Science

Jupiter helped create the different rocky bodies in the Solar System. The massive gas giant created a planet-induced pressure bump in the gas in the disk surrounding the young Sun. This pressure bump filtered different types of dust at different times, leading to the formation of planetesimals with different compositions at different times.

There’s a dearth of news, or should I say there’s a dearth of news that I want to write about: the interesting news is relevated to the morning Hili post.  But since it’s June 1, which marks for me the Day to Begin Wearing Hawaiian shirts, I present my garb for today. I have about 50 Hawaiian shirts, acquired when I went through an aloha-shirt phase, but I wear them only in appropriat weather. This one is semi-authentic, as it’s not old but has coconut buttons and a pocket matched with the shirt’s pattern—two features of an authentic Hawaiian shirt. (The real old ones from decades ago are made of rayon, not cotton.  I got it from a now-defunct outfit that had gorgeous Hawaiian shirts: “Paradise on a Hanger” (great name). Sadly, it is not longer in business, but i have enough shirts.

This one has a lovely green-and-orange fish pattern. I wish that mainland Americans would take up this habit, for you see them all over the islands of Hawaii, especially on “aloha Fridays.” It counts as “business casual” garb, too. You can hardly be unhappy when all around you are colorful shirts.

And Matthew sent this short YouTube video about a new puggle (the name for a baby platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus) from ZoosVictoria, which really does seem to be interested in conservation. Note that the incubation for the egg is just ten days, but it’s four months until it emerges from the den. It’s okay to hold females, but remember that males have poison spurs on their hind legs, which can inflict a painful and slow-healing wound.

4.5 billion years ago was an interesting time for the Earth. The atmosphere was thick and what we would now think of as toxic. The Moon, which was freshly formed, looks much more massive than it does today and faintly glows with the residual heat from its own creation. And the floor was literally lava. Everywhere. If there were any children alive at the time, they would have no chance of winning that game. But for a long time, scientists had thought this molten phase of the Earth didn’t last long. But according to a new paper, available in preprint on arXiv by researchers at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, it might have lasted for upwards of half a billion years.

From PCC(E):  After watching the explosion of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket last week, a rocket that is designed to help create the first human colony on the Moon, I thought to myself, “What is all this mishigass? Why do we need a human colony on the Moon? What will it tell us that unmanned exploration using drones or robotic vehicles won’t?” I couldn’t think of any answers, but I beefed about this to my friend (and reader) Jim “Bat” Batterson, who used to work for NASA.  I was surprised that he pretty much agreed with me, and wrote an email to that effect. I asked him if he could turn the email into a short post, and he gladly assented.  So here’s Bat’s take on space missions (indented):

Before Trump’s election and, really, its Project 2025 budgetary guidance, NASA spent roughly equal amounts on “human spaceflight” (also called “human exploration”) and “science”. In the NASA budget, “science” is a category that includes basic/fundamental science —mostly via grants to universities and institutes in the sub-areas of planetary science, like heliophysics, astrophysics, and earth/atmospheric science.  The areas within “science” are prioritized by “decadal” committees of experts who, every ten years, assess the possible knowledge that NASA could help create.  These needs can be very expensive, requiring the engineering of entirely new spacecraft and instrumentation needing long timelines and large teams of unique technical expertise (think space telescopes, planetary landers, comet or asteroid fly-bys). 

Human Exploration, on the other hand, deals with all endeavors in which humans go into space in rockets, capsules, and space stations.  The Mars Rover, for example, counts as “Science” and not “Human Exploration” because humans aren’t involved. 

Until this past year. Human Exploration and Science were each budgeted at about $8 billion yearly with an additional $3 billion in human spaceflight operations such as running the International Space Station.

Last year, the administration’s (i.e., the President’s) budget recommended cutting Science by about 50%(!), and raising Human Exploration by $1 billion. Congress rejected that and kept the budget as it was.  The same attempt to cut the budget was made this year, and Congress again rejected it.

The lunar moon base or colony, as well as the Mars colonization form of mental masturbation, both fit under the exploration and human spaceflight operations budget. Space telescopes, robotic missions to the planets and asteroids, earth-observing satellites and the like are generally counted in the “Science” portion of NASA’s budget.  Even if Congress again restores the full Science budget, the chaos and uncertainty brought on these multi-year efforts can easily erode NASA if talented engineers and scientists seek more stable work to support their families.

I fully agree that there is no “science” in human colonization of the Moon as opposed to using robotic rovers; and the addition of humans to the mix entails not only danger to human lives, but much extra expense.  The significant science that comes out of human exploration of space is limited to understanding the complexities of humans living and working in space. The only justification I see for a lunar base is the same as that given for the “first man in space” competition with Russia in the 1960’s:  the claim of “soft” military/international presence IF another country such as China plants their flag along with a human colony.  Adjusted for inflation, the NASA budget of the early 1960’s was three times that of today’s budgets, reflecting the more serious devotion to putting humans on the Moon in the Sixties.  You can see a good budget summary from planetary society at this link.  

By the way, using Department-of-Defense comparisons, I like to think in terms of how many aircraft0-carrier-equivalents aspects of the NASA budget represent. A new aircraft carrier these days costs around $13 billion +/- out the door.  So the cost of the of NASA Human Exploration program is on the order of a new aircraft carrier each year.

So, dear readers, both Bat and I agree that we’re wasting a lot of dough (our dough) trying to put human colonies on the Moon and on Mars. It is a performative gesture with no real scientific benefits, and only tiny and unforseeable military benefits.  That money could well be used to alleviate human problems right here on Earth.

If you have any questions about this, put them in the comments and Bat will be glad to answer them.

Here from Wikipedia is a “NASA concept art of an envisioned lunar mining facility” and, below that, an “Inflatable module for lunar base”.

NASA/SAIC/Pat Rawlings, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons NASA, Kitmacher, Ciccora artists, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The TRAPPIST-1 system, located about 41 light years from Earth, has been a focal point of much exoplanetary discussion - mainly because it has 7 confirmed planets orbiting a dim M-dwarf star. Two of those planets - TRAPPIST-1e and -1f - are thought to be in the star’s habitable zone. However, the habitable zone of M-dwarfs is so close to the star itself the planets are likely tidally locked to it, meaning they have a permanent day and night side, with a “twilight terminator” in between. Armed with that knowledge, scientists have been attempting to model the climate on these two exoplanets, and a new paper from Jacob Haqq-Misra of Blue Marble Space uses a new type of climate model to accurately do so with much less computational power.

Today we have pictures from the shore of New Jersey taken by Jan Malik.  Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are a few pictures from my walks on Cape May and Sandy Hook, taken this April.

Starting from the Atlantic Ocean (eastern) shore on Cape May, I met this pair of American Oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus). In Cape May, a section of the beach is fenced off to protect nesting sites for them and for Piping plovers. They are feisty birds and every spring there is a competition for nesting sites; the bird on the right is calling at another Oystercatcher:

The pair took off to drive out the intruder:

The place where I found that pair was littered with the remains of Sand fleas (possibly Emerita talpoida). These fossorial crustaceans normally stay buried in the sand, exiting only when the sand is awash with the shallow tide, but Oystercatchers’ bills are well adapted to dig them out. I think the birds ate only the soft and juicy parts of their telsons, leaving the crustaceans mortally wounded and unable to move:

These Sand fleas are small and difficult to catch alive. That’s what their front end and first pair of legs look like. These crabs dig backwards, starting from their telson, and the front pair of legs is used as a sand anchor:

Another arthropod – the Horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), came ashore, atypically for it, on the Atlantic Ocean side of the peninsula. These are treacherous waters for these spiderlike creatures, for they are easily flipped over by ocean waves and become stranded. They are an interesting part of the Delaware Bay ecosystem and I may share more pictures of them later:

On the Delaware Bay shore of Cape May, there were already many Laughing gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla), which mostly move south in winter but return to their breeding grounds in the spring. They are quite similar to the Eurasian Black-headed gull:

Terns also made their appearance. I think this may be a Forster’s tern (Sterna forsteri) because of the lack of black tips on its primaries and its pure white underbelly, but they are difficult to tell apart from Common terns (Sterna hirundo):

The terns landed on old quay pilings and started courting. There’s no way to tell females from males other than by their courting behavior; males can be slightly larger, but the difference is less than 5%, which is hardly discernible to the human eye:

The courting consists of the two mates trying to look “smug”, with wings drooped, necks extended, and bills pointed toward the sky:

Then there’s the courtship dance and ritual feeding. Here is a fragment of it, taken from a large distance, so I’ve compensated for the lack of pixels by cobbling together this composite. The male presents a fry to the female and then, if she accepts (which is not a given), circles around the female while stomping his feet:

On my way home, I stopped at Sandy Hook, a sand spit where shore gun batteries protecting New York Harbor were once located. It is now a prime nesting site for Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus):

The former Army garrison required many houses for the officers, and these are now excellent nesting sites for Ospreys. Standing in the center of Officers Row (as the area is called), I counted four nests on top of chimneys:

The meadow below the houses was full of American robins (Turdus migratorius) fattening up for the nesting season by preying on earthworms. I know little about annelids, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is the common earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris), since it is a favorite prey for robins:

Finally, moving to the class Mammalia, here are Sandy Hook’s harbor seals (Phoca vitulina), congregating on rocks exposed by low tide (the tide was rising so, one by one, the seals were forced to slip back into the water). There are eight seals in this picture, but I counted 15 in total. Their population around the New York inlet has increased in recent years, which may soon put them on a collision course with the fishing industry:

Almost 50 more genes have been flagged as being linked to Alzheimer’s, along with changes in activity in crucial cells that disappear as dementia progresses

NASA’s futuristic X-59 jet is about to face its biggest challenge yet: breaking the sound barrier for the first time. After a successful series of test flights that pushed the aircraft to near-supersonic speeds, engineers are preparing to fly it faster than Mach 1 and eventually up to Mach 1.6 at 60,000 feet. The sleek experimental aircraft is designed to replace the thunderous sonic boom with a much quieter “thump,” a breakthrough that could help bring supersonic passenger travel back over populated areas.

A stunning spiral galaxy called Messier 88 is racing through the crowded Virgo Cluster on a journey that will dramatically reshape its future. At its heart lies a supermassive black hole about 100 million times the mass of the Sun, while its graceful spiral arms sparkle with young star clusters and dark clouds of dust. But as M88 plunges deeper into the cluster over the next few hundred million years, powerful forces will strip away much of the gas it needs to create new stars.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope could revolutionize the search for alien worlds by discovering around 100,000 exoplanets—far more than all previous missions combined. It will look deep into unexplored parts of the Milky Way, helping scientists compare planetary systems across very different galactic environments. The mission will also uncover rare Earth-sized planets, study thousands of exotic alien atmospheres, and provide a treasure trove of data that could reshape our understanding of how planets form.

A long-overlooked organ may hold surprising clues to healthy aging and cancer survival. Researchers at Mass General Brigham used AI to analyze CT scans from tens of thousands of adults and found that people with healthier thymuses—a small immune-system organ once thought to become largely irrelevant after childhood—lived longer and had substantially lower risks of heart disease, cancer, and death.

Two companies are aiming to preserve Arctic ice by pumping water onto the sheet and letting it freeze, but only one of the trials found that this delayed melting in the summer

A remarkable crystal called molybdenum oxychloride could help make futuristic technologies like smart contact lenses and ultrathin AR glasses a reality. Scientists have created the first detailed experimental map of its optical properties, revealing the strongest light-bending effect ever measured in a natural material. The crystal can act either like a reflective metal or transparent glass, allowing it to manipulate light with extraordinary efficiency while being thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

A remarkable crystal called molybdenum oxychloride could help make futuristic technologies like smart contact lenses and ultrathin AR glasses a reality. Scientists have created the first detailed experimental map of its optical properties, revealing the strongest light-bending effect ever measured in a natural material. The crystal can act either like a reflective metal or transparent glass, allowing it to manipulate light with extraordinary efficiency while being thousands of times thinner than a human hair.

From the beginning, Trump science policy has been Lysenko 2.0, in which ideology, not scientific promise and rigor, dictates federal grantmaking. OMB Director Russell Vought's proposed rules de-emphasizing peer review and placing political appointees in charge of final grantmaking decisions do Lysenko proud.

The post The Lysenko-ization of federal science takes a big step forward first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

It’s 2234, you’re on your annual class field trip touring exoplanets, and your teacher informs everyone they can pick one more exoplanetary system to explore before heading back to Earth. You and your classmates are exhausted from the day’s activities and you’re hungry. However, you get really excited because you already know what everyone will want. You and your classmates all shout in unison, “The young and far away puffy ones!”

It’s June 2027, and you’re fresh off defending your PhD studying the direct imaging of exoplanets while starting your postdoctoral journey at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The trauma of eating ramen and living off a sub-living wage for the last five years of your life is still fresh in your brain. But you’re excited to finally get your real career started with funding you received for viewing time on the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman for short). You begin to download the first set of data as your eyes tear up knowing your entire journey in research and academia is about to be worth it.

It’s 2165, and methane is in high demand, especially after the Titan Treaty of 2145 made it illegal to harvest methane from Saturn’s moon, Titan. But the advent of interstellar travel has made exoplanetary exploration far easier, enabling corporations to identify and harvest methane from exoplanets. However, it’s far cheaper and easier to harvest methane from exoplanets with reasonable (also called temperate) temperatures, because it means higher quantities of methane. The Exoplanet Exploration Corporation decides to send its first ship to one such exoplanet loaded with methane that could bring their quarterly financial statements back into the green.

Before any spacecraft can survive the Moon, it has to survive something almost as brutal, a giant metal chamber in Houston that strips away every molecule of air and swings temperatures from scorching to freezing in minutes. Blue Origin's lunar lander just spent time in exactly that chamber and it came out the other side ready for the real thing.

We are closer than ever to detecting signs of life on another world. The James Webb Space Telescope is already ‘sniffing’ alien atmospheres, and the Habitable Worlds Observatory is being built specifically to find biology beyond Earth. But a new paper raises an uncomfortable question; when we do find that first biosignature, will it actually tell us anything meaningful about life in the universe? The answer, it turns out, might be no.