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Continued investment in carbon-intensive industries will drastically increase the amount of 'stranded assets' as the world moves to net-zero emissions, researchers warn.

Engineers have developed an innovative way to make covalent organic frameworks, special materials that can be used to trap gases, filter water and speed up chemical reactions.

As part of the global effort to harness power from fusing plasma, PPPL and the University of Seville's Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Lab worked on the computer codes, engineering and physics for a new and unique fusion reactor: the SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak.

A blood test that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect cancer-related genetic changes and protein biomarkers could help screen women for early signs of ovarian cancer, according to a new study.

Rapid erosion caused by a geological act of “piracy” tens of thousands of years ago may have raised Earth’s crust and elevated Mount Everest by as much as 50 metres

Well, Princeton, via its president Christopher Eisgruber, has wussed out of adopting a crucial plank in a university free-speech platform: institutional neutrality. The man simply can’t hold back his ideological or political opinions, even if they chill the speech of faculty and students.

As you’ll know if you read here, the University of Chicago was the first college in America to adopt an official posture of institutional neutrality in the form of the Kalven Report of 1967. That report, expanded on in 2020 by the late President Robert Zimmer, specified that no units of our University could make ideological, political, or moral statements save those that had a direct bearing on the mission of the University. The object was to allow people to speak freely without worrying about being punished by contradicting “official” university statements. By and large, we’ve hewed to its dictates with a few exceptions, like this one, which involves clear and multiple violations of Kalven.

FIRE’s list of institutions adopting a Kalven-like policy has expanded exponentially, now numbering 22 (23 including Chicago). Sadly, according to the Daily Princetonian article below (click to read), Princeton will not be joining them.

An excerpt (my bolding):

President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 shared in an interview with The Daily Princetonian that the University will not consider institutional neutrality. The University administration will maintain the current policy of institutional restraint although Eisgruber expressed plans to issue statements “less frequently.”

Under institutional neutrality, universities do not take positions on social and political issues. Peer institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Cornell University have recently released statements pledging commitments to furthering institutional neutrality following highly polarizing Pro-Palestine protests in the spring semester.

“No.” Eisgruber responded when asked if the University is considering implementing institutional neutrality.

“You can’t be neutral about everything,” Eisgruber continued. He specifically noted speaking on behalf of diversity, inclusivity, free speech, academic freedom, and sustainability. “We got to do it … We’re speaking out on behalf of those things. So I think institutional neutrality is just a misleading formulation.”

This selective approach to issuing statements is called institutional restraint, the principle that universities are not neutral but instead value-laden institutions that can take positions in rare cases concerning the core values of the University. 

“We have to stand up for our values … I’ve spoken, and will continue to speak boldly for those values, where that’s required, for the institution, and at times beyond the way in which other university presidents are doing that,” Eisgruber said in defense of maintaining institutional restraint.

Nobody says that a university has to be “neutral about everything”; Kalven specifies that universities can speak up officially when there’s an issue that impacts the ability of the school to fulfill its mission (defending DACA was one of those, which would have taken students away from the school).  So, you ask, what is the difference between Kalven and “institutional restraint”? The bold bit above implies that they’re really the same.

But they’re not, and Eisgruber makes that clear:

Still, on certain topics, Eisgruber believes he has an “institutional responsibility” not to speak out.

“Something I share with the people who embrace the idea of institutional neutrality [is that] the University is first and foremost, not itself the critic. It’s the sponsor of critics,” Eisgruber said.

He specifically referenced the Dobbs v. Jackson decision reversing Roe v. Wade as a moment when he felt he should not speak out, despite his expertise in law and other university presidents doing so.

Despite holding back on certain issues, Eisgruber has issued statements on current events to recognize their “momentous character” and “the way in which they are affecting people on campus.” Recent examples include statements on the War in Ukraine and a condemnation of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. In these statements, Eisgruber shared that he makes sure to use the first person.

The University has also taken actions which would be considered violations of institutional neutrality, most notably divestments from South Africa and companies in Sudan and partial divestment from the fossil fuels sector during Eisgruber’s presidency. Eisgruber pointed out that the University of Chicago, which created and follows the Kalven Report, a guideline to institutional neutrality, never divested from South Africa.

These issues really have nothing to do with the core values of a university. Ergo, there should not be statements about them. These issues are political and ideological, and should be debated without restraint. Granted, there are people, however misguided, who support Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and even the October 7 attacks of Hamas. These folks should feel free to make their arguments about these issues without being chilled by official statements. The same goes for divestment and Sudan (see Geoff Stone‘s pro-Kalven statement about divestment from Darfur in Sudan).

While Eisgruber recognizes in the article that he’s probably made too many political statements on behalf of Princeton (duh!), he still won’t commit the school to keeping its institutional yap shut. And that is a shame. The prestigious Ivy League schools should be promoting institutional neutrality, and, so far, the only ones that have are Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Even Yale hasn’t joined the side of the angels.

How did the supermassive black holes we’re now seeing in the early universe get so big so fast? Astrophysicist Sophie Koudmani is using sophisticated galaxy simulations to figure it out

A remote annular solar eclipse bookends the final eclipse season for 2024.

The final eclipse of the year is almost upon us. If skies are clear, a few lucky observers and intrepid eclipse-chasers will get to witness the passage of the Moon in front of the Sun one last time on Wednesday, October 2nd during an annular solar eclipse.

The eclipse is the final one of the current season, and the last solar eclipse for 2024. The first—the April 8th total solar eclipse spanning North America—was witnessed by millions. This week’s eclipse is by contrast much more bashful.

The path and timing for Wednesday’s annular solar eclipse. Credit: from Michael Zeiler’s Atlas of Solar Eclipses (2020 to 2045). Why Do Annulars Occur?

An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is visually too small to cover the Sun. Both vary in apparent size throughout the month and year, as the orbits of the Moon and the Earth are both elliptical. The shadow of the Moon falls short of the surface of the Earth during an annular eclipse, and the ‘ring of fire’ path is known as an antumbra.

Stages of the 2019 annular eclipse as seen from Guam. Credit: Eliot Herman

We often marvel at how ‘perfect’ total solar eclipses are, but this situation slowly changing. Going forward, annulars are already more common, as the Moon slowly moves away from the Earth… in about 600 million years annulars will win this battle for good, as total solar eclipses will cease to occur on the surface of the Earth.

The path for Wednesday’s annular solar eclipse over the southern tip of South America. Credit: from Michael Zeiler’s Atlas of Solar Eclipses (2020 to 2045).

There’s good reason why this eclipse is annular. The Moon reaches its most distant apogee of 2024 on October 2nd at 50 minutes after eclipse conjunction at 19:08 Universal Time, at 406,516 kilometers from Earth.

Eclipse Path and Circumstances

The path crosses the South Pacific, and only makes landfall across Easter Island, Chile, Argentina. Maximum annularity reaches 7 minutes and 25 seconds in duration northwest of Easter Island. There’s a chance for some excellent ‘horns of the Sun’ shots towards sunset around to Falkland Islands and the Horn of South America.

An animation of Wednesday’s eclipse. Credit: NASA/GSFC/A.T. Sinclair

The partial phases of the eclipse will be visible from Antarctica and northern New Zealand, across southern South America all the way up to Brazil, Paraguay and Peru, up to a small sliver of the west Pacific coast of Mexico. The Falkland Islands in the Atlantic ocean will see a narrow miss, with Stanley seeing an 84% obscured partial eclipse.

This eclipse also marks the end of the second and final eclipse season for 2024. This season was book-ended by the slight partial lunar eclipse earlier this month.

This eclipse is also member 17 in the 70 eclipses in relatively new Solar Saros Series 144. This saros is a prolific producer of annulars, and started on April 11th, 1736 and will end on May 5th 2980.

Viewing and Safety

Unlike a total solar eclipse, proper safety precautions must be taken during Wednesday’s eclipse… even during the annular phase. A few percent of the Sun is still pretty bright, enough to give the sky a deep blue-steely tint, the only hint that something might be afoot. NASA has a pretty solid eclipse safety page.

There’s another low tech way to observe the eclipse. Keep an eye out for tiny crescent suns cast though natural pin hole projectors. These can include gaps in tree leaves and latticework. Kitchen utensils such as graters and strainers will also do the trick.

Crescents cast through gaps in the tree leaves seen from Mapleton Maine during the June 2021 annular solar eclipse. Credit: Dave Dickinson.

Comet T-ATLAS ‘may’ also make an appearance during the eclipse. Have any comets ever appeared during an annular? Certainly bright comets have made themselves known during the daytime. There’s now a chance that Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS ‘may’ reach negative magnitudes in early October, and the comet will be ~20 degrees from the Sun during next Wednesday’s annular eclipse… To be sure, it’s an extremely remote chance to see comet T-ATLAS against a bright sky, but I remember noticing Venus becoming plainly visible on April 8th about 10 minutes prior to totality, so you just never know…

The next eclipses in 2025 includes only two partial solars worldwide: one on March 29th for the North Atlantic, and another on September 21st for New Zealand and the South Pacific. The next annular won’t occur until February 17th, 2026 for the remote Antarctic.

Will the eclipse be carried live? As of writing this, no live streams along the path have emerged, but we’ll drop them here if any turn up.

if you have the chance, don’t miss this final eclipse of the year.

The post An October Annular Solar Eclipse Rounds Out 2024 appeared first on Universe Today.

My hour-long conversation with UCSD Professor Brian Keating, on his Into the Impossible podcast, has just come out on YouTube; click here to listen.

We covered several topics from my book, including what particles really are and how the Higgs field gives them mass, along with others ranging from renormalization to the nature of the book’s cover.

The podcast’s intro sequence is a bit wild — a mix of Dr. Who meets the Discovery Channel — but hang tight, because the discussion itself is serious science. One thing that’s fun about it is that Keating asked me a number of questions that no one had asked me on prior podcasts that I’ve been on. The fact that some of his queries were a bit “out there” adds to the entertainment value. I think you’ll enjoy it.

As a reminder, I have a number of other podcasts and interviews that you can choose from, listed below:

• Shalaj Lawania’s podcast “Know Time”
  • Episode title: “Particle Physics, Waves & the Higgs Field”
    • 185 minutes (!!), covering all the main topics in the book and some metatopics too
      
• The “Quirks and Quarks” show:
  • Episode title: “Why an essential subatomic particle plays the field”
    • 15 minutes, on how the Higgs field gives mass to particles
      
• Sean Carroll’s podcast “Mindscape”
  • Episode title: “Matt Strassler on Relativity, Fields, and the Language of Reality”
    • 90 minutes, all about the book
      
• Daniel Whiteson’s podcast “Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe”,
  • Episode title: “Is the Universe Made From Waves?”
    • Part 1 , 43 minutes
    • Part 2 , 53 minutes
      

I’m not putting up “Readers’ Wildlife’ today as we have only a few contributions left. Please help out by sending in your good photos.

Yesterday was one of those unpredictable nights when I hardly slept at all. Perhaps it’s because I drank ONE MEASLY GLASS OF WINE before dinner, and wine interacts badly with my new sleeping medication. But sometimes I can have wine with dinner and it doesn’t affect my sleep. It seems unprecictable. I’m going to try weaning myself off sleep medication because life without wine is intolerable. As they say on television, I’ll ASK MY DOCTOR.

Anyway, I slept on and off, but not more than about two hours total. I finally dozed off, having a bizarre dream in which I was with an old girlfriend in Florida, which for some reason was next to the University of Pennsylvania (it was a dream, Jake!). We were staying in a long, pink hotel, but I suddenly got lost and couldn’t find it again. I was unable to find my girlfriend, and discovered that my cellphone was missing as well. I asked a passerby to lend me her cellphone so I could call 911 and perhaps find my girlfriend through a “missing persons” report, but the woman refused to lend me her phone. The dream was so realistic that I woke up in terror, and it took me a minute to realize that it was just a dream. At least I no longer have the Academics’ Dream in which you’re in school but can’t find the room for the final exam, or are taking the exam but haven’t studied all semester.

Anyway, as I tossed and turned and tried not to get more anxious by worrying about staying awake, I had a series of thoughts. I meant to write them down, but you know how hard it is to get up in the middle of the night to write stuff.  I remember three things.

1.) This is something I noticed while watching the NBC Evening News, which of course advertises a lot of drugs for the ailments of the aged (the t.v. news demographic leans OLD).  Nearly all the new drugs they advertise have an “x”, “y” or “z” in them. Examples: Ozempic, Breztri, Keytruda. And none of those drug names are appealing, as they don’t make you optimistic or even suggest what the drug is for.

2.) I regretted that, as I grow older, I learn more about humans and how to deal with their issues.  The regret is because you should be born old and then get younger, so you’d enter the world with a built in stock of learned wisdom. This would save a lot of problems. (I’d stop the “younging” process at about 25.) And here is one thing that I’ve learned (I may have said this before):

When someone calls you in distress, or has a problem they want to talk about, I first try to find out what the person needs. I call these the “three H’s”:

a. Help: a tangible solution to their problem.  Males are more likely to want solutions and to offer them. Often women simply want b):
b.  Hearing:  Someone to simply listen and sympathize. This is often the best thing to do since many problems defy quick solutions, and I’m not a therapist.
c. Hugging:  Sometimes physical contact, like an affectionate hug or a squeeze of the hand, might help. This has to be done in person, and must be used sparingly lest it be mistaken for a romantic gesture.

Before saying anything, I try to ascertain what the person in distress wants.

These thoughts may have been triggered by reading Abigail Shrier’s terrific new book on the maladaptive effects of therapy, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. I recommend it highly.

3.) Once again I mused on the penchant of Brits (and some Americans) for tea over coffee, especially in the morning. I like the taste of good tea, and enjoy it as part of a conversation or, upon occasion, as a restorative in cold weather. But I can’t fathom why Brits use it to wake up. Perhaps it’s my upbringing, but be aware that a cup of tea has only half the caffeine of an equal-sized cup of coffee.  Tea doesn’t seem to me to be an effective wake-up drink. (Note: I am NOT dissing tea drinkers!).  If you want a non-coffee drink with lots of caffeine, try yerba mate brewed strongly. Brits should weigh in.

I had other thoughts as well, but I can’t remember them. I need a voice recorder by my bed that records only when you speak. Then I’d have a lot to say here!

Of course this is also a prompt for readers to disgorge their own midnight thoughts, or reveal their dreams, particularly recurring ones.

I can’t resist a good science story involving technology that we can possibly use to stabilize our climate in the face of anthropogenic global warming. This one is a fun story and an interesting, and potentially useful, idea. As we map out potential carbon pathways into the future, focusing on the rest of this century, it is pretty clear that it is going to be extremely difficult to completely decarbonize our civilization. This means we can only slow down, but not stop or reverse global warming. Once carbon is released into the ecosystem, it will remain there for hundreds or even thousands of years. So waiting for natural processes isn’t a great solution.

What we could really use is a way to cost-effectively at scale remove CO2 already in the atmosphere (or from seawater – another huge reservoir) to compensate for whatever carbon release we cannot eliminate from industry, and even to reverse some of the CO2 build up. This is often referred to as carbon capture and sequestration. There is a lot of research in this area, but we do not currently have a technology that fits the bill. Carbon capture is small scale and expensive. The most useful methods are chemical carbon capture done at power plants, to reduce some of the carbon released.

There is, however, a “technology” that cheaply and automatically captures carbon from the air and binds it up in solid form – trees. This is why there is much discussion of planting trees as a climate change mitigation strategy. Trees, however, eventually give up their captured carbon back into the atmosphere. So at best they are a finite carbon reservoir. A 2019 study found that if we restored global forests by planting half a trillion trees, that would capture about 20 years worth of CO2 at the current rate of release, or about half of all the CO2 released since 1960 (at least as of 2019). But once those trees matured we would reach a new steady state and further sequestering would stop. This is at least better than continuing to cut down forests and reducing their store of carbon. Tree planting can still be a useful strategy to help buy time as we further decarbonize technology.

But what if we could keep trees from rotting and releasing their captured CO2 back into the atmosphere? They could then become a longer term sequestration strategy. One way to do this is to build stuff out of the wood, and this also has already been proposed. There is a movement to use more wood for commercial construction, as it has a lower carbon footprint than steel or concrete. Wood in a building that is kept dry can easily last hundreds of years.

A recent study now offers a potential other option – we could just bury trees. But wait, won’t they just rot under ground and still release their CO2? Yes – unless the soil conditions are just right. Ning Zeng and his colleagues set out to study if wood could survive long term in specific kinds of soil, those with lots of clay and low oxygen. Zeng found a location near Quebec with soil conditions he thought would be conducive to preserving wood long term. He dug a trench to place fresh wood in the soil so they could then track it over years and measure its carbon release. But here’s the fun part – when they dug the trench they found a log naturally buried in the soil. They examined the log and discovered that it was 3,775 years old. Not only that, they estimate that the log has lost less than 5% of its carbon over that period of time. Nature has already conducted the experiment Zeng wanted to run, so he published those results.

What this means is that we can potentially just grow trees, find or even create locations with the right conditions (clay seems to be the key), and just bury the logs. Then replace the trees and capture more carbon, without the older trees releasing their carbon back. They analyzed the potential of this method and found:

“We estimate a global sequestration potential of up to 10 gigatonnes CO2 per year with existing technology at a low cost of $30 to $100 per tonne after optimization.”

That is a lot. The global release of CO2 is now at about 36 gigatonnes per year, so this would be more than a quarter of our current release. So if we can get our global CO2 release to less than 10 gigatonnes per year, and combine it with burying logs in the right conditions, we could get to net zero, and even net negative. Current methods of direct air capture of CO2 cost $100-$300 per tonne, so if we can get this approach closer to the $30 per tonne cost that would be potentially viable. At the low end sequestering 10 gigatons per year of CO2 using this method would cost $300 billion per year. That’s a big number, but not that big if we consider this a global project. Estimates of the cost of global warming range from $1.7 to $38 trillion dollars per year by 2050, which means this could be a cost-effective investment. f

Obviously before scaling up this approach we need more study, including a survey of potential locations. But we can certainly get started planting some trees while we figure where to put them. And a point I frequently make – we should not be putting all our eggs in one basket, or necessarily looking for the one solution to climate change. Reforestation, wood construction, and wood vaulting, combined with other carbon capture technologies, can all work together. We can use trees to capture a lot of carbon over the next 50 and 100 years, altering the path of global climate change significantly.

 

The post Wood Vaulting for Carbon Sequestration first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Before you read the rest of this article know there are no known threats to life on Earth! We shouldn’t sit complacently on this tiny rock in space though so NASA have been working on ways to neutralise potential asteroid threats should they arise. The DART mission proved it was possible to alter the trajectory of an asteroid in space. Direct impact though where a probe smashes into the rock is one way but potentially not the best. A team of researchers have now been exploring ways that a nuclear explosion near an asteroid may send a blast of X-rays sufficiently powerful to vaporise material generating thrust to redirect the asteroid. 

Statistically the risks of an asteroid are low but the ‘impact’ of such an event could be catastrophic. The majority of asteroids that enter our atmosphere burn up giving us the stunning sight of a ‘shooting star’  but those over 1km wide could cause widespread damage and devastation. The likelihood is rare and might occur once every several hundred thousand years but smaller objects hit more often. They can also create significant localised damage. Take the Chelyabinsk event in Russia in 2013 when an asteroid exploded in mid air sending shockwaves across hundreds of kilometres. 

This image of a vapor trail was captured about 125 miles (200 kilometers) from the Chelyabinsk meteor event, about one minute after the house-sized asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere. Credits: Alex Alishevskikh

Whilst the risk is low we must put in place a plan to deal with such threats when they arise. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission that NASA launched back in 2021 sent a probe to the binary asteroid system Didymos with its tiny moon Dimorphos. The probe hit Dimorphos in September 2022 and very slightly altered the orbit proving it is possible to effect change in an asteroid trajectory. Whilst the approach worked, the scope of such an approach is limited since colliding a spacecraft may not be so effective on large asteroids. Coupled with the liklihood of not getting much notice and an alternative, more, effective approach is needed. 

The asteroid Dimorphos was captured by NASA’s DART mission just two seconds before the spacecraft struck its surface on Sept. 26, 2022. Observations of the asteroid before and after impact suggest it is a loosely packed “rubble pile” object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

Other approaches have been explored from deployment of fusion engines to the target rock, focussing laser beams on them, neutron bursts and of course nuclear blasts that generate X-ray radiation. Analysis of these options reveals that only the latter, nuclear blasts has been deemed as a suitable approach for the neutralisation of the threat of a large asteroid impact when only limited time is available. 

A team of researchers led by Nathan W Moore has shown through simulations that a nuclear bomb could indeed deflect an incoming asteroid. Much of the energy release from a nuclear explosion is in the form of X-rays. the team showed that the X-ray emission would be sufficiently powerful to be able to vaporise the surface of an asteroid causing the results vapour to slowly propel the asteroid in the opposite direction. You can think of this as a very basic rocket engine with the vapour producing thrust. In simulations, the test asteroid reached speeds of 250 kilometres per hour! 

The results showed for the first time that X-rays could work and may provide sufficient protection against an incoming asteroid up to 4 km wide assuming of course, we have sufficient notice! There in lies the challenge, asteroids are typically dark and finding them against the blackness of space can be a challenge. The more time we have, then the greater chance we have of deflection being a viable proposition. 

The next step is for actual tests however, nuclear explosions come with high costs, high risks and a whole bunch of international legal restrictions. Careful planning is now needed with perhaps a little more research before this approach can be put on the shelf to be used should the need arise! 

Source : Simulation of asteroid deflection with a megajoule-class X-ray pulse

The post Nuclear Detonations Could Deflect Dangerous Asteroids Away from Earth appeared first on Universe Today.

A beam of radioactive carbon ions has been used to destroy cancer cells in mice, demonstrating a therapy that may cause less collateral damage than current techniques

[Editor note: Regular readers might—or might not have—noticed last Monday that, for the first time in more years than I can remember, I failed to post anything and didn’t even repost something from the archives or announce my absence. The explanation is unfortunately all too simple. The Sunday before, I spent something like 13 hours in the hall of at the emergency […]

The post The NCCIH embraces the quackery that is “functional medicine” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

I don’t think it’s something I have ever really thought of! Robotic explorers can travel around the Solar System visiting our neighbouring planets but when they arrive, sometimes a scientific package must be deployed to the surface. Never occurred to me just how that’s achieved! With a number of landers scheduled to visit the Moon, NASA are testing a new robotic arm called the Lightweight Surface Manipulation System AutoNomy capabilities Development for Surface Operations or LANDO for short! It will lift payloads off the lander and pop them down gently on the surface of the Moon. 

The Moon has always held a special place in our hearts. Since the first humans saw it as they gazed up at the sky, their descendents continued the fascination with our nearest neighbour. Artists, musicians, poets and writers are among just a few of the members of our society that have reflected on its beauty. It was only natural that it would be the first target for human exploration at the dawn of space flight. The Apollo missions saw the first human visitors to the Moon and now we wait with bated breath as Artemis looks set to take us back again very soon. 

Aldrin on the Moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle during the Apollo 11 mission. Mission commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. While astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility region of the moon, astronaut Michael Collins remained with the command and service modules in lunar orbit. Image Credit: NASA

Even with human explorers it’s likely only to be a few at a time so mission planners are turning to robotic helpers for the more mundane work. A team of researchers at the Langley Research Centre in Virginia have been working upon a piece of robotic hardware with new software that can operate autonomously to move objects around on the surface! The team, led by Dr Julia Cline from NASA demonstrated the LANDO system and it performed perfectly.

Looking like a movie set, the team established the arena to look like the Moon, complete with boulders that Hollywood would be proud of. The team undertook their first demo by lifting a payload off a tall black pedestal and onto the floor. They then upped the challenge and tried the same manouver but with a small rover instead. Both tests were succesful.

Closeup of lunar surface (Credit NASA)

Pivotal to the system is a series of sensors on the camera and encoders affixed to the side of the package. Once the system was ready the camera scanned the area looking for the payload which was outlined with the encoders (somewhat like a QR code.) Once it identified the item the robotic arm gently swung over the object and carefully manoeuvred its hook to snare the package. With a destination already defined using a graphical interface of the scene, the robotic arm moved around and dropped the placed the package just where the team commanded it too. 

After a succesful delivery the hook slowly disengaged, returned to its home position and paused, ready for the next command. The testing nicely demonstrated the reliability of the system setting the scene for further more advanced tests. Now the team are looking to develop a larger more robust version that can be tested ahead of its first lunar mission.

The use of robotic arms like LANDO are of immense benefit, helping us to explore the Moon. Not only will they help with repetitive tasks but they can perform more precise scientific studies even in the relatively hostile environment of the lunar surface. Their high levels of dexterity and reliability mean they are an ideal tool for further development with lunar ready versions already being worked upon.

Source : Robotic Moving ‘Crew’ Preps for Work on Moon

The post Unloading Cargo on the Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

Bret Weinstein became famous because of the 2017 Evergreen  State brouhaha, and I was firmly on his side on that one. Eventually he became so demonized that he had to leave the College, and since then has found a niche as a heterodox podcaster. But it’s been heterodoxy of the wrong stripe, including pushing Ivermectin as an anti-covid preventive and cure, warning against covid-shots, and now lapsing into bizarre conspiracy theories.

The criticism of Weinstein’s new heterodoxy is detailed in, of all places, a McGill University post on the University’s “Office for Science and Society”, calling him a “would-be Galileo” (i.e., someone who thinks he’s discerned important truths about the world but hasn’t really done so).  I’ve followed Weinstein’s career a bit, a career that I see as inimical to rational thinking despite his popularity (he has 1.1 million followers on “X” and appeared on the Joe Rogan Show).

Jonathan Jarry agrees with me, and you can read his article on Weinstein site by clicking the headline below. The title is, even by my lights, a bit mean:

It turns out that, to my dismay, Weinstein is still pushing Ivermectin for covid and questioning the efficacy of other covid treatments, including vaccines. I’ll quote the article in indented sections:

Galileo has many heirs. I don’t mean biological descendants; rather, some intellectuals see Galileo’s face in the mirror staring back at them. Freed from the shackles of academia (or simply kicked out of their university), they find a lucrative niche for themselves, telling their enraptured fans that, just like Galileo, they have an Earth-shattering theory… and a mysterious “they”don’t want you to know about it.

Bret Weinstein is a name you might be familiar with. An evolutionary biologist, now self-titled “professor in exile,” he hosts The DarkHorse podcast with his wife, fellow evolutionary biologist Heather Heying. The podcast has nearly half a million subscribers on YouTube alone and has featured high-profile guests like Russell Brand, Sam Harris, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Weinstein has himself guested on The Joe Rogan Experience, seemingly the largest podcast in the world. And while his calm tone of voice may denote sound judgment, Weinstein has become an über-conspiracy theorist, to the point where he believes the Powers That Be are crafting fake conspiracies specifically to make him look stupid.

Being Galileo is hard, but someone has to do it.

The ivermectin stuff, which abides:

But what made Weinstein particularly relevant in the eyes of the average science news consumer was his appearance on an “emergency podcast” of The Joe Rogan Experience, which in terms of sheer viewership eclipses the so-called mainstream media. Sitting next to Dr. Pierre Kory, Weinstein explained to Rogan that ivermectin worked against COVID-19 and that the vaccines were dangerous. (This was the exact opposite of reality.) Importantly, Weinstein painted himself as part of a group of “heretics,” independent of the structures controlling others, hence free to analyze the data accurately and report on it without being muzzled. He became one of the leading figures of the pro-ivermectin contingent during the pandemic.

To this day, Weinstein still believes in the effectiveness of this anti-parasitic drug in preventing and treating COVID-19, despite the clear evidence that it does not do so. On the September 17th, 2024 episode of their DarkHorse podcast, Weinstein and Heying double down on their pseudoscientific perspective on the pandemic: ventilators were “very negative” and “not necessary” for COVID; ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are the “best drugs” against the virus; and it appears we are facing a “pandemic of the vaccinated.”

Jarry argues that Weinstein’s popularity rests largely not only on his conspiracy theories (see below), but on his calm demeanor and also on the fact that he often takes the “JAQ” (“just asking questions”) approach as a way of really pushing his own views.

More covid stuff along with HIV and polio:

Over years of pumping out incredibly long, weekly podcast episodes, Weinstein and Heying have “hypothesized” a number of truly staggering things, both in the sciences and outside of them.

Weinstein wonders if the alleged “noisiness” of COVID diagnostic tests might be a feature not a bug, as it allows someone to claim anything at any moment. He tells Joe Rogan that the evidence for the HIV virus not causing AIDS is “surprisingly compelling.” Similarly, the poliovirus might not cause polio but might simply be a “fellow traveller” in people who have the disease, which is actually caused by pesticides. Also, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau might be Fidel Castro’s son (“the evidence seems kinda good,” says Heying before dismissing its relevance) and he is also gay (“this is now officially known,” says her husband).

This denialism of facts and reality can easily lead you into conspiracy territory: how else to explain that you are right but everyone around you is wrong?

Indeed, we must now confront the Goliath in the room.

“Goliath” is the name Weinstein gives to what he sees is a massive and nefarious worldwide conspiracy aimed at him in particular:

Some conspiracy theorists fret over an alleged “deep state.” For others, it’s the Bildenberg Group, or the World Economic Forum at Davos, or a Satanic cabal, or history’s classic villain: the Jews. For Weinstein, it’s Goliath.

Goliath is the name he gives to the shadowy powers conspiring against the world and against Weinstein personally. The Israel-Palestine conflict unfurling now? That’s Goliath trying to bury the voices of the COVID dissidents like Weinstein under 24/7 news coverage of a world event. He has also hinted at Goliath trying to get him to die by suicide. One day, a browser window allegedly appeared on Weinstein’s phone with a DuckDuckGo search engine page with the search bar containing the word “suicide.” Weinstein believes this might have been a threat, because he and his wife have been “a sticky wicket” for Goliath.

Real conspiracy theories aren’t enough for Weinstein and Heying, however. They must be on their toes for fake conspiracy theories manufactured by Goliath to make them appear foolish. “Traps abound” as Weinstein likes to remind his listeners, and there are psy-ops (or psychological operations designed to influence the population’s attitudes) everywhere. That story about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio? “Very believable,” Weinstein comments, but if it turns out there is no merit to this story, it was an irresistible trap, possibly set by Goliath, to discredit the people who will believe in disinformation. Indeed, Goliath is apparently trying to drive a wedge between Weinstein and his friends, a secret strategy he calls the coalition slicer-dicer. “It could be next-level chess by Goliath,” he calmly states.

Still with me?

Throughout all of this, Weinstein believes his thinking is scientific in nature, but it is not. . .

The author notes several other off-the-rails assertions of Weinstein (e.g., lab mice can’t be used for drug testing because their telomeres are too long), and then goes into a critique of Weinstein’s equally famous brother, Eric, saying that Eric’s “scientific” theories are also criticized (e.g, covid was due to Earth’s shifting magnetic fields).  The article finishes up by listing some of the questionable sponsors of Bret Weinstein’s podcast (e.g., AMRA, which sells cow colostrum as a palliative for leaky gut syndrome).

There’s one final note:

No longer satisfied with pontificating about how everything can be seen through an evolutionary lens, Bret Weinstein is now the co-founder of the Star-Wars-inflected Rescue the Republic. This weekend, they are meeting in Washington, D.C.—peacefully, Weinstein reminds us on his podcast—to give voice to their various antiestablishment grievances. They will be joined by similarly minded contrarians, such as Jordan Peterson, Pierre Kory, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Well, I don’t know much about Eric Weinstein, though I know some readers here, do. I have followed Bret to some extent, though, and all i can say is this: don’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth, be it about Covid, Ivermectin, or Goliath. Caveat emptor. 

h/t: Ginger K.

The Elder of Ziyon is an anonymous supporter of Israel who has a website worth reading if you care about the Middle East conflicts. In the article below (click to read), an anonymous guest poster on that site recounts in detail the anti-Israel actions and statements of the Biden/Harris campaign. The poster avers that these statements and actions will simply be intensified in a Harris/Walz administration. I know about many of these accusations and agree with nearly all of them. It’s true that Biden and Harris say they support Israel, but when you look at what they’ve really done, their “support” is not only guarded, but they’ve also supported Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

I strongly disagree with the poster’s conclusion that, given all this, one should vote for Trump.  The poster’s support for the Orange Man comes from his being a one-issue voter. But many of us are not.  There are a variety of issues that Americans are weighing in the election, and our treatment of Israel doesn’t rank high.  What does rank high are these issues (chart from Statista), and you don’t see Israel at the top of the list of “the most important problems facing America today”.  (In fact, Israel is at the bottom, with only 1% agreement.)

I consider Trump mentally ill and cannot vote for him. But I also consider Israel as an important issue and so will reproduce the problems with Biden/Harris/Walz that the post singles out. (The post is anonymous because, as he/she says, “in my place of work there is intense hostility to Israel. If I openly argued what I am about to argue, that anyone who cares about Israel cannot support the Democratic candidates for President and must seriously consider supporting the other candidate. . . my professional status would be seriously compromised.”)

It’s sad that it’s come to this: we can’t raise heterodox arguments without damaging our careers, but so be it. I’ll simply give the poster’s argument.

My brief here is to call out my party’s Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate (and the acting President) in areas of Israel policy where they could have done better. (And it’s arguable that Trump, though insane, might have done better on Israel than Harris will.) But I won’t abide people telling me that I have to vote for Harris (as opposed to not voting for President at all in a state that will certainly go for Harris). Please do not tell me that I have to vote for Harris, for that’s not what this post is about. You can argue about whether the poster is wrong in his/her criticisms, but this is about the poster’s claims and his conclusion that he will vote for Trump. I certainly won’t.  The poster doesn’t say, either, that voters in general should vote for Trump. As you see above, in general don’t care much about Israel or the war.

This was published September 22, and also appeared on Andrew Pessin’s Substack site. Click to read:

The article is long and gives over twenty reasons why the author won’t vote for Harris/Walz. I’ll reproduce the author’s main claims in indented bold text below, and other words from the piece in indented plain text.  Any text that is flush left is by me.

Here we go:

Harris-Walz will be a disaster for Israel and for American Jewry.

There have been some positive moments. Biden-Harris said the right things immediately after October 7, and allowed the U.S. Navy to be present in the region at a couple of important times, for which an Israel-advocate rightly feels gratitude. But aside from these and their occasional banal remark about believing in Israel’s right to defend itself—doesn’t every country have the right to defend itself?—heaps and mounds of evidence point unambiguously toward that dire conclusion. As I write, in September of 2024, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal is praising Biden-Harris for helping Hamas to remain in power, for always waiting patiently for and listening to Hamas’s demands in negotiations and for pressuring Israel to submit, and for recognizing Hamas as a legitimate diplomatic partner. What Meshal is gushing over is not the behavior of an ally of Israel, but of an administration that has largely taken the side of Israel’s enemies.

Since Harris has so far given no indication that her relevant policies will differ from Biden’s, and also repeatedly expressed her support for Biden’s, we may treat the Biden-Harris record as an indication of her own tendencies. If anything, in fact, the evidence suggests that Harris’s policies and actions will be worse. In September of 2024 here is Harris gloating about withholding weapons from Israel in order to put leverage on Israel to “accept the deal”: the deal, that is, that does not return all the hostages, that leaves Hamas in power, and forces Israel to withdraw in defeat. That is not the behavior of an ally, again, but of a friend of the enemy.

The numbered claims (I’ve omitted the numbers as things get complex with numbers within numbers):

Biden-Harris supported the disastrous JCPOA treaty with Iran, have continued to make efforts to reestablish it, and Harris states that she will rejoin it if elected. That treaty enriched the Islamic Republic with hundreds of billions of dollars, enabling it to fund its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and to fund its “Ring of Fire” surrounding Israel. . . 

Biden-Harris continued to waive the sanctions on Iran even after October 7, and even afterIran directly fired upwards of 300 missiles at Israeli homes.  . . . That treaty and the Biden-Harris administration have also failed to adequately monitor and prevent the regime’s uranium enrichment. Iran is now perilously close to the nuclear weapon they have repeatedly proclaimed they will use to destroy the Jewish state and murder its seven million Jews.

Harris has close ties with many members of and has received a top 100% rating from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), the pro-Khamenei lobby that advances the Islamic Republic’s interests in Washington D.C. 

Biden-Harris reinstated funding to the Palestinian Authority (P.A.), which supports its “pay-to-slay” program, thus incentivizing Palestinians to murder Jews. Numerous terrorist attacks, including and after October 7, and including those against American citizens, are thus rewarded with the American taxpayer money.

The one above particularly galls me: American taxpayer money goes in part to fund the “pay for slay” program to reward those in Israeli prisons who have attacked Jews. That happens to be true, like most of the contentions. More:

Biden-Harris also reinstated funding to UNRWA, thus providing a direct funding line to Hamas—which, the current war has revealed, has entirely infiltrated UNRWA.

I disagree with the one below one a bit, as the U.S. is sending weapons to Israel and not to Hamas. However, the U.S. has gone overboard in its insistence on humanitarian aid, when we do not do so in, for example, Syria or Yemen:

Biden-Harris have shown far more concern for Palestinian civilians than for Israeli civilians, at one point even dictating to Israel (through their Secretary of State) that Israel’s “Job Number One” in fighting Hamas had to be protecting and aiding Palestinian civilians.

Speaking of incompetence, Biden-Harris have bent over backwards to provide massive amounts of “humanitarian aid” to Gaza. That on its own isn’t necessarily objectionable, but the execution has been both laughable and directly harmful.

The relentless insistence that Israel focus on facilitating aid is only one of many ways in which Biden-Harris have consistently hampered Israel’s war effort. For only one particularly heinous example, they demanded that Israel not enter Rafah, causing a months-long delay in that essential operation. Biden threatened Israel with withholding weapons if they went in; Kamala “I’ve studied the maps” Harris condescendingly reproached Israel even for thinking about Rafah, claiming the operation was impossible and warning Israel about crossing her “red line.” She said, “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake … I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go.”

Biden-Harris both regularly parrot Hamas talking points, including citing Hamas’s alleged numbers of casualties, repeatedly suggesting “far too many innocent civilians have died”—even after numerous analysts have demonstrated that Hamas’s numbers are simply not credible (just one example here), and despite it being notably striking that Hamas does not bother distinguishing civilians from combatants so there is literally no way to know how many “innocent civilians” have died.

Throughout the war Biden-Harris have pressured Israel not only to negotiate with the terrorist group responsible for October 7 but to make massive concessions to them. They have pressured Israel to accept defeat from Hamas, in other words, by withdrawing from Gaza without all the hostages and without removing Hamas from power, which is a sure guarantee that Hamas will rearm and rebuild (not least by stealing international aid) and do October 7 again and again—as they have openly said they plan to do.

Harris snubbed Netanyahu’s speech on [sic] Congress. This came after months of repeated Biden-Harris interference in Israel’s own democracy, including outright efforts to unseat Israel’s democratically elected leader. Whether one is for or against Netanyahu as a politician, he is the elected leader of an alleged ally in the midst of an existential war; the lack of respect, and the lack of support for that alleged ally while it is engaged in an existential war, was a disgrace.

Biden-Harris repeatedly demand that those who committed the October 7 atrocities should be rewarded with a “state” of their own. Harris repeats this demand every single time the question arises, including in the debate with Trump and the handful of interviews she has given since. Not only does this demand reward the barbaric massacre and incentivize jihadi violence both against Israel and the West in general—why wouldn’t they perpetrate mass violence, when they get their demands met by doing so?—but she constantly repeats the demand despite the fact that Hamas leaders repeatedly, openly, proclaim their intention to perpetrate October 7 again and again and again, until all the Jews are murdered.

Biden-Harris repeatedly denounce Israelis in Judea-Samaria for defending themselves from Palestinian violence, and have repeatedly imposed sanctions on numerous Israelis there while literally doing nothing about the far more serious and more frequent violence of Palestinians against Israelis.

Beyond some lip service denouncements, Biden-Harris have done nothing serious or substantial to support or defend Israel from the international lawfare being waged against it from the United Nations (U.N.), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

One of the very first Biden-Harris foreign policy decisions was to remove the Iran-funded Houthis from the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. They have continued to resist relisting them as recently as this week, despite numerous calls by others to do so, despite the Houthis’ ongoing attacks on Red Sea shipping and their repeatedly attacking Israel. 

Many campus enemies of Israel and of the Jews responded to October 7 by celebrating, endorsing, and calling for more mass genocidal violence against Jews, demanding the destruction of Israel, and then spent eleven months ostracizing, harassing, and in dozens of instances physically assaulting Jewish students on our campuses. Harris has repeatedly expressed support for these people; “They’re showing exactly what the emotions should be” was only her most recent example. One might have thought that the appropriate emotions in response to an attempted genocide would be something other than celebrating it and calling for more. Meanwhile Harris has said essentially not a word in support of the Jewish students who have confronted a year of terror and record-setting antisemitism on their campuses.

The Biden-Harris Justice Department has been entirely missing in action this past year. It has not only ignored the widely reported mass wave of antisemitism occurring on campuses and in many major cities (including vandalism, incitement to mass murder, violence, and more), but has actively ignored requests that they get involved.

There is a lot more, but I’ll just add one thing about “personnel”:

 As one article title puts it, “Harris would fill her administration with anti-Israel radicals”—and supporters of Iran, the greatest enemy of Israel and of Jews on the planet.

Since I’m not a one-issue voter or political supporter, I cannot, however, agree with the author’s conclusion, which is what would get he/she in trouble were their identity revealed. After listing the positive things that Trump did about Israel, the author says this:

 As a lifelong Democrat, with the fate of Israel and American Jewry on the line, then, it is impossible for me to support this candidate [Harris].

. . . . The conclusion is indisputable:

Biden-Harris-Walz are and will be a disaster for Israel and for American Jews.

Trump was the most Pro-Israel President ever.

Nose held and deep breath taken, but:

Orange Man it is.

Not for me, of course! What I want to highlight here, and which worries me quite a bit, is the Biden/Harris record on Israel, which is likely to become more anti-Israel if Harris is elected. To the extent that Harris says she supports Israel, I still believe she’ll lessen America’s support of the Middle East’s only democracy if she’s elected, which is looking increasingly likely. But if you’re a Democrat, do be aware that your (our) party is becoming increasingly anti-Israel, and, in some cases (e.g., the Congressional “squad”) anti-Semitic. That’s what happened to Labour in the UK, too, and it’s a sign of a democracy that is failing.

For some reason I’ve forgotten to collect and post irritating terms, lists of  which used to be fairly common here.  I usually proffered at least three, but this week I have two.  The purpose here is to get readers to vent about their own annoying words or phrases.  And let’s not be Pecksniffs and say “but language evolves”!  This is a chance to vent and have fun, not defend the use of annoying terms.

My choices:

Deep dive. This phrase is increasingly used to denote a “hard look” at an issue or topic. I have two issues with this.

First, it’s used because it’s trendy. What’s wrong with “hard look” or “thorough examination”?

Second, very often the “deep dive” is not a thorough look, but a shallow belly flop. Here’s an example from a rag I used to read, the Huffington Post. Click to read:

The article is short, not a “deep dive” at all.  Using trendy language like this shows a lack of imagination, a way to demonstrate how cool you are by using the latest argot. You’ll never catch me saying this.

Passed (a synonym for “died”). This word is a double euphemism, for it is itself a synonym for “passed on” or “passed away”, which themselves are synonyms for “died.” What is wrong with “died”? Well, some people can’t bring themselves to say it, even if it’s true.

And there’s one bad side effect: to me, “passed” implies that your journey of life isn’t yet complete: that you’re “passing on” to some other phase of your existence. That is likely to be “heaven”. In other words, to me the phrase denotes belief in an afterlife, and atheists like me have no truck with it. Fortunately, the obituaries in newspaper and magazines don’t use it, and stick with the simple “died.” “Passed” is a word you hear from the mouths of your friends, not in the news.

Now, dear readers, what words or phrases curl the soles of your shoes?

Here’s Bill Maher’s latest (8-minute) comedy bit from “Real Time”. Surprisingly, it’s very patriotic. Maher extols the Harris’s campaign emphasis on patriotism and the privilege of being an American, but kvetches that the young folk aren’t buying it.  His example: the vocal attempts of pro-Palestinian protestors to bring down America. Yes, whether or not they’re aware of it, they are being useful idiots for the Islamist goal of taking over America and destroying our democracy. And why don’t people realize that? If America is so horrible, why are we flooded with immigrants and requests to become Americans.

Maher shows his own patriotism by extolling the Constitution (don’t miss the Google AI picture), yet bemoaning the young folks’ ignorance of the Constitution, to the point of rejecting much of what it specified about how our government is set up.  He admits that the document wasn’t perfect (it didn’t deal with slavery, though an amendment gook care of that), but says that Gen Z’s interpretation of the document is “white people did some very bad things.”  Well, maybe, but they did some good things as well.

This is one of Maher’s better videos, for it uses his humor to make a good point.  America is flawed, but it’s a great place to live. As Maher says, the Founders guaranteed the rights for “everything that makes life good for the very people who hate them so much.” Well, listen for yourself.

The Milky Way is special because it is our home. No matter where we are on Earth we can see its arc of light overhead if the night is dark enough. But how similar is our galaxy to others? Is it an unusual spiral galaxy, or is it rather typical in the cosmos?

Before we had discovered exoplanets, astronomers generally thought our solar system was rather typical. Sure, there would be differences, but the general arrangement of rocky worlds close to the Sun and cold gas giants in the outer system made sense. However when we studied planetary systems we found ours was rather unusual. Most planets orbit red dwarfs, not sun-like stars, and large gas giants often orbit close to their star. Now that we have sky surveys of galaxies throughout the Universe, we can answer the same question of the Milky way, as a recent study shows.

The study is based on the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) Survey, which began collecting data in 2013. The goal of SAGA is to look at the small galaxies which orbit large galaxies. The team looked at 101 galaxies with masses similar to the Milky Way and found 378 satellite galaxies for them. Because of observational limits, this only covers satellites with a mass of about a million Suns or more. In this range our galaxy has four satellites. We know of many more, but most of them are below the mass cutoff.

This would seem to indicate that the Milky Way is rather typical. But then the team looked at those galaxies with a large companion, like the Large Magellanic Cloud we see in the southern hemisphere. For those galaxies the number of satellites is typically much larger than four. The Milky Way has an unusually low number of satellites. One reason for this may be that the Large Magellanic Cloud entered our sphere of influence rather recently on the cosmic timeline.

A second study based on the SAGA data looked at star formation in the satellite galaxies. It found that the closer a satellite is to the main galaxy the more likely it is to still be producing stars. This is similar to what we see among the Milky Way satellites. So it seems that while the Milky Way is a little unusual, it isn’t unique among galaxies of similar mass.

But it will always be our special spiral galaxy.

Reference: Mao, Yao-Yuan, et al. “The SAGA Survey. III. A Census of 101 Satellite Systems around Milky Way-mass Galaxies.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.14498 (2024).

Reference: Geha, Marla, et al. “The SAGA Survey. IV. The Star Formation Properties of 101 Satellite Systems around Milky Way-mass Galaxies.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.14499 (2024).

The post How Does the Milky Way Compare to Other Galaxies? appeared first on Universe Today.