Beethoven’s hair reveals lead poisoning

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Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” was one of the first songs I learned to play on the violin.

I will never forget the exhilaration I felt playing the iconic fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony alongside the other members of the orchestra, each note joining in a celebration of togetherness.

But every exhilarating musical moment has its downside, and Beethoven also put his feelings of despair into his final symphony.

Beethoven began suffering hearing loss in his 20s and became deaf in his 30s, but that didn’t stop him from composing some of his greatest and most enduring pieces.

The classical composer wanted his health problems to be understood and conveyed to the public. While his doctor’s notes have disappeared over time, scientists sequenced Beethoven’s genome from strands of his hair last year.

Today, researchers are taking a step closer to understanding the mysterious illnesses of this troubled genius.

A new analysis of Beethoven’s hair has shown that the composer suffered from lead poisoning towards the end of his life. He died at age 56 in 1827.

Tests revealed incredibly high levels of lead, as well as arsenic and mercury, in two of his locks, likely due to drinking lead-sweetened wine.

Researchers don’t think lead poisoning would have been enough to kill him, but it could have contributed to the composer’s well-known gastrointestinal problems and deafness.

Deciphering the factors that led to Beethoven’s death from kidney and liver diseases could also shed light on how the composer transformed his pain into music.

“People say, ‘Music is music, why do we need to know all this?’ “But in Beethoven’s life there is a connection between his suffering and music,” said Beethoven scholar William Meredith.

Dazzling auroras could appear in the skies of places as far south as Alabama this weekend due to a rare spike in solar activity.

Scientists at the Space Weather Prediction Center observed multiple flares and coronal mass ejections. Large clouds of ionized gas, called plasma, and dynamic magnetic fields erupt from a sunspot cluster that measures 16 times the diameter of Earth.

The predicted solar storm could disrupt Earth’s power grid and communications, but experts agree there’s no need for people to take extraordinary measures to prepare for space weather.

However, you may want to take photos of the sky with your phone, as your camera can capture the dancing lights of the Northern Lights.

Millions of years ago, lava flows on Earth created a network of vast underground tunnels called lava tubes, giving our Neolithic ancestors an ideal place to beat the heat.

As early as the Stone Age, as early as 7,000 years ago, tunnels sheltered shepherds and their livestock from the relentless heat and wind of the Arabian Peninsula.

Researchers in Saudi Arabia have discovered carvings depicting stick-shaped humans alongside animals such as dogs and sheep on the walls of Umm Jirsan. The artifacts have helped archaeologists piece together the history of the people who sought refuge in the lava tubes as well as how they adapted to such arid environments.

Strange creatures began appearing on Earth more than 500 million years ago – and scientists now think it’s because Earth’s protective magnetic field nearly collapsed.

The first life forms were single-celled microscopic organisms. But 591 million years ago, Earth’s magnetic field weakened significantly, potentially allowing an increase in oxygen in the atmosphere.

After this event, animals with surprisingly strange fan, donut, and tube shapes appeared in the fossil record, representing the earliest complex animals on the planet.

A rare event is transforming the Great Barrier Reef, along with reef systems around the world, into silent marine graveyards.

This is the fourth mass coral bleaching, caused by rising ocean temperatures amid a climate crisis, since the late 1990s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Marine heat waves stress corals, causing them to expel algae and lose their colors, and mortality is occurring at unprecedented levels, experts say.

“What’s happening in our oceans right now is like a wildfire underwater,” said Kate Quigley, a senior research scientist at the Minderoo Foundation in Australia. “We’re going to have such significant warming that we’re going to reach a tipping point, and we won’t be able to come back from that.”

Take your time to explore these new discoveries:

— When attacked by predators, a dice snake fakes its own death as a protective measure — and it uses gory special effects to put on a convincing theatrical display.

— The Dark Energy Camera has captured a spectacular image of the cosmic element “Hand of God” appearing to reach a defenseless galaxy – but it is actually a rarely observed celestial phenomenon.

— The historic first crewed flight test of Boeing’s Starling spacecraft was postponed until May 17 at the earliest after a faulty valve aborted a launch attempt Monday.

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