SoT 338: Hidden Bottoms

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:26 Tiny, often-overlooked "cryptobenthic" fish are much more plentiful than we realised, and could therefore explain how reefs can thrive despite a lack of nutrients. 00:08:30 Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory data have been able to measure how fast five supermassive black holes are spinning. One was spinning faster than 70% of the speed of light! 00:17:26 A new analysis of skull fragments found in Greece is leading archaeologists to reassess how and when the earliest humans moved out of Africa, suggesting it could have been as far back as 210,000 years ago. 00:25:12 The media loves to proclaim the dangers of our obsession with smartphones, but there may actually be some evidence to support curbing our digital immersion. This episode contains traces of Rice University anthropologist Cymene Howe talking about a plaque commemorating Okjokull, the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change.