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A new molecular engineering technique can precisely influence the development of organoids. Microbeads made of specifically folded DNA are used to release growth factors or other signal molecules inside the tissue structures. This gives rise to considerably more complex organoids that imitate the respective tissues much better and have a more realistic cell mix than before.

Cement-based materials provide a potential solution for mitigating climate change by trapping and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide as minerals, via a process known as carbonation. Despite extensive studies, however, the exact mechanism of this process is not yet understood. Now, researchers have conducted a comprehensive investigation of carbonation reaction using a new method, revealing the role of structural changes and water transport, paving the way for advanced carbon dioxide-absorbing building materials.

Converting biomass such as waste cooking oil into useful chemicals through catalysis can help create a more sustainable chemical industry. However, conventional techniques require enormous energy and generate harmful chemicals. Moreover, such techniques reduce the lifetime of catalysts. Now, researchers reveal a zeolite catalyst that can be efficiently heated up using microwaves.

Well, it was a grueling 15¼-hour flight from Cape Town to Dulles Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.,  and that was on top of a five-hour wait for my plane at Cape Town International Airport, resulting from an 8 p.m. departure when I had to check out of the hotel a bit after noon.

I tried to sleep on the plane, but it was largely futile. So, as usual, I watched a passel of movies, which included the first film (1972) of the movie trilogy “The Godfather” directed by Francis Ford Coppola.  After watching the whole three-hour movie carefully (and for about the fifth time), my opinion is only strengthened that this is one of the best American movies ever made (my top choice, which I’ve often mentioned is “The Last Picture Show,” released a year before “The Godfather”).

I know some people don’t or can’t rank movies, but if you’re daring enough to do so, I’d be delighted to hear readers’ choices for Best American Movie. (As for best foreign films, I’d choose two Japanese ones: Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” (1952) and Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1953).

BTW, I had forgotten that Marlon Brando, playing Don Corleone, is not the first character to speak in the movie; rather, it’s an undertaker asking the Godfather to exact justice on the undertaker’s daughter, beaten up by a gang of sexual predators. The first sign of the Godfather is the movement of his hand at 1:30. Here are the first 6.5 minutes:

The movie won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Brando nabbed it for Best Actor, but declined the award. It won a third Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, shared by Coppola and author Mario Puzo.

I’m now cooling my heels at Dulles for two hours, waiting for the 2.5-hour flight to Chicago. After that it’ll be another 1.5-2 hours before I get home. It’s been a long, long flight, but less grueling than my canceled flight to South Africa, which I rebooked flying (after our flight to Cape Town to Dulles was canceled) from Dulles to Newark, then from Newark to Johannesburg, and then from Joburg to Cape Town.

I still have at least two photo-and-text posts left for South Africa, including a visit to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in southern Cape Town, perhaps the best such garden I’ve ever seen. I hae photos of many flowers, including the resplendent King Protea (Protea cynaroides), the national flower of South Africa. Here’s a preview (these flowers can be as much as a foot across):

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is being a typical cat:

A: Here you are!
Hili: Yes, because it’s a good place for a siesta.

Ja: Tu jesteś!
Hili: Tak, bo to dobre miejsce na siestę.

Shortly after endorsing Donald Trump for President, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed he and Trump will "make America healthy again." His proposals to do that range from semi-reasonable to outright quackery.

The post RFK Jr.’s MAHA manifesto: How not to “make America healthy again” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

According to Nebula Theory, stars and their systems of planets form when a massive cloud of gas and dust (a nebula) undergoes gravitational collapse at the center, forming a new star. The remaining material from the nebula then forms a disk around the star from which planets, moons, and other bodies will eventually accrete (a protoplanetary disk). This is how Earth and the many bodies that make up the Solar System came together roughly 4.5 billion years ago, eventually settling into their current orbits (after a few migrations and collisions).

However, there is still debate regarding certain details of the planet formation process. On the one hand, there are those who subscribe to the traditional “bottom-up” model, where dust grains gradually collect into larger and larger conglomerations over tens of millions of years. Conversely, you have the “top-down” model, where circumstellar disk material in spiral arms fragments due to gravitational instability. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers found evidence of the “top-down” model when observing a protoplanetary disk over 500 light-years away.

The team was led by Jessica Speedie, an astronomy and astrophysics Ph.D. candidate at the University of Victoria. She was joined by colleagues from the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA-PKU), the Center for Simulational Physics (CSP-UGA), the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy, the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (CNSA-CRAL), the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (MIT EAPS), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and multiple universities and observatories.

The paper that details their research, “Gravitational instability in a planet-forming disk,” was recently published in the journal Nature.

Located in the Atacama desert in the Chilean Andes, ALMA is the largest radio telescope in the world dedicated to studying the parts of the Universe that are otherwise invisible to astronomers. This includes cold dust clouds in space, protoplanetary disks, and some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe, which are only visible at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. Using ALMA, Speedie and her colleagues observed the well-characterized protoplanetary disk around AB Aurigae, a young star system (4 million years old) located about 530 light-years from Earth.

The star is a pre-main sequence A-type star (blue-white) approximately 2.5 times the size of our Sun and about 2.4 times as massive. Beginning in 2017, scientists at ALMA began observing the star’s protoplanetary disk to learn more about planet formation in young star systems. Since then, astronomers have observed several developing protoplanets forming in AB Aurigae’s disk, as well as a gas giant nine times the mass of Jupiter that was confirmed in 2022. These appear as clumps within the protoplanetary disk’s spiral arms, rotating counterclockwise around the star.

The detection of these bodies around such a young star raised doubts about the “bottom-up” process. According to this model, these protoplanets did not have nearly enough time to become as large as they have. Along with her PhD advisor Ruobing Dong, Speedie and their team were determined to study how the gas in the system’s vast spiral arms is moving. ALMA’s sensitivity and high velocity resolution was crucial to that task and enabled the team to probe the gas deep within the disk and measure its motion precisely.

Dr. Cassandra Hall, an Assistant Professor of Computational Astrophysics at the University of Georgia was also a co-author on the research. Four years ago, Hall led a study where she and her colleagues (which included Dong and other members of Speedie’s team) simulated how a gravitationally unstable disk would behave. As she indicated in a NRAO press release:

“Disks that are gravitationally unstable should have distinctive ‘wiggles’ in their velocity field, unlike disks that are stable. Back in 2020, we performed some of the most advanced simulations in the world to predict the existence of this hallmark signature of gravitational instability. It was clear, it was testable, and it was a bit scary – if we didn’t find it, then something had to be very, very wrong with our understanding of these disks.”

Spiral arms form in a protoplanetary disk when the disk-to-star mass ratio is sufficiently high. Over time, changes in density lead to changes in gravity, which causes variations in the velocities of gas in and around the spiral arms. These variations in velocity are seen as “wiggles,” and the magnitude can be used to infer the mass ratio between the host star and the material in its disk. Using ALMA’s array of radio antennas, Speedie and her team mapped the velocity of carbon monoxide isotopes within the disk’s spiral arms and looked for indications of the predicted “wiggles.”

These measurements yielded a three-dimensional rectangular “data cube” that mapped gas velocity and position within the protoplanetary disk along the observatory’s line of sight. As is customary with ALMA’s interferometry measurements, the data was parsed into “slices” (or strategically oriented cuts), allowing Speedie and her team to conclusively identify the velocity wiggle indicating gravitational instability. This constitutes the first direct observational confirmation that the “top-down” pathway to planet formation is correct.

What’s more, it indicates that planetary systems may form much faster than previously thought, which could have significant implications for astrogeology and exoplanet research. As Speedie explained, Hall’s work, ALMA’s sensitivity, and the quality data products it created for them were what made this discovery possible:

“This is a classic science story of, ‘we predicted it, and then we found it’. The Hall-mark of gravitational instability. We worked with one of the deepest ALMA observations taken with such high-velocity resolution toward a single protoplanetary disk to date. The ALMA data provides a clear diagnosis of gravitational instability in action. There is no other mechanism we know of that can create the global architecture of spiral structure and velocity patterns that we observe.”

In the near future, Speedie and her colleagues plan to continue using ALMA to learn more about how planetary systems form around young stars. As part of the NFS/NRAO ALMA ambassador program, Speedie is training alongside other postdoctoral students and early career astronomers to share ALMA’s resources and capabilities with the wider astronomical community.

Further Reading: NRAO, Nature

The post ALMA Detects Hallmark “Wiggle” of Gravitational Instability in Planet-Forming Disk appeared first on Universe Today.

In 2012, two previous dark matter detection experiments—the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) and ZonEd Proportional scintillation in Liquid Noble gases (ZEPLIN)—came together to form the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. Since it commenced operations, this collaboration has conducted the most sensitive search ever mounted for Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) – one of the leading Dark Matter candidates. This collaboration includes around 250 scientists from 39 institutions in the U.S., U.K., Portugal, Switzerland, South Korea, and Australia.

On Monday, August 26th, the latest results from the LUX-ZEPLIN project were shared at two scientific conferences. These results were celebrated by scientists at the University of Albany‘s Department of Physics, including Associate Professors Cecilia Levy and Matthew Szydagis (two members of the experiment). This latest result is nearly five times more sensitive than the previous result and found no evidence of WIMPs above a mass of 9 GeV/c2. These are the best-ever limits on WIMPS and a crucial step toward finding the mysterious invisible mass that makes up 85% of the Universe.

Led by the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the LZ experiment is located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, about 1,500 meters (nearly a mile) beneath the surface. The experiment relies on an ultra-sensitive detector made of 10 tonnes (11 U.S. tons) of liquid xenon to hunt for the elusive signals caused by WIMP-nucleus interactions. While direct detections are yet to be made, these latest results have helped scientists narrow the search.

As Levy explained in a recent UofA press release:

“Dark matter interacts very, very rarely with normal matter, but we don’t know exactly how rarely. The way we measure it is through this cross-section or how probable an interaction is within our detector. Depending on the mass of a dark matter particle, which we don’t know yet, an interaction within the detector is more or less probable. What the new LZ results tell us is that dark matter interacts with normal matter even more rarely than we thought, and the only instrument in the world that is sensitive enough to measure that is LZ.”

The existence and nature of Dark Matter are among the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics. Originally proposed to explain the rotational curves of galaxies, the existence of Dark Matter is vital to the most widely accepted cosmological model – the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. Unfortunately, according to the prevailing theories, DM only interacts with normal (aka. “luminous”) matter via gravity, the weakest of the four fundamental forces. Detecting these interactions requires incredibly sensitive instruments and an environment free of electromagnetic energy (including heat and light).

While no direct detections have been made, the latest results from LZ have narrowed the range of possibilities for one of the leading DM candidates. As Szydagis said:

“It’s often misunderstood what is meant by the phrase ‘world’s best dark matter experiment’ since no one has made a conclusive, unambiguous discovery yet. However, new, stricter null results like LZ’s are still extremely valuable for science. UAlbany, as one part of the multinational collaboration that is LZ, has been making important contributions ensuring the robustness of LZ’s results, going back to the very beginning of the experiment.”

Although DM remains “invisible” to us, the presence of its gravitational pull is fundamental to our understanding of the Universe. For example, the formation and movement of galaxies are attributed to DM, and its existence is vital for explaining the large-scale structure and evolution of the Universe. If DM does not exist, then our understanding of gravity – as described by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity – is essentially wrong and needs revision. However, General Relativity has been experimentally validated again and again over the past century.

Therefore, narrowing the search for its constituent particle is vital to proving that our foundational theories about the Universe are correct. As Levy noted, UAlbany scientists have been making integral contributions to LZ for over a decade, and their work is far from done! “Working on LZ is always so exciting, even if we still have not made a discovery yet,” she said. “We all know that if it were easy, someone else would have done it already! I think right now what we need to take out of this result is that LZ is a great team of scientists, our detector is working superbly, our analysis is extremely robust, and we are nowhere near done taking data.”

Further Reading: University at Albany

The post Largest Dark Matter Detector is Narrowing Down Dark Matter Candidate appeared first on Universe Today.

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From precognitive dreams and telepathic visions to near-death experiences, UFO encounters, and beyond, so-called impossible phenomena are not supposed to happen. But they do happen—all the time. Jeffrey J. Kripal asserts that the impossible is a function not of reality but of our everchanging assumptions about what is real. How to Think Impossibly invites us to think about these fantastic (yet commonplace) experiences as an essential part of being human, expressive of a deeply shared reality that is neither mental nor material but gives rise to both. Thinking with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways, Kripal interweaves humanistic and scientific inquiry to foster an awareness that the fantastic is real, the supernatural is super natural, and the impossible is possible.

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, and just published, also by the University of Chicago Press, How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else.

If you enjoy the podcast, please show your support by making a $5 or $10 monthly donation.

Medical clowns, who play with children in hospitals, may help them be discharged sooner by reducing their heart rates

If all goes well I’ll be flying home this evening, changing planes in Dulles after a 15-hour flight, and arriving in Chicago tomorrow morning. I’ll be a wreck, of course, but that’s expected after a long trip like that. Regular posting here will begin after I start recovering from jet lag.  But today we have a post on my visit (more of a pilgrimage, really) to Robben Island.

Like Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, South Africa’s Robben Island has, in the last few hundred years, served as a repository for the most ostracized of criminals, though Robben is most famous for the last century’s political prisoners rather than common criminals. And, of course, the most famous among these was Nelson Mandela, who spent 18 of his 27 years of incarceration on Robben (see his cell below).

And, like Alcatraz, Robben is within viewing distance of a lovely city (it’s 11 km from Cape Town), which of course would tantalize the prisoners, who could see freedom so close. Below is a Wikipedia aerial photo of Robben Island, with Cape Town and Table Mountain in the distance. The prison is the group of buildings directly in line with the wharf.

As far as I know, only one person, the black political prisoner David Stuurman, escaped from Robben Island. That was in the early 19th century, and he did it twice, by boat.  He eventually was deported to Australia, where he died. But, like Alcatraz, nobody is known to have escaped Robben by swimming. The water is cold and the distance to Cape Town is great.

Note that Robben is only a few meters above sea level, and that distance is shrinking with global warming.

South African Tourism from South Africa, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Robben Island is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so designated because of its “outstanding universal value”. The UNESCO page says this:

Robben Island was used at various times between the 17th century and the 20th century as a prison, a hospital for socially unacceptable groups, and a military base. Its buildings, and in particular those of the late 20th century maximum security prison for political prisoners, testify to the way in which democracy and freedom triumphed over oppression and racism.

What survives from its episodic history are 17th century quarries, the tomb of Hadije Kramat who died in 1755, 19th century ‘village’ administrative buildings including a chapel and parsonage, small lighthouse, the lepers’ church, the only remains of a leper colony, derelict World War II military structures around the harbour and the stark and functional maximum security prison of the Apartheid period began in the 1960s.

The symbolic value of Robben Island lies in its somber history, as a prison and a hospital for unfortunates who were sequestered as being socially undesirable. This came to an end in the 1990s when the inhuman Apartheid regime was rejected by the South African people and the political prisoners who had been incarcerated on the Island received their freedom after many years.

Criterion (iii): The buildings of Robben Island bear eloquent witness to its sombre history.

Criterion (vi):Robben Island and its prison buildings symbolize the triumph of the human spirit, of freedom and of democracy over oppression.

But really, I think that if Nelson Mandela hadn’t spent 18 of his 27 years in prison on Robben, and then gone on to win a Nobel Peace Prize and become President of South Africa as well as President of the African National Congress, then Robben wouldn’t be nearly as well known, or have become a tourist destination.

I went mainly because of Mandela, and especially to see the conditions he endured for 18 years. He is one of my heroes, and his refusal to promulgate divisive hatred after he was released and became President is one of the great conciliatory and humane gestures of history.

But we should remember that many other political prisoners—some of them very well nown—were housed there, too, often for decades. It was the maximum-security prison for blacks and Asians that the white government considered dangerous (no white prisoners were housed there, though all the guards were white).  And now that South Africa is a democracy, the site could indeed be feted as more than a place where Mandela was imprisoned: it could be seen as demonstrating the triumph of the human desire for freedom over bigotry and authoritarianism.

Tours to Robben Island take about 3.5 hours, with 1.5 hours or so traveling to the island and the other two hours for the tour, which consists of a bus drive around the island followed by a tour on foot with a guide, often a former inmate. You’re advised to book in advance, as the slots sell out quickly (I booked two weeks in advance.)

It was an overcast day, with clouds floating around Table Mountain, but the views of Cape Town and surrounding mountains are spectacular both entering and leaving the city. As you can see, Table Mountain is flat like a table, looming high above the city. Taking the cable car to the top for the view is a must-do for visitors, but, sadly, I just couldn’t fit it in.

Below is the entry to the prison complex as well as the rest of the island, which still houses a town for those who maintain the site.  There is also a colony of African penguins (the same species as in Cape Town), as well as assorted smaller wildlife (see below).  Sadly, as in other places in South Africa, the penguin population is declining, almost certainly because of competition from human overfishing.

Below is the entrance to Robben Island, though I’m not at all sure it’s what the entrance looked like in the days of apartheid.  The site “Shadows on the Grass” says this about the entrance, and then goes on to describe how poorly the prisoners were treated:

These are the words written above the entrance gate to Robben Island. A sort of sick irony and blatant lie, symbolic of the methods used by the apartheid regime to try and break the spirit of the political prisoners from 1961 to 1991.

. . . . Originally named Robbeneiland, Dutch for Seal Island, the low lying kilometre wide piece of land is arid with no water sources. From 1836 to 1931, the island was used as a leper colony (Hansen’s Disease) and during the second World War, allied forces used it as a gun fortification.

During apartheid, the regime converted Robben Island into a maximum security prison. Betwee 1961 and 1991, over three thousand men was incarcerated for political crimes, including the former president and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela.

. . . The visitor center, near the front gate was used by prisoners as often as once every six months. Visits must be booked a year in advance, even though they lasted only a half hour in length. Often times, to break the spirits of the captives, guards would tell family members who had travelled from as far away as Namibia, JoBerg, and Natal that their loved ones were ill and could not come see their relatives behind the glass. At the same time they might tell the prisoners that the family had missed the ferry or could not afford the train down to Cape Town. Additionally, all conversation between visitors had to be conducted in Afrikaans or English, the languages of the guards- not their native tongues like Xhosa, isiZulu et… We also stopped at the lime quarry where prisoners like Madiba [Nelson Mandela] worked for 13 years in blinding light without protection or shoes. Many of the former prisoners have undergone eye procedures to correct sun and dust damage.

Our guide (see below) says that because many prisoners could speak neither Afrikaans nor English, and couldn’t speak their native languages under any circumstances when the guards were listening, the yearly half-hour visits were often conducted in silence.

A graveyard (taken from a fast-moving bus) where inhabitants of the island are buried. I’m not sure if any of these are prisoners as opposed to others who worked on the island or sufferers from leprosy (Hansen’s Disease):

Here is the limestone quarry where the prisoners worked—for many hours a day.  There was no need to have them do this, but the hard labor was consider part of their punishment. The harsh sunlight and glare from the rocks, combined with rock dust, hurt the eyes of many prisoners, including Mandela. 

Below: our guide, who was also a political prisoner. I asked him how long he spent on the island and he said “eighteen years”—the same as Mandela. He added that he was in as a political prisoner and also for having a firearm.

In the famous Rivonia Trial of 1964, Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the government through violent acts. Mandela admitted to sabotage but denied the other charges, and gave a famous three-hour speech, called “I am prepared to die” when the defense presented its case. This is the speech’s ending:

During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Mandela was to serve 18 years (1964-1982) on Robben Island and then spent 8 more years in two mainland prisons. He was finally released in 1990.

Besides working in the limestone quarry, the prisoners spent many days sitting the the courtyard outside their cell, breaking rocks. Here’s a photo of a photo hanging on the wall of the prison, showing the rock-breaking. This is the same courtyard where Mandela got the prison to allow a small garden, which, not coincidentally, is where he buried his political writings. See below for a modern view.

In memory of those times, Mandela, revisiting the island, put down a single rock, which was supplemented by single rocks added by other re-visiting prisoners. The picture and caption below show the rock pile from the Wikipedia article on Robben Island:

(from Wikipedia): Rock pile started by Nelson Mandela and added to—one rock at a time—by former prisoners returning to the island. Credit: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Below: the house on the left was that of Robert Sobukwe (1924-1978), another anti-apartheid activist described by Wikipedia:

In March 1960, Sobukwe organized and launched a non-violent protest campaign against pass laws, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison on grounds of incitement. In 1963, the enactment of the “Sobukwe Clause,” allowed an indefinite renewal of his prison sentence, and Sobukwe was subsequently relocated to Robben Island for solitary confinement. At the end of his sixth year at Robben Island, he was released and placed under house arrest until his death in 1978.

But for reasons that are unclear, Sobukwe had privileges that other prisoners didn’t, although, unlike other prisoners, he was kept in solitary confinement.

Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement but enjoyed a unique prisoner-plus status; he was permitted certain privileges including books, magazines, newspapers, civilian clothing, etc. He lived in a separate area on the island and was strictly prohibited from contact with other prisoners, though Sobukwe was able to communicate sporadically through visual signals while outside for exercise.

His house is the big house to the left; I presume the other buildings contain individual cells.

The buildings that held the political prisoners:

Some prisoners were allowed outside exercise and games; here’s a rugby field they constructed. (By the way, congrats to the Springboks for their victory over New Zealand’s All Blacks yesterday.)

This shows the food provided to prisoners, which differed according to their apartheid classification: Asians and “coloureds” (blacks with white genes) got food different from the “Bantus” (native African blacks). “Mealie meal” is corn porridge, presumably like “pap”.  Either way, the prisoners didn’t eat well (where are the vegetables?) and weren’t given much time to eat (just a few minutes in the limestone quarry, we were told):

Prisoners were allowed to receive and to write one letter every six months, but these were read and censored, with any material eliminated that might be considered political. Here’s one censored letter from Durban displayed on the wall of the prison:

The first part of the waking tour of the prison involved showing us two large halls, one full of bunk beds. I’m not sure what these were, as I was was too far behind the guide to hear him, but perhaps they were for non-political prisoners. If you’ve been to Robben or know the answer, please weigh in below.

Mandela was instrumental in getting the prison to allow a small garden to be planted in the courtyard.

The garden area (below) had little greenery (perhaps it was the time of year) and one leafless apple tree. It served more than just a place to see a little greenery, for it was in this garden that Mandela buried some of his political writings, including the manuscript of his best-selling autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, not published until 1994.

When we were in the “garden” area, our guide told us that Mandela’s cell was the fourth window on the right above, and of course I waited until the group had passed so I could see it and photograph it without a crowd.

Here’s where the man spent 18 years. It’s only about 6 m²  (7 x 9 feet).  The light was kept in all the cells night and day. Prisoners, as you can see, slept on the floor on a mat, and had almost no amenities. Here we see a table, a plate, cup, and utensil, and what looks like a slop bucket.

Another view, this time taken with a flash.  Mandela did his writing at night, which I believe extended from 6 pm to 6 am.

Here’s the outside of the prison taken as a panorama. Click the photo to enlarge it.

While exiting the grounds I came upon this turtle. Reader Divy and her husband, who run a veterinary business and have extensive knowledge of reptiles, agreed this is an Angulate tortoise (Chersina angulata), known to be found in Robben Island.

On the way to the exit from the grounds was this room, which was an office without any X-ray machines. I suspect it was part of the facilities when the prison was in operation.

And the exit to the harbor (the other side of the entrance).  I imagined how happy a prisoner was to be walking out this gate to freedom.

Finally, after a choppy trip back to the mainland, we encountered a trio of brown fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus). There are two subspecies with a curiously disjunct distribution, one living at the southern tip of Africa and the other in a strip of southeast Australia.

And, with the sight of a proud seal, we’re back.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is observant:

Hili: A ladybird.*
A: So what about it?
Hili: Nothing, I’m just stating the fact.

Hili: Biedronka.
Ja: I co z tego?
Hili: Nic, stwierdzam fakt.

 

*Hili obviously translates herself into English English – for US readers, a biedronka is a ladybug – MC

Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas, and Marty Makary are also set to speak at Stanford next month

The post Hopkins Business School to Platform COVID-19 Contrarians at Health Policy Symposium first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Throughout Earth’s history, the planet’s surface has been regularly impacted by comets, meteors, and the occasional large asteroid. While these events were often destructive, sometimes to the point of triggering a mass extinction, they may have also played an important role in the emergence of life on Earth. This is especially true of the Hadean Era (ca. 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago) and the Late Heavy Bombardment, when Earth and other planets in the inner Solar System were impacted by a disproportionately high number of asteroids and comets.

These impactors are thought to have been how water was delivered to the inner Solar System and possibly the building blocks of life. But what of the many icy bodies in the outer Solar System, the natural satellites that orbit gas giants and have liquid water oceans in their interiors (i.e., Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and others)? According to a recent study led by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, impact events on these “Ocean Worlds” could have significantly contributed to surface and subsurface chemistry that could have led to the emergence of life.

The team was led by Shannon M. MacKenzie, a planetary scientist, and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). They were joined by researchers from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, the University of Western Ontario, Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) at UPR at Arecibo, Jacobs Technology, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) at NASA Johnson Space Center. The paper that details their findings recently appeared in The Planetary Science Journal.

Voyager 1 image of Valhalla, a multi-ring impact structure 3,800 km (2,360 mi) in diameter.
Credit: NASA/JPL Exogenesis

As indicated in their paper, impacts from asteroids, comets, and large meteors are more often associated with destruction and extinction-level events. However, multiple lines of evidence indicate that these same types of impacts may have supported the emergence of life on Earth roughly 4 billion years ago. These events not only delivered volatiles (such as water, ammonia, and methane) and organic molecules, but modern research indicates that they also created new substrates and compounds essential to life.

Moreover, they created a variety of environments that were essential to the emergence and sustainment of life on Earth. As they wrote:

“Exogenously delivered materials have been estimated to be an important source of organics on early Earth. Shockwaves could provide the energy for organic synthesis of important precursors like HCN or amino acids. The iron and heat from very large impactors can facilitate the reducing atmospheric conditions necessary for abundant HCN production. Impacts fracture and, in typical terrestrial events, melt the target: the more permeable substrates and excavation of deeper rock layers promote hydrothermal activity and endolithic habitats.”

According to the latest fossilized evidence, the earliest life forms emerged on Earth roughly 4.28 billion years ago. These fossils were recovered from hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in northern Quebec, Canada, confirming that hydrothermal activity played a vital role in the emergence of life on Earth. But what about the many “Ocean Worlds” that reside in the outer Solar System? This includes bodies like Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus, and Titan, as well as Uranus’ moons Ariel and Titania, Neptune’s moon Triton, and Trans-Neptunian bodies like Pluto, Charon, and possibly more.

Ocean Worlds

This term refers to bodies predominantly composed of volatile elements such as water and differentiated between an icy crust and a rocky and metallic core. At the core-mantle boundary, tidal flexing (the result of gravitational interaction with another body) causes a buildup of heat and energy released via hydrothermal vents into the ice. This allows these worlds to maintain oceans of liquid water in their interiors. In short, these worlds have all the necessary ingredients for life: water, the requisite chemical compounds, and energy.

Impact velocity and first contact pressure estimates for potential icy and rocky impactors on “Ocean Worlds.” Credit: Mackenzie, S.M. et al. (2024)

Furthermore, data from the NASA/ESA Cassini–Huygens mission confirmed that the plumes regularly erupting from Enceladus’ southern polar region contain organic molecules. Last but not least, the presence of surface craters indicates that these bodies have experienced surface impacts throughout their history. The question naturally arises: could impacts have delivered the necessary building blocks of life to “Ocean Worlds” the same way they delivered them to the inner Solar System? And if so, what does that mean about their potential habitability today? As the team wrote in their paper:

“Impact processes are likely an important part of the answers to these questions, as impacts can drive exchange through the ice crust—either through direct seeding or flushing through the crust—and therefore drive episodic influxes of organic and inorganic materials from the surface and/or from the impactor itself. Impacts can also generate ephemeral microcosms: any liquid water melted during impact freezes out over timescales commensurate with the impact energy.”

“The exciting potential for chemistry within these pockets has been established, from concentrating salts to driving amino acid synthesis. Furthermore, shock-driven chemistry of icy, sometimes organic-rich (in the case of Titan especially) target materials may generate new “seed” compounds (e.g., amino acids or nucleotides) in the melt pool.”

Investigation

The first step for MacKenzie and her team was to investigate the initial shock levels created by the most common impacts for Ocean Worlds—comets that likely originated from the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. To do this, the team calculated the velocities and maximum pressure that would be achieved by impacts involving icy and rocky bodies. They also considered how this would vary based on different families (primary or secondary impacts) and which systems were involved – i.e., Jupiter or Saturn. Whereas primary impacts involve comets or asteroids, secondary impacts are caused by the ejecta they create.

In the case of the Jupiter and Saturn systems, secondary impactors may be icy or rocky depending on where they originated (an icy body like Europa, Enceladus, and Titan, a rocky body like Io and larger asteroids). Whereas primary impacts have higher velocities and produce larger melt volumes), secondary impacts are more frequent. To determine melt sizes, the team consulted observed crater sizes on Europa, Enceladus, and Titan, and dynamic models that calculate the cumulative rate of cratering over time. They then compared the peak pressures at impact to thresholds for the survivability of elements essential to life, organic molecules, amino acids, and even microbes identified in previous studies.

Cumulative cratering rates assuming heliocentric, cometary impactors. Credit: Mackenzie, S.M. et al. (2024)

From this, they determined that most impacts at Europa and Enceladus experience peak pressures greater than what bacterial spores can survive. However, they also determined that a significant amount of material still survives these impacts and that higher first-contact pressures could also facilitate the synthesis of organic compounds in the meltwater that fills the craters. Meanwhile, on average, Titan and Enceladus experienced impacts with lower impact velocities, creating peak pressures that fall within the tolerance range for both bacterial spores and amino acids.

The next step was to consider how long fresh craters would survive and whether this would be sufficient for synthesizing biological materials. Based on the observed crater sizes on Enceladus and Europa, they determined that the longest-lived craters last only a few hundred years, whereas Titan could take centuries to tens of thousands of years for fresh craters to freeze. While Europa and Enceladus experience more high-velocity impacts (due to Titan’s dense atmosphere), the long-lived nature of Titan’s craters means that all three bodies have a chance for organic chemistry experiments to occur.

They also considered resurfacing rates on Europa, Enceladus, and Titan and how these would cycle biological material to their interiors. In all three cases, the satellites have relatively “young” terrain, implying regular resurfacing events.

Results

Based on these considerations, Mackenzie and her team determined that melts produced by comet impacts on Europa, Enceladus, and Titan have been frequent and long-lived enough to be of astrobiological interest. However, this varies based on the composition of the comets and the surface ice in question. As they summarized:

“At Europa and Enceladus, the survival and deposition of impactor organics is more important as there are fewer surface organics within the ice crust to seed the melt pool. On Titan, the survival of elements like phosphorous may be more important. Thus, even the small, more frequent impact events contribute to the astrobiological potential by delivering less modified compounds to the surface that are available either for immediate reaction if melt is produced or for future processing (including in subsequent impact events).”

Total melt production for observed craters on Enceladus (cyan) and Titan (orange), binned by observed crater diameter. Credit: Mackenzie, S.M. et al. (2024)

For instance, they found that a comet impacting Europa at the average impact velocity would create a 15 km (9.3 mi) crater and provide ~1 km3 (0.24 mi3)of meltwater. Based on the abundance of glycine (an essential amino acid) found on the comet 67P Churyumov–Gerasimenko, they determined that several parts per million would survive – roughly three orders of magnitude higher than what has been observed forming around hydrothermal vents here on Earth. “Thus, impactors seed whatever chemistry happens in the melt, providing organic and other essential elements depending on the impactor composition,” they added.

While this does not necessarily mean that these and other “Ocean Worlds” are currently habitable or actively support life, they demonstrate potential for future study. In the coming years, missions like the ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE), and NASA’s Europa Clipper and Dragonfly missions will reach Ganymede, Europa, and Titan (respectively). There are also plans to create an Enceladus Orbiter to pick up where the Cassini-Huygens probe left off by examining Enceladus’ plume activity more closely.

Therefore, conducting in-situ sampling and analysis on these moons could provide powerful insight into prebiotic chemical pathways and determine under what conditions life can emerge. These sample studies will also address the larger question of whether or not life could exist in the interiors of “Ocean Worlds,” providing a preview of what future missions prepared to explore beneath the ice will find.

Further Reading: The Planetary Science Journal

The post Could Comets have Delivered the Building Blocks of Life to “Ocean Worlds” like Europa, Enceladus, and Titan too? appeared first on Universe Today.

When you walk across your lawn or down the street, you move on the surface of a surprisingly layered world. Some of those layers are rock, others are molten. A surprising amount of water is mixed into those layers, as well. It turns out that most planets have more of it “deep down” than we imagined.

Most of a planet’s water isn’t on the surface, even though we see oceans, lakes, and rivers here on Earth. The heart of our planet is iron, and covered by silicate rock layers. Scientists have long used our planet’s makeup as a sort of “model” for rocky exoplanets around other stars. That model may be outdated and too simplistic, according to Professor Caroline Dorn at ETH Zurich. “It is only in recent years that we have begun to realize that planets are more complex than we had thought,” she said. Dorn has been collaborating with Haiyang Luo and Jie Deng from Princeton University to understand the distribution of water mixed with silicates and iron inside a planet. They used computer simulations to come up with a robust model of the distribution of water on exoplanets.

Recent investigations of Earth’s water content triggered the team’s work. It turned out that our oceans contain only a small fraction of the overall water budget. The interior could be hiding the equivalent of 80% of the surface oceans. That raised a big question: could other planets have similarly hidden reservoirs?

Planets and Water

To answer that question, the science team simulated how water behaves in the conditions present when planets are young. Many known exoplanets orbit close to their stars, which means they’re likely to be hot worlds. They probably have oceans of molten magma that haven’t yet solidified to make silicate bedrock mantles.

Artist’s impression of a lava world. The exoplanet K2-141b is so close to its host star that it likely has magma oceans and surface temperatures over 3000 degrees. Water may be mixed in with the magma. c. ESO

As it turns out water dissolves very well in these magma oceans. The iron core takes time to develop,” she said. “A large share of the iron is initially contained in the hot magma soup in the form of droplets,” she explained, noting that water sequestered in this soup combines with the iron droplets and sinks with them to the core. “The iron droplets behave like a lift that is conveyed downwards by the water,” Dorn said.

That kind of mixing of iron and water happened in the moderate pressure environment in Earth’s interior. Larger planets with higher interior pressures presented a challenge to understand. It turns out they mix water and iron, too. “The larger the planet and the greater its mass, the more the water tends to go with the iron droplets and become integrated in the core,” said Dorn. “Under certain circumstances, iron can absorb up to 70 times more water than silicates. However, owing to the enormous pressure at the core, the water no longer takes the form of H2O molecules but is present in hydrogen and oxygen.”

Evolving Planets over Time

This result is a big deal if you want to understand how planets form and develop. That’s because the water never escapes the planet’s core. However, under the right conditions, water mixed in with the magma ocean can “de-gas” under the right conditions. Essentially, it separates and rises to the surface as the magma cools and forms the mantle. “So if we find water in a planet’s atmosphere, there is probably a great deal more in its interior,” explained Dorn.

That gives a lot of new information to use as scientists search for planets around other stars and look for habitable worlds. In particular, astronomers using the JWST can track the types of molecules in exoplanet atmospheres and use that information to find habitable worlds. “Only the composition of the upper atmosphere of exoplanets can be measured directly,” said Dorn. “Our group wishes to make the connection from the atmosphere to the inner depths of celestial bodies.”

TOI-270d appears to be a super-Earth or Earth-type planet, as shown in this artists’ concept. Could it have water hidden in its core that could boost its habitability. Courtesy Martin Vargic CC BY 3.0

Currently, the team studies exoplanet TOI-270d. “Evidence has been collected there of the actual existence of such interactions between the magma ocean in its interior and the atmosphere,” said Dorn. It’s at the top of her list of interesting objects to examine more closely for water, along with another one called K2-18b. It seems to be a promising candidate for habitability as well.

So, Does Deep Water Imply Life or Habitability?

Since water is important in the search for life-bearing worlds, looking for wet Earth-type and super-Earth worlds is the next step in searching out life. Dorn’s team found that planets with these deep water layers are likely to be fairly rare. That’s because most of their water is not on the surface. In other words, they may not be ocean worlds, but places with water trapped in their cores.

That’s not all bad. The science team assumes that even planets with a relatively high water content could have the potential to develop Earth-like habitable conditions. Dorn’s team may give scientists new ways to look for water-abundant worlds.

For More Information

Planets Contain More Water Than Thought
The Interior as the Dominant Water Reservoir in Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes

The post There’s More Water Inside Planets Than We Thought appeared first on Universe Today.

Popular science history paints a picture of the Greek geocentric model dominating astronomical thought beginning around the 3rd century BCE, and being the favored model for ~1,500 years. Then, suddenly (it suggests), astronomical thought was overhauled at the birth of the Renaissance by brilliant astronomers such as Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, all of whom rejected placing the Earth at the center of the cosmos.

But these sources are generally quiet on why this shift occurred. If mentioned at all, sources generally suggest that it was because the Ptolemaic geocentric model was too complicated – overly burdened with epicycle and equants. Heliocentrism, in comparison, was simple – elegant, even.

Yet, Copernicus’ heliocentric model was still rooted in the Greek philosophical principles of uniform circular motion. Thus, it too was forced to adopt many of the complications we’re regularly told were the reason for rejecting Ptolemy’s model – epicycles included.

So, why then, did Copernicus actually turn his back on over 1,500 years of astronomical thought?

The answers are an interesting glimpse into the astronomical paradigm of the 16th century.

To find out Copernicus’ thoughts, we can examine the first book of his masterwork, De Revolutionibus.

The Force Needed to Sustain Geocentrism

The first reason he gives applies to the forces involved:

Surely if [Ptolemy’s reasoning for the geocentric model] were tenable, the magnitude of the heavens would extend infinitely. For the farther the movement is borne upward by the vehement force, the faster will the movement be, on account of the ever-increasing circumference which must be traversed every twenty-four hours.

– Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Book I, Chapter 8

Copernicus’ writing of De Revolutionibus predated Newton’s Principa by over 140 years. The notion that “an object in motion tends to stay in motion” was, therefore, not yet one in the scientific consciousness.

Instead, natural philosophers believed that the natural tendency of objects was that of rest and the only way an object could be kept in motion was through an application of force.

In the Ptolemaic geocentric model, the Earth did not rotate on an axis. Instead, the stars were all affixed to the surface of a sphere at an immense distance which rotated about the Earth every day along with the rest of the cosmos. Copernicus criticizes the absurd amount of force he supposed would be necessary since, “things to which force or violence is applied get broken up and are unable to subsist for a long time.”

In other words, Copernicus believed that the force that should keep Ptolemy’s geocentric model going would necessarily destroy it.

The heliocentric model avoids this by making the motion of the stars and planets around the sky every night not actual motion, but apparent motion caused by the rotation of the Earth about its poles. This would require a far smaller force since the Earth is smaller than the stellar sphere. Indeed, this completely removes the need for the motion of the stellar sphere, and now the planets and Sun can move far more slowly, and thus would have a much reduced force on them.

To be fair, various astronomers had considered the possibility that the cosmos was geocentric, but did allow for the Earth to rotate on its axis. However, the Ptolemaic cosmos with its static Earth was still the predominant model of the day, which is why Copernicus attacks it with little mention of other authors.

But, if you’re willing to accept that the Earth rotates on its axis, why wouldn’t you accept that it has other motions too?

Early Musings on Gravity

I myself think that gravity or heaviness is nothing except a certain natural appetency implanted in the parts by the divine providence of the universal Artisan, in order that they should unite with one another in their oneness and wholeness and come together in the form of a globe. It is believable that this affect is present in the sun, moon, and the other bright planets and that through its efficacy they remain in the spherical figure in which they are visible, though they nevertheless accomplish their circular movements in many different ways.

-Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Book I, Chapter 9

To understand this, we should briefly examine Ptolemy’s thinking on gravity. In the Almagest, Ptolemy opines that there is some point in the universe towards which all things fall unless they are supported. Thus, the Earth, being unsupported by a celestial sphere, must fall towards this point and thus, is the center of the cosmos; ergo, geocentrism.

Copernicus suggests that, perhaps gravity is just an innate force, and it would have the property to make things round. And since the Sun and moon are obviously round, perhaps they too have gravity. This removes the need for the central point to the cosmos that Ptolemy relies on, undercutting Ptolemy’s argument.

Elongation of Inferior vs Superior planets

How unconvincing is Ptolemy’s argument that the sun must occupy the middle position between those planets which have the full range of angular elongation from the sun [i.e., Mercury and Venus] and those which do not [i.e., Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn] is clear from the fact that the moon’s full range of angular elongation proves its falsity.

– Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Book I, Chapter 10

Here, Copernicus is taking aim at the argument that the Sun must be between Venus and Mars due to a division in the angular elongation (the distance from the Sun) inferior and superior planets are able to have. Specifically, Mercury and Venus are never more than 24º and 45º away from the Sun respectively. Meanwhile, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn can be any angular distance from the Sun (although they are always found along the ecliptic).

Ptolemy explains this by matching the mean (or average) speeds of Mercury and Venus to that of the Sun. Therefore, their getting ahead of and falling behind the Sun’s motion is due only to their epicycles. The other three planets had mean speeds unrelated to the Sun, allowing their centers of motion to drift anywhere along the ecliptic relative to the Sun.

The Ptolemaic order of the planets was largely correct; Ptolemy had ordered them according to speed. Ignoring the Sun and moon momentarily, this meant the planets, in increasing distance from the Earth, were ordered Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

The Sun was inserted between Venus and Mars, again based on its speed. But, this conveniently meant that the Sun’s sphere provided a division between planets which were fixed to the Sun (Mercury and Venus), and those that could obtain any elongation (Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). And astronomers of the day used this division as evidence that that positioning of the Sun among the planets must be correct.

But the moon, Copernicus tells us, upends this argument, because the moon is the innermost sphere and it is able to have any elongation, just like the outer planets.

Keep in mind, the nature of the moon, Sun, and planets was still quite uncertain at this time. Quite frequently, the term “planet” can include all of them. Hence why Copernicus considered their nature all together in this point.

Apogee & Perigee are Aligned with the Sun

For, it is manifest that the planets are always nearer the Earth at the time of their evening rising, i.e., when they are opposite to the sun and the Earth is in the middle between them and the sun. But, they are farthest away from the Earth at the time of their evening setting, i.e., when they are occulted in the neighbourhood of the sun, namely when we have the sun between them and the Earth. All that shows clearly enough that their center is more directly related to the sun and is the same as that to which Venus and Mercury refer their revolutions.

– Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Book I, Chapter 10

Copernicus’ next argument has to do with the position of the planets when at their farthest points to Earth versus their closest points. These are known as apogee and perigee, respectively.

What Copernicus is indicating is that planets always seem to have their apogee when they are nearest to the Sun. This is a natural consequence of a heliocentric model (because the planet is on the opposite side of the Sun), but the geocentric model has no special cause for this.

This is easiest to understand if we think about a superior planet, like Mars, in the context of the heliocentric model. If we think of the closest Mars can be to Earth (perigee), it occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Mars are all in a straight line, in that order. When that occurs, Mars would be rising in the evening, being highest in the sky around midnight.

Conversely, the furthest Mars could be from us, is when it is on the opposite side of the Sun. It’s still on a straight line, but this time the order would be Mars, Sun, then Earth. When this occurs, Mars is setting in the evening (although we couldn’t see it because it would be too close to the Sun to be visible).

What Copernicus is pointing out is that this is true for every planet – they’re all tied to the Sun in this manner. Thus, he tells us, the Sun clearly has some special privilege.

Venus’ Massive Epicycle

Moreover, there is the fact that the diameter of the epicycle of Venus – by reason of which Venus has an angular distance of approximately 45º on either side of the sun – would have to be six times greater than the distance from the center of the Earth to its perigee, as will be shown in the proper place. Then what will they say is contained in all this space, which is so great as to take in the Earth, air, ether, moon, and Mercury, and which moreover the vast epicycle of Venus would occupy if it revolved around the immovable Earth?

– Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Book I, Chapter 10

Epicycles are often cited as one of the biggest problems with the Ptolemaic geocentric model. And that is precisely what Copernicus is taking aim at here. That’s not to say that Copernicus was fundamentally against epicycles. Indeed, his own adherence to uniform circular motion forced him to include epicycles in his model. But what Copernicus is criticizing here is the size demanded by the Ptolemaic model for Venus in particular.

As discussed above, the mean motion of Venus is tied to that of the Sun. So it can only deviate from that position based on its epicycle. Thus, to get 45º away from the Sun, it was going to need a massive epicycle. One so large, it would take Venus crashing through the spheres of both Mercury and the Moon. The latter was particularly problematic because of a belief about the nature of matter.

The natural philosophy of the time was still alchemical, with four terrestrial elements (earth, fire, air, and water) and one celestial element (æther, or quintessence). It was held that the celestial element was eternal and unchanging. “Incorruptible,” as they would phrase it, which is why the heavens were so pure and consistent. It was only on Earth that we had the other four classical elements, which were “mutable” or “corruptible”. But where does that division between the incorruptible and corruptible take place? Greek astronomers placed it at the sphere of the moon which was the closest to Earth in the geocentric model.

Conclusion

However, because Venus’ epicycle would be so big, it would cross into this realm. Thus, there becomes a logical contradiction as you’d have the celestial matter diving in and out of the terrestrial realm which was not something that was considered acceptable.

Ultimately, these arguments were only partially convincing to astronomers of the time. We know that Copernicus’ work was widely read. However, it was not quickly adopted.

Even after Kepler revised it, sweeping away the Ptolemaic equants and epicycles and replacing them with ellipses, geocentrism still took quite a bit of time to be fully dislodged. Newton’s theory of gravity gave a compelling theoretical reason to give centrality to the larger object, but it was the discovery of the aberration of starlight and the parallaxes of stars that finally disproved the geocentric model.

The post Why Did Copernicus Reject Geocentrism? appeared first on Universe Today.

It seems that on some posts some readers are violating the posting Roolz with impunity, as if these commenters are for some reason immune to the Roolz I’ve set forth here.   So, once again I politely ask commenters to read and follow the posting rules at the link I just gave. Please read especially Roolz #6-#9 and #23.

I am doing the best I can to run this site during these fraught times, and also when I’m not in Chicago. By all means hash things out, but please keep things civil.  I have to add, though, that I will not alter the mix of topics, stop commenting on the excesses of the “progressive” left until the election is over, or change the slant of this site simply because there’s an election impending.

On another note, if you wish to contact me by email, preferably to send me wildlife photos (but also if I’ve made typos or arrant errors of fact), you can find my email address by clicking on “about the author” at the upper right and then on “contact information” at the bottom of the “about the author” link.

I’ve long urged all colleges and universities, including private ones, to adopt a speech code that adheres as closely as possible to the First Amendment of the Constitution.  The few exceptions, like specifying the “time, place, and manner” of protests, are made simply to avoid demonstrations from disrupting the main business of colleges: teaching and learning.

The University of Chicago and its “Free Expression” policy has now been adopted by 110 American universities, but there are many more who haven’t yet (there are roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in America).

Further, fewer than a dozen schools have adopted the principle of institutional neutrality embodied in Chicago’s “Kalven Report”, which prevents the university and its units from making any political, ideological, or moral statement—with the rare exception that statements are permitted when they bear directly on the teaching, learning, and research mission of the university. A neutrality principle is important because it prevents the university from taking official ideological positions that might chill the speech of those who dissent from such positions.

A similar defense of the neutrality principle, for scholarly associations, by the way, just appeared as an op-ed in the WSJ, written by our former provost Daniel Diermeier, now Chancellor (aka President) of Vanderbilt University. You can read it by clicking below, or find it archived here:

A quote:

The American Association of University Professors sparked a firestorm in higher education last month by reversing its longstanding opposition to academic boycotts. As wrongheaded as that move was—and as poorly received as it was by many, including the group representing America’s leading research universities—the real trouble with the AAUP began in February, when the organization signed on to a petition from organized labor calling for a cease-fire in Israel’s war in Gaza.

It is inappropriate for the AAUP to take a position at all on the war in the Middle East. Here is an important guardian of academic freedom—the essential rights of professors to study, write and say what they like—espousing a particular ideological position, thereby sending the message to its members that there is only one correct way to think about the war.

. . . This is a problem for several reasons. There is the chilling effect on debate, and the potential silencing of dissenting members, that occurs when a professional association declares there is only one right way to think about an issue. There is the risk of eroding the organization’s legitimacy and effectiveness by turning it into one more political player or advocacy group. And there is the undermining of respect for earned and credentialed expertise, the foundation of academia, that results when leaders of an association whose discipline is unrelated to the topic at hand opine on the issue nonetheless. But what concerns me most are the damaging consequences that position-taking by academic associations can have on the careers of individual faculty members.

But I digress, for the topic at hand is Sunstein’s op-ed. I just happen to agree nearly completely with both pieces, which lay the ground work for free speech and academic freedom.

At any rate, Cass Sunstein, a professor of law at Harvard (and formerly at the University of Chicago), has written a NYT op-ed emphasizing that yes, colleges and universities should follow the free speech guidelines of the First Amendment as they have been interpreted by the courts. You can read the article by clicking on the headline below, or you can find it archived her.

I’ll add the Sunstein is of Jewish descent given his statements about speech that may be anti-Semitic.  His introduction:

Last spring, protests at numerous American universities, prompted by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, produced fierce debates over freedom of speech on campus.

Colleges and universities struggled mightily over how to mount an appropriate response. The University of Pennsylvania refused to allow a screening of a movie that was sharply critical of Israel. Brandeis University barred a pro-Palestinian student group in response to inflammatory statements made by its national chapter.

At Columbia, police officers arrested more than 100 students in an effort to empty the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment; classes were later moved online. But at Northwestern, the administration entered into a deal with protesters in which almost all of their tents were removed in return for multiple commitments by the university, including an agreement to provide the “full cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern for the duration of their undergraduate careers.”

There have been intense debates about whether antisemitic speech, as such, should be banned on campus and about the right definition of antisemitic speech. With the new academic year starting alongside a looming presidential election, we can expect protest activity on a host of issues, raising fresh questions about free speech on campus.

To answer those questions, we should turn to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” Those words provide the right foundation for forging a new consensus about the scope and importance of free speech in higher education.

. . . It is true that the First Amendment, as framed, does not apply to private colleges and universities — only to public officials and institutions. If Harvard, Stanford, Baylor, Vanderbilt, Pomona or Colby wants to restrict speech, the First Amendment usually does not stand in the way (though a state might choose to apply First Amendment requirements to colleges and universities, as California has in fact done).

Still, most institutions of higher learning, large or small, would do well to commit themselves to following the First Amendment of their own accord.

As a rallying cry, that consensus should endorse the greatest sentence ever written by a Supreme Court justice. In 1943, Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote, “Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”

Agreed, and remember, as Sunstein emphasizes, the courts have placed limits on free expression: no defamation, no false advertising, no sexual harassment, no speech intended to provoke imminent and lawless violence. The last one, and several others, are relevant to the abrogations of speech likely to occur on campus this year:

If students want to take over a building or to destroy university property, the First Amendment will not help them. The Constitution does not forbid universities from enforcing the law of trespass.

Nor does the First Amendment protect criminal conspiracy. If a group of students or professors conspires to violate the law, it is not protected merely because the conspiracy consists of speech.

More subtly, the First Amendment allows universities to punish speech that is intended to incite, and is likely to invite, “imminent lawless action.” Under this standard, students or professors can be punished for inciting an angry crowd to take over the president’s office.

But they cannot be punished for saying, “The United States is a racist country” or “Capitalism Is Rape” or “Israel is committing genocide” or “Abortion is Murder.”

The First Amendment protects speech that is angry, unpatriotic, insulting, hateful, hurtful, offensive — or even harmful.

Sunstein then quickly lays out a program of what speech should be permitted (and again, he’s talking largely about campuses, for this is where the problem has become most acute, at least for academics).  Colleges should not ban speech because of its viewpoint. Colleges should not restrict speech based on its content—unless that content inhibits the mission of the college (for example, if a professor in an evolution class starts fulminating about politics).  Here’s another sensible exception:

It follows that even if colleges and universities choose to follow the First Amendment, they can impose restrictions that would not be permissible elsewhere. They can direct professors to treat their students respectfully in class. If a teacher of physics says he believes it is hopeless to try to teach physics to women, he can probably be disciplined; it is hard to teach physics if you are on record as saying that your female students are incapable of learning.

Most important, colleges and universities should not (and public ones cannot) forbid “hate speech”, for that’s a slippery term that, unless designed to incite imminent and predictable violence, could encompass any statements that people find offensive, including criticism of affirmative action or religion.  I, for example, should be free to stand in the middle of the University of Chicago campus and shout “gas the Jews!”. (If you’re shouting it to a group of Jews who could enact violence, however, that is banned speech.) Such words are reprehensible, of course, and I’d never say them, but I would defend those who would.  And for sure that’s “hate speech”.

Sunstein shouldn’t have to write such an op-ed, as the value of the First Amendment is obvious, especially on campus, where the clash of ideas, many of them “offensive,” is supposed to take place as the way to sort out good ideas from bad, truth from falsehood. But each generation of students needs to learn this anew, which is why our University, and many others, will be giving entering students a short introduction to the meaning and application of the First Amendment.  As Sustein concludes,

. . . freedom always deserves the benefit of the doubt. The educational mission does not give colleges and universities a green light to punish speech that their alumni, their donors or influential politicians abhor or perceive as harmful. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it, “we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death.”

Colleges and universities exist for one reason above all: to promote learning. They are democracy’s greatest arsenal. They do not need the unanimity of the graveyard. They need the noisy, teeming pluralism of living communities that search for truth.

Katie Herzog is still doing the TGIF columns at the Free Press, which, when Nellie Bowles wrote them, was one of the best reasons to subscribe (Bowles is the Bill Maher of print journalism).  Since Bowles has taken maternity leave, the column has been written by others, including nepo baby Suzy Weiss and, this week, Katie Herzog again.  The replacements have been good, but Nellie is The Queen, and nobody can really replace her. We’re told she’ll be back in two weeks.

Anyway, since I can’t do a proper Hili column when I’m traveling, here at least are three article stolen from Herzog’s latest column, called “TGIF: Foreign Interference.” Click below to read the whole thing:

→ Iranian writer sentenced to prison over dot: Hossein Shanbehzadeh, an Iranian writer and activist, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison by the Tehran Revolutionary Court after he tweeted a period at the Supreme Leader. Officially, NPR reports, “Shanbehzadeh was sentenced to five years for alleged pro-Israel propaganda activity, four years for insulting Islamic sanctities, two years for spreading lies online and an additional year for anti-regime propaganda.” Suspicious. . . this was my exact penalty in college for attending Shabbat services.

Shanbehzadeh’s one-character tweet, which was in response to a photo posted by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of himself with the national volleyball team, received more likes than the Ayatollah’s post. He basically got 12 years for ratioing. Which, if that’s a crime, I guess I’ll be going in for twenty to life any day now.

→ Now, maybe you’re telling yourself: This could never happen in the U.S. Thank Allah and the Founding Fathers for the First Amendment! And you’re probably right: Tweeting a period at President Harris and/or Trump is unlikely to get you thrown in jail, and American citizens enjoy more speech protections than probably any other people on Earth. But don’t let your Bill of Rights throw pillow woo you into complacency. I mean, we’re not some tyrannical shit hole like the UK, where people are being charged for mean tweets, but government censorship does exist here. The last few years has seen huge surges in book banning and protest crackdowns, and just last week, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Meta caved to Biden administration pressure to censor content posted by users on Facebook.

This week, Reason reported on the case of a “citizen journalist” who goes by the name Lagordiloca, or “the fat, crazy lady” (catchy), who was arrested by police in Laredo, Texas, after she broke stories obtained by a confidential source from within that same department. And vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz said in a recently resurfaced interview that misinformation and hate speech aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Now, he’s wrong about that, which you’d think a former high school social studies teacher would know (you actually are allowed to be a prick and a liar in America, thank God), but it’s a troubling statement from someone who could soon occupy the little closet down the hall from the Oval Office where they stow the VP.

→ Arrest-Me-Not: The darling of Sweden, Greta Thunberg, was arrested at Copenhagen University while protesting the school’s connection to Israel, namely that they have an exchange program where Israeli students come to study there. Thunberg sent a dispatch via Instagram from the front lines of her battle against. . . climate? Israel? At this point I can’t tell. She wrote: “Students Against the Occupation and I are at the University of Copenhagen’s administration building. Police have been called, violently entered the building with a ram wearing assault rifles. They are evicting everyone as we speak.” I love the new use of eviction where it’s just when someone tells you to leave the place that you aren’t allowed to be in. I swear I’ve been evicted from many pools in my neighborhood by people who don’t know me, and dozens of Denny’s parking lots after closing. . . it’s honestly a travesty. Meanwhile, a bunch of people were arrested outside of Citibank headquarters in New York while protesting fossil fuels, a throwback to a sweet time when environmental activists organized around the environment.

Whatever happened to Greta? Although I’ve always found her somewhat irritating, I also was on her side in the climate-change controversy. But I guess she’s found herself a new cause, BDS:

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A post shared by Students Against the Occupation (@studerendemodbesaettelsen)

Speaking of violations of freedom of speech by colleges, here’s a letter to the “faculty community” of Mount Holyoke College (a high-class women’s liberal arts school), telling professors that they have to report certain types of speech. Note that these violations, however, are apparently in line with the Biden Administration’s recent rewriting of the Title IX guidelines, so federal money could be withheld from schools who don’t comply. In that sense, it’s the Biden administration itself who is responsible for policing “hate speech” and creating these new—and in my view mostly harmful—regualations (Note that as a private school, Mt. Holyoke needn’t abide by the First Amendment, but, like all nonreligious and nonmilitary schools, it certainly should.)

The new rules are laid out in this email sent to the Mount Holyoke faculty by the College President and another administrator, with the text taken from a tweet by Steve McGuire (bolding is mine):

Dear Faculty Community,

Welcome to the start of another academic year at Mount Holyoke College! As you may have learned in President Danielle R. Holley’s email communication on August 20th, the College has created a new compliance department as of this past summer. To ensure that Mount Holyoke is a safe and inclusive campus for our community as well as compliant with ever-changing regulations, two new positions were created: Assistant Vice President for Compliance and Director of Civil Rights and Community Standards.

Some of you recently heard from the Assistant Vice President for Compliance, Shannon Lynch, regarding your responsibilities as Mandated Reporters at the College. Per our Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Policy, all College employees who are not designated as Confidential must disclose to the Title IX Coordinator when they have information that may reasonably constitute a violation of the Policy.

On August 1, Title IX Regulations expanded to include misgendering, deadnaming, and mispronouning as prohibited acts and thus expanded the set of prohibited activities of concern to mandated reporters. Because faculty have a unique role in creating classrooms as spaces of mutual trust, respect, and concern—a role that lives alongside their responsibilities under Title IX—we would like to provide some guidance regarding faculty observations of misgendering in their classrooms. It is the expectation of the College that faculty report when misgendering occurs in the following ways:

• when the misgendering has created a hostile environment;

• when there is open mocking of our Pronoun Policy or an individual’s choice of pronouns;

• or when a student reports being misgendered, deadnamed, or has been subject to incorrect use of their pronouns.

Shannon will follow up with all parties named in a report, offering resources and support, as well as procedural options if the policies’ definitions and standards have been met.

The scope of Title IX has shifted, but Mount Holyoke’s overarching commitment to education, care, and support of our gender diverse community of students, faculty and staff remains unchanged. Faculty can continue to look to the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as the Teaching and Learning Initiative (TLI) for additional resources and support. We also want to highlight the upcoming TGNC10 programming, which will provide opportunities for education, discussion, and community related to our 10 years as a gender diverse campus. [Although Mt. Holyoke is a women’s school, about a decade ago they decided to allow transgender women to enroll.]

Additional resources related to our Title IX policies can be found here. You may also visit the College Title IX webpage to learn more about our policies and procedures, as well as support and resources available to our campus community.

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding your responsibilities listed above, please contact Shannon Lynch at shannonlynch@mtholyoke.edu for more information.

Thank you and we wish you a successful semester ahead! =

Shannon Lynch
AVP for Compliance

Lisa M. Sullivan
Provost and Dean of Faculty
Mount Holyoke College

You can see how Title IX has changed for the worse under Biden, which, beyond changes highlighted above, also removed protections for students accused of sexual harassment or assault when their cases were being adjudicated by colleges. These protections, like the right to cross-examine witnesses, are inherent in the legal system when sexual harassment or assault is judged in the courts, and were reinstated by Betsy DeVos, but dismantled again by the Biden administration. The protections accused students enjoy when they are judged in college hearings are far weaker than when they’re judged in the courts.

And there’s more, but they’re saving these changes until after the election, presumably because they’ll be unpopular:

Absent is a proposal on transgender participation on specific men and women athletics teams, which is anticipated after the November election.

You can read about that rule at the link to the WaPo article above, which describes a proposal apparently applying to all secondary schools through high school:

[The rule] would outlaw blanket state bans but gives schools a road map for how they can bar transgender girls from competing in certain circumstances, particularly in competitive sports.

But allowing transgender females to compete against biological women isn’t a popular view, and so the administration, in an act of duplicity and mendacity, put it off:

. . . . Nonetheless, issuing such a rule risks injecting the issue into an election year in which President Biden faces a close contest with former president Donald Trump, who has promised to ban trans women from women’s sports if reelected.

“Folks close to Biden have made the political decision to not move on the athletics [regulation] pre-election,” said one person familiar with the administration’s thinking. “It seems to be too much of a hot topic.”

Seriously, how is it okay to adopt a policy that’s unpopular with the public, but not publicize it or put it into force until the three-month period between the election and the inauguration of a new administration?

At any rate, I agree with Mt. Holyoke’s first point above: misgendering should not be allowed to create a hostile climate for a given student by repeatedly harassing that student directly, although criticizing the general notion of going along with someone’s pronoun preference is simply freedom of speech to criticize compelled speech.

Ditto for “open mocking of our pronoun policy”, which again prevents someone from criticizing a policy that is debatable. That mockery, too, is in line with the First Amendment.  Finally, deadnaming or pronoun “misuse” not used to harass a student directly seems to me in line with the First Amendment as well. (Still, if a student hears about it and reports it, that too has become a violation.) I suspect that if this issue gets to the courts, some of the provisions of the new Title IX provisions will be struck down.

Here’s a tweet about this from Nicholas Christakis, who along with his wife Erika had their own speech run-in at Yale University:

A college that prohibits “mocking” a policy (not a person) simply does not have academic freedom nor understand freedom of expression. Who are these administrative apparatchiks overrunning our universities? https://t.co/zV3PrBEc4G

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) September 5, 2024