Plus, islands in the sky; a ‘contagious vaccine’, and the pivotal 1918 pandemic mistake
| Wednesday, March 23, 2022 | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE AND TOURISM, ABU DHABI | | By Michael Greshko, SCIENCE writer
On October 5, 2020, an auctioneer’s hammer fell at Christie’s New York, and a scientifically invaluable Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton called “Stan” sold for a record-breaking $31.8 million. The sale—by far the biggest of its kind for a fossil—immediately stoked controversy among scientists. Who had bought the fossil? What would happen to it? And what would the sale mean for the science that rested on those dinosaur’s bones?
For 17 months, the world has waited to learn where Stan has ended up. Now we finally know: Stan (pictured above) will be a star attraction of a new natural history museum outside Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
National Geographic brings you an exclusive look inside the upcoming Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi and into Stan’s journey to its new home. Read our full story and see video of Stan here.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY SPENCER PLATT, GETTY IMAGES | | Pictured above, Stan at Christie’s auction house in 2020. The skeleton is named for amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, who found the initial bones in 1987.
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| Breakthroughs on energy: David Hattan, a remote handling engineer, puts his skills to use, helping with the world’s largest fusion energy experiments at a lab near Oxford, United Kingdom. Fusion is the process that powers stars like our sun and promises a near-limitless green electricity source for the long term. It uses small amounts of fuel that can be sourced worldwide from inexpensive materials. Read more about fusion energy in an upcoming Nat Geo story.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY NICK HRISTOV, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, PBZ | | A ‘contagious vaccine’: Imagine a vaccine that could replicate in a person’s body and spread quickly to others nearby, just like a disease. Researchers are currently developing self-spreading vaccines for Ebola, bovine tuberculosis, and a viral disease spread by rats, hoping to prevent the next pandemic by stopping pathogens from jumping from animals to people, Nat Geo reports. Critics of the technology, however, argue that the diseases could mutate or jump species with devastating effects. (Pictured above, a thermal image of bats flying in Texas.)
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY RENAN OZTURK | | Would you sleep here? Getting to the Guiana Highlands, this remote region of South America, is a bigger undertaking than you can imagine. There, flat mountains called tepuis rise high above the forest canopy, poking into the clouds. At the top of these tepuis are unique ecosystems filled with plants and animals never before seen by humans. Biologist Bruce Means teamed up with professional climbers and Indigenous people to trek through the jungle and get to the top of the tepui Weiassipu in search of frogs. Tepuis “are special, wonderful, remote, beautiful places on this planet that give me as much … euphoria as I have ever gotten from any place I’ve ever been,” Means, a Nat Geo Explorer, says on the latest Overheard episode. (Pictured above, writer Mark Synnott in his portaledge in Guyana.)
Interactive: Explore South America’s ‘Islands in the Sky’
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 | | ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW FAZEKAS | | A city of stars: With the moon out of the evening sky this week, it’s a great opportunity to hunt down a stunning, giant ball of stars known as Messier 3 rising in the Eastern sky late at night. While it lies within the borders of the tiny constellation Canes Venatici or the Hunting Dogs, this star cluster is very close to the boundary line shared with Bootes, the herdsman. This globular cluster sits at about the midpoint along a line drawn between the stars Arcturus and Cor Caroli. Binoculars will easily reveal M3 as a round-shaped mist, while a telescope will begin to resolve some of its half-million stars that call this beautiful cluster home. Astronomers estimate that M3 is one of the largest globulars ever discovered and it’s located about 33,920 light years from Earth. On Sunday and Monday at dawn, look for the crescent moon to join an eye-catching triangular formation of the planets Venus, Mars, and Saturn low in the southeastern sky. — Andrew Fazekas
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY JAIME CULEBRAS | | Fully transparent: Two new species of frogs found in the Andes of Ecuador have names: Hyalinobatrachium mashpi (pictured above) and Hyalinobatrachium nouns (H. mashpi and H. nouns for short). Both animals have a see-through belly that reveals their red heart, white liver and digestive system, and, in the cases of females, greenish-colored eggs. To the naked eye, they appear identical, but scientists found they possess distinct genetic differences, Nat Geo reports. What’s also surprising is that the amphibians live just 13 miles apart, says Juan Manuel Guayasamin, an evolutionary biologist and Nat Geo Explorer.
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