All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey
Earth and other alien planets, plus women with ADHD, and some happy Nobel prize news for once.
Hello friends,
I just got back from California! Well, a week ago, which is roughly the amount of time it's taken for me to feel human again after a terrible case of jet lag. I miss the warmth and the ridiculous landscapes. I took the photo above in Yosemite National Park – a good place to go if you'd like to feel small and insignificant, which is no bad thing once in a while.
Lessons from early Earth
Almost as eye-opening as Yosemite was the New Scientist feature I wrote that came out right before I went away. It's about how the clues to finding alien life may lie in Earth's deep past, but what really struck me while researching it was just how much Earth has changed over its billions of years, and how little we know about some of its past. If you want to talk about how scientists are searching for alien life, or how it might actually be harder to reconstruct early Earth's atmosphere than it is to measure that of a distant alien planet, hit me up.
More alien planets
Speaking of exoplanets, here's a story I wrote for the Daily Beast on how gravitational waves could help find them. As far as I know this is the first story to combine what are two of the biggest physics breakthroughs of our time. Possibly because right now it's not a technique we can use – we'll need to wait for the next generation of space-based gravitational wave detectors.
How to leave Earth
If those two have whet your appetite for life beyond Earth, how would you like to read about how we'll leave this planet for good? My (cover!) feature in the October issue of BBC Focus, out now, is all about that. Spoiler alert: living in space involves doing a lot of exercise so you don't waste away, and could also screw you up psychologically. So beware of Elon Musks bearing spaceships – we've got a long way to go before setting up home on Mars is going to be as easy as getting there (which is not even an easy task in itself).
ADHD is a feminist issue
While you're in the newsagents picking up Focus, my Women's Health feature on why ADHD is often misdiagnosed in women was out in August and might still be on shelves if your newsagent is like mine and doesn't appear to remove old stock. It's another print only one, so you'll have to actually leave the house and pay money to read it, or just like, DM me and I'll give you the gist.
A good day for women in physics (or at least one of them)
Finally, I am so happy to be writing this on the day that a woman has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the first time IN FIFTY FIVE YEARS. Donna Strickland shares half the prize with Gérard Mourou for their work on super short laser pulses, with the other half going to Arthur Ashkin for optical tweezers. And only a week after I wrote about some of my favourite women in science for the i. Here's hoping she doesn't now spend the rest of her career answering the same question over and over again about how it feels to be a female winner.
Until next time: say hi at @kahoakes, or lurk at kellyoak.es.
– Kelly