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Continuous human habitation of the Moon is the state aim of many major space-faring nations in the coming decades. Reaching that aim requires many tasks, but one of the most fundamental is feeding those humans. Shipping food consistently from Earth will likely be prohibitively expensive shortly, so DLR, Germany’s space agency, is working on an alternative. This semi-autonomous greenhouse can be used to at least partially feed the astronauts in residence on the Moon. To support that goal, a team of researchers from DLR released a paper about EVE, a robotic arm intended to help automate the operations of the first lunar greenhouse, at the IEEE Aerospace conference in March.

The EDEN Versatile End-effector (or EVE) is only possibly named as an homage to the life-seeking robot from WALL-E. But it is designed to interface with the EDEN LUNA greenhouse, a project at DLR meant to result in a fully functional greenhouse for use on the lunar surface. The advantages of such a greenhouse have been discussed in other articles, but needless to say, the EDEN LUNA is the best-supported project that will likely result in a fully functional system on the Moon when the time is right.

But as any gardener would tell you, greenhouses are a lot of work. And any time an astronaut spends on greenhouse maintenance is time they can’t spend doing other tasks, like scientific research. So, it would be extremely beneficial if there was a robot to assist with greenhouse operations, even if that robot had to be remotely controlled by an operator back on Earth.

Fraser discusses how to grow crops on the Moon.

Enter EVE, which consists of three main components. The transport rails allow the robot to move to the correct location in the greenhouse. Its robotic “arm” enables the robot to position itself effectively to complete its assigned task, and the end effector can push, pull, pick up, or perform other manual tasks. The system uses about 700W and weighs about 170 kg fully installed.

First, let’s look at the transport trails. It’s actually an off-the-shelf commercial system for use in industrial automation. The eXtended Transport System, made by Beckhoff, an industrial automation company, can be mounted in different configurations. It allows whatever is attached to it to be driven to various locations based on a series of signals that control the “mover” to which the robotic arm would be connected.

The robotic arm is based on DLR’s “This Is Not an Arm” (TINA) project. It has seven degrees of freedom, which allows for precise positioning of its end effector. Each of its three joints has around three electronic controllers for motor control, power management, and communication. It’s supported by a camera system that senses its surroundings and allows remote operators to tell where the end effector is positioned.

Isaac Arthur discusses how the Moon could support a biosphere.
Credit – Isaac Arthur YouTube Channel

The Compliant Low-Cost Antagonistic Servo Hand (CLASH) is the end effector. It has two “fingers” and a “thumb” to grip soft objects using force feedback sensors in its fingertips. It can also sense pressure from other components, such as the hand’s “tendons” and thumb and figure position.

These positioning and end-effector systems can work effectively together to perform the greenhouse’s daily maintenance tasks. For now, at least, it will require a skilled operator to do so, but that operator doesn’t have to be co-located with the greenhouse on the Moon – it could be back on Earth or even on the Lunar Gateway station orbiting above the lunar surface. Continuous operation is essential, though, as the first stages of the permanent occupation of the Moon involve temporary stays, where there will be long stretches with no human inhabitants.

DLR is fully backing the development of the EDEN LUNA greenhouse and the EVE robotic arm. Later this year, EVE will be fully integrated into the greenhouse at the Institute of Space Systems in Bremen, followed by a specially designed facility for the greater LUNA project of ESA/DLR in Cologne. As of now, both EVE and EDEN LUNA seem on track to be put through their paces before officially supporting the continual human occupation of the Moon within the next decade.

Learn More:
Prince et al. – EDEN Versatile End-effector (EVE): An Autonomous Robotic System to Support Food Production on the Moon
UT – Plants Could Grow in Lunar Regolith Using Bacteria
UT – A Greenhouse on the Moon by 2014?
UT – Practical Ideas for Farming on the Moon and Mars

Lead Image:
Greenhouse concept art on the Moon.
Credit – DLR

The post Can a Greenhouse with a Robotic Arm Feed the Next Lunar Astronauts? appeared first on Universe Today.

Of all the mysteries facing astronomers and cosmologists today, the “Hubble Tension” remains persistent! This term refers to the apparent inconsistency of the Universe’s expansion (aka. the Hubble Constant) when local measurements are compared to those of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Astronomers hoped that observations of the earliest galaxies in the Universe by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would solve this mystery. Unfortunately, Webb confirmed that the previous measurements were correct, so the “tension” endures.

Since the JWST made its observations, numerous scientists have suggested that the existence of Early Dark Energy (EDE) might explain the Hubble Tension. In a recent study supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggested that EDE could resolve two cosmological mysteries. In addition to the Hubble Tension, it might explain why Webb observed as many galaxies as it did during the early Universe. According to current cosmological models, the Universe should have been much less populated at the time.

The research was led by Xuejian Shen and his colleagues from the Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MTK) at MIT. They were joined by researchers from the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) at MIT, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology (KICC) and Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The paper detailing their findings was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Cosmic Distance Ladder, which relies on different methods to gauge distance, has led to the realization that measurements of cosmic expansion don’t agree. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild (STScI)/A. Riess (STScI/JHU)

To recap, Dark Energy is the theoretical form of energy that is believed to be driving the expansion of the Universe today. The theory first emerged in the 1990s to explain observations by the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, which showed that cosmic expansion appeared to be accelerating over time. EDE is similar but is thought to have briefly appeared shortly after the Big Bang, which disappeared after influencing the expansion of the early Universe. Like Dark Energy, this force would have counteracted the gravitational pull of early galaxies and temporarily accelerated the expansion of the Universe.

The existence of this energy would also explain why measurements of the Hubble Constant are inconsistent with each other. Short of General Relativity being wrong (despite being proven repeatedly for over a century), EDE is considered the most likely solution to the Hubble Tension. Similarly, Webb’s 2023 observations uncovered a surprising number of bright galaxies just 500 million years after the Big Bang that were comparable in size to the modern Milky Way. These findings challenge conventional models of galaxy formation, which predict that galaxies take billions of years to form and grow.

For their study, the team focused on the formation of “Dark Matter Halos,” the hypothetical region that allows protogalaxies to accumulate gas and dust, leading to star formation and growth. As when said in a recent MIT News story:

“The bright galaxies that JWST saw would be like seeing a clustering of lights around big cities, whereas theory predicts something like the light around more rural settings like Yellowstone National Park. And we don’t expect that clustering of light so early on. We believe that dark matter halos are the invisible skeleton of the universe. Dark matter structures form first, and then galaxies form within these structures. So, we expect the number of bright galaxies should be proportional to the number of big dark matter halos.”

Early Dark Energy could have caused early seeds of galaxies (depicted at left) to sprout many more bright galaxies (at right) than theory predicts. Credit: Josh Borrow/Thesan Team

The team developed an empirical framework for early galaxy formation that incorporated the six main “cosmological parameters”—the basic mathematical terms that describe the evolution of the Universe. This includes the Hubble Constant, which describes cosmic expansion, while parameters describe density fluctuations immediately after the Big Bang, from which dark matter halos formed. The team theorized that if EDE affects early cosmic expansion, it could also affect other parameters that might explain the appearance of many large galaxies shortly thereafter.

To test their theory, the team modeled the formation of galaxies within the first few hundred million years of the Universe. This model incorporated EDE to determine how early dark matter structures evolved and gave rise to the first galaxies in the Universe. As study co-author Rohan Naidu, a postdoc with MKI, explained:

“You have these two looming open-ended puzzles. We find that in fact, early dark energy is a very elegant and sparse solution to two of the most pressing problems in cosmology. What we show is, the skeletal structure of the early universe is altered in a subtle way where the amplitude of fluctuations goes up, and you get bigger halos, and brighter galaxies that are in place at earlier times, more so than in our more vanilla models. It means things were more abundant, and more clustered in the early universe.”

“We demonstrated the potential of early dark energy as a unified solution to the two major issues faced by cosmology,” added co-author Mark Vogelsberger, an MIT professor of physics. “This might be an evidence for its existence if the observational findings of JWST get further consolidated. In the future, we can incorporate this into large cosmological simulations to see what detailed predictions we get.”

Further Reading: MIT News, MNRAS

The post Early Dark Energy Could Resolve Two of the Biggest Mysteries in Cosmology appeared first on Universe Today.

Optical interferometry has been a long-proven science method that involves using several separate telescopes to act as one big telescope, thus achieving more accurate data as opposed to each telescope working individually. However, the Earth’s chaotic atmosphere often makes achieving ground-based science difficult, but what if we could do it on the Moon? This is what a recent study presented at the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2024 hopes to address as a team of researchers propose MoonLITE (Lunar InTerferometry Explorer) as part of the NASA Astrophysics Pioneers program. This also comes after this same team of researchers recently proposed the Big Fringe Telescope (BFT), which is a 2.2-kilometer interferometer telescope to be built on the Earth with the goal of observing bright stars.

Here, Universe Today discusses MoonLITE with Dr. Gerard van Belle, who is an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, regarding the motivation behind proposing MoonLITE, the science they hope to achieve, lunar surface location preference, the cost of MoonLITE, and next steps to make MoonLITE a reality. Therefore, what is the motivation behind proposing MoonLITE?

“The real barrier to doing super sensitive high resolution optical interferometry is the Earth’s atmosphere,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “It’s a boiling, turbulent medium that means the exposure time of your telescope is ultimately limited to less than a millisecond or so. Telescopes that expose longer than that can achieve greater sensitivity, but at the expense of angular resolution – things smear out. MoonLITE, with two-inch (50mm) apertures, would be more than a thousand times more sensitive than terrestrial apertures is 8-meter collecting apertures, because it can stare for many minutes at a time. In comparison to millisecond exposure times on the Earth, the amount of light grabbed by these tiny dime-store sized telescopes exceeds giant industrial facility telescopes within the first second of having the shutter open.”

Much like with the recently proposed BFT, MoonLITE has a number of scientific objectives it hopes to accomplish, as the study notes three science cases, including studying the radii of low-mass stars (M-dwarfs) and brown dwarfs, young stellar objects (YSOs), and active galactic nuclei (AGN). For the M-dwarfs and brown dwarfs, the team aspires to obtain long-sought data regarding their sizes and temperatures since observing them from ground-based telescopes has proven difficult.

For YSOs, the researchers hope to gain greater understanding of the formation and evolution of habitable exoplanets within the protoplanetary disks of pre-main sequence stars, with MoonLITE being capable of ascertaining the inner regions of these stars and the star sizes, as well. For AGNs, the researchers aspire to learn more about supermassive black holes, and specifically the jets that emanate from them, with MoonLITE being able to observe these objects in optical wavelengths for the first time. But what else can we learn from these three science cases?

“So, we actually have more science cases than that – so many, in fact, that we realized the new capabilities of MoonLITE were beyond our collective imagination for covering all the bases,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “So, we built into the program a 20% slice of the overall observing time to put up for competitive selection by the community – you know, crowdsource for the really creative ideas. The three we wrote up were just what we felt highlighted what one could do with greater sensitivity from the Earth’s surface. For example, the stars that are the smallest – 10% the size of our sun – are also the faintest. And measuring the sizes of those is out of reach of terrestrial interferometers. Same for YSOs and AGNs – there’s a few that can be done from Earth, but for more general samples – ones that represent the more typical objects, not the super-bright oddballs – you need lots of sensitivity.”

Diagram conveying the setup for MoonLITE on the lunar surface, beginning with a lander being delivered by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (1), which unrolls a fiber umbilical over 100 meters (328 feet) (2), concluding with deploying the siderostat station (3). Science operations begin once instrument calibration is performed. (Credit: van Belle et al. (2024))

One of the unique aspects of MoonLITE is it could be brought to the lunar surface via NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which is a collaboration with the private sector to deliver scientific and technical payloads to the Moon to test technologies that can help with both human missions as part of the Artemis Program, and scientific missions to further our understanding of the universe, like MoonLITE. Examples of companies participating in upcoming CLPS missions include Intuitive Machines, Astrobiotic, Firefly Aerospace, and Draper, all of which are delivering payloads to various locations on the lunar surface. But is there a specific location where MoonLITE would work best?

“We designed MoonLITE to be entirely site agnostic,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “For a small experiment like this, it’s going to catch a ride on board a NASA CLPS lander as a minor guest – and putting a minimal number of requirements on your ride improves one’s chances of getting a ride assignment. So polar or equatorial latitudes both work, as well as nearside versus farside.”

As noted, this same team of researchers recently proposed the Big Fringe Telescope, which is slated to be a 2.2-kilometer interferometer telescope comprised of 16 smaller telescopes that are 0.5-meters in diameter. Along with conducting cutting-edge science, including observing binary star systems and making exoplanet transit “movies”, one of the most notable features of the BFT is its extremely low cost compared to current optical interferometers around the world, coming with an approximate price tag of $28,496,000.

In contrast, the cost of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), which is comprised of four 8.2-meter telescopes and four movable 1.8-meter telescopes, has been estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, what is the potential cost for MoonLITE compared to other Earth-based interferometers?

“MoonLITE was designed to work within the cost box for the NASA Pioneers call for proposals,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “This CfP [Call for Projects] stipulates a couple of things: a $20M cost cap, including a 25% uncommitted reserve, so the actual budgeted level of activities and hardware was $15M. The CfP does let you request some things – first off, a CLPS ride, though you have to then fit within the CLPS mass cap of 50kg. The notional CLPS lander in the CfP was to provide some other things as well – power, communications, mobility with a rover. So, there’s actually quite a bit of in-kind support wrapped up in that CLPS ride.”

Submitting a proposal to NASA is a very in-depth process involving several steps, also known as phases, resulting in a very small acceptance rate, often with several rejections and improvements before being accepted. These proposals range from CubeSats to full-blown, multi-billion-dollar space missions, with most taking years to become real-world missions even after selection, if at all. For example, of the four proposals selected for further development in January 2021 Astrophysics Pioneers Program, (Aspera, Pandora, StarBurst, and PUEO), only two of them have definitive launch dates (StarBurst in 2027 and PUEO in 2025). Therefore, if MoonLITE is to be selected for advancement, it could be years, or even decades, before it officially lands on the lunar surface to conduct science. Unfortunately, while Dr. van Bells says the 2024 Pioneers proposal term was canceled due to federal budget issues, what are the next steps to make MoonLITE a reality?

“We submitted for the 2023 NASA Pioneers call and got turned down,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “But we got a good review and have been encouraged to improve things, address perceived issues, and resubmit. We’re trying to reduce risk by doing some lab and ground-based tests. This is another nice element of MoonLITE – we can just build a representative system on the ground and test it straight up here. We don’t get the exquisite sensitivity like we would on the moon, but otherwise it’ll work just the same – we just need to look at bright things here from Earth. So, we’re keen to address some of these issues from the review panel and resubmit for 2025.” 

As NASA prepares to send humans back to the Moon with the Artemis Program for the first time since 1972, the level of science that can be achieved on the lunar surface is unprecedented. This is specifically evident given the lack of a Moon’s atmosphere, allowing for more accurate data to be obtained and potentially providing scientists with a greater understanding of our universe, and our place in it. With MoonLITE, scientists hope to gain insight into low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, young stellar objects, and active galactic nuclei from potentially anywhere on the lunar surface, allowing for greater diversity is site selection and what celestial objects can be observed.

Dr. van Belle concludes by telling Universe Today, “MoonLITE is super exciting, not just because it’s a really high-impact experiment in a remarkably affordable package – but because it will show the whole approach works and can be taken much, much further. As an example, high precision astrometry from a lunar interferometer could characterize the masses of terrestrial-scale extrasolar planets. Mass measures are needed in advance of the Habitable Worlds Observatory of the 2040’s, to understand the spectral HWO will get, and disentangle those spectra for signs of life.”

How will MoonLITE contribute to optical interferometry on the lunar surface 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 Studying Stars from the Lunar Surface with MoonLITE, Courtesy of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services appeared first on Universe Today.

Here are two clips from the latest Real Time show: the introductory monologue and the longer comedy bit, which this week is on the interminable campaigning going on.

This 3½-minute intro is about the debate and Trump’s abysmal showing (he doesn’t forget to bring in Haitians and dogs).  His imitation of Trump at the end is pretty good:

Here Maher beefs about how long elections are taking these days, suggesting that we start the campaigning on Labor Day at the earliest, for we can learn enough about the candidates within three months, especially given today’s short attention spans. (It’s long enough for debates, too!) Even heterosexual sex, he says, takes on average between three and seven minutes. The long campaigns, he claims, is due entirely to money.  “It’s time we admit that the endless campaign exists only to enrich advertisers, political consultants, and what’s left of the news media.”  He adds that the only things that last too long these days are campaigns–and streaming series.

The educational part is Maher’s description how much less time it takes other countries to have political campaigns–and the much shorter interval between someone being elected and taking office.

 

I’ve mentioned before that at the University of Aucklannd—New Zealand’s most prestigious university—every student has to take a mandatory course related to indigenous knowledge, a course ostensibly related to their their field of study. In reality, these courses are exercises in propaganda, created to indoctrinate students into sacralizing indigenous “ways of knowing”.  As an example, I gave this course, which is required for all science majors. Click to access the course description, which I went through a while back (see the link above).

Now I’m going to be on a radio show in New Zealand next week (stay tuned!), talking about the ideological distortion of that country’s science, and it’s a great chance for me to share my thoughts with Kiwis without the fear of being punished. To prepare for the show, I have a pile of stuff to read and review, and, besides the whale/kauri tree mishigass that I described before, I managed to get hold of the syllabus for this course. (It came from an anonymous New Zealander, of course; they are too afraid to reveal personal information on this site.) You might have a listen to this podcast on related issues, and this 140-page report about the “culture of fear” among New Zealand academics is indispensable in explaining why all my correspondents insist on remaining anonymous. In that country you stand to lose your job if you even raise your voice to contest the academic Zeitgeist.

The course syllabus is in fact frightening in its “progressive” authoritarianism and its neglect of real science in favor of ideology. I can’t find the syllabus on the Internet (I got it from someone who wants to remain anonymous), but would be glad to send a pdf to those who request it.  Here’s the heading of the syllabus:

If you read the course description, you’ll see that it’s largely designed to inculcate students into the (1840) Treaty of Waitangi (in Māori: “Te Tiriti o Waitangi”) as a way of showing that Māori ways of knowing, or Mātauranga Māori (MM), should be considered coequal to modern science.  This, in turn, is part of a push to insinuate indigenous ways of knowing into New Zealand science, as well as giving Māori increased power over what science is done and how it is done. (For my criticisms of this approach, see the many pieces I’ve written about it.) The general view of the indigenous people of New Zealand is that Māori have the sole power to use and control how indigenous knowledge is used. That’s in contrast to modern science, in which no ethnic group has any control about what projects are done or funded.

I’ll simply give some highlighted extracts from the syllabus. Remember, the course required for all science majors at Auckland Uni. I’ll have to give screenshots as copy-paste doesn’t work well. Ask for the 15-page pdf if you want to check it out.

Here we go:

 

The rest of the bits below are from the course schedule.  A whole week, the second, is devoted to the Treaty of Waitangi. “What does this have to do with science?”, you ask. Good question! See below. “Aotearoa” is the Māori term for New Zealand, and woe to whoever forgets to use it when referring to their country. Note the emphasis on the importance of “place,” which we’ll discuss shortly.

As Wikipedia notes, about one term below, “Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei or Ngāti Whātua-o-Ōrākei is an Auckland-based Māori hapū (sub-tribe) in New Zealand.” Again, the relationship to science eludes me, but the relationship to ideology is clear. The emphasis on “place” for science is grossly distorted, as science should be pretty much the same no matter where it’s done. But the reason is clear: science (e.g, MM) done in New Zealand is thought to be critically different from science done elsewhere. In reality, the place where science is done, except in those cases where the object of study is in a particular location, is irrelevant. And the place where science is done has no effect on how science is practiced, even if you’re doing field work in a particular place in, say, Alaska.

Ah, my favorite topic, “knowledge systems”, appears:

Note that MM is characterized as a “knowledge system.” This is untrue. There is some empirical “knowledge” in there, but it’s based largely on trial and error, is specific to New Zealand (where and when to pick berries or catch eels), and is larded and guided by myth, as in the kauri tree/whale research. In that case, based on Māori mythology, people are trying to play whale songs and utter Māori prayers to kauri trees dying en masse of an oomycete infection, and rubbing sperm whale oil and ground-up bones on the trunks. This is based on a mythological belief about the relationship between whales and kauri trees so ludicrous that it defies belief (see here and here).

And, as I’ve discussed ad infinitum, MM is more than just “knowledge”: it includes superstition, mythology, religion, guidelines for behavior, morality, and traditions handed down by word of mouth.  If you consider such stuff “knowledge”, then there are a gazillion competing and conflicting “knowledge systems” in the world, each corresponding to the views of indigenous people in a different area. But of course there is only one form of modern science. Chemistry, for example is understood and practiced the same way by chemists throughout the world.

Another trope pops up in Week 7: the weaknesses of modern science:

That needs no comment; I’ve discussed it before and it’s largely science-dissing.

But wait! The course isn’t done yet! They haven’t yet gone over the value of narrative and storytelling in science communication. Remember, this course is taking up time that could be use to teach science itself. “Pūrākao” is “storytelling” in Māori:

Finally, in the penultimate week, the sweating science majors have to learn more about the Treaty of Waitangi:

 

Now what is the relevance of “Te Tiriti” to science? There isn’t one, really, as the treaty was signed in 1840 and its main goals are outlined at the site New Zealand History (excerpt below). Note that not all Māori tribes signed this treaty, and its interpretation is still subject to dispute:

The Treaty is a broad statement of principles on which the British and Māori made a political compact to found a nation state and build a government in New Zealand. The document has three articles. In the English version, Māori cede the sovereignty of New Zealand to Britain; Māori give the Crown an exclusive right to buy lands they wish to sell, and, in return, are guaranteed full rights of ownership of their lands, forests, fisheries and other possessions; and Māori are given the rights and privileges of British subjects.

The Treaty in Māori was deemed to convey the meaning of the English version, but there are important differences. Most significantly, the word ‘sovereignty’ was translated as ‘kawanatanga’ (governance). Some Māori believed they were giving up government over their lands but retaining the right to manage their own affairs. The English version guaranteed ‘undisturbed possession’ of all their ‘properties’, but the Māori version guaranteed ‘tino rangatiratanga’ (full authority) over ‘taonga’ (treasures, which may be intangible). Māori understanding was at odds with the understanding of those negotiating the Treaty for the Crown, and as Māori society valued the spoken word, explanations given at the time were probably as important as the wording of the document.

Different understandings of the Treaty have long been the subject of debate. From the 1970s especially, many Māori have called for the terms of the Treaty to be honoured. Some have protested – by marching on Parliament and by occupying land. There have been studies of the Treaty and a growing awareness of its meaning in modern New Zealand.

Why, then are students majoring in science being force-fed a huge dose of Treaty, which would seem to belong in a New Zealand Aotearoa history course? It’s not absolutely clear, but making science majors learn this stiff is surely part of the effort, promoted both by Māori and woke non-Māori activists, to ensure that MM is taught alongside regular science in the classroom. But again, what does this have to do with the Treaty? My best guess is that because the treaty was a swap of privileges between Māori and Europeans (called “The Crown”), Māori “ways of knowing” should have equal representation in the classroom.  That is, MM, which is seen as indigernous science, should be taught as if it were as useful as modern science.

This of course comes from postmodernism, which denies the existence of objective knowledge and sees “knowledge” as the outcome of competing and struggling points of view, with the most powerful group getting its point of view spread most widely. MM is thus in a power struggle with modern science. The Treaty is the rationale that supposedly gives power to MM, though of course there’s nothing about educational systems, much less “ways of knowing,” in the Treaty.

Many think that postmodernism is also a major source of DEI initiatives, and while I won’t weigh in on that, it’s clear that this course is designed to inculcate science majors with the ideology that not only are Māori the victims of colonization (and yes, historically they were oppressed), but are still the victims of colonization, and must assert their presence by having their way of knowing taught in the classroom. And taught not just taught as sociology, anthropology, or history, but as real ongoing science,

The whale/kauri story exemplifies all that is wrong with this initiative, and all that is wrong with this course.  It grounds empirical investigation partly in mythology, diverts scientific investigation into blind alleys, and, most of all, takes up time that students could use to learn real science, not mythology or place-specific information about when the berries should be ripe. Many of New Zealand’s universities are funded substantially by high tuition charged to foreign students, particularly those from Asia. If you were a parent who wanted to give a kid a good science education, could you in all honesty look at the syllabus above (again, this is a required science course) and want to send your kid to the University of Auckland?

Needless to say, the indigenization of the science curriculum is happening not just at Auckland University, but through the entire country of New Zealand/Aortearoa. It’s a shame, for the long-term results of this misguided policy are predictable. Anybody who wants to seriously study science will leave the country, and those who remain will become confused over what science really is.

Oh, and I’ll add, as a coda, that this stuff is already going on big time in Canada, and has got its feelers in the U.S. as well.  Of course, the “ways of knowing” that are pushed in these places are different from those in New Zealand. But the drive for indigeneity is pretty much the same everywhere.

I just got back from the grocery store (a large chain where I shop early every Sunday morning), and is it possible that grocery prices have gone up in the one month I’ve been gone? Perhaps I’ve forgotten how high they were, but when a loaf of garden-variety generic bread costs $2 (it’s $1 at Aldi’s, but I’d have to drive a lot farther to get it), a smallish jar of brand-name but not fancy preserves (for my peanut-butter sandwiches) is six bucks, and as for toilet paper or paper towels, well, I’ll have to make more runs to Costco to buy in bulk (at least it’s the season when I can get one of their fantastic and humongous pumpkin pies).  And as for the price of eggs, fuggedaboutit.

Now I am fortunate enough to be able to afford these things, though I took a pass on the preserves (I can order fancy Tiptree British preserves from Amazon at the same price). But I can understand why Americans pinched for cash are beefing about food, which is the one contact with the economy that the average person has on a weekly basis. Note too that while inflation is beginning to decrease, the cost of groceries has increased fully 25% in four years, outpacing the general inflation rate, which was 19% in the same period.  To counteract this, Kamala Harris has proposed a ban on price-gouging when it comes to food. (Economists are dubious.)

I’m not blaming the current administration, as understanding these high prices is above my pay grade and there may be good reasons for this inflation, but I can understand now why people feel that the economy is going to hell.

Anyway, I’m not trying to incite a political discussion here, as I’m not blaming any politician or administration for food inflation. All I’m saying is that I’ve been gone a month and, restarting my weekly trips to the grocery store, I can see why people who are not flush with cash are complaining.  If you have your own beefs about the prices of certain groceries, put them below.

BUT, see below. This alone is worth joining Costco for, as well as their huge $5 pre-roasted chickens:

 

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A post shared by Laura Jayne Lamb (@costcohotfinds)

Thanks to the generosity of several readers, we now have at least five future wildlife posts, and good ones, too.  But I always need more, and we’d run out in a week if I posted one every day. So if you have good photos, please send them to me. Thanks!

Since today is the first Sunday since I’ve returned from South Africa, John Avise has contributed some of his favorite pictures of South African birds. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

South African Montage 

While PCC(E)’s safari to South Africa is still fresh in WEIT readers’ minds, I thought I would send in a batch of my own photos of some of the birds I encountered on a business trip that I took to that country in 2007.  Most of these photos came from either the Cape Town area or from Kruger National Park.  Jerry posted his own photos of several charismatic birds (such as Ostrichs, Vultures, Geese, Hornbills, and Quineafowl), but of course many other birds also inhabit this part of the world.  So here I’m showing my best photos of several smaller but nonetheless enchanting South African birds.

African Hoopoe (Upupa africana):

Acacia Pied Barbet (Tricholaema leucomelas):

Black-collared Barbet (Lybius torquatus):

Common Bulbul (Pycnonotus barbatus):

Blacksmith Lapwing (Vanellus armatus):

Bokmakierie (Telophorus zeylonus):

Brown-hooded Kingfisher (Halcyon albiventris):

Cape Grassbird (Sphenoeacus afer):

Cape Sparrow (Passer melanurus):

Fiscal Flycatcher (Sigelus silens):

Grey-headed Bushshrike (Malaconotus blanchoti):

Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis):

Spotted Prinia (Prinia maculosa):

Tawny-flanked Prinia (Prinia subflava):

White-crested Helmetshrike (Prionops plumatus):

White-bellied Sunbird (Cinnyris talatala):

White-fronted Bee-eater (Merops bullockoides):

Yellow-bellied Greenbul (Chlorocichla flaviventris):

Earlier this year, NASA selected a rather interesting proposal for Phase I development as part of their NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. It’s known as Swarming Proxima Centauri, a collaborative effort between Space Initiatives Inc. and the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) led by Space Initiative’s chief scientist, Marshall Eubanks. The concept was recently selected for Phase I development as part of this year’s NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

Similar to other proposals involving gram-scale spacecraft and lightsails, the “swarming” concept involves accelerating tiny spacecraft with a laser array to up to 20% the speed of light. This past week, on the last day of the 2024 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium, Eubanks and his colleagues presented an animation illustrating what this mission will look like. The video and their presentation provide tantalizing clues as to what scientists expect to find in the closest star system to our own. This includes Proxima b, the rocky planet that orbits within its parent star’s circumsolar habitable zone (CHZ).

As we addressed in previous articles, the Swarming Proxima Centauri concept has evolved significantly over the past few years. The concept emerged in 2017 as a proposal by the i4is named Project Lyra, which aimed to send tiny spacecraft to catch up with the interstellar object (ISO) ‘Oumuamua. However, it has since evolved into a collaborative effort between the i4is and Space Initiatives Inc., a Florida-based aviation and aerospace component manufacturer dedicated to developing gram-based “femtospacecraft” – i.e., even tinier than nanospacecraft!

Not long ago, Eubanks and his colleagues produced research papers addressing some big questions about interstellar exploration, including communications and what we might learn from a flyby of Proxima b. During the 2024 NIAC Symposium, which took place from September 10th to 12th in Pasadena, California, Eubanks and his colleagues had the opportunity to present their latest findings. As the video illustrates, the swarm they envision will consist of a thousand “picospacecraft” (between nano and femto), which they’ve named “Coracles” (a small, rounded, lightweight boat).

The probes are solid, armored on one side, and covered with optical annuli (reflective material) on the other. They measure about two centimeters thick (0.8 inches) and four meters (about 13 feet) in diameter and weigh no more than a few grams each. According to their NIAC proposal, these will be accelerated by a ~100 gigawatt (GW) laser array that will be available by mid-century. The probes are also equipped with side-mounted lasers to facilitate communications between them and mission controllers back on Earth.

As Eubanks indicated during the presentation, there are actually a thousand probes in the animation and an artistically accurate depiction of the Proxima Centauri system. The red dwarf is shown prominently as the probes approach the Proxima b, while Alpha Centauri AB is visible in the far background. Once the probes pass by the planet, we also get an accurate depiction of many scientists they expect to find:

“This is real-time. This is more or less what you would see expect for a redshift, a blushift, and then a redshift. And we had the artists do the planet as an ‘eyeball planet,’ where you have a central warm spot surrounded by a cold zone because we think this planet’s probably rotationally locked.”

Team member Robert Kennedy III posing in front of an 88% size mock-up of the Coracle sail. Credit: 2024 NIAC/i4is/Interstellar Initiatives Inc.

As Eubanks further explained, their collaboration has already produced prototypes of their Coracle spacecraft. One was recently showcased at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, while another is currently in Pasadena. While providing a run-down on the design of the individual spacecraft, Eubanks emphasized the importance of coherence and how the swarm’s configuration will facilitate communications and cohesion:

“Operational coherence is essential to making this mission work. By operational coherence, we mean that the whole set of probes acts as a unit. Now I notice that doesn’t mean photonic phase coherence – we won’t be able to do that. But if we have good enough clocks and we have range measurement by lasers, we can determine where we are to a few centimeters. We can determine what the relative clocks are to more or less the same level. And [they] can then act as one thing.

“And the crucial part of that is we can do that with a lot of things, like taking pictures of the planet and so on. But the crucial part of that is what we call the wall of light. The wall of light is when all the probes send one coherent set of photons back to Earth so they can be received altogether. We think we can get one kilobit per second data rate back, and we can, therefore, send something like four gigabytes a year back to Earth. And that’s enough to get good data and really understand the system.”

While the Swarming Proxima Centauri concept did not receive Phase II or III funding from the NIAC this year, it remains a project worthy of study and further development. Like Breakthrough Starshot and other lightsail proposals, it showcases what interstellar missions will look like in the coming decades. In that respect, ideas like this also indicate that we are at a point in our history where exploring the nearest star systems is no longer considered a far-off idea that requires serious technological innovations to happen first.

Further Reading: 2024 NIAC Symposium

The post New Video Shows How Tiny Spacecraft Will “Swarm” Proxima Centauri appeared first on Universe Today.

If you have good wildlife photos, comparable in quality to those I’ve put up on this site, I’d be most grateful if you’d send them in.  We’re running quite low (I have two in the tank, with one going up tomorrow), and I’d hate to make this feature a very sporadic one.

Thank you!

News Items: Embryo Models, Carbon Fiber Battery, Zeta Class Supercomputer, UFOs as a Societal Problem; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Residential Solar; Science or Fiction

It appears that seven universities now have adopted a version of the University of Chicago’s Kalven Principle mandating institutional neutrality (“IN”): the dictum that no political or ideological statements should come from a university save statements about issues endangering the mission of the university. (Faculty are, of course, always free to speak on their own, but not as representatives of an “official view”.) Now it looks as if we can add two more schools to the total: UCLA and the University of Wisconsin system.

This is still far fewer than the 110 schools that have adopted a version of Chicago’s “Free Expression” principle, but I think the tide is turning: colleges are realizing that it’s not to their benefit to weigh in on debatable issues of the day. At any rate, two years ago the University of Chicago was the only school in North America with an institutional neutrality policy.

FIRE needs to start keeping a list of the IN schools, which include these:

The University of Chicago
Simon Fraser University (in Canada: see also here for a discussion of the problems with their statement)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Vanderbilt University
Columbia University,
Stanford University
The University of Pennsylvania; and the two new ones mentioned here:
UCLA
The University of Wisconsin (whole system)

Now some of the IN policies adopted by these schools have problems, but they’re aiming in the right direction: buttressing free speech by ruling out “official” statements from that could inhibit people in the University from speaking their minds,

Click below to see the story of how UCLA’s Chancellor has accepted a principle of institutional neutrality confected by a University committee:

A short excerpt that gives a link to UCLA’s recommendations:

On Sept. 12, UCLA announced that Interim Chancellor Darnell Hunt has accepted a recommendation from a working group that the university should not weigh in on political matters.

The working group, headed by UCLA School of Law Dean Michael Waterstone,  submitted a recommendation — accepted in full by Interim Chancellor Hunt — that moving forward, “UCLA’s chancellor, executive vice chancellor and provost, vice chancellors, vice provosts and deans should not make public statements on societal, public and political matters, unless those matters directly affect the university’s ability to support a research and educational environment where free expression thrives.” Such institutional statements, the recommendation explained, “can imply a false sense of unanimity about a given topic, stifle the free exchange of ideas, and risk making parts of our diverse community feel silenced or unheard. A focus on these kinds of statements can also divert university leaders’ attention away from their core responsibilities and pursuit of institutional goals.”

The working group’s report elaborated that “whether — and if so, how — a contentious issue relates to this essential mission of the university will itself be disputed at times; as with any general rule, this one would require university officials to exercise judgment in good faith, subject to critique by community members,” adding that in borderline cases, “the presumption should be for not issuing a statement.”

A pretty big problem here: the policy should apply more widely—to departments, center, units, or any moiety of the university, including libraries, museums, and so on. It is because the issue of department statements was unclear that in 2020 our late President Bob Zimmer clarified that Kalven applied to all University departments and units.

I found the University of Wisconsin news in, of all place, the Times of Israel, but below that you can find the official UW statement, provided by Greg Mayer, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside. The new policy came into being after a cowardly UW chancellor, Mark Mone, made an invidious deal with protestors. Click to read:

An extract:

University of Wisconsin leaders must limit their public statements to matters that affect school operations and maintain neutral viewpoints under a new policy that system administrators released Friday.

UW system spokesperson Mark Pitsch said in an email to The Associated Press that the policy will take effect immediately and doesn’t need the approval of the board of regents. Asked what drove the policy’s creation, Pitsch pointed to language in the policy that states the restrictions are necessary in order to uphold academic freedom and an environment where ideas can compete freely.

The move comes after UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone struck a deal in May to end pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel campus protests. The university agreed to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and discuss cutting ties with Israeli companies.

The deal drew intense criticism from Jewish groups. UW system President Jay Rothman also took Mone to task over the deal, posting on X that campuses need to remain viewpoint-neutral and make sure actions on campus have consequences.

Rothman is also trying to stay on good terms with Republicans who control the Legislature in the hopes of securing an $855 million boost for the system in the next state budget. . . .

It is often fear of Republican legislatures that brings these policies into being (and, indeed, Chancellore Mone is an invertebrate), but I don’t care where institutional neutrality comes from so long as it’s put into place with proper wording (yes, it should apply to all “units” of a university) and restrictions (yes, statements are permitted on rare occasions).

The official Wisconsin policy is here, with this extract:

Institutional statements issued by university leaders should be limited to matters that directly affect the operations and core mission of the university, and should maintain viewpoint neutrality in any reference to any matter of political or social controversy.

Institutional statements may include communications on the impact of proposed or enacted regulations, legislation, or court decisions that materially affect the operations and core mission of the university. Such institutional statements may also express a position of support or opposition only when authorized by the president or chancellor.

. . .Where there is reasonable disagreement about whether an event or issue directly affects the operations or core mission of the university, university leaders are encouraged to forgo an institutional statement.

What’s good about this is that it is supposed to apply to every UW “unit,” which they define as as “a school, college, department, division, center, institute, program, or other institutional entity”. That is, as far as I know, the most detailed and specific list of university constituents that must adhere to institutional neutrality.

President Maud Mandel at Williams College, who appears reluctant to commit her entire College to institutional neutrality, at least asserted that she was going to stop making statements on politics and ideology, and pinpoints the reason why she changed her mind and adopted IN:

NEW: Williams College President Maud Mandel has developed principles committing her to institutional neutrality.

“I do not believe it is right, or even possible, for me to speak on behalf of the thousands of people who together constitute Williams.” pic.twitter.com/TZFMR8kOo3

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 12, 2024

Here’s the Williams statement; click to enlarge:

Unfortunately, the Williams policy appears to apply only to President Mandel herself. For reasons known best to her it doesn’t appear to apply to any other units of the university. But it doesn’t nearly go far enough.  It’s time for Williams to step up and extend Mandel’s personal principle to the entire school.

Finally, Vanderbilt, which now is really the #1 free speech school in America as far as I’m concerned (its Chancellor Daniel Diermeier used to be our provost), has updated its policies on demonstration and free expression, and appears to construct a whole program to educate students in free speech and to give them an opportunity to engage in controversial but civil discourse. Click below to read Vanderbilt’s announcement. It links to a lot of different programs and initiatives, so click around on the site to see what this school has done to foster free expression.

Here are some changes, clearly put into place to prevent disruptive demonstrations that impede Vanderbilt’s mission:

Relevant revisions include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• The public may not participate in or be invited to participate in campus demonstrations and protests, and the university may request identification from those participating in demonstrations and protests to determine if they are members of the campus community. 
• Demonstrations and protests may not occur at times that would require individuals to sleep or gather overnight given safety, logistical and maintenance concerns. 
• Installations, defined as “temporary displays, art pieces, symbolic structures or other physical objects,” require reservations and may only be displayed between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. or sundown, whichever is earlier, for no more than three consecutive days. 
• Camping, sleeping, preparing to sleep or any other gathering overnight outdoors on campus is prohibited due to safety, logistic and maintenance concerns and to ensure access to university spaces for other groups wishing to make reservations.

All members of the Vanderbilt community are encouraged to review the full Student Handbook in advance of the start of the academic year.

Even Chicago doesn’t follow all these strictures (especially the first and third), and our school hasn’t made its policies nearly as explicit as those given above.  Nevertheless, the move towards forestalling disruptions of university life is spreading, though just at the time that pro-Palestinian demonstrators have vowed to be even more disruptive than they were over the last academic year.

Something tells me that we’re not going to see this kind of disruption at Vanderbilt. . . .

h/t Mayaan, Greg Mayer

Kevin Richardson (born 1974) is known as “The Lion Whisperer” because he develops a personal relationship with the semi-feral lions at his Welgedacht Private Game Reserve near Pretoria. (His YouTube channel is here.)  He’s been criticized for not really contributing to lion conservation, but I find myself mesmerized by the plethora of videos showing his interactions with lions, many whom he has known since birth. Here he makes the rounds of several groups, giving some of the lions eggs and even catnip, as well as scritches and brushing.

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If you have a cat, chances are that it’s followed you to the bathroom and watched you when you were seated on the throne.  Some people even find this embarrassing, though I’ve never understood why. Do they think their cat is a voyeur, or is judging their behavior?

At any rate, the question remains about why they do it.  This short article in Yahoo argues that SCIENCE has the answer.  But before giving an answer, SCIENCE should have answered this question, which it didn’t: do cats follow you to the bathroom more often than they follow you to other rooms?  That would take only a simple test, but they didn’t do it.

Let’s accept for the moment that cats do indeed preferentially follow people to the bathroom to watch them excrete.  Here are some suggestions from SCIENCE:

Excerpts:

If you’re not a cat owner, it’s hard to explain the situation, but here’s the gist: You go to the bathroom, and your cat rushes in next to you. It then proceeds to watch you pee, like a fluffy little gargoyle. [JAC: Of course it’s not just peeing!] It then proceeds to watch you pee, like a fluffy little gargoyle. If you try to lock the kitty out, it wails and scratches the door like a maniac. It’s a phenomenon science has produced little to no explanation for.

“I have two cats, and if I don’t keep the door open when I use the bathroom one will yowl like her entire heart is broken,” cat owner Phoebe Seiders tells Inverse. “The other I can only assume tries to free me because she, like, flings herself against the door as high up as she can jump. When I do keep the door open they like to come in and jump in the tub (as long as it’s dry).”

It turns out that, of course SCIENCE doesn’t even have answers that might be correct, but it does have some suggestions:

There are tons of stories like Phoebe’s, but no concrete evidence to explain them. According to cat researcher Mikel Delgado, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis, scientists don’t have answers but certainly some ideas.

“There might be various reasons cats like to join people in the bathroom,” she tells Inverse. “Their litter box might be in there, so it could be a room that smells very familiar. Cats also probably know that when we are on the toilet, we are a captive audience — nowadays we are so busy and distracted that many cats are probably looking for an opportunity to have our undivided attention!”

Cats also might enjoy the “cool, smooth surfaces of sinks and tiles,” or even water, Delgado adds. This can make for some seriously priceless photo ops.

. . . Since cats in the wild are pretty solitary creatures, wildlife biologist Imogene Cancellare says domestic cats’ bathroom obsessions are pretty obscure.

“Lap sitting is really popular in the loo — I assume this is characteristic opportunist behavior to find the warmest spot in the house and exploit the attention of their human servants,” Cancellare tells Inverse. “I think they want to be the center of the universe and have learned that humans don’t do much when sitting in the small room with the strange water chair.”

I like the “captive audience” theory, for cats can surely associate a bathroom with a human trapped in place.  About the lap stuff, well. . . .

And then SCIENCE, after proffering a few lame theories, punts in favor of extolling moggies:

We may never fully understand why cats do the things they do. But we do know they make our lives complete, in mildly terrifying, infinitely inexplicable ways.

Photo of Nozka the cat by davynin, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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Here’s a 10-minute video showing “hero cats” protecting people from danger or confronting dangers in the wild, including cobras, bears, and coyotes!. That standoff with dogs are amazing.  Did you know that cats were this courageous? No worries: no cats appear to have been harmed.

The last bit of the video also highlights cats’ athletic abilities.

h/t: Merilee, Ginger K.

Maybe this isn't a drill.

The post We Want Them Infected Doctors Sanewashed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Will He Reward Them With Appointments at the CDC, FDA, and NIH? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A team of scientists presented a new gravity map of Mars at the Europlanet Science Congress 2024. The map shows the presence of dense, large-scale structures under Mars’ long-gone ocean and that mantle processes are affecting Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System.

The new map and analysis include data from multiple missions, including NASA’s InSIGHT (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission. They also use data from tiny deviations in satellites as they orbit Mars. The paper “The global gravity field of Mars reveals an active interior” will be published in an upcoming edition of JGR: Planets. The lead author is Bart Root of the Delft University of Technology. Some of the results go against an important concept in geology.

Geologists work with a concept called flexural isostasy. It describes how a planet’s outer rigid layer responds to large-scale loading and unloading. The layer is called the lithosphere and consists of the crust and the uppermost part of the mantle. When something heavy loads the lithosphere, it responds by sinking. On Earth, Greenland is a good example of this, where the massive ice sheet puts downward pressure on it. As its ice sheets melt due to global warming, Greenland will rise.

This downward bending often causes an uplift in surrounding areas, though the effect is slight. The more massive the load is, the more pronounced the downward bending, although it also depends on the lithosphere’s strength and elasticity. Flexural isostasy is a critical idea for understanding glacial rebound, mountain formation, and sedimentary basin formation.

The authors of the new paper say scientists need to rethink how flexural isostasy works on Mars. This is because of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System, and the entire volcanic region called Tharsis Rise, or Tharsis Montes. Tharsis Montes is a vast volcanic region that holds three other enormous shield volcanoes: Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons.

This colourized image of the surface of Mars was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The line of three volcanoes is the Tharsis Montes, with Olympus Mons to the northwest. Valles Marineris is to the east. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Arizona State University

Flexural isostasy states that this massive region should force the planet’s surface downward. But the reverse is true. Tharsis Montes is much more elevated than the rest of Mars’ surface. NASA’s InSIGHT lander also told scientists a lot about Mars’ gravity, and together, it’s forcing researchers to reconsider how this all works on Mars.

“This means we need to rethink how we understand the support for the big volcano and its surroundings,” the authors write. “The gravity signal of its surface fits well with a model that considers the planet as a thin shell.”

The research shows that active processes in the Martian mantle are boosting Tharsis Montes upward. “There seems to be a big mass (something light) deep in Mars’ layer, possibly rising from the mantle,” the authors write. “It shows that Mars might still have active movements happening inside it, making new volcanic things on the surface.”

The researchers found an underground mass around 1750 kilometres across and at a depth of 1100 kilometres. They suspect that it’s a mantle plume rising under Tharsis Montes and strong enough to counteract the downward pressure from all the mass. “This suggests that a plume head is currently flowing upward towards the lithosphere to generate active volcanism in the geological future,” the authors write in their paper.

There’s debate about how volcanically active Mars is. Although there are no active volcanic features on the planet, research shows that the Tharsis region has resurfaced in the near geological past within the last few tens of millions of years. If there is a mantle plume under Tharsis Montes, could it eventually reach the surface? That’s purely speculative, and more research is needed to confirm these findings.

The researchers also found other gravitational anomalies. They found mysterious, dense structures under Mars’ northern polar plains. They’re buried under a thick, smooth sediment layer that was likely deposited on an ancient seabed.

This map from the study highlights the dense gravitational structures in the northern hemisphere. The regions marked with black lines are high-mass anomalies that do not show any correlation with geology and topography. These hidden subsurface structures are covered by sediments from an old ocean, and their origin is still a mystery. Credit: Root et al.

The anomalies are approximately 300–400 kg/m3 denser than their surroundings. Earth’s Moon has gravitational anomalies that are associated with giant impact basins. Scientists think that the impactors that created the basins were denser than the Moon, and their mass has become part of the Moon.

These maps show the gravitational anomalies at the surface of the Moon. Some of the gravity anomalies are clearly associated with large impact basins. On Mars, the anomalies have no corresponding surface features. Image Credit: By Mark A. Wieczorek – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1381260

Impact basins on Mars also show gravity anomalies. However, the anomalies in Mars’ northern hemisphere show no traces of them on the surface.

This image from the research shows the gravitational structures in Mars’ northern polar region on a topographical map. There’s no correlation between the deep structures and the surface. Image Credit: Root et al.

“These dense structures could be volcanic in origin or could be compacted material due to ancient impacts. There are around 20 features of varying sizes that we have identified dotted around the area surrounding the north polar cap—one of which resembles the shape of a dog,” said Dr. Root. “There seems to be no trace of them at the surface. However, through gravity data, we have a tantalizing glimpse into the older history of the northern hemisphere of Mars.”

The only way to understand these mysterious structures and Mars’ gravity in general is with more data. Root and his colleagues are proponents of a mission that could gather the needed data.

It’s called the Martian Quantum Gravity (MaQuls) mission. MaQuls would be based on the same technology used in the GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) and GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) missions, which mapped the Moon’s and Earth’s gravity, respectively. MaQuls would feature two satellites trailing each other and connected by an optical link.

A grainy yet illustrative image of how the MaQuls mission would work. MaQuls would investigate the gravitational field of Mars and study static and dynamic processes on and under the surface. MaQuls would measure Mars’s gravitational field with the highest precision yet. Image Credit: Worner et al. 2023.

“Observations with MaQuIs would enable us to better explore the subsurface of Mars. This would help us to find out more about these mysterious hidden features and study ongoing mantle convection, as well as understand dynamic surface processes like atmospheric seasonal changes and the detection of ground water reservoirs,” said Dr. Lisa Wörner of DLR, who presented on the MaQuIs mission at EPSC2024 this week.

The post A Gravity Map of Mars Uncovers Subsurface Mysteries appeared first on Universe Today.

Physicists propose that a mysterious force known as early dark energy could solve two of the biggest puzzles in cosmology and fill in some major gaps in our understanding of how the early universe evolved.

The success of the all-civilian spacewalk on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission shows that private space flight is starting to catch up with government space agencies

In 2003, strange features on Mars’s surface got scientists’ “spidey senses” tingling when they saw them. That’s when unusual “anareiform terrain” landforms appeared in images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They’ve returned each year, spreading across the southern hemisphere surface.

At first, nobody knew what caused these weird wrinkly spider-like formations. Now, NASA researchers have duplicated them in the lab to explain their existence. No doubt about it, though, these Mars spiders look weird. Some of them stretch across a kilometer and generally appear in clusters.

Since discovering them in 2003 via images from orbiters, scientists have marveled at these Mars spiders sprawled across the southern hemisphere of Mars. No one is entirely sure how these geologic features are created but lab simulations may provide clues. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Since carbon dioxide is common on Mars, scientists figured it had something to do with creating these weird formations. They used the “Kieffer model” to delve into the history of Mars spiders. That model explains how carbon dioxide ice slabs under the surface trap gas as it sublimates (turns to gas), usually during southern hemisphere spring.

Sunlight heats the surface and shines through transparent slabs of carbon dioxide. Those ice layers build up each winter. The soil beneath the ice absorbs heat from the Sun and causes the ice closest to it to sublimate. Gas pressure builds up, which cracks the ice and allows gas to escape. As it seeps upward, the gas takes with it a stream of dark dust and sand from the soil that lands on the surface of the ice. Those deposits take the form of spidery landforms.

Confirming Mars Spiders

To see if that process is what’s creating Mars spiders, NASA JPL scientists, led by Lauren McKeown, decided to simulate Mars conditions in their lab. “The spiders are strange, beautiful geologic features in their own right,” said McKeown. “These experiments will help tune our models for how they form.”

The DUSTIE chamber at JPL. This is where scientists simulated the surface conditions under which Mars spiders form. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Not that it’s easy to replicate Mars on Earth, even in strict laboratory conditions. For Mc Keown and her team, the hardest part was re-creating conditions found on the Martian polar surface. That region experiences extremely low air pressure. Seasonal changes bring the air and surface temperatures down to a chilly -301 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 185 degrees Celsius). To make it work, the team used a liquid-nitrogen-cooled test chamber at JPL—the Dirty Under-vacuum Simulation Testbed for Icy Environments, or DUSTIE.

“I love DUSTIE. It’s historic,” Mc Keown said, noting that the wine barrel-size chamber was used to test a prototype of a rasping tool designed for NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander. For their experiment, the team chilled Martian soil simulant in a container dipped into a nitrogen bath. Then they put the whole thing into DUSTIE and replaced Earth-normal pressure with Mars air pressure. Carbon dioxide gas flowed in and condensed to ice. The next step was to put a heater inside to simulate Martian conditions in early spring. The team did this several times before the experiment created simulated “spiders” similar to those on Mars.

Mars spider-like formations in soil simulant created during experiments at NASA/JPL in the DUSTIE chamber. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. The Next Steps

That simulation created plumes of carbon dioxide gas escaping from the soil simulant. It’s close to what happens on Mars, but not quite. So, the next step is to do the same experiment and use a simulated Sun to heat the surface materials. If that produces the same results, then the team has a good chance of proving this is what happens on Mars.

However, Mars being what it is—there are still a lot of questions about why the spiders only form in the southern hemisphere at spring. Since subsurface carbon dioxide ice isn’t limited to that region of the planet, why don’t spiders form in other places? One possibility is that these aren’t recent features. They could be left over from a more active time in the planet’s past. Maybe the climate was very different when they formed. Or something catastrophic happened to enable the formation and growth of spiders in the southern hemisphere.

The study at JPL is a good step forward in understanding the Martian terrain. It confirms several formation processes described by the Kieffer model. Of course, it would be really cool to visit those spiders someday. For now, however, lab work is as close as it gets to explaining them. Future rovers and landers could be used to study those landforms up close and personal. However, there aren’t any planned in the near future, and no other spacecraft has landed in the spider-rich southern hemisphere region. For now, scientists will continue testing the lab to understand the conditions that make these strange-looking features.

For More Information

NASA Scientists Re-Create Mars ‘Spiders’ in a Lab for the First Time
A Lab-scale Investigation of the Mars Kieffer Model

The post Scientists Recreate Mars Spiders in the Lab appeared first on Universe Today.

We’ve officially entered a new era of private spaceflight. Yesterday, the crew of Polaris Dawn, a privately funded mission managed by SpaceX, officially performed the first private extra-vehicular activity, commonly known as a spacewalk. The spacewalk was a success, along with the rest of the mission so far. But it’s attracted detractors as well as supporters. Let’s take a look at the mission objectives and why some pundits are opposed to it.

There are two main “firsts” for the Polaris Dawn flight, which is the first in a series of private space missions that could include a third mission that would make the first crewed use of SpaceX’s massive Starship launcher. The most talked-about “first” of the mission was a spacewalk that mission commander Jared Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis took part in yesterday morning. They utilized SpaceX’s newly designed, more mobile EVA suits, which marks a clear departure from the previous bulky suit iterations.

Another first is that this crew is the farthest any private space passengers have ever been from Earth. In fact, they are farther away from Earth than anyone since to Apollo missions in the 1960s and 70s. Their list of things to do so far away from home includes monitoring 36 scientific experiments ranging from monitoring bone health to how to control motion sickness during spaceflight.

Full video of the Polaris Dawn spacewalk.
Credit – VideosfromSpace YouTube Channel

But the mission has attracted its share of detractors too. Some of the most well-reasoned include experts quoted in Al-Jazeera that SpaceX might be violating a clause in the Outer Space Treaty that requires governments to be responsible for the health and safety of their missions in space, even if the mission is run by a non-governmental agency. NASA has very clearly not contracted for the safety of the mission once it is in space. However it gave permission for the rocket launch that got them there, especially since it launched from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center.

Space policy experts argue that, since this is an entirely privately funded mission, it is in itself a violation of the Outer Space Treaty. They might be right, but an alternative interpretation is that the treaty, which was signed in early 1967, might be out of date for the more modern world of private spaceflight.

A less well-reasoned line of argument against the missions is the complaint that billionaires, which include the mission commander among their number, are simply blowing the Earth’s resources on their own pet projects. This line of reasoning is supported by the fact that the missions is supported by Doritos, who supplied a specially designed chip that wouldn’t get cheese dust everywhere inside the Dragon capsule the astronauts are using.

Fraser discusses the EVA suit used in the Polaris Dawn mission.

But it is also off-set by the fact the mission is donating much of its income (admittedly some of which is derived from merchandise sales) to St. Jude Children’s Hospital, to help kids fight cancer. Whether or not you agree with the motivations behind the mission, it doesn’t seem that anyone will get upset about trying to help kids with cancer.

And noone can take away the mission’s achievements so far. Of particular note is that the two female crew members – Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon – are now officially the women that have been the farthest away from the Earth ever. With the launch and spacewalk a success, the final real test of the mission will be its return. Given that Dragon has successfully returned to Earth dozens of times at this point, there’s a good chance that part will be successful too. And then humanity will have the opportunity to hope for, or complain about, the Polaris’ next step in private space flight.

Learn More:
Polaris Program – Polaris Dawn Successfully Launches to Earth’s Orbit and Begins Five-Day Mission 
UT – See a First-Person View of the First Private Spacewalk
UT – Civilian Astronauts are Going to try Spacewalking From a Crew Dragon Capsule
UT – NASA and SpaceX Will Study Low-Cost Plan to Give Hubble a Boost

Lead Image:
Shot of the curvature of the Earth from the Polaris Dawn mission.
Credit – Polaris Program

The post Polaris Dawn is Away, Sending Another Crew Into Orbit to Perform the First Private Spacewalk appeared first on Universe Today.

The Milky Way’s outer reaches are coming into view thanks to the JWST. Astronomers pointed the powerful space telescope to a region over 58,000 light-years away called the Extreme Outer Galaxy (EOG). They found star clusters exhibiting extremely high rates of star formation.

The Milky Way’s EOG is defined as the part of the galaxy with a galactocentric radius of 18 kpc. That translates to almost 59,000 light-years, and for comparison, our Solar System is about 26,000 light-years from the galactic centre.

A team of astronomers used the JWST’s powerful NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to examine star formation in two specific regions of the EOG. They’re molecular clouds named Digel Cloud 1 and Digel Cloud 2. They’re named after the astronomer Seth Digel, who discovered them in 1994.

The environment in the EOG is different than our Solar System’s neighbourhood; their metallicity and gas density are significantly lower. Metallicity and gas density play huge roles in how Solar Systems evolve and how planets form. The JWST is giving astronomers an opportunity to examine star formation in the EOG at the same level of detail they can closer to home.

The JWST’s supreme observing power allowed the researchers to examine the regions, and they found nebular structures, extremely young protostars, and outflow jets. Their findings are in research published in the Astronomical Journal titled “Overview Results of JWST Observations of Star-forming Clusters in the Extreme Outer Galaxy.” The lead author is Natsuko Izumi of Gifu University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

“What was fascinating and astounding to me from the Webb data is that there are multiple jets shooting out in all different directions from this cluster of stars.”

Mike Ressler, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

“In the past, we knew about these star forming regions but were not able to delve into their properties,” said Izumi. “The Webb data builds upon what we have incrementally gathered over the years from prior observations with different telescopes and observatories. We can get very powerful and impressive images of these clouds with Webb. In the case of Digel Cloud 2, I did not expect to see such active star formation and spectacular jets.”

Astronomers have previously observed the region with the Subaru 8.2 meter telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii. In 2008, some of the same astronomers used the Subaru to observe star formation in the clusters in Digel Cloud 2S. In that research, the authors said that star-forming clusters were likely triggered by the same supernova.

This is an image of Digel Cloud2-S captured with the Subaru Telescope. If there was ever any doubt about what an improvement the JWST is over previous telescopes, this image puts it to rest. Image Credit: Yasui et al. 2008.

But the Webb’s NIR is from 10 to 80 times more sensitive than the Subaru. “Accordingly, the mass detection limit reaches to about 0.01–0.05 solar masses, which is about 10 times better than the previous observations,” the researchers explain in their paper.

This is Digel Cloud 2S, where a bright cluster of young stars has formed. The white arrows show extended jets emitted from some of the stars. To the upper right of the cluster is another, smaller sub-cluster. Astronomers suspected it was there in previous observations, and now the JWST has confirmed it. The red structures are gaseous, nebulous structures being carved and shaped by the powerful radiation coming from the young stars. The JWST captured invisible near- and mid-infrared wavelengths that have been translated into visible light. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. Ressler (NASA-JPL)

“We know from studying other nearby star-forming regions that as stars form during their early life phase, they start emitting jets of material at their poles,” said Mike Ressler, the study’s second author. Ressler is from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is the principal investigator of the observing program. “What was fascinating and astounding to me from the Webb data is that there are multiple jets shooting out in all different directions from this cluster of stars. It’s a little bit like a firecracker, where you see things shooting this way and that.”

This image from the research gives the overall context of the Digel Clouds in galactic coordinates. Star formation in Cloud 2N was likely triggered by a nearby huge supernova remnant, according to the authors. Izumi et al. 2024.

The astronomers observed nebular structures both in and around all the main clusters. “Notably, distinct nebular structures are identified within Cloud 2N and 2S,” they write. In Cloud 2N, the nebular structures are cliff-like and pillar-like and are similar to the ones found in star-forming regions closer to home, like in the JWST’s well-known ‘Cosmic Cliffs‘ and ‘Pillars of Creation‘ images.

These images of the nebular structures in Cloud 2N show the JWST’s power to resolve detail compared to the Spitzer IR telescope. The features in the structures are similar to ones found in star-forming regions closer to home. Image Credit: Izumi et al. 2024.

These features are likely caused by intense ultraviolet radiation emitted by the nearby B-type star, MR 1, near Cloud 2N’s main structure.

This image from the research shows HI (neutral atomic hydrogen) near Digel Cloud 2. The MR1 star is labelled in the image. Its powerful UV radiation is likely responsible for carving some of the nebular cliffs and pillars. Image Credit: Izumi et al. 2024.

This research provides an overview of the JWST’s observing effort in the EOG and the Digel Clouds. The authors say it’s just a starting point, and there’s lots more to discover. They want to determine the relative abundance of stars of different masses in the EOG and understand how the different environments shape that abundance.

“I’m interested in continuing to study how star formation is occurring in these regions. By combining data from different observatories and telescopes, we can examine each stage in the evolution process,” said Izumi. “We also plan to investigate circumstellar disks within the Extreme Outer Galaxy. We still don’t know why their lifetimes are shorter than in star-forming regions much closer to us. And of course, I’d like to understand the kinematics of the jets we detected in Cloud 2S.”

The post The Outer Reaches of the Milky Way are Full of Stars, and the JWST is Observing Them appeared first on Universe Today.

The outer Solar System has been a treasure trove of discoveries in recent decades. Using ground-based telescopes, astronomers have identified eight large bodies since 2002 – Quouar, Sedna, Orcus, Haumea, Salacia, Eris, Makemake, and Gonggang. These discoveries led to the “Great Planet Debate” and the designation “dwarf planet,” an issue that remains contentious today. On December 21st, 2018, the New Horizons mission made history when it became the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) named Arrokoth – the Powhatan/Algonquin word for “sky.”

Since 2006, the Subaru Telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii has been observing the outer Solar System to search for other KBOs the New Horizons mission could study someday. In that time, these observations have led to the discovery of 263 KBOs within the traditionally accepted boundaries of the Kuiper Belt. However, in a recent study, an international team of astronomers identified 11 new KBOs beyond the edge of what was thought to be the outer boundary of the Kuiper Belt. This discovery has profound implications for our understanding of the structure and evolution of the Solar System.

The research team was led by Wesley C. Fraser, a Plaskett Fellow and a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Victoria (UVic) and the Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre. He was joined by colleagues from UVic, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NOIRLab, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and many other institutes and universities. The paper that describes their findings recently appeared in the Planetary Science Journal.

Since its last flyby of the KBO Arrokoth, the New Horizons mission has been exploring objects in the Kuiper Belt as well as performing heliospheric and astrophysical observations. Courtesy: Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/Roman Tkachenko

In recent years, mounting evidence has been provided that objects exist beyond the edge of the Kuiper Belt. However, this study is the first to provide clear evidence of a large number of objects in a relatively small search area that cannot be attributed to false positives. Moreover, these KBOs appear to represent a new class of objects that orbit in a ring separated from the known Kuiper Belt by a gap where very few objects exist. This type of structure has been observed around many young planetary systems observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) array.

This suggests that the Solar System has more in common with extrasolar systems than previously thought, which could have implications for astrobiology—the search for extraterrestrial life in the Universe. Dr. Fraser, who is also a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission science team, explained in a NOAJ press release:

“Our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt long appeared to be very small in comparison with many other planetary systems, but our results suggest that idea might just have arisen due to an observational bias. So maybe, if this result is confirmed, our Kuiper Belt isn’t all that small and unusual after all compared to those around other stars.”

As any astrobiologist knows, the search for life is a major challenge because of our limited perspective. To date, we know of only one planet where life emerged and evolved (i.e., Earth), making it difficult to understand what conditions life can arise from. As such, scientists are eager to identify what sets our Solar System apart from others to constrain the prerequisites for life. Discovering that the Kuiper Belt may be larger than previously thought eliminates the idea that larger belts are an impediment to the emergence of life in extrasolar systems (possibly because they constitute a larger population of potential comets).

Artist’s impression of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. Credit: NASA/APL/SwRI and NASA/JPL-Caltech

“If this is confirmed, it would be a major discovery,” said study co-author Dr. Fumi Yoshida of the University of Occupational and Environmental Health and the Planetary Exploration Research Center. “The primordial solar nebula was much larger than previously thought, and this may have implications for studying the planet formation process in our Solar System.”

“This is a groundbreaking discovery revealing something unexpected, new, and exciting in the distant reaches of the Solar System; this discovery probably would not have been possible without the world-class capabilities of Subaru Telescope,” added New Horizons mission Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Stern.

These results indicate that more discoveries await beyond the traditionally recognized edge of the Kuiper Belt, which was thought to be a cold, empty end of space. They also entice astronomers to conduct follow-up studies to confirm these results and identify additional families of objects. Last but certainly not least, they offer a tantalizing clue as to what objects the New Horizons mission may be able to study someday.

Further Reading: NAOJ, Planetary Science Journal

The post More Bodies Discovered in the Outer Solar System appeared first on Universe Today.