Marnie Chesterton

Joten jos löytyy stressattava uusi isä, joka näyttää olevan jättämättömän aromaa. Ehkä anna häneltä hieman paikkaa, kuitenkin.

Now it's time in the show where we use everything in our powers to try and answer those tricksy science questions that AI tools just won't answer. Think of us as scientific matchmakers pairing your musing to an expert who's really put in the years to finding the answer to your question. It's time for Ask the Unexpected.

And our question this week comes from a regular listener of the show, Liz from London. Liz's dying houseplants got her thinking about how plants in the wild die. Do they mostly die of old age or does something else come for them?

To find out, we tapped into our scientific speed dial and gave Dr. Naomi Fraga, director of conservation programs at the California Botanic Garden, a call. Before we get to death, I think it's important to think about actually how plants can be very long-lived. So some plants live a very, very long time, like many thousands of years.

I've got to say, either of you green-fingered or are you adept at killing houseplants and can tell us how to do it? I once killed a cactus, so we all know how hardy those plants are. Wow, that is advanced level plant killing. I know because Michael has a farm that Michael knows how to look after plants. Give Michael all your points, all the gold stars. All the gold stars to Michael. It happens all the time, Marni. I wouldn't say that as a farmer that you're always...

Well, another thing to bear in mind is that I'm constantly talking about these amazingly long-lived plants. So I'm thinking of redwoods that can live for thousands of years. And we talk about them on science shows because they are outliers and it's so majestic that something can live to 6,000 years. A cherry tree...

will usually live to about 40 years. There are some things that are just short-lived. Plants sometimes live for a year, and that's their actual lifespan. So I will give our listener Liz one final word of comfort, which is that in the Royal Botanic Gardens queue, home of some of the most amazing plant scientists in the world, and these people can...

Thank you, Liz, so much for the question. And thank you, Dr. Naomi Fraga, for the answer.

Listeners, have you got a question? Is there anything that we can help you out with? The email address is unexpected at bbc.co.uk or you can send us a WhatsApp voice note or a message. Just text it or speak it to plus44 330 678 3080.

Now we started this science show with the news that the king of mangoes, the Alfonso, has been devastated in India by a weather phenomenon called El Niño. And we haven't really had a chance to dig into that, which I can do now with the help of the BBC's audio archives. So according to the UN this week, the poor mango season was just the beginning. A new phase of the El Niño weather pattern could begin in a matter of weeks.

But how does an El Niño start? From the BBC World Service's Inside Science last week, here's Amanda Maycock, a climatologist from Leeds University with the beginnings. Typically in the Pacific, the winds blow from the east towards the west.

Ja yleensä, jos olet yli kaksi tuntia yli maan lämpöä, voit odottaa El Niñoa. Ja yli kaksi tuntia yli on yliopiston Super El Niño. Joten miten tämä tapahtuu, on se, että tämä ilmastopuoli on muuttanut koko tuon lisää lämpöä ja vapausta maan läheisestä Pacific Basinin puolelta. Ja tämä on globaalisia tarkoituksia.

Pohjois-Afrikassa on rauhoja, Suomessa ja Australiassa on myös rauhoja. Michael, Sandy, mitä El Niño-vuosi tarkoittaa sinun mielestäsi maailmalle? El Niño-vuosi on toivottavasti vaikuttanut meille melko huonosti kesällä.

He keep talking about it on the news and what that means is that we can expect it to be a lot hotter and drier. I think many health experts in the region are worried because many countries are already suffering from a fuel crisis due to the Iran war. So it's going to be even more challenging to keep people cool and at healthy temperatures.

But I do remember 1997 and 1998 was especially bad. We had really bad haze. And I remember that because they actually shut school for a couple of days, which made me very happy. So the 1997-98 year sticks in a lot of people's minds as the first big super El Nino. I think that's when it registered first on a lot of people's radars. But I was looking into the figures. El Nino in 2015-16 was

Yes, so collapse of the Egyptian empire and the England cricket team. George Adamson mentioned Peruvian civilisations, which is interesting because in Peru Edgar Bracamonte is director of the Royal Tomb of Sipan Museum. And for the BBC's climate show, The Climate Question, here he is explaining how an early civilisation, the Moche, dealt with El Niño.

Oh wow, so they were actually doing town planning 1,500 years ago? Yes, I think that that's exactly it. These Moche had their capital, I mean a good 50 miles from the coast, I think. And there is evidence that they moved their capital there in response to a massive flood. And Marni, what happened to the Moche civilisation?

So it ended, and wouldn't you know, Michael, a super El Niño event is implicated. So there is this really fascinating suggestion from ice core research that the warmer climate meant that the usual snowfall fell as rain instead of snow, and where they'd moved their capital to...

They were in this place that needed melting snowfall off the mountain to supply their water. And instead of that, they got a flood for 30 days and then a drought that lasted 30 years. And that did for them in the end.

So, combine the effects of climate change with this year's predicted El Niño event, and 2027 is set to be the warmest year on record. If there's anything we can do to prepare for the floods, the droughts and the wildfires being forecast, it's always cheaper than rebuilding afterwards.