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Overlook “Acquired milk?”—the brand new query du jour is “What’s milk?” The ubiquity of plant-based alternate options has challenged concepts about what the phrase means and what it encompasses. And it’s not simply oats and almonds which can be complicating milk’s identification; the liquid itself is the topic of scientific uncertainty. “If an alien life type landed on Earth tomorrow and known as up a few of the planet’s foremost consultants on lactation, it could have a heck of time determining what, precisely, people and different mammals are feeding their youngsters,” my colleague Katherine J. Wu wrote final 12 months.
Researchers who concentrate on milk can describe who makes it, the place it comes from, and what it does, “however few of those solutions get at what milk materially, compositionally, is definitely like,” Katie writes. In the present day’s publication doesn’t remedy these huge milk conundrums, but it surely does gather our writers’ reporting on milk’s previous and future. This provides you with one thing to ahead to the aliens ought to they arrive asking questions.
On Milk
Milk Has Misplaced All Which means
By Yasmin Tayag
Sure, it’s a white-ish liquid. Past that, milk’s identification is tough to pin down.
Go Forward, Attempt to Clarify Milk
By Katherine J. Wu
Nobody can outline it, a lot much less absolutely replicate it.
Milk Has Misplaced Its Magic
By Yasmin Tayag
The bird-flu panic is getting out of hand.
Nonetheless Curious?
Different Diversions
P.S.
I not too long ago requested readers to share a photograph of one thing that sparks their sense of awe on this planet. “Sunrises, nothing extra to say,” wrote A. B. Swett from Buffalo, Wyoming.
— Isabel
