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The Moon just brushes the umbral shadow of the Earth during Tuesday night’s partial lunar eclipse.

A shallow partial lunar eclipse is on tap for the night of September 17th/18th. The eclipse is a slight one to be sure, but will be noticeable as the northwestern limb of the Moon just slips past the dark inner umbral shadow of the Earth. The eclipse is just over 8% partial at its maximum, meaning the Full Moon will look a little ‘smushed’ on one side at mid-eclipse.

The path of the Moon through the Earth’s shadow Tuesday night. Credit: F.Espenak/NASA/GSFC. Additional annotations by author. Timing and Visibility

The eclipse will be visible in its entirety around the Atlantic Ocean region, including western Africa and Europe, eastern North America, and all of South America. Eastern Europe and Africa will see the eclipse in progress at moonset towards sunrise, while western North America will see the eclipse already underway at moonrise/sunset. The umbral (partial) phase of the eclipse lasts not quite 63 minutes in duration, and is centered on 2:45 Universal Time (UT) Sept 18th/10:45 PM U.S. East Coast Time (EDT) on the evening of Tuesday, September 17th. The entire penumbral phase of the eclipse starts at 00:41 UT/8:41PM EDT, and runs about 4 hours and six minutes in duration.

A map showing the visibility footprint of Tuesday night’s eclipse. F. Espenak/NASA/GSFC A Complicated Celestial Affair

This is also a complex event, before and after the eclipse. First up, the Moon occults (passes in front of) the planet Saturn for western North America, just over 15 hours prior. Then, the Moon reaches perigee (its closest point to the Earth) just 10 hours after the eclipse. This will likely lead to cries of a ‘Supermoon eclipse’ across ye ‘ole web. Don’t buy into any purported ‘Blood Moon’ hype; the Moon won’t go far enough into the umbral shadow of the Earth to turn red. Finally, the Moon also occults Neptune for North America just over five hours after the eclipse, a challenging event indeed.

The start of the January 31st, 2018 lunar eclipse. Credit: Marion Haligowski.

The September Moon nearest the Equinox (which falls on Sunday, September 22nd, for 2024) is also known as the Harvest Moon. Not only did the illumination from the Full Moon give farmers in the pre-industrial era a few extra hours to get the harvest in, but the angle of the ecliptic is shallow enough in September that the Moon seems to linger from one night to the next, rising only slightly later. I remember growing up picking potatoes in Northern Maine in September, working our way home on foot under the light of the Harvest Moon.

A partial lunar eclipse over London, UK from April 25th, 2013. Credit: Sculptor Lil. Catching This Week’s Partial Lunar Eclipse

Observing and imaging the eclipse is as simple as following the Full Moon Tuesday night at the appointed time. Modern phones zoomed in will produce a clear image, as will a phone camera aimed through the eyepiece of a telescope. You probably won’t notice anything is amiss with the eclipse until about 30 minutes into the penumbral phase. Then, the Moon may seem to have a bit of a tea-colored tint. Towards the partial phase, the ragged umbral shadow of the Earth will just brush the Moon. The curve of the shadow cast by the Earth will become apparent, visual proof that our fair planet is indeed round.

The Partial Lunar Eclipse…As Seen From Space

The spectacle extends out into space as well. Most of the Earthward face of the Moon will experience a partial solar eclipse, except the very northwestern limb, which will see a total solar eclipse. Perhaps one day, human astronauts will stand on the Moon and witness this event.

A time lapse of Tuesday night’s eclipse as seen from the northwest limb of the Moon. Credit: Stellarium. Tales of the Saros

Eclipses (lunar or solar) occur in groups known as saroses, with members spaced 18.04 years (223 synodic months) apart. Several saroses are active at any given time. This is eclipse member 52 of 74 for lunar saros series 118, meaning this cycle is past its prime on its way out. Lunar saros 118 began waaaaay back on March 2nd, 1105. This saros produced its first total lunar eclipse on August 22nd, 1393, and final one on June 22nd, 1880. If you caught the September 7th, 2006 partial lunar eclipse centered over the Indian Ocean region, you caught the last member of this saros cycle. The final member of saros series (a barely perceptible penumbral eclipse) occurs on… (mark your calendars) May 7th, 2403.

This marks the start of the final eclipse season of 2024. This is book-ended by an annular solar eclipse two weeks from now on October 2nd. This event spans Easter Island in the South Pacific, and the southern tip of South America.

The next lunar eclipse is a total lunar eclipse on March 13-14th 2025 favoring the Americas. This ends the current ongoing ‘lunar eclipse drought,’ as the last one occurred on November 8th, 2022.

The partial phase start of a lunar eclipse. Credit: Dave Dickinson

If skies are clear, be sure to give this final lunar eclipse of 2024 a look Tuesday night.

The post Earth’s Shadow Nicks the Moon During This Week’s Partial Lunar Eclipse appeared first on Universe Today.

Up to now, the main source of information about cancellations was the “Campus Deplatforming Database” FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). Going back to 1998, it now lists 1,507 deplatforming attempts on campus, of which 626 were successful (there have been 110 this year alone). They define these attempts this way:

A deplatforming attempt is a form of intolerance motivated by more than just mere disagreement with, or even protest of, some form of expression. It is an attempt to prevent some form of expression from occurring. Deplatforming attempts include efforts to disinvite speakers from campus speeches or commencement ceremonies, to cancel performances of concerts, plays, or the screenings of movies, or to have controversial artwork removed from public display. An attempt to disrupt a speech or performance that is in progress is also considered a deplatforming attempt, whether it succeeds or fails.

Deplatforming attempts do not include criticisms of some form of expression and protests denouncing them that are not motivated by the goal of deplatforming the controversial expression.

Here are a few examples in a screenshot (click to read); go to the page to read more.

When you click on “view” to the right, you get more details about the incidents, including whether the deplatforming attempt came from the Left, Right, somewhere else, or isn’t known.

For example, I didn’t know that Bari Weiss was the subject of an unsuccessful deplatforming attempt at UNC Chapel Hill this year (the subject was Israel). The deplatforming attempt came from the Left, and among the details FIRE notes that

“About 25 minutes into Weiss’ discussion with Frank Bruni, protesters affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine began waving Palestine flags and shouting at the stage. A university administrator took to the podium and informed the protesters that, as per university policy, they are not allowed to disrupt the event and must leave. Police escorted the protesters out of the event and Weiss and Bruni resumed and completed their discussion.”

SJP never gives up!  At any rate, the source of the deplatforming, Left or Right, gives an interesting take on who’s trying to cancel people. I once did a survey over a few decades, and, as I recall, early on deplatforming attempts seemed to come almost equally from the Left or Right, while in the last seven or eight years ago the majority of them, by far, came from the Left.  I just looked at the first 20 on the list, and found that 13 deplatformings came from the Left and the other 7 from the Right, but of course there are multiple events from a school at the same time. But I’d bet my hat that in the last five years, a sizable majority of deplatforming events came from the Left, which is a weakness of my side. People on the Left, or at least liberals, are not supposed to suppress speech.

The weakness of the FIRE survey compared to the one below is that the former deals only with deplatforming attempts on campus.

There is now a new “cancellation” database (click the screenshot) that has two advantages: it deals with cancellations that don’t just occur on campus, and these are cancellations that, when successful (most of them have been) result not in the ending of a talk or speech, but in substantial damage to a person’s career, including firing, demotion, and so on. Some details are given.

The new “canceled people” list includes about 210 victims, some of whom you will recognize. All the cancellations appear to have occurred this year, though the offenses may have occurred several years before, as with  They come from several Western countries, though mostly from the U.S.

And, as far as I can see, none of the cancellations were justified. In some cases, the courts or other appeals reversed the cancellations.

First, part of what they say about the reason why the database was constructed and how they define cancellation. There’s more at the “about” page.

Purpose

We are building a database of people who have been “canceled”.

Our purpose is to better understand cancel culture itself as a phenomenon. How does it manifest? How is it evolving? How does it affect societal norms around free speech that enable democracy to function and flourish? By consolidating as many well-sourced data points as possible, we hope to give researchers and others the tools to explore and draw their own conclusions.

What does it mean to be canceled?

There has been some controversy over whether or not cancel culture is real. Obviously, we do think it is real – that is the whole reason this database exists!

Part of the problem when discussing cancel culture’s prevalence and existence is that there has been no clear definition of what it means to be canceled.

For the purposes of this database, we will use the following definition:

1. The canceled person has been targeted for behavior that falls within the boundaries of “reasonable expression” (see more on this below). The “offense” may not be recent, and it may not even be their own action.
2. The canceled person has lost their job or position (this includes forced resignations). Their future professional opportunities have been limited. If they are self-employed, they have suffered financial losses from a boycott or sabotage of their company.
3. The canceled person has faced a coordinated effort to silence them. The effort seeks to render their person or their ideas unfit to discuss.
4. The canceled person has faced a coordinated effort to shame them and destroy their reputation. The effort seeks to damage their self-worth and will likely target their personal or professional relationships.

What is not included?

It is perhaps as important to define what should not be considered a “canceled person”:

1. A person who has been subject to harsh criticism or disagreement. Disagreeing with someone’s speech or behavior, even in a cruel way, is not the same as canceling them.
2. A person who has been subject to online harassment but no “real-world” consequences. We recognize that online harassment and bullying can be horrific. Part of what makes cancelation unique is the attempt to bring the person down by moving outside of the online space. Most commonly, this involves contacting their employer or making them unemployable.
3. A person who has said or done something outside of the window of reasonable expression and therefore is predictably getting their comeuppance. This could include many different things: saying a racial slur with the intention to wound, inflicting a sexual fetish on others, denying the Holocaust, etc. Our society does have legitimate reasons to shun a person, and employers have legitimate reasons to fire an employee.
4. A person who has said or done something illegal. This one seems obvious, but for example, threatening a person online may lead to real-world “cancelation” as well as legal action – rightly so!
5. A person who had the attempt made to cancel them that did not succeed. There are many examples of this and we believe they are troubling and worth paying attention to – they likely do have “chilling effects” on free speech. However, they are an example of the system working properly; the mob went after someone and did not succeed.

Here are a few examples that you can find by using the “find” function on the site. There are links so you can verify the cancellations from sources on the Internet:

It’s interesting to peruse the list, but keep in mind that people’s careers have been wrecked by this stuff. Remember this one?

And this one, also involving the New York Times?

Almost all of these involve freedom of speech, though there are cancellations for stuff like refusals to sign oaths and, in the case of NYT editor James Bennet, for simply running an op-ed that didn’t comport with the ideology of the NYT.  His being forced out wasn’t a violation of the First Amendment, as a paper can fire whom it wants, but it was unjustified and a violation of the canons of good journalism.

Anyway, have a look.

I’ll keep posting ’em as long as you keep sending ’em.  Do it!

Today’s photos come from Susan Harrison at UC Davis, who shows the flora and fauna of an “island in the sky”. Her captions are indented and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

A cool — in both senses — island in the sky

During the record heat of summer 2024, the summit of Mt. Ashland in Oregon was an attractive refuge.  When the mercury reached triple digits in downtown Ashland, it was possible to drive one’s electric car only half an hour from the town to the 7,532-foot mountaintop and reach beautiful views, abundant wildflowers, and 30-degree cooler temperatures (by the standard formula of 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit per 1000 feet of elevation).

Rare plants were an additional enticement.  Mt. Ashland has been designated a special botanical area thanks to the numerous unique plants found in the crumbly granite close to the summit.  The reasons for this specialness include being an isolated “island” of subalpine habitat that was evidently never wiped clean by glaciers during the Ice Ages.   Here are two examples.

Mt. Ashland Lupine (Lupinus aridus ashlandensis):

Jaynes Canyon Buckwheat (Eriogonum diclinum), a dioecious plant (the yellower and browner flowers may belong to individuals of different sexes):

Yet another attraction was the lush wildflower meadows just below the summit, where many birds and insects could be seen making use of pollen, nectar and seeds.

One of the flashiest of these was Rufous Hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) nectaring on the six- to eight-foot-tall Tower Larkspurs (Delphinium glaucum):

Orange-crowned Warbler (Leiothlypis celata) on Angelica (Angelica arguta):

Sand wasp (Bembix americana) on Bigelow’s Sneezeweed (Helenium bigelovii):

Unstable Longhorned Beetle (Judolia instabilis) on Ranger’s Buttons (Angelica capitellata or Sphenosciadium capitellatum):

Yellow-faced Bumblebee (Bombus vosnesenskii) approaching Sulfur-flowered Buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum):

Milbert’s Tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti) on Mountain Coyotemint (Monardella odoratissima):

Another treat was to see a pair of White-headed Woodpeckers (Picoides albolarvatus) casually foraging their way up a massive Shasta Red Fir (Abies procera x magnifica):

Mars has always held a special place in our hearts, likely from hints over the decades of perhaps finding signs of life, albeit fossilised and primitive. It’s been the subject of study from telescopes and space missions alike, most notably ESA’s Mars Express which has been observing the red planet for 20 years. Over the two decades of observation it has studied an amazing variety of atmospheric phenomenon which have now been catalogued in a new ‘Cloud Atlas.’ Many will be familiar to sky watchers on Earth but some are very different. 

The atmosphere of the red planet is thin and mostly composed of carbon dioxide. There are traces of nitrogen and argon but with an atmospheric pressure of just 1% of the Earth’s it’s inhospitable for human life. The rarefied atmosphere provides insufficient insulation to the surface leading to aggressive temperature fluctuations from -125°C on night time side to 20°C during the day. It’s not unusual for dust storms to whip up in the atmosphere sometimes encircling the entire planet. It’s in this atmosphere that a multitude of cloud features have been observed. 

Mars, Credit NASA

Over the last 20 years, Mars Express has been studying the cloud formations in the Martian atmosphere. It was launched in June 2003 to study Mars remotely from an orbit around the red planet. Mars Express was not only studying atmospheric phenomenon but also the surface, subsurface and geological history. With a suite of scientific instruments from high resolution cameras and radar to spectrometers and atmospheric sensors, Mars Express is well equipped for the task. 

Using the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HSRC) on board Mars Express, images of a multitude of clouds have been captured. The clouds are usually the result of microscopic dust particles in the atmosphere around which, water and carbon dioxide crystals form. The dust particles themselves can be left hanging in the atmosphere following unusually strong winds that lift large quantities of dust into the atmosphere. They are occasionally seen as large beige coloured clouds. In the north polar regions it’s possible to see giant spiral dust storms as cyclonic storm systems develop. They are one of the drivers of the global weather systems seen on Mars and studying them is crucial to understanding the dynamics of the atmosphere. 

In January 2024, DLR’s HRSC on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft captured the Caralis Chaos region, which has several interesting and sometimes puzzling landscape features – such as a field of small, light-coloured hills to the northeast (bottom-right of the image). The mounds are located in the remains of a depression that was once filled by a lake. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

So called ‘gravity waves’ are a common sight on Mars as they are on Earth. Somewhat resembling rolling hills or the rippling of water, they are usually seen in the mid-latitudes in the colder winter months. A particular type of these gravity waves, known as Lee waves, can build up on the downwind side of mountains and ridges. The presence of the mountain or other large obstacle disturbs the laminar flow of air to generate the effect.

The study has led to a Martian cloud spotters dream, the publication of a fully browsable 20-years of cloud images and data. It was created by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Berlin and is proving invaluable helping researchers to gain a better understanding of the Martian atmosphere. In particular how the different dynamical processes can lead to the clouds seen. The ‘Atlas’ which is available to the public here has been presented at the Europlanet Science Congress in Berlin by Daniela Tirsch form DLR.

Source : Cloud Atlas of Mars Showcases Array of Atmospheric Phenomena

The post Mars has an Amazing Variety of Clouds appeared first on Universe Today.

Last month my flight home from Chicago was canceled because of an intense rainstorm. In CT the storm was intense enough to cause flash flooding, which washed out roads and bridges and shut down traffic in many areas. The epicenter of the rainfall was in Oxford, CT (where my brother happens to live), which qualified as a 1,000 year flood (on average a flood of this intensity would occur once every 1,000 years). The flooding killed two people, with an estimated $300 million of personal property damage, and much more costly damage to infrastructure.

Is this now the new normal? Will we start seeing 1,000 year floods on a regular basis? How much of this is due to global climate change? The answers to these questions are complicated and dynamic, but basically yes, yes, and partly. This is just one more thing we are not ready for that will require some investment and change in behavior.

First, some flooding basics. There are three categories of floods. Fluvial floods (the most common in the US) occur near rivers and lakes, and essentially result from existing bodies of water overflowing their banks due to heavy cumulative or sudden rainfall. There are also pluvial floods which are also due to rainfall, but occur independent of any existing body of water. The CT flood were mainly pluvial. Finally, there are coastal flood related to the ocean. These can be due to extremely high tide, storm surges from intense storms like hurricanes, and tsunamis which are essentially giant waves.

How does global warming contribute to flooding? First, there has been about 6-8 inches of sea level rise in the last 100 years. As water warms in expands, which causes some of the sea level rise. Also, melting glacial ice ends up in the ocean. Sea ice melt does not contribute, because the ice is already displacing the same amount of water as it would occupy when melted. Higher sea levels means higher high tide, resulting in more tidal flooding. Increased temperature also means there is more moisture in the air which leads to heavier rainfall – more fluvial and pluvial flooding and storm surges.

In terms of flooding damage there are other factors at play as well. We have been developing more property in floodplains – in the US we developed 2 million acres of property in floodplains in the last two decades, half of which was in Florida.

In addition there have been two development trends that can worsen flooding. We also put down a lot of concrete and asphalt. When it rains or there is a storm surge, the water has to go somewhere. Flooding results when the water in exceeds the water out. Water out includes rivers carrying water to the sea, but also the land absorbing water. The more land that is covered with concrete, the farther the water has to spread before it gets absorbed. The result is increased flooding.

Further, local communities often build damns and levies in order to protect themselves from flooding. This can be coastally or along rivers. However – this can make flooding worse. It actually extends the floodplain deeper inland or farther from major rivers, and intensifies the flooding when it occurs. Again, the water has to go somewhere. This means that even communities dozens of miles inland may still be in a coastal floodplain, even if they are not aware and don’t have proper protections (including flood insurance). The result is a predictable increase in flood damage. According to FEMA:

“From 1980–2000, the NFIP paid almost $9.4 billion in flood insurance claims. From 2000–2020, that number increased over 660% to $62.2 billion.”

What can we do? We can’t change the laws of physics. Water is heavy, and flowing water can have massive momentum, capable of causing extreme damage. People caught in a flood learn the hard way how powerful water can be, which is why so many people are just “swept away” by flood waters. Also, once flooding occurs, flowing water will likely carry a lot of debris, which just adds to further damage. We also can’t change the physics of the water cycle – water will evaporate and then rain back down, and will have to flow to bodies of water or get absorbed into soil.

What we can do is everything possible to slow and hopefully stop anthropogenic climate change. This is just one more reason we need to transition to a green economy. Increasing flood damage (and the cost of mitigation) needs to be factored into the cost of emitting CO2.

But we already have the effects of existing climate change, and a certain amount is already baked in over the next century regardless of what we do (it will just be degrees of bad depending on how quickly we decarbonize our industries). This means we need to think about flooding mitigation. This is economically and socially tricky. There are existing communities in floodplains, and it would be no simple matter to uproot and move them. There are also a lot of economic incentives why states and communities would want to expand into floodplains. Lakeside and coastal properties are often attractive.

It does seem reasonable, however, to set limits on development in high risk floodplains, and to encourage shifting to lower risk areas. I don’t think we should uproot communities, but arranging incentives and regulations so that trends over time shift away from floodplains is feasible. Also, if a community is devastated by a flood, perhaps we shouldn’t just rebuild in a floodplain. If we have to rebuild anyway, why not somewhere safer. I know this is massively complex and painful, but just rebuilding in a high (and increasing) risk floodplain does not seem rational.

Local regulations can also require building standards that are resistant to flooding, such as putting homes on raised foundations, and putting structures on relatively high land while leaving lowing lying lands for water flow. Communities in floodplains, in other words, need to be engineered with flooding in mind. Have lots of open soil to absorb water, have adequate drainage to accommodate heavy rainfall, and raise up property as high as possible.

Finally, civil engineers need to continue to study the dynamics of floodplains to make sure, at least, we aren’t making the problem worse when each community just tries to protect themselves. We need an integrated plan to manage the entire floodplain.

It’s a difficult problem, and there is no simple solution. But I have been reading about this topic for years, and it seems like we are still having the same problems and wrangling over the same issues. There are efforts on the Federal level to address flooding, but they all seem either reactive or small scale. We may need an aggressive national-level strategy to properly address this issue. Otherwise – get ready for 1,000 year flooding.

The post Flooding is Increasing first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A species of leaf chameleon newly named Brookesia nofy was discovered in a patch of coastal rainforest, a highly threatened habitat in Madagascar

The Florida Department of Health, run by Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, just released guidance on COVID-19 vaccines based on antivax tropes. Is the federal government next?

The post Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s assault on public health in Florida: Will it be coming to the federal government next year? first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

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

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

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

Fraser discusses how to grow crops on the Moon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading: MIT News, MNRAS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How will MoonLITE contribute to optical interferometry on the lunar surface in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

The post Studying Stars from the Lunar Surface with MoonLITE, Courtesy of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services appeared first on Universe Today.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Here we go:

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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A post shared by Laura Jayne Lamb (@costcohotfinds)

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

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

South African Montage 

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

African Hoopoe (Upupa africana):

Acacia Pied Barbet (Tricholaema leucomelas):

Black-collared Barbet (Lybius torquatus):

Common Bulbul (Pycnonotus barbatus):

Blacksmith Lapwing (Vanellus armatus):

Bokmakierie (Telophorus zeylonus):

Brown-hooded Kingfisher (Halcyon albiventris):

Cape Grassbird (Sphenoeacus afer):

Cape Sparrow (Passer melanurus):

Fiscal Flycatcher (Sigelus silens):

Grey-headed Bushshrike (Malaconotus blanchoti):

Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis):

Spotted Prinia (Prinia maculosa):

Tawny-flanked Prinia (Prinia subflava):

White-crested Helmetshrike (Prionops plumatus):

White-bellied Sunbird (Cinnyris talatala):

White-fronted Bee-eater (Merops bullockoides):

Yellow-bellied Greenbul (Chlorocichla flaviventris):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further Reading: 2024 NIAC Symposium

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

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

Thank you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An extract:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The official Wisconsin policy is here, with this extract:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 12, 2024

Here’s the Williams statement; click to enlarge:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

h/t Mayaan, Greg Mayer

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

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

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

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

Excerpts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

h/t: Merilee, Ginger K.

Maybe this isn't a drill.

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