🌱 7 things I learned last week
Hey folks! This time, I’ve got Yorkshire wine, lunar tea, bamboo plastic, lucid dream chats, and a few shifts in what people read. Let’s get started:
Good news for future astronauts: researchers in Kent have shown that tea can grow in lunar soil. Mars is still a lost cause — plants in simulated Martian soil didn’t sprout at all.
Wine production is Britain’s fastest-growing agricultural sector. There are over 1,000 vineyards nationwide, including roughly sixteen in Yorkshire, which is about as far from Provence as you can get.
Researchers have worked out the scientifically optimal Cacio e Pepe. The sauce holds together best when the starch content sits between 2 and 3 per cent, a range confirmed by both taste and texture tests.
Analysis of 4,000 book abstracts and the reading habits of more than 100,000 users shows that, after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, readers shifted sharply toward books about life under dictatorship and complicity in state crimes, with Nazi Germany drawing the most attention.
By late 2024, people aged sixteen and over were spending about two hours and twenty minutes a day on social platforms, almost 10% less than in 2022, with the sharpest drop among teens and twenty-somethings.
Scientists have developed a new way to make strong, biodegradable plastic from bamboo. It looks and behaves like oil-based plastics, but breaks down in soil in about 50 days.
A 2021 study showed that people in the middle of a lucid dream can communicate with awake researchers. Dreamers perceived questions and answered with eye twitches or brief sniffs.
What I’ve been reading
The climate change paradox: “The Earth is a complex dynamical system — an interwoven mass of moving parts, each of which requires a different branch of science to understand. Even with advanced knowledge, sophisticated algorithms and modern instruments, it defies and eludes us. Yet this engine of chaos is now under our influence.”
How ring-necked parakeets took over London: “A clue to their unlikely success can be found in London’s map. The capital consists of 47% green space, including 35,000 acres of parks, commons, woodlands, wetlands, cemeteries, allotments and gardens. To avian eyes it is less urban jungle than, well, jungle.”
New York or London — what’s your table talk style?: “Brits tend to eat later than Americans, drink far more alcohol and hate it when guests ask each other, ‘What do you do?’ (Let alone google each others’ achievements at the table, which is common in the US.)”
And that’s it for today! Thanks for reading! If you enjoy the newsletter, share it with a friend. And if you really enjoyed it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription: it helps support my work and means a lot.
Elia Kabanov is a science writer covering the past, present and future of technology (@metkere).
Cover art: Elia Kabanov feat. DALL-E.