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On December 23m I called attention to the huge amount of money that the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) was throwing at biology projects giving evidence of “purpose and agency” in organisms. For example, one grant given to a group of investigators, titled “Agency, directionality, and foundations for a science of purpose,” handed out more than $14.6 million! And one of the few areas in biology they’re funding again next year is, yes, projects on the “science of purpose”, to wit:

Science of purpose. We are looking for experimental and theoretical research projects that will provide insight into the purposive, goal-directed, or agential behaviors that characterize organisms and various components of living systems. Researchers who have familiarity with our ongoing work in this area are especially encouraged to apply.

Now you can easily see how this fits into the JTF’s original aim, which was to find evidence for divinity and spirituality in science. And indeed, I’m sure that’s why they’re funding this area.  But I’ve already argued that the only kind of “purpose” found in organismal behavior is that involved in conscious cogitation, which is present in only a few organisms.  Yes, some behaviors look “purposeful,” as when a bacterium moves toward or away from light, but that’s a purely mechanical response—not the kind that, say, humans have when they decide, “I’m going out for pizza.” And of course there is no goal-directedness or purpose in evolution, which simply sorts out genetic variation based on whether genes leave more or fewer copies of themselves, often leaving more when they adapt their carrier better to the environment.

However, the biologists who get funded for work on “agency” and “purpose” will be the first to tell you that they are not really imputing to organisms the kind of mental “purpose” that some organisms have, nor are they looking for anything numinous or supernatural. Rather, they seem to be whipping up a bunch of word salad that makes it seem that they are overthrowing the neo-Darwinian view that adaptations arise from genetic variants sorted out by their relative contribution to the genes of descendants.  Such researchers pretend that they are making profound new statements about biology and evolution, but when you look at the papers carefully, as I did with one of the influential papers (below) that Templeton funded in its “purpose and agency” program, you find nothing new. In this case, a whole paper touting “purpose” is merely re-describing something known for a long time: organisms can evolve “norms”of reaction”. These are simply the plastic developmental programs that organisms evolve to respond to environmental changes, so that behavior, physiology, and appearance can change when conditions change. That superficially may look like “agency”, but there’s no “will” involved, and nothing beyond genes responding to environments.

The evolution of norms of reaction is not hard to understand. Take one familiar plastic response: mammals like cats that grow longer fur in the winter.  This is due simply to natural selection acting on the DNA to respond to cold temperature by growing thicker fur. And, of course, as we know from all the varieties of dogs and cats with more or less fur, artificial selection can do that, too. We needn’t think about “purpose” or “agency” when we see this, nor need we say, “one purpose of this trait is to keep the cat warm” or “the cat has agency to grow longer fur to keep in warm in winter.”  That kind of talk about “purpose” is only confusing, hiding what really happened during evolution: natural selection for flexible forms of development.

And there are gazillions of traits that you could say look as if organisms have such agency or purpose, but they are all the result of natural selection. If a goat loses its front legs in an accident, it may well eventually walk on its hind legs. To do that, a number of their bones, tendons, and muscles have to be reconfigured to allow adaptive locomotion. But this, too, is a result of evolved plasticity: in the past, injuries may have been common, and those individuals with genes that allowed their development to compensate for those injuries, thus allowing the sufferer to survive and reproduce, outcompeted individuals lacking genes giving their bodies the ability to cope with injuries.

This is nothing new in evolution; people have talked about plasticity and “norms of reaction” (how organisms change to cope with changes in the environment”) for ages, and there are even experiments showing that such coping is due to natural selection.  But authors like those of the paper below, funded by the JTF, gussy up an old concept by calling it “biological agency”, enabling them to get a ton of cash from the JTF.

I see the effort as intellectually confusing and, indeed, hubristic, because surely the authors know what they’re doing. In the next and final installment of this “agency” mishigass, I’ll highlight a paper that calls this kind of effort to task, showing that it really doesn’t show anything new. Yes, I get excited when new concepts and findings appear in biology and especially evolution, but this ain’t one of them.

Click on the headline below to read the paper, which is free (there’s a pdf here):

The Sultan et al. paper is poorly written, full of big words that are supposed to constitute their idea of agency. But let’s see first how they define agency. Excerpts from the paper are indented.

What is agency? Sultan et al. assure us that it isn’t anything supernatural, but what it really is comes down to “self-regulation” that, in the end, simply amounts to the norms of reaction of an organism.

Living systems have evolved to be robust, responsive, flexible, self-synthesizing and self-regulating. This dynamic flexibility is manifest across diverse levels of biological organization, from cells, to tissues, to entire organisms, to reproductive lineages, to social colonies, and throughout a variety of organismal activities—from molecular signaling pathways to morphogenetic, metabolic, immune, endocrine, and behavioral systems. We use the term biological agency to refer to this suite of robust processes that is constitutive of living systems (See Box 1). Biological agency, in this sense, is the capacity of a system to participate in its own persistence, maintenance, and function by regulating its own structures and activities in response to the conditions it encounters.[69] Attributing agency to a biological system is based on natural, empirically determined processes and connotes neither consciousness nor deliberate intention.

or

Agency is a dynamical property of a system.[162] It consists in the system’s capacity to transduce, configure, and respond to the conditions it encounters. Crucially, agential systems are capable of maintaining functional stability in response to conditions that would otherwise compromise their viability.

Try as I might, I cannot see a distinction between this farrago of fancy words and good old “norms of reaction”.  “Self regulation” is simply the end result of natural selection acting on organisms so that when the environment changes, they respond through their evolved developmental systems in an adaptive way. Note that the authors explicitly rule out “purpose” of “deliberate intention” in the “consciousness” sense here.  Ergo, “maintaining functional stability in response to conditions that would otherwise compromise their viability” is just like a cat growing longer fur in the winter, but it sure is a fancy way of saying it.

Here some examples the authors adduce for “agency”:

Polypterus fish reared in a terrestrialized environment in which fish are forced to walk on their pectoral fins rather than swim, adjust—within a lifetime—not just their behavior, gait and posture but also their skeletal features, in ways that parallel the fossil record of tetrapods’ ascendance onto land.[136] Tadpoles exemplifying the ancestral detrivorous life style and associated gut morphology will adjust the latter if forced to consume a carnivorous diet, in ways that partly parallel evolved changes in specialized carnivorous lineages.[137] Examples such as these suggest that interactions between developmental systems and environmental circumstance may bias the production of phenotypic variation in the face of novel or stressful environments toward functional, integrated, and possibly adaptive variants.

No, the phenotypic direction isn’t “biased” by anything but natural selection. Polypterus fish live in shallow water and have lungs, and it’s possible that their ancestors evolved to walk on their fins to get around in that shallow water or even to leave the water for brief periods of time if their ponds are drying up and they need to get to another pool of water.  Or, it’s even possible that this norm of reaction isn’t evolved at all, but simply the result of an organism struggling to move when that’s the only alternative it has. Here’s what it looks like:

Try that with a goldfish! Why do Polypterus show “agency” in this way but not goldfish? Probably because of the evolutionary background of this species, which is sometimes regarded as an example of the kind of fish that evolved into terrestrial teterapods. But what “agency” are they showing? Likewise, it’s easy to see how tadpoles could occasionally encounter a situation in which there is more “meat” (other organisms or their remains) to eat than there is non-animal detritus. In that case, tadpoles able to evolve a way to change their digestion in such a circumstance would leave more offspring than those that couldn’t. Of course for this system to work, the environment would occasionally have to change in a way that would give organisms like this an advantage (it doesn’t have ot change every generation).  If organisms evolved a developmental system to adapt to environmental changes that couldn’t conceivably have occurred, then we’d have something to talk about! But I know of no such cases.

To justify their “new” approach, the authors give examples of three phenomena that, they say, can’t be explained by conventional neo-Darwinism:

1). Genome-wide association studies (GWAS), in which genes for traits are identified by looking at which genetic variation in an entire genome is correlated with variation in a trait, often reveal “too few genes”.  For example:

In the case of body weight, for example—a biomedically critical trait in the context of obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes—115 genetic loci that showed significant statistical association with body mass index (BMI) collectively explained less than 3% of the variation among adults,[8] and a meta-analysis based on an enormous sample of 700,000 individuals (conferring great statistical power) still explained only 6% of BMI variation[9] despite using a high-dimensional correlation matrix that is known to inflate these estimates.[10] While such extremely large studies may incrementally add to the variance explained by identifying additional loci of small effect through sheer statistical force, over 90% of (a) phenotypic variation for BMI and (b) risk of type 2 diabetes remains unaccounted for,[11, 12] pointing to a more fundamental issue.

And yet heritability studies, involving simple correlation of BMI between relatives is measured, show that between 40% and 70% of the variation of that trait among individuals is due to variation in genes. We can find only 6% of those genes, so where are the rest?  One explanation is that there are many genes affecting BMI whose effects are too small to be measured by GWAS, which requires pretty big effects to find a genetic region affecting a trait. Further, GWAS analyses rely entirely on SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms in DNA sequence), and are unable to detect duplications and deletions, which we know make a contribution to human trait variation (see references here, here, and here). Finally, GWAS is unable, except in vary large samples, to detect rare genes, and yet given the size of the genome, everyone has quite a few “rare” genes.  When you use large samples, as they have done for human height, the missing heritability diminishes to almost zero: the genetic variation detected by GWAS gives predictions that are almost the same as that based on standard heritability studies.

The authors add this:

Biomedical researchers concerned about the limits of the GWAS approach are therefore increasingly calling for conceptually broader studies directly addressing processing pathways that modulate gene function and hence phenotypic outcomes in individuals via complex gene-environment interactions,[18] environmentally-mediated epigenetic modifications,[19, 20] and physiological and developmental feedback systems such as microbiome composition, which changes dynamically in response to the individual’s diet, behavior, and social environment.[21]

Yes, perhaps there are some differences in microbiomes that are responsible here, but there are many traits where there are “missing genes” that cannot be imputed to microbiome inheritance. As for epigenetic modifications and the like beyond bacteria in the gut, those would also show up in GWAS studies, and so can’t constitute “missing genes” (an epigenetic modification occurs at a given site in the DNA, involves a modified base, and is supposedly inherited over at least one generation).

But much of the above is simply gobbledygook: how can “dynamic changes in response to diet, behavior, and social environment” account for missing genetic variation that shows up in heritability studies but not GWAS studies? This could occur only in species in which cultural, nongenetic factors are inherited, like the tendency to eat fatty foods. But these factors are usually ruled out in most heritability (e,g., in flies) and those studies still show a substantial genetic contribution to variation in a phenotype. What the authors consider “agency” here is not clear, but they are doing a service by highlighting a problem that has yet to be solved: “dark heritability.” We don’t know the answer yet, but we have some clues, and time will tell.

2). The authors drag in epigenetics to explain the missing heritability. This second problem is really the same as the first: we have a mismatch between results revealed by GWAS analysis and simple studies of heritability via correlation between relatives.  But this doesn’t solve the problem: it compounds it for two reasons. First, epigenetic modifications of DNA will show up in GWAS and heritability studies, and so don’t constitute “dark genetic variation”. Further, non-coding RNAs, which the authors further use to explain missing variation, are also inherited.  Finally, and most important, epigenetic modifications of DNA resulting solely from the environment (and not coded for themselves in the genome) almost never persist for more than two or three generations, and thus can’t explain a persistent appearance of “adaptive change” over evolution. Nor are epigenetic modifications usually adaptive, and they can be maladaptive (as in the “Dutch famine trauma”), because they are not evolved but simply the effect of the environment on a genome not adapted to changes in that environment.

Here is one example the authors use to show agency via purported epigenetic change:

An experimental example using isogenic plants points to part of what may be missing. In one series of experiments with the common herb Polygonum, parent plants of the same genetic line were either drought-stressed or given ample water. When their offspring were grown in identical, dry, conditions, they developed differently: the offspring of drought-stressed parents produced significantly larger and more rapidly-extending root systems than those of the moist-grown parents, an inherited phenotypic effect that resulted not from a genetic difference but in response to parental conditions.

“Isogenic” means that all the plants were genetically identical. And yes, it’s hard to imagine that offspring have a way of genetically “knowing” whether their parents experienced drought, though there could be cytoplasmic effects.  So this looks like agency, and may be due to adaptive epigenetic modification.  But this is the exception, rather than the rule.

3.) This is the kicker: neo-Darwinism cannot, say the authors, explain the origins of “novel, complex traits”. Here we have one of the assertions of intelligent design, but although there’s no designer, the authors’ claim about the impotence of neo-Darwinism in producing complex adaptations is simply wrong (they are implying, I think, that organisms are somehow using their AGENCY to develop those complex traits. Here’s the assertion:

The origin of novel complex traits constitutes a central yet largely unresolved challenge in evolutionary biology.[61] Ever since the founding of evolutionary biology one of the discipline’s core motivations has been to understand such elaborate innovations as the vertebrate eye, the insect wing, or the mammalian placenta, traits whose origins transformed the diversity of life on earth. Yet conventional approaches to understanding evolutionary change have provided few opportunities to make significant headway.[62] Of the four evolutionary processes conventionally recognized—natural selection, genetic drift, migration, and mutation, the first three can only sort among existing variants and their distribution within and among populations, but by themselves cannot bring about novel features.[63] This privilege is instead restricted to mutation, yet all attempts to explain the evolution of novel complex traits solely via the coincident origin, spread, and fixation of one beneficial mutation at a time have failed.

Sorry, but this resembles what comes out of the south end of a cow looking north. There is no conceptual reason that sorting out existing and new genetic variants via conventional natural selection is impotent to produce complex traits. The problem is that we simply weren’t there when many complex traits evolved, and so don’t know the genes involved, the selection pressures involved, or even the developmental pathways involved in producing the traits.

I know of only one attempt to get at this problem, and that involved the evolution of the camera eye. This was the work of Nilsson and Pelger summarized in a delightful summary by Richard Dawkins called “The eye in a twinkling“.  Using conservative (“pessimistic”) assumptions about mutation rates, heritabilities, and the number of developmental steps required to transform a light-sensitive spot into a complex “camera eye” with a lens, retina, and cornea (viz., what we and some cephalopoods have), Nilsson and Pelger found out that the evolution of this assuredly complex trait took around 400,000 generations. As Dawkins noted:

Assuming typical generation times of one year for small animals, the time needed for the evolution of the eye, far from stretching credulity with its vastness, turns out to be too short for geologists to measure. It is a geological blink.

And so it might be with other traits, like wings or placentas. The problem is making an appropriate model, and that is hard or impossible without knowing how the trait evolved (we have some idea with the eye, as Dawkins notes, hearkening back to Darwin, who first raised the “eye problem”.) But without such models, it’s almost deceitful to say that we need a new paradigm to explain the evolution of complex traits. (In fact, we can see the evolution of complex traits—like whales evolving from land ungulates in a mere 10,000 years. And that is surely due to selection, though we can’t say with assuredness that conventional neo-Darwinism was involved. But our ignorance does not justify us trying to depose a well-established paradigm, and one that works very quickly in the case of artificial selection (genetic analysis of adaptations invariably shows that changes in the DNA are involved).  Are dog breeds all due to epigenetic modifications of DNA or “agency” in the ancestral wolf? I don’t think so!)

I’ve already gone on too long, but if this paper is typical of the kind of research the JTF is funding as evidence for agency and purpose, it’s throwing its money down the toilet,.

Oh, and one last beef. When I saw this claim in the Sultan et al. paper, I was astonished:

In Maize, for instance, the “profound” architectural and reproductive changes that distinguish cultivated Maize from its wild progenitor, Teosinte, resulted not from novel mutants but from the response of a complex epistatic network to the atmospheric CO2 and crowded planting conditions encountered during the species’ early cultivation.[155]

What? This change, from the grass teosinte on the left to modern corn on the right (hybrid is in the middle) has nothing to do with novel mutations?

John Doebley, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

I looked up reference 155 and found this:

For example, genetic research shows that once-emphasized conventional assumptions about morphological change—e.g., that the change was driven mainly by human selection for rare mutants of a few single genes that were deleterious in wild plants and favorable in field environments or by selection for new, advantageous mutations that appeared postcultivation—have, for some major traits, been supplanted by different and/or more complex processes. These processes include (i) regulatory changes that targeted diverse developmental pathways and led to changes in gene expression (e.g., how, when, and to what degree existing genes are expressed through changes in the amount of mRNA during transcription); (ii) extensive rewiring of transcriptomic and coexpression networks; (iii) in an increasing number of wild progenitors, the presence and availability to the first cultivators of preexisting, nondeleterious genetic components for major domestication traits (known as “cryptic genetic variation”) that induce trait variation only under specific environmental or genetic conditions; and (iv) deviations from simple Mendelian expectations.

Every change mentioned involves mutations, whether they be structural, regulatory, or “cryptic” (genes showing their effects only under limited conditions). There is nothing new here, merely an explication of how artificial selection on teosinte involved a variety genetic changes.  There is NO AGENCY in teosinte, not even construed as broadly as Sultan et al. do.

In the end, the paper seems to be much ado about nothing, which, in the last chapter (maybe tomorrow) another author will analyze critically, showing that there’s no “there” there.

I know many people won’t be interested in this analysis, but I wanted to get it on the record because so many people are hearing that not only is neo-Darwinism a pretty useless paradigm for understanding adaptation, but now are hearing as well that some nebulous “purpose” and “agency” are involved. As usual, Templeton’s money has only muddied the water.

 

h/t: Luana for her explanations of GWAS.

Most of the neutron stars we know of have a mass between 1.4 and 2.0 Suns. The upper limit makes sense, since, beyond about two solar masses, a neutron star would collapse to become a black hole. The lower limit also makes sense given the mass of white dwarfs. While neutron stars defy gravitational collapse thanks to the pressure between neutrons, white dwarfs defy gravity thanks to electron pressure. As first discovered by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in 1930, white dwarfs can only support themselves up to what is now known as the Chandrasekhar Limit, or 1.4 solar masses. So it’s easy to assume that a neutron star must have at least that much mass. Otherwise, collapse would stop at a white dwarf. But that isn’t necessarily true.

It is true that under simple hydrostatic collapse, anything under 1.4 solar masses would remain a white dwarf. But larger stars don’t simply run out of fuel and collapse. They undergo cataclysmic explosions as a supernova. If such an explosion were to squeeze the central core rapidly, you might have a core of neutron matter with less than 1.4 solar masses. The question is whether it could be stable as a small neutron star. That depends on how neutron matter holds together, which is described by its equation of state.

Neutron star matter is governed by the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff, which is a complex relativistic equation based on certain assumed parameters. Using the best data we currently have, the TOV equation of state puts an upper mass limit for a neutron star at 2.17 solar masses and a lower mass limit around 1.1 solar masses. If you tweak the parameters to the most extreme values allowed by observation, the lower limit can drop to 0.4 solar masses. If we can observe low-mass neutron stars, it would further constrain the TOV parameters and improve our understanding of neutron stars. This is the focus of a new study on the arXiv.

Previous searches for low-mass neutron stars. Credit: Kacanja & Nitz

The study looks at data from the third observing run of the Virgo and Advanced LIGO gravitational wave observatories. While most of the observed events are the mergers of stellar-mass black holes, the observatories can also capture mergers between two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole companion. The signal strength of these smaller mergers is so close to the noise level of the gravitational wave detectors that you need to have an idea of the type of signal you’re looking for to find it. For neutron star mergers, this is complicated by the fact that neutron stars are sensitive to tidal deformations. These deformations would shift the “chirp” of the merger signal, and the smaller the neutron star, the greater the deformation.

So the team simulated how sub-white-dwarf mass neutron stars would tidally deform as they merge, then calculated how that would affect the observed gravitational chirp. They then looked for these kinds of chirps in the data of the third observation run. While the team found no evidence for small-mass neutron stars, they were able to place an upper limit on the hypothetical rate of such mergers. Essentially, they found that there can be no more than 2,000 observable mergers involving a neutron star up to 70% of the Sun’s mass. While that might not seem like much of a limit, it’s important to remember that we are still in the early stages of gravitational wave astronomy. In the coming decades, we will have more sensitive gravitational telescopes, which will either discover small neutron stars or prove that they can’t exist.

Reference: Kacanja, Keisi, and Alexander H. Nitz. “A Search for Low-Mass Neutron Stars in the Third Observing Run of Advanced LIGO and Virgo.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.05369 (2024).

The post Neutron Stars With Less Mass Than A White Dwarf Might Exist, and LIGO and Virgo Could Find Them appeared first on Universe Today.

Athayde Tonhasca Júnior has returned with one of his patented text-and-photo stories of biology.  Athayde’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his pictures by clicking on them.

Gone with the wind

As the sun rose on the morning of 28 October 2013, a painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) came out of nighttime torpor, spread its wings to warm up and start a busy day. Were the butterfly to be conscious and self-aware, it would know right away it had gone through a rough patch. Its wings were worn out and ragged in places. If the butterfly looked around, it would see it had company: other painted ladies, all equally battered, mingled nearby. They were on a beach fringed by unfamiliar vegetation and, curiouser and curiouser, the sea seemed to be on the wrong side. It didn’t look at all like West Africa, from where they took off 5 to 8 days before. The perceptive butterfly would be right: they had ended up in French Guiana, over 4,200 km away from home across the Atlantic Ocean.

The painted lady is one of the most cosmopolitan of all butterflies, absent only from Antarctica and South America © Muséum de Toulouse, Wikimedia Commons:

Painted ladies are committed frequent flyers, constantly on the move to keep up with seasonal food plants. Every spring they set out from tropical Africa to Europe across the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea, only to go back in the autumn. The 15,000-km round trip of successive generations between Africa and Europe is the longest migratory flight recorded for butterflies. But crossing the Atlantic Ocean, as registered by Suchan et al. (2024), is a much tougher challenge altogether: no stopovers for feeding, no respite from the weather. How did the painted ladies make it through the gruelling journey alive?

Routes of painted lady spring migration from North Africa to Europe © Sémhur, Wikimedia Commons:

A fellow traveller, the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), may offer some clues. Every year, monarchs depart from their breeding grounds in southern Canada and northern USA in September and October, arriving at their overwintering sites in Central Mexico in November. Migrating monarchs cruise at energy-saving speeds of about 9 km/h, slower than a person jogging (although there’s a quite a large variation in butterflies’ speed estimates), so they have to slog away to manage distances of over 4,000 km.

Monarch butterfly southbound migration patterns © U.S. Forest Service:

For some insects such as dragonflies and damselflies (Odonata), flight is bimotoric, that is, controlled by forewings and hindwings. Others such as grasshoppers, crickets and related species (Orthoptera) have posteromotoric flight (driven by hindwings). Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are anteromotoric fliers: their flight is controlled primarily by the forewings (Dudley, 2002). But hindwings don’t have a secondary role in butterflies’ locomotion: they are exceptionally well-developed and are coupled with the forewings to flap in synchrony, so that butterflies in general have the largest wing area relative to body mass of all flying insects and perhaps all flying animals, a feature of great help for migrating species.

An efficient flying machine: a female monarch © Kenneth Dwain Harrelson, Wikimedia Commons:

Still, flapping their wings alone would not do: fat reserves would soon be depleted. So, monarchs use skills familiar to aircraft pilots; they glide, taking advantage of air currents and thermals. By holding their wings motionless, their fore- and hindwings overlapping to form a single aerodynamic surface, monarchs gain altitude by soaring in rising air currents, just like birds do. This technique is the most energy-efficient travelling method regarding distances travelled. With good weather and tail winds, monarchs can soar to at least 300 m above the ground and glide for very long distances (Gibo & Pallett, 1979).

Monarchs, birds and glider pilots fly towards a cliff or building to be carried over the top of the obstacle by the deflected air and rise to a higher altitude © Aerospaceweb.org:

Suchan et al. (2024) estimated that painted ladies’ travel would be limited to about 780 km without refuelling. Even if they could feed and despite favourable winds, they wouldn’t go beyond 1,900 km by flapping their wings. Painted ladies must have glided along the northeasterly trade winds, the prevailing winds from West Africa to northwestern South America – the same winds that helped the Portuguese and Spanish to colonize the New World. Based on what has been observed for monarchs, painted ladies must have glided about 85% of the time taken for their trans-continental flight. This dispersal ability could explain the sudden appearance of gaggles of them in places as diverse as the French Riviera, Gaza, Madagascar, the Caribbean, Pacific Islands, and in Siberia, above the Arctic Circle (Shields, 1992):

A model of wind trajectories 48 h before painted ladies were observed in French Guiana © Suchan et al., 2024:

Big and conspicuous wings allow butterflies to travel far, but they also attract hostile characters such as hungry birds. To reduce their chances of ending their lives as juicy morsels, butterflies must take evasive actions. Their well-developed hind wings allow them to make abrupt turns with just a couple of wing flaps, giving them outstanding manoeuvrability. Most butterflies fly erratically, often zig-zagging with no discernible patterns. If you ever tried to catch a butterfly in the air, you know how expertly they evade pursuers. Irregular, chaotic flight patterns can frustrate and discourage the most relentless predator, who quite likely would give up the chase by pragmatically convincing itself in a sour-grapes fashion that the intended prey is ‘mostly wrapper and little candy’ (Jantzen & Eisner, 2008).

A gentleman failing to impress the ladies with his hunting skills. Catching butterflies in Venetian canal, 1854 © Antonio Rotta, Wikimedia Commons:

Butterflies elicit feelings of vulnerability and tenderness, but aesthetics are not good ecological yardsticks. These insects are well-adapted to the vagaries of life, including inclement weather, food deprivation and threat of predation. Some species are perfectly capable of travelling – voluntarily or not – distances that would defeat tougher-looking creatures. These feats of endurance must be relevant for the dispersal and colonisation of hitchhiking propagules such as spores and pollen, but such effects are yet to be extensively investigated. Meanwhile, we may carry on appreciating butterflies’ beauty, knowing that their perceived fragility is deceiving.

Butterflies are not the delicate creatures of our imagination © Samuel Hubbard Scudder, 1881, Wikimedia Commons:

It is Thursday, December 26, 2024, Boxing Day, the second day of Chanukah, and, most important, the second Day of Coynezaa.

The Hili dialogue will be very short today because I prepare most of them the day before, and yesterday was Christmas, when I took a well-deserved break.  We will have a science post and a readers’ wildlife post, but the full Monty won’t be on tap until tomorrow.  So first, here’s Hili (and Szaron). Hili is chewing out the sub-editors

Hili: What do our readers like best? A: I don’t know, I never thought about it. Hili: That’s what I suspected. In Polish: Hili: Co nasi czytelnicy lubią najbardziej? Ja: Nie wiem, nigdy się nad tym nie zastanawiałem. Hili: Tak podejrzewałam.

And Szaron on his blanket and the poinsettia. No worries: none of the cats gnaw on the plant, whose sap is poisonous.

*One NYT article that readers can quarrel about. It’s by Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Penn’s Wharton School, and is called “No, you don’t get an A for effort.” (See it archived here.) It’s an argument that today’s students, who beef about their grades not reflecting their effort, are misguided. While effort may count some, achievement, or merit, is more important—at least for course grades. Excerpts:

After 20 years of teaching, I thought I’d heard every argument in the book from students who wanted a better grade. But recently, at the end of a weeklong course with a light workload, multiple students had a new complaint: “My grade doesn’t reflect the effort I put into this course.”

High marks are for excellence, not grit. In the past, students understood that hard work was not sufficient — an A required great work. Yet today, many students expect to be rewarded for the quantity of their effort rather than the quality of their knowledge. In surveys, two-thirds of college students say that “trying hard” should be a factor in their grades, and a third think they should get at least a B just for showing up at (most) classes.

This isn’t Gen Z’s fault. It’s the result of a misunderstanding about one of the most popular educational theories.

More than a generation ago, the psychologist Carol Dweck published groundbreaking experiments that changed how many parents and teachers talk to kids. Praising kids for their abilities undermined their resilience, making them more likely to get discouraged or give up when they encountered setbacks. They developed what came to be known as a fixed mind-set — they thought success depended on innate talent, and they didn’t have the right stuff. To persist and learn in the face of challenges, kids needed to believe that skills are malleable. And the best way to nurture this growth mind-set was to shift from praising intelligence to praising effort.

The idea of lauding persistence quickly made its way into viral articles, best-selling books and popular TED talks. It resonated with the Protestant work ethic and reinforced the American dream that with hard work, anyone could achieve success.

Psychologists have long found that rewarding effort cultivates a strong work ethic and reinforces learning. That’s especially important in a world that often favors naturals over strivers — and for students who weren’t born into comfort or don’t have a record of achievement. (And it’s far preferable to the other corrective: participation trophy culture, which celebrates kids for just showing up.)

The problem is that we’ve taken the practice of celebrating industriousness too far. We’ve gone from commending effort to treating it as an end in itself. We’ve taught a generation of kids that their worth is defined primarily by their work ethic. We’ve failed to remind them that working hard doesn’t guarantee doing a good job (let alone being a good person). And that does students a disservice.

. . . . This is what worries me most about valuing perseverance above all else: It can motivate people to stick with bad strategies instead of developing better ones. With students, a textbook example is pulling all-nighters rather than spacing out their studying over a few days. If they don’t get an A, they often protest.

. . . Teachers and parents owe kids a more balanced message. There’s a reason we award Olympic medals to the athletes who swim the fastest, not the ones who train the hardest. What counts is not sheer effort but the progress and performance that result. Motivation is only one of multiple variables in the achievement equation. Ability, opportunity and luck count, too. Yes, you can get better at anything, but you can’t be great at everything.

. . . Teachers and parents owe kids a more balanced message. There’s a reason we award Olympic medals to the athletes who swim the fastest, not the ones who train the hardest. What counts is not sheer effort but the progress and performance that result. Motivation is only one of multiple variables in the achievement equation. Ability, opportunity and luck count, too. Yes, you can get better at anything, but you can’t be great at everything.

Is Grant a hardass, too tough on his students? Should effort (which can be gauged to some extent) count for anything when assessing grades? After all, when someone like me used to look at grades on a transcript, say for potential graduate students, I assumed they reflected mastery of the material.

And on meme from Cat Memes:

. . . and my daily post from the Auschwitz Memorial:

Killed with cyanide gas upon arrival at Auschwitz, this French Jewish girl was only eight.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-26T11:37:01.149Z

As part of a project to make mathematics machine-readable, mathematicians have discovered an error in an important proof. Thankfully there was a fix, but the incident highlights the potential for other errors to be lurking in the mathematics literature

The coding that forms the basis of Google’s recent breakthrough in error-correcting quantum computers is facing fierce competition

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was specifically intended to address some of the greatest unresolved questions in cosmology. These include all of the major questions scientists have been pondering since the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) took its deepest views of the Universe: the Hubble Tension, how the first stars and galaxies came together, how planetary systems formed, and when the first black holes appeared. In particular, Hubble spotted something very interesting in 2003 when observing a star almost as old as the Universe itself.

Orbiting this ancient star was a massive planet whose very existence contradicted accepted models of planet formation since stars in the early Universe did not have time to produce enough heavy elements for planets to form. Thanks to recent observations by the JWST, an international team of scientists announced that they may have solved this conundrum. By observing stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which lacks large amounts of heavy elements, they found stars with planet-forming disks that are longer-lived than those seen around young stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

The study was led by Guido De Marchi, an astronomer at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, Netherlands. He was joined by researchers from the INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC), the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, the Leiden Observatory, the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA’s Ames Research Center, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The paper detailing their findings appeared on December 16th in The Astrophysical Journal.

James Webb Space Telescope image of NGC 346, a massive star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC)/Guido De Marchi (ESTEC)/Margaret Meixner (USRA)

According to accepted cosmological models, the first stars in the Universe (Population III stars) formed 13.7 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. These stars were very hot, bright, massive, short-lived, and composed of hydrogen and helium, with very little in the way of heavy elements. These elements were gradually forged in the interiors of Population III stars, which distributed them throughout the Universe once they exploded in a supernova and blew off their outer layers to form star-forming nebulae.

These nebulae and their traces of heavier elements would form the next generation of stars (Population II). After these stars formed from gas and dust in the nebula that underwent gravitational collapse, the remaining material fell around the new stars to form protoplanetary disks. As a result, subsequent populations of stars contained higher concentrations of metals (aka. metallicity). The presence of these heavy elements, ranging from carbon and oxygen to silica and iron, led to the formation of the first planets.

As such, Hubble‘s discovery of a massive planet (2.5 times the mass of Jupiter) around a star that existed just 1 billion years after the Big Bang baffled scientists since early stars contained only tiny amounts of heavier elements. This implied that planet formation began when the Universe was very young, and some planets had time to become particularly massive. Elena Sabbi, the chief scientist for the Gemini Observatory at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, explained in a NASA press release:

“Current models predict that with so few heavier elements, the disks around stars have a short lifetime, so short in fact that planets cannot grow big. But Hubble did see those planets, so what if the models were not correct and disks could live longer?”

James Webb Space Telescope image of NGC 346, a massive star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC)/Guido De Marchi (ESTEC)/Margaret Meixner (USRA)

To test this theory, the team used Webb to observe the massive, star-forming cluster NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy and one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors. This star cluster is also known to have relatively low amounts of heavier elements and served as a nearby proxy for stellar environments during the early Universe. Earlier observations of NGC 346 by Hubble revealed that many young stars in the cluster (~20 to 30 million years old) appeared to still have protoplanetary disks around them. This was also surprising since such disks were believed to dissipate after 2 to 3 million years.

Thanks to Webb’s high-resolution and sophisticated spectrometers, scientists now have the first-ever spectra of young Sun-like stars and their environments in a nearby galaxy. As study leader Guido De Marchi of the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk put it:

“The Hubble findings were controversial, going against not only empirical evidence in our galaxy but also against the current models. This was intriguing, but without a way to obtain spectra of those stars, we could not really establish whether we were witnessing genuine accretion and the presence of disks, or just some artificial effects.”

“We see that these stars are indeed surrounded by disks and are still in the process of gobbling material, even at the relatively old age of 20 or 30 million years. This also implies that planets have more time to form and grow around these stars than in nearby star-forming regions in our own galaxy.”

Side-by-side comparison shows a Hubble image of the massive star cluster NGC 346 (left) versus a Webb image of the same cluster (right). Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC)/Guido De Marchi (ESTEC)/Margaret Meixner (USRA)/Antonella Nota (ESA)

These findings naturally raise the question of how disks with few heavy elements (the very building blocks of planets) could endure for so long. The researchers suggested two distinct mechanisms that could explain these observations, alone or in combination. One possibility is that a star’s radiation pressure may only be effective if elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are present in sufficient quantities in the disk. However, the NGC 346 cluster only has about ten percent of the heavier elements in our Sun, so it may take longer for a star in this cluster to disperse its disk.

The second possibility is that where heavier elements are scarce, a Sun-like star would need to form from a larger cloud of gas. This would also produce a larger and more massive protoplanetary disk, which would take longer for stellar radiation to blow away. Said Sabbi:

“With more matter around the stars, the accretion lasts for a longer time. The disks take ten times longer to disappear. This has implications for how you form a planet, and the type of system architecture that you can have in these different environments. This is so exciting.”

“With Webb, we have a really strong confirmation of what we saw with Hubble, and we must rethink how we model planet formation and early evolution in the young universe,” added Marchi.

Like many of Webb’s observations, these findings are a fitting reminder of what the next-generation space telescope was designed to do. In addition to confirming the Hubble Tension, the JWST observed more galaxies (and bigger ones!) in the early Universe than models predicted. It also observed that the seeds of Supermassive Black Holes (SMBH) were more massive than expected. In this respect, the JWST is doing its job by causing astronomers to rethink theories that have been accepted for decades. From this, new theories and discoveries will follow that could upend what we think we know about the cosmos.

Further Reading: NASA, The Astrophysical Journal

The post Webb Observes Protoplanetary Disks that Contradict Models of Planet Formation appeared first on Universe Today.

A research team accelerates stretchable technology commercialization with world's first visualization of serpentine structures.

Scientists have developed an innovative therapeutic platform by mimicking the intricate structures of viruses using artificial intelligence (AI).

A research team develops manganese-based cathodes with longer lifespan by suppressing oxygen release.

Here, via Barry, is a 15½-minute video compendium of my beloved Philomena Cunk (aka Diane Morgan) celebrating today’s holiday.

In today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “ploy2”, the boys give the barmaid a new toy, but then Mo breaks it. Oy! I think one recurring theme of this strip is “The boys exemplify that which they decry.”

This strip was in fact first published in 2008—16 years ago. Happy birthday to Jesus!

After years of rising obesity rates in the US, the numbers dipped slightly during 2023, though experts disagree about the exact cause

The teeth of dolphins and other toothed whales are connected to a uniquely thick bundle of nerve fibres, which might play a role in sound detection

In place of the readers’ wildlife photos, we’re having a series of readers’ domestic wildlife, aka kitties. Yesterday I asked readers to send in one picture of their cat having a Christmas theme. I will post more if they arrive today, but here’s what we have.  Readers’ descriptions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Send ’em in until noon Chicago time!

From Bob Randall:

Fred would rather attack the low hanging ornaments on our regular tree. This small tree only has one wooden ornament, and he didn’t bother with it.  When the presents were finally opened this morning, he was all into the wrapping paper and opened boxes.  Fred just showed up one afternoon, and despite our attempts to find his former owner, he adopted us. Fred was named to go along with his best friend and sometime nemesis, Barney, as in the Flintstones. From Publilius: Here’s my twelve-year-old cat Violet. A co-worker’s daughter brought her home as a kitten.  year later, the daughter moved to California, leaving the cat behind. No one else in the family wanted a cat, so I offered to adopt her. She’s been a great cat.

From Robert Wooley, of Asheville, NC:

This is Lucy (now 13 years old), on 2/24/19, in her Santa hat and scarf. This is a historically rare photo, because they were only on her for about 5 seconds before she ripped them off, and she has never allowed me to tarnish her dignity with them again. Lucy is the best cat I’ve ever had: soft, cuddly, playful, easy to take care of, non-destructive, clean, funny.

From Ursula: “Edith guarding the stocking”:

From George Scott in Colorado:

A few years ago we had two sweet (usually) black cats, Christopher and Samantha. They passed away at the ages of 18 and 19, We miss having them around, but don’t miss some of the duties of being cat staff, so we replaced them with these two black plastic cats. Not as cuddly, but far easier to take care of.

From Reese Vaughan:

It’s Woodford Reserve again; his litter was named for liquor.  He lives in Texas.  Every year he takes a great interest in the Christmas tree. Here, he appears to be sniffing the lights, but the granddaughter says he bit them.

From JC McLoughlin:

Inkling oozes around the table leg in silent preparation for an assault on Ghrelin. NOT a pretty sight.

From Darrel E.:

This is one of our three, Princess Leia, making herself at home in the Christmas village under our tree. She is about 5 years old now.

We found Leia at our local humane society when she was about 3 months old. She was a feral that they had trapped with two other litter mates. They were not having any luck trying to habituate her to humans and were beginning to think they may not be able to adopt her out. We took her and had her out of her shell in a week, though she still has her quirks. She is the sweetest soul I have ever encountered.

From Shoshana:

I’m attaching picture of my Christmas cats. Yoda and Mendel are half brothers (same father) born six months apart. Both have mutations in KRT71, the same gene that causes curls in poodles and near hairlessness in the Canadian Sphynx. (Though visible in their truncated whiskers and wavy fur, I confirmed through Basepaws that they have the rexoid mutations. Other than that, they are moggies with a little bit of a lot of breeds—everything from Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest Cat to British and American Shorthair and Bengal, etc.)

From Bruce Cochrane:

Here are two of ours – Mothra and Rommel. Both are purebred Burmese, bred. By the late Delores Kennedy of Louisville. Rommel is 10, at more than lives up to his name. Mothra is 4 and did a lot to get us through COVID.

PS – we are up to N=8.

From Kevin Henderson of Los Alamos, New Mexico:

Jules (2) Lyra (15, black), and Opera (9, named after the Santa Fe Opera).  The lamb behind Lyra is g-2.  A physicist will get that reference.

From Brooke O’Neill in Atlanta

This is a picture of Peppermint – sadly now departed – on the Christmas day when she was gifted to my then- 7 yo daughter as a wee kitten. My daughter very aptly named her Peppermint since it was Christmas day and since the kitten had red (orange, really) and white stripes.

One of the first things my daughter did was tuck the kitten into the pink hat (don’t worry – the kitty was very cozy and content).

From Elizabeth Leahey-Martinez:

This is our rescue cat Lilah on her favorite blanket in front of what she considers her Christmas tree. Our vet believes Lilah is part Egyptian Mau, which is quite an interesting breed to read up on, as they have a unique skin fold under their belly that allows them to be more agile and jump very high, along with some other unique characteristics. Her mother was found pregnant wandering the streets of Fullerton, California. My vet and two sisters who run a rescue took her mother in and we adopted her about 5 years ago.

From Steven Eakman:

Here is our elder statesman, Nigel, addressing the assembly from his Pillow of Purrfect Pronouncements.

From Naama Pat-El:

Attached are pics of Mulan (fluffy grey and white) and Maryam with the tree. Our two other cats are less interested…

From Susan Harrison:

Here are Natasha (foreground), Boris, and their stuffed sibling — a.k.a.  Spirit Cat — enjoying the holidays.

From Dennis Howard Schneider:

Here is Bootz, a Hili lookalike. She was left on my porch 13 years ago around Christmas. She is one tough cookie:

From Linda Taylor (no cat name given), titled “Waiting for guests for Christmas Eve Dinner”:

From Steven Psycho:

Bif was found living in a tree at about 1 yr old. She just celebrated her 1 yr anniversary when she was found with her paws frozen to the driveway.

My daughter and her husband poured warm water on her feet to free her.  They brought Bif inside ” just until she recovers”. Bif has been a housecat ever since.

From Natalie in Berlin:

Stupsi is a 3 year old cat of Polish descent that welcomed me and my family into the new house we moved to this summer. She is a scepticat as you can see here – albeit a total sweetheart with the children whom she teaches good manners for long lasting happy relationships with their new cat master.

I asked her if she would put on a Santa hat to send as a Christmas greetings to your readers. Her answer I interpreted as “You must be joking.” The Christmas candle was more successful. The newly planted Christmas tree is pleasantly accepted as an opportunity for hide and seek games, pretending she is not there, and then jumping out from behind it to the surprised delighted giggles of our daughter Murielle (4). Really for atheists there is no better companion than a sweet Stupsi like her.

From reader Divy in Florida we have a Christmas-y Jango:

From Laurie:

Here is your niece, Miss Octavia Sadle, listening to her favourite xmas music!!!

Screenshot

And your namesake niece, Miss Alcestis Jerry, in her mummy’s lap!

From Sue Smalldon:

In the spirit of Christmas, spreading love and understanding, I wanted to share a heartwarming moment that happened this morning – Christmas morning. For the first time ever, my dog ‘Homer’ let one of my cats ‘Fearless Pussycat’ clean his ears! To understand this milestone, I should add that Homer doesn’t even let me clean his ears, so it was an absolutely thrilling WOW moment. Homer and Fearless Pussycat have always had a unique relationship. Fearless Pussycat, true to her name, is always bold and adventurous, while Homer is more reserved and protective. This special interaction between them was wonderful. Oh btw it reached 39.4 degrees Celsius today so that’s about 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Hence the fan  in the photo, although I’ve ended with both fans and the air conditioner on.

 

From Katey Keffalinos, we have a Christmas mouse:

Not a moggy, but a mousey! You were so good to post Cricket as a (rein)deer mouse a few years ago, so I was hoping you might share him as Santa (Crick Kringle, if you will). Cricket died shortly into the new year, and I miss the sweet little guy. He lived a long time for a deer mouse; 4 years, 7 months, and became very bonded with me, as he was not releasable due to neurological impairment. He was a champion nest builder, intrepid sofa climber (with my assistance and spotting), world class snuggler and brave cooperative patient at the vet for his regular nail trims, as well as tolerating silly hats and holiday photo shoots. He was very special. 

From Kevin Elsken of Springdale, Arizona.

I could not quite get the cats in a true Christmas pose, and actually we decided not to put up a tree with two 8 month old very active kittens running around! I include a photo of the kids: JB (flabby tabby), Misty (grey) and Sam (tuxedo). They are doing their best Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Other Cats imitation…

 

From Terence McLean in Edmonton, Alberta:

Here is Ruby in the tree again this year. She gets the zoomies and ends up in the tree for a break. Have a fantastic 2025.

Also from Stephen P., “Some cat figures and pics which are ubiquitous in Chiang Mai, Thailand.”  They must love their cats there

The James Webb Space Telescope was designed and built to study the early universe, and hopefully revolutionary our understanding of cosmology. Two years after its launch, it’s doing just that.

One of the first things that astronomers noticed with the James Webb was galaxies that were brighter and larger than our models of galaxy formation suggested they should be. They were like seeing teenagers in a kindergarten classroom, challenging our assumptions of cosmology. But while there were some breathless claims that the Big Bang was broken, those statements were a little overblown.

But still, big, bright, mature galaxies in the early universe are forcing us to reconsider how galaxy formation is supposed to proceed. Whatever nature is telling us through the James Webb, it seems to be that galaxies form far faster than we thought before.

Related to that, for several years cosmologists have recognized a certain tension in their measurements of the present-day expansion rate of the universe, called the Hubble rate. Appropriately called the Hubble tension, the difference comes when comparing measurements of the distant, early universe with measurements of the later, nearby universe.

There’s definitely something funky going on here, but cosmologists can’t figure out exactly what. It might have something to do with our measurements of the deep universe, or it might be because of our lack of understanding of dark matter and dark energy. Either way, the James Webb didn’t help anything by confirming that the tension is very, very real.

No matter what comes out of the Hubble tension problem, the James Webb is delivering spectacular results in other areas. One of its primary missions was to find evidence for Population III stars, the first generation of stars to appear in the universe. There are no such stars left in the modern-day cosmos, as they all apparently died off billions of years ago. So our only hope to detect them is to use super-telescopes like the James Webb.

This year a team reported the first tentative detections of a galaxy in the young universe that just might contain Population III stars. The detection is not confirmed, but hopefully upcoming observation campaigns will tell us if we’re on the right track.

No matter what, we know we have a lot left to learn about the universe, and that the James Webb will continue delivering results – and hopefully a few surprises – for years to come.

The post James Webb’s Big Year for Cosmology appeared first on Universe Today.

Titan is one of the solar system’s most fascinating worlds for several reasons. It has something akin to a hydrological cycle, though powered by methane. It is the solar system’s second-largest moonMooner our own. It is the only other body with liquid lakes on its surface. That’s part of the reason it has attracted so much attention, including an upcoming mission known as Dragonfly that hopes to use its thick atmosphere to power a small helicopter. But some of the most interesting features on Titan are its lakes, and Dragonfly, given its means of locomotion, can’t do much with those other than look at them from afar. So another mission, initially conceived by James McKevitt, then an undergraduate at Loughborough University but now a PhD student at University College London would take a look at both their surface and underneath.

The mission, which has undergone several iterations, was initially designed to mimic the hunting motion of a gannet. This seabird famously dives under the water to search for fish and then floats back up to the top before setting off again. In the original paper describing the mission concept, Mr. McKevitt focused on the hydrodynamics of how such a mission would be possible on Titan, including the physics of diving into a lake of liquid methane without breaking the probe.

Luckily, the most fascinating lakes on Titan are all clustered around the north pole, so it would be theoretically possible to hop between one lake and another, given there was enough thrust/power. However, as time went on, the original mission concept seemed less and less feasible – especially given the most required to both take off from a resting position on top of a lake and dive down deeply enough into the next lake to make a meaningful difference in the environment.

Fraser discusses the importance of a mission to Titan.

Of particular concern was the power system – RTGs, the only current system that would feasibly power such a probe on Titan’s fully enveloped surface, would be too heavy for such a mission architecture. So, Mr. McKevitt changed tact and created something entirely different.

During COVID-19, he created an organization known as Conex Research to explore complex missions in a collaborative think-tank format. He then adapted Astraeus, as the mission was known, to a more achievable format, which was then described on Conex’s website. In a press release from August of 2022, the mission had morphed into a four-part system.

First is a “Main Orbital Spacecraft,” which would orbit the Moon Moondeploy two smaller vehicles – Mayfly and Manta. As their names suggest, Mayfly would flit about as an aerial observation platform, while Manta would dive into the lakes that were so intriguing in the original mission architecture. A series of 2U Cubesats, called “Mites,” would also join them and measure different parts of Titan’s atmosphere during a slow descent period after being released from the MOS.

Fraser discusses the Dragonfly mission planned to visit Titan’s surface.

That sounds like a pretty hefty lift, especially for a group of volunteer contributors, even if there are almost 30 of them. Lately, the group hasn’t had much of an update since they presented the mission format at the International Astronautical Conference in 2022. But if they are still making progress on the mission, there is a chance it might one day make it all the way to the bottom of one of Titan’s lakes.

Learn More:
James McKevitt – ASTrAEUS: An Aerial-Aquatic Titan Mission Profile
Conex Research – The Astraeus Mission to Titan
UT – Scientists Construct a Global Map of Titan’s Geology
UT – Titan May Have a Methane Crust 10 Km Thick

Lead Image:
Surface of Titan (left) with modeling mockups of the Mayfly (middle) and Manta (right).
Credit – Conex Research

The post A Mission to Dive Titan’s Lakes – and Soar Between Them appeared first on Universe Today.

I’m sort of late this year, but if you can send me a photo of your cat in a Christmas theme, and also a few words about the cat (including its name), I’ll try to put these up tomorrow.

I just realized that Chanukah and Christmas and Coynezaa all begin on the same day this year. The latter two are by definition, but the coincidence of Chanukah and Christmas occurs only rarely.

If you don’t know where to send them, look at the left hand sidebar and click on “How to send me wildlife photos.”

NOTE:  I can use only one photo per contributor, so please send just one.

It’s not surprising to me that a mainstream liberal newspaper, the New York Times, would publish an op-ed on Christmas Eve that assumes the reality of Jesus as the son of God. There are of course endless lessons one can draw from this myth, and the NYT has always been soft on religion. Remember the op-ed column by Anglican minister Tish Harrison Warren, in which we were subject to a weekly dose of anodyne pap? (The paper apparently ditched her after a while.)

But today we get an essay from Peter Wehner that, to me, seems arrantly stupid in its very thesis. For that thesis is that IF you believe in Jesus’s genealogy, and IF you think that one’s genealogy beyond one’s parents could be a source of shame, THEN you could draw lessons from the story of Jesus as told in the Bible.  Every one of these links is weak, and yet the paper published the essay anyway. I’ll give a few quotes below (click below to read the article, or find it archived here, but don’t bother):

Wehner was impressed by a semon her heard at a Baptist Church, and simply draws on its content to show that Jesus was amazing in overcoming his lineage:

One of the forgotten facts of the story of Jesus’ life is that he came from a profoundly dysfunctional family.

I was reminded of this while listening to a sermon this month at Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. Chris Davis, the pastor of the church, took as his text the first 17 verses of the Gospel of Matthew, known as the genealogy of Jesus. Those verses, a long list of names that ties one generation to another, are often skipped over in favor of the story of Jesus’ birth. To the degree that they have any meaning at all, it’s usually because for Christians it establishes Jesus as the heir to the promises God made to Abraham and David.

But as the pastor pointed out, Jesus came down to us through broken families: “one generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation.” There were murderers, adulterers, prostitutes and people who committed incest, liars, schemers and idolaters.

Now I’ve forgotten my New Testament (yes, I read it), but I’m not sure how broken Jesus’s fictional ancestry was. But let’s assume it was pretty screwed up. From that Wehner ()and Davis) draw the following conclusions, all based on assuming the truth of the New Testament). I’ve indented the quotes; bolding is mine:

1.) The disreputable lineage of Jesus reminds us of something else as well: Past is not prologue. If Jesus himself came from a line of murderers, adulterers, cheats and frauds, the Rev. Scott Dudley, senior pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Wash., told me, “then there is hope for all of us. He’s a cycle-breaker showing that generations of dysfunction don’t have to be predictive of future events.

The next lesson is pretty much the same:

2.) A Jesus who showed up from nowhere, fully grown and without ancestry, might have too. The actual Jesus, though, shows us something different. We are not our bloodlines or our family histories.

And the lesson in wokeness:

3.) But Jesus’ awareness of broken lives wasn’t restricted to his family tree; it defined his ministry. He identified with the least and the lowliest, not just those in his lineage but those in his life.

4.) The genealogy of Jesus is also a story of radical inclusion. Several of the women listed in the first chapter of Matthew are Gentiles [non Jews]. This incorporation has significance, according to Craig Barnes, a former president of Princeton Theological Seminary.

And that’s about it. Is there anything new here except to draw lessons from a work of fiction? Those lessons, in fact, are purely made up, and the last two are simply wrong. Yes, you could couch Jesus as a Social Justice Warrior, who included everyone in his great love, except for the fact that he stated that he himself was the only way to get to heaven. Remember John 14:6 in the King James Bible?

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

That alone should dispel the idea that Jesus’s teachings were inclusive, for what about all those nonbelievers outside of the Middle East who had no opportunity to accept Jesus. Further, Christian theology tells us that these were tainted by Original Sin, and, as unrepentant sinners, were doomed to fry for eternity in Hell.

Yes, what we have here is a believer cherry-picking Scripture to tell us something that everybody knows (if some of your ancestors—but not your parents!—were dysfunctional, you can overcome that); as well as telling us something that isn’t true (Jesus’s love extended to everyone), But yes, it’s the Christmas season, and it’s grinch-y to even say that Jesus might not really have been the wonder-working Son of God.

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

Well, of course the MSM has always been soft on religion, adhering, even if atheistic, to “belief in belief”. What bothers me is that one aspect of my own ideology, which is opposition to the performative and ineffectual forms of wokeness, is also getting soft on religion. I’m not referring to right-wing media like Fox News, which of course won’t go after religion, but to the liberal form of anti-wokeness. Like this article that just appeared in the Free Press (click to read). In some ways this one is worse than above, for it demonstrates the regret of a mother (the author) for not having imbued her children with more of the Jesus-y aspects of Christianity. And that despite the fact that author Larissa Phillips (founder of the Volunteer Literacy Project) and her husband are atheists. (This article isn’t fully archived.)

The thesis here is that yes, Christmas is a great time to get together with family, celebrate in traditional ways by opening presents, having a big feed, and socializing with others.  But this still leaves a God-shaped hole in one’s persona.  Now a mother with kids in her twenties, Phillips regrets not having injected more traditional religion into her kids’ upbringing. And remember, she and her partner are atheists. What gives?

Of all the treasures that came out of the cardboard box of Christmas decorations every December of my childhood, the nativity set was the best. Joseph, Mary, the kings, the shepherds: Our tiny figures were made of clay with a white glaze that looked like icing. I treated them like delicate, special dolls, rearranging them and moving them around the living room, from the coffee table to the stereo console, to the mantle. I might add a blanket for the baby, sometimes a scarf for Mary, cut from scraps of velvet or felt.

These are experiences that my own children, who are now 21 and 25, never had. Their father and I are atheists who, without debate, raised them entirely without religion. At Christmas, we still did the tree and the lights and the presents—all the secular parts of the holiday—and my kids knew the Christmas story, the way they knew about Greek myths. But there were no religious symbols in our home, and no going to church. In recent years, I’ve begun to regret this.

Apparently problems arise if you bring up your kids without Jesus. One of those problems is the Santa myth:

But right away, there were problems with secular Christmas, and they got worse every year.

Santa Claus, for example. If you’ve decided to raise your children without God because you are into truth and reason and rationality, are you going to tell them that Santa Claus is real? And refuse to budge even when your kids become stout little rationalists demanding answers? I thought it was bizarre to lie to your children, but by the time they started asking difficult questions, we were committed to Christmas. We went half in on the Santa delusion, referring to Santa with a wink.

Yes, but kids stop believing in Santa after a while, and you don’t see Santa-believers doing bad stuff to others. This isn’t always the case with Christians.  And then there is the Present Problem:

The problem with presents was worse and ever-worsening. I love presents. I love buying gifts and wrapping them and hiding them in secret places. I love the sight of a Christmas tree surrounded by presents. I love Christmas morning, sitting around in pajamas opening all the gifts. And when the kids were still little it was simple: Fill a stocking with a few chocolates and trinkets and wrap up some presents. Preschoolers are easy to impress. They like boxes more than anything else. (“Mom!” my 4-year-old daughter stage-whispered to me one Christmas morning, having peeked under the tree. “He brought clementines!”) But older kids always want more. By middle school my daughter had graduated to texting me an extensive shopping list with links. She once told me that her friends’ parents spend $1000 on each child. It made me wonder whether I should give up on presents completely.

Seriously? I know families whose present-giving is minimal, and I doubt that Amish or Orthodox Jewish families engage in this sort of wholesale gift-giving.

But the biggest problem is that God-shaped hole:

Maybe we didn’t have to reject every aspect of the religious traditions.

I’m sure my kids would have had complaints about church on Christmas Eve. I’m sure I would have too. I can imagine sitting in a pew silently grumbling about the minister’s call for obedience. My husband might have sighed pointedly when the man behind us sang too loudly. It wouldn’t have been perfect. But lately I can’t get those services at my grandmother’s church out of my mind. Even as a teenager it was impossible not to be moved by the sight of the familiar building at night, dressed up in garlands and ribbons, the stained glass windows in dark shadows, the altar flickering with candlelight, everyone in velvet dresses or ties or even suits. I remember the voices of the choir vibrating in my chest and the feeling of something very big and old and special.

My generation had the best of both worlds. We played in the crumbling remains of Christian traditions without realizing how much structure and beauty they gave us. I’m still an atheist, but I’ve come to believe that taking religion out of my children’s Christmas was a mistake. They never really witnessed the celebration of a miracle that goes back two thousand years. They didn’t have a nativity set, even though I loved mine, because when you scrub God from your holiday celebration, it’s strange to give your kids a tiny baby Jesus to play with. Isn’t it?

I’m not sure anymore. I couldn’t pass on to my kids a faith in God, but I could have shared the traditions that have always shaped and enchanted childhoods in this part of the world. The remnants were still there, and they were good. To today’s young atheist families building their annual rituals, I offer this advice: It’s okay if you don’t believe in God. Go to the Christmas Eve service anyway. Learn the carols, even the religious ones. Get the nativity set.

Yes, you have to let your kids see that celebration of a delusion.  But what Phillips is mourning here is not really the lack of traditional religious beliefs. She’s mourning what Richard Dawkins likes about Church: the ceremony, the incense, and the singing. What she’s talking about is not a god-shaped hole but a hymn-shaped hole.  The problem with this article is just that: it confects a problem that really doesn’t exist. Does atheist Phillips want her children simply to know more about religion? If so, give them a Bible? Or, if she wants her kids to hear hymns and sniff incense, well, that’s simply ceremony.  Yes, I went to midnight mass at Notre Dame when I lived in Paris, and it was quite the spectacle, with the swinging censers, the music, and the beautiful cathedral. But not for a minute did I believe what they were celebrating, and I could get the same feeling by going to a concert of Tagore songs.

Of course Bari Weiss, the founder of the Free Press, seems to be religiously Jewish; as far as I can see, there are aspects of Judaism that she believes in. But she’s not explicit about it, and so I can’t be sure that she’s not a secular Jew like me.  I’d like to ask her exactly what supernatural stuff she believes in, and what about this article merited its publication.

UPDATE: This just came up: an interview of Tom Holland by Bari Weiss:

An excerpt. Bolding is mine:

Whether you believe in the story of the virgin birth and resurrection, or you believe that those miracles are myths, one thing is beyond dispute: The story of Jesus and the message of Christianity is among the stickiest ideas the world has ever seen.

Within four centuries of Jesus’s death, Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. It had 30 million followers—which amounted to half the empire. Today, two millennia later, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world, with more than 2 billion adherents.

How did the radical message of Christianity catch on? How did it change the world? And how does it shape all our lives today?

These questions motivate the latest episode of Honestly. My guest is the incredible historian Tom Holland, one of the most gifted storytellers in the world. His podcast, The Rest Is History, is among the most popular out there. Each week, he and his co-host, Dominic Sandbrook, charm their way through history’s most interesting characters and sagas. I can’t recommend it more highly.

I also recommend Tom’s book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. In it, he argues that Christianity is the reason we have America, that it was the inspiration behind our revolution. He also argues that Christianity is the backbone of both “wokeness,” as an ideology, and liberalism, which so often sees itself as secular.

Oy vey! Something is going on at the Free Press. I guess it’s the claim that Christianity is the backbone not just of wokeness, but of liberalism.

As I noted yesterday, Biden has commuted the sentences of all but three federal prisoners on death row; they’ll now be serving life behind bars without parole instead. I insisted that this was an excellent decision, as I have never seen the sense of the government killing a prisoner.  Here are the pros and cons of capital punishment as I see them.

Pro:  People feel that somebody who does a bad crime deserves to be killed for it. The idea is that because the criminal made the victims suffer, he, too, should suffer as retribution for what was inflicted on his victims. It’s retribution, Jake!

Cons:  Because of litigation fees and the length of time before execution, as well as execution costs, it actually costs more to execute a prisoner than to keep him in prison until he dies.

If exculpating evidence surfaces, you can retry or free a living prisoner, but not one who’s been executed.

Evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.

Capital punishment is purely retributive and, in the end, seems selfish as it satisfies the wishes of people to see other people dead.

The state should not be in the business of killing people. That is reserved for one’s opponents in wartime.

Prisoners sentenced to death have no opportunity to be rehabilitated. And surely some of them could be released eventually and become productive citizens, and enjoy the rest of their lives in freedom.

To a determinist, prisoners who commit capital crimes had no choice in the matter, and you don’t execute people for “making the wrong choice” if they didn’t have one.

Anyone who wants retribution should be able to find it in the idea that someone will spend the rest of his life in prison, which is a harsh punishment in itself.

Note that the cons heavily outweigh the pros. And that is surely why the U.S, is the only Western country to have the death penalty (Japan also has it, though it’s not really “Western”).

My question: is there ANY benefit to society in having the death penalty? It seems to hang around because it to afford a ghoulish kind of closure to those who feel strongly about what should happen to someone who commits a horrible crime. One of the most barbaric things I have seen is the crowd of people massed outside a prison on the eve of an execution, baying for blood.