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What does it take to have life at another world? Astrobiologists say you need water, warmth, and something for life to eat. If it’s there, it’ll leave signs of itself in the form of organic molecules called amino acids. Now, NASA scientists think that those “signatures” of life—or potential life—could exist just under the icy surfaces of Europa and Enceladus.

If future explorations find those signatures, it’ll make a major step in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System—and beyond. That’s one reason why robotic missions will someday land on those moons—to look for the signs of life. The next mission to Europa, called Europa Clipper, will orbit that tiny moon, but won’t land. However, it will look for environments suitable for life. So, that’s a start. There’s also a proposed mission called Enceladus Orbilander. It could launch in 2038 and spend a year checking out that moon.

The Search for Life Signs

Scientists strongly suspect there’s a warmish salty ocean beneath the ices of both Europa and Enceladus. Moreover, they are probably heated by tidal stresses. So, those are two of the ingredients for life right there. Given what we know about these worlds, there could be something to feed that life, too.

If life does exist, it could “imprint” its existence in the form of amino acids, nucleic acids, and other organic molecules in the surface ice. Life probably wouldn’t exist right on the surface, mostly due to radiation and the lack of atmosphere at those worlds. That makes the near sub-surface ice a good place to look for evidence of that life. That will require a little digging to find the evidence. How deep? According to Alexander Pavlov of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, it wouldn’t be far.

“Based on our experiments, the ‘safe’ sampling depth for amino acids on Europa is almost 8 inches (around 20 centimeters) at high latitudes of the trailing hemisphere (hemisphere opposite to the direction of Europa’s motion around Jupiter) in the area where the surface hasn’t been disturbed much by meteorite impacts,” Pavlov said. “Subsurface sampling is not required for the detection of amino acids on Enceladus – these molecules will survive radiolysis (breakdown by radiation) at any location on the Enceladus surface less than a tenth of an inch (under a few millimeters) from the surface.”

Testing that Hypothesis

Of course, scientists don’t have any samples of ice on hand to study from either Europa or Enceladus. So, Pavlov’s team simulated the conditions to see if rovers and landers could find evidence of organic materials and life on those worlds. They used amino acids in ice and those from dead microorganisms in radiolysis experiments as possible representatives of biomolecules on icy moons. Radiolysis uses ionizing radiation to bombard molecules and break them apart.

Experimental samples of amino acids (as fingerprints of life) were loaded into a dewar and bombarded by gamma radiation. Credit: Candace Davison.

The team mixed samples of amino acids with ice chilled to about -196 Celsius and bombarded them with gamma rays. Since the oceans might host microscopic life, they also tested the survival of amino acids in dead bacteria in ice. Finally, they tested samples of amino acids in ice mixed with silicate dust. That tested the potential mixing of material from meteorites or the interior with surface ice.

Amino acids are interesting because life can create them. Other non-biological chemistry processes also make them. Scientists studied specific kinds of amino acids that could exist on Europa or Enceladus, particularly those amino acids from the microorganisms they tested (called A. woodii). If other microorganisms similar to that one existed at Europa or Enceladus, they could be a potential sign of life. That’s because they are used by terrestrial life as a component to build proteins. Those make enzymes that speed up or regulate chemical reactions and make structures.

Moving Evidence of Life to the Icy Surface

If such life did exist on either world’s subsurface oceans, the next question is how its “fingerprint” amino acids get to the ice so close to the top layers of ice. There’s evidence of resurfacing at both worlds by ocean water from below. On Europa, there are surface units much younger than others, which indicates that water makes its way to the surface and freezes. On Enceladus, geysers shoot material out to space from below the surface. Amino acids and other compounds from subsurface oceans could be brought to the surface by geyser activity or the slow churning motion of the ice crust.

Europa’s bizarre surface features suggest an actively churning ice shell above a salty liquid water ocean. That liquid could carry amino acids and signs of life to the surface. Credit: JPL

So, it looks like the team’s experiment shows that amino acids could survive on both worlds, under certain conditions, but they also degrade at different rates. That’s important news for future missions, according to Pavlov.

“Slow rates of amino acid destruction in biological samples under Europa and Enceladus-like surface conditions bolster the case for future life-detection measurements by Europa and Enceladus lander missions,” he said. “Our results indicate that the rates of potential organic biomolecules’ degradation in silica-rich regions on both Europa and Enceladus are higher than in pure ice and, thus, possible future missions to Europa and Enceladus should be cautious in sampling silica-rich locations on both icy moons.”

For More Information

NASA: Life signs Could Survive Near Surfaces of Enceladus and Europa

Radiolytic Effects on Biological and Abiotic Amino Acids in Shallow Subsurface Ices on Europa and Enceladus

The post We Might Find Life Just Under the Surface on Europa appeared first on Universe Today.

With coral reefs around the world struggling in the face of warming oceans, should we swap out native species with heat-tolerant ones from elsewhere?

The first generation of stars changed the course of cosmic history. Now, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we have a real chance of spotting them

An analysis of 20,000 metal objects from Bronze Age Europe suggests human economic behavior may not have changed much over the past 3500 years

Hair follicle infections are often difficult to treat because bacteria settle in the gap between hair and skin, where it is difficult for active substances to reach them. In order to investigate this scenario more closely in the laboratory, researchers have now developed a model with human hair follicles embedded in a matrix produced using 3D printing. In the future, this model can be used to test the effectiveness of new drug candidates against corresponding pathogens directly on human follicles.

Researchers uncover a rapid, efficient and environmentally friendly method for selective lithium recovery using microwave radiation and a readily biodegradable solvent.

Like several people I know, I’m caught up in a temporary fit of the downs because the world seems to be going off kilter. I worry about politics, I worry about Israel, I worry about Ukraine, I worry about Iran and its forthcoming nukes, I worry about fulminating wokeness and its effect on science, and, well, the list goes on.  But something is keeping me awake at night. Although I don’t lie abed racked with conscious worries, my theory (which is mine) is that the worry has become internalized. Further, it’s hard, for me at least, to avoid converting the worry into anger, as it’s made me short-tempered, so I have to exert more control over my behavior.

So much for the personal stuff. But since all the stuff I have to write about is depressing (in the wings are articles about the ideological capture of chemistry, Wikipedia’s “Jewish problem”, the school curriculum in New Zealand—in other words, the kind of thing you see her regularly), there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. I’m thinking of writing about more personal stuff, just to improve my writing and go off on a different tangent. But there will always be the Hili dialogues with their daily five news items.

Do recall that on Saturday I leave for a month in South Africa, and posting will be very sparse for that month and somewhat sparse from now until Saturday.

So let’s have a couple of polls—about politics, of course. Please vote if you’re reading this and, more important, explain your feelings below if you wish.

First poll:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Second poll (remember, all answers are anonymous and I don’t know who votes which way):

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Weigh in below.  You needn’t tell me that this is not a scientific poll. It’s simply a survey of the readers.

Researchers have synthesized a bio-inspired polymer for water purification. The polymer was designed to mimic phytochelatin, a plant protein that selectively captures and neutralizes harmful heavy metal ions. The hyperconfinement of the polymer enabled a flow-through system and effectively removed cadmium ions from contaminated water, making it safe to drink. The system was selective for heavy metals and provides a new way to remove specific contaminants from water.

A new generation of specialty optical fibers has been developed by physicists to cope with the challenges of data transfer expected to arise in the future age of quantum computing.

A new generation of specialty optical fibers has been developed by physicists to cope with the challenges of data transfer expected to arise in the future age of quantum computing.

Sometimes, brainstorming does work. In 2019, America’s National Science Foundation (NSF) held the CubeSat Ideas Lab, a shindig that brought together some of the world’s best CubeSat designers. One outcome of that shindig is the Virtual Super-Resolution Optics with Reconfigurable Swarms, or VISORS, mission. Expected to launch in October, this mission will be a proof of concept for many swarming technologies in CubeSats. Hopefully, It will also capture a pretty impressive picture of the Sun’s corona.

VISORS was formally defined in a paper in 2022, with input from experts at nine different academic institutions, one NASA lab, and one private lab. The concept of operations (or ConOps in the paper) is easy enough – fly two separate 6U CubeSats in formation and take an extreme ultraviolet picture of the Sun. 

The obvious question is—why do you need two CubeSats to do that? A single spacecraft could do the job, but the science goal of the VISORS missions is to take an image at a very high resolution in a very specific extreme ultraviolet wavelength. To do that, the mission would need an optical mirror diameter of around 40m.

Fraser discusses how swarms could change how we explore the solar system.

That is beyond humanity’s current capability to fit onto a rocket fairing and blast into space. So, VISORS will actually consist of two spacecraft. One, known as the Detector Spacecraft (DSC), will house an ultraviolet detector, and one, known as the Optics Spacecraft (OSC), will act as an optical system that mimics the characteristics of a 40m diameter mirror.

However, the secret sauce of the VISORS mission lies in the coordination between the DSC and the OSC. They will fly in formation with each other, about 40 m apart, with the OSC placed between the Sun and the DSC. The light from a specific region of the Sun’s corona will pass through a photon sieve on the OSC and be directed into the detector of the DSC 40 m away, effectively creating the effect of a 40m wide mirror without the need for a continuous surface.

The only problem is that this type of coordinated alignment between CubeSats has never been done before. So, really, the VISORS mission could be looked at as a technology demonstration mission for CubeSat swarm formation rather than a heliophysics one. The mission statement in the ConOps paper states that the mission will be considered successful if it captures one ten-second image over the course of a six-month primary mission duration.

YouTube video from the Space REndezvous Laboratory describing VISORS formation.
Credit – Space Rendevzous Laboratory YouTube Channel

Ten seconds out of almost 16 million may not seem like much, but it shows the difficulty of getting CubeSats to align properly at the right time. To do so, researchers at the Space Rendezvous Laboratory at Stanford have created novel Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) software based on a concept familiar to any controls engineer—a state machine.

In software, a state machine is defined by various variables that will change the software’s behavior based on the values of those variables. In the case of VISORS, there will be five different states. Standby is pretty self-explanatory – wait in your current orbit for further instructions. Transfer is an attempt to move into formation to allow the system to capture an image. Science is when the mission will attempt to capture that ten-second image. But if something goes wrong, it also has two recovery states – Safe mode is pretty standard for all spacecraft, but Escape mode is unique for VISORS. This would move either spacecraft out of the way of the other, and collision between the two is one of the primary risks of the mission architecture and one of the things the GNC algorithm is designed to avoid.

Development of that software appears to be ongoing, though the planned launch date for the mission is only three months away. If all goes well and VISORS is successfully deployed and takes at least one picture, that proof of concept will shortly enable plenty more CubeSat swarm missions. It might even inspire more successful brainstorming Idea Labs.

Learn More:
Lightsey et al – CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS FOR THE VISORS MISSION: A TWO SATELLITE CUBESAT FORMATION FLYING TELESCOPE
UT – What a Swarm of Probes Can Teach Us About Proxima Centauri B
UT – Tiny Swarming Spacecraft Could Establish Communications with Proxima Centauri
UT – A Pair of CubeSats Using Ground Penetrating Radar Could Map The Interior of Near Earth Asteroids

Lead Image:
Artist’s depiction of the VISOR spacecraft flying in formation.
Credit – Simone D’Amico

The post Taking a High-Resolution Ultraviolet Image of the Sun’s Corona Will Require VISORS appeared first on Universe Today.

A subatomic particle called the muon caused waves when its experimental behaviour didn't align with a prediction based on the standard model. A new calculation might resolve the discrepancy – but some particle physicists are sceptical

A mathematical model suggests there is an unusual region of space where objects can get pulled into the sun’s orbit – meaning we may have to redraw the boundary of the solar system

On Friday, JAMA Health Forum published a study that is just more evidence that public health interventions against COVID-19 saved lives.

The post As imperfect as they are, public health interventions save lives first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

What would the economy of a future Mars society look like, and how could it be self-sustaining while being completely sovereign from Earth and its own economy? This is what a recent study submitted to Space Policy hopes to address as a sole researcher discusses a model that could be used for establishing economic freedom on Mars, enabling both monetary and political stability across all Red Planets settlements. This study holds the potential to help scientists, economists, and world leaders better understand plausible governmental systems used by human settlers on other worlds while maintaining sovereignty from Earth and its own governmental law and order.

Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible study with Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra, who is the Director and a Senior Research Investigator of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (BMSIS) and sole author of the study, regarding the motivation behind the study, significant ideas presented in the study, the importance of establishing a sovereign economic system on Mars, eliminating capital exchange between Mars and Earth, how Mars can become a sovereign entity from Earth after humans settle there, and how an economic system can be established on a sovereign Mars. Therefore, what was the motivation behind the study?

“My motivation was to build on the idealistic framework for an independent Mars that I developed in my book Sovereign Mars,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “In my book, I describe five conditions for enabling Mars to be an independent planetary state, a juridical peer to Earth. In this new study, I develop a possible economic model that would be consistent with these five conditions.”

These five conditions outlined in Sovereign Mars include all permanent settlers on Mars completely acquiescing Earth citizenship and interests; Earthlings being unable to interfere with the Mars affairs, including financial, political, and social aspects; Earthlings requiring permission from Mars to conduct scientific investigations on the Red Planet; only Mars citizens can own land; and all resources brought from Earth, including technological or other items, will remain on Mars permanently.

For the study, Dr. Haqq-Misra dives deeper into the economic facets of a future sovereign Mars government while embodying these five conditions, specifically focusing on the financial aspects of such an economic system, including banking, currencies, capital ownership, and Earthling tourism. He emphasizes how such a system builds off the mistakes from Earth’s present-day economic systems that could potentially lead to both financial and political stability on Mars. He notes this is an “idealistic but feasible model” with the goal of establishing full economic freedom for future Mars citizens from Earth. So, what were the most significant ideas presented in this study?

“The first idea is ‘full reserve banking’,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “Our banking system today allows banks to loan out more money than they hold as cash in reserves, which is known as a ‘fractional reserve’ system. This can lead to problems such as a ‘run on the bank,” where too many people try to take out their deposits all at once, only to find that the bank does not have their money.”

Dr. Haqq-Misra continues, “The second idea is the diffusion of capital ownership. Many visions of space settlement imagine something like a world space agency or other centralized authority that could ensure justice and perhaps even serve as a way to redistribute wealth. But the centralization of sovereign power also carries significant risks for the abuse of such power. Some arguments even suggest a somewhat Marxists approach toward the centralized or government ownership of wealth-producing capital, which is then redistributed equitably, but this again carries significant risk of abuse and corruption. An alternative idea is to widely diffuse the ownership of capital, instead of wealth. This means that ownership of companies, equipment, and anything else that can generate wealth would be held in a wider range of hands than today—ideally, by everyone.”

Along with the five conditions of a sovereign Mars noted above, requirements will also be established by the full reserve banking system on Mars, including all transactions staying on Mars, no currency exchange with Earth, and currency issuance will be based on changes in population. All tourism on Mars will follow three conditions that coincide with the conditions of both a sovereign Mars and the Mars full reserve banking system, including tourists being unable to own capital on Mars, the prohibition of Mars currency from being returned to Earth, and no currency transactions from tourists while services would only be provided from the exchange of goods.

On present-day Earth, currency exchange is the primary method for purchasing goods and services, with a total of 180 currencies being recognized across 195 countries around the world. While the value of each currency across the globe varies daily, this system allows individuals from separate countries to own capital in other countries with minimal government interference. But what is the importance behind the complete lack of capital exchange between Earth and Mars?

“This is part of the idealistic framework in Sovereign Mars,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “Preventing exchange between the two planets would enable Mars to retain its maximum potential to develop new ideas in civilization, such as this economic model. In practice, these ideas could still be attempted on Mars even if there is some exchange between the two planets, although this may lead to different results.”

The prospect of sending humans to Mars has been the purview of science fiction and countless scientific discussions for over 100 years. this began with the Danish silent film A Trip to Mars and other films continuing throughout the 20th century while incorporating current Mars inhabitants or remnants of past Mars civilizations. While films of the last few decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century conveyed the first human trips to Mars, most recently with the film The Martian, little has been discussed regarding permanent human settlements on the Red Planet.

The closest this notion came was in the television series The Expanse, which depicted the Martian Congressional Republic on Mars being a sovereign entity from Earth, complete with its own military and political hierarchy. However, the economic system within this government wasn’t discussed in detail. But what steps need to be taken for Mars to become a sovereign entity after humans settle there?

“The biggest challenge is having sufficient infrastructure and resources to become self-sustaining on Mars,” Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today. “Some resources could be used on Mars, but not right away, and actually enabling an independent Mars may require benefactors with long-term visions for humanity or even Earth, without the need for an immediate or near-future financial return. I call this ‘deep altruism’ in Sovereign Mars.”

Additionally, regarding the importance of establishing a sovereign economic system on Mars and the steps required for this economic system to take hold, Dr. Haqq-Misra tells Universe Today, “We have many examples even in recent history of economic recessions and collapses. If space settlement is really to be a long-duration venture, then we need economic ideas that can remain sustainable over long timescales.”

Dr. Haqq-Misra continues, “The best way to establish this economic system would be for any initial settlers to agree on a method for implementing such a system prior to actually arriving on Mars. Part of the value in thinking about martian governance today is to anticipate such possibilities prior to the actual landing of humans on Mars. And thinking about governance on Mars can also help us gain better insight into our governance and economic systems on Earth.”

Sending humans to Mars could happen within the next decade, but sending humans to live there could be decades away, and establishing a sovereign Mars could be at least 100 years away, along with establishing and maintaining a sustainable economy separate from Earth. However, establishing protocols well in advance could lead to a smooth transition into an economic system on a sovereign Mars that is completely separate and free from the Earth’s systems.

Dr. Haqq-Misra concludes by telling Universe Today, “I am working with a talented group of students this summer through the BMSIS Young Scientist Program to examine historical analogues for sovereignty on Mars. We hope to have some new studies finished in the coming year.”

Will a future sovereign Mars successfully establish an economic system that is separate from Earth some time in the distant future? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post What could a future sovereign Mars economy look like? appeared first on Universe Today.

Last October I posted a critique of a new National Science Foundation (NSF) initiative designed to combine indigenous knowledge with modern science—in the U.S. this time, and  to the tune of $30 million. The NSF was very optimistic, as you can see from the article below in Science (click to read; see also a similar report in Nature):

My main beef with that study is that it conflated a fusion of indigenous and modern knowledge with an attempt to create equity among researchers themselves. As I wrote at the time:

Thus, if you’re going to use money to improve science, and help indigenous people at the same time, virtually all of that money should be earmarked for training indigenous youngsters to learn science, and ensure that there’s no bigotry against them. That is, indigenous people should have equal opportunity from the outset to learn STEM. Then, those with talent and desire can become scientists using modern science.  To my mind, this is better than simply scouring indigenous cultures for bits of knowledge that can be further investigated, or giving money to indigenous people without fixed projects to fund, simply as a form of reparations.  To fund education rather than cultures themselves is preferable because the results are permanent and self-sustaining (once the pipeline is open, it tends to stay open).

But I was unaware that another “braiding” project—yes, they both use that word—attempting to fuse two “ways of knowing” had been undertaken by a different funding group: the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). This project had a mere $2 million in funding, with the dosh provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and NASA.

I don’t know the fate of the NSF project, but the NASEM one didn’t last long, with the joint effort collapsing after a short period of time, and for two reasons.

Click the Science article below to read about the failure of the new endeavor:

The purpose of this endeavor, which involved a panel whose lucubrations were then to be published by NASEM, was this:

. . . to explore how best to pursue coproduction, the process by which scientists, Indigenous community members, and other scientific stakeholders jointly create and share knowledge in a way that values diverse perspectives.

. . . Gregory Symmes, NASEM’s chief program officer, confirmed the panel’s job was “to summarize what’s known about … coproduction,” and that he was aware of the committee’s desire to use the concept in its study early on. But, he says, “The study itself was not intended to be coproduced.” Instead, “We thought we could work through those differences” by, for example, including a discussion in the final report of the obstacles the committee faced.

Note that “coproduction” links back to the first NSF-funded study, involving “two-eyed seeing,” the notion that you can increase our knowledge of the world most efficiently if you combine vision from one “eye” (modern science) with vision from the other eye (indigenous “ways of knowing”). The original NSF project, which largely involved trying to fix climate change, reported this:

The center will explore how climate change threatens food security and the preservation of cultural heritages through eight research hubs in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. (Ranco co-leads the U.S. Northeast hub.) Each hub will also serve as a model for how to braid together different knowledge traditions, or what its senior investigators call “two-eyed seeing” through both Indigenous and Western lenses.

The new NASEM study, which involved a committee of 11 members including three Native scholars, began well, with a harmonious initial meeting. But then things fell apart, and for two reasons (my headings below; quotes are indented):

1.)  The committee was not tasked with producing the final report. Normally, National Academies reports are written by a National Academies-designated committee that includes both Academies members and selected experts who are not Academies members.   In addition, every study has many other ‘participants’ who are not members of the committee, but interviewees or presenters who bring information into the discussion, while not participating in the committee’s internal deliberations or report writing. Also excluded from writing the report are people who could conceivably profit from what that report says, and this may have involved people excluded below.

Committee members knew the approach ran counter to NASEM’s rules for what it calls a consensus study. “The traditional way in which a National Academies report works is that you go and meet with people, and they can inform you, but they can’t participate in the [committee’s] deliberations or help shape the report,” says committee member ecologist F. Stuart “Terry” Chapin, emeritus professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

But in this case some of the members of the committee, realizing that they wouldn’t be writing the final report, were upset. The deliberations about “coproduction of knowledge” apparently didn’t involve the coproduction of the report.  The indigenous members also felt that they were marginalized in the deliberations:

Many committee members who spoke to Science say they believed their assignment—to explore the “challenges, needs, and opportunities associated with coproduction of environmental knowledge between scientists and local and Indigenous experts”—would require them to take a different approach given the subject matter. “At our first meeting [in August 2023], several people raised concerns that here was a project talking about coproduction of knowledge, but we weren’t allowed to use those processes to carry out the study,” says Gordon, who runs a company that advises scientists and government agencies on coproduction.

In the following, Kyle White is an “environmental justice expert at the University of Michigan and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.”

. . . Whyte also vented his frustration that the committee’s statement of task did not require that the study be coproduced. However, he told participants at the February workshop he “was willing to keep working on the project” to “figure out a way to do this right.” But in late March, he and three other committee members wrote to their colleagues and NASEM staff calling for the study to be “paused.” The four proposed instead writing an interim report on how to “allow equitable participation by Indigenous partners” that could be the basis for a new study on coproduction.

. . . Another participant who was not a committee member, Philomena Kebec, says comments she and other Native people made about coproduction during discussions at breakout sessions weren’t brought back up during plenary sessions and felt like sidestepping. Kebec, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and its head of economic development, says Native representatives were hoping for a dialogue about traditional knowledge across a range of scientific topics as well as “about the power dynamics affecting the ability to share information effectively.”

The issue of “power dynamics” will come up in a second.

2.) The second workshop was to be held in an indigenously-owned casino, and the NASEM didn’t want that. 

But that high didn’t last long. Before a second workshop in February, tensions arose over the choice of its venue, which was the Kewadin casino owned by the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan. Tribal casinos hold important meaning to Native nations as places of gathering and bastions of tribal sovereignty. Yet several sources told Science NASEM leaders saw the venue as inappropriate for a meeting the institution was sponsoring.

The tension made four members of the committee write to the NASEM asking that the deliberations be “paused” and that they be allowed to write an interim report. But that didn’t fly. Shortly thereafter, Whyte was told that he was dropped from the committee, and then the committee (and the whole study) were dropped and removed from the NASEM’s website.

The whole thing was a big failure.  Yes, the casino fracas looks a bit trivial, but there are really two issues, not emphasized in the report, that doomed this project to failure, as it will doom others like it.

First, while there is indeed indigenous knowledge, and some of it can indeed be “braided” with knowledge coming from modern science, the latter is far more broad and important than the former.  Indigenous knowledge, as far as I can see from reading about it, involves conclusions, based on trial and error, that help local people lives their lives in their environment. It involves things like when to plant and harvest crops, where and when to hunt and fish, how to navigate (in the case of Polynesians) and so on. It’s practical knowledge, which still makes it knowledge, but does not involve empirical studies of the wider world like the ambits of modern chemistry, physics, and biology.

Even if we think about the knowledge that we “colonists” use to live our lives in our environment, that depends heavily on modern science: we take antibiotics, use cellphones, fly in planes, rely on scientifically-generated weather predictions, and so on.  When you think of how indigenous knowledge not derived from modern science can be braided with it, almost all of the braid will consist of knowledge coming from modern science.  There is simply no way to make indigenous knowledge coequal in breadth or social importance to modern science. It sounds patronizing and colonialist to say that, but that’s really the way it is. (Note that Science buys into the erroneous “Western knowledge” trope in the title above; this trope is insulting to the many people around the world who do science.)

This lack of coequality is exacerbated by the second observation: these discussions are as much about power as about science. It’s an attempt of “minoritized” groups to wield as much scientific power as do majority (“Western) groups—a way, I suppose to compensate for historical bigotry against indigenous people. The power trope is most obvious—and successful—in New Zealand, where the attempt to equalize science with local “ways of knowing” has already infiltrated science, secondary schools, and colleges.  Here are two expressions of it in the article:

“There’s a dearth of knowledge on how to apply other ways of knowing,” said Chad English of the Packard foundation, speaking at the panel’s kickoff meeting. “And it’s not just scholarship,” English noted about the scope of the study. “It’s also about addressing the power dynamic—who is at the table, and whose voices are being heard.”

and from the quote above:

 Kebec, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and its head of economic development, says Native representatives were hoping for a dialogue about traditional knowledge across a range of scientific topics as well as “about the power dynamics affecting the ability to share information effectively.”

It is of course churlish to mistreat indigenous people or make them feel inferior, especially when they’re invited to participate with others on an equal basis on a panel like this. But perhaps the “power imbalance” ultimately reflects the “knowledge imbalance” that I describe above. If your group isn’t really coequal in scientific knowledge to another, you can hardly expect to have as much influence in the conclusions as does the group espousing the more effective and important “way of knowing.”

That, of course, is no excuse to ignore people or talk over them. But perhaps it’s time to have a hard look at the “indigenous science versus modern science” issue and lay out which “way of knowing” is most important in doing things like fixing anthropogenic climate change or ameliorating epidemics of infectious disease.  People avoid this discussion because it’s uncomfortable—indeed, the University of Auckland, after promising such a discussion, has avoided it for three years. But eventually it’s a discussion that must be had, and it helps nobody to pretend in the interim that all “ways of knowing” are equal.

h/t Jon

Mars exploration vehicles typically have wheels, allowing them to traverse some challenging terrain on the Red Planet. However, eventually, their systems start to wear down, and one of their wheels gets stuck. The “Free Spirit” campaign in 2009 was the most widely known case. Unfortunately, that campaign wasn’t successful, and now, 15 years later, Spirit remains stuck in its final resting place. Things might have been different if NASA had adopted a new robot paradigm developed by Guangming Chen and his colleagues at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics Lab of Locomotion Bioinspiration and Intelligent Robots. They devised a robot based on a desert lizard, with adaptable feet and a flexible “spine” that, according to their calculations, would be well suited to traversing over Martian regolith.

Planning for traversing tough terrain isn’t limited to rovers that are stuck. Curiosity and Perseverance, perhaps the two best-known operating rovers on Mars, currently spend a lot of their time trying to avoid areas where they might become entangled. This limits their ability to capture any data from those areas, potentially missing out on some cool rocks, like the pure sulfur that Curiosity recently found for the first time on Mars. 

A lizard-inspired robot, on the other hand, would have no trouble traversing such terrain. It also has some advantages over traversing different types of terrain, such as rocks. Most rovers don’t have enough leg lift to get over medium-sized rocks, whereas a legged robot would, especially one with adjustable “toes” that would allow it to grip a rock tighter than would otherwise be possible with typical legged robots.

Lizard-inspired robots aren’t only useful for walking – they can also jump like their biological cousins, as demonstrated in this video from UC Berkeley’s robotics lab.
Credit – UC Berkeley YouTube Channel

The design for the robot itself is relatively simple – it has four “feet” that are offset from each other by a chassis that essentially looks like a desert lizard. It even has a tail for counterbalancing. Each foot has a series of three “toes” powered by springs. They also have a servo for ankle articulation and a bearing for rotational control. This combination allows the lizard robot to walk on all fours effectively and adjust each leg to best adapt to the surface it is “walking” over.

The authors performed a series of kinematic calculations for different types of terrain to help understand how the robot would interact with each of those surfaces. Kinematic calculations are typically used in robotics when designers attempt to find the best way to move a specific robot part. The calculations are relatively detailed in this case, given the number of variable parts. However, a control algorithm is possible using just on-board computation, allowing for some basic autonomous terrain navigation if architecture is ever adopted for use in space.

Building an actual prototype would be a great way to work on that navigation algorithm, and that’s precisely what the researchers did. They 3D printed many of the parts for the chassis and foot, embedded some batteries and controllers in the head and tail sections, and started testing the prototype on simulated Martian test terrain.

Mars isn’t the only place that could benefit from legged robots – they could work on the Moon as well, as Fraser discusses.

They tested everything from grasping loose regolith to climbing over small rocks, and their algorithm seemed to work effectively for handling the relatively simple terrain in the test bed. However, the robot’s actual speed of movement was slower than originally simulated, mainly due to technical difficulties in balancing the motions of the springs and the spine. 

Despite any problems that arose during physical testing, this new robot iteration is a step in the right direction, as this lab has been designing similar systems for years. They also plan to continue to another version, including mounting a continuous power supply and fully implementing an autonomous navigation algorithm. Their research is funded by both Jiangsu Province and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, so it seems it will continue to gain support, at least for the foreseeable future.

Learn More:
Chen et al. – Development of a Lizard-Inspired Robot for Mars Surface Exploration
UT – Spirit Extrication, Day 1: Drive Stopped After 1 Second
UT – Bio-Mimicry and Space Exploration
UT – Robots Might Jump Around to Explore the Moon

Lead Image:
Image of the prototyped lizard biomimetic robot.
Credit – Chen et al.

The post Having Trouble Traversing the Sands of Mars? A Lizard Robot Might Help appeared first on Universe Today.

Dark matter is a mysterious and captivating subject. It’s a strange concept and we don’t really have a handle on what it actually is. One of the strongest pieces of evidence that dark matter is a particle comes from cosmic collisions. These collisions chiefly occur when clusters of galaxies interact such as the famous Bullet Cluster. Gravitational lensing reveals how the dark matter component couples from gas and dust in the cluster but now, astronomers have found another galaxy cluster collision but it is different, showing the collision from a new angle. 

Dark matter was first talked about in the 1930’s by Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky who observed the Coma Cluster. The observations found that the galaxies in the cluster were travelling faster than could be explained by visible mass alone. Zwicky proposed the existence of an unseen type of material, known as dark matter which was gravitationally effecting the galaxies. In the 1970s’s even more evidence emerged when spiral galaxy observations found the other regions rotated at the same speed as the inner regions. Again, it suggested some otherwise unseen matter which surrounded the stars in the galaxies. Even so, dark matter has not yet been directly observed, largely due to its complete lack of interaction with normal matter. 

Fritz Zwicky. Image Source: Fritz Zwicky Stiftung website

Galaxy clusters are one phenomenon where dark matter seems to have a significant impact. The component galaxies are bound together under the force of gravity. When we explore galaxy clusters and the amount of matter that seems to be present, only about 15% is from normal matter. In the case of galaxies, this s mostly in the state of hot gas but the rest will be made up of stars, planets and even people! The remaining 85% must be therefore, dark matter. 

Recent observations of the collision of clusters collectively known as MACS J0018.5+1626 show that the individual galaxies are largely unscathed. In galaxy clusters the distance between the galaxies are vast however the gas components have become turbulent and superheated. Typically such events would be revealed through gravitational and electromagnetic effects from normal matter but dark matter just interacts through gravity. 

The Submilimeter Observatory from Caltech, the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, Herschel Space Observatory and Planck Observatory were all part of the project which have been observing the collision of MACS J0018.5+1626. The disassociation or decoupling of dark matter and normal matter in such collisions has a been seen before in the Bullet Cluster. In this event the hot gas and normal matter was lagging behind dark matter as the clusters passed through each other. MACS J0018.5+1626 is the same and with similar lagging between normal and dark matter. MACS J0018.5+1626 however has a slightly different orientation and offers a unique view on this type of event. 

Detailed views of the Orion Bullet region. In each image pair, left is the Altair 2007 image and right is the new 2012 GeMS image. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA

To try to understand the process, a team of researchers used  a method known as the Kinetic-Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (the spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background through inverse Compton scattering.) This is not the first time the effect has been observed though, a team of astronomers detected it in a cluster known as MACS J0717. Multiple observations have since been made of the effect allowing astronomers to measure the speed of gas and normal matter. Measuring the speed of galaxies allowed for the deduction of the speed of the dark matter too. 

It is hoped that future studies will reveal even more clues about the nature of dark matter. The observations of MACS J0018.5+1626 and previously the Bullet cluster have given a good starting point but more detailed steeds are required. 

Source : Dark Matter Flies Ahead of Normal Matter in Mega Galaxy Cluster Collision

The post Giant Collision Decouples Dark Matter from Regular Matter appeared first on Universe Today.

Johannes Kepler is probably most well known for developing the laws of planetary motion. He was also a keen solar observer and in 1607 made some wonderful observations of our nearest star using a camera obscura. His drawings were wonderfully precise and enabled astronomers to pinpoint where the Sun was in its 11-year cycle. Having taken into account Kepler’s location and the location of sunspots, a team of researchers have identified the Sun was nearing the end of solar cycle-13.

Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician who was born in 1571. His contribution to the world of celestial mechanics and the movement of the planets is second to none. The laws of planetary motion that he formulated from the observations of Tyco Brahe have stood the test of time. Other than his work on planetary motion, he was a renowned observer in his own right and he made one of the earliest records of solar activity before the invention of the telescope! 

Johannes Kepler in 1610. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Kepler used a camera obscure which consisted of a small hole in a wall through which, sunlight would be allowed to pass. It would then full upon a sheet of paper allowing the observer to study an image of the Sun. Kepler used this to record and sketch the visible features of the Sun and in May 1607 he recorded what he thought was a transit of Mercury. It turned out that it wasn’t a transit of Mercury but instead, group of sunspots. 

The sunspots seen by Kepler and seen on the Sun often by modern amateur astronomers are temporary solar phenomena. They exist in the visible layer of the sun’s atmosphere known as the photosphere and appear dark compared to their surroundings. In reality, if they could be isolated from the much brighter solar disk but kept at their existing distance from Earth they would be brighter than the full Moon. The spots are simply cooler and darker than the surrounding hot and bright material. Their temperature is around 3,800 K instead of just under 6,000 K for the average photospheric temperature. 

Sunspot image from the newly upgraded GREGOR Telescope

The Sun is a great big ball of plasma and it has a magnetic field like Earth. Plasma is electrically charged gas that can drag magnetic field lines with it. As the Sun rotates it drags the magnetic field with it causing it to get wound up and tangled. Often the stress the field lines are under are so intense that they burst through the surface, inhibiting convection making the temperature in this region cooler, the sunspot. The sunspot (and general solar activity) peaks over an 11 year cycle. 

A team of researchers led by Hisashi Hayakawa from Nagoya University have used new techniques to analyse Kepler’s drawings and have uncovered new information about the solar activity at the time. Spörer’s law (which examines variation of heliographic latitudes at which solar active regions form during a solar cycle) was applied to the drawings placing them at the end of the solar cycle before the cycle that Thomas Harriot, Galileo and other telescopic observers first captured solar cycle information. This placed the observations just before the well documented Maunder Minimum – an unexplained period of significantly reduced sunspot activity that occurred between 1645 and 1715.

Until now, this period of minimal solar activity has been hotly debated and, whilst no definitive conclusion has been reached, the team hopes that Kepler’s information may put us finally on a path to understand great periods of solar inactivity. 

Source : Kepler’s 1607 pioneering sunspot sketches solve solar mysteries 400 years later

The post Kepler Sketched the Sun in 1607. Astronomers Pinpointed the Solar Cycle appeared first on Universe Today.

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In 1956, The New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE’S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other.

With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors―Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla―who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes.

Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy―one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.

David Lipsky is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Magazine Writing, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, and many others. He contributes to NPR’s All Things Considered, and is the recipient of a Lambert Fellowship, a Media Award from GLAAD, and a National Magazine Award. He’s the author of the novel The Art Fair; a collection, Three Thousand Dollars; and the bestselling nonfiction book Absolutely American: Four Years at Westpoint, which was a Time magazine Best Book of the Year. His book, The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial, is just out in paperback.

Shermer and Lipsky discuss:

• how he became a professional writer and how you can become one too
• the scientists who first sounded the alarm about climate change: Roger Revelle, Charles Keeling, James Hansen, Michael Mann
• when there was science consensus that global warming is real and human caused
• how George H.W. Bush was on board with combatting global warming
• Obama’s dilemma over which cause to back: climate change or healthcare?
• climate change as a collection action problem
• climate skeptics: S. Fred Singer, Fred Seitz, Jim Tozzi, Lord Christopher Monckton, Patrick Michaels
• Climategate
• strategies of global warming skeptics
• connection between cigarette smoking/tobacco industry and climate change
• when the politicization of climate change began
• what is to be done now.

The five basic questions about climate change:

1. Is the Earth getting warmer?
2. Is human activity the primary driver of the warming?
3. How much warmer is it going to get?
4. What are the effects of the warming?
5. What should we do about it?

Climate concensus (the 97% figure)

Here’s what Dr. Shermer wrote in Scientific American:

A 2013 study published in Environmental Research Letters by John Cook, Dana Nucitelli, and their colleagues examined 11,944 climate paper abstracts published from 1991 to 2011. Of those papers that stated a position on AGW, 97.1 percent concluded that climate change is real and human caused. What about the three percent? What if they’re right? In a 2015 paper published in the journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Rasmus Benestad, Dana Nucitelli, and their colleagues examined the three percent and found “a number of methodological flaws and a pattern of common mistakes.” That is, instead of the three percent converging to a better explanation than that provided by the 97 percent, they failed to converge to anything. “There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming” Dana Nuccitelli concluded in an August 25, 2015 commentary in The Guardian. “Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that’s overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.” For example, one skeptical paper attributed climate change to lunar or solar cycles, but to make these models work for the 4,000-year period that the authors considered they had to throw out 6,000 years’ worth of earlier data.

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