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The first of our three items today (plus there’s lagniappe at the bottom) are the three best cat commercials ever made.  I chose the first two, but reader Divy insisted that I add the third,

This one was originally broadcast on the Superbowl, and in my view has never been bettered for a cat commercial. Repeated watching enables you to pick up things you missed the first time.  It even has its own Wikipedia entry, “Cat herders“, which says, among other stuff, this:

Cat Herders is a commercial made by Fallon for Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Alluding to the management-speak idiom “It’s like herding cats” that refers to the impossibility of controlling the uncontrollable, it posits an analogy between herding cats and the solution of seemingly impossible problems by EDS.

. . . Authentic cowboys were required, and a casting call was put out across Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and California. Some of the cast had never acted previously but others were SAG-accredited.

Actor Tony Becker points out that many of the actors were “real-life cowboys”, and gives a comprehensive cast list [the list is on the page]

Real cowboys!

Here’s a well-known Cravendale Milk ad for cats with thumbs. Very clever!

And here’s one of the “got milk?” series that is Divy’s favorite. Cats don’t have no truck with fake milk!

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This is from Fox News, but there’s no politics in it—just humanity. Click to read about a lovely man who rescued a kitten from a bunch of horrible people who glued it to a road! How much more disgusting can people get?

An excerpt (the story is from October of 1918):

A tiny kitten may have shaved off one of his nine lives after being discovered glued to a busy road in Oregon on Friday.

Chuck Hawley was driving to work on Silverton Road Northeast just outside of Salem around 7 a.m. when he noticed there was something in the road in a busy lane of traffic.

“When I went to pick her up, her feet were stuck to the road, and I’m like, ‘uh oh.’ So I start to pull her feet up, and it was like a rubber cement, so she was glued to the road.” Hawley told FOX12. “It was all under her neck and then she had a little bit down her side, but it was mostly her tail and her feet.”

The 5-week-old kitten, frightened and cold, had her feet soaked in glue that was “sort of rubbed into the pads of her feet,” according to Hawley.

“Sticky” the kitten was found with her feet stuck to a busy road on Friday. (FOX12)

“I think the way she was sitting someone actually went out and put her there,” he told FOX12. “Because there were no glue footprints around, it was just a glob of glue under her, so it looked like someone just took her and put her in the road.”

Hawley took the kitten, now named Sticky, to an animal clinic where staff members had to use mineral oil to get the glue off her tiny paws. Puncture wounds were also found on the kitten’s neck, but it’s yet to be determined what caused them.

On Monday, Hawley said he spoke with deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, who came to his home to take pictures of Sticky’s neck injuries as they investigate how she ended up glued to the road.

And so Sticky was saved!

The little kitten is expected to make a full recovery — and wound up getting a new home out of the ordeal after Hawley adopted her.

“The funny thing is we were just talking about getting a cat a couple of nights ago,” he said. “Seems like there’s easier ways for the cat to find us, but if that’s how we’re doing it, okay, I guess that’s how we’ll do it.”

Here’s a 2-minute4 video:

Stuff like this both restores my faith in humanity but also makes me realize how horrible some people are. Torturing a poor animal that never did anything to you! Isn’t that the way that some serial killers start?

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From Bored Panda we have some vintage cat photos. The site has twenty, but I’ll show half a dozen.  Click on the headline below to see them.

First, BP‘s intro:

Cats have a way of capturing our attention and our hearts, and it’s not just a modern thing. Long before the internet, people were photographing their furry companions, preserving those moments for generations to enjoy. Thanks to Paula Leite Moreira, a Brazilian journalist and the creator of the Instagram account “All Vintage Cats,” these charming snapshots from the past are now reaching a whole new audience.

Paula’s collection is like a time machine for cat lovers. From historical archives to forgotten magazines, she’s unearthed photos that show cats in all their timeless glory—lounging, playing, or even posing with famous faces. If you’re someone who appreciates old photographs or just loves cats, this project is a quiet little gold mine you won’t want to miss. Scroll down to take a look at some of the gems she’s shared.

Milk right from the source!  A note from the article:

Bored Panda reached out to Paula Leite Moreira once more to learn more about her insights on the evolving portrayal of cats in photography across different eras and cultures.

When asked if she noticed any patterns or trends in how cats were photographed across different decades or countries, the journalist mentioned that in the early days of photography, around the mid-19th century in Europe, photos often depicted kittens mimicking human poses, sometimes even dressed in tiny outfits. “These images were frequently made for postcards. But aside from that period, it’s remarkable how photos from decades ago are similar to those we see today. Owners also enjoyed capturing casual moments with their cats at home, with their families, in an unpretentious way.”

From the article:

We were curious about the most surprising or unusual place where Paula came across a vintage photo of a cat. “Definitely a photo of a kitten ‘hidden’ in the so-called ‘longest beard in the world’ of a Frenchman named Louis Coulo,” the journalist responded.

It is a great photo, and here it is:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by All Vintage Cats (@allvintagecats)

 

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Lagniappe: From Newsweek, a cat with salacious markings (below).  I don’t think the black bit looks like a middle finger, though:

Picking a name for a pet is no easy task, which is why one owner took to Reddit and asked for name suggestions, but the answers they received were unexpected.

Reddit user u/martindukz posted to the subreddit channel r/funny a picture of the unnamed brown, white and black calico cat sitting on a footrest. Within four days, the post received over 27,000 upvotes and almost 10,000 comments.

People were basing their suggestions on a specific physical characteristic. The shape of the black fur marking on her lower back immediately gave people ideas; however, the suggestions weren’t what the owner expected. People flooded the comment section with not-safe-for-work name options.

The owner commented on the post, saying the cat’s name is Chili, but based on the marking, they are open to renaming her; hence, the post to Reddit.

Newsweek reached out to u/martindukz via Reddit for additional comment.

“I may be a little dark, but I see a middle finger in that black splotch. I won’t make any name suggestions,” commented one Reddit user.

Others suggested subtle names after humans such as Richard or the author Charles Dickens. A more subtle name idea was Clickbait “because that mark looks like a computer mouse.”

Not everyone had their heads in the gutter. Someone asked: “Am I the only one that thinks it’s a lighthouse?”

h/t: Dan, Divy

Today we have photos of amphibians and other items from Matt Moran, an ecologist at Monteverde in Costa Rica as well as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biology and Health Sciences at Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas.  Matt’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

These are photos from the Children’s Eternal Rainforest in Costa Rica (25,000 hectares), where I work as a field biologist. I am engaged in several projects, but my major one is a study on the status of amphibians in the park. Amphibians around the world have been declining and this area of Costa Rica is one of first places it was documented. While many theories have been developed as to why amphibians are declining, the one with the most support that explains the sometimes sudden collapse of amphibian populations (especially frogs) is the arrival of a pathogenic fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), commonly called chytrid. This fungus infects the skin of frogs and often causes high levels of mortality. It has been implicated in the extinction of dozens of species of frogs around the world.

In the Monteverde area where I work, the population collapses occurred in the late 1980s. Initially, 25 of the known 50 species from the area were missing, but over time, most reappeared, apparently surviving in small numbers and then recolonizing larger areas. It appears that this was a major selection event, so that individuals with natural resistance to the fungus survived to reproduce, while most died. It is estimated that in many species, over 99% of individuals died. About 5 species originally found in the area appear to be totally extinct. Others still missing from here exist elsewhere, although often at critically low levels. Many, however, have recovered and probably exist at levels similar to pre-fungus invasion times.

I am attempting to determine the frog community structure 35 years post-chytrid invasion. These data will be valuable in two ways: 1) to determine how the community structure has changed over the last 35 years, and 2) to determine how future community structure is different from today so that we will have long-term population trends (using now as a baseline).

This is an amazing place to work. I retired from academia several years ago and this has become my new passion. It is one of the most biodiverse protected areas on the planet and every minute I spend in the forest is enchanting beyond description.

Emerald Glass Frog (Espadarana prosoplebon). This is the most common glass frog (Family Centrolenidae) found in this area. As their name suggests, they have transparent skin on the ventral side and their internal organs are easily visible. Interestingly, this species, like most glass frogs, does not appear to have declined because of chytrid fungus invasion. Like all glass frogs, this one breeds in streams:

Reticulated Glass Frog (Hyalinobatrachium valerioi). A fairly common species in mid-elevation areas of rainforest. It is easily identified by the large yellow spots on the dorsal side:

Clay-colored Rain Frog (Pristimantis cerasinus). A small frog found perched on leaves in the rainforest. It is identified by its eye color, often called “sunset” eyes, with the contrasting yellow (dorsal) and brown (ventral) parts of the iris. It has direct development where eggs are laid on the forest floor and the tadpole develops inside the egg directly into a miniature version of the adult. This species declined with the arrival of chytrid fungus but now appears to be relatively common again:

Sunset over the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, Costa Rica:

Evergreen toad (Incilius coniferus). A common toad found in mid- and low-elevation rainforest. This species is one of the few true toads (Family: Bufonidae) that can readily climb vegetation, although they are also often found inside the burrows of other animals. They are highly toxic and probably have few predators:

Puma (Puma concolor) track. These big cats are common in rainforests through Costa Rica. We also have jaguars (Panthera onca), but jaguar tracks are the size of your hand, including the fingers!!, while puma tracks are the size of the palm of your hand. Because it had rained very hard the night before, I knew this track was less than 8 hours old!:

Atlantic Forest Toad (Incilius melanochlorus). Another common toad. This one declined dramatically with the arrival of chytrid fungus but now appears to have fully recovered:

A giant Ceiba tree (Ceiba pentandra). This is one of largest trees in Central America, reaching heights of over 70 meters. Because they often grown above the canopy (emergent tree), they are the favorite nesting sites of many raptors (e.g., Harpy Eagle, Harpia harpyja) where the elevated platform provides a good viewing point and relative safety from nest predators. This tree may be over 300 years old:

When I first saw this snake, I thought it was the highly venomous Fer-de-lance (Terciopelo in Costa Rican Spanish, Bothrops asper). However, this is the False Fer-de-lance (Xenodon rabdocephalus), a harmless mimic. I have often wondered if it is true case of mimicry trying to make potential predators think it is the deadly pit-viper or if its patten is actually an example of convergent evolution for camouflage. It might function in both ways in that it does provide great camouflage, but if spotted, it also has the pattern of something very dangerous!?:

JAC: I added a photo of a real fer-de-lance from Wikipedia:

thibaudaronson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Quickie With Bob: Using Nukes to Deflect Asteroids; News Items: Near Earth Asteroid Threat, Does the Internet Affect Our Memory, Growing City Rat Problem, Do Apes Have a Theory of Mind, NASA Astronauts Harassed by Aliens; Who's That Noisy; Science or Fiction

Our Moon continues to surprise us with amazing features. Scientists recently shared new information about two canyons that branch out from a major lunar impact. The site is the Schrödinger basin near the Moon’s South Pole. It formed when an asteroid or possibly even a leftover planetesimal slammed into the surface. It took only minutes to dig out that huge crater and split the landscape to make two huge rifts that extend from the site.

According to David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX, the impact is of very ancient origin. “Nearly four billion years ago,” he said, “an asteroid or comet flew over the lunar south pole, brushed by the mountain summits of Malapert and Mouton, and hit the lunar surface. The impact ejected high-energy streams of rock that carved two canyons that rival the size of Earth’s Grand Canyon. While the Grand Canyon took millions of years to form, the two grand canyons on the Moon were carved in less than 10 minutes.”

Those two canyons—named Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck—are significant clues to that turbulent time in the Moon’s past. And, they’re impressive. Vallis Schrödinger is just under 300 kilometers long, 20 km wide, and 2.7 kilometers deep. Vallis Planck has two units. One is a deep canyon within the ejecta blanket of debris thrown out by the impact. The rest comprises a row of craters made as falling rocks were thrown out from the impact. They fell back to the Moon to create so-called “secondary craters.” The canyon part is about 280 kilometers deep, 27 km wide, and 3.5 km deep. The depth of both of these canyons surpasses the deep gorges of Earth’s Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Anatomy of an Impact and its Aftermath

The impactor probably slammed into the surface at nearly 55,000 kilometers per hour. The crash is what produced the enormous 320-kilometer-diameter Schrödinger impact basin. In the aftermath, the rocky debris scoured the deep canyons.

Schrödinger formed in the outer margin of the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin. At a diameter of about 2,400 km, it’s the largest and oldest impact basin on the Moon. The basin’s rim is about 300 km from the South Pole and within 125 km of the proposed exploration site for the Artemis mission.

The Schrödinger crater has a ~150-km diameter peak ring and the whole area is surrounded by a blanket of impact ejecta that splashed out in an irregular pattern up to 500 km away. The outermost crater ring resembles a circular mountain range and rises 1 to 2.5 km above the basin floor. It was produced by the collapse of a central uplift after the impact. After the impact, basaltic lava flows flooded the area. A large pyroclastic vent erupted more material onto the basin floor. That volcanic activity ended around 3.7 billion years ago.

Impact Anomalies

A careful analysis of the impact basin the canyons, and the ejecta surrounding the site by Kring and a team of scientists at the Lunar Planetary Laboratory, gives an idea of impact details. In a paper released about the site, the scientists discuss its features, plus some unusual finds. For example, the canyon rays don’t converge at the basin’s center as you might expect from typical impacts. They seem to come together in a different spot. That implies a point explosion impact.

Schrödinger peak-ring impact basin and two radiating canyons carved by impact ejecta. NASA\SVS\Ernest T. Wright. b Azimuthal Equidistant Projection of the Moon LRO LROC WAC Global Morphology Mosaic 100 centered on the Schrödinger basin, with the continuous ejecta blanket outlined and radial secondary crater rays (red). Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck intersect near the southern rim of the basin (white point). The size of the point indicates the uncertainty. The projected bearing of the primary impactor (yellow) runs through the point of intersection and the basin center. A third unnamed feature extends in an uprange direction.

The location of the converging rays suggests that the incoming asteroid’s trajectory was about 33.5 west of north. The evidence also points to a distributed impact. That could mean the impactor came in at a low angle. Or, it’s also possible that secondary ejecta from the impact also came in at low angles. There are many secondary craters in the area which help explain the possibilities. Continued analysis will help explain the huge amounts of energy released in the event. Gareth Collins, one of Kring’s team members, said, “The Schrödinger crater is similar in many regards to the dino-killing Chicxulub crater on Earth. By showing how Schrödinger’s km-deep canyons formed, this work has helped to illuminate how energetic the ejecta from these impacts can be.”

Future Exploration

Of course, these rays and the impact basin will end up as great exploration points for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions. Right now, the evidence from the ejecta blanket points to the fact that there’s an uneven distribution, particularly in the area where the first missions are planned. That will allow astronauts and robotic probes to reach underlying samples of the Moon’s primordial crust without having to dig through rocks of a younger age.

Since the basin is the second-youngest basin on the Moon, the impact melted rocks will be a great way to test the actual age of the impact. The general understanding is that some 3.8 billion years ago, the Moon (and Earth) experienced a great many of these collisions. This epoch was the Late Heavy Bombardment, thought to have lasted up to 200 million years. The continual impacts during this time scarred the surfaces of the rocky planets and the Moon, as well as asteroids. Lunar rocks created as a result of lava flows at that time will open a window into their ages and mineralogy, especially compared to other, older rock formations. They should also improve our understanding of that period of solar system history. In particular, it can help scientists characterize the impacts on Earth that affected not just the surface, but its life forms.

For More Information

Grand Canyons on the Moon (journal article)
Grand Canyons on the Moon

The post The Moon has Two Grand Canyons, Carved in Minutes by an Asteroid Impact appeared first on Universe Today.

How would detecting methane help astronomers identify if exoplanets, or even exomoons, have life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it? This is what a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers led by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center investigated how a method called BARBIE (Bayesian Analysis for Remote Biosignature Identification on exoEarths) could be used on a future space mission to detect methane (CH4) on Earth-like exoplanets in optical (visible) and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. This study builds on past studies using BARBIE, known as BARBIE 1 and BARBIE 2, and has the potential to help scientists and engineers develop new methods for finding life beyond Earth and throughout the cosmos.

Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible study with Natasha Latouf, who is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at George Mason University and lead author of the study, regarding the motivation behind the study, significant results, potential follow-up studies, next steps for BARBIE, the significance of detecting methane on Earth-like exoplanets, and if Natasha thinks we’ll ever find life on Earth-like exoplanets. Therefore, what was the motivation behind the study?

Latouf tells Universe Today, “We developed the BARBIE methodology in order to quickly investigate large amounts of parameter space and make informed decisions about the resultant observational trade-offs. Methane is a key contextual biosignature that we would be very interested in detecting, especially with other biosignatures like O2.”

As its name states, BARBIE used what’s known as a Bayesian inference, which is a statistical method employed to determine data probability outcomes based on a given input of data, meaning the probabilities change based on additional data input. As noted, this work builds off previous studies involving BARBIE, with those investigating parameters including observing exoplanets in optical wavelengths with planetary parameters including surface pressure, surface albedo, gravity, along with water (H20), oxygen (O2), and ozone (O3) abundance. However, those results indicated that only oxygen-rich atmospheres were observable in optical wavelengths, with the authors noting the parameters were too limited. With this work, known as BARBIE 3, the team added NIR wavelengths and CH4 to the parameters to broaden the parameters for more desirable results. Therefore, what were the most significant results from this study?

“The most significant results from this study is the interesting interplay between H2O and CH4 in the near-infrared (NIR),” Latouf tells Universe Today. “While we knew that the spectral features H2O and CH4 overlap heavily in the NIR, and would probably cause some issues with detectability, what we didn’t realize was how much that effect mattered. In fact, we find that at sufficiently high CH4, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required to strongly detect H2O shoots up, and the same vice versa. Essentially, we need to be careful before claiming a planet has no H2O or CH4, because if both are present, we might be missing one! There are follow up studies happening currently, led by my fantastic post-bac Celeste Hagee, studying how the detectability of biosignatures in the NIR changes if we add CO2 into the mix!”

Along with building off previous BARBIE studies, this study focuses on contributing to the planned NASA Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) mission, which was recommended by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 and is currently planned to launch sometime in the 2040s. The goal of HWO will be to analyze 25 potentially habitable exoplanets, which contrast past and current exoplanet-hunting missions like NASA’s Kepler and NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) missions, respectively, whose objectives were to locate and identify as many exoplanets as possible.

Artist’s rendition for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, which is slated to launch in the 2040s with the goal of analyzing 25 potentially habitable exoplanets for biosignatures along with conducting other incredible science about our place in the cosmos. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

HWO will use a combination of the direct imaging method to find the exoplanets and its spectroscopy instruments to analyze their respective atmospheres for biosignatures, specifically oxygen and methane. Along with identifying and analyzing potential habitable exoplanets, the other science goals include galaxy growth, element evolution from the Big Bang until now, and our solar system and its place in the universe. Therefore, what next steps need to be taken for BARBIE to become a reality on a future exoplanet imaging mission like HWO?

“The reason why BARBIE is useful is because it provides a huge swath of information about lots of parameter space very quickly – that means we can use that data to build future telescopes!” Latouf tells Universe Today. “For instance, if we’re trying to understand whether we need a 20% or a 40% coronagraph in order to strongly detect biosignatures in the optical regime, we can look at how the 20% and 40% influences detection of biosignatures, and from there make the decision on whether the science benefit of a 40% is worth the increased cost.”

This isn’t the first time scientists have postulated that methane might be a key indicator of life on exoplanets, as a 2022 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) discussed how atmospheric methane should be considered an exoplanet biosignature and be targeted by space telescopes like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Within our own solar system, methane is a key component of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, with researchers hypothesizing that its crust could contain methane. Additionally, Mars experiences seasonal changes in methane gases that keep scientists puzzled regarding its origin. Therefore, what is the significance of identifying methane on Earth-like exoplanets?

Latouf tells Universe Today, “CH4 is a contextual biosignature – if we find sufficient amounts of CH4 and O2 in an atmosphere together, it means the atmosphere is in disequilibrium. That means that there must be something PRODUCING those levels of CH4 and O2, and depending on the abundances of each, the signs would point to some form of life behind that production.”

This study comes as the number of confirmed exoplanets currently totals 5,832 with 212 being designated as terrestrial (rocky) exoplanets, or exoplanets that are Earth-sized or smaller. A primary example of terrestrial exoplanets includes the TRAPPIST-1 system that resides just over 40 light-years from Earth and is currently hypothesized to host seven Earth-sized exoplanets with at least three orbiting in its star’s habitable zone, which is the right distance from the star to support surface liquid water like Earth.

The closest known terrestrial exoplanet to Earth is Proxima Centauri b, which is 4.24 light-years from Earth and orbits within its star’s HZ despite its orbit only being 11.2 days. However, this also means Proxima Centauri b is blasted by ultraviolet radiation, meaning its surface might not be suitable for life as we know it. Therefore, does Latouf believe we will ever find life on Earth-like exoplanets and which Earth-like exoplanets are particularly interesting to her?

“In my opinion, I think that we will,” Latouf tells Universe Today. “Will that happen in my lifetime? That I’m not sure of – but I do believe we’re going to find life eventually! Although it’ll sound boring the most Earth-like planet I’m interested in is…Earth. We have this wonderful gift in this planet, with all the exact right conditions. We need to be making sure we’re preserving it and understanding our own planet before we dive into the search for others!”

For now, BARBIE remains on the drawing board, but it demonstrates the tireless commitment of the scientific community to improve upon previous designs with the goal of answering whether life exists beyond Earth and throughout the cosmos. Going forward, the authors note that future work will continue to enhance BARBIE’s capabilities, including detecting all molecules across HWO’s entire wavelength range like ultraviolet in addition to optical and NIR. They also plan to test whether coronagraph detectors, which block light from a star to both reveal and improve exoplanet analysis, are suitable for identifying molecules in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.

Latouf concludes by telling Universe Today, “I want to emphasize that it’s very easy to see a completed paper and think to yourself, especially as an early career, “I could never do that.” BARBIE was a project that was created by a team – sure, I put my special branding on it and did the work, but the project was born of open collaboration and communication. The process of doing the work for BARBIE1, 2, and 3 took about 3.5 years, and many, many setbacks. This work is hard, it’s not easy, and no one finds it easy. All this to say – if you’re working on something, and looking at others thinking you can’t do it like they can, just know: they’re learning and growing too, and science is never as easy as it looks.”

Is methane the correct biosignature to identify life as we know it on exoplanets and how will BARBIE help the continued search for life beyond Earth 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 Is Methane the Key to Finding Life on Other Worlds? appeared first on Universe Today.

An expert in energy technologies uses AI tools to investigate the impact of extreme weather on solar-powered and electrified homes and uncover their unique vulnerabilities and develop insights on how they handle harsh conditions.

In the more than 60 years since the Space Age began, humans have sent more than 6,740 rockets to space. According to the ESA’s Space Debris Office, this has resulted in 56,450 objects in orbit; about 36,860 of these objects are regularly tracked and maintained in a catalog, while 10,200 are still functioning. The rest is a combination of spent rocket stages, defunct satellites, and pieces of debris caused by unused propellant exploding and orbital collisions. This is leading to a cascade effect known as Kessler Syndrome, where the amount of debris in orbit will lead to more collisions and more debris.

What’s worse, the situation is only projected to get worse since more launches are expected with every passing year. Last year, space agencies and commercial space companies conducted a record-breaking 263 launches, with the U.S. (158) and China (68) leading the way. And with future break-ups occurring at historic rates of 10 to 11 per year, the number of debris objects in orbit will continue to increase. According to a new study by a team from the University of British Columbia (UBC), this also means that debris falling to Earth will have a 1 in 4 chance per year of entering busy airspace.

Ewan Wright, a doctoral student in UBC’s Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program, led the research. He was joined by Associate Professor Aaron Boley of the UBC Department of Physics and Astronomy and the co-director of The Outer Space Institute (OSI) at UBC, and Professor Michael Byers, the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the UBC Department of Political Science. The paper detailing their findings, “Airspace closures due to reentering space objects,” recently appeared in Scientific Reports, a journal maintained by Nature Publishing.

Artist’s impression of the orbital debris problem. Credit: UC3M

Traditionally, the discussion of space junk and the Kessler Syndrome has focused on how debris in orbit will pose a hazard for future satellites, payloads, and current and future space stations. In 2030, NASA and its many partnered space agencies plan to decommission the International Space Station (ISS) after thirty years of continuous service. However, this situation will also mean that more debris will be deorbiting regularly, not all of which will completely burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

While the chance of debris hitting an aircraft is very low (one in 430,000, according to their paper), the UBC team’s research highlights the potential for disruption to commercial air flights and the additional costs it will lead to. The situation of more launches and more hazards is illustrated perfectly by the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (RUD) of the Starship on January 16th, during its seventh orbital flight test. The explosion, which happened shortly after the prototype reentered Earth’s atmosphere, caused debris to rain down on the residents of the Turks and Caicos. Said Wright in a UBC News release:

“The recent explosion of a SpaceX Starship shortly after launch demonstrated the challenges of having to suddenly close airspace. The authorities set up a ‘keep out’ zone for aircraft, many of which had to turn around or divert their flight path. And this was a situation where we had good information about where the rocket debris was likely to come down, which is not the case for uncontrolled debris re-entering the atmosphere from orbit.”

A similar situation happened in 2022 when the spent stages of a Chinese Long March 5B (CZ-5B) weighing about 20 metric tons (22 U.S. tons) prompted Spanish and French aviation authorities to close parts of their airspace. If spent stages and other payloads have a low enough orbit, they can reenter Earth’s orbit uncontrolled, and large portions may make it to the ground. In addition to the record number of launches last year, there were also 120 uncontrolled rocket debris re-entries while more than 2,300 spent rocket stages are still in orbit.

Debris from the SpaceX Starship launched on January 16th, spotted over the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Credit: Marcus Haworth/Reuters

According to the International Air Transport Association, passenger numbers are expected to increase by almost 7% this year. With rocket launches and commercial flights increasing at their current rate, Wright and his colleagues say that action must be taken to mitigate the potential risks. As part of their study, the team selected the busiest day and location for air traffic in 2023, which was in the skies above Denver, Colorado – with one aircraft for every 18 square km (~7 mi2). They then paired this to the probability of spent rock stages reentering Earth’s atmosphere (based on a decade of data) above the flights.

With this as their peak, they calculated the probability of rocket debris reentering the atmosphere over different air traffic density thresholds. Their results showed that for regions experiencing 10% peak air traffic density or higher, there was a 26% chance of deorbited rocket debris entering that airspace. “Notably, the airspace over southern Europe that was closed in 2022 is only five percent of the peak,” said Wright. “Around the world, there is a 75-per-cent chance of a re-entry in such regions each year.”

At present, whenever orbital debris reenters the atmosphere around busy airspace, aviation authorities will respond by diverting flight paths, closing airspace, or taking the risk of allowing flights to continue. “But why should authorities have to make these decisions in the first place? Uncontrolled rocket body re-entries are a design choice, not a necessity,” said Dr. Boley. “The space industry is effectively exporting its risk to airlines and passengers.”

One possibility is to design rocket stages to reenter the atmosphere in a controlled way so they can crash into the ocean far away from busy air traffic lanes. However, this solution requires collective international action. “Countries and companies that launch satellites won’t spend the money to improve their rocket designs unless all of them are required to do so,” said Dr. Byers. “So, we need governments to come together and adopt some new standards here.”

Further Reading: UBC, Scientific Reports

The post Space Junk Could Re-Enter the Atmosphere in Busy Flight Areas appeared first on Universe Today.

The Quipu superstructure is enormous, spanning 1.4 billion light years – and it could violate one of our fundamental assumptions about the universe

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Scientists have successfully developed a gastric cancer model using 3D bioprinting technology and patient-derived cancer tissue fragments. This innovative model preserves the characteristics of actual patient tissues and is expected to rapidly evaluate and predict individual patient drug responses.

An international collaboration sheds new light on the relationship between quantum theory and thermodynamics. The research group demonstrated that while the laws of quantum theory alone do not inherently prevent violations of the second law of thermodynamics, any quantum process can be implemented without actually violating the law. This surprising result suggests a peaceful coexistence between quantum theory and thermodynamics, despite their logical independence. This discovery could have profound implications for understanding the thermodynamic limits of quantum technologies, such as quantum computing and nanoscale engines.

'Temperamental' stars that brighten and dim over a matter of hours or days may be distorting our view of thousands of distant planets, suggests a new study.

(This is my 29,994th post, so we’ll reach 30,000 by the end of the weekend. I don’t know what to think about that!)

I think we all know now that most Americans, and a majority of individuals in both Democratic and Republican parties, oppose the participation of trans-identified males in women’s sports, presumably on the grounds of their athletic advantages (particularly if they transition after puberty) and because a prohibition represents simple fairness to women. Here’s a CNN tweet giving the data (the NYT article below says that 94% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats don’t think that trans-identified males should compete in women’s sports).

CNN: “You rarely get 79% of the country to agree on anything — but they do, in fact, agree on the idea of opposing” men in women’s sports.

pic.twitter.com/MpjPqjNyIU

— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) February 6, 2025

And I guess I’ll have to give the usual disclaimer next: while I didn’t vote for Trump and see him as a narcissist with a personality disorder, I don’t believe that everything he has done or will do is necessary reprehensible. (I have several friends who think that.) For example, the action described in the NYT article below (click to read, or find it (archived here) seems to be a good one, the result of an executive order by Trump.  As the headline says, the NCAA, dealing with college sports, has now excluded transgender athletes (meaning in this case trans-identified men, sometimes called “trans women”) from participating in women’s sports in college.  It does not exclude trans-identified women (aka “trans men”) from men’s sports, though World Rugby has done that to prevent biological women from being injured by more powerful men.

I’ll give a few quotes below from the NYT piece. Of course the NCAA’s decision, and Trump’s order in particular (linked below), has faced the usual pushback: e.g., it’s transphobic, there are very few trans-identified men trying to compete in women’s sports, and so on.  And I do think we need a solution for those trans-identified men who want to compete in sports. That may mean they compete in men’s sports, or even in an “open” category, but surely everyone who wants to do sports deserves a chance to participate. It’s just that for some trans people, that place is not in women’s sports:

 

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An excerpt:

Transgender women will be barred from competing in N.C.A.A. women’s college sports, the sports organization announced on Thursday, a day after President Trump effectively forced the decision by reversing federal policy.

That decision, effective immediately, followed Mr. Trump’s signing of an executive order asking his agencies to withdraw federal funding from educational institutions if they defied him and let transgender girls and women compete.

“We strongly believe that clear, consistent and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,” Charlie Baker, the president of the N.C.A.A., said in a statement. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”

The N.C.A.A.’s previous policy on transgender athletes left the decision up to each sport’s national governing body. The rules varied by sport, especially as to how much testosterone could remain in a transgender woman’s blood following hormone therapy. USA Volleyball, for instance, allowed an athlete to compete as a woman even with testosterone levels typical of many men. U.S. Rowing’s limit for college athletes was just one-fourth of volleyball’s.

The new policy limits women’s competition to athletes assigned female at birth, and covers all of the N.C.A.A.’s sports. Appearing before Congress last year, Mr. Baker said that there were fewer than 10 transgender athletes among the 500,000-plus students who play N.C.A.A. sports.

One problem here is the “assigned female at birth” designation. That definition of sex is not in Trump’s EO, which uses the gametic definition of sex, while sex recognized at birth is usually based on looking at genitalia. Thus Imane Khelif , the Tunisian boxer who won the gold medal in the women’s welterweight boxing class in the last Olympics, was recognized as a woman at birth, but was really an XY male with a disorder of sex development, and lived in Tunisia as a post-puberty man, something that would immediately have disqualified Khelif from the Olympics. As you see, the US is also pushing the Olympics to do what the NCAA did.

Some pushback from individuals on the NCAA’s rule.

“It’s like taking a bulldozer to knock down the wrong building,” said Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia University Law School and an expert on gender and sexuality law, adding that the policy distracts from the serious problem of girls and women not having equal opportunities in sports.

I’m not sure what she means about distracting from the problem of girls and women not having equal opportunity in sports, that is whataboutery since people are already working on that, and Title IX guarantees it.  The other argumen—that there are too few trans-identified men wanting to compete with women to make it an issue—is a claim that doesn’t hold water, for it is fundamentally unfair, allows one biological mail to work injustice on many women, and, finally, the number of trans people is growing quickly.

There’s also the issue of how to find out if someone is competing unfairly, but given the ways you can study that (cheek swab, etc.), that is not a serious problem:

The order will affect more than transgender athletes, Ms. Goldberg said, adding that it might force women suspected of being transgender to answer invasive personal questions or undergo physical examinations.

What about the Olympics? Right now the IOC has punted on the issue, asking each sport to set its own rules, which itself is unfair and may lead to conflicting results. But the administration also has the Olympics in mind:

Mr. Trump’s executive order, titled “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” is based on the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding. Barring transgender girls and women from women’s sports was one of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises.

The order also directs the State Department to demand changes within the International Olympic Committee, which has left eligibility rules up to the global federations that govern different sports.

Finally, there are lawsuits in progress as well as many state rules prohibiting transgender athletes from competing based on their assumed gender identity:

Last March, a group of college athletes sued the N.C.A.A. for allowing [Lia]. Thomas to compete, saying her participation in a women’s event had violated their Title IX rights. And on Tuesday, three University of Pennsylvania female swimmers sued the school, the Ivy League and Harvard University, which hosted the 2022 Ivy League swimming championships. The lawsuit said Ms. Thomas’s participation in those championships and other Ivy League meets was an “illegal social science experiment” and that her competitors were “captive and collateral damage.”

Bill Bock, the swimmers’ lawyer, said in a statement that the institutions named in the suit sought “to impose radical gender ideology on the American college sports landscape.”

Mr. Bock also represents the female volleyball players who sued San Jose State University, the Mountain West Conference and others in November for allowing a transgender woman to play on San Jose’s team. Five volleyball teams boycotted matches last season against the school because of the player.

And:

Twenty-five states have barred transgender athletes from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group that tracks legislation. Some of those laws, however, have been blocked while lawsuits against them make their way through the courts.

The prohibition of cross-sex competition in women’s sports seems to me a good thing, increasing fairness towards women.  That still leaves the problem of how to deal with transgender athletes who want to compete in athletics. I’ve suggested several solutions before, but none of them involve allowing transgender athletes competing in women’s sports—with the exception of those sports in which men have no inherent athletic advantage over women. That may be true of equestrian sports, though I haven’t checked.

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A prosthetic hand that weighs about half that of a human hand also enables wearers to carry out intricate tasks, such as tying knots

Recently I am getting more emails from various countries—all of whose senders wish to be anonymous—about indigenous people trying to combine their own “ways of knowing” with science or to represent them as an alternative to modern science (often mistakenly called “Western” science). The anonymity, of course, comes because criticism of indigenous people is about the worst blasphemy you can commit against “progressive” liberals, who regard indigenous people as historically and currently oppressed by “settlers”.

In this case, though, the indigenous knowledge isn’t purely indigenous, but an effort to piggyback on or to ape modern science. The article below, from the Royal Society of Chemistry News, involves Australians and Aboriginals together trying to develop an indigenous periodic table.

When you ask “a periodic table of what?”, it appears to be a periodic table of the elements. But the elements were identified by modern science, and of course placed in the modern periodic table by the work of non-indigenous chemists and physicists.  The proposed indigenous table, however, uses the very same elements, but wants to classify them in a different way: by how they are used, how they are connected to the land, and so on. This would also change the names of the elements.

Also, as the article points out, there are over 400 indigenous groups in Australia, each with a different language and presumbly a different culture, so we’d get dozens of periodic tables. If that’s the outcome, then what is the point of this exercise?

Click on the headline below to read the short article:

The craziness of this endeavor, which seems to have no point save to give indigenous people something resembles what the “Western” settler-colonialist scientists have, can best be seen in a few quotes.  “I have a dream today”, says one professor, who is not aboriginal but apparently an “ally”:

‘I have a dream of walking into a chemistry lecture theatre and seeing two periodic tables – the traditional one and a periodic table in the language of the Gadigal whose land we teach on,’ says Anthony Masters, a chemistry professor at the University of Sydney in Australia. The Gadigal are one of over 400 different Aboriginal communities in Australia and the Torres Straight Islands that have their own distinct set of languages, histories and traditions. Masters has pulled together a team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal scholars to investigate what an Indigenous periodic table might look like. Together, the multidisciplinary team aims to organise the elements in a format that represents the relationships between them based on Indigenous knowledge.

Masters, apparently not even a member of the Gadigal, seemingly wants to do this as a scientific sop to the aboriginals “whose land we teach on.”  But if that’s the case, I’m sure the Gadigal would much prefer to be paid for the appropriated land, or given their land back.

So what is this table? Well, perhaps it doesn’t seem to involve elements, but compounds or minerals:

In reality, Aboriginal people developed their own knowledge of the chemical elements and their compounds. This includes uranium in its mineral form, which they called sickness rocks because they were aware that mishandling them could cause illness. Moreover, Aboriginal Australians have been using the iron oxide-based pigment ochre for at least 50,000 years. Historically, it had economic value, being traded between different tribes, but it also remains central to several cultural practices including body painting and decorating sacred objects. ‘Ochre is used as a pigment, and it can be formed into different colours – which is material science. It can be used as a disinfectant, as a sunscreen. A lot of these things are to do with its interaction with light,’ explains Masters who uses these examples to teach his undergraduate students about attributing knowledge to the Indigenous community.

But uranium doesn’t occur free in nature (often it’s found as “uraninite“, also known as “pitchblende”, UO2 but with other minerals), and ochre, according to Wikipedia, is “is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand.”  (One of the few elements that can be seen occurring in its pure form in nature is sulfur.) Are we to have a periodic table of compounds, then? If so, that will be a very large periodic table! The problem of distinguishing elements from compunds isn’t even mentioned, but it appears that they want to do this for elements (see below).

The article then says that the traditional and correct periodic table of the elements is largely useless to an indigenous person:

The idea to develop an Indigenous periodic table arose because Masters started looking into how language influences our understanding of chemical knowledge and how chemistry is taught at Australian universities. ‘How do you know that oxygen and sulfur have similar properties? You can’t tell from the names,’ says Masters. Regarding palladium, he points out there is little to no value in an Indigenous student learning about an element named after an asteroid, which in turn was named after a Greek goddess. And what about neon, which William Ramsay named after the Greek word for new, but it’s hardly new after 120 years. Instead, Masters wants Indigenous Australian students to grow up with a periodic table in their language, just as it exists in other languages around the world.

But you don’t discern chemical properties from the names but from the position in the scientific periodic table. And who cares what the element is called? Scientists or anybody who wants to learn chemistry, that’s who. But Masters & Co. want to change the names of the elements/compounds. If you make a periodic table in this way, if you even can, it will not help indigenous people learn modern chemistry; it will in fact impede them.

But it appears that this project is grinding exceedingly slowly, and I doubt it will happen at all, especially because it’s limited to just one group of aboriginals. The slowness may result from their need to construct the table by talking. Bolding below is mine:

Troy explains the team’s first step was to ask the Sydney Mob – which encompasses over 29 Indigenous communities based in the Sydney region – if an Australian First Nationsperiodic table was something they would be interested in. They were. And so began the delicate process of establishing what scientific understanding of the elements is inherent in Aboriginal Australian knowledge systems.

Being mindful of and engaging with Aboriginal culture is central to the project, and face-to-face consultations are the preferred medium of meeting in Indigenous communities. So, the team has started the process of yarning – an Indigenous practice of sharing knowledge through conversations – with elders from the Gadigal clan. ‘The idea of yarning is that you give people a chance to talk and then you consider what they talk about. And then you respectfully engage with what they’ve been talking about,’ explains Troy. This means the project is developing slowly as yarning can take a very long time, with no expectations or pressure on the Indigenous people to immediately embrace the project. They are still planning yarning workshops (at the time of publishing) to continue engagement with as many of the community as they can.

. . . There is no timeline for when the team might complete its first Indigenous periodic table, but the team has begun developing a methodology to move the project forward. Part of that includes creating a blueprint that other Aboriginal groups can adapt and use themselves to document the elements and the relationships between them. With over 400 languages in Australia, each element may have a different meaning. ‘It’s in that spirit that the Periodic table is an obvious example. There are different ways of looking at things. And for me, that’s one of the beauties of [chemistry],’ concludes Masters.

. . . The meetings and conversations, which have already been under way for two years, have confirmed the project is worthwhile.

Really? How so?

Finally, it becomes clear that the goal is indeed to make an indigenous periodic table of elements, not compounds. And the purpose is given below as well: an indigenous periodic table (which does not now exist) is needed because a simple indigenous representation of the scientific periodic table might “erase Indigenous knowledge”:

So far, the team notes that the Gadigal spoken to in initial meetings like how the traditional periodic table combines nomenclature from Latin and Greek, as well as Arabic and Anglo-Saxon, but this is subject to change as more community members are consulted. ‘Some of the elements are named after people. Some are named after their qualities. But it is quite inconsistent,’ says Troy. They are therefore looking for a consistent style in the Gadigal language that might work and considering the relationship between the elements in the understanding of local knowledge holders. One idea is to group together elements that are part of daily life, elements that hold a special place in ceremony and elements that are avoided.

. . . It’s important to understand that the team doesn’t intend for an Indigenous periodic table to be a direct translation of the traditional periodic table because that could end up erasing rather than celebrating Indigenous knowledge. And it might not necessarily look like a table. Rather they’re aiming to represent the elements in a chart that also reflects Indigenous understanding concerning how an element connects to the lands, water and skies on which the First Nations people live. ‘We have to translate the concept culturally,’ says Tory, using a First Nations approach. Strategies the team is investigating include, but are not limited to, using Indigenous language to express a unique characteristic of an element or using Indigenous language to express the etymology of the English term. However, the most important factor is that the choice is made by the Indigenous community to suit their cultural and ideological foundations.

So they are apparently going to take the elements known from modern chemistry, many of which are not encountered by indigenous peoples in a pure state (hydrogen, neon, etc.) and group them together in ways that are supposed to be useful to the local people.  But since they don’t know the pure elements, how can they do this? I cannot see how.

More important, why are they doing this? It appears to me to be a performative act to ape modern science but in a far less useful way: “See, we can order the elements according to our own culture.”  That is fine if they want to try, but that ordering, even if it were possible, will not be useful in teaching chemistry to aboriginal people. The periodic table is useful because it tells you something about the atomic structure of an element, which in turn tells you something about how it behaves chemically. What other kind of ordering makes sense?

Finally, given that indigenous people from various parts of Australia, and of the world, encounter different compounds that are used or recognized differently, even if one could make an indigenous periodic table of elements (which seems to me impossible), there would be dozens or hundreds of them, each representing the concepts of a different culture.  There will not be a “correct” periodic table and so, in the end, we will have many orderings that represent sociology or anthropology and not science.

And that means that Anthony Masters’s dream is only a pipe dream, and his Indigenous Periodic Table does not belong in a chemistry lecture theater.

h/t: Ginger K.

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