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New York, New York, the “city that never Sleeps,” has given us two Presidents, Eggs Benedict, potato chips, Robert De Niro, Saturday Night Live, and Scrabble. Two of New York City’s boroughs have also been home to three of the most controversial and infamous criminal defendants in American history: Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Though their convictions were handed down decades ago, Hauptmann from the Bronx, and the Rosenbergs from Knickerbocker Village in Manhattan, remain causes célèbres around the globe. With passionate proponents around the world still proclaiming their innocence, a skeptical examination of the evidence for the guilt of both Hauptmann and the Rosenbergs is warranted.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann
The Crime

On the night of March 1, 1932, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped from his nursery window on the second floor of the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, NJ.1 The kidnapper(s) left a poorly written ransom note demanding $50,000 (over $1 Million in today’s money).2 The note to the Lindbergh’s also contained a code: two interlocking circles resembling a Venn diagram with three small holes punched through them.3 At least two sets of differing footprints were found at the crime site, as were a ¾” chisel,4 and the home-built ladder used to climb to the nursery window.5 During the next three months, 13 more notes bearing the code symbols were delivered and the ransom was raised to $70,000.

The kidnapping of the world-famous son of “Lucky Lindy” (solo pilot of the first nonstop airline flight across the Atlantic Ocean, New York to Paris) made international headlines. A retired school teacher and, by all accounts, a self-aggrandizing publicity-seeker6 named John F. Condon, published a letter in the Bronx Home News offering to serve as a liaison between the Lindberghs and the kidnapper(s).7 On March 8, seven days after the child was taken, and one day following the publication of his offer, Condon received a letter, bearing the code, accepting his offer to be an intermediary.8

Condon was instructed by the kidnapper(s) to place an ad in the New York American using the name “Jafsie” (a play on his initials), indicating that the ransom money was ready. Condon did so and, on March 12, he received another code-bearing letter from a cab driver instructing him to meet the kidnappers at Woodlawn, a Bronx cemetery.9 Condon went alone. There he met a man with a German accent identified as “John,” who asked for the money, which Condon refused to provide until he’d seen the baby. The mysterious man expressed fear that he “might burn” if the baby was dead and told Condon he would provide proof of the child in the toddler’s sleeping suit.10 Condon soon received the child’s sleeping suit in the mail and continued to communicate through advertisements until a meeting was arranged to exchange the ransom. $70,000 in unmarked gold certificate U.S. paper money were placed in two packages, their serial numbers having been recorded. (The fact that the ransom was paid in gold certificates would later become significant).

On April 2, 1932, Charles Lindbergh rode with Condon11 to another Bronx cemetery, St. Raymond’s,12 where they heard a man call out, “Hey doctor!” Condon went toward the voice while Lindbergh waited in the car. Condon convinced the kidnapper he only had $50,000 of the ransom money. The kidnapper accepted the sum and gave Condon another note filled with misspellings asserting that the child was safe aboard a boat named “Nelly,” harbored off the Massachusetts coast.13 The kidnapper took the money and Condon returned to the car where Lindbergh was waiting. An exhaustive search failed to find the boat. On May 12, 1932, the body of the child was found close to Lindbergh’s home from which he was taken.14 Over the next two years, 296 of the gold certificates the Lindberghs used to pay the ransom turned up in circulation.

Earlier that year, Roosevelt’s Gold Reserve Act of 1934 mandated that all gold and gold certificate currency be surrendered and vested in the sole title of the United States Department of the Treasury. In other words, The Gold Reserve Act prohibited private ownership of monetary gold. On September 15, 1934, a gas station attendant in the Bronx wrote down the license plate number of a man who had paid him with one of the gold standard-backed certificates. The authorities traced the plate to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German-born American carpenter.15 A search of Hauptmann’s garage found $14,600 of the ransom money. Hauptmann provided an explanation and an alibi: He was working the night of the kidnapping at a hotel and a former business partner named Isidor Fitch left the money with him.16 Fitch, who owed him money, had since returned to his native Germany and died on March 29, 1934. Initially, Condon was unwilling to identify Hauptmann conclusively from a police lineup, later changing his mind and acknowledging that Hauptmann was indeed “Cemetery John.”17 Hauptmann was charged with extortion and murder and pled not guilty. The trial was a media circus, with famed journalist H.L. Mencken labeling it “the greatest story since the resurrection.”18

Hauptmann was found guilty and sentenced to death, with most of the public convinced of his guilt.19 After the Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey unanimously affirmed Hauptmann’s conviction, he was executed on April 3, 1936. Hauptmann died protesting his innocence, even though a newspaper offered him $75,000 (far more than the ransom money) to name his accomplices.20

The Conspiracies

Though the Lindbergh kidnapping is approaching its 100th anniversary and all the principal participants are long dead, The State of New Jersey v. Bruno Richard Hauptmann has evolved in much of the public imagination into a tragic miscarriage of justice. Since his execution in 1936, books, articles, documentaries, plays, websites, and movies have examined Hauptmann’s role in the crime, the majority of them wondering if Hauptmann was, in fact, wrongly convicted.21

For years, conspiracies have run the gamut from the probable (Hauptmann had accomplices)22 to the possible (Violet Sharpe, a domestic servant of the Lindberghs, was somehow involved)23 to the preposterous (Charles Lindbergh had his own disabled son murdered).24 A few highlights:

• In 1976, author Antony Scaduto capitalized on these conspiracies with the publication of Scapegoat: The Lonesome Death of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Scaduto purported to “set the record straight after some forty years of distortion…”25
• In a 1980 episode of In Search Of…, Scaduto claimed to have found “startling new evidence that exonerates Hauptmann.”26 All expert testimony, eyewitness testimony, and physical and forensic evidence, he claimed, were manufactured by the police to frame Hauptmann. Scaduto goes even further, asserting that the body found on May 12, 1932, was not that of the Lindbergh baby, and the only way to identify the badly decomposed body was by the number of his teeth.27
• In 1981, Hauptmann’s widow Anna began a series of lawsuits against her husband’s prosecutor, David Wilentz, echoing conspiratorial claims of new evidence that exonerated her husband alongside charges of fraud and witness suppression.28
• In 1985, Ludovic Kennedy published The Airman and The Carpenter: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. He posited that Hauptmann did not commit the crime and was wrongfully convicted and executed.29
• In a 1996 HBO movie, Crime of the Century, Stephen Rea portrayed Hauptmann as an innocent victim railroaded for a crime he did not commit.30
• In 2012, Robert Zorn published Cemetery John: The Undiscovered Mastermind Behind the Lindbergh Kidnapping, in which he makes the case that Hauptmann’s accomplice was a fellow German immigrant named John Knoll.31 Zorn’s thesis notes Knoll’s resemblance to the police sketch provided by Condon, traces of meat found on some of the ransom money (Knoll having worked at a deli), updated handwriting analysis of the ransom notes,32 and Knoll’s trip to Germany on a luxury liner during the trial, only returning after Hauptmann’s conviction.33
• In 2020, Lise Pearlman released The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1: The Man Who Got Away, which suggests Lindbergh himself, a vocal eugenics supporter and Nazi sympathizer, may have orchestrated the kidnapping and death of his own son.34

The Evidence

Pay attention only to Hauptmann-was-innocent proponents and a pattern emerges: Desperate to satisfy a public hungry to assign blame, authorities deliberately conspired to frame Hauptmann for the crime. Lacking hard evidence, the prosecution exploited the anti-German atmosphere of the time by portraying Hauptmann as part of the the growing German menace, and a gross miscarriage of justice.35 Authorities coerced Condon into identifying Hauptmann as Cemetery John,36 and Hauptmann was forced to misspell the same words on writing samples that were misspelled on the ransom notes.37

The evidence reveals a much harsher reality: It may well be that Hauptmann had accomplices (the government certainly thought he did),38 but it takes an extraordinary leap of faith to believe Hauptmann was uninvolved in the crime and preposterous to argue that he was “framed.” Many of these conspiratorial claims mislead by omission, while others are demonstrably false. For example, when initially interviewed by the police, Hauptmann lied twice, saying the only gold certificates he had were the ones in his wallet,39 and he was working as a carpenter at a hotel the day of the kidnapping,40 driving his wife home at about 9:00 p.m. that night.41

About one-third of the ransom money was found hidden in Hauptmann’s garage.42 Upon checking the hotel employment records, it was discovered that Hauptmann had not started working there until 20 days after the crime, and quit the day the ransom was delivered.43 (Scaduto omits this entirely.44) The summer after the ransom was paid, Hauptmann (an unemployed carpenter at the height of the Great Depression) came into enough money to fund four family trips to California, Florida, and Maine, and finance trips to Europe for his wife and several friends.45

The physical evidence found on Hauptmann’s property wasn’t limited to the ransom money, either. Hauptmann’s tools matched the marks on the ladder. Dr. Condon’s address and phone number were found scrawled in a closet alongside the serial numbers of gold certificates.46 When asked for an explanation on the witness stand, Hauptmann admitted that he must have written Condon’s contact information in his closet because, in his words, “I must have read it in the paper about the story. I was a little bit interested and keep a little bit record of it, and maybe I was just on the closet, and was reading the paper and put it down the address.”47

There were eyewitnesses as well. The cab driver, Joseph Perrone, pinpointed Hauptmann as the man who gave him written instructions for Condon.48, 49 After deliberation, Condon testified that it was indeed Hauptmann whom he met at the cemetery,50 and Lindbergh himself testified it was Hauptmann’s voice he heard yelling, “Hey doctor!”51 Forensic evidence also implicates Hauptmann. Contrary to Scaduto’s claims, the autopsy of the victim was conducted with fidelity by Dr. Charles Mitchell, a veteran coroner, who easily identified the child by his (clearly recognizable) face. Lindbergh confirmed the body was that of his son.52, 53 Forensic experts54 then and now confirm a board from the ladder came from Hauptmann’s own attic.55 Scaduto notes that Hauptmann’s fingerprints did not match those found on the ransom note.56 This is true, but only because no fingerprints were found at the scene.57

At least 21 handwriting experts examined Hauptmann’s notebooks, and private letters in addition to the samples Hauptmann wrote for the police, all of whom concluded Hauptmann wrote the ransom notes during the trial.58 All of Anna Hauptmann’s lawsuits against the government through the early 1980s were dismissed for lack of evidence.59 As recently as 2003, a police archivist named Mark Fazini found a handwritten, anonymous note in German confessing to the crime.60 This would seem to exonerate Hauptmann unless one considers the note was debunked61 and was only one of dozens of similar confessions.62

Through the years, at least 16 different people have claimed to be the actual Lindbergh baby, including an African American woman from Trenton, NJ.63 Establishing the Lindbergh baby survived and grew up under an assumed name would absolutely exonerate Hauptmann, but no substantive evidence for any one of these claims has ever been provided.64, 65, 66 Even more damning is Hauptmann’s modus operandi. His widow, Anna, gave multiple interviews in which she asserted Richard was telling the truth67 and could never commit such a crime.68, 69 In fact, Hauptmann had an extensive criminal record. While in Germany, for example, he’d been convicted of robbery at gunpoint and even burglarized a home while using a ladder.70

Why didn’t Hauptmann name his accomplices and save himself, then? According to criminal profiler John Douglas, it isn’t unusual for the condemned to maintain innocence in order to spare their surviving family members public shame.71 Hauptmann also believed he would be spared the electric chair, as the governor of New Jersey publicly expressed doubts about Hauptmann’s role in the crime.72

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, separated by heavy wire screen as they leave U.S. Court House after being found guilty by jury. (Credit: Roger Higgins, New York World-Telegram and Sun Collection / Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Digital ID cph 3c17772)

Julius & Ethel Rosenberg
The Crime

In January of 1950, a physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project named Klaus Fuchs was arrested in Great Britain for passing top-secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.73 Fuchs admitted the crime and fingered a Swiss chemist named Harry Gold as the courier between himself and the Soviets. Gold was arrested and identified others in the espionage ring, including a machinist at Los Alamos, David Greenglass,74 who first denied the charges, and then, in June of 1950, named his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, as the one who convinced him to spy for the Russians.75 Julius Rosenberg was living with his wife Ethel and two children in Knickerbocker Village, a housing development located near the Manhattan Bridge.76 Julius was arrested and flatly denied any involvement.77

A grand jury convened in August 1950 to investigate the spy ring, one of the witnesses being Julius Rosenberg’s wife, Ethel. Following her testimony in which she invoked her right not to incriminate herself, Ethel was charged with conspiracy to commit espionage alongside Julius and another defendant, Morton Sobell.78

At their trial, Greenglass testified that Julius had orchestrated the espionage at his home in January 1945. Julius went into his kitchen with Ruth (David’s wife) and Ethel, and cut a side panel of a Jell-O box into two irregular parts. He passed one piece to Ruth, asserting that the spy contacting her and David at Los Alamos would identify themselves with the other half.79 Ruth testified that Ethel solicited her to approach David to spy and typed the notes David brought back to New York with him. Greenglass confirmed his wife’s testimony, further implicating Ethel by testifying she typed the notes containing nuclear secrets, which were turned over to Harry Gold. Both Rosenbergs denied any involvement whatsoever in espionage and refused to answer questions about their Communist party membership.80

The accused were found guilty in March 1953. Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years (a lighter sentence because he’d agreed to turn state’s evidence), Sobell received 30 years, and the Rosenbergs were sentenced to die in the electric chair.81 Despite pleas for clemency by notables, including Pope Pius XII, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Einstein,82 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to their deaths maintaining their innocence.83 At the time of their conviction and execution, and for many years afterward, many Americans believed the United States executed two innocent people.84

The Conspiracies

As in the Hauptmann case, Rosenberg v. United States: 346 U.S. 273 lives on. In 1971, novelist E.L. Doctorow published The Book of Daniel, a fictionalized account of the case.85 A film adaptation (Daniel) followed in 1983.86 Bob Dylan recorded “Julius and Ethel” in 198387 and Meryl Streep portrayed Ethel’s ghost haunting her prosecutor Roy Cohn in the movie Angels in America in 2003. If anything, the Rosenberg case has only gained prominence in the last quarter century. In 2001, a New York Times reporter named Sam Roberts tracked down David Greenglass (who testified against the Rosenbergs), who was living under an assumed name. In the extensive interviews for The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case, Greenglass admitted he’d lied on the witness stand about Ethel typing the letters of instruction from Julius to the Soviets.88

In 2004, Ivy Meeropol, granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, released the documentary Heir to an Execution, in which she incorporates archival footage with interviews of her family members and the other alleged conspirators.89

In 2008, Michael and Robbie Meeropol (the Rosenbergs’ surviving children, who had been adopted into the Meeropol family) unsuccessfully petitioned President Obama to exonerate their mother using their uncle David Greenglass’ confession.90, 91 Recently, in 2021, Anne Sebbe published Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy, in which she argued for Ethel’s innocence.

The Evidence

Rosenberg defenders often note outside factors that led to their convictions: Jurist prejudice, antisemitism, Cold War hysteria, and (in Ethel’s case) misogyny have been named as the reasons for their convictions and executions.92, 93 Another common argument is that the Rosenbergs assisted a World War II ally, not an enemy, therefore they should not have been tried and convicted for treason.94

The facts of the case tell a different story. The Rosenbergs were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, not treason.95 Evidence shows Julius approached Soviet intelligence96 agents before Hitler invaded Russia at a time when the Nazi leader and Stalin were collaborating under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.97 In 1995, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) released translations of Soviet cables decrypted in the 1940s. Called VENONA, it ran from 1943 to 1980 and identified hundreds of Soviet agents in America and other Western countries.98 The cables identify Julius as the head of a vast spy ring, assigning him two code names, “liberal”99 and “antenna.” In 2008, co-defendant Morton Sobell affirmed he and Julius were spies but the information passed was useless.100

In 2009, Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer and defector to Great Britain, released his notes taken during his service in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which debunk Sobell’s claim that minimizes Julius’ activities. Not only did Julius orchestrate the theft of top-secret information from Los Alamos, he also recruited a man named Russell Alton McNutt (son and brother of members of the Communist Party of the United States)101 to obtain information from a uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge, TN.

Sensationalism and conspiratorial thinking keep the cases of Bruno Richard Hauptmann and the Rosenbergs thriving as cottage industries.

When the VENONA transcripts were released, the narrative for innocence shifted from “the Rosenbergs were innocent” to “Julius Rosenberg was guilty, but Ethel was innocent.”102 What of Ethel’s guilt, then? At their trial, prosecutor Irving Saypol established Ethel’s guilt in his summation by stating, “Mrs. Rosenberg struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets.”103 In 2001, Greenglass admitted he likely perjured himself by testifying Ethel typed Julius’ instructions104 and, indeed the Vassiliev notes seem to confirm this.105 Sobell’s 2008 admission notes that Ethel Rosenberg knew of her husband’s activities but did not actively spy herself.106

Despite the commonly-held belief that Ethel Rosenberg is not mentioned in the VENONA Project,107 in fact, she is. The Soviet spy cables describe Ethel as “…well devoted politically (who)108 knows her husband’s work and the role of ‘Twain’ and ‘Callistratus.’ (code names of Soviet agents).”109 If the only evidence against Ethel were the false testimony of Greenglass and her sole mention in the VENONA cables, a reasonable case might be made for doubt. Unfortunately for proponents of her innocence, substantive evidence has since come forth that makes it clear Ethel not only knew of her husband’s illegal activities but actively participated in spying alongside him.110

This article appeared in Skeptic magazine 29.1
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Through Vasiliev’s leak, we know that Ruth testified truthfully when she claimed Ethel solicited her to persuade David Greenglass to spy.111 A letter written to Moscow by Julius Rosenberg himself substantiates this.112 Vasiliev’s notes reveal Ethel met with at least three of the KGB officers with whom Julius was spying.113 Why did Greenglass perjure himself in front of the grand jury and later at his trial, then? Simply, he was attempting to protect his sister and hoped the government would leave her out of the indictment charging Julius. In the same transcripts before the grand jury, Greenglass implicates Ethel by testifying she was present at a meeting between Julius and Ann Sidorovich, one of the couriers for the spy ring.114

Why didn’t they save themselves by naming others, then? As noted, the Vasiliev leak makes clear the spy ring Julius orchestrated was far more expansive in scope than was revealed to the public. Julius and Ethel most likely did not reveal names because they (correctly) believed the FBI had yet to identify them and those individuals could continue spying for the Soviets after their own deaths.115

• • • • • •

Sensationalism and conspiratorial thinking keep the cases of Bruno Richard Hauptmann and the Rosenbergs thriving as cottage industries. In truth, the evidence for Hauptmann’s involvement in the Lindbergh Kidnapping remains exceptionally strong, as does the case for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s guilt in conspiring to commit espionage. Even though books propounding conspiracy theories exonerating them sell—and sell well—the full weight of evidence shows, beyond any reasonable doubt, NYC’s most controversial defendants to have been guilty of the crimes for which they were charged.

About the Author

John D. Van Dyke is an academic and science educator. His personal website is vandykerevue.org.

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Genetic analysis shows that there are four varieties of Portuguese man o’ war, or bluebottle, including an Antipodean species that has yet to be named

The largest storm in the Solar System is shrinking and planetary scientists think they have an explanation. It could be related to a reduction in the number of smaller storms that feed it and may be starving Jupiter’s centuries-old Great Red Spot (GRS).

This storm has intrigued observers from its perch in the Jovian southern hemisphere since it was first seen in the mid-1600s. Continuous observations of it began in the late 1800s, which allowed scientists to chart a constant parade of changes. In the process, they’ve learned quite a bit about the spot. It’s a high-pressure region that generates a 16,000 km-wide anticyclonic storm with winds clocking in at more than 321 km per hour. The storm extends down through the atmosphere to a depth of about 250 km below the mainly ammonia cloud tops.

A zoomed-in view of the Great Red Spot based on Juno observations. Courtesy Kevin Gill. Modeling a Shrinking and Growing Great Red Spot

Over the past century, scientists noticed the GRS shrinking, leaving them with a puzzle on their hands. Yale Ph.D. student Caleb Keaveney had the idea that perhaps smaller storms that feed the GRS could play a role in starving it. He and a team of researchers focused on their influence and conducted a series of 3D simulations of the Spot. They used a model called the Explicit Planetary Isentropic-Coordinate (EPIC) model, which is used in studying planetary atmospheres. The result was a suite of computer models that simulated interactions between the Great Red Spot and smaller storms of varying frequency and intensity.

A separate control group of simulations left out the small storms. Then, the team compared the simulations. They saw that the smaller storms seemed to strengthen the Great Red Spot and make it grow. “We found through numerical simulations that by feeding the Great Red Spot a diet of smaller storms, as has been known to occur on Jupiter, we could modulate its size,” Keaveney said.

If that’s true, then the presence (or lack thereof) of those smaller storms could be what’s changing the spot’s size. Essentially, a lot of smaller spots cause it to grow larger. Fewer little ones cause it to shrink. Furthermore, the team’s modeling supports an interesting idea. Without forced interactions with these smaller vortices, the Spot can shrink over a period of about 2.6 Earth years.

Using Earth Storms as a Comparison

The Great Red Spot isn’t the only place in the Solar System that sports such a long-lived high-pressure system. Earth experiences plenty of them, usually called “heat domes” or “blocks.” Most of us are familiar with heat domes because we experience them during the summer months. They happen frequently in the upper atmosphere jet stream that circulates across our planet’s mid-latitudes. We can blame them for some of the extreme weather people experience—such as heat waves and extended droughts. They tend to last a long time, and they are linked to interactions with smaller transient weather such as high-pressure eddies and anticyclones.

Given that the Great Red Spot is an anticyclonic feature, it has interesting implications for similar atmospheric structures on both planets, according to Keaveney. “Interactions with nearby weather systems have been shown to sustain and amplify heat domes, which motivated our hypothesis that similar interactions on Jupiter could sustain the Great Red Spot,” he said. “In validating that hypothesis, we provide additional support to this understanding of heat domes on Earth.”

The Ever-changing Great Red Spot

In addition to the changing size of the Great Red Spot, observers also notice shifts in its color. It’s mainly reddish-orange but has been known to fade to a pinkish-orange hue. The colors suggest some complex chemistry occurring in the region spurred by solar radiation. It has an effect on a chemical compound called ammonium hydrosulfide as well as the organic compound acetylene. That creates a substance called a tholin, which gives a reddish color wherever it exists.

At times the spot has nearly disappeared altogether due to some complex interaction with a feature called the Southern Equatorial Belt (SEB). The SEB is where the spot is located, and when it is bright and white, the spot goes dark. At other times, the reverse color change happens. In some cases, the SEB itself has disappeared at various times. No one is quite sure why this is happening, but it’s one more piece of the Jovian atmospheric puzzle.

These Hubble images of Jupiter taken 11 months apart show the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared. Note the presence of the Great Red Spot. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley, USA), H. B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA), A. A. Simon-Miller (Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA) and the Jupiter Impact Science Team.

Changes to the Great Red Spot have been studied extensively not just from the ground, but also by spacecraft missions, beginning with Voyager and extending through the Galileo, Cassini, and Juno missions. Each spacecraft used specialized instruments to probe the spot, measure its windspeeds and temperatures, and sample the gas and compounds in the upper atmosphere. All of that data feeds models like the ones used at Yale to model the smaller storms’ contributions to the Great Red Spot’s growth and shrinkage.

For More Information

A New Explanation for Jupiter’s Great, Shrinking “Spot”
Effect of Transient Vortex Interactions on the Size and Strength of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
Juno and the Great Red Spot

The post Why is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Shrinking? It’s Starving. appeared first on Universe Today.

Creating fertilizers from organic waste can help reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and promote sustainable production. One way of doing this is through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), which converts biomass into biocrude oil through a high-temperature, high-pressure process. Two studies explore the use of a fungal treatment to convert the leftover wastewater into fertilizer for agricultural crops.

According to the ESA’s Near-Earth Objects Coordination Center (NEOCC), 35,264 known asteroids regularly cross the orbit of Earth and the other inner planets. Of these, 1,626 have been identified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), meaning that they may someday pass close enough to Earth to be caught by its gravity and impact its surface. While planetary defense has always been a concern, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter in 1994 sparked intense interest in this field.

In 2022, NASA’s Double-Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) mission successfully tested the kinetic impact method when it collided with Dimorphos, the small asteroid orbiting Didymos. Today, the ESA Space Safety program is taking steps to test the next planetary defense mission – the Rapid Apophis Missin for Space Safety (RAMSES). In 2029, RAMSES will rendezvous with the Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) 99942 Apophis and accompany it as it makes a very close (but safe) flyby of Earth in 2029. The data it collects will help scientists improve our ability to protect Earth from similar objects that could pose an impact risk.

Discovered in 2004, Apophis is an irregularly shaped asteroid measuring about 375 m (410 yards) across. At the time, observations indicated there was a small risk that it would impact Earth in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Given its size and the devastating effect an impact would have, astronomers decided to name it after the Egyptian god of chaos and destruction. While astronomers have since ruled out the possibility of a collision for at least the next century, Apophis will pass within 32,000 km (~19,885 mi) of Earth’s surface on April 13th, 2029.

Radar observations of Apophis rule out future impact. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech and NSF/AUI/GBO

At this distance, the asteroid will be close enough to be visible to the naked eye to roughly two billion people across much of Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia. Based on analyses of the size and orbits of all known asteroids, astronomers believe that objects this large pass this close to Earth only once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. The RAMSES spacecraft will rendezvous with Apophis before it makes its closest pass to Earth and follow behind, monitoring it with a suite of scientific instruments to see how Earth’s gravity changes it.

This will consist of conducting before-and-after surveys of the asteroid’s shape, surface, orbit, rotation, and orientation. Based on this comparative analysis, scientists will learn more about how an asteroid’s fundamental characteristics – its composition, interior structure, cohesion, mass, density, and porosity – respond to external forces. These properties are vital for determining how to knock a PHA off course so it does not collide with Earth. Patrick Michel, the Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, explained in an ESA press release:

“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the Solar System to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface. For the first time ever, nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”

The ESA recently secured permission from the Space Safety Program board to begin preparatory work on the mission so it can launch by April 2028. This deadline is necessary, so the mission is to be ready to launch and rendezvous with Apophis in orbit by February 2029. The final decision to commit to the mission will be made at the ESA’s Ministerial Council Meeting in November 2025. In the meantime, NASA has redirected its newly renamed OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft towards Apophis, which will arrive one month after the asteroid makes its flyby.

Apophis orbit diverted by Earth’s gravity – NEO Toolkit Space Safety Apophis orbit diverted by Earth’s gravity, Credit: ESA

Since asteroids are leftover material from the formation of the Solar System (ca. 4.5 billion years ago), this rendezvous is also an opportunity to obtain data that could provide new insights into planetary formation and evolution. This makes the 2029 flyby an extremely rare opportunity for astronomy, asteroid science, planetary defense, and for engaging billions of people worldwide. It will also be an opportunity for international collaboration, as previously demonstrated by the DART and the ESA’s Hera missions – the former redirected Didymos while the latter confirmed a change in orbit.

Last, but not least, the RAMSES mission will test the ability of space agencies to build and deploy an asteroid response quickly. As Richard Moissl, heading ESA’s Planetary Defence Office, explained:

“Ramses will demonstrate that humankind can deploy a reconnaissance mission to rendezvous with an incoming asteroid in just a few years. This type of mission is a cornerstone of humankind’s response to a hazardous asteroid. A reconnaissance mission would be launched first to analyse the incoming asteroid’s orbit and structure. The results would be used to determine how best to redirect the asteroid or to rule out non-impacts before an expensive deflector mission is developed.”

Further Reading: ESA

The post ESA is Building a Mission to Visit Asteroid Apophis, Joining it for its 2029 Earth Flyby appeared first on Universe Today.

Astronauts face multiple risks during space flight, such as microgravity and radiation exposure. Microgravity can decrease bone density, and radiation exposure is a carcinogen. However, those are chronic effects.

The biggest risk to astronauts is fire since escape would be difficult on a long mission to Mars or elsewhere beyond Low Earth Orbit. Scientists are researching how fire behaves on spacecraft so astronauts can be protected.

Scientists from the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen are investigating the risks of fire onboard spacecraft. They’ve published a new study in the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute titled “Effect of oxygen concentration, pressure, and opposed flow velocity on the flame spread along thin PMMA sheets.” The lead author is Hans-Christoph Ries.

“A fire on board a spacecraft is one of the most dangerous scenarios in space missions,” said Dr. Florian Meyer, head of the Combustion Technology research group at ZARM. “There are hardly any options for getting to a safe place or escaping from a spacecraft. It is therefore crucial to understand the behavior of fires under these special conditions.”

Since 2016, ZARM has been researching how fire behaves and spreads in microgravity conditions like those in the ISS. Those conditions also include an oxygen level similar to Earth’s, forced air circulation, and ambient pressure similar to Earth’s. NASA has been conducting similar experiments, and now we know that fire behaves differently in microgravity than it does on Earth.

Initially, a fire will burn with a smaller flame and take longer to spread. This is to the fire’s advantage since it won’t be noticed as quickly. Fire also burns hotter in microgravity, meaning that some materials that may not be combustible in normal Earth conditions could burn in spacecraft, creating toxic chemicals in the spacecraft’s air.

Spacecraft for Mars missions will have different environments than the ISS. The ambient air pressure will be lower, which provides two benefits: it makes the spacecraft lighter and also allows astronauts to prepare for external missions more quickly. However, the lower ambient pressure introduces another critical change in the spaceship environment. The oxygen content has to be higher to meet the astronauts’ respiration needs.

In these latest tests, the team at ZARM tested fire in these revised conditions.

PMMA stands for polymethyl methacrylate and is usually called acrylic. It’s a common material used in place of glass because it’s light and shatterproof. The ISS doesn’t use it, but it’s being developed for use in future spacecraft. The Orion capsule uses acrylic fused to other materials for windows, and future spacecraft will likely use something similar.

In their experiments, the researchers lit acrylic glass foils on fire and varied three environmental factors: ambient pressure, oxygen content and flow velocity.

This table from the figure is the test matrix for the experiments. The X’s and the single O indicate flow rates: X = 100 mm/s, O = 30–200 mm/s. Image Credit: Ries et al. 2024.

They used the Bremen Drop Tower to simulate microgravity.

The experiments showed that lower ambient pressure dampens fire. However, higher oxygen content has a more powerful effect. The ISS’s oxygen level is 21%, just as it is on Earth. Future spacecraft with lower ambient pressures will have oxygen levels as high as 35%. That translates into a huge increase in the risk astronauts face from fire. The results show that a fire can spread three times faster than it would under Earth conditions.

“Our results highlight critical factors that need to be considered when developing fire safety protocols for astronautic space missions.”

Dr. Florian Meyer, Combustion Technology research group at ZARM This figure from the study shows a time series of infrared images of the tests. They show fire on an acrylic film under microgravity conditions with 100 mm/second airflow, 75 kPa, and 28.3% oxygen. The white dashed lines show the contour of the acrylic sample. The green dotted lines are the evaluation lines used to measure the fire’s propagation rate. In panel b, the pink horizontal bar below the propagation front is the igniter. Image Credit: Ries et al. 2024.

We all know increased airflow spreads fire faster; that’s why we blow on a small flame to create a larger fire. Increased airflow delivers more oxygen, increasing combustion, so increased airflow in a higher-oxygen atmosphere creates a dangerous situation for astronauts.

“Our results highlight critical factors that need to be considered when developing fire safety protocols for astronautic space missions,” said Dr. Florian Meyer. “By understanding how flames spread under different atmospheric conditions, we can mitigate the risk of fire and improve the safety of the crew.”

The post The Most Dangerous Part of a Space Mission is Fire appeared first on Universe Today.

The way oil drops break up at the water's surface means some oil may not get cleaned up after a spill.

As the number of major utility-scale ground solar panel installations grows, concerns about their impacts on natural hydrologic processes also have grown. However, a new study by Penn State researchers suggests that excess runoff or increased erosion can be easily mitigated -- if these 'solar farms' are properly built.

Retinol, which is commonly added to anti-ageing skincare products, may improve hydration by interacting with bacteria on the skin

When a massive star dies in a supernova explosion, it’s not great news for any planets or stars that happen to be nearby. Generally, the catastrophic event crisps nearby worlds and sends companion stars careening through space. So, astronomers were pretty surprised to find 21 neutron stars—the crushed stellar cores left over after supernova explosions—orbiting in binary systems with Sun-like stars.

A team led by Caltech’s Kareem El-Badry detected these cosmic oddities using observations made by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. Its astrometrical data revealed “wobbles” in the orbits of the Sun-like companions. The team then followed up with spectral observations of the objects. Essentially, this work helped uncover a new population of what the team terms “dark” neutron stars still in orbital dances with their sunlike partners. Now the trick is to explain why these unusual pairs exist, according to El-Badry.

“We still do not have a complete model for how these binaries form,” he said. “In principle, the progenitor to the neutron star should have become huge and interacted with the solar-type star during its late-stage evolution.”

Astronomers have discovered 21 stars like our Sun in orbit around neutron stars (formed in supernova explosions). The European Space Agency’s Gaia mission detected this wobble by observing the orbits of the Sun-like stars (yellow dots) for three years. The Sun-like stars are green in this animation, and the neutron stars (and their orbits) are purple. Credit: Caltech/Kareem El-Badry Surviving a Supernova?

It seems counterintuitive to think of the nearby star surviving the nearby catastrophe. The process itself begins as the massive progenitor star ages and expands. That pushes the smaller star around. Just before the supernova occurred, the dying star probably engulfed the companion for a time. Some theories suggest that the engulfment itself could destroy the smaller star. Others say that it affects the star but doesn’t completely obliterate it.

At some point, the larger star’s core collapses when it runs out of fuel. All the other layers come crashing down on the core. The temperatures and pressures in the event compress what’s left of the core into a ball of neutrons. Then, the outer layers rebound off the core and blast out into space. That’s the part we see as the supernova explosion. The outburst should eject it from the system if there’s still a companion star. However, for these strange binaries, that didn’t happen. The neutron star and a companion remain.

Now it’s El-Badry’s team task to figure out why. “The discovery of these new systems shows that at least some binaries survive these cataclysmic processes even though models cannot yet fully explain how,” he said. In a paper about the finding, the team also suggests that they cannot rule out that the neutron stars may be ultramassive white dwarfs or white dwarf binaries.

The Search for Neutron Stars and their Companions

The Gaia mission aims to scan the sky and look for “wobbles” in the motions of more than a billion stars. The orbits of planets around the stars cause wobbles. However, the gravitational tug of nearby black holes, neutron stars, or more massive stars also induces them.

Neutron stars are massive balls of neutrons about 20 km across but denser than the Sun. They’re created as the collapsing stellar layers crush the core of the supernova progenitor star. As the neutron star and its companion orbit around a common center of mass, the neutron star tugs on its companion and that makes it shift back and forth—creating the telltale “wobble”. Gaia detected those wobbles, and then scientists used data from follow-up observations at several ground-based telescopes, including the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawai‘i; La Silla Observatory in Chile; and the Whipple Observatory in Arizona. That gave them more information about the masses and orbits of the hidden neutron stars.

Now, there have been neutron stars in orbit with other Sun-like stars, those orbits have been pretty tight and close-in. In those cases, the mass transfer between the two companions makes the neutron star brighter in X-ray or radio wavelengths. That’s not true for the 21 systems El-Badry’s team studied. They are much farther apart in wider orbits. This limits how much material the neutron star can steal from its companion. As a result, those objects are dark and quiet. “These are the first neutron stars discovered purely due to their gravitational effects,” El-Badry said.

An animation of a binary star system containing a neutron star created in a supernova and a Sun-like companion. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC) Tracing the Tale from Supernova to Binary

So, now astronomers have a population of neutron star/Sun-like star binaries to explain. Now, the team will work to figure out the real story of why these rare pairings still exist. “We estimate that about one in a million solar-type stars is orbiting a neutron star in a wide orbit,” El-Badry said.

He’s also interested in similar matchups between dormant (and largely invisible) black holes and Sun-like stars. There are two that he knows about, including one called Gaia BH1, which is only 1,600 light-years away from us. The fact that these odd couples also exist opens up a lot of questions. “We don’t know for sure how these black hole binaries formed either,” El-Badry said. “There are clearly gaps in our models for the evolution of binary stars. Finding more of these dark companions and comparing their population statistics to predictions of different models will help us piece together how they form.”

For More Information

Sun-Like Stars Found Orbiting Hidden Companions
A Population of Neutron Star Candidates in Wide Orbits from Gaia Astrometry

The post Stars Can Survive Their Partner Detonating as a Supernova appeared first on Universe Today.

A jiggling robot has revealed the ideal vibrating speed to free jumbled fibres

A new camera could prevent companies from collecting embarrassing and identifiable photos and videos from devices like smart home cameras and robotic vacuums. It's called PrivacyLens.

A new camera could prevent companies from collecting embarrassing and identifiable photos and videos from devices like smart home cameras and robotic vacuums. It's called PrivacyLens.

Europe's next big space mission -- a telescope that will hunt for Earth-like rocky planets outside of our solar system -- is on course to launch at the end of 2026. PLATO, or PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars, is being built to find nearby potentially habitable worlds around Sun-like stars that we can examine in detail.

A new study suggests that the U.S. government's push to increase heavy-duty trucks' energy efficiency could encourage more shipping by truck instead of rail, reducing the policies' anticipated effectiveness by 20%.

So far, only about ten intermediate-mass black holes have been discovered in the entire universe. The newly identified black hole causes surrounding stars in a cluster to move in an unexpectedly orderly way.

The flowless zinc-bromine battery (FLZBB) is a promising alternative to flammable lithium-ion batteries due to its use of non-flammable electrolytes. However, it suffers from self-discharge due to the crossover of active materials, generated at the positive graphite felt (GF) electrode, to the negative electrode, significantly affecting performance. Now, researchers have developed a novel nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon-coated GF electrode that effectively suppresses self-discharge. This breakthrough can lead to practical applications of FLZBB in energy storage systems.

Researchers have developed a new formal description of internal world models, thereby enabling interdisciplinary research. Internal world models help to make predictions about new situations based on previous experience and to help find one's bearings. The new formalized view helps to compare world models of humans, animals and AI and to eliminate deficits.

By harnessing the power of machine learning, researchers have constructed a framework for analyzing what factors most significantly contribute to a species' genetic diversity.

The VIPER moon rover was due to launch in 2025 but NASA has suddenly cancelled it, citing budgetary issues, despite the spacecraft being fully built