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Europe is set to regain its capacity to launch satellites into space when the Ariane 6 rocket finally flies after years of delays

Cars carrying sensors and scanners have been touring UK cities collecting data to help property owners plan carbon-cutting retrofit projects

Access Consciousness claims to show how to improve your mental and physical health by touching 32 Access Bars on your scalp. It's basically phrenology reborn and fused with "energy medicine."

The post Access Consciousness: Phrenology fused with energy medicine first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

I guess I have to give the usual disclaimers here: yes, John Sailer is a conservative, and yes, it’s an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, whose op-eds are reliably on the Right. But of course where else will you learn things that the MSM won’t tell you? In this case, we learn that the National Institutes of Health, the largest government dispenser of research funds in America, is apparently funding hiring initiatives involving racial preferences. But how can they do that given that such hiring is illegal under Title VII? (And accepting students on the basis of race was recently deep-sixed by the Supreme Court.)

The way around this, according to Sailer’s article, is simply to fund “cluster hires,” which gives an institution a pot of money to hire several faculty at once, in hopes that doing so will bring in underrepresented minorities. Well, that’s fine (it casts a wider net), so long as people aren’t hired on the basis of their ethnicity itself.  But in the case of the National Institutes of Health, cluster-hire funding also requires that candidates proffer diversity statements, which of course allow universities to pick and choose using race, which is easily determined from diversity statements. (The University of Chicago prohibits this explicitly based on the Shils Report: our hires and promotions are to be based solely on research, teaching, contribution to the intellectual community, and university or department service).

Further, beyond the NIH’s end-run around race-based hiring, universities are making their own goals much more explicit, as Sailer found out by using the Freedom of Information Act to see what universities are doing vis-à-vis hiring.

If Sailer is wrong in his quotes and claims, he could be sued, and because he bases them on public records, I seriously doubt that his article is misguided.

Click the headline to read, or find the WSJ piece archived here. 

Here are some excerpts, showing how universities manage to hire based on ethnicity. One of them, to my horror, was Vanderbilt, which, headed by Chicago’s former Provost, has been a model of rationality, honesty, free speech, and adherence to academic and legal standards.

Sailer:

 . . . . there is evidence that many universities have engaged in outright racial preferences under the aegis of DEI. Hundreds of documents that I acquired through public-records requests provide a rare paper trail of universities closely scrutinizing the race of faculty job applicants. The practice not only appears widespread; it is encouraged and funded by the federal government.

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a large hiring initiative targets specific racial groups—promising to hire 18 to 20 scientists “who are Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander.” Discussing a related University of New Mexico program, one professor quipped in an email, “I don’t want to hire white men for sure.”

Both initiatives are supported by the National Institutes of Health through its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program, or First. The program gives grants for DEI-focused “cluster hiring” at universities and medical schools, promising eventually to spend about a quarter-billion dollars.

A key requirement is that recipient institutions heavily value diversity statements while selecting faculty. The creators of the program reasoned that by heavily weighing commitment to DEI, they could prompt schools to hire more minorities but without direct racial preferences. That’s the rationale behind DEI-focused “cluster hiring,” an increasingly common practice in academia. The documents—which include emails, grant proposals, progress reports and hiring records—suggest that many NIH First grant recipients restrict hiring on the basis of race or “underrepresented” status, violating NIH’s stated policies and possibly civil-rights law.

In grant proposals, several recipients openly state their intention to restrict whom they hire by demographic category. Vanderbilt’s NIH First grant proposal states that it will “focus on the cluster hiring of faculty from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, specifically Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander scientists.” The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Texas at Dallas jointly proposed hiring 10 scholars “from underrepresented groups,” noting that the NIH First program specifically identifies racial minorities and women as underrepresented.

But if you can’t use race as a criterion for hiring, why are DEI statements required? This still confuses me, for it’s not even a moderately disguised way to engage in the practice. If you go to the NIH First Awards page, you see a list of seven schools given FIRST awards for cluster hiring, and then this statement:

These awardee institutions will build self-reinforcing communities of scientists, through recruitment of cohorts of early-career faculty who are competitive for assistant professor positions and have a demonstrated commitment to inclusive excellence. The institutions are also building efforts to positively impact faculty development, retention, progression, and eventual promotion, as well as develop inclusive environments that are sustainable. Overall, the FIRST cohort awardees, together with the CEC  will work to determine if a systematic approach that integrates multiple evidence-based strategies including the hiring of faculty cohorts with demonstrated commitments to inclusion and diversity will accelerate inclusive excellence, as measured by clearly defined metrics of institutional culture change, diversity, and inclusion.

Unless you fell off the turnip truck, you’ll know that “inclusive” and “diversity” are simply code words for “racial diversity.”  But the code isn’t hard to break. This means that the government is, without explicitly admitting it, in the business of producing equity, which of course is against government regulations. In fact, the NIH affirms this ban (bolding is mine):

At its inception, NIH First was widely understood not to involve racial preferences. In 2020, shortly after the program was announced, Science magazine published an explanation: “Not all of the 120 new hires would need to belong to groups now underrepresented in academic medicine, which include women, black people, Hispanics, Native Americans, and those with disabilities, says Hannah Valantine, NIH’s chief diversity officer. In fact, she told the Council of Councils at its 24 January meeting, any such restriction would be illegal and also run counter to the program’s goal of attracting world-class talent.”

ILLEGAL is the relevant word here. Sailer goes on (again, bolding is mine):

Yet multiple programs have stated their intention to limit hires to those with “underrepresented” status. One job advertisement, for a First role at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, notes: “Successful candidates will be early stage investigators who are Black, Latinx, or from a disadvantaged background (as defined by NIH).”

And some universities make explicit the fact that they’re hiring based on race. Drexel, one of the seven schools that got a FIRST Award, makes it mandatory to be an underrespresented minority to be hired:

Some grantees even admit such preferences in documents sent to and reviewed by the NIH. A joint proposal from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the university’s Baltimore County campus states that all scientists hired through the program will meet the NIH’s definition of “underrepresented populations in science.” Drexel University’s program, which focuses on nursing and public health, provides its evaluation rubric in a progress report. Among its four criteria: “Candidate is a member of a group that is underrepresented in health research.”

This raises questions about compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in employment. The First program’s website highlights regulations requiring that federal agencies ensure grant recipients comply with nondiscrimination law. The most basic implication is that universities can’t refuse to hire someone, or prefer one candidate over another, because of race or sex. But emails show that this has been happening.

This also occurs at the University of New Mexico (UNM), which appears to have been slapped on the tuches. Bolding is mine:

At the University of New Mexico, the First leadership team heavily scrutinized the race and sex of applicants. “Just to be sure: what was the ethnicity of Speech and Hearing’s first-choice candidate?” a UNM team member asked in an email.

“She identified as URM in her application, right? I am confused, maybe I am misremembering,” a team member wrote of a different candidate. Another responded, “It looks like she said she was a ‘native New Mexican.’ We checked, and she said she’s white.”

. . . UNM appears to have violated NIH First policy, which states that programs “may not discriminate against any group in the hiring process.” The UNM spokeswoman said in a statement that “the email correspondence among members of the UNM FIRST Leadership Team do [sic] not represent the University of New Mexico’s values nor does it comport with the expectations we have of our faculty” and that “as a result of this unfortunate circumstance,” the university is instituting a required “faculty search training/workshop for all . . . faculty search committee members.”

Hiring of underrepresented minorities is, of course, a form of discrimination—against people considered “white” or “white adjacent” (e.g., Asians).

And this goes on even for non-NIH-funded hires. One place is, as I said, Vanderbilt University, run by our former Provost, Daniel Diermeier. Does he know about this?

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a large hiring initiative targets specific racial groups—promising to hire 18 to 20 scientists “who are Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander.” Discussing a related University of New Mexico program, one professor quipped in an email, “I don’t want to hire white men for sure.”

For sure!

I’m pretty sure that Vanderbilt does know about this, because they refused to comment when asked. They do have a FIRST grant proposal in for a cluster hire, and it’s explicitly aimed at hiring those of “minoritized” groups, not including, of course, Asians or Jews (bolding is mine):

In grant proposals, several recipients openly state their intention to restrict whom they hire by demographic category. Vanderbilt’s NIH First grant proposal states that it will “focus on the cluster hiring of faculty from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, specifically Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander scientists.”

. . . Taken as a whole, these documents shed new light on the practice of cluster hiring. They explain why some in academia seem to treat the practice as a form of legal racial quotas. In addition to the responses already noted, representatives of the University of Maryland, UT Dallas and UT Southwestern said that their institutions comply with civil-rights laws and don’t discriminate on the basis of race. Drexel, Northwestern, Mount Sinai and Vanderbilt didn’t reply to inquiries.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m in favor of increasing all kinds of diversity—socioeconomic, ethnic, and viewpoint diversity. The more varied people you have, assuming that they meet quality standards, the more chance you can get an oddball idea that will move science forward. But in science, and particularly in the NIH—whose money goes entirely for health-related research—an increase in diversity is important only insofar as it is associated with an increase in the quality of research produced. You can get both only by widening the net, trying to attract more applicants. And in the end you must, according to law, hire people irregardless of their race, and, as the Shils Report specifies for Chicago, using only criteria associated with merit.

 

A giant salamander—and by “giant” I mean about 2.5-4 meters long—equipped with teeth and wicked fangs was found in Namibia, dated at about 270 million years ago, and just reported in Nature.  Its significance is that it is early, but is considered a “stem” tetrapod, meaning that it has some of the characteristics of modern amphibians, which are tetrapods (four-legged animals that could move around on land).  The authors, according to this CBS News story, suremise that it “was considerably longer than a person, and it probably hung out near the bottom of swamps and lakes”.  It was also an apex predator, meaning that it ate other animals, but there was nothing around that could eat it.

Its was found in an area that, 270 million years ago, was at high latitude, ergo cold and partly glaciated. This beast is the first suggestion that there was a tetrapod fauna in cold-ish climates at that time.

Click below to see the article, or download the pdf here:

The researchers recovered a skull that was about 60 cm (2 feet long), as well as the front part of the postcranial skeleton. The authors don’t give a size estimate, but with a two-foot head it was probably large, and could have been 12 feet long: the longest salamander known yet. (The largest living salamander, the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus), can attain a length of about 5 feet.  This puppy could have been twice as long.

Two skull fragments were known of this animal before, but it hadn’t been named and there were no remains of the skeleton. The authors named this one Gaiasia jennyae, after the Gai-As formation in which it was found, and also after Jenny Clack (1947-2020), who studied early tetrapods. (This, of course, will anger the pecksniffs who think that animals shouldn’t be named after people, but they can jump in the lake.) It is the only species in the genus Gaiasia.

The sample in the field (from the Supplementary information):

(From paper): B. Reassembling the ex situ type specimen of Gaiasia jennyae (F 1528)– a dorsal up skull with lower jaw and most of the articulated axial skeleton. C. In situ dorsal-up Gaiasia jennyae skull (F 1522) at locality shown in A. panorama. D. Type specimen of Gaiasia jennyae (F 1528) shown in B. after preparation. Note the differential compression of the skull roof. There is no evidence of pre-burial breakage or subaerial weathering. Scale bar =10cm.

Here’s the skull in dorsal (a,b) and ventral (c,d) views, and reconstructions.

From the paper: a,b, Skull in dorsal view. a, Photograph. b, Interpretative drawing. c,d, Skull in ventral view. c, Photograph. d, Interpretative drawing. e, Reconstruction of the articulated specimen in lateral view showing preserved elements of the skeleton. adsym, adsymphysial bone; an, angular; anf, angular fenestra; c1, anterior coronoid; c2, middle coronoid; caf, carotid artery foramen; chf, chordatympanic foramen; d, dentary; ept, ectopterygoid; exo, exoccipital; f, frontal; it, intertemporal; j, jugal; l, lacrimal; mx, maxilla; n, nasal; p, parietal; par, prearticular; pfr, prefrontal; pl, palatine; po, postorbital; pof, postfrontal; pp, postparietal; pospl, postsplenial; psph, parasphenoid; pt, pterygoid; qj, quadratojugal; sa, surangular; spl, splenial; sq, squamosal; st, supratemporal; t, tabular; v, vomer. Scale bars, 50 mm (a,c).

And a reconstruction of the skull and postcranial skeleton they found. Because we don’t have the posterior skeleton, length estimates are guesses.

Here are photos and a reconstruction of the lower jaw. The white circles show the fangs, which are indicated in the upper drawing. There were three on each side, and interlocking fangs on the top mandible as well. It ate by both suction and biting:

(From the paper): e, f. Photographs of the right hemimandible. e, Ventral view of the posterior half. f, Dorsal view of the symphyseal area. adsym, adsymphysial plate; an, angular; anf, angular fenestra; c1, anterior coronoid; c2, middle coronoid; chf, chordatympanic foramen; d, dentary; par, prearticular; pospl, postsplenial; sa, surangular; spl, splenial. Dotted white circles show the position of the symphysial fangs. Scale bar, 50 mm.

. . . and a reconstruction of the front of the animal from the paper. Remember, that fearsome head was about two feet long!

Now this is unlikely to be any kind of ancestor of reptiles, but it’s likely that this is one of several species occurring when tetrapods had already evolved from fish and one of its relatives probably gave rise to modern amphibians, while another gave rise to all modern reptiles (and after followed the evolution of birds and mammals). Its importance is not only the “gee whiz” factor, but also the indication that there was a thriving ecosystem at high latitudes about 270 myr ago. After all, this is an apex predator, and it had to eat something aquatic (fish or, perhaps, other early amphibians).  So if these creatures existed, there must also have been many other animals living at high latitudes at that time.

Today is Sunday, and so we get a batch of bird photos from John Avise.  John’s comments and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Falkland Island Birds 

On my vacation voyage to Antarctica aboard a Quark ship in 2018, our first stop was in the Falkland Islands, before heading on to South Georgia Island and then the Antarctic Peninsula proper.  This week’s post shows several of the birds that I photographed in the Falkland Islands.  In retrospect, it turns out that this first stop on our journey was one of the great highlights of that entire voyage.

Cobb’s Wren (Troglodytes cobbi); endemic to the Falklands:

(I sent this photo to Matthew Cobb, who replied, “My wren, which is mine, is very thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end.”)

Correndera Pipit (Anthus correndera):

Dark-faced Ground Tyrant (Muscisaxicola maclovianus):

Gentoo Penguin (Pygoscelis papua):

Grass Wren (Cistothorus platensis):

Magellanic Oystercatcher (Haematopus leucopodus):

Magellanic Penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus):

Magellanic Snipe (Gallinago paraguaiae):

Rockhopper Penguin, Eudyptes chrysocome:

Ruddy-headed Goose (Chloephaga rubidiceps) pair:

Striated Caracara (Phalcobaenus australis):

Upland Goose (Chloephaga picta) pair; the white one is the male:

Black-browed Albatross (Diomedia melanophris):

And at my insistence, John put this one up:

Falkland flightless steamer duck (Tachyeres brachypterus):

It looks like a distant ring with three sparkly jewels, but the Webb telescope’s (JWST) most recent image is really the view of a distant quasar lensed by a nearby elliptical galaxy. The telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) looked at the faint apparition during a study of dark matter and its distribution in the Universe.

We get to see this ghostly vision thanks to the gravitational lensing of the quasar. Such lensing creates one of the great natural telescopes in nature. It uses the gravitational effect of matter to warp space. All matter does this, but bigger conglomerations of it do it more. So, for example, a galaxy cluster and its aggregate stars, planets, gas clouds, black holes—and dark matter—warps space quite a bit. So does an individual galaxy.

When that happens, the path of light from more distant objects around (or through) the lens also gets warped. The lens magnifies the view of those distant objects between us and the lensing mass. So, thanks to gravitational lensing, astronomers often get intriguing views of objects otherwise too dim or far away for detailed study.

A Lensed View of a Distant Quasar

The distant quasar RX J1131-1231 that JWST imaged for this view lies about six billion light-years away from Earth. Astronomers know there’s a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s heart. It emits high-energy X-rays, which Chandra X-ray Observatory and the XMM-Newton orbiting telescope detected. Hubble Space Telescope has also viewed this eerie-looking object.

This image shows the quasar RX J1131-1231 imaged by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. JWST’s image is in the infrared. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/R.C.Reis et al; Optical: NASA/STScI

Those X-rays tell astronomers that something very energetic is happening in the galaxy—that’s why it’s also often called a quasar. The X-ray emissions get produced by a superheated accretion disk and eventually bounce off the inner edge of the disk. Astronomers can take a spectrum of that reflected X-ray emission—but they have to account for the fact that it’s affected by the strong gravitational pull of the black hole. The larger the change in the spectrum, the closer the disk’s inner edge lies to the black hole. In this case, the emissions come from a region that lies only three times the event horizon’s radius. That suggests the black hole is spinning very, very fast—at half the speed of light.

JWST’s mid-infrared observation of the lensed quasar allows astronomers to probe the region around the its heart. They should be able to tease out details of matter distribution in the region, which should help them understand the distribution of dark matter there.

Mapping the Black Hole’s History

The central supermassive black hole at the heart of quasar RX J1131-1231 has its own tale to tell. Those X-ray emissions from its accretion disk provide clues to how fast that black hole grew over time and how it formed. There are a couple of main theories about the growth of black holes. We know that stellar-mass ones come from the deaths of supermassive stars. They explode as supernovae. What’s left collapses and that creates the black hole.

However, the supermassive ones at the hearts of galaxies probably form in one of two ways. They could come from the accumulation of material over a long time during collisions and mergers between galaxies. If that happens, a growing black hole gathers material in a stable disk. If it has a steady diet of new material from the disk, that should lead to a rapidly spinning black hole. On the other hand, if the black hole grows due to many small accretion episodes, its diet would come from random directions and its spin rate would be slower.

So, what’s the story of the bright, supermassive monster at the heart of RX J1131-1231? All the observations to date show a rapidly spinning black hole. That means it likely grew via mergers and collisions. Further observations of its high-energy activity should help astronomers as they probe deeper into the Universe and see objects at earlier and earlier epochs of cosmic time. JWST’s contribution helps them use gravitational lenses to spot these things. At the same time, they get to map the distribution of dark matter that helps the Universe create those natural magnifying glasses.

For More Information

Webb Admires Bejeweled Ring
Distant Quasar RX J1131
RX J1131-1231: Chandra & XMM-Newton Provide Direct Measurement of Distant Black Hole Spin

The post Webb Looks at One of the Best Gravitationally Lensed Quasars Ever Discovered appeared first on Universe Today.

NASA has big plans for the Moon. Through the Artemis Program, NASA plans to create a program of “sustained exploration and lunar development.” This will include the creation of the Lunar Gateway, an orbital habitat that will facilitate missions to and from the surface, and the Artemis Base Camp that will allow for extended stays. Through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, NASA has contracted with commercial partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver scientific experiments and crew to the lunar surface.

However, these efforts are expected to culminate in the creation of a permanent outpost and human presence on the Moon. This will require far more in the way of crew and payload services to ensure crews can be sustained in the long run. In a recent white paper, “Lunar Surface Cargo,” NASA researchers identified a significant gap between current cargo delivery capabilities and future demand. The paper indicates that this growing cargo demand can only be met by creating a “mixed cargo lander fleet.”

Key Findings

As the authors indicate in the paper, NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture Definition Document (ADD) (Revision A) cites the need for a wide variety of landing systems. In section 3 (subsection 1.4.8.4), the ADD addresses the CLPS program and the need for cargo landers as part of the larger subject of transportation systems:

“Lunar surface exploration will require the delivery of assets, equipment, and supplies to the lunar surface. While some supplies and equipment may be delivered with crew on HLS, cargo landers provide additional flexibility and capability for robust exploration. In the HLR segment of the exploration campaign, additional cargo delivery can be provided through NASA’s CLPS Provider Landers.”

To date, NASA has selected fourteen companies to deliver payloads during the Human Lunar Return (HLR) exploration segment. This includes SpaceX, Blue Origin, Ceres Robotics, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, selected in November 2019 to deliver crew and cargo. It also the nine additional companies that were contracted to deliver science experiments in 2018 and 2022, such as Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin Space, Moon Express, and Astrobotic – the first commercial vendor to launch a mission to the Moon (Peregrine-1), which unfortunately did not land on the lunar surface.

However, as the Artemis Program transitions from the HLR to other segments, the need for cargo deliveries will expand dramatically. As stated in the ADD, this will include the Foundational Exploration (FE) segment, which will coincide with Artemis IV and Artemis V (currently planned for 2026 and 2028, respectively) and will consist of NASA expanding its “lunar capabilities, systems, and operations supporting complex orbital and surface missions.” After Artemis VI takes place in 2031, NASA anticipates sending a crewed mission a year to the Moon.

Artist’s concept of the Blue Moon lander. Credit: Blue Origin

At this point, the Sustained Lunar Evolution (SLE) segment will begin, consisting of “enabling capabilities, systems, and operations to support regional and global utilization (science, etc.), economic opportunity, and a steady cadence of human presence on and around the Moon.”

Growing Demand

To assess the growing need for lunar landers and transportation systems, NASA analyzed a representative sample of planned cargo for the Artemis Program and potential needs. Once again, these needs are broken down by segment, with each sample item represented by a potential mass range (see table below). They also include one-time payloads for habitation, mobility systems, power and communications, freezers, various science and technology payloads, and recurring logistics delivery missions that will include food, water, air, spare parts, and other necessities.

The authors note that the initial crewed missions using the Starship HLS (Artemis III and IV) will be short-duration, so the landers will be able to carry the necessary supplies. However, future missions will need additional surface elements to accommodate longer-duration missions, the range of exploration, and the size of the crew. For instance, as the Human Landing Return segment transitions to Foundational Exploration, the planned and potential payloads in the sample reflect these growing needs.

Examples include the delivery of the Lunar Mobility Vehicle (LMV), Vertical Solar Array Technologies, a mobile Lunar Surface Relay, an IP Mobility System, the Endurance Rover, a Sample Return Freezer, and a Fission Surface Power (FSP) reactor (an expansion of NASA’s Kilopower project). These payloads will allow for extravehicular activities (EVAs), the provision of power and communications for a future habitat, and the ability to conduct sample return missions from the South Pole-Aitken Basin.

Planned and potential cargo to the lunar surface. Credit: NASA

Beyond this, NASA anticipates the delivery of the elements that make up the Artemis Base Camp. This includes a Pressurized Rover – aka. the Habitable Mobility Platform (HMP) – and the Initial Surface Habitation – the Lunar Foundation Surface Habitat (LFSH) – which will culminate in the creation of regular Surface Habitats. They also consider the logistical needs for crews of two operating with the HMP and crews of four operating within the LFSH. During the Sustained Lunar Evolution segment, there are the deliveries associated with creating an ISRU Pilot Plant and the ongoing logistical needs.

In sum, NASA predicts that future demands for cargo will range from 2,500 to 10,000 kg (~5,510 to 22,045 lbs) a year for annual recurring logistics. They also predict that occasional large cargo deliveries (rovers or habitation modules) of up to 15,000 kg (33,070 lbs) could occur during the Foundational Exploration campaign segment. The “Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs” white paper, part of the 2024 Moon to Mars Architecture series, provides a detailed breakdown of the logistical requirements.

Capabilities

Regarding the current payload capabilities, the authors acknowledge NASA’s cooperation with private industry and international partners. This includes the CLPS, HLS, and the Human-class Delivery Landers (HDL) programs responsible for developing crew and cargo landers. Meanwhile, international partners like the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are collaborating on potential cargo delivery services. As they demonstrate, small payloads of 500 kg (1100 lbs) that will support logistics in the SLE segment are within the capabilities of the CLPS program.

The heavier payloads, which include the elements of the Artemis Base Camp, range from 12,000 to 15,000 kg (26,455 to 33,070 lbs), which is within the capabilities of the HDL program. This leaves a gap between the 500 kg and 12,000 kg, which accounts for the vast majority of necessary payloads in the FE segment. These payloads are foundational to NASA’s long-term plans for a program of “sustained lunar exploration and development.” As a result, demand for these elements and the related support services is high.

Artist’s impression of an Orion spacecraft rendezvousing with the Lunar Gateway. Credit: NASA Additional Considerations

In addition to landers providing cargo deliveries, they must provide access to diverse locations across the South Pole-Aitken Basin that satisfy mission objectives. Specific locations that are named include the Hawthorn Crater, the peak near Shackleton Crater, the rim of the Faustini Crater, the De Gerlache Crater, Malapert Mastiff, and connecting ridges covering a region measuring about 500 km2 (310 mi2). These sites are key locations for solar arrays, ice collecting, and transportation networks.

NASA also identified gaps for lunar cargo and sample return, where the capacity of existing vehicles greatly exceeds the return capability. To this end, the white paper recommends a range of cargo providers that will allow for diversity and flexibility. This approach addresses “some key lessons learned from the International Space Station, including the need for dissimilar redundancy to avoid a situation in which any system becomes a single point of failure.”

In conclusion, NASA has identified a “substantial architectural gap in lander capability” that will grow as the Foundational Exploration segment continues and gives way to the Sustained Lunar Evolution phase. But as they note, this presents major opportunities for NASA and industry partners to create a mixed cargo lander fleet that “meets cargo delivery demands, enables longer missions, sends more crew members to the surface, and empowers a larger exploration footprint.” This, they add, is essential to achieve the objectives of NASA’s Moon to Mars mission architecture.

Additional details regarding payload services and transportation are provided in another white paper, “Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs,” released concurrently with the paper mentioned above. These and other considerations will be addressed in greater detail in the 2024 Architecture Concept Review (2024 ARC), which is due to be released later this year. This review will include white papers on NASA’s lunar surface strategy and cargo return needs.

Further Reading: NASA

The post NASA's Skyrocketing Need for Cargo Deliveries to the Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

Did you spot the two fawns this morning in Charles Schwing’s photo? Here’s the reveal, with the babies circled. You can see the legs of the one on the left and the spots on the fawn to the right, but click the photo (twice if you must) to enlarge it:

Here’s the full 22-minute uncut interview of Joe Biden by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. It took place yesterday evening, and concentrated, of course, on Biden’s performance in his debate for Trump.  Please weigh in below.

My short take: Stephanopoulos asked good, hard questions—no softballs. And Biden’s unscripted performance here was better than in the debate, but I’m still worried.

When asked whether he watched the debate on tape, Biden says he couldn’t remember. He says he was ill and “just had a bad night.” He also claims that Trump’s shouting, even with his mike shut off, threw Biden off. But then remember that Biden gave a barnburner teleprompted speech the very next day, and how could that be if he was ill? As for reports that he has a “bad day” often in private life as well, he replies by touting his accomplishments in a boilerplate recitation, and denies that his efforts in the past 3.5 years has cost him anything vis-à-vis his health.

Biden claims that his doctors say he’s fine, and that “he has a full neurological test every day”, which sounds dubious. Stephanopoulos asks, however, if Biden had taken a full cognitive test. Biden evades that question, saying that he “has a full cognitive test every day,” referring to his behavior in public. But that’s not an answer, and it’s curious if he really hasn’t HAD such a test, which could put many minds at ease  Nevertheless, the President says he doesn’t want to have a full medical evaluation because “he’s already done it.”  That’s clearly not the case: he’s referring to his “normal” behavior in public. But many of his answers are basically a campaign speech: assertions that he “put NATO together,” “shut Putin down,” “checkmated China” (???), “put together a South Pacific initiative,” and so on.

Biden vehemently asserts that he will defeat Trump in November. despite the polls that show otherwise. He adds that he got this same poll-based pushback in 2020, when he won.  Ergo, he implies that the polls aren’t really a good prediction of what will happen, and it’s merely a “toss-up”. That may be the case, and no candidate ever admits that they’re really behind. He claims that a “pathological liar” like Trump simply can’t win, and that he knows of nobody “more qualified to be President and win this race than me.”

When Stephanopoulos notes that a group of Congresspeople are getting together to convince Biden to drop out of the race, Biden poo-poos that, claiming that all the people in Congress he knows have told him to stay in.  (Biden looks disturbed at this point.) He reasserts that his dropping out “is not gonna happen,” and denies that his approval rating really is 36%.

In the end, yes, I think Biden did a good job in his first term. He was good on Ukraine vs. Russia, okay on Israel, not so good on immigration, decent on most other things, but lame on gender/sex issues (Title IX).  I don’t hold him responsible for the downturn in our economy; but I think he certainly did better than Trump would have.  Trump will be mired in trials and legal issues for the next few years, and I also think he’s mentally ill. So, as a “never Trumper” liberal, I’ll vote for whatever candidates the Democrats choose. But I’m still dubious about Biden, even after watching this interview. He was simply not sharp enough, and what’s the story with his voice? I do think he has a neurological problem that might impede his effectiveness as President. He needs to take a cognitive test and make the results public.

Despite that, and despite his defensiveness and clear reluctance to even consider dropping out of the election, I guess he’ll be the Democrat whose name is by the party box.

After the end of the debate, 23 minutes in, four ABC correspondents give their take during the last 8 minutes. None of them think that Biden did a good enough job to rehabilitate his reputation, and several say that he hasn’t taken the doubt among House Democrats seriously enough. None of the four are enthusiastic.

Biden’s self-confidence may hurt not just the party, but, come November, the country.

Here are two takes (excerpted). First, from the New York Times (archived here):

Mr. Biden’s performance in the 22-minute session with George Stephanopoulos was not viewed as disastrously as his debate against Mr. Trump eight days earlier. But while his most loyal supporters presumably found enough reassurance to stick with him, those who have turned against him or were on the verge of doing so did not seem comforted, and time is running out if the party is to change nominees, as some would like.

While Mr. Biden had a ruddier color to his face this time and looked calm and composed with his hands in his lap and legs crossed, he once again sounded hoarse and at times tentative, sometimes struggling to finish a sentence. He was dismissive about concerns about his health, denied that he was more frail and ducked questions about medical tests.

He took responsibility for his debate performance repeatedly — “nobody’s fault but mine” — but then blamed it on exhaustion and sickness and Mr. Trump “shouting” and distracting him. Even so, he indicated that he did not know whether he had actually watched a recording of the debate afterward. He said that he has a cognitive test every day because he is “running the world” and that he would only step aside as a candidate “if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race.’”

Probably the one line that generated the most irritation among fellow Democrats was his response when Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Mr. Biden how he would feel in January if he loses to Mr. Trump and has to turn the White House back over to the former president. “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about,” Mr. Biden replied.

Multiple Democrats expressed exasperation at that afterward, declaring that the election was not about earning a participation trophy but about stopping a convicted felon who tried to overturn an election he had lost, urged “termination” of the Constitution to return himself to power and vowed to devote his next term to exacting “retribution” on his adversaries. One House Democrat, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussion, said that he hoped the Lord Almighty would be coming to talk with Mr. Biden soon.

And from this morning’s Free Press article by Eli Lake:

President Joe Biden, in his interview Friday night with ABC News, said many things. The polls had him in a dead heat with Donald Trump. Democratic Party leaders have urged him to stay in the race. America, under his leadership, has “checkmated” China.

He delivered these assessments with a gravel-voiced clarity missing from his disastrous debate performance on June 27. He was engaged and followed his train of thought to a conclusion. The problem was the substance of his answers were lacking. In fact, many of the things he said strained credulity.

Call it Biden’s alternative facts.

Let’s start with the polling. Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “All the pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a toss-up” between him and Donald Trump. It’s possible Biden has indeed spoken to pollsters who tell him the presidential race, after the debate, is 50-50. But the highest quality polls after the debate show Trump in a firm lead.

The New York Times/Siena College poll, for example, has Biden down six points among likely voters. A Wall Street Journal post-debate poll found 60 percent of likely voters either strongly or somewhat disapprove of Biden’s performance as president. CNN’s latest poll among American adults has Biden at 43 percent versus Trump at 49 percent.

Former senior adviser to President Barack Obama David Axelrod posted on X a more realistic assessment of Biden’s chances in the race on Friday evening: “The president is rightfully proud of his record. But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacities moving forward and his standing in this race. Four years ago at this time, he was 10 points ahead of Trump. Today, he is six points behind.”

The other extraordinary answer Biden gave to Stephanopoulos was that Democratic Party leaders were urging him to stay in the race. In response to a question about whether he would consider abandoning his run for a second term if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged him to withdraw, Biden said, “Every one of ’em. . . they all said I should stay in the race.” He said this was also true of James Clyburn, the former House majority whip from South Carolina who saved Biden’s campaign in 2020 in his home state.

In public remarks, however, two of these Democratic leaders have signaled a very different message for Biden. This week Clyburn said he would support a “mini-primary” before the Democratic convention at the end of August if Biden stepped aside. And Pelosi this week encouraged Biden to give an interview to serious journalists to prove he is capable of running for a second term. Then she added this knife-twist in an interview with MSNBC: “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’ ”

Scanning the liberal press, I really couldn’t find a single op-ed saying that Biden did a good job and should forget about dropping out.  Surely that tells you something about the mindset of liberals.  Joe needs to go.

From the AP News, we hear about a shrine on the Japanese island of Tashirojima, population 50 humans and 100 cats. (Click the screenshot to read). Here’s a map of its location from Wikipedia:

Click on the AP headline to read about this place:

An excerpt:

On a small island off Japan’s northeastern coast, visitors make offerings at a shrine for unlikely local guardians: cats.

The “Neko Jinja,” or Cat Shrine, mythologizes cats as guardian angels of Tashirojima, where cats outnumber humans.

Legend says the island used to be famous for sericulture and farmers would keep cats because they would chase away rats, protecting the silkworm cocoons from the rodents.

Fishermen on the island have also traditionally believed that cats bring good luck, including large hauls of fish.

Another legend says fishermen used to watch the cats’ behavior for tips on the coming weather before heading to sea.

The islanders have long coexisted with the cats. One day, however, a fisherman accidentally injured a cat while working. Feeling sorry for the injury, the islanders built the shrine for cats.

Here’s that shrine, but first a note from Wikipedia:

There is a small cat shrine, known as neko-jinja (猫神社), in the middle of the island, roughly situated between the two villages. In the past, the islanders raised silkworms for silk, and cats were kept in order to keep the mouse population down (because mice are a natural predator of silkworms). Fixed-net fishing was commonly practiced on the island after the Edo period, and fishers from other areas would come and stay on the island overnight. The cats would go to the inns where the fishers were staying and beg for scraps. Over time, the fishers developed a fondness for the cats and would observe the cats closely, interpreting their actions as predictions of the weather and fish patterns. One day, when the fishers were collecting rocks to use with the fixed-nets, a stray rock fell and killed one of the cats. The fishers, feeling sorry for the loss of the cat, buried it and enshrined it at this location on the island.

There are at least ten cat shrines in Miyagi Prefecture. There are also 51 stone monuments in the shape of cats, which is an unusually high number compared to the other prefectures. In particular, these shrines and monuments are concentrated in the southern area of the island, overlapping with the regions where silkworms were raised.

The shrine:

ja:user:ダダ, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Tashirojima is part of the city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture in the Tohoku region, which became well known after a tsunami devastated the area following a massive magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011.

Over 100 cats inhabit Tashirojima, along with about 50 humans, according to the city’s website.

Wikipedia adds that there are no dogs, and gives this info:

Along a paved road running about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) between the island’s two ports, cats groom themselves and mingle with other cats.

There are a few cafes and inns, but no car rental shops, gas stations or public transportation. Tourists are expected to walk up and down the island’s hills while visiting.

Most of the cats are used to tourists, who can be seen petting the friendly animals throughout the island.

A photo from the AP of direction signs—and a cat, of course (credit: HK Photo; Hiro Komae)

From Wikipedia:

By 2015, the human population numbered around 80, while the total cat population exceeded that by several hundred, with at least 150 cats permanently residing in one of the villages. A vet traveled to the island every two months to examine the village-dwelling cats. While the cat population is mostly made up of crossbreeds and mixed-breed cats, one distinct breed commonly seen on the island is the Japanese Bobtail.

In Japanese culture, cats are considered to bring good luck, said to bring money and good fortune to all who cross their path. Some even claim that it was the cats who kept the majority of the island from being destroyed during the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Another photo from the AP article: cats being fed at a cat cafe (credit HK photo, Hiro Komae):

From Wikipedia:

Since 83% of the population is classified as elderly, the island’s villages have been designated as a “terminal village” (限界集落, genkai-shūraku) which means that with 50% or more of the population being over 65 years of age, the survival of the village is threatened.  The majority of the people who live on the island are involved either in fishing or hospitality.

The island is also known as Manga Island, as mangaka Shotaro Ishinomori planned to move to the island shortly before his death. There are manga-themed lodges on the island, resembling cats.

Here’s one of the lodges from the Manga Island site, which gives useful information about how to visit:

. . . and more cats on Tashirojima (photo: Hiro Komae):

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

Here’s a NYT article about an annual parade in Belgium for cats; the article is also archived here.  Click to read:

An excerpt:

A 7-year-old girl hawks cat-themed souvenirs in Flemish outside her parents’ shop. Two women in matching cat print dresses wander down a crowded street looking for a place to buy stuffed plush kitties. In every store and restaurant window, a cat figurine or statue signals allegiance to the feline persuasion.

This is Kattenstoet, Belgium’s cat-themed parade and festival.

JAC: I believe “Kattenstoet” means “Cat festival”.  And Ieper used to be known as “Ypres,” site of an infamous battle in WWI.

Tucked among rolling farmland in the West Flanders region near the border with France, Ieper, Belgium, has not always had such an adoring relationship with cats. In the Middle Ages, when the city’s main industry was cloth making, they used cats to keep wool warehouses free of mice and other vermin. But when the felines began reproducing too quickly, town officials developed a ghastly solution: During the second week of Lent, on “Cat Wednesday,” cats were tossed to their deaths out of the belfry tower onto the town square below. At the time, the animals were seen as a symbol of witchcraft and evil, so their deaths were celebrated.

The last live cat was thrown in 1817, but Ieper (also called Ypres in French) developed Kattenstoet in 1937, a tradition to both acknowledge the city’s gruesome history and celebrate cats. The parade, which was held on Sunday, May 12, is filled with elaborate floats, costumes and performances. Afterward, a person dressed as a jester tosses stuffed animal cats from the belfry, down to the onlookers below.

UGH. Do they have to toss the stuffed cats?

One woman, wearing cat ears while sitting on the curb eating a Belgian waffle, said she had traveled from Tokyo to catch the parade. Another, who identified herself as Beth from Northamptonshire, England, said she’d grown up coming to Ieper with her family to visit the British war memorials, but this was her first time attending Kattenstoet. Though she only owns one cat, a Maine Coon named Kimber, she has him and six of her former feline friends tattooed on her left arm.

There’s a lot more, and photographs (which I dare not show because the copyright Pecksniffs will get me), but look at the archived version.  Here’s a photo from Wikipedia:

User cirdub at flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

. . . and a video of the 2018 parade; watch for the people dressed as cats:

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

From Bored Panda we have a panoply of religiously-themed cat photos. I’ll show a few; click the headline below to see them all.

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Lagniappe: From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a 9-year-old girl sets up a lemonade stand, with proceeds going to rescue cats. Click to read, and I’ll give an excerpt:

When Steve the cat passed away last month at the age of 16, 9-year-old Ivy Larson wanted to do something to honor him.

She set up a lemonade stand in front of her father’s house on Mount Washington and donated the proceeds to Nose 2 Tail, a cat rescue based near her mother’s home in McDonald.

good cat

“I wanted to help the cats there,” Ivy said. “I love cats … and Nose 2 Tail is right near my house.”

So the dogs didn’t feel left out, she also had homemade dog treats for the dogs that walked by her lemonade stand.

Joe Larson, Ivy’s father, said that the neighbors and community have been wonderfully supportive and gave generously in Steve’s honor.

They raised $150 and plan to have another lemonade stand on the Fourth of July on Hallock Street, Mount Washington, from noon-3 p.m. You can also contribute online in Steve’s honor at nose2tailcatrescue.org.

 

h/t: Laurie Ann, Ginger K.

In lieu of a Readers’ Wildlife today (I’m running low again), we’ll have a “spot the. . . ” feature sent in by reader Charles Schwing.  Here’s his lead-in:

I noticed an adult doe relaxing in our backyard in Napa, California, and chewing her cud. Knowing that this time of year there will usually be a fawn or two accompanying each doe, I started looking. It didn’t take long to spot
one – located where we often see backyard deer. Closer inspection revealed a second fawn.

As I was searching for the young ‘uns, the “Spot the …” WEIT posts came to mind. I especially liked the idea of a “Spot the fawn” challenge since the fawns are themselves spotted. Indeed, it was the spots that caught my eye and revealed the second fawn. I apologize for the low resolution of my 20+ year old digicam. This challenge would be much easier with more pixels. I also wish I’d snapped a pic of mom, but shewas gone by the time I thought of submitting this. Happy non-lethal hunting.

Very often, a mother deer will leave her fawns alone when she goes off to graze, and they remain still while she’s gone, often lying down. If you find one or two fawns alone in the forest, don’t try to rescue them, for mom will be back soon.

Can you see the two fawns in this photo, which I consider “medium hard”.  Please just say “yes” or “no” in the comments and don’t give away their location.  At the very least you’ll see how good their camouflage is.

Click the photo to enlarge it, and I’ll put up the reveal at 11 a.m. Chicago time.

Simulating Black Holes; News Items: DNA Nano Killbot, Bionic Leg, Neanderthal with Downs, Festival Fail, Kugelblitz Black Holes; Who's That Noisy; Name That Logical Fallacy; Science or Fiction

"There is an ongoing, competitive process of writing the history of the pandemic."

The post Pandemic Revisionism: Doctors Who Defend Dr. Scott Atlas Are Afraid to Accurately Quote Dr. Scott Atlas. I’m Not. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss446_John_Mackey_2024_07_09.mp3 Download MP3

Whole Foods Market’s Cofounder and CEO for 44 years, John Mackey offers an intimate and provocative account of the rise of this iconic company and the personal and spiritual journey that inspired its remarkable impact.

The growth of Whole Foods isn’t just a business success story—it’s the story of a retail, cultural, and dietary revolution that has forever changed the industry and the way we eat. After more than four decades at the helm, John Mackey is ready to share never-before-told tales of the people and passions behind the beloved brand.

The Whole Story invites readers on the adventure of building Whole Foods Market: the colorful cast of idealists and foodies who formed the company’s DNA, the many breakthroughs and missteps; the camaraderie and the conflict, and the narrowly avoided disasters. Mackey takes us inside some of the most consequential decisions he had to make and honestly shares his regrets looking back.

For the millions of people who know and love Whole Foods, Mackey’s story is a candid look at the fellowship and meaning born of a shared mission and how an inimitable entrepreneur shepherded a startup hippy food store into the market-leading international brand it is today. John Mackey is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and visionary of Whole Foods Market. In his 44 years of service as CEO, the natural and organic grocer grew from a single store in Austin, Texas, to 540 stores in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, with annual sales exceeding $22 billion. Mackey co-founded the Conscious Capitalism Movement and co-authored a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling book entitled Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business and follow up, Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business. He is also the co-author of The Whole Foods Diet: The Lifesaving Plan for Health and Longevity and The Whole Foods Cookbook: 120 Delicious and Healthy Plant-Centered Recipes. Mackey currently serves on the board of directors for Conscious Capitalism, The Motley Fool, CATO Institute, The Institute for Cultural Evolution, and Students for Liberty and is pursuing his next business venture, Love.Life.

Shermer and Mackey discuss:

• how lives turn out: genes, environment and luck
• born in 1953: timing of going into the natural and organic foods market in the 1970s
• growing up in the 60s and coming of age in the 70s
• influence of his father, family, friends, mentors, teachers
• Trinity University and UT Austin influences
• Do you have to go to college to be successful?
• what makes an entrepreneur successful
• Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality
• from vegetarian co-op to SaferWay (with Renee Lawson) to Whole Foods Market
• from one store to many stores
• unions, salary caps, CEO/worker ratio, employee-owned businesses, regulators
• food quality regulation: private vs. government
• spiritual journey: from Christianity to New Age mysticism, Eastern wisdom, and life-changing awakenings through psychedelics
• political and intellectual development: from countercultural co-op dweller to libertarian and Conscious Capitalist
• libertarianism as a philosophy
• collective action problems: common good vs. individual liberty
• What’s it like getting your company to an IPO?
• What’s it like doing ultra-marathon hiking for days and weeks at a time?

Wars in space are no longer just science fiction. In fact, Space War I has been raging for more than two years, with no quick end in sight. This isn’t the kind of conflict that involves X-wing fighters or Space Marines. Instead, it’s a battle over how satellites are being used to collect imagery, identify military targets and facilitate communications in the war between Ukraine and Russia.

“As I looked at Ukraine in the early months, it was obvious to me: This is the first space war,” says David Ignatius, a journalist who lives a double life as a foreign-affairs columnist for The Washington Post and a spy-thriller novelist.

In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Ignatius delves into the potential national-security threats posed by satellite-based warfare — and how he wove those threats into the plot threads of a new novel titled “Phantom Orbit.” The tale lays out a scenario in which Space War I tips toward a potentially catastrophic Space War II.

Ignatius shies away from calling the novel “science fiction.”

“All of my books really are drawn from my reporting,” he says. “I begin with the real world — the subjects that interest me — and if they seem bigger and more important than I can express in a newspaper column of 800 or 1,200 words, then I think maybe that might be a novel.”

The real-world reporting behind “Phantom Orbit” began in 2017, when Ignatius became intrigued by calls for the creation of the U.S. Space Force. Over the years that followed, he mapped out a spy-novel plot with a Russian satellite researcher as one of the main characters — and made plans for a research trip to Russia’s industrial heartland.

But before he could take that trip, the war in Ukraine broke out in February 2022 — and Russia put Ignatius on its list of banned travelers. “My journalist friends were envious,” he recalls.

David Ignatius is a Washington Post columnist as well as a novelist. (Credit: Stephen Voss)

Ignatius ended up stealing an assortment of plot points from real-life developments in the war in Ukraine — for example, how Russia jammed Viasat’s satellite internet network at the start of its offensive, how SpaceX’s Starlink network stepped into the breach to help Ukraine fight back, and how commercial satellite imagery contributed to Ukraine’s battlefield awareness.

In response, the Russians have escalated the space-based battle — by interfering with Starlink, scrambling satellite navigation systems and  camouflaging its military assets to hide them from satellite sensors.

If Space War I gets hotter, Ignatius worries that Russia may resort to measures that bring down entire satellite constellations. “We should be very scared about the vulnerability of space systems,” he says.

For more than two decades, policymakers have warned about the potential for a “space Pearl Harbor” — a sneak attack on America’s orbital assets. Ignatius points to U.S. Rep. Mike Turner’s recent warning about the potential for Russia to use nuclear weapons in space. Such weapons might destroy enough satellites to create a crippling debris field in orbit, or shut down electronics with an electromagnetic pulse.

“The Russians understand their vulnerability in space. They understand that the United States and its commercial companies would suffer asymmetric damage. We’d suffer a lot more than Russia or China,” Ignatius says. “So, they’re willing to go forward with this planning, and it ought to scare the heck out of people.”

What is to be done? “What I would say, first, is that our existing systems in space need to be hardened,” Ignatius says. “They need to be less vulnerable to all of the mischief that an adversary could attempt.”

The U.S. Space Force is already well into its effort to make satellite networks more resilient — and more replaceable in the event of an attack. That’s what its “Tactically Responsive Space” initiative is all about. Millions of dollars are being paid out to commercial ventures to demonstrate how they could help the U.S. military send up fresh assets to support existing networks in a matter of days, if not hours.

“Phantom Orbit” by David Ignatius. (Jacket Design: Pete Garceau for W.W. Norton & Co.)

One rapid-response demonstration mission, known as Victus Nox, was conducted successfully last year with Firefly Aerospace and Millennium Space Systems serving as the Space Force’s commercial partners. Another demonstration, Victus Haze, is currently being readied by Rocket Lab and True Anomaly. In all, a dozen commercial launch providers are on the Space Force’s list for future rapid-response satellite missions.

The Space Force is even supporting the development of new space station architectures — such as the orbital system being built by Gravitics, a Seattle-area startup.

Keeping track of what’s going on in orbit — also known as space domain awareness — is another must-have for ensuring America’s space security. With Pentagon support, True Anomaly, Starfish Space and Northrop Grumman’s SpaceLogistics subsidiary are working on spacecraft that could approach other satellites in orbit to inspect them, refuel them, boost them into different orbits or deorbit them safely.

In the Fiction Science podcast, Ignatius hints that there may be bigger things to come. “I was just hearing about a company that’s going to radically change the way space and other big weapons systems are built,” he says. “It will revolutionize how weapons are built. The Russians and Chinese just don’t have anything remotely like that kind of creativity. So, there are a lot of reasons that I think people should be worried, but that’s a reason people should be reassured.”

Which begs the question: Which company is Ignatius talking about? If I had to guess, I’d put a bet down on a defense-tech startup called Anduril. But Ignatius isn’t telling. At least, not yet.

“It’s coming to a Washington Post near you,” he says with a laugh.

“Phantom Orbit” is David Ignatius’ 12th novel. Check out DavidIgnatius.com for links to information about his books and about his columns for The Washington Post. He’ll participate in a live online chat with readers on July 15.

For more about space security policy, check out the resources offered by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, including the center’s latest Space Threat Assessment. Ignatius also recommends resources provided by The Aerospace Corp.

This report and the accompanying podcast were originally published on Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log. 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 The First Space War Is Here: Find Out How the Next One May Play Out appeared first on Universe Today.

In the beginning, the Universe was all primordial gas. Somehow, some of it was swept up into supermassive black holes (SMBHs), the gargantuan singularities that reside at the heart of galaxies. The details of how that happened and how SMBHs accumulate mass are some of astrophysics’ biggest questions.

Black hole science took a big step in 2019 when the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first image of a black hole. That SMBH was in Messier 87, a supergiant elliptical galaxy over 50 million light-years from Earth. As fascinating an accomplishment as that was, it didn’t answer our longstanding questions about how these objects become so massive.

Scientists know that two main processes govern SMBH growth: They accrete cold gas from their host galaxy, and they merge during galaxy collisions.

But there are some mysterious, unanswered questions. One concerns their origins. We can see SMBHs accreting matter, but the speed at which they acquire mass can’t really explain their size. Some of them are billions of times more massive than the Sun. Did SMBHs have some type of growth spurt in the Universe’s early ages?

What about intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs.) Are these elusive objects, which may reside in the center of globular clusters, stepping stones to SMBHs?

Black hole jets are also mysterious. These jets are extremely powerful and accelerate matter to extreme speeds. Astrophysicists understand the basics of how SMBHs create these jets. But these jets can reach relativistic speeds and how they do that is unclear.

Since SMBHs are so difficult to observe in detail, scientists rely on theories to explain them. Over time, they try to refine their theories. But sometimes, as our observing power increases, our theories don’t match our observations. This is true of the accretion disks around SMBHs. While theory says these disks should be flat like pancakes, observations show that they’re puffy.

This is where simulations come in.

Detailed simulations are one of astrophysicists’ best tools for understanding SMBHs. New research published in The Open Journal of Astrophysics examines the accretion disks around SMBHs with simulations. These disks are the reservoirs of gas that feed SMBH growth. The research is “FORGE’d in FIRE: Resolving the End of Star Formation and Structure of AGN Accretion Disks from Cosmological Initial Conditions.” The lead author is Philip Hopkins, a professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech.

“Our new simulation marks the culmination of several years of work from two large collaborations started here at Caltech,” said lead author Hopkins in a press release.

Hopkins is talking about FIRE (Feedback in Realistic Environments) and STARFORGE (Star Formation in Gaseous Environments.) STARFORGE is a small-scale simulator that focuses on how individual stars form in clouds of gas called molecular clouds. FIRE focuses on galaxy formation, including things like black hole feedback and quenching.

FIRE and STARFORGE are on opposite ends of a scale, and the new work fills in the gap between the two.

“But there was this big gap between the two,” Hopkins explains. “Now, for the first time, we have bridged that gap.”

“It has recently become possible to zoom in from cosmological to sub-pc scales in galaxy simulations to follow accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs),” the authors write in their research. “However, at some point, the approximations used on ISM <interstellar medium> scales (e.g. optically-thin cooling and stellar-population-integrated star formation [SF] and feedback [FB]) break down.”

The physics driving small-scale accretion is different from the physics driving large-scale accretion. “It is by no means clear what physically occurs when the different physics most relevant on different scales intersect,” the researchers write.

Large-scale simulations are based on things like the collective effects of entire star populations and the initial mass function. Small-scale simulations are based on things like the formation of individual protostars and stellar winds from individual stars. At an even smaller scale, simulations focus on individual aspects of accretion disks around SMBHs.

This figure from the research shows nine different scales with labels appropriate to each: intergalactic medium, circumgalactic medium, galactic interstellar medium, black hole radius of influence, and the rest are written in full. Image Credit: Hopkins et al. 2024.

“As a result, there have not been simulations that can span all three of these regimes simultaneously and self-consistently,” Hopkins and his co-authors explain.

Bridging the gap wasn’t a simple matter. Hopkins and his fellow researchers needed a simulation with much higher resolution. The resolution had to be over 1,000 times greater than the previous best simulator.

“This allows us to span scales from ~100 Mpc down to <100 au (~300 Schwarzschild radii) around an SMBH at a time where it accretes as a bright quasar in a single simulation,” the researchers explain in their paper.

Their simulations had a surprise in store. They show that magnetic forces play a larger role in SMBH accretion disks than thought.

Theory shows that the rotating accretion disks around SMBHs should be flat like pancakes. This is due to the conservation of angular momentum and viscous forces in the disk that distribute momentum, keeping the disk flat. But our theories don’t line up with observations.

“Our theories told us the disks should be flat like crepes,” Hopkins says. “But we knew this wasn’t right because astronomical observations reveal that the disks are actually fluffy—more like an angel cake. Our simulation helped us understand that magnetic fields are propping up the disk material, making it fluffier.”

Supermassive black holes have different activity levels. When they’re actively accreting lots of material, they’re extremely luminous and emit light across the electromagnetic spectrum. In this case, they’re called quasars, and their light output can exceed that of an entire galaxy as large as the Milky Way.

Quasars are enormously powerful, and astrophysicists are keen to understand how the disks around these SMBHs work. These researchers used their simulations to do what they call a “super zoom-in.” For that to work across multiple scales, the simulations must include all kinds of formulae that govern things from simple gravity to dark matter. These things must be computed in parallel, and they feed into each other.

“If you just say gravity pulls everything down and then eventually the gas forms a star and stars just build up, you’ll get everything wildly wrong,” Hopkins explains. Stars are complex objects. They have stellar winds. They can heat up nearby gas. Some are small and dim and last for trillions of years. Some are massive and hot and explode as supernovae at the end of their short lives. Nature is extraordinarily complex, as most people interested in astronomy understand.

Building a simulation that could take all of the details across multiple scales into account is an enormously complex task.

“There were some codes that had the physics that you needed to do the small-scale part of the problem and some codes that had the physics that you needed to do the larger, cosmological part of the problem, but nothing that had both,” Hopkins says.

The team’s work led to a simulation of an SMBH in the early Universe with ten million solar masses. It zooms in as a giant stream of star-forming gas is torn away from its cloud into the accretion disk swirling around the black hole. It keeps zooming in as the gas is drawn closer to the hole.

“In our simulation, we see this accretion disk form around the black hole,” Hopkins says. “We would have been very excited if we had just seen that accretion disk, but what was very surprising was that the simulated disk doesn’t look like what we’ve thought for decades it should look like.”

Black hole theory, dating back to the 1970s, shows that thermal pressure is a dominant force in supermassive black hole accretion disks. These theories show that thermal pressure prevents the disks from collapsing under the extreme gravity exerted by the SMBH. Magnetic fields played a lesser role.

But these simulations show otherwise. They show that the magnetic pressure on the disk is about 10,000 times stronger than the thermal pressure from the gas.

“So, the disks are almost completely controlled by the magnetic fields,” Hopkins says. “The magnetic fields serve many functions, one of which is to prop up the disks and make the material puffy.”

This result changes a lot.

“We show that magnetic fields are critical for a wide range of effects on sub-pc scales within the accretion disk, ranging from maintaining efficient torques and high inflow rates, explaining the scale heights and vertical profiles of the disk structure, the outer size/boundary of the accretion disk, and perhaps most importantly the suppression of star formation at sub-pc scales,” the authors write.

A disk can still form without a magnetic field, but things are drastically different. The disk will be a magnitude or more smaller than a disk with a field. The accretion rate onto the disk can be more than 100 times lower, and the disk can fragment and form stars.

This is just the beginning of the team’s simulations. They intend to publish two additional papers in a series. In those papers, they’ll focus on more details, like star formation and the initial mass function in the inner region around quasars accretion disks.

The post Black Holes Dominate Large Regions of Space, But They’re Mysterious appeared first on Universe Today.

The technologies introduced by the Romans after they conquered Britain led to the kind of economic growth seen in the industrial age

CubeSats are becoming ever more popular, with around 2,400 total launched so far. However, the small size limits their options for fundamental space exploration technologies, including propulsion. They become even more critical when mission planners design missions that require them to travel to other planets or even asteroids. A team from Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi recently released a review of the different Cubesat propulsion technologies currently available – let’s look at their advantages and disadvantages.

The paper breaks propulsion systems into four categories: Chemical, Kinetic, Electrical, and “Propellant-less.” Chemical systems are the traditional rockets most people think of when launching satellites – they burn chemicals together and expel gas created by the fire to produce thrust. Kinetic systems use things like cold gas, where instead of reacting two chemicals together, they simply push gas molecules out to propel themselves in the opposite direction.

Electrical systems are similar to kinetic systems but use an electrical system, such as a Hall Effect thruster, to heat the propellant before it is expelled. Lastly, propulsion-less technologies don’t have any active component and instead, passively use the forces from space itself to move about. The most common example of this is solar sails.

SciShow Space discusses how CubeSat propulsion systems work.
Credit – SciShow Space YouTube Channel

Let’s start with chemical propulsion. This is probably the least helpful setup for Cubesats, as the material requirements for handling small explosions make the supporting infrastructure too bulky and heavy to fit into a traditional CubeSat package. Even though some miniaturized systems that could fit in a CubeSat framework have been developed, chemical propellant systems likely won’t take off soon.

Kinetic systems are much more common for CubeSats, and the paper breaks them down into two major categories: Cold Gas and Resistojet. In the past, we’ve reported about systems that use everything from ammonia to water as kinetic propellants, which would fall under the Cold Gas. If the gas is heated slightly before release, the system becomes a Resistojet configuration. While the heating is nowhere near the level of explosions used in chemical rockets, it still increases the force of the propellant exiting out the thruster’s nozzle.

Electric propulsion is similar in many ways to Kinetic propulsion, but it uses electric energy to heat its propellants before discharge. The paper breaks these technologies into three major categories: Electrothermal discharge, Electrostatic, and Electromagnetic. Electrothermal discharge systems are similar to arcjets, though no system small enough to fit into a Cubesat form factor has yet been developed that can provide the power needed for such a system.

CubeSat Developers talk about developing a micro propulsion system.
Credit – CubeSat Developers Workshop YouTube Channel

Electrospray systems use electrical forces rather than heating to accelerate charged particles used as propellants. Charged particles are accelerated through a magnetic field created by the propulsion system and forced through the thruster’s nozzle at high speed. Electromagnetic systems operate similarly by using an arc to ionize propellant, which is then pushed out by the magnetic field that is formed around the ionized material. Overall, electric systems are becoming more common on CubeSats. Still, their material requirements typically demand high-precision machining and other advanced technologies that make them trickier to develop than simple kinetic systems.

Non-propellant systems have become more widespread with the successful test of Lightsail, the Planetary Society’s solar sail technology demonstrator. However, other propellantless technologies, such as tethers or a magnetic sail that powers itself via the magnetic fields floating around the solar system. At the same time, many of these systems remain in the conceptual phase; their ability to provide potentially limitless thrust appeals to Cubesat designers with longer-term missions in mind. However, they are again limited by material development and size constraints, as large structures are required for many of them, and it is challenging to pack those into the confines of a CubeSat. 

With all the development going on in the world of CubeSats, more ideas will undoubtedly be mooted in the future. With launch costs coming down, more industries and non-governmental organizations will be interested in how the platform could help them. But no matter where CubeSats end up being used, they will have to trust their propulsion systems to get there.

Learn More:
Alnaqbi, Darfilal, & Min Swei – Propulsion Technologies for CubeSats: A Review
UT – The First Cubesat With a Hall-Effect Thruster has Gone to Space
UT – A Flock of CubeSats Will Use Wings to Maneuver at the Edge of Space
UT – Pale Blue Successfully Operates its Water-Based Propulsion System in Orbit

Lead Image:
Two cubesats communicated and then maneuvered towards one another in a recent technology demonstration.
Credit: NASA

The post CubeSat Propulsion Technologies are Taking Off appeared first on Universe Today.

We’ve known about the Denisovans for about 15 years, since part of a finger was found in a Russian cave (the “Denisova Cave“) in 2008 and wasw published two years later.  They were a hominin subspecies like Neanderthals. I consider these groups subspecies of H.sapiens because they both interbred with H. sapiens and left fertile offspring. Denisovans lived in Asia from about 300,000 to 25,000 years ago. (They may also have bred with Neanderthals.)  They are considered a sister taxon to Neanderthals, which means that these two groups shared a common ancestor that had already branched off from the ancestor of “modern” H. sapiens.

Wikipedia gives a useful table of all the known remains of Denisovans, which are judged as a distinct group from DNA sequencing. We have small bits of bone, including teeth, parietal bones, mandibles, and limb bones (and now, according to the Nature article below, a rib bone) from the three locations—all caves—shown below from the Wikipedia map shown below:

And here’s a picture of the Denisova Cave in Russia where it all started:

Xenochka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s a diagram of the route the Denisovans took as they colonized Siberia and SE Asia from the Middle East, as well as a “family tree” on the right showing the sister-group relationship of Neanderthals and Denisovans (the figure presumes that the common ancestor of the two was a different species, Homo heidelbergensis, which, confusingly. has been considered a subspecies of H. erectus or even H. sapiens.

John D. Croft at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Just as many Westerners have some Neanderthal DNA (I have a bit among my Ashkenazi genes), so some Asians and people from Oceania have Denisovan DNA.  This shows the hybridization I talked about above. And if two groups meet, mate, and produce fertile hybrids, they’re considered by evolutionary biologists to be subspecies, not species. Unless, that is, they’re hominins, for paleobiologists love to split names and create new species, a practice that produces more excitement and fame than simply saying “we found a new subspecies of Homo sapiens.”

Well, we’ve known about the Denisovans for a while, so what’s new? This news report from Nature (click to read) gives us a bit more information, like what kind of food they ate, as well as reporting on a new Denisovan rib bone found this year.

The results aren’t that thrilling to me, but many people thrive on human paleobiology, and so here are some extracts from the news:

When life got tough, the Denisovans got tougher. The enigmatic ancient humans hunted birds, rodents, even hyenas, helping them to thrive high on the Tibetan plateau for well over 100,000 years.

Those conclusions emerge from a study of thousands of mostly tiny animal bones that provide an insight into life at Baishiya Karst Cave in China1 — only the second archaeological site known to host Denisovans, after the Siberian cave that gave the group its name. Denisovans are a sister group to Neanderthals, and might have once lived across Asia.

Many of the cave remains could be identified only by their protein signatures. This included a rib bone that represents a new Denisovan individual, one of just a handful known.

“Denisovans are dealing with the full suite of animals they’re surrounded with in order to survive in this quite harsh landscape,” says Frido Welker, an archaeological scientist at the University of Copenhagen who co-led the study, published in Nature on 3 July. “It’s at high altitude. It’s cold. It’s not a nice place to be as a hominin.”

The article they’re discussing, a new one also in Nature, is below: click on the screenshot to read it:

And here’s the paper’s abstract, which discusses not only the discovery of a new rib bone from the cave in Tibet, but also some scratches on associated animal bones, indicating that they’d been processed for food, presumably by Denisovans:

Using zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, we identify a new hominin rib specimen that dates to approximately 48–32 thousand years ago (layer 3). Shotgun proteomic analysis taxonomically assigns this specimen to the Denisovan lineage, extending their presence at Baishiya Karst Cave well into the Late Pleistocene. Throughout the stratigraphic sequence, the faunal assemblage is dominated by Caprinae, together with megaherbivores, carnivores, small mammals and birds. The high proportion of anthropogenic modifications on the bone surfaces suggests that Denisovans were the primary agent of faunal accumulation. The chaîne opératoire of carcass processing indicates that animal taxa were exploited for their meat, marrow and hides, while bone was also used as raw material for the production of tools. Our results shed light on the behaviour of Denisovans and their adaptations to the diverse and fluctuating environments of the late Middle and Late Pleistocene of eastern Eurasia.

Here, from the paper, is a human-cut bird wing bone showing the scratches, probably made when feathers were removed. This happens to be a golden eagle. How did they catch it?

(from the paper): Aquila chrysaetos right humerus (layer 4) with superficial and straight cut mark clusters, associated with the removal of feathers

And here from the paper is a photo of the rib bone from a Denisovan also found in the Tibetan cave, along with a phylogeny showing that the rib is closely related to a Denisovan mandible found in the same cave.  It’s not really earth-shaking that a Denisovan rib would be genetically similar to a Denisovan mandible found in a different level of the same cave, but it does add to the specimens we have. Note as well that Denisovans and Neanderthals are, again, placed by DNA analysis as sister groups: each other’s closest relatives.

(From paper): a, Photograph of the Xiahe 2 specimen. Scale bar, 1 cm. b, Phylogenetic tree for the Xiahe 2 specimen and reference proteomes. Support values at nodes are shown for the maximum likelihood and Bayesian analysis, respectively.

A summary from the News & Views piece of how scientists decided which species the animal bones came from (they used protein sequences from collagen rather than DNA to do this), and which animals they ate:

Proper excavations of the cave revealed more signs of occupation: dirt from the site dating to between 100,000 and 45,000 years ago contained DNA sequences from maternally inherited cell structures called mitochondria, matching those of the Denisova Cave remains. The dig, led by archaeologist Dongju Zhang at Lanzhou University in China, also uncovered thousands of mostly fragmentary animal bones.

To identify more than 2,000 of these remains, Zhang, Welker and their colleagues chemically analysed collagen protein signatures, which vary between animals. Especially common were caprines (the subfamily that includes goat and sheep) as well as wild yak, horses and gazelle. Carnivores, including wolves and foxes, also turned up in the mix.

Many of the bones from the cave, including those of hyena, caprines and golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), contained cut-marks and other signs of human predation. Even rodents and hare were probably hunted: a marmot (Marmota) leg bone was split open, potentially to harvest its marrow. Such small, speedy animals wouldn’t have been easy to catch, says Zhang, and bringing down carnivores such as hyenas would have taken moxie.

And here’s the Tibetan cave, Baishiya Karst Cave.  It’s no wonder they call these hominins “cavemen”. Where else could you get shelter from the rain and wind and a place to process your catch? And cook it, too, for there’s evidence that both the Denisovans and the Neanderthals could probably make fires.

What more do we know now? Well, we know what the Denisovans ate, which is really no surprise. Callaway tries to give his piece more oomph by saying that we now know the Denisovans’ “survival secrets”, but of course they had to eat something. But knowing what they ate is better than nothing. And we also have more bones, though as yet they haven’t yielded much new information. There’s more to come as excavations proceed, but the N&V ends rather lamely:

. . . . scientists’ picture of Denisovans is becoming less opaque thanks to information gleaned from dirt and shards of bone subjected to cutting-edge DNA and protein analysis, says Brown. “Denisovans are essentially, at the moment, a biomolecular population.”

The remains Zhang and her colleagues analysed are from pre-pandemic excavations of Baishiya Karst Cave. But the researchers are now back excavating the enormous cavern, hoping to find more insights into Denisovan life. “We haven’t reached the bottom,” says Zhang.

Perhaps I’ve gotten jaded, for the discovery of a new subspecies of humans in Eastern Asia, one that probably went extinct like the Neanderthals, truly is a surprise.