News Feeds

Two for two! A duo of interacting galaxies commemorates the second science anniversary of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which takes constant observations, including images and highly detailed data known as spectra. Its operations have led to a 'parade' of discoveries by astronomers around the world.

A new technique enables huge machine-learning models to efficiently generate more accurate quantifications of their uncertainty about certain predictions. This could help practitioners determine whether to trust the model when it is deployed in real-world settings.

A new study finds that AI enhances creativity by boosting the novelty of story ideas as well as the 'usefulness' of stories -- their ability to engage the target audience and potential for publication. However, AI was not judged to enhance the work produced by more creative writers and the study also warns that while AI may enhance individual creativity it may also result in a loss of collective novelty, as AI-assisted stories were found to contain more similarities to each other and were less varied and diverse.

Two recent studies published in The Astrophysical Journal discuss findings regarding solar flare properties and a new classification index and the Sun’s magnetic field, specifically what’s called solar magnetic reconnection. These studies hold the potential to help researchers better understand the internal processes of the Sun, specifically pertaining to solar flare activity and space weather. Here, Universe Today discusses these two studies with both lead authors regarding the motivation behind the studies, significant results, and implications on our understanding regarding solar flares and space weather.

The first study discusses new insights into solar flare properties and presents a new solar flare classification index that builds off previous classification indices along with scientific advancements in our understanding of solar flares. So, what was the motivation behind this study?

“The inception of our interest in this study was inspired by work that my advisor, Prof. Adam Kowalski, has done in the last decade in classifying stellar flares using a similar index,” Cole Tamburri, who is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and lead author of the study, tells Universe Today. “Traditionally, solar flares are classified according to the peak flux in GOES soft X-ray. However, as our understanding of flare physics has advanced, we’ve learned that there’s much more diversity between flare events which is not captured by the GOES classification system – for example, two events with the same peak intensity might occur over much different time periods (a few minutes, to even a few hours!), which is indicative of significant differences in the physical mechanism.”

The GOES soft X-ray currently classifies solar flares ranging from lowest intensity to highest using classes labeled as A, B, C, M, and X. This data is gathered from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) system of four active spacecraft currently in a geosynchronous orbit and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States. This data is plotted in real-time on the GOES X-ray flux interface available on the NOAA website where users can watch live solar activity while viewing which class the solar flares correspond to on the plot, with the data being updated every 10 minutes.

For the study, the researchers sought to expand upon and improve the GOES classification index by measuring what’s known as impulsiveness, which Tamburri refers to as a “suddenness” of energy release. During a 4-year period between 2010 and 2014, the researchers obtained impulsiveness measurements using Solar Dynamics Observatory/Extreme Ultraviolet Experiment for 1,368 solar flares, categorizing their impulsiveness as low, mid, and high. So, what were the most significant results from this study?

“During this project, we developed and statistically analyzed the impulsiveness of a large number of flares in the extreme ultraviolet 304 Angstrom line,” Tamburri tells Universe Today. “Magnetic reconnection is the process that occurs when two oppositely oriented magnetic field structures interact to form new field lines, resulting in an intense outflow of energy from the region where reconnection is occurring, the effects of which we then observe in the lower solar atmosphere as a solar flare. We found that impulsiveness, interestingly, has a moderately strong correlation with the peak rate of magnetic reconnection. This suggests that the details of the magnetic field present during a solar flare may indeed be related to the energetics of the flare itself (magnitude and duration).” 

As noted above, this study builds off initial research from Dr. Adam Kowalski, which Tamburri notes published a 2013 study discussing a connection between M-class solar flares and stellar properties. This work involving impulsiveness was further expanded upon by another advisor of Tamburri’s, Dr. Maria Kazachenko, who published a 2017 study discussing a new catalog of flare ribbon properties. Finally, two 2022 studies (Dahlin et al. 2022 and Qiu et al. 2022) discussed a potential connection between solar flare impulsiveness and the behavior of the Sun’s magnetic field when a solar flare occurs. According to Tamburri, the goal of this recent study was to expand upon the discussion of impulsiveness by sampling many solar flares.

Image of solar activity emanating from the Sun. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Solar Dynamics Observatory)

Regarding future work, Tamburri tells Universe Today that there are three research directions they can go from here: 1) Expanding the impulsiveness index to include various wavelengths since that determines the accuracy of solar flare and impulsiveness measurements; 2) After identifying a satisfactory wavelength, a comparison of solar flares to stellar flares is planned to be made; 3) Using models to simulate and identify the origins and physics behind impulsiveness activity.

Observations and studies of solar flares date back to the mid-19th century, with the first recorded solar flare observation being conducted by two amateur astronomers, Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson, using an optical telescope. Further studies occurred by accident using radio observations during World War II by British radio operators in February 1942, with their findings not being made public until after the war ended in 1945.

After the Space Age began, it was discovered that space telescopes would be best suited for observing solar flares due to the Earth’s atmosphere blocking large amounts of solar radiation, limiting ground-based telescope observations. This has allowed near unobscured observations of solar activity, resulting in better understanding of solar flares. Therefore, what implications could this new impulsiveness index have on our understanding of solar flares?

“At this point, we don’t fully understand the fast, intense initial phase (the impulsive phase) of a flare,” Tamburri tells Universe Today. “Ultimately, an accurate, complete picture of the flaring process must tie together the flare process in all regimes – the magnetic field in the low-density corona, the high-energy processes in the dense chromosphere, and even what lies below, in the photosphere.  While we’re a far way from that, connecting what we see during a solar flare to what we can infer about the magnetic field in an active region before, during, and after an event can help to create this unified picture.”

Solar flare activity falls under the category of space weather, which is the activity on the Sun’s surface that can influence activity both on Earth’s surface and in orbit. While this often results in the beautiful auroral displays seen at high northern and southern latitudes, this harsh solar radiation can potentially damage satellites and electronic ground stations, causing widespread electrical and communication blackouts around the world.

The most revered incident of solar activity causing widespread damage to the earth’s surface is known as the Carrington Event, which occurred between September 1-2, 1859, during the most intense solar storm on record. The result was massive incidents of sparks and fires occurring at telegraph stations across the globe and auroral observations reported around the world, as well. Therefore, what implications could this new impulsiveness index have on our understanding of space weather and how to protect against it?

Tamburri tells Universe Today, “In a sense, one of the real dangers of solar flares/storms as they relate to space weather is the uncertainty regarding the specific characteristics of an event while it’s happening – much like two snowflakes, no two solar flares are exactly the same! There are still many vagaries in flare prediction, despite decades of research; even once a flare begins, it’s hard to tell exactly how energetic a flare will be, or how long it will last. If we are able to clearly tie the impulsiveness index to distinct signatures in the magnetic field topology (from which we can infer stored energy), this could possibly tell us a little more about how intense we expect a flare to be, using which knowledge we can mitigate the effects of a flare on technology on and around Earth.”

Tamburri tells Universe Today that this work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the DKIST Ambassadors program, along with being administered by the National Solar Observatory and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., with thanks also to the University of Colorado Boulder and the George Ellery Hale Graduate Fellowship.

The second study discusses new insights into the properties of solar magnetic reconnection, which is the primary process during solar storms that converts magnetic energy into thermal energy (heat), kinetic energy (motion), and particle acceleration. While studying this phenomenon could help scientists better understand the mechanisms behind solar storms, a lack of high-resolution data has prevented in-depth observations from being made until now. Therefore, what is the specific motivation behind this study involving solar magnetic reconnection?

Marcel Corchado-Albelo, who is also a PhD student in the Department of Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences at CU Boulder and lead author of the study, tells Universe Today, “Currently, our methods to measure the solar magnetic field are usually constrained to the solar surface or photosphere, or in the scarce cases in which the magnetic field has been measured from higher solar atmospheric layers the measurement lacks the temporal cadence to track the evolution of reconnection processes. Therefore, scientists have been using proxy measurements involving flare ribbons to calculate magnetic reconnection properties like magnetic reconnection flux.”

Corchado-Albelo continues, “Extensive statistical work has shown that these flare ribbon derived measurements are well correlated with other flare variables like the strength of the solar flare. These results motivated us to examine how the solar magnetic reconnection flux changed in time during solar flares. When examining the rate of change of the magnetic reconnection flux we discovered that a large number of flares exhibited bursts that reminisce complex oscillatory features commonly found in multi-wavelength emission, called quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs).”

For the study, the researchers analyzed high-resolution imaging data from a set of M-class and X-class solar flares and statistical analyses on 73 solar flares ranging from C-class to X-class using a known flare ribbon computer database to ascertain QPP properties. Better understanding the mechanisms responsible for QPPs will provide greater insight into solar flare energy and activity within the Sun’s atmosphere and the relationship they have with solar magnetic reconnection. Previous research into QPPs include observing QPPs using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space telescope, examining their relationship with recurrent jets, and conducting comprehensive analyses of QPPs. Therefore, what were the most significant results from this study?

“Our results showed that indeed the burst in the magnetic reconnection rate can be described as QPPs with similar characteristics as the ones found in X-ray emission of the same solar flares,” Corchado-Albelo tells Universe Today. “This result suggests that the process through which the magnetic reconnection flux described by flare ribbons is modulated is related, if not the same, to the process through which the X-ray QPPs are formed.”

Corchado-Albelo continues, “Further evidence from the morphological evolution of the flare ribbon, when observations were available, suggest that the solar plasma in the magnetic reconnection region (called the current sheet) undergoes some plasma instability. Our results were inconclusive in what process leads to the co-observation of QPPs in the magnetic reconnection flux and X-ray emission.”

Along with the above description, solar magnetic reconnection also involves the Sun’s massive magnetic field, also called the solar dynamo. Despite its much larger size than the Earth’s magnetic field, its behavior can be just as erratic, as the Earth’s magnetic field is known to experience variations due to its interaction with solar wind that the Sun emits daily. Unlike the Earth, the Sun’s surface is constantly changing since it’s essentially a massive ball of plasma and causes even more erratic behavior within its magnetic field.

This behavior often results in the Sun’s magnetic field lines literally becoming tangled as the Sun rotates, and specifically as its surface continuously rotates, resulting in periodic sunspots and solar activity, including solar flares. Therefore, what implications could this study have on our understanding of the Sun’s magnetic field?

A diagram conveying the Sun’s magnetic field lines overlaid on an image of the Sun obtained by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on March 12, 2016. (Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL)

“The results of this study suggest that the plasma contained within the region where magnetic reconnection occurs during solar flare are involved in highly complex dynamics,” Corchado-Albelo tells Universe Today. “Understanding the origin of these dynamics can help us diagnose properties of the solar magnetic fields involved in flare reconnection. Properties that could help us possibly constrain the flaring magnetic field geometry, as well as potentially the strength of the field in the reconnection region. These properties are of much value in our endeavors to better constrain our models of solar flares, and in cases where the underlying physics of the solar flares are comparable to those of the Sun, stellar flares.”

Like the first study discussed earlier, this research corresponds to better understanding solar flare activity and space weather, with the latter having direct influence regarding space-based and ground-based activities, ranging from communications to electricity. Better understanding solar flare activity could help scientists better predict space weather, specifically since the Sun goes through what’s known as solar cycles every 11 years when the Sun’s magnetic field flips, which results in increased sunspots and other solar activity, including space weather. Therefore, what implications could this study have on our understanding of solar flares and space weather?

Corchado-Albelo tells Universe Today, “The QPPs in the X-ray emission are a well-known, and common feature of solar and stellar flares. Yet, there is no full consensus to the process through which the X-ray QPPs form. Our results provide direct evidence that these QPPs are at least related to processes that modulated the dynamic evolution of the flaring magnetic fields. It is a step forward towards understanding the details connecting how plasma particles within the reconnection region are accelerated and give rise to the QPPs observed in solar flares.”

Corchado-Albelo continues, “All of these details need to be reproduced by flaring models in order to be a realistic representation of the process occurring in the Sun, which can then be used to forecast solar flares and their properties. This is an invaluable first step to forecast space weather in a reliable manner.”

Like the first study, this study was also funded by the National Science Foundation through the DKIST Ambassadors program with support also from the CU Boulder’s Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences.

What new discoveries about solar flares and solar activity will scientists make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Solar Flares and Solar Magnetic Reconnection Get New Spotlight in Two Blazing Studies appeared first on Universe Today.

In a new movie titled “Fly Me to the Moon,” a marketing consultant played by Scarlett Johansson uses Tang breakfast drink, Crest toothpaste and Omega watches to give a publicity boost to NASA’s Apollo moon program.

The marketing consultant may be totally fictional. And don’t get me started on the fake moon landing that’s part of the screwball comedy’s plot. But the fact that the makers of Tang, Crest and Omega allied themselves with NASA’s brand in the 1960s is totally real.

More than 50 years later, those companies are still benefiting from the NASA connection, says Richard Jurek, a marketing and public relations executive in the Chicago area who’s one of the authors of “Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program.”

In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Jurek says Tang sold poorly when it was introduced in the late 1950s. “But once it was announced that it was being used in the space program and marketed that way, it became a huge bestseller for them, and in fact, still sells more overseas — and is a multibillion-dollar brand today,” he says.

NASA also got something out of the arrangements: The easy-to-use Tang powder was well-suited for the astronauts to mix with water during their flights. The Crest team helped NASA come up with a type of toothpaste that astronauts could swallow rather than spit. And Omega made one heck of a chronograph for the astronauts.

But Jurek says the marketing campaign’s main players were contractors like Boeing, Martin Marietta and North American Rockwell. Those contractors, rather than NASA itself, gave the biggest commercial push to the Apollo program.

“There was a war going on,” he explains. “There were a lot of missile manufacturers who didn’t want to come home and talk to their families about, ‘Yeah, we built another missile that was being used in the war.’ But through the marketing of Apollo and marketing of what they were doing for NASA, they could come home and talk about, ‘Look, we’re helping Neil Armstrong, we’re helping NASA, we’re helping America get to the moon.’ And that was a feel-good message.”

NASA and its commercial partners rode a tsunami-scale wave of enthusiasm in the buildup to the first moon landing in 1969. But in the wake of the life-and-death drama that surrounded the crippled Apollo 13 mission in 1970, that wave quickly crashed. “It shifted from an adventure story and a geopolitical story into one that really was a geology story, about rocks and the formation of the Earth, and it became a much harder sell,” Jurek says.

Jurek says that could serve as a cautionary tale for future crewed missions to the moon, like the ones that NASA is planning for the latter half of the 2020s as part of its Artemis campaign (which is named after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology).

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm for space travel,” he says. “You see it in the SpaceX launches, and some of the gimmicks of whether you fly a Tesla into space — and you have all these GoPros around and everybody’s oohing and ahhing over the images. But then it becomes a very real thing when you ask somebody to actually pay for it, and pay for it with their tax dollars.”

For taxpayers who may be tempted to turn from oohing to booing, the lesson of the Apollo era is that many of the space program’s benefits are indirect and pay dividends over the course of decades.

“We’re benefiting from the Apollo program today, from those fundamental investments that were made in basic research and science and infrastructure … back in the ’60s and ’70s,” Jurek says. The advances in microcircuitry and satellite technology required for the Apollo program made it possible for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to create multibillion-dollar businesses, he says.

And what can NASA learn? Jurek says the space agency is doing a good job of adapting to a media marketplace that’s more “tribe-focused and niche-focused” than it was during the Apollo era, due to the rise of the internet and social media. But he adds that NASA’s efforts to engage with the public “could maybe gain a lot more from having a bit more of that private-enterprise management of digital marketing, elevated beyond just social media.”

Richard Jurek is chief marketing and communication officer and executive vice president of The Inland Real Estate Group, and the co-author of “Marketing the Moon.”

Jurek also gives a thumbs-up to the way NASA lets its astronauts build their own brands through social media. He says the space agency could take that a step further — perhaps by following the precedent that was set in the early 1960s, when the Mercury astronauts struck a deal with Life magazine for their personal stories.

“What the movie got right — and what NASA got right in the 1950s and 1960s — was turning the astronauts into the face of the program,” he says.. “By doing so, they personalized the missions, and gave people a personal connection to the astronauts in which they felt like they had a stake in their success.”

Could there be, for example, a Netflix documentary series about the next generation of spacefliers? Oh, wait … there’s already been such a series, focusing on the privately funded Inspiration4 orbital mission.

Jurek says the rise of private-sector space missions could dramatically change the space marketing game over the next five to 10 years.

“You’ll have a lot more commercialization, a lot more individual managing of brands and messaging. Sponsorships, if you will, of missions, and private contractors elevating their brands,” he says. “But I think the bigger question will be the cooperation between the various private organizations and the government entities who in many ways control and regulate access to things. For example, it’s illegal to own a moon rock from the Apollo program. It’s government property.”

If private astronauts start extracting resources from the moon — or if other countries such as China, Russia or India do the same — who decides who gets what? What if China beats the U.S. in the space marketing game?

“How is the access and the engagement internationally in space going to change?” Jurek says. “That, I think, is a bigger question over whether or not Taco Bell or Pizza Hut sponsors a particular spaceflight to go back to the moon.”

Take a look at the original version of this posting on Cosmic Log for links to additional resources on moonshot marketing, plus a roundup of fun facts and celebrity cameos to look for in “Fly Me to the Moon.” For what it’s worth, next week brings the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Stay tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Apple, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Podchaser. If you like Fiction Science, please rate the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.

The post ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Points to the Past and Future of Moonshot Marketing appeared first on Universe Today.

After going eight years and more than 300 launches without a failure, SpaceX had a Falcon 9 rocket launch go awry, resulting in the expected loss of 20 Starlink satellites.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it would oversee an investigation into the anomaly, raising the prospect that dozens of launches could be delayed until the problem is identified and rectified.

As many as 40 Falcon 9 launches are on tap between now and the end of the year — potentially including missions that would carry astronauts to the International Space Station and send the privately funded Polaris Dawn crew into orbit for the world’s first commercial spacewalk.

The problem cropped up during the July 11 launch of a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The rocket’s first stage performed as expected, went through stage separation and returned to Earth for a successful touchdown on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.

“Falcon 9’s second stage performed its first burn nominally,” SpaceX said in a mission recap, “however, a liquid oxygen leak developed on the second stage.”

When the second-stage engine was relit to adjust the orbital parameters, it experienced an anomaly and couldn’t complete the burn. In a posting to his X social-media platform, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the engine went through a “RUD,” or rapid unscheduled disassembly.

The second stage was still able to deploy its batch of 20 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband internet network. But those satellites were left in an orbit that was lower than planned, where they were subject to significant atmospheric drag.

“At this level of drag, our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites,” SpaceX said. “As such, the satellites will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise. They do not pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety.”

The FAA said in a statement that it would require an investigation into the anomaly, aimed at determining its root cause and identifying corrective actions. The agency would have to approve SpaceX’s final report as well as any license modifications that would be required.

The FAA is also charged with determining when it’s safe for SpaceX to resume flights. Falcon 9 launches were delayed for six months after a failed launch in June 2015. And when a Falcon 9 suffered a launch-pad anomaly in September 2016, it took four months for SpaceX to get the FAA’s go-ahead for a return to flight.

Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, who is leading the Polaris Dawn space mission, gave SpaceX a vote of confidence in a posting to X. “I have no doubt they will arrive at a cause quickly and ensure the most cost-effective and reliable launch vehicle keeps delivering payload to orbit,” he wrote. “As for Polaris Dawn, we will fly whenever SpaceX is ready and with complete confidence in the rocket, spaceship and operations.”

A Falcon 9 rocket was due to launch Isaacman and three crewmates into orbit as early as July 31, for a mission that could last as long as five days. The mission aims to go into an unusually high 700-kilometer (435-mile) orbit to test the spacesuits that SpaceX has created for spacewalks, and demonstrate how extravehicular activities can be conducted from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

Falcon 9 rockets are also set to launch an uncrewed Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station, and send NASA’s Crew-9 astronauts to the ISS in a Dragon capsule. Both those missions are scheduled for as early as next month, but both seem likely to launch later than that in the aftermath of this week’s anomaly.

SpaceX isn’t the only company that’s currently facing challenges relating to orbital access: Boeing’s Starliner space taxi and its two NASA crew members are still at the space station, waiting for the go-ahead to return to Earth. The departure has been held up for weeks while NASA and Boeing address concerns about Starliner’s propulsion system.

The post SpaceX’s Rocket Failure Could Cause Delays for Lots of Launches appeared first on Universe Today.

For the weekend, we have a 3.5-minute National Geographic video explaining why cheetahs are so fast (they’ve been clocked at 75 mph or 120 kph: an enormous speed). New slow-motion video has helped us with the answer.

The key is their spine. Look how immobile their heads are while they’re running: they have to keep their eyes on the prize!

Working with a tiny cantilever, physicists managed to violate the second law of thermodynamics, using less energy than expected to change the cantilever’s motion

The skein of human migrations out of Africa is quite tangled.  We of course evolved in Africa, splitting off from the lineage leading to bonobos and chimps about 5-6 million years ago (mya). The first Homo foray out of Africa was probably Homo erectus, which might have left about 1.75 mya and then spread all the way to eastern Asia by 1.5 mya. Then they died off for reasons unknown. (All of this is tentative and subject to revision after future research.)

Our ancestors also split off from a lineage destined to leave again, at various times estimated from 500,000 years ago to 200,000 years ago. That lineage split into the sister subspecies Neanderthals and Denisovans (I consider them subspecies of Homo sapiens), and perhaps into the tiny species H. floresiensis, which lived on the Indonesian island of Flores (dating is wonky here).

The conventional wisdom is that all of these subspecies and species went extinct until “modern” Homo sapiens made its Big Exit into Eurasia about 50,000-60,000 years ago, proceeding to colonize the world.  Now, as Carl Zimmer reports in the NYT (click headline below or find article archived here)  there’s increasing evidence that modern H. sapiens might have left Africa a lot longer ago: about 250,000 years ago. That’s a substantial revision of our migration out of Africa.

I’ve indented excerpts from the article:

Several new studies, including one published on Thursday, argue that the timeline was wrong. According to new data, several waves of modern humans began leaving the continent about 250,000 years ago.

“It wasn’t a single out-of-Africa migration,” said Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. “There have been lots of migrations out of Africa at different time periods.”

Those earlier migrations went largely overlooked until now, Dr. Tishkoff said, because the people who moved did not leave a clear fossil record of their existence, nor did living people inherit their DNA.

And here’s the evidence that modern H. sapiens left Africa a lot earlier than we think:

Dr. Paabo’s team also discovered that living, non-African people carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA, a signature of interbreeding from long ago. In May, a team of researchers estimated that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred during a short period of time, between 47,000 and 40,000 years ago.

But some Neanderthal DNA does not fit into this neat picture. The Neanderthal Y chromosome, for example, is more similar to the Y chromosome found in living humans than it is to the rest of the Neanderthal genome.

In 2020, researchers offered an explanation: Neanderthal males inherited a new Y chromosome from humans between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago. But that would have made sense only if a wave of Africans had expanded out of the continent much earlier than scientists had thought.

Researchers have recently found evidence for such an early wave in the genomes of living Africans.

Dr. Tishkoff and her colleagues compared the genome of a 122,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil with the genomes of 180 people from 12 populations across Africa. Previous studies had found no sign of Neanderthal DNA in African genomes. But Dr. Tishkoff’s group detected tiny pieces of Neanderthal-like DNA scattered across all 12 of the populations they studied.

When they examined the size and sequence of those genetic fragments, they concluded that Neanderthals inherited them from early Africans. That meant an early wave of Africans expanded into Europe or Asia about 250,000 years ago and interbred with Neanderthals.

This conclusion depends critically not just on the dating of the Y chromosome and other bits of DNA, but also on the date of the migration of the Neanderthal/Denisovan lineage out of Africa. If, for example, the Neanderthal lineage had exchanged genes with the modern H. sapiens lineage in Africa between 370,000 and 250,000 years ago, and THEN the Neanderthal lineage migrated to Europe, we wouldn’t need to invoke an earlier migration of modern humans out of Africa.  I trust that the dating of the Neanderthal migration out of Africa (600,000 years ago or so) is sufficiently accurate that the scenario I invoked wouldn’t have happened. But as far as I can see, the date of Neanderthal migration out of Africa is contested. I’ll punt and take the attitude that “Popppa knows best” since Tischkoff and Paabo are both excellent researchers.

There’s also another study suggesting early migration out of Africa:

Another group of researchers — led by Joshua Akey, a professor of genomics at Princeton University — tackled the same question with its own statistical method. After comparing the genomes of 2,000 people from across the world with three Neanderthal genomes, they reached the same conclusion.

As Dr. Akey and his colleagues reported on Thursday, modern humans expanded out of Africa and interbred with Neanderthals between 200,000 and 250,000 years ago.

But Dr. Akey’s team also found evidence for yet another early wave. By comparing the genomes of young and old Neanderthal fossils, they concluded that another group of people migrated from Africa between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago.

As Steve Gould once said, he always prepared for his class on human evolution by throwing away all his notes from the previous year’s lecture and rewriting his spiel.  This is how fast things change, particularly now that Paabo and colleagues pioneered the study of hominin fossil DNA.

One question remains:  if modern H. sapiens really did leave Africa between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago, what happened to them?  One thing we do know for sure from copious DNA and skeletal and artifact dating is that all modern humans descended from a group of ancestors that left Africa around 60,000 years ago. There’s very little doubt about that.

This means that those earlier migrants didn’t leave descendants; they went extinct and are ex-hominins, singing with the choir invisible. What happened? The article suggests that “African populations built up cultural knowledge that led them to make new inventions, like arrows, and adapt to new places more successfully.”  The older H. sapiens then would have been outcompeted or even killed off by the new arrivals. As usual, we don’t know, nor do we know why the Neanderthals and Denisovans (or, for that matter Homo erectus) went extinct.

It’s a good thing I’ve stopped teaching my lecture on human evolution (I got only 1.5 hours on this in my short Evolution segment), as I’d have trouble keeping up with these changes.  There are few human remains and dating is imperfect, so what’s sure to happen is that the story above is likely to be revised—except for the part that all living humans are brothers and sisters who evolved from a band of ancestors who left Africa a few tens of thousands of years ago.

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

Here’s a “classic” Neanderthal skull from Wikipedia, labeled this way:

La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 (“The Old Man”) is an almost-complete male Neanderthal skeleton discovered in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France by A. and J. Bouyssonie, and L. Bardon in 1908. The individual was about 40 years of age at the time of his death. He was in bad health, having lost most of his teeth and suffering from bone resorption in the mandible and advanced arthritis.

Neanderthals didn’t live very long. Poor guy!

Luna04, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Researchers have successfully developed an environmentally friendly, microspherical fluorescent material primarily made from citric acid. These microbeads emit various colors of light depending on the illuminating light and the size of the beads, which suggests a wide range of applications. Furthermore, the use of plant-derived materials allows for low-cost and energy-efficient synthesis.

Scientists have developed a tiny 'claw machine' that is able to pick up and drop a marble-sized ball in response to exposure to chemical vapors. The findings point to a technique that can enable soft actuators--the parts of a machine that make it move--to perform multiple tasks without the need for additional costly materials. While existing soft actuators can be 'one-trick ponies' restricted to one type of movement, this novel composite film contorts itself in different ways depending on the vapor that it is exposed to.

A new study presents a method to record the temperature of materials with exceptional temporal resolution, using a Doppler broadening effect in neutron resonance absorption. Using a high-powered laser to generate pulses of neutrons 100 nanoseconds long, a test on samples of silver and tantalum successfully returned characteristic information for both materials and their temperatures.

RNA drugs are the next frontier of medicine, but manufacturing them requires an expensive and labor-intensive process that limits production and produces metric tons of toxic chemical waste. Researchers report a new, enzyme-based RNA synthesis method that can produce strands of RNA with both natural and modified nucleotides without the environmental hazards.

Scientists propose a new way of implementing a neural network with an optical system which could make machine learning more sustainable in the future. In a new paper, the researchers have demonstrated a method much simpler than previous approaches.

Scientists propose a new way of implementing a neural network with an optical system which could make machine learning more sustainable in the future. In a new paper, the researchers have demonstrated a method much simpler than previous approaches.

Scientists have created a computer program that 'paints' the structure of molecules in the style of famous Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian. Researchers are opening eyes and minds to the beauty of molecular structure, as well as posing new questions about the form and function of the molecules themselves.

Galaxies avoid an early death because they have a 'heart and lungs' which effectively regulate their 'breathing' and prevent them growing out of control, a new study suggests. If they didn't, the universe would have aged much faster than it has and all we would see today is huge 'zombie' galaxies teeming with dead and dying stars. That's according to a new study that investigates one of the great mysteries of the Universe -- why galaxies are not as large as astronomers would expect.

Our pupils shrink and expand as we breathe in and out, but whether this affects vision is unclear

Two letters have just been published in Science signed by a total of 15 scientists, all criticizing the first article below (published in Science last February), a piece arguing for teaching indigenous knowledge (including N.Z.’s version, Mātauranga Māori) alongside science in the science classroom. (Click to read.)  Now the authors, after being criticized, denied that they really meant what they argued in this paper:

I also published a post in February criticizing Black and Tylianakis’s paper, and was pretty hard on their claims, which deserved such criticism. Science clearly published their article as part of the performative wokeness infecting major science journals, and it was full of assertions and short on facts. It was, in reality, an attempt to sacralize indigenous knowledge—a dangerous gambit.  Some quotes from my critique:

In the end, this article appears to me to be a DEI-ish contribution: something published to advance “the authority of the sacred victim” by arguing that indigenous knowledge and ways to attain it is just as good as modern (sometimes called “Western” ) science, and that teaching it will empower the oppressed. Here’s one line from the paper supporting my hypothesis:

In addition to a suite of known benefits to Indigenous students, we see the potential for all students to benefit from exposure to Indigenous knowledge, alongside a science curriculum, as a way of fostering sustainability and environmental integrity.

In other words, the argument here is really meant to buttress the self image of indigenous people, not to buttress science. You can see this because there are hardly any examples given to support their thesis. Instead, there is a lot of palaver and evidence-free argument, as well as both tedious and tendentious writing.

The publication of this paper is somewhat of a travesty, for it shows that the AAAS is becoming as woke as New Zealand, where the claim that you should NOT teach MM in the science classroom can get you fired!  If this kind of stuff continues, the authoritarians will eventually shut down anybody who makes counterarguments, as is happening in New Zealand, where counterspeech against the “scientific” nature of MM is demonized and punishable.  Did the AAAS[ The American Association for the Advancement of Science] even get critical reviewers for this piece?

But it’s especially important for Kiwis themselves to push back on this paper, for authors Black and Tylianakis are both from New Zealand, and their paper could be seen as supporting the widespread but misleading idea that indigenous knowledge, at least in New Zealand but probably everywhere else, is coequal to modern science.

The first paper pushing back, which you can access by clicking the screenshot below, has fourteen authors, including all but one of the Auckland University researchers who signed the Listener Letter on science—the letter that ignited this conflagration. In fact, that letter, which argued that indigenous knowledge in NZ had a place in the classroom, but not the science classroom, is quite similar to what you’ll read below (click headline to read). But you can’t attack this stuff too often, for the postmodern-derived claim that “all ways of knowing are equal” must be debunked before it destroys New Zealand science (it’s already done a job on social science and the humanities).

Here’s Ahdar et al.’s argument against what Kiwis, in their drive to sacralize Māori language, call mana ōrite, defined below. An excerpt (I’ve highlighted the money quote):

We agree with A. Black and J. M. Tylianakis (“Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science,” Policy Forum, 9 February, p. 592) that the arguments of those supporting the “mana ōrite” policy (translated as “equal status” or “equal value”) between Indigenous knowledge and science are largely based on ethics and morals; that science is typically considered discrete from nonscience academic disciplines, whereas Indigenous knowledge lacks such divisions; and that science and Indigenous knowledge systems are distinct in “methodologies, philosophies, worldview, and modes of transmission.” However, such distinctions (1, 2) are precisely why Indigenous knowledge—although it contains empirical and cultural knowledge of great value—should be taught as a distinct subject or as aspects of other subjects, not “alongside” science in science classes, as Black and Tylianakis suggest.

Black and Tylianakis fail to consider how to resolve conflicts between science and Indigenous knowledge in empirical content or methodology in the classroom. In Indigenous knowledge, empirical observations generally merge seamlessly with, and gain an authority not to be challenged from, spiritual and religious beliefs (3–5). Therefore, incorporating such observations into science curricula has led to, and will continue to lead to, the use of spiritual concepts in science classrooms (6).

Placing science and Indigenous knowledge alongside each other does disservice to the coherence and understanding of both, and leading Māori scholars have cautioned against such comparisons (7, 8). Black and Tylianakis do not explain how science students might reconcile content from these two very distinct systems when taught as being of “equal value,” nor do they acknowledge that teaching Indigenous knowledge alongside science greatly limits the delivery of science curricula that meet international academic disciplinary standards.

 

Note how the authors use the Dennett-ian strategy of first showing where they agree with the paper they’re criticizing before they start hurling the brickbats.

And indeed, as I’ve written before, attempts to equate MM with science has lead to confusing lessons incorporating Māori myths and the concept of “mauri”, or vitalism, into the science classroom (see here, here, and the many posts here). What’s new in this letter is the authors’ digging for the roots of mana ōrite, which, they say, lie in social constructivism (my bolding):

The mana ōrite policy (9) states that Indigenous knowledge and science should be given equal status, but equating such vastly different systems is meaningless and based on the relativist concept of social constructivism. This ideology posits that all knowledge depends entirely on its cultural context, which it cannot transcend, and therefore epistemic claims from one culture cannot challenge claims from another. This is inherently antiscience; science is open to all to pursue and critique, and it depends on every claim being open to challenge. Framing the mana ōrite policy in terms of “relative value” or “relative status” is the problem, not the solution, because it tips the discussion into an emotive moral judgment that purports to say something about the merit of cultural differences. Under this view, the contest of ideas becomes a battle of cultural and political power rather than a matter of empirical evidence and theoretical coherence.

Their letter goes on to say that because science is based on testing factual claims, but indigenous knowledge, in contrast, comes with a heavy dose of spirituality and other nonfactual stuff, it shouldn’t be taught in the science class, or construed as a form of “knowledge”.  This parallels the Listener letter, but this and Matzke’s letter are more important because they are peer-reviewed letters in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals. It goes without saying that the letter could not have been publishe in New Zealand, and that’s very sad.

There’s another critique as well: a single-authored paper written by American Nick Matzke, now working at Auckland Uni. Nick may be familiar to you as a prolific author on The Panda’s Thumb website, and as a fighter against creationism as a member of the National Center for Science Education. Nick is now battling the Kiwi version of creationism: the spiritual/religious aspects of MM.  He’s argued against the vitalism of MM (“mauri“) in a video (see here), but in this letter, again peer reviewed, he criticizes the vitalism of New Zealand’s indigenous “ways of knowing”. Letters in Science have considerable clout, though of course Nick and the other 14 authors are up against powerful ideological and political forces in their own country and university. (Click to read.)

Nick points out several examples where vitalism (“mauri“), a supernatural concept, remains in the Kiwi science curriculum—at the behest of NZ’s Ministry of Education:

A. Black and J. M. Tylianakis (“Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science,” Policy Forum, 9 February, p. 592) give an overly rosy picture of New Zealand’s policy of “mana ōrite,” or equal status for mātauranga Māori, in science education, which they say teaches Indigenous knowledge “alongside” science rather than “as” science. They suggest that this policy avoids problems such as teaching creationist myths in science class. However, the New Zealand Ministry of Education placed supernatural content directly into science and math curricula with no clarification that it was nonscientific material.

The chemistry curriculum required students to “recognise that mauri is present in all matter which exists as particles held together by attractive forces” (1), with a glossary that defined mauri as “[t]he vital essence, life force of everything.” This concept, known as vitalism, has long been debunked (2). Teaching concepts that directly conflict with empirical evidence undermines the goals of science education. Dozens of science teachers opposed the inclusion of mauri in the chemistry curriculum, but the Ministry steamrolled their objections, citing “the requirement for mana ōrite” (1). The objective was only removed after 18 months of controversy, at a time when the 2023 election was looming. The Ministry, ignoring vitalism’s evidentiary flaws, claimed the reversal occurred because inserting concepts such as mauri into science curricula ran the “risk of recolonisation” (3), despite the fact that mana ōrite’s entire rationale was decolonization.

Problems remain in 2024. Despite its removal from exam objectives, mauri remains in the chemistry curriculum, in which students are told, “Revisit the concept of mauri” (4). This learning can sit beside learnings in atomic theory” (5), and the Gulf Innovation Fund Together website (4) says that mauri is “the force that interpenetrates all things to bind and knit them together.” A math qualification on practical problems of “life in… the Pacific” asks trigonometry students to calculate how much flaxen rope the demigod Maui made to lasso the Sun, slowing it to lengthen the day (6). The text of the exercise is studiously agnostic about the literal truth of this story, describing it as a “narrative.” Black and Tylianakis might categorize this as teaching Indigenous knowledge alongside math, but teachers face the prospect of strife among students over whether it is appropriate to call it knowledge or myth and if students of various backgrounds are expected to defend or disclaim its verity.

The letter (limited to about 300 words) goes on to emphasize that the Ministry’s current policy puts supernatural content in the science classroom, and suggests, as is only sensible, that MM, if it’s to be taught as a whole, has to be in a “nonscience class or unit” that discusses the content and diversity of Māori beliefs.  Nick also wrote a brief backstory about this on The Panda’s Thumb website and makes two minor corrections of his letter.

Now of course the original authors, Amanda Black and Jason Tylianakis, got to respond, and they were given more words than the critics.  Click below to see their reply:

I’m biased, of course, but I consider this response very weak, as it continues to defend the nonscientific aspects of MM, including mauri, as forms of “knowledge”.  In fact, I don’t think that they realize that all verifications of truths about the world, whether they come from science or sociology, are examples of what I call “science construed broadly”.  Here are some statements that weaken their response (my own comments are flush left):

Indigenous knowledge must retain its integrity as a separate, parallel knowledge system. Analogous to philosophy, Indigenous knowledge should be taught alongside science as a separate form of knowledge, not within the science curriculum.

Indigenous “ways of knowing” such as MM are not “parallel knowledge systems”. In fact, MM is not a “knowledge system” at all, for, although it does contain some empirical knowledge, it’s also laden with religion, tradition, superstition, ethics, social strictures, legend, vitalism, and so on.  This gemisch cannot be a knowledge system, though later on the authors try to argue that, for example, vitalism is also “knowledge.” Further, philosophy, a useful discipline when applied to real issues, is not a “way of knowing” but a “way of thinking”.  Philosophers can verify what’s true about the world only in the same way scientists do: via observation, replication, hypothesis testing, pervasive doubt, experiments, and so on, And that’s part of science, not philosophy. But wait! There’s more!

Matzke demotes Indigenous knowledge to a “belief system” rather than knowledge, and Ahdar et al. dispute the idea that “epistemic claims from one culture cannot challenge claims from another.” Philosophy, arts, and other social sciences and humanities are all valuable forms of knowledge that sit alongside science in the curriculum without positivist science proofs of their “verity,” as Matzke requires of Indigenous knowledge. We thus agree with scholars who have cautioned against using science to test nonscience concepts from other knowledge systems (2). (Ahdar et al. claim to agree with such scholars as well but contradict themselves.)

No, philosophy, art and much of the humanities are “ways of seeing,” not “ways of knowing”. Knowledge or empirical truth, defined as “justified true belief” accepted by most rational people, cannot be attained without using the methods of science. If you make a claim about what’s true in the world, then yes, you need science construed broadly to test that claim.  These authors are so immersed in their “all knowledge systems are true in their own way” mantra that they don’t seem to even know what science is.

Here they try to shoehorn mauri, indisputably a form of vitalism and supernaturalism, into science:

 The concept of mauri, a key feature in the Māori worldview, has been frequently explored within the peer-reviewed scientific literature as a measure of ecological resilience (2) without being absorbed by or undermining science. Similar to the concept of health (4, 5), mauri is not directly measurable, but both health and mauri can be operationalized through quantifiable indicators, and both concepts are useful for communicating societal and environmental well-being to the public. Nonscience concepts (assuming that they are not presented as science) can have value for connecting with communities.

I’m not sure what the sweating authors are trying to say here. What do they mean by “operationalizing vitalism through quantifiable indicators”? If they mean that, then yes, the concept of mauri is testable in the same way that intercessory prayer as a way to cure disease is testable (and of course it’s failed: prayer doesn’t work). I’d put up many dollars if they could find a way to test whether vitalism was operating in nature. The authors’ last statement, that supernaturalism can be valuable in “connecting with communities”, is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant to the argument of these letters.

Here’s another example of their relative ignorance about indigenous knowledge. If they mean what they say below, let them give just ONE EXAMPLE:

Matzke’s concern about “whether it is appropriate to call it knowledge or myth” fails to acknowledge that Indigenous knowledge systems can encode knowledge within apparent myth (2), so neither English term may fit perfectly. Education on Indigenous knowledge would avert such misunderstandings.

Yes, true. Separate the empirical wheat from the supernatural chaff, and then plant the wheat alongside science.  But teaching myths that mix both empirical knowledge and superstition can only confuse students. Are the authors suggesting that teachers tell students that part of MM isn’t really true?  If so, they should admit that (this would get them into big-time trouble), but they should also clarify what they mean by this:

We believe that harm arises when nonscience is presented as science, and we remain unconvinced that the intent of the mana ōrite initiative (8) is to present Indigenous knowledge and culture as science or to compete with scientific concepts in science classes.

Well, ante up, Drs. Black and Tilianakis! MM is in fact being funded and taught as science, and there are personal penalties levied on those who criticize it.  In the end, Black and Tilianakis admit that MM, which is largely nonscience, should not be “presented as science”. So far, so good. But it’s clear that the mana ōrite initiative is indeed presenting myth and tradition as science and is pitting MM and other forms of indigenous “knowledge” against science.

Kiwis really need to debate this issue: in fact, this is the most important of aspect of science that needs discussing in New Zealand right now.  What a pity it is that this discussion has effectively been banned. Remember Auckland Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater’s promise to hold such a debate three years ago—a promise she never kept?

Highland and lowland populations in Papua New Guinea have different gene variants derived from Denisovan archaic humans, indicating possible adaptations for lower oxygen levels and higher malaria risk