Thoughts This Week - 2025/03/07

Berry surprised by banana berries, an ocean moon, and an update

I can’t believe that… bananas are berries, but strawberries aren’t? When I first encountered this statement, I was like, “what is this nonsense? Of course strawberries are berries—‘berry’ is in the name.”

Alas, it turns out that botanically speaking, it’s a misnomer. Per an academic definition, a berry contains multiple seeds and pulp that mature from the ovary of a flower. This includes plants that we often think of as berries, such as blueberries and elderberries, but many that we don’t, such as bananas, watermelons, cucumbers, and pumpkins. Typically, the skin of berries are edible (e.g., grapes, red currents, and kiwis, if you’re like me and don’t mind the fuzz). However, I challenge you to try and eat a banana peel (please don’t).

So, what makes strawberries, cherries, raspberries or blackberries not berries? Well, I went a’ digging a here’s what I found. Let’s start with strawberries. They develop not from the ovary of a flower, but from the receptacle of their plants, which botanists call an “accessory fruit.” Meanwhile, cherries are actually drupes because the part that you’d want to eat surrounds a pit, hence why we also call them “stone fruit.” And when drupes aggregate to form mega-drupes (I made that term up, the actual term is “drupelet”), that’s when you get raspberries or blackberries with their many little seeds/pits.

That’s no moon… Actually, yes it is.

Selection of satellite image of Europa from Juno’s flyby. Source: NASA

Europa, Jupiter’s moon, has long fascinated me. It’s not the only other celestial body in our solar system with evidence of water—look no further than our neighbor, Mars. Saturn’s moon, Titan, and two other moons of Jupiter contain water, too.

The difference? The other bodies that I listed above sport frozen water. The median surface temperature of Mars is -65°C (or -85°F, if you’re using the inferior units), which is well bellow freezing. Europa’s surface temperatures are almost three times as cold as Mars, yet scientists have reason to believe the moon may have an active, warm ocean beneath the icy crust.

NASA dispatched the Europa Clipper in October 2024 with a mission: to uncover whether the ocean beneath Europa’s surface could support life. To do this, the Europa Clipper will analyze the moon’s changing magno-electric field and crater-less surface to search for clues that a warm, salty ocean. (The link above to NASA’s site provides many details regarding the mission.) I would have guessed that this mission required landing the spacecraft on Europa’s surface, but I’d have been wrong. The Europa Clipper will conduct all of its analyses during 49 fly-bys of the moon before crashing into Ganymede.

All this time, I’d thought that Earth was the only life-supporting planet in our solar system, but maybe there’s life closer than we think! We’ll (hopefully) find out in 2030…

Upcoming…

You may have noticed that I’ve been gone for a bit. This past week has been a busy week for me because, thanks to this newsletter and your support, I’ve finally started editing my novel again!

This novel (title withheld for now) is my third manuscript. I wrote the first draft in four months, but let the files languish in my Scrivener project for over a year. It’s taken me a few tries to write a story that I love, but I’m really happy with this one and hope to have it ready to query before the end of this year. Thanks to some key developmental edits that I’ve made, the first draft still requires a lot of work, though (i.e., me staring at screens for too many hours).

Don’t worry, this won’t mean that HIMBy will peter out. My drafts folder is replete with different topics that I’m currently researching! But, for now, expect regular installations of HIMBy once a week. My dispatches will enter your inboxes every Friday morning at 6:00 a.m. Pacific Time. I’ll still continue with Cities posts and the occasional Book Summary, but when I’m really busy or traveling, you’ll receive one of these Thoughts This Week posts in lieu of the others. For paid subscribers, Deep Dives will continue to come irrespective of the Friday schedule (you can still expect Deep Dives 1-2 times a month).

Anyway, I wish you all a great weekend, wherever in the world you’re reading this!

Take care,

Blake