News Feeds

Laws that let bicyclists treat stop signs as yield signs lead neither riders nor motorists to act unsafely, according to a groundbreaking study.

New results from the world's most sensitive dark matter detector put the best-ever limits on particles called WIMPs, a leading candidate for what makes up our universe's invisible mass.

New results from the world's most sensitive dark matter detector put the best-ever limits on particles called WIMPs, a leading candidate for what makes up our universe's invisible mass.

Exoplanets are often discovered using the transit method (over three quarters of those discovered have been found this way.) The same transit technique can be used to study them, often revealing detail about their atmosphere. The observations are typically made in visible light or infrared but a new paper suggests X-rays may be useful too. Stellar wind interactions with the planet’s atmosphere for example would lead to X-ray emissions revealing information about the atmosphere. As we further our exploration of exoplanets we develop our understanding of our own Solar System and ultimately, the origins of life in the Universe. 

The first planet around another star was confirmed in 1992. Since then, astronomers around the world have discovered thousands of exoplanets with many differences. Some are gas giants like Jupiter, others small and rocky more like the Earth. Their positions too vary from their host star with some tantalising orbiting within the habitable zone, the region where liquid water is a distinct possibility. Most discoveries are in the visible spectrum but using X-ray telescopes has opened up a new window in our hunt for, and understanding of alien worlds.

“Icy and Rocky Worlds” is a new exoplanet infographic by Slovak artist and space enthusiast Martin Vargic. It’s available as a wall poster at his website. Image Credit and Copyright: Martin Vargic

Most of the exoplanets that have been discovered using visible light tend to be on short period orbits and, as a result of their proximity to their host star, are subject to high levels of radiation. These levels of radiation are often in the X-ray and extreme ultraviolet range and they heat the upper levels of the planet’s atmosphere. The result is that the atmosphere expands beyond the radius where the gravitational pull can keep hold of it and so gasses are lost into space. 

It is interesting that such a phenomenon offers some interesting areas for study such as the lack of planets in the 1.5 – 2 Earth radii range and of Neptune sized planets on orbits of 10 days period or less. It has been suggested that the loss of atmospheric gasses explains the scarcity of Neptune sized planets on close orbits. The so-called sub-Neptunes however which have rocky cores have a higher gravitational force so they are able to hang on to their atmospheres despite their close proximity to the star. Studying exoplanet atmospheres should go some way to understand these processes in greater detail.

X-ray transit events are the perfect way to study X-ray emissions from exoplanet transits. They events are however quite faint making X-ray observations difficult with current technology. A team of astronomers from the University of Michigan led by Raven Cilley have published a paper exploring the capability of future x-ray observatories (such as NewAthena and Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite – AXIS) in detecting more transit events. 

By combining a large X-ray telescope with state-of-the-art scientific instruments, Athena will address key questions in astrophysics. Credit: ESA

Using data from NASA’s Exoplanet Archive, the team first found targets which were missing X-ray observations and estimated X-ray luminosity from age, colour and rotation. The transits were modelled as they would appear in AXIS and NewAthena observations and determined the probability of each transit to be detectable using simulated light curves. The team found that their top 15 transits were likely to be detected but only if multiple light curves were stacked. Those exoplanets were there was an absence of atmospheric escape were less likely to be detected. 

The findings showed that exoplanet transit X-ray detection likelihood increases substantially with new technology like AXIS and NewAthena. The enhanced capability will lead to an improved understanding of exoplanetary atmosphere properties in their current and prior states, also improving our chances in the hunt for habitable worlds.

Source : Detecting exoplanet transits with the next generation of X-ray telescopes

The post X-Ray Telescopes Could Study Exoplanets Too appeared first on Universe Today.

To determine an object’s quantum properties, you may only need to measure how it exchanges heat with its environment, without touching the object itself

Life is rare, and it requires exactly the right environmental mix to establish itself. And there’s one surprising contributor to that perfect mix: gigantic black holes.

Life requires a certain combination of elements to make itself possible: hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Hydrogen has been hanging around the universe since the first few minutes of the big bang, but the other elements only come from fusion processes inside of stars. Galaxies need several generations of stellar lives and deaths before a solar system like our own can be possible.

But left to its own devices, star formation in a galaxy can proceed far too rapidly, burning through material too quickly, the stellar generations coming and going in a blink. One thing that can put the brakes on this kind of out-of-control star formation is the activity tied to supermassive black holes.

Giant black holes sit in the hearts of almost every single galaxy. Their intense gravitational strength can pull material towards it. The swirl and turbulence of gas will send material careening towards the galactic center, where the waiting black hole is more than eager to devour it. As the gas crams itself down the throat of the vent horizon, it will heat up to over a trillion degrees, releasing a flood of high-energy radiation in the process.

That radiation floods the rest of the galaxy, heating up the rest of the gas. To make stars, the gas in a galaxy has to be cool, allowing it to collapse to high densities. But if it’s heated by outbursts from the central black hole, it can’t make new stars. After enough time, however, the gas cools off and resumes star formation, and the entire cycle starts again.

This feedback process from the central black hole keeps star formation in a galaxy regulated. Without the black hole, galaxies would use up their available material much quicker, possibly before the ingredients needed for life can circulate and spread throughout the galaxy.

So the next time you take a deep breath and feel grateful you’re alive, thank a supermassive black hole.

The post Life Needs Black Holes to Survive appeared first on Universe Today.

Superconductivity is an extremely interesting, and potentially extremely useful, physical phenomenon. It refers to a state in which current flows through a material without resistance, and therefore without any loss of energy or waste heat. As our civilization is increasingly run by electronic devices, the potential benefit is huge.

As physicists unravel the quantum physics of superconductivity, this allows them to potentially design new materials that can display superconductivity in useful settings. One recent study presents a small breakthrough in a specific type of superconducting material – Kagome metals. These are a class of ferromagnetic metal metamaterials with an interwoven structure that resembles the Japanese basket by the same name. This creates some specific quantum effects that are currently being researched for their technological uses, one of which is superconductivity.

One of the ways in which superconductivity arises is through what are known as Cooper pairs – two electrons that join together in a quantum state that distributes them like a wave throughout the material. Cooper pairs can therefore “travel” through a material without resistance. A recent study looks at the formation of Cooper pairs within Kagome metals, showing something surprising to physicists. Previously it was believes that Cooper pairs were evenly distributed within Kagome metals. The new study finds that the number of Cooper pairs in the star-point locations with the Kagome pattern can contain a variable number of Cooper pairs.

This was predicted in 2023 by Professor Ronny Thomale. His predictions have now been verified by direct observation, changing how physicists think about the superconducting potential of Kagome metals. You can read the study if you want to delve deeper into the details, but let’s talk a bit about the technological potential.

First, like other superconducting material, Kagome superconductors require extremely low temperature, -272 C. Cooper pair generally are a phenomenon that happens at very low temperatures, and much of the research into superconductivity has been searching for materials in which Cooper pairs form and superconductivity happens at higher temperatures. The current record (for ambient pressure) is a cuprate of mercury, barium, and calcium, at around 133 K (−140 °C). A big breakthrough happened in the 80s when a class of ceramics was discovered with superconducting temperature above that of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is relatively cheap, allowing for the practical development of devices operating at this temperature (like the superconducting supercollider, and the magnets used in plasma research for fusion).

Another class of material becomes superconducting at high temperature but at super high pressures, making them completely impractical for actual use. This research is mostly about understanding superconductivity, not necessarily developing usable superconducting material. I of course have to wonder if the research with Kagome metals is similar – improving our understanding of the underlying physics, but not necessarily a pathway to usable materials. That remains to be seen.

Of course, the press release emphasizes the potential applications – because they always (or at least almost always) do that. That’s the formula with any new material science research – what’s the sci fi tech application. Then lead with that. So I take any such discussion with a grain of salt. Still, we can explore what potential applications would look like, and if not with this exact material, then something similar.

For Kagome metals, it seems applications would be limited to things that are physically small. I don’t think this is the material we will be making superconducting cables out of. In fact the current observations are only at the atomic scale, not the macroscopic scale. But they could be useful tiny electronic components, such as diodes. The obvious application would be in computers, including quantum computers.

The potential benefit of superconducting components in computers should not be underestimated. Increasingly we are building huge data centers for multiple applications, with artificial intelligence apps likely to significantly increase the need for hardware. These data centers use massive amounts of energy, measure on the scale of major industrialized nations, and increasing. They also generate a great deal of heat, and therefore have to spend more energy for cooling.

Now imagine a data center with computers that have mostly superconducting components, using a fraction of the energy and producing little waste heat. Even if you had to supercool the entire thing with liquid nitrogen temperatures, it would likely be worth it.

But of course, the higher temperature the superconductors, the more cost-effective and practical they are. If such a data center needed to be merely refrigerated, to -40 C for example, that would be relatively easy and cost effective. The ultimate goal of superconducting research, of course, is the “room temperature” (ambient pressure) superconductor. It’s not clear if this is even physically possible – right now we have no theory of how a room temperature superconductor would work, but no one has proven that they are impossible either. They remain theoretical. This is the real promise of superconducting research, even if the approach does not lead directly to a specific application. The more we understand about the quantum physics of superconducting, the better we will be able to design and research new materials at higher temperatures.

I don’t know if we will see superconducting Kagome metal-based technologies in the future. We may or may not. But at least we have added on more piece of the puzzle to our understanding of superconductivity.

The post Superconducting Kagome Metals first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

This week, Stanford University announced a conference on pandemic policy that features several of the usual suspects who spread misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Truly, Stanford has become the "respectable" academic face of efforts to undermine public health.

The post Stanford University will host a conference on pandemic planning featuring the usual (COVID-19) suspects first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is getting spiritual:

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m thinking about evanescence.

Ja: Co robisz?
Hili: Myślę o przemijaniu.

Can a kilometer-scale telescope help conduct more efficient science, and specifically for the field of optical interferometry? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as a pair of researchers propose the Big Fringe Telescope (BFT), which is slated to comprise 16 telescopes 0.5-meter in diameter and will be equivalent to a telescope at 2.2 kilometers in diameter. What makes BFT unique is its potential to create real-time exoplanet “movies” like the movies featuring Venus transiting our Sun, along with significantly reduced construction costs compared to current ground-based optical interferometers.

This proposal builds upon past optical interferometers, including Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) array comprised of six telescopes 1-meter in diameter equivalent to a telescope 330 meters in diameter, and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VTLI) comprised of four 8.2-meter telescopes and four movable 1.8-meter telescopes equivalent to a telescope 130 meters in diameter. Additionally, this proposal comes as the ESO is currently building its Extremely Large Telescope with a 39.3-meter-diameter (130-foot) reflecting telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible proposal with Dr. Gerard van Belle, who is an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, regarding the motivation behind proposing BFT, the science cases that BFT hopes to accomplish, new methods regarding how BFT will study exoplanets (i.e., real-time movies), how BFT can potentially contribute to finding life beyond Earth, the next steps for making BFT a reality, and the implications for each telescope being 0.5 meters in diameter for both the science and cost. Therefore, what was the motivation behind proposing BFT?

“The motivation is that somewhere along the line, the community ended up ‘leaving money on the table’,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “There’s a really exciting science case here – imaging of bright stars – and it’s been overlooked. This is in part because the collective imagination of the people (like me) who build these very high angular resolution imaging arrays has been collectively distracted by pushing on going ‘fainter, fainter, fainter’, rather than ‘finer, finer, finer’. And the nice surprise is that, since we’re not going super faint, the telescopes that make up the BFT array are small, and therefore the BFT is surprisingly affordable. The additional third axis here is much of the parts are only recently commercial-off-the-shelf, so that also helps the affordability. So, it’s great science that hasn’t been done, it’s cheap, and it’s timely.”

The study notes that the “routine imaging of bright main sequence stars remains a surprisingly unexplored scientific realm.” For context, while the CHARA array obtained the first image of a single, main-sequence star in 2007, some of the science conducted by CHARA has focused on binary stars, supernova explosions, and dust orbiting stars. Additionally, while the VLTI obtained the best image of the surface and atmosphere of a red supergiant star, some of the science conducted included direct observations of exoplanets, observing Sagittarius A*, which is the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and detection of exozodiacal light. Like CHARA and VLTI, the BFT will also conduct a wide range of science along with its goal of imaging bright, main-sequence stars. These include studying exoplanet host stars, solar analogs, resolved binaries, and resolved exoplanet transits.

Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today, “The exoplanet hosts are the real meat-and-potatoes case here: the explosion of discoveries over the past three decades on exoplanets has really transformed astronomy. Solar analogs are super important to study. Up until now, we have a single solar-like star we can resolve into more than a disk and see how it behaves over time – namely, our own sun. But that’s a little like trying to learn anatomy and physiology if you were a doctor to a single patient, ever. So, being able to make resolved images of sun-like stars is really vital to better understanding our own sun – and especially its effect on our home planet.”

Dr. van Belle continues, “Observations of binary star systems let us determine the masses because of their orbital motion around each other, and BFT adds extra value by then directly measuring the radii of those stars. Resolved exoplanet transits is going to be the wicked cool one. We will be able to see the *resolved* disk of *another world* as it passes in front of its host star. This sort of thing will be good for further characterization of exoplanets, as well as searches for exomoons. There’s a bunch of other BFT science that isn’t part of the core ‘marquee’ cases – many hundreds of different types of stars that we’ll be able to make pictures of and see how those pictures change over time.”

Currently, directly viewing exoplanets is obtained through the direct imaging method where astronomers use a coronagraph to blot out the glare of a host star, revealing the hidden exoplanets underneath, although their full shapes aren’t observable. Additionally, the transit method is conducted by measuring the dip in starlight caused by the exoplanet traveling in front of it but is not observable due to their small size and the intense glare of the host star.

The resolved exoplanet transits that BFT hopes to achieve means astronomers will be able to observe the full outline of an exoplanet as it passes in front of its host star, thus combining the direct imaging method with the transit method. An example of this is when Venus passes in front of our Sun, enabling astronomers to observe the entire outline of both the planet and our Sun, resulting in real-time movies of this incredible astronomical event. With BFT, these real-time movies are anticipated to be made for exoplanets, as well. Therefore, what science can be achieved from these real-time movies?

“As noted above, we’ll be able to see these worlds as resolvable disks,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “That’ll let us better pin down the linear size, as well as measure the density of these worlds – eg. rocky or watery, solid or gaseous? Doing such resolving in a wavelength-dependent sense may tell us about the composition of the atmospheres, too – though that’s a pretty challenging observation. Maybe the more straightforward thing will be attempting to measure the oblateness of the gaseous worlds – eg. Jupiter is a bit wider than it is tall, because of it being a rapidly spinning clot of gas. Such observations will allow us to measure the rotation rate of those planets.”

As of this writing, NASA has confirmed the existence of 5,743 exoplanets consisting of a wide range of sizes, compositions, and have been found in solar systems containing single planets or up to seven planets. The methods used to detect exoplanets also demonstrate diversity, including the transit method, radial velocity method, microlensing method, and the direct imaging method. Each with their own unique ways of not only identifying exoplanets, but also gathering data about their surface compositions, atmospheric compositions, and potential for life. Therefore, how can the BFT contribute to finding life beyond Earth?

Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today, “BFT will primarily be doing follow-up of exoplanets, rather than finding them, but in doing so will contribute to much better characterization of the exoplanets and their hosts. A lot of ‘is there life out there’ is riding on not just the exoplanet but the conditions handed to that exoplanet by its host. Knowing the ‘space weather’ environment will get much better information from BFT observations.”

Along with the potential exoplanet movies and improved science of bright stars, one of the primary driving forces behind BFT is its cost, as the researchers estimate the total cost of the entire project is $28,496,000 for all 16 telescopes at 0.5 meters each. In contrast, the GSU CHARA array cost more than $14.5 million for just six telescopes at 1-meter each, and the construction costs for the VLT/VLTI is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars for four 8.2-meter telescopes and four movable 1.8-meter telescopes.

Credit: van Belle & Jorgensen (2024)

This recent study provides an in-depth cost breakdown for each aspect of the BFT, including beam collection ($4,720,000), beam transport ($2,744,000), beam combination ($4,140,000), beam delay ($4,000,000), infrastructure ($1,943,000), and labor ($5,250,000). But, given each BFT telescope is each smaller than those used on the GSY CHARA and VLTI, thus meaning their collecting aperture size is smaller, what is the significance of using 0.5-meter collecting aperture size and what is the reason for BFT targeting bright stars?

“The 0.5-m telescopes have a big impact on the affordability of the project,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “The smaller telescopes are less expensive, both for the telescope tube & the mount. This in turn means the enclosure is smaller & cheaper, too. With half-meter telescopes, simple tip-tilt atmospheric correction is sufficient, rather than more expensive multi-element adaptive optics. And since there’s 16 apertures, every reduction in cost per station has a big domino effect. And yes, the major trade happening here is that the facility can only observe brighter objects – eg. primarily bright stars.”

Just like space telescopes, building ground-based takes years of funding, tests, planning, and construction. This involves getting the necessary funding from multiple parties and organizations and finding an appropriate construction site for the location. Additionally, testing the telescopes prior to installation is essential for them to conduct successful science, in both the short- and long-term.

For example, the GSU CHARA array was founded in 1984, which was followed by years of funding efforts that finally completed in 1998, and the construction of the array was not completed until 2003. For the VLT/VLTI, funding began in 1987, construction began in 1991, and was completed in 1998. Therefore, what are the next steps to make BFT a reality?

“So, the BFT is interesting in how it scales,” Dr. van Belle tells Universe Today. “Right now, we’re doing lab work to verify some of the underlying technology; quite a bit of that tech has already been maturely deployed at places like the Georgia State University CHARA Array, or the European Southern Observatory VLTI facility. Following on that, our next steps will be to test, on sky, a single pair of telescopes. The BFT is daisy-chained from 16 such telescopes, but we can already test its performance with just two. This scalability makes the BFT a much lower-risk telescope than conventional large facilities, where you have to more or less build the whole dang thing before you can test it on sky.”

How will the BFT contribute to optical interferometry 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 The Big Fringe Telescope. A 2.2 KILOMETER Telescope on the Cheap. And it Can Make Exoplanet “Movies”. appeared first on Universe Today.

We rose early today to meet two researchers on ground hornbills, Kyle-Mark Middleton and Carrie Hickman, to see if we could get a glimpse of the rare bird in nearby Timbavati Private Nature Reserve.  Kyle and Carrie, research partners with Rita (whom you’ve already met) and a few others, have been studying ground hornbills for several years.

The work is not easy as these birds are rare, big, nasty, and nest in tree holes or nest boxes provided by the researchers. They breed rarely, and, in this dry winter season, are very scarce. We went out knowing that our chance of seeing the bird or even hearing its call were slim, but it gave us a chance to get back in the bush again. And we did see some cool things.

First, the main players. The study object is the Southern Ground Hornbill,  (Bucorvus leadbeateri)l, one of two species of Ground Hornbill in Africa.

Here’s a photo from Wikipedia labeled “A male Southern ground hornbill on the S21 Road west of Lower Sabie, Kruger National Park, South Africa”:

Source: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Some information from Wikipedia:

Southern ground hornbills are carnivorous and hunt mostly on the ground. Their food ranges from insects to small vertebrates. Their nests are often found in high tree cavities or other shallow cavities, such as rock holes in cliff faces These birds are a long-lived species, having lifespans in the range of 50–60 years, and up to 70 in captivity. In relation to their long lives, they do not reach sexual maturity until 4–6 years old, and begin breeding around 10 years old.Their sex can be identified by the colour of their throats: the male’s is pure red and the female’s is a deep violet-blue.

And they have an unusual breeding system, involving nonbreeding helpers at the nest and obligate “siblicide,” with two to three eggs being laid, but the parents neglecting all but the largest (and first-hatched) chick. This means that the others always die. (Nature is cruel, isn’t it?). But if the first-born chick dies, they’ll feed another so that one offspring is produced. That is, if there is no predation, yet they have many predators, ranging from leopards to civets. And the birds breed slowly, producing one chick about every three years. No wonder the species is endangered in some places (e.g., South Africa) and threatened in others. This is due largely to habitat loss.  More from Wikipedia (bolding is mine):

The southern ground hornbill is an obligate cooperative breeder, with each breeding pair always assisted by at least two other birds. Experiments in captivity have found that birds without six years experience as helpers at the nest are unable to breed successfully if they do become breeders. This suggests that unaided pairs cannot rear young and that the skill gained in helping as a juvenile is essential for rearing young as an adult.

They live as long as parrots!:

In captivity, a maximum lifespan of 70 years is recorded, and it is generally believed that the life expectancy of a bird that survives long enough to fledge is as high as thirty years or more, which is comparable to that of more famously long-lived birds like the wandering albatross.

Ground hornbills are believed to reach maturity at six to seven years, but very few breed at this age. Nests are almost always deep hollows in very old trees, though there exist reports ground hornbills have on occasions nested on rock faces. One to three eggs are laid at the beginning of the wet season, but siblicide ensures that only one nestling is ever fledged. The eggs measure 73 millimetres (2.87 in) by 56 millimetres (2.20 in) and are pure white in colour but very rough in texture.

After a 40 to 45-day incubation period and an 85-day fledging period, the young remain dependent on their parents and helpers for between one and two years depending on climatic conditions, longer than any other bird. This means that ground hornbills can normally breed successfully only every third year. Triennial breeding is rare in birds: probably the only other example is the ornate hawkeagle of Neotropical rainforests.

The researchers below): Kyle and Carrie, dedicated to studying these birds. They raised the money to buy this special hornbill study truck, complete with a long ladder to climb up to the nest holes or nest boxes. (Apologies for my shadow in the picture.) Kyle is South African, and Carrie is from Scotland, but has been enamored of the animals of Africa since she was a girl. She made one trip to the Serengeti and other parts of the continent, met Kyle. Now they’re married and permanent members of Team Hornbill.

We were told beforehand that the chances were slim that we’d see any of the birds, but that was okay, and it turned out that we had a wonderful four or five hours in the park. Kyle climbed up to one artificial nest box to install a camera trap, and also went up up a baobab tree to investigate a genuine cavity where rangers had reported hornbills hanging around.

Getting up early gives you the chance to see one of the loveliest sights in the world: African sunrise in the bush:

And there was wildlife on tap, including a Kori Bustard (Ardeotis kori), the largest flying bird native to Africa. It’s not easy to see these omnivores (mostly carnivores), who are shy and spend most of their time foraging on foot:

A female Greater Kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros) showed up:

A small, shy common duiker (Sylvicapra grimmia), bearing tiny, cute horns, peeked at us through the brush. This is a male, for females of this species are hornless:

And a big Nile crocodile lurked in the “dam” (the term for a large water hole), waiting to waylay a thirsty animal:

The geographic area is shown below.  Timbavati was created in 1956 by a group of about 50 private landowners concerned about the despoliation of the land by farming and the consequent loss of wildlife. They joined together to create a park designed to restore and conserve the original flora and fauna, and have largely succeeded.

The park, still a private reserve, is right next to Kruger, where we’re going tomorrow, and in 1993 the fences between the two reserves were removed, as they have been for many parks in the area. Without fences the animals can now roam freely and widely, getting a better chance to find food, water, and mates. This is truly one of the world’s most successful conservation efforts despite the persistence of poaching (mainly rhinos and elephants).

Here’s where the park is located; it’s close to where I’m staying in Hoedspruit:

Htonl, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Location of Mpumalanga province in South Africa

TUBS, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Driving around, Kyle and Carrie checked an artificial nest box that they’d placed in a tree. Kyle carried the long ladder to the tree, climbed up to the box, and found that a genet had apparently taken residence. That genet will be expelled by a hornbill, as the aggressive birds brook no intrusion of their nests, even by eagles:

Checking inside the nest box:

They decided to put a camera trap next to the next box to monitor it over the coming months. The trap is set to take a photo when it’s activated by motion or infrared light, and takes two pictures a minute so long as there’s something to detect. It will remain functional until the summer breeding season.

Here Carrie puts together the camera, and Kyle climbed back up the tree and installed it:

A plant interlude:  One of the unique botanical features of Africa is the Baobab Tree. Curiously, although they can become HUGE, they are regarded as succulents rather than true trees, though I suppose that depends on your definition of “tree”.

There are eight species of baobab in Africa, all in the genus Adansonia, but six are endemic only to Madagascar. The most common one, and one I hear is all over Kruger, is the African baobab, A. digitata. From Wikipedia:

These are long-lived pachycauls; radiocarbon dating has shown some individuals to be over 2,000 years old. They are typically found in dry, hot savannas of sub-Saharan Africa, where they dominate the landscape and reveal the presence of a watercourse from afar. They have traditionally been valued as sources of food, water, health remedies or places of shelter and are a key food source for many animals. They are steeped in legend and superstition. In recent years, many of the largest, oldest trees have died, for unknown reasons.

Here’s the first African baobab I’ve seen; it was exciting. It was also full of vultures. Look at that huge trunk!

The bark was weird:

Kyle and Carrie saw a likely cavity in the tree that, as I said, has reportedly had ground hornbills around it. Kyle, who is tall, tried to climb the ladder to photograph the hole, but he couldn’t reach it. They have a longer ladder on order:

Carrie provided me with some information about the Hornbill work, as well as some cool videos they took.  First, the Ground Hornbill Project website is still under construction, but you can find some details about the project, run by the run by the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at this website.

The project is being run on a shoestring budget and a patchwork of grants and donations, so if you wish to donate to Kyle and Carrie’s work, Wild Wonderful World collects donations for it at this PayPal link. If you’re feeling birdy or conservationish, and want to help a worthy effort to save an endangered bird, you might toss a few bucks their way.

Here are a few videos from the Hornbill Project of what Carries calls  “these wonderfully weird birds”. First, their strange vocalizations:

Captions from Carrie: “Interesting interaction between male and female at nest”:

“Ground hornbill destroying one of our cameras”:

“Leopard predation video” Trigger warning: nature red in tooth and claw. The leopard drops the bird at about 1:45 and the despondent parents return to find their baby is missing.

Near the baobab tree above was a lovely tree wisteria (Bolusanthus speciosus) in bloom, being pollinated by bees and other insects I couldn’t identify:

A few feet from the wisteria was the skull of an ex African Buffalo, probably taken down by lions and now singing with the Choir Invisible.

I lifted the skull, and oy, was it heavy! (Photo by Kyle).

Coincidentally, the headquarters of the park has a small but very nice museum with stuffed specimens or skeletons of animals in the park, And here is what was said to be the largest known specimen (in terms of horn-tip-to-horn-tip width) of the same species:

At first I read the label as “Buffalo Bill,” a remnant of my Howdy Doody-watching days. The horn span was, as you see, nearly five feet and three inches across.

However, Wikipedia says this:

In large bulls, the distance between the ends of the horns can reach upwards of one metre (the record being 64.5 inches 164 cm).

Buffalo Bull, above, appears to be about two inches shy of the world record.

In front of the museum is an unlabeled statue of a ranger.

I was told that this is the statue of Anton Mzima, killed in 2022 for preventing poaching:

Anton Mzima once said, “I am not shy to say that I’m a hero. Because I know that the poacher, before he shoots at the rhino, is going to shoot at me first.”

And this is exactly what happened outside his home in Edinburgh Trust near Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, on Tuesday. The courageous head of ranger services at Timbavati reserve was gunned down in cold blood. His wife was also shot and is fighting for her life.

Mzimba had worked at Timbavati for 25 years, dedicating his life to the protection of wildlife. At the 2016 Rhino Conservation Awards, he was given the Best Field Ranger award. He also served as technical adviser for the US-based Global Conservation Corps.

Mzimba’s murder left the conservation world stunned, with many friends and colleagues taking to social media to pay tribute and mourn the tremendous loss of this wildlife warrior.

. . .“The year 2008 saw Anton lifted into the leader he was meant to be — Head of Ranger Services for the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. The impact that this one man has had, not only within the wildlife space, but also touching the lives of and inspiring young children, has been simply enormous,” said the reserve.

Timbavati said Mzimba worked tirelessly in motivating the youth to become rangers, creating a vision of hope for young people to grow up respecting and protecting wildlife as he had.

“Something he shared with everyone he met, was that a field ranger should be seen as a hero, someone to aspire to become. Anton lived his beliefs, never wavered from his convictions and, above all, he remained a brave and honest man.

He was a hero! Here’s a photo of Mzima from Helping Rhinos:

Here’s a trailer of a brand-new movie about Mzima, “Rhino Man”:

Finally, a few odds and ends from Hoedspruit the last few days. Ozy has been scarce, but he’s still around. Yesterday Mama Pig came with her two young boys.  We originally thought one of the babies was doomed as it choked when it ate, and was rapidly losing weight. But mirabile dictu, he’s now eating normally and has gained weight nearly equal to that of his twin brother:

A a southern red-billed hornbill (Tockus rufirostris), of which there are plenty around my lodging:

On Friday night we ate at a railroad-themed restaurant, which used to be a station on the north-south line that no longer stops in Hoedspruit, and carries not passengers but freight. The owner has lined the place with old African railway memorabilia, including this poster for the Uganda Railway. Look at all the animals converging on the train, begging to be shot!

And a memory of the bad old days of apartheid: the car for all passengers who weren’t white. You might remember that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s career as an activist, culminating in the Quit India movement that got the British out, began when, as a lawyer in South Africa, he was thrown off a train for being in the “white” car:

On the night of 7 June 1893, a young Indian lawyer, known to the world as ‘Mahatma Gandhi’, was thrown off a train at the Pietermaritzburg Railway Station. He had refused to move from a whites-only compartment. Gandhi later wrote:  “I was afraid for my very life. I entered the dark waiting-room. There was a white man in the room. I was afraid of him. What was my duty? I asked myself. Should I go back to India, or should I go forward with God as my helper, and face whatever was in store for me? I decided to stay and suffer. My active non-violence began from that date”. It was a Rosa Parks moment, but occurred many years earlier:

More later, probably several days after I get back from Kruger. I’ll be taking photos all the while, though.

By eye, it’s impossible to pick out the exact boundaries of the superclusters, which are among the largest structures in the universe. But that’s because they are not defined by their edges, but by the common motion of their components.

The Milky Way galaxy was long thought to be a member of the Virgo supercluster, a complex, twisting branch containing over 100 individual galaxy groups and clusters stretching for more than a hundred million light-years. Astronomers arrived at that definition through some of the earliest galaxy surveys that attempted to map the nearby portions of the universe.

Those early surveys were not entirely sophisticated. Astronomers could spot the galaxies scattered around, and also dense clumps of galaxies known as clusters. Ever since the 1950’s astronomers debated if there were higher-order structures in the pattern of galaxies, wondering if “super-galaxies” (or superclusters) existed.

Once astronomers began to map deep into the universe, however, the cosmic web could not be ignored. While some galaxies found their homes in the clusters, most inhabited long, thin filaments and broad walls. This cosmic web was defined by the voids, the vast regions of almost-nothing that dominate the volume of the universe.

The largest portions of the cosmic web are the superclusters. But unlike the clusters, they are not gravitationally bound. That means that the member galaxies in a supercluster have not yet finished their building project. The superclusters are still in the process of forming. This fact makes it difficult to pick out exactly what a supercluster is.

Recently astronomers have turned to dynamical definitions of a supercluster. This means that they don’t just consider the position in space of a particular galaxy, but also its movement. Since superclusters are in the process of continual construction, this method looks at what galaxies are trying to build.

This method allows astronomers to distinguish one supercluster from another, and that’s how we’ve recognized that the Virgo supercluster is just one individual branch of a much larger structure known as Laniakea, which contains an astounding 100,000 galaxies. And that is our home in the universe.

The post What Makes a Supercluster? appeared first on Universe Today.

Tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. we’re heading off to Kruger until the 30th. I’ve been told that internet in the park and in the huts is either bad or unavailable, so I’m writing this to let you know that posting may be nearly nonexistent until I get.back to Capetown on the 31st. Perhaps Matthew might start a discussion, but I haven’t told him to.

Later today there should be another photo post on our search for ground hornbills in Timbavati Nature Reserve with two researchers who study these bizarre birds. We didn’t see any, nor did we expect to, but we saw plenty else. Stay tuned.

As always, I do my besst.

Dr. Vinay Prasad started treating vaccine side effects as a fate worse than death in February 2021, before these was a COVID vaccine for children.

The post Dr. Vinay Prasad Opposed The Pediatric COVID Vaccine Before There Was A Pediatric COVID Vaccine first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is doing that thing that cats do:

A: Do you want something?
Hili: No, I’m just checking whether you are at home.

Ja: Co byś chciała?
Hili: Nic, sprawdzam tylko, czy jesteście w domu.

When neutron stars dance together, the grand smash finale they experience might create the densest known form of matter known in the Universe. It’s called “quark matter, ” a highly weird combo of liberated quarks and gluons. It’s unclear if the stuff existed in their cores before the end of their dance. However, in the wild aftermath a neutron-star merger, the strange conditions could free quarks and gluons from protons and neutrons. That lets them move around freely in the aftermath. So, researchers want to know how freely they move and what conditions might impede their motion (or flow).

These weird stars are hugely dense and strange collections of neutrons. So, when two of them dance and merge, they change shape under the pressure of the merger. They also heat up. The conditions eventually change the states of matter in their cores. According to Professor Aleksi Vuorinen of the University of Helsinki, Finland, this is what astronomers think happens during neutron star mergers. However, he points out nobody completely understands those conditions and how quarks behave in them. “Describing neutron-star mergers is particularly challenging for theorists because all conventional theoretical tools seem to break down in one way or another in these time-dependent and truly extreme systems”, he said.

How Neutron Star Collisions Involve Quarks Crab Nebula by JWST. The resulting neutron star at its heart spins rapidly and sends out a signal. That makes it a pulsar. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, T. Temim (Princeton University)

In the cosmic zoo, neutron stars are among the weirder denizens. They’re the highly magnetized leftovers of old supermassive stars that died in supernova explosions. The catastrophic collapse of the dying star creates a solid ball of neutrons where the stellar core once existed. Some spin very rapidly and send signals out to space. The Crab Nebula pulsar is a good example of such an object. Its core spins some 30 times per second and its signal shows up as regular pulses in radio frequencies, gamma and x-ray wavelengths. That’s why it’s called a “pulsar”.

When neutron stars merge, obviously they mix and mingle their contents. Researchers want to know the viscosity of the material created in the merger. Essentially, this would be a measure of how strongly particle interactions would resist flowing. Or, think of it as measuring how “sticky” the flow of the quark soup would be. A thick quark soup would flow more slowly while a thin one would move faster. The idea is to understand the conditions and what they do to affect the flow of quarks during a merger.

Theories about Sticky Quarks

Researchers want to define the so-called “bulk viscosity” of the material created during the neutron star merger. Essentially, bulk viscosity describes the energy loss as the system involved in the merger experiences radial oscillations. They show how the quark-gluon density changes in a regular, periodic way. Vuornin and colleagues set out to determine the bulk viscosity of the quark matter involved in such a collision. They studied the problem using two theoretical methods, one invoking principles of holography and the other on a quantum field study called perturbation theory.

Illustration of a quark core in a neutron star. Credit: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC – IT Center for Science

Essentially, the holographic approach looks at the quark matter problem as a factor of the densities and temperatures that occur during neutron star collisions. The team is interested in something called “quantum chromodynamics.” That’s the study of interactions between the quarks and gluons in the material created by the collision.

The perturbation theory looks at the strength of the interactions between those particles. By applying both methods, the team was able to characterize the bulk viscosity, i.e. the “stickiness” of the quark matter. Then, they could figure out that its stickiness occurs at lower-than-expected temperatures. It’s a big step forward in understanding the behavior of neutron star matter during mergers. “These results may also aid the interpretation of future observations. We might for example look for viscous effects in future gravitational-wave data, and their absence could reveal the creation of quark matter in neutron-star mergers,” adds University Lecturer Niko Jokela.

A simulation of two dense neutron stars colliding. In some cases, a larger neutron star results; sometimes a black hole is created. Courtesy: A. Tchekhovskoy, R. Fernandez, D. Kasen Using Physics and Quantum Theory to Delve into a Neutron Star

No one has ever been inside the strange universe inside the neutron star. However, it’s got to be one of the weirder places in the cosmos. As mentioned, they’re made simply of neutrons—combos of protons and electrons. Unlike most stars, they don’t radiate heat and whatever residual heat they do contain dissipates over time. These odd objects do have extremely strong magnetic fields.

Neutron stars are incredibly dense. Just a small amount of their material (about the size of a regular wallet) would weigh around 3 billion tons. That makes these odd stars the second-most dense objects in the Universe, after supermassive black holes. Astronomers and particle physicists are interested in them because they can offer insight into such topics as superconductivity, the behavior of dense fluids, and a topic called quantum chromodynamics. Studying the collisions of these superdense objects also offers insight into the growth of these objects after their original formation in catastrophic supernova explosions.

For More Information

Neutron-Star Mergers Illuminate the Mysteries of Quark Matter
Estimate for the Bulk Viscosity of Strongly Coupled Quark Matter Using Perturbative QCD and Holography
Quantum Chromodynamics

The post Neutron Star Mergers Could Be Producing Quark Matter appeared first on Universe Today.

In the coming years, China and Roscosmos plan to create the International Lunar Research PStation (ILRSP), a permanent base in the Moon’s southern polar region. Construction of the base will begin with the delivery of the first surface elements by 2030 and is expected to last until about 2040. This base will rival NASA’s Artemis Program, which will include the creation of the Lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon and the various surface elements that make up the Artemis Base Camp. In addition to the cost of building these facilities, there are many considerable challenges that need to be addressed first.

Crews operating on the lunar surface for extended periods will require regular shipments of supplies. Unlike the International Space Station, which can be resupplied in a matter of hours, sending resupply spacecraft to the Moon will take about three days. As a result, NASA, China, and other space agencies are developing methods to harvest resources directly from the lunar environment – a process known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). In a recent paper, a research team with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced a new method for producing massive amounts of water through a reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen.

The research was conducted by Prof. Wang Junqiang and his team at the CAS Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering‘s (NIMTE) Key Laboratory of Magnetic Materials and Devices. They were joined by colleagues from the Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. The paper that describes their process, “Massive Water Production from Lunar Ilmenite through Reaction with Endogenous Hydrogen,” recently appeared in the Chinese journal The Innovation.

Ever since the Apollo missions brought samples of lunar rocks and soil back to Earth for analysis, scientists have known that there is abundant water on the Moon. These findings were confirmed by several subsequent robotic sample-return missions, including China’s Chang’e-5 mission. However, much of this water consists of hydroxyl (OH) created through the interaction of solar wind (ionized hydrogen) and elemental oxygen in the regolith. There is also plenty of water in the form of ice that can be found in permanent shadowed regions (PSRs), such as the craters that cover the South Pole-Aitken Basin.

Unfortunately, lunar regolith contains very little hydroxyl that can be converted into water, ranging from 0.0001% to 0.02%. Moreover, the icy patches found in cratered regions are mixed with regolith, forming layers that extend beneath the surface. As such, extraction is a challenge regardless of where the water is coming from. After they examined the samples returned by the Chang’e-5 mission, the team led by Wang determined that the highest concentrations of water were contained in ilmenite (FeTiO3), a titanium-iron oxide mineral found in lunar regolith.

According to the research team, this is due to “its unique lattice structure with sub-nanometer tunnels.” The team then conducted a series of in-situ heating experiments that revealed how hydrogen in lunar minerals could be used to produce water on the Moon. According to their study, the process consists of heating lunar regolith to temperatures exceeding 1,200 K (~930° C; 1700° F) with concave mirrors. This led to the formation of iron crystals and water bubbles in the material, the latter being released as water vapor. The chemical process is expressed mathematically as:

FeO/Fe2O3 + H –> Fe + H2O.

The resulting water vapor is then reclaimed at a rate of 51-76 mg of water for every gram of lunar soil. That works out to 50 liters (13.2 gallons) of water for every ton of processed regolith, enough to sustain 50 people daily. As the team noted in their paper, “[t]his amount is ~10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon.” In addition to drinking water, this process could provide the necessary irrigation water for growing crops, another important task for future lunar settlements to lessen their dependence on Earth.

A map showing the permanently shadowed regions (blue) that cover about 3 percent of the Moon’s south pole. Credit: NASA Goddard/LRO

This same process could be used to chemically separate hydrogen and oxygen gas from regolith, which could then be fashioned into propellant – liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LOX) – or used as fuel and for maintaining supplies of breathable oxygen. “Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in [lunar regolith] is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which is helpful for establishing scientific research stations on the Moon,” they conclude.

Another benefit is that the process is driven almost entirely by focused sunlight, while solar arrays can provide the additional power that drives the retention process. The one limiting factor is that this process will only be possible during a lunar day in the southern polar region (where China, NASA, and the ESA plan to build their bases). This means that the facility could run for two weeks straight, followed by a two-week lull.

However, this can be mitigated by stationing processing facilities away from the polar regions or possibly creating a network of solar mirrors or satellites that can direct light toward the southern polar region. In any case, this method presents a potential means of harvesting water on the Moon that is cost-effective compared to heating regolith in industrial furnaces and could be paired with ice extraction and processing to ensure future settlements have plenty of water.

Further Reading: NIMTE, The Innovation

The post Chinese Researchers Devise New Strategy for Producing Water on the Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

When I wrote about my five-night stay at the Honeyguide Mantobeni Tent Camp in the Manyeleti Game Reserve, I showed photos of the animals we saw. After all, it was the biology that drew me there. But of course it doesn’t hurt to have tasty food, comfortable accommodations, and, above all, two three-hour game drives a day with a good guide!

We had all that, and in this post I’ll show you something about the camp itself, the food, the accommodations, and the vehicles.  I will add that if you can splurge on something like this once in your life, do so. It costs no more than staying in a reasonable hotel in New York City, but with the benefits of seeing buffalo, rhinos, elephants, and a whole host of creatures, not to mention being soothed to sleep at night by the “location growls” of nearby lions.

I reserved about six months ago, as these places fill up quickly, and even though now (the winter in South Africa) the bush is dry and not verdant, it’s a good time to see the animals as they’re more visible. Plus you can count on no rain at all.

It’s about a 15-minute drive from the gate of the reserve to the registration building, itself part of a more luxurious feature of the camp complex: real rooms in a hotel-like structure instead of a tent. But as I was to find out, our “tents” were plenty luxurious.

From reception you’re driven to the lodge of your tent camp: the place where you come to socialize, eat, drink, and leave on the game drives. This is the nerve center of your stay:

It’s a lovely little lodge with a bar, a dining room, a fireplace, and even a wine cellar. Our tents are scattered outside.

Below: the main room of the lodge with the bar at the far end. Here you can sit and read, and there is internet (none in the tents).  In the foreground you can see my computer with picture I’m downloading to prepare a post:

The dining room. I always sat at the far end. Most of the visitors, it seems, come in large tour groups (there were, for example, many Italians, one of whom, to the puzzlement of the waitress, tried to explain that he wanted his pasta cooked al dente).  But there were some individual visitors like me, and we’d converge at the small far table.

There was a constant turnover of visitors, most seeming to stay about two or three nights. After five nights (and ten game drives), I was the longest-staying visitor when I left.

As I said, I was sad to leave. One of the reasons was the swimming pool, which was almost invariably patronized by a herd of elephants who came to drink. The group ranged from a single female (the matriarch, I think) up to 23 pachyderms.  As I worked writing my posts in the late mornings and afternoons, I could watch them.

Only a few people actually went into the pool, and mostly for photos (I didn’t as I had no bathing suit). It was largely a place to watch the elephants:

The schedule:

6:00 a.m.: The sound of a horn and faint drums wakes you up. I set my phone alarm as the wake-up call was barely audible.

6:30 a.m.: Game drive begins: there are coffee, tea, and rusks (an African favorite) in the dining room beforehand if you care to partake. Make sure your bowels and bladder are empty when you set out, as you are not allowed to relieve yourself in the bush!

9:30 a.m.: Return from game drive, wash up, go to your room if need be (I got my computer), and get ready for breakfast.

10:00 a.m.: Breakfast! Hot and hearty: just what you need after a long and sometimes chilly game drive (they provide coffee and rusks in the bush right before you drive back). Here’s the breakfast menu. Portions are copious, but if you’re really hungry you can have more.  I alternated between the “flapjacks” (made with corn and served with honey and bananas instead of syrup) and the “big five” breakfast if I was really hungry. It’s pretty much the Full English Breakfast, complete with baked beans, grilled tomatoes, and fried mushrooms:

There is also juice, toast, muffins, and fruit Here’s one of my Big Five Breakfasts, lacking the beans this time but with potato cakes:

Between breakfast and 2 p.m. you have about 3½ free hours, mostly time that I’d devote to writing my posts at a place where I could watch the elephants.

What about the lodgings? They were excellent. Here is my “tent”. It had a king-sized bed just for me, as well as a bathroom, a couch, and places to store belongings, which are perfectly safe.  This is tent 2F, which I’d recommend:

You have to unzip three zippered flaps to get to your bed; this keeps out mosquitoes, baboons, and other pests.  The “living room”, behind the entrance flap.  You can see the bed to the rear:

My bed. The nights were cold, but there was a heated mattress pad and a comforter that kept me very cozy and warm at night. During the morning game drive they make up your bed and tidy your room. During the evening game drive, they put out the mosquito netting, which completely encompasses your bed. (Although it’s not the wet season, my doctor still prescribed malaria pills for me.)

The bathroom, open to the outdoors at one end, has two sinks, a flush toilet, and two showers (not in stalls) with hot water. Now that is luxury:

The showers, which drain into wooden planks. It was a delight to take showers open partly to the elements, but you have to zip the bathroom flap shut at night to keep the baboons out of your tent (no food allowed in tents, either). You’re advised not to leave your toothbrush or any other personal articles in the bathroom, as the baboons can climb in through the open part and steal them.

In the afternoons I’d work for a few hours, catching up on email and writing posts, all the while watching any elephants who came to the pool. (You’re not allowed to wander about on your own because of possible danger from animals.

At 2 p.m. lunch was served.  Here are some photos. The lunch menu was conveyed verbally, and there was always a choice of at least two main courses as well as dessert.

Ribs:

Dessert: meringue in a shell.

You could also buy wine by the glass or bottle, or order a drink from the bar. They weren’t free, but they were inexpensive and the selection was good. I rarely drink alcohol when traveling, so at best I’d have a cappuccino.

3 p.m.: The second 3-hour game drive begins.  The vehicles we used were converted Toyota Land Cruisers made suitable for driving over very rough roads. Each one seated ten people and the driver. The best seat was by the driver, and ours was the affable and knowledgeable Dan. Since  most people were in groups, they sat in the three seats behind, usually leaving me the prized front seat.

Here are our vehicles. Dan is in the driver’s seat in the left one. (They drive on the wrong side in Africa: a legacy from the Brits.)

A full vehicle setting off:

I’ve already shown you what we saw on our game drives. After all of them I saw every animal I wanted to see, and finished the Big Five on my very last day by seeing an African buffalo. On only one drive did we fail to see anything interesting, but if you want a good shot at seeing most of the iconic animals, I’d recommend a stay of at least four days.

About half an hour before we began the drive back to camp, we’d have a “sundowner”: drinks that we’d specify at lunch. You could have wine, beer, iced tea, gin and tonics, and some nibbles like nuts or chips.  I usually had iced tea or a beer. Here’s my favorite picture of Dan (one I’ve shown before): laughing as he prepared the evening’s G&Ts, everything kept cold in a cooler. I can still hear his laugh and his deep voice, saying “Yaaaaah” for “Yes.”;

Then came the long drive back to camp in the dark (usually at least half an hour). As Dan drove, he swept a powerful flashlight back and forth across the road, not only to see any animals in the road to avoid (we came across several hares), but also to catch the gleam from the eyes of any cats lurking in the bush. We didn’t see any, but I saw every big cat on tap: lion, leopard, and cheetah. I missed the smaller cats: the serval, caracal, and African wildcat. But a picture of a serval from a wildlife rehab center will be coming in a later post.

Home at 6:30, dinner at 7.  Some menus and photos (all desserts!). As you see, the food selection was wide, and except for an occasional tendency to overcook meat, the kitchen did well. As you see, they featured game, but I tended to avoid it after seeing the animals in the wild. (Yes, call me a hypocrite, because I’ve seen cows and pigs on farms but do eat them.ˆ).

It was dark in the dining room and my flash doesn’t work well, so you’ll have to be satisfied with photos of desserts. Stewed guava with vanilla ice cream:

And cake with whipped cream and fruit purée.

The temperature-controlled wine cellar in a glass-fronted room.

So those are the amenities of life in camp. I will miss it, and perhaps some day will visit again. But the day after tomorrow we go to Kruger for five days, and although the accommodations are simple bungalows, the important thing is that I get the chance to see animals again.

Maybe one like this:

Quickie with Steve: Killing Mammoths; News Items: Water on Exoplanets, Mpox, Darkling Beetles, Moon Gravity Assist, Luminescent Solar Concentrators; Who's That Noisy; From Tik Tok: The Sage Wall; Science or Fiction

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) is most famous for its “Doomsday Clock,” which assesses how close we are to a worldwide anthropomorphic catastrophe, including global warming and nuclear war. Right now the clock stands at “90 seconds till midnight,” but it’s gone back and forth over the years and I don’t take that figure too seriously.

But the journal is a serious one dealing with important existential issues for humanity, and I believe it’s widely respected (it was founded by Albert Einstein and participants in the Manhattan project after the nuclear bombings of Japan in 1945).

Well, it was serious—but now, after seeing the article below, we have to worry about ideological capture of yet another organ of science and technology. Why was this published?

Click the headline to read:

The article is a response to “hateful” tweets among comment that “the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation received in response to a December 2022 panel discussion on LGBTQ+ identity in the nuclear weapons space.” The hatefulness is of course bigoted and uncivil, but in response the authors make insupportable statements that we need to “queer” thinking about nuclear weapons to prevent disaster.  Why? Some quotes from the piece (indented):

While the event received an outpouring of vocal and wide-reaching support from some of the best-known figures in the nuclear field, the disparaging tweets illustrated the common belief that queer identity has no relevance for nuclear policy, and that examining the relationship between queerness and nuclear policy is intended to push a social agenda rather than to address substantive issues.

During this Pride Month, we would like Bulletin readers to understand that the visible representation and meaningful participation of queer people matters for nuclear policy outcomes. Discrimination against queer people can undermine nuclear security and increase nuclear risk. And queer theory can help change how nuclear practitioners, experts, and the public think about nuclear weapons.

I’ve never really understood what “queer theory” is, so of course I went to Wikipedia:

The term “queer theory” is broadly associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge the notion that heterosexuality is normal.  Following social constructivist developments in sociology, queer theorists are often critical of what they consider essentialist views of sexuality and gender. Instead, they study those concepts as social and cultural phenomena, often through an analysis of the categories, binaries, and language in which they are said to be portrayed.

. . . Similarly, queer theory remains difficult to objectively define as academics from various disciplines have contributed varying understanding of the term. At its core, queer theory relates to queer people, their lived experience and how their lived experience is culturally or politically perceived, specifically referring to the marginalization of queer people. This thinking is then applied to various fields of thinking

That doesn’t help me much; it seems to be a collection of post facto claims and generalization without much “theory”. At any rate, as you read on, the “theory”, as it relate to nuclear security and disarmament, turns out to be the usual demand for equity in a technical field based on the claim that increased equity will improve the field by bringing in salubrious views:

Equity and inclusion for queer people is not just a box-ticking exercise in ethics and social justice; it is also essential for creating effective nuclear policy. Studies in psychology and behavioral science show that diverse teams examine assumptions and evidence more carefully, make fewer errors, discuss issues more constructively, and better exchange new ideas and knowledge.

I’d check the references (I couldn’t access one of them), for the “diversity” mentioned included exclusively racial diversity and gender diversity sans “queer” diversity. The first reference in fact says that in business the “Theory” hasn’t worked, probably because it’s been misapplied. Here’s a quote from the Harvard Business Review (first link):

These rallying cries for more diversity in companies, from recent statements by CEOs, are representative of what we hear from business leaders around the world. They have three things in common: All articulate a business case for hiring more women or people of color; all demonstrate good intentions; and none of the claims is actually supported by robust research findings.

None of these references include diversity of sexual behavior or sexual identity encompassed in the authors’ call for more LGBTQ+ people, nor do they consider other forms of diversity, like socioeconomic background. While surely LGBTQ+ people should not be discriminated against in this field, and in others, the argument that they have “different ways of thinking,” and thus added representation will help stave off nuclear disaster, is not convincing. More from the BAS article:

When the stakes of making best-informed decisions are as high as they are with nuclear weapons, governments cannot afford to lose out on the human capital and innovation potential of queer people. Informed by their life experiences, queer people have specific skills to offer that are valuable in a policy and diplomacy context. LGBTQ+ people often must navigate being different from those around them; develop the ability to listen and empathize; and mobilize the skill and perseverance to make themselves heard.

This is an assertion without evidence, and the argument would of course apply to any “marginalized” group—were it true.

Again, any bigotry against people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people in the area of nuclear policy is shameful and should be eliminated, but does it exist? Only one or two anecdotes are given, not a claims of “structural bigotry.”

Further, the article does nothing to dispel the notion that “examining the relationship between queerness and nuclear policy is intended to push a social agenda rather than to address substantive issues.” Indeed, I can’t imagine one could read this article and not conclude that it’s pushing a social agenda:

Here are a few of the putative advantages of creating LGBTQ+ equity (headings are mine):

Better decision making. 

Including a wider range of perspectives in nuclear decision making creates a more comprehensive definition of who or what constitutes a “threat” to nuclear security. An example of this is the threat posed by some white supremacist groups with plans to acquire nuclear weapons or material, which can go undetected when a white-majority workforce does not perceive these groups and their ideological motivation as a relevant threat to their nuclear security mission. Individuals targeted by these kinds of groups—including women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community—are more likely to identify these types of behaviors and attitudes as security risks and can play a crucial role in identifying a potential insider threat.

This seems both hypothetic and uber-hyperbolic to me, and again, seems clearly aimed at pushing a social agenda, not ameliorating palpable threats. If you look at the second link in the paragraph above, you’ll find another BAS article that says stuff like this (note that the article is not about white supremacists, as claimed above, but “far-right extremists”:

Inspired by the ideas of accelerationism, the modern breed of violent far-right extremism is becoming more destructive, and nuclear weapons certainly fit into this profile of catastrophic violence.

. . . While some violent far-right extremists are clearly motivated to carry out catastrophic terrorist attacks, a question remains: Do they possess the means and opportunity to conduct an act of nuclear terrorism? There is no public evidence violent far-right extremist groups have obtained the resources or exhibited the requisite operational sophistication to carry out an act of nuclear terrorism.

I can’t say that this really worries me, nor am I convinced that adding more queer people to the field would help us find white supremacists plotting to use nuclear weapons.  In fact, were the instances of theoretical “nuclear terrorism” already mentioned by those on the far right (some aren’t even in the U.S.) detected largely by queer people? We have no data here.  Here are some of the reasons why, say the authors, we must “queer” nuclear policy. Again, quotes from BAS are indented:

The historical legacy of anti-gay discrimination in government. 

Being LGBTQ+ has historically been considered a security risk. Akin to the “Red Scare” anti-communism movement, the “Lavender Scare” was a campaign persecuting and dismissing gay and lesbian federal employees. The linking of homophobia and national security concerns seems to stem from sensationalized case studies of defections of US intelligence specialists to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This legacy of queerness being considered a security risk is still pervasive in the nuclear field.

Read the second link; it’s from 1995 and notes that since 1991 the investigators have found no cases of discrimination against gays procuring security clearances:

. . . .our work disclosed no evidence that sexual orientation has been used as a criterion in the security clearance process for federal civilian and contractor employees since 1991.

In fact, this kind of discrimination is now illegal, and could lead to lawsuits.  Once again, the evidence is distorted seemingly to push a social agenda.

Finally, there’s this claim:

Nuclear facilities don’t create a “welcoming environment: for queer people.

Despite setbacks, public acceptance of the queer community is rising globally, and the supposed links between espionage and homosexuality have been unfounded. However, nuclear facilities still have a reputation for being unwelcoming toward queer people and have failed to investigate allegations of homophobia and harassment. In part, this is due to the lack of diversity in the nuclear field. Homogenous organizations run a higher risk of isolating queer employees, leaving them vulnerable to pressure. Employees in the majority can feel threatened by those they perceive as “different” and exclude them due to discomfort, rather than any legitimate risk factors. Nuclear security practice needs to refrain from treating an individual’s behavior or identity as a risk and focus instead on identifying misbehaviors that indicate malicious intent.

By failing to create a welcoming workplace at nuclear facilities—whether military or civilian—practitioners risk reducing the effectiveness of an organization’s nuclear security culture.

Again, if there is bigotry and discrimination in nuclear facilities against queer people, that’s reprehensible and should be rooted out. But here we need facts, not feelings. Given the welcome and rapid acceptance of queer people into mainstream society and science in particular, the assertion of structural bigotry is questionable. In fact, the authors adduce only one link instance of a failure to investigate homophobic bullying and abuse at one British nuclear site. That’s reprehensible, but is one instance sufficient to indict the entire field and raise a sweeping call for equity?

The Solution:

We need to beef up the number of LGBTQ+ people in nuclear policy—that is, “queer the field”—to reap the substantial benefits of greater queer equity (though the present degree of inequity isn’t specified and is surely not known). Some quotes on the benefits:

Queer identity is also relevant for the nuclear field because it informs theories that aim to change how officials, experts, and the public think about nuclear weapons. Queer theory is a field of study, closely related to feminist theory, that examines sex- and gender-based norms. It shines a light on the harm done by nuclear weapons through uranium mining, nuclear tests, and the tax money spent on nuclear weapons ($60 billion annually in the United States) instead of on education, infrastructure, and welfare. The queer lens prioritizes the rights and well-being of people over the abstract idea of national security. . . [JAC: What is national security but a balancing of well-being and rights against dangers like nuclear weapons?]

. . . Queer theory also identifies how the nuclear weapons discourse is gendered: Nuclear deterrence is associated with “rationality” and “security,” while disarmament and justice for nuclear weapon victims are coded as “emotion” and a lack of understanding of the “real” mechanics of security.

That is another risible assertion without evidence; in fact, no quotes or links are given. It goes on:

. . . Queer theory is also about rejecting binary choices and zero-sum thinking, such as the tenet that nuclear deterrence creates security and disarmament creates vulnerability. It identifies the assumptions and interests these ideas are built on—and imagines alternatives that serve a broader range of interests, including those of the invisible and resource-stripped.

. . . Finally, queer theory informs the struggle for nuclear justice and disarmament. For example, queer artist and writer Jessie Boylan highlights the harm done by nuclear weapons by documenting the social and environmental consequences of nuclear testing in Australia as part of the Atomic Photographers Guild. Queer theory helps to shift the perception of nuclear weapons as instruments for security by telling the hidden stories of displacement, illness, and trauma caused by their production and testing.

As we know, there have been plenty of arguments for nuclear disarmament and depictions of the dangers of nuclear war made by non-queer people, beginning with Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, both cis physicists who pushed strongly for nuclear disarmament. Citing Jessie Boylan’s work does nothing to support the authors’ general argument.

And so we have Reitman and Nair’s argument, an argument that in principle could be made for any field of endeavor. It’s based on a concatenation of assumptions and  undemonstrated assertions, among them the claim that queer people have a “different way of knowing” and a “different way of thinking” than do non-queer people, and that absorbing these differences could lead to in a substantially better nuclear policy than we have now.

It is an argument based in victimhood and divisiveness, and forgive me if I find it unconvincing. As I said, if you adduce the past evidence of homophobia, which was once pervasive, any field of human endeavor could be subject to this article’s argument: all fields need to be “queered.”

But assuming that each once oppressed group can bring to the table important new “ways of thinking” about policy or science itself is not only unevidenced, but leads to an “otherism” that only serves to divide LGBTQ+ from cis people.

Although the authors claim that they are not trying to push a social agenda, it seems evident that they are. What is that agenda? Simply to bring more LGBTQ+ people into nuclear policy. But given our ignorance of the claimed inequities, and especially of any important “ways of thinking” of queer people that would inform nuclear policy, this seems to be an argument without evidence.

Of course bigotry against queer people in any field is reprehensible, and often illegal, and should be condemned. Equal opportunity for entry should be the rule. But that’s not the same thing as saying that we need more queer people in nuclear policy because they bring something new and important to the table. The whole argument is in fact what the authors deny it is: a pastiche of dubious claims that add up to a social agenda.

The’ comments by the article’s readers also show that, by and large, they aren’t buying it. Have a look after the article. Here are two:

That one deals with the “merit versus ideology” dichotomy, and, as always, I’m going with merit.