came from southern Norway. I know, very shocking for a man found in a well in Norway. But this is less of a “mystery solved” kind of situation than an “oh, neat” situation.
The researchers pointed out that the guy in the well didn’t come from exactly the part of Norway they would have expected based on the stories written about the military campaigns going on at the time. Basically, it raises questions about what side of the battle the body came from, and which side threw the body into the well, and who knows? That makes them excited to conduct DNA analysis on other historical figures. Because what’s more fun than getting to “well, actually” a niche historical text? I sure don’t know what.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about why humans love spooky stuff. I mean maybe you don’t love spooky stuff, but I really love spooky stuff. And even if you hate horror, I promise you are going to learn something from this episode, it’s definitely worth listening. Then, tune in on Friday for an explainer on how the 2024 election could impact major issues in science and health in the years to come. Also just as an FYI: next Monday we’ll be skipping the news roundup to offer you part two of that election prep special.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
