From the Moon to Mars… what better guide than the affable astronaut Tim? ROLAND WHITE reviews last night’s TV
Secrets of our universe
The truth about the “skinny” vaccine
Astronaut Tim Peake in front of Soyuz TMA-19M at the Science Museum. What better guide to present the Secrets of our universe, says ROLAND WHITE
Astronaut Tim Peake looked down at Earth from the International Space Station, so he may have been a little disappointed when Secrets Of Our Universe (Ch5) sent him exploring the mysteries of Saturn from a beach in Cumbria.
Arnside was chosen because it has particularly rapid tides, caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon. Once he had covered gravity, Major Tim watched Oxford professor Carly Howett draw circles in the sand around a large rock to explain the origin of Saturn’s rings.
His lesson was dazzlingly simple – like watching Blue Peter presented by teacher Brian Cox. Saturn has 145 moons, but it had one more until it broke into pieces. The rings were formed by the orbits of other moons, opening a path through the debris.
For reasons that weren’t entirely clear to me, Major Tim circled the planets, attacking Venus from a hot air balloon above York. We learned that when the Sun was colder, there was water on Venus. As the sun warmed, the water disappeared. It was a warning, according to Major Tim, about the dangers of fossil fuels.
This seems to me to be quite the opposite: it shows that the Sun determines the temperature change. Unless he’s implying that Venus once had a thriving automobile industry?
He doesn’t have the academic qualifications of Brian Cox, but you can see how the Major managed to spend six months in a cramped space station without bothering anyone. He is affable and cheerful, and has a good line in colorful but useful dialogue.
For example, why is Mars red? It’s a combination of the planet’s iron content and the water that was once there. “Basically,” said Major Tim, “it’s become rusty.”
Anna Richardson presented The Truth About the ‘Skinny’ Vaccine, exposing the biological reason why some people eat more than others.
Presenter Anna Richardson (pictured) met a nurse called Steph who had lost 12 pounds in three months.
There was good news and bad news for overweight people in The Truth About the ‘Skinny’ Vaccine (Ch4). Two-thirds of us are too fat, but the good news is that it’s not necessarily our fault. “There is a huge biological factor that explains why some people eat more than others,” said geneticist Giles Yeo.
The second good news is that so-called “skinny jabs” really seem to work. Presenter Anna Richardson met a nurse called Steph who had lost 12 pounds in three months (although they could have undone some of that good work by meeting over two large, high-calorie coffees).
The bad news is… actually, there was quite a bit of bad news. Side effects include nausea, severe headache and constipation. Steph enjoyed a successful trip to the toilet – to put it politely – just once a week.
And these are the real drugs. Some people get vaccinated through social media influencers. Why would you do that? Especially since research carried out as part of the program revealed that certain black market slimming products contained “unknown” ingredients.
The drugs were initially designed to control diabetes, until someone noticed that patients were losing weight. Today there is such a demand for weight loss cures that there is a shortage of medications for diabetics. “I have never experienced such hysteria about a drug in 27 years,” said one pharmacist.
The government wants more lean vaccines to be available on the NHS, which could be good news. But if you’re struggling to see a GP now, imagine the queues when two thirds of the population decide they’d like to lose some weight in a simple way.