Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to our weekly science news roundup.
Earlier this month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a surge in whooping cough cases, bringing us back to pre-pandemic patterns for the disease, which is also known as pertussis. We’ve seen about five times as many whooping cough cases this year as we had by the same time in 2023. That uptick is even sharper in some regions in particular; cases are more than 10 times higher in Pennsylvania than at this point last year and 17 times higher in Delaware.
Whooping cough, which is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis, is highly contagious, even when an infected person’s symptoms are mild. Infants are especially vulnerable to serious illness. According to the CDC, about a third of children under the age of 12 months who get whooping cough end up in the hospital. The DTaP, or diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine, covers whooping cough. We’ll include a link in the show notes to the CDC’s pertussis recommendations so you can make sure your family’s vaccines are all up to date.
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Speaking of microbes, a study published last Thursday suggests that they might be using our own disinfectants against us. Researchers studied hundreds of microbial strains in samples taken from urban surfaces and the skin of city-dwellers in Hong Kong. Some of the strains featured genes that allow them to metabolize compounds found in cleaning products. In other words, they’re eating the disinfectants. For instance, the study authors found strains with the ability to chow down on ammonia and alcohol.
The researchers point out that our increasingly artificial built environments may leave little in the way of natural sustenance for microbes. We might be tempted to assume that means our spaces are increasingly clean from potential pathogens, too. But as this study reminds us, life … finds a way.
And while we don’t want to start accidentally breeding strains of bacteria that find bleach delicious and nutritious, it’s not all bad news. The researchers also identified an intriguing new strain of so-called nanobacteria. Nanobacteria have genomes so tiny that they’re largely dependent on other organisms for producing the resources they need to survive. The authors found a strain that lives on human skin and produces carotenoids and ubiquinone, which are both important antioxidants. So it’s possible that this strain has evolved to live in harmony with us.
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And in other other microbe-related news, it turns out that these organisms have got some competition for real estate down beneath the seafloor. It’s long been assumed that hydrothermal vents, where water heated by magma under the Earth’s crust burbles up into the ocean, were only inhabited by microbes. But last summer, an underwater vehicle peeked beneath shelves of volcanic rock in the Pacific and found a bustling community of multicellular organisms. Researchers published their findings on the surprising critters last week.
There were giant tube worms, sea snails, and several other species in residence. The study authors suspect that larvae sometimes get sucked into the hydrothermal vents and decide to make their homes there—or at least as much as a giant tube worm decides to do anything.
While we’re already here under the sea, let’s talk about some new research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Scientists there have been trying to determine which types of plastic contribute the most to ocean pollution and, on the flip side, which types of plastic do the best job of biodegrading in the deep. The researchers do that by monitoring materials in a specially designed tank that allows an uninterrupted flow of seawater straight from Vineyard Sound.
In a paper published last Thursday, the scientists report that a type of cellulose diacetate, which is derived from wood pulp, appears to be the most ocean-friendly plastic alternative, at least in terms of how quickly it breaks down in saltwater. They also found that adding small pores to the material could make it degrade 15 times faster than it would otherwise—which meant it broke down even more quickly than plain old paper.
Now from the ocean deep, let’s head up into space.
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What’s that over there? It’s a planet! It’s a sun! It’s actually neither! And there are two of them! What is going on?
Back in 1995, researchers identified the first known brown dwarf. These celestial bodies are incredibly heavy—many times more massive than gas giants like Jupiter—but they’re not quite robust enough to achieve literal stardom.
That first discovery, known as Gliese 229B, was thought to have the mass of around 70 Jupiters, though it didn’t shine as brightly as it should have given that heft. Now astronomers have finally figured out why: it’s twins! Gliese 229B is not one brown dwarf but two. The twins come in at about 38 and 34 times the mass of Jupiter, respectively. The binary objects whip around each other once every 12 days and orbit their host star once every 250 years.
But just how these objects formed and why they entered into this cosmic twin dance is still a mystery. Maybe we’ll know why in another 30 years.
Here’s one more quick space story: Last Tuesday NASA and NOAA announced that the sun is officially in her main character era. You’ve probably heard some rumblings about the so-called solar maximum, which is the peak of our host star’s cycle of activity. Every 11 years or so, the sun’s magnetic poles literally swap places. That comes with an uptick in sunspots, which are cool zones caused by strong magnetic fields that keep hot gas from flowing out of the interior of the star. All that magnetic activity also leads to solar flares, which are bright bursts of radiation, and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, which spit magnetized plasma out into space. This so-called space weather interacts with Earth’s magnetic field to create geomagnetic storms, which have caused some stunning auroras in recent months. NASA and NOAA have now confirmed that we’re in the midst of the solar maximum, but that doesn’t mean we’ve reached the peak—we won’t know when that happens for months or even years after the fact because it’s not over until it’s over. But it seems pretty safe to say that more auroras are on the way. If you want to see those magical lights in the sky, keep an eye out for reports of high solar activity, then head out to the darkest spot you can manage and look north. My partner and I recently tried to catch an aurora in New Jersey by driving out into the middle of the woods and standing at the side of a road that a local helpfully informed us was “the most haunted” one in the country—which, listen, I’m about as rational as they come, and you still don’t want to hear that when it’s midnight and you are in the middle of the woods. You just don’t. That being said, I think the ominous sounds of screaming foxes probably would have bothered me a lot less if we’d actually seen the aurora, but, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
That’s all for this week’s news roundup. If you’re enjoying the show, do us a favor and leave a rating or review wherever you’re listening. If your platform of choice lets you follow or subscribe to the show, we’d love it if you could do that, too. Finally, if you’ve got any feedback to share with us, send us an e-mail or voice memo at sciencequickly@sciam.com.
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!
