Anthropologists have discovered an entirely new Chimpanzee Culture and I’ll bet you didn’t even know that Chimps had Culture.

Sixty years ago the very idea of that Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, living in different areas of Africa could have different cultures seemed simply ridiculous. After all in order to even have a culture requires either the production of manufactured items that can differ from one group to another or complex social interactions, like a language, that again can show differences between groups. Chimpanzees, so the thinking went, neither made things nor did their various hoots and growls amount to anything more than simple alarums or warnings.

We’ve learned a lot since then and it all began when Jane Goodall was the first to observe a chimpanzee using a twig to get termites out of a nest in order to eat them. (See my posts of 11Nov17 and 21Mar18). This was the first ever observation of tool use by Chimpanzees but was quickly followed by numerous other observations of them using a range of tools. However, because Goodall concentrated all of her observations on a single-family group of chimpanzees she missed the fact that chimpanzees do things differently in different parts of Africa, that P troglodytes possessed culture.

The First Use of Tools by Chimpanzees was using a stick to ‘fish’ for termites (Credit: Seeker)

For example only the chimpanzees of West Africa use stone and wood as hammers in order to crack nuts while in central Africa chimps have been observed to use clubs to open up beehives. Other cultural differences include different styles of nest construction, chimpanzees make a new bed of leaves every night, along with behaviors such as stone piling and algae scooping.

Chimpanzee using a rock to break open a nut (Credit: Phys.Org)
In order to maintain a Culture of course you have to teach it to your Children (Credit: Earth in Transition)

Now researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) and the University of Warsaw have discovered a new ‘behavioral realm’, a new cultural unit located in the Bili-Uĕrĕ region of northern Democratic Republic of Congo. The area encompassed in this new ‘behavioral realm’ is estimated at some 50,000 square kilometers but could extend further. The announcement, in a paper published in the journal Folia Primatologica is the result of twelve years of study in the field; some discoveries take a long time and require a careful examination of the evidence.

The Area of the DR Congo where the New Chimpanzee Culture was discovered (Credit: Thurston C. Hicks et al)

Some of the differences are striking, such as whereas most chimp populations use twigs to ‘fish’ for the common termite Macrotermes muelleri, the Bili-Uĕrĕ chimps prefer to use stones and clubs to pound open the nests of the species Thoracotermes macrothorax. In fact the Bili-Uĕrĕ chimps seem to prefer pounding things in general, such as using stones on snail shells and even tortoises, behavior never before observed in chimpanzees. The scientists hope that by learning more about how chimpanzees develop their different cultures they may succeed in better understanding how it was that the first human cultures came into being.

Chimpanzees use a variety of different tolls for different jobs (Credit: Discover Magazine)

As exciting as this new discovery is there’s a danger here that has nothing whatsoever to do with the study of anthropology. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is currently mired in a bitter civil war that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of people. Yet even while the bloodshed continues there is a destructive exploitation of the jungle underway that threatens to exterminate the chimpanzees in Bili-Uĕrĕ even as their distinctive culture is being studied.

As co-author and director of the Department of Primatology at MPI-EVA Christophe Boesch put it. “It is great to have found these fascinating behavioral traits in this population. We simply hope that the many threats they face won’t wipe out these chimpanzees just as we are learning more about their uniqueness.”

 

Post Script: I’d like to update a story from just last week about the test mission of the Space X crew Dragon capsule. After five days attached to the International Space Station (ISS) the Dragon capsule undocked from the ISS and reentered Earth’s atmosphere, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean about 450 km from the Cape Canaveral launch pad from which it had taken off six days earlier. While the reentry and splashdown appeared to go flawlessly NASA and Space X will still review all of the data over the next few months. Currently the plan is for the first actual manned mission to the ISS for the Dragon to take place in July. I’ll keep you up to date!

Splashdown of the Space X Crew Dragon Capsule (Credit: NASA)

 

Telstar and the Revolution brought about by Communications Satellites.

This is the third installment of a series of articles leading up to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and humanity’s first landing on the Moon. In these articles I will reminisce about some of the most important milestones on the journey that led to Apollo 11, some of the best known events in the Space Race.

In the second installment I discussed how the Soviet Union and the USA had successfully launched the first astronauts into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) demonstrating that human beings could live and work in space. I also mentioned how a challenge from the US President Kennedy to ‘land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth” had given the new ‘Space Race’ a measurable finish line.

In this post I’d like to discuss the first series of experiments in what has undoubtedly become the most commercially valuable sector of the space industry, communication satellites or Comsats. Now I should warn you, I spent a good part of my career designing and developing the equipment for communications satellites and their associated ground stations so I trust that you’ll forgive me if I become a bit enthusiastic on the subject.

The very idea of using man made satellites in orbit above the Earth as relay stations passing radio messages across the oceans from one continent to another was the brain child of the well known science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke’s article ‘Extraterrestrial Relays’ in the October 1945 issue of the radio technology journal ‘Wireless World’. Such relays, Clarke maintained, could relay thousands of telephone calls and perhaps even TV signals across the world.

The First Page of Extra-Terrestrial Relays by Arthur C. Clarke (Credit: Wireless World)

Below is a PDF of the entire article.

Extra-Terrestrial Relays2

Clarke’s idea was for a series of satellites at a distance of 35,700 km above Earth’s equator. This orbit is now known at Geostationary because at that distance and location the satellite would orbit the Earth exactly once everyday and appear to always remain at the same point in the sky. So important has this orbit become that it is often referred to as the Clarke orbit!

Some of the Satellites currently in the Geostationary (Clark) Orbit (Credit: Space Exploration Stack Exchange)

The first attempt at using a satellite to relay a radio signal was by the United States with their Pioneer 1 Lunar spacecraft, launched on 11October 1958. Pioneer 1failed in its mission to reach the Moon but it did achieve a high enough orbit for NASA to use it to relay a radio signal from Cape Canaveral to Manchester England. However Pioneer 1 could only relay one simple radio signal at a time, nowhere near the thousands of messages that Clarke envisioned.

On August 12th 1960 NASA launched the experimental Echo 1 Comsat. Echo was really nothing more than a 30m diameter aluminized balloon that would simply reflect radio signals aimed at it back to receiving stations in other parts of the World, hence the name Echo. Being so large and reflective Echo was easily visible in the night sky and was actually the first satellite I ever saw moving across the night’s sky.

Inflation Test of the Echo Satellite (Credit: NASA)

These first attempts at communications satellites may have taught the scientists and engineers a great deal but the equipment on those early satellites simply did not have the power and capacity to make a real impact in the way the world communicated. That all changed with Telstar.

For one thing Telstar was designed and funded by a consortium of communications companies including AT&T and Bell Telephone in the US along with GPO in the United Kingdom and PTT in France. In fact Telstar was the first object to be put into space owned and operated by private companies, even the launch was privately funded.

Telstar 1 communications satellite, 1962 (replica). Made by Bell Systems. (Credit: Space Museum Group Collection)

The shape of Telstar, see image above, was basically a globe some 87 cm in diameter and the satellite spun in order to maintain stability. The surface of the globe was covered in solar cells that provided 16 watts of electrical power but around the equator were two rows of small ‘horn’ antennas. The larger horns were tuned to a frequency of 4 Giga-Hertz (GHz), which is 4 billion cycles per second, while the small horns were tuned to 6 GHz.

Weighing just 77kg Telstar was crammed full of the latest technology of the time including an innovative electronic subsystem called a ‘transponder’. The transponder was an assembly that carried out several radio operations in a single device. The transponder received signals from the 6Ghz horns, down-converted those signals to 4Ghz, amplified those signals using an electronic device known as a Traveling Wave Tube (TWT) before transmitting it out of the 4Ghz horn antennas. Today Comsats are often judged by the capacity of their transponder(s) and Telstar’s transponder allowed it to relay either 2,000 telephone calls or one television channel.

Because it had to operate all of its equipment off of only 16 watts the signals coming back down from the satellite were very weak and required large, specially built antennas. The US antenna for Telstar was built at Andover Maine; see below, while the British antenna was at Goonhilly Downs in Southwest England and the French built theirs at Pleumeur-Bodou in Northwestern France.

Telstar Ground Antenna at Andover Maine (Credit: Bell Systems)

Telstar I was launched from Cape Canaveral on July 10, 1962 and the very next day the first ever transoceanic TV picture, an American Flag outside the Andover site, was transmitted as a test signal. This was a non-public test of Telstar’s equipment however and it wasn’t until two weeks later on July 23rd that Europa and North America shared the first live TV program to be spread across half of the world. Then a month later in August Telstar was use to synchronize the official clocks in Europe and America to within 1 milli-second.

The Launch of Telstar 1 (Credit: NASA)

Now you might have noticed that I haven’t even mentioned anything so far about The Soviet Union’s efforts to develop communications satellites. Well that’s because the use of satellites to relay radio signals around the world was the one section of the early space race where America led the way right from the very start. You see, despite the advantage that the USSR had with their larger rockets, which were capable of putting larger spacecraft into orbit, it was the American advantage in electronics that mattered in the design and development of Comsats.

In addition the Soviets were not so concerned with the commercial benefits of communications satellites. So it was that their first series of Comsats, christened Molniya or lightning in Russian, were designed for military communications only. The first successful Molniya satellite was not launched until April 23rd of 1965, nearly three years after Telstar. This backwardness in technology continues to this very day with Russian presently buying its Comsats from western, primarily American aerospace companies.

The Soviet Molniya Communications Satellite (Credit: Astroautix)

Although Telstar I and its sister Telstar II demonstrated all of the possible benefits that Comsats could bring the fact that it had not been placed in Clarke’s geostationary orbit meant that it could only be used for 20 minutes out of every 2-hour orbit. It was only later, as more powerful communications satellites were installed 35,700 km above the equator that the communications revolution we are now living in became possible. Nevertheless it was Telstar that led the way.

 

NASA Scientists set up Experiment into the Origins of Life.

We humans have been obsessed with the question of the origin of life on Earth at least as long as recorded history, probably much longer. In ancient times the gods, of one variety or another always got the credit. And let’s be honest, the difference between living and non-living things is so enormous, so mysterious that it really seems as if some sort of supernatural ‘spirit’ must be involved.

Modern science however seeks more natural causes and in the last few hundred years considerable progress has been made. In the 1950s there was the famous Miller-Urey experiment that recreated Earth’s early atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia and used an electric spark to generate amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. (If you’re not familiar with the Miller-Urey experiment check out my post of 11Nov17 or look for ‘Miller-Urey experiment’ on Youtube). The basic result of the Miller-Urey experiment was that in the chemical rich soup of Earth’s early atmosphere all that was needed was a source of energy, lightning for example, to begin the process of generating life.

Setup of the Miller-Urey Experiment (Credit: Krishna.org)

Many experts now feel that one of the possible sources of that energy may have been the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the planet’s ancient oceans. Now if you’re not familiar with hydrothermal vents they are hot springs of superheated water located near underwater volcanoes, like the hot springs around land volcanoes. The superheated water pouring out of those vents is chemical rich and various types of bacteria thrive in conditions that would boil most living things. Larger animals then feed off of the bacteria and an entire, unique ecology exists just around these vents.

A Hydrothermal Vent (Credit: Phys.org)
Some of the Living Things around a Hydrothermal Vent (Credit: EMTV Online)

To study the role that these hydrothermal vents may have played in the early Earth NASA scientists working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have recreated the environment around a hydrothermal vent as it would have been some 4 billion years ago. The team, led by astrobiologist Laurie Barge, mixed a chemical solution of ammonia and pyruvate in water, both chemicals are commonly found near hydrothermal vents, in a glass container. By heating the solution to 70º C and decreasing the oxygen content the container became a modern day reproduction of the primordial ocean.

Researchers Laurie Barge (L) and Erika Flores (R) in their Lab (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Time Lapse recreation of a Hydrothermal vent in a Lab (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It wasn’t long before amino acids began to form just as in the Miller-Urey experiment, clearly demonstrating that there were multiple locations on the early Earth where life could have begun. Biologists and chemists studying the origin of life still have a few more steps in the process that need to be discovered. However the results of the work at JPL do highlight how broad a set of conditions can trigger the initial steps in that process.

And not just here on Earth! You may have noticed how I mentioned that the team leader Laurie Barge is an astrobiologist, someone interested in life in outer space, and life on other worlds is a big part of the JPL experiment.

You see planetary scientists are quite certain that two of the moons in our Solar System have oceans of liquid water with hydrothermal vents very similar to those here on Earth. Both Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus are covered with a sheet of ice but there is evidence that beneath the ice there are oceans of liquid water, and keeping that water in a liquid state is the heat from hydrothermal vents, just like those here on Earth.

Are there Hydrothermal vents beneath Europa’s icy surface? (Credit: NASA)
Enceladus is another possible location for Hydrothermal vents (Credit: NASA)

So Dr. Barge and her colleagues weren’t just studying the origins of life here on Earth but the possibility of life on Europa and Enceladus as well. Right now NASA is preparing robotic missions to both of these moons and it is hoped that the results of the JPL experiment may give those mission planners a better idea of how to go about looking for life on those alien worlds!

Space News for March 2019.

There’s been quite a bit of news about space the past month so let’s get to it!

The big news of course in the successful launch of Space X’s manned version of their Dragon space capsule and its arrival at the International Space Station (ISS). Although in this final test the Dragon capsule is unmanned nevertheless this launch represents the first time that a human capable spacecraft has taken off from American soil since the last Shuttle flight back in 2011. Since that time all American astronauts have had to pay for a ride on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in order to get to the ISS.

Launch of Space X’s Crew Dragon Capsule (Credit: Press TV)

The test schedule now calls for the Dragon capsule to remain docked with the ISS for several days before returning to Earth. When, and if the capsule reenters the atmosphere and splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean safely NASA and Space X will review the data from the mission before scheduling an actual manned mission later this year. Hopefully by early next year there will be regularly scheduled flights leaving Cape Canaveral for the ISS. Oh, I forgot to mention that once again Space X succeeded in recovering the rocket’s first stage so that it can be used again

The Dragon Capsule Docked at the ISS (Credit: NASA)
Astronauts about the ISS enter the Dragon Capsule (Credit: NASA)

And Space X isn’t alone in this effort; Boeing Corporation also has a human capable space capsule called the Starliner that is scheduled to conduct its unmanned test sometime in April. Both of these companies’ efforts are a part of NASA’s commercial crew program whose intention is to ‘hand off’ the transportation of cargo and personnel up to Low Earth Orbit (LOE) so that NASA can concentrate its efforts on human exploration beyond Earth orbit.

Boeing’s Starliner Capsule being readied from it’s test launch (Credit: Boeing)

With NASA helping to fund the development of both the Dragon and Starliner capsules the two commercial companies hope to find other customers as well. The possibilities of taking patrons to space hotels along with small countries who would like the recognition of putting an astronaut into orbit without the cost of building an entire launch system could be quite profitable. In the long term the commercialization of LOE could jumpstart space travel by lowering cost while increasing access.

 

Of course there’s some other space news as well. Staying with NASA for the moment the space agency has announced its plan for a return to a manned lunar landing by the year 2028. The first part of this plan will be to use the Space Launch System (SLS), now nearing completion, to construct a space station called Gateway in Lunar orbit. One piece of news is the announcement by the nation of Canada that it intends to participate in the construction of Gateway, to the tune of $150 million Canadian dollars per year.

Illustration of the Space Launch System (Credit: NASA)
The Gateway Lunar Orbiting Platform (Credit: Wikipedia)

During the time that Gateway is being built in Lunar orbit a reusable lander module will be developed. That way the Gateway station can serve as a ‘parking garage’ for the lander module with the SLS taking astronauts back and forth to Gateway.

For the moment NASA is asking for bids for a robotic Lunar Lander. Nine companies have been asked to submit bids under the new Commercial Lunar Payload Services or CLPS program. These unmanned landers will be designed to carry a number of different payloads, perhaps one day including supplies to a manned Moon base.

Draper Corp. proposed Lunar Lander for NASA’s CLPS program (Credit: Space News)

 

Finally, further out in space the Japanese probe Hayabusa 2 has successfully touched down on the asteroid Ryugu, you can’t call it a landing the asteroid’s gravity is too low. The asteroid is currently about 270 million kilometers from the Earth. The image below shows the shadow of Hayabusa 2 on the surface on Ryugu as it made it’s final approach.

Shadow of the Hayabusa 2 Probe against the surface of Ryugu (Credit: Universe Today)

Before making contact the probe shot a pinball-sized object at the asteroid in order to kick up a little dust for the space probe to study. Now the probe is on the surface and is preparing to take its first samples of the asteroid’s surface materials.

Artist’s Impression of Hayabusa 2 hovering above Ryugu (Credit: Astronomy.Com)

Two more landings, and sample collections are planned for Hayabusa before it begins its return trip in December of this year (2019). The material collected by Hayabusa is scheduled to arrive back at Earth just a year later in December 2020.

 

Can Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) be used to fight infectious Diseases?

All of the infectious diseases that afflict us have one problem in common that they must solve, how to pass from an infected individual to an uninfected one. Some take the shortest path and move from person to person by touch. Our skin is actually pretty tough however so without a cut or other wound allowing the germs to get inside infection rarely takes place. Some microbes get themselves sprayed into the air by a cough or sneeze in order to be breathed in by their victim, but that’s very much hit or miss with most of the germs left hanging out in space.

A Sneeze can release millions of disease germs ready to infect a healthy person. (Credit: India Today)

Then there are some that actually use another living creature to literally take them from a sick person to new victims. A couple of well known examples of this type of disease are malaria, which uses the mosquito Anopheles gambiae to transmit the bacteria and bubonic plague which uses fleas that are themselves transported by rats. These organisms that pass on diseases from one person to another are referred to a ‘vector’ by epidemiologists and controlling the spread of the vectors, the rats and mosquitoes has often proved to be the most effective way to fight the diseases they spread.

The Anopheles Mosquito carries Malaria one one person to another. (Credit: ZME Science)

Now some biologists are actually trying to use the technology of gene editing to modify the DNA of the vector organisms in an effort to make those species unable to spread the diseases! See my posts of 5Aug17, 1Sept18, 1Dec18 and 12Jan19 for information on gene editing. Two such projects are now reaching the stage where field-testing could soon begin!

 

I mentioned the disease malaria above, a disease that most epidemiologists believe is responsible for the death of half of all the human beings who have ever lived. Think of that, half of all the people who have ever died were killed by the single disease malaria. Even today malaria is a terrible scourge in many parts of the world killing an estimated million people yearly while 300-400 million suffer from the disease.

It’s easy to understand therefore that many efforts are underway to fight this deadly disease. One of these efforts involves the use of gene editing techniques to control the population of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito that transports the malaria germ.

Using the gene-editing tool CRISPR a high security lab in Terni Italy has produced a modified form of female mosquito whose mouth parts resemble those of the males. You see it’s only the female mosquitoes who actually bite, sucking the blood of warm blooded animals in which they incubate their eggs. Females with male mouth parts would be unable to bite, unable to breed in the wild.

GMO Mosquito feeding off of Cow’s Blood (Credit: Pierre Kattar, NPR)

The idea is to artificially breed large numbers of male mosquitoes with the modified gene and release them into the wild. There they will breed and all of their female offspring will be sterile while the male offspring will continue to propagate the edited gene. It is hoped that this will cause the local population to crash, reducing the occurrence of malaria.

The problem, as it always is with gene editing, is unintended consequences. Both genetics and ecology are extremely complex matters that we still know very little about and releasing GMO mosquitoes into the wild will almost certainly alter the environment in unexpected ways. If nothing less, the crash of the Anopheles gambiae population in an area could lead to another species of mosquito, possibly carrying a different disease such as yellow fever to move in to the empty ecological niche.

GMO Mosquitoes are kept tightly controlled at High Security Lab in Terni (Credit: Pierre Kattar, NPR)

The scientists at Terni, led by lab director Ruth Mueller, are aware of the possible dangers, that’s why they’re doing the experiments in a high security lab in order to make certain none of the GMO mosquitoes escape prematurely. To further reduce the danger the mosquitoes will be subjected to long term studies prior to any actual release.

That means that there’s a long way to go and a lot of work still to go on this project but any advance that helps in the fight against malaria would represent a tremendous victory.

 

The second project I’ll discuss involves combating Lyme disease by modifying the DNA of mice. You see the spread of Lyme disease involves a complex back and forth between mice, fleas and deer; it’s really a disease of deer more than it is of humans. Both the mice and fleas are born uninfected but once a mouse is bitten by an infected flea it becomes a carrier and any fleas that subsequently bite the mouse also becomes carriers, and can then pass the disease to a deer, or a human.

Deer Tick infecting someone with Lyme Disease (Credit: AFMC)

Some mice however appear to be immune to Lyme disease and according to MIT evolutionary biologist Kevin Esvelt that presents an opportunity. Dr. Esvelt has been experimenting with the mice, identifying the genes that provide the immunity. Dr. Esvelt now plans to use the gene-editing tool CRISPR to insert the immunity genes into the reproductive cells of the mice so that all of their offspring are born immune to Lyme disease.

Can altering the genes of Mice help to fight Lyme Disease? (Credit: NPR)

For field testing Dr. Esvelt has proposed releasing thousands of GMO mice onto some of the uninhabited islands off of Nantucket Island in the State of Massachusetts. It happens that Lyme disease is an epidemic on Nantucket; over 40% of the human population there has been infected, so the people of the island are more than ready to at least listen to Dr. Esvelt’s plan.

Now Dr. Esvelt is well aware of the possibility of unintended consequences, genetics and ecology are both very complex subjects after all. That’s what makes trying the plan on a small, uninhabited island first so attractive; the GMO mice will be confined until all of the ramifications have been studied. Only then, when not only Dr. Esvelt but all of the people of Nantucket are satisfied will the experiment move on to phase 2, releasing the mice onto Nantucket itself.

Plan for using GMO Mice to battle Lyme Disease on Nantucket (Credit: nMagazine.com)

In other words this is also a project that will take years before it can be called a success. Still, if the genetically modified mice do help to eradicate Lyme disease from the islands of Massachusetts then we will have another potent weapon in our fight against infections like Lyme disease.

Archaeologists succeed in locating the exact Quarry from which the Bluestones at Stonehenge Came.

Stonehenge (Credit: Sky News)

The stone circle known as Stonehenge is an icon of prehistoric Europe and Britain in particular. Stonehenge is certainly not the only stone circle in the British Isles; there are over 900 of them. Nor is it the largest, in terms of area the circle at Avebury, 25 kilometers to the north is so large there is a town inside it. In fact it’s not even the best preserved, the nearby Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire or Long Meg and her Daughters in Cumberland are in much better condition. Still Stonehenge was without doubt the most complex and sophisticated of all of the Late Stone / early Bronze Age structures in Britain.

The Rollright Stones are another Stone Circle in the British Isles (Credit: Megalithic Portal)
Long Meg and her Daughter Stone Circle (Credit: Ancient Origins)

One of the reasons for the complex, almost bewildering structure at Stonehenge is due to the simple fact that the monument was built and then rebuilt time and again over a period of nearly 1500 years. Trying to determine which stones were put where when and which were moved to where they are now, and from where, is a very difficult task that archaeologists have been working on now for centuries. The consensus is that Stonehenge was constructed in three basic stages beginning about 3100BCE, that’s 500 years before the first Egyptian Pyramid:

Stonehenge 1: in 3100BCE: The first construction at the site of Stonehenge consisted of a circular ditch and mound with two entrances at the Northeast and South. The mound was built from the material removed to make the ditch and just inside the ditch a further ring of 56 holes were dug. The purpose of these holes appears to have been to erect either timber posts or perhaps an initial set of bluestones. If bluestones were used at this stage Stonehenge would have resembled many of the other stone circles such as the Rollright Stones.

Stonehenge as it would have appeared in Stage 1. (Credit: Stone-Circles.org.uk)

Stonehenge 2: 3000BCE: The evidence from this period indicates that several wooden structures were erected, one at the Northeast entrance and a larger one within the enclosure. There is other evidence that during this time Stonehenge became a repository for the cremated remains of many individuals.

Stonehenge Phase 2 (Credit: Megalithia)

Stonehenge 3: Starting 2600BCE (About the same time as the Great Pyramids). It was during this stage, which experts divide into 5 phases, that the familiar stone ring of sarsen stones and the 5 huge Trilithons, also made of sarsen were erected. Also during this time the arrangement of the bluestones was altered, bringing most of them inside the sarsen stone ring.

Stonehenge as it would have looked at the completion of Stage 3 (Credit: Stone-Circles.org.uk)

The above is only a brief, very brief description of the construction of Stonehenge but just as amazing are the details of how the stones ever got to Stonehenge! The huge sarsen stones, some weighing nearly 50,000 kg, came from a quarry on the Marlborough Downs about 40km to the north while the bluestones can only have come from the western part of Whales, an estimated 240km away from Stonehenge!

In a recent paper a team of archaeologists led by Mike Parker Pearson of the University College of London’s Institute of Archaeology have now claimed to have identified the actual quarries in the Preseli Hills of western Whales from which the bluestones came. Of the 43 bluestone pillars at Stonehenge, 27 are a type known as ‘spotted dolerite’ due to white specks of material throughout the stone. Using chemical analysis, along with a lot of legwork, the team has identified a location known as Carn Goedog as the likely source of the spotted dolerite stones. The remaining bluestones, technically known as rhyolite, were also traced to another nearby quarry called Craig Rhos-Y-felin.

Location in Whales from where the Stonehenge Bluestones came (Credit: The Daily Mail)

Having identified the probable quarries from which the bluestones came the archaeologists then proceeded to carry out excavations to see if any artifacts could be found after all these millennia. They soon discovered large numbers of stone hammers and wedges all of which dated to the same time period as the first construction at Stonehenge. Interestingly, the stone tools were made of a material known as mudstone which is considerably softer than the bluestones they were quarrying. The implication is that the ancient Britains were more worried about any damage to the bluestones than they were to their tools. Also excavated were the remains of manmade platforms to aid in lowering the stones and loading them into sledges for transport.

Excavation at the Bluestone Quarry (Credit: UCL)

Transporting the massive stones all the way to Stonehenge must have been a tremendous effort for the primitive technology of the time. It has always been assumed that the bluestones were pulled to the nearby shoreline and then rafted along the southern coast of Whales, up the River Severn and all the way to within a few kilometers of Stonehenge. However they were transported the fact remains that stone age tribes hundreds of miles apart must have cooperated in mining them, moving them and erecting them.

Possible Theories about the Routes the Bluestones may have taken to Stonehenge (Credit: Sarsen.org)

Which leaves the question why? Why did those Stone Age Britains put so much effort into building Stonehenge and the other megalithic structures that dot the countryside? Was their function religious, astronomical, both? That will have to wait for another post.

If you’d like to learn more about Stonehenge and the other stone circles of the British Isles check out the links below.

https://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/stone-circles/article_stonecircles.htm

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/history-and-stories/history/

The Robots are Coming, and becoming more like Living Creatures Everyday

This is the fifth post in a series discussing the advances scientists and engineers have been making in automation and robotics and the possible effects they could have on human society. (See posts of 2Sept16, 12Feb17, 17Jun17 and 8Sept18)

Now just to remind everyone, I’m very much in favour of having robots take over the monotonous drudgery that wastes so much human life. At the same time however I’m fully aware that in the short term many people lose their jobs and are left destitute by automation. It’s a shame that our political leaders are so blinded by their own infighting that they seem to be completely aware of these changes in the society it is their task to govern.

I have three, very different items related to robotics to discuss and I think I’ll start with a little robot who has learned how to navigate autonomously the same way that desert ants do. The little six legged robot, see image below, is called AntBot and it has been developed by a team of scientists and engineers at Aix-Marseille University in France.

Ant-Bot (Credit: IEEE Spectrum)

In order to find food ant colonies have certain members called foragers who lay down a chemical trail that not only allows them to find their way home but also enables other colony members to find any food source the forager has located. In the hot, dry Sahara desert however that chemical trail is quickly burned away by the Sun leaving the forager without a way to get home before it too is burned away by the Sun.

The ant species Cataglyphis fortis has evolved to use the Sun itself to solve that problem. Because of the scattering of sunlight by the atmosphere the light in the sky becomes more polarized the further away from the Sun you look, reaching a maximum at an angle of 90º. The ant’s eyes allow it to see something we humans cannot, the degree of linear polarization (DoLP) of the light across the sky. This information gives the ant a heading as to where it going and by counting its steps the ant knows where it is in relation to its home. Thanks to that knowledge, the ant is able to zigzag across the ground on its search for food and still make a beeline for home when it needs to, see image below.

Typical Searching Path by real Ant (Very wiggly line) and Path Home (Straight line) (Credit: Dupeyroux et al)

AntBot is designed to navigate in the same way. Two UV sensitive sensors are mounted at its top beneath polarizing material, see image below. This gives AntBot the same heading information as the desert ant enabling it to replicate the ant’s navigational skill, see second image below.

The UV sensors used by Ant-Bot to give it a Heading (Credit: Dupeyroux et al)
Typical Path for Ant-Bot (Credit: Dupeyroux et al)

The researchers at Aix-Marseille University hope to use their navigational system as both a backup for GPS as well as a navigational system for other autonomous robots. Another example of how robots are gaining an ever greater sensory idea of the world around them.

 

Over the last decade or so scientists and engineers have succeeded in developing a series of software protocols that have enabled computers to actually learn from experience, or data supplied to them. These machine learning techniques, collectively known as Artificial Intelligence or AI employ a trial and error approach with the accuracy of the computer’s guesses improving each time they learn what not to do.

Despite these advances however computers still fail in one aspect of intelligence that only the most advanced of animals possess, self awareness. That is, an ability to understand themselves, to imagine themselves doing something before they actually do it in order to compare the actual results to those they had imagined, which is the beginning of experimentation.

Now researchers at the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University’s Department of Engineering have taken the first steps in robotic self awareness. Led by Professor Hod Lipson the team used a mechanical arm that possessed 4 degrees of freedom, four joints if you will, see image below. Starting with absolutely no prior knowledge of what the arm can do the computer controlling the arm uses the AI tool known as Deep Learning, along with a lot of trial and error, to determine what its arm was capable of. See image below. In other words the robot is learning about itself!

Robot Arm used in the Self Awareness Experiments (Credit: Robert Kwiatkowski, Columbia Engineering)

At first the arm’s movements were random and aimless, “babbling” as described by Professor Lipson. After some 35 hours of playing however the robot had developed an accurate enough model of itself that it could carry out simple ‘pick and place’ tasks with 100% success.

The researchers went on to experiment with the robots ability to detect ‘damage’ to itself. What they did was to replace a part of the mechanical arm with a ‘deformed’ part. See image below. The robot quickly realized that its movements no longer matched up with its model and soon adjusted to a new self model.

Robot Arm with ‘Deformed’ Part (Credit: Robert Kwiatkowski, Columbia Engineering)

Speaking of the study Lipson remarked. “This is perhaps what a newborn child does in its crib, as it learns what it is…While our robot’s ability to imagine itself is still crude compared to humans, we believe that this ability is on the path to machine self-awareness.” Will the combination of AI and self aware technology result in the creation of a true robot straight out of science fiction? We may learn the answer to that question sooner than we think!

 

So if robots and computers do become self aware could they then ever develop emotions like those humans have? Well a recent news item has actually convinced me that they will some day develop emotions that, while those emotions may be similar to ours they will undoubtedly differ in many details.

You may have heard that NASA’s Mars rover named Opportunity has officially been declared lost as of 13 February 2019. The space agency’s last contact with Opportunity was actually back on 10 June 2018 when a large dust storm engulfed the rover’s location blocking the sunlight from its solar arrays. NASA’s greatest fear was that the dust might coat the surface of Opportunity’s solar arrays, leaving the rover permanently without power.

NASA has lost contact with its Opportunity Rover (Credit: NASA, JPL)

After 10 months and over a thousand attempts at trying to reestablish contact with the rover it appears that those worst fears have come to pass and Opportunity is now lost. Even as it declared the mission over NASA released the final message sent back by opportunity as it hunkered down to try to survive the storm.

“My batteries are low and it’s getting dark!”

O’k sure, Opportunity didn’t actually send those words. In fact the last message from the rover was just data, just numbers that indicated its status, that its battery power was low and the level of ambient light was dropping rapidly. The solitary little robot had no clear idea of the danger it was facing; it’s just a robot after all.

Still, you have to admit, it’s hard to say to say those words without feeling just a trace of fear. And as we learn how to give our creations the sensors that can detect situations that are dangerous, as they become more aware of the consequences of those situations to them…well couldn’t that actually be called fear?

The Space Race: Yuri Gagarin and the First Men in Space.

This is the second installment of what I plan as a series of articles leading up to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and humanity’s first landing on the Moon. In these articles I will reminisce about some of the most important milestones on the journey that led to Apollo 11, some of the best known events in the Space Race.

In the first installment I discussed how the Soviet Union had surprised the USA by successfully launching the first artificial satellite just months before America had planned on doing so. Then when America’s Vanguard satellite blew up on the launch pad in front of the entire world the US was left playing catch up even though the satellite they finally launched, Explorer 1, made the first important discovery of the space age, the van Allen radiation belts encircling the planet.

So with the first satellites launched into orbit the race was now on to see which country could be the first to put a man into space. Once again the Americans conducted their preparations in the full blaze of publicity. With considerable fanfare the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced project Mercury and on April 9th 1959 the world was introduced to the Mercury Seven Astronauts, see image below. The Mercury astronauts were all military jet pilots who were considered to be the best suited to undergo the rigors of space travel.

The Mercury Seven Astronauts (Credit: PD)

Once again the Soviets carried out their preparation in total silence, not even publicly admitting that they were working on a manned space program. Indeed the very name of the chief engineer of the Russian space program, Sergei Korolev, the designer of their huge R-7 rocket, was kept an absolute secret. Like the Americans the Soviets choose military pilots to be their cosmonauts, twenty men were selected during late 1959.

The First Soviet Cosmonaut Squad. Korolev is seated in the middle of the first with Gagarin to his right (Credit: Space Safety Magazine)

While the training that all these men underwent was arguably the most exhaustive in human history the medical examinations were actually far worse. No one knew how the human body would react to the environment of space, in particular zero-gravity. There were in fact many well recognized medical experts who maintained that zero-gee would kill within minutes, a person’s heart would race uncontrollably or you would be unable to swallow and the build up of saliva would choke you. Both manned space programs were determined that if any human being could survive in space their astronauts could.

A Small Part of the Training for Project Mercury (Credit: Stellarviews.com)

NASA chose to progress cautiously, step by step. They began with unmanned launches of their Mercury capsule before then proceeding to the launch of a young chimpanzee named Ham. All before considering a manned flight.

Ham the Astronaut (Credit: National Air an Space Museum)

The Mercury capsule was designed as the smallest possible system that could support a single human being for one day’s time. Basically conic in shape the capsule was 3.3 m in height and 1.8 m wide at its base with a mass of less than 1400kg. The astronaut lay inside facing the top, which was found to be the best position for withstanding the high-gee forces of launch. See image below.

Cutaway of the Mercury Capsule (credit: PD)

The bottom of the vehicle was fitted with retro-rockets to bring the craft out of orbit along with an ablative heat shield to remove the heat caused by the fiction of re-entering the atmosphere. Once friction had eliminated most of the Spacecraft’s velocity parachutes would open to bring the capsule to a landing in the ocean.

Meanwhile the Soviet chief designer was working on the plans for his Vostok space capsule. Sergei Korolev had a big advantage in that his R-7 rocket was simply capable of putting more mass into orbit than anything the Americans had or would have until the mid-1960s. This allowed him to follow typical Russian engineering practice and develop a simple, strong and sturdy spacecraft.

The Vostok spacecraft consisted of two modules, a spherical crew compartment 2.3 m in diameter weighing 2400kg along with a service module about a half a meter wide by 2.3m in diameter weighing 2300kg. With its larger size the Vostok capsule was capable of sustaining a cosmonaut in space for a longer period of time, up to five days.

Cutaway of the Vostok Capsule (Credit: PD)

The entire surface of the Vostok crew capsule was covered in ablative material for re-entry. An unusual feature of the capsule was that, as it descended on parachutes to a landing on land, the cosmonaut was expected to leave the capsule and parachute separately to the ground.

Once again it was the Russians who succeeded first, launching Yuri Gagarin into a single orbit flight lasting about ninety minutes on the 12th of April in 1961. Once again the USSR had scored a space first just days before the US was ready for their flight. Alan Shepard became the first American in space just three weeks later on the 5th of May on a suborbital flight lasting about 15 minutes.

The First Man in Space Yuri Gagarin (Credit: PD)

Not only had the Soviet’s succeeded first but they had placed a man into orbit while the American’s were not only second but were still conducting suborbital flights. It would be another eight months before John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on February 20th of 1962.

In the end both the Vostok and Mercury programs carried out six successful manned launches. Between them the two programs demonstrated that human beings could survive, and even carry out some tasks in space.

America was still in second place, and there seemed little that NASA could do in the short term to take the lead. It was as much to distract his countrymen from their current subordinate position that President John F. Kennedy decided to challenge NASA with a long-term goal that would tax American science and industry to their fullest.

On May 25 1961, before a joint session of both houses of congress Kennedy declared. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

John F. Kennedy before Congress (Credit:PD)

The space race now had a finish line. Only time would tell which nation, if either, would get there first.

Paleontology News for February 2019.

There are several items of interest from the world of paleontology for this month; several newly discovered species of early life to discuss. I think I’ll start with the most ancient and work my way forward in time.

250 million years ago life on Earth suffered its greatest mass extinction event. The Permian extinction as it’s known wiped out more than 90% of the species of plants and animals, far more than were killed by the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Paleontologists are intensively interested not only in what caused the Permian extinction, there are many theories, but also how quickly did the Earth’s ecology recover from such a terrible blow.

Today Antarctica may be mostly an icy desert but 250 million years ago it was a warm, lush forest and a new species of reptile from Antarctica is now providing us with a glimpse into that period of recovery. The creature has been given the name Antarctanax shackletoni, the first name means Antarctic King in Greek while the second honours the Antarctic explorer Ernst Shackleton. A shackletoni was a kind of reptile known as an archosaur, a group who are considered to be the ancestor to both the dinosaurs and the crocodiles. About the size of a modern iguana, A shackletoni probably fed on insects and other small prey.

Artists Impression of Antacrtanax shackletoni (Credit: Sci-News.com)

The remains of A shackletoni were discovered in rocks dating to only 2 million years after the Permian extinction indicating that life recovered more quickly than had been previously thought. One theory that is being discussed amongst paleontologists is the idea that extinction events may actually open up ecological niches, spurring evolution to generate entirely new types of living creatures. As an ancestor to both the dinosaurs and crocodiles A shackletoni is strong evidence for that theory.

Fossil Remains of A shackletoni (Credit: Bobr Times)

 

My second story deals with the discovery of a new species of dinosaur proper, although a very strange looking one. We’re all familiar with the largest of the dinosaurs, the long necked, long tailed sauropods along with the stegosaurs, those dinosaurs who had bony plates along their back for protection. See images below.

The Sauropod Dinosaur Diplodocus (Credit: NicePNG.com)
A Typical Stegosaurus (Credit: Cmstudio)

Well how would you like a sauropod with a set of sharp spikes running down its back? That’s just what a team of paleontologists working in the Patagonia region of Argentina has discovered. It’s being called Bajadasaurus pronuspinax; the name means downhill lizard with bent over forward spines and it lived during the lower early Cretaceous period some 140 million years ago. See image below.

Artists impression of Bajadasaurus pronuspinax (Credit: Jorge A. Gonzalez)

Judging from its skull B pronuspinax resembled the more familiar Diplodocus but based on the size of the discovered skeleton B pronuspinax was only some ten meters in length, less than half the size of its enormous relative. According to Pablo Gallina of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina and lead author of the paper the bony spines must have been reinforced in some fashion, “We think that had they just been bone structures or covered only by skin, they could have been easily broken or fractured…they probably were covered by a keratin sheath, in a similar way to the horns of mammals such as antelopes.” Either way I’m sure that B pronuspinax would have been a fascinating creature to see.

The Actual Fossil Spines of B pronuspinax (credit: Science Alert)

For my final story I’d like to discuss a type of animal that still exists and with which we are all quite familiar, the kangaroo and when did it evolve its distinctive hop. Now researchers studying fossils of kangaroo ancestors have concluded that 20 million years ago those ancestors could hop, walk on four legs and even climb trees!

Ancestors of the Kangaroos (Credit: Peter Shouten)

The fossils that led to this conclusion come from the northwest region of the state of Queensland near the town of Riversleigh. Most importantly the finds include very rare specimens of the feet of the kangaroo ancestors, see image below, giving clear evidence of their mode of locomotion.

Foot Bones of the 20 Million Year Old Kangaroo Nambaroo gillespieae (Credit: Benjamin Kear)

The long held view was that the hopping motion of kangaroos occurred in the more recent past as a change in climate led to widespread grasslands typical of modern Australia. However these new fossil finds indicate that kangaroo ancestors were hopping very efficiently while most of Australia was still forested. According to Dr. Benjamin Kear of Uppsala University in Sweden and a member of the study, “It all points to an extremely successful animal, that’s superbly adapted to its environment and a whole range of ecosystems and it’s why kangaroos are so successful today.”

So there we have it, three more examples of the fascinating diversity of life here on Earth!

Book Review: One way by S. J. Morden.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the possibility, within the next few decades, of humans not only visiting the planet Mars but actually staying there. However the mechanics of spaceflight are such that the costs of a round trip to Mars could be considerably more than twice the cost of a one-way trip. With that in mind the concept of people taking a one-way trip to Mars with the intent of establishing a self-sufficient settlement is being seriously considered.

A Typical Idea for a Mars Base (Credit: Christian Gruner)

There are many in the spaceflight community who are convinced that this is the best path to follow for colonizing Mars. Elon Musk and Space X in particular have made this concept a central part of their future plans. It’s also the idea behind the novel ‘One way’ by author S. J. Morden but with a twist.

Cover of ‘One Way’ by S. J. Morden (Credit: Amazon)
Author S. J. Morden (Credit: Worlds Without End)

The twist is that the people who are going to be spending the rest of their lives on Mars are convicts, prison inmates who also happen to possess some kind of technical skill. In the novel Xenosystems Operations Corp. (XO) not only runs prisons for the State of California they also have a contract with NASA to design, fabricate and assemble on location the first Mars base so why not combine their expertise and use cheap convict labour on the Red Planet?

While not Exactly a Chain Gang, ‘One Way’ does suggest Prison Labour be used to Build Mars Base (Credit: Warner Brothers)

Cheap is the operative term here. Every chapter of ‘One Way’ begins with a memo, email or transcript from a meeting at XO where ways to reduce cost are given or at least hinted at. The convicts are given only enough training to perform their own tasks, only the bare minimum of supplies are provided and even their personal effects are left behind simply because it would cost so much to send them to Mars! Not surprisingly, once on Mars it isn’t long before murder and mayhem are rampant.

The problem for ‘One Way’ is that it’s all so predictable, even from the brief outline I’ve given above you can probably guess who the bad guys really are. Seriously, I pretty much had the ending figured out before the seven convicts and one guard / handler had even left Earth. Since the story is at heart a murder mystery knowing what’s coming and whodunit is not a good thing.

Which is a bit of a shame because the story is crisply told and filled with the kind of technical details that gives you a real feeling of being there. In fact Dr. S. J. Morden is a bona fide space scientist with a degree in planetary geophysics so he easily gets high marks for accuracy. In fact ‘One Way’ almost seems as if Dr. Morden just took a rather trite crime plot and thought he could make it fresh by putting it in outer space.

Which leaves me in something of a dilemma. ‘One Way’ is a well written book, the pace is good, there are no long dry spots and again, the details are meticulously drawn. However the clumsy plot means that it simply isn’t exciting, you’re left with just trying to guess who’s the next victim even though you know who will be left standing for the final battle. So in the end I suppose I’d only recommend ‘One Way’ to those of you out there who are the true lovers of hard science fiction.