China makes an Everest move; the god of 🍷
 | | PHOTOGRAPH AND VIDEO BY ARBINDRA KHADKA | | It was the highest weather station on Earth. Then, after seven months of producing important data, it succumbed to extreme conditions.
Now, reinforced against the wind, and roughly 160 feet lower than Everest’s summit, a replacement weather station is running on the peak’s southeast side. It took three hours to install, by a National Geographic Society climbing team (pictured above) braving steady winds and warmed by 24-volt batteries in their down suits.
The new station now has three separate—and now stronger and better anchored—wind sensors, says climate scientist and team member Tom Matthews, whose right fingers went wooden with frostbite during the ascent. “We have a good chance of measuring a full winter’s wind,” the Nat Geo Explorer told us. “That would be fascinating.”
Weather data from the roof of the world has become a point of pride for nations in a way that Everest summits once were. This year, another meteorological station appeared high up on the mountain’s Tibetan side. It is China’s. Let the forecasts begin!
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| Pictured above, the team performs a Puja ceremony at Everest Base Camp to pay respects to the mountain and pray for safe passage.
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| | Cave of crystals: It looks like something out of a Superman movie, clusters of giant milky-white crystals inside one of the world’s largest geodes. Nat Geo Explorer Robbie Shone captured this image at the Pulpí Geode, which was discovered in an abandoned silver mine on the southern coast of Spain in 1999. Here’s how giant crystals are formed there.“Keep your head on a swivel,” the sheriff told her. | | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPH BY MARCO CARMIGNAN
| | Lingering effects: Most COVID-19 patients recover from the infection in two weeks, but symptoms linger for some patients for weeks, or even months. A new study has found that viral remnants could be causing long COVID in these patients, Nat Geo reports. (Pictured above, a patient getting a chest CT scan in a Rome clinic to check her lungs after COVID-19.)
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 | ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW FAZEKAS
| | Superhero in the sky: Want to see Hercules? The legendary ancient Greek god is represented in a sprawling constellation that rides high in the east during early evenings this week. Hercules is easy to find between the brilliant stars Vega and Arcturus. Four of the constellation’s stars make up a distinctive wedge-shaped trapezoid marking his torso and is known as the ‘Keystone’ asterism. The constellation was the center of a flurry of speculation in 2015 and 2016 that radio waves from it may have heralded extraterrestrial beings. (Alas!) In other stargazing this week, look for the crescent moon at dawn on Thursday, pairing with a brilliant Venus. — Andrew Fazekas
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 | | I wish everyone had a chance to go to space so you can see how dependent you are on oxygen, water, the fruit that miraculously grows on trees. The minute you get to another planet, you see this is what it could be like if you don’t preserve things. | | | Ved Chirayath
| Physicist, inventor, Nat Geo Explorer
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 | | ACI/ALAMY | | Dionysus was there: The Greek god is so associated with wine that ancient Greeks believed that anywhere grapevines could be found, Dionysus had once visited. So for today’s U.S. demarcation of National Wine Day, Nat Geo’s History magazine has this look at the disruptive, freedom-loving, transgressive god of wine. “Clearly,” the magazine notes, “Dionysus continues to cast a long shadow.” (Pictured above, a youthful Dionysus is crowned with grapes in a first-century marble statue at the Naples Archaeological Museum.)
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| This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Monica Williams, and Jen Tse. Have an idea for us? Let us know. And thanks for reading. | |
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