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Record breaking pole vaulters
Imagine a pole vaulter as he takes off, sticks the pole in the designated spot, it bends and launches him over 200 meters. Absolutely impossible, after all, the best jumpers in the world jump over bars at a height of only 6 meters! In the case of humans, yes. But a tiny animal called a springtail, if it had human dimensions, would jump within 200 meters. How does he do it? And how does he manage his jump to influence where it lands? This was explained by the biologist Prof. Jaroslav Petr.
The discovery of infrared radiation
British astronomer of German origin William Herschel, the famous discoverer of the planet Uranus, studied the Sun. He did this by diffusing the sunlight with a prism and then inserting a mercury thermometer into the individual color zones. To his amazement, he found that in the red band of visible light the temperature rises fastest and reaches the highest value. And here he showed himself as an essential researcher – “just like that” he moved the thermometer out of the rainbow, just beyond its red area. The thermometer got even hotter! On February 11, 1800, he discovered infrared radiation. We reminded you of this in the column It happened this day, which is prepared by Ing. Francis Houdek.
Do virus residues cause disease?
There are remnants of hundreds of thousands of viruses in human DNA. We collected them during evolution and they can still make us angry. These so-called retroviruses can rewrite gene messages. Their research is carried out by dr. Jan Pačes from the Institute of Molecular Genetics AV. It mainly focuses on whether viruses could cause certain autoimmune diseases. What if our immune system attacks our own cells because it detects the remnants of these viruses in them?
The return of man to the moon
Finally, it looks like we will fly to the moon! Half a century after the first Apollo voyages, here comes the new Artemis project. The test flight was very successful at the end of last year. What will be next? Ing. Tomáš Přibyl from the Technical Museum in Brno described that in the Artemis II flight people will already go to the moon, even if only to its orbit. The landing is not planned until Artemis III, probably in 2027. And then? Will it be possible to build a station on the moon?
Why did the Bronze Age end?
Bronze is a fascinating material that has pushed humanity forward. Several important civilizations developed: Babylon, the Egyptian Empire, the Hittites and also the oldest Mycenaean civilization in Greece. But before the end of the second millennium BC, all these civilizations disappeared. Almost simultaneously. Why? Prof. also writes about this. Miroslav Raab, who works at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences. His book People Around the Table or Introduction to Interpersonal Chemistry was published by the Academia publishing house. It is an unconventional book, it is a mixture of life experiences, art, history and chemistry. Martina Preissová reads from it in Meteor.
