Science

Locomotion makes things move, and certain forms of locomotion make them move better than others. Those more effective types of locomotion change depending on the environment, which is even more true for space exploration. Methods that might work well on Earth or even other planets, such as helicopters, might be utterly useless on others. But, specialized forms of locomotion abound, and the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC) phase I grants for this year include a closer look at one such specialized form – jumping.

The Legged Exploration Across the Plume (LEAP) program would utilize a specially designed jumping robot to explore the lower parts of the massive plumes emitted from Enceladus. The concept is based on the Salto jumping robot, initially developed by a team at UC Berkeley. Justin Yim, now a professor at the University of Illinois and the NIAC Phase I grantee, worked on it as part of his PhD thesis.

In an interview with Fraser, Dr. Yim details what makes Salto unique. For its size, which measures only about 50 centimeters, and weight, which is planned for less than .5 kg, Dr. Yim believes the robot could jump upwards of 100m horizontally on the surface of Enceladus.

Operations of the LEAP robot – launching off from and returning to the Orbilander.
Credit – Justin Yim / NASA

That is a significant advantage over other forms of locomotion on the icy moon. Enceladus has no atmosphere, so flying would have to be powered by a rocket, which will use up fuel, rather than by rotors, like Ingenuity was able to do on Mars. However, the surface is also icy and uneven, making having a rover trundle impractical.

Jumping, however, offers the best of both worlds. It requires relatively little power and, as such, could be done multiple times without depleting a robot’s battery. But it is also terrain agnostic, soaring above the most challenging parts. It would also allow the robot to jump directly through the lower part of the plumes that Enceladus ejects into the Saturnian system, the remnants of which form one of Saturn’s spectacular rings.

No other form of locomotion would be able to get that close to the source of the plumes, and since those plumes are some of the most interesting parts of Enceladus, studying them up close is appealing for many reasons. One mission in particular, the Enceladus Orbilander, which was a proposed flagship mission that the 2023 Decadal Survey supported, would be able to capture the upper parts of a geyser as it flew through one on its orbital path but would be unable to collect any data on its lower parts. At least as initially envisioned, its lander wouldn’t be capable of moving through a geyser.

CNET video describing Salto, the inspiration for LEAP.
Credit – CNET YouTube Channel

LEAP could potentially hitch a ride with the system, though. Utilizing the lander as a launch platform would save significant design effort of the robot itself. It could even use the Orbilander as a recharging station, allowing it to explore even further afield. 

There are some challenges, though – the original design of Salto only had one reaction wheel, which allowed its engineers to control the robot pitch, allowing it to perform the feet of aligning for multiple jumps off walls, kind of like characters do in video games. However, to truly control itself, LEAP would need two other reaction wheels to control yaw and rolls, giving engineers direct control over all three axes of the robot’s orientation. Dr. Yim added that, as part of the Phase I study, the researchers planned to assess using those reaction wheels to control motion in these three dimensions to assist in righting the robot if it falls over. Inevitably, given Enceladus’s rough and icy slick surface, it will undeniably eventually fall over.

As Dr. Yim discusses with Fraser, there is always a trade-off between size, weight, and capability for robots. Even larger versions of LEAP wouldn’t necessarily be able to travel as far or as efficiently as a smaller one does – though they might be able to carry more payload. One of the limitations of a small jumping robot is the mass limits placed on its ability to jump. Therefore, Dr. Yim expects simple instrumentation, like a flow meter and a camera, to be the extent of what LEAP will be able to carry into the plume, rather than fancier instrumentation like a mass spectrometer that might provide more insight but would be too bulky for jumping.

Dr Yim discusses some of the technical background of Salto.
Credit – BiomimeticMillisys YouTube Channel

Like all NIAC Phase I projects, this one is still very early in development. The outcome of this round is expected to be a case study that shows the parameters that must be considered in any future design or prototyping. Whether or not it ends up on Enceladus, the jumping concept behind LEAP appears to be an important locomotion style for many future robots, so expect to see more jumping around near you sometime soon.

Learn More:
NASA / Justin Yim – LEAP – Legged Exploration Across the Plume
UT – A Hopping Robot Could Explore Europa Using Locally Harvested Water
UT – A Robot Hopper to Explore the Moon’s Dangerous Terrain
UT – Miniaturized Jumping Robots Could Study An Asteroid’s Gravity

Lead Image:
Artist’s depiction of the LEAP robot jumping over a geyser on Enceladus.
Credit – NASA / Justin Yim

The post A Jumping Robot Could Leap Over Enceladus’ Geysers appeared first on Universe Today.

The JWST was never intended to find asteroids. It was built to probe some of our deepest, most demanding questions about the cosmos: how the first stars formed, how galaxies have evolved, how planets like ours take shape, and even how life originated. However, it’s first and foremost a powerful infrared telescope and its unrivalled infrared prowess is helping it contribute to another important goal: defending Earth from dangerous asteroids.

Humanity doesn’t want to share the dinosaurs’ fate. About 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub impact wiped them out. An asteroid 10 to 15 km (6 to 9 mi) wide struck Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula, ending the dinosaurs’ 165-million-year reign. Only avian dinosaurs survived.

With that haunting backdrop, there’s a growing effort to identify dangerous space rocks that could strike Earth. In 2005, the US Congress directed NASA to “establish a Near-Earth Object Survey Program to detect, track, catalogue, and characterize certain near-Earth asteroids and comets.” That effort has paid dividends, especially when it comes to large asteroids that pose an existential threat.

Finding the largest main-belt asteroids hasn’t been difficult. They practically announce their presence to our powerful telescopes. Large asteroids around 100 kilometres in diameter or greater are potentially devastating, but they tend to follow stable orbits in the main belt.

However, decameter-size impactors are more elusive. These are asteroids tens of meters in diameter, and their smaller masses mean they can more easily become part of the Near-Earth Object (NEO) population due to interactions in the main belt. While these aren’t civilization-ending size rocks, they can reach Earth more frequently and cause megaton-size explosions. They’re behind the Tunguska Event in 1908 and the Chelyabinsk explosion in 2013.

The JWST is helping scientists understand this population of space rocks, and new research illustrates how. It’s titled “JWST sighting of decametre main-belt asteroids and view on meteorite sources.” It’s published in Nature, and the co-lead authors are Julien de Wit and Artem Burdanov, both from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

“Asteroid discoveries are essential for planetary-defence efforts aiming to prevent impacts with Earth, including the more frequent megaton explosions from decametre impactors,” the authors write. “Although large asteroids (~100 kilometres) have remained in the main belt since their formation, small asteroids are commonly transported to the near-Earth object (NEO) population.” NEOs are objects whose closest approach to the Sun is less than 1.3 AU. This boundary includes objects that can come close enough to cross Earth’s orbit or can be potentially influenced by Earth’s gravity.

This diagram shows the orbits of 2,200 potentially hazardous objects as calculated by JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). Highlighted is the orbit of the double asteroid Didymos, the target of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) mission, launched in 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Most asteroids are detected with ground-based optical telescopes that sense the sunlight they reflect, which is their albedo. Relying on asteroids’ albedo measurements, though, is fraught with errors. For example, small objects with a high albedo can appear larger than large objects with a small albedo.

Asteroids also give off thermal emissions or infrared energy, and that’s where the JWST comes in. “With an exquisite sensitivity in that wavelength range and a large aperture, JWST is ideal for detecting the thermal emission of asteroids and revealing the smallest main-belt asteroids (MBAs),” the authors write in their paper.

According to the researchers, the JWST’s infrared measurements can constrain an object’s size to within 10% to 20%, while albedo measurements alone can be off by a factor of 3-4x. That’s a huge discrepancy that could lead to a risky misunderstanding of the main asteroid belt’s population.

Burdanov, de Wit, and their co-researchers developed a new way to detect decametre-size impactors with the JWST by using GPUs, Graphics Processing Units, and what the researchers call “synthetic tracking techniques.” These were initially developed to hunt for exoplanets, but the method is bearing fruit in the effort to catalogue asteroids. The researchers’ synthetic tracking method is designed to detect asteroids in data gathered from exoplanet observations. The JWST observed the TRAPPIST-1 star for more than 90 hours in 2022-23, and these results are based on that data.

“After applying our GPU-based framework for detecting asteroids in targeted exoplanet surveys, we were able to detect 8 known and 139 unknown asteroids,” the authors write. “The 139 new detections could not be attributed to any known asteroids.”

They range from the size of a bus to several stadiums wide. They’re the smallest objects ever detected in the main asteroid belt.

This figure from the new research shows the diameter, flux, and distance from the Sun for the new asteroids. “The dash-dot, solid, and dotted lines represent the size-flux relationships for objects at 2.00, 2.50, and 3.25 au, respectively,” the authors explain. Image Credit: Burdanov et al. 2025.

“We have been able to detect near-Earth objects down to 10 meters in size when they are really close to Earth,” said author Artem Burdanov in a press release. “We now have a way of spotting these small asteroids when they are much farther away, so we can do more precise orbital tracking, which is key for planetary defence.”

“For most astronomers, asteroids are sort of seen as the vermin of the sky, in the sense that they just cross your field of view and affect your data,” study co-author Julien de Wit said.

via GIPHY

de Wit explained the background of this research to Universe Today. Their interest in using the JWST in this way preceded the telescope’s launch.

De Wit and his co-researchers helped discover the TRAPPIST-1 system in 2016. In exoplanet science, objects like asteroids are considered noise that interferes with attempts to detect exoplanets. These asteroids are basically tossed aside in those efforts. In more recent years, astronomers pointed the JWST at the TRAPPIST-1 system and used its infrared capabilities to measure the temperature of the innermost planet and observe stellar flares. Those observations created what de Wit calls “bonus science.”

“Our main line of work relates to detecting and studying exoplanets like the TRAPPIST-1’s seven terrestrial gems,” de Wit explained. “But over the years, we’ve also been wanting to do more with all the astronomical data gathered by exoplanet surveys, and we started mining these fields of view for “bonus science.” One of them relates to detecting objects crossing the field of view, like asteroids. We perfected our methodology ahead of JWST, knowing that synthetic tracking combined with JWST’s unparalleled capabilities in the infrared (part of the wavelength range where these asteroids are the brightest) would change the game.”

These results are just a beginning. Every time the JWST is trained on something, it creates data. All of that data can be combed through to detect more asteroids and to try to understand what family they belong to. Decameter-size asteroids are likely the result of collisional cascades, and researchers would like to understand some of those relationships.

“There is a LOT more archival data to be used as done here. We are now gearing up to mine all of it,” de Wit explained, though it depends on funding. “This would allow us to study the 3D structure of the main belt and relate different sub-populations of these decameter asteroids to specific families of asteroids (and meteorites)!”

We’re expecting thousands of these asteroids in the existing MIR data!” said de Wit.

The discovery of the potentially dangerous asteroid 2024YR4 has focused peoples’ attention on the asteroid threat. It’s a NEO with a small chance of impacting Earth in 2032, though scientists caution against any panic. It’ll pass close to Earth again in 2028 and will be subjected to more precise observations and a reassessment of its risk.

Observing time with the JWST is a hot commodity. We asked the researchers if they’ll have an opportunity to use the space telescope to purposefully detect more asteroids.

“We did put forth a “catch me if you can” proposal with the intent of demonstrating JWST’s capabilities to detect decameter MBAs and then follow up on them to constrain their orbits as a “performance test” for planetary defence efforts,” de Wit said. He explained that “possible impactors often have their aphelion up in the main belt and constraining their orbit well can use observations all the way out there.” Their proposal is waiting for approval.

The 139 new asteroids detected in the main belt are bonus science. The team’s observation method had limitations and wasn’t dedicated to finding the smallest asteroid. However, there’s a lot more JWST data waiting to be mined, and with a more dedicated effort, de Wit and his co-researchers could detect many more.

“An observational setup that would allow for JWST to “drift” along the expected motion of smaller asteroids in the main belt while performing longer exposures would allow for asteroids below 10 meters to be detected,” de Wit told Universe Today.

“With an observational set up dedicated to detecting the smallest main-belt asteroids, we could go much smaller,” de Wit concluded.

Press Release: MIT astronomers find the smallest asteroids ever detected in the main belt

Research: JWST sighting of decametre main-belt asteroids and view on meteorite sources

The post JWST Finds the Smallest Asteroids Ever Seen in the Main Belt appeared first on Universe Today.

A new study sheds light on how the extreme miniaturization of thin films affects the behavior of relaxor ferroelectrics -- materials with noteworthy energy-conversion properties used in sensors, actuators and nanoelectronics.

The future of manufacturing is not just about machines and AI; it's about re-empowering humans, according to a new study.

The future of manufacturing is not just about machines and AI; it's about re-empowering humans, according to a new study.

Qubits -- the fundamental units of quantum information -- drive entire tech sectors. Among them, superconducting qubits could be instrumental in building a large-scale quantum computer, but they rely on electrical signals and are difficult to scale. In a breakthrough, a team of physicists has achieved a fully optical readout of superconducting qubits, pushing the technology beyond its current limitations.

Qubits -- the fundamental units of quantum information -- drive entire tech sectors. Among them, superconducting qubits could be instrumental in building a large-scale quantum computer, but they rely on electrical signals and are difficult to scale. In a breakthrough, a team of physicists has achieved a fully optical readout of superconducting qubits, pushing the technology beyond its current limitations.

Triple click chemistry has revolutionized chemical synthesis with its simplicity and efficiency, allowing for the quick and selective assembly of complex molecules. Now, in a recent study, researchers developed novel trivalent platforms capable of producing highly functional triazoles in straightforward one-pot reactions. These platforms have significant potential in drug development, materials science, and bioengineering, promising advancements in sustainable chemistry and biomedical innovations.

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that will help predict endangered whale habitat, guiding ships along the Atlantic coast to avoid them. The tool is designed to prevent deadly accidents and inform conservation strategies and responsible ocean development.

Rhobo6, a light microscopy probe, gives scientists an unprecedented look at the extracellular matrix -- the collection of organized molecular structures that fills the spaces between cells in our bodies.

A major challenge in self-powered wearable sensors for health care monitoring is distinguishing different signals when they occur at the same time. Researchers addressed this issue by uncovering a new property of a sensor material, enabling the team to develop a new type of flexible sensor that can accurately measure both temperature and physical strain simultaneously but separately to more precisely pinpoint various signals.

Researchers have discovered that superconducting nanowire photon detectors can also be used as highly accurate particle detectors, and they have found the optimal nanowire size for high detection efficiency.

The appearance of the Interstellar Objects (ISOs) Oumuamua and Comet Borisov in 2017 and 2019, respectively, created a surge of interest. What were they? Where did they come from? Unfortunately, they didn’t stick around and wouldn’t cooperate with our efforts to study them in detail. Regardless, they showed us something: Milky Way objects are moving around the galaxy.

We don’t know where either ISO came from, but there must be more—far more. How many other objects from our stellar neighbours could be visiting our Solar System?

The Alpha Centauri (AC) star system is our nearest stellar neighbour and consists of three stars: Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, which are in a binary relationship, and Proxima Centauri, a dim red dwarf. The entire AC system is moving toward us, and it presents an excellent opportunity to study how material might move between Solar Systems.

New research to be published in the Planetary Science Journal examines how much material from AC could reach our Solar System and how much might already be here. It’s titled “A Case Study of Interstellar Material Delivery: Alpha Centauri.” The authors are Cole Greg and Paul Wiegert from the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

“Interstellar material has been discovered in our Solar System, yet its origins and details of its transport are unknown,” the authors write. “Here we present Alpha Centauri as a case study of the delivery of interstellar material to our Solar System.” AC likely hosts planets and is moving toward us at a speed of 22 km s?1, or about 79,000 km per hour. In about 28,000 years it will reach its closest point and be about 200,000 astronomical units (AU) of the Sun. According to Greg and Wiegert, material ejected from AC can and will reach us, and some is already here.

AC is considered a mature star system about five billion years old that hosts planets. Mature systems are expected to eject less material, but since AC has three stars and multiple planets, it likely ejects a considerable amount of material. “Though mature star systems likely eject less material than those in their
planet-forming years, the presence of multiple stars and planets increases the likelihood of gravitational scattering of members from any remnant planetesimal reservoirs, much as asteroids or comets are currently being ejected from our Solar System,” the authors write.

We know that macro objects like Borisov and Oumuamua have reached our Solar System, and we also know that interstellar dust has reached our system. The Cassini probe detected some, and researchers reported on it in 2003. Existing models for material ejection from star systems are partly based on what we know about our Solar System and how it ejects material, and Greg and Wiegert based their work on those models.

Artist’s impression of `Oumuamua. While large ISOs like this grab our attention, dust particles from other star systems are also interstellar objects. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

The research shows that there are potentially large quantities of material from AC. The authors write that “the current number of Alpha Centauri particles larger than 100 m in diameter within our Oort Cloud to be 106,” or 1 million. However, these objects are extremely difficult to detect. Most of them are likely in the Oort Cloud, a long distance from the Sun. The pair of researchers explain that “the observable fraction of such objects remains low” and that there is only a one-in-a-million chance that one is within 10 AU of the Sun.

This animation brings some of the research results to life. “Alpha Centauri’s orbit about the Galactic Centre viewed on the xy and yz planes (top row), as well as the orbits of the ejecta from Alpha Centauri viewed in a comoving frame (bottom row). Our Sun (Sol) is marked by a black hexagon, and its orbital path is indicated by a grey solid line (top row only). Alpha Centauri’s location and path are shown by a yellow star and a solid blue line (top row only). In the bottom row, the comoving frame follows Alpha Centauri around its orbit while maintaining its orientation with the y-axis pointing towards the Galactic Centre (blue arrow) and Alpha Centauri’s velocity pointing in the -x direction (black arrow). This still frame is taken at t?3,000 yr (that is, +3,000 years from the current epoch) after ~100 Myr of integration. The colours of the ejecta represent the 3rd dimension of position, except that any particle that will at any point come within 100,000 au of Sol is plotted in red. This shows the time evolution from t? -100 Myr to t? 10 Myr,” the authors write.

The researchers ran simulations to determine how much material can reach us from AC. The simulations ran for 110 million years from t= -100 myr to t= 10 myr. During that span, AC ejected 1,090,000 particles. They were ejected in random directions at different speeds, and only a tiny amount came anywhere near the Sun. “Only a small fraction of the AC ejecta come within the CA (close approach) distance of the Sun. In total, 350 particles had a CA with the Solar System, ~0.03% of the total ejecta,” the authors explain.

This figure from the study focuses on the 360 particles that make close approaches. “The heliocentric equatorial radiant for the 350 close approaches at the time of their closest Solar approach (“Arrival Time”), with the current heliocentric equatorial coordinates of Alpha Cen plotted as a black star and the “effective radiant” corresponding to Alpha Cen’s apparent velocity is plotted as a red star. The purple-shaded region is the combined projection of the effective cross-section of the Solar System (solid angle size as seen from Alpha Cen) from the start of the simulation up to the current time.”

The research shows that there are plausible pathways for particles from AC to reach our Solar System. How large can they be?

According to the authors, small particles that would appear as meteors in Earth’s atmosphere are not likely to reach us. They’re subjected to too many forces on their way, including magnetic fields, drag from the interstellar medium, and destruction through sputtering or collisions. “Small particles travelling through the interstellar medium (ISM) are subject to a number of effects not modelled here,” they explain.

They computed the minimum size of particles that could make the journey. “We extracted the relevant parameters for each of the 350 CAs from our simulation and computed the minimum size needed for a grain travelling along that trajectory to survive all three effects,” the authors write. They found that a particle with a median of 3.30 micrometres can survive the journey.

“At this size and speed, the particle can travel 125 pc in the ISM before grain destruction becomes relevant, 4200 pc for ISM drag, and only 1.5 pc for magnetic forces, and thus our typical particles are effectively magnetically limited,” the researchers explain. “In fact, all of our particles are limited by magnetic forces.” The authors also point out that these tiny grain sizes are undetectable by meteor radar instruments like the Zephyr Meteor Radar Network.

These results are hampered by our poor understanding of our Solar System’s material ejection rate, on which the research is partly based. “Unfortunately, the rate of ejection of material from Alpha Cen is poorly constrained,” write Greg and Wiegert.

However, with that in mind, the research shows that some material can reach us and is already here. Most of it travelled for less than 10 Myr to reach us, but it has to be larger than about 10 microns to survive the journey. It also estimates that about 10 particles from Alpha Centauri become detectable meteors in Earth’s atmosphere currently, with that number increasing by a factor of ten in the next 28,000 years.

This research presents a concrete example of how our Solar System is anything but isolated. If material from star systems can move freely to and from one another, it opens up another window into the planet formation process. If AC does host exoplanets, some of the material reaching us could be from the same reservoir of material that those planets formed from. It could be possible to learn something about those planets directly without having to overcome the vast distance between us and Alpha Centauri.

“A thorough understanding of the mechanisms by which material could be transferred from Alpha Centauri to the Solar System not only deepens our knowledge of interstellar transport but also opens new pathways for exploring the interconnectedness of stellar systems and the potential for material exchange across the Galaxy,” the authors conclude.

Research: A Case Study of Interstellar Material Delivery: Alpha Centauri

The post Material from Alpha Centauri is Already Here appeared first on Universe Today.

In a groundbreaking discovery, a NASA CubeSat has detected new radiation belts around Earth following a powerful solar storm in May 2024. This discovery reshapes our understanding of how solar activity interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, creating new zones of trapped particles. CubeSat, which was designed to study space weather, has captured data that could have major benefits for satellite operations, astronaut safety, and future space missions. As solar activity intensifies in the coming years, this discovery highlights the need for continued monitoring of the interactions between the Earth and Sun.

The radiation belts around Earth, known as the Van Allen Belts, are doughnut-shaped regions of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. The belts that were discovered in 1958 by the Explorer 1 mission consist mostly of high-energy electrons and protons originating from the Sun. The inner belt, located about 600 to 6,000 kilometres above Earth, contains highly energetic protons, while the outer belt, extending from 13,500 to 60,000 kilometres is mostly made up of electrons. These radiation zones pose risks to satellites, astronauts, and space missions, requiring shielding and careful navigation. 

The Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth. Image: NASA

Something largely unexpected happened back in May 2024 when a large solar storm hit Earth. In the days that followed, high energy particles from the Sun bathed the Earth sparking auroral displays and disrupting GPS communications. A NASA satellite has since discovered this storm created two new but temporary radiation belts that circle the Earth. The two belts sit between the other two existing belts and form concentric rings above the equator. 

Ohio’s Aurora 05-10-2024, captured in front of John Chumack’s observatory domes at JBSPO in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Credit: John Chumack, used by permission. Canon 6DDSLR 16mm F2.8 lens, ISO 1250, 10 second Exp.

The discovery was made by the Colorado Inner Radiation Belt Experiment Satellite (bit of a mouthful so it’s shortened to CIRBE) on 6 February this year. The announcement was made in the Journal of Geophysical Research : Space and Physics. The CubeSat had been in space for about a year before it experienced what NASA reported as an anomaly and the satellite went quiet on 15 April. The satellite was out of action during the storm in May last year but it unexpectedly leapt back to life on 15 June. It then resumed taking measurements and it was this that led to the discovery of the new belts. Understanding them is of crucial importance since satellites heading into geostationary orbits have to travel through the radiation belts. 

The CIRBE CubeSat in the laboratory before launch. CIRBE was designed and built by LASP at the University of Colorado Boulder. Xinlin Li/LASP/CU Boulder

It’s not unusual for temporary belts to be identified following large solar storms but these new belts seem to last much longer. Previously the temporary belts were sustained for around four weeks but the new belts seem to have lasted for more than three months.  They are composed mostly of electrons like the outer belt but with the new innermost belt hosting a substantial quantity of protons too. 

Quite how long the new belts will last will depend on solar storms that follow and how strong they are. Larger storms tend to have more energy and are more likely to destroy the particles in the belts, knocking them out of their orbit. A solar storm in June reduced the size of one of the new belts and another storm in August of last year almost completely destroyed it. 

Source : NASA CubeSat Finds New Radiation Belts After May 2024 Solar Storm

The post NASA CubeSat Discovers New Radiation Belts After Intense Solar Storm appeared first on Universe Today.

Here we have two notables on opposite sides of the religion-versus-faith issue, or at least clashing about how to deal with the oft-claimed incompatibility between science and religion. In one corner is Sam Harris, who, as you know, is a hard-core critic of faith, and not shy about saying that. His book The End of Faith could be counted as the beginning of New Atheism. In the other corner is Brian Greene, who doesn’t like to criticize religion because, he says, confrontation turns people off (he refused to autograph my Faith vs. Fact book that I was auctioning off for charity).  And Greene doesn’t mind taking Templeton money to fund his World Science Festival.

This 9-minute discussion, from 2018, is part of a 2+-hour discussion you can find here.

Greene argues there’s a big reason to avoid being as hard-core as Harris. He claims that being vociferous (apparently like Harris or Dawkins) undercuts the stated goal of atheists to spread rationality. For Greene sees New Atheists as elitists who tell people that they are “stupid”—a contention that we often hear but I don’t think carries much truth. (Try finding such a statement in Faith vs. Fact!) Rather, Greene believes that people’s deconversion is best accomplished indirectly: by getting people to appreciate the natural wonders of the universe and showing your passion for them. This, he thinks, “will drive things in a good direction.” (I believe he means letting go of religion, though Greene isn’t explicit.) I can’t quite see how that would work.

Sam responds that people’s minds can change; believers can become nonbelievers. That is true, and I’ve seen it and, indeed, have even been instrumental in changing some minds that way. (No, I don’t call people “stupid.”)  Greene responds that he’s changed minds, too, but yet he fails to show that the “soft” approach is more efficacious. How many I-got-people-to-give-up-religion anecdotes does he have? As Sam says, “You’re talking about the carrot and I’m talking about the stick. And the stick works.”  This exchange, by the way, is hilarious.

Sam responds that there are some religious views that in fact facilitate the ruination of nature (global warming, for example, can be justified as a necessary precursor of The End Times).  Greene responds that he’s rarely confronted with such people.

My methods are clearly the same as Sam’s, though I wouldn’t for a minute tell Greene that he has to go after religion big-time. That’s just not his way. However—and I don’t have evidence for this—I do think that the direct approach to criticizing faith, one that avoids ad hominem attacks—is more efficacious. I don’t think telling people that science and faith are perfectly compatible, for instance, can account for the rise of the “nones” in recent years. It appears that many people have become “nones” because they realized that religion is irrational and in conflict with science. As a paper published in 2023 noted:

. . . . the authors queried self-identified religious nones about their reasons for leaving their religion. In response, each participant wrote a short personal essay, which was coded by the research team. Four primary themes emerged. About half of the sample (51.8%) reported leaving for intellectual reasons or because they outgrew their faith. Roughly a fifth of the sample (21.9%) reported religious trauma, such as the hypocrisy of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Others (14.9%) reported leaving religion because of personal adversity, such as an inability to make sense of the tragic death of a child, or social reasons (11.4%), including a religious community’s being unwelcoming.

In other words, by far the most common reason for leaving faith is because people perceive that it has no intellectual underpinnings. They don’t leave it because appreciating a passion for the university changes them “in a good way”. (Note that New Atheists also emphasize at least two of the other three reasons people give up their faith.)

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is tasked with developing standards for encryption that can protect against quantum computers, may be at risk

As you know the University of Chicago was the first higher-ed school in America to adopt a position of institutional neutrality. This was done in 1967, with the principle embodied in our Kalven Report.  Kalven prohibits the University or its units, including departments and centers, from taking official stands on political, moral, and ideological issues—save in those cases where the issue is one that could affect the mission of our University.  According to FIRE, which approves of this position of institutional neutrality, some 29 other colleges or boards of education have joined Chicago in adopting one.

Deviations from the position of neutrality are rare, but this morning we learned that our President, Paul Alivisatos, has declared official University opposition to the Trump’s administration of slashing “indirect costs” on NIH grants. “Indirect costs” are the payments the University gets on top of an award when a researcher or entity gets a grant. They are supposed to be used to support the research through university costs and infrastructure, paying, for example, for building maintenance, administrative costs, electricity, water, and other costs not directly involved in doing research.  Each university negotiates its indirect costs directly with the NIH, and they typically range between 25% to 70% of the money awarded the researcher.

So, for example, if I asked for $2 million in research for monies for a three-year NIH grant, having calculated the costs of doing the research and paying grad students and postdocs, I would ask for that amount of money. Our overhead rate is 64%, so if I got the grant, the university would receive an extra $1,280,000 in overhead, so the whole award would cost the NIH over $3 million.

Now not all the overhead is used to support the specific research grant funded, as there’s no way to exactly calculate infrastructure costs.  Universities therefore often put the overhead money into a big pot used to support the university as a whole, and often it’s not clear where that overhead money goes, nor is it clear that all of it supports research.   But it is clear that overhead is crucial for keeping universities running and that a lot of it does cover the costs doing research (animal facilities, safety assurance, OSHA compliance, and so on). The Chicago Maroon reports that the cuts will cost our University $52 million in yearly revenue.

It was a big deal, then, when the Trump administration decided to cap the indirect cost rate on NIH grants at 15%, which would result in a severe loss of money to research-oriented universities—amounting in toto to billions of dollars.  The NIH verified this in their own announcement.  To President Alivisatos, this slashing represents an impediment to the mission of the University of Chicago, and so we broke neutrality, as delineated below his announcement below. I’ve put a screenshot of the announcement, but have put the words in larger type below it:

I’ve put the parts in bold where the University has taken an official stand:

Dear Colleagues,

In recent weeks, a large number of executive orders and federal policy changes have been issued. Following an election, policy changes are an expected part of our democracy. Yet today, some of these, if implemented, would have far-ranging adverse impacts on institutions of higher education and academic medical centers, including ours. These matters stand to affect our institution substantially, and I have a duty to act in support of our core interests.

Yesterday, I authorized that we join over a dozen plaintiff universities and associations in a suit to challenge the sudden reduction in NIH indirect costs that was announced Friday evening. The precipitous timing of this move would immediately damage the ability of our faculty, students, and staff (and those of other academic institutions and medical centers across the nation) to engage in health-related fundamental research and to discover life-saving therapies. For many, indirect costs may conjure images of administrative waste, but the truth is: this is a mechanism through which federal grants support essentials like state-of-the-art lab facilities and cybersecurity to protect data privacy.

I–and the leadership from across the University–are monitoring the policy developments closely. We look at each issue carefully and with an open mind. In this rapidly evolving landscape, where appropriate, the University is acting on our community’s behalf on a wide range of issues in defense of our operations and mission.

This is a period of contestation and change, and in such a moment it is important to keep our focus on what we treasure in UChicago. Ours is an extraordinary community where we advance our mission to create new knowledge, where we offer students a deep and meaningful education, where we forge new understanding, and where our medical enterprise offers new therapies and care for patients. This is a place where we are committed to open debate, to rigor and to excellence, and where we recognize that diversity of viewpoint and experience enriches our ability to seek truths. Realizing these values is a constant and good struggle, and academic freedom and freedom of inquiry and expression are the fundamental principles that make them possible. The work of the members of this community is important. For these reasons, since the University’s founding, this community has been committed to upholding those ideals–and will remain steadfast to honoring them.

Many of you have questions; local leadership across the schools, units, and divisions will have the most up-to-date information. We are collaborating with other institutions and utilizing the tools available to us to counter actions that would adversely affect our ability to fulfill our calling.

Sincerely,
Paul

——-

Paul Alivisatos

President

Harvard had similar objections:

Every scientific and medical breakthrough, whether in basic or applied research, depends on the people who conduct the research, as well as the materials and laboratory equipment they use. These components of research, readily attributable to a specific project, are funded as direct costs, but they do not encompass all essential aspects of research. The work also requires laboratory facilities, heat and electricity, and people to administer the research and ensure that it is conducted securely and in accordance with federal regulations. The expenditures for these critical parts of the research enterprise are called indirect costs. They are substantial, and they are unavoidable, not least because it can be very expensive to build, maintain, and equip space to conduct research at the frontiers of knowledge.

Implementing a 15 percent cap on indirect support, as the NIH has announced it intends to do, would slash funding and cut research activity at Harvard and nearly every research university in our nation. The discovery of new treatments would slow, opportunities to train the next generation of scientific leaders would shrink, and our nation’s science and engineering prowess would be severely compromised. At a time of rapid strides in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, brain science, biological imaging, and regenerative biology, and when other nations are expanding their investment in science, America should not drop knowingly and willingly from her lead position on the endless frontier.

Since this just happened, I’ll leave the lawsuiting to the University, though I note that a federal judge has put these cuts on temporary hold as the attorneys general of 22 states, including Illinois, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the cut would irreparably damage research.  In the meantime, those of us in the free-speech community here are pondering whether and how the cuts really do endanger the stated mission of our university. It would seem obvious that it does, since part of our mission is to generate knowledge through research, but there are two caveats. Does the mission per se include medical research designed to save lives—that is, to create medical innovations? Is that part of our our mission statement? And does the mission of the university include protecting its operational budget, assuring a comfortable financial bottom line? If so, how much overhead do we require?

Clearly our university and others construe this as part of our mission, and I’m not going to object. But clearly we need to think harder about what the mission of a university like ours really is.

The last time the University of Chicago broke institutional neutrality was in 2017, when the U of C declared opposition to Trump’s cancellation of the DACA (“Dreamers”) act because having Dreamers here as part of the university was considered helping fulfill our mission, and deporting them would thus impede our mission.  As the Chicago Maroon noted at the time:

The University declined to support the DREAM Act in 2010, citing the 1967 Kalven Report which recommended that the University generally avoid taking political stances, and University spokesperson Jeremy Manier maintained this position in an e-mail to The Maroon Tuesday.

“The DREAM Act encompasses issues that do not directly affect the University,” he said in the e-mail. “However, in general the University strongly supports efforts to address this issue through legislation that protects the ability of DACA-eligible students to live in the United States and pursue their education and careers here.”

That breaks institutional neutrality. Such declarations are rare here, and thus today’s announcement is a big deal for the University of Chicago.

The debate over when consciousness arises has been revitalised by new tests of awareness in infants – raising the possibility that it emerges just before birth

As the search for extraterrestrial life continues, scientists have identified the hidden oceans beneath icy moons as target locations for discovery. However, new research from the University of Reading suggests these alien seas may be better at masking their secrets than previously believed. Thick ice layers and complex chemical processes could make detecting signs of life from spacecraft far more challenging. The discovery presents significant obstacles for future missions to moons like Europa and Enceladus, where subsurface oceans might host the clues needed to finally confirm life beyond Earth.

Europa, one of Jupiter’s largest moons, has a subsurface ocean beneath an icy crust. Research to date suggests that this hidden ocean, kept liquid by tidal heating from the gravity of Jupiter, could contain the necessary ingredients for life, including water, energy, and essential chemicals. Surface features such as cracks and ridges suggest that water from the ocean occasionally seeps through the ice, possibly carrying organic material to the surface. NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission aims to investigate the moon’s habitability by analyzing its surface and subsurface environment. If life exists beyond Earth, Europa’s ocean may be one of the best places to find it.

Europa captured by Juno

Another location where life could be found in our Solar System is Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It’s perhaps one of the most fascinating of all Saturn’s moons with, just like Europa, it’s thought to have a global ocean beneath an icy crust. Water vapour escapes as jets through cracks in the crust near the south pole. A new study that has been published in Communications Earth & Environment shows how the ocean of Enceladus is separated into distinct layers. These layers impeded the movement of material from the ocean floor, where life is thought to exist, to the surface. 

True-color image of Enceladus’ plumes emanating from its south pole. (Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / Kevin M. Gill)

Spacecraft visiting worlds like Enceladus hunt for traces of chemicals like microbes and organic compounds are searched for among the water spraying out of the surface. However these ocean layers may well break down as they ascend through the ocean. By the time they reach the surface the biological signatures that would have been familiar are unrecognisable. It’s just possible that this process could hide signs of life that exist deep on the floor of the alien oceans. 

Flynn Ames, the lead author of the paper from the University of Reading explains that the oceans behave like oil and water in a jar with the distinct layers resisting vertical mixing. 

“These natural barriers could trap particles and chemical traces of life in the depths below for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. Previously, it was thought that these things could make their way efficiently to the ocean top within several months.”

A black smoker hydrothermal vent discovered in the Atlantic Ocean in 1979. It’s fueled from deep beneath the surface by magma that superheats the water. The plume carries minerals and other materials out to the sea. Courtesy USGS.

It seems then that simply sampling the escaping surface waters may not be sufficient to detect signs of life. Computer models have been established that are similar to those used to study our own oceans. The results revealing implications for our search for aliens in our Solar System. We may yet have to do more than simply analyse water spraying through surface cracks and fissures. Missions have been discussed that could launch tiny submarines to explore the oceans beneath the ice. It may be the only way we can find out once and for all if life does exist in the deep waters beneath the icy crusts.

Source : Alien ocean could hide signs of life from spacecraft

The post Alien Oceans May Conceal Signs of Life from Spacecraft appeared first on Universe Today.

Today we have another photo-plus-text contribution from Athayde Tonhasca Júnior; the subject is mangoes, my favorite fruit (and flies, my favorite group of insects). Athayde’s text is indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

The king and its flies

Germany has its Pumpkin Festival, Canada celebrates a Cranberry Festival, Spaniards go wild hurling over-ripe tomatoes at each other at the Tomato Festival, while Italians savour their winemaking heritage during the Marino Grape Festival. But among the many fruit- and produce-themed events around the world, few have the cultural magnitude of The International Mango Festival, held annually in Delhi.

Delhi’s mango festival: activities include mango eating competitions, mango quizzes and slogan-writing, mango carving, mango tasting and varieties contests, dances, plays and crafts © India’s Ministry of Tourism.

Mango (Mangifera indica) has been a cultural and religious symbol in India for millennia: grown for over 4,000 years, its earliest references date back to around 2,000 BC from ancient texts and scriptures. The fruit is associated with fertility, prosperity and devotion in Hindu and Buddhist mythologies and traditions. Mangoes symbolise the arrival of summer, appearing in folk songs, literature and art, and are used in religious ceremonies and offerings to the gods. When summer comes, Indians give mangoes to family, friends, customers and employees. The fruit’s flavours, juiciness and texture make it an effective tool for diplomatic relations: mangoes have been routinely offered to foreign dignitaries and were sent as gifts for the coronation of George VI.

The mango is more than an Indian icon: it is one of the most important fruits in tropical and subtropical areas around the world. Mangoes are a main source of vitamin A in Africa and Asia, and the tree’s bark and leaves have been used in folk remedies for centuries. The fruit is mainly eaten in natura, green or ripe, but is also liberally used in chutneys, pickles, curries, preserves, juices, ice-creams and a variety of dishes throughout Asia and Central and South America. Mangoes are grown commercially in more than 100 countries, and 65 of them produce over 1,000 million tonnes each a year. And there’s no problem selling all those fruits: mangoes are rapidly gaining in popularity in temperate countries, so demand is increasing. The cultural, nutritional and economic importance of the mango more than justify its title of ‘the king of fruits’.

The king of fruits. Mangoes sold in Britain don’t do justice to the fruit’s flavours © Obsidian Soul, Wikimedia Commons:

Mango trees produce panicles (branched inflorescences) bearing tiny flowers – and lots of them. A mature tree may have 200 to 3,000 panicles, each with 500 to 10,000 flowers. This abundance may suggest ample opportunities for pollination, but that’s not so. Depending on growing conditions and crop variety, 30 to 80% of flowers are staminate, that is, they lack functional pistils. These flowers are functionally male, therefore incapable of being fertilized. The remaining fertile flowers are vulnerable to a range of environmental stresses such as excessive rain and extremes of temperature that prevent fertilisation. To make things worse, each flower produces little nectar, relatively few pollen grains (200-300), and its stigma (the part that receives the pollen) is too small to be of great efficiency. As a result, up to 60% of the flowers receive no pollen, and a panicle may produce up to three fruits at most.

A mango panicle © Delince, Wikimedia Commons:

A single mango flower is not particularly rewarding, but massive numbers of them entice lots of non-specialised visitors. A range of flies, bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, beetles, ants, bugs and bats drop by for a small sip of nectar from each flower. By hopping from flower to flower, visitors greatly increase the chances of cross pollination – although the wind also plays a part.

Among all the flower visitors, one group makes up some of most efficient pollinators of mango varieties grown around the world: flies, especially blowflies, carrion flies, bluebottles (family Calliphoridae), flesh flies (family Sarcophagidae), hover flies (family Syrphidae), and the house fly (Musca domestica). Except for hover flies, they are not seen in a good light by the public. That’s understandable, since most of what we know about them relates to their roles as agricultural pests and vectors of human and animal diseases. But that’s a narrow take on their comings and goings. These flies, often categorised as “filth flies”, are enormously important as decomposers and recyclers, and are vital for food chains: numerous birds, bats and fish depend on them. Another role is becoming increasingly understood: their contribution to myiophily (or myophily), that is, pollination by flies (Orford et al., 2015).

The unappealingly named oriental latrine fly (Chrysomya megacephala) is an important mango pollinator © portioid, iNaturalist:

Blowflies, flesh flies and the like are relatively large and their bodies are covered with ‘hairs’ (setae), which are important pollen-carrying structures. These flies are abundant and persistent flower visitors throughout the blooming season, all desirable qualities for efficient pollination. Besides mango, blow flies, flesh flies and the house fly are known or suspected to pollinate avocado, blueberry, Brussels sprout, carrot, leek, macadamia, onion and strawberry (Cook et al., 2020). The common greenbottle (Lucilia sericata) and the bluebottle (Calliphora vomitoria) are reared commercially for the pollination of seed crops and vegetable crops, respectively (L. sericata is also reared for medical uses: because their maggots preferentially eat dead tissue, they have been used for the treatment of diabetic ulcers, bedsores and other chronic wounds).

A fly with pollen attached to its back © ninfaj, Maryland Agronomy News:

Mango farmers in Northern Australia hold blow flies in such esteem that some growers have installed ‘stink stations’ in their orchards, a practice also used by avocado farmers in Peru. Each station consists of a plastic container filled with fish or chicken carcasses, a concoction guaranteed to attract flies. It’s not clear whether these contraptions improve yields (Finch et al., 2023), but at any rate, farmers see foul-smelling orchards as a small price to pay for the possibility of bumper crops of juicy, fragrant and profitable mangoes.

‘Stink stations’ used by mango growers in the Northern Territory, Australia © Finch et al., 2023:

The mango is a case study of the ‘other’ pollinators, that is, those outside the better known and celebrated club of bees, hover flies and moths. We may be unenthusiastic about flies that are the happiest on carrion and dung, but that’s a reflection of our aesthetic prejudices. Farmers around the world who deal with the mango’s finicky floral biology are very grateful for those unloved insects that help them produce better and more of the king of fruits.

The Guimaras Mango Festival in the Philippines wouldn’t be so lavish without the contribution of some flies of ill repute © Ranieljosecastaneda, Wikimedia Commons: