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A new article analyzes in depth the physical problems associated with DNA packaging that have often been neglected in structural models of chromosomes. The study demonstrates that the multilaminar organization of DNA, proposed from previous experimental research, is fully compatible with the structural and functional properties of chromosomes. This organization can be explained by weak interactions between nucleosomes, which are the repetitive blocks that fold the DNA double helix.

How can computer models help design microbial communities? Researchers examined the development perspectives of so-called synthetic biology. In a new article, they explain why computer-aided biology has an important role to play.

Astronomers have directed NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison, Earth is approximately 26,000 light-years from the center.)

Researchers mined the molecular foundations of cancer and uncovered a new reason chimeric antigen receptor (CAR-T cell therapy) fails in some patients. This discovery has fueled new strategies that incorporate antibodies and gene editing to improve the outcome of this breakthrough treatment for patients.

Researchers have been able to initiate a controlled movement in the very heart of an atom. They caused the atomic nucleus to interact with one of the electrons in the outermost shells of the atom. This electron could be manipulated and read out through the needle of a scanning tunneling microscope. The research offers prospects for storing quantum information inside the nucleus, where it is safe from external disturbances.

Researchers have been able to initiate a controlled movement in the very heart of an atom. They caused the atomic nucleus to interact with one of the electrons in the outermost shells of the atom. This electron could be manipulated and read out through the needle of a scanning tunneling microscope. The research offers prospects for storing quantum information inside the nucleus, where it is safe from external disturbances.

A research team has made a major discovery by designing molecules that could revolutionize computing.

It’s hard to tell which mainstream media outlet is the most biased against Israel when covering the war, but if I had to choose it would be two British sites: the Guardian and the BBC.  Now, an article in the Torygraph (shown below) reports on a new analysis of the Beeb’s behavior in just the four months following the Hamas massacre of October 7. The report concludes that the outlet violated its own guidelines for impartiality over 1,500 times in just those four months. The Torygraph report is echoed in another report in the Times of Israel, which you can read for free pieces by clicking on the second headline below. But it’s sufficient to read the first piece, as it’s longer and more comprehensive.

You can read the Torygraph piece by clicking below, but if it’s paywalled, you can find it archived here. The whole report on the BBC, called “The Asserson Report,” is here, and if you want to judge its veracity, go have a look, though the pdf is 200 pages long.

The breaches of impartiality, which show a pattern of excoriating Israel and downplaying Hamas’s terrorism, involve not only biased reporting (see bar graph below) but also the use of biased reporters and material on the BBC’s Arabic channel. The main analysis involves reporting analyzed by AI for the use of certain words, like “genocide,” but it goes beyond that.

An except:

The BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the height of the Israel-Hamas war, a damning report has found.

The report revealed a “deeply worrying pattern of bias” against Israel, according to its authors who analysed four months of the BBC’s output across television, radio, online news, podcasts and social media.

The research, led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson, also found that Israel was associated with genocide more than 14 times more than Hamas in the corporation’s coverage of the conflict.

On Saturday, Danny Cohen, a former BBC executive, warned that there was now an “institutional crisis” at the national broadcaster and called for an independent inquiry into its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

. . . .The Asserson report analysed the BBC’s coverage during a four-month period beginning Oct 7, 2023 – the day Hamas carried out a brutal massacre in southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking another 251 into Gaza as hostages.

A team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists contributed to the research, which used artificial intelligence to analyse nine million words of BBC output.

Researchers identified a total of 1,553 breaches of the BBC’s editorial guidelines, which included impartiality, accuracy, editorial values and public interest.

“The findings reveal a deeply worrying pattern of bias and multiple breaches by the BBC of its own editorial guidelines on impartiality, fairness and establishing the truth,” the report said.

It also found that the BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism while presenting Israel as a militaristic and aggressive nation.

It claimed that some journalists used by the BBC in its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict have previously shown sympathy for Hamas and even celebrated its acts of terror.

The report claims that a number of BBC reporters have shown extreme hostility to Israel, including BBC Arabic contributor Mayssaa Abdul Khalek, who is said to have called for “death to Israel” and defended a journalist who tweeted: “Sir Hitler, rise, there are a few people that need to be burned.”

. . . the report’s analysis of BBC coverage found that Israel was associated with war crimes four times more than Hamas (127 versus 30), with genocide 14 times more (283 versus 19) and with breaching international law six times more (167 versus 27).

Here’s a figure showing the disproportionality in the BBC’s coverage of Israel vs. Hamas.  Given that Hamas has explicitly endorsed genocide and commits far more war crimes and violations of international law than does Israel, the longer blue bars are a palpable indication of bias in reporting:

The Torygraph article goes on in this vein, and of course reports that Jewish groups are extremely concerned, as are some politicians—even former Labour party members (e.g., Lord Austin of Dudley, now an independent) and Tories like Julia Lopez, the shadow culture secretary, and Sir Oliver Dowden, the shadow deputy prime minister.

One matter of concern is the Beeb’s dogged reluctance to label Hamas as a “terrorist group”. The Times of Israel says this:

The report found that, though the BBC said in October that it would describe Hamas “where possible” as a “proscribed terrorist organization,” Hamas’s designation as a listed terror group was only noted 3.2 percent of the time.

The BBC, of course, disses the Asserson report:

A BBC spokesman said: “We have serious questions about the methodology of this report, particularly its heavy reliance on AI to analyse impartiality, and its interpretation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines. We don’t think coverage can be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context.

Well, the bar graph above clearly shows there’s something worth investigating, and if you’ve actually read the BBC on the war, as I have, you’ll see that yes, they’re clearly biased against Israel. For example, the BBC was one of the first to jump the gun when a misfired Islamic Jihad missile hit the parking lot of Al-Ahli hospital, blaming the “hit” on Israel. The reporting journalist, international editor Jeremy Bowen, wouldn’t apologize (though I think the BBC did).

The BBC also had to apologize when Israel sent Arabic-speaking doctors and others into Al-Shifa hospital to help evacuate the patients. That was a gesture of humanity, but the Beeb (and Reuters) said, wrongly, that the IDF was targeting Arabic speakers and medical personnel in the hospital.  These are two cases I remember, but I’m sure the report gives more. At any rate, read the report  if you’re concerned. The BBC apparently repeatedly jumped the gun, and in a way that falsely accused Israel.

A bit more:

The report identifies 11 cases where it claims BBC Arabic’s coverage of the war has featured reporters who have previously made public statements in support of terrorism and specifically Hamas, without viewers being informed of this.

The report accuses Mr Bowen, one of the BBC’s most respected journalists, of bias against Israel, in breach of the corporation’s editorial guidelines.

Mr Bowen, who is taking part in a BBC Masterclass on “reporting war impartially” next week, is accused in the report of “excusing Hamas terrorist activities” and of “stressing the callousness of Israelis”.

These are not just words, but incidents.  The article concludes with more incidents involving both Bowen and Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, who’s accused of downplaying the October 7 massacre

Well, the results are no surprise to me, but the fact that a 200-page report on bias in a major media outlet was even created is surprising. I haven’t looked at whether the Beeb itself has reported it, but they should. It’s news, Jake.

The Times of Israel report (click headline below) largely echoes the Torygraph, but there are a few items quoted in the report that the ToI mentions (one is above) but the British paper doesn’t.

“Sir Hitler, rise” indeed!

I wonder what a study of the New York Times or Washington Post would show. . .

An area of missing Antarctic sea ice twice the size of Texas adds to concerns that the ice has seen a lasting “regime shift”, with consequences for ecosystems and global ocean circulation

A new book looks at the latest scientific insights versus a key question in astronomy and space science.

It’s tough to answer a scientific question, with a just data point of one. How special are we, and how common (or rare) is the story of how life arose on the Earth in the grander drama of the cosmos?

A new book out this week entitled Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life by Mario Livio and Jack Szostak looks at the scientific state of answering this key question. The book offers a sweeping view of the nascent science of astrobiology, a multi-disciplinary field melding biology, chemistry, astronomy and more.

Astrophysicist Mario Livio is also the author of Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein, Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists that Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe and The Equation That Couldn’t be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry.

Co-author and Nobel laureate Jack Szostak worked on the Human Genome Project and was the co-recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for discovering how telomeres defend chromosomes.

The basic premise of the book looks at the riddle of how the basic building blocks of life—from amino acids, RNA and the first cells—emerged on Earth. Could the same processes by common elsewhere?

An artist’s conception, of an Earth analog. Credit: NASA

Remember Rare Earth from about 20 years back? That book definitely made ripples in the fledgling field of astrobiology, by positing that a series of rare circumstances led to life to arise on the Earth. Is Earth Exceptional? Updates the science on this question and debate a generation later.

Exceptional Earth

The book doesn’t shy away from some pretty extensive organic chemistry in the first half. It’s rather tantalizing to researchers that simple life came into existence almost as soon as the conditions were ready for it. Was this a fluke, or a cosmic imperative? The chemistry of primordial life is a big mystery. Is Earth Exceptional looks at the latest findings, and what breakthroughs may be imminent in the field of astrobiology.

We live in an amazing time, a golden age of astronomy that may give us hard answers to these questions in our lifetimes. SETI searches, exoplanet surveys, and space telescopes such as TESS, JWST and the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope (set to launch in 2027) could bare fruit this century. The book points out that even a null result—however disappointing—could still be profound.

JWST’s direct views of an exoplanet. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Alyssa Pagan(STScI)

The answer could come from missions to worlds in our own solar system searching for signs of life past or present on Mars, Europa or Titan. The book deals with prospects for life on worlds in our solar system, and implications of such a discovery. Farther afield, detections of signs in exoplanet spectra could also herald the detection of exobiology on distant worlds.

An artist’s conception of ‘Orbilander’ on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Credit: NASA

For example, we now have the ability to see what’s known as the Vegetation Red Edge. This would be a very strong hint that photosynthesis was afoot via chlorophyll. This is a molecule that—as far as we know—only arises due to life.

A conceptualization of Earth’s ‘Red Edge’ due to vegetation. Credit: NASA

All amazing thoughts to consider, as you read Is Earth Special and ponder the state of modern astrobiology.

The post Book Review: Is Earth Exceptional? appeared first on Universe Today.

Two days ago I reported that Simon Fraser University had adopted a policy of institutional neutrality, which I don’t think I have to explain any further, as I’ve written about it in detail (see the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report). This is heartening to some extent, as for years my own school was the sole upholder of neutrality. But it’s also disheartening in that 110 universities, both public and private, have adopted Chicago’s policy of Free Expression, but a mere five have adopted institutional neutrality, an important policy meant to buttress free speech.  Schools just can’t seem to resist the urge to make moral, political, and ideological statements; clearly, their desire to “be on the right side” outweighs their desire to adopt freedom of speech.

Here are the five schools that have embraced institutional neutrality:

The University of Chicago
Simon Fraser University (see also the link above, noting the problems with their statement)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Vanderbilt University
Columbia University

And of course Columbia and Simon Fraser bear watching—Columbia because of its toxic history and Simon Fraser because its policy has problems.

Well, these don’t add up to 110 schools, but five is better than none.  And now, with the announcements of both Penn and Stanford that they too are adopting institutional neutrality, while Yale is thinking about it, we have seven universities pledging neutrality and one seriously studying the issue.  Could it be that American colleges and universities are finally realizing the palpable advantage of staying neutral on moral, political, and ideological issues?

Here’s Penn’s announcement from two days ago, written by its interim President and taken taken from Penn Today, the school’s official newsletter.  (Perhaps the policy was prompted because the previous president, Liz Magill, after a lame performance on free speech  before a House hearing, was forced to resign last December after pressure from alumni, donors, and others. The statement below denies, however, that this was the motivation.)

An excerpt; I’ve put the key words are in bold. It seems that if Penn, which has been around for ages, only now has realized the value of not chilling speech!

Today, Penn is introducing two new institutional positions: a statement of University Values and a statement Upholding Academic Independence. These statements sit alongside two older collections of words, one from last year, and one from 1755.

The words from 1755 comprise our Latin motto, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae, commonly translated into English as “Laws without morals are useless.” These few words communicate deeply. The motto urges us to do what is good and practical, and also what is right. This spirit has guided Penn for centuries, and I am proud to be part of an institution built upon such a motto.

. . . Today, we introduce a statement of University Values. [Check the link; the “values” are very skimpy.] These values are also a product of our long history, and yet re-presenting them in new words today carries added importance. Over the past months we have found ourselves reacting to the events of the world and responding to events on our campus. Both the Presidential Commission on Countering Hate and Building Community and the University Task Force on Antisemitism called for an explicit articulation of our values to help guide us through these challenges. Like the committee that developed In Principle and Practice, the Task Force and Commission sought and received broad input about our values from the Penn community. The current statement reflects this input and aspires to capture what is distinctive about Penn. Our values were always there and are best revealed through our actions. But the words we use to express them are guideposts along the way. I urge you to read and reflect upon those words.

Today, Penn also introduces Upholding Academic Independence. Over the years, and with increasing frequency, leaders across the University—indeed across most universities—have made public statements in response to external events. By and large, these messages sought to provide acknowledgement and solidarity following often horrific circumstances. Although well-meaning, these institutional messages fundamentally compete with the free and unencumbered creation and expression of ideas by individuals. Going forward, the University of Pennsylvania and its leaders will refrain from institutional statements made in response to local and world events. By quieting Penn’s institutional voice, we hope to amplify the expertise and voices within.

The release of this new guidance should not be construed as fear to take a studied position. Quite the opposite, it is a confirmation of our commitment to academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Likewise, the timing should not be interpreted as a response to past or upcoming events, or prior institutional positions. We will, of course, continue to communicate about policies and activities that have direct relevance to the University’s missions and its operations. This new guidance represents the culmination of intensive deliberation about how Penn and its leaders can best support our mission and our community—now, and moving forward.

I see one loophole in their statement: they won’t comment on “local and world events.”  But that doesn’t keep them from making ideological or political statements that arise not from world events, but from societal changes in views or values.  For example, they could still make statements about the value of equity or DEI, which are not based on any events in particular but on the Zeitgeist. It would be far better if they simply said they wouldn’t take any “University positions on political and social action, with the exception of matters that threaten the very mission of the University,” as the late President Robert Zimmer emphasized.

So Penn people, keep an eye on your school and see if it adheres to its principles.

In the article below (click to read), the National Review reports the Stanford as well has just put into practice institutional neutrality. Stanford, of course, has been roiled by political turmoil, with many students explicitly coming out against free speech (remember Judge Duncan?).

First, a comment they make about Penn’s policy:

Penn has repeatedly weighed in on prominent public events in recent years, condemning the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 and celebrating the jury conviction of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, in April 2021.

The decision to move toward neutrality comes after the Ivy League school was embroiled in campus protest throughout the previous academic year. Campus police dismantled a 16-day pro-Palestinian encampment toward the end of the spring semester, and former president Liz Magill stepped down following her widely criticized testimony at a House hearing on campus antisemitism in December.

And a tweet just sent to me. The caption may be a bit exaggerated since this is just a display of history books, not the full history-book section, but it’s still reprehensible and morally obtuse:

Breaking: The University of Pennsylvania has changed its bookstore’s “history” section to exclusively propaganda books demonizing Israel.

It is no wonder the university breeds a student body that is radicalized, considering these are the books they push on them. pic.twitter.com/9KiFQqhFS3

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) September 10, 2024

And here’s an excerpt from the NR’s article about Stanford, whose policy seems better than Simon Fraser’s or Penn’s because it hews more closely to the Kalven Principles:

Stanford University’s faculty senate adopted an institutional-neutrality policy in May, which the university’s Board of Trustees commended this week. 

“When speaking for the institution, Stanford University leaders and administrators should not express an opinion on political and social controversies, unless these matters directly affect the mission of the university or implicate its legal obligations,” reads a portion of the “Institutional Statements Policy” adopted by the Stanford faculty senate in May. The policy applies to “Academic Organization Executive Officers of the University,” which includes leadership, vice provosts, deans, and others, but not to the directors of centers or institutes within the university. 

In formally adopting a policy of institutional neutrality, the universities are following the recommendations laid out by University of Chicago faculty in their 1967 “Kalven Report,” produced amid nationwide protests against the Vietnam War.

“The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity,” reads the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report. “It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest.”

The problem with this is that it doesn’t apply to departments, centers, or institutes, all of which fall under the University of Chicago’s Kalven Principoles (I’m proud that this clarification by President Zimmer was something I helped forge):

The principles of the Kalven Report apply not only to the University as a whole, but to the departments, schools, centers, and divisions as well, and for exactly the same reasons, i.e., these essential components of the University should not take institutional positions on public issues that are not directly related to the core functioning of the University.

Finally, Yale has created a committee to study adopting institutional neutrality, at least according to President McInnis’s announcement (click to read):

An excerpt (my bolding):

Although I am only beginning to gather your suggestions, one topic has emerged as top of mind for many people in our community: the question of when Yale, as an institution, speaks on issues of the day. This topic also has been central to a national discussion in higher education over the past year. Recognizing that members of our community hold multiple views, I write to announce that I have convened a committee to address the question.

I have asked the committee to examine when the university, or those speaking on its behalf, should comment on matters of public significance, weighing the value that Yale places on engaging with the wider world as well as the university’s commitment to fostering an environment of diverse viewpoints and open dialogue and debate. To be clear, I am not charging the committee with revisiting the vital and robust protection for the free expression of individuals within our diverse community. Rather, the committee’s focus is on the role of Yale itself as a speaker.

. . . . The committee will host listening sessions over the next few weeks to solicit feedback from students, faculty, and staff. Information will be posted online. Community members who are not able to attend in person—including alumni—can share their perspectives via a webform, which will be open until the end of the last listening session.

The question is not WHEN Yale speaks on issues of the day, but WHETHER it speaks on issues of the day. (One exception, mentioned in the Kalven Report, is that speech about “issues of the day” is okay when it bears directly on the university’s mission to foster teaching, learning, research, and free discourse.)  Do we really need another committee to study the issue? Well, I guess so, but they should begin by reading the Kalven Principles and then see if there are any good reasons for deviating from them.

h/t: Simon

I have written previously about the concept of structural batteries, such as this recent post on a concrete battery. The basic idea is a battery made out of material that is strong enough that it can bare a load. Essentially we’re asking the material to do two things at once – be a structural material and be a battery. I am generally wary of such approaches to technology as you often wind up with something that is bad at two things, rather than simply optimizing each function.

In medicine, for example, I generally don’t like combo medications – a single pill with two drugs meant to take together. I would rather mix and match the best options for each function. But sometimes there is such a convenience in the combination that it’s worth it. As with any technology, we have to consider the overall tradeoffs.

With structural batteries there is one huge gain – the weight and/or volume savings of having a material do double duty. The potential here is too great to ignore. For the concrete battery the advantage is about volume, not weight. The idea is to have the foundation of a building serve as individual or even grid power storage. For a structural battery that will save weight, we need a material is light and strong. One potential material is carbon fiber, which may be getting close to characteristics with practical applications.

Material scientists have created in the lab a carbon fiber battery material that could serve as a structural battery. Carbon fiber is a good substrate because it is light and strong, and also can be easily shaped as needed. Many modern jets are largely made out of carbon fiber for this reason. Of course you compromise the strength when you introduce materials needed for the energy storage, and these researchers have been working on achieving an optimal compromise. Their latest product has an elastic modulus that exceeds 76 GPa. For comparison, aluminum, which is also used for aircraft, has an elastic modulus of 70 GPa. Optimized carbon fiber has an elastic modulus of 200-500 GPa. Elastic modulus is one type of strength, specifically the resistance to non-permanent deformity. Being stronger than aluminum means it is in the range that is suitable for making lots of things, from laptops to airplanes.

How is the material as a battery? The basic features are good – it is stable, can last over 1000 cycles, and can be charged and discharged fast enough. But of course the key feature is energy density – their current version has an energy density of 30 Wh kg. For comparison, a typical Li Ion battery in an electric vehicle today has an energy density of 200-300 Wh kg. High end Amprius silicon anode Li ion batteries are up to 400-500 Wh kg.

So, as I said, the carbon fiber structural battery is essentially bad at two things. It is not as strong as regular carbon fiber, and it is not as good a battery as Li ion batteries. But is the combination worth it? If we run some numbers I think the answer right now is – probably not. What I don’t know is the cost to mass produce this material, which so far is just a laboratory proof of concept. All bets are off if the material is super expensive. But let’s assume cost is reasonable and focus on the weight and energy storage.

If, for example, we look at a typical electric vehicle how would the availability of this material be useful? It’s hard to say exactly because I would need to see the specs on a vehicle engineered to incorporate this material, but let’s do some rough estimates. A Tesla, for example, has a chassis made of steel and titanium, with a body that is almost entirely aluminum. So we can replace all the aluminum in such a vehicle with structural carbon fiber, which is stronger and lighter. Depending on the vehicle of course, we’re talking about 100kg of carbon fiber for the body of a car. The battery weighs about 500 kg. The carbon fiber battery has one tenth the specific energy as a Tesla Li ion battery, so 100 kg of carbon fiber battery would hold as much energy at 10 kg of battery. This would allow a reduction in the battery weight from 500 kg to 490 kg. That hardly seems worth it, for what is very likely to be a more expensive material than either the current battery or aluminum.

Of course you could beef up the frame, which could have the double advantage of making it stronger and longer lasting. Let’s say you have a triple thick 300 kg carbon fiber frame – that still only saves you 30 kg of battery. My guess is that we would need to get that energy density up to 100 Wh kg or more before the benefits start to become worth it.

The calculus changes, however, when we talk about electric aircraft. Here there is a huge range of models but just to throw out some typical figures – we could be talking about a craft that weighs 1,500 kg and battery that weight 2,000 kg. If the body of the craft were made out of structural carbon fiber, that could knock 150 kg off the weight of the battery, which for an aircraft is significant. For a commercial aircraft it might even be worth the higher cost of the plane, given the lower operating costs.

What about at the low end of the spectrum – say a laptop or smart phone? A laptop might be the sweet spot for this  type of material. If the case were made of a carbon fiber battery that could allow for a thinner and lighter laptop or it could extend the battery life of the laptop, both of which would be desirable. These are already expensive, and adding a bit to the overall cost to improve performance is likely something consumers will pay for. But of course the details matter.

Given all this – is the carbon fiber structural battery ready for commercial use? I think it’s marginal. It’s plausible for commercial electric aircraft and maybe laptops, depending on the ultimate manufacturing cost, and assuming no hidden gotchas in terms of material properties. We may be at the very low end of viability. Any improvement from this point, especially in energy density, makes it much more viable. Widespread adoption, such as in EVs, probably won’t come until we get to 100 Wh kg or more.

The post Carbon Fiber Structural Battery first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

New research suggests that cannabis use may be harmful and could be causing cardiovascular disease.

The post Cannabis use and cardiovascular disease first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A groundbreaking civilian spacewalk saw two astronauts partially exit a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule wearing a brand new design of spacesuit. Every previous spacewalk completed before this was performed by government-trained astronauts.

If you were standing on Mars as it was hit by a solar flare, you might be able to see an aurora just like on Earth

I’ve been an avid stargazer for a fair few decades now and not once have I seen anything that makes me believe we are being visited by aliens! My own experiences aside, there’s no evidence of alien visitations but it seems much of the population believes anything that they cannot immediately identify in the sky MUST be ailens. A new paper suggests there are costs associated with increasing claims such as disctractions to government programs and background noise that hampers science communication. How on Earth should we deal with it? If debunking doesn’t work, then maybe its time for a scientific investigation. 

Do you believe in aliens? It seems that a great proportion of the population does. That’s despite all the usual issues that those of us in science communication trot out to enrich the debate with a little factual information; everything is a long way away, the universe is actually quite young and so on and so on  Yet still we have a problem that a lot of people still think we are being visited by our cosmic cousins. 

With thousands of exoplanets discovered so far, astronomers are learning how different planets can be. What if intelligent alien civilizations arise on extremely different habitable worlds? Some civilizations could develop space exploration technologies, but others would be trapped underwater, under ice, or in enormous gravity wells. How could they escape? Image Credit: DALL-E

Tony Milligan from Kings College London, the author of a new paper into this very phenomenon says that it is ‘no longer a quirk but a widespread societel problem.’ He goes on to explain that it is really quite unusual because there is zero evidence that aliens even exist let alone travel to Earth. He cites the same arguments about the sheer scale of the Universe and how we are far more likely to start to engage and learn about them from remote observation. 

Somewhat worryingly is that the paper articulates almost a quarter of Americans have seen a UFO. This is then supported by a poll that shows 68% of people believe the US Government knows more about UFOs than they are letting on! Of course, and as I have often retorted in such discussions, if you see an aeroplane in the sky but don’t know it’s an aeroplane then it is indeed an Unidentified Flying Object. Doesn’t mean it’s an alien though! 

Screenshot from the “UFO Over Santa Clarita VFX Breakdown” video.

The essence of the report is that alien visitation claims become a problem when they do one of three things; 1 – move into mainstream debate in such a way that governments have to reply and respond to them; 2 – when they generate background noise which impedes science communication and 3 – when they become entangled with indigenous origin narratives, making it hard to recover the latter.

The rise of artificial intelligence and sheer volume of content in social media makes item 2 even more difficult to separate the proveribal wheat from the chaif. The paper concludes that there it is clear the popular belief in alien visitations makes it difficult to articulate and discuss such topics. Even bursts of debunking seem to fail to cut through the noise and certainly seem to show no sign of reducing it. The Moon landing is another great exmple where people that believe the landings were faked seem to have great trouble in accepting evidence when it is presented to them. 

There will come a time in the not too distant future, asserts Tony Milligan when it will require something of a more structured scientific research program to investigate and explore the concept. The time may not be now but in the near future a program can apply scientific rigour to the debate and perhaps provide an answer. 

Source : Equivocal Encounters: Alien Visitation Claims as a Societal Problem

The post Are Claims of Alien Visitation Causing a Problem to Society? appeared first on Universe Today.

A single dose of a smallpox vaccine seems to lower the risk of catching mpox by around 60 per cent, and two doses would probably be even better

Jupiter’s moon, Io, is the most volcanic body in the Solar System. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been getting closer and closer to Io in the last couple of years, giving us our first close-up images of the moon in 25 years.

Recent JunoCam images show a new volcano that appeared sometime after the Galileo spacecraft visited the region.

The new volcano is just south of Io’s equator. Since tidal heating from Jupiter causes Io’s volcanic activity, most volcanoes are in the moon’s equatorial region, within about 30 degrees north and south of the equator. When NASA’s Galileo spacecraft imaged the region where the new volcano was spotted in 1997, the surface was featureless.

The new volcano is near an existing volcano called Kanehekili. JunoCam’s image from April 2024 revealed multiple lava flows and volcanic deposits covering an area of about 180 kilometres by 180 kilometres.

The grey inset image shows what the Galileo spacecraft saw about 25 years ago. The larger colour image is from JunoCam and clearly shows a new volcano and lava flows. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Europlanet.

“Our recent JunoCam images show many changes on Io, including this large, complicated volcanic feature that appears to have formed from nothing since 1997,” said Michael Ravine. Ravine is the Advanced Projects Manager at Malin Space Science Systems, the company that built and operates JunoCam for NASA’s Juno mission.

Of course, the volcano didn’t form from nothing. Io is in a tough spot orbitally. Tidal friction from massive Jupiter, and some from its fellow moon Europa, is dissipated as orbital and heat energy in Io. In its sibling ocean moons like Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, the heat keeps their subsurface oceans in liquid form. But Io doesn’t have an ocean, so the heat causes magma to well up and break through the surface as volcanoes. Io has over 400 active volcanoes, and the surface is covered in sulphuric compounds from these eruptions, which give it its colours.

JunoCam’s best image of the region and the new volcano was taken on February 3rd, 2024, from a distance of about 2,530 km. The scale is about 1.7 km per pixel. In this image, Io is illuminated with sunlight reflected off of Jupiter.

This image shows the Galileo and JunoCam images sisde by side. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS.

There are unanswered questions about Io, its volcanism, and its interior composition. Scientists know that tidal heating from Jupiter is the moon’s primary heat source, but they aren’t certain how the heat is distributed inside. They are also uncertain about the extent of Io’s magma ocean.

They also want to know what initiates eruptions and what drives the different types of eruptions, like plumes, lava flows, and pyroclastic flows. There are unanswered questions about Io’s volcanic history and how often the surface is reshaped. There are no impact craters on Io, which means the surface must be young.

This schematic illustrates four competing explanations for Io’s interior and how tidal heating is dissipated. Though Juno won’t tell us which one is correct, every volcanic eruption is a piece of the puzzle. Image Credit: Chuck Carter and James Tuttle Keane / Keck Institute for Space Studies.

Researchers are also keen to understand how the gases from eruptions might affect the surface and the moon’s extremely thin atmosphere. Io’s volcanic activity has likely changed over time, and how that happens and what drives it are also unknown.

Answers to these questions will not only help us understand Io, but other rocky planets as well.

Juno’s discovery of a new volcano on Io is interesting, and its observations are a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge. However, Juno won’t provide the in-depth answers scientists seek. It has several more flybys of Io in the future, with the last one in 2025. Unfortunately, it’ll be getting further from the moon, and the last one will be at a distance of 94,000 km.

This graphic shows Juno’s orbits around Jupiter. PJ (perijove) 58 was its closest approach to Io, and as time goes on, its flybys will be more and more distant. Image Credit: Scott Bolton/SWRI

These images do highlight an important part of the Juno mission, though. The JunoCam isn’t a scientific instrument, strictly speaking. It was included for the rest of us, and the images are freely available for anyone to work on and post.

By spotting the new volcano, JunoCam has proven its scientific value.

The post Juno Sees a Brand New Volcano on Io appeared first on Universe Today.

Although stars are enormous, they’re extremely far away, and appear as point sources in telescopes. Usually, you never get to see more than a pixel. Now astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to resolve details on the surface of the star R Doradus and track its activity for 30 days. The images revealed giant, hot bubbles of gas 75 times larger than the entire Sun. R Doradus is 350 times larger than our Sun, but only 180 light-years away.

“This is the first time the bubbling surface of a real star can be shown in such a way,“ said Wouter Vlemmings, a professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and lead author of the study, in a press release from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). “We had never expected the data to be of such high quality that we could see so many details of the convection on the stellar surface.”

In the study, published in Nature, the astronomers detailed how they observed R Doradus, a massive red supergiant star, over four weeks between July 2 and August 2, 2023. The observations were made using the longest available ALMA baselines. The images revealed a stellar disk with prominent small-scale features that provide the structure and motions of convection on the stellar surface.

Convection is the mixing of gas within a star, where heated gas from the interior of the star created by nuclear fusion in the core rises to the surface and the cooler, denser gas on the star’s photosphere sinks. This continuous motion also distributes the heavy elements formed in the core, such as carbon and nitrogen, throughout the star, and convection is also thought to be responsible for the stellar winds that carry these elements out into the cosmos to build new stars and planets.

“Convection creates the beautiful granular structure seen on the surface of our Sun, but it is hard to see on other stars,” said Theo Khouri, a researcher at Chalmers who is a co-author of the study. “With ALMA, we have now been able to not only directly see convective granules — with a size 75 times the size of our Sun! — but also measure how fast they move for the first time.”

While convection bubbles have been previously observed in detail on the surface of other stars, including another observation of a red giant star using with the PIONIER instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer, ALMA’s higher resolution allowed astronomers to track the motion of the bubbles in a way that was not possible with other telescopes.

The researchers found that the granules of R Doradus appear to move on a one-month cycle, which is faster than scientists expected based on how convection works in the Sun.

“We don’t yet know what is the reason for the difference. It seems that convection changes as a star gets older in ways that we don’t yet understand,” said Vlemmings. In their paper, the team wrote, “This indicates a possible difference between the convection properties of low-mass and high-mass evolved stars.”

This wide-field view, created from Digitized Sky Survey 2 images, shows the region around R Doradus, the bright, orange star in the centre. The star’s surface was recently imaged in detail using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

Red giant stars are what become of main sequence stars like our Sun once they have exhausted their hydrogen fuel, and they expand to becomes hundreds of times their normal diameter. Since R Doradus has a mass similar to that of our Sun, this red giant star is likely a good example of how our Sun will look like in approximately five billion years.

“It is spectacular that we can now directly image the details on the surface of stars so far away, and observe physics that until now was mostly only observable in our Sun,” said Behzad Bojnodi Arbab, a PhD student at Chalmers who was also involved in the study.

The post High Resolution Images Show Bubbling Gas on the Surface of Another Star appeared first on Universe Today.

Mars is known for its unique geological features. Olympus Mons is a massive shield volcano 2.5 times taller than Mt. Everest. Hellas Planitia is the largest visible impact crater in the Solar System. However, Mars’ most striking feature is Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar System.

This fascinating geological feature begs to be explored, and a team of German researchers think that a swarm of robots is best suited to the task.

Valles Marineris (VM) is named after NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft, which discovered the massive canyon in 1971. It’s about 4,000 km long, 8 km deep at its deepest point, and 600 km wide in some places. These measurements dwarf the Grand Canyon in the USA.

From a distance, VM looks like a scab on Mars’s surface. It’s an interconnected network of chasms, faults, valleys, and probably caves. Unlike the Grand Canyon, VM wasn’t excavated by a flowing river. Instead, scientists think it was likely formed by rift faults, regions on the surface where plates receded from one another.

Annotated close-up of High-Resolution Stereo Camera images of Valles Marineris. The HRSC is an instrument on the ESA’s Mars Express mission. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Michael)

German scientists are developing a way to explore this unique region. It’s called the Valles Marineris Explorer (VaMEx), and the idea dates back several years. VaMEx is an initiative of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and it’s making significant progress.

NASA’s Mars rovers have made great progress in understanding Mars and its potentially habitable past. They’re incredible machines that put humanity’s inventiveness on display. But they’re ill-suited to rough, obstacle-strewn terrain like Valles Mariners. Instead of building one robotic vehicle, VaMEx will build several types of vehicles and stationary units that will work together to explore VM and its chasms, valley walls, and caves.

VaMEx will be a swarm of interconnected vehicles that fly, move across the ground, and visit caves in VM. They’ll be linked with a ground station that acts as a command center, and a satellite will provide communications with Earth. The vehicles will collect images and data and send them to the command center and an orbiter or satellite, then to Earth.

This image outlines the different components of the VaMEx Mars Symphony concept. Image Credit: Clemens Riegler / University of Wuerzburg

VaMEx is particularly aimed at caves that scientists think are likely plentiful in VM. Caves are protected from radiation, and if Mars hosted simple life in its past, there may be traces of it deep in these caves. VaMEx also includes ground repeater stations that will allow cave-exploring robots to share data and images in real time.

All of this will require finely tuned communications.

“We have given our sub-project the name ‘VaMEx3-MarsSymphony’ because the aim is to make the individual elements of the robot swarm play together harmoniously like an orchestra,” said project leader Professor Hakan Kayal. Kayal is a professor of Astronautics at the Satellite Mission Control Centre at the University of Würzburg.

The walls of Valles Mariners are an ideal place to study Mars’ layered geology, as shown in this HiRISE image of layered deposits. Scientists can learn about the planet’s geological history without the need for excavation. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/UA/HiRISE

Units called autorotation bodies are also part of the swarm. Autorotation is a term from rotary-wing (helicopter) flight. It describes a situation where power to the rotors is lost, and as the helicopter falls toward Earth, air makes the rotors spin, providing enough energy for a controlled descent. VaMEx’s autorotation bodies aren’t helicopters. They’re like maple seeds, which float gently to the ground, spinning as they descend. Once they’ve reached the surface, they’re stationary.

VaMEx is also taking an unusual approach to cameras. The stationary ground station will feature a camera that monitors the Martian sky. “All previous Mars missions have focussed on the surface of the planet, but we want to look upwards for the first time,” says Hakan Kayal. The camera can monitor cloud formation and dust in the atmosphere. It will also capture any transient phenomena like unusual cloud illumination or lightning.

NASA’s Mars rovers have occasionally imaged the Martian sky. The gif below is from the Perseverance rover, which used one of its navigation cameras to capture images. A purpose-built sky-monitoring camera would image the Martian sky like never before.

via GIPHY

It will also see incoming meteors, and data shows that one about the size of a basketball strikes Mars every day. “We could further substantiate this with data if we film the entry of meteorites with our UAP camera and correlate these events with the seismic signals,” says Hakan Kayal.

VaMEx faces many technical challenges that still need to be overcome. The mobile robots will need powerful route-finding AI to maneuver through difficult terrain, especially in caves. It takes about 40 minutes for a signal to travel from Mars and back, making remote real-time control impossible.

There are also communication challenges. A key challenge is getting VaMEx’s ground segments to communicate with a satellite. One company is working on special transceivers that operate in the Ka-band to handle all of the scientific data. The Ka-band is used in satellites because it allows higher bandwidth communications, but landers currently use the S or X-band. The issue is that the Ka-band usually requires more and bulkier equipment, including larger antennae, that may not be practical on a surface robot.

In August, scientists tested some aspects of VaMEx at the DLR site in Oberpfaffenhofen. They tested LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) sensors for ground truth validation. This compared sensor information against known data. They also successfully tested Wi-Fi-like communication systems and radio-ranging.

“One of the highlights of our field test was the live test of multi-robot SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping),” the VaMEx website says. “In a dual-robot scenario, we tested the real-time capabilities of our SLAM algorithms.” They say the results were promising and illustrate a way forward for individual robots to cooperate.

This image shows several robots during tests at the DLR site. Image Credit: VaMEX/DLR

Not everything in the tests went well, though. The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) encountered some challenges with so many units trying to communicate with one another. Bandwidth and synchronization were both problematic.

These results are helping the VaMEx team prepare for upcoming analog tests in 2025. These will take place at a quarry in Germany, where the robot swarm will be tested after improvements gained from August’s tests. The Wurzburg UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) Skycam will be part of these tests, with its resource-hungry video data added to the mix to test the system’s overall robustness.

This image shows an early version of the automated Wurzurg UAP Skycam from 2021. Image Credit: Hakan Kayal / Universität Würzburg

If all goes well, the next step is to harden the VaMEx equipment. Mars has much harsher conditions, with much lower temperatures, a thin atmosphere, and global dust storms that can interrupt exploration.

“In a possible follow-up project, the hardware would have to be adapted for use on Mars,” explains Hakan Kayal.

The post A Swarm of Robots to Explore Mars’ Valles Marineris appeared first on Universe Today.