Royal Tomb Of Egyptian King Thutmose II Unearthed

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Flora Lichtman. Later in the hour, the CEO of one of the oldest scientific societies, the AAAS, joins us to talk about his rallying cry for scientists as threats to science mount. But first, some news that takes us to a valley in Egypt. This week, archeologists report one of the biggest Egyptian archeological finds in modern history, the tomb of a pharaoh, King Thutmose II. This is the first pharaoh tomb find in over 100 years. The last one was King Tut’s in 1922. Joining me to sift through the details of this story and other news from the week is Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead of CarbonPlan based in Minneapolis. Welcome back. Maggie.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Thanks for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: All right. Let’s talk about this very cool discovery. Who was buried in this tomb?

MAGGIE KOERTH: So this is the tomb of Thutmose II. He’s actually a dynastic predecessor of King Tutankhamun. So he died around 1479 BC, which is about 150 years before King Tut took the throne. So this tomb was found in 2022. And at the time, archeologists actually thought it might be a queen’s burial, because it was really close to some other queenly tombs, including the wife of King Thutmose II, Hatshepsut.

But there was a ton of ancient flood damage in this tomb, and it had destroyed a lot of the interior. And it had also cemented dirt and debris in front of the door. So it actually took a really long time to get in there and start figuring out whose tomb it really was. What’s really interesting about this, though, is that his body was not there. So what they found was this kind of empty tomb. There are relics that have his name on them that kind of tie this to King Thutmose. But his body was actually discovered back in the 19th century in an entirely different location, far away.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Why?

MAGGIE KOERTH: Well, so the floods. So the archeologists say that this tomb has shown signs that it was severely flooded out shortly after it was completed. And there’s also evidence that most of his burial goods and his body were moved shortly after that. So this was the tomb that was dug for him, that was made for him that he was originally buried in. And then it just got flooded out, and he got moved elsewhere.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Why did it take so long to find this tomb?

MAGGIE KOERTH: There’s just a lot of things buried out there. And from what I can tell, they just discovered the stairs of this while they were doing other excavations in the area.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm. Let’s move on. A lot of listeners are living in a world right now that is covered with regular old ice, Earth ice. There’s a new finding about some weird alien ice. What’s that about?

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yeah. Well, so they’re calling this plastic ice, but it’s not really plastic. It just has plasticity. So this stuff has a crystalline molecular structure, like ice. But the individual molecules in that structure are able to rotate around in a way that’s more like how molecules in water move. So plastic ice could be molded or deformed. And the descriptions that scientists gave to reporters at Science News make it sound a little like those gooshy gel packs you kind of sometimes get with flowers at the grocery store. Do you know what I’m talking about?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes. Of course, yes.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yeah, right. Nobody’s actually touched it, though. [LAUGHS] So getting plastic ice to form in a lab for the first time required temperatures higher than 300 Celsius and a pressure of nearly 900,000 PSI. And for context, the bottom of the Mariana Trench is about 16,000 PSI.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow! So high temperature, high pressure.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Right. Yes.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s interesting. I think of ice as cold.

MAGGIE KOERTH: I do as well. But it turns out that there are weirdly a lot of different forms of ice, at least 20 of them. And they all have different crystalline structures that form because of different temperature and pressure combinations. So the natural ice that you and I are most familiar with, you can call it natty ice if you wanted to, that has–

FLORA LICHTMAN: I will, thank you.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yeah, thanks. That has a kind of honeycomb lattice. Ice 7, in contrast, has this dense cube structure like a Rubik’s cube. And this newly observed ice is actually a plastic form of ice 7. So same cube structure, more molecular wiggles.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Would it clink in a drink? That’s really my burning question about this.

MAGGIE KOERTH: That is an interesting question. They did not say, but the regular degular ice 7, that has been found on Earth inside of diamonds.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Whoa! Where might this plastic ice be found?

MAGGIE KOERTH: Well, so up until recently, it was only theoretical. Scientists think it might have once existed inside of the high pressure centers of icy moons like Europa, back when they were still forming.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. Let’s head back to Earth. There’s some troubling news out of the Southwest. Tell me about this measles outbreak.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yeah, it’s bad. Cases more than doubled over the last week. So as of Wednesday, there were 58 cases, 13 hospitalizations across five West Texas counties. And most of them are in this one very rural county called Gaines County, south of Lubbock. So this is a County with a population density of like 14 people per square mile, which is lower than average in the US for even unincorporated areas. And the fact that measles is spreading this fast in a place that’s that isolated tells you a lot about measles and about the drivers of this outbreak.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah. Well, what does it tell us?

MAGGIE KOERTH: Well, so measles is really good at spreading from person to person. It’s one of the most contagious viruses out there. People who aren’t vaccinated, 90% of them who get exposed will get measles. And Gaines County has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the entire state, according to reporting by The Texas Tribune. So the outbreak has been centered in the county’s Mennonite community, and they tend to mostly avoid the healthcare system in general.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How can people protect themselves from measles?

MAGGIE KOERTH: So the big thing is just get vaccinated, and vaccinate your kids. A lot of people can recover safely at home from measles, but babies and younger children are really vulnerable. Kids can end up so dehydrated they can’t even cry. It’s pretty common for it to lead to pneumonia in younger children, and it can cause more rare, lethal complications like brain inflammation. It’s also able to suppress the immune system for months after infection, which is a big deal when we’re also in the middle of one of the worst flu seasons in recent memory.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm. Let’s move on to a more hopeful health story. There’s a new study about a man who seemed almost certain to develop Alzheimer’s because of his genes. But he’s symptom-free, and he’s in his 70s. Tell me about this.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yeah, yeah. So there’s this really cool story in Live Science this week. And the man is Doug Whitney. His family had had multiple cases of a rare form of genetically-linked Alzheimer’s. His mother had it. 11 of her 13 siblings had it. They were all experiencing symptoms by the time they were in their 50s. And 14 years ago, Whitney enrolled himself in this large trial at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He was 61 at the time. He had no symptoms of the disease, and he sort of assumed he had managed to just not get the genetic mutations that had harmed so many of his family members.

But from the studies that he enrolled himself in, it turned out that he actually had at least one of these mutations. And the brain scans showed that his brain was full of the kind of amyloid beta plaques that are usually the first step to developing Alzheimer’s. But he was fine, and he continues to be fine.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. So do scientists understand what’s happening?

MAGGIE KOERTH: There’s still a lot they’re trying to figure out. But though he had these amyloid protein plaques in his brain, Alzheimer’s patients usually have these tangles of a different kind of protein called tau. And the interaction between the two proteins might be what hastens cognitive decline. So one of the things the scientists are trying to figure out is why he has plaques but no tangles, and they still aren’t sure. One really cool hypothesis about why he doesn’t have these tau tangles is that he was a shipboard mechanic in hot boiler rooms as a job for many, many years.

And it turns out there are changes in the cerebral spinal fluid that happen when the human body is protecting itself from extreme heat. That can also protect itself from misfolded proteins, like tangles. So the scientists are speculating that it might turn out that his job ended up protecting him from Alzheimer’s.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. Does this point to any new avenues for treatment or prevention?

MAGGIE KOERTH: It’s all really still in very early stages of research. So it’s not really leading to treatments yet. But studying Whitney is really helping researchers understand how Alzheimer’s works. And eventually, it might also tell us a lot about how the process of the disease could be slowed.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, last story. We now know that coral can go for a walk. I need every detail.

MAGGIE KOERTH: So this is not like big reef corals that live in huge stationary communities. This is a species of coral called a mushroom coral. They’re kind of roundish. They’re squishy. They have that stone-like structure, but it’s on the inside of their bodies. So they look a little bit– like the videos I watched, they look a little bit like a living muffin top.

FLORA LICHTMAN: [LAUGHS] Sounds familiar.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yeah. I know. [LAUGHS] But the scientists have known for a very long time these things can move insomuch as that they’re not in the same place where you left them from day to day. And in the ’80s, Japanese scientists caught it on camera for the first time. But now researchers are using better equipment to really measure and sort of see and understand how that movement happens. And it’s weird little hops. They hop.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s what I was going to ask. What does it look like?

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yeah, they hop. They kind of like gear their bodies up and just throw themselves forward just a tiny bit. And then they just do that again over and over and over. And in about six hours, a mushroom coral can cross a piece of paper the short way.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Oh, I love it. I love it so much. The mushroom coral and the hair is what it’s serving for me.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Yes, we should all embrace the philosophy of the mushroom coral and just take our time.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Can they walk away from their boiling ocean habitat?

MAGGIE KOERTH: [LAUGHS] I mean slowly.

[LAUGHTER]

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thank you so much, Maggie.

MAGGIE KOERTH: Thank you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead of CarbonPlan, based in Minneapolis.

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