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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shermer and Mackey discuss:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This report and the accompanying podcast were originally published on Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log. Stay tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Apple, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Podchaser. If you like Fiction Science, please rate the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.

The post The First Space War Is Here: Find Out How the Next One May Play Out appeared first on Universe Today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is where simulations come in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This result changes a lot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Xenochka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It seems like every month, a new story appears announcing the discovery of thousands of new asteroids. Tracking these small body objects from ground and even space-based telescopes helps follow their overall trajectory. But understanding what they’re made of is much more difficult using such “remote sensing” techniques. To do so, plenty of projects get more up close and personal with the asteroid itself, including one from Dr. Sigrid Elschot and her colleagues from Stanford, which was supported by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts back in 2018. It uses an advanced suite of plasma sensors to detect an asteroid’s surface composition by utilizing a unique phenomenon – meteoroid impacts.

The project, known as the Meteroid Impact Detection for Exploration of Asteroids (MIDEA), has an architecture that has become more prominent as of late – a swarm of smallsats coordinated around a mothership. In this case, the smallsats are plasma sensors with one specific purpose: to detect characteristics of the plume of debris from the asteroid after a meteoroid hits it. 

Those impacts happen more often than you might think. Estimates from the authors suggest that they could map the surface composition of an asteroid down to 1 m resolution in around 50 days. And that’s after accounting for some decreases in detections due to orbital constraints and other considerations.

Fraser discusses the idea of mining asteroids.

So, how would this architecture work? First, there would be a main spacecraft, originally envisioned as a Cubesat, that weighs around 50 kg. It would use a standard Cubesat propulsion system, such as an ion drive, to make its way to an asteroid. Once there, it would hover a few hundred meters above the surface and deploy a series of small sensor satellites.

According to the calculations in the paper, these sensor sats would weigh about 250 g, allowing them to use traditional materials such as rigid PCB boards rather than flexible ones that don’t have as much proven flight history. On each, there would be a sensor whose job is to face the asteroid no matter where it is in its orbital path. This feat of astronautical engineering is tricky, as it would also be required to point its solar arrays at the Sun to ensure they provide the 1-5 W needed to operate the sensors and communication arrays.

Each sensor satellite would also have an attitude control technique called “controlled reflectivity.” The satellite would adjust the sensor’s pointing direction by actuating a reflective surface either towards or away from the Sun and using that reflective pressure to point itself in the right direction. 

Fraser discusses some other ideas of what we could do with an asteroid.

A series of these sensors is necessary to capture any plume from a meteoroid impact from as many different angles as possible, allowing the sensors to collect as much data as possible. The sensors would then relay the data to the central hub spacecraft, which could collate the data streams and send a complete package back to Earth. On Earth, the data could be analyzed using a time-of-flight mass spectrometer to determine the makeup of the plume and, therefore, the part of the surface it came from.

While that sounds relatively simple in theory, in practice, there are many unknowns still to work through, including how to handle controlling all the different satellites in orbit around a single asteroid. That would include an overall architecture design that could help implement other subsystems as well. 

For now, though, that development is on hold, as MIDEA has not yet received a Phase II grant from NIAC or funding from any other source. Maybe someday, the thousands of asteroids in our vicinity will be the target of swarms of little orbiters or their own.

Learn More:
Lee & Close – METEOROID IMPACT DETECTION FOR EXPLORATION OF ASTEROIDS (MIDEA)
UT – We Could SCATTER CubeSats Around Uranus To Track How It Changes
UT – Water Found on the Surface of an Asteroid
UT – What Are Asteroids Made Of?

Lead Image:
Artist’s depiction of the MIDEA mission.
Credit – Sigrid Close (Elschot)

The post Swarms of Orbiting Sensors Could Map An Asteroid’s Surface appeared first on Universe Today.

Several people, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson, and Douglas Murray, have floated the idea that the malaise of the West is caused largely because the decline of religion has taken away our sense of meaning and purpose.  Hirsi Ali, for example, has written and talked extensively about how embracing Christianity alone can help stave off the forces that threaten to destroy Western civilization, and names three: Putin, Chinese Communism, and global Islamism. It is these forces that brought her to abandon atheism, embrace Jesus, and cure her depression.

Now I’m not sure how the rest of us can embrace Christianity and its tenets—Hirsi Ali, for instance, believes in the Resurrection—if we’ve already rejected them for one of the many reasons (for me, the lack of evidence) that people give up or reject faith. How can you force yourself to believe this stuff? Hirsi Ali apparently has, but I think she’s an outlier. As Nineteen Eighty-Four shows, it takes a lot of societal change and pressure to make people believe things that don’t make sense.

At any rate, the meme of the “god-shaped hole” in our lives—the supposed lack of purpose and meaning that accompanies atheism—appears to be making a comeback. But in earlier posts (here and here), I asked readers where they found their own “purpose and meaning”, and the near universal response is that we don’t get it from the outside, but make it ourselves. That seems about right to me. (For another critique of the “we need god to fill that lacuna” trope, see here.)

In the long Quillette article below, which is worth reading, author Matt Johnson looks at this claim in detail, and finds it severely wanting. It’ll take some time to read, but has a lot of ideas you may want to absorb. Click the screenshot to read.

Johnson’s quotes are indented, and I’ll give the topics bold headers (flush left):

The Problem: Liberalism and secularism are said to leave us groping around spiritually, looking for meaning. Johnson concentrates on The Christianity Solution, but also talks about  liberalism itself as a filler of The Hole.  I won’t deal much with the liberalism stuff, as Johnson assumes that many afflicted with Lack of Meaning are already liberals. Here’s Johnson on suggestions about what can fill The Hole.

There are different expressions of this belief. In an article for the Spectator, journalist Ed West discusses a phenomenon he describes as “New Theism”—an intellectual movement pushing back against the rising secularism in Western liberal societies. In a recent essay for Quillette, the historian and author Adam Wakeling describes this phenomenon as “political Christianity,” which he defines as the belief that “Western civilisation has Christian foundations, and returning to those Christian roots can help protect Western values today.” Wakeling challenges both of these beliefs and argues that the “success of our civilisation rests on the pillars of Enlightenment thought: constitutional government, secularism, science, the rule of law, and human rights—not on belief in the supernatural or in any specific set of ancient myths.”

. . . New Theists don’t just believe that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the cornerstone of Western civilisation, they also argue that secular liberalism leaves people bereft of community and a sense of meaning and purpose. New Theists like author and psychologist Jordan Peterson, conservative intellectual Douglas Murray, author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and historian Tom Holland all argue that the decline of Christianity will lead to nihilism, new forms of political tribalism, and a profound sense of spiritual emptiness in Western societies.

, , , New Theists believe traditional monotheistic religion is the only belief system that satisfies our need for meaning. [JAC note: Islam is also monotheistic, but you don’t see the New Theists touting Muslim belief.] In the absence of religion, Lefebvre says liberalism can serve this purpose. For [David] Brooks, just about any fervently held belief besides liberalism will do. All these beliefs share the conviction that Western liberalism has been hollowed out by the decline of religious faith. They don’t just seek to fill the hole in their own souls with religion or some other existential doctrine—they assume that all their fellow citizens share their spiritual yearning.

But if Christianity is a source of purpose, meaning, and solace, why is it declining everywhere? (In my view, it’s because if you’re getting better off materially and physically, as most of us are, the less you need a God to appeal to.)  Some data:

The New Theists, Brooks, and Lefebvre all agree that there’s a crisis of meaning in liberal societies. This view has become increasingly common as Western countries have gone through a period of rapid secularisation in recent decades. In 2000, 86 percent of Americans reported that they were Christian. Since then, the proportion has collapsed to 68 percent. Other indicators of religiosity have plummeted as well—while nearly two-thirds of Americans said religion was “very important” to them in 2003, 45 percent now say the same. Church membership was around 70 percent in 2000, but it’s now 45 percent. Since 2007, the proportion of Americans who say they’re atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular” jumped from 16 percent to 28 percent.

A similar trend is sweeping Western Europe, which has seen significant declines in Christian belief. In Belgium, 83 percent of respondents to a Pew survey say they were raised Christian, but just 55 percent remain Christian. Many other countries have followed a similar trajectory: 79 to 51 percent in Norway, 67 to 41 percent in the Netherlands, 92 to 66 percent in Spain, 74 to 52 percent in Sweden. Every Western European country Pew surveyed followed this trend.

This is a problem, for why would people give up a belief if doing so plunges you into despair, anomie, and, say some, an abandonment of moral standards?   Of course the morality/Christianity connection is dubious, as plenty of atheists are moral, and plenty of them, including John Rawls and Peter Singer, have written about how we can get morality from secular rationality alone.  And you probably know the problems with asserting that morality comes from Christianity (especially the Bible). You have to cherry-pick the Bible to get a morality that we can hold today, ignoring things like acceptance of genocide and slavery, as well as Jesus’s command to leave your family to follow him.  Further, as Johnson points out, history shows that the Enlightenment and its accompanying moral virtues came from rejecting Christianity, leading us to. . . .

The role of secularism in giving us morality:

There’s a reason Holland redefines humanism and secularism as Christian concepts. Criticism of religion played a major role in the development of Western liberal democracy, a historical fact that’s difficult to reconcile with his view that the West is fundamentally Christian. The word “Enlightenment” doesn’t appear once in Holland’s attack on humanism. While he briefly mentions Voltaire, he only does so to claim that the Western tradition of criticising religious authority can be traced to Martin Luther rather than the progenitors of Enlightenment humanism.

It’s true that Voltaire and Martin Luther were both critics of the Catholic Church, but the Protestant Reformation launched a century and a half of religious bloodshed in Europe—one of the great episodes of religious violence that Voltaire reacted against. The Thirty Years War directly or indirectly killed as much as a third of Central Europe’s population. This was also a period in which people were routinely tortured and killed for being insufficiently pious, worshiping the wrong God, or conducting scientific research. It’s no wonder that major Enlightenment figures such as David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, and Voltaire were such stern critics of religion, nor is it a surprise that the American Founders consulted their arguments and determined that a secular republic is the best form of government.

In the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—which laid the foundation for the First Amendment to the US Constitution—Thomas Jefferson condemned as “tyrannical” the idea that a citizen must “furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors.” Citizens’ “opinions in matters of religion,” he wrote, should in no way “diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

In fact, although many people attribute the rise of the Nazis to Hitler’s atheism, that doesn’t wash, as most Nazis were Christians. And there’s this:

Despite Nietzsche’s proclamation that God was dead in the late 19th century, there was no great movement away from Christianity in Germany prior to World War II. Immediately after the Nazis seized power in 1933—and less than a week after Hitler banned all non-Nazi parties—the German government signed a treaty with the Vatican. (The Catholic Church didn’t have an especially inspiring record on fascism elsewhere in Europe, either—Pope Pius XII supported General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and blessed his regime in 1948.) In a March 1933 speech, Hitler described Christianity as the foundation of German values. While it’s true that Hitler made this claim for political reasons and despite his own animosity toward Christianity, it demonstrates that he believed he had to appeal to the Christian faith of the German people.

Germany is the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation—one of the most significant events in the history of Western Christianity. It has as much of a claim to being a country forged by the Judeo-Christian tradition as any other in Europe, perhaps even more so. And yet, this rich Christian history and the presence of millions of Christians on German soil offered no bulwark against the descent into Nazism. New Theists attribute every Western achievement to Christianity and blame the West’s most cataclysmic failures on atheism. This is no surprise, as they have engineered a worldview in which everything moral is by definition Christian, and everything immoral is anti-Christian. But this obvious deck-stacking requires them to ignore the horrors of the distant past—the Crusades, the Inquisition, and 150 years of religious warfare in Europe—as well as the not-so-distant past.

There’s more, but the New Theism has also made a claim that renders the “god-shaped-hole hypothesis” worthless, making it untestable. And that claim is this: “Well, even if atheists are moral, and find meaning and purpose outside Christianity, the morality and purpose they have derives from the fact that the West was Christian for many years.”  Using this argument, you can attribute anything good in the modern world to Christianity. But good things have happened in non-Christian countries, too, including India and, of course, Israel.

Johnson touches on this untestability, but I’d like to see more written about it by others.

For Holland and other New Theists like Peterson, the secularism of early liberals like Hume, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Jefferson is a mirage—no matter how ferociously they criticise Christianity, they’re inescapably Christian. Just as Holland says Christianity is responsible for liberalism, human rights, and even secularism, Peterson credits Christianity with “Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of good and evil.” Peterson says the “fundamental tenets of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition continue to govern every aspect of the actual individual behavior and basic values of the typical Westerner.” He even argues that it isn’t possible to be a genuine atheist and live an ethical life.

Note how Peterson asserts that Christianity still “governs every aspect of the individual behavior and basic values of the typical Westerner.”  Can that be disproven under the views of the New Theists? If you think that America, for example, is built on Christian values, then why doesn’t the palpable rejection of religion by the Founders, as they drew up their plans for American government, disprove it? No, it can’t be disproved because the New Theists are, like Hirsi Ali, True Believers.  If they’ve found meaning in Christianity, then somehow it must also undergird all of our lives, and the lives of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and other Founders. (If they thought Christianity was an essential social glue, why did they explicitly leave it out of government?) Of course they can always make up untestable claims to support that: the Founders were raised in a milieu of Christianity!

Which brings us to the final topic:

Where do we get meaning and purpose?  Of course there are real people who claim (and mean it) that the meaning and purpose of their lives comes from Christianity.  And some of them will be right, but there are also a lot of “nones”, and I haven’t seen them running around killing, raping, and stealing. Further, the countries of Northern Europe, like Sweden and Denmark, are almost completely atheistic (though people go to church for ceremonial reasons), and yet they are some of the most “moral” countries in the world.  The New Theists, of course, will attribute this to these countries’ “Christian background”. But ask any regular Joe or Jill (not the Bidens!), or any Dane or Swede, what the purpose or meaning of their lives are, and see what they say. Johnson hits the nail on the head when he avers this:

There’s an assumption at the heart of liberalism: purpose is what we make it. While many of liberalism’s critics insist that there must be some top-down source of purpose in contemporary democratic societies, this contradicts essential liberal principles like freedom of conscience, self-determination, and pluralism. But the idea that there’s no fundamental source of purpose or meaning in life can be destabilising, which is why it has always generated such powerful resistance.

and his last sentence:

. . . Liberal ideas and institutions like the rule of law, property rights and contract enforcement, and freedom of expression and conscience deserve much of the credit for the health, prosperity, and autonomy we enjoy today. The one thing liberalism can’t provide, however, is a sense of meaning and purpose—that’s up to us, and the responsibility of making our own meaning is a small price to pay. For many, it isn’t a price at all.

It sure isn’t a price for me. I never worry about whether my life has “meaning and purpose.” I just do the things that I find fulfilling.

Although I’m absolutely confident that Christianity and Judaism are on the way out, for the time being New Theism is having a bit of a resurgence with the popularity of people like Peterson and Hirsi Ali. You can see this in the tremendous applause that Hirsi Ali got when she had a discussion with Richard Dawkins about her newfound Christianity.  Dawkins’s claim that for him the value of life was empirical discovery and science couldn’t stand up to Hirsi Ali’s claims that we need Christinaity as a bulwark against the Dark Forces that besiege us.  This doesn’t comport with the rise of nonbelief and the growth of “nones” (those who embrace no formal religion). How those lacking belief nevertheless can wildly applaud those who find meaning in Christianity can, I think, be attributed only to what Dan Dennett called “belief in belief.”  That is, of course, the view that “I don’t need religion, but society needs it as a form of social glue to keep us together.” This is also known as The Little People Assertion.

That claim, in centuries to come, will be proven wrong. Unfortunately, none of us will be observing it from above!

An AI driver achieved faster lap times than the best humans in the video game Gran Turismo 7, and unlike previous versions, it only used information available to players

Chemists have develop innovative ionic liquid synthesis and purification technology.

A mysterious remnant from a rare type of supernova recorded in 1181 has been explained for the first time. Two white dwarf stars collided, creating a temporary 'guest star,' now labeled supernova (SN) 1181, which was recorded in historical documents in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. However, after the star dimmed, its location and structure remained a mystery until a team pinpointed its location in 2021. Now, through computer modeling and observational analysis, researchers have recreated the structure of the remnant white dwarf, a rare occurrence, explaining its double shock formation. They also discovered that high-speed stellar winds may have started blowing from its surface within just the past 20-30 years. This finding improves our understanding of the diversity of supernova explosions, and highlights the benefits of interdisciplinary research, combining history with modern astronomy to enable new discoveries about our galaxy.

Researchers have now developed a new way to make microbes hardy enough to withstand extreme conditions such as heat and the manufacturing processes used to formulate the microbes into powders or pills for long-term storage.

A new electrolyte design for lithium metal batteries could significantly boost the range of electric vehicles. Researchers have radically reduced the amount of environmentally harmful fluorine required to stabilize these batteries.

A new electrolyte design for lithium metal batteries could significantly boost the range of electric vehicles. Researchers have radically reduced the amount of environmentally harmful fluorine required to stabilize these batteries.

Engineers have created a device that can efficiently convert heat into electrical voltage at temperatures lower than that of outer space. The innovation could help overcome a significant obstacle to the advancement of quantum computing technologies, which require extremely low temperatures to function optimally.

Engineers have created a device that can efficiently convert heat into electrical voltage at temperatures lower than that of outer space. The innovation could help overcome a significant obstacle to the advancement of quantum computing technologies, which require extremely low temperatures to function optimally.

Ecologist Susan Harrison has been to the North, and today we get her photos of some birds from Finland. Her notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Northeastern Finland

Birdwatchers flock to northeastern Finland because there are more extensive old-growth coniferous forests there than anywhere else in Europe. Also, the relatively unmanaged forests of western Russia are a vast haven for wildlife, helping to maintain the neighboring eastern Finnish bird populations.  Old-growth forests provide the large trees with decaying centers that certain birds require for nesting, as well as abundant lichens for nest materials and lush understories for food.

On our route to Arctic Finland and Norway in May 2024, a group of bird enthusiasts investigated Oulanka National Park and other areas around the northeastern Finnish town of Kuusamo, and then we crossed the Arctic Circle and looked around forests near the ski resort town of Ivalo.

These are some of the sought-after, old-growth-dependent songbirds we saw.

Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus):

Gray-headed Chickadee (Poecile cinctus):

Willow Tit (Poecile montanus):

Siberian Jay (Perisoreus infaustus):

Here are several forest grouse species.

Hazel Grouse (Tetrastes bonasia):

Black Grouse (Lyrurus tetrix):

Capercaillie female (Tetrao urogallus):

We saw a Hawk Owl female (Surnia ulula) nesting in an enormous Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris), and her mate perched on another such tree nearby:

Here are a few other birds we saw around Kuusamo and Ivalo.

Bohemian Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus):

Pine Grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) adult male and first-year male:

Ruff (Calidris pugnax): a colorful male, a non-colorful male, and a non-colorful male courting two females while a Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos) stood by.  As you may have read, this bird has a fascinating breeding system with three genetically distinct types of males: