TWDK past, present and future

At this time of year, it's customary for a company to reflect on what it has (or hasn't) achieved over the past year, and to plan out how it wants to move forward for the next twelve months. 2013 was indeed a special year for Things We Don't Know, as it was the first full year in which we existed! We're certainly very proud of everything we've achieved so far.

In 2012, our highest monthly visitor count to our articles was just under 2,500 (November). In October 2013, saw more than three times as many visitors. That's still a low number compared to what we want to achieve, but for a website that doesn't advertise anywhere (yet) we're rather happy with that.

Of course, our published articles are just the tip of the iceberg - we've been busy doing a lot more behind the scenes.

TWDK founder Ed Trollope, presenting his vision on stage in Berlin. Photograph by Gerhard F. Ludwig

The six-tailed comet, and other mysteries

Comets are one of the spectacles of the solar system and some only pass by in view of the Earth every few thousand years (Comet Hale-Bopp is only in view of Earth every 2,500 years). At the end of 2013, astronomers observed the marvels of both Comet ISON and a “pseudo” comet with six tails! On Monday, ESA's Rosetta mission will wake from hibernation to continue its mission to orbit and land on a comet. This week, TWDK's physics editor Cait has interviewed Nick Howes, the Pro-Am Programme Manager for the Faulkes Telescopes in Hawaii and Australia. Nick is also an active amateur astronomer, with a particular focus on comets and other solar system bodies.

The main tail of a comet that you see in the sky is caused by the ice of the comet subliming (turning straight from solid to gas) as the comet approaches the Sun. This sublimation of ice also lifts dust of the surface of the comet (this nucleus is generally only a few kilometres in size) which then streams away to form a dust tail that is millions to hundreds of millions of kilometres in length. Looking closer, astronomers also observe another ‘ion’ tail - a tail of ionised gas. It is thinner and has a slightly different colour. The dust tail often appears curved as it is a trail of dust left behind in the comet’s path whereas the ion tail is straight as the charged ions are pushed outwards in the solar wind. Both tails always face away from the Sun, so the tails can appear to proceed the comet when it is travelling out of the solar system.

With Comet Lulin here in 2009, we sometimes also see an “Anti-tail” which looks like it's facing towards the Sun, but this is an optical illusion caused by line-of-sight effects with the comet.  Then in some rare comets, we may also "see" a third main tail, which is a sodium tail. "See" being specialist filters on large telescopes. This was notable in Comet Hale-Bopp in the late 1990s. Image credit: Wikimedia commons

The majority of asteroids in our solar system orbit the Sun in a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter known as the “main belt” and were once thought to be the leftover ingredients for a planet that failed to form, but have a combined mass much smaller than would be necessary for this to be the case. Exactly what asteroids are made of and how many are out there, are questions that scientists are still working on - but they’re mainly rocky or metallic bodies or piles of rubble, sometimes with an icy coating. Comets, on the other hand, are generally thought of as ‘dirty snowballs’, and are more ice than rock. Regular comets come from the outer solar system, in the Kuiper Belt/Trans Neptunian zone or from the Oort cloud, and in the latter case in long, looping orbits that take extremely long periods of time - hundreds or thousands of years, or even longer.

Merry Christmas!

As 2013 draws to a close, it's been a wonderful year for us and we wanted to say a big thank-you to everybody that's been working with us, writing for us, and just reading our site! We've achieved so much this year, and we're confident 2014 will be even better.
So from all of us at TWDK,

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Here's a little something we put together just for you, with more than a little help from Es Einsteinium:

See you in the new year!

Why do we sleep? [SCIENCE VIDEO]

We spend a third of our lives doing it, yet it still isn't clear why we need to sleep. In fact, there’s so many things we don’t know about sleep, that we don’t have time to talk about them all today.

This is the first of our articles to be made available as an animated video. 
An audio version of this article is also available!

What we do know is that we can’t function without it. After missing just one night’s sleep, you are likely to find yourself feeling hungry, emotional and unable to concentrate. Decisions will become difficult to make, your reactions will slow, you may become forgetful, and your vision can even be affected. Going without enough sleep can weaken the immune system, making you susceptible to colds and other infections, and can even increase your blood pressure.

So it is clear that sleep is vital, but why? Scientists just can’t agree…

TWDK launches "TWDK Kids!"

We're very happy to announce a new section of our website has gone live today - with the new mission of "explaining the things scientists can’t answer with fun and games".

Entamoeba histolytica – how and why does it cause disease?

There is a disease that you probably haven’t heard of, which infects 35-50 million people every year - mainly in areas of developing countries where wastewater isn’t kept separate from drinking water. It causes symptoms ranging from stomach cramps to life-threatening dysentery (bloody diarrhoea) and, in extreme cases, fatal liver abscesses. This disease, called Amoebiasis, kills up to 100,000 people annually, and is caused by the parasitic microbe Entamoeba histolytica.

When accidentally ingested by a human, the parasites stay as ‘armoured’ dormant cells called cysts, until they pass through the highly acidic stomach. Upon entering the large intestine, the environment becomes more hospitable for them and allows them to transform into their active form.

It was once thought that E. Histolytica infected 10% of the world's population - but although that figure has been reduced to just 1%, that's still a lot of people. Image credit: CDC / Dr. George Healy (1964)

Many of them will stay in the intestines but some pass out of the host in faeces, and transform into cysts again in order to survive in the more varied temperature and acidity levels they must endure before finding another host. But it is those that remain which (might) cause a problem. This is the main mystery of E. histolytica - not everybody infected will experience the same symptoms, if any. So what triggers the different levels of infection?

TWDK Introductory Video

As you may have guessed from the title, or seen on our homepage, we have a new video by the very talented Jon King over at Envisuals. This video strives to explain, in about 90 seconds, all the things we're trying to achieve, how, and why. We hope you like it - we do!

If you've got a YouTube (or Google+) account, you can now subscribe to our YouTube channel - which will soon be bursting with fascinating science videos!

New collaboration - Odyssey magazine

It's been a bit quiet on the TWDK blog since our very successful World Space Week series, which as usual means we've been working on something big! We have some great new features coming soon, and we won't give away too many spoilers just yet but as a hint we've just created the Things We Don't Know YouTube channel!

One thing we will reveal however, is that we've started working with American science magazine Odyssey. Their focus is on explaining science to kids with regular features like "Ask Dr Cyborg", and will have a special feature in January about "Unsolved Mysteries of Science". We're happy to announce that TWDK have been acting as consultant editor for the issue, and we have been collaborating on some material which will go live on the TWDK site in December. Watch this space!

For more information about partnership opportunities with Things We Don't Know, please contact us at partnerships@thingswedontknow.com