Category: Uncategorized

The 80th National Folk Festival in Salisbury, Maryland.

Today’s post is going to be a bit out of the ordinary since it really doesn’t have anything to do with either science or science fiction. Over the last weekend, September 10-12, I attended the 80th National Folk Festival that was held in the city of Salisbury, Maryland. I just thought this might be a nice chance to discuss, not just the National Folk Festival itself but small, independent entertainment venues in general.

Logo for the 80th National Folk Festival. (Credit: NationalFolkFestival.com)

Founded in 1934 in St. Louis by the folklorist Sarah Gertrude Knott The National Folk Festival is the oldest traditional arts festival in the United States. Over the years the festival has played an important role in preserving and promoting such local folk musical styles as the Blues, Cajun music, Tex-Mex Conjunto, Sacred Harp and even Blue Grass. So popular has the National Folk Festival become that it has even spun off several similar venues such as the American Folk Festival, the Lowell Folk Festival, the Richmond Folk Festival and Montana Folk Festival.

Salisbury’s just a nice little slice of small town America. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Over the years the National Folk Festival has appeared in 26 different communities across the US and as I mentioned this year’s Festival was held in Salisbury, Maryland, a city with a population of about 35,000 people situated in the middle of the Delmarva Peninsula on the east side of Chesapeake Bay. This is the third time in the last four years that the Festival has taken place in Salisbury and it would have been four years straight except that last year the Festival had to be canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact even at this year’s festival most of the people attending were wearing masks, vaccinated or not.

Salisbury’s Mayor, Jake Day put in several appearances at the festival. Here he is introducing the Irish Band. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Drone shot of one of the stages at the National Folk Festival in Salisbury, the city’s downtown is seen to the right. (Credit: National Council for the Traditional Arts)

A city like Salisbury is just the right size for the Folk Festival, the city and surrounding area are big enough to guarantee good crowd but small enough so that the Festival is a important event that deserves and receives both community and government support. In preparation for the festival Salisbury closed off a significant portion of its downtown area to traffic in order to provide space for the three stages where the musical acts performed while the area between the stages was filled with both food and folk art vendors. And while the downtown area may have been closed to cars many of the shops and restaurants remained open to service the crowd attending the festival.

Just a sample of the food vendors at the festival. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

The festival began on the evening of Friday September 10th and ran all day Saturday the 11th and most of Sunday the 12th. My family and I went on Saturday, arriving early in order to have lunch before the music started and staying for dinner. The weather on Saturday was perfect, bright sunshine with a temperature around 25ºC and low humidity just right for an afternoon outdoors.

First up was a Tejano Conjunto trio from Texas. The fiddle player was quite talkative telling us all about how the music passed down through her family, that’s her husband on the bass. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

The first act we saw was a Tejano conjunto fiddle trio from southern Texas who performed music traditional to both sides of the Rio Grande in northern Mexico and southern Texas. Up next was a band playing Cajun music called the Savoy Family. The highlight of the show was of course the Irish American All-Stars who had the biggest audience of any of the acts we saw. After all the Irish are such fun people that everybody loves them, except the English.

The Savoy Family played Cajun music. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Then came the Irish. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

The Irish musicians were followed by an interesting group called the Sri Lankan Dance Academy of New York who performed traditional dances from their country. The final act we saw was actually a musical workshop that included members from several of the bands. Although the music was good I have to admit that I had some difficulty in following the discussion parts.

Colourful costumes highlighted the Sir Lankan Dance Academy’s performance. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

All in all the festival was a great way to spend a beautiful fall day. Good music, good food and just getting out and about after months of trying to avoid crowds because of the pandemic. And the best news is that Salisbury has already been selected to host next year’s festival.

In addition to the music there were demonstrations of traditional crafts such as those provided by the local Pocomoke tribe. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Now, without getting too political, a lot has been said in recent years about how too much of the entertainment in this country is controlled by too few big corporations like Disney, Comcast, Fox or Viacom. If you’re one of the people who think that way then maybe you need to look a little harder for some entertainment venues like the National Folk Festival.

After nearly a century of giving the America public what it wants some people how hate Disney and other entertainment corporations for doing such a good job! (Credit: Disney)

Think about it, there are thousands of nightclubs and restaurants that have small musical groups performing. Wineries often have tasting evenings that feature live music. Here in Philadelphia our Museum of Art even has Friday night music events featuring local groups ranging from a Jazz trio to a string quartet. Of course you could also attend a bigger, better produced show like a Broadway Musical or even the Philadelphia Orchestra.

If you’re tired of the low brow entertainment provided on TV why not try something a little more Sophisticated? (Credit: The Philadelphia Orchestra)

Of course live entertainment does have one drawback when compared to canned TV shows, you have to sit through the setup or between act parts where nothing happens. On TV the producers edit out all those boring parts so you never see them, that way you’re entertained all the time. And for most of us, when we settle down at night after work we don’t want to have to look for entertainment, we just want to press a button and be entertained.

They don’t call it the Boob Tube for nothin’. (Credit: SoundCloud)

Still. we all know that there are plenty of live entertainment events out there just begging for us to come and join in the fun. So let’s be honest, if Disney and Comcast control too much of what you watch it’s because you want them too!

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) consortium centered in Belgium is working to construct a Radio Telescope that is effectively as large as all of Western Europe.

Ever since the telescope was first used by Galileo to study the heavens astronomers have built bigger and bigger telescopes to aid them in their work. To an astronomer the bigger the telescope the better for two basic reasons, the first reason is simply that the bigger the telescope the more light it can collect. This extra light allows objects that are too dim to be seen with the unaided eye to become visible. Point even a small telescope at a portion of the sky where you see only one or two stars and suddenly you’ll see dozens of stars because the telescope has a larger area to gather more light from those dimmer stars.

All of the galaxies seen in this image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope are far to dim to be seen with our eyes. But because the light gathering area of Hubble is so much larger it can gather much more light making these dim objects visible. (Credit: Science News)

The second reason is that a telescope, because of its ability to magnify what it sees, can separate two objects that appear to the naked eye to be a single object. Soon after a child receives their first telescope, and after a few nights looking at the Moon and a few planets they will turn to look at a star like Rigel or Spica in order to see how a single star becomes two or even more stars in their new ‘scope.

Equation for calculating the resolution, the ability of a telescope to separate two very close objects. For a visible telescope the wavelengths of light are so small even a small ‘scope does a good job but at radio frequencies the wavelengths are so large that a huge telescope is needed. (Credit: Telescope Nerd)

This ability to resolve the details of distant objects is a function of the size of the telescope divided by the size of the wavelength of the Electromagnetic waves it is designed to collect. For an optical telescope the wavelength of visible light is very small so they tend to have a lot of resolution. For radio telescopes however the waves they collect can have wavelengths that are centimeters or even meters long. In fact at a low frequency like 3 Mega-Hertz (MHz) the wavelength is actually a full 100m.

Radio waves have wavelengths ranging from centimetres to kilometres in length. (Credit: YateBTS)

This has always made the ‘images’ produced by radio telescopes much ‘fuzzier’ than those from optical telescopes. Over the last couple of decades however radio astronomers have developed a workaround thanks to the enormous progress in computer and communications technology. What they have done is link as many as a dozen radio telescopes in different parts of the world together electronically so that the signals they collect are added together by a supercomputer, effectively making the separate telescopes into a single one with a size of nearly the entire planet.

Combining the energy received by twelve radio telescopes spread across the world astronomers succeeded in obtaining the first image of a black hole. (Credit: BBC)

As mentioned in a previous post 17 April 2019, this technique is being used to provide the most detailed images ever obtained of the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies along with other objects of interest. The telescopes used in these projects however were not originally designed to be used in conjunction with other scopes.

First image taken of a Black Hole obtained by an array of radio telescopes spread across the entire Earth and added together in a computer. (Credit: NASA)

Now a large array of radio receivers that are designed to act as a single radio telescope has been constructed at sites spread out over a sizeable portion of the Earth’s surface. Known as the LOw Frequency ARray or LOFAR project and originally funded as a national program by the government of the Netherlands LOFAR has now grown to include most of the countries of Western Europe.

Originally started as a project by the government of the Netherlands LOFAR has grown to cover western Europe. (Credit: Earth Observation Portal)

Currently LOFAR consists of 38 stations in the Netherlands, 24 core stations in the province of Exloo and 14 remote station spread around the rest of the country. There are also 14 international stations, 6 in Germany, 3 in Poland and one each in Ireland, the UK, France, Sweden and Latvia with a fifteenth station under construction in Italy. Each station is composed of 96 Low Band Antennas (LBAs) that receive signals between 10 and 90 MHz, along with 48 High Band Antennas (HBAs) that receive in the 120 to 240 MHz band. All together this makes for a total of more than 70,000 antennas in the LOFAR array. Each station also has the computer facilities to completely digitize all of the signals received by its antennas so that the data can be combined with those from all the other stations making LOFAR the highest resolution radio telescope ever built.

One of the LOFAR remote antenna stations in Holland. The high band antennas are to the left and the low band antennas are to the right.
Design for the layout of a LOFAR remote antenna station. (Credit: LOFAR)
Ground level view of some LOFAR antennas. Because they are simple, and cheap to build a very large number can be built increasing the amount of signal the entire array can receive. (Credit: BDFRMA)

The initial results published by the LOFAR consortium have dealt with detailed studied of the radio emissions from the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. When combined with optical images of the galaxy containing the black holes, see image below, astronomers can get a much more complete picture of the influence of supermassive black holes on their host galaxies.

This image of the galaxy Hercules A was made by combining a Hubble image in visible light with a LOFAR image at radio frequencies. The LOFAR data consists of the two jets streaming out from the galaxy itself, which is a tiny object in the center. The jets are generated by a supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy which is feeding and generating huge amounts of energy. (Credit: R. Timmerman, LOFAR and Hubble)

Other studies planned for LOFAR include a full scale investigation into the early period of the Universe known as the ‘Period of Re-Ionization’ when the first stars and galaxies heated the gas and dust created by the big bang. LOFAR will also be employed to study transient sources like pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs). Closer to home LOFAR will study our Sun and in particular the solar wind of high energy particles emitted by the Sun.

The LOFAR array will also be used to study the solar wind and solar flares giving scientists a beeter idea of conditions on the Sun. (Credit: Astronimy and Astrophysics Group)

Best of all the LOFAR partnership has already submitted its plan to the EU for LOFAR2.0, a major upgrade to the system that is planned to commence in 2022. One can only guess at what wonders that system will reveal.

There’s some good news on the Environmental Front. Spotted Lanternfly Populations in areas that have been infested for several years are Declining Rapidly.

I have already mentioned the invasive species Spotted Lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula to give them their scientific name, several times in these posts, see post of 8 July 2020. A native of Southeast Asia L delicatula feeds by sucking the sap of fruit trees and vines and is considered a minor agricultural pest in its home region.

The Spotted Lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula, may be a rather pretty bug but it’s causing a great deal of damage to agriculture in the Mid-Atlantic states. (Credit: Scientific American)

The spotted lanternfly was first discovered in Berks county Pennsylvania in 2014 and in just a few years has spread across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware and into portions of New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia and Ohio. Wherever they have appeared the pests have caused considerable damage to vineyards and orchards. So great has been the economic damage that State Departments of Agriculture in infested areas have been issuing advisories to kill the lanternflies in any way necessary.

A large number of nymphs and winged adult Lanternflies feeding on a branch. So great have the numbers of these creatures become that it’s easy to see how destructive they can be. (Credit: Fruit Growers News)

I first saw a few spotted lanternflies in my backyard and neighborhood back in 2019 and at that time was more curious than concerned. Last year in 2020 however there were thousands of them in all over my yard and in various places on every block within walking distance of my home. I killed as many as I could last year but all my efforts hardly made a dent in their numbers. At the time I was convinced that this year could only be worse.

Although the various state departments of agriculture may be having a bit of fun getting the spotted lanternfly under control is a very serious business. (Credit: UCNJ.org)

2020 certainly started out bad. The wild grapevines and other bushes in my backyard were heavily infested by early May and all of the spots in my area of Philadelphia where I had seen them last year were also teeming with nymphs. The population explosion didn’t last however, by the middle of June the numbers of spotted lanternflies had definitely declined and now, at the beginning of September the pests have become very difficult to find at all.

Not only that but their behavior has changed as well. Last year, and early this spring in the morning you could see a large number of spotted lanternflies sitting out on leaves in the bright sunshine to warm themselves in the Sun before going back to the branches to feed. Now however, if you want to find any at all you have to look deep in the foliage, several layers of leaves down. L delicatula seems to have become shy as their numbers have declined. 

Recently Lanternflies have become much more difficult to find. Rarely more than one at a time and farther back in the leaves. (Credit: The Sun Newspapers)

 So what’s going on? Something is killing the lanternflies, but what? Is it some disease or fungal infection that is killing them? Or maybe it’s us, is the spraying with insecticide and all the other means we’ve used to control them doing the job?

Nah! The spotted lanternflies I examined lately show no sign of disease, they look as healthy as ever. And some areas that were heavily infested with lanternflies are now virtually clear despite no human doing anything about them.

This baby Bluebird seems to have figured out that lanternflies are worth eating. (Credit: Penn State News – Penn State University)

It looks like what is actually happening is that predators, insect eating birds and other insects have discovered that spotted lanternflies taste good and are worth going after. Scientists at the Academy of Natural Sciences here in Philadelphia think that Preying Mantis’ in particular are feeding on the lanternflies. In fact if you Google images of spotted lanternflies and preying mantis’ you can see a large number of different pictures of a mantis chomping down on a lanternfly. And if predators are the cause of the collapse of lanternfly numbers that would also explain why the remaining flies are now in hiding.

A Praying Mantis chomping down on a lanternfly. (Credit: Drexel University)
Another Mantis making a meal of a lanternfly. (Penn State News – Penn State University)

Even if true this doesn’t mean that the problem is over and spotted lanternflies are now under control however. So far it’s only the counties of Berks, Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania that have seen a major decline in lanternfly numbers. But these are the very counties that have been infested with lanternflies the longest. Other areas, like south Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and New York where the Lanternflies only arrived a year to two ago are still seeing a population explosion. It seems then that it takes the insect eating predators of an area two or three years to recognize the lanternflies as prey and begin eating them in large enough numbers to control the population.

Current known areas infested with Spotted Lanternflies. The recent decrease in the lanternfly population has only been noticed in five or six counties in southeastern Pennsylvania. Everywhere else they continue to spread, becoming a growing problem. (Credit: The Conversation)

If this theory works out to be true then spotted lanternflies may end up being something like a tsunami, a big wave that causes a lot of damage but eventually recedes. Spotted Lanternflies may show up in small numbers in an area one year, then have a massive population increase for the next 2-3 years only to have predators attack and collapse their numbers afterward.

Gypsy Moth caterpillars were once considered to be as big a problem as Spotted Lanternflies. Even today they can appear in large enough numbers to cause considerable amounts of destruction. (Credit: Adirondack Explorer)

Other invasive, destructive insects have already followed this scenario. Both Gypsy Moths and Japanese Beetles caused a lot of damage here in the Mid-Atlantic States several decades ago but now their populations are so small that it’s rare to see one. Nature it seems, has a way of regulating itself, of fixing the screw-ups we cause.

Mather Nature may have great powers but those powers take time and remember, she works to benefit all of her creatures, not just us! (Credit: Fine Art America)

 There is a limit to even nature’s restorative powers however.

The ‘Remnants’ of Hurricane Ida cause Catastrophic Destruction in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Once again Climate Change is making once in a thousand years Weather Events ‘The New Normal’.

Just a few weeks ago, 11August 2021, I published a post describing the massive flooding that had hit the cities of Zhengzhou in central China and London in the UK. The rainstorms that caused the flood events in both cities would have been considered to have been once in a thousand years deluges were it not for the way that climate change is making extreme weather much more common. In that post I wondered how the infrastructure in cities, especially older cities like London, were going to cope with ‘The New Normal’.

Aftermath of the flooding in Zhengzhou China only a month ago. (Credit: New York Times)

When I wrote that post I had no idea that I was soon to become a witness to the very predicament I had written about. That’s because, on the first of September 2021 the remnants of Hurricane Ida, the leftovers that is, unleashed its destructive power on my home state of Pennsylvania along with New Jersey and New York.

As Ida, now a tropical depression, passed through the mid-Atlantic states it released one last disaster. (Credit: Bucks County Courier Times)

Now Ida had already caused more than enough damage to the state of Louisiana and southern Mississippi when it came ashore on the 29th of August, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm hit as a strong category 4 with winds over 240 kph causing terrific damage. Whole communities were destroyed with more than a dozen dead while over 1 million people lost their electrical power due to downed power lines and uprooted trees.

Just a bit of the destruction wrought by Ida in Louisiana. (Credit: CNN)

Turning to the northeast over the next several days Ida brought heavy rains to the states of Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky West Virginia and Virginia before entering the Mid-Atlantic States. It was here that the now tropical depression collided with a cold front coming down from Canada. That front squeezed Ida like a sponge releasing its remaining moisture and causing the storm to regain some of her strength.

Even as Ida was coming ashore in the gulf states a front was moving down from Canada. The two would meet over Pennsylvania. (Credit: WDBJ)

If you draw a line from Baltimore through Philadelphia to New York City to the northwest of that line there were historic amounts of rainfall that caused unprecedented flooding. To the southeast a series of supercell storms dropped strong tornadoes that ripped up trees and flattened homes.

One of the Tornadoes generated by Ida in New Jersey. (Credit: Tony Citara / WPVI)
Some of the damage done by Tornadoes in Mullica Hill New Jersey. (Credit: WPVI)

The period of the strongest storms began a little after 4PM EDT when Philadelphia’s three local news stations had begun their evening broadcasts. As the destruction unfolded all other news was forgotten and the meteorologists at those three stations continuously stayed on the air for the next four hours while the National Weather Service issued tornado warning after tornado warning, flash flood warning after flash flood warning.

Last Year’s total of Tornadoes and warnings smashed all previous records for the Delaware Valley region. This year has already smashed last year’s records. (Credit: WPVI)

Several of the weatherpersons who have lived all their lives in the Philadelphia area were simply stunned by the enormity of the storm’s power. “Philadelphia doesn’t get weather like this” they continually stated, “This is historic”. And it was; 20 record rainfall totals were set along with record flooding in many creeks and rivers. And so far this year the Delaware valley has seen 25 tornadoes. I don’t think we had 25 tornadoes in the first sixty years of my life!

The Tornadoes weren’t just confined to New Jersey, here’s a damaged home in Chester County Pa. (Credit: WPVI)

I almost feel guilty to say it but I was safe throughout the entire ordeal, my neighborhood got 10Cm of rain but fortunately nothing worse. Many people were not so lucky. As I write these words 50 people are known to have died and thousands more have lost their homes or automobiles. Indeed the number of cars that were simply abandoned by their drivers because they were stuck on crowded highways while the waters rose around them is simply unbelievable. Many areas of Philadelphia and the surrounding communities that I known very well are currently underwater and will remain so for days, and only then can the cleanup effort begin.

An underpass of the Vine Street Expressway, the major route through center city Philadelphia. Well, it’s certainly under something now! (Credit: WPVI)
Some of the flooding caused by the Brandywine Creek in Chadds Ford Pennsylvania. (Credit: WPVI)

The city of New York suffered similarly with the heaviest rain ever measured falling on Central Park and many of the city’s subway stations closed due to flooding. Of course its not just the big cities that suffered, smaller cities like Wilmington, Delaware and Trenton, New Jersey also saw major flooding along with scores of smaller towns. In all three states there were hundreds of water rescues of people whom the waters had trapped in their cars or homes.

On the left a New York City bus is flooded, on the right a subway car in Zhengzhou. Several times during Ida I was struck by a feeling of deja vu. (Credit: New York Post and Insider)
Play Ball! Not for awhile as the minor league park in Bound Brook in New Jersey is flooded out. (Credit: CNN)
Water rescues underway in Wilmington Delaware. Scenes like this occurred in eight states. (Credit: WPVI)

With such extreme weather of course climate change was bought up and I suppose it’s a sign of some progress that all of the weathercasters and most of the newspersons I watched that night have accepted global warming as a major factor in the strength of these storms. After all global warming is heating our atmosphere and oceans, and since heat is just a form of energy that warming just makes the storms that develop over the oceans much more energetic, that much more deadly. It’s that extra energy that is turning once in a hundred, once in five hundred year weather events into the new normal.

Arial view of the Vine Street Expressway. Compare this image to the first image above from Zhengzhou, again eerily similar. (Credit: WPVI)
The Manayunk section of Philadelphia along the Schuylkill River is known for occasional flooding, but not like this. (Credit: WPVI)

However it still seems that there are plenty of politicians who will do anything and everything in their power to keep on burning fossil fuels. The battle isn’t won yet; let’s be honest, it’s only just started.

Fortunately it looks like Hurricane Larry will stay out in the Atlantic. We won’t always be so lucky! (Credit: WPLG)

   Oh, and Hurricane Larry has formed out in the Atlantic, its expected to grow into a big one! 

The more anthropologists study our closest relatives the more like us they seem to behave, and the more we learn about ourselves.

It was only a little more than fifty years ago that the world was astounded by the discoveries of Jane Goodall as she described the normal, day-to-day behavior of Chimpanzees. By simply monitoring the same group of chimpanzees for such a long period of time that they ceased to pay any attention to her Goodall was able to observe behavior in them that previously was considered to be purely ‘human’. Tool use, hunting in groups for small animal prey and even murder were among the most notable of her discoveries.

Jane Goodall succeeded in learning secrets about the behavior of Chimpanzees be getting up close and personal over a long period of time! (Credit: Pro Well technology)

Since that time other researchers have uncovered further aspects of chimpanzee behavior, even the astounding fact that large populations of chimpanzees in different parts of Africa display different behaviors, the rudimentary beginnings of culture, even ethnicity. All of these studies have one thing in common, the more we learn about our closest relatives the more human they seem.

Anthropologists are recognizing different behaviors and even different material use in six different populations of chimpanzees. Are we seeing the beginnings of ethnic culture? (Credit: Nature)

Now two new studies have added further evidence in support of that thesis. The first concerns social interactions between two chimpanzees or two bonobos, a closely related species often mistaken for chimps.

There is still some debate as to whether Bonobos are a separate species or a subspecies of Chimpanzees. The consensus at present is a separate species but that brings up the whole question of just exactly how to define a species. (Credit: San Diego Zoo Kids)

Whenever two humans meet it is customary for them to exchange greetings, “Hi, how are you doing.” being typical. The strange thing is that the better two individuals know each the shorter the time required for the greeting. Think about it, if you run into a business acquaintance that you haven’t seen in over a year you spend a few minutes getting re-acquainted before getting down to business. On the other hand when you get together for dinner with your best friend who you just saw last week it’s “Hey man, good to see you…where should we eat?” The two of you know each other so well that you don’t have to get re-acquainted, you can get right down to the purpose of the meeting.

Chimpanzees and Bonobos both perform a series of behaviors when starting and closing an interaction with another individual. (Credit: Psychology Today)

The same happens at the end of the get together. When the meeting is over with that business associate you see once or twice a year you make plans to keep in touch, maybe even arrange the next meeting. When you and your best friend say goodbye it can be a short as ‘See ya around.” Anthropologists refer to these greetings and goodbyes as Entry and Exit phases of a social interaction and together represent a Joint Commitment to the social interaction. 

We humans also have our own ritual greetings at the start of any interaction. Turns out our relatives are a lot like us! (Credit: The New York Times)

Now a group of researchers at the Institute of Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland and eight other institutes has published a paper in the journal iScience where they present evidence of very similar conduct in both chimps and bonobos. The observed behaviors include such actions as eye contact and non-verbal signals both prior to and at the end of some joint activity such as mutual grooming or play.

Chimps and other great Apes love to groom each other but first they have to mutually agree to the time spent together by means of an entry greeting. (Credit: ZME Science)

Bonobos in particular exhibited the human like behavior; even to the extent that the observed greetings and farewells are shorter for very well acquainted individuals, again just as in humans. One interesting observation made in both species is that the social rank of the individuals involved, such as the alpha male, appeared to play no role in the coordinated joint action phases.

So it seems as if our relatives share much of our behavior when interacting on a one on one basis. A second recent study gives evidence that they also act in very human like ways when in larger groups.

Once again it was Jane Goodall who first observed the chimpanzees of the group she was studying carry out what could only be described as an act of war against a neighboring group. What she described was that the alpha male of her group first gathered together all of the other males. The males then quietly and stealthily entered the territory of a neighboring group where, after a period of time in hiding they ambushed a juvenal male of the neighboring group, killing him without mercy.

Perhaps another similar behavior Chimps have with us is rebelling against authority. The dead Chimp in the middle was the former Alpha Male of the group that just killed him! (Credit: New Scientist)

Now biologists at the Loango National Park in Gabon have witnessed two inter-species battles between groups of chimpanzees and gorillas. In each incident the chimpanzees both outnumbered the gorillas and seemed to have instigated the conflict. Also, in both incidents a young gorilla was killed.

The first war between two groups of Chimpanzees was witnessed back in 1974 and lasted four years. The new evidence of fighting between Chimps and Gorillas just demonstrates how much like us they are. (Credit: Fact Republic)

The first incident occurred in February of 2019 and took place when a group of 18 chimpanzees were returning to their territory from a foraging excursion. The chimps came upon five gorillas, only one of which was a male and immediately became aggressive. In a battle that lasted nearly an hour an infant gorilla was separated from its mother and killed.

The second battle happened in December and was even larger with 27 chimpanzees attacking seven gorillas for well over an hour. Again a baby gorilla was stolen from its mother and killed and this time the murdered infant was actually eaten by the triumphant chimps.

Under threat from humans throughout Africa it appears that Gorillas are even threatened by Chimpanzees. (Credit: Windy City Travel)

It is not known how often such conflicts take place between chimps and gorillas, or what the reasons for the battles were. Both chimpanzees and gorillas are very difficult to keep under observation. The naturalists at Loango Park have noted however that both incidents occurred during the season when supplies of fruit are low so the fights may have been over resources.

Loango National Park in Gabon. (Credit: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

Nevertheless the episodes do illustrate just how remarkable the resemblance is between the behaviors of ourselves and our closest relatives. Whether that be for good or ill.

Paleontology News for September 2021: Some Exciting new Fossil Discoveries from around the world.

As I have mentioned several times in these posts, 99% of the fossils that paleontologists, and amateurs like me find are the hard parts, the shells or bones of ancient animals. Soft tissue like muscles or internal organs are rarely preserved and even then they usually distorted in shape because of the enormous pressure they were under for millions of years. So it’s not surprising therefore that paleontologists got pretty excited recently by the discovery of a very well preserved 310 million year old brain.

Fossil Horseshoe Crab (L) showing its brain, closeup of the brain (C) and an illustration of how the brain would fit inside a living crab (R). (Credit: Phys.org)

The brain in question belonged to a specimen of a species of horseshoe crab called Euproops danae and was found at the Mazon Creek fossil site in Illinois. The Mazon Creek site is famous for its excellent preservation of fossils from the Pennsylvania period some 310 million years ago. Many completely soft bodied species have been discovered in the iron concretions at Mazon Creek and are known only from that site.

The Mazon Creek fossil location in the state of Illinois. The fossils at Mazon Creek are so well preserved that the locale is considered a ‘mother load’ by paleontologists and amateurs alike. (Credit: Field Museum)
A well preserved specimen of the enigmatic ‘Tully Monster’, the most famous creature found at Mazon Creek. (Credit: UCMP Berkeley)

The specimen of horseshoe crab was discovered and studied by a team of paleontologists from the University of New England in Australia, Harvard University in Massachusetts and Pomona College in California with the results published in the journal Geology. The identification of the preserved organ as the animal’s brain was made certain by comparing it to the brain of modern horseshoe crabs. So close is the resemblance that the fossil brain illustrates how little the horseshoe crabs have evolved in the last 300 million years, making them true ‘living fossils’.

A living fossil. Horseshoe crabs have changed very little over the last 400 million years, a true testament to a body design that fits in perfectly with its environment. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

So it seems that even some of the softest organs and even whole animals from the past can be preserved and studied, all that’s required to find one is patience and a lot of fossils to examine. But for those of us who associate fossils with big animals like dinosaurs it’s nice that big means big bones, bones that are more easily fossilized.

Let’s be honest, when most people think of fossils they think of bones because they are nice and large and hard. Because of that they fossilize well. (Credit: Wikipedia)

And the biggest of all the dinosaurs were the sauropods; those long necked and long tailed monsters like the Diplodocus and wrongly named Brontosaurus, whose scientifically accepted name is really Apatasaurus. Both Diplodocus and Apatasaurus were discovered more than a century ago in North America but sauropods have now been discovered on every continent. Recently new fossils from the early Cretaceous period, 120-130 million years ago in China are adding two new species of giants to that well-known group.

Rivaling whales as the largest of all living creatures, sauropod dinosaurs lived for more than 100 million years on every continent. (Credit: Amazon.com)

 The fossils were discovered in the Turpan-Hami Basin in the province of Xinjiang China and were described in an article published in the journal Science Reports. One specimen detailed in the study consisted of seven vertebra from the neck of a new species of sauropod that has been christened Silutitan sinensis and is estimated to have been some 20m in length. The second specimen is made up of seven vertebra from the tail of a different individual and is also described as a new species, which they have named Hamititan xinjiangensis. The researchers estimate the length of H xinjiangensis as being more than 17m.

Artists illustration of Hamititan xinjiangensis (L) and Silutitan sinensis (R) the largest dinosaurs known to have inhabited China. (Credit: ABC News)

The third specimen consists of only a few vertebra and rib fragments that the paleontologists have been unable to identify for certain as either a known or new species but are confident that they do come from a sauropod. These new species of sauropod not only add to the ever growing number of known dinosaur species but help to round out our knowledge of the cretaceous period in the far east.

Another part of the world whose Mesozoic past is also being uncovered is Australia where a new species of pterosaur has been described in an article published in the journal Vertebrate Paleontology, and it’s also a monster. The fossil skull of the flying reptile, pterosaurs are not dinosaurs, was discovered by a longtime amateur fossil hunter Len Shaw and has been given the name Thapunngaka shawi, which means ‘Shaw’s Spear Mouth’ in the local indigenous language.

The Skull of Thapunngaka shawi. Pterosaur bones are lighter than those of most animals, necessary for flying creatures, and therefore they don’t fossilize as well as a sauropod’s bones would. (Credit: Everything Dinosaur Blog)

The skull measures a little over a meter in length and would have contained about 40 sharp spiky teeth. By comparing it to related species researchers estimate that T shawi would have had a wingspan of about seven meters. The researchers speculate that T shawi probably flew above the vast inland sea that covered much of Australia back in the early cretaceous catching fish in much the same way as a modern pelican does.

Artists impression of T shawi in flight. With a wingspan of perhaps seven meters T shawi would have been a flying dragon indeed. (Credit: Bif Think)

In order to be able to fly the bones of pterosaurs were mostly hollow and easily broken. This makes fossils finds of pterosaurs rare and valuable, in fact the skull of T shawi is only the 20th pterosaur fossil to be found in Australia over the last 50 years. Nevertheless T shawi, like the sauropod species from China, does help to complete our picture of the living creatures who inhabited these parts of the world more than 100 million years ago.

Space News for August 2021: The installation of Russia’s final module for the International Space Station nearly causes a disaster while Boeing’s Starliner capsule continues to be one.

From the very start the design and construction of the International Space Station (ISS) was intended to be a cooperative effort between NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, with a few additions from other nations to justify the “International” part of the name. And even though the station has been manned and running now for more than 20 years it still wasn’t entirely competed. The launch of Russia’s final contribution, a 13m long, 23,000 kg module named Nauka (Science), has been delayed for several years as the cash strapped Russians tried to finish it.

Intended as a labouratory and living module construction of Russia’s Nuaka module to the ISS has been delayed for several years. (Credit: NASA)

Nauka was finally launched on the 21st of July aboard a Russian Proton rocket from their Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The launch went off without a hitch and the Nauka module was successfully attached to the ISS eight days later. The day after being attached however a ‘software failure’ caused the module’s thrusters to begin firing unexpectedly sending the entire ISS into an uncontrolled spin. The ISS crew and controllers on the ground quickly responded by firing the thrusters of other modules to compensate, not a terribly safe thing to do on the ISS since thrusters pushing in opposite directions puts a considerable strain on the station’s main structure. The spin also led to two periods when the ISS was out of communication with ground controllers, once for four minutes and the second time for seven.

The Nauka module docking with the ISS. A short time later Nauka would begin firing its thrusters without orders sending the space station into a dangerous roll. (Credit: Twitter)

Initially it was reported that the malfunction had caused the ISS to roll about 45º from its normal orientation but it was later admitted that the station had in fact made one complete rotation plus 45º. “It wasn’t a benign event,” admitted astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Nevertheless the ISS did survive its unscheduled stress test and a few days later all station operations seemed to be back to normal. Problems like the ‘software failure’ do have a tendency to cascade however, sometimes in unexpected directions. The problems with the Nauka module forced NASA to delay the scheduled 30th of July launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its final unmanned flight test to the ISS.

Boeing’s Starliner capsule on the pad ready for it’s final unmanned test flight. The problems with Nauka caused a delay in Starliner’s launch and then the capsule had problems of its own. (Credit: Ars Technica)

Boeing, as you may recall is developing a manned space capsule similar to Space X’s Dragon capsule, indeed the two capsules were both developed under NASA’s commercial crew program. But whereas the Dragon has successfully completed all of its qualification tests and has now taken astronauts to the ISS three times, Boeing has had a number of problems and failures so that it still has not been certified as man ready.

The next crew of the Space X Dragon capsule, scheduled for launch around 31October. Space X has successfully sent 10 astronauts in orbit and its Dragon capsule is now NASA’s space vehicle of choice. (Credit: Space.com)

In fact the 30 July flight to the ISS, officially designated as Orbital Test Flight-1, (OTF-1) was to be the final unmanned test of Starliner. And the capsule was all ready to go, sitting atop its Atlas 5 rocket when NASA’s concern over the Nauka incident caused them to delay the flight for a few days, until August the 3rd.

Sitting atop its Atlas Five rocket Starliner was all ready to go but it was not to be. (Credit: Space.com)

But the August 3rd flight was not to take place either. As the countdown was underway a status check of the capsule’s propulsion system revealed ‘some’ valves were in the wrong position. The launch was immediately scrubbed and an investigation begun. The first question that needed to be answered was whether the problem was with the indicators or actually with the valves, thirteen valves in all. A quick check showed that the valves themselves were the culprit.

The Starliner capsule has been taken off of its launch vehicle and is returning to the factory. How much longer this will delay the capsule’s test flight is unknown at present. (Credit: Florida Today)

In order to determine exactly what the problem was and correct it was necessary to remove Starliner from the launch pad and return rocket to its assembly building. The investigation then found that it was necessary to separate Starliner from its lunch vehicle in order to gain access to the problem valves. Because of this the launch of Starliner has now been delayed indefinitely and will need to be completely rescheduled. Just more problems for what is beginning to look more and more like a snake-bit program.

While Boeing continues to struggle with the Starliner capsule its rival Space X continues to expand the role that it is playing in the manning and maintenance of the ISS. Preparations are currently underway for the Hawthorn California Company’s 23rd unmanned resupply mission to the station, now scheduled to launch on the 28th of August. In addition to the usual food, water and oxygen needed to keep the ISS running this mission carries with it a number of science experiments designed to help expand the ability of humans to live in space.

An unmanned cargo version of the Space X Dragon capsule is now on the launch pad ready to take supplies to the ISS. (Credit: Space Coast Daily)

Some of the experiments are medical in nature and intended to investigate ways to minimize the effect of zero gravity on astronaut’s bones and eyes. Earlier studies conducted aboard the ISS, see my posts of 15 February 2017 and 24 March 2018, have shown the detrimental effect that even a few months in zero g can have on the human body and NASA is very interested in trying to uncover possible treatments for the bone and visual disorders that have been found on astronauts once they return to Earth.

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly spent more than a year aboard the ISS as an experiment in how the human body can handle zero gravity for long periods of time. (Credit: Research Gate)

Other experiments will test the effect of space environment on various materials along with plant growth. Also going to the station is a robotic arm designed by a Japanese company that may eventually be used to replace astronauts in performing tasks that are deemed to be hazardous.

Developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) a new robotic arm is scheduled to be launched to the ISS for testing. (Credit: Hindustan Times)

The International Space Station has now passed 20 years of continuous service in orbit, teaching humans much about how to live in space. It’s been a long journey with its share of twists and turns. Now, as both NASA and the Russians are thinking about the future of the ISS other players, commercial companies seem to be taking a bigger role in the space station. Where all of this will lead only the future will tell.

P.S. Thunderstorms in Florida have forced the scrubbing of Space X’s 23rd cargo mission. NASA and Space X will try again tomorrow, hopefully the weather will cooperate.

P.S.S. Space X and NASA successfully launched the 23rd Dragon cargo mission on the 29th of August and once again the first stage of the rocket nailed the landing on the recovery ship. All in all a perfect launch. Boeing, are you paying attention.

Archaeology News for August 2021: A Babylonian cuneiform table has been deciphered that describes a working knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem a thousand years before Pythagoras lived.

Throughout history the advance of human civilization has gone hand and hand with an advance in our knowledge of mathematics. Many of the earliest known examples of writing contain, not stories of gods or heroes but rather accounts of material goods whether that be the number of sheep in a flock or the number of bushels of wheat gathered in a harvest.

To a Shepard counting sheep so you know how many you have is more important than trying to get to sleep. (Credit: KBBI)

Just knowing how much material wealth a tribe had, and how much it needed in order to survive required a number system and the ability to add and subtract. And when it came to deciding how to allocate land for use among the members of a society a working knowledge of geometry was required. Early mathematics therefore was a practical tool that our ancestors used to help build the first civilizations.

Generally regarded as the first civilization ancient Sumer developed a method of counting than was based on the number 60. Imagine doing arithmetic in base 60! (Credit: The Story of Mathematics)

Now mathematician Dr. Daniel Mansfield of the University of New South Wales in Australia has uncovered a Babylonian tablet, written in cuneiform and dating from 1600 to 1900 BCE that shows a remarkable practical knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem, at least a thousand years before the birth of Pythagoras. Dr. Mansfield found the tablet, which was given the designation Si.427 not while doing fieldwork in the ruins of the ancient city but in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum where it had been stored, and left undeciphered since the late 19th century.

Dr. Daniel Mansfield holding the tablet SI.427. (Credit: UNSW Sydney)

The tablet describes the sale of a piece of land that contains some marshland along with a tower and a threshing floor. Rectangles on Si.427 show opposite sides of equal length indicating that the surveyors who plotted the parcel of land had a more accurate way of producing a right, 90º angle than previously known.

A closeup view of Si.427 showing the various pieces of land the tablet describes. (Credit: Slashgear)

The key find is at the bottom of Si.427 where three sets of three numbers are given in Babylonian, three sets of Pythagorean numbers who satisfy the well known equation:

A2+B2=C2

The three sets are 3, 4, and 5:

32+42=9+16=25=52

8, 15, and 17

82+152=64+ 225=289=172

and 5, 12, and 13:

52+122=25+144=169=132

A triangle whose sides are in the ratio of any of the three sets will contain a 90º angle opposite the longest side, the hypotenuse.

By simply construction a triangle with sides three unit long, four units long and five units long you get an exact 90 degree angle opposite the 5 unit long side. (Credit: Voovers)

Now simply knowing a few Pythagorean triplets as these sets are known is a bit different from being able to prove the complete theorem. It’s been known for centuries that the builders of the Egyptian pyramids could use a 3, 4, 5 triangle in order to construct a right angle but they never succeeded in establishing the general equation A2+B2=C2. Still tablet Si.427 does give substantial evidence that the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia were using rather advanced mathematics almost 4,000 years ago. 

And archaeologists are helping mathematicians to answer several other questions from the history of mathematics, namely the origins of zero and π. Let’s start with zero.

This is typical of the kind of philosophizing that caused the ancient Greeks to ignore zero as a matter of principal rather than whether or not it made calculations easier. (Credit: Quora)

You may have heard that the Greeks and later the Romans had no symbol with zero. The Greek philosophers had a problem with the very idea of ‘nothing being something’ so they devised a system for doing calculations that didn’t require a zero. (Do you know how to multiply or divide two Roman numerals, ’cause I don’t?) This attitude toward zero continued in Europe until the beginning of the renaissance.

A few Roman numerals, notice no zero. The system is quite unwieldy so that doing complex calculations is very difficult. (Credit: How Stuff Works)

The Greeks weren’t the only mathematicians in the classical world however. Evidence from hieroglyphic bas-reliefs and cuneiform tablets show that both Egypt and Mesopotamia had a symbol that they used as the origin, in other words the 0 in 0,1,2,3… But they did not use that symbol as a placeholder like in 102 or 270.

In fact the Babylonians, whose number system was based on the number 60, are known to have used a space as a placeholder, which had the unfortunate consequence of making 2 and 120 (2×60) or 5 and 300 (6×60) look exactly the same when written. You had to recognize the space in order to know which number was meant.

Sometime in the century or so before the start of the Common Era the Chinese began to use a simple dot as a symbol for both the origin of the numbers and a placeholder. Hindu mathematicians in the 7th century then changed that dot to an oval shape, which the Arabs copied and passed on to Europe during the 15th century. It wasn’t long before European mathematicians were doing all of their calculations with ‘Arabic numerals’ even while they continued to write down dates in Roman numerals. (I had to learn Roman Numerals in school but all we ever learned was how to translate Roman Numerals into Arabic. So you’d be right to wonder why Roman Numerals were still being used in the mid-20th century. I sure did!)

Ancient sanskrit text that uses a dot for zero. As the dot got bigger it became our familiar 0. (Credit: Times of India)

The symbol π also has a long and convoluted history. As everyone knows π is used to represent the ratio between the circumference of a circle to its diameter. In other words Circumference / Diameter for a circle =π. The fact that all circles have this same property seems to have been recognized at the very beginnings of civilization.

The definition of Pi! Some mathematicians would like to redefine Pi in terms of radius so that Pi=6.28318… (Credit: Reddit)

It’s been asserted from measurements of the great pyramids of Giza, dated to around 2500 BCE, that the Egyptians probably used the fraction 22/7 as an approximate value for π= 3.14286, just as many people do today. A Babylonian tablet dated to 1600-1900 BCE gives a value for π=3.125. Both these any other ancient values for π came from actually measuring the circumference and diameter of a circle and taking a ratio, which doesn’t sound like an easy thing to do with any great accuracy to me.

The first person to figure out a method for calculating π was the Greek mathematician Archimedes around 250 BCE. He invented a technique now known as the polygonal algorithm where a regular polygon is drawn both inside and outside a circle giving an upper and lower bound for the value of π. The more sides to the regular polygon used the closer the calculation will approximate π. Archimedes got as far as a 96 sided polygon giving 223/71< π<22/7 which would remain the most accurate answer for nearly a thousand years.

The perimeters of the inscribed and circumscribed hexagon are easy to calculate. Taking their ratios to the diameter, one, gives an upper and lower bound to pi! (Credit: Business Insider)

Later mathematicians would discover simpler techniques for calculating π so that today π has been calculated to millions of digits. But one thing that rather surprised me when I did a little background checking for this post was that the Greek Letter π only became adopted as the symbol for the ratio of circumference to diameter in 1706 when the Welsh mathematician William Jones used it as such. The symbol was then popularized by the mathematician Leonhard Euler around 1720. I have to admit that I thought it went all the way back to ancient times.

If you’d like to calculate all of the digits to Pi, which is impossible of course, this will get you off to a good start. (Credit: The News Journal)

Archeologists have uncovered much about the history of mathematics that had been lost; I didn’t even mention how zero and π were used in Mesoamerican culture. That complex ideas like zero and π were developed by so many cultures so early in their history shows the importance of mathematics in building a civilization.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its long awaited 2021 report on the Physical Science behind climate change. Guess what, it’s all our fault.

Under the auspices of the United Nations a panel of 234 of climatologists, meteorologists and other scientists have prepared an exhaustive and comprehensive assessment of the effect of human activity on the Earth’s climate, primarily due to the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The report was released on the 9th of August 2021 in the form of two documents, the first is a 159 page technical summary that gathers together and analyses an unprecedented amount of data collected from every part of our planet.

Released in August of 2021 the Summary for Policymakers is a dire warning of the damage we are doing to the only planet we have to live on. (Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Labouratory)

The second report is a 42 page non-technical summary for policymakers, in other words the politicians. This is the report that you’ll be seeing charts from and hearing quotations from on the news programs in the days, weeks and years to come. The main headline is quite simple, the Earth’s temperature has risen by an unprecedented amount over the last fifty years and that rise has been in a linear relationship with the amount of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) that we have released into our atmosphere. In other words the more fossil fuels we burned the hotter the Earth has gotten.

Years of data collected by thousands of scientists from locations around the globe all summed up in a single chart. The Earth is warming up because of our irresponsible use of fossil fuels! (Credit: BBC)

Now scientists in general always try to be restrained in their rhetoric. They only make definitive statements when they feel they have overwhelming evidence to support those statements and even then they include error bars as an indication of any possible uncertainty.

The statements made in the summaries and agreed to by those 234 scientists are unequivocal however, both the rise in temperature over the last 50 years and the extreme weather events that are becoming more and more common are solely due to human activity, to our ever increasing reliance on fossil fuels. So stark is the conclusion reached by the panel of scientists that UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres has declared the report to be “a code red for humanity”.

Currently we are sitting at the top center model, with all of the climate disasters now occurring. Without drastic measures the most probable futures are bottom center and bottom right! (Credit: Dezeen)

Indeed the findings detailed in the report are dire. The goal of limiting the global rise in temperature to 1.5ºC that was made at the Paris climate conference in 2015 has pretty much already been broken. If the Earth hasn’t gone past that 1.5ºC it will in the next few years even if we were to completely stop our carbon emissions today. Also unavoidable is a 15-20 cm rise in sea level, again that’s regardless of what measures we take now.

Those areas of the world that are under threat due to sea level rise just happen to be the most densely populated place! (Credit: Forbes)

The temperature will continue to rise even without more carbon emissions because of what scientists call hysteresis, that simply means that we have put enough GHGs into the air to warm the Earth by several degrees but it hasn’t done so yet simply because it hasn’t had enough time to do so. Any chef will tell you that putting something in the over doesn’t immediately cook it, it takes time to thoroughly heat it all the way through. If we left things as they are the planet would still get a bit warmer, the droughts would get a little worse, the torrential rainstorms would cause more flooding, to say nothing about more hurricanes and permafrost melting.

Predicted rise in global temperatures based upon five scenarios of future fossil fuel use. Even the best cases lead to considerable more harm to our climate over the next fifty years. (Credit: Eco-Business.com)

But of course we’re not going to just stop emitting GHGs. Let’s be honest our carbon emissions are more likely to increase over at least the next decade than decline. In order to make science based predictions about what the future holds for the climate the scientists extrapolated from current conditions using five basic scenarios for human activity. The first scenario is based upon an actual increase in GHG emission such that we double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2050. The second scenario assumes a slower increase so that CO2 levels double by 2100. Both these scenarios suppose that we do little or nothing to reduce the amounts of fossil fuels we burn.

Let’s admit it, we all know someone this stupid. (Credit: www.cagle.com)

The third scenario assumes that GHG emissions remain at current levels until around 2250 and only then begin to decrease slightly. The final two scenarios are based upon immediate steps being taken to reduce GHG emissions so that the entire planet reaches net zero carbon emissions sometime after 2050 or, best of all cases, sometime before that year.

For each of these five scenarios estimates were then made for global temperature rise in the near term, 2021-2040, mid-term, 2041-2060 and long-term, 2061-2100. In none of these scenarios does the temperature rise remain below that 1.5ºC goal, even the best-case scenario it goes to 1.6ºC, and only the best case has temperature starting to go down by the long-term time frame. All the other four scenarios have the temperature continuing to rise throughout the century with the temperature in the worst-case scenario reaching a horrifying 4.4ºC rise by 2100. 

The billion dollar weather disasters that occurred in the USA just last year. This year looks to be even worse and we can be confident that trend is going to continue. (Credit: S&P Global)

Think of that for a minute, currently we are sitting just below that 1.5ºC rise and we are witnessing increased tropical storm activity, an increase in droughts, in flooding. We are seeing more severe weather in many forms. We are seeing glaciers melting throughout the Polar Regions causing a rise in sea levels.

A vision of our future? Not a pretty one to be sure. (Credit: The Guardian)

A 4.4ºC temperature rise would be triple what we have already seen. The consequences of that simply don’t bear thinking about. Nevertheless our children and grandchildren may have to face those consequences if we don’t do something soon. The reports from the IPCC aren’t without hope however; in fact they detail many of the steps we can take to limit climate change by limiting our GHG emissions. The choice is simply ours, do we have the will to do whatever is necessary to achieve net zero carbon emissions or will we simply walk with our eyes closed into a hellish future.

Book Review: ‘Project Hail Mary’ by Andy Weir.

 ‘Project Hail Mary’ is the third novel by Andy Weir, best known as the author of ‘The Martian’. Like Weir’s two earlier novels ‘Project Hail Mary’ is a fast paced, hard science fiction adventure with both a plausible plot and relatable characters. In many ways this is Weir’s forte, he always does his science and engineering homework beforehand so that as he writes he can describe the interior of a spaceship as accurately as another author could describe the interior of a Starbucks.

Cover art for ‘Project Hail Mary’ by Andy Weir. (Credit: Amazon.com)

And like Mark Watney in ‘The Martian’ Ryland Grace, the main character in ‘Project Hail Mary’, is the sort of person who solves problems by ‘Sciencing the shit out of them.’ As the novel opens, Grace wakes up aboard a spaceship with amnesia, and two dead astronauts for his only company. As the story goes along Grace remembers bits and pieces of his past, a commonly used plot device that allows Weir to fill in some backstory whenever he needs to.

Andy Weir seems drawn to characters who are problem solvers, which I guess is why I like his stories! (Credit: Meme Generator)

In fact there’s quite a lot of backstory. As Grace remembers his past Weir describes in detail the threat to our Sun, and therefore us, that prompted Project Hail Mary. He also describes the design and construction of the spaceship that will take three astronauts on an expedition to hopefully find a way to save our Solar System.

As an aid in visualizing what’s going on in the novel, Andy Weir even gives a drawing of the interstellar spaceship Hail Mary. (Credit: Kerbal Space Program Forums)

You see unlike ‘The Martian’ or Weir’s second novel ‘Artemis’, both of which took place inside our Solar System and only concerned terrestrial life forms, ‘Project Hail Mary’ takes place in the Tau Ceti system and deals with humans contacting alien life. With the rest of his crew having died while in hibernation, which is also the cause of his amnesia, Grace is all alone in another Solar System trying to save all of humanity from a threat that’s infecting multiple solar systems. Or is he alone; could there be another intelligent species in the same predicament as we are?

In ‘Project Hail Mary’ Ryland Grace may be the only human in the Tau Ceti star system but he isn’t alone. (Credit: Goodreads)

So you get a story of first contact with aliens while under the shadow of extinction for both species. Weir’s alien comes from the Epsilon Eridani system and lives in a very different, and deadly environment. Because of that the only time Grace and it touch is during an emergency that nearly destroys both ships and the result of that touch is that both creatures nearly die.

Some basic scenarios for contact with Extraterrestrials. In ‘Project Hail Mary’ a single human meets a single alien and both are in such desperate need that working together is the only way to save both their worlds. (Credit: Seth Baum et al, Pennsylvania State University)

Both human and alien work together however to save their worlds, that’s another idea Andy Weir seems to like to portray in his novels, how much more we can accomplish if we just try to work together. And there are a lot of problems for the two astronauts to solve before the end of the novel, another of Weir’s traits.

One small criticism I have is that the two expeditions show up in the Tau Ceti system at the virtually the same time looking for a solution to the same threat, what are the chances of that happening. In fact there are a number of such unlikely events in the novel. But of course any good story, especially a science fiction story, requires a little suspension of disbelief.

I guess ‘Suspension of Disbelief’ kinda depends on the circumstance. (Credit: Riky the Writer)

All in all ‘Project Hail Mary’ is a very good SF novel, I really enjoyed it. And unlike all too many SF novels these days it isn’t the first installment in a series of books. Andy Weir is apparently the sort of writer who has a good idea for a story and then writes the story without adding a lot of filler in order to stretch his idea out for three or four books.

Word out of Hollywood is that Ryan Gosling, who play Neil Armstrong in ‘First Man’ is in talks to star in and produce a movie version of ‘Project Hail Mary’. (Credit: The Daily Mail)

There’s no filler in ‘Project Hail Mary’, just probably the best science fiction novel I’ve read since…well, the ‘Martian’!