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A new study overcomes a key obstacle to switching commercial aircraft from their near-total reliance on fossil fuels to more sustainable aviation fuels. The study details a cost-effective method for producing ethylbenzene -- an additive that improves the functional characteristics of sustainable aviation fuels -- from polystyrene, a hard plastic used in many consumer goods.

A new study overcomes a key obstacle to switching commercial aircraft from their near-total reliance on fossil fuels to more sustainable aviation fuels. The study details a cost-effective method for producing ethylbenzene -- an additive that improves the functional characteristics of sustainable aviation fuels -- from polystyrene, a hard plastic used in many consumer goods.

The use of plastic has skyrocketed over the past decade. Recent statistics reveal that in 2021, each person in the European Union (EU) generated an average of 36 kg of plastic packaging waste.

Wood has been a mainstay of human machines and construction for millennia. Its physical properties offer capabilities that are unmatched by almost any synthetic replacements. However, it has only very rarely been used in space. That might change based on the results of a new test run by Japan’s Space Agency (JAXA). LignoSat, one of the world’s first wooden satellites, was deployed from the ISS in December. 

We previously reported on the satellites’ history and launch. Matt’s article here provides an in-depth look at LignoSat’s path to eventual deployment.

Now that LignoSat has officially been deployed, what is it trying to measure? Stress and strain are two big ones that go hand in hand with temperature. Wood can warp with temperature changes, and there is probably still some water left in the honoki magnolia wood panels used for LignoSat’s construction. Understanding those effects on the satellite’s structure is one of the metrics of LignoSat’s makers at the University of Kyoto.

LignoSat is one of three Cubesats being deployed in this photo.
Credit – NASA

The effect of radiation is another. Wood, though an organic substance, is typically housed under the protective umbrella of the ozone layer, protecting it from most of the Sun’s radiation. Several samples of different kinds of wood were exposed to the space environment outside the ISS to test for these effects. However, testing them in full force without shielding the ISS is another of LignoSat’s challenges.

Finally, it will test for geomagnetic interference. Typical satellites are large metal boxes. In electrical engineering terms, we would call that a “Faraday cage,” named after Michael Faraday, the father of modern electrical engineering. Faraday cages are essential to keeping signals either inside or outside the cage and now allowing signals to pass either in or out. That’s why old-style radios used to have antennas that extended outside of their metal housings.

However, a wooden box doesn’t create a Faraday cage, so any electronics inside would be subjected to various geomagnetic interferences. LignoSat’s other job is to determine how severe those interferences are.

Example of the wood joinery technique used to construct the LignoSat, known as a Blind Miter Dovetail Joint.
Credit – Kyoto University

To be fair, the satellite isn’t entirely made of wood—it has aluminum frames and internal steel shafts holding the wood panels in place. However, it is still intended to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere upon reentry in around six months, steel struts and all.

Interestingly, LignoSat uses a traditional Japanese wood joinery technique that will allow the panels to flex during temperature changes, whereas metal fasteners would be much more restrictive and possibly damage the panels. If nothing else, it makes for a beautifully designed box, the outside of which looks more like home decoration than a satellite.

As LignoSat begins collecting data, researchers at the University of Kyoto are already working hard on LignoSat2. It’s scheduled to be launched in 2026, and it promises to add even more aesthetic appeal to the satellite industry while hopefully overcoming some of its technical challenges.

Learn More:
NASA – JAXA’s First Wooden Satellite Deploys from Space Station
UT – Japan Launches the First Wooden Satellite to Space
UT – Japan to Launch ‘Wooden Satellite’ in 2023
UT – Building a Satellite out of Wood? Use Magnolia

Lead Image:
Internal view of LignoSat’s structure shows the relationship among wooden panels, aluminum frames, and stainless-steel shafts.
Credit: Kyoto University

The post Astronauts Deploy the First Wooden Satellite into Orbit appeared first on Universe Today.

It’s easy to forget that, despite life having existed on Earth for billions of years and despite our relatively carefree existence from total destruction, throughout history there have been events that wiped out nearly everything! Fortunately for many life forms, they have the ability to go dormant and enter a state of reversible, reduced metabolic activity. In this state they are protected from decay and can survive long harsh periods where life would otherwise not survive. Is it just possible therefore that dormancy could also allow life to survive on other worlds like Mars or Venus? 

‘Life, don’t talk to me about life,’ were the utterances of Marvin the depressive robot on the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Unlike Marvin, it seems humanity loves talking about and exploring the possibilities that life may exist elsewhere in the universe. A discussion about life is always tricky though as life could, conceivably come in such a strange form that we might not even recognise it as life. Typically if we talk about searching for alien life of any level of existence, we tend to consider life like that which we find here on planet Earth. After all, we have to start somewhere. 

With thousands of exoplanets discovered so far, astronomers are learning how different planets can be. What if intelligent alien civilizations arise on extremely different habitable worlds? Some civilizations could develop space exploration technologies, but others would be trapped underwater, under ice, or in enormous gravity wells. How could they escape? Image Credit: DALL-E

Exploring the diversity of life on Earth gives us an insight into what critters might be out there in similar environments. One such state that is surprisingly common across Earthly organisms is the ability to enter the state known as dormancy. The process protects an inactive organism and minimises the chances of extinction by preserving the critical bodily functions and shutting down all others, but just temporarily. In a paper recently published in The Royal Society Journals, Kevin D. Webster and Jay T. Lennon explore dormancy theory in consideration of its enabling life to flourish elsewhere in the cosmos. 

The duo first analysed the key activities that led to the evolution of intelligent life; the supply of chemical building blocks at the necessary rate to exceeded their decay and that some sort of compartmentalisation was needed for early primative life to offer protection between their cellular components and the environment. The sustained evolution of life from these early stages was susceptible to chance events but also error in DNA replications that may have brought a species to an evolutionary dead end. 

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the genetic material for all known life on Earth. DNA is a biopolymer consisting of a string of subunits. The subunits consist of nucleotide base pairs containing a purine (adenine A, or guanine G) and a pyrimidine (thymine T, or cytosine C). DNA can contain nucleotide base pairs in any order without its chemical properties changing. This property is rare in biopolymers, and makes it possible for DNA to encode genetic information in the sequence of its base pairs. This stability is due to the fact that each base pair contains phosphate groups (consisting of phosphorus and oxygen atoms) on the outside with a net negative charge. These repeated negative charges make DNA a polyelectrolyte. Computational genomics researcher Steven Benner has hypothesized that alien genetic material will also be a polyelectrolyte biopolymer, and that chemical tests could therefore be devised to detect alien genetic molecules. Credit: Zephyris

Despite the sequence of events that brought about evolution that shaped our history there were events that momentarily brought a pause to proceedings. There have been five extinction events since the formation of Earth and it is the ability to drive through these dark days that dormancy really comes into its own. 

Impactors strike during the reign of the dinosaurs (image credit: MasPix/devianart)

Dormancy is a state of reduced activity or metabolism that organisms enter to survive during periods of challenging environmental conditions, such as extreme temperatures or reduced levels of light. This survival mechanism is common in plants, seeds, and certain animals, enabling them to withstand harsh seasons or environments. For animals, dormancy may take the form of hibernation or estivation, where metabolic rates decrease to conserve energy until conditions improve.

Dormancy provides protection, allowing inactive organisms to survive during unfavourable conditions and resume activity once more better conditions return. It may not have just helped organisms to survive harsh seasons but may have protected life from extinction during catastrophic events. It seems that the ability for primitive organisms to evolve dormancy processes is quite simple. If this is the case then it is quite plausible that any organisms that evolved on other planets with less than favourable conditions could be in their dormant state and waiting for conditions to improve. 

Source : Dormancy in the origin, evolution and persistence of life on Earth

The post Dormancy Could Be One of the Keys to Life on Earth (and Beyond) appeared first on Universe Today.

Suzie Imber is a co-investigator for the BepiColombo mission, currently on its way to Mercury. She explains how it will cast new light on the planet's many oddities, including its awful space weather and the fact it appears to have shrunk

Suzie Imber is a co-investigator for the BepiColombo mission, currently on its way to Mercury. She explains how it will cast new light on the planet's many oddities, from its massive core to its epic solar storms

Regular pulses of X-ray radiation emanating from a supermassive black hole could be explained by a white dwarf star on the verge of falling in

Tonight (January 13th) offers a wonderful opportunity for all of us who love the night sky, and also for science teachers. For those living within the shaded region of Fig. 1, the planet Mars will disappear behind the Moon, somewhere between 9 and 10 pm Eastern (6 and 7 pm Pacific), before reappearing an hour later. Most easily enjoyed with binoculars. (And, umm, without clouds, which will be my own limitation, I believe…)

For everyone else, look up anyway! Mars and the Moon will appear very close together, a lovely pair.

Figure 1: the region of Earth’s surface where Mars will be seen to disappear behind the Moon. Elsewhere Mars and the Moon will appear very close together, itself a beautiful sight. Image from in-the-sky.org.

Why is this Cool?

“Occultations”, in which a planet or star disappears behind our Moon, are always cool. Normally, even though we know that the planets and the Moon move across the sky, we don’t get to actually see the motion. But here we can really watch the Moon close in on Mars — a way to visually experience the Moon’s motion around the Earth. You can see this minute by minute with the naked eye until Mars gets so close that the Moon’s brightness overwhelms it. Binoculars will allow you to see much more. With a small telescope, where you’ll see Mars as a small red disk, you can actually watch it gradually disappear as the Moon crosses in front of it. This takes less than a minute.

A particularly cool thing about this particular occultation is that it is happening at full Moon. Occultations like this can happen at any time of year or month, but when they happen at full Moon, it represents a very special geometry in the sky. In particular, it means that the Sun, Earth, Moon and Mars lie in almost a straight line, as shown (not to scale!!!) in Fig. 2.

• The Moon is full because it is fully lit from our perspective, which means that it must lie almost directly behind the Earth relative to the Sun. [If it were precisely behind it, then it would be in Earth’s shadow, leading to a lunar eclipse; instead it is slightly offset, as it is at most full Moons.]
• And when the Moon covers Mars from our perspective, that must mean Mars lies almost directly behind the Moon relative to the Earth.

So all four objects must lie nearly in a line, a relatively rare coincidence.

Figure 2: (Distances and sizes not to scale!!) For a full Moon to block our sight of Mars, it must be that the Sun, Earth, Moon and Mars lie nearly in a line, so that the night side of the Earth sees the Moon and Mars as both fully lit and in the same location in the sky. This is quite rare. What Does This Occultation Teach Us?

Aside from the two things I’ve already mentioned — that an occultation is an opportunity to see the Moon’s motion, and that an occultation at full Moon implies the geometry of Fig. 2 — what else can we learn from this event, considered both on its own and in the context of others like it?

Distances and Sizes

Let’s start with one very simple thing: Mars is obviously farther from Earth than is the Moon, since it passes behind it. In fact, the Moon has occultations with all the planets, and all of them disappear behind the Moon instead of passing in front of it. This is why it has been understood for millennia that the Moon is closer to Earth than any of the planets.

Less obvious is that the map in Fig. 1 teaches us the size of the Moon. That’s because the width of the band where the Moon-Mars meeting is visible is approximately the diameter of the Moon. Why is that? Simple geometry. I’ve explained this here.

“Oppositions” and Orbital Periods

The moment when Mars is closest to Earth and brightest in the sky is approximately when the Sun, Earth and Mars lie in a straight line, known as “opposition”. Fig. 2 implies that an occultation of a planet at full Moon can only occur at or around that planet’s opposition. And indeed, while today’s occultation occurs on January 13th, Mars’ opposition occurs on January 15th.

Oppositions are very interesting for another reason; you can use them to learn a planet’s year. Mars’ most recent oppositions (and the next ones) are given in Fig. 3. You notice they occur about 25-26 months apart — just a bit more than two years.

Figure 3: A list of Martian oppositions (when Mars lies exactly opposite the Sun from Earth’s perspective, as in Fig. 2) showing they occur a bit more than two years apart. From nakedeyeplanets.com. [The different size and brightness of Mars from one opposition to the next reflects that the planetary orbits are not perfect circles.]

This, in turn, implies something interesting, but not instantly obvious: the time between Martian oppositions tells us that a Martian year is slightly less than two Earth years. Why?

Fig. 4 shows what would happen if (a) a Martian year (the time Mars takes to orbit the Sun) were exactly twice as long as an Earth year, and (b) both orbits were perfect circles around the Sun. Then the time between oppositions would be exactly two Earth years.

Figure 4: If Mars (red) took exactly twice as long to orbit the Sun (orange) as does Earth (blue), then an opposition (top left) would occur every two Earth years (bottom). Because oppositions occur slightly more than 24 months apart, we learn that Mars’ orbit of the Sun — its year — is slightly less than twice Earth’s year. (Yes, that’s right!) Oppositions for Jupiter and Saturn occur more often because their years are even longer.

But neither (a) nor (b) is exactly true. In fact a Martian year is 687 days, slightly less than two Earth years, whereas the time between oppositions is slightly more than two Earth years. Why? It takes a bit of thought, and is explained in detail here (for solar conjuctions rather than oppositions, but the argument is identical.)

The Planets, Sun and Moon are In a Line — Always!

And finally, one more thing about occultations of planets by the Moon: they happen for all the planets, and they actually happen pretty often, though some are much harder to observe than others. Here is a partial list, showing occultations of all planets [except Neptune is not listed for some unknown reason], as well as occultations of a few bright stars, in our current period. Why are these events so common?

Well (although the news media seems not to be aware of it!) the Moon and the planets are always laid out roughly in a (curved) line across the sky, though not all are visible at the same time. Since the Moon crosses the whole sky once a month, the chance of it passing in front of a planet is not particularly small!

Why are they roughly in a line? This is because the Sun and its planets lie roughly in a disk, with the Earth-Moon system also oriented in roughly the same disk. A disk, seen from someone sitting inside it, look like a line that goes across the sky… or rather, a huge circle that goes round the Earth.

To get a sense of how this works, look at Fig. 5. It shows a flat disk, seen from three perspectives (left to right): first head on, then obliquely (where it appears as an ellipse), and finally from the side (where it appears as a line segment.) The closer we come to the disk, the larger it will appear — and thus the longer the line segment will appear in side view. If we actually enter the disk from the side, the line segment will appear to wrap all the way around us, as a circle that we sit within.

Figure 5: A disk, seen from three perspectives: (left) face on, (center) obliquely, and (right) from the side, where it appears as a line segment. The closer we approach the disk the longer, the line segment. If we actually enter the disk, the line segment will wrap all the way around us, and will appear as a circle that surrounds us. Upon the sky, that circle will appear as a curved line (not necessarily overhead) from one horizon to the other, before passing underneath us.

Specifically for the planets, this means the following. Most planetary systems with a single star have the star at the near-center and planets orbiting in near-circles, with all the orbits roughly in a disk around the star. This is shown in Fig. 6. Just as in Fig. 5, when the star and planets are viewed obliquely, their orbits form an ellipse; and when they are viewed from the side, their orbits form a line segment, as a result of which the planets lie in a line. When we enter the planetary disk, so that some planets sit farther from the Sun than we do, then this line becomes a circle that wraps around us. That circle is the ecliptic, and all the planets and the Sun always lie close to it.

Fig. 6: (Left) Planets (colored dots) orbiting a central star (orange) along orbits (black circles) that lie in a plane. (Center) the same system viewed obliquely. (Right) The same system viewed from the side, in which case the planets and the star always lie in a straight line. (See also Fig. 5.) Viewed from one of the inner planets, the other planets and the star would seem to lie on a circle wrapping around the planet, and thus on a line across the night sky.

Reversing the logic, the fact that we observe that the planets and Sun lie on a curved line across the sky teaches us that the planetary orbits lie in a disk. This, too, has been known for millennia, long before humans understood that the planets orbit the Sun, not the Earth.

(This is also true of our galaxy, the Milky Way, in which the Sun is just one of nearly a trillion stars. The fact that the Milky Way always forms a cloudy band across the sky provides evidence that our galaxy is in the shape of a disk, probably somewhat like this one.)

The Mysteries of the Moon

But why does the Moon also lie on the ecliptic? That is, since the Moon orbits the Earth and not the Sun, why does its orbit have to lie in the same disk as the planets all do?

This isn’t obvious at all! (Indeed it was once seen as evidence that the planets and Sun must, like the Moon, all orbit the Earth.) But today we know this orientation of the Moon’s orbit is not inevitable. The moons of the planet Uranus, for instance, don’t follow this pattern; they and Uranus’ rings orbit in the plane of Uranus’ equator, tipped almost perpendicular to the plane of planetary orbits.

Well, the fact that the Moon’s orbit is almost in the same plane as the planets’ orbits — and that of Earth’s equator — is telling us something important about Earth’s history and about how the Moon came to be. The current leading explanation for the Moon’s origin is that the current Earth and Moon were born from the collision of two planets. Those planets would have been traveling in the same plane as all the others, and if they suffered a glancing blow within that plane, then the debris from the collision would also have been mostly in that plane. As the debris coalesced to form the Earth and Moon we know, they would have ended up orbiting each other, and spinning around their axes, in roughly this very same plane. (Note: This is a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum.)

This story potentially explains the orientation of the Moon’s orbit, as well as many other strange things about the Earth-Moon system. But evidence in favor of this explanation is still not overwhelmingly strong, and so we should consider this as an important question that astronomy has yet to fully settle.

So occultations, oppositions, and their near-simultaneous occurrence have a great deal to teach us and our students. Let’s not miss the opportunity!

My recent article on social media has fostered good social media engagement, so I thought I would follow up with a discussion of the most urgent question regarding social media – should the US ban TikTok? The Biden administration signs into law legislation that would ban the social media app TikTok on January 19th (deliberately the day before Trump takes office) unless it is sold off to a company that is not, as it is believed, beholden to the Chinese government. The law states it must be divested from ByteDance, which is the Chinese parent company who owns TikTok. This raises a few questions – is this constitutional, are the reasons for it legitimate, how will it work, and will it work?

A federal appeals court ruled that the ban is constitutional and can take place, and that decision is now before the Supreme Court. We will know soon how they rule, but indicators are they are leaning towards allowing the law to take effect. Trump, who previously tried to ban TikTok himself, now supports allowing the app and his lawyers have argued that  he should be allowed to solve the issue. He apparently does not have any compelling legal argument for this. In any case, we will hear the Supreme Court’s decision soon.

If the ban is allowed to take place, how will it work? First, if you are not aware, TikTok is a short form video sharing app. I have been using it extensively over the past couple of years, along with most of the other popular platforms, to share skeptical videos and have had good engagement. Apparently TikTok is popular because it has a good algorithm that people like. TikTok is already banned on devices owned by Federal employees. The new ban will force app stores in the US to remove the TikTok app and now allow any further updates or support. Existing TikTok users will continue to be able to use their existing apps, but they will not be able to get updates so they will eventually become unusable.

ByteDance will have time to comply with the law by divesting TikTok before the app becomes unusable, and many believe they are essentially waiting to see if the law will actually take effect. So, it is possible that even if the law does take effect, not much will change for existing users unless ByteDance refuses to comply and the app slowly fades away. In this case it is likely that the two existing main competitors, YouTube shorts, and Instagram, will benefit.

Will users be able to bypass the ban? Possibly. You can use a virtual private network (VPN) to change your apparent location to download the app from foreign stores. But even if it is technically possible, this would be a significant hurdle for some users and likely reduce use of the app in the US.

That is the background. Now lets get to the most interesting question – are the stated reasons for wanting to ban the app legitimate? This is hotly debated, but I think there is a compelling argument to make for the risks of the app and they essentially echo many of the points I made in my previous post. Major social media platforms undeniably have an influence on the broader culture. If the platforms are left entirely open, this allows for bad actors to have unfettered access to tools to spread misinformation, disinformation, radicalization, and hate speech. I have stated that my biggest fear is that these platforms will be used by authoritarian governments to control their society and people. The TikTok ban is about a hostile foreign power using an app to undermine the US.

There are essentially two components to the fear – that TikTok is gathering information on US citizens that can then be weaponized against them or our society. The second is that the Chinese government will use TikTok in order to spread pro-communist China propaganda, anti-American propaganda, so social civil strife and influence American politics. We actually don’t have to speculate about whether or not China will do this – TikTok has already admitted that they have identified and shut down massive Chinese government campaigns to influence US users – one with 110,000 accounts, and another with 141,000 accounts.  You might argue that the fact that they took them down means they are not cooperating with the Chinese government, but we cannot conclude that. They may be making a public show of taking down some campaigns but leaving others in place. The more important fact here is that the Chinese government is using TikTok to influence US politics and society.

There are also more subtle ways than massive networks of accounts to influence the US through TikTok. American TikTok is different from the Chinese version, and analyses have found that the Chinese version has better quality informational content and more educational content than the US version. China can be playing the long game (actually, not that long, in my opinion) of dumbing down the US. Algorithms can put light thumbs on the scale of information that have massive effects.

It was raised in the comments to my previous post if all this discussion is premised on the notion that people are easily manipulated pawns in the hands of social media giants. Unfortunately, the answer to that question is a pretty clear yes. There is a lot of social psychology research to show that influence campaigns are effective. Obviously not everyone is affected, but moving the needle 10 or 20 percentage points (or even a lot less) can have a big impact on society. Again – I have been on TikTok for over a year. It is flooded with videos that seem crafted to spread ignorance and anti-intellectualism. I know that most of them are not crafted specifically for this purpose – but that is the effect they have, and if one did intend to craft content for this purpose they could not do a better j0b than what is already on the platform. There is also a lot of great science communication content, but it is drowned out by nonsense.

Social media, regardless of who owns it, has all the risks and problems I discussed. But it does seem reasonable that we also do not want to add another layer of having a foreign adversary with significant influence over the platform. Some argue that it doesn’t really matter, social media can be used for influence campaigns regardless of who owns them. But that is hardly reassuring. At the very least I would argue we don’t really know and this is probably not an experiment we want to add on top of the social media experiment itself.

The post Should the US Ban TikTok? first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Trees dating back almost 6000 years have come to scientists' attention due to ice melting in the Rocky mountains, offering a "time capsule" into the past

A new technique involving lasers can measure long distances more precisely than ever, which could be useful for space telescopes

Ductal carcinoma in situ is a precursor of breast cancer that is usually treated with surgery, radiation therapy, and estrogen blockade. A new study suggests that watchful waiting might be safe for some women with DCIS.

The post Is watchful waiting for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) safe? Preliminary results of the COMET trial first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

It’s turns out that you don’t need a high-powered quantum experiment to observe Heisenberg’s uncertainty Principle. You just need to go the beach.

Heisenberg’s famous principle tells us that the more precisely we try to measure the position of a subatomic particle, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa. While the roots of this principle lay in a fundamental mathematical property of quantum mechanics, it’s easy enough to see this play out in a completely different context.

The next time you’re at a beach, check out the waves rolling onto shore. If you happen to see a perfectly even line of wave crests following one after another, you are looking at something called a plane wave. Plane waves have extremely easy to measure wavelengths. You simply break out a ruler and measure the distance from wave crest to wave crest.

But if I were to ask you to pinpoint the location of the wave, you wouldn’t be able to be that precise. You would just look out over the ocean, seeing all those beautiful waves lined up right against each other, and just wave your hand and say that the wave is just kind of all over the place.

So when it comes to plane waves, you can accurately measure their wavelength, but not their position.

Now let’s say that a tsunami wave is coming in. This kind of wave looks more like a pulse. If I asked you where the tsunami wave was, you would be able to point right to it and say it’s right there – it’s highly localized in space.

But what about its wavelength? Well, there’s no successive lines of wave crests to measure. At first there’s nothing, then there’s the big wave, and then there’s nothing again. So how do you define the wavelength of something like that?

It turns out that in order to describe a pulse, you need to combine lots of waves with all sorts of different wavelengths. They all work together to make the pulse happen, canceling each other out at the edges of the pulse in reinforcing each other at the center. So when it comes to a pulse, you know it’s position very well, but you are much less certain about its wavelength.

This relationship holds for all kinds of waves in the universe. And in the early 20th century, we realized that all particles had waves associated with them. These waves are very strange, they are waves of probability that describe where we are likely to see a particle the next time we go looking for it, but it’s still a wave. And as a wave, there is a trade-off we must make when trying to accurately measure one property versus another.

It means, fundamentally, that the precision of our knowledge of the subatomic world is limited. And there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. It’s not a matter of technology or cleverness – it’s simply the way that nature plays the game.

The post The Wavey Reality Behind the Uncertainty Principle appeared first on Universe Today.

It’s not unusual for space probes to complete gravitational flyby manoeuvres en route to their destination. It’s a bit more unusual when the flyby is at the destination planet. ESA’s BepiColombo spacecraft is manoeuvring around Mercury into its final orbit. With each flyby it gets closer and closer and closer until its finally captured by Mercury’s gravity in 2026. During the latest flyby, stunning images of the nearest planet to the Sun were captured from just a few hundred km. Checkout the best and most stunning images of Mercury yet. 

Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System and closest to the Sun is a rocky world. It’s surface somewhat resembles the Moon, desolate and heavily cratered. The lack of an atmosphere and the proximity to the Sun means daytime temperatures can reach a whopping 472°C but they plummet to -200°C at night. Mercury’s orbit is highly elliptical taking just 88 Earth days to complete one full orbit around the Sun. From Earth Mercury is never far from the Sun in the sky and so is very difficult to observe in the bright twilight sky. 

Image of Mercury taken by NASA’s MESSENGER mission. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/ASU/Carnegie Institution of Washington

To date, only two spacecraft have visited Mercury; Mariner 10 and Messenger. There is now another on the way, BepiColombo. It was launched on 20 October 2018 where it began its journey to the innermost planet. Led by ESA, this joint mission with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA.) is made up of two orbiters; ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. On arrival, the two orbiters will manoeuvre into their dedicated polar orbits, beginning their operations in early 2027. 

BepiColombo stacked in preparation for launch. ESA

During a press briefing on 9 January 2025, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed the first images from the spacecraft’s monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) and the results did not disappoint. 

In this first image, BepiColombo passed over Mercury’s terminator, the line between the day and night hemispheres, allowing M-CAM 1 to peer into the permanently shadowed craters of the north pole. The craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer can be seen with their permanently dark floors. Despite Mercury’s proximity to the Sun, the floors of the craters are some of the coldest places in the Sun. In these dark, shadowy places there is even evidence of frozen water!

The second image captures the volcanic plane known as Borealis Planitia. The large smooth plains on Mercury, rather like those on the Moon, formed billions of years ago. In the case of Mercury, it’s thought the plains formed 3.7 billion years ago when volcanic eruptions flooded the surface with molten lava. Any craters that were in the area, such as Henri and Lismer got filled with lava and as the planet cooled, wrinkles formed in the plains much like the wrinkling of an apple skin. 

Many of the smaller craters in this region have been wiped out by the lava but the rim of Mendelssohn crater is still visible along with Caloris Basin, a large impact crater with a diameter of 1,500 km. 

The final image was taken by M-CAM 2 and shows more evidence of volcanic activity and impact events. There is a bright region toward the upper limb and this is known as Nathair Facula. It’s the result of the largest volcanic explosion on Mercury with a central vent 40km across. Evidence has been found for at least 3 major eruptions that have deposited lava over 150km away. In stark contrast, to the left is the much younger Fonteyn Crater, just 300 million years old! 

Source : Top three images from BepiColombo’s sixth Mercury flyby

The post BepiColombo Just Completed its Sixth Flyby of Mercury. Here are the Best Images appeared first on Universe Today.

According to the most widely held astronomical model (the Nebular Hypothesis), new stars are born from massive clouds of dust and gas (aka. a nebula) that experience gravitational collapse. The remaining dust and gas form a protoplanetary disk that encircles the new star, which slowly accretes to form systems of planets. For the past decade, astronomers have relied on the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to study young stars and their disks and learn more about how this process occurs.

In a recent study, an international team of astronomers used ALMA to capture high-resolution images of eight protoplanetary disks in the Sigma Orionis cluster, a group of stars located in the constellation Orion. During their observations, the team found evidence of gaps and rings in most of the disks, which are potential indications that giant planets are forming. This was surprising, seeing as how these disks are irradiated by intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation from a massive star in the cluster. Their findings suggest that planet formation can occur in conditions that were previously thought to be inhospitable.

The study was led by Jane Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University. She was joined by Shangjia Zhang, a NASA Sagan Fellow from Columbia University and the Nevada Center for Astrophysics, and Feng Long (also a NASA Sagan Fellow) from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL). The team also included researchers from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), the University of St. Andrews, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and NASA Headquarters. Their research was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Images captured by ALMA’s most extended antenna configuration reveal surprisingly rich disk structures in the sigma Ori cluster. Credit: ALMA (ESO/JAO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Huang et. al.

The research team used the most extended configuration of ALMA’s 12-meter antennas, which provided a zoom lens effect, allowing them to achieve a resolution of about eight astronomical units (eight times the distance between the Sun and Earth). This allowed them to resolve multiple gaps and rings in images of five of the disks, comparable to what astronomers have observed in other systems where giant planets were forming. The most impressive of these was the disk known as SO 1274, which features five gaps that could be a system of planets in the making.

Whereas previous studies have focused on disks in regions with low ultraviolet radiation, this research provides ALMA’s highest-resolution observations of disks in a more extreme environment. While stars are typically born in much harsher UV environments, astronomers understanding of substructures is primarily based on observations of nearby star-forming regions with mild UV environments. These findings could have implications for our understanding of how the Solar System formed, which may have evolved in a similarly high-radiation environment. As Huang noted in an NRAO press release:

“We expected the high levels of radiation in this cluster to inhibit planet formation in the outer regions of these disks. But instead, we’re seeing signs that planets may be forming at distances of tens of astronomical units from their stars, similar to what we’ve observed in less harsh environments. These observations suggest that the processes driving planet formation are quite robust and can operate even under challenging circumstances. This gives us more confidence that planets may be forming in even more places throughout the galaxy, even in regions we previously thought were too harsh.”

However, the team acknowledges that these structures could also result from interactions between planets in formation and the disk material. Their findings, therefore, illustrate the need and potential for follow-up studies of disks in even more extreme stellar environments. It also demonstrates the ability of ALMA to probe protoplanetary disks in diverse environments throughout the galaxy.

Further Reading: NRAO, The Astrophysical Journal

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Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is being zen:

Hili: Sometimes you just have to stop thinking.
A: It’s not always possible.
Hili: You have to train more.

Hili: Czasem trzeba po prostu przestać myśleć.
Ja Nie zawsze się daje.
Hili: Musisz więcej ćwiczyć.

If only they had let more unvaccinated children suffer and die from COVID, we wouldn't be in this position today.

The post Science-Based Satire: My Patients are Refusing the MMR Because the CDC Added the COVID Vaccine to the Routine Vaccine Schedule first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The hunt for aliens goes hand in hand with the hunt for habitable planets. Astronomers are on the hunt for exoplanets with atmospheric chemicals that could be a sign of an advanced civilisation. These chemicals, known as technosignatures are found on Earth and are the result of burning fossil fuels. A team of researchers have been exploring Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and whether they could detect them.

Over the decades, researchers have developed a number of different ways to hunt for advanced civilisations. From scanning stars for abnormal radio signals or laser pulses to searching for evidence of water the techniques have so far returned no positive results. Initiatives like SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) have used some of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes to listen for signals. At the same time, the habitable zones of exoplanets have been probed for signs of water suggesting life may exist. 

The Allen Telescope Array searches for alien technosignals. Credit: Seth Shostak, SETI Institute

A team of researchers led by Dwaipayan Dubey explored the viability of using Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) as an alternate way to continue the search. PAH’s sprung into the headlines when they were detected inside a Martian Meteorite. Their discovery received a lot of attention since the hydrocarbons are known to be the byproduct of life and finding them buried in Martian meteorites suggested some form of life at some point in the history of Mars. The debate is still continuing but the team believe searching for the hydrocarbon in planetary atmospheres could give away advanced civilisations.

In 1996 a team of scientists lead by Dr. David McKay of NASA’s Johnson Space Center announced possible evidence of life on Mars. The evidence came from their studies of a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica, called Alan Hills 84001. The researchers found chemical and physical traces of possible life including carbonate globules that resemble terrestrial nanobacteria (electron micrograph shown) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In terrestrial rock, the chemical traces would be considered breakdown products of bacterial life. The findings became the subject of controversy as non-biological explanations for the findings were found. Today, they are no longer regarded as definitive evidence of Martian life. Credits: NASA Johnson Space Center

There are sources of PAH’s in space such as the interstellar medium but they are mostly associated with activities from biological beings. The team focus their attention on hydrocarbons that have available absorption cross sections in the atmosphere of exoplanets like Earth. An absorption cross section is a measure of the probability of an absorption process such as particle scattering being detected by the 8m Habitable Worlds Observatory. The chosen chemicals are Naphthalene, Anthracene, Phenanthrene, and Pyrene. 

A future interstellar probe mission aims to travel beyond the heliosphere to the local interstellar medium to understand where our home came from and where it is going. Credit: John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Drawing on evidence from Earth-based PAH concentrations the team knew that they have declined a little since the industrial revolution. Learning from this they ran simulations across a range of concentrations hoping they could prove the detection capabilities of an Earth-like civilisation. Telescope architecture was also explored in the paper and, whilst large mirrors help improve resolution and light gathering capability the result was less positive. 

The analysis relied upon a large telescope mirror being able to resolve detail in the spectral signature of four molecules. They found however that telescopes with 6m, 8m or 10m aperture would have an insufficient signal to noise ratio to be able to resolve the necessary details. The final conclusion of the team was that the detection of PAH signatures between 0.2 and 0.515?m using large Earth-based telescope is infeasible. 

This is a great example of a piece of work that doesn’t yield a positive outcome however a negative result in scientific research is also valuable. Further research and lab based measurements are now needed to help improve the detectability of the molecules and perhaps help us to find our first comic neighbour. 

Source : Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons as an Extraterrestrial Atmospheric Technosignatures

The post Could We Detect Advanced Civilisations by their Industrial Pollution? Probably Not. appeared first on Universe Today.

Computers are an integral part of space exploration, keeping them functioning when away from Earth. The space environment however is a far from ideal environment for them to operate in. High energy particles can even flip memory bits effecting storage and damaging the computers. NASA are now testing a Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) which has been designed to handle higher levels of radiation. It’s inaugural flight is booked on a trip to the Moon as part of the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost 1 Lunar Lander. 

Modern space missions rely critically upon computers to perform functions like navigation, processing data and communication. The extreme environment of space however makes computer operations challenging as, aside form high levels of radiation they must endure microgravity, vibrations upon launch and high thermal variations. Without the computers to operate life-support for crewed missions or the multitude of scientific experimentation, and variety of data gathering the missions not achieve their goals. Ground based systems complement the onboard computers providing further analytical information, communication and other support functions but as computers advance and space missions become more ambitious, computers will become relied upon even more. 

SpaceX’s Starship lifts off from its Texas pad for the launch system’s sixth flight test. (Credit: SpaceX)

One of the challenges bestowed upon computer operations in space is radiation. On Earth, computers (and human beings, indeed everything on the planet) is largely protected by the planet’s magnetic field and the atmosphere. Journey into space however, and these natural shields are absent, immersing the traveller and their craft to high levels of radiation. The Sun, events on the Sun and cosmic rays are just some of the sources of radiation that our craft are exposed to. Exposure to radiation can damage materials, electronic systems and even data. Ideally advanced shielding materials can be employed but this becomes even more crucial for long duration missions. 

The Solar Orbiter mission is studying the Sun in great detail. It is helping scientists track down the source of the solar wind. Courtesy: ESA.

Even one high-energy dose of radiation can trigger the so called “single event effect.” These can lead to data errors that can lead to a cascading malfunction that can even crash systems. For some time now, NASA has been exploring ways to protect against radiation damage to on board computers. The solution; the Radiation Tolerant Computer known as the RadPC. It’s scheduled to be one of the payloads on board the Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission to the Moon, carried by Blue Ghost 1.

NASA has selected three commercial Moon landing service providers that will deliver science and technology payloads under Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) as part of the Artemis program. Each commercial lander will carry NASA-provided payloads that will conduct science investigations and demonstrate advanced technologies on the lunar surface, paving the way for NASA astronauts to land on the lunar surface by 2024…The selections are:..• Astrobotic of Pittsburgh has been awarded $79.5 million and has proposed to fly as many as 14 payloads to Lacus Mortis, a large crater on the near side of the Moon, by July 2021…• Intuitive Machines of Houston has been awarded $77 million. The company has proposed to fly as many as five payloads to Oceanus Procellarum, a scientifically intriguing dark spot on the Moon, by July 2021…• Orbit Beyond of Edison, New Jersey, has been awarded $97 million and has proposed to fly as many as four payloads to Mare Imbrium, a lava plain in one of the Moon’s craters, by September 2020. ..All three of the lander models were on display for the announcement of the companies selected to provide the first lunar landers for the Artemis program, on Friday, May 31, 2019, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. ..Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/2Ki2mJo..Credit: NASA/Goddard/Rebecca Roth

The system, which aims to demonstrate recovery from faults caused by radiation events, was developed by a team of researchers at Montana State University. Rather cleverly, it can monitor its own health in real-time using a series of processors known as programmable gate arrays. These logic blocks are easy to repair should they be struck by radiation and that’s the secret behind the success of RadPC. If it detects a strike, it will be able to identify its location and repair the issue in the background. It also has sensors that can measure the varying levels of radiation, known as dosimeters. It will constantly monitor and measure the interactions between the Earth’s magnetosphere and the solar wind on the way to the Moon and generate detailed radiation information about the landing site. 

If RadPC is successful it could lead to a new generation of computers perfectly suited to the harsh environments of space. It could harbour in an era of less damage to systems or minimal data corruption making computers far more resilient

Source: NASA to Test Solution for Radiation-Tolerant Computing in Space

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