Will Gompertz reviews Cats starring Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson

Will Gompertz Arts editor@WillGompertzBBC on Twitter

First things first, I want you to know this is a safe space, free from feline puns. There'll be no talk of fur-from-purrfect performances that don't scratch the character's surface or give you paws for thought. That's not happening, not in this review - not a cat-in-hell's chance.

Onward!

We all know about the social media hoo-ha the trailer caused when it was released in the summer. "Urgh!" was the general reaction. "Cats with furry breasts, that's gross! And the scaling, that's rubbish."

Well, those issues remain in the finished, full-length feature, although the director - Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, Les Misérables) - has spoken about throwing a large chunk of cash at fixing the more glaring problems made evident to him by the Twitterstorm.

Money has been spent. You can see that.

Cats the movie is a slick, computer-enhanced celeb-fest with meticulously choreographed set-pieces taking place in a version of London that sits somewhere between Dickensian squalor and Soho glamour. It is a shiny, colourful, sung-through piece with luxury hotel production values.

That the cats are still gendered and sexualised is not such a big deal. The geriatric bodies of the de-aged stars in Scorsese's film The Irishman are far more disconcerting and off-putting. Anyway, the figure-hugging outfits allow Francesca Hayward - a Principal Ballerina at the Royal Ballet - to treat us to her best moves playing Victoria, the white cat.

Francesca Hayward plays Victoria (centre), the white cat 

She is not exactly verbose, but her eyes talk plenty, wearing a nonplussed expression throughout as she tries to figure out what in the name of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is going on.

Not much, is the answer.

This is a thin tale (see, I can resist) about a gang of feral cats called the Jellicles, who gather once a year to see which of their number will be given the opportunity to ascend to the Heaviside layer.

Dame Judi Dench, who plays wise Old Deuteronomy, has the task of making the Jellicle choice under heavy lobbying from pantomime baddie cat Macavity (Idris Elba).

That's it, basically.

A simple story based on the poems of T.S. Eliot, which Andrew Lloyd Webber illustrated with some very catchy numbers in his hit 1981 musical Cats. I saw that original production as a Clash-mad teenager and surprised my grumpy self by loving every single second. I really do have the T-shirt. Brian Blessed was wonderful as Old Deuteronomy.

More recently, I saw Nicole Scherzinger as Grizabella knock it out of the park in a 2014 revival, where she left absolutely everything in the auditorium with an unforgettable rendition of Memory.

Nicole Scherzinger as Grizabella (front left) starred in a West End production of Cats in 2014 

Jennifer Hudson gives a strong performance as Grizabella in the film 

That job falls to Jennifer Hudson in the film, who is convincing as the ostracised Grizabella, and - more importantly - nails the famous song with aplomb, as you would expect from such a talented individual.

It is a reflection of the singing throughout, which rarely dips below excellent, although both Dame Judi and Elba are clearly primarily actors not singers. That's fine, they know how to sell a song. As does Taylor Swift, who has a welcome cameo playing the mischievous Bombalurina.

Sir Ian McKellen rocks up for a turn as Gus the Theatre Cat, while Rebel Wilson and James Corden pitch in to bring a little light-hearted comedy to proceedings. Oh, and Ray Winstone makes an appearance too, just like he does in those betting ads. 

Singer Taylor Swift plays the mischievous Bombalurina 

Dame Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy 

It is a roll-call of stars that's a testament to Hooper's well-deserved standing as a top-notch, Oscar-winning director.

But you can't always hit the bullseye, and the helmsman has missed the spot with Cats.

The sum is a great deal less than the parts, however famous and gifted the people playing them happen to be. The story takes forever to get going, and when it does - eventually - it lacks any real conviction or emotion.

The harsh truth is the film feels plastic, it has no heart or soul. That might well be a problem with the source material and its suitability for a transfer from stage to screen. Notwithstanding notable successes, the fact is not everything that is a hit in one medium works in another.

It's not terrible, it's certainly got more going for it than the trailer, but it is some way short of Lord Lloyd-Webber's original.

Europe's Cheops telescope launches to study far-off worlds

Cheops rode into space on a Russian Soyuz rocket flying out of French Guiana 

The European Cheops space telescope has launched to study planets outside our Solar System.

The observatory will follow up the discoveries of previous missions, endeavouring to reveal fresh insights on the nature of distant worlds: What are they made of? How did they form? And how have they changed through time?

The telescope was taken into orbit on a Russian Soyuz rocket that set off from French Guiana at 08:54 GMT.

The ride to 700km lasted 145 minutes.

Cheops (short for CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite) is a joint endeavour of 11 member states of the European Space Agency (Esa), with Switzerland in the lead.

Prof Didier Queloz, who won this year's Physics Nobel for discovering the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star in 1995, was on hand to watch the launch.

"I think it's great. We started this project more than 10 years ago and now that's it - we're in the sky," said the chair of the Cheops science team.

• Planets and Big Bang win Nobel physics prize
• Distant star's vision of our Sun's future 'death'
• Exoplanet tally set to pass 4,000 mark

Kate Isaak: "We're a follow-up mission. We know when and where to point"

What will Cheops do?

The University of Bern, together with the University of Geneva, has provided a powerful photometer for the telescope.
The instrument will measure the tiny changes in light when a world passes in front of its host star.
This event, referred to as a transit, will betray a precise diameter for the planet because the changes in light are proportional to the surface of the world. When that information is combined with data about the mass of the object - obtained through other means - it will be possible for scientists to deduce a density.
"From that we can say something about the planet's composition and internal structure," said Esa project scientist Dr Kate Isaak. "And by measuring this for many different planets orbiting different types of stars, those close in and far out - we can also say something about the formation and evolution of planets," she told BBC News.

Didier Queloz: Cheops will prioritise planets for study by later, bigger telescopes

What's significant about this mission?

Some 4,500 planets have been discovered since the late 1990s using a variety of techniques. But there is a feeling now that the science has to move beyond just detection; beyond just counting planets. We need to profile the objects in a more sophisticated way. Do they have atmospheres and how thick are they? What kind of clouds? Do they possess oceans on their surface? Do they have rings and moons? Cheops ought to be able to address such questions just from looking for these tiny dips in light during a transit.
The mission has been given a list of 400-500 targets to look at over the next 3.5 years. Most of these worlds will be in the size range between Earth and Neptune, sometimes called "super Earths". From all the exoplanet surveys conducted to date, this grouping would seem to dominate the statistics. 

Cheops is a project of Esa and 11 of its member states, led by Switzerland 

How sensitive is Cheops?

It will be concentrating on bright stars, but even so - its observations will still be challenging.
When a Jupiter-sized planet passes in front of a Sun-like star, the drop in light as viewed by Cheops will be as little as 1% of the total signal. If an Earth-sized planet does the same thing, the drop-off will be a hundred times smaller again, at 0.01%.
"The difficulty was in building an optical system that is capable of measuring these minute light changes," recalled Prof Willy Benz, the Cheops consortium principal investigator.
"To give you an example, when we wanted to test this in the lab we didn't find a single light source in the world that was stable to this precision to allow us to test our telescope - so we had to build one."

JWST will have a huge mirror and instruments capable of probing the chemistry of atmospheres 

How does it fit with other missions?

The Americans are currently flying a space telescope called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess), a follow-on to the highly successful Kepler observatory. Both are planet-finders and have had input into the candidates soon to be pursued by the 280kg Cheops observatory.
The Nasa ventures have, if you like, provided the shortlist for the European telescope. Its studies will now whittle the targets down still further to find the most promising subjects for the next generation of planet investigators. These missions will have the ability to analyse the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres, looking for gases that might hint at the presence of life. The most eagerly awaited is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) due for launch in 2021.
"It's very classic in astronomy that you use a small telescope 'to identify', and then a bigger telescope 'to understand' - and that's exactly the kind of process we plan to do," said Prof Queloz.
"Cheops will now pre-select the very best of the best candidates to apply to extraordinary equipment like very big telescopes on the ground and JWST. This is the chain we will operate."
The 30cm-aperture telescope was a secondary passenger on the Soyuz launch. The primary payload was an Italian radar satellite.
Cheops was released from the Soyuz' Fregat upper-stage at an altitude of 709km, moving at a speed of over 7.5km/s.
One of the early tasks for controllers, who are based in Spain, will be to open a protective door to the optics.
Dr Isaak said: "The next few days are going to be very interesting. We're going to be working at the mission operations centre to check out the spacecraft. And then once that's done, everybody will have a very well deserved Christmas break. And we're back in the New Year to exercise the instrument, to check it's survived the launch, to see how it performs, and look to see then how we're going to process the data which is the end product that we're all very much looking forward to."
Science operations will be run out of the University of Geneva.

Giant prehistoric caiman had extra hip bone to carry its weight

Purussaurus mirandai's extra bone in the sacrum is marked in pink on this handout 

A prehistoric caiman, which weighed up to three tonnes, had an extra hip bone and upright shoulders to help it carry its weight on land, scientists say.

Purussaurus mirandai could grow up to 10m (32ft) in length and lived in the swamps and rivers of what is now Venezuela.

An international team of scientists says its extra vertebra and shoulder alignment meant it could move on land.

Their study was published in the online journal eLife

.

A handout shows the size of the caiman compared to a human 

The team, led by Dr Torsten Scheyer of the Palaeontological Institute and Museum of Zurich, studied fossils found in the badlands of Venezuela.

• Prehistoric caiman's bite 'twice as strong' as T-Rex's
• The day the dinosaurs' world fell apart
• Stunning fossils record dinosaurs' demise

They found that the now-extinct giant caiman had an extra vertebra in its sacrum, the lower part of its spine. Its shoulder girdle was also aligned with the action of gravity, allowing it to better move its massive weight.

"Our findings are important because they help show how development can be altered in order to enable biomechanical changes as animals evolve into larger body sizes," Prof John Hutchinson of The Royal Veterinary College in London said.

Dr Schreyer said the discovery "broadens our knowledge of what animals can do in evolution".

"These old bones show us once again that the morphological variation seen in animals that are long extinct extends well beyond that of what is known in living animals," he said.

Purussaurus mirandai is the only crocodylian that has been found to have the extra vertebra in its sacrum, the scientists said.

DNA from Stone Age woman obtained 6,000 years on

An artist has made a reconstruction of the woman, who has been nicknamed "Lola" 

This is the face of a woman who lived 6,000 years ago in Scandinavia.

Thanks to the tooth marks she left in ancient "chewing gum", scientists were able to obtain DNA, which they used to decipher her genetic code.

This is the first time an entire ancient human genome has been extracted from anything other than human bone, said the researchers.

She likely had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes.

Dr Hannes Schroeder from the University of Copenhagen said the "chewing gum" - actually tar from a tree - is a very valuable source of ancient DNA, especially for time periods where we have no human remains.

"It is amazing to have gotten a complete ancient human genome from anything other than bone,'' he said.

What do we know about her?

The woman's entire genetic code, or genome, was decoded and used to work out what she might have looked like. She was genetically more closely related to hunter-gatherers from mainland Europe than to those who lived in central Scandinavia at the time, and, like them, had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes.

She was likely descended from a population of settlers that moved up from western Europe after the glaciers retreated.

How did she live?

Other traces of DNA gave clues to life at Syltholm on Lolland, an island of Denmark in the Baltic Sea. The DNA signatures of hazelnut and mallard duck were identified, showing these were part of the diet at the time.

"It is the biggest Stone Age site in Denmark and the archaeological finds suggest that the people who occupied the site were heavily exploiting wild resources well into the Neolithic, which is the period when farming and domesticated animals were first introduced into southern Scandinavia," said Theis Jensen from the University of Copenhagen.

The researchers also extracted DNA from microbes trapped in the "chewing gum". They found pathogens that cause glandular fever and pneumonia, as well as many other viruses and bacteria that are naturally present in the mouth, but don't cause disease. 

Piece of 5,700-year-old birch pitch from Syltholm, southern Denmark 

Where did the DNA come from?

The DNA was stuck in a black-brown lump of birch pitch, produced by heating birch bark, which was used at that time to glue together stone tools.

The presences of tooth marks suggest the substance was chewed, perhaps to make it more malleable, or possibly to relieve toothache or other ailments.

Researchers said the genomic information preserved in this way offers a snapshot of people's lives, providing information on ancestry, health and livelihood.

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Climate change: Longest talks end with compromise deal

Some of the difficult issues proved impossible to resolve in Madrid 

The longest United Nations climate talks on record have finally ended in Madrid with a compromise deal.

Exhausted delegates reached agreement on the key question of increasing the global response to curbing carbon.

All countries will need to put new climate pledges on the table by the time of the next major conference in Glasgow next year.

Divisions over other questions - including carbon markets - were delayed until the next gathering.

What was agreed?

After two extra days and nights of negotiations, delegates finally agreed a deal that will see new, improved carbon cutting plans on the table by the time of the Glasgow conference next year.

• Download the BBC Energy Briefing, from October 2019 (10.7MB)
• Greenland ice melt 'is accelerating'
• Methane pulse detected from South Sudan wetlands

All parties will need to address the gap between what the science says is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change, and the current state of play which would see the world go past this threshold in the 2030s.

Supported by the EU and small island states, the push for higher ambition was opposed by a range of countries including the US, Brazil, India and China.

However a compromise was agreed with the richer nations having to show that they have kept their promises on climate change in the years before 2020.

What is the reaction?

"The result of this COP25 is really a mixed bag, and a far cry from what science tells us is needed," said Laurence Tubiana, from the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris agreement.

"Major players who needed to deliver in Madrid did not live up to expectations, but thanks to a progressive alliance of small island states, European, African and Latin American countries, we obtained the best possible outcome, against the will of big polluters."

Decisions on other issues including the thorny question of carbon markets have been delayed until Glasgow. 

This aspect of the deal was welcomed by campaigners.

"Thankfully the weak rules on a market based mechanism, promoted by Brazil and Australia, that would have undermined efforts to reduce emissions has been shelved and the fight on that can continue next year at COP26 in Glasgow," said Mohamed Adow, with the group Power Shift Africa.

Many of those in attendance were unhappy with the overall package, feeling it doesn't reflect the urgency of the science. But negotiators will be satisfied to have kept the process alive after these difficult and complex talks in Madrid.

Humans 'sole culprits' in US parrot extinction

The genome comes from a specimen held in a private collection in Spain 

A genetic study of the US's only native parrot appears to confirm its extinction was down to humans alone.

Scientists sequenced the genome of a stuffed Carolina parakeet held in a private collection.

The colourful bird's DNA showed none of the signs of inbreeding characteristic of animals that have been in decline for many years.

Instead, its genetic sequence suggests populations were buoyant until the expansion of European settlers.

The parrots then disappeared abruptly, with the last captive specimen dying in Cincinnati Zoo on 21 February 1918. The bird was once found from New England in the east to Colorado in the west.

The bird had green plumage with a yellow head, and measured about 13ins (33cm) long. They lived in old-growth forests along rivers and in swamps.

• The dream of de-extinction

Carolina parakeets in a plate from John James Audubon's The Birds of America, published in sections between 1827 and 1838 

"Many endangered species have been sequenced and what seems to be a pattern is that when populations are small and declining for a long period of time, this leaves some signals in their genomes that can be recognised," co-author Carles Lalueza-Fox, from the University of Barcelona, explained.
"Even if you have a single specimen, as here, we have a genome from the father and a genome from the mother; two copies of each chromosome. If the population has been small for thousands of years, these two copies will be very similar to each other and over long stretches sometimes they will be identical."
When a population is large, Dr Lalueza-Fox explained, the two chromosome copies will be more different genetically. Indeed, this is exactly what the team saw in the Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis).
"The inference is that this bird was not subjected to a very long demographic decline for thousands of years, it was something very quick," the University of Barcelona geneticist explained. 

Spanish TV journalist Pere Renom with Carles Lalueza-Fox. The process of extracting and analysing the bird's genome was filmed for a documentary in Spain

Dr Lalueza-Fox noted that the extinct bird's closest living relative, the Sun parakeet (Aratinga solstitialis), which is native to South America, has much less genetic variation.
The precise mechanism of the Carolina parakeet's extinction remains mysterious, however.
Deforestation, along with hunting and trapping, must both have played roles in its demise. Disease and even competition with non-native honeybees may also have been factors.
The birds congregated in large, noisy flocks and were gregarious in their behaviour. Contemporary observers noted that they would return to the locations of dead or dying birds, which made the wholesale slaughter of flocks even easier for hunters.
The American naturalist John James Audubon had commented on the birds' declining numbers in 1832. The birds had disappeared from the wild by the early 20th Century.

A Carolina parakeet is shown in an engraving from the late 18th Century 

The researchers also found signs of a genetic adaptation to the bird's toxic diet. The Carolina parakeet had a liking for eating cockleburs, a coarse flowering plant that contains a powerful toxin called carboxyatractyloside.
The toxin accumulated in the bird's tissues, and there are records of cats that ate Carolina parakeets being found dead.
The researchers uncovered genetic changes in two proteins known to interact with carboxyatractyloside that could underlie a dietary adaptation to the poison.
The birds are one target for de-extinction, the scientific discipline which seeks to bring lost species back from the dead.
One approach might be to take the Sun parakeet, and use genome editing to modify its DNA code to look like its extinct relative. But despite the similarities between the two species, this will be far from straightforward.

Hundreds of specimens of the extinct bird remain in museums 

"If we compare both genomes, we can easily see there is a list of several hundred protein coding genes that have changes, that also seem to be functionally important," Prof Lalueza-Fox told BBC News.
"It's an enormous task. But even if we wanted to do that, as far as I know, nobody has been able to clone a bird... nobody knows how to modify something before it becomes an egg.
"If anything, this genome illustrates the enormous difficulties behind the de-extinction ideas. I am not saying it's impossible, but it is incredibly difficult."
The last captive Carolina parakeet died in the same cage that the last passenger pigeon had died in four years earlier. The decline of both birds parallels the rapid expansion of people across the United States over the 19th Century.
The genome-sequencing project began when a journalist discovered a specimen was held in a private collection in Espinelves, North-Eastern Spain. The stuffed bird had been acquired by an ancestor of the current owners.

Bloodhound car has 800mph target in its sights for 2021

The team now has a great volume of data with which to plan the next phase

"We're 99% sure this car is capable of a land speed record that begins with the number 8."

Mark Chapman, chief engineer on the Bloodhound car, is reflecting on the vehicle's high-speed trials this past November.

The arrow-shaped racer reached a top speed of 628mph (1,010km/h) on the mudbed of Hakskeen Pan, South Africa, before packing up to head home to England.

The team is now engaged in a review of all the data gathered during testing - from the roughly 200 air-pressure sensors dotted around the car, plus a multitude of strain gauges, temperature readers and accelerometers.

"We've only been looking at it for a couple of weeks, but there's nothing I've seen that says Bloodhound can't do 800mph (1,290km/h)," says Chapman.

The current world best, which has stood for more than 20 years, is 763mph (1,228km/h).

You can see how the trials progressed in an exclusive film to be broadcast this weekend on the BBC News Channel and BBC World.

• Bloodhound land speed racer blasts to 628mph
• Getting the job done at over 600mph

The length of track this year allowed the car to get up to 628mph and then slow and stop safely 

What should be telling is how, overall, the trials were conducted without any major incidents.

The team could be forgiven for anticipating a stream of technical glitches when it arrived in the Kalahari Desert. It certainly had some.

But the schedule of runs designed to achieve a steady, stepwise increase in speed broadly held together.

And only once did engineers have to perform a full strip-down of the vehicle to overhaul a problematic engine bay over-heat alarm system

"It was a high-stakes gamble to be honest in taking Bloodhound out there, but I wanted to prove that this car and this team could do it," says businessman Ian Warhurst, who bought Bloodhound out of administration at the beginning of 2019.

"We could have gone out there and been unable to run the car properly, and we'd have returned home with no following and been forced to close the project down. But it was fantastic and the engagement we saw was amazing."

An engine bay overheat alarm eventually required a stripdown of the vehicle

There's a lot of work ahead, however.

First, Bloodhound needs sponsorship. Warhurst's calculation is that £8m is required to break the land speed record.

The Yorkshireman says his conversations with interested parties have been boosted by the successful trials.

The money will cover operations but also the R&D to enable Bloodhound to carry a rocket.

A hole in the back of the car is ready to receive a rocket motor from the Nammo company

To achieve 800mph, the car needs five to six tonnes of thrust on top of the nine tonnes it already receives from a Eurofighter jet engine.

The extra power will come from a booster supplied by the Norwegian aerospace company Nammo. But Bloodhound's engineers must develop the pump that feeds this rocket with a high-test peroxide monopropellant.

And the new system will have an electric element - a battery or supercapacitor to run the motor that drives the pump. Bloodhound is about to become a hybrid vehicle.

"I want an electric solution," says Chapman. "We've talked about this for a few years and it's clear now there are quite a few options out there. It's a question of seeing what we can package into the car."

South Africa correspondent Andrew Harding presents the BBC film

The team left South Africa saying it would return either in late 2020 or in mid-2021 to try to break the land speed record.

The R&D and sponsorship schedules suggest 2021 is the more realistic timeframe.

Another influential factor is the Kalahari weather.

The rain season arrives in November and December, and has the potential to flood Hakskeen Pan. That's a good thing because it washes away tracks and resets the lakebed surface, but the car can't run in such conditions.

You have to wait then until the dryness of winter returns.

"It takes time to do the R&D and get the parts made, so it looks like we'll miss that window towards the end of 2020," says Warhurst. "But we need to keep things moving, to work to very clear timelines. Sponsors want to know when you're going to do it. We haven't finalised things yet because we need to work through the plan, but it will be in 2021, once we get past the wet season."