News Feeds

Building on a landmark algorithm, researchers propose a way to make a smaller and more noise-tolerant quantum factoring circuit for cryptography.

The Milky Way may be home to strange black holes from the first moments of the universe, and the best candidates are the three closest black holes to Earth

Radio astronomers teamed up with SpaceX to find a promising solution for helping expensive telescopes avoid interference from thousands of Starlink satellites

Astronomers have identified patterns within the motion of stars stretching across the Milky Way, hinting at the presence of a vast wave

Do we live in a patriarchy? Does toxic masculinity permeate our society? Are they the reasons why women are paid less than men, and fewer women are working in STEM? There is a long-documented history of these differences, and they go deeper than you might think. Let’s consider some causal explanations.

The Gender Pay Gap

One statistic offered as evidence of male hegemony (i.e., the patriarchy) is the ubiquitous gender pay gap that exists between men and women. For example, self-described feminist economists1 Xuan Pham, Laura Fitzpatrick, and Richard Wagner suggest:

…the two overarching institutions that enable the persistence of the GPG [gender pay gap] in the USA are capitalism and patriarchy. Capitalism is a production system is [sic] driven by the profit motive, meaning firms seek to cost minimize. If employers can pay whole segments of workers lower wages, it is easier to boost profit margins and preserve capitalist production. The incentive to do this is quite powerful and a society that relegates women to a lesser position through non-labor market forces enhances the potential to increase exploitation of women through differential wages relative to men… Capitalism alone cannot create the GPG, however. The other crucial institution, patriarchy—allowing for gender-based disparate treatment—has deep roots in U.S. society. At the country’s founding, women were no more than the property of men.2

The ratio of annual earnings between women and men has gone from a low of 59 cents on the dollar in 1963 to 84 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024.3 Pham et al. claim the patriarchy is responsible for the gender pay gap—that is, wholesale discrimination against women. Most leading economists, regardless of their gender, disagree. Cornell University economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn point out4 most of the reduction in the pay gap came in the 1980s and early 1990s during a “sharp increase in female participation rates” in the work force—increasing from 32 percent in 1947 to 57 percent in 2014 while the male participation rate fell from 87 to 69 percent over the same period.

Countering the oppressive patriarchy argument, an extraordinary and remarkable natural experiment that demonstrates the lack of discrimination in the differences in pay between men and women was conducted by researchers at Stanford University in 2018 using data from over one million Uber drivers. Uber pays their drivers according to a rigid “non-negotiated formula” (i.e., invariant among drivers), and they do not offer any employee benefits. The drivers also determine when and where they work. Each driver earns a specific base fare in addition to a “per-minute and per-distance” fare beginning with the pickup and ending with the drop off of a customer. During periods of high customer demand, drivers can receive a “surge multiplier.” More importantly as related to the gender pay gap, there are no promotions, work overtime pay, or any ability to negotiate higher pay for drivers. In other words, earnings are directly proportional to productivity. The Stanford researchers have also demonstrated that there is no meaningful customer discrimination toward female or male drivers. In other words, there are no statistically significant differences in customer ratings of men and women drivers nor do riders prefer one gender to the other.5

*Men make more on a weekly basis, but much of the weekly difference is due to men working more hours. The percent difference in the pay gap is presented as per hour to avoid work amount variations.

The results of the study show unequivocally that men earn about 7 percent more than women on an hourly basis.* The “entire gap” can be explained by three factors, all unrelated to discrimination:

1. Men tend to drive faster than women. This leads to an increase in pay because they handle more customers per hour.
2. Uber pays a “compensating differential” for driving in high-crime areas and areas with high concentrations of bars. Men tend to drive in the more lucrative areas not only because they accept the risk but also because they are inclined to live nearer to or within these areas compared with women.
3. Drivers who work 30 or more hours per week compared to those that work fewer than 10 hours per week make 9 percent more per hour. Why is that? There is much to gain from experience at Uber such as when and where to drive, or which trips a driver should accept or reject. The researchers stated, “Male drivers accumulate more experience than women by driving more each week and being less likely to stop driving with Uber.”

†The Stanford team noted in 2018 that “nearly every one of the parameters favors men earning more. Men have shorter trips to the rider, longer trips, faster speed, higher surge, and more incentives.”

Experience in other studies is typically measured by years of employment or a worker’s age which are notoriously poor ways of ascertaining work experience. As the Uber study suggests, experience differentials between men and women may be underestimated in previous studies and “can lead to biased estimates of the job-flexibility penalty.” Put another way, by working fewer hours, women are not only earning less pay than men but also accumulating less experience.† The Stanford team concludes:

Even in the absence of discrimination and in flexible labor markets, women’s relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid work time and gender-based differences in preferences and constraints can sustain a gender pay gap.

A study by two Harvard economists on bus and train operators produced similar results—the pay gap in favor of men is due to the differential choice preferences of men and women.6 Even though “in a unionized environment where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar.” The same study revealed that women were also less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages.

Economists at Cornell University7, 8 have recently completed two extremely detailed and extensive reviews of the research literature demonstrating factors that influence the gender pay gap. A few of them are obvious. Gender differences in choice of college majors funnel women into lower paying careers. For example, women tend to avoid majoring in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs resulting in fewer women in these relatively high-paying careers. Women also tend to avoid jobs requiring extensive training specific to the company they are working for, i.e., training that does not help them with other companies.

Although both men and women quit their jobs at about the same rate “all else being equal,” they quit for different reasons. Men quit for reasons primarily related to the job; in contrast, women quit, for the most part, because of family-related reasons. As a result, women’s wages are affected adversely compared to men probably because women miss out on experience through training. Married women and mothers focus on home and family reducing the number of hours they spend in the labor market. Not surprisingly, research has found that the more hours women spend doing housework, the lower their wages in the market.

We should foster working environments that reward the most qualified and competent candidates, encouraged to participate irrespective of their gender.

The choice families make regarding their working locations also impact wages. Men are still the primary wage earners in families, and families tend to choose the location of the husband’s work as opposed to where the wife works (probably because, on average, men tend to focus on careers while women tend to prioritize family). Recent research in the U.S. and Great Britain has revealed that total family earnings increase significantly while the wife’s earnings decline when the family relocates.9 As a result, although women may enter into traditionally male-oriented occupations, they often select careers that are flexible geographically (e.g., physicians, pharmacists, managers, accountants, etc.).10, 11

But the largest single impact on the gender wage gap appears to be the difference in pay between the careers men and women choose (as much as a third of the gap!). The companies women tend to gravitate toward are those that pay both men and women lower wages whereas men tend to be concentrated in firms that pay more to both men and women. Women may consciously be choosing companies that are less stressful and offer more flexible work hours, but pay less than those where greater demands are made. As Blau and Kahn explain:

Men are found to place a higher value on money, to have higher self-esteem, to be less risk averse, more competitive, self-confident and disagreeable, and to believe that they control their own fate (an internal, as opposed to external, locus of control) to a greater extent than women.

From a broader perspective, men may have traditionally needed to excel in these arenas not only to provide for their families but also to succeed in competing with other men for mates. It is well established that men spend longer hours in their jobs, tend to place work over family, and take less time off from their jobs, which has a large impact on wages. One study presented men and women in the laboratory with a task to solve under two conditions of compensation—in a “noncompetitive piece rate and then a competitive tournament incentive scheme.”12 There were no differences between the performance of men and women, but 73 percent of the men preferred the competitive tournament scenario compared to 35 percent of the women.

The competitiveness of men translates from the laboratory into real-life performance benefits. Researchers have found that high school boys and girls have, on average, similar academic abilities. However, boy’s higher level of competitiveness correlates with their choosing to go into “more prestigious academic tracks” than do girls.13 Field research substantiates these results. In a large study, economists posted online job advertisements in 16 major cities that randomly varied the advertisements in their compensation regimes. Based on the 9,000 people assessing the job advertisements, the researchers were able to conclude that, “women disproportionately shy away from competitive work settings.”14 Increasing the competition within the workplace also appears to increase the performance of men relative to women.15, 16 Many studies have also found that on average not only do women shy away from risk, but their wages are lower due to having greater risk aversion than men.17 Controlling for extraneous effects, employers tend to pay more to entice workers to accept risk.

Yet another primary influence on the gender pay gap is a preference by women for what economists refer to as “work-force interruptions,” which include flexibility (such as working at home or at convenient times) and working fewer hours (a decision not to put in the long hours required by some jobs). Numerous recent studies have explored the impact of workforce interruptions and shorter hours, and it is worth discussing them in detail because they are pertinent within the context of the “glass ceiling,” a term that refers to the discriminatory barriers hindering women from attaining top-level, high-paying jobs in the labor market.

One of these studies followed MBA graduates from a distinguished program and found that women and men began their careers at nearly the same pay, but their pay diverged over time and men were paid more. The conclusion of the research posited that the gender pay gap can be attributed almost entirely to the fewer weekly hours women worked and the larger number of “career interruptions” women took compared to men.18 Another study, conducted over a fifteen-year period and focusing on lawyers, revealed an interesting trend: while gender had little impact on initial salaries, the gender pay gap significantly widened over time. This was attributed to women working shorter hours and taking time off for childbirth.19 A recent study by Ghazala Azmat and her colleague Rosa Ferrer found a similar disparity between male and female lawyers and attributed the difference to men obtaining more clients and receiving twice as much revenue from those clients compared to women. The authors concluded the disparities between men’s and women’s earnings and promotions were due to higher workplace performance by men compared to women.20 It is worth quoting their findings:

Possible channels of direct discrimination in law firms—whereby, for instance, senior lawyers (i.e., law firm partners) could interfere with performance—are not strong determinants of performance gaps. The presence of preschool children in the household contributes to the gaps in performance; however, it is not the only key determinant. A substantial share of the gender gap in performance is explained by aspirations to become a partner, which are likely to reflect more general career concerns as well as traditional gender roles… We find that the distribution of career aspirations differs across genders, which is reflected in the differences in performance [i.e., women do not aspire to become partners as much as their male counterparts]… One potential implication is that gender-based inequality in earnings and career outcomes might not decrease in the near future—and could even increase—as more high-skilled workers are explicitly compensated on the basis of performance.

In 2014, Harvard economist Claudia Goldin showed that the gender pay gap increases over the lifespan of laborers particularly for college-educated employees.21 She explained that the gender pay gap can “almost entirely be explained by various factors such as hours worked, time out of the labor force, and years spent in part-time employment.” In 2017, economist Erling Barth and his colleagues evaluated the gender pay gap over the time span of employee careers by analyzing data from the 2000 Decennial Census of the United States and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics. Their findings? The gender pay gap starts out relatively small but widens over time for both college-educated and non-college educated men and women. The largest gap is among the college educated men and women. The researchers found the gap (in both college and non-college scenarios) is primarily attributed to married women earning less and “most of the loss in earnings growth for married women, relative to married men, occurs concurrently with the arrival of children.”22

David Lubinski and his colleagues conducted a 35-year longitudinal study following some of the most intellectually gifted people in the United States.23, 24 This research led to two major conclusions that tracked with other findings here. (1) Intellectually exceptional women prefer to work with people rather than “things,” unlike their male counterparts, who often exhibit the opposite preference. This aligns with other findings indicating that both women and men choose careers based on their individual strengths and interests. For example, women score higher than men on verbal abilities, while men tend to excel in mathematical abilities. And even though fewer women go into STEM (women received only 25.1 percent and 23.4 percent of the doctorates in mathematics/computer science and engineering, respectively), those that do, score similar to men in ability and interest. In other words, women who pursue careers in STEM fields exhibit exceptional mathematical and spatial reasoning abilities, and their mathematical and spatial abilities are typically greater than their verbal abilities. (2) On average, gifted men earn higher salaries than their female counterparts after 35 years. The main reason for this is that men work more hours than women suggesting once again that men put more emphasis on work than women. Not only do men work longer hours but when both genders are asked “How many hours would you choose to work if you were in the job of choice” [i.e., desired job, place of work, and the pay required] women chose fewer hours than men.

Regarding the quote at the beginning of this article, Steve Horwitz, Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise, commented on Pham and colleagues’ supply/ demand hypothesis (for example, the abundance of women as teachers in grades K–12) this way: “Those jobs tend to pay less because they are jobs where many people have the relevant skills to do them, thus employers can always find another person to fill them (male or female!), which keeps wages low. The same is true of garbage collectors, who are almost all male. Their wages are much lower than those of teachers and nurses because even more people have the relevant skills. So, perceptions of the femininity of a job [i.e., social constructionism] can’t really explain why wages are low.”25 If more people, whether they are men or women (supply), go into specific fields, those fields will be able to pay less for workers (demand).

The Glass Ceiling

The National Science Foundation is pouring money into programs established to encourage women to enter STEM fields. For example, Howard University recently received $1.3 million for a proposal entitled “Multiple Consciousnesses: Investigating the Identities (Academic, Gender, Race, and Disability) of Black Women Undergraduate Students in STEM and Their Impact on Persistence.”26 Funding such as this presumes the gender pay gap and the glass ceiling are due to discrimination against women. However, as we have seen, economists—many of whom are women, as cited—have challenged these assumptions.

A recent study demonstrates the impact of women’s choice on the glass ceiling. Psychologists Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary published a paper27 documenting the gender gap in STEM fields has remained relatively constant for decades despite heroic efforts to bring women into STEM fields.28 They discovered the largest STEM gender gaps exist in countries that test high on the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI)—a measure of the degree of parity between men and women based on 14 indicators, which include earnings, seats in parliament, the number of women relative to men that enroll in universities, life expectancy, etc. The GGGI uses a scale from 0 to 1, where 1.0 represents complete gender parity (see Figure 1). The data comes from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)29—an educational survey of 519,334 students from 72 countries. Upon reviewing the graph, you may observe that the data might seem somewhat counterintuitive. This unexpected correlation is referred to as the educational-gender-equality paradox.

Figure 1. A graph of gender equality (GGGI where 1.0 = gender parity) versus the percentage of women that graduate from STEM-related fields in each country. The line represents the best-fit least squares regression.

The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) exemplify this paradox. They have established more than generous opportunities for women in maternity leave, first-rate state-provided childcare, and gender quotas for stock-market company boards.30 Yet they have some of the largest gender gaps in the world! For example, Finland ranks second in science literacy, and girls outperform boys on the tests. However, paradoxically, the number of women graduating with STEM degrees only approaches 20 percent. In contrast, countries with treatment of women ranging from fair to poor, such as Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, and Tunisia, have over 35 percent women graduating in STEM on average.

Stoet and Geary found that “girls performed similarly or better than boys in science” in 66 percent of the countries “and in nearly all the countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled.” They attribute the anomaly to personal academic choice related to what each gender perceives as their personal strength. Girls do better on literacy testing than they do in mathematics and science. Even though girls do better than boys in science and mathematics in many countries such as Finland, they choose fields outside of STEM. The opposite is true for boys. They do better in science and mathematics than literacy, and consequently choose STEM more than girls. The researchers also emphasize that women in less gender-equal countries may be more prone to choose STEM fields based on economic stress than personal preference.

It may be time to move away from activist ideology and acknowledge that girls and women freely choose their interests; they are not discriminated against in STEM fields, nor are they discouraged from pursuing a career in these fields. Similar holds true regarding men, even when countries such as Finland and Sweden go to extraordinary lengths to get more men into nursing and other fields traditionally dominated by women.

For a long time, radical feminists have advocated for quotas to break up the perceived patriarchal havens (often referred to as “good-ole-boy networks”) in the hopes of creating environments that support the advancement of women into senior management positions. Norway provides a notable example of the drawbacks of implementing such quotas. In 2003, Norway passed a law mandating that all publicly traded Norwegian corporations must ensure that their corporate boards comprise at least 40 percent women (or men, if the board was predominantly women). Five economists—all women—led by Marianne Bertrand have assessed the impact of the law:

…within firms that were mandated to increase female participation on their board, there is no evidence that these gains at the very top trickled down. Moreover the reform had no obvious impact on highly qualified women whose qualifications mirror those of board members but who were not appointed to boards. We observe no statistically significant change in the gender wage gaps or in female representation in top positions… Finally, there is little evidence that the reform affected the decisions of women more generally; it was not accompanied by any change in female enrollment in business education programs, or a convergence in earnings trajectories between recent male and female graduates of such programs.31

It appears that Norway was trying to correct for a glass ceiling that did not actually exist. As reported by The Economist, the law led to a significant number of Norwegian corporations leaving the Norway stock exchange to avoid the mandated quota requirements. Of the 563 companies on the Norway stock exchange in 2003, only 179 remained by 2008.32 Meanwhile, the observed increase in women’s leadership was the same as in neighboring Denmark, which did not implement quotas.

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 29.2
Buy print edition
Buy digital edition
Subscribe to print edition
Subscribe to digital edition
Download our app

Simply stated, economists—many of whom are women—have found that women are more risk averse (i.e., less willing to place themselves in highly competitive job environments) and more inclined toward occupations that offer flexible hours, often in order to prioritize time with their children. Women are certainly as competent as men in STEM, but gravitate toward college majors and jobs that highlight their superior verbal and social skills. There is much more fascinating data—most of it largely absent from the public discourse—that shed light on these differences. I will discuss such scholarship from disciplines other than economics in future articles.

Why is a scientific approach so important in this case? If political activists succeed in convincing the public that pay disparities between men and women are due to discrimination through an ominous patriarchy and toxic masculinity, not only will the data be ignored, but hardworking men will be discriminated against in favor of parity. I am not suggesting women should be discouraged from entering competitive fields; on the contrary, I am arguing for fairness. We should foster working environments that reward the most qualified and competent candidates, encouraged to participate irrespective of their gender. There is no glass ceiling, i.e., the purported discriminatory barrier that keeps qualified women from achieving top-level, high-paying jobs in the labor market in the United States, Canada, and many other Western countries subject to extensive research. The available evidence reveals that the primary hindrance to upward mobility is often the choices made by women—whether consciously or subconsciously—with regard to employment flexibility.33

About the Author

Marc J. Defant is a professor of geology at the University of South Florida specializing in the study of volcanoes—more specifically, the geochemistry of volcanic rocks. He has been funded by the NSF, National Geographic, the American Chemical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences and has published in many international journals including Nature. His book Voyage of Discovery: From the Big Bang to the Ice Age is in the 2nd edition.

References

1. https://bit.ly/4d2amZW
2. Ibid.
3. https://bit.ly/49XFxDb
4. https://bit.ly/4aEQZog
5. https://bit.ly/3W6UvmO
6. https://bit.ly/3Q7Q1sg
7. https://bit.ly/4aEQZog
8. Blau, F., & Winkler, A.E. (2018). The Economics of Women, Men, and Work, Eighth Edition. Oxford University Press.
9. https://bit.ly/447kEUM
10. https://bit.ly/3vXe5XZ
11. https://bit.ly/3vM6gVe
12. https://bit.ly/3W3PBHm
13. https://bit.ly/3QaLKoa
14. https://bit.ly/4aGtXgA
15. https://bit.ly/3W6Z4NY
16. https://bit.ly/4d3H1y9
17. Bertrand, M. (2011). New Perspectives On Gender. In O. Ashenfelter, & D. Card, Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume 4B. Elsevier.
18. https://bit.ly/3Q7sYOs
19. https://bit.ly/4490wkT
20. https://bit.ly/49K7jCX
21. https://bit.ly/3UmrBxF
22. https://bit.ly/3U4bovN
23. https://bit.ly/4d6cqAj
24. https://bit.ly/4cWi7kh
25. Personal communication, 2019
26. https://bit.ly/442RZ34
27. https://bit.ly/444y5Vc
28. National Science Foundation. (2017). Women, Minorities, and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering. National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
29. OECD. (2016). PISA 2015 Results: Excellence and Equity in Education (Vol. 1). OCED.
30. https://bit.ly/3xGI1s1
31. https://bit.ly/3W5jKGa
32. https://bit.ly/3xGI1s1
33. https://bit.ly/4aEQZog

Our universe is defined by the way it moves, and one way to describe the history of science is through our increasing awareness of the restlessness of the cosmos.

For millennia the brightest scientific minds in Europe and the Middle East believed that the Earth was perfectly still and that the heavens revolved around it, with a series of nested crystal spheres carrying each of the heavenly objects. Those early astronomers busied themselves with attempts to explain and predict the motion of those objects – the Sun, the Moon, each of the known planets, and the stars. Those predictions were excellent, and their systems able to explain the data well into the 16th century.

But that cosmological system of motion, initially developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century, wasn’t perfect. In fact, it was an ungainly mathematical mess, relying on small circular orbits nested within larger ones, with some centered on the Earth and some centered on other points. On his deathbed in 1543, the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, a radical reformulation of the old Ptolemaic system that put the Sun at the center of the universe – still and motionless – with the Earth set in motion around it along with all the other planets.

The reaction to the work of Copernicus was mixed and muted. On one hand, it was a bold and controversial reshaping of the universe. On the other, it was arguably just as messy and complicated as the Ptolemaic system it was trying to replace. And it introduced more than a few questions that had no easy answer. First and foremost, if the Earth was moving, how could we tell?

We know we are moving on the surface of the Earth through a variety of ways. We can feel the wind against our face when we run, or watch as a distant goal draws nearer. So why don’t we feel a great rush of wind as the Earth orbits around the Sun? Or why aren’t we flung off into the void of space due to the incredible rotation of our planet?

To all this, there were no ready answers. It would take another century and the development of Newton’s theory of gravity for the full picture to come together and make sense of the Earth in motion. Today we know that we don’t feel the motion of the Earth because we are in motion along with it, and since the vacuum of space is just that – a vacuum – there’s nothing for us to push against and betray that motion.

The post The Universe is on the Move appeared first on Universe Today.

The state of modern science and technology is truly amazing, much more so than the fake stuff that people like to spread around. Gravitational waves have opened up an entirely new type of astronomy, a way to explore the universe through very subtle ripples in spacetime produce by powerful gravitational events. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916, but it took decades to develop the technology to actually detect them. Their existence was inferred from neutron star observations in 1974, but they were not directly detected until 2015, almost a century after their prediction.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observer (LIGO) uses the interference at the intersection of two lasers at right angles to each other to detect tiny fluctuations in spacetime. Each laser travels through an arm 4 kilometers long. It is sensitive enough to detect changes 1/10,000 the diameter of a proton.

Using LIGO many gravitational wave events have been detected, all involving the merger of massive bodies – some combination of neutron stars and black holes. A new study, however, uses computer simulations to predict another potential source of gravitational waves – collapsars.

What are collapsars? They result from the death of rapidly spinning large stars, 15-20 solar masses. When they run out of fuel to keep their cores burning they rapidly collapse under their massive gravity, and then they explode from all that matter crashing into itself. This results in the formation of a black hole at the core, surrounded by a lot of mass that is leftover. This mass swirls rapidly around the black hole and is quickly consumed, within minutes. This large rapidly moving mass is what causes the gravitational waves – at least that is what is predicted by the current model. d

The beauty of this prediction is that it is immediately testable. The physicists had to calculate how many such events are happening around the universe that LIGO is sensitive enough to detect. They had to make some assumpti0ns, that such events are as common as type 1b/c supernovae, the signal to noise ratio, and the detection threshold. They calculate that we should be able to detect about one such event per year. But better gravitational wave detectors are coming.

NASA is planning the LISA space-based gravitational wave detector. This will be comprised of three arms in an equilateral triangle, with each arm about a million miles long. You might think this would be the instrument to better detect collapsars, but it isn’t. LISA is designed to detect very low frequency gravitational waves, which is not optimal for collapsars.

However, there are also plans for so-called third generation gravitational wave detectors which will be Earth-based. Once these detectors go online, the paper predicts that they will detect hundreds of collapsars per year.

This paper represents the confluence of so much advanced science and technology. First, we need the physics to understand and predict the existence of collapsars and of gravitational waves. We need the knowledge of interferometry and the technology to build the lasers and facilities such as LIGO. And we need advanced computer and AI technology to develop the simulations that predict gravitational waves from collapsars.

And of course if we can detect gravitational waves that correspond to collapsars, then that will confirm everything above. It will also allow us to explore how collapsars work and what’s happening inside black holes. This will push our understanding forward, and the cycle will continue.

Again, these kinds of stories are endlessly fascinating, and they have the advantage of being real. The universe is more interesting and complicated than any story people make up. Yet, go on social media and most of what you find is people talking about utter nonsense. There is great science there as well, but you often have to look for it, or curate good sources. It’s a bit disheartening to find countless videos with millions of hits of someone who clearly has no idea what they are talking about pontificating about complete fantasy as if it’s real. But that’s the world social media has created.

This is why scientists and academics needs to interface more with social media and create content to compete with the nonsense. Scientists have great stories to tell. They should tell them.

The post Collapsars and Gravitational Waves first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is pensive:

Hili: I’m entertaining different options.
A: What options?
Hili: First, second and third.

Hili: Rozważam różne opcje.
Ja: Jakie?
Hili: Pierwszą, drugą i trzecią.

We do not have herd immunity to COVID and we should reject doctors who seek to redefine basic terms because they are incapable of uttering the words "I was wrong."

The post Part 2: We Don’t Have to Wonder if the Great Barrington Declaration Could Have “Worked”. In the Real World It Failed & Redefining Basic Medical Terms Won’t Change That. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss459_Michael_Shermer_2024_08_23.mp3 Download MP3

As if 2024 couldn’t get any weirder, tensions in the Middle East have escalated with the United States sending one of our nuclear submarines to the Mediterranean as a deterrent signal to Iran that they better think twice about attacking Israel. That sub, the Ohio-class USS Georgia, carries non-nuclear cruise missiles.

But 14 of our 18 Ohio-class submarines have nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles—each sub has in its belly the nuclear equivalent of all the bombs dropped in World War II. Multiply that by 14 and let your imagination be properly staggered.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have pushed into Russian territory and Putin is outraged at the invasion. How far can Ukraine go before Putin uses his battlefield tactical nukes in response?

In this solo episode, Michael Shermer discusses the threat of nuclear annihilation and explores the evolutionary origins of our moral emotions and logic of deterrence based on game theory.

Focus of the analysis: the need to reduce nuclear stockpiles and shifting the taboo from using to owning nuclear weapons.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Wastewater is a major reservoir for antibiotic resistance genes, but modified bacteria can chop up this DNA before the dangerous microbes reach people

Researchers have developed a sprayable gel that creates a shield to protect buildings from wildfire damage. It lasts longer and is more effective than existing commercial options.

In 1971, English mathematical physicist and Nobel-prize winner Roger Penrose proposed how energy could be extracted from a rotating black hole. He argued that this could be done by building a harness around the black hole’s accretion disk, where infalling matter is accelerated to close to the speed of light, triggering the release of energy in multiple wavelengths. Since then, multiple researchers have suggested that advanced civilizations could use this method (the Penrose Process) to power their civilization and that this represents a technosignature we should be on the lookout for.

Examples include John M. Smart’s Transcension Hypothesis, a proposed resolution to the Fermi Paradox where he suggested advanced intelligence may migrate to the region surrounding black holes to take advantage of the energy available. The latest comes from Harvard Professor Avi Loeb, who proposed in a recent paper how advanced civilizations could rely on a “Black Hole Moon” to provide their home planet with power indefinitely. The way this black hole would illuminate the planet it orbits, he argues, would constitute a potential technosignature for future SETI surveys.

Professor Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, the Director of the Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics (CfA), the founding Director of the Black Hole Initiative (BHI), and the head of the Galileo Project. His latest paper, “Illumination of a Planet by a Black Hole Moon as a Technological Signature,” recently appeared in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society (RNAAS).

In 1975, Stephen Hawking theorized that black holes emit photons, neutrinos, and some larger particles – thereafter known as “Hawking Radiation.” Since then, proposals for using black holes as an energy source generally fall into one of two camps. On the one hand, there’s the possibility of harnessing the angular momentum of their accretions disks (the “Penrose Process“) or capturing the heat and energy generated by their hypervelocity jets (perhaps in the form of a Dyson Sphere). On the other, there’s the possibility of feeding matter onto the black hole and harnessing the resulting Hawking Radiation.

In his paper, Loeb proposes how an advanced civilization could rely on the latter process by engineering a black hole that would orbit its home planet. This black hole would be very small, weighing just one hundred thousand tons (1011 g). If left unchecked, this black hole would evaporate in just a year and a half through the emission of Hawking Radiation. But as Loeb told Universe Today via email, it could be maintained by accreting relatively small amounts of matter (2.2 kg; 4.85 lbs) onto it per second. In exchange, it would provide an endless supply of power:

“This black hole system is the most efficient engine that I ever thought about. The fuel is converted to energy with the perfect efficiency of 100%, because the mass falling into the black hole is ultimately coming out as Hawking radiation. I have not seen this idea discussed before and had a “Eureka moment” when I realized it a few weeks ago. The only other method for converting mass to radiation with 100% efficiency is matter-antimatter annihilation.”

As Loeb indicates, the amount of antimatter required is beyond anything humanity can achieve at present. Since 1995, the particle colliders at CERN have managed to produce less than ten nanograms of antimatter, which is enough to power a 60-watt lightbulb for four hours. In comparison, Loeb’s proposed 1011g black hole could continuously supply 40 quadrillion (4015) Watts. “The global energy use is a few terra-Watts, ten thousand times less than the power supply of this black hole,” Loeb added. “The other advantage of this black hole engine is that it can use any form of matter as fuel. It could be trash. There is no better way to recycle trash than convert it into clean energy with 100% efficiency.”

Another advantage is that a black hole can use any form of matter as fuel, including whatever waste the civilization produces. In this respect, a black hole engine would solve an advanced civilization’s garbage problems while providing an inexhaustible supply of energy in return. Globally, humans produce roughly 1.92 billion metric tons (2.12 US tons) of waste annually, which is having a severe impact on our environment. This would be enough to feed a black hole engine weighing 1011 g for over 437 million years!

As to how such a feat could be accomplished, Loeb refers to a previous op-ed in which he theorized that a sufficiently advanced civilization could create a “baby universe” through quantum tunneling. Whereas such a feat would be something only a Type III Civilization (or more advanced) could achieve, a black hole engine would be much simpler and perhaps something a Type II Civilization could engineer:

“This is the big challenge. The good news is that it is much easier to produce such a black hole than a baby universe. But any production line of a 1011 g black hole requires compressing matter or radiation to a mass density that is 60 orders of magnitude above the density of solid iron. The density of atomic nuclei or neutron stars is only 15 orders of magnitude above solid density. This was possible to achieve in the cosmic radiation density less than femtosecond after the Big Bang.”

This was the subject of another recently written paper by Loeb in which he argued that, based on General Relativity, black holes can be made out of light. But what is most interesting about this proposed black hole engine is the way it would be detectable light-years away, making it a viable technosignature that would indicate the existence of an advanced civilization. Like many proposed technosignatures, particularly Dyson Spheres and other megastructures, the existence of a black hole engine is speculative and theoretical. But as Freeman Dyson himself once related, whatever we can conceive (and if the physics are sound), a sufficiently advanced civilization may have already been created. Said Loeb:

“The black hole engine could be discovered as a rogue rocky planet that is illuminated by a gamma-ray moon with no stellar-mass companion. If we ever find evidence for such an engine, we would need to consider the possibility that the source was created or trapped as a primordial black hole by a highly advanced technological civilization. There is no better marker of technological innovation than creating a furnace out of spacetime curvature in the form of a mini black hole.”

Further Reading: arXiv

The post New Study Proposes how a Black Hole in Orbit Around a Planet Could be a Sign of an Advanced Civilization. appeared first on Universe Today.

Thanks to NASA’s Juno mission to the Jupiter system, we’re getting our best looks ever at the gas giant’s volcanic moon Io. Even as Juno provides our best views of the moon, it also deepens our existing questions. Only a dedicated mission to Io can answer those questions, and there are two proposed missions.

Io is well-known as the most geologically active world in the Solar System, and it’s not even close. It has over 400 active volcanoes. Io is the closest moon to Jupiter, and the planet’s powerful gravity is largely responsible for Io’s volcanoes. As the planet pulls on Io, the friction creates tidal heating in the moon’s interior. This creates magma and drives its volcanic eruptions. Sulphur compounds in the eruptions paint the moon’s surface in shades of red, yellow, white, black, and green.

There’s never been a dedicated mission to Io, only missions that captured images as they passed by, including Galileo, Voyager 1, Cassini, New Horizons, and Juno, NASA’s current mission to Jupiter. But Io is intriguing and unique, and it can teach us a lot.

Planetary scientists want to know more about the moon’s geological processes. Io is considered a high heat flux world, and scientists want to learn more about its tidal dissipation. Studying Io can also tell us more about primitive planetary bodies that were once more volcanic, which Earth likely was early in its history.

Io can also tell us more about volcanogenic atmospheres, which can play a vital role in shaping a planet’s environment. This 2020 paper draws a link between Earth’s volcanic activity and the Great Oxygenation Event, a critical period when oxygen accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere. A better understanding of the link between volcanic activity and atmospheric evolution will help us better understand exoplanets and habitability.

Scientists know that the Galilean moons exchange material with Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. They also know that material ejected from Io’s volcanoes can reach the surfaces of the other moons. Some of it can be turned into plasma by Jupiter’s powerful magnetosphere, forming Io’s plasma torus. They’re curious about this mass exchange in the Jupiter system and how it’s shaped the moons.

These are the reasons for a dedicated mission to Io.

This schematic of Jupiter’s magnetic environments shows the planet’s looping magnetic field lines, Io and its plasma torus, and Io’s flux tube. Credit: John Spencer / Wikipedia CC-BY-SA3.0 with labels by the author

In 2010, scientists at the University of Arizona and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory first proposed the Io Volcano Observer (IVO) as part of NASA’s Discovery Program. IVO was proposed as a low-cost mission to explore Jupiter’s volcanic Moon. It was proposed again in 2015 and in 2019. In 2020, IVO was selected with two other missions for further study but ultimately lost out to the DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions to Venus.

Now, there’s another proposal for the Io Volcano Observer, but this time, it’s under NASA’s New Frontiers Program. The new proposal shows that the desire for an Io-focused mission won’t go away. Instead, it’s gaining steam.

In a new paper still subject to peer review, a group of mostly American scientists present their case for the New Frontiers IVO. It’s titled “Comparing NASA Discovery and New Frontiers Class Mission Concepts for the Io Volcano Observer (IVO).” The first author is Christopher Hamilton from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona.

The IVO NF would address our scientific questions by reaching three goals, according to the authors:

• Determine how and where tidal heat is generated inside Io;
• Understand how tidal heat is transported to the surface of Io;
• Understand how Io is evolving.

The original IVO proposal had the spacecraft encounter Io ten times in four years after reaching the moon in 2033. It would’ve carried five instruments, with a sixth under consideration. The IVO would’ve crossed Io from pole to pole, passing over the equator at an altitude of between 200 and 500 kilometres (124 and 310 miles.)

The Jovian moon Io as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. The mission’s camera caught a view of one of this moon’s volcanos erupting. A new mission to Io could have a spacecraft fly right through one of these plumes to sample it. Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.

The closest approaches were carefully designed to give the spacecraft the best observations of the moon’s magnetic field, gravity field, and libration amplitude. The approaches also would’ve allowed for both sunlit and dark views of volcanoes, allowing the spacecraft to study the composition of lava. The polar perspective would’ve provided new views of heat emanating from the moon that were unavailable to Galileo and unobservable from Earth.

The new IVO NF proposal maintains the polar orbit of the original IVO but improves it in several ways. Universe Today talked with lead author Christopher Hamilton about the new proposal. His remarks have been lightly edited for clarity.

The first change in the new proposal concerns the number of flybys, which would increase from 10 to 20.

“Both IVO and IVO-NF are great missions, but doubling the number of flybys more than doubles the scienctific return from an Io mission!”

Christopher Hamilton, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona.

“10 flybys for the original Discovery-level IVO mission would fill important gaps in image coverage that remain unfilled after the Voyager and Galileo era,” Hamilton said. So why double it?

“The new tour not only doubles the image coverage of Io’s surface with high-resolution imaging but also enables more flybys of active volcanoes, like Loki, Loki Patera, and Pillian Patera,” Hamilton said. “These are highly dynamic volcanic systems that include active lava lakes and explosive eruptions—one pass over the volcanic systems is simply not enough to constrain their time-variability and eruption dynamics.”

An artist’s rendition of Loki Patera, a lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io. Credit: NASA.

Like Earth’s Moon, Io is tidally locked to Jupiter, with one side more readily available for study than the Jupiter-facing side. But Jupiter’s effect on Io is much stronger than Earth’s effect on the Moon. “However, tidal interactions between Jupiter and Io are much stronger, exciting tides in solid rock with an amplitude of about 100 m (328 feet), which is taller than the Statue of Liberty!” Hamilton said. These tidal interactions drive Io’s powerful volcanism. “However, studies of the past decade have suggested that this heat has also melted a layer within Io to form a subsurface ‘”‘magma ocean,'” Hamilton said.

The original IVO’s ten orbits, with its magnetometer instrument, would have confirmed or excluded this hypothesis. The new proposal will carry an improved version of this instrument, and with more orbits, it could answer questions about Io’s magma ocean.

“IVO-NF would also carry a fluxgate magnetometer and with the repeat passes, carefully timed to measure Io’s induced magnetic field at different times in its orbit, would greatly reduce the uncertainty in estimating a potential magma oceans depth,” Hamilton said. The current uncertainty is ±10 km, but IVO NF would reduce it to ±3 km. This “would revolutionize our understanding of Io’s interior and the links between tidal heating and volcanism,” Hamilton told Universe Today.

“Both IVO and IVO-NF are great missions, but doubling the number of flybys more than doubles the scienctific return from an Io mission!” Hamilton said.

IVO-NF would also approach Io much closer than the original IVO. The original mission called for an altitude of 200 and 500 kilometres (124 and 310 miles) above Io’s surface. IVO-NF would begin its mission with high-altitude fly-bys, but as the mission progressed and objectives were reached, it would come much closer.

“With 20 flybys, IVO-NF can be more daring, flying closer to Io’s surface and even flying through its volcanic plumes to determine the chemistry of its erupted products in unprecedented detail,” Hamilton told Universe Today.

Initial flybys would be at about 200 km, “but as the mission progresses and Baseline objectives are achieved, we will be able to lower the altitude of later flybys over active volcanoes like Pele Patera,” Hamilton said.

“Nonetheless, we would image and analyze these volcanoes first, making use of repeat coverage to further constrain the safety of the close approach, and take precautions like reorienting the spacecraft’s solar panels so that they fly through the plume side-on rather than exposing the full cross-sectional area,” Hamilton told Universe Today. “Plume flythroughs for Io would also open the door to other sampling opportunities for plumes on Saturn’s active moon, Enceladus.”

This image shows some of the volcanic features on Io, including the Pele volcano. It’s surrounded by a ring of orange sulphur compounds that erupted and fell back to the surface. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

“This may seem dangerous, but even at altitudes of 50 km, there would be very few particles,” Hamilton said. But before the spacecraft comes that close, it’ll use its Surface Dust Analyzer to understand the hazard. This instrument was added to the IVO-NF as a top priority. It will measure surface dust composition and the composition of nanograins in the volcanic plumes. Overall, it will give scientists a better understanding of Io’s dust environment and inform them if it’s safe to approach within 50 km.

According to Hamilton, we’re experiencing a renaissance in exploring the Jovian system.

“This is an important time in Planetary Exploration, and exploration of the Jupiter System is undergoing a renaissance, with Juno, Europa Clipper, and JUICE examining Jupiter, Europa, and Ganymede at the same time,” Hamilton told Universe Today. Io is a critical part of Jupiter’s moon system. It’s at the heart of the orbital resonance configuration between Io, Europa, and Ganymede, and the resonance drives geological activity on all three moons, including volcanism, tectonic activity, and the formation of surface features.

The orbital resonance of the three innermost Galilean moons. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons).

“Juno has filled some important gaps left after the end of the Galileo mission (1995–2003), but IVO and IVO-NF would be the first to have an instrument suite that is optimized specifically for Io,” said Hamilton.

To the intellectually curious, everything in nature is worthy of study and deeper understanding. An extraordinary world like Io is certainly no exception, with everything it has to tell us about itself, its sibling moons, and even about the early Earth and Moon.

“Our paper makes the case that Io is a priority target for exploration that should be considered in the next New Frontier Announcement of Opportunity,” Hamilton told Universe Today. He acknowledges that the original IVO mission at the Discovery level is possible, but the IVO New Frontiers mission would accomplish a lot more and would more thoroughly address our outstanding questions about Io.

“A larger mission to Io via New Frontiers would more than double the scientific return of the mission and would offer the best approach to understanding not just Io, but the Jupiter System as a whole, and the origins of high-heat flux worlds like the early Earth, early Moon, and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System and beyond,” Hamilton concluded.

The post Comparing Two Proposed NASA Missions to Jupiter’s Moon Io appeared first on Universe Today.

An analysis of 1500 climate policies in 41 countries has found that a slim minority have led to a significant reduction in carbon emissions, with most policies being too specifically targeted to make a substantial difference

DNA from mitochondria, the energy powerhouses inside cells, sometimes gets added to our genome – and the number of these mutations in the brain could be linked to ageing

New research using neural networks, a form of brain-inspired AI, proposes a solution to the tough challenge of modelling the states of molecules.

New research using neural networks, a form of brain-inspired AI, proposes a solution to the tough challenge of modelling the states of molecules.

Scientists report incredibly small time delays in a molecule's electron activity when the particles are exposed to X-rays. To measure these tiny high-speed events, known as attoseconds, researchers used a laser to generate intense X-ray flashes that allowed them to map the inner workings of an atom.

Managing hard-to-treat respiratory illnesses like asthma and pulmonary fibrosis just got easier if a new drug-carrying molecule is as sneaky as its inventors think.