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Every day, people die waiting for an organ transplant. Time is at a premium, not just for those awaiting organs, but also for the organs themselves, which can deteriorate rapidly during transportation. Looking to extend the viability of human tissues, researchers report on their efforts to facilitate completely freezing, rather than cooling and then thawing, potentially life-saving organs. They demonstrate a magnetic nanoparticle's successful rewarming of animal tissues.

Rain and water in ponds and lakes slowly seeps into the soil, moving through minute cracks to refill underground aquifers. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often described as forever chemicals, can tag along into groundwater that's later removed for drinking. Researchers analyzed water from over 100 wells in Denmark for one particularly persistent PFAS: trifluoroacetate. They report steadily increasing levels of the forever chemical in recent decades.

The new approach marks a major step forward in the design of AI tools to support clinical decisions in cancer diagnosis, therapy. The model uses features of a tumor's microenvironment to forecast how a patient might respond to therapy and to help inform individualized treatments. The model can expedite the identification of patients not likely to benefit from standard treatments used in some forms of cancer.

A new study shines a light on the enormous scale of uncollected rubbish and open burning of plastic waste in the first ever global plastics pollution inventory. Researchers used A.I. to model waste management in more than 50,000 municipalities around the world. This model allowed the team to predict how much waste was generated globally and what happens to it.

Nuclear clocks would measure time based on changes inside an atom's nucleus, which would make them less sensitive to external disturbances and potentially more accurate than atomic clocks. These clocks could lead to improved timekeeping and navigation, faster internet speeds, and advances in fundamental physics research. Scientists have demonstrated key components of a nuclear clock, such as precise frequency measurements of an energy jump in a thorium-229 nucleus.

Nuclear clocks would measure time based on changes inside an atom's nucleus, which would make them less sensitive to external disturbances and potentially more accurate than atomic clocks. These clocks could lead to improved timekeeping and navigation, faster internet speeds, and advances in fundamental physics research. Scientists have demonstrated key components of a nuclear clock, such as precise frequency measurements of an energy jump in a thorium-229 nucleus.

I am not being hyperbolic by saying the protestors are “pro-Hamas” rather than “pro-Palestinian,” as they themselves extol Hamas (see below). What kind of student would glorify muderous terroristic thugs? Columbia ones, of course.

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to predict that pro-Palestinian protests which violate campus regulations, as well as the law, would start up again as soon as fall classes resumed. And so they have at Columbia, which is one hot mess of a campus, and whose leadership can’t seem to control the skirmishes, hate, and anti-Semitism that pervades the campus.

Click below to read the article at the World Israel News, apparently written by Jessica Costescu, at The Washington Free Beacon:

Remember, right now access to Columbia’s campus is strictly limited to Columbia students with IDs or approved visitors. The vandalism below, then, is likely done by Columbia students themselves.

An excerpt.

Anti-Israel students brought chaos to Columbia University on Tuesday morning, returning the campus to its new normal: dozens of keffiyeh-clad protesters blocked the entrance to the school, praising Hamas, vandalizing a statue, and clashing with police. At least one group involved aims to bring violence to America, while others called on their followers to help shut down the university. Agitators with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter prevented students from entering campus, promising that “this is just the beginning.” A flyer posted to social media advertising the protest encouraged attendees to “wear a mask,” “bring noisemakers,” and to “shut it down.” Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter released a statement praising Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin and the terrorist group’s current chairman, Yahya Sinwar. .“Sheikh Yassin was assassinated by the Zionists in 2004, but even in death, his legacy of unrelenting resistance in the face of oppression lives on,” the group wrote on Telegram. “He lives on in his students, which includes the current head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar—the man who fooled the Zionist entity—and all the Palestinian fighters who embody the steadfastness that Yassin taught.” On X, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter said protests will continue.“ As we begin our new semester, students in Gaza have no universities to return to. Instead of listening to the student body, Columbia University is doubling down. We will not stop & we will not rest until @Columbia divests from apartheid and genocide. This is just the beginning,” the group posted to X.“ We refuse to trade in the blood of Palestinians, and until Columbia commits to full financial disclosure and complete divestment from Zionist apartheid, occupation, and genocide — we do not deserve a first day of school,” a statement by CUAD said.“In the belly of the beast, we have the highest responsibility to crush the gears of this cold and unloving death machine and to build something new. For us and for Palestine, the only option is revolution.”

Two tweets showing vandalism, both of which I retweeted, and one showing the protestor’s risible demands:

This is a well-known statue by Daniel Chester French at Columbia University. I doubt that this vandalism will win support for the cowardly protestors, who scurry away like rats, unwilling to accept the consequences of their “civil disobedience.” https://t.co/MUc7b04Wdq

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) September 4, 2024

Here are their demands:

“We act in full support of the Palestinian resistance. This action is first & foremost an effort to extend the successes of the Palestinian resistance to the heart of the empire itself, to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest &violence in America” pic.twitter.com/O6ZyjwaaDn

— Unity of Fields (@unityoffields) September 3, 2024

More:

Unity of Fields, a self-described “militant front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism,” formerly known as Palestine Action US, took credit for the vandalism.

Campus access is restricted to Columbia ID holders, suggesting the perpetrator was affiliated with the university.

“The first day of classes at Columbia University are drenched in blood,” the group posted to X

“We act in full support of the Palestinian resistance. This action is first & foremost an effort to extend the successes of the Palestinian resistance to the heart of the empire itself, to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest & violence in America.”

“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the group wrote in a follow-up post listing its demands.

“It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of all populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”

Their demands in full (click to enlarge):

Note that these hate-filled morons argue, as others have noted, that destruction of Israel is only an incremental goal: the true goal is to bring down America itself. Will these students like living in a country ruled by Hamas? I doubt that at least women and gays will!

The protestors can’t write well, either.

This makes me ill: a bunch of supposedly educated people whose moral compass is turned 180° the wrong way, supporting a bunch of terrorists who hate Jews and want to kill them all (ergo the students must feel the same way).

Call these students out for who they are: morally obtuse, Jew-hating idiots who might as well be worshiping Hitler. Fot no longer bother to hide the fact that they’re not just supporting Palestine, but are supporting Hamas.

And the lesson for parents is clear: don’t send your kids to Columbia.

Bring it on! More encampments, more divisiveness, more people rooting for terrorists and demanding divestment from the world’s only Jewish state! This, apparently, is what Michael Roth, the President of prestigious Wesleyan College, is calling for in his new NYT op-ed. Click below to read, or find the article archived here.

Now the title is a bit misleading. Although Roth wants a return to the days when the main mission of colleges was often said to be “producing good citizens” rather than “research. teaching and learning, especially learning how to think”, he’s really not saying much more beyond the latter mission, though he sounds radical at the start (emphasis below is mine):

Last year was a tough one on college campuses, so over the summer a lot of people asked me if I was hoping things would be less political this fall. Actually, I’m hoping they will be more political.

That’s not to say that I yearn for entrenched conflict or to once again hear chants telling me that I “can’t hide from genocide,” much less anything that might devolve into antisemitic or Islamophobic harassment or violence. But since at least the 1800s, colleges and universities in the United States have sought to help students develop character traits that would make them better citizens. That civic mission is only more relevant today. The last thing any university president should want is an apolitical campus.

College students have long played an important, even heroic role in American politics. Having defended the voting franchise during the civil rights movement and helped to end the Vietnam War, they have continued to work for change across a range of social issues. If you went to college in the past 50 years, there’s a good chance the mission statement of your school included language that emphasized the institution’s contribution to society. Like many others, my university’s founding documents speak of contributing to the good of the individual and the good of the world. Higher-education institutions have never been neutral.

Well, that’s not exactly true. First of all, where’s the evidence that college students have produced, on average, more social justice than people who didn’t go to college? (These days, in fact, it seems to be the opposite, as antiliberal wokeness is concentrated in influential colleges.) I’m betting, in fact, that the Civil Rights movement of the sixties was propelled not by traits developed by a college education (granted, Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King did go to college), but by simple awareness of a morality involving equal rights and opportunities. And those things you don’t learn in college.

Further, when Roth asserts that “higher-education institutions have never been [politically] neutral,” he’s just wrong.  Contributing to the good of civilization is not a violation of political neutrality; divesting from Israel is.  And plenty of colleges, most notably mine, refuse to take stands on political issues (viz., the Kalven Report).

But wait! There’s more:

The issue that matters most to many activists right now is the war in Gaza, and protesters will undoubtedly continue to make their voices heard. Last spring at Wesleyan, students built an encampment of up to about 100 tents to protest the war and to call for the university to divest from companies thought to be supporting it. Since the protest was nonviolent and the students in the encampment were careful not to disrupt normal university operations, we allowed it to continue because their right to nonviolent protest was more important than their modest violations of the rules.

I walked through the protest area daily, as did many faculty members, students and staff members. I also met with pro-Israel students, mostly Jewish, some of whom felt beleaguered by what their classmates were saying. I made clear that if any of them felt harassed, I would intervene. I also said that I could ensure their ability to pursue their education but that I could not protect them from being offended.

Good thing President Roth doesn’t lead Columbia (see latest report here) or Stanford, where recent reports show pervasive anti-Semitism as documented by student reports (granted, it’s based on students’ experiences, but that’s exactly what Roth wants to know about). Further, on many campuses the protests certainly did violate campus regulations, as well as the law. Roth seems to be unaware of that.

Roth also seems to think that the only alternative to the college mission of “developing good citizens” is “helping students get a job”. But of course learning itself, and learning how to think, do research, and analyze arguments, is a third alternative, and one that is a quality we want in our citizens but comes as a byproduct of the third mission:

These days many Americans seem to think that education should be focused entirely on work force development. They define the “good of the individual” as making a living, not working with others to figure out how to live a good life. It’s understandable. In these days of economic disparities, social polarization and hyperpartisanship, it is certainly challenging to talk with one’s neighbors about what we want from our lives in common. But that is the core of political discussion.

In the end, in fact, Roth shows that the qualities that make for effective learning just happen to be the qualities he thinks produce “good citizens”: freedom of thought and speech, and the ability to discuss things rationally and civilly, and, especially, to pay attention to those with opposing views.  Who would have thought that?:

Professors aren’t in classrooms to entice students to share their ideology; they are there to challenge students to grapple with how much more there is to learn about any issue that really matters.

These discussions, like all authentic learning, depend on freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression. They also involve deep listening — thinking for ourselves in the company of others. The classical liberal approach to freedom of expression underscores that discussions are valuable only when people are able to disagree, listen to opposing views, change their minds.

To strengthen our democracy and the educational institutions that depend on it, we must learn to practice freedom better. This fall we can all learn to be better students and better citizens by collaborating with others, being open to experimentation and calling for inclusion rather than segregation — and participating in the electoral process. As for those loud voices in the political sphere who are afraid of these experiments, who want to retreat to silos of like-mindedness, we can set an example of how to learn from people whose views are unlike our own.

Forget about the DEI-ish “inclusion” part, and it’s beyond me why college should teach students how to “participate in the electoral process” when anybody with neurons already knows how to vote. What Roth has produced, under a novel and provocative title, is just the same old (and, yes, salubrious) call for truly free speech and a college ethos of imparting and creating knowledge.  My reaction is “meh.”

I asked Greg Mayer what he thought of the piece, and his first response was this (quoted with permission):

It’s pretty awful, both in overview and detail. God help Wesleyan with people like him in charge.

Followed by this in a second response:

To elaborate a bit, Roth seems nostalgic for the 60s, and wants to regenerate that atmosphere. To do so, he is willing to bend the rules and negotiate under conditions approaching blackmail. He adopts the anti-woke stance of “you have to handle being offended”, but he doesn’t want to offend pro-Hamas protesters. Roth doesn’t seem to know what institutional neutrality is, and he doesn’t know what universities are for.

And a second addendum:

Also, Roth’s attempt to invoke alternatives to the neoliberal consensus is risible. Higher ed is so deep into neoliberalism they don’t even know what it is anymore, him included. (Search “neoliberal consensus” on WEIT for discussion.) His apparent alignment with “progressives” reveals his fondness for neoliberalism. As Adolph Reed wrote, antiracism is a neoliberal alternative to a left.

Greg’s reaction is stronger than my “meh,” he thinks that Roth is basically pushing nonsense. But both Greg and I agree that the article makes no new arguments, and also floats some bad ones.

A new procedure turns an alloy of nickel and titanium into a material as strong as steel but 20 times stretchier – and one application could be building planes with shape-shifting wings

A network of neurons in the brain seems to be larger in people with depression, which could change how we think about the condition's causes

Patchy garbage collection services result in more than 50 million tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste each year, and the majority of this is incinerated

After an mRNA vaccine for mpox achieved promising results in monkeys, researchers say it could have several advantages over existing vaccines – but cold storage requirements mean it will be hard to roll out in some hard-hit countries

With its particles in two places at once, quantum theory strains our common sense notions of how the universe should work. But one group of physicists says we can get reality back if we just redefine its foundations

Black holes are by their very nature, challenging to observe and difficult to spot. It’s usually observations of the accretion disk that reveal properties of the hidden black hole. There is often enough material within the accretion disk to make them shine so brightly that they can often be among the brightest objects in space. A wonderful image has been released which shows the highest resolution simulation of a black hole accretion disk ever created. 

The concept of black holes was first theorised by physicist John Mitchell in 1784 but it was Einstein’s theory of General Relativity that provided the necessary physics to understand them. The first indirect observation of a black hole came in 1971 of Cygnus X-1, the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. Since then, more candidates have been identified with the first image of a black hole being captured in 2019.

This X-ray image of Cygnus X-1 was taken by a balloon-borne telescope, the High Energy Replicated Optics (HERO) project. NASA image.

The anatomy of black holes is fascinating and one of the most useful to astronomers is the accretion disk. It’s a swirling disk of dust and gas that orbits the black hole slowly spiralling inward before being lost beyond the event horizon. As the material accelerates, it heats up due to gravitational forces and emits the energy which we can often detect from Earth in the form of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation. 

A team of researchers from the Tohoku University and the University of Utsunomiya have announced their breakthrough in understanding the accretion disks. Using the power of  supercomputers like RIKEN’s (Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution) “Fugaku” and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s “ATERUI II”, the team created the highest resolution simulations of an accretion disk to model the complex, almost chaotic nature of turbulence in the disks. 

Attempts have been made before but none of them have observed the inertial range largely due to the lack of computer power..until now. This recent study by the Japanese team has successfully reproduced the observed connections between large and small eddies in the accretion disk turbulence, the so called ‘inertial range.’ The results provide a significant step forward in understanding the physics of the environments and processes around black holes and how turbulence allows material to be transported toward the central black hole.

An artist’s illustration of a supermassive black hole (SMBH.) The SMBH in a distant galaxy expelled all the material in its accretion disk, clearing out a vast area. Image Credit: ESA

The team also discovered just why ions are selectively heated in accretion disks. Slow magnetosonic waves propagate and dominate the region causing the heating. These waves are low frequency compression waves that are driven by the interaction between a magnetic field and an electrically conductive material. The team showed that it was these waves that are thought to drive the heating process.

The study, which was published in Science Advances on 28 August, will help with the interpretation of data from telescopes like the Event Horizon telescope which is one of a number engaged in black hole studies. 

Source : Supercomputer Simulations Reveal the Nature of Turbulence in Black Hole Accretion Disks

The post Simulating the Accretion Disk Around a Black Hole appeared first on Universe Today.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “relaying“, came with the sentence, “it all makes perfect sense.” And it does, if you accept Mo’s tortured logic.  More than anyone else, Mo’s behavior defines the original meaning of “begging the question” (“assuming that which is to be proved”) rather than the current and debased meaning (‘raising the question”):

Two more installments, and we’re out of the bush. We’d spent the previous night at the Satara Rest Camp, with superb rooms in small thatched huts (photos tomorrow).  And we took off especially early because there were rumors of lions nearby: the cats who apparently killed the African buffalo whose remains I showed yesterday.

The first sign of lions were spotted hyenas in the road (their minds were squirming like a toad). I hadn’t seen a hyena crossing before, but it was a harbinger of felids to come:

Clearly they were after the carcass of the buffalo that had been killed by lions, and now was topped with a hungry vulture. But why were the hyenas staying away from the carcass? They should be all over it, nomming the rotting buffalo meat.

The reason was that the predators who killed it (and there may have been more) were very close nearby, resting and waiting to finish picking at the carcass. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and comrades, meet the first African lions (Panthera leo) that we saw in Kruger: two males. (Note that there is a small endangered population of the same species inhabiting the Gir Forest in India.)

As we watched, one male rolled over, exposing a distended tummy. He and the other lion had clearly eaten their fill of buffalo. Look at that fat boy!

The hyenas were there because they wanted a chance at the carcass, too, having clearly smelled or seen it, but they dared not approach it because of the lions. And so they stood around hungry, their gaze riveted on the carcass:

Fixated:

“I want some!”

But this one deigned to look at us (remember, we were in a car). I think hyenas should be in Isaac’s “ugly five” of animals, but they’re not. (I believe the Marabou stork is.)

As we drove along further, we spotted an ostrich. Is this a male or a female? (There is no third sex.). A male, of course, for male ostriches are black while females are brown:

A waterbuck  (Kobus ellipsiprymnus), recognizable from its shaggy coat, the horns (found only in males) and the white ring around its butt. Some Fun Waterbuck Facts from Wikipedia:

The waterbuck has a robust build. The shaggy coat is reddish brown to grey, and becomes progressively darker with age. Males are darker than females.  Though apparently thick, the hair is sparse on the coat. The hair on the neck is, however, long and shaggy. When sexually excited, the skin of the waterbuck secretes a greasy substance with the odour of musk, giving it the name “greasy kob”. The odor of this is so unpleasant that it repels predators. This secretion also assists in water-proofing the body when the animal dives into water. The facial features include a white muzzle and light eyebrows and lighter insides of the ears. A cream-coloured patch (called “bib”) is on the throat. Waterbuck are characterised by a long neck and short, strong, black legs. Females have two nipples. Preorbital glands, foot glands, and inguinal glands are absent.

The odiferous secretion apparently is detectable in the meat if it isn’t properly prepared, and so waterbuck aren’t eaten by humans as often as are other antelope.

Why don’t we do it in the road? Martim identified this bird as a Tawny Eagle (Aquila rapax), consuming its kill, which I couldn’t identify, in the road. Its feathery legs place it in the group of “booted eagles” (subfamily Aquilinae), but it’s not the named “booted eagle” found rarely in Kruger:

A rare spot in Kruger, a secretarybird (Sagittarius serpentarius).  It’s a ground-dwelling predator that doesn’t fly often—mostly at night when it finds a tree to roost in.

From Wikipedia:

The secretarybird is instantly recognizable as a very large bird with an eagle-like body on crane-like legs that give the bird a height of as much as 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in). The sexes are similar in appearance. Adults have a featherless red-orange face and predominantly grey plumage, with a flattened dark crest and black flight feathers and thighs.

.  . The neck is not especially long, and can only be lowered down to the intertarsal joint, so birds must stoop to reach down to the ground.

. . . Prey may consist of insects such as locusts, other grasshoppers, wasps, and beetles, but small vertebrates often form main biomass. Secretarybirds are known to hunt rodents, frogs, lizards, small tortoises, and birds such as warblers, larks, doves, small hornbills, and domestic chickens. They occasionally prey on larger mammals such as hedgehogs, mongooses, small felids such as cheetah cubs, striped polecats, young gazelles, and both young and full-grown hares.

And they kill almost entirely by stomping on their prey!:

The birds often flush prey from tall grass by stomping on the surrounding vegetation. Their crest feathers may raise during a hunt, which may serve to help scare the target and provide shade for the face. A bird will chase after prey with the wings spread and kill by striking with swift blows of the feet. Only with small prey items such as wasps will the bird use its bill to pick them directly. There are some reports that, when capturing snakes, a secretarybird will take flight with their prey and then drop them to their death, although this has not been verified. Even with larger prey, food is generally swallowed whole through the birds’ considerable gape. Occasionally, like other raptors, they will hold down a food item with their feet while tearing it apart with their bill.

You can’t see how long its legs are below because they’re hidden in the tall grass:

Here’s a photo of a secretarybird skeleton taken from Wikipedia, showing how weird its body is. No other raptor looks like this:

Ryan Somma, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A grey heron (Ardea cinerea), widely distributed in Africa, Asia, and Europe:

A yellow-billed stork, found only in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar. I believe I’ve shown this bird earlier:

A beautiful Cape Starling (Lamprotornis nitens), endemic to southern Africa. It also hangs around places like rest stops and people’s houses where it might get a tidbit. Because its blue iridescence is seen only in certain lights, it often looks black, and thus its beauty isn’t noticed. (This is also true of our common starling.)

A panoramic view of the bush from an overlook. Click to enlarge the photo:

And a non-panoramic view of the bush. Remember, its barren absence of green-ness is because now in Africa it’s the dry season (winter). In summer, I’m told, the entire landscape is lush and looks completely different.

Photo below: an elephant has used its tusks to carve off pieces of this tree’s bark. Why do the pachyderms do this? For several reasons:

Where nature reserves house elephants, Africa’s largest land mammal is often singled out as the leading cause of destruction of the large trees that they share the landscape with. Elephants break trees to get easier access to the leaves, roots and nutrients. They also remove the bark to get access to the nutritious cambium layer underneath. As bark often strips off in a circular manner around the trunk, this may lead to ring barking, causing the tree to die off as the cambium layer is responsible for transporting nutrients upwards from the soil.

Here’s a video of an elephant removing bark:

The underappreciated impala:

I love their faces. Along with male nyalas, they may be the most beautiful of all antelopes I’ve seen, but I haven’t seen the tiny ones like klipspringers and dik-diks, whose photos are ineffably cute:

An older male impala whose horns have started to curve:

Two Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) and a Nile Crocodile. The birds are endemic to sub-Saharan Africa but have been introduced widely. I first saw them in a bay beside the Amsterdam railway station!

A male elephant leaning its butt against a tree. Yes, they can kill trees this way, too.

Another waterbuck with the “toilet-seat” ring around its butt:

I always try the local food when I can. The rest camp had a restaurant featuring this kind of food, including “chicken, pap, and ‘sas’ [sauce]”, and I much wanted to try pap.  Below is my dinner, with a roasted leg and thigh. Pap, formally called “ugali“, is a type of cornmeal similar but not identical to grits, and can be served in many different ways.

In this meal pap serves the same purpose as grits: a largely flavorless but nutritious starch that serves as a substrate for sauce or other toppings.  I loved the stuff when the ‘sas’, a type of tomato sauce made with various ingredients I’ve forgotten, was poured over the pap.

I love grits, too, though many people can’t abide their tastelessness. But they’re the perfect accompaniment to a breakfast of fried eggs, country ham, and red-eyed gravy. And I scarfed this meal down, too. It turns out that Isaac had independently ordered the same thing. See below for uncooked pap:

Pap comes in these large bags, which I saw when food was being given to hungry African villagers. It looks like white flour, with a very fine texture. Nutrients and vitamins are often added to the pap to supplement the diet:

And some signs at the Satara Rest camp extolling those who protect rhinos:

A rhino ranger with his equipment, including two horns that have presumably been removed to render the rhino immune from poaching:

And praise for the “honorary rangers” who protect the rhinos (click to enlarge the photo):

Sadly, this was our last full night at Kruger. But we had most of the next day in the park, too, and got to see the white lions at last! Stay tuned for the last segment: Day 5.

I overestimated people’s ability to spot the white lion in yesterday’s post, probably because I knew where it is. It’s hunkered down in the grass with only its back showing, and the circle below shows you where it is:

A photo with the camera zoomed in to the max:

We’ll have more and better photos tomorrow. I took this intending it to be a “spot the” photo.  Soon we’ll have a double entendre photo: “spot the leopard.”

The Moon has been a source of interest of late largely due to the focus on getting humans back to the Moon. Future human explorers though will likely be there to stay in permanent lunar bases. Making this a reality means it is of vital importance to harvest materials from the Moon and water is just one of them. Recently, ESA Announced they have secured a ride to the Moon for their Prospect package in 2027. It consists of a drill and tiny laboratory that will hunt for water and other volatiles, paving the way for human exploration.

The existence of water on the Moon was confirmed in 2009 by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. It primarily exists in the form of ice in the permanently shadowed craters in the polar regions. It was a significant discovery because it meant that future human explorers might be able to harvest the water and use for drinking, oxygen and even rocket fuel. Accessing it remains however, challenging because the polar areas are a particularly harsh and challenging environment. 

Map displaying water content across the lunar surface, which was the focus of this study as researchers examined how the Earth’s magnetic field contributes to water on the Moon. As the data indicates, lunar water is primarily concentrated near the lunar poles. (Credit: Li, et al., 2023)

The search for, and analysis of the distribution of water on and under the lunar surface continues apace and one of the upcoming missions, the European Space Agency’s Prospect mission has just booked its ride to the Moon. In 2027, NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative will journey to the Moon and carry with it the Prospect probe that will include a drill and miniature laboratory. 

Prospect’s drill is called ‘ProSEED’ will drill into the lunar regolith (the lunar surface material) to a depth of one metre. At that depths it is expected to find temperatures less than -100 °C and so any water at that depth will be ice. It will collect samples at that depth to be transferred into the laboratory (named ProSPA) for analysis. ProSEED is capable of its own analysis work as it carries a multispectral imager (always makes me think of the Ghostbusters movie!) and a permittivity sensor. This allows the drill to measure capacitance of the material and detect volatile substances and the mineral make up of the landing site.

Once the material is transferred into ProSPA, samples will be placed into a multitude of sections like a carousel with multiple ovens, they will be sealed and heated to extract the cold trapped volatiles. It will measure the nature and concentration of volatiles from the gasses released as the samples are heated. It will also test processes for the extraction of the volatiles for future missions.

Simply understanding that water exists on the Moon is not sufficient for its future use to be planned. It is imperative that we understand just how much water is present and more importantly how accessible it is. If relatively accessible then it would be much more economical to extract the water from the Moon than to transport it there. Once it has been harvested, oxygen can be extracted to for human habitats or for rocket fuel and of course, can be used as water to drink. 

Image of the Multi-Purpose Habitat (MPH) being developed through a recent partnership between the Italian Space Agency and Thales Alenia Space. (Credit: Thales Alenia Space)

ProdSEED has already been going through extensive testing and trials in an environment similar to the surface of the Moon with low temperatures and low pressures and has proved capable of drilling into hard material to extract samples. A successful mission will not only lay the foundations for future human exploration but will also help us to get a more fuller understanding of the lunar environment.

Source : European drill and mini lab secure ride to the Moon

The post Europe is Sending a Drill to the Moon to Search for Water appeared first on Universe Today.

A newly spotted asteroid named 2024 RW1 burned up in the atmosphere over the South Pacific, creating a spectacular bright flash in the sky over the Philippines just hours after first being detected

A newly spotted asteroid dubbed CAQTDL2 will impact just east of the Philippines. There is no danger from the space rock, which will burn up in the atmosphere and could appear as bright as the moon in the night sky