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As one of the few black students in his philosophy program at Columbia University years ago, Coleman Hughes wondered why his peers seemed more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than his own grandparents–who lived through segregation. The End of Race Politics is the culmination of his years-long search for an answer.

Contemplative yet audacious, The End of Race Politics is necessary reading for anyone who questions the race orthodoxies of our time. Hughes argues for a return to the ideals that inspired the American Civil Rights movement, showing how our departure from the colorblind ideal has ushered in a new era of fear, paranoia, and resentment marked by draconian interpersonal etiquette, failed corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, and poisonous race-based policies that hurt the very people they intend to help. Hughes exposes the harmful side effects of Kendi-DiAngelo style antiracism, from programs that distribute emergency aid on the basis of race to revisionist versions of American history that hide the truth from the public.

Through careful argument, Hughes dismantles harmful beliefs about race, proving that reverse racism will not atone for past wrongs and showing why race-based policies will lead only to the illusion of racial equity. By fixating on race, we lose sight of what it really means to be anti-racist. A racially just, colorblind society is possible. Hughes gives us the intellectual tools to make it happen.

Coleman Hughes is a writer, podcaster and opinion columnist who specializes in issues related to race, public policy and applied ethics. Coleman’s writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Quillette, The City Journal and The Spectator. He appeared on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2021.

Shermer and Hughes discuss:

• If he is “half-black, half-Hispanic” why is he considered “black”?
• What is race biologically and culturally?
• Race as a social construction
• Population genetics and race differences: sports, I.Q., crime, etc.
• Base Rate Neglect, Base Rate Taboos
• The real state of race relations in America: surveys, call-back studies, search data, etc.
• George Floyd, BLM, Ibram X Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, Isabella Wilkinson, Ta-Nehisi Coates and the neo-racists
• Institutionalized neo-racism: the academy and business
• What it means to be “colorblind”
• Viewpoint epistemology and race
• Affirmative action and correcting for past wrongs
• Lyndon Johnson’s famous quote, June 4, 1965, Howard University: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”
• Why are there still big gaps in income, wealth, home ownership, CEO representation, Congressional representation, etc.?
• Myth of Black Weakness
• Myth of No Progress
• Myth of Undoing the Past
• The Fall of Minneapolis
• Reparations
• The future of colorblindness.

Read Michael H. Bernstein’s review of Coleman Hughes book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.

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Several years ago, I came across an imaginative essay entitled “Explaining Affirmative Action to a Martian.”1 The author, who I had never heard of, described a fictious interaction where a human explains the rationale of affirmative action to an alien. Among its gems is the following interaction:

Earthling: Black people were enslaved and subjugated for centuries, so, sometimes they get special dispensations. It’s only fair…

Visitor: So those black kids…were enslaved and subjugated, so they get to score 450 [standardized test] points lower than Asians?

Earthling: Well these particular black students didn’t experience slavery or Jim Crow themselves… But their grandparents might have experienced Jim Crow.

Visitor: Might have?

Earthling: Well, around half of black students at elite colleges are actually the children of black immigrants so they have no ancestral connection to American slavery or Jim Crow…

Visitor: … I’m utterly confused by you creatures.

The author of this essay was Coleman Hughes, a Columbia University undergraduate at the time. In the intervening years, Hughes has been one of the leading voices on race. As a long-time listener and fan of Hughes, I was eager to read his first book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. It did not disappoint.

Hughes has a gift for clearly and dispassionately evaluating one of our most explosive social topics. Oftentimes in today’s world, the political left exaggerates the prevalence of racism while the political right a priori assumes that all such accusations lack merit. What we so desperately need is a middle ground: An analysis that deals honestly with the racism which does exist without inflating it. This is what Coleman Hughes does.

What makes his book excellent is, ironically, the mundane manner in which he evaluates race. Hughes carefully dissects the arguments of neoracism, an ideology he defines as “discrimination in favor of non-whites…justified on account of the hardships they endure—and hardships their ancestors endured—at the hands of whites.” Reading Hughes is a breath of fresh air. He gives neoracism the long overdue hearing it deserves, one that is fair but critical.

Hughes forces readers to think in terms of counterfactuals. This is typically missing from public discourse but is essential for evaluating double-standards and identifying what philosophers call the “special pleading” fallacy where rules are inconsistently applied. For example, the author points out that Yale University did not denounce the racism of a psychiatrist who gave a talk saying, “I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless.” Yet, as Hughes puts it, “Suppose [the speaker] had described fantasies about shooting black people in the head, burying them, and walking away… Is there any doubt that the Yale administration would have condemned her racism?”

In chapter five, Hughes delves into seven central tenants of neoracism, such as “Racial disparities provide direct evidence of systemic racism” and “White people have power in society, but Black people don’t.” Reading the book, and this chapter in particular, felt like following the author on a tour of three-legged stools. Each claim seems believable on its face but Hughes raises compelling arguments against them. For instance, consider the racial disparity tenant mentioned above which includes the claim that “there would be no racial disparities, or at least large ones, in a fair society.” It is easy to see the appeal: Blacks have been historically discriminated against and are on the short end of many troubling disparities. However, Hughes discusses factors other than racism that could explain group differences. Perhaps most critical is the age gap, such that the median White person is 10 years older than the median Black person. Wilfred Reilly points out that the age gap is even more striking (31 years) when comparing the modal (most common) age.2 Might that play a role in some disparities, such as wealth or incarceration rates?

One of the joys of reading Hughes’ book, at least for myself as a research psychologist, is the way key psychological concepts are infused throughout—even if not explicitly named (and since the author has no formal background this is not surprising). The notion of tribalism, something my colleagues and I have studied in the context of politics,3 is depicted as key to the neoracist ideology “because it casts every event as an instance of us versus them, good versus evil, black versus white.” Sadly, one of the most important lessons4 from social psychology—the subfield largely devoted to understanding how humans interact with each other—of the past 50 years is the ease with which people separate into groups and develop preference for in-group members.

Elsewhere, in critiquing what he calls “chronic victimhood,” Hughes writes, “A wise therapist wouldn’t tell you to accept chronic victim status…and think of yourself as forever trapped in your experience of trauma. The wise therapist would instead help you develop strategies for moving past the trauma you’d suffered, empowering you to escape the trauma’s gravitational pull.” Here, the author is getting at the idea of mindset, a concept developed by Stanford Psychology Professor Carol Dweck. Hughes is correctly pointing out that victimhood and its downstream difficulties should be viewed in the context of a growth mindset—something that is malleable—rather than in the context of a fixed mindset, which is not changeable. Growth mindsets suggest that people have agency to change; unsurprisingly, research generally supports the idea that it leads to better outcomes. A study by Jessica Schleider, for example, found that a single 20–30 minute computer-based session focused on enhancing a growth mindset reduced depression among adolescents when evaluated nine months later.5

There was one observation Hughes made in passing that clearly reveals his status as a gifted intellectual with a keen eye towards understanding how people think and behave. He starts by critiquing the position that America has failed to “acknowledge and atone for its past [racism]” by pointing out several facts which seem to contradict this assertion, including the adoption of Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Day as federal holidays, affirmative action programs, and most critically, Congress issuing apologies for slavery. Hughes argues that “none of this paints a picture of a general public, or a government, that is resistant to historical soul-searching.” Several paragraphs later he continues, “To this day, it remains a talking point among media pundits that America has ‘never’ issued a formal apology for slavery.” And this is where he makes his insight:

We must realize that a game is being played here. Normally when someone demands an apology, they actually want one. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the ability to continue demanding the apology is worth more than the apology itself. Sometimes the debt is worth more unpaid than paid… This is why every new apology, program, or holiday that they demand is forgotten as soon as it’s achieved… It’s not clear to me whether neoracists play this game consciously or whether there is self-deception involved. But either way, we are indeed playing a game, and if we don’t realize it, then everyone loses.

If you took out the word “neoracist” and told me this passage was from Eric Berne’s seminal 1964 book, Games People Play, I would have believed you. Hughes is arguing that a game of shifting goalposts is occurring. One could argue another instance of this happened in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. First, there were demands for Chauvin to be convicted. After he was convicted, the guilty verdict was seen as insufficient. For instance, Bernie Sanders tweeted the common sentiment “The jury’s verdict delivers accountability for Derek Chauvin, but not justice for George Floyd.”6 If no game were occurring, which is to say that opinion was also held before the conviction, then it seems to suggest courts are unable to administer justice for victims. This raises challenging questions about how justice would be administered (if possible) and who would decide what constitutes justice.

My only substantiative critique of the book is that, while it functions as a highly effective counter to ideas presented by radical neoracists, Hughes could have bolstered his argument in favor of colorblindness by also speaking more explicitly to moderates. I think many left-of-center people are put off by the ideas of activists such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, and are disturbed by the way race is discussed in elite circles. However, I also think most would still favor mild affirmative action programs that they believe are appropriately calibrated. People who fall into this camp might agree with 90 percent of the book and even agree that colorblindness is a better approach to race than our current one. Yet, they might also argue that the best solution is to reduce, yet not eliminate, the consideration of race.

Overall, I found The End of Race Politics to be an excellent read from a superb up-and-coming author. Those teaching classes on race who include Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist on their syllabus should seriously consider adding this book to the reading list for a diversity of viewpoints. Students could then engage with scholars who hold diametrically opposing positions and debate the merits of each.

I doubt that will happen anytime soon, but will be delighted if proven wrong.

A review of The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes

About the Author

Michael H. Bernstein is an experimental psychologist and an Assistant Professor at Brown University. His research is focused on the overlap of cognitive science with medicine. He is Director of the Brown Medical Expectations Lab and co-editor of The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick. For more information, visit michaelhbernstein.com.

References

1. https://bit.ly/3Vi24Xv
2. https://bit.ly/48UG3Be
3. https://bit.ly/498cmNi
4. https://bit.ly/4amn181
5. https://bit.ly/4cddOR0
6. https://bit.ly/3TuKcGu

A recent study presented at the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) discusses the Mars Astrobiology, Resource, and Science Explorers (MARSE) mission concept and its Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD), which offers a broader and cheaper method regarding the search for—past or present—life on the Red Planet, specifically by using four rovers at four different landing sites across Mars’ surface instead of just one-for-one. This concept comes as NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers continue to tirelessly explore the surface of Mars at Gale Crater and Jezero Crater, respectively.

Here, Universe Today discusses the MARSE mission concept with the study’s sole author, Alex Longo, who is a MS student in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, regarding the motivation behind MARSE, how the landing sites were chosen, significant implications, current work being conducted, and next steps for MARSE becoming an actual mission. Longo draws on his ten-plus years of experience finding landing sites on Mars, along with having several publications under his belt, including an assortment of scientific abstracts, papers, and a Kindle book. So, what was the motivation behind the MARSE mission concept?

“The overarching goal of the MARSE concept study was to reduce the cost of access to the surface of Mars,” Longo tells Universe Today. “Flagship-class rovers, such as Curiosity and Perseverance, are extremely capable vehicles. The caveat is that, since they cost over a billion dollars apiece, we can only visit one or two sites on Mars every decade. Like Earth, Mars is an astoundingly diverse planet. Using satellites in orbit, we have mapped a variety of ancient environments which may have been habitable in the distant past. However, the resolution of orbital imagery and spectra are limited, and they sometimes fail to predict what a field geologist (or, in the case of Mars, a rover controlled by geologists) will discover on the ground. Even on Earth, finding early biosignatures is difficult, and even with comparatively little weathering and erosion, I would not be surprised if the same is true on Mars. MARSE was intended to present one possible solution which would allow planetary scientists to explore more sites on Mars within a realistic budget.”

The car-sized Curiosity rover landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, with its mission website displaying that Curiosity has traveled a total of 31.27 kilometers (19.43 miles) as of January 27, 2024, having far surpassed its primary mission timeline of one Martian year, or 687 Earth days. Gale Crater was chosen as the landing site due to a multitude of evidence that it once held liquid water at some point in Mars’ ancient past, as scientists estimate that Gale Crater was formed from an impact between approximately 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. During its time in Gale Crater, Curiosity has used its suite of scientific instruments to identify evidence of past liquid water within Gale Crater and evidence that Mars once contained the building blocks for life, including carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.

A selfie of NASA’s Curiosity rover taken on Oct. 11, 2019, or the 2,553rd Martian day, or sol, of its long and successful mission. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

The car-sized Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, with its mission website displaying that Perseverance has traveled a total of 25.113 kilometers (15.604 miles) as of March 28, 2024. While Perseverance and Curiosity have similar designs, the main upgrade has been the delivery of the Ingenuity helicopter to Mars, which became the first robotic explorer to achieve a powered flight on another world and accomplished dozens of flights before being permanently grounded after damaging one of its rotor blades on what would be its final landing in January 2024. Like Gale Crater for Curiosity, Jezero Crater was chosen as the landing site for Perseverance due to strong evidence that it once held a massive body of liquid water, which is made evident from the enormous fan-delta deposit that was the likely entry point for the liquid water billions of years ago. During its time in Jezero Crater, Perseverance has used its suite of scientific instruments to identify ancient volcanic rocks, sediments from an ancient lakebed, converted carbon dioxide (the primary atmospheric constituent of Mars) to oxygen, and even used its powerful microphones to record the sounds of Mars. Given the incredible science conducted by Curiosity and Perseverance, what are the most significant implications for the MARSE mission?

A selfie of NASA’s Perseverance rover taken in January 2023 displaying the rover with several sample tubes it has collected and dropped on the Martian surface to be picked up and returned to Earth by the Mars Sample Return mission, scheduled for the 2030s. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

“The most significant ramification of this trade study is that it should be possible to build a small rover capable of characterizing an unexplored site on Mars,” Longo tells Universe Today. “There have been several proposals for cheap Mars landers, such as SHIELD. MARSE demonstrates that it may be possible to deliver useful scientific payloads with these landers. Each MARSE rover weighs just 15 kilograms and is about the size of a microwave oven. If we can determine how to land similar rovers on Mars, that would help proliferate and democratize Mars exploration. We are already seeing a similar paradigm shift in lunar exploration thanks to the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.”

Artist rendition of one of the four MARSE mission rovers that will each be deployed to explore separate landing sites on Mars. (Credit: Longo (2024))

While Curiosity and Perseverance have successfully explored their respective landing sites in great detail, the cost of each mission was in the billions of dollars (Curiosity: ~$2.5 billion, Perseverance: ~$2.7 billion). Therefore, the cost alone only allows for one rover per mission, and their landings occurred almost seven years apart. As noted, one of the objectives of the MARSE mission concept is to land four rovers at four separate landing sites, which are Columbia Hills, Milankovi? Crater, Mawrth Vallis, and Terra Sirenium, with Coumbia Hills being the landing site for the Spirit rover during its mission from 2004 to 2010, and the others having never been explored by landers or rovers. But how were the landing sites chosen and are other landing sites being considered?

Longo tells Universe Today, “The four landing sites are not an exclusive list. We just wanted to illustrate the range of investigations which can be conducted with this approach. All four of the listed sites have been highlighted in peer-reviewed papers and prior landing site studies, so we know that they have high scientific potential.”

Image of Columbia Hills on Mars, which is one of the potential landing sites for a MARSE rover. The white circle denotes the approximate 80-kilometer (50-mile) landing ellipse that SHIELD will use to land. (Credit: Longo (2024))

Longo continues by telling Universe Today that SHIELD will be designed to “land at any flat site on Mars below the datum (0 km of elevation on Mars; the equivalent of sea level on Earth), so you could readily swap one or more of them out for locations of your choice”, with Longo noting that one of his personal favorite landing sites would be inside Valles Marineris, which is the largest and deepest canyon in the solar system. Longo discusses the years-long research by Dr. Steven Ruff at Arizona State University, who conducted analog studies comparing hot spring deposits at Columbia Hills on Mars to similar features at the El Tatio hot spring in Chile, concluding that microbial communities could thrive at these locations.

A breakdown of the Mars Astrobiology, Resource, and Science Explorers (MARSE) mission profile and its Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) system, which could revolutionize how we search for life on Mars by using four rovers at four different landing sites. (Credit: Longo (2024))

As noted, Curiosity and Perseverance landed on Mars almost nine years apart, 2012 and 2021, respectively, but their respective missions had been in the works almost an entire decade earlier. Both rovers are part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, with the Curiosity rover mission having been approved in 2003 and the Perseverance rover mission having been announced in 2012. Once approved, it takes NASA years to design and build each rover, ensuring every aspect of their systems is functioning at their fullest potential before being delivered and loaded onto the launch vehicle. This includes tests designed to analyze the rovers’ endurance, exposure to harsh environments, and longevity, and many others. Therefore, if a MARSE mission were to get the green light, it could still be almost a decade of designs, builds, and tests before their microwave-sized rovers touch the surface of Mars. So, what are the next steps in terms of MARSE being approved for an actual mission?

“Regrettably, the future of MARSE and SHIELD is uncertain,” Longo tells Universe Today. “This concept was developed with the support of the SHIELD team at JPL, led by Lou Giersch and Nathan Barba. They were doing phenomenal, cutting-edge work, and I was grateful for the opportunity to work with them. Unfortunately, JPL was forced to implement massive budget cuts and layoffs last month due to uncertainty over the future of the Mars Sample Return mission, which accounts for the majority of the center’s budget. Because JPL’s future priorities are in flux, we have placed the development of the MARSE concept on hold.”

While uncertainty looms for the MARSE mission, it’s important to note that space exploration missions often take decades to go from a simple concept to real hardware, and then several more years until it’s launched. This is noted by the Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions, as it took almost a decade from the time each was approved until they landed on Mars. Moreover, it is not uncommon for mission proposals to take several attempts before they’re approved, as NASA has very stringent criteria for approving missions, including cost, timelines, science objectives, and long-term implications for science. Despite the outlook, this has not deterred Longo from continuing his work for the MARSE mission concept.

“Developing a mission concept is a rewarding experience, and it was a privilege to work on this concept with the SHIELD team,” Longo tells Universe Today. “Even if it happens a decade from now, I hope that someone will eventually implement a low-cost, multi-rover Mars geology and astrobiology mission. Following the completion of Mars Sample Return, the next logical steps in Mars exploration are to explore more of the planet, to develop a better understanding of its history, and to learn what Mars can teach us about our own planet’s past. If we want to have a thriving space program, we need to be creative and embrace bold ideas, and I love working with the scientists and engineers who are doing just that.”

Will the MARSE mission get to explore the Red Planet in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Search for Life on Mars Could Level-Up with MARSE Mission Concept appeared first on Universe Today.

The Milky Way has many satellite galaxies, most notably the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. They’re both visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere. Now astronomers have discovered another satellite that’s the smallest and dimmest one ever detected. It may also be one of the most dark matter-dominated galaxies ever found.

The galaxy is called Ursa Major III / UNIONS 1 (UMa3/U1), and it contains very few stars. In fact, its luminosity is so low that it’s gone undetected until new, even though it’s in our neighbourhood.

The discovery is in a new paper titled “Ursa Major III/UNIONS 1: the darkest galaxy ever discovered?” The paper has been published in The Astrophysical Journal, and the lead author is Simon Smith. Smith is an astronomy graduate student at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada.

“UMa3/U1 is located in the Ursa Major (Great Bear) constellation, home of the Big Dipper. It is in our cosmic backyard, relatively speaking, at about 30,000 light-years from the Sun,” said Smith. “UMa3/U1 had escaped detection until now due to its extremely low luminosity.”

There are only about 60 stars in UMa3/U1, which barely qualifies it as a galaxy. There are star clusters with more members than that. In fact, the tiny galaxy is more in line with an open cluster in terms of number of stars.

“There are so few stars in UMa3/U1 that one might reasonably question whether it’s just a chance grouping of similar stars.”

Marla Geha, professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University

The tiny galaxy contains stars that are more than 10 billion years old and is only 10 light-years across, small for a galaxy. Its mass is also low for a galaxy. It contains just 16 times the mass of the Sun and is 15 times less massive than the faintest suspected dwarf galaxy. Those are small numbers more similar to a globular cluster, but it still might be a galaxy because of the presence of dark matter.

While stellar associations like globular clusters are more massive than this dwarf galaxy, they’re not galaxies. Astronomers think that globulars are dominated by baryonic (normal) matter processes. Ultra-faint galaxies (UFG) like this one have masses many orders of magnitude greater than their stars can account for. “Therefore, in the framework of ?CDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter) cosmology, dwarf galaxies are thought to lie at the center of their own dark matter halos,” the research states. Astrophysicists think the dark matter haloes account for all that mass, something that globulars and other star clusters lack.

The tiny galaxy was first spotted as part of the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) at Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS,) both in Hawaii. Once detected, the researchers studied it in more detail with Keck Observatory’s Deep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS). Those observations confirmed that the stars are gravitationally bound, meaning they had to be either in a cluster or a tiny galaxy.

The CFHT is at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii, and Pan-STARRS is at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. Both are key parts of UNIONS, the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey. Image Credit: UNIONS

The galaxy’s small number of stars would make anyone question whether it can be rightly called a galaxy. Even the researchers had their doubts.

“There are so few stars in UMa3/U1 that one might reasonably question whether it’s just a chance grouping of similar stars. Keck was critical in showing this is not the case,” says co-author Marla Geha, professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University. “Our DEIMOS measurements clearly show all the stars are moving through space at very similar velocities and appear to share similar chemistries.”

This figure from the research shows the motion (L) and velocity (R) of the dwarf galaxy’s member stars. In the left panel, the great region marks the motion of stars in the Milky Way and shows how the member stars (blue) are clustered together differently. In the panel on the right, the member stars are clustered together by velocity, and the empty circles are other non-member stars. Image Credit: Smith et al. 2024

Astronomers have struggled to understand dwarf galaxies and their dark matter. For one thing, the diagnostics astronomers use, like the stellar mass-metallicity relation, leads to arguments that they’re more like star clusters than galaxies. Also, their observed properties place them at the mid-point between clusters and dwarf galaxies.

Uncertainty abounds when it comes to UMa3/U1. Somehow, this association of stars has remained intact for a long time. With such low stellar mass, the grouping should’ve been torn apart by now, its members diluted into the larger Milky Way population. The fact that it’s still together is an intriguing indication that dark matter is involved.

“The object is so puny that its long-term survival is very surprising.”

Will Cerny, co-author, Yale University

“Excitingly, a tentative spread in velocities among the stars in the system may support the conclusion that UMa3/U1 is a dark matter-dominated galaxy – a tantalizing possibility we hope to scrutinize with more Keck observations,” said Yale University graduate student Will Cerny, the second author of the study.

“The object is so puny that its long-term survival is very surprising. One might have expected the harsh tidal forces from the Milky Way’s disk to have ripped the system apart by now, leaving no observable remnant,” says Cerny. “The fact that the system appears intact leads to two equally interesting possibilities. Either UMa3/U1 is a tiny galaxy stabilized by large amounts of dark matter, or it’s a star cluster we’ve observed at a very special time before its imminent demise.”

If astrophysicists can confirm that the galaxy has dark matter, that would be a big deal. It would be more evidence in support of the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model, the leading theory for dark matter and the Big Bang. CDM predicts that as the Milky Way formed, its gravity attracted large numbers of dwarf galaxies, much more than found so far. If this is one of them, and if the others are as difficult to detect as UMa3/U1, it supports the CDM.

But for the researchers behind the discovery, there’s more to it than just dark matter. They’ve found something unusual that’s difficult to detect. Are there more of them out there?

The ESA’s Gaia mission has found many dwarf galaxies and globular clusters in the Milky Way’s halo. This image from the mission’s second data release shows 75 globular clusters (blue) and 12 nearby dwarf galaxies (red). However, deeper observations are needed to understand the nature of the dwarf galaxies. Image Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Map and orbits: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO LICENCE CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence

“Whether future observations confirm or reject that this system contains a large amount of dark matter, we’re very excited by the possibility that this object could be the tip of the iceberg – that it could be the first example of a new class of extremely faint stellar systems that have eluded detection until now,” says Cerny.

As for its origins, there are really only two options. It either formed in situ or was accreted by the Milky Way. Astronomers use metallicity and orbit to determine a dwarf galaxy’s origins, but in this case, neither measurement showed clearly that it formed in situ.

Only further observations will constrain its origins, but as it stands, the authors are leaning toward accretion. “We favour a scenario where UMa3/U1 was accreted onto the Milky Way halo,” they write in their conclusion. That scenario also supports the Lambda CDM model.

Its fate is similarly unclear. So far, it hasn’t been torn apart, which signals the presence of dark matter. But if it doesn’t have dark matter, it may be on the verge of being destroyed. We’ll have to wait and see.

For now, the object has an uncertain past and an uncertain future. But whatever it ends up being classified as, it’s something new, and that means it’s a challenge.

“This discovery may challenge our understanding of galaxy formation and perhaps even the definition of a ‘galaxy,'” says Smith.

The post The Milky Way’s Smallest, Faintest Satellite Galaxy Found appeared first on Universe Today.

A new equation shows a surprisingly simple relationship between pressure and the temperature needed to melt any solid substance into a liquid

We’ve reported on a technology called pulsed plasma rockets (PPRs) here at UT a few times. Several research groups have worked on variations of them. They are so popular partly because of their extremely high specific impulse and thrust levels, and they seemingly solve the trade-off between those two all-important variables in space exploration propulsion systems. Essentially, they are an extremely efficient propulsion methodology that, if scaled up, would allow payloads to reach other planets in weeks rather than months or years. However, some inherent dangers still need to be worked out, and overcoming some of those dangers was the purpose of a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) project back in 2020. 

Originally granted to Howe Industries, a design shop that has received several NIAC grants (including two in 2020 itself), the purpose of this project was to model the design of a fully functional PPR in modeling software to see if the necessary materials and power systems are available for a rocket that can provide 100 kN of thrust and over 5,000 seconds of specific impulse. 

In essence, a PPR takes a fuel pellet made out of some form of fissionable material (in this case, uranium), and zaps it into a plasma, then emits the plasma out the back for a forceful thrust. Rockets with this design can carry much less fuel than standard chemical rockets, but their design must be significantly larger due to the heating constraints put on the system by creating the plasma in the first place.

SciShow discusses a scaled down version of the PPR proposed in the paper.
Credit – SciShow Space

Those heating constraints were one of the Phase I NIAC study’s main focal points in 2020. In particular, this study focused on analyzing the barrel the fuel pellet is released into to see if it could withstand the extreme temperatures created by handling a plasmatized uranium pellet.

To do this modeling, the team at Howe Industries used a modeling software called MCNP6 to check where particles went in the system and thereby calculate how much heat would be collected on other parts of the system where it wasn’t desired. MCNP6 uses a Monte Carlo simulation methodology, which calculates where neutrons will be created from the fission reaction that makes the plasma and where those neutrons will impact the rest of the spacecraft.

Those plasmas would have to be created about once every second, according to the calculations done by Howe Industries, and each pulse must reach an energy level of around 1 keV – much smaller than industrial-level nuclear fission reactors but a relatively high number for a spacecraft propulsion system. That energy is turned into heat, and while some of the heat is effectively used to eject the plasmatized uranium out as a thrust propellant, the rest is absorbed by other parts of the system. 

Troy Howe, one of the paper’s authors, discusses his research into the PPR.
Credit – Interstellar Research Group YouTube Channel

The barrel was a part of that system that is particularly important in these thermal calculations. The modeled barrel was made out of low-enriched uranium but of a different type than the projectile, allowing the energy to heat the projectile and not the barrel itself. However, a small part of the barrel would be made of highly enriched uranium, allowing for rapid plasma propagation in an otherwise relatively stable system.

That’s not to say that none of the heat generated by the fission reaction would end up in the barrel. Still, by the author’s calculations as part of their final report, an active cooling system should be enough to lower the temperature to a point where at least the barrel itself wouldn’t melt. Other parts of the system, such as the nozzle and a rotating drum that helps handle the fuel pellet, will be modeled in future work.

Additional future work would include building benchtop prototypes of these systems to test them out, though the prospect of working with highly enriched uranium as part of this process seems daunting. However, NIAC hasn’t yet funded a Phase II study of the PPR system, so for now, it is resigned to a nicely modeled project and another step forward in an idea that has plenty of history. Maybe someday, it will find its time to shine.

Learn More:
Howe et al. – Pulsed plasma rocket- developing a dynamic fission process for high specific impulse and high thrust propulsion
UT – Magnetic Fusion Plasma Engines Could Carry us Across the Solar System and Into Interstellar Space
UT – Plasma Thruster Could Dramatically Cut Down Flight Times to the Outer Solar System
UT – Plasma Rocket Could Help Pick Up Space Trash

Lead Image:
Model of the PPR design proposed in the paper.
Credit – Howe et al.

The post Thermal Modeling of a Pulsed Plasma Rocket Shows It Should Be Possible To Create One appeared first on Universe Today.

Here’s a lovely video showing wildlife photographers having unexpected and often delightful encounters with their subjects, ranging from peaceful meerkats to threatening lions.  No worries: no animals nor humans were injured (well, one human was head-butted in the testicles by a sheep) in the making of this video. I think the cheetah cubs are my favorite.

Happy (Good) Friday!

A global analysis of heatwaves over a span of 40 years shows that they are getting more frequent, moving slower and lasting longer

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has been ongoing for decades at this point. Despite that, we have yet to find any rock-hard evidence of a signal from an alien civilization. When asked about this, experts point out just how little of the overall signal space we’ve analyzed. A signal could be coming from anywhere in the sky, at any frequency, and might not be continuous. Constraining the “search space” could help us find a signal faster, but what could we use to constrain it? It’s hard to think like an alien intelligence, let alone to mimic them.

One of the most famous examples of the reverse of search is the Arecibo message, wherein humanity tried to announce, “We are here,” using scientific and mathematical standards like numbers and the atomic number of some elements (hydrogen and carbon, for example). Even so, it was still sent as a binary signal using a type of frequency modulation at a single point in time back in 1975. The likelihood that any civilization in the Messier 13 globular cluster, its intended target, will be able to both receive and interpret it is negligible. But it would help if they had a key to interpret it. But how can we convey a key to unlock the message without the key itself being interpretable only with the same key?

Naoki Seto of Kyoto University’s Department of Physics has spent a lot of time thinking about that question, and he came to a similar conclusion about the usefulness of scientific constants. In the past, he produced papers that suggested the time of a future binary star merger or a past supernova explosion to help narrow down a patch of sky to look at. However, with a new paper released on March 21st, he suggested a new idea – the orbital period of an exceptionally bright star around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole.

Fraser discusses the most hyped finding of SETI so far – the WOW! signal.

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, known as Sgr A*, would be well known to any alien civilization advanced enough to send communication signals to announce their presence. It also, conveniently, has several super-bright stars that orbit it on regular periods. Dr. Seto selected one of those stars, known simply as S2.

S2 is a B-type star, is skewed toward the blue end of the stellar spectrum, and weighs in at about 15 times the mass of our own Sun. But most importantly, it is very, very bright and orbits Sgr A* with an orbital period of almost exactly 16 years. 

Those features are important because of their prominence but also because of the ease of calculations for something called the Schelling point. A Schelling point is derived from game theory – specifically, how two people can communicate about how to communicate without actually communicating. For example, someone wants to meet up with their partner but doesn’t want to tell them when or where they want to meet up. The other person is also interested in meeting up but equally interested in not communicating when or where. 

Fraser askes – are we ready to find aliens?

A Schelling point is thinking through reasonable touch points culturally to try to determine a place to meet without expressly saying it. In one example, knowing that we’re both Americans, if we were to pick one distinct time of year to meet up, and knowing that the other person is thinking the same thing, they might settle on something well known, such as midnight on New Year’s Eve. As for a place to meet, why not New York, the country’s largest city, and maybe Grand Central Station, the most common meeting place in that great city? That would be a Schelling point for two Americans, and the same inductive reasoning can be applied to communications with alien life forms.

S2 and its orbital period are something we would have in common with any alien life that develops in this galaxy – they would be able to see it from wherever they are. Dr. Seto thinks that using detailed characteristics of this one particular star, astronomers could start to search specific patches of sky for signals that use its orbital period as a basis for communication.

This is admittedly an arbitrary selection of a touch point for the Schelling point, but the general idea holds. The most likely way we can narrow down the absurd number of search parameters plaguing the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is to try to think like an alien and come up with some shared common experience that we can use as a basis to try to communicate without prior communication. It’s a tricky problem, and one that has lasted for decades, but, as with all things in science, the more people that get to thinking about them, the more likely they are to be solved.

Learn More:
Naoki Seto – A Proposal for Enhancing Technosignature Search toward the Galactic Center
UT – What is the Arecibo Message?
UT – What are the Best Ways to Search for Technosignatures?
UT – The 2nd Annual Penn State SETI Symposium and the Search for Technosignatures!

Lead Image:
Image of the galactic center. For the interferometric GRAVITY observations the star IRS 16C was used as a reference star, the actual target was the star S2. The position of the centre, which harbours the (invisible) black hole known as Sgr A*,with 4 million solar masses, is marked by the orange cross.
Credit – ESO / MPE / Gillessen et al.

The post Civilizations Could Time Their Communications Based on the Movement of a Single Star appeared first on Universe Today.

Rosalind Franklin, the ESA’s Mars rover, is scheduled to launch no sooner than 2028. Its destination is Oxia Planum, a wide clay-bearing plain to the east of Chryse Planitia. Oxia Planum contains terrains that date back to Mars’ Noachian Period, when there may have been abundant surface water, a key factor in the rover’s mission.

Rosalind Franklin’s primary mission mirrors that of NASA’s Perseverance rover: to search for fossil evidence of life. To do that, both rovers are equipped with a suite of powerful instruments. They both have sampling drills, but Franklin’s drill wins the tale of the tape. It can penetrate to a depth of two meters, compared to Perseverance’s which can only drill a few inches deep.

In order for the Franklin to be successful, it needs to land in a place where its drilling capability can be put to good use. That’s why the ESA chose Oxia Planum. Not only is it flat, which makes for a safer landing, but it contains hydrated minerals. In fact, it’s one of the largest exposed sections of clay-bearing minerals on Mars, and that’s where the fossilized evidence of life it seeks may be found.

A team of European scientists has created the most detailed geological map of Oxia Planum ever. It took four years to complete and leans heavily on data from orbiters. The detailed map shows 15 units with characteristic geological features that can help decide how the rover explores the area. The map will also help the rover interpret its surroundings and collect evidence of primitive life.

“This map is exciting because it is a guide that shows us where to find the answers.”

Peter Fawdon, co-lead author, Open University

Oxia Planum preserves a record of the forces that shaped the region and that shaped Mars. It’s a transitional region between Chryse Planitia, which contains lower elevation plains from the Amazonian/Hesperian, and Arabia Terra, the heavily cratered Noachian-aged region.

The sediments at Oxia Planum are nearly four billion years old. This will be the oldest site ever visited by a rover.

The new map has its roots in the COVID lockdowns. During that time, the Rosalind Franklin science team trained 80 volunteers to help them map Oxia Planum. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter supplied the data.

The result is a map that shows Oxia Planum’s geology in high detail. It shows types of bedrock and features like ridges and craters. It also shows crater ejecta and windborne dust. The map will not only help the rover navigate through difficult terrain; it’ll inform the choices of where to drill for samples.

This isn’t the first geological map of the Martian surface. But as this comparison shows, the new map (left) is much more detailed than previous ones (right.) The map on the right is a global geological map that labels the entire landing region as lNh, or late Noachian highlands. Image Credit: L: Fawdon et al. 2024. R: Tanaka et al. 2014.

“The map represents our current understanding of bedrock units and their relationships prior to Rosalind Franklin’s exploration of this location,” the map creators write in the paper presenting the map.

“The objectives of this map are (i) to identify where the most astrobiologically relevant rocks are likely to be found, (ii) to show where hypotheses about their geological context (within Oxia Planum and in the wider geological history of Mars) can be tested, (iii) to inform both the long-term (hundreds of metres to ~1 km) and the short-term (tens of metres) activity planning for rover exploration, and (iv) to allow the samples analyzed by the rover to be interpreted within their regional geological context,” the authors explain.

You can download the map and explore it here.

This is the new geological map of Oxia Planum, along with explanatory text. Image Credit: Fawdon et al. 2024.

“The wider region was extensively modified during the late Noachian and Hesperian periods, as shown by evidence of fluvial and paleo-lake activity, possible shoreline formation, volcanism, and aqueous alteration,” the authors write. The Hesperian is when Mars lost its water and transitioned from a warm, wet environment to a dry, cold environment. Understanding how that happened is a primary goal in Mars science.

The map contains a location and context section that orients viewers. The image on the left shows Rosalind Franklin’s landing site, and the image on the right shows the geological context. Image Credit: Fawdon et al. 2024.

The map shows mound materials, different types of bedrock, features like Mensas and crater materials of different ages.

This zoom-in of the map shows Sicilla Mensa, a flat-topped feature with cliff-like edges. oDm stands for overlying dark material. The image also shows craters and the extent of their ejecta, shown in yellow. It’s labelled rCm for recent crater material. Image Credit: Fawdon et al. 2024.

This is the highest-resolution map of the region ever made. With a scale of 1:25,000, each centimetre on the map equals 250 meters on Mars. Since Rosalind Franklin will travel an average of 25 to 50 meters each day, a day’s journey is one or two millimetres on the map.

The making of the map has already provided some benefits to the Rosalind Franklin mission. “The mapping exercise has provided the wider <ExoMars> rover team with a sound knowledge of the landing site and has also helped us to develop new geological hypotheses for the region,” the authors write.

Oxia planum is rich in clays, also called hydrated minerals. Because clays are formed in water-rich environments, it makes these sites excellent locations to study for clues as to whether life once began on Mars. Image Credit: ESA/Mars Express (OMEGA and HRSC) and NASA/Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (CRISM). LICENCE: ESA Standard Licence

The map is more than just a driving guide. It’s essentially a summary of our hypotheses about Mars. When the rover begins its mission, its initial exploration and drilling will test some of these existing hypotheses for Martian geology and history. Those results will inform the rover team, leading to better decisions about where to drill and explore. That will “… improve the chances of the mission meeting its search for life goals,” the authors explain.

“This map is exciting because it is a guide that shows us where to find the answers. It serves as a visual hypothesis of what we currently know about the different rocks in the landing site. The instruments on Rosalind Franklin will allow us to test our knowledge on the spot when the time comes,” explained Peter Fawdon, one of the lead authors from the Open University.

The post The ESA’s Mars Rover Gets a New Map appeared first on Universe Today.

I told you so! Rock reached its apogee in the Sixties and has been going downhill ever since.  Today’s popular music for young people is pathetic: autotuned, repetitive, trite, and without much creativity or inventivity. Look at the Billboard Top Ten this week, featuring Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift.  Yes, readers send me groups that, they claim, are as good as the Beatles. They often are okay, but they are definitely not as good as the Beatles. Or The Band, or Hendrix, or Clapton, or Joni Mitchell, or Steely Dan, or. . . . ad infinitum.

But don’t take my word for it; I’ve already defended my views extensively. Now SCIENCE itself proves the decline of rock, summarized in the article in the Guardian below, and based in a paper in the respectable journal Nature. You can read both by clicking below:

I’ll simply provide an excerpt of the Guardian article:

You’re not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming simpler and more repetitive, according to a study published on Thursday.

Lyrics have also become angrier and more self-obsessed over the last 40 years, the study found, reinforcing the opinions of cranky ageing music fans everywhere.

A team of European researchers analysed the words in more than 12,000 English-language songs across the genres of rap, country, pop, R&B and rock from 1980 to 2020.

Before detailing how lyrics have become more basic, the study pointed out that US singer-songwriting legend Bob Dylan – who rose to fame in the 1960s – has won a Nobel prize in literature.

. . . . “What we have also been witnessing in the last 40 years is a drastic change in the music landscape – from how music is sold to how music is produced,” Zangerle said.

Over the 40 years studied, there was repeated upheaval in how people listened to music. The vinyl records and cassette tapes of the 1980s gave way to the CDs of the 90s, then the arrival of the internet led to the algorithm-driven streaming platforms of today.

For the study in the journal [Nature] Scientific Reports, the researchers looked at the emotions expressed in lyrics, how many different and complicated words were used, and how often they were repeated.

“Across all genres, lyrics had a tendency to become more simple and more repetitive,” Zangerle summarised.

The results also confirmed previous research which had shown a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics over time and a rise in those that express anger, disgust or sadness.

Lyrics have also become much more self-obsessed, with words such as “me” or “mine” becoming much more popular.

The number of repeated lines rose most in rap over the decades, Zangerle said – adding that it obviously had the most lines to begin with.

“Rap music has become more angry than the other genres,” she added.

The researchers also investigated which songs the fans of different genres looked up on the lyric website Genius.

Unlike other genres, rock fans most often looked up lyrics from older songs, rather than new ones.

Rock has tumbled down the charts in recent decades, and this could suggest fans are increasingly looking back to the genre’s heyday, rather than its present.

Another way that music has changed is that “the first 10-15 seconds are highly decisive for whether we skip the song or not,” Zangerle said.

Previous research has also suggested that people tend to listen to music more in the background these days, she added.

There you go. If self-obsessed, angry, repetitive, and simpler songs are better songs, then you don’t have ears to hear. Further, “rock fans most often looked up lyrics from older songs, rather than new ones.”

My prediction is that “oldies” stations will continue to play music of the sixties and early seventies, and you won’t be hearing Ariana Grande even when the kids in Generation Z or Generation Alpha grow up.  Yes, people may prefer the tunes of their youth, for that was the musical background for their growing up, but it so happens that my youth happened to coincide with the greatest flowering of rock music. (Purely a coincidence, I assure you.) Like art, classical music, and opera, genres of art tend to wear themselves out and become senescent. Nowhere is this more evident than rock music.

I found the article in Nature Scientific Reports on which the piece above was based. Click to read; I’ll not go through it as it’s long and complicated:

The abstract:

Abstract

Music is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, and lyrics play an integral role when we listen to music. The complex relationships between lyrical content, its temporal evolution over the last decades, and genre-specific variations, however, are yet to be fully understood. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of English lyrics of Western, popular music over five decades and five genres, using a wide set of lyrics descriptors, including lyrical complexity, structure, emotion, and popularity. We find that pop music lyrics have become simpler and easier to comprehend over time: not only does the lexical complexity of lyrics decrease (for instance, captured by vocabulary richness or readability of lyrics), but we also observe that the structural complexity (for instance, the repetitiveness of lyrics) has decreased. In addition, we confirm previous analyses showing that the emotion described by lyrics has become more negative and that lyrics have become more personal over the last five decades. Finally, a comparison of lyrics view counts and listening counts shows that when it comes to the listeners’ interest in lyrics, for instance, rock fans mostly enjoy lyrics from older songs; country fans are more interested in new songs’ lyrics.

QED.

h/t: Jez

 

Catching a supernova in action is tricky business. There is no way to predict them, and they don’t occur very often. Within the Milky Way they only occur about once a century, and the last one was observed in 1604.

Of course, supernovae occur in other galaxies too, but you still have to get lucky to catch them as they explode.

But that’s what happened last year, according to a new paper released in Nature this week. Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki, observing a nearby galaxy named Messier 101 (colloquially known as the Pinwheel Galaxy), recognized that something special was happening. He had just observed a new supernova. It was dubbed SN 2023ixf.

The initial phase of a supernova is measured in hours, so astronomers had to act fast. Within five hours, Itagaki had reported the sighting to an international astronomical reporting database called the Transient Name Server. Less than an hour after that, professional astronomers were already rushing to turn their telescopes to look at the new explosion.

The discovery took place on May 19, a Friday night, and it was a scramble to get everything in place across multiple time zones.

“It’s very rare, as a scientist, that you have to act so swiftly,” says Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute. “Most scientific projects don’t happen in the middle of the night, but the opportunity arose, and we had no choice but to respond accordingly.”

Messier 101 (the Pinwheel Galaxy), 21 million lightyears away, where supernova SN 2023ixf was discovered. ESA/NASA.

Gal-Yam’s PhD student and lead author of the paper, Erez Zimmerman, was part of the team who stayed up all night collecting data, and sharing information with the Hubble Space Telescope operators in time to make high-quality observations. Speed was of the essence.

“That’s what makes this particular supernova different,” says Zimmerman. “We were able – for the very first time – to closely follow a supernova while its light was emerging from the circumstellar material in which the exploding star was embedded.”

The team had already applied for time on Hubble, intending to observe existing supernovae remnants in UV light. They got lucky in being able to observe a brand-new one instead. And even luckier that Hubble had just recently observed the same area, meaning that they not only captured the supernova in action, but also captured the star and its conditions in the days immediately before the explosion. These before-and-after observations are incredibly valuable in understanding the final days of a star’s life.

“Stars behave very erratically in their senior years,” says Gal-Yam. “They become unstable and we usually cannot be sure which complex processes occur within them because we always start the forensic process after the fact, when much of the data has already been lost.”

Data from SN 2023ixf was also collected in X-ray from NASA’s Swift spacecraft, and spectra were obtained from the ground-based Keck Observatory in Hawai’i. Together, all these observations helped piece together the evolution of the explosion as it changed over time.

The remnants of Kepler’s supernova, which exploded within our galaxy in 1604. Composite image using data from Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer space telescopes. NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair.

Another PhD student on the team, Ido Irani, says that the explosion probably formed a black hole, replacing the aged red giant that once sat in its place.

“Calculations of the circumstellar material emitted in the explosion, as well as this material’s density and mass before and after the supernova, create a discrepancy, which makes it very likely that the missing mass ended up in a black hole that was formed in the aftermath of the explosion – something that’s usually very hard to determine,” he says.

Follow-up observations are expected to provide even more details about the event, and help astronomers understand more precisely how supernovae occur and interact with their environment.

Learn More:

“A Hundred Million Suns.” Keck Observatory.

The post Astronomers Catch a Supernova Explode Almost in Realtime appeared first on Universe Today.

A 63-hour-long marathon of GPS jamming attacks disrupted global satellite navigation systems for hundreds of aircraft flying through the Baltic region – and Russia is thought to be responsible

The battle continues between truth (or merit) and social justice, exemplified in John Haidt’s famous lecture at Duke on the two types of approaches to education, continues. This time it’s in an article in the new Science urging expansion of DEI initiatives in STEMM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine).

The article is by Shirley Malcolm, whose associated bio is this:

Shirley Malcolm is a senior advisor and director of the STEM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change initiative at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Science), Washington, DC, USA.

Since the AAAS funds a whole unit on “STEM Equity Achievement Change,” it’s not surprising that they’re defending DEI at a time when the Supreme Court has banned race-based admissions and DEI is waning everywhere—not just in academic but in the corporate world. Malcolm says she’s explicitly fighting back against this tendency/

Click to read.

None of us want a country where there is bigotry against women or members of different ethnic groups, and all of us want a country where everyone has equal opportunity to rise as high as they can (the latter is far harder to achieve).  We want a country where the net for positions is cast as widely as possible, to get talent wherever it lies and to make sure that everybody’s in the net.

But this is not DEI.  To me, DEI stands for extreme forms of affirmative action, and I generally oppose it for the  reasons below. Malcolm’s quotes are indented.

1.)  It favors not equality of opportunity but equity: the proportional representation of all groups in a population in an endeavor—STEMM in this case. This is made explicit in Malcolm’s article:

STEMM should ideally benefit all of society. However, this will not happen until the country creates a STEMM community as diverse as the population it should serve.

This neglects the view that different groups may have different preferences; for example, it’s likely that in medicine women tend to go into “people oriented” fields, like pediatrics, family medicine, and OB-GYN, while most surgeons are men.  This appears to be due not to salary differentials but to preference, and is seen in countries, like those of northern Europe, which have the highest ratings for gender equality. (In fact, in more gender-equal countries, women are less likely to go into STEMM, for reasons probably connected with the freedom to exercise preference and make career choices.) Which leads us to the second problem.

2.) Differences in equity are imputed by DEI to systemic racism, not to differences preference or merit. Over and over again, we find that underrepresentation of groups are not due to people trying to keep others out of their fields, but to the fact that preference has controlled people’s movement into fields, or different groups are over- or under-represented because of differences in merit. Here we have Malcolm touting “inclusion and respect” as an important aspect of STEMM firled

The success of STEMM is measured not only by publications and head counts of underrepresented groups in STEMM fields but also by creating a culture of inclusion and respect.

3.) Systemic racism/sexism is said to have reduced equity in different STEMM fields, but there’s precious little evidence for that. In fact, STEMM fields and departments are desperate to hire minorities and women, which, because of affirmative action, actually now have an advantage in entering STEMM.

4.)  Because identity trumps merit (something not good for science), differences in merit are to be either effaced or reduced using with strong affirmative action. For example, standardized tests have been largely eliminated, DEI statements prevail in hiring and promotion (and, in covert forms, in college admissions essays), and “holistic” admissions are used to circumvent legal bans on sex-based or race-based hiring.

Instead of using these stopgap measures that result in more equity, but at the expense of the quality of science produced, we should be working (in society, not in science) on bestowing equality of opportunity from birth. That’s a hard problem, of course, but solving it ensures that the quality of scientists is the overweening criterion for evaluating them (of course there’s teaching and service, too). And everybody wants science to be the best it can, especially, of course, when it comes to medical science.

The emphasis on merit as opposed to identity has been embodied in the University of Chicago’s Shils Report, which states this:

 The Shils report dictates that faculty at the University of Chicago must display distinguished performance in each of the following criteria when being considered for promotion:

• Research
• Teaching and Training, including the supervision of graduate students
• Contribution to intellectual community
• Service

“Promotion” also includes hiring. We do not use DEI statements when hiring (though some departments try to do it on the sly), so that hiring as well as promotion is based on the criteria above, but mainly, because new professors don’t have a record of service or teaching, on research and contribution to the intellectual community.

I won’t bore you by quoting Malcolm at length, because it’s simply a boilerplate defense of DEI neglecting all the points above. The only remotely cogent point she makes is this:

For example, one study reports that women researchers in the United States are more likely to make innovations that benefit women as a whole but are less likely to participate in commercial patenting. Their relative absence is a loss for women and for the world economy. Critics imply that DEI promotes mediocrity, whereas research shows the exact opposite.

The link indeed shows what Malcolm says, except she doesn’t mention that the innovations are “patents for biomedical innovations”, but of course those reflect a sex-ratio bias inherited from the old days. and, more important, there is no bias in hiring, promotion or funding grants of women these days. As I said, departments are competing fiercely for good female talent, and the proportion of women in biomedical research is increasing. It will increase up to the point where representation reflects female merit and preference—I suspect this may be more than 50%.   And this will happen naturally, so long as there’s no systemic misogyny, something that no biologist I know has seen. Here’s a table of recent Ph.D.s conferred in various fields: look at biology and at “health and medical sciences; the latter is 71.4% female!

In the end, the invidious effects of DEI, with its misguided emphasis on equity and systemic racism, and its devaluing of merit in favor of social justice, is not good for science.  And yet the AAAS itself, and the journal Science, has been ideologically captured, as have nearly all scientific organizations. As Luana Maroja and I predicted, the nature of science has already changed in the past five years, and may be almost unrecognizable in another ten:

And because it’s “progressive,” and because most scientists are liberals, few of us dare oppose these restrictions on our freedom. Unless there is a change in the Zeitgeist, and unless scientists finally find the courage to speak up against the toxic effects of ideology on their field, in a few decades science will be very different from what it is now. Indeed, it’s doubtful that we’d recognize it as science at all.

We were accused of hyperbole for saying that. And yet it’s happening, as scientific journals have science articles increasingly replaced by statements like the above, by “invited” papers on progressive issues and bias, and by ideologically-based papers accepted to reinforce a preferred ideology.

And the new science, needless to say, will not produce as much understanding of the world as science that leaves ideology at the door of the lab.

A brain region critical for memory is smaller in older adults with fewer than 10 teeth than in those who have most of their teeth, suggesting that tooth loss may precede the development of dementia

Posting may be light today as I have an event to attend. But please send in your photos. I have about two batches left, and today I’m featuring the work of people who sent me only one or a few photos.  Their comments are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

From Lee Jussim

A young muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) dining among pondscum:

Three from Claudia Baker.

On a winter’s walk one day last year, I came across this barred owl (Strix varia) high up in the branches of a tree. Just out there in the bright sunshine, having a snooze, open for anyone to snap a picture. What a beautiful sight. Made my day. The interweb says “originally a bird of the east (where I live), during the twentieth century it spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward to California”. They are fairly prolific around here (Ontario) and, according to a birding friend of mine, they are crowding out the other owls, especially the Barn Owl.

On an old spruce stump along my road, I spotted this fungus. When I tried to identify it, it was very confusing as there are so many. I think it is a Ganoderma lucidum, but I’m not sure. Perhaps a reader can weigh in. Sure are beautiful.

From Jon Alexander:

I just stumbled on some photos of a pigeon (Columba livia domestica) I took in 2013 from the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. (I straightened a couple today.) Not exactly the best photos of wildlife, but I like them. I don’t remember if I put a cracker there or if someone else put it there. But I imagine that some pigeons may have learned that crackers might be had with a little effort (or an updraft).

This is from Richard Pieniakowski.  I have many good pictures from him, but must download them from a Google Drive. This is from October, and a barred owl, like the one pictures above.

I just wanted to share this photo of a Barred Owl I captured the other day with you. I think that readers would appreciate looking at this silent hunter.

And from Reese Vaughn, a duck (I think it’s a mallard hen, Anas platyrhychos):

Betty Brown Duck graces the deck on the resaca in Brownsville, Texas. The Williamsons, Kay and John, are her staff. I have asked if she is a mallard hen and how long they have been feeding her — she swims up for food on an elaborate deck that belongs to my friends Kay and John Williamson and they call her Betty Brown Duck. They may be able to send more pictures. Every morning they feed a swarm of nutria, fish, and water birds.

I don’t think I know anyone personally who doesn’t have strong opinions about music – which genres they like, and how the quality of music may have changed over time. My own sense is that music as a cultural phenomenon is incredibly complex, no one (in my social group) really understands it, and our opinions are overwhelmed by subjectivity. But I am fascinated by it, and often intrigued by scientific studies that try to quantify our collective cultural experience. And I know there are true experts in this topic, musicologists and even ethnomusicologists, but haven’t found good resources for science communication in this area (please leave any recommendations in the comments).

In any case, here are some random bits of music culture science that I find interesting. A recent study analyzing 12,000 English language songs over the last 40 years has found that songs have been getting simpler and more repetitive over time. They are using fewer words with greater repetition. Further, the structure of the lyrics are getting simpler, and they are more readable and easier to understand. Also, the use of emotional words has increased, and has become overall more negative and more personal. I have to note this is a single study and there are some concerns about the software used in the analysis, but while this is being investigated the authors state that it is unlikely any glitch will alter their basic findings.

But taken at face value, it’s interesting that these findings generally fit with my subjective experience. This doesn’t necessarily make me more confident in the findings, and I do worry that I am just viewing these results through my confirmation bias filter. Still, it not only fits what I have perceived in music but in culture in general, especially with social media. We should be wary of simplistic explanations, but I wonder if this is mainly due to a general competition for attention. Overtime there is a selective pressure for media that is more immediate, more emotional, and easier to consume. The authors also speculate that it may reflect our changing habits in terms of consuming media. There is a greater tendency to listen to music, for example, in the background, while doing other things (perhaps several other things).

I’m really trying to avoid any “these kids today” moments in this piece, but I do have children and have been exposed through them (and other contexts) to their generation. It is common for them to be consuming 3-4 types of media at once. They may listen to music, while having a YouTube video running in the background, while playing a video game or watching TV. I wonder if it just comforting for people raised surrounded by so much digital media. This would tend to support the author’s hypothesis.

Our digital world has given us access to lots of media and information. But I have to wonder if that means there is a trend over time to consume more media more superficially. When I was younger I would listen to a much narrower range of music – I would buy an album of an artist I liked and listen to the entire album dozens or even hundreds of times. Now, when I listen to music, it’s mostly radio or streaming. Even when I listen to my own playlists, there are thousands of songs from hundreds of artists.

Or there may be other factors at play. Another study, for example, looking at film found that the average shot length in movies from 1945 was 13 seconds, while today it is about 4 seconds. I like to refer to this phenomenon as “short attention span theater”. But in reality I know this is about more than attention span. Directors and editors have become more skilled at communicating to their audience through cinema, and there is an evolving cinematic language that both filmmaker and audience learn. Part of the decreased shot length is that it is possible to convey and idea, emotion, or character element much more quickly and efficiently. I also think editing has just become tighter and more efficient.

I watch a lot of movies, and again having children meant I revisited many classics with them. It is amazing how well a really good classic film can hold up over time, even decades (the word “timeless” is appropriate). Simultaneously, it is amazing how dated and crusty not-so-classic movies become over time. The difference, I think, is between artistic films and popular flicks. Watch popular movies from any past decade, for example, and you will be able to identify their time period very easily. They are the opposite of timeless – they are embedded in their culture and time in a very basic way. You will likely also note that movies from past decades may tend to drag, even becoming unwatchable at times. I am OK with slow movies (2001 is still a favorite), if they are well done and the long shots have an artistic purpose. But older movies can have needlessly long scenes, actors mugging the camera for endless seconds, pointless action and filler, and a story that is just plodding.

The point is that shorter, quicker, and punchier media may not be all about short attention-span consumers. There is also a positive aspect to this – greater efficiency and a shared language. There may also be shifting habits of consumption, with the media just adapting to changing use.

But I still can’t help the subjective feeling that with music something is being lost as well. I am keenly aware that the phenomenon known as “neural nostalgia“. What may be happening is that the media we consume between the ages of 12 and 22 gets ingrained onto a brain that is rapidly developing and laying down pathways. This then becomes the standard by which we judge anything we consume for the rest of our lives. So everyone thinks that the music of their youth was the best, and music has only gotten worse since then. This is a bias that we have to account for.

But neural nostalgia does not mean that music has not objectively changed. It’s just difficult to tease apart real change from subjective perception, and to also avoid the bias of thinking of any change as a worsening (rather than just a difference). More emotional and personal song lyrics is not necessarily a bad thing, or a good thing – it’s just a thing. Simpler lyrics may sound annoyingly repetitive and mindless to boomers, but older lyrics may seem convoluted and difficult to understand let alone follow to younger generations.

I do think music can be an interesting window onto culture. It reflects the evolving lives of each generation and how cultural norms and technology are affecting every aspect of their experience.

 

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It’s a well known fact that black holes absorb anything that falls into them. Often before material ‘vanishes’ inside it forms into an accretion disk around them. Like the progenitor stars, the black holes have powerful magnetic fields and these can generate jets that blast away from the black hole. A similar process occurs in neutron stars that are orbiting other stars and recent observations holes have shown that some material in the jets travel at speeds 35-40% the speed of light. 

The European Space Agency launched the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (Integral) in October 2002. Its purpose to observe gamma ray events across the universe with energies up to 8 MeV (meagaelectron volts). Not only can it image gamma ray events, it can also provide spectroscopic analysis. Of all the gamma ray instruments in space, Integral is the most sensitive. It was using Integral that astronomers detected the high velocity jets. 

Artist’s illustration of Integral. Image credit: ESA

One of the chief methods used to identify the velocity of jets is to track matter moving along their length. This might sound easy but the distances to them are so extreme that observing their movement is difficult. A team of astronomers led by Thomas Russell from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy conjured up a cunning idea that neutron stars might help! 

Neutron stars are the result of the collapse of a massive star – effectively they are a whacking great neutron often around the size of Earth – and when a neutron star orbits another star, it can strip material off the companion. Most of the material accretes on the neutron star surface and wen it reaches a critical mass, a nuclear explosion occurs in an event known as a type-I x-ray burst. Some material however escapes this event by being ejected out of jets along the star’s rotational axis. 

Russell and his team concluded that the matter would be accelerated by the energy from the neutron star surface and it may be possible to measure the disturbance. The short lived impulse of extra material shot along the beam may make it easier to track. To date, there are 125 neutron stars that behave like this. If sufficient neutron stars with jets can be observed hen it may help us to understand the primary launching mechanism and whether magnetic fields from the star or material are key.

Two neutron stars (4U 1728-34 and 4U 1636-536) have been shown to exhibit x-ray burst events but only ’34 could be observed in radio wavelengths. x-ray events were observed on ‘536 but they only emitted radio waves. Supporting observations were needed from radio telescopes around the world. The bursts usually occur every few hours but it is difficult to predict. The Australian Telescope Compact Array chocked up 30 hours of observing in April 2021 and captured 14 x-ray bursts. The team were surprised to see that the nuclear explosion did not destroy the location where the jet launched but instead, saw strong input. The jets are well established phenomenon capable of withstanding such events. 

The new technique has shown that neutron star jets can be observed in this way so further observations are required to further explore the fascinating phenomena. 

Source : Integral spots giant explosions feeding neutron star jets?

The post Neutron Stars are Jetting Material Away at 40% the Speed of Light appeared first on Universe Today.