Win a School Science Day with Mark the Science Guy
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One nominated school will win a day of science fun in 2025 with Mark Langtry.
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RTÉ News
6 days ago
- RTÉ News
'Acoustic trauma' could have caused Mayo whale beaching
A True's beaked whale and her calf who became stranded and died in Co Mayo could have beached due to "acoustic trauma", according to the CEO of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group. Acoustic trauma can cause great harm to whales due to loud man-made sounds in the ocean, particularly when naval exercises make use of active sonar. Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Dr Simon Berrow, who is also a lecturer at Atlantic Technical University Galway, said the stranding in Kilcummin Back Strand on 27 July happened around the same time as similar incidents in the Netherlands and Orkney in Scotland. "When you put them all together, it could just be a coincidence, or it could indicate that something has happened. "Typically, when these deep-diving species live-strand, your first thought is it could be acoustic trauma," Dr Berrow said. He added: "These species are deep divers. They'll go down to 1,000 or 2,000 metres on every dive so they're designed to dive deep routinely. "And often they're getting washed up with signs of the bends, which is an incredibly unusual thing, so it tends to be attributed to acoustic trauma when the animal has surfaced too fast. "This is generally associated with typically naval exercises because the navy - not the Irish navy – would use a thing called an 'active sonar' which is the same frequency as the whales use to communicate and they're incredibly sensitive to these frequencies. "We're not saying that's the case but when you've an unusual event over a wide geographical range you kind of flag and think 'what's going on? Is this just a coincidence or a little bit indicative of something sinister going on'," Dr Berrow said. According to Dr Berrow, the stranding of the two True's beaked whales was only the second confirmed sighting in Irish waters ever, and the 20th stranding of that species in total since 1899. He said nothing at all could have been done to save the whales after they became stranded. "The logistics of refloating these whales are quite challenging, you need people, you need people who are trained, it can be quite dangerous." Dr Berrow added that while the calf refloated on its own, it was found dead a few days later. "It probably died fairly quickly and that's probably a good thing because with the adult mother dying the calf would have starved to death," he said. An investigation is under way to determine what happened to the whales. However, Dr Berrow is unsure whether it will get to the bottom of what happened due to the complexity of conducting the post-mortem and a lack of expertise in Ireland.
Irish Independent
10-07-2025
- Irish Independent
Dublin teen wins top science prize for physics project inspired by her cat
Amelia Lupascu, a 16-year-old student at Adamstown Community College, was named overall winner for her project Through Another Eyes, which explores how animals perceive the world in completely different ways from humans. Her entry, inspired by her pet cat Zorro, investigates how animals use not just light, but sound waves, heat, and even magnetic fields to navigate and understand their surroundings. Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Amelia said the idea started close to home. 'I came across this idea because I have a cute little cat,' she said. 'I was aware they could see the world in different colours than us humans, and began to wonder what other animals see when perceiving the world.' Cats, she explained, don't see colour the same way people do and, in fact, miss out on large parts of the visible spectrum. 'They're dichromatic, so they mainly have two types of colour receptors. They don't really see red at all, so they mostly see the world in shades of blue and green,' she said. But what fascinated Amelia even more was discovering that not all animals rely on sight. 'Seeing the world can mean many different things, it's not limited to light entering an eye,' she said. 'Some creatures use echolocation, some sense heat, others navigate using magnetic fields. That really intrigued me and provided a new angle to the question.' The Eurekas competition, organised by the Institute of Physics as part of its Limit Less campaign, aims to break down stereotypes around who can study physics and how it can be approached. Entries came in a range of formats, from poetry and music to experiments and presentations, with 274 submissions this year alone. Amelia, who was a runner-up in last year's competition, also won a prize at this year's BT Young Scientist Competition. Her project, 'Sealing The Future, Polymer-based adhesives for safer internal wound healing', was awarded third place in the senior individual project category. Amelia says the Eurekas win has also given her clarity about the future. 'I've always been interested in science,' she said. 'I haven't narrowed it down to a specific field yet, but I'm definitely planning on going in that direction.' Two other Dublin-based students were also recognised. Mariia Rudnitska (13), from Nord Anglia International School, came second for her project on the physics of mirrors, while 14-year-old Katie Staunton, from Mount Sackville Secondary School, was highly commended for her entry on quantum physics and the double slit experiment.
The 42
08-07-2025
- The 42
The sequel that few asked for, but the one that Taylor and Serrano deserved the last time
WHEN I WAS FIVE, my father set a VHS cassette to record the 'Big Big Movie' for me as I got ready for bed on a Saturday night. My obsession with dinosaurs had begun about a year earlier with a Christmas present of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie on video. But the day I first sat through Jurassic Park, RTÉ ad breaks and all, was the day the Rangers began to gather dust in the corner unit. Spielberg — and soon afterwards, the original author, Michael Crichton — had me spellbound. I spent years telling aunts, uncles and teachers that I wanted to become a palaeontologist. My dad, bless him, always encouraged me, but I can't imagine how many times he must have hidden his dismay as he passed me a football only to witness his little nerd of a son compare its dimensions to that of a Diplodocus egg. My interests would later mutate towards sport but Jurassic Park remains my favourite film. Its greatness perseveres less in the spectacle and more in the questions it poses and the ideas it proposes. 'Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.' Dr Ian Malcolm's warning to John Hammond, perhaps even more prescient these days than it was when Crichton first committed a longer version of it to paper 36 years ago, now sadly also applies to the franchise that Crichton never intended to create. Released in cinemas last week, Jurassic World: Rebirth — the sixth sequel to Spielberg's original — struck this JP lifer as a pointless, brainless, soulless affair. And yet it has enjoyed the biggest global movie opening of 2025 so far, raking in over $320 million worldwide. The Jurassic movies have averaged out at about a billion quid per instalment, so you can expect Universal Studios to continue to flog the bones off this extinct reptile in the years to come. If you've flicked on Netflix, recently, then, you'll have seen they're flogging a sequel of their own. At a casual glance, it would be easy to perceive Katie Taylor's latest meeting with Amanda Serrano as being, in its own right, another preposterous summer blockbuster for summer blockbusters' sake. Advertisement Why would Katie go back to the island for a third time when she has already survived it twice?! She and Serrano can probably think of five to seven million reasons each, for starters. The Netflix trailer for their trilogy bout at Madison Square Garden, New York, this Friday, contained a curious twist: interspliced into Charlize Theron's narration was the comically Serrano-biased commentary from Taylor-Serrano 2 in Dallas last November, including the line from Serrano's fellow Puerto Rican Brooklynite Rosie Perez that Taylor's razor-thin victory in that rematch would see an 'asterisk' applied to her legacy. That Perez retracted that comment and apologised the same night apparently mattered not to Netflix, who used it as a hook in their highly produced promo. But they won't be using Perez on Friday night, nor will Mauro Ranallo return on lead commentary in this latest instalment. Taylor's team likely saw to that during contract negotiations. Hey, Hollywood's a tough business. When I asked Taylor about this casting development a couple of weeks ago, what do you think she said? Spoiler alert: you're probably going to be correct. 'Yeah, I didn't even see the trailer, to be honest,' Taylor laughed. 'I don't really care what happens, really, beforehand, or what's been said or anything like that. 'And nobody's ever going to remember the trailer… but they will remember the result on fight night and that's all I focus on.' It's true enough, which is clearly why Netflix embellished the trailer with Perez's infamous quote: most people know full well that Taylor is up 2-0 on her career-long rival and so without controversy, however contrived, this third entry in the series is a tougher sell than the first two. It all comes to down to this. KATIE TAYLOR vs. AMANDA SERRANO 3 is coming LIVE on Netflix, Friday July 11 at 8 pm ET | 5 pm PT — Netflix (@netflix) June 11, 2025 Taylor, who will again defend her undisputed light-welterweight title on Friday night, turned 39 last week. Serrano will be 37 in October. In athletic years, they're fossils, but in the ring, they were still physical marvels as recently as November. This trilogy bout may well prove the final act for both of them and nobody would argue the fact that Taylor and Serrano deserve the millions they'll pocket when the dust settles beneath them once more. And while an unwarranted sequel will always be treated with cynicism, it's only fair to point out that Taylor-Serrano 3 is exactly the follow-up that critics wished Taylor-Serrano 2 could have been. Unlike Dallas, there will be no predetermined male main event between a YouTuber and a 58-year-old former heavyweight champion entering the ring by way of eight blood transfusions. Taylor and Serrano have returned from the circus for a stripped-down, back-to-basics boxing event at the scene of their original classic in 2022. They will headline at Madison Square Garden an all-female card, brimming from top to bottom with world-level talent, live on a streaming platform with over 300 million global subscribers. This will not be car-crash TV but an elevation of women's boxing and a celebration of the cherished characters who have taken it to unprecedented heights in under a decade. The viewing figures will be organic, no caveats. The paychecks will again be huge. So, while one more will absolutely hurt, you can understand why it would feel worthwhile, all told. It would certainly make for a more fitting night to bow out than as the co-main event to Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. With nothing left to prove against Serrano, with her sporting legacy sealed, and with her financial future long since secured, I asked Katie Taylor recently how she could possibly summon the determination to do it all again. She said: 'I love the fact that I get to do something I love every single day. 'And even though sometimes I wake up and I'm not in the mood for training', Taylor added, 'I'm still so grateful to be in this position and I think that's definitely one of the reasons why I've been able to stay at the top for so long — because of this passion that I have for my sport.' In which case, who am I to tell this master of the sweet science whether or not she should? I'll be in New York this week to pick the bones of it for The 42 either way.
