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Today we have Part One of reader Chris Taylor’s photos from Queensland. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

After having been unable to travel for the last five years, I was at last able to get away again, so my partner and I decided to escape the cold of Canberra’s winter and travel up to tropical North Queensland. We had arranged to go out to the Bush Heritage Australia reserve at Yourka again, but before going there we had some time to visit the rainforest near the coast. After flying in to Cairns, we drove up to our first campsite in Mossman.

Above the town, the pristine Mossman River flows through a steep sided gorge.

The rainforest here is said to be the oldest on earth. Many ancient plant families are preserved here, including cycads, ferns and primitive conifers. We had a couple of short walks along the paths into the rainforest.

Our campground was on the banks of the Mossman River. A sign in the site was slightly alarming!

I’m not sure how often the crocodiles get up into the town.

But a few days later we travelled the few kilometres further north to the Daintree River, and there were plenty of crocodiles to be seen. There are two species of crocodile found in Australia, the smaller Freshwater Crocodile, and the larger Saltwater species.

This is a Saltwater Crocodile, Crocodylus porosus:

On the Daintree River, a dominant male will rule a territory of many kilometres of the river, and will keep a harem of females. The male will also tolerate a number of juvenile males until they are three or four years old, at which time they will be driven out of the area. Once fully grown they may return to the river to challenge the resident male for his territory and females.

This is a young male. He was only about 2.5m in length.

This is a female of breeding age. She is regulating her body temperature by entering the water, and gaping her mouth to the wind. There are many blood vessels in the roof of the mouth and this cools the blood going to her brain.

There is some concern in Queensland that climate change is having a big adverse effect on the crocodiles. The sex of the hatchling is determined by the temperature:  less than 32oC produces males, but over 34oC the litter is predominantly female. This warming, together with the effects of the flooding caused by Tropical Cyclone Jasper, has led to no young crocodiles surviving in the Daintree for two years.

We also saw the dominant male of this part of the river, a 5m long, 500kg animal known as Scarface.

He is thought to be at least 70 years old, and carries witness to many fights he has had to retain his kingdom. He has lost most if not all of his teeth, but is still able to feed, often on carrion that is carried down the river.

Lining the river banks are stands of Mangrove trees of different species. Here the mangroves are combining to form an island in the river. There are three different forms that the roots take to enable the tree to live in the brackish water.  All three can be seen in this picture.  Most obvious is the prop or stilt root system, where many roots branch off from the trunk of the tree and spread out to form a strong supporting network.  Then there are some that have Buttress roots flaring out from the trunk. These sometimes bend up above the surface before returning to the mud, and are called knee roots. Lastly there are the roots that stick up pencil-like structures known as pneumatophores. All of these are mechanisms that help the plant to regulate oxygen, salt and water intake and removal, and all help to stabilise the mud around the plant, as well as providing a habitat for fish and invertebrates to breed.

In amongst the mangroves were other creatures. This is a Little Pied Cormorant, Microcarbo melanoleucos, a very common bird around Australia.

Further upstream in one of mangroves was a Scrub Python, Simalia kinghorni:

This is Australia’s largest snake, growing to 5m and 20kg., but it is quite at home in the trees. It was resting in the sun when we first encountered it, but soon began to move around in the tree tops. This one was probably approaching the 3m mark. It was fascinating to see how it was able to span the gaps in the branches.

Back at Daintree we saw this White-Lipped Tree Frog, Litoria infrafrenata. This is the largest tree frog in the world. There are other larger frogs but these are unable to climb:

Back at Mossman, we photographed a Giant Orb Weaving spider, Nephila pilipes. This individual had a span across her legs of about 150mm, and a body of 25mm. Her web was rather more that 1m across!

Also in the campground were a number of Orange-footed Scrub Fowl, Megapodius reinwardt. These birds belong to the Megapodidae, along with the Brush Turkey that I will describe later:

There were also Olive-backed Sunbirds, Cinnyris jugularis, flying around the site. This one is a female emerging from the hanging nest made from woven grasses fibres and bark. It is the female who does most of the work of raising the two eggs laid in the nest:

There was also a spectacular display of Red Jade Vine, Mucuna bennettii. Introduced into Australia, this member of the Legume family is a native of Papua New Guinea:

Returning to Cairns for a night we were able to go for a swim in a nearby rainforest stream at the (crocodile free) Crystal Cascades:

Next morning, while waiting to board the bus to Atherton, we went to a café for breakfast. A cheeky Willie Wagtail, Rhipidura leucophrys, decided to join us in the hope of getting crumbs of food from the table.

Continued in Part 2.

 

Quickie with Steve: Minimoon; News Items: Dead Internet Theory, Classroom CRISPR, CAM Market, ADHD Increasing; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Changing Names, Net Metering and Residential Solar; Science or Fiction

Black holes often appear in science fiction movies, largely because elements of their existence are still a mystery. They have fascinating impacts on the surrounding region of space too with distortions in space and time high on the list. A team of astronomers have found a supermassive black hole with twin jets blasting out an incredible 23 million light years, the longest yet. To put this into context, if you lined up 140 Milky Way galaxies side by side, then that’s the length of the jet! 

The presence of mass in the Universe distorts space-time in its vicinity and the more massive, the greater the distortion. Black holes are regions where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape. They form when a massive star runs out of fuel in the core and collapses under its own gravity. The process creates a point of infinite density known as a singularity. Surrounding the singularity at a distance that depends on the properties of the progenitor star, is the event horizon. If matter of any sort, even a passing spacecraft, gets dragged in through the event horizon then it is never able to escape. 

After the death of a massive, spinning star, a disk of material forms around the central black hole. As the material cools and falls into the black hole, new research suggests that detectable gravitational waves are created. Ore Gottlieb

One of the properties of a black hole are powerful jets, high speed streams of particles ejected from the regions around a black hole. The material ejected never quite reaches the event horizon but instead has been ejected from within the accretion disk. The magnetic fields of a black hole and the rotation of the disks of heated gas and dust can launch jets from the polar regions. They can travel at speeds near the speed of light and can shoot across thousands and millions of kilometres of space. The exact mechanisms of the jets are still not well understood. 

Astronomers observing with LOFAR (the Low Frequency Array) radio system spotted a jet so massive that its the equivalent of 140 Milky Way galaxies lined up side by side! For comparison the jet emanating from Centaurus A at the centre of our Galaxy spans about 10 Milky Way’s! It’s been nicknamed Porphyrion after the mythological giant in Greek culture. Dating back to a time when the universe was 6.3 billion years old, the jet has been found to be producing power equivalent to trillions of Suns!

The LOFAR ‘superterp’, part of the core of the extended telescope located in the Netherlands. Credit: LOFAR/ASTRON

The team that have studied the jet suggest that if giant jets like this were common in the early universe then they may well have been an influential force in the formation of galaxies. Modern jets seen in the nearby universe (and therefore at a later era in the evolution of the universe) seem to be much smaller by comparison. The conclusion is that perhaps the giant jets would have connected and fed energy and material to other nearby galaxies, driving their evolution. 

The survey undertaken by LOFAR revealed more than 10,000 of these megajets. Previous studies revealed only a few hundred large jets suggesting they were more rare but this latest research shows otherwise. It was a real labour of love though as the team searched radio images by eye, used machine-learning tools to scan the images and even enlisted citizen scientists around the world to help. Their paper was published in the Astronomy and Astrophysical journal. 

What of Porphyrion? The team followed up with observations with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in Kitt Peak and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to reveal the host galaxy 7.5 billion light years away. 

Source : Gargantuan Black Hole Jets Are Biggest Seen Yet

The post Astronomers Find the Longest Black Hole Jets Ever Seen appeared first on Universe Today.

I think some respected newspapers could do a better job of being honest with their readers about some pretty basic and pretty important things.

The post Open Letter to Pamela Paul of the New York Times: Watch Some Interviews With Dr. Marty Makary. They Are More Important Than Peanut Allergies. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Global internet access does seem like a worthy enterprise yet the rise of satellite megaconstellations there is a danger of the night sky becoming ruined. Astronomers the world over are keeping an eye on the impact these satellites are having on the night sky. Until recently the concerns have been relating to the reflection of visible light against the sky hindering night time observations. A recent study shows that the second-generation Starlink satellites leak 32 times the radio signal than the previous models. Are their presence putting at risk the radio sky now too?

The starlink satellites are the brainchild of SpaceX to provide high-speed broadband internet to every corner of the planet. The constellation of satellites consists of thousands of small satellites measuring just 2.8 metre in length. They form a network that can transmit data quickly around the planet offering high speed internet which is far more reliable than traditional satellite systems. The goal is to provide high speed connectivity to places where fibre or traditional infrastructure is difficult or too costly. As it expands though there will be more and more satellites in orbit. 

An artist’s conception shows Starlink satellites in orbit. Credit: SpaceX

It’s not just SpaceX that is causing the problem though. Since 2019 other companies have been getting in on the act with organisations like OneWeb too having launched hundreds of thousands of satellites. The plan is for organisations like these to launch in excess of 100,000 satellites. If the rise in megaconstellations like these rise then the emissions (visible, radio or otherwise) could very easily make astronomical observations from the surface of Earth difficult if not impossible.

During the last year, observations with the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) revealed that the Starlink satellites were emitting radio waves. Astronomers were concerned that the unintentional waves could have a negative impact on radio observations. As SpaceX expand their network with a second generation of satellites, their ‘V2-mini’ modules the risks seem to be increasing. New LOFAR observations have shown that the new satellites are producing up to 32 times more radio emissions than the earlier satellites! Anyone observing the universe in radio waves at the time of their passing is likely to receive a blinding radio signal that would ruin any observations. 

The LOFAR ‘superterp’, part of the core of the extended telescope located in the Netherlands. Credit: LOFAR/ASTRON

Putting the radio emissions into context, the new satellites are emitting radio waves 10 million times brighter than that detected by the faintest astronomical object detected by LOFAR so far! The discovery highlights the need for control and regulations around satellites and their emissions, intended or otherwise. Left unchecked then the future of astronomical observations will be highly compromised.

ASTRON operates LOFAR which is one of the most sensitive low frequency telescopes in the world. It’s only possible because it operates from the Netherlands which is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. Despite the high population density, the national organisations of Netherlands co-operate and consult with ASTRON to safeguard the future of radio astronomy. We just need other organisations like SpaceX and OneWeb to jump on board to ensure our view of the universe isn’t lost for ever. 

Source : Second-Generation Starlink Satellites Leak 30 Times More Radio Interference, Threatening Astronomical Observations

The post Second Generation Starlinks are 32 Times Brighter in Radio Wavelengths appeared first on Universe Today.

A new covid-19 variant called XEC may spread more easily than past variants, but current vaccines are still effective against it

When you look at the Moon, you don’t see any water on its surface. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any. In fact, there’s a lot of “wetness” on the Moon, but it’s in places and forms we can’t see. Understanding where all those resources are is the subject of a study based on NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) data taken from aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

The analysis performed by a team led by Planetary Science Institute senior scientist Roger Clark shows that there are many sources of water and a group of chemicals called “hydroxyls” (OH). Water lies hidden in ice deposits in shaded areas, and inside enriched rocks.

Image showing the distribution of surface ice (which could supply water) at the Moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Credits: NASA

Hydroxyls are interesting. They form as solar protons interact with electrons on the Moon’s surface. That creates hydrogen atoms which hook up with oxygen atoms found in silicates and other oxygen-bearing molecules in the lunar regolith. Together, the hydrogen and oxygen make hydroxyl molecules, which are a component of water. While it would take some work, mining those “raw materials” for water on the Moon could be a huge boost for future crewed missions, according to Clark.

“Future astronauts may be able to find water even near the equator by exploiting these water-rich areas. Previously, it was thought that only the polar region, and in particular, the deeply shadowed craters at the poles were where water could be found in abundance,” said Clark. “Knowing where water is located not only helps to understand lunar geologic history but also where astronauts may find water in the future.”

How They Identified Lunar Water Sources

Searching out sources of lunar water requires special instruments. This is where the Chandrayaan mission and NASA’s mineralogy mapper data came in handy. Clark and his team zeroed in on a set of data taken by the lander’s imaging spectrometer from 2008-2009. This infrared spectroscopy data contains the spectral fingerprints of both water and hydroxyl in sunlight reflected from the Moon’s surface. The M3 instrument dissected the light into 85 different visible and infrared “colors”. That’s how they were able to spot the distinctive hints of water and hydroxyls across much of the Moon.

The team also looked at the location and geologic contexts of water and hydroxyl distribution. They also had to take into account the “lifetime” of these resources on the Moon. Interestingly, water gets slowly destroyed over time. Hydroxyl, however, lasts much longer. So, for example, if a crater smacks into the lunar surface, the “wet” rocks it “digs up” will lose that content over time through the action of the solar wind. The result is a diffuse layer or “aura” of hydroxyls that remain behind. In other places, solar wind protons that collide with the surface contribute to a thin layer or “patina” of hydroxyls on the surface. The hydroxyls last much longer and exist on the Moon up to millions of years.

“Putting all the evidence together, we see a lunar surface with complex geology with significant water in the sub-surface and a surface layer of hydroxyl. Both cratering and volcanic activity bring water-rich materials to the surface, and both are observed in the lunar data,” Clark said.

Near-infrared image of the Moon’s surface by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 mission. The mapper helped identify water- and hydroxyl-rich areas on the lunar surface. Image credit: ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown Univ./USGS Using Precious Lunar Resources

Lunar rocks may well help supply water to future visitors to the Moon. There are two kinds of rocks there. The dark mare rocks are mainly basaltic (like Hawaiian lava). The other type is the anorthosite rock. It exists in various places, including the lunar highlands. The anorthosites are relatively “wet” while the basalts remain very dry. The two rock types also contain hydroxyls bonded to different minerals.

The water-rich anorthosites should be a target for harvesting by lunar astronauts. To get a good supply, you have to heat the rocks and soils. The result of that process could be a long-lasting water supply. You could also get it by using methods to create chemical reactions that liberate hydroxyl and combine four hydroxyls to create oxygen and water.

Of course, a more immediate source lies at the poles. That’s where ice lies hidden inside shaded crater walls or under the surface, preserved for millions of years. That source is likely more easily harvested, but you still have to transport the water to other lunar regions. The downsides of getting water from rocks are the expense and the energy required to heat them for extraction. NASA and other agencies (such as the Chinese space agency) are looking at all the methods of producing supplies for upcoming missions. Studying the locations of ice deposits and hydroxyls is just one part of a larger “search for water” that will benefit future lunar bases.

For More Information

Sources of Water and Hydroxyl are Widespread on the Moon
The Global Distribution of Water and Hydroxyl on the Moon as Seen by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3)

The post There’s Water All Over the Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

Lasso peptides are natural products made by bacteria. Their unusual lasso shape endows them with remarkable stability, protecting them from extreme conditions. In a new study, researchers have constructed and tested models for how these peptides are made and demonstrated how this information might be used to advance lasso peptide-based drugs into the clinic.

A research team has developed a computational workflow for analyzing large data sets in the field of metabolomics, the study of small molecules found within cells, biofluids, tissues, and entire ecosystems.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft was sent to Jupiter to study the gas giant. But its mission was extended, giving it an opportunity to study the unique moon Io. Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, with over 400 active volcanoes.

Researchers have taken advantage of Juno’s flybys of Io to study how tidal heating affects the moon.

In recent months, Juno performed several flybys of Io, culminating in one that brought the spacecraft to within 1500 km of the surface. This gave Juno unprecedented close-up views of the volcanic moon. One of its instruments, the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), is an infrared spectrometer, and its data is at the heart of new research into Io’s volcanic activity and how tidal heating drives it.

The new research letter, “JIRAM Observations of Volcanic Flux on Io: Distribution and Comparison to Tidal Heat Flow Models,” was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Madeline Pettine, a doctoral student in astronomy at Cornell University, is the lead author.

Though Io is dead, the tidal heating that keeps it warm could contribute to habitability elsewhere.

“Studying the inhospitable landscape of Io’s volcanoes actually inspires science to look for life,” said lead author Pettine.

“It’s easier to study tidal heating on a volcanic world rather than peering through a kilometers-thick ice shell that’s keeping the heat covered up.”

Madeline Pettine, Cornell University

Io is one of the four Galilean moons. The other three, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, are all suspected of having liquid oceans under frozen layers of surface ice. If these oceans truly exist, they could potentially support life. Jupiter’s tidal heating provides the heat to keep those oceans warm. Io is valuable scientifically because we can witness the effects of tidal heating on its surface.

Juno isn’t the only spacecraft to have visited Jupiter’s moon Io. This global view of Io was obtained during the tenth orbit of Jupiter by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. It’s a false colour image that highlights differences on Io’s surface. Image Credit: NASA

“Tidal heating plays an important role in the heating and orbital evolution of celestial bodies,” said co-author Alex Hayes, the Jennifer and Albert Sohn Professor of Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell. “It provides the warmth necessary to form and sustain subsurface oceans in the moons around giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn.”

Io’s volcanoes aren’t distributed evenly on its surface. The majority of them are in the equatorial region. However, in this work, the researchers found that the volcanoes on Io’s poles may act to regulate the moon’s interior temperature.

“I’m trying to match the pattern of volcanoes on Io and the heat flow that they’re producing with the heat flow we expected from theoretical models,” said Pettine.

Jupiter is the most massive planet in the Solar System and its gravitational pull is second only to the Sun’s. Jupiter’s powerful gravity does more than dictate Io’s orbit. It warps the moon and forces it to deform, generating heat.

This simple schematic shows how a planet can create tidal heating on an orbiting moon. The stretching and heating are most extreme when the moon is at its pericenter, the closest distance to the planet. Image Credit: Caltech.

“The gravity from Jupiter is incredibly strong,” Pettine said. “Considering the gravitational interactions with the large planet’s other moons, Io ends up getting bullied, constantly stretched and scrunched up. With that tidal deformation, it creates a lot of internal heat within the moon.”

Io has no ocean, so the heat melts rock, creating a likely magma ocean inside the moon. That magma works its way up through the surface, erupting as volcanoes and lava flows. The gases from the magma colour the surface of the moon in reds, yellows, and browns.  

To understand what’s happening inside Io, Pettine and her colleagues worked with a mathematical equation called spherical harmonic decomposition. This equation allows scientists to analyze data from a spherical surface and break it down, revealing patterns and important features.

Previous research shows that most of Io’s volcanic activity is in its equatorial region, although some volcanoes have been detected on its poles. In this work, it revealed systems of bright volcanoes at high latitudes.

“Our observations confirm previously detected systems of bright volcanoes at high latitudes,” the authors write. “While our map agrees with previous studies that suggest that low?to mid?latitude areas see the highest areas of volcanic activity, our map suggests that the poles of Io are comparably active to the equator.”

This figure’s perspective shows the sub-Jovian, north-polar view of Io in the left column and the anti-Jovian, south-polar view of Io in the right column. The topmost row shows the coverage map achieved for JIRAM during this study. The second row is a global map of volcanic flux. The hot spot in the north polar region is clear. Image Credit: Pettine et al. 2024.

Pettine and her co-researchers compared their global heat flux maps with three different models that attempt to explain what’s going under Io’s surface: the Deep Mantle model, the Asthenospheric model, and the Global Magma model.

The Deep Mantle Model says that tidal heating keeps a large portion of the mantle in a molten state. The Asthenospheric Model says that less of the mantle is molten and that only the asthenosphere is in a molten state due to tidal heating. This is more similar to Earth. The Global Magma Ocean model is a more extreme interpretation of the data and says that a greater portion of Io’s interior is molten, perhaps extending from just below the surface to greater depths.

This figure shows what Io’s surface heat flux should look like for three different interior models. Image Credit: Pettine et al. 2024.

The researchers also created a complete global map of heat flux produced by volcanic hot spots. “Viewing this flux on both a linear and a logarithmic scale better illustrates individual volcanic behaviour and global heat flow variations, particularly the lowest-flux regions,” the authors write.

“Our study finds that both poles are comparably active and that the observed flux distribution is inconsistent with an asthenospheric heating model, although the south pole is viewed too infrequently to establish reliable trends,” the authors explain.

These global volcanic flux maps show the average flux in milliwatts per square meter. The top is on a linear scale, while the bottom is on a logarithmic colour scale. The coloured bars and the line plots beside each map show the average flux projected horizontally (to the right of each map) and the average flux projected vertically (below each map) to show trends in flux by latitude and longitude. Image Credit: Pettine et al. 2024.

The researchers say that their heat flux maps don’t favour any of the models. “Using spherical decomposition, we find that the distribution of flux is much more uniform than in-line with any of the models,” they write.

For now, a more complete understanding of Io’s tidal heating and volcanic activity is elusive. Juno’s JIRAM observations are just a snapshot of the moon. Over longer time periods, the heat maps will look different and may support different models and conclusions.

“I’m not solving tidal heating with this one paper,” said Pettine. “However, if you think about icy moons in the outer solar system, other moons like Jupiter’s Europa, or Saturn’s Titan and Enceladus, they’re the places that if we’re going to find life in the solar system, it will be one of those places.”

A better understanding of tidal heating will do more than explain aspects of our own Solar System. It may help us understand habitable zones in other solar systems and how exomoons might be heated by giant exoplanets.

Artist’s illustration of a large exomoon orbiting a large exoplanet. While we have no way of observing exomoons, that day will come soon enough. A better understanding of tidal heating will help us understand what we will see. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Hustak

That’s why, although Jupiter’s icy moons are prime targets for exploration, with two missions heading to study Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, we need to keep a scientific eye on Io.

“We need to know how the heat is being generated,” Pettine said. “It’s easier to study tidal heating on a volcanic world rather than peering through a kilometers-thick ice shell that’s keeping the heat covered up.”

The post Io’s Volcanoes are Windows into its Hot Interior appeared first on Universe Today.

A sprawling research program aims to improve hurricane forecasts by collecting data at the chaotic interface of ocean and atmosphere

Forest loss is thought to have played a part in record low rainfall across South America this year, in a sign that environmental destruction is accelerating climate collapse

Spintronic devices work with spin textures caused by quantum-physical interactions. Scientists have now studied graphene-cobalt-iridium heterostructures at BESSY II. The results show how two desired quantum-physical effects reinforce each other in these heterostructures. This could lead to new spintronic devices based on these materials.

Spintronic devices work with spin textures caused by quantum-physical interactions. Scientists have now studied graphene-cobalt-iridium heterostructures at BESSY II. The results show how two desired quantum-physical effects reinforce each other in these heterostructures. This could lead to new spintronic devices based on these materials.

Medically evacuating an astronaut from space is difficult and expensive, and a new model predicts that one in three long-duration moon missions may require it

For the second time in its 179-year history, Scientific American, which has become increasingly lame in its science reporting but increasingly “progressive” in its politics (see all my posts about this rag here), has decided to endorse a political candidate. I consider this endorsement—or any ensorsement—an abrogation of institutional neutrality that should go with science journals and magazines. I am opposed to science magazines making political or ideological statements in general. Of course Sci Am endorsed Harris, but I’d be just as opposed if they had endorsed Trump.) My main objections to an endorsement per se are fourfold:

1. It’s performative, designed to show the virtue of the magazine, and will accomplish nothing.
2. It’s been shown that when science journals endorese political candidates, it reduces not only the credibility of the journal, but of science itself in the eyes of the public.
3. The purpose of a science magazine is to present science, not endorse ideologies or politics. If ideological endorsements becomes normal—and they are becoming normal—then science magazines will morph into political magazines.  It’s as if the National Review published an editorial endorsing string theory.
4. If you argue that the endorsement is simply because Trump would do more damage to the scientific enterprise than would Harris, then why does the endorsement include a lot of issues that have nothing to do with that mission: like approving of Harris’s stand on abortion? (Again, I’m firmly on her side in this, but science magazines shouldn’t be giving endorsements for debatable issues like abortion.)

Blame editor Laura Helmuth, who has taken the magazine to its present depths and must have approved this endorsement.

But let someone more articulate than I give his critique: writer Tom Nichols writing in The Atlantic. I’ve also put a link Scientific American’s long endorsement below. Click to read, or find the Atlantic piece archived here.

Like me, Nichols considers Trump a scientific ignoramus and someone whose actions, during the pandemic, almost certainly injured people:

I understand the frustration that probably led to this decision. Donald Trump is the most willfully ignorant man ever to hold the presidency. He does not understand even basic concepts of … well, almost anything. (Yesterday, he explained to a woman in Michigan that he would lower food prices by limiting food imports—in other words, by reducing the supply of food. Trump went to the Wharton School, where I assume “supply and demand” was part of the first-year curriculum.) He is insensate to anything that conflicts with his needs or beliefs, and briefing him on any topic is virtually impossible.

When a scientific crisis—a pandemic—struck, Trump was worse than useless. He approved the government program to work with private industry to create vaccines, but he also flogged nutty theories about an unproven drug therapy and later undermined public confidence in the vaccines he’d helped bring to fruition. His stubborn stupidity literally cost American lives.

It makes sense, then, that a magazine of science would feel the need to inform its readers about the dangers of such a man returning to public office. To be honest, almost any sensible magazine about anything probably wants to endorse his opponent, because of Trump’s baleful effects on just about every corner of American life. (Cat Fancy magazine-—now called Catster-—should be especially eager to write up a jeremiad about Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance. But I digress.)

Catster??!  Was Cat Fancy considered politically incorrect, perhaps implying that people were having sex with cats? But I digress, too. For after noting the above, Nichols still disagrees with Helmuth’s decision to endorse Harris.

Strange as it seems to say it, a magazine devoted to science should not take sides in a political contest. For one thing, it doesn’t need to endorse anyone: The readers of a magazine such as Scientific American are likely people who have a pretty good grasp of a variety of concepts, including causation, the scientific method, peer review, and probability. It’s something of an insult to these readers to explain to them that Trump has no idea what any of those words mean. They likely know this already.

And here are the reasons Nichols opposes political endorsements in general. The bold headings are mine.

They won’t sway the readers. Nichols has already said that the readers are too savvy to be influenced by the magazine. Indeed, I felt patronized when I read the endorsement, even though I agree in the main with the article’s opinions about Trump. And, Nichols says, Trump voters have pretty much made up their minds and won’t be swayed by what this magazine says:

Now, I am aware that the science and engineering community has plenty of Trump voters in it. (I know some of them.) But one of the most distinctive qualities of Trump supporters is that they are not swayed by the appeals of intellectuals. They’re voting for reasons of their own, and they are not waiting for the editors of Scientific American to brainiac-splain why Trump is bad for knowledge.

Well, there are people on the fence, and perhaps they might be influenced, right? Perhaps. But one of the biggest arguments about science magazines taking ideological stands is that they reduce the public’s trust in both the magazine and science. This is pretty well known from the Nature study cited next:

Political stands of magazines reduce public trust in science.

In fact, we have at least some evidence that scientists taking sides in politics can backfire. In 2021, a researcher asked a group that included both Biden and Trump supporters to look at two versions of the prestigious journal Nature—one with merely an informative page about the magazine, the other carrying an endorsement of Biden. Here is the utterly unsurprising result:

The endorsement message caused large reductions in stated trust in Nature among Trump supporters. This distrust lowered the demand for COVID-related information provided by Nature, as evidenced by substantially reduced requests for Nature articles on vaccine efficacy when offered. The endorsement also reduced Trump supporters’ trust in scientists in general. The estimated effects on Biden supporters’ trust in Nature and scientists were positive, small and mostly statistically insignificant.

In other words, readers who supported Biden shrugged; Trump supporters decided that Nature was taking sides and was therefore an unreliable source of scientific information.

To me this is the most important issue, and is why I keep my political views out of lectures on science, like when I’m defending evolution. I could go on and on in such lectures about how Republicans oppose evolution far more than do Democrats, and thus the audience should vote Democratic, but that would accomplish nothing save reduce my credibility about evolution. “Coyne must be pushing this issue because he’s a Democrat,” they’d say.

The Scientific American editorial ventured into fields that had little or nothing to do with science, and also dealt with debatable issues that can’t be “scientifically” settled.

But even if Scientific American’s editors felt that the threat to science and knowledge was so dire that they had to endorse a candidate, they did it the worst way possible. They could have made a case for electing Harris as a matter of science acting in self-defense, because Trump, who chafes at any version of science that does not serve him, plans to destroy the relationship between expertise and government by obliterating the independence of the government’s scientific institutions. This is an obvious danger, especially when Trump is consorting with kooks such as Laura Loomer and has floated bringing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crackpot circus into the government.

Instead, the magazine gave a standard-issue left-liberal endorsement that focused on health care, reproductive rights, gun safety, climate policy, technology policy, and the economy. Although science and data play their role in debates around such issues, most of the policy choices they present are not specifically scientific questions: In the end, almost all political questions are about values—and how voters think about risks and rewards. Science cannot answer those questions; it can only tell us about the likely consequences of our choices.

. . . . Also unhelpful is that some of the endorsement seemed to be drawn from the Harris campaign’s talking points, such as this section:

Economically, the renewable-energy projects she supports will create new jobs in rural America. Her platform also increases tax deductions for new small businesses from $5,000 to $50,000, making it easier for them to turn a profit. Trump, a convicted felon who was also found liable of sexual abuse in a civil trial, offers a return to his dark fantasies and demagoguery …

An endorsement based on Harris’s tax proposals—which again, are policy choices—belongs in a newspaper or financial journal. It’s not a matter of science, any more than her views on abortions or guns or anything else are.

This implies that it might be okay if the magazine endorsed Harris because her election is better for science than the election of Trump. That might well be true, but we can’t be sure (after all, both candidates are making promises they can’t keep). More important, even if the endorsement were based on the proposed effect on science in the U.S., it’s still based on politics and ideology (Scientific American is hardly politically neutral!), and is outside the ambit of what the magazine should be about. Readers may disagree, of course, and feel free to do so in the comments. But I’d feel the same way not only if they endorsed Trump, but also if a journal like Nature of Evolution endorsed any presidential candidates.

Here’s Nichols’s conclusion:

I realize that my objections seem like I’m asking scientists to be morally neutral androids who have no feelings on important issues. Many decent people want to express their objections to Trump in the public square, regardless of their profession, and scientists are not required to be some cloistered monastic order. But policy choices are matters of judgment and belong in the realm of politics and democratic choice. If the point of a publication such as Scientific American is to increase respect for science and knowledge as part of creating a better society, then the magazine’s highly politicized endorsement of Harris does not serve that cause.

But have a look at Sci Am’s endorsement below (click on the headline or find it archived here):

The topics covered in the endorsement are healthcare (a debatable issues on what kind to provide), reproductive rights, gun safety, environment and climate, and technology.  Except for the undoubtable presence of anthropogenic climate change, which is a scientific reality that Trump has denied, all of these issues involve political differences.  Now I agree with Helmuth Scientific American and Harris on nearly all these issues, and, indeed, I go further than most in my permissive views on abortion (I favor unrestricted abortion up to term). But I know that many regard abortion as murder, and how up to what point in gestation we should permit abortion is simply not a scientific issue. Gun issues, too, are a debatable proposition, and, of course, if you’re going to bring up issues that bear on science, then Title IX and gender ideology, in which I think the Trump administrator has done better than Biden, should make an appearance (they don’t).

Further, the op-ed gives credit to Harris for things that the Biden administration actually did, referring to the accomplishments of the “Biden-Harris” administration, as if they were one person and as if Harris had a major role. As Harris has emphasized repeatedly, “I am not Joe Biden.”

But this is all pilpul.  The main point is that, in my view, science magazines should stay out of politics. If they want to publish articles about global warming, or the effect of gun laws on human lives, that’s fine, but let the readers absorb the scientific information and make their own judgments.  To tell them how to vote is both patronizing and a slippery slope that could lead to the politicization of all science journals and magazines. (In fact, that’s already happening; have a look at the Lancet or Nature.)

Researchers used a detailed mathematical model to demonstrate that the construction sector in the UK and Europe could almost eliminate its carbon emissions by 2060. This could be achieved through using state-of-the-art energy efficiency technologies to renovate existing properties and construct new ones.

Researchers used a detailed mathematical model to demonstrate that the construction sector in the UK and Europe could almost eliminate its carbon emissions by 2060. This could be achieved through using state-of-the-art energy efficiency technologies to renovate existing properties and construct new ones.

Within the cycling realm, 'to Everest' involves riding up and down the same mountain until your ascents total the elevation of Mt. Everest. A new record was set a few years ago, but a debate ensued about the strong tailwind the cyclist had on climbs. To what extent do the tailwind help a cyclist as they climb? Should limits be set on the allowed windspeed?

A research group has developed a new COVID-19 testing system using Janus particles -- microparticles with two sides possessing distinctive molecular properties. These particles are engineered to bind specifically to target antigens, such as viral proteins, creating a low-cost, accurate, and rapid means of testing for viral diseases. The system's versatility means it can potentially be used to test for other diseases and biomarkers linked to other conditions.