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Are Primordial Black Holes real? They could’ve formed in the unusual physics that dominated the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. The idea dates back to the 1960s, but so far, the lack of evidence makes them purely hypothetical.

If they do exist, a new paper suggests they may be hiding in places so unlikely that nobody ever thought to look there.

Black holes form when massive stars reach the end of their lives and suffer gravitational collapse. However, Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) didn’t involve stars. Physicists hypothesize that PBHs formed in the early Universe from extremely dense pockets of sub-atomic matter that collapsed directly into black holes. They could form part or all of what we call dark matter.

However, they remain hypothetical because none have been observed.

New research in Physics of the Dark Universe suggests researchers are not looking in the right places. It’s titled “Searching for small primordial black holes in planets, asteroids and here on Earth.” The co-authors are De-Chang Dai and Dejan Stojkovic, from Case Western Reserve University and the State University of New York, respectively.

The authors claim that evidence for PBHs could be found in objects as large as hollowed out planetoids or asteroids and objects as small as rocks here on Earth.

“Small primordial black holes could be captured by rocky planets or asteroids, consume their liquid cores from inside and leave hollow structures,” the authors write. “Alternatively, a fast black hole can leave a narrow tunnel in a solid object while passing through it. We could look for such micro-tunnels here on Earth in very old rocks,” the authors claim, explaining that the search wouldn’t involve specialized, expensive equipment.

The authors work leans heavily on other research suggesting that PBH masses between 1016 and 1010 solar masses could be candidates for dark matter. These PBHs could be captured by stars or trapped in their interiors upon formation. The PBH would slowly consume gas inside the stars.

However, these authors take it in a different direction. “We extend this idea to planets and asteroids, which can also be expected to host PBHs,” they write, explaining that the PBHs could be captured by these objects either during their creation or after their creation. Once inside a rocky body, the PBH would consume the liquid core, hollowing it out and leaving it empty.

“We have to think outside of the box because what has been done to find primordial black holes previously hasn’t worked.”

Dejan Stojkovic, SUNY

“If the object has a liquid central core, then a captured PBH can absorb the liquid core, whose density is higher than the density of the outer solid layer,” Stojkovic said.

This figure from the research illustrates what could happen when a PBH is inside a rocky body. (A) A planet is formed around a small primordial black hole (or alternatively a planet captures a black hole in its center) (B) The central core gets slowly absorbed by the black hole. If the outer shell has a strong enough compressive strength, then the shell can support itself leading to a hollow object. (C) If the liquid core becomes solid before it is completely eaten by the black hole, there will exist an empty shell between the outer layer and central core. Image Credit: Stojkovic et al. 2024.

If the asteroid or other body suffers an impact, the PBH could escape, leaving nothing but a hollow shell behind, which could be detectable.

“If the object’s density is too low for its size, that’s a good indication it’s hollow,” Stojkovic said. Studying an object’s orbit with a telescope is enough to reveal hollowness.

Another possibility the authors present is fast-moving tiny PBHs that leave microscopic tunnels in objects. “Since the cross-section of a small PHBs is very small, a fast enough PBH will most likely create a straight tunnel after passing through the asteroid,” the authors explain. In that case, a straight tunnel through an asteroid could be evidence of a PBH.

A rapidly moving PBH could leave a straight tunnel the size of its Schwarzschild radius. If the asteroid’s composition is strong, the tunnel wouldn’t collapse immediately. Image Credit: Stojkovic et al. 2024.

PBHs could also leave microscopic tunnels in rocks and other objects on Earth. “The same effect could allow detection of a PBH here on Earth if we look for sudden appearance of narrow tunnels in metal slabs,” the authors write.

What’s different about these hypothesized PBHs is detection. In other scenarios, space telescopes, gravitational wave observatories, or even monitoring distant quasars in microwaves are required to detect them. But in this work, detection is potentially much cheaper and easier.

The James Webb Space Telescope or the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna are proposed ways of detecting PBHs. Image Credit: European Space Agency CC BY-SA 4.0

“The chances of finding these signatures are small, but searching for them would not require much resources and the potential payoff, the first evidence of a primordial black hole, would be immense,” said Stojkovic. “We have to think outside of the box because what has been done to find primordial black holes previously hasn’t worked.”

“While our estimate gives a very small probability of finding such tunnels, looking for them does not require expensive equipment and long preparation, and the payoff might be significant,” the authors explain.

“You have to look at the cost versus the benefit. Does it cost much to do this? No, it doesn’t,” Stojkovic said in a press release.

This is thinking outside the box, or outside the standard model in any case. Cosmology is kind of at a standstill while we wrestle with the idea of dark matter. Could PBHs be dark matter? Could they behave like the authors suggest, and be detected in this manner?

“The smartest people on the planet have been working on these problems for 80 years and have not solved them yet,” Stojkovic said. “We don’t need a straightforward extension of the existing models. We probably need a completely new framework altogether.”

The post Could Primordial Black Holes Be Hiding in Plain Sight? appeared first on Universe Today.

One of NASA’s primary missions is to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers to join the STEM field. It does so by producing inspirational and educational content on various platforms. But sometimes, it takes a more direct approach by rewarding students for their contributions to solving a particular problem NASA is facing. Recently, the organization announced such a challenge – the Power to Explore Challenge, which is open to submission from K-12 students until the end of January.

This challenge is part of an ongoing series of challenges that NASA has released to encourage kids to utilize a radioisotope power system (commonly known as a radioisotope thermal generator—or RTG) to enable future missions. Last year, the challenge involved coming up with a mission to a “dark, dusty, or far away place” where the benefits of RTGs, which don’t rely on solar power, would be the most obvious.

A winner was then selected in three separate age categories, detailing missions to Enceladus (Rainie Lin from Kentucky), Tethys (Aadya Karthik from Washington), and Ariel (Thomas Liu from New Jersey). The three winners received a behind-the-scenes tour of the research facilities at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, where much of NASA’s RTG research occurs.

Video Announcing the Challenge.
Credit – ScienceatNASA YouTube Channel

This year, there is again a call to develop missions powered by an RTG, but with a more explicit call to visit a moon somewhere in the solar system. There are plenty to choose from—the International Astronomical Union recognizes 288 orbiting planets, while there are over 470 orbiting smaller objects, like Dimorphos around Didymos, the asteroid targeted by NASA’s DART redirect mission.

The challenge is once again run by Future Engineers, an organization that emphasizes engineering education for kids. They provide the judges, who will focus on details like how feasible it is to use an RTG at the location the entrant selected, and what their “special human power” that they describe in their essay would bring to the mission.

Submissions must be a maximum of 275 words and will go through three rounds of judging. Semifinalists, finalists, and grand prize winners will be selected in March, April, and May, respectively. Once again, the grand prize winners will receive a tour of the Glenn Research Center. Semifinalists will receive a gift pack, and finalists will receive both a gift pack and a teleconference with a NASA mission expert.

Fraser discusses some challenges facing missions to other moons – especially their budgets.

Applications are open until the end of January, so if you or someone you know is interested in applying, there’s still plenty of time to conceive of a mission and polish up a 275-word essay. Who knows, you might even win a trip to Cleveland – and I can attest to it being pretty nice here in the summer – but more importantly, you might inspire the next NASA mission to one of the solar system’s numerous moons.

Learn More:
NASA – Power to Explore Student Challenge
Future Engineers – Power to Explore
UT – An Improved Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator Could Dramatically Reduce The Weight Of Interplanetary Missions
UT – NASA is Getting the Plutonium it Needs for Future Missions

Lead Image:
Power To Explore Logo
Credit – NASA / Future Engineers

The post NASA Wants Students’ Help Designing Missions to Other Moons appeared first on Universe Today.

Parts from dozens of different individual comb jellies have been fused together to create strange new animals unlike anything seen before

Yesterday, Dr. David Gorksi invited us to come up with questions for Senators to ask our future public health leaders. Here are mine.

The post Questions For Senators to Ask Drs. Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Our satellites are dispassionate observers of Earth’s climate change. From their vantage point they watch as pack ice slowly loses its hold on polar oceans, ice shelfs break apart, and previously frozen parts of the planet turn green with vegetation.

Now, scientists have compiled 35 years of satellite data showing that Antarctica is slowly, yet perceptibly, becoming greener.

NASA and the United States Geological Survey sent the first Landsat into space in 1975. Since then, they’ve launched eight more Landsats, with Landsat 9 being the most recent launch in 2021. Landsat data is a unique treasure trove of data about Earth and the changes it goes through, including millions of images.

Landsats have watched as forest fires burn, as urban regions expand, as glaciers melt, and as Earth goes through many other changes.

Recent research published in Nature Geoscience used 35 years of Landsat data, from Landsat 5 through Landsat 8, to measure the spread of vegetation into Antarctica. It’s titled “Sustained greening of the Antarctic Peninsula observed from satellites.” The research was co-led by Thomas Roland, an environmental scientist University of Exeter, and by remote sensing expert Olly Bartlett of the University of Hertfordshire.

“This study aimed to assess vegetation response to climate change on the AP <Antarctic Peninsula> over the past 35 years by quantifying rates of change in the spatial extent and ‘direction’ (greening versus browning), which have not yet been quantified,” the paper states.

The Antarctic Peninsula is about 1300 km (810 mi) long and is part of the larger West Antarctica Peninsula. It covers about 522,000 square kilometers (202,000 sq mi) and is the northern-most part of Antarctica. Image Credit: By krill oil – Krilloil.com, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23043354

The research shows that the amount of land covered in vegetation on the Antarctic Peninsula has increased by more than 10x since 1986. The area of vegetated land rose from 0.86 sq. km. (0.33 sq. mi.) in 1986 to 11.95 sq. km (4.61 sq. mi.) in 2021. The coverage is restricted to the warmer edges of the peninsula, but it still indicates a shift in the region’s ecology, driven by our carbon emissions.

This vegetative colonization of Earth’s coldest region begins with mosses and lichens. Mosses are pioneer species, the first organisms to move into a newly-available habitat. These non-vascular plants are tough and hardy, and can grow on bare rock in low-nutrient environments. They create a foundation for the plants that follow them by secreting acid that breaks down rock and by providing organic material when they die.

This image shows moss hummocks on Ardley Island just off the coast of the Antarctica Peninsula. Image Credit: Roland et al. 2024.

The map makes the results of the research clear. Each of the four panels show the amount of green vegetation on the Antarctic Peninsula’s ice-free land below 300 meters (1000 ft) altitude. Each hexagon is shaded depending on how many sq. km. of it are covered in vegetation. That’s determined by the satellite-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The NDVI is based on spectrometric data gathered by the Landsat satellites during cloud-free days every March, the end of the growing season in Antarctica.

Mosses dominate the green areas, growing in carpets and banks. In previous research, Roland and co-researchers collected carbon-dated core samples from moss banks on the western side of the AP. Those showed that moss had accumulated more rapidly in the past 50 years and that there’s been a boost in biological activity. That led them to their current research, where they wanted to determine if moss was not only growing upward to higher elevations, but outward, too.

“Based on the core samples, we expected to see some greening,” Roland said, “but I don’t think we were expecting it on the scale that we reported here.”

A moss bank grows on bare rock on Norsel Point on Amsler Island. Carbon-core samples from moss banks showed an increase in growth in the past few decades. Image Credit: Roland et al. 2024.

“When we first ran the numbers, we were in disbelief,” Bartlett said. “The rate itself is quite striking, especially in the last few years.”

The Western Antarctica Peninsula is warming up faster than other parts of Earth. Not only are its glaciers receding, but the extent of the sea ice is shrinking and there’s more open water. The authors point out that changing wind patterns due to GHG emissions could be contributing.

What will happen as the ice continues to retreat and pioneer species colonize more of Antarctica? The continent has hundreds of native species, mostly mosses, lichens, liverworts, and fungi. The continent has only two species of flowering plants, Antarctic Hair Grass and Antarctic Pearlwort. What does it mean for them?

Left: Antarctic Hair Grass. Right: Antarctic Pearlwort Image Credit Left: By Lomvi2 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10372682. Image Credit Right: By Liam Quinn – Flickr: Antarctic Pearlwort, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15525940

“The narrative in these places has been dominated by glacial retreat,” Roland said. “We’re starting to think about what comes next, after ice recession.”

After moss gains a foothold in a region, soil is created where there was none. That provides an opening for other organisms, both native and non-native. The risk is that the inherent biodiversity will be undermined. Tourism and other human activity can inadvertently introduce new species, and wind-borne seeds and spores can do the same. If robust organisms arrive, they can outcompete the native species. There are already a few documented instances of this happening.

This image shows a moss lawn or carpet on Barrientos Island. Image Credit: Roland et al. 2024.

The carbon-core and Landsat data is just the beginning for Roland, Bartlett, and their fellow researchers. Up-close fieldwork is the next step. “We’re at the point that we’ve said the best we can say with the Landsat archives,” Roland said. “We need to go to these places where we’re seeing the most distinctive changes and see what’s happening on the ground.”

The researches want to know what types of plant communities are establishing themselves, and what shifts are playing out in the environment.

The post Antarctica Has Gotten 10 Times Greener in 35 Years appeared first on Universe Today.

This paper in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics (click title below to read, or find the pdf here) is a strong contender for Bonkers Paper of the Year. The author, Ewelina Jarosz, is a Polish professor from Kraków—not a scientist, but an assistant professor of Media and Cultural Studies (of course).

Ewelina Jarosz

• University of the National Education Commission, Krakow; Department of Media and Cultural Reseach, Kraków, małopolskie, Poland

Below is the abstract, which promotes “hydrosexuality” and denigrates “settler science”. If you had a shot of tequila for every buzzword in this abstract, you’d be stinking drunk at the end:

The article aims to transform narratives surrounding Utah’s Great Salt Lake, often referred to as “America’s Dead Sea,” by reimagining how brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) are perceived in science, culture, and art. It introduces the concept of hydrosexuality to bridge these realms, thereby enriching feminist blue posthumanities and feminist biology through art-based practices and queer advocacy. By navigating the environmental narrative of the GSL, the hydrosexual perspective challenges settler science by exploring the connections between the reproductive system of brine shrimp and the economy, ecology and culture. The article provides a framework for integrative cultural analysis that bolsters arguments about the multilayered exploitation of the lake and amplifies voices that recognize the brine shrimp as vital to the survival of multiple species and to the GSL as a unique ecosystem. Furthermore, this cultural analysis draws inspiration from low trophic theory and Queer Death Studies. This multifaceted approach is exemplified by two case studies in the arts, which gradually alter white humans’ perceptions and understandings of the brine shrimp, helping to reimagine the GSL in the context of rapid climate change.

If you want an analysis of what the paper actually says, read and give credit to Colin Wright, who read it and analyzed it on his site Reality’s Last Stand (click below to read):

Colin’s introduction (I can’t believe he read the entire paper, apparently without gastric distress, but he did):

In the annals of academic absurdity, there are moments that make even seasoned critics pause in awe. “Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the ‘America’s Dead Sea’” is one such moment. This is not a parody—though it reads like one—but a “serious” paper, or so the author insists. In what is best described as a surrealist love letter to brine shrimp, the author, Ewelina Jarosz (she/they), wades through a soup of critical theory, environmental activism, and performance art, asking the reader to reconsider their relationship with brine shrimp—not as mere crustaceans but as symbols of queer resilience, ecological ethics, and, somehow, hydrosexual love.

This paper is part of a growing tradition of postmodern scholarship that prioritizes ideological signaling over intellectual rigor. Following in the footsteps of infamous works like the 2016 “Feminist Glaciology” paper—which posited that glaciers are gendered—“Loving the Brine Shrimp” sets a new standard for academic ridiculousness. Its culmination in a cyber wedding to augmented reality brine shrimp makes feminist glaciers seem like a grounded scientific pursuit by comparison. But before we arrive at the nuptial climax, let’s examine how this spectacle unfolds.

There was performance art involved: a marriage of two Polish academics to brine shrimp at the Great Salt Lake of Utah:

The paper reached peak woke in a section titled “Loving the Brine Shrimp,” which recounts a performance art piece called Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp. This event, staged on the receding shores of the Great Salt Lake, involved artists, scientists, and augmented reality brine shrimp. Participants made vows to the crustaceans, marched in a procession, and capped it off with a communal bath in the lake. The author describes this as “making love to the lake,” a phrase that may haunt frequent swimmers of the Great Salt Lake for the rest of their lives.

Here’s a photo and article found by Malgorzata at the right-wing website David Horowitz’s The Front Page. Just read it for the lolz:

On September 14, 2021, two Polish female professors headed to the Great Salt Lake in Utah to marry some brine shrimp in an ecosexual wedding.

Presided over by Bonnie Baxter PhD, a biology professor at Westminster University in nearby Salt Lake City, the two Polish professor brides in clinging wedding dresses approached holding hands and together with the rest of the wedding party which included a sexologist and Elizabeth Stephens, the chair of UC Santa Cruz’s Art Department, who helped create the ‘Ecosexual’ movement, went into the lake to marry the shrimp through an exchange of psychic vows.

The 12-minute video of the wedding vows and the postnuptial swim in the lake, “Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp”, can (and must) be seen at Colin’s website.  

One thing is clear: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics lacks even a scintilla of academic rigor. In fact, when the journal publishes a paper, replete with buzzwords, that’s indistinguishable from the “hoax papers” of Alan Sokal or of Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay, you know that something has gone badly wrong with scholarship. Is there any contribution to knowledge here? I can’t detect any.

Yes, it’s all hilarious, but only in the sense that academics become lunatics in their effort to promulgate social justice, or, in this case, “environmental justice.” As Colin says at the end of his herculean reading of the paper:

In an era where intellectual rigor often takes a backseat to performative absurdity, it’s important to keep a sense of humor about the bizarre trajectory of academic publishing. After all, what else can we do when purportedly serious scholars convene weddings for brine shrimp or ascribe nonbinary identities to water?

Alas, these are the times we live in.

h/t: Ann

In a few billion years, our Sun will die. It will first enter a red giant stage, swelling in size to perhaps the orbit of Earth. Its outer layers will be cast off into space, while its core settles to become a white dwarf. Life on Earth will boil away, and our planet itself might be consumed by the Sun. White dwarfs are the fate of all midsize stars, and given the path of their demise, it seems reasonable to assume that any planets die with their sun. But the fate of white dwarf planets may not be lifeless after all.

More than a dozen planets have been discovered orbiting white dwarf stars. That’s a small fraction of the known exoplanets, but it tells us that planets can survive the red giant stage of a Sun-like star. Some planets may be consumed, and the orbits of survivors might be dramatically affected, but some planets retain a stable orbit. Any planets that were in the habitable zone of the star would die off, but a new study suggests that some white dwarf planets might give life the foothold it needs to evolve again.

Although white dwarfs don’t undergo nuclear fusion, they do remain warm for billions of years. Young white dwarfs can have a surface temperature of 27,000 K or more, and it takes billions of years for them to cool. Since the simple definition of a star’s habitable zone is simply the range where a planet is warm enough for liquid water, this means all white dwarfs have a habitable zone. Unlike main sequence stars, however, this region would migrate inward as the star cools. But in this new work, the authors show that white dwarfs have a habitable zone that would be warm enough for life across billions of years. For a white dwarf of about 60% of the Sun’s mass, part of the habitable zone would persist for nearly 7 billion years, which is more than enough time for life to evolve and thrive on a world. In comparison, the Earth is less than 5 billion years old.

Habitable zone of a white dwarf over time. Credit: Whyte, et al

Of course, for life to appear on a white dwarf planet, simply being warm isn’t enough. To have the kind of complex life we see on Earth, the spectrum of starlight would need to provide the right kind of energy for things like photosynthesis without ionizing the planet’s atmosphere. The spectra of white dwarfs are shifted much more to the ultraviolet than the visible and infrared, but the authors show that ionizing radiation would not be severe, and the amount of UV would allow for Earth-like photosynthesis. The optimal habitable zone would be close to the white dwarf, similar to the habitable zone of the TRAPPIST-1 red dwarf.

Just because a white dwarf planet might be home to life, that doesn’t mean they are. We know life can exist around a Sun-like star, but we’d need clear evidence to say the same is true for white dwarfs. That’s where the second part of this work comes in. Since white dwarfs are bright for their size and habitable planets would need to orbit them closely, our ability to gather evidence on them is good. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), for example, is sensitive enough to observe the atmospheric spectra of white dwarf planets as they transit. A few hours of observational time could be enough to get a spectrum sharp enough to detect biosignatures.

All that said, finding life on a white dwarf planet is a long shot. The planets would likely have to migrate inward during the latter part of the red dwarf stage, maintain a stable orbit, and somehow retain or recapture the kind of water-rich atmosphere you need for terrestrial life. That’s a big ask. But given how easy it might be to detect biosignatures, it’s worth taking a look.

Reference: Whyte, Caldon T., et al. “Potential for life to exist and be detected on Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarfs.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.18934 (2024)

The post White Dwarfs Could Have Habitable Planets, Detectable by JWST appeared first on Universe Today.

From perfecting your hydration levels to tracking hormones, analysing your perspiration can give new insights into your fitness and how to improve it

Now is the time to catch Jupiter at its best.

The King of the Planets rules the winter night skies. Early December gives sky watchers a good reason to brave the cold, as Jupiter shines at its best. Look for the regal planet rising in the east at sunset, while the Sun sets to the west.

Why Opposition?

For an outer planet, we call this point ‘opposition’ as the planet sits ‘opposite’ to the Sun from our Earthly perspective. This also means that Jupiter is above the horizon for the entire evening: low to the east at sunset, high to the south at local midnight, and setting to the west at sunset.

Opposition for Jupiter in 2024 occurs on Saturday, December 7th. Jupiter is closest to the Earth (611 million kilometers distant) a day prior on December 6th. The discontinuity exists because Jupiter is currently moving away from us, while we’re headed towards the Sun.

A double shadow moon transit from August 14th, 2024. Credit: Thad Szabo.

Jupiter reached perihelion early last year on January 20-21st, 2023, while Earth heads towards perihelion about a month from now on January 4, 2025. On an 11.9 year orbit, we won’t have another perihelion-opposition year for Jupiter until 2034.

Jupiter at opposition on December 7th. credit: Stellarium.

To the naked eye, Jupiter shines as a -2.8 magnitude ‘star’, in the constellation Taurus the Bull. This position, along with an opposition just two weeks prior to the December southward solstice on the 21st assures that Jupiter dominates the scene for northern hemisphere observers in 2024, riding high in the nighttime sky.

A ground-based view of Jupiter and its moon Io, versus the view as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Juno/Efrain Morales. Seeing Double

Zooming in on Jupiter with a telescope even at low power gives you a view similar to Galileo’s just over four centuries ago. The four major moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto easily pop out, even in a low power binocular view. At opposition, the moons and even Jupiter itself cast shadows nearly straight back, slowly changing angle towards quadrature. While triple shadow moon transits are rare (the next one isn’t until March 20th, 2032) double shadow transits happen in seasonal cycles a few times a year. The next one involving Io and Ganymede starts on December 23rd.

A simulation of the double shadow transit coming up on December 23rd. Credit: Starry Night.

Jupiter’s fast 10 hour rotation also means that you can witness one full rotation of the gas giant in one night. This means you can spot the Great Red Spot on any given evening if you wait long enough, though to my eye, it looks more like the ‘Pale Salmon Spot’ in recent years. The major northern and southern equatorial belts are also easily apparent at low power, though the Southern Equatorial Belt has been known to pull a vanishing act roughly once a decade or so… it last did so on 2010-2011, so you could say we’re due.

JWST provides a unique infrared view of Jupiter, showing the atmospheric depth of the belts and the Great Red Spot. NASA/JWST.

Jupiter is so bright that it can cast a slight shadow, something that’s worth watching for on the freshly fallen snow. The Moon also reaches Full for December on the 15th, and passes five degrees north of the planet on the 14th, offering a chance to see Jupiter in the daytime, just before sunset.

A daytime Jupiter near the Moon. Credit: Dave Dickinson. A Teaser for Jupiter in 2025

There’s also more Jovian action in store. In the coming years, Callisto (the only major moon that can ‘miss’ Jove) resumes transits in 2026. This leads the way into the next bi-decadal mutual-eclipse season for the moons.

Don’t miss Jupiter at opposition for 2024… it’s worth braving the cold for.

The post Catch Jupiter at Opposition 2024 This Coming Weekend appeared first on Universe Today.

Yes, this analysis and report are from Texas’s Republican Senator Ted Cruz, but let’s not use that to dismiss his press release and report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation. If you won’t read something simply because it’s from Ted Cruz’s office, you are at the wrong site.

At any rate, the press release”reveals how Biden-Harris diverted billions from science to DEI activists.”  I have no reason to doubt this claim given the increasing tendency of federal funding agencies (the NSF in this case) to divert money from real science into ideological project furthering the “progressive” agenda. But if you want to undercut this claim, simply look at the projects that are classified as “DEI activism”. Only a few are offered, and they support the claim, which is not surprising.

Although I finished my last grant about eight years ago, I am told by active researchers, scientists I know personally, that the entire system has changed in the last decade, exactly in the way this report describes. And the pressure to change from pure science to Social Justice must have come from the top. I don’t know who applied it, but the buck stops at the President’s desk, and it was clearly the Biden Administration that approved the change in direction.

Click the headline below to read, and you can find the committee’s 43-page report here.

The upshot is that over the four years that Biden was President, over two billion dollars were allocated to projects that Cruz’s committee classified as “DEI grants”. Over 3,400 such grants were given.  Disturbingly, such grants used up only 0.29% of the funding in 2021, but their number swelled each year until, in 2024, they used up over 27% of NSF funding.

The three paragraphs below are taken from the press release. Yes, the language is from the Right (i.e., “neo-Marxist” and “radical perspectives”), but who can deny that the DEI agenda has damaged universities, making them more divisive and imposing an orthodoxy on thought and research that’s inimical to free thinking and academic freedom?

In its first week, the Biden-Harris administration mandated that all taxpayer-funded scientific research and development (R&D) must incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) values. Sen. Cruz’s investigation found that in response to this directive, NSF allocated over $2.05 billion to thousands of research projects that promoted neo-Marxist perspectives or DEI tenets. Taxpayer dollars supported projects of questionable scientific merit, often led by researchers who used federal R&D dollars to drive divisive, extremist ideologies in their classrooms and on their campuses.

The Committee’s analysis identified 3,483 grants—over 10% of all NSF grants awarded during the Biden-Harris administration—totaling more than $2.05 billion went to questionable projects that promoted DEI or pushed neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle. The Committee grouped these grants into five categories: Status, Social Justice, Gender, Race, and Environmental Justice.

The report reveals, through examples across categories, that many of the most extreme research proposals were led by principal investigators who are also promoting radical perspectives through on-campus activism and in their classrooms.

Here are two figures from the report itself (click pictures to enlarge) showing the number of grants and total funding in each of five “DEI” categories:

And the NSF obeyed the Biden administration’s directive. This shows the total NSF funding per year, and the amount and proportion of funding directed towards what are classified as DEI initiatives:

The report also gives examples of grants that sound ludicrous. These of course are cherry-picked and remind me of Senator William Proxmire’s old “Golden Fleece Awards,” (Proxmire was a Democrat), given to agencies who squandered public money. Below are two examples cited, and I urge those who want to examine the Cruz Committee’s contentions to examine them further. Others are given in the report. Bolding is from the press release:

• Shirin Vossoughi is an associate professor of learning sciences at Northwestern University and the co-principal investigator for a $1,034,751 NSF grant awarded in 2023 for a project titled, “Reimagining Educator Learning Pathways Through Storywork for Racial Equity in STEM.” Vossoughi credits Marxist traditions for her decision to teach children “the meaning of ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’” after Hamas’s attack against Israel.

 

• In 2023, NSF awarded Georgia Institute of Technology’s (Georgia Tech) Kelly Cross $99,791 to “disrupt[] racialized privilege in the STEM classroom” by acknowledging “Whiteness and White Supremacy” are “deeply ingrained in the past, present and future of U.S. Higher education.” Cross sought to “subvert[] these toxic systems… to creat[e] a more equitable educational system” and “initiate a national conversation about addressing racial inequity and White Supremacy in the STEM profession and classroom” with the support of the grant.

There are further examples given in the report, but you can look at them yourself. Here are the conclusions taken from the paper, not the press release:

The Biden-Harris administration has methodically weaponized federal agencies to drive a partisan, divisive agenda. President Biden and Vice President Harris tasked federal science agencies to restructure scientific investigation into an exercise in categorizing individuals by their background, not by their talent and capabilities.

This year, almost 30 percent of NSF grant projects will seek to promote these divisions. Already, billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted. These grants both crowd out other kinds of research that could advance understanding of the physical world and advance a deeply divisive philosophy antithetical to the tenets of empirical scientific research. The NSF must return to a merit-based focus on legitimate science of the kind that resulted in landing Americans on the moon and making the U.S. technology industry the engine of the global economy.

If this analysis is correct, then I have no quarrel with the last paragraph, particularly the insistence that the NSF go back to “a merit-based focus on legitimate science”. America has long been a Mecca for scientists from foreign countries, many coming here to study, do research, or take faculty positions. This kind of funding, if continued, would seriously erode the nation’s scientific reputation. It’s already happened to New Zealand, but the “social justice” there involves incorporating “indigenous knowledge”, like Polynesian navigational astronomy, into modern science.

It is too late to stop the awokening of New Zealand’s science, but I’m pretty sure that the new Trump administration—if it doesn’t cut real science—will ameliorate the current trend. (Note: this is NOT an endorsement of Trump as President, but a hope that his admiinistration will fix the wrongly skewed direction of science funding.)

We collected some of the wildest physics that New Scientist covered in 2024, findings that are forcing scientists – and us – to rethink reality

We collected some of the wildest physics that New Scientist covered in 2024, findings that are forcing scientists – and us – to rethink reality

Astrophysicists come up with a lot of whacky ideas, some of which actually turn out to be possibly true (like the Big Bang, black holes, accelerating cosmic expansion, dark matter). Of course, all of these conclusions are provisional, but some are now backed by compelling evidence. Evidence is the real key – often the challenge is figuring out a way to find evidence that can potentially support or refute some hypothesis about the cosmos. Sometimes it’s challenging to figure out even theoretically (let alone practically) how we might prove or disprove a hypothesis. Decades may go buy before we have the ability to run relevant experiments or make the kinds of observations necessary.

Black holes fell into that category. They were predicted by physics long before we could find evidence of their existence. There is a category of black hole, however, that we still have not confirmed through any observation – primordial black holes (PBH). As the name implies, these black holes may have been formed in the early universe, even before the first stars. In the early dense universe, fluctuations in the density of space could have lead to the formation of black holes. These black holes could theoretically be of any size, since they are not dependent on a massive star collapsing to form them. This process could lead to black holes smaller than the smaller stellar remnant black hole.

In fact, it is possible that there are enough small primordial black holes out there to account for the missing dark matter  – matter we can detect through its gravitational effects but that we cannot otherwise see (hence dark). PBHs are considered a black hole candidate, but the evidence for this so far is not encouraging. For example, we might be able to detect black holes through microlensing. If a black hole happens to pass in front of a more distant star (from the perspective of an observer on Earth), then gravitational lensing will cause that star to appear to brighten, until the black hole passes. However, microlensing surveys have not found the number of microlensing events that would be necessary for PBHs to explain dark matter. Dark matter makes up 85% of the matter in the universe, so there would have to be lots of PBHs to be the sole cause of dark matter. It’s still possible that longer observation times would detect larger black holes (brightening events can take years if the black holes are large). But so far there is a negative result.

Observations of galaxies have also not shown the effects of swarms of PBHs, which should have (those > 10 solar masses) congregated in the centers of small galaxies over the age of the universe. This would have disturbed stars near the centers of these galaxies, causing the galaxies to appear fluffier. Observations of dwarf galaxies so far have not seen this effect, however.

A recent paper suggest two ways in which we might observe small PBHs, or at least their effects. These ideas are pretty out there, and are extreme long shots, which I think reflects the desperation for new ideas on how we might confirm the existence of PBHs. One idea is that small PBHs might have been gravitationally captured by planets. If the planet had a molten core, it’s then possible that the PBH would consume the molten core, leaving behind a hollow solid shell. The researchers calculate that for planets with a radius smaller than one tenth that of Earth, they outer solid shell could remain intact and not collapse in on itself. This idea then requires that a later collision knocks the PBH out of the center of this hollowed out small planet.

If this sequence of events occurs, then we could theoretically observe small hollow exoplanets to confirm PBHs. We could know a planet is hollow if we can calculate its size and mass, which we can do for some exoplanets. An object can have a mass much too small for its apparent size, meaning that it could be hollow. Yes, such an object would be unlikely, but the universe is a big place and even very unlikely events happen all the time. Being unlikely, however, means that such objects would be hard to find. That doesn’t matter if we can survey large parts of the universe, but finding exoplanets requires lots of observations. So far we have identified over 5 thousand exoplanets, with thousands of candidates waiting for confirmation. Most of these are larger worlds, which are easier to detect. In any case, it may be a long time before we find a small hollow world, if they are out there.

The second proposed method is also highly speculative. The idea here is that there may be really small PBHs that formed in the early universe, which can theoretically have masses in the range of 10^17 to 10^24 grams. The authors calculate that a PBH with a mass of 10^22 grams, if it passed through a solid object at high speed, would leave behind a tunnel of radius 0.1 micrometers. This tunnel would make a long straight path, which is otherwise not something you would expect to see in a solid object.

Therefore, we can look at solid objects, especially really old solid objects, with light microscopy to see if any such tiny straight tunnels exist. If they do, that could be evidence of tiny PBHs. What is the probability of finding such microscopic tunnels? The authors calculate that the probability of a billion year old boulder containing such a tunnel is 0.000001. So on average you would have to examine a million such boulders to find a single PBH tunnel. This may seem like a daunting task – because it is. The authors argue that at least the procedure is not expensive (I guess they are not counting the people time needed).

Perhaps if there were some way to automate such a search, using robots or equipment designed for the purpose. I feel like if such an experiment were to occur, it would be in the future when technology makes it feasible. The only other possibility is to crowd source it in some way. We would need millions of volunteers.

The authors recognize that these are pretty mad ideas, but they also argue that at this point any idea for finding PBHs, or dark matter, is likely to be out there. Fair enough. But unless we can practically do the experiment, it is likely to remain just a thought experiment and not really get us closer to an answer.

The post Finding Small Primordial Black Holes first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

From Alzheimer's disease to depression to heart disease, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonist drugs appear to offer a solution. Can one type of drug really tackle so many conditions, and if so, how does it actually work?

Astronomers spotted a 70-centimetre asteroid hours before it hit the atmosphere above northern Siberia, making a fireball in the sky

What could explain a strange creature living in the suburbs, but only ever witnessed once?

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In a first-of-its-kind breakthrough, a team of researchers has developed an artificial adhesion system that closely mimics natural biological interactions. Their research focuses on understanding how cells physically interact with each other and their environment, with the ultimate goal of developing innovative tools for disease diagnosis and therapy.

NASA has given SpaceX the contract to launch the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. A Falcon Heavy will send the rotorcraft and its lander on their way to Titan in 2028, if all goes according to plan, and the mission will arrive at Titan in 2034. Dragonfly is an astrobiology mission designed to measure the presence of different chemicals on the frigid moon.

Dragonfly will be the second craft to visit Titan, along with the Huygens probe and its short visit back in 2005.

Titan is remarkable because it’s the only body besides Earth with liquids on its surface. The liquids are hydrocarbons, not water, though there may be surface deposits of water ice from impacts or cryovolcanic eruptions. Researchers think that prebiotic chemicals are also present, making the moon an enticing target to understand how far prebiotic chemistry may have advanced.

These images of Titan’s well-known hydrocarbon seas are from Cassini radar data. Image Credit: [JPL-CALTECH/NASA, ASI, USGS]

Titan is benign when it comes to powered flight; its atmosphere is dense and its gravity is weak, compared to Earth. Dragonfly is an octocopter, a large quadcopter with double rotors, that can take advantage of Titan’s flight-friendly conditions. It will travel at about 36 kmh (22 mph) and will be powered by a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), a type of engine proven in multiple missions. The craft is designed to be redundant; it can lose one of its motors or rotors and still function.

Dragonfly will land near a feature on Titan called Shangri-La, east of where the Huygens probe landed. Shangri-La is one of three large sand seas near the moon’s equator.

Dragonfly’s target is the Selk impact structure, near the edge of Shangri-La. Selk is a young impact crater about 90 km (56 mi) in diameter that features melt pools, sites where liquid water and organics could mix together to form amino acids or other biomolecules. Dragonfly will initially land at some dunes near the structure then begin exploring the region and its chemistry.

Thanks largely to Cassini and Huygens, researchers have made progress understanding Titan. In a 2020 paper, researchers examined two types of craters on the moon: dune craters and plains craters. Selk is a dune crater, and in the paper, researchers said that the dune craters are richer in organics than plains craters, and in fact are almost entirely composed of organics. However, Titan’s thick atmosphere makes it difficult to observe, and these findings stem from interpreting albedo and emissivity.

Selk and the other dune craters may have originally had more water ice, according to the research, but much of it’s been eroded away. However, there was a long period of time where the water ice was present, and Dragonfly is heading for Selk to examine the chemistry in the crater and to try and determine if water and organics interacted and if prebiotic chemistry made any headway.

It’s up to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to send Dragonfly on its way to Titan. Falcon Heavy has 11 launches under its belt, including the launch of the Europa Clipper in October. After Falcon Heavy launches Dragonfly, the spacecraft will perform one flyby of Earth to gain additional velocity.

It’ll take six years for Dragonfly to reach Titan, and just as it arrives, the entry capsule will separate from the cruise module. With the help of an aeroshell and two chutes, the lander will endure an approximately 105-minute descent. At approximately 1.2 km above the surface, the lander will deploy its skids, and based on its lidar and radar data, will perform and autonomous landing.

From its landing site, Dragonfly will deploy itself and perform a series of flights up to 8km (5 mi) long. There’s diverse geology in the region, and the rotorcraft will acquire samples and then analyze them during Titan’s nights, which last about 8 Earth days or about 192 hours. After that, it will head to the Selk crater.

Titan is an important astrobiology target in our Solar System, and unlike the frozen ocean moons Europa and Enceladus, there’s no added complexity of somehow working its way through thick ice before its potentially biological environment can be examined.

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket sends NASA’s Europa Clipper into space from its Florida launch pad. If all goes well, the Falcon Heavy will launch the Dragonfly mission to Titan in July, 2028. (NASA Photo / Kim Shiflett)

But for all of this to succeed, it needs a successful launch first. NASA is paying SpaceX about $256 million to launch Dragonfly, and it the launch goes off without a hitch, it’ll be money well-spent.

The post Dragonfly is Going to Titan on a Falcon Heavy appeared first on Universe Today.

The algorithms behind generative AI tools like DallE, when combined with physics-based data, can be used to develop better ways to model the Earth's climate. Computer scientists have now used this combination to create a model that is capable of predicting climate patterns over 100 years 25 times faster than the state of the art.