Historic discovery finds 19th-century estate agent used peepshow technology to create proto version of Rightmove

University of Exeter

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The Brooks and Green advert, taken from The Patriot, dated 4 April, 1842

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Credit: ‘Brooks and Green’, The Patriot, 4 April 1842, 1.

A 19th-century estate agent created the world’s first version of Rightmove more than 160 years before the birth of online property previews.

Brooks and Green, a high-end estate agent based in Old Bond Street, London, used an early form of immersive visual technology called a cosmorama to offer prospective buyers a virtual tour of the properties they were selling.

New research by the University of Exeter has discovered that for 20 years during the 1840s and 50s, decades before photography was used for advertising property, Brooks and Green had created their very own version of a ‘digital walk-through’.

The discovery has emerged as part of a broader study of the history of the cosmorama across Europe and its contribution to the development of ‘show-business’. It’s been published in a special themed edition of Early Popular Visual Culture.

“For half a century, the cosmorama was one of the most common forms of visual show across Europe and the Americas,” said Professor John Plunkett, an expert in 19th-century visual media, and lead author of the paper. “Similar in format to other early forms of immersive entertainment, such as the peepshow, the cosmorama offered picture galleries for the people, tapping into an era of greater travel and offering views of international tourist sites and scenes from across the British Empire. What we’ve discovered through this latest research project, however, is that its use extended beyond simple entertainment: the appeal of cosmoramas was that they sold an experience of virtual travel. This was utilised by one of a new type of dedicated estate agents seeking to sell a growing number of luxury properties and country estates.”

These new insights have emerged through the European research project, CURIOSITAS: Peeping Before Virtual Reality. A Media Archaeology of Immersion Through VR and the Iberian Cosmoramas led by the Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon.

Professor Plunkett worked with the project team to investigate the history of this visual technology in the UK and Ireland. By analysing newspaper archives containing adverts and articles, he mapped its emerging use, particularly from the 1820s onwards. The research project catalogued over 650 cosmoramas in Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, with many others exhibited in countries as far apart as North America, Brazil, Cuba and Australia.

In cosmorama galleries, the paintings were not immediately visible. They were hidden behind walls and viewed through convex lenses that enlarged them and enhanced their depth effects. With the addition of clever lighting effects, the viewer enjoyed an immersive experience. From lens to lens, the viewer would embark on a picturesque journey around the world.

Professor Plunkett found examples of cosmorama galleries in cities across Britain and Ireland. The paper explores how cosmorama began appearing in urban bazaars – the 19th-century equivalent of a department store – as well as becoming a popular feature of the touring shows that travelled around Britain.

And it was during this research that Professor Plunkett, of Exeter’s Department of English and Creative Writing, found evidence that a London business was using a cosmorama in a truly innovative way. Advertisements in London newspapers in the late 1830s revealed that auctioneer and surveyor Brooks and Hedger (later, Brooks and Green), on Old Bond Street, close to the Cosmorama Rooms of Regent Street, were offering cosmoramic views of some of the properties and estates they were selling.

The firm advertised their cosmoramic views until at least 1859. They claimed that their gallery included ‘several Hundred Views of different estates’ from an ‘Aerial Perspective’ showing the house and relevant grounds. Professor Plunkett said that for each view produced, an artist would have had to spend time at the property, making it a labour-intensive process likely reserved for the more exclusive sales.

He said: “In contemporary life, prospective purchasers of real estate are usually aided by a full suite of photographs and floor plans, and often an online video walk-through. Nineteenth-century buyers had no such advantages.

“But the founding of the first specialised estate agents set in motion a more professional approach to marketing property, fuelled by population growth, urbanisation and improved transport links. In that context, we can see how Brooks and Green pioneered the virtual tour, over 150 years before digital technology would fully realise the potential.”

Cosmoramas, Immersive Viewing and the Co-Evolution of the Peepshow is published in Early Popular Visual Culture.

An illustration of a cosmorama, taken from the women's magazine, La Belle Assemblee

Credit

C. Blunt, ‘popular description of the cosmorama’, La Belle Assemblée, nº155, vol. 24, November 1821, 233.

Journal

Early Popular Visual Culture

DOI

10.1080/17460654.2026.2700727 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Cosmoramas, immersive viewing and the evolution of peep practice

Article Publication Date

5-Aug-2026

 

Subsonic or supersonic?

Nicola Pugno of the University of Trento proposes a new analytical approach to determine the limiting velocity of a fracture that triggers an avalanche. Published in Matter, the findings help clarify a debate on avalanche crack propagation

Università di Trento

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Nicola Pugno conducting a snow test at the European highest altitude (Mont Blanc, 4810m, 23 May 2026) 

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Credit: ph. Luca Nervo

Can a crack be supersonic? Can the fracture that triggers an avalanche propagate faster than the limiting velocity predicted by classical fracture mechanics?

The question remains the subject of debate within the scientific community. While some numerical and experimental studies suggest that avalanche cracks may propagate at supersonic speeds, others offer a different interpretation.

The issue stems from the fact that the snowpack is often treated as a homogeneous material, for which the reference limiting velocity is well defined. In reality, however, it consists of multiple layers with different mechanical properties. What, then, are the factors that limit crack propagation velocity in such a multilayered material?

This is the question addressed by the latest research of Nicola Pugno, Full Professor of Solids and Structural Mechanics in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Trento. His study proposes a new theoretical approach to determine the limiting velocity of avalanche cracks.

"The analytical results reveal a clear transition between a regime governed by the snow slab that detaches and another governed by the weak layer, or its interface, along which the fracture propagates. In the presence of a stiffer weak layer or interface, the crack may 'feel' a local stiffness greater than the global one, and therefore appear to propagate at a globally supersonic speed while remaining locally subsonic. This finding at least partially reconciles the different interpretations reported in the avalanche literature and is based on a characteristic energy length previously introduced to explain the two propagation regimes that had already emerged from numerical studies," explains Pugno.

The results have been published as a Matter of Opinion - a short article written by experts also on current research challenges - in Matter, the international journal of the Cell Press group, under the title Sub-Rayleigh or supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches?

"My approach represents a brief analytical contribution, building on pioneering numerical work by fellow mechanicians. I hope it will help shed further light on a complex issue that certainly requires additional theoretical, numerical and experimental investigation. In essence, the new theory should make it possible to better understand whether, and under what conditions - for example depending on the snow layering and mass - an avalanche is capable of sustaining supersonic crack propagation," comments Nicola Pugno.

Why is it important to know whether a crack propagates at supersonic speed?

"A particularly rapid release of energy can be even more catastrophic, and this should also be taken into account when designing structures that may be impacted by the snow mass, such as avalanche barriers and exposed buildings," says Pugno.

In the longer term, Pugno's contribution may also improve our ability to predict avalanches more accurately, including their propagation front and other key characteristics.

"The uncertainties in the constitutive laws of snow - which, moreover, is not a linearly elastic material - combined with the multilayered nature of the snowpack, motivated this approach and call for the development of further theoretical, numerical and experimental frameworks."

 

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Journal

Matter

DOI

10.1016/j.matt.2026.102957 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Sub-Rayleigh or supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches?

Article Publication Date

5-Aug-2026

 

Two origins of life

Early Evolution of Life: Publication in Science Advances

Heinrich-Heine University Duesseldorf

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Metabolism of the first cells: Starting compounds are shown at the left, they are converted by metabolism into the building blocks of life. The 420 enzymatic reactions are indicated as circles, chemical metabolites as diamonds, lines connect reactions having common metabolites. Circles shown in magenta shading indicate reactions that could have been catalysed by inorganic compounds in the environment where metabolism of the first cells arose. (Image: HHU/Nadja Hoffmann)

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Credit: HHU/Nadja Hoffmann

How and where did the first forms of life arise? These are the main questions driving research at the Institute of Molecular Evolution at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU). In a new publication in Science Advances, an international team led by Düsseldorf biologists uncovers pioneering insights into the network of chemical reactions that the very first cells used to make the building blocks of life and which sources of energy they used to drive those reactions. They retraced the origin of enzymes during life’s earliest divergence into bacteria and archaea, and found evidence for two independent origins of life for free-living cells.

If we could go back 4 billion years in time and watch as the first cells emerged on Earth, what would we see? “We would see two very different kinds of cells emerging, pioneer bacteria and pioneer archaea, making their first attempts at life outside the confines of a hydrothermal vent” says Natalia Mrnjavac, biologist at the University of Düsseldorf and lead author on the new publication in Science Advances.

There, Mrnjavac and an international team of scientists report investigations of genomes, protein structures and chemical reactions that probe the very earliest phases of microbial evolution before there were free living cells. “These comparisons are giving us unprecedented insights into the phase of evolution when metabolism catalysed by enzymes was arising from spontaneous reactions catalysed by metals in the Earth’s crust” says Düsseldorf biologist William Martin, senior author of the study.

The approach that the team took differs from all previous investigations of early evolution by looking at the entire set of chemical reactions that cells use to make the building blocks of life (amino acids, RNA bases and vitamins) from compounds present on the early Earth: hydrogen gas, ammonia and CO2. This set of 420 chemical reactions is called metabolism. The chemical reactions themselves are as universally conserved as the genetic code.

Martin: “The surprise is that the enzymes that catalyse those reactions are not conserved across the evolutionary divide that separates bacteria and archaea. We found that the last universal ancestor of all cells, LUCA, possessed enzymes for only about half of the reactions of metabolism. The other half was catalysed by metals in the environment where LUCA arose.”

“Metals that naturally occur in hydrothermal vents can replace a surprisingly large number of enzymes in metabolism” says Harun Tüysüz, inorganic chemist from the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung and the IMDEA Materials Institute in Madrid, and co-author on the study.

“The closer we look, the more clearly we can see that early biochemical evolution was a hybrid of enzymatic and metal catalysts” says Joseph Moran from the University of Ottawa, Canada, an international leader in the use of metals to catalyse metabolic reactions, replacing enzymes and cofactors.

A big step forward in the present study was that the team could reconstruct four phases of early evolution of catalysis: metal-only, a metal-enzyme hybrid in LUCA, followed by divergent evolution towards the ancestors of the bacteria and archaeal lineages. In those lineages, new enzymes were arising, replacing inorganic catalysts provided by the environment where metabolism arose.

“We can see cases where the ancestors of bacteria and archaea independently evolved structurally distinct enzymes to catalyse the same essential metabolic reaction,” says Mrnjavac, “such parallel inventions could have paved the way to the independent emergence of free-living bacteria and archaea.”

And where did the energy come from to drive these reactions forward? Today the energy in metabolism mainly comes in the form of ATP, but ATP is a complicated molecule, made by enzymes, not a compound that was lying around for free in hydrothermal vents. “We have identified a new source of energy at metabolic origin” says Manon Schlikker from the Düsseldorf team. Among the metals that naturally occur in hydrothermal vents are palladium, an excellent catalyst known and used by chemists for a century. “When we react phosphite, a form of phosphorus that naturally occurs in hydrothermal vents, with organic compounds, we get metabolic phosphorylation reactions overnight in water. Phosphite and palladium replace ATP and enzymes; it’s amazing, and it makes early evolution a lot easier to grasp” says Schlikker.

The study is the first focused investigation into the reaction set called metabolism. That reaction set is a highly interconnected network of 420 reactions, with many compounds participating in multiple reactions. Such networks can be mathematically challenging to deal with. But among the authors are Prof. Mike Steel, from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and Prof. Daniel Huson from the University of Tübingen. Experts when it comes to networks, they devised a new method to order metabolic reactions from the simplest to the most complex, possibly recapitulating the order in which metabolic reactions arose at origins. “The first question,” says Steel, “is whether or not a unique order exists for these reactions. Once we could prove that there is one, the algorithm to order them became tractable.”

It is part of our human condition to want to know about our origins, where we come from, where life started and how the first cells on Earth made a living. And what is the larger significance of the new findings? Martin: “The new data leave only one conclusion. The bacteria and archaeal lineages made the transition to the free-living state independently. Only free-living cells are alive. Let’s call it by name: we are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life.”

In addition to researchers from HHU, the international team included scientists from the Universities of Canterbury (New Zealand), Rostock, Constance, Ottawa (Canada), Strasbourg und Tübingen, the Max-Planck-Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg and the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim/Ruhr plus the IMDEA Materials Institute in Madrid (Spain).

Background: Bacteria and Archaea

Biologists divide life forms into two categories: Eukaryotes – advanced cells with a cell nucleus – and the more ancient cells lineages without a nucleus: the prokaryotes. The prokaryotes comprise the two primordial lineages of life: Bacteria and Archaea. Many prokaryotes can survive in extreme conditions such as high temperatures, acid or alkaline environments. Many inhabit hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor where, in some theories, life is thought to have arisen.  

Original publication

Natalia Mrnjavac, Nadja K. Hoffmann, Manon L. Schlikker, Maximilian Burmeister, Loraine Schwander, Carolina García García, Max Brabender, Mike Steel, Daniel H. Huson, Sabine Metzger, Quentin Dherbassy, Bernhard Schink, Mirko Basen, Joseph Moran, Harun Tüysüz, Martina Preiner, William F. Martin; Intermediate stages in the origin of metabolism at a phosphorylating hydrothermal vent; Science Advances 12, eaef3128 (2026)

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aef3128

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aef3128 

Article Title

Intermediate stages in the origin of metabolism at a phosphorylating hydrothermal vent

Article Publication Date

5-Aug-2026

 

Research uncovers hidden patterns in hurricane storm surge

Virginia Tech

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When a hurricane roars toward land, forecasters try to predict how high sea levels will rise to help coastal communities prepare for the worst impacts.

But storm surge peak isn't always the biggest problem. How fast water rises, how long it remains elevated, and how quickly it recedes all influence coastal erosion, infrastructure damage, emergency response, and recovery — and these factors can vary dramatically from storm to storm.

A team of Virginia Tech researchers recently published a study in Coastal Engineering demonstrating that storm surge behavior follows a set of distinct, repeatable patterns that depend on both storm characteristics and coastal geography. The findings could help improve forecasting, engineering design, and coastal planning as communities prepare for stronger storms and rising seas.

Looking beyond peak flooding

For decades, storm surge research and engineering guidance have focused primarily on the highest water level a storm produces.

“But that doesn’t tell the whole story,” said Atefeh Alipour, a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering. “We wanted to look at the bigger picture of how a storm surge evolves over time.” 

Alipour led the research with Jennifer Irish, professor of civil and environmental engineering; Robert Weiss, professor of geosciences; and David Muñoz, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.

“The timing and duration of storm surge are just as critical as its height when it comes to coastal destruction,” said Irish. “A surge that lingers for days causes severe, prolonged erosion on barrier islands and keeps critical evacuation routes submerged long after a storm passes.” 

Using two decades of high-resolution hurricane simulations representing 62 named storms that affected the United States coastline between 2003-22, the researchers analyzed more than 1,000 storm surge events to better understand how flooding evolves from beginning to end.

Eight patterns hidden in thousands of storms

Rather than examining each storm individually, the team used a machine learning approach known as k-means clustering to group storm surge events based on how they evolve over time.

“This allowed us to uncover recurring patterns that aren’t obvious when looking at individual storms,” said Munoz. “These recurring patterns provide a clearer picture of how storm surge evolves across different coastlines and storm conditions.”

The analysis revealed eight characteristic surge patterns. Some surged rapidly before gradually receding, while others built more slowly or remained elevated for much longer. Together, these patterns capture the wide range of ways coastal flooding can unfold during tropical cyclones.

The findings also showed clear regional differences. The Gulf Coast exhibited the highest diversity of surge patterns, driven by its shallow continental shelf and frequent hurricane landfalls. The Atlantic Coast showed fewer overall patterns but greater variation in how those patterns were distributed along the shoreline.

Perhaps most importantly, the researchers found that no single characteristic, not even hurricane category, determines how storm surge will behave. 

Instead, surge evolution depends on several interacting factors, including storm size, speed, direction of travel, wind field, and the shape of the coastline beneath the water. 

“As a result, two storms with similar wind speeds can produce very different flooding timelines,” said Alipour. 

Building better tools for coastal resilience

Understanding how a storm sturge evolves could help engineers and planners to design infrastructure like roads that can withstand the unique timeline of each flood event. 

The findings around common storm surge patterns could also strengthen flood forecasting and give emergency managers more detailed information to support evacuation planning and community preparedness.

“As climate change contributes to rising sea levels and more intense tropical cyclones, understanding how storm surge evolves is more important than ever,” said Weiss. “This framework could improve flood prediction and support better planning and decision making to make coastal communities more resilient.”

Original study: DOI 10.1016

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Journal

Coastal Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.coastaleng.2026.105086 

Article Title

Characterization of tropical cyclone surge evolution

 

Study finds it’s where you log, not just how much, that determines flood risk

UBC researchers say landscape and climate strongly influence how forests respond to harvesting, and reveal fog as an overlooked factor in flood risk

University of British Columbia

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Watersheds that are flatter, drier and warmer are generally more vulnerable to increases in flooding after trees are harvested. Those with greater variation in elevation spread runoff out over time, reducing flood peaks.

This is the key finding of a new study from researchers at UBC’s faculty of forestry and environmental stewardship that could help identify where logging is most likely to increase flood risk.

The study, published in Advances in Water Resources, examined data from nine paired watersheds in Oregon’s coastal mountain forests. The researchers found that flood responses are shaped not only by how much forest is removed, but by the natural characteristics of the landscape itself, including elevation, slope, road density and timing of snowmelt.

“The question was never simply whether logging affects floods. It was whether we understood the conditions that make some watersheds more sensitive than others,” said Dr. Younes Alila, senior author of the study and professor in the faculty of forestry and environmental stewardship at UBC. “By identifying the landscape factors that control flood response, we can move toward predicting where forest harvesting is likely to increase small, frequent peak flows as well as large floods.”

Comparing watershed responses

By comparing areas that had been harvested with similar nearby forests that remained intact, the researchers identified the landscape features that influence how water moves through a watershed after disturbance.

In mountainous landscapes, snow often melts at different times across elevations, naturally spreading runoff over longer periods. But in flatter landscapes, snow can melt more uniformly, causing large volumes of water to reach streams at the same time. Removing forests in these areas can amplify flood peaks and play a major role in determining how vulnerable a watershed is after logging.

“By studying how different watersheds respond to forest harvesting, we developed a framework that shows why some landscapes are more vulnerable to flooding than others,” said Nick Rong, lead author and UBC master's graduate. “This approach challenges the traditional method of assessing flood impacts based on the percentage of forest harvested within a watershed and instead considers the combination of climate, terrain and watershed features that influence flood risk.”

Role of fog in flood behaviour

The study also highlights an overlooked driver of flood risk: fog. In humid forests, tree canopies capture moisture from fog and release it to the ground, while also influencing how snow accumulates and melts across the landscape.

When trees are removed it disrupts this process and can lead to more runoff during rain-on-snow events. This can make flood patterns more variable after logging – a finding that the authors say has been underestimated as a key factor in shaping flood risk.

Implications for B.C.

The research has important implications for B.C., where forests experience similar Pacific Northwest conditions – including rain-on-snow events that contributed to the 2021 atmospheric river flooding in Sumas Prairie and southwestern B.C.

“This is especially relevant in the province because the region’s coastal mountain landscapes are complex,” said Dr. Alila. “The same amount of harvesting can have very different consequences depending on where it occurs. We need forest management approaches that recognize the natural ability of landscapes to regulate water.”

The authors are calling for a more targeted approach to forest and watershed management.

“This research reinforces the importance of managing forests at the landscape level rather than looking at individual harvest areas in isolation,” said Kyle Bishop, co-author and PhD candidate in forest hydrology at UBC. “Every watershed responds differently to disturbance, and understanding those differences allows us to develop management plans that account for the natural features that influence flood risk.”

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Journal

Advances in Water Resources

DOI

10.1016/j.advwatres.2026.105432 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Stochastic Hydrology Reveals the Controls of Forest Harvesting - Peakflow Causal Relations in Snow-Transient Environment