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Quickie with Steve: New Gene Editing Tool; News Items: 3D Printed Superalloy, Lacking an Inner Voice, Spider Silk Sensors, How Were the Pyramids Built, Exoplanet Hunt for Life; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Star Talk and Acupuncture, Science or Fiction

Welcome to CaturSaturday, shabbos for Jewish cats: June 1, 2024, and we’ve reached June at last. It’s Graduation Day at the University of Chicago, and National Bubbly Day, celebrating sparkling wine. Just avoid the cheap, sweet stuff. Here’s a 7-minute video about how French champagne is made:

 

It’s also Dare Day, National Black Bear Day, Dinosaur Day, National Hazelnut Cake Day, Heimlich Maneuver Day, National Pineapple Day, National Prairie Day,World Milk Day, and Global Day of Parents.

As for Food Months, we have these for June:

• California Avocado Month.
• National Candy Month.
• National Cucumber Month.
• National Dairy Month.
• National Fresh Fruit and. Vegetable Month.
• National Iced Tea Month.

Today’s Google Doodle (click on image) celebrates the Men’s 2024 ICC T20 World Cup, a competition among cricket teams.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*According to the NYT, Trump went bananas after his conviction yesterday, but what else did you expect given the verdict?

As America began to absorb on Friday the conviction of Donald J. Trump, a first for a U.S. president, he criticized the criminal case and attacked the judge who oversaw his trial.

Mr. Trump, in a rambling and misleading 33-minute speech, derided the trial as “rigged” and made numerous false statements about what had taken place in court. His remarks came after he was found guilty on Thursday of all 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr. Trump, who said he would appeal the verdict, continued to attack people who testified against him in the seven-week trial, specifically his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, the star witness for the prosecution. He also admitted that he had gotten “very upset” with his lawyers.

He called the judge, Juan M. Merchan, the “devil.”

. . . At Trump Tower on Friday, Mr. Trump reprised his usual campaign attacks on immigrants and made numerous false representations about U.S. border policies under President Biden. He falsely claimed that American children couldn’t play Little League Baseball games anymore because undocumented immigrants were setting up too many tents.

Well, I’ll venture to predict (though I won’t be able to prove it) that Trump’s conviction will hurt his election chances in November. He is a convicted felon, and among the undecided voters that could make a difference. Plus he’s a bull-goose looney.

*Democratic Senator Tim Manchin from West Virginia, always a renegade, has changed his party affiliation to “independent”.  Last winter he announced he wouldn’t be running again, but this suggests he will. And, if he’s elected, it means the Democrats will be even less able than before to count on his vote.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia announced Friday that he has changed his party registration to independent, fueling speculation he could run for office again in November after announcing his retirement last year.

“My commitment to do everything I can to bring our country together has led me to register as an independent with no party affiliation,” Manchin wrote on X.

Manchin did not immediately say anything about his political plans. But the move allows him to possibly reconsider his plan to not seek reelection — or to run for governor, a job he previously held.

Aug. 1 is the deadline for independent candidates to file for office in West Virginia. Manchin was facing a Saturday deadline to register as an independent and still have a chance to file as an independent candidate this election.

The centrist senator announced in November 2023 that he would not run for another term, handing Republicans a likely pickup seat in solidly red West Virginia. The GOP nominee for the seat is the state’s governor, Jim Justice.

. . .For months, Manchin flirted with running for president as an independent or third-party candidate, worrying Democrats who anticipated a close rematch between President Biden and former president Donald Trump. But Manchin announced in February that he would “not be involved in a presidential run” this year.

Speculation has picked up in recent weeks that Manchin may be mulling a return to the governor’s office, though he reportedly said this week he would not enter the race. He said he is supporting the Democratic nominee, Steve Williams.

If Manchin decides to run for Senate again, he could have a fighting chance in a race that otherwise favors the GOP. CNN reported in March that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has talked with Manchin about running for reelection as an independent. At the time, Manchin said he did not expect to do so.

In fact, the guy is so much of a renegade that we don’t know what he’s going to do. All we can guess is that he’s going to run for something. 

*The war in Gaza, now that the IDF is operating around Rafah, has become a real mess, as the three-man war cabinet has become split about what to do. The dissent involves whether to prioritize defeating Hamas or getting the hostages released (I suspect that a lot of them are actually dead.)

As the fighting continues, the debate in Israel over the necessary next steps is becoming more intense. The issue has not set the ruling coalition against all or part of the public. Rather, the divisions bisect the government and have split the three-man war cabinet consisting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Chief of the General Staff Benny Ganz. The matter of who wins this debate, along with the issue of western pressure on Israel, are likely to determine the outcome of the war.

Former Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, an observer in the war cabinet who is closely aligned with Gantz, was, according to Israel’s Channel 12 News channel, reported to have told the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defence committee last week that Israel should pause its Rafah operation in order to conclude an agreement for the release of the 128 Israeli hostages remaining in Hamas captivity.

While Eizenkot clarified in his statement that Israel would be able to recommence the fighting at a later date, this seems to be at odds with reality. The position of the Gaza Hamas leadership throughout has been that a hostage deal was possible only if Israel were to agree to a long-term cessation of the war. So if Israel really wishes to go down the route of prioritising the release of hostages, the cost is almost certainly an admission of defeat in the eight month-long military campaign in Gaza. Defeat in this context means the cessation of hostilities without the destruction of the Hamas ruling authority in Gaza.

. . .Among those in Israel who seek an early end of the war and a central emphasis on getting hostages released, this reality is accepted, rather than blurred. Thus Zehava Golan, a former leader of the left wing Meretz party, stated the matter plainly in a column in the Haaretz newspaper on Wednesday: ‘We need to bring back the hostages via a deal now, establish a state commission of inquiry to look into the events of 7 October and the conduct of this war, and stop the war itself,’ she wrote.

On the other side, Netanyahu and his allies reject the Hamas demand for an end to the war, seeing this (accurately) as representing surrender to the Islamist movement. Netanyahu, however, in a fudge of his own, was reported to have indignantly rejected the notion that he and those around him were refusing to give the team negotiating on the issue of the hostages a mandate that could lead to a successful agreement. But given that Hamas is clearly and openly demanding the end of the war as a price for agreement, it follows logically that any negotiating mandate that clearly rejects any such outcome does in fact then undermine the chance for a successful agreement on the hostages.

The reason for both Netanyahu and Eizenkot’s obfuscations is that the Israeli mainstream debate is not yet able to openly confront the horrific nature of the strategic position into which the Hamas leadership has placed it. Namely that it must either concede defeat to the Gaza Islamists, or follow a path that may well seal the fate of the 128 remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza.

This is a horrible dilemma; you lose the hostages or risk losing your country. What should the war cabinet do? They’ll probably continue going after Rafah and leave the hostages as a secondary consideration, for Netanyahu runs the war cabinet and a majority of Israelis want the IDF to persist in Rafah.  The cold-hearted calculus might say that if you let Hamas persist in power and rescue all the hostages (Remember that we don’t know how many are still alive, and Hamas won’t say), in the long run more Israelis will die from terrorism than lives will be saved by recouping the hostages. But it’s still a horrible thing to do—making a calculus of lives. But this is an existential war for Israel, and those of us who pay attention now have to force ourselves to just sit back and try to disengage. After all, there’s little we can do.

*As always, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly summary of the news, called this week “The Trial of the Century of the Week“. Actually, I’ll steal four this week so I can slip in the loon Candace Owens:

→ What Chinese propaganda? A new poll of young people by the firm Blueprint finds that a huge percentage of them think America is basically hell. Specifically, they see it as “a dying empire led by bad people.” Also: they need a ride to lacrosse practice. Some 51 percent agreed that the U.S. political system “doesn’t work for people like me,” and 64 percent supported the idea that “America is in decline.” Only 26 percent think it matters who wins the next election. Now, I’m not going to say this can be traced back entirely to the fact that the youth have hooked their eyes to a Chinese propaganda machine, but it does raise the question. Like, I’m not happy about our presidential choices either, but I do think things are different if one or the other is chosen. Does that make me a patriot?

→ Candace Owens going full crazy: Our favorite right-wing influencer is not antisemitic but is just obsessed with the Jews, specifically tracking how various evil acts and empires in history can all be traced to Jewish influence. This is the vibe these days: “I will grant you that Stalin’s ancestry is still hotly debated. My Georgian friend tells me that his real name ‘Djugashivilli’ literally translates into ‘child of Judah’ and that everyone in Georgia knows he was Jewish but that is hearsay and hardly admissible as a fact. What we do know for a fact is that Stalin spoke Yiddish and his three wives were all Jews.” Hmm. Candace’s rantings—to her more than 5 million followers on Twitter/X alone—continue.  [See this refutation of Owen’s tweet “the vibe”.]

Here are a few tweets I found by Candace Owens (click to go to tweet).  She has 5.1 MILLION followers.

→ The polling problem is Biden, not Dems: Democratic Senate candidates in swing states are doing great, according to a new poll from the quite reliable Cook Political Report. While Biden is projected to lose to Trump in the noted states, the Dems’ Senate candidates are doing extremely well. Many are differentiating themselves from the Biden administration on unpopular-for-Dems issues like the border, in that they’re arguing they don’t want a fully open border. They’re playing up their pro-choice bona fides and displaying their youth and virility through confident, youthful exhibitions like cheering in jerseys at a soccer game. Makes you wonder: If Biden had stepped aside for another candidate, would Trump be in the lead right now? The poll results image is best on desktop, unfortunately for my cell phone readers:

→ Campus update: Harvard’s Students for Justice in Palestine group called for an escalation of “intifada,” which historically means attacks on Jews: “Escalate protests to an open intifada in every capital and city.” Columbia’s chapter of the same influential club explained: “Supporting a 2 state solution is an inherently zionist position as zionism means that you believe in Israel’s right to exist.” And Harvard’s commencement speaker, journalist Maria A. Ressa, defended herself against allegations of antisemitism with more antisemitism in her speech: “I was. . . called antisemitic by power and money because they want power and money.” Well, that clears that one up.

And then all of a sudden, Harvard decided to slow down on weighing in. They’re out of the condemnation game, they say, mostly, at least right now, maybe not forever.

*In the latest Weekly Dish, “The consistency of their genius,” Andrew Sullivan leaves the Trump conviction to one side and analyzes two pop-culture phenomena that he admires, the musical group The Pet Shop boys and the television show “South Park.”

In fact, I want to celebrate what still rocks my world: the staggeringly consistent, supremely intelligent, and self-assured genius of two unique duos still powering forward in two different worlds: South Park and Pet Shop Boys.

That those brand names are more recognizable than their creators — Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe — tells you something of what they have in common: a commitment to their own unique creativity, rather than their fame, and the discipline and grit to explore it for decades. Anti-celebrities, in their time but never of it, perfectionist but unafraid of failure, these two duos are proof, it seems to me, that a democratic culture, even one as decadent as ours, can still spawn excellence and intelligence, spanning high and low, and generating what I can only call joy.

South Park is going into its 27th season. And it has rarely been better. (I simply can’t believe so many people I meet say they haven’t watched in years. You’ve been missing out!) The new special on obesity — a deft masterclass of social commentary — has a brutal takedown of suburban white women jonesing for doses of Ozempic like meth-heads; a definitive — and musical! — digression into the insanity of the American healthcare system; pure, character-driven humor in a figure like Randy Marsh — a far subtler parody of the average American male than Homer Simpson; and, of course, Eric Cartman — the “big-boned” fat-ass kid whose capacity for pure evil was first truly captured in the epic “Scott Tenorman Must Die.”

You can read books on Ozempic, scan op-eds, absorb TikToks, and even listen to the Dishcast! — but nothing out there captures every single possible social and medical and psychological wrinkle of this new drug than this hour of crude cartoons. Yes, there are fart jokes. There are always fart jokes. But fart jokes amid a sophisticated and deeply informed parody of insurance companies? Or, in other episodes, toilet humor guiding us through the cowardice of Disney, the dopey vanity of Kanye, the wokification of Hollywood, the exploitation of black college athletes, the evil of cable companies, the hollowness of hate-crime laws, the creepiness of Christian rock, or the money-making behind legal weed? Only South Park pulls this off. Only South Park gets away with all of it.

It’s a 1990s high-low formula at root, sophisticated cultural and political knowingness married to crude cartoons, silly accents, m’kay, and a talking Christmas turd, Mr Hankey. Generationally, it really marked a moment when merging these two worlds seemed the most creative option — not an abandonment of seriousness, but the attachment of a humane levity to it. South Park can be brutal, but it is never cruel. Unless you’re Barbra Streisand or Bono. And virtually every character (even Eric) is redeemable. Except Meghan Markle.

I don’t get cable t.v., not because I can’t afford it pecuniarily but because I can’t afford it timewise or mentally: there are too many books to read. But when I read a paean like the one above, it does make me sad that I don’t watch the show.  The episodes I’ve seen I have liked, but isnt that true of a lot of television shows.   I can afford to get hooked on new shows when there are places to see and books to read.  (This, of course, is just my subjective preferences and I don’t fault anyone who stays glued to the t.v. Wait a minute: yes I do. I don’t fault people who are selective in what t.v. they watch.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is down by the Vistula River, having walkies with Malgorzata and Andrzej:

Hili: May we return home? A: Why? Hili: There is something alarming in the air. In Polish: Hili:: Czy możemy wrócić do domu? Ja: Dlaczego? Hili: Jest coś niepokojącego w powietrzu.

*******************

From Science Humor:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Masih (translation from the Turkish):

Masih Alinejad, who escaped from Iran to Europe and ran freely on the streets of London, made the following comment under the photo he shared on social media: “A God who is ashamed of my hair cannot be my God”

İran’dan Avrupa’ya kaçıp Londra sokaklarda özgürce koşan Masih Alinejad, sosyal medyada paylaştığı fotoğrafın altına şu yorumu yaptı:

“Benim saçımdan utanan Tanrı, benim Tanrım olamaz” pic.twitter.com/wd409qvmpG

— Uzaktan Gelen (@Uzaktan_Gelen_) May 30, 2024

From Luana. The free speech that was affirmed was that of the National Rifle Association, and though I dislike them intensely, I also think that their free speech rights must be preserved regardless of how odious they are. From CBS News:

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the National Rifle Association in a dispute over whether its free speech rights were violated when the top financial regulator for New York state pushed banks and insurance companies to sever ties with the gun rights group.

The court said in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that the NRA “plausibly alleged” that the New York regulator violated the First Amendment by coercing regulated entities to end their business relationships with the NRA in order to “punish or suppress” the group’s pro-gun rights advocacy.

“The critical takeaway is that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from wielding their power selectively to punish or suppress speech, directly or (as alleged here) through private intermediaries,” Sotomayor wrote.

This morning, the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed a foundational First Amendment principle: “A government official cannot coerce a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on her behalf.”

The Court held the @NRA plausibly alleged New York state officials… pic.twitter.com/z0vJFbHdox

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) May 30, 2024

Emmanuel the Emu is being bad again, but so is Princess the Deer. But there’s also a baby bat having a nosh.

stop what you’re doing and look at this baby bat eating a strawberry pic.twitter.com/J6H0g18KGO

— Mirthful Moments (@moment_mirthful) May 30, 2024

From Larry the Cat via Simon:

First they came for Donald Trump and I… was relieved, as I’d been waiting ages for them to come for Donald Trump.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 31, 2024

These tigers must be married:

“That’s my side of the bed”
pic.twitter.com/WVWCEDxO0F

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 6, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl gassed on arrival at the camp. She was 12.

1 June 1931 | Dutch Jewish girl Leontine Juliette Susan was born in Amsterdam.

In November 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber. pic.twitter.com/HxxZBUXBUL

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) June 1, 2024

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, live and learn:

A tiny fern from New Caledonia was found to have the largest genome of any living organism.

If unraveled, the DNA contained in a single cell would stand taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Read more @YaleE360: https://t.co/xPh0HoVdGG pic.twitter.com/LRMlj2teUH

— Yale Environment 360 (@YaleE360) May 31, 2024

And a big Martian cloud:

https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fkonstructivizm%2Fstatus%2F1796498356765696279&widget=Tweet

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss436_George_Takach_2024_06_01.mp3 Download MP3

So much of what we hear about China and Russia today likens the relationship between these two autocracies and the West to a “rivalry” or a “great-power competition.” Some might consider it alarmist to say we are in the midst of a second Cold War, but that may be the only responsible way to describe today’s state of affairs.

What’s more, we have come a long way from Mao Zedong’s infamous observation that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Now we live in an age more aptly described by Vladimir Putin’s cryptic prophecy that “artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, but of all mankind, and whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.”

George S. Takach’s incisive and meticulously researched new volume, Cold War 2.0, is the book we need to thoroughly understand these frightening and perilous times. In the geopolitical sphere, there are no more pressing issues than the appalling mechanizations of a surveillance state in China, Russia’s brazen attempt to assert its autocratic model in Ukraine, and China’s increasingly likely plans to do the same in Taiwan.

But the key here, Takach argues, is that our new Cold War is not only ideological but technological: the side that prevails in Cold War 2.0 will be the one that bests the other in mastering the greatest innovations of our time. Artificial intelligence sits in our pockets every day—but what about AI that coordinates military operations and missile defense systems? Or the highly sophisticated semiconductor chips and quantum computers that power those missiles and a host of other weapons? And, where recently we have seen remarkable feats of bio-engineering to produce vaccines at record speed, shouldn’t we be concerned how catastrophic it would be if bio-engineering were co-opted for nefarious purposes?

Takach thoroughly examines how each of these innovations will shape the tension between democracy and autocracy, and how each will play a central role in this second Cold War. Finally, he crafts a precise blueprint for how Western democracies should handle these innovations to respond to the looming threat of autocracy—and ultimately prevail over it.

George S. Takach holds a bachelor’s degree in history, political economy, and philosophy from the University of Toronto; a graduate degree from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University; and a law degree from the University of Toronto. For forty years, he practiced technology law at McCarthy Tétrault, Canada’s premier law firm. He has written three books on technology law/tech commercial subjects. Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America is his first book for a general audience. He lives in Toronto.

Shermer and Takach discuss:

• Mao Zedong, 1927: “Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
• Vladimir Putin: “artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, but of all mankind, and whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.”
• What is AI and what will it be able to do in the coming decades?
• China’s surveillance state
• Russia and Ukraine
• Cold War 1.0: Autocracy, Democracy and Technology
• Cold War 2.0: AI and Autocracy and Democracy
• semiconductor chip supremacy
• quantum computing
• biotechnology
• China and Taiwan
• How China’s invasion of Taiwan is likely to unfold, and what the U.S. can do about it.

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

Universe Today has recently investigated a plethora of scientific disciplines, including impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, planetary geophysics, cosmochemistry, meteorites, radio astronomy, extremophiles, organic chemistry, black holes, and cryovolcanism, while conveying their importance of how each of them continues to teach researchers and the public about our place in the vast universe.

Here, we investigate the field of planetary protection, which involves preventing Earth-born organisms from contaminating other worlds or interfering with scientific analyses on those worlds, along with preventing contamination to Earth from returned samples. To investigate this, we present a 2023 paper in Acta Astronautica with additional insights from the study’s lead author, Dr. Athena Coustenis, who serves as the Chair of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Panel on Planetary Protection (PPP), regarding what planetary protection can teach us about finding life beyond Earth, exciting aspects about planetary protection, and advice for upcoming students who wish to study planetary protection.

The paper discusses the importance of planetary protection regarding space exploration, stating, “Planetary protection enables scientific return from solar system bodies investigations and at the same time protects life on Earth. As we continue to explore our solar system by landing machines and humans on other planets, we need to ascertain that we do not bring potentially dangerous material home to Earth or carry anything from Earth that may contaminate another planetary body and prevent scientific investigations.”

The paper discusses in greater detail the COSPAR PPP and its primary goals, including offering advice or guidance to government or private space-faring organizations and ensuring extraterrestrial samples returned from outer space do not contaminate the Earth, and specifically its biosphere. Additionally, the paper discusses recent policy actions taken by the PPP for the continued exploration of the Moon, Mars, and icy moons such as Europa, Enceladus, and Titan.

For the Moon, PPP recommended steps that need to be taken to prevent potential contamination of the permanently shadowed regions of the Moon, which are hypothesized to contain large quantities of water ice and are of significant interest for the upcoming Artemis missions. For Mars, the PPP focused on safeguarding more advanced scientific endeavors, including drilling, older areas of Mars that have yet to be explored, and sample return missions, to prevent contamination of potential scientific results and Earth’s biosphere, as well.

For icy moons, which the paper notes as being “possible habitable environments”, the PPP has already expressed concerns about exploring these worlds with the Planetary Protection of the Outer Solar System (PPOOS), which was led by the European Science Foundation and funded by the European Commission and is in the process of seeking additional insights in the future. Therefore, with these intriguing worlds being considered for exploration, what can planetary protection teach us about finding life beyond Earth?

Dr. Coustenis tells Universe Today, “Finding ways to preserve scientific research in our solar system helps the quest for finding life elsewhere and protecting our own biosphere during space exploration is essential for life on Earth. Working to that end with a large group of scientists, agency representatives and other expert stakeholders is one of the most rewarding activities in my career. The valuable outcome which represents thorough, long-term studies and reviews of knowledge is achieved through consensus and distributed to the large community. We are very excited to be able to offer such a service to the community via the COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection.”

Along with serving as Chair of the COSPAR PPP, Dr. Coustenis has extensive research experience regarding planetary surfaces and atmospheres, specifically outer solar system objects like Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Enceladus, as these worlds are targets for future astrobiology research. Additionally, Dr. Coustenis’ research extends far beyond the solar system as she has helped distinguish and characterize exoplanetary atmospheres, as well. Regarding planetary protection, some notable publications include being a co-author on a March 2024 paper discussing planetary protection for a future crewed Mars mission and a 2023 paper discussing COSPAR requirements for exploring Venus. Given her knowledge and experience regarding planetary protection, what are some of the most exciting aspects about planetary protection that Dr. Coustenis has encountered during her career?

Dr. Coustenis tells Universe Today, “We have recently worked on the Moon exploration requirements to preserve the poles and the regions where liquid water could be found at some periods of time and are currently working on the missions that will explore icy worlds, like the moons of our giant planets that harbor liquid water oceans underneath their surfaces, as well as organic chemistry and energy sources. These could be habitable environments that we need to explore with care.”

As noted in the Acta Astronautica paper, the field of planetary protection requires international collaboration not only from a multitude of scientists, but also engineers, as they are the individuals responsible for building the spacecraft that are sent to far-off worlds for scientific exploration. Other disciplines that contribute to planetary protection include geology, physics, geophysics, biotechnology, astrobiology, biomedical, planetary science. It is through this constant collaboration of scientists, engineers, and medical professionals that planetary protection has successfully prevented contamination of planetary bodies outside the Earth, but also preventing contamination of the Earth from returned samples. Therefore, what advice can Dr. Coustenis offer to upcoming students who wish to pursue a career in planetary protection?

Dr. Coustenis tells Universe Today, “Planetary protection offers the possibility to contribute coming from many different fields, scientific, engineering, economic or legal. We need all these varied points of view in order to accomplish adequate characterizations of space missions and related requirements and also to establish the real value of planetary protection, the enabling capacity of this tool and to spread the word about what we do and how others can contribute, in particular the younger generations. So, we encourage students and early-career space aficionados to join COSPAR and learn more about our work and that of other commissions and panels within its structure so as to be able also to position themselves and engage with the space community.”

How will planetary protection teach us about our place in the cosmos in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Planetary Protection: Why study it? What can it teach us about finding life beyond Earth? appeared first on Universe Today.

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), located on Mount Graham in Arizona and run by the University of Arizona, is part of the next generation of extremely large telescopes (ELTs). With two primary mirrors measuring 8.4 m (~27.5 ft), it has a collecting area slightly greater than that of a 30-meter (98.4 ft) telescope. With their resolution, adaptive optics, and sophisticated instruments, these telescopes are expected to probe deeper into the Universe and provide stunning images of everything from distant galaxies to objects in our Solar System.

An international team led by the University of Arizona recently acquired images of Jupiter’s moon Io that were the highest-resolution pictures ever taken by a ground-based telescope. The images revealed surface features measuring just 80 km (50 mi) across, a spatial resolution previously reserved for spacecraft. This includes NASA’s Juno mission, which has captured some of the most stunning images of Io’s volcanoes. These images were made possible by the LBT’s new SHARK-VIS instrument and the telescope’s adaptive optics system.

The team was led by Al Conrad, an Associate Staff Scientist with the University of Arizona’s Department of Astronomy, the Stewart Observatory, and the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO). He was joined by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the California Institute of Technology, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Their paper, “Observation of Io’s Resurfacing via Plume Deposition Using Ground-Based Adaptive Optics at Visible Wavelengths With LBT SHARK-VIS (GRL),” and the LBT images are set to be published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

The Large Binocular Telescope, showing the two imaging mirrors. Credit: NASA

SHARK-VIS is a high-contrast optical coronagraphic imaging instrument designed and built at INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma. The instrument is fed by the refurbished LBT extreme Adaptive Optics system, called the Single conjugated adaptive Optics Upgrade for LBT (SOUL). It was installed in 2023 on the LBT along with the near-infrared instrument, SHARK-NIR, to take advantage of the telescope’s outstanding adaptive optics system. The key to the instrument is its fast, ultra-low-noise “fast imaging” camera that captures slow-motion footage that freezes the optical distortions caused by atmospheric interference.

Gianluca Li Causi, the data processing manager for SHARK-VIS at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, explained how it works in a recent University of Arizona News release:

“We process our data on the computer to remove any trace of the sensor’s electronic footprint. We then select the best frames and combine them using a highly efficient software package called Kraken, developed by our colleagues Douglas Hope and Stuart Jefferies from Georgia State University. Kraken allows us to remove atmospheric effects, revealing Io in incredible sharpness.”

The SHARK-VIS image was so rich in detail that it allowed the researchers to identify a major resurfacing event around Pele, one of Io’s largest volcanoes located in the southern hemisphere near the equator (and named after the Hawaiin deity associated with fire and volcanoes). The image shows a plume deposit around Pele covered by eruption deposits from Pillan Patera, a neighboring volcano. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft observed a similar eruption sequence while exploring the Jupiter system between 1995 and 2003. However, this was the first time an Earth-based observatory took such detailed images.

An artist’s concept of the interior of Io. Credit: Kelvinsong/Wikimedia

“We interpret the changes as dark lava deposits and white sulfur dioxide deposits originating from an eruption at Pillan Patera, which partially cover Pele’s red, sulfur-rich plume deposit,” said co-author Ashley Davies, a principal scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Before SHARK-VIS, such resurfacing events were impossible to observe from Earth.” Io is the innermost of Jupiter’s largest moons (aka. Galilean moons), which include Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Since NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft flew through the Jupiter system in 1979, scientists have been fascinated by Io and its volcanic features.

Along with Europa and Ganymede, Io is locked in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance, where Europa makes two orbits for every orbit made by Ganymede, and Io makes four. Between its interaction with these moons and Jupiter’s powerful gravity, Io’s interior is constantly flexing, producing hot lava that erupts through the surface. While telescopes have taken infrared images that revealed hot spots caused by eruptions, they are not sharp enough to reveal surface details or identify the locations of the eruptions. By monitoring the eruptions on Io’s surface, scientists hope to gain insights into the tidal heating mechanism responsible for Io’s intense volcanism.

“Io, therefore, presents a unique opportunity to learn about the mighty eruptions that helped shape the surfaces of the Earth and the moon in their distant pasts,” said Conrad. Studies like this one, he added, will help researchers understand why some planets have active volcanoes while others do not. For instance, while Venus is thought to still be volcanically active, Mars is home to the largest volcanoes in the Solar System but is inactive. These studies may also shed light on volcanic exoplanets someday, helping astronomers to identify geological activity on distant planets (a possible indication of habitability).

SHARK-VIS instrument scientist Simone Antoniucci anticipates that it will enable new observations of objects throughout the Solar System with similar sharpness, revealing all manner of features that would otherwise require spacecraft.”The keen vision of SHARK-VIS is particularly suited to observing the surfaces of many solar system bodies, not only the moons of giant planets but also asteroids,” he said. “We have already observed some of those, with the data currently being analyzed, and are planning to observe more.”

Further Reading: University of Arizona

The post New Telescope Images of Io are so Good, it Looks like a Spacecraft Took Them appeared first on Universe Today.

It is truly wonderful to see so many nations aspiring to space exploration and trips to the Moon. Earlier this week on the 27th May, South Korea innaugurated its new space agency, the Korea AeroSpace Administration otherwise known as KASA. The group is headed up by former professor of aerospace engineering Yoon Young-bin. Whilst the group has yet to announce detailed plans for their upcoming missions Young-bin has stated they hope to land on the Moon by 2032 and to get to Mars by 2045.

The President of Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, had confirmed that the government was committed to the space sector. To that end, they intend to secure investments of billions of dollars to fund the project. In March this year Korean Space Agency was formed in a ceremony that took place in March this year. Suk-yeol pleduged to facilitate 1,000 space companies and he hoped that 10 of the companies would become top-tier space firms. They would work hard to increase Korea’s share of the space market, aiming to hit 10% instead of the existing 1%. and create over 100,000 jobs. 

The Korean goverment has for sometime been keen to expand the space industry, Young-bin also prioritised support for the private sector. “The establishment of KASA will be an important stepping stone that guides the way for Korea to become a powerhouse in space economy by setting up the private-led space ecosystem,” Young-bin said. 

Young-bin is no stranger to space exploration since he had been researching space propulsion at the time of his appointment. His research chiefly focuses on liquid rocket engine. He has also been a serving director of the Institute of Advanced Aerospace Technology. 

Mid to long term goals and visions for space development are important next steps along the journey. To achieve those, KASA are striving for active cooperation from public, private and academic sectors. All of this is of course subject to securing the necessary funding. 

The framework for operations of KASA have been established and will be implemented with a maximum of 293 employees. Currenly only 110 are in place which includes a number of officials who were originally part of the Science Ministry in Korea. With the establishment of KASA, the Ministry of Science and ICT have been reorganised to align to their reduced scope of work but to find the remaining employees KASA will continue to search at home and abroad for the right people.

Along with their plans to explore the Moon and Mars, KASA is also planning to explore the Lagrangian Point known as L4. These regions in space lie along the Earth’s orbit and usually a little ahead or a litle behind but at these points, the gravitational force of the Earth and that of the Sun balance out against each other making for a highly efficient location for a probe. No country has acehived this yet so it will really put KASA on the international space exploration map.

They also plan to restore the Apophis mission which had been scrapped some years ago. The asteroid will pass close by Earth in 2029. The plan is for this to become an international mission, calling upon international co-operation. Other projects include participation in the Event Horizon Telescope and black hole imaging from one of NASA’s solar coronagraph.

Source : Korea ushers in new space era with KASA launch

The post South Korea is Planning to Send a Mission to Mars by 2045 appeared first on Universe Today.

Mars has a distinct structure in its mantle and crust with discernible reservoirs, and this is known thanks to meteorites that scientists have analyzed. These results are important for understanding not only how Mars formed and evolved, but also for providing precise data that can inform recent NASA missions like Insight and Perseverance and the Mars Sample Return.

If matter falls into one end of a wormhole, it could heat up in a tornado of plasma hot enough to initiate nuclear fusion – and come blasting out the other end

A simple statistical test can quickly guide humanitarian efforts in areas like Gaza and Ukraine impacted by war – and it could perform as well as more expensive, AI-powered methods

Machine-based decision-making is an interesting vision for the future: Humanity, crippled by its own cognitive deformations, tries to improve its lot by opting to outsource its decisions to adaptive machines—a kind of mental prosthetic.

For most of the twentieth century, artificial intelligence was based on representing explicit sets of rules in software and having the computer “reason” based on these rules—the machine’s “intelligence” involved applying the rules to a particular situation. Because the rules were explicit, the machine could also “explain” its reasoning by listing the rules that prompted its decision. Even if AI had the ring of going beyond the obvious in reasoning and decisionmaking, traditional AI depended on our ability to make explicit all relevant rules and to translate them into some machine-digestible representation. It was transparent and explainable, but it was also static—in this way, it did not differ fundamentally from other forms of decisional guardrails such as standard operating procedures (SOPs) or checklists. The progress of this kind of AI stalled because in many everyday areas of human activity and decisionmaking, it is exceptionally hard to make rules explicit.

In recent decades, however, AI has been used as a label for something quite different. The new kind of AI analyzes training data in sophisticated ways to uncover patterns that represent knowledge implicit in the data. The AI does not turn this hidden knowledge into explicit and comprehensible rules, but instead represents it as a huge and complex set of abstract links and dependencies within a network of nodes, a bit like neurons in a brain. It then “decides” how to respond to new data by applying the patterns from the training data. For example, the training data may consist of medical images of suspected tumors, and information about whether or not they in fact proved to be cancerous. When shown a new image, the AI estimates how likely that image is to be of a cancer. Because the system is learning from training data, the process is referred to as “machine learning.”

Such data-driven AI offers two important advantages over conventional AI. First, humans no longer have to make rules explicit to feed into the system. Instead, rules emerge from the training data. Alex Davies, author of the book Driven on machine learning and self-driving cars, puts it succinctly: in this new paradigm “the computer gets lessons, not laws.” That means we can use such AI for the kind of everyday knowledge that’s so difficult to capture with explicit rules.

The second advantage—which is even greater, in this context—is that because rules are derived from training data, they don’t have to be fixed. Instead, they can be adapted as more (and newer) training data is used. This should prevent the stiffening that lessens the effectiveness of many decisional guardrails as times change. It enables looking at patterns not only from the past but also from the present to deduce rules that can be applied to decisions in the future. It has, in other words, a built-in mechanism of updating rules.

Advocates suggest that we should incentivize the use of machine learning in an ever-increasing number of contexts, and even mandate it—much like collision warning systems have become obligatory in commercial aviation. While this might sound dramatic, the change may actually be more gradual. In many instances in our daily lives, we already have machines making decisions for us, from the relatively simple—such as an airbag deploying in a car crash—to the more sophisticated, such as Siri selecting music on our smartphone. And we profit from it: Machines aren’t as easily derailed by human biases; they perform consistently, irrespective of their emotional state. They also act efficiently—capable of doing so within a split second and at relatively low cost.

The central idea of data-driven decision guidance is that past experiences can be employed to decide well in the present. That works when the world doesn’t change—not the circumstances in which we must decide, nor the goals we want to attain through our decisions. Hard-coded rules are a poor fit for times of change; in theory, this is where data-driven AI should be able to shine. If a situation changes, we should be able to add more training data that reflect the new situation. However, there is a flaw in this line of reasoning.

Autonomous driving company Waymo illustrates the argument—and the flaw. For years, Waymo has had hundreds of cars roam the roads in the United States, collecting enormous heaps of data on roads, signage, conditions, weather, and the behavior of drivers. The data were used to train Waymo’s AI system, which then could drive autonomously. These cars were the guinea pigs for the Waymo system. Mistakes observed (including by their own drivers) in turn help the Waymo system to learn to avoid them. To identify the best driving behavior for any given circumstance, such a system needs not only data about a wide variety of situations, but also data about the outcomes of many different decisions made by drivers in each situation. Learning is richest when there is sufficient variability in the training data, so the system can deduce what works best in which conditions. To get diverse training data, Waymo needs to capture drivers making a variety of choices.

The more we use data-driven machine learning to make decisions, the more it will take the variability of decisions out of the data and shed its ability to progress.

Because Waymo never stopped collecting training data, even small changes in circumstances—such as in driving laws and resulting driving behavior—were reflected in the data collected and eventually embedded in the Waymo system. It was a machine that not only learned once, but never stopped learning.

However, let’s imagine a world in which we increasingly rely on machines when making decisions. The more machines shape our choices, the more these decisions will become the only source of training data for ongoing machine learning. The problem is that data-driven machine learning does not experiment; it acts based on the best practice it has deduced from data about previous decisions. If machines begin to learn more from choices we made based on their recommendations, they will amplify their own, conservative solutions.

Over time, this will narrow and drown out behavioral diversity in the training data. There will not be enough experimentation represented in it to enable the machines to adjust to new situations. This means data-driven machine learning will lose its single most important advantage over explicit rule-based systems. We will end up with a decisional monoculture that’s unable to evolve; we are back to fixed decisional rules.

The flaw is even bigger and more consequential than not being able to adjust to changed circumstances. Even if reality doesn’t change, we may miss opportunities to improve our decision-making in the future. Many innovations that end up becoming successful are less useful than existing choices in their initial form. But any new decision options emerging from the training data will likely only be adopted if they yield better results than existing choices straight away. This closes off any opportunity to experiment with promising new ideas.

For example, the first steam engines used far more energy than they could translate into motion and power. If a machine had compared them to the existing solution of using horses for power, it would have discarded the idea of steam power right away. The only reason the steam engine succeeded is because stubborn humans thought that they could improve the invention in the long run and stuck with it. These tinkerers had no data to support their confidence. They just imagined—and kept tinkering.

Of course, most such would-be innovators fail over time. The path of progress is paved with epitaphs to dogged tinkerers following crazy ideas. Occasionally, though, small changes accumulate and lead to a breakthrough—a far more optimal decision option. Modern societies have permitted tinkering to persist, though it is almost always unproductive, even destructive, in the short term—because of the slight chance of a big payoff sometime in the future.

Data-driven machine learning, if widely utilized, would discard initially suboptimal inventions. But in doing so, it would forego the possibility of long-term breakthroughs. Machines can learn only from what already exists. Humans can imagine what does not yet exist but could. Where humans invented steam power, data-driven machine learning would instead have found more and more efficient ways to use horse power.

Human dreaming can go far beyond technical novelties. Our ancestors once dreamed of a world in which slavery is abolished; women can vote; and people can choose for themselves whom to marry and whether to have children. They imagined a world in which smallpox is extinct and we vaccinate against polio. And they worked to make those dreams come true. If they had looked only at data from their past and present, none of these dreams would have been realized.

Decisional guidelines, from SOPs to nudges, emphasize constancy. Traditional education, too, often aims to perpetuate—suggesting there is a right answer for decisions much like for math problems. But decisional guidelines are just that—suggestions that can be disobeyed if one is willing to take the risk (and shoulder the responsibility). For eons, young people have frequently revolted against their parents and teachers, pushed back against the old, the conventional and predictable, and embraced instead not just the original and novel, but the still only imagined. Humans continue to dream—of a world, for example, that will warm by less than two degrees, or in which people have enough to eat without depleting the planet.

In contrast to humans, machine decision-making is optimized toward consistency across time. Even if data-driven machine learning has access to the very latest data, it will still limit our option space. It will always choose a more efficient way to travel along our current path, rather than try to forge a new one. The more we use it to make decisions, the more it will take the variability of decisions out of the data and shed its ability to progress. It will lead us into vulnerability, rigidity, and an inability to adapt and evolve. In this sense, data-driven machine learning is an adulation of immutability, the anathema of imagination.

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 29.1
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No technological adjustment can remedy this easily. If we want to increase diversity in the data, we will need variability in machine decisions. By definition, this means machines that make suboptimal choices. But the entire argument for using more AI in our decision-making is premised on AI’s ability to suggest better choices consistently across space and time. In many instances, it would not be societally palatable to deliberately introduce variation into what options a machine picks, thereby increasing the near-term risk of bad decisions in the hope of long-term benefits. And even if it were, it would not necessarily produce the experimentation we hope for. Very often, the theoretical decision space is immense. Randomly iterating through decision options to generate the diverse data necessary would take a very long time—far too long in most instances to help in timely decision-making. Even when iterations are non-random and can be done purely digitally, it would require massive computing resources.

In contrast, when humans experiment, they rarely decide randomly; instead, they use mental models to imagine outcomes. Done correctly, this can dramatically narrow the decision space. It’s that filtering based on cognitive modeling that differentiates human experimentation in decision contexts from the random walk that the machine, in the absence of a mental model, has to employ. And if machines were to use a particular mental model, the resulting data would be constrained again by the limitations of that model. A diverse set of humans experimenting using diverse mental models is simply very hard to beat.

This essay was excerpted and adapted by the authors from their book Guardrails: Guiding Human Decisions in the Age of AI. Copyright © 2024 by Princeton University Press.

About the Author

Urs Gasser is professor of public policy, governance, and innovative technology and dean of the School of Social Sciences and Technology at the Technical University of Munich. He is the author of Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is professor of internet governance and regulation at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. This essay was excerpted and adapted by the authors from their book Guardrails: Guiding Human Decisions in the Age of AI.

A novel, human-inspired approach to training artificial intelligence (AI) systems to identify objects and navigate their surroundings could set the stage for the development of more advanced AI systems to explore extreme environments or distant worlds, according to new research.

Converting home heating systems from natural gas furnaces to electric heat pumps is seen as a way to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

MRI scans are commonly used to diagnose a variety of conditions, anything from liver disease to brain tumors. But, as anyone who has been through one knows, patients must remain completely still to avoid blurring the images and requiring a new scan. A prototype device could change that. The self-powered sensor detects movement and shuts down an MRI scan in real time, improving the process for patients and technicians.

MRI scans are commonly used to diagnose a variety of conditions, anything from liver disease to brain tumors. But, as anyone who has been through one knows, patients must remain completely still to avoid blurring the images and requiring a new scan. A prototype device could change that. The self-powered sensor detects movement and shuts down an MRI scan in real time, improving the process for patients and technicians.

Here’s the last video of the day, as well as the last live performance of Otis Redding, who died with his band in a plane crash the day after this video was recorded on December 9, 1967.  He was only 26. This song, along with “Dock of the Bay”, are Redding’s best recordings, but “Dock of the Bay” was largely written by him, while this song, “Try a Little Tenderness“, recorded on the Stax label, was actually written by three white men in 1932. And it was recorded by, among others, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.  (Redding’s released recording, from 1966, is here.)

NPR’s “Fresh Air” did a documentary on Stax Records that’s still up, and well worth listening to (it’s only 46 minutes long and has tons of music, including some good stuff from Booker T., who, with the M.G.s, backed Redding on the recorded version of “Tenderness”.). Since Redding recorded for Stax, I revisited this song and found this live version.  If you listen to the recordings by Crosby or Sinatra, you’ll see that Redding’s soul version is infinitely better. The difference between the performance below and the earlier versions shows you the very essence of soul music.

And you can also get an inkling of Redding’s talent—talent cut off way too early.

(“Dock of the Bay,” by the way, was released posthumously, and became the first Top 100 pop single to top the charts after the performer’s death.)

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades, here’s Otis Redding, giving James Brown a run for his money as “the hardest-working man in show business.”

Queen Asian hornets found in East Sussex this year are a genetic match to a 2023 nest, suggesting the invasive species is becoming established in the UK

The true nature of time has eluded physicists for centuries, but a new theoretical model suggests it may only exist due to entanglement between quantum objects

For centuries, civilizations have used naturally occurring, inorganic materials for their perceived healing properties. Egyptians thought green copper ore helped eye inflammation, the Chinese used cinnabar for heartburn, and Native Americans used clay to reduce soreness and inflammation. Flash forward to today, and researchers are still discovering ways that inorganic materials can be used for healing. A new article explains that cellular pathways for bone and cartilage formation can be activated in stem cells using inorganic ions. Another recent article explores the usage of mineral-based nanomaterials, specifically 2D nanosilicates, to aid musculoskeletal regeneration.

To overcome issues associated with real-life testing, researchers successfully demonstrated the use of digital twin technology within robot simulation software in assessing a robot's suitability for deployment in simulated built environments.

As more and more people drive electric cars, congestion and queues can occur when many people need to charge at the same time. A new study shows how AI-controlled charging stations, through smart algorithms, can offer electric vehicle users personalized prices, and thus minimize both price and waiting time for customers. But the researchers point to the importance of taking the ethical issues seriously, as there is a risk that the artificial intelligence exploits information from motorists.