Gravity waves are hard to explain because they are confusing, and rely on a basic understanding of a lot of other confusing things. Exactly 100 years ago Einstein’s general theory of relativity imagined that space was like a giant sheet of permeable linen upon which indentations are made by massive objects. Imagine the sun as a bowling ball creating a crater on a sheet into which other objects sink. This is how Einstein imagined gravity. The earth is a cricket ball that falls towards the sun and the moon is a marble that falls toward the Earth.

Einstein did not stop there. During a very high energy event he imagined ripples, or waves, of gravity cascading through the fabric of the universe. It’s like a pebble creating ripples in a pond, or someone pinching the sheet of linen down from beneath so it is taut and then releasing it suddenly. Einstein did a whole lot of maths that suggested these waves would exist when, for example, two black holes were spinning into each other. Now LIGO have proved him right.

At this point I was going to try and explain how these waves were detected but it’s difficult and I can’t rely on bedding metaphors. You should look their experiment up on the internet; it’s cool and it involves lasers. But why should you care about these seemingly obscure and esoteric discoveries?

Because someday gravity waves may provide a new lens to view the universe through. In some cases using gravity as a foundation of explanation may supersede the use of light, as gravity, unlike light, is not blocked by objects that stand in the way—there are no shadows. But these discoveries also remind us of how complicated and enigmatic the universe is. They highlight the tenacity of human curiosity, and how the creative and driven people of our planet further our collective wisdom.

Finally, LIGO has given us more proof that Einstein was a total badass. Remember this is the same dude who was a pacifist and mates with Ghandhi, and said cheesy things like “you can’t blame gravity for falling in love” and “look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.”

Here at Salient, we’ve had a great time bringing you the sometimes serious, sometimes ridiculous and always last minute, news in science. To conclude our year together, we present to you some of our favourite headlines from science around the globe in 2015.

Large Hard-on Collider

Oops. Typo. That title was meant to read “Large Hadron Collider”. We certainly wouldn’t be trying to make science cool using immature sexual innuendos. But now that we have your attention…

On 5 April the Large Hadron Collider was switched back on after two years of inactivity. The LHC reached peak levels of fame in 2012 with the detection of the Higgs Boson, the subatomic particle credited with giving other particles mass. After its two-year makeover, the LHC got back in the game quickly, smashing particles together at speeds greater than ever before. It wasn’t long before the LHC was back in the news again, this time for the discovery of a new species of sub-atomic particle—the pentaquark—an exotic particle arrangement of five quarks.

Quarks are the most fundamental building blocks known to man, and the six different types have been named by physicists as: up, down, strange, charm, top and bottom. (Note: this has been known to crop up as a question in a Wellington pub quiz). Commonly accepted theory has long suggested that it is the combination of three quarks that make up well known particles such as the proton and neutron, but until July this year, there had been no hard evidence of a five quark combination. Physicists are hoping that the discovery of the pentaquark will yield greater insight into what was happening in the first fractions of a second following the Big Bang.

Hawking Won Hearts and Continued Being Badass

In 2014, women around the world developed a newfound crush on both physics and Stephen Hawking as a result the film The Theory of Everything. In 2015 Hawking surprised many by revoking elements of his previous reservations about searching for extraterrestrial life. In a press conference in London on July 20, Hawking, along with Russian Billionaire Yuri Milner, announced a new $100 million initiative looking for signs of intelligent life. This came as a surprise to many as Hawking has long been vocal with his concerns about the discovery of alien life.

As Hawking said during the press conference, “If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilisations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced.” He continued to explain that other civilisations could be billions of years ahead of us, and if so, “will be vastly more powerful, and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria”. Although these concerns remain entirely valid, Hawking explained in his always beautifully concise manner, that “We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know.”

Pluto, Baby, I’m Sorry—I Want You back

Poor Pluto has been strung around by us on Earth for a number of years now, and 2015 proved no different. Pluto was discovered by in 1930, and spent a period of relative bliss as the smallest planet in our solar system and the ninth planet from the sun, but was demoted from its planetary status in 2006. The rejection came following the discovery of an object located beyond Pluto, which was suspected to be a larger planet; this sparked a discussion about what should classify as a planet, and eventually Pluto was kicked out of the category. However, in July this year, NASA’s New Horizons mission was able to finally answer the question “How big is Pluto?” As it turns out, bigger than we thought in 2006 when we rejected it, and certainly larger than any other known objects in the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. Many of us got our hopes up, thinking this could mean Pluto would be welcomed back into the cool kids club; but alas, it wasn’t enough. Although the New Horizon flyby provided some stunningly detailed photographs of the icy planet, Pluto remains a dwarf planet.  

Bacon Seaweed is the New Kale

That kale craze that happened was mental, and although at the moment it appears that Instagramming about pepperoni pizza is on the rise, the long term trends suggest that the health food fad is here to stay. So, what comes next? Well, apparently, bacon-flavoured seaweed.

Scientists at Oregon State University are in the process of cultivating a red algae called dulse, which is packed with more nutrients than kale, yet naturally tastes like bacon. Dulse had been available for human consumption for a long time now, but costs around $200 per kilogram—i.e. more than a basic bitch is willing to spend on a gram-worthy lunch that may or may not crack 100 likes. So it is here that the science teams step in. New strains of the superfood are being developed and patented, which will make the seaweed easily to cultivate with only seawater and sunshine, and without a large ecological footprint.

Real Guys Go for Real Down to Mars Girls

On 28 August six scientists—three men and three women—locked themselves inside an 11-metre-wide dome on a volcano in Hawaii. This is no hula vacation. The team will be in there for an entire year, isolated from the rest of the world in an attempt to simulate the realities of life as a colony on Mars, in preparation for a potential mission in the near future. Plans to establish a human settlement on Mars have been discussed for quite some time now, and this is not the first time Salient has reported on this; however, with NASA’s recent discovery of flowing liquid water on Mars, human life on Mars is looking more feasible than ever.

Yet just days after NASA broke the incredible news that the evidence now strongly suggested the presence of flowing water on Mars, they declared that Mars rover Curiosity would not be able to go near that water to investigate any further. Despite the robot’s fascinating successes to date, there is a high risk that Curiosity is contaminated with microbial matter from Earth. Essentially, although a fantastic scientist, Curiosity hasn’t had a bath for over three years, and a United Nations treaty prevents it from contaminating life-giving water on Mars with bacteria, especially as Mars may be the future home of a number of scientists in as little as 15 years.

I Tried Really Hard Not to Include This One

Salient science works hard to present science in a positive and engaging manner, but sometimes you have to be real, and we’d be lying if we didn’t address the fact that one of the most prominent science issues of 2015 was climate change. Let’s take a look at some of the climate change news from this year.

January 7: a new model suggests that if we want global warming to be kept lower than 2°C this century, then we need to keep over 80% of our coal, 50% of our gas, and 30% of our oil reserves in the ground. May 14: researchers confirm that “strong warming” is already taking place in the upper troposphere. May 15: reports suggest that two large ice shelves in the Antarctic are on the brink of collapse, a threat which could potentially add several centimetres to global sea levels. Today: science columnist Bridget Pyć asks Vic students to please take responsibility for your actions and contributions to sustainability and climate change. You all know what to do.

Global Warming.

A picture of a polar bear standing on a small round piece of ice surrounded by water.

We’ve heard it and we’ve seen it, although apparently we’re becoming immune to genuine concerns regarding climate change, because our actions as a whole don’t seem to be changing at any rapid pace. But I digress. The real story here is how the polar bears are responding.  

The Arctic ice serves as a hunting ground for polar bears, and as this ice continues to thaw as a result of global warming, polar bears are being forced to spend increased periods of time onshore. The result has been a hybridisation of two species, the polar bear and the grizzly bear.

This sounds kind of cute, and the names given to this newfound hybrid animal, “grolar bear” or “pizzly”, do sound playful, but as research biologist Brendan Kelly from the U.S. National Marine Mammal Laboratory has pointed out, hybridisation can be “the final straw in the loss of species”.  

For species with healthy population numbers, interbreeding presents no real threat of extinction, but endangered species suffer potentially severe consequences when interbreeding occurs as a result of rapid alterations of the natural environment—and in most cases, it is humans causing these rapid alterations. Kelly and the team identified a list of the 22 arctic marine mammal species most likely to interbreed, and unfortunately, 14 of these are already listed as endangered.

So yes, I understand that the image of a polar bear on melting ice isn’t soliciting the same emotional response as it once was—so instead, before you flick on your heater, consider the threatened polar bear whose future may consist of mating with its cousin and please, just put on a jumper or two instead.

Almeida and his team recently set out to confirm existing the existing astrophysics theory that dwarf galaxies grow by moving, spider-like, across the “cosmic web”. This cosmic web is made up of blobs of gas and is underpinned by a skeleton of dark matter. The blobs of cosmic gas have especially low levels of oxygen, and oxygen is easier to measure and detect than other cosmic gases—so we can use its level as an indicator. It is thought that as the blobs of gas are pulled into orbit of hungry spider galaxies, they are eaten and used as fuel, triggering a new burst of star formation. This causes the hungry galaxies to grow.

The spider theory has been hard to prove. Blobs of gas don’t emit much light, so scientists have hard a tough time searching for them. However, Almeida and his team were able to find what has been described as a spider galaxy “a smoking gun” by focusing on a number of smaller, fainter galaxies. These galaxies have naturally lower rates of star formation if they don’t get influxes of new gas.

By looking at the correlation between oxygen levels and bright, star-forming regions of these galaxies, Almeida and his team found that the star-forming regions had lower levels of oxygen than the other regions. This suggests that new stars are forming in the regions where the spider galaxies were eating the gas blobs.

Astrophysicists want more evidence to confirm the process, but say that it might help us explain more about dwarf galaxy growth and the cosmic web.

In light of the rising numbers of “anti-vaxxers”, I’ve found myself immersed in far too many arguments where it becomes apparent that the opposition doesn’t actually know the mechanisms of vaccines. Here’s the simple explanation of the human immune system and how vaccines work.

The Immune System

The immune system is your own personal army, defending you against foreign invaders like unwanted bacteria and viruses. Non-“you” substances that invade the body are called pathogens or antigens.

The immune system can be described as having two “subsystems”, both of which are carried out by types of white blood cells: the Innate Response, and the Specific/Adaptive Response.

The Innate/Non-Specific Response

The innate immune system is the first line of defense. Innate immune cells recognise and respond to almost all pathogens, utilising a generic response—meaning they do the same thing to fight pretty much every pathogen they meet.

Upon exposure to a pathogen—for example, you cut yourself and bacteria enters your system—the cells at the site of infection release chemicals that attract your innate immune cells. These are called phagocytes (which literally means “hungry cells”). The two main phagocytic characters are called neutrophils and macrophages.

If some punk foreign cell like Billy the Bacteria attacks you, the cells that see Billy call out to Nancy Neutrophil and Marty Macrophage. They race over, and at first sight of Billy they race in and attack. Nancy Neutrophil performs phagocytosis, in which she essentially eats Billy and digests him. Sometimes Marty eats Billy; other times, Marty helps recruit the Adaptive Response to kill him.

Marty and Nancy don’t think things through much and essentially run in and go berserk whenever they’re called to an infection. They’re not very skilled, and no matter how many times they fight a particular enemy, they never figure out the most efficient way to kill it.

The Adaptive/Specific Response

Sometimes Nancy, Marty and the first-line furies are all you need to stop a foreign invasion. Other times they’re overpowered, so they recruit their more strategic buddies.

Two subtypes of cells called lymphocytes perform the adaptive response: B Cells and T Cells. Remember how I mentioned antigens? Every type of bacteria, virus, or other foreign invasion has different antigens. The adaptive immune response is described as specific because different B and T cells are “trained” to recognise one of these foreign antigens.

For example, when Marty and Nancy are having their phagocytic arses kicked, they call out to Helper T Cells. The Helper T checks out the antigens, allowing it to figure out what type of invader it is—for example E. Coli. Some Helper T Cells send messengers to the Killer Ts. These Killers travel the body searching for any of your human cells that have been invaded by the E. Coli. Even from inside your cells, they recognise the specific antigen and bind to the infected cell, activating it to self-destruct, killing the pathogen inside.

The Helpers send another messenger to stimulate the B Cells, which provide the basis of what we call Immunological Memory. B Cells are equipped with what we call antibodies, proteins designed to recognise specific antigens. Some B cells will be designed with an antibody to fight E Coli, some to fight salmonella, etc., etc. The Helper Cell messenger will activate the B Cells with antibodies for that exact infection.

However, sometimes your body doesn’t have the antibodies for a specific invader. When this happens, your T Cells and B Cells still help to fight, but aren’t as efficient. In this case, your B Cells spend some of their time studying the antigen on the invader and building the right antibody to fight it. After developing the required antibody, some B Cells head straight out to the battlefield. Others however remain floating throughout your body in a semi-active state, holding on to the new antibody in case you come into contact with this invader again: these are memory cells. Think about chicken pox—once you have it once, you tend to never get it again. This is because your memory cells formed the first time you fight it remember it, and if you’re exposed to it, they already know the most efficient and quick way to defeat it.

Vaccines

Thanks to this adaptive immune response, your body is much more efficient when fighting a disease it has already fought before—thus the premise for vaccines. Vaccines are designed to show your immune system something that looks the same as a particular pathogen, so it can how to fight it if you are exposed to it in the future.

There are different types of vaccines: Inactivated vaccines contain particles of a pathogen that have been grown and then deactivated/killed. Attenuated vaccines contain pathogens that are still alive, but have been weakened to make it far easier to kill. Subunit vaccines contain just the antigens of a pathogen, without needed to introduce the entire pathogen.

Why do we need new flu shots every year?

Much like animals adapting to the environment to survive, pathogens can do the same thing. Some are better than others, for example the influenza virus. The influenza virus is able to perform something called antigenic drift. As our bodies develop the ability to detect the antigens the flu virus has, the flu virus mutates over time, resulting in antigens different enough that our immune systems can no longer recognise them.

Regardless of the immune virus mutating, the immunity conferred from the influenza vaccine is often only short-lived, only protecting you for a few months.

How do I endanger others by not getting vaccinated?

The problem is not everyone is able to get vaccinated. That’s why you often hear about herd immunity. Sometimes regardless of being vaccinated, an individual’s immune system didn’t learn how to fight it well, and are still susceptible to a disease.  Other times, an individual may already be too sick with an alternative to disease to get vaccinated—this is an example of being immunodeficient. For example, young infants, the elderly, and individuals with cancer or HIV do not have strong immune systems. Even a vaccine made from deactivated particles can be too strong for their weak immune systems.

If everybody around them gets vaccinated, they have a higher level of protection—via herd immunity. For every healthy person that chooses not to get vaccinated, they are increasing the likelihood of exposure of a disease to those with a weakened immune system.

When I was a kid, every time I heard people mention “greenhouse gases” and the “greenhouse effect”, I thought the problem was harmful emissions from the greenhouses people used for growing plants. Fast-forward a few years, and I found myself taking a university paper on energy resources and use, and soon discovered that amidst the media outlet of the global warming debates, the growing use of climate change as a political weapon, and the financial gain for businesses by labelling their products “green”, not many people were taking the time to explain what the fuck it all meant.

The Greenhouse Effect and Greenhouse Gases

In some ways, you can think of the sun as a giant ball of energy. Because of space and the universe and big things happening, it sends a whole bunch of energy to Earth, mostly coming in the forms of heat energy and light energy.

When this hits the earth, the land and water on Earth’s surface absorbs a lot of the energy, while some of it is reflected right off the surface—like shining a light on a mirror and having it reflect back off.

Of this rejected energy, some of it goes back into space. A good chunk of it, however, gets trapped in a layer of the atmosphere made up of gases that trap heat, like a blanket around the earth. Because Earth absorbs energy, without the blanket to trap some, above the earth’s surface would actually be below freezing point.

The large amounts of anthropogenic (manmade) emissions produced are added to this “blanket”, making it thicker and thicker, so less heat can escape. This is the greenhouse effect.

To put it another way, think of a baked potato wrapped in tinfoil. The potato represents earth and the tinfoil is our blanket of atmospheric greenhouse. The heat comes in from the oven, and the potato absorbs some of it, but the rest is bounced off. The shiny tinfoil traps some of this heat, and sends it back to the potato, to keep it warmer.

In case you hadn’t guessed, the gases that make up this atmospheric layer around the planet are the greenhouse gases, like nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide.

Weather and Climate

Weather is the current, observable state of the atmosphere. If you look outside and it’s hot, cold, sunny, rainy, whatever it is—that’s the weather.

The climate is the average weather in a particular location over a period of time (usually measured in 30-year periods). This “average weather” can be measured in terms of many different features of the climate, like the average temperature or average rainfall over the time period. When people talk about the Earth’s climate, it’s the average of these features everywhere in the world. That’s why when talking about Earth’s average temperature, it may sound pretty high for a place like Antarctica, but rather underwhelming for the tropics.

Global Warming and Climate Change

While the phrases are often used interchangeably, climate change and global warming are not the same thing.

Global warming can be defined as the temperature increase produced by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Climate change is a change in the typical climate of a location. This change in typical climate must be sustained over a long period of time. Climate change can be caused by global warming.

Why do people go on about carbon emissions?

Thinking back to greenhouse gases, I mentioned some of the key players:

• Methane—a primary component of natural gas used for fuel, and also a byproduct of the cattle digestive system in agricultural practices; you may remember the 2003 “fart tax” proposal.
• Nitrous Oxide—a byproduct generated from agricultural fertiliser production and use.
• Carbon dioxide—the greenhouse gas of most immediate concern, largely produced by our excessive burning of fossil fuels.

While carbon dioxide isn’t the most heat-trapping gas, it’s present in the highest concentration in our atmosphere and has a long atmospheric lifetime of up to 200 years. Meaning the carbon dioxide you released driving to university today will still be chilling up in Earth’s gas blanket, glaring at your grandchildren.

The Carbon Cycle

All living things are made of carbon (and many non-living things, like rocks and minerals, have a large carbon component too). Carbon dioxide (CO2) is formed when certain reactions cause oxygen molecules to attach to carbon molecules.

The carbon cycle refers to the long-term and short-term natural processes in which carbon and CO2 is continuously exchanged between parts of the climate system. Short-term, CO2 is constantly being exchanged between plants, trees, animals, the atmosphere, and the oceans—like when we breathe CO2 out as waste, or when plants consume it to feed themselves.  

Long-term, 99.9 per cent of carbon is stored in reservoirs in rocks and as fossil fuels. This carbon is slowly released through natural processes such as rock erosion, resulting in carbon movement into the ocean and atmosphere. Most of our oil reserves are the result of plant and animal remains being buried in sediment millions of years ago, then being subject to heat and pressure over time. By extracting and burning these fossil fuels, we’re releasing excess carbon from long-term storage reservoirs at increasingly rates—much faster than it can be returned to storage.

For millions of years, Earth has tightly regulated the levels of atmospheric versus stored carbon dioxide, encapsulating the natural carbon cycle. However, carbon dioxide emissions have dramatically increased since the industrial era, destabilising this natural cycle.

How do we know the problem is manmade?

Through ice core extraction, we’ve been able to analyse the gaseous compositions of air bubbles trapped in ice formed as far back as 800,000 years ago. Such research has allowed us to trace changing atmospheric gas levels, showing that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases were largely consistent until the industrial era, where they began to rise sharply. Today, atmospheric CO2 concentrations are nearly 40 per cent higher than preindustrial levels.

Sea Level Rising—More than meets the eye, you see?

Rising temperatures can cause sea level rises in two key ways: the expansion of water as it heats, and melting of land-based ice sheets and glaciers—both of which are implicated in a range of unfavorable climatic repercussions.

Rising sea levels can push cause seawater further inland—contaminating our soils, causing destructive erosion, and jeopardising the habitats of fish, birds, and plants. Higher sea levels can also increase intensity of powerful storms, and bring them further inland. Even a rise of just one metre puts coastal habitats at high risk of devastation.

When Weather Gets EXTREME

The weather system is filled with complex interactions, and any adjustment can have a range of repercussions. Observable weather events occur primarily from air pressure differences between two locations, which can be caused by variations in air temperature and air moisture content. For example, the angle of the sun can influence pressure contrasts. As the sun is angled more directly at the tropics, locations further from the sun receive less direct sunlight and are, on average, cooler. The contrasting temperature can influence air pressure.

Rising temperatures can cause increased evapotranspiration—the total water evaporating from plants, soils, and water bodies, influencing the intensity and frequency of droughts. Conversely, a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour, which increases risk of extreme rainfall events.

For Fuck’s Sake, No, Colder Winters Don’t Disprove Global Warming

While it sounds counterintuitive, rising average temperatures can in fact influence the intensity of our winter seasons in both temperature and storm incidences. There are multiple weather systems in place that account for temperature variations throughout the seasons, and destabilisation of any of these can result in extreme temperature events. For example, destabilisation of polar vortexes. These are large pockets of very cold air, positioned above the North and South Poles. As global temperature rises, snow cover and ice coverage decrease and the ocean temperature increases, yielding a subsequent increase in evaporation and transpiration, altering pressure and temperature gradients across these polar vortexes and destabilising them. When strong and stable, the vortexes contain their cold air. Weakening of them can result in some of the freezing air breaking out and travelling into regions not accustomed to such cold.

Ocean Acidification—It’s not as trippy as it sounds

As carbon dioxide emissions continue to offset the natural carbon cycle, the excess carbon is stored both in the atmosphere and in the ocean. Ocean absorption of CO2 is a natural part of the normal carbon cycle, however the rate of CO2 being absorbed is causing the ocean water to become more acidic. This is because of a natural reaction between CO2 and seawater. CO2 reacts with water molecules, and forms a weak acid called carbonic acid. Excess CO2 absorption results in higher levels of acidity, which can completely destroy marine habitats.

Well, that sucks then.

Yes, yes it does—but fortunately, experts are ensuring us that it’s not too late to, you know, fix the planet and shit. Basically, after hearing all the ads telling us to have shorter showers and walk more and actively save energy, rather than rolling your eyes because “yes, I KNOW ALREADY”—actually try to adjust your habits. Put the car keys away and save on the fuel bill. And next time you’re panting your way up Devon Street in the rain, when it’s easy to pity yourself and wish you were driving, just catch your reflection in the windows of the poor people on display that keep forgetting to close their curtains and remind yourself—you’re Captain Frickin’ Planet.

When all is said and done, I don’t see why we don’t steal some climate terminology for the 420 world. Goodbye hotboxing, hello greenhouse gassing.

Graduate Scott Schafer has conducted studies in the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience to further prove the placebo effect. Subjects were given a placebo treatment and conditioned to believe that it works. After four sessions, subjects were told that the treatment was false, but still reported that they were getting pain relief. Subjects who only had one session didn’t report continued pain relief.

He discovered that the placebo effect still works even if research participants know the treatment they are receiving to ease pain has no medical value whatsoever. These new findings could open doors to treating drug addiction and drug management when it comes to people who have undergone serious surgeries and are taking potentially addictive drugs.

“If a child has experience with a drug working, you could wean them off the drug, or switch that drug to a placebo, and have them continue taking it,” Schafer said.

All people need is ample time to believe a treatment works, then the placebo effect kicks in, and this study reveals that even when patients are told that the treatment is actually false, they still report pain relief.

MSG stands for monosodium glutamate. So let’s break that down. We have sodium, i.e., salt—cool, I’m okay with that—and glutamate. Glutamate is a naturally occurring amino acid found in most common foods including meat, dairy and vegetables (think tomatoes, walnuts, and parmesan cheese). Our bodies also produce our own glutamate as we prepare to metabolise food.

The much loved property of glutamate is that it enhances our tongue’s receptiveness to “umami”, one of the five basic tastes (alongside bitterness, sweetness, saltiness and sourness). Umami is a loanword from the Japanese language meaning “pleasant savoury taste”. So putting this all together, MSG is simply the naturally occurring amino acid glutamate in its sodium salt form (meaning, like salt, it is easier to sprinkle on food).    

People who discredit it cite the study whereby mice suffered ill effects after having MSG injected into their brains. But duh. Almost anything can have a negative effect if consumed in too high a quantity, especially in this particular case, whereby a dose fit for a horse was injected directly into a small animal’s brain.

More humane, and more scientifically accurate studies, have since been conducted to analyse the effects of MSG. Double blind placebo studies on a large number of people, including 130 who identified as sensitive to MSG, have not been able to consistently trigger any reactions. Feeling sick after being starving and then stuffing your face with Chinese food does not necessarily demonstrate cause and effect.

As such, your author would like to add MSG to the list of things that some members of society believe they are better informed on than scientists. Note that this list also includes vaccinations and climate change. Cummon guys!

The newly discovered creature was given the name of Tetrapodophis amplectus. Tetrapodophis, Greek for “four-footed serpent”, and amplectus, Latin for “embracing”. No one had described a 4-legged snake before. Tetrapodophis amplectus was found by Dr Martill during a field trip with students in the museum Solnhofen in Germany, when he noticed this small piece labelled “unknown fossil”.

“All of a sudden my jaw absolutely dropped.” He then realised, that small little “snakey” creature had tiny little legs!

Martill and his colleagues analysed the fossil and deduced it came from north-eastern Brazil. Before it was displayed at the museum and accidentally found by Martill, the fossil was housed in a private collection for decades.

A tight hug of life or death

Tetrapodophis amplectus lived approximately 130 million years ago, when Africa and America were still together in one huge supercontinent called Gondwana. It was a great great great great relative to modern snakes.

This ancient snake-like animal is 20cm long, had hooked sharp teeth, joints in its jaws (characteristics that allow snakes to expand their jaws for swallowing its meal whole) and a flexible spine, which Martill and colleagues estimate could be used to constrict prey.

The limbs are greatly reduced yet highly specialised, suggesting that they were functional. The  arms are 4mm long, while the legs are 7mm. The presence of slender “fingers” and well-developed phalanges resemble birds’ claws—yet the size makes it unlikely that these four tiny legs were used for locomotion. The resemblance to bird feet suggests they were used for holding prey while the “snakey” body wrapped around an unfortunate small vertebrate—the animal equivalent of Judas’ kiss. Another option was they could be used to hold a partner while mating.

T. amplectus had around 160 vertebrae before its tail and still retains its hand and feet, while, on average, once achieving a length of 70 vertebrae, snakes and lizards start to lose limbs. The fossil had preserved snake-like scales, skull and body shape compatible with serpentine locomotion and adaptations for burrowing (again, tiny legs are a great example of those).

This would indicate that the early snakes did the same. The gut content was preserved so the researchers were able to identify bones from the hugging snake’s last meal.

To be or not to be [a snake]?

Tetrapodophis amplectus might not be a snake. Wait, what? It really looks like one to most of us, right? At this point you might have been convinced that Martill did find the missing link between lizards and snakes, and that it would soon be in really cool documentaries and movies, right?

Well, according to Susan Evans, a paleobiologist of the University College of London, snake-like bodies appeared many times in history in different species of snakes and lizards—at least 26 times.

“I’m trying to carefully sit on the fence as to whether this is actually a snake,” said Susan to Science magazine. Michael Caldwell, a paleontologist is also unsure. “I think the specimen is important, but I do not know what it is,” he stated in an interview for National Geographic. He claims that the vertebrae and the lack of association with another bone that occurs in every living and extinct reptile is enough to doubt that the four-legged snake is even a reptile, let alone a snake. He believes it could be an ancient amphibian instead.