Month: November 2020

Space News for November 2020.

I’d like to start this month’s space news post by taking a moment to celebrate twenty years of continuous human occupancy aboard the International Space Station (ISS). It was on November 2nd, 2000 that a Russian Soyuz capsule brought American astronaut William Shepard along with Russians Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev to the not nearly completed ISS as it’s first official crew. Since that time human beings have had an uninterrupted presence in Low Earth Orbit (LOE).

When the first crew of the International Space Station (ISS) climbed aboard construction of the station had barely begun. (Credit: Wikipedia)
The Expedition 1 crew. American Bill Shepard is in the middle with Russians Yuri Gidzenko on the right and Sergei Krikalev on the left. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Of course the idea of a space station dates all the way back to the early Russian space theorist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In fact in 1961 President Kennedy considered ordering NASA to build a space station before deciding instead to start the Apollo Moon program. Then in 1984 President Ronald Reagan formally ordered NASA to use the new Space Shuttle to construct ‘Space Station Freedom’ a program that I actually did some work on dealing with the communications systems.

Physicist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky made many advances in the theory of how travel into space could be accomplished. (Credit: BBVA Openmind)

Unfortunately the loss of the space shuttle Challenger along with a growing federal deficit caused Space Station Freedom to be canceled during the first Bush administration. It was left to President Clinton to revive the idea of a space station and use it’s construction as a means to promote cooperation between the US and the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

President Clinton, with First Lady Hillary, watches a launch of the Space Shuttle. (Credit: Pinterest)

So briefly that’s how we humans came to construct our first permanent outpost off of our planet. A home in space, the beginning of many homes on many worlds in the years to come hopefully. Officially the ISS will continue to operate until 2024 but the indications are that the time limit will be extended until at least 2028.

And there’s currently also talk of several other possible space stations being constructed in the near future. The aerospace company Orion Span hopes to begin construction of an LEO station called Aurora as early as 2021 while Bigelow Aerospace also has plans for a private space station. Both of these stations are intended to cater to a growing space tourist demand using commercial launch systems as a means of getting their customers to their space stations. Meanwhile the growing space superpower of China is also making progress in its space station plans.

There are several companies hoping to launch a ‘Space Hotel’ in the next few years. This is Orion Span’s Aurora module. (Credit: Name a Star)

And getting to the ISS just got a lot easier because on November 15th Space X Corporation launched the first mission to the station in their contract under NASA’s commercial crew program. Now you should remember how back on the 28th of May a Space X Falcon 9 rocket launched two astronauts to the ISS in the company’s Dragon capsule, see my post of June 3rd 2020. Well, legally that was the last test flight for Dragon while this new mission is the first contract flight.

Irregardless of what the lawyers call it on the 15th of November the Space X Dragon capsule lifted off from Kennedy Space Center carrying four astronauts who are expected to remain aboard the ISS for the next six months as regular crew members. After a short voyage of about 27 hours the capsule successfully docked at the ISS perhaps beginning a new chapter in manned space exploration similar to the one that began with the first commercial airline flights more than 100 years ago.

Launch of the Space X Crew 1 mission on its way to the ISS. The astronauts aboard will be spending the next six months aboard the station. (Credit: NASA)

All of this progress comes right after a tumultuous election here in the United States and while space exploration never became much of an issue during the campaign the incoming Biden administration will certainly be looking to make a few changes at NASA. One change that is certain to occur is the appointment of a new Chief Administrator for the space agency since its current head Jim Bridenstine has announced that he will be leaving his post once Biden becomes president.

For the next four years the person with the ultimate authority over the US space program will be Joe Biden. (Credit: NBC News)

Bridenstine was an unusual choice in the first place since the former Oklahoma congressman is the only NASA head ever to have a political rather than a science or engineering background. Nevertheless I have to admit that Bridenstine has done a better job that I feared successfully managing not only the commercial crew program but also the ramping up of the Artemis Moon program. In fact if I have any criticism of the NASA administrator it is that as a former republican congressman he should have been able to generate a little more support, i.e. funding for Artemis.

So what changes can we expect from a Biden administration with respect to space exploration? For one thing the commercial crew program is undoubtedly safe since during his term as Vice-President Biden oversaw the initial start of the program.

In addition to Joe Biden in the White House former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly has been elected to the Senate from Arizona. (Credit: The Arizona Republic)

Throughout his career Biden has been a supporter of space exploration but with the huge number of problems facing the new President it will all come down to the question of how much resources can we afford to spend on space. The answer to that question will have a great impact on the Artemis program and its plan of returning US astronauts to the Moon in 2024. In these posts I have often questioned the feasibility of that schedule suggesting that a first Artemis lunar landing is more likely to take place in a 2026-28 time frame. It seems likely that the new Biden administration will continue to provide enough support to Artemis to keep to that more reasonable schedule.

At least the President-elect has begun to assemble his NASA team choosing eight former NASA employees, including former astronaut Pam Melroy and several chief scientists, Ellen Stofan and Waleed Abdalati as advisors. For the moment these are temporary advisors rather than permanent appointees but at least their participation in Biden’s transition team indicates the incoming president’s commitment to space exploration.

President Elect Biden’s NASA Advisors. (Credit: Space News)

On the whole I expect that NASA under a Biden administration will receive as much support and funding as can be spared from trying to solve all of the other, more pressing problems facing our nation.

Virgin Corporation performs first ever test of a Hyperloop transportation system. So how long before the first commercial Hyperloop line begins service?

The Hyperloop transportation system may seem high tech and futuristic but the idea behind it is simple enough. A high-speed train of some sort, like the magnetic levitation (maglev) trains in Japan for example, is placed inside a tube with most of the air removed. With 99% of the air gone from the tube the high-speed train will encounter virtually no air resistance allowing it to travel even faster and with greater energy efficiency.

The Hyperloop is really just a train inside a tube that has had all of the air removed so that the train can speed along as fast as an airplane! (Credit: Railway Gazette)
Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) trains are already operating in Japan and China. Putting one of these babies inside an vacuum tuba and who knows how fast it could go! (Credit: YouTube)

The basic idea of railroad trains running through evacuated tubes has been around for nearly a hundred years now but the technical difficulties were so great that nobody gave it much thought. At least not until Elon Musk, of Tesla electric cars and Space X first began taking about it in 2012, and at the same time giving it the name by which it’s now known, the Hyperloop. Musk himself hopes that one day the Hyperloop will achieve speeds even greater than those of airplanes, supersonic or even hypersonic and he has also described the Hyperloop as a ‘cross between a Concord and a railgun and an air hockey table”.

Between Tesla, Space X and his Hyperloop Elon Musk is a very busy man. (Credit: Times of India)

In his effort to develop the Hyperloop Musk has taken advantage of the engineering skills of both Tesla and Space X corporations. So far the collaboration has resulted in the building of a 1.6 km (1 Mile) long tube to be used as a test track for validating various designs. Musk has even opened Hyperloop development up for competition from other engineering firms along with University engineering teams in order to help speed up progress. In Musk’s Current Alpha Hyperloop design the passenger carrying pod glides above its tracks lifted by air bearings and is propelled down the tube by a linear electric motor.

Musk’s Hyperloop One test vehicle is prepared for a test. (Credit: Vox)

Musk’s goal is to develop the technology to the point where construction of a line to provide passenger service between San Francisco and Los Angeles can begin. Such a Hyperloop line could cut surface travel time between the two cities from its current 12 hours to less than one hour. Then, once the technology has proven itself the plan would be to extend Hyperloop service throughout the country providing a low cost, more energy efficient alternative to air travel.

The Proposed Hyperloop route between San Francisco and LA. There’s an awful lot of valuable land between those two points. (Credit: California Policy Center)

With all of that effort by Elon Musk and his companies it was something of a shock therefore when the first manned test of a Hyperloop vehicle was performed by a competitor, Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop Corporation. On the eighth of November two executives of Virgin, co-founder Josh Giegel along with Director of Passenger Experience Sara Luchian, took their seats inside a new pod design from the engineering firms Bjarke Ingels Group and Kilo Design. Employing maglev technology the pod was accelerated to a velocity of 172 KPH in a little under 6 seconds. At that speed the pod raced down Virgin’s 500 meter test track without any problem. If you’d like to see a short video of the test click on the following link to be taken to a YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w2lo5h3D5E

Musk does have competition. Richard Branson’s Virgin Corporation is also working hard on the Hyperloop concept. (Credit: Virgin)
The first passengers to ride a Hyperloop were two employees of Virgin. Josh Giegel on the left and Sara Luchian on the right took a 500m ride. (Credit: CNBC.Com)

So how soon can we expect construction to begin, how soon will we be able to ride the Hyperloop? Well you better be patient, there are a lot of technical problems to overcome. Chief among these is probably just the difficulty in maintaining a near vacuum inside a nearly thousand kilometer long tube, especially in earthquake prone California.

This sort of thing happens all the time in California. Just imagine a vacuum tube having the ground beneath it suddenly split like this. (Credit: Noozhawk.com)

To my mind however the biggest challenge facing the Hyperloop is going to be legal, not technical. You see I’ve driven from San Francisco to LA several times and there are few areas on Earth as densely populated, or as commercially valuable. The idea of trying to buy the land, or at least obtain right of way, over a line straight through the heart of California is hard to imagine. Oh I suppose you could plan your route so as to go around San Jose, Salinas, San Luis Obispo, Oxnard and Santa Monica but remember every curve you put into your course adds cost and time.

The average acre of land in California costs about twice as much as the US average. That means that Musk’s Hyperloop dream is going to be an expensive one! (Credit: CA.gov)

I wouldn’t be surprised if the first Hyperloop isn’t built in some less populated, but fast growing region such as Phoenix Arizona to Albuquerque New Mexico, with a later extension to Fort Worth Texas. Such a route would allow the Hyperloop to be constructed at a lower cost, with far fewer lawyers getting involved. Then once the system is up and running it could prove its value, increasing both the economic and political will to replace our out of date and decaying rail systems with a brand new, state of the art transportation system.

Astronomers think that they have finally solved the mystery of ‘Fast Radio Bursts’ (FRBs), and what are FRBs anyway?

Go out some clear night and look up at the night sky, it’s much better if you can get away from big city lights by the way. If you think about it there really aren’t that many different types of objects up there. Aside from the Moon, if it’s out, all there really is up there are a lot of points of light, stars. O’k some stars are certainly brighter than others, and if you look closely it is easy to see that there are some stars with distinct colour to them. Nevertheless, from here on Earth the Universe just looks like a lot of points of light, a lot of stars.

The night sky may look beautiful, but there really don’t appear to be a lot of different types of objects. Appearances can be deceptive however. (Credit: Forbes)

Of course we all know that’s not true. With the invention of the telescope we quickly learned that stars and planets are very different. We also learned that some stars are giants while some are dwarfs.

The visual differences between the stars is summed up in the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram. (Credit: Chandra X-ray Observatory)

Then, as new types of telescopes were invented, other stranger kinds of objects were discovered. Radio telescopes discovered both quasars and pulsars while X-ray telescopes discovered black holes. One very unusual discovery was made when CIA spy satellites were the first to observe Gamma Ray bursts.

Quasars are the brightest steady objects in the Universe. They are now known to actually be a supermassive Black Hole in the center of a galaxy that is feasting on nearby stars, releasing some of that energy. (Credit: Hubble Space Telescope)

Based upon the observations from those telescopes astrophysicists then had to figure out what those objects actually were. Quasars for example turned out to be supermassive black holes in the centers of distant galaxies that are devouring nearby stars and releasing some of that energy feast. Pulsars are the remains of stars that went supernova, been crushed down into neutron stars and are emitting radio waves like a lighthouse. Gamma Ray Bursts on the other hand are caused by giant stars collapsing into black holes.

A Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) is even brighter than a Quasar but it only lasts for a few seconds. When a supermassive star explodes as a supernova some of its energy is released as gamma rays creating the GRB.

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are the newest member of the cosmic zoo. Now FRBs are exactly what they sound like.  Without any warning a powerful burst of radio waves occurs that only lasts for a tiny fraction of a second. Transient events like FRBs are a curse to scientists because you’re never looking right at it when it happens, and by the time you say ‘what was that’ and turn around to look at it it’s gone.

The Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Large reflector dishes such as Parkes can only observe a small region of the sky at any one time. That’s what makes finding transient objects such as an FRB so difficult. (Credit: Square Kilometre Array)

In fact the very first FRB was actually ‘discovered’ in an analysis of old data from the Parkes Observatory in Australia. The data had been collected in 2001 but the FRB wasn’t recognized until 2007. Then it wasn’t until the 15th of January in 2015 that an FRB was detected live, also at Parkes Observatory. Canada’s new Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope, which unlike other radio telescopes is designed to have a wide field of view, has detected dozens of FRBs since it first went online in 2018.

The CHIME telescope in Canada is a different type of radio telescope that has a wider field of view. That now makes it the go-to instrument for studying FRBs. (Credit: Phys.org)

One of the few things that we do known about FRBs is that the most common frequencies of the burst are from around 800-1400 Mega-Hertz (MHz), that’s not to far from the frequencies used by your cellphone. Also, when astronomers say fast they mean really fast, each event being a single spike of radio waves lasting no more than a few milli-seconds. And because FRBs are scattered evenly across our sky, rather than being concentrated along the Milky Way, they must come from intergalactic space, perhaps as far away as billions of light years. At those enormous distances the energy released during those few milliseconds must be more than our Sun emits over the course of more than a dozen years.

A typical observation of an FRB. The burst releases different amounts of power at different frequencies but the entire event only last a few milli-seconds. (Credit: Daily Mail)

The mystery of FRBs has generated a lot of attention in the astronomy field and with all of that interest it’s not surprising that new discoveries are being made every year. A few FRBs have been discovered that are irregular repeaters, that is they have erupted more than once but without a predictable pattern. On the other hand FRB 180916 has been found to repeat on a schedule of once every 16.35 days. (By the way FRBs are numbered by the year, month and day they were first observed hence FRB 180916 was observed on the 16th of September in 2018.)

Just this past April an FRB was definitively detected as coming from inside our own galaxy and astronomers believe that they can even identify the source as the known object magnetar SGR 1935+2154 which is located in the constellation Vulpecula at a distance of about 30,000 light years. This is significant because some astrophysicists have been promoting magnetars as a possible source for FRBs for the past several years.

A magnetar is the dead corpse of a star that blew up as a supernova. The remaining core has been chrushed so small that its magnetic fiend is super intensified! (Credit: Quanta Magazine)

Now magnetars are the dead corpses of massive stars that exploded as supernovas. What remains after that explosion is an object about as massive as our Sun crushed down to the size of a city, an object so dense that it has become composed mainly of neutrons, a neutron star. As the star was squeezed its magnetic field also got compressed. But while compressing a magnetic field may decrease its size it also increases its intensity and a neutron star with a particularly strong magnetic field is given the special name of magnetar.

But wait, didn’t I say near the top of this post that neutron stars are also known as pulsars. Yes indeed, in fact all of these creatures are so closely related that astrophysicists argue all of the time where one class ends and another begins, in fact many neutron stars may be both pulsars and magnetars at the same time.

Pulsars also are the dead core of supernovas, and they also have very strong magnetic fields. So is there any real difference between a pulsar and a magnetar? Perhaps not very much. (Credit: Pinterest)

And just because one FRB has been identified as coming from a magnetar doesn’t mean that they all do. There may be even more exotic animals in the cosmic zoo that are as yet completely unknown such as dark matter particles or even cosmic strings. So far we’ve figured out a bit about FRBs but there’s still a lot more to learn. But then isn’t that the whole fun of astronomy!

Pharmaceutical Giant Pfizer has released initial data on its Covid-19 vaccine. The Vaccine is safe and more than 90% effective but there’s some bad news as well.

Over the past month the news about the Covid-19 pandemic has just gone from bad to worse. Currently the daily increase in the number of cases has climbed above 100,000 while the death rate has risen to over 1,000 a day. Hospitalizations are surging and if the trend continues medical facilities in many states will soon be overwhelmed, possibly resulting in the deaths of many people who could have been saved if adequate medical care had been available.

Will this image of the Covid-19 virus become a new symbol of death for our age? (Credit: FDA)
As more and more Covid patients are hospitalized will we be forced to start rationing medical care? (Credit: Bloomberg)

It was hardly surprising therefore that the release of the initial data from the Phase 3 trial of Pfizer corporation’s Covid-19 vaccine was proclaimed throughout the media as something close to a divine miracle. In fact the news was good, better than expected. Of the 44,000 people who participated in the trial none showed any sign of harm that could be attributed to the vaccine.

More importantly the preliminary estimate for the effectiveness of the vaccine was calculated at more than 90%. Now it’s important to understand how that estimate is derived. First of all, only half of the 44,000 volunteers actually got the vaccine, the other 22,000 were given a placebo. Then, over the course of more than three months 94 of the participants tested positive for Covid-19 but 90% of those who tested positive were from the placebo group while less than 10% were from the group that had received the vaccine. Statistically that implies that Pfizer’s vaccine provides immunity to Covid-19 to more than 90% of those who receive it.

Stages of Vaccine development. Pfizer and Moderna are nearing the end of Phase III and are hoping to obtain FDA approval for wide distribution of their vaccine soon. (Credit: IndianYug)

While the full testing isn’t over yet, Pfizer hopes to have enough data to be able to ask the FDA for an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the end of November. If that EUA is granted then Pfizer could begin to supply as many as 20 million doses of their vaccine by the end of the year with more to come in the first months of 2021.

Basic outline of the distribution plan for the Covid-19 vaccine once approved. (Credit: WTVD)

Other drug companies are also nearing the conclusion of their vaccine testing. Just this last Monday the drug company Moderna has announced initial results showing that their vaccine is 94.5% effective. And like Pfizer, Moderna hopes to ask the FDA for an EUA by the end of November. This progress is generating real hope that enough people could be vaccinated by next May or June to finally bring this horrendous disease under control.

That’s the good news; there are a few potential problems as well. The big one is going to be transportation, distribution and administration of the vaccine. You see in order to maintain its effectiveness the Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept at a temperature of -70ºC (-94ºF), and while many vaccines need to be kept cool, -70ºC is unusually cold. So cold in fact that very few refrigerated trucks are capable of such a low temperature, which will make transportation difficult. At the same time your personal physician or local pharmacy is unlikely to have the refrigeration necessary to keep a supply of the vaccine on hand. So the question becomes, how is the vaccine going to get to you? This is the big reason why it will take almost half a year to get enough people vaccinated to make a difference.

Most Vaccines need to be stored at low temperatures but Pfizer’s Covid Vaccine needs to be kept very cold. (Credit: Financial Times)

Longer term there is also the question of how long will the immunity provided by Pfizer’s, or any vaccine last. Individual cases of people becoming infected with Covid-19 a second time have been cropping up now for months and studies have indicated that the anti-bodies produced by our bodies start to decay after only a few months. Currently epidemiologists are coming to the conclusion that it may be necessary for people to get vaccinated for Covid-19 every year, just like your yearly flu shot.

Getting a yearly Flu shot has become a routine part of many people’s lives. Will a yearly Covid shot have to become one as well? (Credit: Harvard Health – Harvard University)

Finally there are the ongoing difficulties of those people who needed to be hospitalized because of Covid-19 and survived, but whom months later have still not fully recovered. These patients have been given the designation of Covid-19 ‘Long Haulers’ and the question of just how long the disease will continue to impact their health is at present totally unknown. There are now tens of thousands of these unfortunate people, and more are joining this ill-fated group everyday.

So many people are suffering from long term effects of Covid-19 that they are even beginning to establish support groups. (Credit: Fox13)

There has even been speculation in the media that, assuming the ‘pre-existing conditions’ statue in Obamacare is struck down, Health Insurance Companies may try to classify anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19 as having a pre-existing condition. Just a few more ways in which Covid-19 may still be harming people years from now. Humanity has been suffering from the Covid-19 epidemic for almost a year now and even if the development of the first safe and effective vaccine is a big step forward there is still going to be a lot more suffering to come. We can only hope that the scientists who are studying Covid-19 now can learn enough lessons to enable us to handle the next pandemic better.

Book Review: The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays, by Arthur George.

Let’s be honest, we humans like to celebrate, we like to have a good time and we’re always looking for a reason, any reason to party. Now some of the reasons we celebrate are quite personal, it’s my birthday or it’s our wedding anniversary. Others are special for a small group of people; perhaps your bowling team just won the league championship. And of course there are the special days set aside every year for an entire population, either national or religious, to come together as a community and reaffirm the bonds that they all share. Those days are called holidays and some of them are historical in nature while others are our way of marking the changes in the seasons as we go through the year. Both kinds of holidays do have one thing in common however, we have mythologized them to the extent that sometimes it is difficult to decide where reality ends and mythmaking begins.

Let’s be honest, we humans will take any excuse to celebrate! (Credit: Pinterest)

That’s where ‘The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’ by Arthur George comes in. Starting, as our year does, with the celebrations for New Year’s Day Mr. George examines Groundhog’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Carnival or Mardi Gras, Easter, May Day, Independence Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving before finally concluding with Christmas.

Cover of ‘The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’ by Arthur George. (Credit: Target)

For each holiday in turn Mr. George follows basically the same methodology, beginning with the origins of each holiday. The ancient festivals of Greco-Roman, Celtic, Hebrew and Germanic cultures are scrutinized, as is early American history. The festivals of these cultures provide the clues as to why a particular American holiday exists in the first place along with why it is celebrated at the time of year that it is. Following the growth of each holiday from its roots to the present day Mr. George then goes on to highlight how the various rituals associated with each developed.

The Classical Romans liked to enjoy themselves and celebrated many holidays both private and public. (Credit: Nova Roma)
The ancient Gaels (Irish) celebrated the end of the year at Samhain (Sow-Ween) which today we continue to celebrate as Halloween. (Credit: Reuters)

Of course many, perhaps most of our holidays are rooted in nature. The renewal of life every spring along with the end of the growing season in the fall are obvious examples but Mr. George shows in detail how even Groundhog’s day and May Day have for thousands of years been observed in connection with the yearly cycle of the Earth. At the same time other holidays, more political in nature still tend acquire features over time that relate to the time of year in which they occur, a picnic or baseball game on the 4th of July for instance.

The Maypole has been used to celebrate the beginning of new life at spring for thousands of years. (Credit: Omilights)

While the mythology surrounding religious festivals is well recognized Mr. George also succeeds in illustrating the legends associated with our secular holidays as well. From the figure of Lady Liberty to the fact that the phrase ‘The First Thanksgiving’ was only coined some 200 years after the event it was used to describe Mr. George clearly shows how we humans like to embroider the truth around those days we consider important.

Out Lady Liberty is actually MUCH older than the USA. She has a clear relation to the Roman Goddess Libertas. (Credit: Ancient Pages)

More than that however, Mister George also delves into the psychological aspects of our holidays. In the book he also investigates the emotional benefits we humans derive from celebrating the renewal of vegetation in the spring or the shortest day of the year, December 25th. In ancient Rome, the Winter Solstice was known as the ‘Birthday of the Sun’, which of course eventually became Christmas, the birthday of the son of god.

December 25th was also the birthday of the Persian God Mithra whose worship spread throughout the Roman world in the years just before Christianity gained control. (Credit: Britannica)

I do have two very small complaints about “The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’. One is that on several occasions Mister George limits himself with only covering the highlights of how a particular holiday developed. The reader often gets a distinct feeling that he could say a lot more if he wanted. At the same time the narrow focus on American holidays is quite arbitrary, comparisons to modern holidays in other countries are completely absent. I think that both problems stem from Mr. George’s desire to prevent the size of the book from getting too large, which books on mythology often do.

People in other parts of the World like to celebrate just as much as Americans. Mr. George could have spent a bit of time discussing those holidays. (Credit: Afro Tourism)

Nevertheless ‘The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays’ is both an interesting and enjoyable book. If you want a better understanding of how much of our national culture began and grew, Mr. George’s book belongs in your library.

Can the Proteus Project revive interest in humans living beneath the Sea? Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Yves Cousteau is betting it can.

Back on the 26th of October 2019 I published a post about how, during the 1960s there was a considerable effort made to develop the technologies that would allow human beings to live and work at the bottom of the Ocean. As I was growing up it seemed to me that the efforts of those aquanauts paralleled in some ways those of the astronauts in outer space, both seeking to explore and colonize new frontiers for the human race. And like the space race, during the 1970s public interest in living beneath the sea plummeted. However while manned space travel limped along for the next few decades stuck in Low Earth Orbit (LOE), efforts to colonize the oceans virtually disappeared.

Mercury Astronaut AND Sealab Aquanaut Scott Carpenter epitomized the exploration of ‘the new fronteir during the 60s. (Credit: Diving Almanac)

To me it’s not surprising therefore that even as NASA plans for a return to the Moon in the next half dozen years or so there is also renewed interest in exploring and settling the ocean depths. And one of the leading figures in this revival of ocean exploration has a lot of family tradition backing him up. He’s Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Yves Cousteau, the engineer and oceanographer who designed and developed the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus or SCUBA gear and who on his ship the Calypso brought the mysteries of the sea into our living rooms through his documentaries “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.”

Musician John Denver, with guitar, partying aboard Calypso with Jacques Cousteau, far left. (Credit: Blue Ocean Network)

Now during the early 1960s Jacques Cousteau had personally organized and led the Conshelf Project that consisted of three separate manned habitats on the seafloor. In 1962 Conshelf 1 allowed two men to live for a week at a depth of 10m off of the Southern coast of France. Conshelf 2 followed in 1963 with six men living for a month at 10m in the Red Sea. Conshelf 3 in 1965 was the most ambitious with six men living at a depth of 100m for three weeks.

The two main structures of Conshelf 2 waiting to be installed on the seafloor. The starfish like structure on the right is the living quarters while the round house on the left is the garage for a two man mini-sub. (Credit: Medium)
Artist’s illustration of the interior of Conshelf 3. (Credit: Medium)

With that kind of family history you would expect that Fabien’s proposed undersea habitat would be both ambitious and well conceived. Project Proteus, named for a Greek sea god who was the son of Poseidon, is really a scaled up version of Conshelf 2 in that the main structure will be at a depth of 20m off of the coast of the island of Curacao in the Caribbean.

Designed to have more than 350 square meters of living space, Proteus will be a two-story structure housing a crew of twelve. Unlike previous underwater habitats where scientists would collect samples and data to be studied at a later time in labouratories on land Cousteau intends for Proteus to have enough space for a full sized, state of the art labouratory of its own.

Artist’s illustration of the planned design for Project Proteus)
The face of a man with a vision. Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus Project isn’t lacking for daring, it’s just needs money! (Credit: Science / How Stuff Works)

The estimated price tag for the construction of Proteus along with the first three years of operation is $135 million US dollars, which Cousteau and his team are currently busy trying to raise. Cousteau is promoting Proteus as an International Space Station (ISS) for underwater research and like the ISS it is planned that Proteus will be permanently manned with groups of scientists coming to stay for a period of weeks or months and then being relieved by other scientists. 

Will Proteus become a long term science research station in an alien environment? Only time will tell. (Credit: Wikipedia)

In addition to studying the sea bottom as a large scale, long term habitat Proteus will also enable scientists and engineers to identify and solve some of the many problems humans face living in the oceans. For example, in an underwater home you can’t cook using an open flame, it would quickly use up all of your oxygen. At the same time stepping outdoors simply isn’t as easy as it is from any home on land. If humans are ever going to establish permanent settlements in the seas these and many other technical problems are going to have to be solved. And we need to solve them because in the years to come we are going to have to make better use of our ocean’s resources, while at the same better protecting all of the many creatures living there.

Just as the development of agriculture did 20,000 years ago, the farming of the seas has the potential to transform the way we live. (Credit: New Atlas)

Back in the 1960s it was said that since all life had come from the sea originally, so by exploring the oceans we were just returning to our ancient home. The Proteus project, like the ISS now in orbit, could be our first real home in a new world. 

Is there a ‘Wild West / Pioneer mentality? A new study by Psychologists provides evidence that there just may be.

Many people picture John Wayne or some other cowboy star as the archetype of the rugged, self assured, always ready to stand up for what he thought was right American. This myth of the pioneer individualist wasn’t created by Hollywood; in fact it at least dates back to the days of James Fennimore Cooper and his character Hawkeye in ‘The Last of the Mohicans’. Still Hollywood built on that image, making the ‘Wild West’ the natural environment where America’s national character both evolved and flourished.

Like it or hate it, images like this just scream American! (Credit: Roger Ebert)
Check out the resemblances between Daniel Day Lewis as Hawkeye in ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ and John Wayne as the Ringo Kid in ‘Stagecoach’. (Credit: Graphic Arts – Princeton University)

Historically frontier regions have been known to attract people who were not only seeking a better life but a life less constrained by the rules and mores of society. In order to survive in such harsh, lonely conditions those settlers had to be not so much strong in a physical sense but resilient and adaptable. The question today would be, are those traits still present in the descendants of those pioneers one hundred years after the close of the frontier.

Does building a new life in an unpopulated wilderness require a certain type of person or breed them? Probably both! (Credit: Boston University)

So is there actually such a type of person, psychologically speaking that is, and how would we go about measuring the traits of the sort of person who exemplifies the pioneer spirit? And where would you find such a person today?

Psychologists at the University of Cambridge have attempted to do just that. Using the results of an online personality test completed by over 3.3 million Americans they employed the respondents zip codes to separate out those who lived in rugged, mountainous regions, such as the Rocky Mountains from their lower altitude, more comfortably urban neighbors. By comparing the two populations the researchers hoped to discover if the people living in harsh, unpopulated surroundings actually developed a distinct personality.

Even today living in the Rocky Mountains is rustic and can certainly generate a feeling of isolation. (Credit: Pinterest)

To carry out their analysis the researchers assessed the results of the psychological testing using a standard psychological model known as the ‘Big Five’ for five fundamental personality traits. Included in the big five model are such characteristics as ‘Agreeableness’, ‘Extraversion’, ‘Conscientiousness’, ‘Neuroticism’ and ‘Openness to Experience’.

‘Big Five’ personality traits in Psychology. As an experiment try rating yourself in these terms. (Credit: Simple Psychology)

When the inhabitants of the Rocky Mountains were evaluated according to those categories they demonstrated low levels of ‘Agreeableness’, ‘Extraversion’ and ‘Conscientiousness’. These results indicate a personality that is marked by a lack of trust, more territorial, more self reliant and rebellious. On average the Rocky Mountain residents also showed low values of ‘Neuroticism’ showing a more secure, less neurotic mental state, which would give them the mental stability to deal with problems on their own, without any help from others. Finally they showed high values for ‘Openness to Experience’ showing that Mountain folk also have to be ready to accept new situations and do whatever it takes to survive.

People in the Rockies aren’t without culture but it’s their own culture. (Credit: Twitter)

The psychologists separately analyzed the results from respondents who lived in the Appalachian Mountain regions, which were settled just about a hundred years before the Rockies, to see if there were any significant differences between the two groups of mountain dwellers. The scientists found that while the psychology of the residents of Appalachia were similar to those in the Rockies the eastern mountain inhabitants displayed more ‘Agreeableness’ and less ‘Openness to Experience’.  Could this mean that the frontier attitude lessens with time. That as a region becomes more settled, even if it remains less densely populated, the inhabitants of mountainous areas will become psychologically more similar to their low land, urbanite neighbors? That’s a question that only more data and further analysis can answer.

The similarities between the people of the Rockies and Appalachians are easy to spot but the differences are important as well. (Credit: YouTube)

What the results of the University of Cambridge do show is that the environment in which we choose to live says a great deal about our personality. And in return of course that environment will have its evolutionary effect on us. Just one more way of saying that we are a part of our environment.

Paleontology News for November 2020, two new studies look at the causes and effects of the Permian extinction, the greatest mass dying in the history of Earth.

The asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago may get more press coverage but when it comes to the biggest extinction event of all time the Permian extinction of 252 million yeas ago has no rival. More than 70% of all land species and 95% of all marine species disappeared within the space of just a few thousand years. And even those species that lived through the extinction must have suffered an unimaginable loss of individuals, leaving the entire Earth an almost lifeless, barren planet.

Along with thousands of other types of living creatures the Permian extinction killing off the last of the Trilobites! (Credit: Science Alert)

Unlike the Cretaceous extinction, which most paleontologists now agree was caused by an asteroid or comet striking our planet; the exact cause of the Permian extinction has been more controversial. The majority opinion is that it was triggered by a massive volcanic outbreak in the region of Russia known as the Siberian Traps. It is thought that the massive amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants released by the volcanoes caused tremendous changes in the climate leading to the massive dying. Sound familiar!

Massive volcanic eruptions certainly contributed to the destruction at the end of the Permian but were they the only cause? (Credit: Sci-News.com)
Geological maps of the Siberian Traps region. The huge extent of volcanic rock must have been caused by massive eruptions unlike anything seen on Earth since. (Credit: Saturian Cosmology)

Now a new study by scientists with the European Union funded BASE-LiNE Earth project have been able to outline a blow-by-blow description of the sequence of events that took place 252 million years ago. According to their website the BASE-LiNE Earth project is “… an international training, research and career development network for highly motivated young scientists…” The goal of BASE-LiNE Earth is to “…extend the knowledge on the complex and long-term Phanerozoic seawater history…” In other words the BASE-LiNE Earth scientists hope to use the latest scientific tools to learn more about the conditions in Earth’s oceans throughout the past half billion or more years.

Some of the members of the Base-LiNE Earth Project. (Credit: Base-LiNE Earth)

One of the sources of information that the BASE-LiNE Earth researchers hope to use is the fossilized shells of the marine invertebrates known as brachiopods. These small bivalved creatures are among the earliest animals to develop hard parts and since their shells were produced using the substances in the oceans at the time they lived those fossilized shells still carry the chemical traces of the composition of those ancient waters. By the way, although brachiopods superficially resemble clams in possessing two shells the animal inside those shells was very different, coming from an entirely different phylum.

It’s easy to recognize a brachiopod from a clam because each brachiopod shell is symmetric while it’s only when you put the two clam shells together that you get symmetry. (Credit: Skeptical Squirrel)

Back in the period of Earth’s history before the Permian extinction brachiopods greatly outnumbered clams, dominating the ecosystem of every ocean in the world making them the most common type of fossil from that early period of life. Therefore using brachiopod shells as time capsules of conditions from right before and during the Permian extinction makes perfect sense.

A few species of Brachiopod did survive the Permian extinction but today they are very rare. I have thousands of fossil brachiopod but I’ve never seen a live one! (Credit: www.baseline-earth.eu)

Using well-preserved shells of brachiopods collected from the mountains in the Southern Alps BASE-LiNE team leader Dr. Hana Jurikova was able to determine the pH of the oceans during the course of the Permian extinction. pH of course is a measure of acidity which is directly tied to the amount of carbon-dioxide dissolve in water. Now ocean acidification by itself is deadly to many marine organisms like brachiopods because it reacts with the calcium in their shells weakening and dissolving them. Harming if not actually killing the animal inside. And as we are all aware today the amount of carbon dioxide is also directly linked to the global temperature. So the fossilized shell of an ancient brachiopod can tell us a lot about the world’s temperature 252 million years ago.

Some brachiopod fossils. Since the animal that made them used chemicals absorbed from the seawater in which they lived these shells contain information about the oceans millions of years ago. (Credit : Illinois State Geological Survey)

So the question becomes, did the massive volcanic eruptions of the Siberian Traps release enough carbon dioxide to cause the Permian extinction by itself or were there other factors involved as well? On the basis of their analysis of fossilized brachiopods the BASE-LiNE Earth study team concluded that amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s oceans and atmosphere was more than sufficient to caused the great dying. If this result holds up it will mean that the smoking gun for the greatest killing in the history of Earth has at last been found.

And if the greatest mass extinction of life on Earth was due to nothing more than carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere what lesson does that hold of us today. It is true that the fossil fuels we burn for energy aren’t releasing as much carbon dioxide as the Siberian Traps did but hey, we’ve only been at it a 150 years or so. The Permian extinction was just a random act of nature but the extinction event we are causing now will be the work of our own selfishness and stupidity.

If a massive release of CO2 caused the greatest extinction event in Earth’s history you have to ask yourself, are we causing another? (Credit: Scientific American)

But some life did survive the Permian extinction and as the environmental conditions slowly returned to normal those survivors found themselves in an almost empty world, but a world of opportunity. In many ways the whole world was like the newly formed Galapagos islands where only a few creatures were able to colonize and diversify and evolve into many new kinds of animals, like dinosaurs, birds and mammals.

Some of the earliest mammals, known as synapsids, looked more like reptiles but there is evidence that immediately after the Permian extinction some were already developing hair and other more mammalian features. (Credit: Morgan’s Lists)

In fact a new study by Professor Mike Benton and Masters Student Tai Kubo at the University of Bristol in the UK now asserts that it in the period immediately after the Permian extinction that warm-blooded animals first evolved and spread. Professor Benton and Mr. Kubo base their conclusion on an analysis of hundreds of fossilized trackways of four legged vertebrates, reptiles both immediately before and after the Permian event.

What the footprints revealed is a major change in the gait of creatures as they walked. Before the Permian the trackways they found had the left and right feet spread far apart, a gait typical of an animal with a sprawled posture where the legs come out from the side of the body. Such an anatomy is typical of a slow moving cold-blooded animal such as an alligator or lizard. See image below.

The trackways of animals after the Permian extinction indicate a major evolutionary change in the anatomy. (Credit: University of Bristol)

Immediately after the Permian extinction however a new kind of trackway appeared, one where the right and left footprints were much closer together, almost in a line. Such a gait indicates that the animal’s legs come straight down from the body, an anatomy more similar to that of a modern dog or horse, the anatomy of fast moving, warm-blooded animals.

Benton and Kubo recognized that this change occurred in two major groups of reptiles, the synapsids and archosaurs, the ancestors of mammals and dinosaurs/birds respectively. While there had been some evidence of the presence of hair in the synapsids from this time period the work of Benton and Kubo represents the earliest evidence for warm blood in the archosaurs.

The Archosaurs eventually develop into both the Dinosaurs and Birds. (Credit: Britannica Kids)

Of course Professor Benton and Mr. Kubo are assuming that an upright posture is a definitive sign of an animal’s being warm blooded, which may be going a bit too far. While in modern animals the two characteristics may be intimately linked was that true 250 million years ago?

Still the study carried out by the paleontologists is further evidence that mass extinctions, however terrible to the creatures that experience them, can also open up new opportunities for evolution to make great leaps forward. A reminder that, without those mass dyings, we ourselves would not be here.