The Suez Canal Blocking - What's the Problem?

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The ever given ended up blocking the suez canal and causing a big disruption to trade. A new article looks at how this might actually have happened. The researcher thinks it got caught up in a well known phenomenon called the bank effect. This is where water can be displaced by ships, but not very far into the canal. And so because there are no places for that water to go, it ends up getting sucked closer to the banks of the canal. It then spins around - just like when you're driving a car or riding a bike. Nick: Is this sort of knowledge going to help us avoid similar situations in the future? Ben: I think we've been building boats bigger and bigger

Laser-cooled antimatter opens up new physics experiments, and the staggering economic cost of invasive species.

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00:44 Cooling antimatter with a laser focus

Antimatter is annihilated whenever it interacts with regular matter, which makes it tough for physicists to investigate. Now though, a team at CERN have developed a way to trap and cool antihydrogen atoms using lasers, allowing them to better study its properties.

Research Article: Baker et al.

News and Views: Antimatter cooled by laser light

09:27 Research Highlights

A dramatic increase in Arctic lightning strikes, and an acrobatic bunny helps researchers understand hopping.

Research Highlight: Rising temperatures spark boom in Arctic lightning

Research Highlight: Rabbits that do ‘handstands’ help to find a gene for hopping

11:53 Cost of invasion

Invasive alien species are organisms that end up in places where they don’t really belong, usually as a result of human activity. These species can cause loss of biodiversity and a host of damage to their new environments. This week, researchers estimate that the economic impact of invasive species to be over US $1 trillion.

Research Article: Diagne et al.

19:04 Briefing Chat

We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, the physics that might explain how a ship blocked the Suez Canal, and a new insight into octopuses’ sleep patterns.

The Financial Times: The bank effect and the big boat blocking the Suez

Science: Octopuses, like humans, sleep in two stages

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