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Projects to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by making the oceans less acidic are popping up all over the world – New Scientist visited one in New York City’s East river

One of the best bright star lunar occultations for 2024 occurs this week, as the Moon covers Spica.

Have you ever seen the Moon blot out a star? If the weather cooperates, early morning viewers across eastern North America have a chance to see a rare spectacle, as the crescent Moon occults (covers) the bright star Spica.

When to Watch

The event is centered on the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 27th at 12:16 Universal Time (UT)/7:16 AM EST/6:16 AM CST. The International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) has a list of ingress/egress times for select sites in the occultation footprint. The IOTA also has a more technical discussion of the event here. The Moon is a -13% illuminated, waning crescent (just four days from New) during the event, meaning that Spica will ingress on the daytime lit side, and egress along the nighttime dark limb of the Moon.

The occultation visibility footprint for Wednesday morning’s event. The solid lines denote where the event is visible under dark skies, blue is twilight, and broken lines means the event occurs under daytime skies. Credit: Occult 4.2. The ‘Wow Factor’

It’s a strange celestial scene: like during a total solar eclipse, you’re standing in the shadow of the Moon… but in this case, it’s ‘cast’ by +1st magnitude Spica… from 250 light-years away. Also known as Alpha Virginis as the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, Spica also holds the distinction of a contender for a nearby galactic supernova event in the far future.

Cloud cover percentage prospects for Wednesday morning. Credit: NOAA/NWS.

Occultations are interesting and important to astronomers, as they give us a chance to analyze both objects involved. In the case of the star, we might notice the teeny angular diameter as it winks out, perhaps briefly revealing a faint secondary companion. In the case of Spica, its apparent size is 0.906 milliarcseconds, and is a spectroscopic binary with a close companion star in a close four day orbit.

Going to the Grazeline

An occultation can also help to map out the jagged limb or profile of the Moon. This works as the star blinks in and out of view. Imagine the star playing peek-a-boo with mountain peaks, shining down lunar valleys. The southern grazeline to see such a spectacle Wednesday morning crosses Texas, New Mexico and Arizona and is not to be missed.

The grazeline limit across the southwestern U.S. Credit: IOTA The ‘Spica Cycle’

Spica is one of the four bright stars that lies along the path of the Moon in the current epoch. The other three are Aldebaran, Regulus and Antares. Like eclipses, these occur in cycles. The Moon covers the star once per every 29.5 day synodic lunation. This continues until the track of the Moon carries it slowly away. In 2024 into 2025, the Moon is also occulting Antares as well. Also, like eclipses, the track for occultations moves 120 degrees west in longitude from one event to the next.

Observing and Imaging

Spica is bright enough to track near the Moon right up into the bright dawn, just before sunrise. The event also lends itself well to video capture. You’ll be able to easily see Spica disappear and reappear using binoculars… or even with just the unaided eye. The star will be much more prominent along the dark nighttime limb of the Moon.

Faint, but there… Spica near the daytime Moon. Credit: Dave Dickinson.

In a slow-moving Universe, occultations give us a chance to see change occurring in a split second. Don’t miss ‘The Great American Occultation,’ as Spica disappears behind the Moon Wednesday morning, and the celestial drama of the sky above us continues.

The post Watch the Crescent Moon Occult Spica for North America Early Wednesday Morning appeared first on Universe Today.

Every year, NASA releases a detailed simulation of the Moon that shows how it will change through the year. They produce a couple of versions that show how it appears from the northern and southern hemisphere and others that highlight different features. Not only does it show the phases through the year but it also shows the change in size as its completes its orbit. The change in apparent size of the Moon is a result of its elliptical orbit so that it can appear up to 30% brighter. 

The Moon is Earth’s only permanent natural satellite. It has captivated humans for thousands of as it orbits at an average distance of 384,400 kilometres. It plays a key role in shaping our tides through its gravitational pull. The lunar surface is a desolate, rocky world with colossal mountains, and plains known as maria.  It has no atmosphere and so experiences extreme temperature shifts, from intense solar heating in the day to freezing cold at night. Over the centuries, it has inspired countless myths and driven exploration that has culminated in the Apollo missions and soon Artemis. 

Global map of the Moon, as seen from the Clementine mission, showing the lunar near- and farside. If we’re going back to the Moon, we’ll need a Lunar GPS. Credit: NASA.

One of the most well known aspects of the Moon are the lunar phases. The phases of the Moon represent its motion around the Earth and its changing appearance when viewed from Earth. The cycle lasts about 29.5 days and is known as a lunar month. It begins with a new moon when the Moon lies approximately between Earth and the Sun and appears nearly invisible as we look at the night time hemisphere. 

The bright sunlit crescent contrasts with the darker lighting of twice-reflected light supplied by sunlight reflecting off our own planet. Credit: Bob King

As the cycle continues the crescent appears, getting larger and larger marking the waxing crescent phase. Eventually it leads to a first quarter phase when half of the Moon appears illuminated. It increases through the waxing gibbous phase before reaching full moon. The cycle then reverses through the waning phases to new moon again. 

The phases appear nicely in the video from NASA but what is also apparent is the gentle rocking of the Moon. Known as libration, it means we get to see slightly more than 50% of the lunar surface, 59% over time. The phenomenon occurs due to the axial tilt of the Moon and its elliptical orbit. It can be categorised as three different types; longitudinal (caused by changes in Moon’s orbital speed,) latitudinal (caused by tilt in the Moon’s axis) and diurnal (caused by Earth’s rotation and a slight shift in position of observer.)

The video simulation produced by NASA has been created from images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO.) It has been in orbit since the summer of 2009 and has produced images of unprecedented quality. Using advanced instruments, it has mapped the surface in high detail, revealing detailed topography, temperature, and geological maps. It has identified landing sites, especially near the poles, where water ice may exist, and has captured images of some of the Apollo landing sites.

Artist’s rendering of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in orbit. Credit: ASU/LROC

The animation shows the phases, and libration at hourly intervals until the end of 2025. One month is compressed down into about 24 seconds to give a comprehensive view of the year ahead.

Source : NASA Moon Animation

The post NASA Releases its Moon Phases Animation for 2025 appeared first on Universe Today.

Before the decade is out, as part of the Artemis Program, NASA plans to send astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. To realize this goal, they have contracted with commercial space industries to develop all the necessary components. This includes the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft that will take the Artemis astronauts to the Moon. There’s also the Lunar Gateway and the Artemis Base Camp, the infrastructure that will facilitate regular missions to the Moon after 2028.

In between, NASA has also partnered with companies to develop the Human Landing Systems (HLS) that will transport the Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface and back. This includes the Starship HLS SpaceX is currently developing for NASA, which will rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit and allow the Artemis III astronauts to land on the Moon (which will take place no sooner than September 2026). In a series of newly-updated images, SpaceX has provided artistic renders of what key moments in this mission will look like.

Artist’s rendering of the Starship tanker transferring propellant to a Starship depot in orbit. Credit: SpaceX

The renderings include a Starship tanker docking with a Starship propellant depot in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), shown above. These elements are crucial to SpaceX’s long-term plans to send payload and crews to the Moon and Mars, which require that the Starship refuel in orbit so that it can make a trans-lunar injection (TLO) or trans-Mars injection (TMI). For the Artemis missions, this will allow the Starship HLS to reach lunar orbit, where it will rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft. Once there, the Orion will dock with the Starship HLS (shown below), and two Artemis crew members will transfer to the HLS.

The Orion spacecraft docking with the Starship HLS in lunar orbit. Credit: SpaceX

At this juncture, the two astronauts will take the Starship HLS to land near the Moon’s southern polar region (shown below). Similar to how the Starship has conducted many landings here on Earth, this will consist of the spacecraft firing two of its Raptor engines to make a powered descent (shown below). Once the spacecraft safely lands on the Moon (shown at top), the two astronauts will descend to the surface using the spacecraft’s elevator (shown at bottom) and spend approximately a week exploring the South Pole-Aitken Basin, collecting samples, performing science experiments, and observing the Moon’s environment.

Artist’s rendering of the Starship HLS making a braking burn to land on the Moon. Credit: SpaceX

This mission will help pave the way towards creating a lunar settlement in the area, taking advantage of the abundant water ice observed in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) – i.e., the many craters that dot the Moon’s south pole. While these surface operations take place, the other Artemis crew will await them in orbit. The Starship HLS and its two crewmembers will then launch into lunar orbit and rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft one last time. After returning to the Orion, the entire crew will return home, leaving the Starship HLS in orbit.

Two Artemis III astronauts using the Starship HLS elevator to descend to the surface. Credit: SpaceX

In preparation for the Artemis III mission, SpaceX will perform an uncrewed landing demonstration mission on the Moon. NASA is also working with SpaceX to further develop the HLS to meet the extended requirements for the Artemis IV mission, which is scheduled to launch no sooner than September 2028. This mission will see a crew rendezvous with the Artemis Gateway, which will be launched ahead of time, then land on the lunar surface and conduct extensive science operations. This will include field geology experiments, deploying instruments, and collecting more samples.

Further Reading: NASA

The post NASA, SpaceX Illustrate Key Moments of Artemis Lunar Lander Mission appeared first on Universe Today.

Gene editing in the womb could be more effective than the same treatment after birth, as it is easier to deliver the necessary genetic machinery to fetal cells

A reluctant deal finalised at the COP29 climate summit isn't generous enough to encourage nations to submit more ambitious climate plans, delegates warn

Enigmatic phenomena called fast radio bursts might be caused by interstellar objects colliding with highly magnetised neutron stars

President-Elect Donald Trump has now announced most of picks to lead critical federal health agencies. These picks predictably prioritize grift, quackery, and antivax ideology.

The post Antivaxxers, grifters, and quacks: RFK Jr.’s MAHA takes over federal health agencies first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The Arecibo Message, transmitted on November 16th, 1974, from the Arecibo Observatory, was humanity’s first true attempt at Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). The message was a simple pictorial signal in binary code composed by famed astronomer and SETI researcher Frank Drake (inventor of the Drake Equation) with the assistance of Sagan and other prominent astronomers. The message was and was aimed toward Messier 13 (NGC 6205 or “The Great Hercules Cluster”), a globular star cluster located about 25,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Hercules.

In 2018, in preparation for the 45th anniversary of the historic broadcast, the Arecibo Message Global Challenge was launched. Student teams were tasked with designing a new message that could be sent to space, and by August 2020, the Boriken Voyagers team was recognized as the winner of the competition. Unfortunately, the Observatory collapsed on December 1st, 2020, and the message was never sent. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Arecibo Message, the Boriken Voyagers have shared “The Last Arecibo Message.”

The Boriken Voyagers team consists of eight students from the University of Arecibo Mayagüez Campus (RUM) and the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. Boriken is the name for Puerto Rico in the language of the Indigenous Taino/Arawakan people. The group is led by Kelby D. Palencia-Torres, a student at RUM and PHL who specializes in the study of the gas and dust surrounding galactic disks – aka. the Circumgalactic Medium.

The Original Message

The Arecibo Message was organized by Drake in the early 1970s as the first campaign to compose a message destined for space. The effort relied on Arecibo’s megawatt transmitter attached to its 305-meter (1000-foot) antenna to send a 20-gigawatt omnidirectional broadcast. The M13 cluster was selected because of the number of stars (about 300,000) and the cluster’s age (11.65 billion years). This made it seem a likely place to host an extraterrestrial civilization. The message was not intended as an invitation to talk nearly as much as a demonstration of human technological capabilities and scientific knowledge.

The message was transmitted on November 16th, 1974, at a frequency of 2380 MHz and an effective bandwidth of 10 Hz. The message was transmitted at a frequency-shifting rate of 10 bits per second and lasted less than three minutes. It consisted of a 1679-binary digit picture (210 bytes) – the product of two prime numbers – arranged rectangularly into 73 lines of 23 characters per line (also prime numbers). The use of prime numbers was deliberate since mathematics is considered the only “universal language” and easier for an alien civilization to decode.

They conveyed a series of scientific, geographical, biological, and astronomical information in different colors. These included:

• A counting scheme of 1 to 10 (white)
• The atomic numbers for hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which make up DNA (purple)
• The chemical formula of the four purines and pyrimidine bases that make up DNA (green)
• An image of the DNA double helix and an estimate of the number of nucleotides (blue and white, respectively)
• A stick figure of a human being (red), our average dimensions (blue/white), and the human population of Earth (white)
• A depiction of the Solar System, indicating that the message is coming from the third planet (yellow)
• A schematic of the Arecibo Observatory and its dimensions (purple/white and blue)

Fifty years after the Arecibo Message was sent, its legacy lives on. Universe Today recently caught up with the Boriken Voyagers to learn more about the original message and their updated version. The team members included Kelby D. Palencia-Torres, Cesar F. Quinones-Martinez, Javier A. Garcia Sepulveda, Luis R. Rivera Gabriel, Lizmarie Mateo Roubert, German Vazquez Perez, and Abel Mendez.

Q: Why does the Arecibo Message endure 50 years later?

Germán Vázquez Pérez: “Even 50 years later, and despite the loss of the Arecibo Observatory, the Arecibo Message continues its journey through the vastness of space, waiting to be intercepted by potential civilizations. It’s a bittersweet feeling. The message remains an example of what humanity can achieve, but we no longer possess the same capability to receive a potential reply or transmit another message with such power and significance. At least for the moment.”

Kelby Palencia-Torres: “The significance of the Message is that it represents humanity, and it is the first intentional message of our existence in the cosmos. The message compels curiosity, and it’s our first step to answering the old question if we are alone in the universe.”

Lizmarie Mateo Roubert: “The Arecibo Message can represent the hope people working in the scientific community have in answering questions about the Universe and all the efforts they have put in throughout the years.”

Cesar Quinones-Martinez: “The Arecibo Message has fascinated many throughout the decades, bringing a lot of debate as to whether or not we should actively contact other extraterrestrial civilizations. Arecibo and the Arecibo Message for Puerto Rico represent a collective curiosity in space exploration, as for many students on the island, visiting Arecibo becomes a key motivator to beginning their STEAM journey. It represents a bold step into the unknown, where our curiosity takes us to make new discoveries. “

Q: How has the field of SETI/METI changed since?

Cesar Quinones-Martinez: “The SETI and METI initiatives both have seen improvements to their capabilities as technology improves. Bigger, more sensitive detectors bring us closer to receiving any artificial signal, while better transmitters could allow for future messages that can better retain their information while passing through gas clouds or other mediums. While the Arecibo Message was designed to showcase Arecibo’s capabilities, current METI projects are more rigorous with what they want to communicate. We do not know the intentions of the recipient of our message, and measures must be taken to be direct with what we say.”

Kelby Palencia-Torres: “With METI, we are more cautious with the content included in the messages. Some sci-fi series like the ‘3 Body Problem’ play a negative role in how METI is perceived outside the scientific community.”

Q: What was it like to compete in the Arecibo Message Global Challenge?

Kelby Palencia-Torres: “The New Arecibo Message Global Challenge was an intriguing and daring competition. To partake and enlist in the challenge, one had to solve a riddle. After this first stage of the challenge, we had to solve a puzzle where the situation was similar to that of the movie Contact. We had to decode a message and identify the location of said message. Once proven to solve the puzzle, we passed to the last stage, where we had to develop the New Arecibo Message. As part of the challenge of the message, we had to consider the energy used to produce the signal and transmit it, choose a location visible to the Arecibo Telescope, and the hardest part … fully create the content of the message itself.”

Lizmarie Mateo Roubert: “At the time, this was truly the most difficult part of the challenge we had encountered so far. Back in 2018, most of us were just beginning our undergraduate degrees and some of the information we needed to keep in mind whenever we were to develop a message in a way that could be encoded eventually proved to be a bit of a struggle. With the help of other professionals in the field and professors on our university campus, we were then able to fully understand how to properly develop this message and the different conditions and capabilities we had to keep in mind so the message could be successfully sent and deciphered.”

Luis Rivera: ‘It proved to be a space for great professional and personal growth for me. The difficulty behind solving the problems and creating something new that t underscored the need for teamwork in all aspects of science, and helped me grow closer to people I call my friends today.’ 

Cesar Quinones-Martinez: ‘The Arecibo global Competition consisted of 3 stages to highlight important stages of making the message: interpretation, decoding a received message, and finally writing our New Arecibo Message. The first stage showed how clever message design can contain a lot of information about the subject material. Imagine a pixelated image of a human sent at a certain frequency. How do you figure out the human’s average height? The key is the frequency, which corresponds to a specific wavelength so that by counting the pixels, you can approximately obtain the height.

“However, is that all the information you can extract from the image? Knowing the size of the pixels, you can figure out the ratio of the head to the arms, legs, and abdomen, communicating more about humans without added complexity. The second stage gave us a scenario with a received message that we needed to decode. The team regularly pitched different ideas on what aspects of the signal were important to decode, which was useful to the design of the new Arecibo Message in the final stage. The competition was a great exercise in thinking outside the box and looking at different perspectives, showing the nuance of communicating efficiently when the turnaround time can be centuries.’

Aerial view of the damage to the Arecibo Observatory following the collapse of the telescope platform on December 1st, 2020. Photo courtesy of Deborah Martorell. The Last Arecibo Message

Lizmarie Mateo Roubert: “The content of the Last Arecibo Message contains information about humanity’s knowledge of mathematics, science, and astronomy. The first two sections include the numbers from 1 to 10 and the arithmetic symbols including the equal sign. We included mathematical and physical constants such as pi, the Euler constant, the speed of light, the Planck constant, and the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. Adding these constants in our message helps us with a variety of assumptions regarding the recipient’s understanding of the universe..” 

Germán Vázquez: “We also wanted to share astronomical aspects of our galaxy, solar system, and earth-moon system to pinpoint our location in the universe. The image of the Milky Way Galaxy is presented (up to scale) with the distance from the Galactic center to our solar system.

“The Arecibo Message, sent in 1974, served as a direct inspiration for the next section of our message, our Solar System. However, we wanted to enhance some aspects to make it more descriptive and accurate. We included our Moon and Saturn’s rings, enhanced the sizes of the gas giants, and excluded Pluto, which is now considered a dwarf planet.

“The Earth-Moon system was also implemented in our message, considering the impact our natural satellite has had in shaping humanity, influencing our calendars, producing ocean tides, and understanding celestial mechanics. Lastly, our depiction of a human being, the average height, and the population in 2020 were also included, alluding to the original message.”

Kelby Palencia-Torres: “The purpose of the message is to continue the legacy of the Arecibo Observatory and the Original message by Frank Drake. Our message sums up humanity’s curiosity and wanting to explore the universe together.”

Q: “What significance could this have for the ongoing debate concerning METI?“

Kelby Palencia-Torres: “The message we constructed for the Arecibo Message Global Challenge was to commemorate and demonstrate the importance the original had. Currently, our message does not have plans to be transmitted. But it showcases the innate curiosity and feelings we have to see if we are alone. Our message will go to the list of messages built with METI purposes and show the interest in taking the first step in communicating with other intelligence.

“One of the assumptions we use in our paper can also back up METI since other civilizations with similar capabilities to our civilization will face the same constraints as SETI. Whoever listens will need resources, energy, and telescope time to look for techno signatures in their sky. Assuming that other civilizations have a greater technological feat than us, it would mean giving access to resources and a really big and sensitive radio telescope to a being from this advanced civilization to search for techno signatures, and it all would be reduced to be lucky enough to be looking at the right moment and time to receive a one time signal that is not continuous such like the original Arecibo message or the wow signal.”

Further Reading: arXiv

The post The Last Arecibo Message Celebrates the Observatory and One of its Greatest Accomplishments appeared first on Universe Today.

Despite 90 years of research, the nature and influence of Dark Matter continue to elude astronomers and cosmologists. First proposed in the 1960s to explain the rotational curves of galaxies, this invisible mass does not interact with normal matter (except through gravity) and accounts for 85% of the total mass in the Universe. It is also a vital component in the most widely accepted cosmological model of the Universe, the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. However, according to new research, the hunt for DM could be over as soon as a nearby star goes supernova.

Currently, the axion is considered the most likely candidate for DM, a hypothetical low-mass particle proposed in the 1970s to resolve problems in quantum theory. There has also been considerable research into how astronomers could detect axions by observing neutron stars and objects with powerful magnetic fields. In a recent study supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, a team of astrophysicists at the University of California Berkeley argued that axions could be discovered within seconds of detecting gamma rays from a nearby supernova explosion.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics (BCTP) and a member of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (LBNL) Theoretical Physics Group. The paper that describes their findings was published on November 19th in the journal Physical Review Letters. As they argue, axions would be produced in copious quantities during the first 10 seconds after a massive star undergoes core collapse and becomes a neutron star. These axions would then escape and be transformed into high-energy gamma rays in the star’s intense magnetic field.

For decades, the search for Dark Matter focused on MAssive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). When they failed to materialize, physicists began to consider Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) as the most likely candidate but also failed to find anything tangible. This led to axions becoming the most widely accepted candidate, an elementary particle that fits within the Standard Model of Particle Physics and resolves several unresolved questions in Quantum Mechanics – including a Theory of Everything (ToE).

The strongest candidate for axions is the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axion, which theoretically interacts with all matter, though weakly. As previous research has shown, axions will occasionally turn into photons in the presence of a strong magnetic field that can be detected. However, such detections would be very challenging since it would require that the supernova be nearby (within the Milky Way or one of its satellite galaxies). In addition, observable supernovae are rare, occurring once every few decades.

The last time astronomers observed this phenomenon was in 1987 when a Type II supernova (SN1987A) appeared suddenly in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), roughly 168,000 light-years from Earth. At the time, NASA’s Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) was observing the LMC but wasn’t sensitive enough to detect the predicted intensity of gamma rays. Benjamin Safdi, a UC Berkeley associate professor of physics and senior author of a paper, explained in a recent UC Berkeley News statement:

“If we were to see a supernova, like supernova 1987A, with a modern gamma-ray telescope, we would be able to detect or rule out this QCD axion, this most interesting axion, across much of its parameter space — essentially the entire parameter space that cannot be probed in the laboratory, and much of the parameter space that can be probed in the laboratory, too. And it would all happen within 10 seconds.”

Illustration of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope at work. Credit: NASA GSFC

Through a series of supercomputer simulations that used SN1987A to constrain higher mass axions, Safdi and his colleagues determined that Type II supernovae simultaneously produce bursts of gamma rays and neutrinos. They further noted that the gamma rays produced would depend on the axions’ mass and only last 10 seconds after the neutron star forms. After that, the production rate would drop dramatically. This means a gamma-ray space telescope must be pointed toward the supernova at precisely the right time.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is currently the only observatory capable of detecting cosmic gamma-ray sources. Based on its field of view, scientists estimate that Fermi would have about a one-in-ten chance of spotting a supernova. To that end, the team proposes that we create a next-generation gamma-ray telescope known as the GALactic AXion Instrument for Supernova (GALAXIS). Said Safdi:

“This has really led us to thinking about neutron stars as optimal targets for searching for axions as axion laboratories. Neutron stars have a lot of things going for them. They are extremely hot objects. They also host very strong magnetic fields. The strongest magnetic fields in our universe are found around neutron stars, such as magnetars, which have magnetic fields tens of billions of times stronger than anything we can build in the laboratory. That helps convert these axions into observable signals.”

As they note, a single detection of gamma rays would pinpoint the mass of an axion over a huge range of theoretical masses and allow for laboratory experiments to refocus their efforts on confirming this mass. Even a lack of detection would mean that scientists could eliminate a large range of potential masses for the axion, which would narrow the search for Dark Matter considerably. In the meantime, Safdi and his colleagues hope the Fermi telescope will catch a lucky break.

“The best-case scenario for axions is Fermi catches a supernova,” he added. “It’s just that the chance of that is small. But if Fermi saw it, we’d be able to measure its mass. We’d be able to measure its interaction strength. We’d be able to determine everything we need to know about the axion and incredibly confident in the signal because there’s no ordinary matter which could create such an event.”

Further Reading: UC Berkeley News, Physical Review Letters

The post A Nearby Supernova Could Finally Reveal Mark Matter appeared first on Universe Today.

I presume that the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports is a real, peer-reviewed journal rather than a complete fake, as this paper is listed in PubMed Central and the journal in the University of Chicago online journals. You can see the paper by clicking on the weird title below, or download the pdf here; if the paper disappears just ask me for it.

I suspect that this was written by AI given the quote below, which sounds stilted, but perhaps the authors, from France and Germany respectively, may just write English that way. Either way, you be the judge.

It is not an April fool joke as it was published in September, and although the introduction (below) mentions that the Saturnians, who came from Earth, introduced both the terrestrial systems of private and public healthcare, my notion that this paper would really contrast them here and take a position was dispelled.

The references and authors’ locations

The first part of the three-page letter:

We practice Neurosurgery on SATURN in a country called « ILLUSIONLAND ». 60 million homo sapiens sapiens who live in this country migrated 30 years ago from the Earth. According to anatomical data, there is no difference between terrestrial and Saturnian homo sapiens sapiens. Modern medical and surgical technology has also been imported from Earth. The Saturnians of earthling descent of the earth-lings have roughly kept the same way of life, society, habits, etc. they inherited from their earthly ancestors.

In our country, ILLUSIONLAND we have two health systems. Private independent doctors and government-employed doctors who practice in hospitals. We present two clinical cases of the practice of Neurosurgery on SATURN. The main difference between the cases on Saturn with clinical cases on Earth is that on Sa-turn, both doctors’ and patients’ clinical cases are simultaneously presented.

1.1. Saturnian clinical case 1 1.1.1. First part

Doctor D.P. 52 terrestrial-year-old male (Saturnian 1 year 10 months old), obtained his doctoral degree of specialization at the age of 29 and was recognized as the second for its promotion in Medical School. As a young neurosurgeon, he is as active as when he was a resident and passed his fellowship. He operates every day, visits many patients during the day, and stays late at the hospital. He always offers to cover his colleagues’ on-call shifts if they have difficulties. He holds three master’s degrees and a Ph.D. He writes medical papers. He attends different congresses and seminars. As an example, he takes the Saturnian rocket to participate in the annual conference of the world Saturnian Federation of Neurosurgeons which takes place in “Utopia” the country located 200,000 km from his workplace. He is curious and wants to know everything about everything in his profession, especially about new surgical techniques. He asks his hierarchy about their experiences. He wants to participate in all the surgeries. In general, he stays in the hospital until 10 p.m. To have time to read an article or two, he quickly grabs a sandwich for lunch instead of going to the canteen. At home, even in bed, he thinks of cases he has seen during the day (Saturnian day which lasts only 10 h 30). When his secretary or a colleague from the emergency room calls him for a patient, he says: “Add them to my patient’s list. I’ll see them” so the consultation which officially lasts 4 h lasted 6 h sometimes 7 h. His colleagues know that they can count on him to take a night’s call or take care of an additional patient because he does this with joy.

Today, 23 years after (10 Saturnian months) Professor D.P. realizes that he is married and has two children, but he knows nothing about them. He does not even remember any details of his marriage. He just remembers that reading medical papers on his own was the best moment of his rare holidays with his wife. Today, he realized progressively that surgery makes him more tired, physically, both mentally. Today, unlike 20 years ago, when there is a new addition to the consultation list, he grumbles and answers the secretary with this leitmotif: “Is it really urgent? Is it a matter of neurosurgery? or as usual the guy has boo-boos and he comes to piss us off!”

Any explanations from readers?

Addendum by Greg Mayer

The paper has already drawn attention on PubPeer. The following query was posted:

Could the authors and the journal explain the rationale behind the publication of this ‘case study’?

The authors replied, beginning with

This paper possesses a symbolic nature.

and went on from there, including the statement that “science” encompasses “human sciences”, which are not restricted to

the study of molecules, statistical figures, false negatives, false positives, clinical trials, biological aspects, or specific p-values such as 0.003, as well as percentages, meta-analyses, or observations made under a microscope.

Another commenter, tongue firmly in cheek, applauds that

At least informed consent was obtained from all participants. No violations of research ethics on Saturn.

The authors, in a second reply, say their paper focuses on situations that are “fictitious.” You can’t make this stuff up, folks!

I think the paper is neither a fake (intended to get the authors publication credit for nonsense), nor a hoax (seeing what nonsense can get published), nor a parody (making fun of someone else’s nonsense by mimicking it). Rather, it is akin to science fiction, using an imaginary situation to explore real world situations. A case report journal, though, is certainly an odd place for such fiction!

This new course, to be offered next spring at MIT, was first singled out on The Babbling Beaver site, which calls attention to “fake news” at the university that usually turns out, as in this case, to be real news.  The Beaver said this about the course.

Feminist theory, disability justice, critical race theory, queer theory, anti-colonial thought, and trans liberation movements provide the foundation for a new approach to medical education now being taught at MIT.

A proselytizing professor dispatched from Harvard is on a mission to spread wokeism to all corners of STEM. Unable to penetrate MIT’s School of Science or Engineering, the Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality program hosted by MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts and Socialist Scientism let him in.

Now students can learn how Marxist, psychoanalytic, and anarchist frameworks can inform debates in bioethics, public health, and environmental justice.

Why is racism so prevalent in hospitals and other health care settings? What unique challenges do trans and gender-diverse youth face in seeking medical care as a result of recent transphobic laws and policies? How are community organizers advocating for the end of medical neglect, abuse, and torture in prisons and migrant detention facilities? This largely discussion-based course will explore these questions and many others.

Special attention is paid to the structuring force of anti-Blackness in various clinical and research settings, the development and racialization of transgender medicine, and what it means to view state violence as an issue in public health and the medical humanities.

The Beaver apologizes for his inability to make this funny rather than alarming, and confesses to copy-pasting most of the above directly from the course description.

Yep, the course description can be seen by clicking on the screenshot below:

I’ve put in the course description all aspects of “progressivism” that have colonized this course:

SPRING 2025, Thursdays, 5:00-8:00PM; MEETS AT MIT

Why is racism so prevalent in hospitals and other health care settings? What unique challenges do trans and gender-diverse youth face in seeking medical care as a result of recent transphobic laws and policies? How are community organizers advocating for the end of medical neglect, abuse, and torture in prisons and migrant detention facilities? In this largely discussion-based course we explore these questions and many others. Social approaches to medicine and public health challenge and expand contemporary debates in the medical humanities by centering issues of gender, race, and sexuality.  This class provides an overview of the theoretical landscape and social movements that ground recent developments in the field. In particular, the course engages feminist theory, disability justice movements, critical race theory, queer theory, anti-colonial thought, and trans liberation movements. The seminar will also explore how debates around race, gender, and medicine are conceptualized in Latin America and Africa. This includes an overview of racism and religion in Brazilian gynecological spaces, as well as how legal theorists from Kenya and Uganda critique pertinent public health issues like vaccine nationalism and the coloniality of gender.  Special attention is paid to the structuring force of anti-Blackness in various clinical and research settings, the development and racialization of transgender medicine, and what it means to view state violence as an issue in public health and the medical humanities.

You already know from the description that the course is designed to inculcate students with “progressive” viewpoints rather than let them think for themselves.  Descriptions like “transphobic laws and policies”, “critical race theory”, “vaccine nationalism”, and so on are all issues that should be debated, not presented as realities. One would think that such a piece of propaganda would be limited to the humanities and social sciences, and indeed, it’s offered in the “Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality” program hosted by MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts and Socialist Sciences.  But have no doubts: there are courses like this in science departments and medical schools as well. While some of the social issues mentioned above do need fixing, the purpose of college is supposed to be education, not fixing social problems identified by a particular ideology.

And the professor’s description includes this (my bolding):

Roberto Sirvent, JD, PhD is a political theorist who studies race, law, and social movements. He also works at the intersection of ethics, philosophy of religion, and science and technology studies (STS). Roberto’s research considers how Marxist, psychoanalytic, and anarchist frameworks can inform debates in bioethics, public health, and environmental justice. Central to his scholarly interests are the ways that colonialism, imperialism, and US militarism fuel various health injustices and ecological crises around the globe. Roberto is especially interested in helping bioethics professionals find creative ways to engage the theoretical work of disability justice advocates, queer and trans liberation movements, Black Studies scholars, mutual aid networks, and anti-colonial revolutionary struggles.

Roberto’s current research examines the prevalence of medical neglect, abuse, and torture in prisons and migrant detention centers. He is also working on a community resource guide exploring the intersection of education policy, critical pedagogy, and students’ mental health, as well as a study that draws on theories of libidinal economy and the “psychopolitics of race” to address recent controversies in sports and bioethics. Some of Roberto’s most recent scholarship invites students of comics and graphic medicine to consider how narratives of slave revolts and prison rebellions contribute to Black liberation struggles for health justice. His work in clinical ethics explores how anti-Black racism functions in Latinx and Latin American communities and the impact it has on everyday clinical encounters between patients, doctors, and other medical professionals.

“Latinx”: a term that virtually no Latinos use or want to use.

I could write more about this course and what its offering connotes about modern America, but there are so many of these these things that I don’t want to wear out my precious neurons thinking about them. Just be aware that the kids who take this stuff are going to leave MIT spreading their brainwashed mindset through the greater society.

h/t: Anna

At the CSICon meetings in Las Vegas this November, I gave a half-hour talk on the two aspects of evolutionary biology that have been most deeply misrepresented by ideologues: sex and race. “Progressives” maintain that sex is not binary but a spectrum, and also that “race and ethnicity are social constructs, without scientific or biological meaning” (that last bit is a quote from the Journal of the American Medical Association‘s guidelines for reporting race and ethnicity in medical and science journals).  Below is the title slide of my talk, much of which was based on my paper with Luana Maroja on the ideological subversion of biology, but I talked only about the two most controversial claims in evolutionary biology that have been attacked by ideologues (the paper discusses six claims):

On the day before my talk, Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale and editor of  Science-Based Medicine, gave a talk about “When Skeptics Disagree,” but, as he said in a later post on his Neurologica blog,

I spent most of the talk, however, discussing the issue of biological sex in humans, which I perceive as the currently most controversial topic within skepticism. My goal was to explore where it is we actually disagree.

He strongly attacked the notion of a sex binary, saying that sex is multidimensional and that in the end, is “biological” in the sense that some people’s brains are wired up in such a way that their self-image doesn’t comport with either their natal sex or with the “gender role” typical of their natal sex.  In other words, he sees sex in humans (he said nothing about other animals or plants) as something that’s complex, but largely comes down to how an individual feels about their sex. Presumably if you’re born a male with typical male primary and secondary sex traits, but think you’re a woman, then you are a woman. (This of course plays into the gender-activist notion that “a transwoman is a woman” and “a transman is a man”.)

The audience ate it up, giving Novella a standing ovation. [UPDATE:  A reader says that she was in the back of the room during CSICON and while there were some who gave Novella’s talk a standing ovation, it was a relatively small group of conferees who did so. Most people stayed seated and offered polite applause as they would for any speaker. I would note that I was seated in front and people around me were standing up, but I didn’t survey the room.]

That is when I realized that, in fact, many skeptics at the conference, as well as Novella himself, have gotten it wrong, and have surrendered to the misguided gender-activist notions that, I think, make their bearers feel empathic towards those with gender dysphoria. But the gametic definition of sex wasn’t constructed to placate emotions (after all, it was devised about 100 years ago based on observation), and a scientific definition adopted because it’s universal, has great utility, aids in our understanding of nature (sexual selection, to give one example), and is maximally parsimonious. The gamete-based biological definition has no bearing on the treatment of or moral and legal rights of non-binary of transsexual people.  To think otherwise is to engage in what I call the “reverse naturalistic fallacy”—that nature must conform to what we consider ideologically and morally proper. Increasingly, people are trying to force biological reality into the Procrustean bed of their ideology.

I realized that I had to revise my bit on sex for the next day’s talk, and so I did, adding some bits to refute Novella’s “multidimensional/brain-centered” view of sex. I then wrote a post on this site about it, and Novella responded on his own blog (both are linked in the second paragraph below the headline).  At that point I didn’t want to engage any further, and ignored a few emails saying that I must respond to Novella. But both of our talks with eventually be posted on YouTube, and you can read our takes (mine is short) at the links below.

However, reader Jon Guy decided to write his own take on our conflicting talks, and put it on his own website: The Curious Case of Science. You can read it by clicking on the headline below, and I direct you towards his response, which was too long to publish on this site.  If you’re interested in the definition of biological sex, by all means read it:

Two quotes that I’ve indented:

This year, I attended the annual CSICon conference, hosted by the wonderful skeptical organization Center for Inquiry. Among the star-filled lineup of amazing speakers were Professor Jerry Coyne and Dr Steven Novella, who both gave talks about the science of biological sex.

Following CSICon, both Novella and Coyne wrote blogposts about the others’ talk, and I decided to make a short Facebook post giving my own brief opinion about the matter. It didn’t take long before Dr Novella appeared on my post to argue the issue, and what followed was a cascade of scientific blunders, logical fallacies, and a critical thinking deficit that one wouldn’t normally expect to see from such an esteemed member of the skeptical community.

Why the “binary” position is derived: it’s ideology, Jake!:

. . . . Another interesting (and telling) component here is the number of biologists who are silent on the topic. That alone rings my skeptical alarm bells. Why would biologists be afraid to say sex is NOT binary in the current social climate? Well, obviously they wouldn’t be on account of the current culture wars on sex and gender. So why aren’t there more of them? Why aren’t ALL of them saying that? Can we assume it’s because they’re too scared of being canceled or labeled a transphobe, like teachers, academics, clinicians, social workers, civil servants, managers in organizations, many journalists, people in the arts, media, and publishing companies are? Even philosophers are afraid to publicly take the binary position, despite that that’s what they believe. It seems pretty obvious to me that if sex weren’t binary, we’d have a consensus statement saying as much. Instead, we have to search the primary literature to see how biologists actually define biological sex, which is something we saw Dr Novella avoided like the plague.

Guy’s post is a long one, but written clearly, and is devoted to sorting out the differences between my talk and Novella’s as well as examining scientific claims about the binary nature of sex. There are a few places where I would have written it a bit differently from Guy, but overall it corresponds not only with what I said, but also with biological reality. You can define sex any way you want, but the gamete-based definition, like the biological species definition, is the one most universal and most useful. And it happens to lead to the sex binary in all species of animals and vascular plants.

Today we have a surprise from biologist John Avise: butterfly photos. And he reminds us of how many times his photos have appeared here (they’ve all been of birds):

You’ve posted a total of more than 3500 of my avian photographs across 231 Sundays!  I thought it might be time to start sending some other wildlife that I’ve photographed, so this week let’s start a long series on butterflies of North America.

Butterflies in North America, Part 1 

Longtime readers of WEIT might rightly suspect that I photograph only birds.  But that is far from correct.  In truth, almost any wildlife is fair game for my camera.  This week I exemplify this point by beginning a many-part series on butterflies that I have photographed over the years in North America (mostly in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, or California).  In general, I find butterflies to be much easier to photograph than birds, because they often sit still nearby.  Typically, I use the same 300 mm telephoto lens that I use for birds, except that the butterflies are much closer to me so the focal distance becomes critical.  I’m six feet tall, and butterflies perched near my feet happen to be at a perfect distance for close-up photos with that lens.

Acmon Blue (Icaricia acmon), male topwing:

Acmon Blue, male underwing:

Acmon Blue, female topwing:

Acmon Blue, female underwing:

American Copper (Lycaena phlaeas), topwing:

American Copper, underwing:

American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis), topwing:

American Lady, underwing:

Anise Swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon), topwing:

Anise Swallowtail, underwing:

Aphrodite Fritillary (Speyeria aphrodite), topwing:

Aphrodite Fritillary, underwing:

Astronomers have just found one of the youngest planets ever. At only 3 million years old, planet TIDYE-1b (also known as IRAS 04125+2902 b) is practically in its infancy. By comparison, Earth is 4.5 billion years old: that’s 1500 times older. The discovery of a planet this young can teach scientists a lot about the early stages of planet formation, and the peculiarities of this particular one have scientists re-evaluating their models of planetary birth.

“Astronomy helps us explore our place in the Universe — where we came from and where we might be going. Discovering planets like this one allows us to look back in time, catching a glimpse of planetary formation as it happens,” said Madyson Barber, lead author of a new paper and graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Barber discovered TIDYE-1b using the transit method, where a planet passes in front of its star, dimming the light and revealing itself to the observer – in this case, NASA’s TESS telescope. Previously, more than a dozen young planets in the 10-40 million-year-old range have been found via transit, but TIDYE-1b surpasses them all.

It’s a rare find because, under normal circumstances, such young planets are usually obscured by gas and dust that make up the ‘protoplanetary disc’, a debris field orbiting a star like a ring, out of which new planets are built.

“Planets typically form from a flat disk of dust and gas, which is why planets in our Solar System are aligned in a ‘pancake-flat’ arrangement,” explains Andrew Mann, associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. “But here, the disk is tilted, misaligned with both the planet and its star — a surprising twist that challenges our current understanding of how planets form.” 

Since TIDYE-1b orbits its star at a different angle than the main protoplanetary disc, it was visible despite its youth. It can often take more than five million years for such a disc to clear out in a young star system, so this was a lucky break without which the astronomers would not have been able to see the planet.

The planet is very close to its star, orbiting around it about once every nine days. The researchers believe it is a young example of what will someday become a ‘super-Earth or a ‘sub-Neptune, a planet type missing in our solar system but which seems common in the wider Milky Way galaxy. TIDYE-1b is not as dense as the Earth is, but it is about 11 times larger in diameter.

The discovery provides conclusive evidence that planets can form earlier than previously known – the lack of examples of planets younger than 10 million years found so far is not because they don’t exist. It’s just because they tend to be hidden from view.

The post Astronomers Find a 3 Million Year Old Planet appeared first on Universe Today.

To understand the practical challenges of indoor augmented reality applications on smartphones, researchers conducted 113 hours of extensive experiments and case studies over 316 patterns to determine the factors that degrade localization accuracy in real-world indoor environments. Landmarks for vision systems, LiDAR, and the IMU were evaluated. To solve the identified problems, the researchers suggest radio-frequency-based localization as a potential solution for practical augmented reality applications.

To understand the practical challenges of indoor augmented reality applications on smartphones, researchers conducted 113 hours of extensive experiments and case studies over 316 patterns to determine the factors that degrade localization accuracy in real-world indoor environments. Landmarks for vision systems, LiDAR, and the IMU were evaluated. To solve the identified problems, the researchers suggest radio-frequency-based localization as a potential solution for practical augmented reality applications.

Here’s Bill Maher’s 8½-minute comedy/news video from yesterday’s “Real Time”; the plaint is that people are going to let politics screw up the holidays. Note that his guests are Donna Brazile, Andrew Sullivan and Neil deGrasse Tyson (see this tweet).  Now that the election is over, we’re more divisive than ever, with Republicans gloating and Democrats seething, wondering what went wrong. It’s all a recipe for Holiday Hatred, and Maher mocks and decries that tribalism and calls for comity.

The money line: “Family isn’t like gender: you can’t fix it by cutting off members.”

Earth and Mars were very similar in their youth. Four billion years ago, both planets had vast, warm seas. But while Earth retained its oceans, the waters of Mars evaporated away or froze beneath its dusty surface. Exactly why these two worlds took such divergent paths is unclear, though it may lie in the origins of their water.

Based on geological studies, we know that Earth’s water cycle seemed to have stabilized early. From about 4.5 billion years ago to today, water has had a stable presence on Earth. For Mars, things are less clear. Clay minerals cover about 45% of the Martian surface and date to what is known as the Noachian period, which ranges from 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago. We also see evidence of water flows from 3.7 to 3.0 billion years ago, in what’s known as the Hesperian period. During the Amazonian period, which dates from 3 billion years ago to today, Mars seems to have been mostly dry. We have little evidence of the earliest period of Mars, known as the pre-Noachian. But a new study peels back the Martian ages to give us a glimpse of the first epoch of Mars, and it comes from a Martian meteorite known as Black Beauty.

Black Beauty, or NWA 7034, is a Martian meteorite thought to have formed at a time when the Red Planet harbored a magnetic field. Credit: C Agee, Institute of Meteoritics, UNM; NASA

There are about 200 meteorites known to have come from Mars, and they are currently the only physical samples of Mars we have on Earth. One of the larger meteorites, Northwest Africa 7034, was discovered in Western Sahara in 2011 and is nicknamed “Black Beauty” because of its rich black coloring. It’s made of material that’s about 4.4 billion years old and contains more water than any other Martian meteorite. But since it was only ejected from Mars 1.5 billion years ago, it is difficult to determine whether Black Beauty formed in a wet environment or if it gained water during the Noachian or Hesperian period.

This new study doesn’t focus on Black Beauty as a whole, but rather on small crystals of zircon embedded within it. These crystals can be dated to 4.48–4.43 billion years, meaning they formed in the Pre-Noachian period. What’s interesting is that the crystals have layers of iron, aluminum, and sodium in a pattern known as oscillatory zoning. Since zircon is igneous in origin, this kind of banding is almost unheard of in zircon crystals. On Earth, there is only one place where such a pattern occurs, which is in hydrothermal geysers such as those found in Yellowstone National Park.

The presence of these crystals in Black Beauty proves not only that Mars was wet during the Pre-Noachian period, but that it was geologically active with warm thermal vents. Similar vents on Earth may have triggered the formation of life on our world. Whether life ever existed on Mars is still an unanswered question, but it is clear that the conditions for life on Mars did exist in its earliest history.

Reference: Gillespie, Jack, et al. “Zircon trace element evidence for early hydrothermal activity on Mars.” Science Advances 110.47 (2024)

The post There was Hot Water on Mars 4.45 Billion Years Ago appeared first on Universe Today.

For a long time astronauts have been tested by subjected them to short “zero-gravity” conditions using “reduced-gravity aircraft“. These planes fly up and down on a parabolic flight path, creating a free-fall condition for part of the flight:

Initially, the aircraft climbs with a pitch angle of 45 degrees using engine thrust and elevator controls. The sensation of weightlessness is achieved by reducing thrust and lowering the nose to maintain a neutral, or “zero lift”, configuration such that the aircraft follows the same path that an object in free fall, with no air resistance, would follow. Engine thrust is used to exactly compensate for drag. Weightlessness begins while ascending and lasts all the way “up-and-over the hump,” until the aircraft reaches a downward pitch angle of around 30 degrees.

But of course the first question an ailurophile would ask is, “Well, what about falling cats?”  We all know that a cat held up and dropped to the floor only a foot above the ground will nevertheless right itself and land on its feet.  And SCIENCE has also learned how cats do this, using a clever evolved pathway called “the righting reflex“:

They can turn themselves the right way around during the fall to land safely on their feet. The vestibular apparatus inside a cat’s ear is used for balance and orientation and this enables cats to quickly figure out which way is up, and rotate their head so the body can follow.

Cats also have incredibly unique skeletal structures: they have no collarbone and a very flexible backbone with 30 vertebrae. This flexible spine means that they can correct themselves easily and quickly during a fall. Their back arches, the feet go underneath the body and bring their forepaws close to the face to protect it. Their low body to weight ratio also helps cats to land on their feet as it manages to slow their velocity while falling.

Cats develop the righting reflex very early on and is first seen in kittens as early as 3 weeks old, and by 7 weeks it is fully developed.

Here’s Destin from “Smarter Every Day” showing the normal righting reflex, which involves an initial determination of “down” and then twisting the front and back halves of their bodies in opposite directions:

But what happens to a cat released in zero gravity, when there is no cue to tell up and down? The article below explains: the cats go haywire:

An excerpt:

The first experiments were conducted on board a Convair C-131 Samaritan, and yes, there is absolutely video of the proceedings. A similar experiment involved releasing pigeons inside the C-131 during parabolic flight. The humans seem to have had a somewhat cavalier attitude towards having eyes.

It’s fascinating to watch. The narration for the video says the cats’ “automatic reflex action is almost completely lost under weightlessness”. Almost – but not quite. Although the cats seem disoriented, they are still able to twist and turn their bodies around as they try to figure out where they are going to fall.

That was far from the end of the experiments. A 1957 paper in The Journal of Aviation Medicine documents experimenting with eight kittens in T-33 and F-94 aircraft performing parabolic flights – “not only to satisfy our own curiosity,” wrote Siegfried Gerathewohl and Herbert Stallings of the US Air Force, “but to clarify the role of the otolith organ during weightlessness.”

. . .All these kitty-cat shenanigans helped scientists understand cats. In 1969, mechanicians Thomas Kane and MP Scher of Stanford University published an analysis in the International Journal of Solids and Structures that described the motion of a falling cat as two cylinders that twist in relation to each other in order to right themselves quickly while falling.

The research had implications for humans, too. The same two scientists also wrote a 1969 document for NASA that used mathematical models to better understand the motion and orientation of the human body in freefall.

And of course you’ll want to see a video. But oh, those poor kitties! I hope they got plenty of treats for having to do this. But note the lessons that the cats imparted to human astronauts in zero gravity:

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Here’s a 3½-minute video showing three barn cats doing their job.  Note how well they supervise the goats, keeping them in line. and also ensure that the small d*gs do not engage in bad behavior, giving them a swat for bad behavior.

The cats also walk on tightropes, count barn swallows, consume leftover milk, patrol the fence line, and keep each other company with cuddles.

 

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Finally, Matthew sent me this tweet from Bluesky (I’m now on it) showing the Chinese mountain cat, Felis beiti. As Wikipedia notes:

It is endemic to the Tibetan Plateau of western China, where it lives in grassland above elevations of 2,500 m (8,200 ft). It has been listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 2002.

Have you ever heard of the Chinese mountain cat?I hadn't until I read Ruth Kamnitzer's piece on this small cat that was only photographed for the first time in the wild in 2007.news.mongabay.com/2024/11/easy…

— Rhett Ayers Butler (@rhettayersbutler.bsky.social) 2024-11-20T04:48:24.473Z

Here’s a photo of a captive cat from Wikipedia. Looks like a household tabby, no?

西宁野生动物园, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Click on the article from Mongabay (below) to read about Chinese scientists who found and studied the cat:

 

From the Mongabay article:

In 2018, Han Xue-song, then a researcher with the Beijing-based Shan Shui Conservation Center, was in the Sanjiangyuan region on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, surveying black-necked cranes (Grus nigricollis). At an elevation of more than 4000 meters (13,000 feet), this is a windswept land of alpine meadows and rolling hills that stretch as far as the eye can see.

On this particular day in mid-September, Han and his colleagues were taking a break by the side of the road when they spotted something on a distant hillside. The animal was difficult to make out, but looked like a red fox (Vulpes vulpes), which are fairly common in the area. Han took out his camera, snapped a couple of pictures with its powerful 400-millimeter lens, and didn’t think much more about it.

But later that evening, when Han downloaded the photos, he was in for a surprise. A strange cat — about twice the size of a domestic cat, with straw-colored fur, tufted ears, a white lower lip, and startling blue eyes — was staring back at him. Beside her was a small kitten. It was only after Han sent the photo to another biologist that he realized the significance of the find.

(From the article): A Chinese mountain cat in winter, in Menyuan county, Qinghai province. Chinese mountain cats are only found on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, at elevations of 2,000-5,000 m (6,600-16,400 ft). Image courtesy of Kong Yue-qiao.

“Even at that time, when we had the picture in our hands, we didn’t know that’s a Chinese mountain cat,” Han says. “Most of us had never heard of that species.”

The Chinese mountain cat (Felis bieti) is China’s only endemic felid, and one of the least-known small cats in the world. Historically, most records came from skins or museum specimens of dubious origins. It wasn’t until 2004 that scientists figured out the cat has a very confined distribution along the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and it was another three years before biologists captured the first photographs in the wild. The species is classified as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List, but until very recently, almost nothing was known about its distribution, habitat use, or threats.

. . .In 2020, Liu Yan-lin, a professor at Qinghai Normal University, undertook the first comprehensive survey of Chinese mountain cats in and around the newly established Qilian Mountain National Park, a 50,200-square-kilometer (19,400-square-mile) protected area on the northern edge of the cat’s range.

. . . . Liu found that the Chinese mountain cat lived on the southern side of the Qilian range, and it appeared to be particularly abundant in Menyuan county, a high-elevation basin between the Qilian and Daban mountains. The county is a mix of small- and large-scale agriculture and tree plantations, as well as native shrubland and grassland. It’s inhabited by Han Chinese, pastoral Hui and ethnic Tibetans, and Liu says he was surprised that it appeared to be a stronghold for the cats.

“At the beginning, before I did the survey, my impression was that the cats live in remote areas, far away from people. But after the survey in the Qilian mountain [my impression] changed,” Liu says. “So, it’s actually living nearby people, even with the people.”

To figure out what was going on in Menyuan county, Kong Yue-qiao, a doctoral candidate at Peking University co-supervised by Liu, took on the first ecological study of the Chinese mountain cat in the wild. {JAC: Sadly, the article is in Chinese]

Kittens!:

(From article): A female Chinese mountain cat with kitten outside their den in the Sanjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. By setting up camera traps outside the den site, researchers were able to record photos and videos of the female and her two kittens, in the first ever observations of an active Chinese mountain cat den. Image courtesy of Han Xue-song.

More kittens:

(From paper): Chinese mountain cat kittens playing outside their den in Menyuan county, Qinghai province. Image courtesy of Kong Yue-qiao.

But they are introgressing with domestic cats. That is BAD!

In 2021, Luo co-authored a study that found there was ongoing and recent genetic introgression between Chinese mountain cats and domestic cats. Genetic introgression is  the transfer of genetic material from one species into the gene pool of another, which happens when two species interbreed over numerous generations.

Those findings were worrying, Luo says, but only based on genetic samples from four Chinese mountain cats. To figure out the full extent of the problem, they needed more samples.

Over several years, Luo and her team managed to collect samples from 51 Chinese mountain cats on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Luo and her colleagues haven’t yet published the results of their analysis, but she says they found evidence of a greater degree of introgression, with gene flow going both ways.

For example, Luo sampled one cat that had most of the markings of a Chinese mountain cat, except for a small patch of white on one paw and slightly-darker-than-usual stripes; the genetic analysis revealed about one-third genetic introgression from domestic cats.

Here’s a hybrid:

From the paper: A hybrid Chinese mountain cat with about one-third genomic introgression from domestic cats. Note the white toes on the right front paw and darker stripes, both morphological features of domestic cats. The photo was taken at Xining Zoo, Qinghai province, of a rescued animal born in the wild. Image courtesy of Luo Shu-jin/Peking University.

Dogs and cars are also a danger to these cats, but the scientists are hopeful that now that we know more about this threatened species, better conservation measures will be applied.

Like this one:

(From paper): A sign alerting motorists to the presence of Chinese mountain cats. During her two-year field study, Kong Yue-qiao identified vehicle strikes as a major threat to the Chinese mountain cat. To reduce the threat, she designed and placed signs asking drivers to slow down in high-risk areas. Image courtesy of Kong Yue-qiao.

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Lagniappe.  I initially had trouble getting this one, but perhaps you won’t. Give it a try.

h/t: Ginger K., Merilee, Matthew