Let the games begin

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. So, we can now listen to your podcast. are marathons bad for you? Spoiler, no. Yes, pounding pavements can be tedious and wear and tear on your joints, but it's hard to argue with the study from 2020 that followed 138 first-time London marathon runners, which found that training reduced blood pressure and aortic stiffness enough to take four years off the age of your arteries. The biggest effect was in older runners, So maybe I should wait to start until next decade, you know, for maximum benefit. I'm Marnie Chesterton from the BBC World Service. This is Unexpected Elements. Now this show is something of a group sport. So joining me, limbering up their mental faculties from around the world, are some top-notch science journalists. In Mumbai, India, we have Chavi Sachdev. Welcome, welcome. Hello. And in Helsinki, Finland, welcome Tristan Ahton. Hello and hello. So this is the show that takes its jump-off point from a headline in the news. and because we're a science show, that headline quickly disappears into curious studies, surprising research, quirky archive and the occasional guest with a PhD up their sleeves. But our theme, which tends to run through the show, all starts with something from the news. And this week, we're strapping on the gloves, hats and sensible jackets for this. We look towards the Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina. We see the strongest athletes in the world. All across Italy, we will be thrilled and emotion. It's never been more important to celebrate that Olympic spirit, the importance of the power of sport. Grab your coats and put on those gloves, because things are going to get really cool. I see what they did there. The really cool Winter Olympics held this year in Milan and Cortina in Italy. And that's going to run from the 6th of February until the 22nd of February. Tristan, you are already in a fairly cold and wintry place. Will you be following Finland at the Games? I'm going to be honest. I forgot the Olympics were even happening. Shame on you. But will I follow Finland? Sure, why not? I guess I generally root for everyone when I watch the Games. Oh, Xavi, more luck with you. I mean, my gut feeling is that India is not a natural competitor in ice games in the same way that Tristan's adopted nation is. Am I ignorantly stereotyping here based on your country's mean average temperature? Slightly. This is going to be our 12th Winter Olympics. We have two competitors this year, one in alpine skiing and one in cross-country skiing. OK, so two competitors. It's not a huge presence. No, but the Winter Olympics always make me think of Shiva Keshavan, who was the pioneer of luge for India. Ah, yes. Luge being a sport where someone sort of lies down on a glorified tea tray on their back and goes down an ice track at incredibly high speeds. That is precisely what they do. Yeah. No. Either of you tempted? Nope. Nope. I've seen the luge track from the outside. I think that was plenty. Tristan? I mean, I don't need to go like super fast, like intro to luge. I would do that one. Like Bunny Hill luge. Like I'm not trying to be that guy. I would give it a try. I'm a fan of sledding. So yeah, why not? Well, our pioneer, Shiva, his origin story is just amazing to me because he was scouted by the International Luge Federation after the film Cool Runnings. You remember that one? About the Jamaican bobsleigh team. Yes, yes. And the International Luge Federation decided that they wanted diversity. So they went looking and they did trial runs in schools. He was 14 years old and they liked him because he was fast already. And he was also slightly heavy, which is something you need. He said in interviews, is that you have to be fast like a sprinter, but strong and heavy like a weightlifter. So he went to the 1998 Winter Olympics in Baganow at the age of 16. Wow. And did he win? So he did not. He did win the 2011 Asian Luge Cup. Ah, I didn't know that that was a Luge Cup, but well done. Well done him. So any interesting science, Luge science to share? Oh, luge has a lot of science going on behind it. There's physics and there's sports psychology and all kinds of cool things. Let me tell you a little bit about the track in case all of you are not massive luge nerds already. The track itself is about a mile long and it drops about 120 meters over about 16 curves. And you get down this mile in less than a minute, about 50 seconds. and you have to go down feet first on this flat sled and you gain speed by being absolutely aerodynamic. So you have to stay really, really, really straight, which means you can't even like crane your neck because any movement will hurt your chances or possibly your own neck. And you pick up speeds of something like 134.3 kilometers per hour, which was his record-breaking speed. and everything they do, including what they use, what they wear, the angle of their hips, their ankles, their knees, their toes, the visor is all designed to minimize aerodynamic drag. So he's said that you need to be, you have the mind of a Zen guru and the heart of a speed maniac because of the high speed, the drag and the G force, which is seven to 10 times your body weight. when you enter a curve at 80 miles per hour or 129 kilometers per hour, the acceleration is five times that of normal gravitational acceleration. I don't like it. I mean, it seems like it's like a lot to think about there, you know, like it's not just like getting on a piece of cardboard and going down a snowy hill kind of a thing. It's just, it's a little too much going on there, I feel like. And also not, right? You're in this dark tube for 50 seconds and every luge track is different. But your sled, hopefully, is going to be the consistent thing. And so he's said, and other losers have said that, before the race, they mentally, because you can't just go like run the track and be a pilot anywhere, anytime you want to. There are only 12 tracks in the world, by the way. So you have to do a lot of it in your head. You have to practice it in your mind. That's fascinating. I mean, sports psychology, big thing. But I love the idea that there's a sport that you have to practice in your mind. And suddenly it's one I can get behind. And the other cool aerodynamic physics fact has to do with their luge sleds. So the sleds are basically like this flat tea tray on blades called runners. And for Shiva's last luge sled, he filed and sanded it himself and was made in the company of a former Olympian. And they used blades made from old train tracks because trains, when they run, they compress the steel and they make it stronger and smoother. So it's less likely to be damaged. The smoother the steel, the faster the sled. Nice. That is a good fact. Thank you, Chavi, for the luge news that you can use. Can I just ask what Shiva's up to now? Yeah, so he's no longer lugeing. He's no longer an active luge pilot, but he is the founder and president of the Olympians Association of India and he supports the development of Olympic athletes here. Great. Thank you. Well, sticking with icy atmospheres, over at Unexpected Elements HQ, there's a situation brewing that's causing producers Imi and Lucy to lose their cool in this week's Fact File. Hey Emi, I'm doing the tea round. Any chance you can help? No worries Lucy, what's the order? Two English breakfast teas, a green tea and an iced water for producer Margaret. Ah, that might be a problem. Well we've got enough hands between us, I'm sure it'll be fine. Plus my waitressing days were not lost on me. I don't doubt your tray carrying abilities. It's the iced water that might be a problem. What? Why? Is the freezer broken? The freeze is fine. It's the water itself that might be an issue. Did you see the email that went round? The one about the new taps? Oh, the one about trialling the new water. It did sound a bit fancy. It is. They're trialling pure water. So? Well, it won't freeze. What do you mean the pure water won't freeze? It doesn't freeze until it's cooled to nearly minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 40 Celsius. I thought the melting point of water was zero degrees Celsius, 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, but that's only when impurities like bubbles or minerals are in the water. The impurities provide nucleation sites which are critical for starting a phase transition like freezing. This new water is completely pure. No impurities, much lower freezing temperature. But Margaret specifically said iced water. Oh, we could just give her some sparkling water. Tell her it's the new iced water. Fine, sparkling water it is, but you can deal with Margaret's meltdown. Thank you, Immy and Lucy. Anything to keep the team happy, eh? Tristan we are talking Winter Olympics so science of ice and snow and water and where are you taking us next? Well how about a scandal? Oh yes I'm here for the scandal. All right well there's a controversy that's rocked and I mean rocked the ski jumping world and it's made a big change to this year's Olympics. Okay, detail. All right. So in 2025, Norwegian ski jumping officials were caught tampering with athlete suits. The head coach and team suit technician had inserted a reinforced thread or extra seam into the crotch area of the jumper suits to expand it and sort of create like extra like stiffness in the suit. And this happened after the suits had already passed official inspection and a whistleblower actually secretly filmed them in the act. So secretly sewing up the suits. How is that science? So generally, when a ski jumper jumps, they're thinking of two things, lift and drag. So lift keeps them in the air and is created by airflow over the body and skis, which is why you see them make a V shape when they jump. So when they assume that form, they float like a glider. And then there's drag, which is air resistance that slows them down as they fly. So performance really depends on sort of maximizing lift while minimizing harmful drag. International rules allow suits to be like slightly larger than the athlete's body, about four centimeters. This permits movement and flexibility. But this extra space creates air pockets and can significantly alter airflow So those small changes can really mean like big gains in distance So a 2025 study in Frontiers of Sport and Active Living found that one to two centimeters of suit difference can carry athletes five to six meters further. What? That's insane. Yeah, exactly. And adding inflexible stitching to increase a suit size can have those really major impacts in a sport where the difference between gold and silver can really come down to just centimeters. Are the Norwegians banned? Right. Or is this... Well, there were some bans for the team, but basically there's stricter equipment controls now. So suits are measured by officials multiple times. There's a doctor involved in verification. There's full 3D scanning of the suits. And then as far as I understand, there are tamper-proof microchips that are embedded into the fabric. I have no idea how those would work, but they sound cool, a little scary also. And then I thought it was kind of one of the funniest things I saw. I guess organizers had sort of brought in an equipment expert, someone who reportedly is known for either previously pushing or even maybe bending the rules as far as they could go in terms of technical equipment so they can help with identifying people who might be cheating. So it's like a catch me if you can kind of a situation. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's employ the not quite fraudster to know where the limits are. Tristan, thank you so much for sharing the scandal of Crotchgate. Listeners, if you have any winter sports stories to share, why not send them in? The email address is unexpected at bbc.co.uk or you can WhatsApp us. The number is plus 44 330 678 3080 or you can send us a postcard. The address is Unexpected Elements BBC World Service Cardiff CF 10 4GA. Still to come, icy conditions, but which of the multiple types do you mean? We're joined by the Iceman of chemistry after this. Hello, Lucy here, and it's time for this week's Unexpected Elements quiz. This week, we're talking the Winter Olympics, and I want to talk about one of the event's most important ingredients. Snow. As we all know, every snowflake is unique in its own magical way. Much like episodes of Unexpected Elements, you might say. but one snowflake in particular takes the uniqueness crown in 1887 in montana in the usa a snowflake fell from the clouds and into the record books as the largest ever recorded according to the guinness book of world records but just how many centimeters wide was it a 12 b 27 or c 38 that's how many centimeters wide was the largest snowflake ever recorded a 12 b 27 or c 38. Have a think and I'll start defrosting the answer. You're listening to Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service, this week taking our inspiration from the opening of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, which has inspired a story about an unlikely lose champion and we've managed an adult take about the aerodynamic advantages behind the controversial Crotchgate scandal. All thanks to a bunch of icy sports events. And talking of ice, here to help us is Christoph Saltzman, Professor of Physical and Materials Chemistry at University College London, or known by some as Iceman, to give you an idea of what he's going to help us with. Welcome, Christoph. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. Thank you. So I think everyone thinks they know what ice is, right? It's frozen water. You're going to tell us it's a bit more complicated than that. Yeah, I mean, it turns out ice, it's a very complex material. It can form very different crystal structures. So at the moment, we know of 21 different forms that ice can manifest itself in terms of different phases, in terms of different crystalline phases. but there are three amorphous types of ice. And even if we just focus on what we all know, that is the ordinary form of ice, so this is what we call ice one, then there is still so much complexity to it. OK, so when you say the ordinary form of ice is ice one, is that going to be the one that everyone sees, for example, in the ice cube trays in their freezers, on frozen lakes? Is that all ice one? Exactly. So if you take liquid water, you put it in your freezer, you get ice one. And all around us, it's pretty much all ice one. So how do you make ices two to 21? What conditions do they need to exist? So typically you need to increase the pressure and you need to change the temperature to form all these different types of ice. So, for example, if you took liquid water at room temperature and you just started to compress more and more, you squeeze the water one more, at some point you would be crystallizing what is called ice six. Chubby. So is this ice any better, like in a drink? Well, seriously though, what can we do with these phases of ice that we can't do with phase one? There would be practical differences. So for example, the ice one that we all know floats on your drink. If you made a drink under pressure, where you make ice six, for example, the ice six cubes would sink in your drink. But apart from that, the i6, it would still look white. So optically, you might not even be able to tell the difference. And it would melt the same way? I mean, it would go straight to the liquid as well, of course. If you were on some sort of crazy planet where it would snow i6, one other difference would be that the snowflakes, they wouldn't have the sort of six-fold symmetry that we all love on Earth. So there the snowflakes would look very different if they were ice six, for example. Tristan? Just thinking of the structure of ice, I mean, you've described, for instance, like a snowflake. I think everybody's very familiar with what a snowflake looks like. But what you're saying is that at these different forms of ice, the patterns start to look different. Yes. Every face of ice contains only water molecules, but the water molecules, they form different structures. So when the water molecules form hydrogen bonds between themselves, So this is something worth mentioning as well as a special type of bonding that holds water molecules together, and that's called hydrogen bonding. Water is obviously H2O. What happens in ice, they get hydrogen bonding, so you get bonds like oxygen, hydrogen, and then to another oxygen of another water molecule. And I sometimes compare this a little bit to playing sort of this molecular twister. So in a sense, a water molecule has got two arms, but it actually also has two legs. So in addition to the two hydrogens, there are also two electron lone pairs, and they can accept the hydrogen atoms from other water molecules. And this is how you would build up a structure of ice. Three-dimensional twister does sound like it's got the capability to make multiple different forms. Which forms are you personally responsible for discovering, Christoph? So some time ago, I've personally discovered ice 13, 14 and 15. Ah, congratulations. Thank you, yes. Tell me about that day in the lab. I was quite excited. I did some extra diffraction, some spectroscopy, and I realised, well, you know, I've made a new phase of ice. But then I thought, well, OK, let's redo the experiment. So I redid the experiment, but I did everything perfect. I took the purest water I could find, you know, and to my greatest point, but I couldn't make it anymore. A few months later, I figured out what happened on that particular day when I made the ice 13. and on that particular day the way the the purified water is produced within the chemistry department they added an impurity on that day by mistake and that ended up in my water and this enabled me to make the ice 13. I love it when then there are those sort of on some level an accident in the lab something got in that wasn't supposed to be there and then there's your breakthrough. I never figured out who sort of made the mistake but obviously I need to thank this person but We've also found in our lab in London here, we found a new amorphous form of ice a couple of years ago, and that's the medium density amorphous ice. So the amorphous ice is the other ones where you don't have the crystallinity, you don't have this long range order, which you do get in the crystalline phases of ice. And how is that different? What property is different in amorphous ice? The amorphous ice is X long range order. So if you could sit within an ice crystal, sit on an oxygen atom, and you look out into the distance, you would see other water molecules sort of popping up periodically at always the same distances, out basically to the horizon. And that's the property of crystallinity. In a morphous ice, that's not the case. If you were to look out into the distance sitting inside a morphous ice, there would just be chaos and disorder. OK, much more of a jumble of that 3D twister. It's a completely chaotic game of twister there. Love it. And do these discoveries change our understanding of water in any way? Well, it's still early days for this medium density amorphousis that we have found. But there's a really curious fact about medium density amorphousis. Its density is pretty much the same as that of liquid water. So the big question is now, have we made what we call a glass of water form that represents liquid water, but at very low temperatures? And if we can prove that, then we will have learned a lot about liquid water itself, which is actually a very strange liquid that is still not well understood at all. I love that there are still mysteries to something as basic as water. Yeah, it's a very unusual material. The fact that the solid basically floats on the liquid is very unusual. So the fact that icebergs actually flow on the oceans, you wouldn't get that for a lot of other liquids. It's really a very unusual property that water has. And one of those ones that you're incredibly grateful for because it insulates all the liquid water underneath and it means that in cold temperatures things survive in the sea. Absolutely. So if ice would sink in liquid water, then maybe throughout the history of Earth, the oceans would have just frozen up from the bottom and then maybe life would have never formed. And then going back to Chavi's question to you, I've spoken to glaciologists in Greenland and it turns out that they're very particular about the type of ice that they want to put in their drink at the end of the working day. And I'm just wondering, are you picky about your ice? The one I put in my drinks? Yeah. I have to make a confession. I don't like ice cubes so much in my drink. Which is very unusual for an ice scientist. That's hilarious. More of a cold beer guy. Christoph Selsmann, thank you so much for coming on to Unexpected Elements and sharing your expertise with us. Of course, it was a pleasure. Thank you. And as we watch the Winter Olympics, we'll have a newfound respect for the frozen water that's so crucial to so many of the Games. So the start of the Winter Olympics has us wondering at a wintry world of ice and sports science. We've raised our luge game, looked at the physics of ski jumping and discovered a world of different types of ice. Still to come, the Olympic effect on disease transmission. What bugs will be winning a gold medal at infection this Winter Olympics? Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I understand that you want to listen to your podcast, so I'll keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a lot of choices, can ASR help? Now I hear you think, how then? Well, for example, when you're selling the expensive things you love to be a bad person. Want to know more about the insurance where expensive expensive expensive is possible? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This is ASR for you and a more expensive community. ASR does it. So, we can listen to your podcast now. World Service. I'm Marnie Chesterton in Cardiff in the UK and with me are... Tristan Atone in Helsinki Finland And Chavis Achtev in Mumbai India This is the part of the show where one of us brings a story that they feel has gone under the radar of global news And we bring it out here, we dust it off, we discuss it, and we share the shiny newness of an underloved story with the BBC global audience. And, of course, bonus points if the show and tell relates to our theme this week. So, Chavi, you are up. Winter Olympics related, if possible, please. Oh, absolutely. Just a couple of months ago, actually, in September 2025, a photographer spotted parallel rows of uniform hollows stretching hundreds of metres on a vertical mountain wall in the Stelvio National Park, which is located in the Frail Valley by Italy's border with Switzerland, near where the Winter Olympics are taking place. ah so mysterious indentations what are they uh so they are dinosaur footprints did you did you see this no sorry i think i buried the lead there yes they found dinosaur footprints near the olympic site tristan marnie have you been following this i have not i mean like are there always new dinosaur discoveries happening or am I just like getting clued into them more these days like for some reason I feel like there's always ambient dinosaur information floating around your dinosaur da is going off I don't know what is it me or like what's going on well it turns out that this valley which is about three miles wide is one of the richest dinosaur sites in the world So there may be more news coming out of here. But these dinosaur footprints are about 210 million years old, dating to the late Triassic period is what they figured. So, of course, paleontologists were called in after the photographer saw these indentations and they figured out that these belonged to prosauropods who were herbivores that could stand up to 10 meters, which is 33 feet high. And they walked on two legs. I mean, the important question is, did they climb vertical surfaces? Well, it turns out no, because these footprints are the equivalent, the ancient equivalent of paw prints of dogs walking in wet cement today. So these used to be tidal flats, which are coastal wetlands. And these are areas of very fine, loose silt and mud, which gets covered by water at high tide and exposed at low tide. So these dinos were walking through coastal mudflats at the time and they were not mountains. And they also found besides just the bipedal footprints, they clearly stopped to rest, even though they weren't going up a sheer wall, because they also found footprints that they were resting their forelimbs as well. Oh, wow. So, I mean, are there any bones or is it just footprints? just footprints and we're hopeful that the footprints will help figure out how many subgroups there were and you know these pro sauropods evolved into sauropods so perhaps looking in the area looking at more information from these they can extrapolate and help us fill in the gaps that's very cool and i did not know that and i also love that there's a mountain that you know, might have Olympic climbers on it that had some pioneer walkers on it back when it wasn't a mountain. Yeah, the photographer who discovered the site, Elio Della Ferreira, said he hoped the discovery would spark reflection in all of us, highlighting how little we know about the places we live in, our home and our planet. I definitely do spend a lot of time staring at rocks now and wondering if any of the indentations are footprints and I'm not qualified to answer whether they are or aren't like I took a lot of photographs when I was in Thailand at the start of this year of rocks that had things that to me looked like paw prints but then maybe they I don't know maybe it's just indentations in rock because you know it's been there for millions of years so anything could have made it surely did you check it like did you i i know you know people in that in these circles that you can send those photos to like they're busy i pick my times to bother them i kind of i get a bunch of photos together and i'm like hi can you check this is this likely to be what about this thanks very much um yes wow so i did not know that thailand actually did have early cretaceous dinosaurs. But you could be like that meteor dust man and just really start bothering the experts like relentlessly until you become a dino footprint collector. Thank you, Chavi, for giving us the long history of the Winter Olympic location. You're welcome. And the first creature is to be doing athletic activities over there. Indeed. Now, on this show, we don't just bring the science to you. We also let you bring the science to us in the form of your scientific queries that you can't easily answer with an online search. It's time for Ask the Unexpected. This week's question comes from Liz and we thought it was brilliantly on topic, given that we're talking about the Olympics and athletes coming together to compete from all around the world. Take a listen to this. Hey, Unexpected. One question I haven't been able to find an answer to is do laughs have accents? And if they don't, what causes our laughs to sound the way that they do? This question came to me while listening to my young boys laughing in the other room, and each of them is totally identifiable, but with totally different laughs. Looking forward to your answer, your friend who often laughs at your jokes, Liz. Oh, thank you, Liz, and special gold star, because, you know, some of the jokes have been shockers. You just narrowly escaped my Italian dinosaur joke, so. Oh, oh, go on. What do you call an Italian dinosaur? I don't know. What do you call an Italian dinosaur? Pasta sauce is Rex. Oh. I know. That's, I was sparing you guys. I mean, the classic of the genre is what do you call a one-eyed dinosaur? What? Do you think he saw us? So, Tristan, Chavi, do you feel like you laugh in different accents? No, I have never thought about that. I have covered birds' dialects and I've heard crowd science about laughter being inherited or environmental, but never even thought about laughing with an accent. I mean, I think it's the inherited bit for me. Like, I'm pretty sure that I laugh like my dad. So I don't know if that really counts as accent, but definitely I know where it comes from. Oh, so to find an answer to Liz's question, we spoke to Philip Glenn, professor of communication studies at Emerson College in Boston. So can you hear an accent in a laugh? Here's what he had to say. Yes and no. I mean, first of all, when we speak of accent, we're generally thinking of how a non-native speaker speaks some language. And really the question might be, do laughs have languages. That is, do people laugh in English or do people laugh in Japanese or laugh in French? Well, universally, there's this laughter sound of a reiterated ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. So you could listen to people from pretty much anywhere on planet Earth and you could tell that they were laughing. But that ah, ah, ah can be ee, ee, ee, or oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, or mm, mm, mm. And that's where you might start to think that the individual what are called phonemes might vary by different languages. So if there is some variation by languages, and there's probably a little, it's also varying by other factors. So there's varying by the individual, the sex, the age, the size of the person, their personality. I worked years ago with a guy, big guy, who down the hall you could hear go, That was his signature laugh. It's also varying by situation, you know. So laughs in an audience of people watching a comedy show are different from laughs in conversation, which are different from laughs at a funeral when you shouldn't be laughing. Which has made me laugh. I laughed multiple times during Philip giving that explanation. There's just something joyful about someone laughing. It is contagious. So someone's language could have something of an impact on the sound of their laugh. So there's a basic laugh and then there's the variations, which I think depend on lots and lots of factors. But often if it's your language, it'll be the shape that your mouth is used to making when you giggle. So thank you, Philip. And thank you, Liz, for your question. Javi, Tristan, any thoughts? I mean, you know, it's not exactly just the laughter thing, but I do also notice this in like text messages. So like H-A-H-A from English speakers, people I know who speak Spanish or J-A-J-A, which just reads to me like ja, ja, ja. That doesn't, it's not very funny to me. And then there are some people who do like text with like H-E, like he, he, he, which always makes me think there's like a elf on the other side that's like laughing. I don't understand that one either. But that is, I mean, that's obviously sort of like textual based, but it is sort of similar in terms of like how laughter is sort of translated in interesting ways, I guess. people that teach different accents have have said that you know you can make a different accent by sort of not moving your upper lip or or the Dutch for instance when I used to live there they have a vowel sound that is a and you make your mouth very wide and British people tend not to pull their face into that sort of position so I can see how that would make a difference to the way you laugh. Yeah, the researchers I was listening to said also just the your size and the capacity of your lungs and your diaphragm, which is both inherited, as well as observed. So your laugh could really be a nice combination. You might have inherited your physical structure from your father, Tristan, for instance, and that just predisposes you to laugh like him. And then you've heard him laughing. And now that's sort of transposed on you. So, other listeners, if you have a burning science question that you'd like us to answer, you can email us on unexpected at bbc.co.uk or send us a voice note or message. The WhatsApp number is plus 44 330 678 3080. Still to come, social loners and this season's fashionable super spreader. After this. hello lucy here back with your unexpected elements quiz answer earlier i asked you how many centimeters wide was the biggest snowflake ever recorded a 12 b 27 or c 38 the answer is c 38 centimeters in 1887 matt coleman said he witnessed the colossal snowflake at his ranch during a fierce winter storm. It was 38 centimetres wide and also 20 centimetres thick. You wouldn't want to be standing in the wrong place when that fell. I should note that there is a debate over the use of the word snowflake. Matt's snowflake was probably not the classic single symmetrical crystal, but more of a white puffball made of multiple crystals stuck together. According to the record books though, it still counts. Well done if you got that right, and next time it snows, maybe keep an eye on the sky and be ready to take some evasive manoeuvres we're always asking our listeners to get in touch with their observations and reactions on unexpected elements and as usual we've been trawling the inbox to see what has been piquing your interest one recent question came from jessica who wondered why a vehicle siren changes pitch as it passes by and her question prompted the following joke from reuben in the north of England Hello world Have you heard the old joke about the cat on the motorway Meow. Chavi, Tristan, I know you're both cat parents. I mean, it's art. What can I say? thank you Ruben so I'm not sure how fast a cat would be moving to cause the Doppler effect in in real life so with sirens the is caused by something called the Doppler effect which is where the sound waves moving towards us are compressed and because the source of the sound waves is moving towards you and that results in a higher frequency or pitch and then as the source of the sound moves away that the waves stretch and that makes the pitch lower. Now last week on the programme we discussed something we can all feel from time to time, loneliness, and it prompted Laurie from Orange County in the US to share her experience of being what she calls a social loner. Chavi, do you want to read this out? Sure. Laurie writes, now that I'm semi-retired from a public facing job, it feels like such a gift to spend days at a time pursuing my own interests and talking to no one but my cat. While I generally don't feel lonely in my solitude, the feeling does arise on occasion and it doesn't bother me. I wonder if a person who can't tolerate being lonely might be more likely to suffer a negative health outcome from it than someone who thrives in solitude. Has anybody done a study on that? Thanks, Laurie, for that. Chavi, Tristan, And are you social loners? No. I am not a loner. I am just social. That sounds about right. I'm up and down on this. I like being alone. But then sometimes I just need to be like really social before disappearing again. So there's a thrill and solitude. But it just, you know, depends on the week. Yeah. And I feel like Finnish people have an extra appreciation for the duality of social lonership, if that's a thing. Finland is regularly sort of marked as one of the happiest places in the world. And one of the things that I've been told by folks here is that part of the reason that it is such a happy country is because you have the right to be sort of like alone and even miserable. And that there is a happiness in being able to be exactly who you want to be, which I really appreciate. Laurie was asking if there has been any research on this. And there was a study from Reading University in the UK in 2023 where researchers tracked 178 adults for three weeks and they got them to keep diaries when they were alone and when they were social. And they sort of cross referenced against measures of whether they were stressed or lonely. Annoyingly, the conclusion is there is no optimal balance between solitude and social time. There's no such thing as the correct number of hours to spend in solitude. It really is a reactive thing, how you're feeling. Yeah, but I appreciate that. Yeah. It's nice. You know, it's just vibes-based sort of social policy. Science says it's just vibes, baby. And maybe it depends on your cat. Yeah, could be. Definitely. Oh, and on cue. There you go. Well done, cat. so thank you listeners so much for all of your messages we do read them all if you would like to get in touch anything really the email is unexpected at bbc.co.uk the number is plus 44 330 678 3080 and the postcard address is unexpected elements bbc world service cardiff cf10 4ga in the uk so each week i have the chance to dig into the bbc archives and connect the dots between our theme of the week and anything else that grabs my fancy and of course when i think of the olympics i instantly think disease transmission are you with me guys love it i'm with you let's do this Take me there, Marnie. I have no idea how you're connecting these. OK, so the Olympics. I mean, it kind of makes sense because it's a place where lots of people come to from all over the world. But they've had their shots and they've had their pills and they're like at peak condition. Well, let's have a look into the archives. Do you remember the classic that was the last Winter Olympics in Beijing? Let's take a listen to this. The International Olympic Committee has the honour to announce the host city of the Olympic Winter Games 2022. Beijing! Well, it's now less than a month before the curtain goes up on the 24th Winter Olympics in China. When they bid for and won these Games, Beijing couldn't have had any idea that it, like last year's summer hosts Tokyo, would have to deliver the event under the cloud of a global pandemic. But the organisers insist it's all in hand. China has secured a strategic victory against COVID-19 and we have formulated an efficient and highly effective defence system. We are confident that we can overcome the challenges brought by Omicron and bring a streamlined, safe and wonderful Winter Olympics to the world. Yes, the Beijing Winter Olympics was held against the backdrop of the global COVID pandemic. And they navigated it by imposing some pretty stringent isolation measures to keep the virus from spreading. Onwards to the following Olympics in Paris 2024. And there were panics that persisted, not about COVID particularly. Points to either of you, if you can remember any of the panic points. Oh, I got this one. Go on. Bedbugs. Wasn't it bedbugs? Let's take a listen. But next year's games in Paris are dealing with something rather more unusual, a fear of bedbugs. There have been increasing reports of the blood-sucking insects on trains, in cinemas and infesting people's homes. It wasn't just bedbugs, though. There were a lot of people that were genuinely quite concerned that with a warmer summer, that there was going to be a risk of a lot of mosquito-borne diseases and that Paris was going to be a kind of melting pot for spreading those around. So I got thinking, well, what's it going to be this time? I know, I'm fun at parties. so I figured it's winter so your chances of dengue or another mosquito-borne disease is lower but winter is the time for colds and flus so I was listening to an excellent episode of Curious Cases on the BBC World Service and I found this really nice summary from professors of virology Wendy Barkley and Jonathan Ball on why certain viruses spread more in winter. There is no doubt that for things like flu and rhinovirus colds we detect more of them in people in the winter. So outside of the body when viruses are moving from one person to the next they're incredibly fragile. They fall apart because they're so simple they're just like a little bag of genetic material and they just collapse. In the sunshine when there's a lot of ultraviolet radiation the virus's genetic material can get chopped up into pieces and so one reason why there might be more viruses in the winter is that there's less sunshine. When winter comes we have reduced daylight hours so the nights draw in and we we have less daylight then that seems to impact on your ability to produce things like vitamin D and it has a knock-on effect in terms of your immune response so that's potentially part of the answer. But there's also other things that we do differently in the winter so we do tend to all come inside and we're perhaps packed more closely to each other indoors and so the chances of a virus coming out from my nose and hopping into yours is greater if we're standing right next to each other than if we're all running around in the fields or lying on the beach. So there we go it's darker so we don't get the vitamin benefits of daylight we also don't get the UV breaking down fragile viruses and we're all hanging around in the same spaces trying to keep warm. So I had a look at what the Italians had organised. And aside from a network of hospitals for any sprains and broken bones for the competitors, they've also got a bunch of disease surveillance hubs. And they're looking out for anything that can be passed on by large crowds of spectators coughing and sneezing at each other. And apparently the Games aim to leave a lasting impact on public health and prevention, according to the organisers. And my favourite Winter Olympic nugget is that they've also made mental health hubs called Mind Zones at all six of the Olympic villages. So, you know, it's high stakes, these competitions. So it's really nice that they've thought about covering mental and physical wellbeing. So I don't know if you guys watched any of these like Olympics documentaries, but one of the things that always really struck me was to see how these athletes actually talked about sort of the psychological toll that they're having to hire sports psychiatrists or needing to like bring people in to help them sort of like motivate and think about their particular events. one of the speed skaters I was watching had to put post-it notes all over their house saying that they loved this particular thousand meter you know race or something so it was really quite interesting to sort of think about like how how intense that sort of like mental preparation is you have to be ready to like win and I suppose on some level you need to be ready to lose too now listen this is us out of time which means that Xavi, Tristan and I can concentrate on the important task of wrapping up in blankets, snuggling in front of the television and working out our hectic schedule of winter sports watching. So team, any particular favorites that you will be tuning in for? Figure skating! Figure skating! It's the best! I really like watching. It doesn't matter the sport. I mean, basically all of them are things that I can't do. So I'm like really impressed. Except maybe the curling. I've never tried curling, but I don't know. So, what have we learnt as we've slalomed through a show's worth of winter? Olympics-adjacent science. Well, heads I win, tails you luge. There we go. We've had tales of fearless friction on a tea tray. We've had Iceman Christopher Saltzman opening our eyes to a wide icy world that most of us, I'd say, knew nothing about. And we've heard about some climbers who left their mark 210 million years before this season's athletes. It just remains for me to thank our gold medal winning panel, if I were in charge, medals both. In Helsinki, Finland, Tristan Ahton, thank you very much. Au revoir. And in Mumbai, India, Javi Sachdev, thank you so much. Dhaniabadji to Zara and see you guys. I'm Marni Chasterton. The producer was Margaret Cesar Hawkins with Immy Harper, Lucy Davis and Tim Dodd. Do join us again next week for more Unexpected Elements. life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. This is murder. Put your hammer on, man. Good humor, stupid misdades, lovely unfulfilled characters and precisely the right dose of sarcasm. Bingo. BBCNL, the place for the best British misdades series. Just on your Canadian TV.