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Researchers have developed a low-cost, energy-efficient method for making materials that can capture carbon dioxide directly from the air. Researchers used a method similar to charging a battery to instead charge activated charcoal, which is often used in household water filters.

Researchers have discovered how networks of neurons in fruit flies transform simple brain signals into coordinated actions. This sheds light on the neural mechanisms underlying complex behaviors for potential application in robotics.

A rare exoplanet that should have been stripped down to bare rock by its nearby host star's intense radiation somehow grew a puffy atmosphere instead -- the latest in a string of discoveries forcing scientists to rethink theories about how planets age and die in extreme environments. Nicknamed 'Phoenix' for its ability to survive its red giant star's radiant energy discovered planet illustrates the vast diversity of solar systems and the complexity of planetary evolution -- especially at the end of stars' lives.

When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched at the end of 2021, we expected stunning images and illuminating scientific results. So far, the powerful space telescope has lived up to our expectations. The JWST has shown us things about the early Universe we never anticipated.

Some of those results are forcing a rewrite of astronomy textbooks.

Textbooks are regularly updated as new evidence works its way through the scientific process. But seldom does new evidence arrive at the speed the JWST is delivering it. Chapters on the Early Universe are in need of a significant update.

At the recent 2024 International Space Science Institute (ISSI) Breakthrough Workshop in Bern, Switzerland, a group of scientists summed up some of the telescope’s results so far. Their work is in a new paper titled “The First Billion Years, According to JWST.” The list of authors is long, and those authors are quick to point out that an even larger group of international scientists played a role. It takes an international scientific community to use JWST observations and advance the “collective understanding of the evolution of the Early Universe,” as the authors write.

The Early Universe is one of the JWST’s primary scientific targets. Its infrared capabilities allow it to see the light from ancient galaxies with greater acuity than any other telescope. The telescope was designed to directly address confounding questions about the high-redshift Universe.

The following three broad questions are foundational issues in cosmology that the JWST is addressing.

What are the Physical Properties of the Earliest Galaxies? The JWST captured these images of 19 face-on spiral galaxies as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program. The telescope has shown us that early galaxies were much larger than expected. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee (STScI), T. Williams (Oxford), PHANGS Team, E. Wheatley (STScI)

The early Universe and its transformations are fundamental to our understanding of the Universe around us today. Galaxies were in their infancy, stars were forming, and black holes were forming and becoming more massive.

The Hubble Space Telescope was limited to observations at about z=11. The JWST has shoved that boundary aside. Its current high-redshift observations have reached z=14.32. Astronomers think that the JWST will eventually observe galaxies at z=20.

The lookback time of extragalactic observations by their redshift up to z=20. Image Credit: By Sandizer – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=140812763

The first few hundred million years after the Big Bang is called the Cosmic Dawn. JWST showed us that ancient galaxies during the Cosmic Dawn were much more luminous and, therefore, larger than we expected. The galaxy the telescope found at z=14.32, called JADES-GS-z14-0, has several hundred million solar masses. “This raises the question: How can nature make such a bright, massive, and large galaxy in less than 300 million years?” scientists involved with JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) said in a NASA post.

It also showed us that they were differently shaped, that they contained more dust than expected, and that oxygen was present. The presence of oxygen indicates that generations of stars had already lived and died. “The presence of oxygen so early in the life of this galaxy is a surprise and suggests that multiple generations of very massive stars had already lived their lives before we observed the galaxy,” the researchers wrote in the post.

“All of these observations, together, tell us that JADES-GS-z14-0 is not like the types of galaxies that have been predicted by theoretical models and computer simulations to exist in the very early universe,” they continued.

What is the Nature of Active Galactic Nuclei in Early Galaxies? This image shows Hercules A, a galaxy in the Hercules constellation. The X-ray observations show superheated gas, and the radio observations show jets of particles streaming away from the AGN at the center of the galaxy. The jets are almost 1 million light-years long. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; visual: NASA/STScI; radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA.

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) that are actively accreting material and emitting jets and winds.

Quasars are a sub-type of AGN that are extremely luminous and distant, and quasar observations show that SMBHs were present in the centers of galaxies as early as 700 million years after the Big Bang. But their origins were a mystery. Astrophysicists think that these early SMBHs were created from black hole “seeds” that were either “light” or “heavy.” Light seeds had about 10 to 100 solar masses and were stellar remnants. Heavy seeds had 10 to 105 solar masses and came from the direct collapse of gas clouds.

The JWST’s ability to effectively look back in time has allowed it to spot an ancient black hole at about z=10.3 that contains between 107 to 108 solar masses. The Hubble Space Telescope didn’t allow astronomers to measure the stellar mass of entire galaxies the way that the JWST does. Thanks to the JWST’s power, astronomers know that the black hole at z=10.3 has about the same mass as the stellar mass of its entire galaxy. This is in stark contrast to modern galaxies, where the mass of the black hole is only about 0.1% of the entire stellar mass.

Such a massive black hole existing only about 500 million years after the Big Bang is proof that early BHs originated from heavy seeds. This is actually in line with theoretical predictions. So, the textbook authors are now in a position to remove the uncertainty.

When and How Did the Early Universe Become Ionized? This graphical timeline of the Universe shows where the Epoch of Reionization fits in. Image Credit: By NASA – NASA, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6272041

“We know that hydrogen reionization happened, but exactly when and how it happened has been a major missing piece in our understanding of the first billion years.”

From “The First Billion Years According to the JWST.”

We know that in the early Universe, hydrogen became ionized during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Light from the first stars, accreting black holes, and galaxies heated and reionized the hydrogen gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM), removing the dense, hot, primordial fog that suffused the early Universe.

Young stars were the primary light source for the reionization. They created expanding bubbles of ionized hydrogen that overlapped one another. Eventually, the bubbles expanded until the entire Universe was ionized.

This was a critical phase in the development of the Universe. It allowed future galaxies, especially dwarf galaxies, to cool their gas and form stars. But scientists aren’t certain how black holes, stars, and galaxies contributed to the reionization or the exact time frame in which it took place. “We know that hydrogen reionization happened, but exactly when and how it happened has been a major missing piece in our understanding of the first billion years,” the authors of the new paper write.

Astronomers knew that Reionization ended about one billion years after the Big Bang, at about redshift z=5-6. But before the JWST, it was difficult to measure the properties of the UV light that caused it. With the JWST’s advanced spectroscopic capabilities, astronomers have narrowed down the parameters of reionization. “We have found spectroscopically confirmed galaxies up to z = 13.2, implying reionization may have started just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang,” the authors write.

JWST results also show that accreting black holes and their AGN likely contributed no more than 25% of the UV light that caused reionization.

These results will require some rewriting of textbook chapters on the EOR, even though there are still lingering questions about it. “There is still significant debate about the primary sources of reionization, in particular, the contribution of faint galaxies,” the authors write. Even though the JWST is extraordinarily powerful, some distant, faint objects are beyond its reach.

The James Webb Space Telescope: humanity’s new favourite science instrument. Image Credit: NASA

The JWST is not even halfway through its mission and has already transformed our understanding of the Universe’s first one billion years. It was built to address questions around the Epoch of Reionization, the first black holes, and the first galaxies and stars. There’s definitely much more to come. Who knows what the sum total of its contributions will be?

As an astronomy writer, I’m extremely grateful to all of the people who brought the JWST to fruition. It took a long time to build, cost a lot more than expected, and was almost cancelled by Congress. Its perilous path to completion makes me even more grateful to be covering its results. The researchers using JWST data are clearly grateful, too.

“We dedicate this paper to the 20,000 people who spent decades to make JWST an incredible discovery machine,” they write.

The post The JWST is Re-Writing Astronomy Textbooks appeared first on Universe Today.

Social media is adamant that you can fertilise your houseplants with milk, but I'll be saving mine for a hot drink, says James Wong

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As I mentioned in the last post, after our discussion at the University of Amsterdam was canceled on grounds of Maarten Boudry’s and my sympathies for Israel, the sponsors who brought us to Amsterdam kindly had the discussion restaged in an empty room and professionally filmed.  I haven’t listened to the whole 80-minute discussion as I can’t stand to see and hear myself, but as I recall it went smoothly, even without an audience.

The filming and appended notes on the screen are due to videographer David Stam, who did a great and professional job, clarifying any references that aren’t spelled out.

To reiterate, the subject of the discussion was a paper by myself and Luana Maroja published in the Skeptical Inquirer, “The ideological subversion of biology.” If you watch the video, you’ll see that the topic of the war and Israel wasn’t even raised.  We did range beyond the ambit of the paper, for we talked about biology, philosophy, and other topics, but you’ll see that we were deplatformed for something we didn’t even intend to mention.

Here are David’s notes on the video:.

Welcome to an eye-opening discussion on “The Ideological Subversion of Science” featuring evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, philosopher of science Maarten Boudry, and embryologist Michael Richardson. In this thought-provoking video, our distinguished panel delves into the growing influence of ideology on scientific research and education. They explore how societal pressures and cultural trends can distort scientific integrity, the implications for scientific progress, and the importance of safeguarding objectivity in the pursuit of knowledge. Join us for a conversation that champions the true spirit of scientific inquiry.

Em. Prof. Dr. Jerry Coyne, Evolutionary Biology at University of Chicago
Dr. Maarten Boudry, Philosopher of Science at University of Ghent
Prof Dr. Michael Richardson, Evolutionary Developmental Zoology at University of Leiden

The moderator, who did an superb job of keeping the discussion going, is Gert Jan van ‘t Land.

As I recounted on May 14, philosopher Maarten Boudry from Ghent, developmental biologist Michael Richardson from Leiden and I were “deplatformed” by a student-run group, “BetaBreak”, at the University of Amsterdam. We were recruited to discuss a paper that I wrote with Luana Maroja, “The ideological subversion of biology,” in which we discussed several areas (sex, race, evolutionary psych0logy, etc.) in which “progressive” ideology had crept into biology, distorting the science.

A few days before our event, we got a note that BetaBreak was canceling our discussion because Maarten and I had “unacceptable” sympathies towards Israel in the Gaza War. This had nothing to do with our discussion, as you’ll see when I put the video in the next post. But it didn’t matter, if you’re more on the side of the Jews, you’re tainted—at least in Amsterdam. (Maarten had in fact been deplatformed a few days before that when he was scheduled to give a talk on climate change, which he eventually gave remotely.)

At any rate, BetaBreak then came up with a second explanation for our deplatforming, which was that the event “could get violent” and they couldn’t guarantee our safety. Well, that sounds bogus to me (a scientific descussion?), and of course none of us were worried about our safety.  The fact that the “safety” trope came only in a subsequent explanation of course makes us think it was confected, for, as the group explained in its first message to us: “Another fear is how [the deplaforming] would reflect on us as a committee and that we might be blackballed at UvA/AUC.” Oh, dearie me. They might have been blackballed! They canceled others so they wouldn’t get canceled themselves. . . And the advantage of raising the “safety” issue, of course, is that it can’t be refuted: if you cancel an event on those grounds, you’ll never know if your worries were justified.

The details of the deplatforming are in the first link above, but Maarten and I collaborated on a new article in Quillette, which you can see below (click the headline) for free, BUT READ IT WITHIN A DAY OR SO, AS IT’S GOING TO BE PAYWALLED. (I did find an archived link here.) But the point of our article was not to play the victim, for within a few days we staged the discussion without an audience, and it was recorded professionally and put on YouTube. (More people can hear it now!)

The point of our Quillette piece, as you see, is that deplatforming invited speakers is a disservice not just to the speakers, but, more important, to the audience. In the article I added an apposite quote from John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” to show why, whether or not you disagree with speakers whose views offend you, you should still listen to them. I’ll put it here:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

That is, if you listen carefully to such a speaker, you might not only change your mind on some issues, but, even if you don’t, it gives you the chance to hear the best arguments of your opponents, and thus a chance to hone your ideas.  (Further, the person speaking is “outed” in that you finally can learn what they really believe.)

But I see I’m summarizing the piece for you. Please read it yourself (and before the weekend!) by clicking below. It’s not very long.

Also, if you’re a regular reader of Quillette, remember that it has no ads and is sponsored by reader support alone. You can subscribe by going here.

I’ll give the first paragraph and then the last two:

Like being struck by lightning, getting deplatformed—first invited to speak and then disinvited for your political views—is something you assume happens only to other people. But, unlike a lightning strike, it’s not a rare occurrence. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)’s “campus deplatforming database” of US universities lists 626 successful deplatforming attempts since 1998. This year alone, there have already been 110 attempts to cancel talks, most involving speakers sympathetic to Israel. Neither of us, however, had ever personally experienced this kind of cancellation before.

And the ending:

The problem with this approach [deplatforming or canceling people] is that plenty of unsavoury people have produced wonderful work in music, art, literature, and science, and that work should be judged on its own merits. In any case, who is to judge which beliefs and behaviours should render you untouchable? As Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four shows, “approved” opinions have a way of changing, and it’s impossible to predict which widely held opinions of today will be considered grounds for damnation tomorrow. Who could have predicted the current “orthodox” view on the war in Gaza several decades ago, when most Western progressives were staunchly pro-Israel? A hundred years ago, vegetarians were seen as cranks. A century hence, will killing and eating animals for food be seen as beyond the pale?

It’s been 155 years since Mill published his famous essay and, sadly, we have still not taken its lessons to heart. If BetaBreak had allowed our discussion to proceed, the students would not only have been able to engage in a lively discussion, but might also have learned something or—heaven forbid—even changed their minds about the relationship between science and ideology.