【推荐2】The universe is incredibly vast. The diameter (直径) of the observable universe is estimated to be about 93 billion light years across. With just our eyes, we can generally only see a few thousand light years worth of distance though there are some objects we can see that are much further away. The farthest object we can see with our eyes is Andromeda Galaxy (仙女座星系) located 2.5 million light years away, and yet it is only visible if there is little light pollution. In order to see farther into space, we must rely on telescopes. How far can we see using the most powerful telescopes?

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was the record holder for the farthest visible distance in space until the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021. JWST is now the most powerful telescope ever built, and it is able to see the universe as it was only 200 million years after the Big Bang. That means that JWST is able to piece together an additional 300 million years of universal history compared to HST. JWST will be able to study some of the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang.

The farthest physical distance we can see is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR). CMBR can be thought of as the echo (回声) of the Big Bang as it is the leftover radiation from the birth of the universe. The CMBR itself is the farthest possible distance humans can see as it represents the moment that the universe became transparent to light. Although light did exist before CMBR, gas and dust were simply too dense for light to cross space. CMBR formed only 380,000 years after the Big Bang, and so we are seeing the universe prior to the formation of even the first stars.

【推荐1】Willie Sutton, a once celebrated American criminal, was partly famous for saying he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” Actually, museums are where the money is. In a single gallery there can be paintings worth more, taken together, than a whole fleet of jets. And while banks can hide their money in basements, museums have to put their valuables in plain sight.

Nothing could be worse than the thought of a painting as important as The Scream, Edvard Munch’s impressive image of a man screaming against the backdrop of a blood-red sky, disappearing into a criminal underworld that doesn’t care much about careful treatment of art works. Art theft is a vast problem around the world. As many as 10,000 precious items of all kinds disappear each year. And for smaller museums in particular, it may not be a problem they can afford to solve. The money for insurance on very famous pictures would be budget destroyers even for the largest museums.

Although large museums have had their share of embarrassing robberies, the greatest problem is small institutions. Neither can afford heavy security. Large museums attach alarms to their most valuable paintings, but a modest alarm system can cost $500,000 or more. Some museums are looking into tracking equipment that would allow them to follow stolen items once they leave the museums. But conservators are concerned that if they have to insert something, it might damage the object. Meanwhile, smaller museums can barely afford enough guards, relying instead on elderly staff.

Thieves sometimes try using artworks as money for other underworld deals. The planners of the 2006 robbery of Russborough House near Dublin, who stole 18 paintings, tried in vain to trade them for Irish Republican Army members held in British prison. Others demand a ransom (赎金) from the museum that owns the pictures. Once thieves in Frankfurt, Germany, made off with two major works by J.M.W. Turner from the Tate Gallery in London. The paintings, worth more than $80 million, were recovered in 2012 after the Tate paid more than $5 million to people having “information” about the paintings. Though ransom is illegal in Britain, money for looking into a case is not, provided that police agree the source of the information is unconnected to the crime. All the same, where information money end s and ransom begins is often a gray area.

【推荐2】The color of deep blue oceans is quickly changing when the planet warms, according to new research published in the journal Nature. The study’s authors found over half the world’s oceans, 56%, experienced a change in color. This is because of changes in the thickness and spread of plankton (浮游生物). These small living things contain chlorophyll (叶绿素), which helps plants get food from sunlight.

The recent study supports a similar prediction (预测) in a Nature Communications study published in 2019. The study copied the changes in plankton when oceans continue to warm. And though the new study used satellites to discover small changes in color, the former research predicted important changes by 2100. If the world keeps warming at its present speed, the blue areas in the oceans will become bluer, and the green areas will become greener. When the oceans warm, the movement of water in the oceans become more unusual, and the layer in the water become more, which means that warm areas are less likely to mix with cold areas.

There are thousands of plankton, which are used to warm or cold water. When oceans continue warming, some kinds of plankton may die off, some will thrive, and others will go to different areas. The 2023 study showed that many of these predicted changes have already happened.

But just looking at chlorophyll alone, we still don’t know how the warming climate is changing plankton. Some strange natural events can influence the number of plankton in an area.

It’s too early to say for sure what influence these changing colors will have on the environment, but scientists think more ecosystems could be controlled by smaller-sized plankton in the future, according to a press release from the National Oceanography Center in the UK.

“Plankton are the base (基础) of the food web in the ocean. Everything in the ocean needs plankton,” a marine ecologist Dutkiewicz says.

【推荐3】Have you ever wondered why most store-bought tomatoes are so tasteless? Does it relate to climate change or soils? The answer has something to do with farmers’ income: Tomato farmers care about output, and the genetic variants (基因变体) associated with output are not associated with tasty tomato flavor, a new study finds.

Is it possible to bring back the rich, sweet flavor of the tomato? To find out, Denise Tieman, research assistant at the University of Florida, explored which genes are associated with tomatoes’ taste.

In an attempt to fix supermarket tomatoes, Florida researchers looked at 398 different types and identified the chemical and genetic makeup of each one. They had participants taste-test 101 varieties, cross-referencing the participants’ favorites with their research findings. They ended up with 13 genetic compositions that are most likely responsible for giving tomatoes their flavor. The researchers then measured the content of the 13 flavor compositions in each of the tomatoes, and identified about250 genetic loci (遗传基因座) that controlled tomato flavor. And the researchers also wanted to explore why supermarket tomatoes have no taste.

It turns out that for industrial growers, it all comes down to priorities (优先性). North American consumers want year-round availability, so farmers started raising their plants for qualities like firmness, shelf life, high output and disease resistance, says Tieman. “Not to discount any of that because it’s all important. We want to have tomatoes in the grocery stores year round and be able to ship them long distances when it’s winter in the north. If they have to be shipped from Florida or Mexico, you need to have all those features.” But as growers planted tomatoes to meet those priorities, the flavor gradually disappeared.

Going back to the old varieties is not an option—at least, not for grocery stores. But the researchers believe that there is hope for a growable tomato that’s both long-lasting and flavorful in about three to five years.