Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i National Geographic Magazine - UK

ILLUMINATING THE MYSTERIES—AND WONDERS—ALL AROUND US EVERY DAY IN THIS SECTION How Moths Weather Rain A New Loo for Astronauts Volcanic Lightning The Craft of Clock Repair I’VE BEEN PUTTING MY PASSPORT to good use lately. I use it as a coaster and to level wobbly table legs. It makes an excellent cat toy. Welcome to the pandemic of disappointments. Canceled trips, or ones never planned lest they be canceled. Family reunions, study-abroad years, lazy beach vacations. Poof. Gone. Obliterated by a tiny virus and the long list of countries where United States passports are not welcome. It is not natural for us to be this sedentary. Travel is in our genes. For most of the time our species has existed, “we’ve lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers moving about in small…

WHEN CHILE’S CALBUCO VOLCANO roared to life in April 2015, it exploded with little warning. The ash-rich plume rose more than 14 miles into the atmosphere, generating a spectacular storm that produced thousands of lightning flashes. Although the tallest and most powerful volcanic explosions tend to produce the most dazzling electrical displays, not all volcanic eruptions trigger lightning. Scientists are just beginning to understand many of the complex processes that determine which ones do. An eruption’s intensity and access to water both play a vital role. And research from recent eruptions in Alaska and Indonesia have clarified how ice can generate lightning. The precise proportion of ice or ash needed for lightning is unclear. Researchers continue to monitor major eruptions for answers. HOW VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS SPARK LIGHTNING 1 Magma breaks…

POPPING INTO A HARDWARE STORE won’t do when Brittany Nicole Cox needs parts or tools. She’s an antiquarian horologist, trained to conserve and restore historic clocks and the clockwork showpieces called automatons (1 and 8, above). “I work on objects created before mass production, before the standardization of things like screw threading,” Cox explains. So when she needs to replace a part in a delicate mechanism that may have sat frozen for a century, she builds it in her Seattle workshop, often using tools that also are antiques. “There’s such craft and art in them,” she says. 2. Vertical milling and drilling machine Likely built more than 100 years ago, this sturdy device is still precise at milling recesses in mechanism plates and other small parts, Cox says. 3. Depthing…

LET’S IMAGINE PLANET EARTH WITHOUT VIRUSES. We wave a wand, and they all disappear. The rabies virus is suddenly gone. The polio virus is gone. The gruesomely lethal Ebola virus is gone. The measles virus, the mumps virus, and the various influenzas are gone. Vast reductions of human misery and death. HIV is gone, and so the AIDS catastrophe never happened. Nipah and Hendra and Machupo and Sin Nombre are gone—never mind their records of ugly mayhem. Dengue, gone. All the rotaviruses, gone, a great mercy to children in developing countries who die by the hundreds of thousands each year. Zika virus, gone. Yellow fever virus, gone. Herpes B, carried by some monkeys, often fatal when passed to humans, gone. Nobody suffers anymore from chicken pox, hepatitis, shingles, or even…

MOVING FOR WORK Migrant workers accounted for almost two-thirds of the 271.6 million people living in foreign countries in 2019. Nearly 48 percent of international migrants were women. WORKING WOMEN Most women who leave home for another country are 20 to 50 years old. Tracking their moves A green circle indicates the number of migrant women in a country. In the U.S. the circle is a large one—representing 26.4 million women. The color fill shows that more women than men entered the U.S. The number of women who left the country—2.4 million—is indicated by the purple circle. Light shading signifies that roughly the same number of women and men left the U.S. More Women Than Men Most of the women who leave these countries do so in pursuit of a…

THE SALWEEN RIVER, known as the Nu in China, is one of the last great free-flowing rivers in Asia. Nearly two decades ago China announced it would dam the Nu. Multiple ethnic groups live in this part of southwestern China, which is called Three Parallel Rivers for the Nu, the Jinsha (Yangtze), and the Lancang (Mekong) Rivers that flow through it and has been named a UNESCO World Heritage site for its rich biodiversity. In 2008 I traveled there to tell the story of this remote region before it was permanently altered. I found that there was very little bottomland along the Nu. Villages hid high above the steep walls of the river’s gorge; a road clung to one side. Few bridges spanned the river. I saw locals crossing by…

Cells are considered the foundation of life, but viruses—with all their genetic diversity—may share in that role. Our planet’s earliest viruses and cells likely evolved in an intertwined and often symbiotic relationship of predator and prey. Evidence even suggests that viruses may have started out as cells but lost their autonomy as they evolved to thrive as parasites on other cells. This dependent relationship began a long history of coevolution. Viruses living in cells cause their hosts to adapt, and those changes then cause viruses to adapt in a never ending cycle of one-upmanship. A more inclusive tree of life? Billions of years ago life on Earth diverged into three branches: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. But recent research suggests viruses should be considered a fourth branch. This diagram, based on…

A half century after the Civil War ended, a Confederate heritage group in Tuskegee, Alabama, erected a statue honoring Rebel soldiers across from the Macon County Court House. As of last fall, the statue still stood sentry—albeit vandalized and under a tarp—as the city, now 97 percent African American, considered what to do with it. Editor’s Note Through our standard image toning processes, we de-emphasized instances of the f-word that were visible in the photo on pages 100-101. It’s an extremely rare step for us to take, but it honors our policy not to use that word in stories or to display it in photographs. Kentucky sculptor Ed Hamilton, 73, is impressively agile for a man of almost any age. On a seasonably warm fall a.ternoon, he easily ascends a…

CELEDONIA TELLEZ doesn’t recall the year she moved to the Osa Peninsula, or exactly how old she was, but she remembers well why she came: free land. At the time, the peninsula, a 700-square-mile crook on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, was a forest frontier, separated from the mainland by a neck of near-impenetrable mangroves and accessible mainly by boat. Celedonia was pregnant when she arrived with her five children, six chickens, a dog, and 700 colones, about one dollar. She also brought her boyfriend, but he “hated nature, and would run away from insects,” she remembers. So she took an ax and cleared the land herself. “When I was cutting down the trees, I would think how they must have taken so long to grow, and I…

WHO A French photographer whose specialty is marine wildlife WHERE Underwater in the Lembeh Strait, off the north edge of the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia WHAT A Nikon D7200 with a 105mm lens in a Nauticam housing and two strobes Indonesia’s coral-filled waters are famous for their biodiversity and for species that use mimicry, alliances, and symbiosis to survive. On a dive, Lecoeur noticed this clown anemonefish had a small companion. The parasite Cymothoa exigua attaches to a fish’s tongue and siphons blood. The tongue withers, but the parasite stays, feeding o the host while the fish pursues its usual diet. Getting the shot took immense patience, Lecoeur says—until, for a fraction of a second, the fish looked at the camera and opened its mouth. This page showcases images…

IN SPACE, PROPERLY DEPOSITING human waste can be tricky. The lack of gravity can result in excretory anomalies, as ground control overheard during NASA’s 1969 Apollo 10 mission: “Give me a napkin quick,” Tom Stafford implored fellow astronauts. “There’s a turd floating through the air.” Now, for the first time since 1993, NASA has sent a brand-new, redesigned toilet to the International Space Station. Like its predecessor, the fancier throne uses suction to whisk away waste. Astronauts urinate into a handheld funnel and hose, and deposit the solid stuff exactly as you’d expect. But with more women visiting space, the new loo’s seat was fashioned with female anatomy in mind. It allows women to more easily multitask—or perform what NASA refers to as “dual ops”—and the seat plus handrails provides…

ALL ABOARD Enveloped by Arctic currents and narrow fjords, the Lofoten archipelago lures thrill seekers—including wintertime surfers. Riding the frigid waves here requires a dose of Norwegian indre kraft, or inner strength. In the past decade, technical advances in cold water attire have made it possible to spend much more time in normally numbing temperatures. “It’s just us, our surfboards, and the vastness of nature,” says German surfer Aline Bock (seen here with pal Lena Stoffel). ISLAND LIFE After surfing, stand-up paddleboarding, or hiking, adventurers can break their icy isolation by warming up to the centuries-old fishing culture that defines the islands. Among the weathered red rorbu cabins, racks of cod dry in the wind, providing the main ingredient for the local fish stew. Daylight is fleeting above the Arctic…

IN AN OBSCURE ALLEYWAY near Lisbon’s Alcântara neighborhood, the Fábrica Sant’Anna has been producing azulejos—the Portuguese word for wall tiles—roughly the same way since the workshop’s founding in 1741. At long tables scattered with pots of myriad colors, artisans paint angels and flowers, graceful swirls and bold lines, onto gleaming white ceramic squares. But if Sant’Anna’s buzzing factory has become something of a pilgrimage site for visitors to the Portuguese capital, seeing azulejos in Lisbon requires no effort at all. You’d have to walk the streets with your eyes closed to miss them. Throughout Portugal, azulejos are an inextricable part of the landscape. But like the tropical trees of Lisbon, brought to the city from faraway lands centuries ago, azulejos are particularly representative of Portuguese identity precisely because they’re so…

Raxma Xasan Maxamuud never wanted to leave her home in Somaliland. But a relentless cycle of droughts turned rivers to dust and dried up the grasses her livestock depended on. In Honduras, violence drove Kataleya Nativi Baca, a transgender woman, on a perilous journey to the United States border. Women make up about half of those who migrate internationally and within their own countries. Some are pulled by the promise of a better future, but for those who face famine or danger in their home countries, migration is a gamble for their very survival. For this story, photographers with The Everyday Projects—a global network with a mission to challenge stereotypes by presenting diverse perspectives—explore how hardship and obligation, violence, poverty, climate change, and other forces undermine women’s lives, spurring them…

Rebel reach Confederate symbols are largely found in the 11 southern states that officially seceded in 1860 and 1861, and many are located far from Civil War battlegrounds. Symbols vary from statues to street names; some states also have commemorative license plates and holidays. Most symbols are in rural areas, but over 80 percent of recent monument removals have been in urban areas. Confederate Symbols Existing Removed/renamed Alaska removed one symbol. There are no symbols anywhere else in U.S. territory. DATA AS OF NOVEMBER 12, 2020. ONLY SYMBOLS ON PUBLIC LANDS ARE COUNTED. SOME CATEGORIES HAVE BEEN MORE COMPREHENSIVELY DOCUMENTED THAN OTHERS. ONLY SYMBOLS WITH KNOWN DEDICATION DATES ARE INCLUDED IN TIME LINE. MONICA SERRANO, SOREN WALLJASPER, AND TED SICKLEY, NGM STAFF. LAWSON PARKER. SOURCES: SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER; U.S.…

RICH IN BIODIVERSITY More than 140 mammals, 460 birds, and thousands of plants and insects, many of them endangered, have been identified in the 700 square miles of land and 120 miles of coastline that make up this vital ecosystem.…