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UPDATE: Go here for Melanie Phillips’s take on the debate (she had been a “yes” in an earlier debate (2019) on the same question in London).

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Normally you’d have to pay to watch this Munk Debate (they’re all in Toronto),  but it recently appeared on FIRE’s YouTube site.  And normally I wouldn’t watch it as it’s nearly two hours long, but it’s a holiday and I get to do something besides writing.

In my view, this is a “good” debate for two reasons. First, and less important, the opponents of the motion show themselves up to be zealots: both fanatical, purveyors of lies, and swallowers of Hamas propaganda. They both want Israel eliminated in favor of a “one-state” solution, which only a fool would think wouldn’t lead to the elimination and/or dispersal of its Jews. In that sense, the debate shows the opponents of the motion up for who they are, both anti-Zionists and antisemites.

But mainly it’s good because both Murray and Hausdorff show their typical debating skill, eloquence, and adherence to the truth. (As I note below, I’ve already said in previous posts that I agree that modern anti-Zionism (i.e., calls for the elimination of Israel) is also anti-Semitism, so I came to this debate with my own strong pro-proposition opinion. That said, I think I was open to having my mind changed, but I can’t envision what arguments would do it. In the same way, I’m open to see evolution proven as false, but I can’t imagine what arguments (or data) would do it.

Here’s the motion under debate:

Motion: Be it Resolved, anti-Zionism is antisemitism

And here are the relevant definitions given by the moderator:

antisemitism: “Hate directed at Jewish people, or cruel and unfair treatment of people because they are Jewish”

anti-Zionism: being against Zionism, defined as “the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.”

We have four people participating. As the Munk site notes (I’ve added the links to the people):

Arguing for the resolution is award winning journalist, best-selling author, and former Munk Debater Douglas Murray. His debate partner will be Natasha Hausdorff, an international law expert and legal commentator on antisemitism.

Hausdorff is director of the UK Lawyers for Israel, and, like Murray, is whip-smart, eloquent, and passionately pro-Israel. If I had to choose a pair to defend the motion, it would be these two. (Look up some of Hausdorff’s interviews and debates on YouTube.)  Hausdorff is the only one of the four without a Wikpedia page, and that needs to be fixed.

Opposing the resolution is Mehdi Hasan. Mehdi is a best-selling author, former MSNBC anchor, and the CEO and editor-in-chief of the new media company Zeteo. He will be joined by the award winning Israeli broadcaster and Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy.

Hasan had an MSNBC show but left the network when his show was canceled.  Levy, who writes for Haaretz, seems to hate the idea of a Jewish state, for he, like Hasan, favors a “one-state solution” and he also supports boycotts of Israel.  As Malgorzata says, “he believes that Jews can live happily and peacefully alongside Palestinians in a single state.”   She added, “Levy is either a fanatic or stupid—and he’s not stupid.”

There are four six-minute presentations, four three-minute rebuttals, and then the moderator asks the debaters questions, which leads to a back-and-forth that got quite heated, especially on the “no” side. There were lots of interruptions. (Hausdorff, however, seems incapable of shows of anger, but she’s nevertheless passionate.) Finally, the debate ends with four 4-minute closing statements by the debaters and then the final vote (spoiler: Murray and Hausdorff win).

But enough palaver.  Watch for yourself. The debate preliminaries start at 4:00, while the debate proper starts at 14:02 with Douglas Murray’s 6-minute statement.

My notes as I watched:

Hausdorff’s opening speech, giving what she sees as the four “blood libels” of anti-Zionism, is magnificent. These are, she avers, libels used by anti-semites to justify their ant-Zionism. She denies that (at least now) Zionism is not a political movement.

Levy, on the other hand, sees Zionism as “Jewish supremacy.” By that I don’t think he means Jews are superior to all other people or to the Arab citizens of Israel. Rather, he sees Zionism as the view that Jews are superior to Palestinians.  This is likely connected with his preferred “one-state” solution. Levy thus sees Zionism as an ideology: the doctrine of Jewish supremacy that has to be leveled by creating one Jewish + Palestinian state. He also argues that Israel is “more Jewish than democratic” as sees Israel as “occupiers”.

In his own rebuttal, Hasan agrees that Zionism is the doctrine of “Jewish supremacy”.

In her rebuttal, Hausdorff argues that the use of double standards against Jewish state omstantiates both anti-Zionism AND anti-Semitism. She scores a huge debate point when she catches Hasan lying about the Balfour declaratin, and happens to have his out-of-context quote on hand, which she corrects.

In his rebuttal, Levy argues that to create a real democracy in Israel, you more or less have to get rid of Israel, creating a single state in which there is a single regime promoting equality of Palestinians and Israels. Levy, an Israeli Jew, apparently believes that Israel is not a democracy because citizens of the Palestinian territories can’t vote in Israeli elections. Murray calls both of his opponents out for argui9ng Israel is not a “democracy.” Indeed, that argument is not even stupid.

One of the best parts of the debate is Murray’s description of how anti-Israel students in America (and other countries, I suppose) as falling in two classes: the “sinister and the silly” That starts at 1:10:16.

To my mind, the most sagacious statement of the debate was Hausdorff’s analogy that, to her, explains why antisemitism is the same thing as anti-Zionism.  She says that a couple can argue about whether or not to have a child, and that there could be good arguments on both sides. But she adds this: “Once a child is born, to suggest that that child be got rid of is murder.”  What she means, of course, is that before 1948 there was a debate, even among Jews, about whether a Jewish state should be created. But once it came into being in that year, it was a fait accompli, Jews flocked there to find refuge, and it is a nation like other nations, with the right to defend itself against aggression.

That is why to Hausdorff, and to me, it is murder to call for the elimination of a Jewish state that already exists. Whether it be through war or the one-state “solution”, that elimination, an “anti-Zionist” endeavor, shows “cruel and unfair treatment of people because they are Jewish”—the given definition of anti-Semitism.

In the end, the “one-state solution” will lead not only to dissolution of Israel, but the targeting of Jews.  Since both Levy and Hasan favor that “one-state solution”, they are in effect calling for either the destruction of the Jews through murder or through dispersion of them throughout the world, for those are the two fates of the Jews under a one-state “solution.” Antisemitism, as Murray maintains, has taken the form of anti-Zionism.

You may ask yourself, as I did, whether a Jew like Levy can be antisemitic if they are anti-Zionist. How can a Jew be antisemitic? The answer is this: for the same reason that an American can be anti-American. In the end it’s not your own identity that determines whether or not you like or hate that identity, but how you feel about those who share your identity.

Unique cell responses mean some people may be immune to catching the coronavirus, even if they are unvaccinated

A material made of liquid salt mixed with polymers is extremely stretchy but still as strong as the plastics used to make water bottles

The New Horizons mission to Pluto, now zooming out of the Kuiper belt, has made a discovery that could upend what we know about where the solar system ends

A giant flower, one of the smelliest in the world, is currently blooming at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Studying the history of science shows how often serendipity plays a role in some of the most important discoveries. Sometimes, the stories are apocryphal, like Newton getting hit on the head with an apple. But sometimes, there’s an element of truth to them. That was the case for a new discovery of the oldest pair of merging quasars ever discovered – and it all started with a pair of red blots on a picture.

Those red blots were on a very particular picture – one taken by the Hyper Subprime-Cam on the Subaru telescope in Manuakea, Hawai’i. Yoshiki Matsuoka of Ehime University in Japan, who was manually reviewing the picture with colleagues, noticed two faint red splotches. Unlike an automated algorithm, which might have overlooked them, he was interested in what might have caused them and decided to look closer.

To do so, he recruited another instrument on the Subaru telescope, known as the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph, and the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph on the neighboring Gemini North telescope. After combing through this more targeted data, Dr. Matsuoka and his colleagues found something no one had seen before—a pair of merging quasars from less than a billion years after the universe was created.

Fraser explains what a quasar is, and why they’re so important.

Quasar mergers were theorized to happen all the time during that period, but despite having found 300 separate quasars around the same time frame, astronomers had yet to find any pairs. This was important because that time period, known as the Epoch of Reionization, was key in creating the structure of the modern-day universe.

During the Epoch of Reionization, energy, potentially from merging quasars, stripped the free-floating hydrogen abundant in the early universe of its electrons in a process called ionization. Around 1 billion years after the Big Bang and the theoretical end of the Epoch of Reionization, the structure of the modern universe was largely settled, and it had officially moved out of the period known as the “cosmic dark ages.” 

Understanding this period is critical for theorizing how the universe formed. Astronomers had long thought that merging quasars would have been common in the period, as supermassive black holes were relatively close, and structures were still working themselves out. So, the lack of them in experimental data was concerning. 

Quasars aren’t only ancient history – could our own supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way become one?

Enter the pair found by Dr. Matsuoka and his colleagues. They appear about 900 million years after the Big Bang, still well within the Epoch of Reionization. However, collecting data on them wasn’t easy, as old objects suffer from contamination in their signals, such as gravitational lensing and stars in the foreground. The researchers eventually found that some of the optical light wasn’t directly coming from the quasars but rather the formation of stars around them.

However, the quasars were massive behemoths, weighing over 100 million times more than our Sun. They also had a bridge of gas connecting them, implying that the two galaxies they formed the core of were undergoing a massive merger, which we will now get to observe as it happens. 

That merger is going to take millions, if not billions, of years, though, so it might be some time before we see the full effect. But in the meantime, cosmologists can start studying this quasar pair in earnest to see what other details can be gleaned about the Epoch of Reionization or the formation of the universe more generally. And it will all happen because someone noticed some red blots on a picture and decided to investigate it further.

Learn More:
NOIRLab – International Gemini Observatory and Subaru Combine Forces to Discover First Ever Pair of Merging Quasars at Cosmic Dawn
Matsuoka et al – Discovery of Merging Twin Quasars at z = 6.05
UT – Hubble Sees Two Quasars Side by Side in the Early Universe
UT – The James Webb Is Getting Closer to Finding What Ionized the Universe

Lead Image:
Illustration of merging quasars
Credit – NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick

The post The Earliest Merging Quasars Ever Seen appeared first on Universe Today.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “perfect,” is a bit confusing.  Mo can be imperfect, but he could also be right in asserting that Allah is the true God. He’s wrong, of course, but I don’t think Mo is being mendacious!

Sadly, we’ve nearly run out of wildlife photos. I could put up one, but that’s all I have that contains acceptable photos.  I hope readers will consider using this holiday (well, American readers) to put together some photos to display.  Otherwise, this feature will be sporadic at best.

Help me (and us) out if you can!

Thank you.

We can add decaffeinated (decaf) products to the list of things you probably shouldn’t worry about but someone wants to make you worry anyway. You may have read recently that some decaf coffee and tea brands have “chemicals” in them that may be a health risk. The real story, as you might imagine, is more complicated. The cause of the recent headlines […]

The post The Decaf Wars first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Radiation surveys suggest that it is now safe to grow food on farmland that has been unused since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but changing its status would face local opposition in Ukraine

The Hubble Space Telescope has experienced ongoing problems with one of its three remaining gyroscopes, so NASA has decided to shift the telescope into single gyro mode. While the venerable space telescope has now returned to daily science operations, single gyro mode means Hubble will only use one gyro to maintain a lock on its target. This will slow its slew time and decrease some of its scientific output. But this plan increases the overall lifetime of the 34-year-old telescope, keeping one gyro in reserve. NASA is also troubleshooting the malfunctioning gyro, hoping to return it online.

Last week, NASA said that the telescope and its instruments are stable and functioning normally.

Gyroscopes help the telescope orient itself in space, keeping it stable to precisely point at astronomical targets in the distant Universe. Hubble went into safe mode back in November 2023, and then again in April and May 2024 due to the ongoing issue, where the one gyro had been increasingly returning faulty readings.

The end of a Hubble gyro reveals the hair-thin wires known as flex leads. They carry data and electricity inside the gyro. Credit: NASA

Going in to safe mode suspends science operations, and in the meantime, engineers tried to troubleshoot to figure out why the gyro experiencing the fault-producing issues and doing work-arounds to get the telescope up and running again. The most recent last safe-mode event in May led the Hubble team to transition from a three-gyro operating mode to observing with only one gyro. This enables more consistent science observations while keeping the other operational gyro available for future use.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has more than doubled its expected design lifetime, providing stunning images and scientific discoveries that have changed our understanding of the Universe and re-written astronomy textbooks.  

During its 34-year history, Hubble has had eight out of 22 gyros fail due to a corroded flex lead, which are thin (less than the width of a human hair) metal wires, that carry power in, and data out, of the gyro.  The flex leads pass through a thick fluid inside the gyro and over time, the flex leads begin to corrode and can physically bend or break.

With his feet firmly anchored on the shuttle’s robotic arm, astronaut Mike Good maneuvers to retrieve the tool caddy required to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph during the final Hubble servicing mission in May 2009. Periodic upgrades have kept the telescope equipped with state-of-the-art instruments, which have given astronomers increasingly better views of the cosmos. Credits: NASA

Thankfully, for the first 18 years of Hubble’s life in space, the telescope had the advantage of being able to be serviced and upgraded by space shuttle astronauts. For example, in 1999, four out of six gyros had failed, with the last one failing about a month before a servicing mission was scheduled to replace them (and do other upgrades to the telescope). This meant Hubble sat in safe mode waiting for the space shuttle and astronauts to arrive.

When the final planned Hubble servicing mission was (temporarily) canceled following the space shuttle Columbia disaster, engineers developed and inaugurated a two-gyro mode to prolong Hubble’s life. The mission was reinstated after outcry from scientists and the public, and so NASA figured out a way to mitigate the risks of flying the space shuttle. Servicing Mission 4 replaced all six gyros one last time in 2009, but it has been running on three since 2018. The three gyros all quit working due to flex lead failures. The retirement of the space shuttle means Hubble has now been operating for 15 years without servicing.

The Hubble Rate Gyro Assembly contains a gyroscope and all of its associated electronics. The gyroscopes are part of Hubble’s pointing system. They provide a frame of reference for Hubble to determine where it is pointing and how that pointing changes as the telescope moves across the sky. They report any small movements of the spacecraft to Hubble’s pointing and Control System. The computer then commands the spinning reaction wheels to keep the spacecraft stable or moving at the desired rate. Credit: NASA

However, during the time it was thought no future servicing mission would happen, the team also devised a one-gyro mode, which will further extend Hubble’s life.

“We knew gyros would be a limiting factor so we started to working on a reduced gyro mode to extend their life,” the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute Ken Sembach told me back in 2015 for my book, “Incredible Stories From Space.” “As it turned out, we did need that reduced gyro mode, and now they aren’t [as big of a] limiting factor for Hubble because we now know how to use the gyro resources in a new way. That added a longer life to the mission we didn’t think we would have.”

While engineers say the difference between two-gyro mode and one gyro-mode is negligible, one-gyro mode provides the option to have one of the remaining gyros placed in reserve.

NASA says that although one-gyro mode is an excellent way to keep Hubble science operations going, it does have limitations, which include a small decrease in efficiency (roughly 12 percent) due to the added time required to slew and lock the telescope onto a science target. One gyro mode also means it takes additional time for the telescope’s fine guidance sensors to search for the guide stars. Additionally, in one-gyro mode Hubble has some restrictions on the science it can do. For example, Hubble cannot track moving objects that are closer to Earth than the orbit of Mars. Without the full complement of gyros, the motion of these objects are too fast for the telescope to track. Additionally, the reduced area of sky that Hubble can point to at any given time also reduces its flexibility to see transient events or targets of opportunity like an exploding star or an impact on Jupiter. NASA says that when combined, “these factors may yield a decrease in productivity of roughly 20 to 25 percent from the typical observing program conducted in the past using all three gyros.”

Read more about the “new normal” for Hubble’s one-gyro mode at this NASA webpage.

The post Hubble's Back, but Only Using One Gyro appeared first on Universe Today.

Humans may have shaped the development of aromatic herbs like lavender and mint, but did herbs also shape our own evolution?

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sciencesalon/mss441_Michelle_Dowd_2024_06_18.mp3 Download MP3

As a child, Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. She was born into an ultra-religious cult, “The Field,” started in the 1930s by her grandfather, who convinced generations of young male followers that he would live five hundred years and ascend to the heavens when doomsday came. Comfort and care are sins, Michelle is told. As a result, she was forced to learn the skills necessary to battle hunger, thirst, and cold; she learns to trust animals more than humans; and most importantly, she learns how to survive in the natural world.

At “The Field,” a young Michelle lives a life of abuse, poverty, and isolation as she obeys her family’s rigorous religious and patriarchal rules. But as Michelle gets older, she realizes she has the strength to break free. Focus on what will sustain you, she tells herself. Use everything. Waste nothing. Get to know the intricacies of the land, like the intricacies of your body. And so she does.

Using stories of individual edible plants and their uses to anchor each chapter, Forager is both a searing coming-of-age story and a meditation on the ways in which understanding nature can lead to freedom, even joy.

Michelle Dowd is a professor of journalism at Chaffey College and contributor to The New York Times, Alpinist, The Los Angeles Book Review, Catapult, OnlySky, and other national publications. She founded The Chaffey Review, an award-winning literary journal, advises student media, teaches poetry and critical thinking in the California State prisons, and has been recognized as a Longreads Top 5 for The Thing with Feathers, on the relationship between environmentalism and hope. She grew up in a family cult called “The Field,” located in a compound in the Angeles Forest outside of Los Angeles. After escaping the cult she found her way into college, earning a degree from the prestigious liberal-arts Pitzer College, then went on to earn a graduate degree from the University of Boulder. Her memoir is Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Earth’s protective atmosphere has sheltered life for billions of years, creating a haven where evolution produced complex lifeforms like us. The ozone layer plays a critical role in shielding the biosphere from deadly UV radiation. It blocks 99% of the Sun’s powerful UV output. Earth’s magnetosphere also shelters us.

But the Sun is relatively tame. How effective are the ozone and the magnetosphere at protecting us from powerful supernova explosions?

Every million years—a small fraction of Earth’s 4.5 billion-year lifetime—a massive star explodes within 100 parsecs (326 light-years) of Earth. We know this because our Solar System sits inside a massive bubble in space called the Local Bubble. It’s a cavernous region of space where hydrogen density is much lower than outside the bubble. A series of supernovae explosions in the previous 10 to 20 million years carved out the bubble.

Supernovae are dangerous, and the closer a planet is to one, the more deadly its effects. Scientists have speculated on the effects that supernova explosions have had on Earth, wondering if it triggered mass extinctions or at least partial extinctions. A supernova’s gamma-ray burst and cosmic rays can deplete Earth’s ozone and allow ionizing UV radiation to reach the planet’s surface. The effects can also create more aerosol particles in the atmosphere, increasing cloud coverage and causing global cooling.

A new research article in Nature Communications Earth and Environment examines supernova explosions and their effect on Earth. It is titled “Earth’s Atmosphere Protects the Biosphere from Nearby Supernovae.” The lead author is Theodoros Christoudias from the Climate and Atmosphere Research Center, Cyprus Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus.

The Local Bubble isn’t the only evidence of nearby core-collapse supernovae (SNe) in the last few million years. Ocean sediments also contain 60Fe, a radioactive isotope of iron with a half-life of 2.6 million years. SNe expel 60Fe into space when they explode, indicating that a nearby supernova exploded about 2 million years ago. There’s also 60Fe in sediments that indicate another SN explosion about 8 million years ago.

This graphic from the research article shows the potential atmospheric and climate impacts of a nearby supernova. Gamma rays can deplete the ozone, allowing more UV radiation to reach Earth’s surface. Some UV radiation is ionizing, meaning it can damage DNA. Cosmic rays can also create more condensation nuclei, meaning more clouds and potential global cooling, Image Credit: Christoudias et al. 2024

Researchers have correlated an SN explosion with the Late Devonian extinction about 370 million years ago. In one paper, researchers found plant spores burned by UV light, an indication that something powerful depleted Earth’s ozone layer. In fact, Earth’s biodiversity declined for about 300,000 years prior to the Late Devonian extinction, suggesting that multiple SNe could’ve played a role.

Earth’s ozone layer is in constant flux. As UV energy reaches it, it breaks ozone molecules (O3) apart. That dissipates the UV energy, and the oxygen atoms combine into O3 again. The cycle repeats. That’s a simplified version of the atmospheric chemistry involved, but it serves to illustrate the cycle. A nearby supernova could overwhelm the cycle, depleting the ozone column density and allowing more deadly UV to reach Earth’s surface.

But in the new paper, Christoudias and his fellow authors suggest that Earth’s ozone layer is much more resilient than thought and provides ample protection against SNe within 100 parsecs. While previous researchers have modelled Earth’s atmosphere and its response to a nearby SN, the authors say that they’ve improved on that work.

They modelled Earth’s atmosphere with an Earth Systems Model with Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model to study the impact of nearby SNe explosions on Earth’s atmosphere. Using EMAC, the authors say they’ve modelled “the complex atmospheric circulation dynamics, chemistry, and process feedbacks” of Earth’s atmosphere. These are needed to “simulate stratospheric ozone loss in response to elevated ionization, leading to ion-induced nucleation and particle growth to CCN” (cloud condensation nuclei.)

“We assume a representative nearby SN with GCR (galactic cosmic ray) ionization rates in the atmosphere that are 100 times present levels,” they write. That correlates with a supernova explosion about 100 parsecs or 326 light-years away.

These panels from the research letter show the ozone column percentage decrease from a 100-fold increase in GCR intensity over nominal. The left vertical axis represents Earth’s latitude, and the x-axis shows the time of year. Ozone loss is more pronounced over the poles due to the effect of Earth’s magnetosphere, where it’s weaker. a is present-day Earth, while b represents an ancient Earth with only 2% oxygen during the pre-Cambrian. Image Credit: Christoudias et al. 2024

“The maximum ozone depletion over the poles is less than the present-day anthropogenic ozone hole over Antarctica, which amounts to an ozone column loss of 60–70%,” the authors explain. “On the other hand, there is an increase of ozone in the troposphere, but it is well within the levels resulting from recent anthropogenic pollution.”

But let’s cut to the chase. We want to know if Earth’s biosphere is safe or not.

The maximum mean stratospheric ozone depletion from 100 times more ionizing radiation than normal, representative of a nearby SN, is about 10% globally. That’s about the same decrease as our anthropogenic pollution causes. It wouldn’t affect the biosphere very much.

“Although significant, it is unlikely that such ozone changes would have a major impact on the biosphere, especially because most of the ozone loss is found to occur at high latitudes,” the authors explain.

But that’s for modern Earth. During the pre-Cambrian, before life exploded in a multiplication of forms, the atmosphere had only about 2% oxygen. How would an SN affect that? “We simulated a 2% oxygen atmosphere since this would likely represent conditions where the emerging biosphere on land would still be particularly sensitive to ozone depletion,” the authors write.

“Ozone loss is about 10–25% at mid-latitudes and an order of magnitude lower in the tropics,” the authors write. At minimum ozone levels at the poles, ionizing radiation from an SN could actually end up increasing the ozone column. “We conclude that these changes of atmospheric ozone are unlikely to have had a major impact on the emerging biosphere on land during the Cambrian,” they conclude.

What about global cooling?

Global cooling would increase, but not to a dangerous extent. Over the Pacific and Southern oceans, CCN could increase by up to 100%, which sounds like a lot. “These changes, while climatically relevant, are comparable to the contrast between the pristine pre-industrial atmosphere and the polluted present-day atmosphere.” They’re saying that it would cool the atmosphere by about the same amount as we’re heating it now.

These two panels from the research help illustrate the global cooling effect from a nearby SN exposing Earth to 100 times more ionizing radiation. b shows the fractional change in CCN relative to the present day. d shows the fractional change in outgoing solar radiation relative to the present day due to increased cloud albedo. Image Credit: Christoudias et al. 2024

The researchers point out that their study concerns the entire biosphere, not individuals. “Our study does not consider the direct health risks to humans and animals resulting from exposure to elevated ionizing radiation,” they write. Depending on individual circumstances, individuals could be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation over time. But overall, the biosphere would hum along despite a 100-fold increase in UV radiation. Our atmosphere and magnetosphere can handle it.

“Overall, we find that nearby SNe are unlikely to have caused mass extinctions on Earth,” the authors write. “We conclude that our planet’s atmosphere and geomagnetic field effectively shield the biosphere from the effects of nearby SNe, which has allowed life to evolve on land over the last hundreds of million years.”

This study shows that Earth’s biosphere will not suffer greatly as long as supernova explosions keep their distance.

The post Earth’s Atmosphere is Our Best Defence Against Nearby Supernovae appeared first on Universe Today.

More than 130 years after cyclodextrins were first discovered and reported, a team of scientists has created chemical mirror images of these complex carbohydrates in the laboratory. This discovery may revolutionize how medications are delivered to patients.

A new technique can model an entire 3D scene, including areas hidden from view, from just one camera image. The method relies on image shadows, which provide information about the geometry and location of hidden objects.

A new technique can model an entire 3D scene, including areas hidden from view, from just one camera image. The method relies on image shadows, which provide information about the geometry and location of hidden objects.

New simulations show that hot neutrinos created at the interface of merging binary neutron stars are briefy trapped and remain out of equilibrium with the cold cores of the stars for 2 to 3 milliseconds.

The chemical composition of Pluto and Triton suggests they originated in the same region of the outer solar system before the latter was pulled into Neptune’s orbit

Speaking of Steve Pinker (see previous press), Free Press‘s Michael Moynihan conducted a new 43-minute video interview with the man (below), who of course is writing another book. (I swear, Pinker has future books lined up in his brain, like planes waiting their turn to land.)

Here are the YouTube notes:

In the latest episode of Honestly,Michael Moynihan talks to the Harvard professor and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker.

Pinker is the author of nine books including Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress and Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. He approaches his work with a kind of data-driven optimism about the world that has set him apart from the chorus of doomer voices we hear so much from in our public discourse.

Today, Michael talks to him about why smart people believe stupid things; the psychology of conspiracy theories; free speech and academic freedom; why democracy and enlightenment values are contrary to human nature; the moral panic around AI; and much more.

The discussion begins with a long back and forth on conspiracy theories. Readers will be interested in Pinker’s comments on “the public health establishment”, whose pronouncements were subject to many conspiracy theories during the pandemic; as well as on the theories behind conspiracy theories.  At 12:15, Pinker expostulates on why smart people believe stupid stuff. It turns out that smart people are less likely than others to believe stuff like conspiracy theories, but they are imbued with one common bias (I’ll let you find out what it is, but it’s a bias we all have.)

The discussion then veers to Enlightenment values, which Pinker thinks are “nonintuitive” but still promote progress in the world by dispelling stuff like “magical thinking” (I think that’s his euphemism for religion).  Then it’s onto AI—its benefits and its dangers—a subject that’s very important but still bores me silly.  Those worried about how AI could harm humanity will find plenty of fodder in Pinker’s speculations, though, at you’ll hear, he’s not that worried about those dangers.

At 35 minutes in, Pinker analyzes why people think that there’s a true genocide in Gaza, something contravened by the known facts; he sees the use of that word with respect to Gaza reeflecting both the “myside bias” as well as constituting a “terrible blood libel.”

At the end the discussion turns to the upcoming election, and Pinker emphasizes our lack of knowledge about what will happen between now and November vis-à-vis the lawsuits, and what Trump would do if he does get inaugurated. (Pinker is a big donor to the Democratic party.) He doesn’t however, think there’s enough “hatred of the establishment to allow a civil war to occur,” but does think we should take measures to prevent one, just in case. His final take-home message: “Rely on data and probabilities.”

The opprobrium that’s heaped on Pinker has always baffled me.  Since his arguments are usually based on facts, then if you disagree with him you can simply refute the facts, which isn’t often done. Rather, he’s attacked as a person, often as a horrible person, and since he’s a nice guy I can assume only that critics are partly motivated by sheer jealousy of Pinker’s intelligence and accomplishments.

As lagniappe, I found this NYT article from four years ago, “How a famous Harvard Professor became a target over his tweets“, which you can find archived here. It turns out that, at least back then, the opprobrium came from Pecksniffs trawling his tweets. I wrote about the undeserved tweet-shaming of that time in a popular post called “The Purity Posse Pursues Pinker.”

An excerpt:

Steven Pinker occupies a role that is rare in American life: the celebrity intellectual. The Harvard professor pops up on outlets from PBS to the Joe Rogan podcast, translating dense subjects into accessible ideas with enthusiasm. Bill Gates called his most recent book “my new favorite book of all time.”

So when more than 550 academics recently signed a letter seeking to remove him from the list of “distinguished fellows” of the Linguistic Society of America, it drew attention to their provocative charge: that Professor Pinker minimizes racial injustices and drowns out the voices of those who suffer sexist and racist indignities.

But the letter was striking for another reason: It took aim not at Professor Pinker’s scholarly work but at six of his tweets dating back to 2014, and at a two-word phrase he used in a 2011 book about a centuries-long decline in violence.

“Dr. Pinker has a history of speaking over genuine grievances and downplaying injustices, frequently by misrepresenting facts, and at the exact moments when Black and Brown people are mobilizing against systemic racism and for crucial changes,” their letter stated.

The linguists demanded that the society revoke Professor Pinker’s status as a “distinguished fellow” and strike his name from its list of media experts. The society’s executive committee declined to do so last week, stating: “It is not the mission of the society to control the opinions of its members, nor their expression.”