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Researchers have found that stars in the early universe may have formed from 'fluffy' molecular clouds. Using the ALMA telescope to observe the Small Magellanic Cloud -- whose environment is similar to the early universe -- they observed that about 60% of the observed clouds had the common filamentary structure, while the remaining 40% had a 'fluffy' shape. These results could provide new insights into the formation of stars in the universe.

Researchers have developed a powerful computational tool, named iDOMO, to improve the prediction of drug synergy and accelerate the development of combination therapies for complex diseases. The study highlights iDOMO's ability to identify synergistic drug combinations using gene expression data, outperforming existing methods.

Dynamic facial projection mapping (DFPM) has reached new heights in speed and accuracy, with the development of a state-of-the-art system with groundbreaking innovations. The first breakthrough involved a hybrid detection technique combining different methods to detect facial landmarks in just 0.107 milliseconds. The researchers also proposed a way to simulate high-frame-rate video annotations to train their models and introduced a lens-shift co-axial projector-camera setup to reduce alignment errors, enabling smoother and more immersive projections.

Dynamic facial projection mapping (DFPM) has reached new heights in speed and accuracy, with the development of a state-of-the-art system with groundbreaking innovations. The first breakthrough involved a hybrid detection technique combining different methods to detect facial landmarks in just 0.107 milliseconds. The researchers also proposed a way to simulate high-frame-rate video annotations to train their models and introduced a lens-shift co-axial projector-camera setup to reduce alignment errors, enabling smoother and more immersive projections.

Gateway’s HALO module heads to the U.S., on its long path to orbiting the Moon.

Preparations for Lunar Gateway are starting to come together. Thales Alenia Aerospace engineers recently began a series of checks on the HALO (Habitation Logistics Outpost) core module. Currently at the company’s Turin, Italy facility, the module is set to head to the U.S. to contractor Northrop Grumman’s Gilbert, Arizona site next month, aboard an Antonov AN-124-100 aircraft.

The HALO segment is the crucial core of what will become Lunar Gateway. Along with environmental and stress tests, the Thales Alenia team will install valves, carry out leak checks, and prepare for integrating secondary structures with HALO. One airlock, the Emirates Crew and Science Module was built and provided by the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre. The airlock will be used for space walks outside of Gateway. In exchange, the UAE will receive an astronaut slot on an Artemis expedition.

The first welding of the ring and cylinder segments for HALO occurred at Thales Alenia Space in 2021, marking the first major milestone for assembly of the module’s primary structure.

The HALO core module on the move. Credit: Thales Alenia Space.

Northrop Grumman was awarded the $935 million dollar contract to develop the Gateway HALO module in 2021. NASA’s FY2025 budget allocates over $817 million for the continued construction of Gateway.

Looking inside the HALO module. Credit: Thales Alenia Space. What’s Next for HALO and Gateway

“To ensure all flight hardware is ready to support Artemis IV—the first crewed mission to Gateway—NASA is targeting the launch of HALO and the Power and Propulsion Element no later than December 2027,” Laura Rochon (NASA-Johnson Spaceflight Center) told Universe Today in a recent email. “These modules will launch together aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and spend about a year traveling uncrewed to lunar orbit, while providing scientific data on solar and deep space radiation during transit.”

Once the module arrives at Northrop Grumman’s Arizona facility, it will undergo more tests and integration with the propulsion stage prior to launch. As one of four pressurized modules, HALO will support crew, experiments and internal and external payloads. Gateway will serve as a staging point, supporting lunar research and crews on the surface. One big advantage for Gateway is that it would act as a reusable ‘command module’ for expeditions to the Moon, allowing for longer stays on the surface.

Part of the propulsion element for Gateway. Credit: NASA/JSC/Maxar Space Systems. A Deep Space Station

Like the International Space Station, Gateway is an international effort. The European Space Agency is designing its Lunar Link (part of ESA’s larger LunaNet DTN framework initiative) for the station. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is supplying a robotic arm, its Small Orbital Replacement Unit Robotic Interface. Gateway will be approximately a fifth the size and volume of the ISS. Unlike the permanently crewed ISS, Gateway will only host temporary expeditions, and will spend much on its time vacant and running in autonomous mode.

An artist’s conception of Gateway in orbit around the Moon. Credit: NASA-JSC.

“The ISS has been a cornerstone of space research in low-Earth orbit for more than two decades,” says Rochon. “Gateway expands this legacy into the deep space environment. Gateway will operate in orbit around the Moon, where radiation is a greater concern due to lack of a protective shield. It took 40 launches and over 13 years to build the ISS. Gateway will be fully constructed in four launches using advanced technology and capabilities focused on what is needed to support long-term human lunar exploration.”

Science and research will still happen on Gateway… even when humans are absent. “Gateway will focus on pushing the boundaries of remote and autonomous operations,” says Rochon. “This will enable Gateway to conduct science investigation and support missions, even when crew are not present.”

Putting Gateway together. Credit: NASA. Artemis at a Crossroads

This all happens at a time of change and uncertainty for NASA. A layoff of 1,000 employees announced earlier this week was put on hold…for now. Many pundits have also questioned the burgeoning complexity and cost overruns for the Artemis initiative, and if Gateway is still needed.

NASA’s large Space Launch System (SLS) rocket finally got off the ground with Artemis I in November 2022. The first crewed lunar flyby on Artemis II has been pushed back to April 2026. The first lunar landing mission on Artemis III relies heavily on SpaceX’s Starship Heavy and Starship HLS (Human Landing System) as part of its architecture. Starship has another suborbital launch coming up on February 26th. The first possible orbital flight of Starship is planned for this April. SpaceX still has lots of hurdles to overcome prior to the Artemis III lunar landing, set for 2027.

Gateway will orbit the Moon in a unique, Near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). This unique type of orbit is necessary for astronauts to access the entirety of the lunar surface. This is especially true for a landing in the south polar regions. The Cis-Lunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations Navigations Experiment (CAPSTONE) mission launched in 2022 on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket is pioneering this type of orbit. An NRHO path also affords the station a near-continuous line-of-sight communications link with controllers on Earth.

Despite the hurdles it faces, it would be great to finally see humans living and working around the Moon. Imagine the view! For now, we can watch as the pieces come together, and the core HALO module for Gateway takes ‘one small step’ closer to the launch pad.

The post Lunar Gateway’s Core HALO Module Enters the Clean Room appeared first on Universe Today.

Satellites have detected large volumes of methane spewing from Mount Fentale’s crater following months of earthquakes that have shaken the region

Evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven was bullied out of Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology for public statements that were true, compassionate and biologically anodyne. As she explains:

At the end of July 2021, I made my first live TV appearance, on the Fox and Friends show on Fox News. I was invited to comment on an article in The Free Press by Katie Herzog,in which I’d been quoted. She reported that medical school professors were backing away from using clear scientific terms such as male, female, and pregnant woman, largely in response to student complaints. I said I thought this trend was a big mistake.

In the brief segment on Fox, my troubles began when I described how biologists define male and female, and argued that these are invaluable terms that science educators in particular should not relinquish in response to pressure from ideologues. I emphasized that “understanding the facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect.” We can, I said, “respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns.”

I also mentioned that educators are increasingly self-censoring, for fear that using the “wrong” language can result in being shunned or even fired.

The ensuing fracas at Harvard, during which Hooven found little support from her colleagues, led to her eventually leaving her department. But she hasn’t lost her cool and, in today’s Boston Globe, explains sex to the layperson, prompted by the Executive Order of Trump discussed in the last post. You can read Carole’s “ideas” post by clicking below or finding it archived here.

This is a great article for not only explaining biological sex to people who are new to the controversy, but also correcting misconceptions about it, like the tri-societies’ claim that sex is defined by some unspecified, multidimensional amalgam of traits like hormones, chromosomes, genitals, and even behavior. (They never tell us how such combining is to be done, nor how many sexes there are in humans and other species.)  But first an excerpt that shows how the media has distorted the sex “controversy,” which shouldn’t even be a controversy:

Ideally, political beliefs would not bias views of scientific reality. But take a look at how the media covered the Trump administration’s new executive order. The Globe: “Trump executive order misstates facts about sex and gender, scientists say.” Time: “Trump’s ‘Biological Truth’ Executive Order Is Not Based in Biology or Truth.” The Guardian: “Most scientists now reject the idea that sex is strictly binary” and “sex is a hell of a lot more complicated than Trump’s executive order would have you believe.” NBC: “The executive order questions [transgender people’s] existence by saying the government would recognize only two unchangeable sexes: female and male.”

As for Fox News: “Trump is returning sanity to the gender conversation.”

Many journalists — and the experts they consult — seem unable to disentangle their politics from analysis of the relevant science. I’m a Democrat, and I have never voted for a Republican. Yet while I might have worded things in Trump’s executive order a little differently, I agree with the way this administration has defined sex.

There are two and only two sexes. Sex is immutable in humans and other mammals, and it is defined by gamete size. (I’ll discuss some of the technicalities shortly.)

I’d love to live in a world in which children in particular felt comfortable expressing themselves as they saw fit, regardless of whether that expression was sex-typical. To promote such a culture, we adults don’t need to pretend that sex is not a biological reality, claim that sex can be changed, or deny the natural differences between boys and girls, men and women. Instead, we should foster an environment that respects individual expression, while also acknowledging biological reality.

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Unfortunately, mainstream coverage has elided basic biological facts and misled the public about what sex actually is.

Carole goes on to give the gametic definition of sex, dispelling the idea that biological sex is defined by other traits like hormone levels, genitalia, and chromosomes. These are traits that are associated (imperfectly) with biological sex, but for reasons that Richard Dawkins has engagingly and clearly  explained, are not part of the definition of sex.  Here is Carole’s related take:

The more we understand about the wide variety of characteristics that can be associated with one sex or the other — like genes, genitalia, hormone levels, muscle mass, or even how individuals feel and act — the better able we will be to meet the medical, psychological, and social needs of those with rare variations. But variation in characteristics that are associated with sex does not constitute evidence for additional sexes. Nor does it mean that sex itself is somehow on a spectrum.

What it instead shows is that sex-associated traits do exist on a spectrum.

Two more points from a long piece. First, Carole does seem to differ slightly from Trump on how sex might be shown on official documents:

Sex is written into law for a reason: There are situations in which it might make sense for boys and men not to have all the same rights as girls and women. For instance, perhaps women should have exclusive access to lactation rooms and women’s sports teams. Perhaps it’s reasonable to consider men’s-only spaces such as military quarters or social clubs. Yet the fact that we are born into one of two sexes doesn’t necessarily mean that our sex should always matter or that official documents must always reflect it. (In the United States, the sex marker on passports wasn’t required until 1977.) But constructive discussion about the implications of sex cannot happen if we can’t agree on basic facts and the language to describe them.

I agree with the last sentence, though I can also see reasons to have natal sex on at least some official documents (for medical care, for one reason). But as she said, it needs to be discussed. Do we have it on passports? (I think yes.) Birth certificates? (Yes, too.) Driver’s licenses? (Those are state and not federal documents, and I see no need to add “sex” to them.) But please put your own views in the comments.

At the end, Hooven explains why we scientists, who are in the truth business, have to get the science right before we begin making policy about it.  And she explains that, because we are humans (and Democrats!), we should avoid using the truth to promulgate bigotry and hatred. The truth is the truth, and the rest is commentary—and morality:

What are our options, as scholars and journalists, if we are concerned about science landing in the “wrong hands” and being “weaponized”? Should we refrain from doing the research that would produce such inconvenient facts, or keep them out of the public eye? Produce journalism that only reports that which appears to support a preferred narrative? Shame those who share facts that the “other side” could to use to advance their own agendas?

All of this is going on, and it’s bad for science, bad for trust in our academic and journalistic institutions, and just bad for democracy. Vulnerable people especially deserve honesty, dignity, and compassion. I hope we can agree that the facts of nature are not what provide the justification for treating people with dignity and respect. We should do that in any case.

You don’t need to have a PhD from Harvard to know the truth here, and you shouldn’t need courage to say it. Whether the policies in Trump’s executive order are justifiable is something reasonable people can disagree about. But as for the scientific facts: The order got those right.

If anybody asks you about the sex kerfuffle, refer them to Dawkins’s article linked above and also to this piece by Carole.

Grave warnings have been issued about the dangers of creating life forms using mirror-image molecules. How worried should we be?

There will be a few posts on the definition of sex today, as everything “dropped”—as the kids say—at the same time.

First, on January 20, the Trump administration issued an executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”—an attempt to efface gender ideology from the government and ensure that people’s biological sex appeared on government documents like passports. It defined “sex”, “male”, “female”, “men”, “women”, “boys” and “girls” in standard ways that were also to be used, per the specifications, in all government documents.  Gender ideology was to be eliminated from government-funded projects like grants, sex was characterized as “binary,” and the order specified things like this:

Agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity.

It also used the gametic definition of sex:

“Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

“Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

. . . and specified standardized terminology:

“Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

“Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

Of course many people were angered by this, some assuming—with some justification—hat this was more than just a clarification of how sex was to be used in by government, but also an attack on those who considered themselves to not be of male or female gender, or on transsexual people.  I recognize this construal and see that it comes from how people have seen Trump previously comment on sex and gender.

Nevertheless, I think the document itself is pretty much okay, though I can’t see why you can’t have both natal sex and some indication of gender on government documents, although that would be nearly impossible as there are a gazillion genders, and a single character wouldn’t say much. I do appreciate the attempt to protect “women’s spaces.”

Now, in an attempt to further clarify how biological sex is defined, and deal with some of the caveats and misconceptions about it, the Department of Health and Human Services (now headed by RFK Jr., oy), has issued another short document, which you can access below by clicking on the headline or by going here. 

I’ll reproduce the entire text, indented, below the header:

Background

President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14168 on January 20, 2025, entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which directs the Department of Health and Human Service (the Department) to promulgate clear guidance to the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public, expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in the Executive Order.

Defining Sex

There are only two sexes, female and male, because there are only two types of gametes. An individual human is either female or male based on whether the person is of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova) or sperm.

The sex of a human, female or male, is determined genetically at conception (fertilization), and is observable before birth. Having the biological function to produce eggs or sperm does not require that eggs or sperm are ever produced. Some females or males may not or may no longer produce eggs or sperm due to factors such as age, congenital disorders or other developmental conditions, injury, or medical conditions that cause infertility.

A person’s sex is unchangeable and determined by objective biology. The use of hormones or surgical interventions do not change a person’s sex because such actions do not change the type of gamete that the person’s reproductive system has the biological function to produce. Rare disorders of sexual development do not constitute a third sex because these disorders do not lead to the production of a third gamete. That is, the reproductive system of a person with such a disorder does not produce gametes other than eggs or sperm.

The Department has long recognized that the biological differences between females and males require sex-specific practices in medicine and research to ensure optimal health outcomes and rigorous research, including by considering sex as a biological variable.

Recognizing the immutable and biological nature of sex is essential to ensure the protection of women’s health, safety, private spaces, sports, and opportunities. Restoring biological truth to the Federal government is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself. Accordingly, the Department promulgates the following definitions:

Definitions

Sex is a person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.

Female is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).

Male is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.

Woman is an adult human female. Girl is a minor human female.

Man is an adult human male.

Boy is a minor human male.

Mother is a female parent.

Father is a male parent.

I really cannot find anything biologically wrong with this short document, regardless of what you think its motivations are. And it does provide a standardized terminology while also correcting some misconceptions about sex (a common but ludicrous one is that if you have the reproductive apparatus of, say, a woman, but cannot produce gametes—as in the case of a sterile or postmenopausal woman—you are not a woman). It also notes, correctly, that “Rare disorders of sexual development do not constitute a third sex because these disorders do not lead to the production of a third gamete. That is, the reproductive system of a person with such a disorder does not produce gametes other than eggs or sperm.”  (Many prefer to say “differences of sexual development” rather than “disorders of sex development” because the former sounds less perjorative. I am fine with “differences.”)

It appears that there was some salubrious biological expertise that went into the confection of this document. As I said, I can’t find anything wrong with it, and it comports pretty well with what I see as the consensus of biologists and with how terminology is used in the literature (see another post by Richard Dawkins to come today).  But remember that administrations come and go, and were a semi-progressive Democrat like Biden to be elected again, this document would be very different.

Finally, I cannot resist a bit of snark.  First note that the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists issued a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress (declaration archived here), a statement deliberately aimed at contradicting the first Executive Order by declaring that sex is not binary but a spectrum—in all species!  I and others have pointed out the fallacies and misrepresentations in this “tri-societies” letter (see my posts here, here, and here); it almost seems that some of Societies’ misrepresentations of biology were based not on science but on ideology, and were deliberate.

How embarrassing is it, given the situation, that the SSE, the AASN, and the SSB got their biology wrong while the Trump administration got it right! But that’s what happens when scientific societies get ideologically captured.

What if I told you there was a secret window, and if you looked through this window you could see the entire history of the universe unfold before your very eyes?

It sounds too good to be true. But this is science, and if we’ve learned anything in our four centuries of scientific exploration of nature, its that science can produce miracles. Or in this case, science can take advantage of nature’s own miracles.

I’m talking about a curious little feature of the humble hydrogen atom. One proton, one electron. Done, the simplest atom possible. You can throw a neutron in there if you’re feeling generous. It’s not necessary but adds a little bit of fiber.

Now this proton and this electron are particles, which means they have a list of properties, like mass and charge. Those properties tell us how the particles respond to the gravitational force and the electric force. And then there’s this other property, a property we call spin. When I say “spin” everybody, including myself, thinks of the obvious: something spinning, like a Harlem globetrotter spinning a basketball on their pinky finger. But these are particles, which means they take up no volume in space, so how do they…spin?

The answer is they don’t. But they kind of do. It’s really weird and complicated and it’s one of those many quantum things that we just have to learn to live with, because there’s no getting around it and quantum mechanics doesn’t really care if we understand it or not. The spin of a particle refers to, essentially, how it responds to magnetic fields. If you were to take a metal ball and charge it up with electricity, and then set it spinning and throw it into a magnetic field, there’s a natural response of that spinning metal charged ball to the magnetic field. If it’s spinning one way, the ball gets deflected in one direction. If it’s spinning the other way, it goes the other way.

Particles like electrons and protons do that: they respond to magnetic fields exactly as if they were charged metal balls. They’re not, but they still act like they are, so we call it spin because that’s the closest thing we can call this, and we have to move on.

And particles like protons and electrons can have one of two choices for their spin. We call these choices up and down, because when we shoot these particles through a magnetic field that points up-and-down, the up-pointing particles go up and the down-spinning particles go down. We could have called these spin states left and right or a and b or alice and bob, but we went with up and down.

In a hydrogen atom, the electron and proton can either have the same direction of spin (both up or both down) or they can have opposite spins. For various quantum mechanical reasons having to do with overlap of the wavefunctions, when the proton and electron have the exact same spin, that configuration has ever so slightly more energy than the situation than when they’re the opposite.

That means that when they find themselves in that same-spin situation, because quantum mechanics allows all sorts of randomness like that, they can realign themselves to reach a lower energy state.

This takes a long time. If you found a hydrogen atom all by its lonesome in the middle of empty space with parallel spins, and you waited and watched for it to flip back to its normal configuration, the average wait time is around 11 million years.

But here’s the kicker. Last time I checked there are way more than 11 million hydrogen atoms in the universe, which means if you have a whole bunch of hydrogen atoms all sitting around, chances are one of them is going to realign and release that pent-up energy.

And if you have, say, a galaxy’s worth of hydrogen atoms, then they’re emitting this energy pretty much all the time.

Now it’s not a lot of energy, around 5.8 micro electron-volts. That energy comes out in a very specific way, in the form of a single photon of electromagnetic radiation. And we can compute the wavelength of that radiation, and that comes out to 21 cm.

Every galaxy is glowing in this very special kind of light, all thanks to the humble hydrogen atom.

The post How Humble Hydrogen Lights Up the Universe appeared first on Universe Today.

A scientific brain teaser for readers: here’s a wave function evolving over time, presented in the three different representations that I described in a post earlier this week. [Each animation runs for a short time, goes blank, and then repeats.] Can you interpret what is happening here?

The explanation — and the reasons why this example is particularly useful, informative, and interesting (I promise!) — is coming soon [it will be posted here tomorrow morning Boston time, Friday Feb 21st.]

[Note added on Thursday: I give this example in every quantum mechanics class I teach. No matter how many times I have said, with examples, that a wave function exists in the space of possibilities, not in physical space, it happens every time that 90%-95% thinks this shows two particles. It does not. And that’s why I always give this example.]

Questioning a chatbot that has been trained on bestselling books from a particular decade can give researchers a measure of the social biases of that era

The inevitable happened this morning: Hamas turned over four dead bodies of Israeli hostages, encased in black boxes. And, contrary to my expectations, there was a ceremony, with posters blaming the deaths on Netanyahu and the Red Cross there signing documents.  The bodies included the Bibas family (Shiri Bibas and her two children. four-year-old Ariel and 9-month old Kfir) and Oded Lifshitz, identified by Matti Friedman in the Free Press as “a grandfather, journalist and peace activist who was 83 when he was kidnapped from the same kibbutz, Nir Oz.”

To get those bodies back, Israel had to release 100 Palestinian prisoners, including a Gazan woman who had held hostages in her flat.

Here is a video of the turnover of the bodies, taken as a live feed. It’s quite long but you can scroll through it. Start at the beginning:

A couple of photos from Sheri Oz’s article in Israel Diaries.  First, a poster hanging over the coffins, reading “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes.”  Of course they blame the deaths on the IDF. There’s a picture of a ghoulish Netanyahu with blood-dripping fangs looming over the dead hostages.  We did not know the identity of the dead hostages until about two days ago.

The Red Cross signing documents.  What kind of documents do they need? The Red Cross has behaved shamefully during all this time, even refusing to bring needed medications to the hostages:

Hamas carrying a coffin:

Lots of spectators came to see the show, with some bringing their children:

From Matti Friedman’s article, “The family that never came home.”  He is angry and sees this as a symbol of Israel’s failure to achieve the goals of this war:

No captives have focused public sentiment like the Bibas children, the youngest Israeli hostages. Footage from October 7 showed a terrified Shiri Bibas cradling a baby and a toddler as they were taken at gunpoint from their home. The two redheads quickly became symbols of the 250 Israelis taken hostage—icons not just of the inhumanity of the Palestinians who kidnapped and murdered civilians and celebrated this barbarism as a victory, but of the unthinkable weakness of the Israeli state that allowed this to happen.

After their capture, the Israeli military said Shiri and the children were in the hands of a small and previously unknown Gazan faction. Video footage showed the children’s father, Yarden, covered in blood on the back of a motorcycle, surrounded by dozens of men as he was taken away separately. He survived 15 months in captivity and was recently returned as part of the current ceasefire deal.

Later, another video surfaced showing Shiri and the children being herded into Gaza by a half-dozen men. This was the last glimpse of them.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of the grief in Israel on Thursday is that the fate of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir has largely been understood since late 2023. Hamas announced early in the war that the three were dead, killed by an Israeli airstrike. Given the intensity of fire in the early stage of the war and the fact that the military didn’t know where Palestinian fighters were hiding hostages, it seemed possible. And the deaths seemed even more probable when, in November 2023, Hamas returned Israeli mothers and children in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and the Bibas family wasn’t among them.

. . .But Hamas has produced false information about other hostages as a form of psychological warfare, including a report that Daniella Gilboa was killed in an Israeli airstrike. (She was just released alive.) And while Israeli intelligence was able to ascertain the death of other hostages in captivity, there was no confirmation about the fate of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir.

And so Israelis retained hope that the Bibas family would somehow come back alive. The reluctance to accept the worst was less about logic than about their deaths simply being too unbearable to believe—and so simply wouldn’t be believed until we had no other choice. That moment arrived on Thursday morning.

After the war began on October 7, 2023, the Israeli government stated that its goals were the elimination of the Hamas threat and the return of all the hostages. Today, as armed terrorists held a macabre ceremony with the coffins of four Israelis who were kidnapped alive, it was impossible to argue that either goal had been achieved.

I have nothing to add.  The “ceremony” instantiates the evil that is Hamas.

In new video footage, cuttlefish show off their dazzling camouflage techniques, such as creating stripes that move over their bodies or mimicking non-threatening objects

A red supergiant star appears to have changed in just a few years – an astronomical blink of an eye – which suggests it may be getting ready to explode in a supernova

Multiple studies suggest that speaking more than one language pushes back the onset of dementia, but doesn't seem to stop it entirely

Every Martian year (which last 686.98 Earth days), the Red Planet experiences regional dust storms that coincide with summer in the southern hemisphere. Every three Martian years (five and a half Earth years), these storms grow so large that they encompass the entire planet and are visible from Earth. These storms are a serious hazard for robotic missions, causing electrostatic storms that can mess with electronics and cause dust to build up on solar panels. In 2018 and 2022, the Opportunity Rover and InSight Lander were lost after dust storms prevented them from drawing enough power to remain operational.

But what about crewed missions? In the coming decades, NASA and the Chinese Manned Space Agency (CMS) plan to send astronauts and taikonauts to Mars. These missions will include months of surface operations and are expected to culminate in the creation of long-duration habitats on the surface. According to new research by the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC), Martian dust storms can potentially cause respiratory issues and elevated risk of disease, making them yet another health hazard space agencies need to prepare for.

The research was led by Justin L. Wang, a Doctor of Medicine at USC, along with several of his colleagues from the Keck School of Medicine. They were joined by researchers from the UCLA Space Medicine Center, the Ann and HJ Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at UC Boulder, and the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The paper detailing their findings appeared on February 12th in the journal GeoHealth.

Sending crewed missions to Mars presents many challenges, including logistics and health hazards. In the past 20 years, the shortest distance between Earth and Mars was 55 million km (34 million miles), or roughly 142 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. This was in 2003 and was the closest the two planets had been in over 50,000 years. Using conventional methods, it would take six to nine months to make a one-way transit, during which time astronauts will experience physiological changes caused by long-term exposure to microgravity.

These include muscle atrophy, loss of bone density, a weakened cardiovascular system, etc. Moreover, a return mission could last as long as three years, during which time astronauts would spend at least a year living and working in Martian gravity (36.5% that of Earth). There’s also the risk of elevated radiation exposure astronauts will experience during transits and while operating on the surface of Mars. However, there are also the potential health effects caused by exposure to Martian regolith. As Wang described to Universe Today via email:

“There are many potential toxic elements that astronauts could be exposed to on Mars. Most critically, there is an abundance of silica dust in addition to iron dust from basalt and nanophase iron, both of which are reactive to the lungs and can cause respiratory diseases. What makes dust on Mars more hazardous is that the average dust particle size on Mars is much smaller than the minimum size that the mucus in our lungs is able to expel, so they’re more likely to cause disease.”

During the Apollo Era, the Apollo astronauts reported how lunar regolith would stick to their spacesuits and adhere to all surfaces inside their spacecraft. Upon their return to Earth, they also reported physical symptoms like coughing, throat irritation, watery eyes, and blurred vision. In a 2005 NASA study, the reports of six of the Apollo astronauts were studied to assess the overall effects of lunar dust on EVA systems, which concluded that the most significant health risks included “vision obscuration” and “inhalation and irritation.”

Artist’s depiction of a dust storm on Mars. Credit: NASA

“Silica directly causes silicosis, which is typically considered an occupational disease for workers that are exposed to silica (i.e., mining and construction),” said Wang. “Silicosis and exposure to toxic iron dust resemble coal worker’s pneumoconiosis, which is common in coal miners and is colloquially known as black lung disease.”

Beyond causing lung irritation and respiratory and vision problems, Martian dust is known for its toxic components. These include perchlorates, silica, iron oxides (rust), gypsum, and trace amounts of toxic metals like chromium, beryllium, arsenic, and cadmium – the abundance of which is not well understood. On Earth, the health effects of exposure to these metals have been studied extensively, which Wang and his team drew upon to assess the risk they pose to astronauts bound for Mars in the coming decades:

“It’s significantly more difficult to treat astronauts on Mars for diseases because the transit time is significantly longer than other previous missions to the ISS and the Moon. In this case, we need to be prepared for a wide array of health problems that astronauts can develop on their long-duration missions. In addition, [microgravity and radiation] negatively impact the human body, can make astronauts more susceptible to diseases, and complicate treatments. In particular, radiation exposure can cause lung disease, which can compound the effects that dust will have on astronauts’ lungs.”

In addition to food, water, and oxygen gas, the distance between Earth and Mars also complicates the delivery of crucial medical supplies, and astronauts cannot be rushed back to Earth for life-saving treatments either. According to Wang and his colleagues, this means that crewed missions will need to be as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to medical treatment as well. As with all major health hazards, they emphasize the need for prevention first, though they also identify some possible countermeasures to mitigate the risks:

“Limiting dust contamination of astronaut habitats and being able to filter out any dust that breaks through will be the most important countermeasure. Of course, some dust will be able to get through, especially when Martian dust storms make maintaining a clean environment more difficult. We’ve found studies that suggest vitamin C can help prevent diseases from chromium exposure and iodine can help prevent thyroid diseases from perchlorate.”

Austin Langton, a researcher at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, creates a fine spray of the regolith simulant BP-1. Credits: NASA/Kim Shiflett

They also stressed that these and other potential countermeasures need to be taken with caution. As Wang indicated, taking too much vitamin C can increase the risk of kidney stones, which astronauts are already at risk for after spending extended periods in microgravity. In addition, an excess of idione can contribute to the same thyroid diseases that it is meant to treat in the first place. For years, space agencies have been actively developing technologies and strategies to mitigate the risks of lunar and Martian regolith.

Examples include special sprays, electron beams, and protective coatings, while multiple studies and experiments are investigating regolith to learn more about its transport mechanisms and behavior. As the Artemis Program unfolds and missions to Mars draw nearer, we are likely to see advances in pharmacology and medical treatments that address the hazards of space exploration as well.

Further Reading: GeoHealth

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If Intermediate-Mass Black Holes (IMBHs) are real, astronomers expect to find them in dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. There’s tantalizing evidence that they exist but no conclusive proof. So far, there are only candidates.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has found 300 additional candidate IMBHs.

Logic says that IMBHs should exist. We know of stellar-mass black holes, and we know of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Stellar-mass black holes have between five and tens of solar masses, and SMBHs have at least hundreds of thousands of solar masses. Their upper limit is not constrained. Astrophysicists think these black holes are linked in an evolutionary sequence, so it makes sense that there’s an intermediate step between the two. That’s what IMBHs are, and their masses should range from about 100 to 100 thousand solar masses. IMBHs could also be relics of the very first black holes to form in the Universe and the seeds for SMBHs.

The problem is that there are no confirmed instances of them.

Omega Centauri, the brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way, is one of the prime candidates for an IMBH. There’s an ongoing scientific discussion about the cluster and the potential IMBH in its center. Stars in the cluster’s center move faster than other stars, indicating that a large mass is present. Some scientists think it’s an IMBH, while others think it’s a cluster of stellar-mass black holes.

This is Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster that we know of in the Milky Way. An international team of astronomers used more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spanning two decades to detect seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of Omega Centauri. These stars provide compelling new evidence for the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle (MPIA)

Other evidence for IMBHs comes from a gravitational wave detection in 2019. The wave was generated by two black holes merging. The pair of black holes had masses of 65 and 85 solar masses, and the resulting black hole had 142 solar masses. The other 8 solar masses were radiated away as gravitational waves.

By adding 300 more IMBH candidates to the list, DESI may be nudging us toward a definitive answer about the existence of these elusive black holes.

The 300 new candidates are presented in a paper soon to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. It’s titled “Tripling the Census of Dwarf AGN Candidates Using DESI Early Data” and is available at arxiv.org. The lead author is Ragadeepika Pucha, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utah.

The 300 candidate IMBHs are the largest collection to date. Until now, there were only 100 to 150 candidates. This is a massive leap in the amount of available data, and future research will no doubt rely on it to make progress on the IMBH issue.

“Our wealth of new candidates will help us delve deeper into these mysteries, enriching our understanding of black holes and their pivotal role in galaxy evolution.”

Ragadeepika Pucha, University of Utah

The new candidates were identified in DESI’s early data release, which contains data from 20% of DESI’s first year of operations. The data included more than just IMBH candidates. DESI also found about 115,000 dwarf galaxies and spectra from about 410,000 galaxies, a huge number.

This mosaic shows a series of images featuring candidate dwarf galaxies hosting an active galactic nucleus, captured with the Subaru Telescope’s Hyper Suprime-Cam. Image Credit: Legacy Surveys/D. Lang (Perimeter Institute)/NAOJ/HSC Collaboration/D. de Martin (NSF NOIRLab) & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

The data allowed lead author Pucha and her colleagues to explore the relationship between the evolution of dwarf galaxies and black holes.

Despite their extreme masses, black holes are difficult to find. Their presence is inferred from their effect on their environment. In their presence, stars are accelerated to high velocities. Fast-moving stars were one of the clues showing that the Milky Way has an SMBH.

Astronomers are pretty certain that all massive galaxies like ours host an SMBH in their centers, but this certainty fades when it comes to dwarf galaxies. Dwarf galaxies are so small that our instruments struggle to observe them in detail. Unless the black hole is actively feeding.

When a black hole is actively consuming material, it is visible as an active galactic nucleus (AGN.) AGNs are like beacons that alert astronomers to the presence of a black hole.

“When a black hole at the center of a galaxy starts feeding, it unleashes a tremendous amount of energy into its surroundings, transforming into what we call an active galactic nucleus,” lead author Pucha said in a press release. “This dramatic activity serves as a beacon, allowing us to identify hidden black holes in these small galaxies.”

The team found 2,500 dwarf galaxies containing an active galactic nucleus, an astonishing number. Like the new IMBH candidates, this is the largest sample ever discovered. The researchers determined that 2% of the dwarf galaxies hosted AGN, a big step up from the 0.5% gleaned from other studies.

“This increase can be primarily attributed to the smaller fibre size of DESI compared to SDSS <Sloan Digital Sky Survey>, which aids with the identification of lower luminosity AGN within the same magnitude and redshift range,” the authors explain in their paper.

This artist’s illustration depicts a dwarf galaxy that hosts an active galactic nucleus — an actively feeding black hole. In the background are many other dwarf galaxies hosting active black holes, as well as a variety of other types of galaxies hosting intermediate-mass black holes. Image Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/M. Zamani

Astronomers think that black holes found in dwarf galaxies should be within the intermediate-mass range. However, only 70 of the newly discovered IMBH candidates overlap with dwarf AGN candidates. This is unexpected and raises yet more questions about black holes, how they form, and how they evolve within galaxies.

This scatter plot, adapted from the research, shows the number of candidate dwarf galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei (AGN) from previous surveys compared with the number of new dwarf galaxy AGN candidates discovered by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Image Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Pucha/J. Pollard

“For example, is there any relationship between the mechanisms of black hole formation and the types of galaxies they inhabit?” Pucha said. “Our wealth of new candidates will help us delve deeper into these mysteries, enriching our understanding of black holes and their pivotal role in galaxy evolution.”

DESI is only getting started. These discoveries were made with only a small portion of data from the instrument’s first year of operation, and there are several more years of operation to come.

“The anticipated increase in the sample of dwarf AGN candidates over the next five years with DESI will accelerate studies of AGN in dwarf galaxies,” the authors write in their research. “The statistical sample of dwarf AGN candidates will be invaluable for addressing several key questions related to galaxy evolution on the smallest scales, including accretion modes in low-mass galaxies and the co-evolution of galaxies and their central BHs,” they conclude.

• Press Release: DESI Uncovers 300 New Intermediate-Mass Black Holes Plus 2500 New Active Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• Research: Tripling the Census of Dwarf AGN Candidates Using DESI Early Data
• Research: Properties and Astrophysical Implications of the 150 M? Binary Black Hole Merger GW190521
• Research: New constraints on the central mass contents of Omega Centauri from combined stellar kinematics and pulsar timing

The post DESI Found 300 Candidate Intermediate Mass Black Holes appeared first on Universe Today.

There are plenty of types of stars out there, but one stands out for being just a little weirder than the others. You might even say it’s strange. According to a paper from researchers at Guangxi University in China, the birth of one might have recently been observed for the very first time.

A strange star is a (so far theoretical) compact star that is so dense it literally breaks down regular parts of atoms (like neutrons) into their constituent quarks. Moreover, even those quarks (the up and down that comprise a neutron) get compressed into an even rarer type of quark called a strange quark – hence the name strange star.

Technically, the “strange” matter that a strange star would be composed of is a combination of up, down, and strange quarks. But, at least in theory, this mix of sub-hadronic particles could even be more stable than a traditional neutron star, which is similar to a strange star but doesn’t have enough gravity to break down the neutrons.

Fraser discusses strange stars.

Strange stars, though they exist in theory, are exceedingly rare. No one has ever proven that one exists. But Xiao Tian and his co-authors think they might have found evidence of one.

Their paper describes a recent gamma-ray burst known as GRB 240529A that they think holds the clues to finding a strange star. Gamma-ray bursts, the gigantic implosions that sometimes result from creating a black hole, could also have other causes – or “central engines,” as they are called in the literature. One such central engine is the creation of a magnetar.

Magnetars are another type of neutron star that is even more extreme. Their magnetic fields could be up to 1,000 times that of a typical neutron star, giving them the largest magnetic fields in the known universe. In them, electrons and protons are forced together to create neutrons, hence the name neutron star.

Fraser discusses magnetars, the type of star that would theoretically collapse into a strange star.

However, they could also collapse upon themselves, as a part of cosmological theory allows for a magnetar to collapse into an even more dense form, which would be something akin to a strange star with the requisite mix of quarks. Doing so would undoubtedly produce a gamma-ray burst, which Dr. Tian and his co-authors believe they found in GRB 240529A.

The details of that particular GRB hold the clues. There were three distinct “emission episodes” that represented different phases of the collapse to a magnetar, then to a strange star, and then the spin-down of the strange star. A different spectrum of gamma rays represents each as part of the burst, and each episode was separated by a few hundred seconds of relative calm, which seems like an exceedingly short time considering how massive the objects were collapsing. 

Moreover, in the X-ray spectrum, another part of the light curve could be described as containing “plateaus.” According to the authors, each of these plateaus could represent a stage in the birth of the strange star, with the first representing its cooling and the second representing its “pin down” phase.

According to their calculations, the observed data best matches the theoretical values that would be seen if GRB represented the birth of a strange star. So it seems likely that, for the first time, astronomers have garnered some evidence to support a theory that was initially developed in the 1980s. But, as always, more testing is needed, and other researchers should confirm the authors’ calculations. But if they do, it would be a significant leap forward in experimental astrophysics – and may herald many more strange findings to come.

Learn More:
Tian et al – Signature of strange star as the central engine of GRB 240529A
UT – It Takes Very Special Conditions to Create This Bizarre Stellar Spectacle
UT – SLS Hurricanes, James Webb Fixed, Strange Quark Star
UT – The Mysterious Case of the Resurrected Star

Lead Image:
Illustration of the interior of a neutron star and a strange quark star
Credit – NASA/SAO/CXC/J.Drake et al.

The post Did Astronomers Just Witness the Formation of a “Strange Star”? appeared first on Universe Today.

The Trump administration’s pause on US foreign assistance could lead to an estimated 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 8300 pregnancy-related deaths