There’s a new movie that’s just been released that is not getting the attention it deserves as far as I’m concerned. It’s called ‘The Current War’ and it dramatizes the often bitter but completely non-violent struggle between Thomas Edison, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, and George Westinghouse, played by Michael Shannon. These two titans of the industrial age struggled over which of them would be the first to provide the new technology of electric power to our nation. This contest was between more than two of the most famous industrialists in our history it was a fight between which kind of electricity, Direct Current (DC) or Alternating Current (AC) would be produced and delivered to millions of customers.
Poster for ‘The Current War’. (Credit: Flickering Myth)
You see Edison had succeeded in electrifying a square kilometer of lower Manhattan using the simpler DC. This was the establishment of the first ever electrical power utility and is a large part of Edison’s reputation as an inventor and industrialist. Because of that success Edison became convinced that simpler just made sense.
Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Tom Edison. (Credit: History versus Hollywood)Michael Shannon plays George Westinghouse. (Credit: History versus Hollywood)
But DC had its drawbacks; the primary one being that it is very difficult to change one DC voltage to another. This meant that Edison could not use dangerous high voltage power lines to transit his power over great distances and then feed lower, safer voltages into people’s home. Because of this limitation Edison needed to build a power plant almost every kilometer, a very costly proposition.
AC traveled much better. An AC power plant could send high voltage power hundreds of kilometers and then use a device called a transformer to lower the voltage down to a safe level in which it could be delivered into a customer’s home. The drawback for AC was that, although motors using DC was simple to build, AC motors were so complicated that no one had managed to invent one. George Westinghouse was convinced however that AC’s advantages made it the superior system and that sooner or later someone would invent an AC motor.
High Voltage Power Lines sending electricity thousands of kilometers is only possible with AC (Credit: T&D World)
‘The Current War’ illustrates all of the engineering back and forth while at the same time showing us something of the personalities of the individuals involved. Both Edison and Westinghouse begin as men of honour. Edison for example steadfastly refuses to invent or work on weapons of war of any kind. As for George Westinghouse, throughout the contest his admiration for Edison is evident, his desire to work together is show on several occasions. However each man is determined to see his system win triggering a battle of technology.
DC Motors are simple and easy to build but are not very efficient. (Credit: Core Electronics)AC Motors are more complicated but offer greater power and efficiency. (Credit: IndiaMart)
Now ‘The Current War’ is not without problems of its own as a movie. There is one sequence in particular that comes to mind. Several times during the story George Westinghouse has a flashback to an incident that occurred to him during the Civil War. Its not until almost the end of the movie that we find out everything that happened and while the incident does reveal something of Westinghouse’s personality by that time it’s of little interest and the movie would have been better to have eliminated the whole affair.
Then there’s Nikola Tesla, the brilliant Serbian born electrical engineer who finally succeeded in developing an AC motor that actually worked better than any DC motor. It was Tesla’s inventions that allowed Westinghouse and AC to finally prevail. However while in the movie Tesla, played by Nicholas Hoult, appears from nearly the beginning he has little influence on the action until nearly the end. Because of this the character of Tesla distracts from the drama more than enhances it.
Nikola Tesla, played by Nicholas Hoult, is an important figure in the development of electrical power but is not well integrated into ‘The Current War’. (Credit: Time)
Still
I heartily recommend ‘The Current War’, if only because it shows how the ‘wars’
that humanity actually wins are those about ideas not gold or territory or
dominance. You’d better see it fast however, it’s not doing well at the box
office and could disappear soon. Just goes to show how a movie about ideas,
about the things that made our modern world a better place to live gets lost
amongst all of the explosions and fistfights and good guy, bad guy mentality
that makes up all of the Hollywood blockbusters.
During all of the celebrations leading up to the 50th anniversary of man’s first landing on the Moon this year I was reminded of another field of scientific exploration that made a lot of news in the 1960s but which has sort of disappeared since then. I’m talking about the idea of people living and working under the oceans and seas of our world, about the possibility of even building underwater cities to colonize the continental shelves that surround the continental landmasses of the Earth.
Underwater cities are the suff of science fiction but in the 1960s people many people thought they would become reality in the near future. (Credit: IMDB)
You think that sounds like science fiction, well wasn’t space travel back then! In fact during the early 1960s the two exploratory efforts of outer space and inner space moved forward in a kind of parallel path. In fact in 1961, the same year as the flights of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard, US Navy diver Robert Stėnuit became the first aquanaut to spend more than 24 hours at a depth of 60m in the ‘Man in the Sea’ project.
The underwater habitat in which Robert Setnuit spent 24 hours at 60m depth. (Credit: Diving Almanac)
To compliment the space race between the US and Russia there was even an ‘Undersea Race’ between the US and France. That’s right France, in the person of Jacques-Yves Cousteau the developer of the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus or SCUBA gear. So many of my generation fondly remember Cousteau both from his articles in the National Geographic magazine along with his TV show filmed aboard his ship the Calypso so I’ll talk about his Continental Shelf or ‘Conshelf’ project first.
Oceanographer Jacques Yeves Cousteau invented the SCUBA driver gear and used his profits to spend his life exploring the oceans. (Credit: Totally History)
Cousteau’s program began with Conshelf I in 1962 with two men spending a week at a depth of 10m in the waters off the French city of Marseille. The Conshelf I habitat was a simple pressurized cylinder with an egress hatch that allowed the two man crew to work outside in the water for a minimum of five hours a day. See image below of Conshelf I being readied for installation.
The design of Conshelf 1 was simplicity itself. (Credit: National Geographic)
Then in 1963 Conshelf II was much more ambitious, with two occupied structures and even an underwater garage for a small two-man sub. The larger habitat, see image below, was a starfish shaped base where six men lived and worked for a month. Near the starfish was the round garage for the sub. There was also a smaller two-man cabin at a depth of 25m. The second image shows the basic setup of the entire Conshelf II project.
Conshelf 2 was a multi structure project allowing a half a dozen men to live underwater for a month. (Credit: National Geographic)The two main structures of Conshelf 2 being readied for placement on the ocean floor. On the right is the starfish living quarters while on the left is the domed garage for the two man sub. (Credit: The Cousteau Society)Sketch of the interior of the inhabited module in Conshelf 2. (Credit: Cousteau Society)
Conshelf III was Cousteau’s final, most ambitious attempt at living in the depths of the sea. In 1965 six men lived inside a spherical shaped pressure vessel at a depth of over 100m for three weeks. See image below. One of the ways in which Conshelf III was more difficult was that, whereas Conshelf I and II and received power and supplies from the surface Conshelf III was mostly self-sufficient, with few ties to the surface.
Conshelf 3 Being lower into the Ocean. (Credit: Medium)Sketch of the Interior of Conshelf 3. (Credit: Medium)
Originally Cousteau had planned on continuing the Conshelf project with two more underwater habitats but Conshelf III was to be the French oceanographer’s last project for living on the ocean’s floor. In his three Conshelf experiments Cousteau demonstrated man’s ability to live and perform useful work while living inside the ocean.
Meanwhile the US Navy was conducting a program of its own in underwater habitation under the project name Sealab. The man in charge of Sealab was Dr. George F. Bond, a modest country doctor from North Carolina who had been drafted during the Korean War and quickly became the head of the Navy’s Medical Research Laboratory. Under Dr. Bond the laboratory led the way in studies of breathable gas mixtures that could allow humans to work for longer periods of time at greater depths underwater.
Doctor George F. Bond was the head of the U.S. Navy’s Sealab underwater program. (Credit: Researchgate)
The Navy’s goals in the
Sealab program were slightly different that those of the French. The Navy was
more interested in perfecting the techniques of deep diving while at the same
time studying the psychological and physiological effects of isolation at great
depth.
Sealab One, see image below, was placed at a depth of 58m off the coast of Bermuda in 1964. The plan was for four men to live inside the Sealab module for three weeks but due to an approaching storm the mission was cancelled after only 11 days.
Like Conshelf 1, Sealab 1 was a simple cylinder. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Sealab Two, see image below, took place the following year in 1965 and was much more successful. Placed off the coast of California at a depth of 62m it was manned by three separate teams of divers. Each team of nine men spent 15 days in the habitat but one of the team members, Mercury Astronaut Scott Carpenter spent a record 30 days in the lab. Another interesting aspect of Sealab Two is that a bottlenose dolphin named Tuffy who was an experimental animal with the US Navy Marine Mammal Program assisted the human team members in their work.
Sealab 2 on a dock waiting to be taken out to sea. (Credit: Medium)
Sketch of the interior of Sealab 2. (Credit: www.history.navy.mil)
Sealab Three, which was lowered into 185m of water off San Clemente Island California, followed in 1969 using a refurbished Sealab Two habitat. Five teams of nine divers were planned for the program but the greater depth of Sealab Three caused problems from the very beginning. These problems in fact led to the death of aquanaut Berry L. Cannon when his rebreather failed to remove the carbon dioxide from his exhalation.
It’s obvious that with the
Conshelf and Sealab programs considerable progress was being made in learning
how to live and work on the seafloor during the 60s. So what happened? Why
haven’t we gone further? Shouldn’t there be cities, or at least towns on the
seafloor by now?
The reasons for why undersea habitats didn’t progress any further are pretty much the same as the reasons for why human exploration of space has also slowed to a snail’s pace. One reason is robots. Just as robotic space probes have explored every planet in our solar system more cheaply and safely than humans can, so undersea robots are doing many of the jobs it was once thought humans would do. Then of course there’s the difficulty of money. Big science, whether in space or under the sea, just doesn’t get funded the way it once did.
Underwater Robots are doing many of the jobs it was thought that men would have to do. (Credit: Business Insider)
However both of those reasons are just symptoms of the real reason, a lack of interest by the general population. There was a time when moving into space or into the oceans was considered a logical next step. We had explored and settled all of the land areas of the Earth so it was just natural that we would move on to explore the sea and sky. That kind of logic just isn’t popular anymore. Maybe it will become so once more. I hope so because the idea of living under the sea, like living in space was a lot more fun than the endless bickering we seem to waste all of our time on nowadays.
This month I’m going to use my monthly space news post for an update on NASA’s commercial crew program. You’ll recall that this is the space agency’s plan to hire private companies to launch America’s astronauts into Low Earth Orbit (LOE). NASA has been anxiously waiting for Space X and its competitor Boeing to begin taking America’s astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) so that it no longer has to pay the Russians $80 million dollars for a seat on their Soyuz spacecraft. The first manned missions of the Space X Dragon and Boeing Starliner capsules were supposed to have begun in early 2018 so the whole program is already more than a year behind schedule and there is still no firm date for an actual manned mission.
The Space X Crew Dragon made an unmanned flight to the ISS in March. (Credit: The Verge)Boeing’s Starliner capsule has yet to reach orbit but it has completed its in flight abort test. (Credit: Space News)
You may recall that back in March of this year Space X successfully launched an unmanned Dragon capsule that was able to dock at the International Space Station (ISS). This was a planned Orbital Flight Test or OFT. (See my post of 6March 2019) At the time there was hope that the Hawthorn California company would soon become the first private entity to perform a manned space mission, possibly as early as August. After all the Dragon Capsule had only one more test to complete in order for NASA to completely certify it as ready for crewed flight.
That test was a launch pad abort test where the capsule’s solid fuel rockets would be fired. Those are the rockets designed to yank the capsule away from its booster rocket in the event of any problem that could endanger the crew. Well on April 20th something went wrong with the solid fuel rockets and the capsule was nearly destroyed. (See my post of 3August 2019) Needless to say the planned manned mission was postponed and still has not been rescheduled.
The Space X dragon capsule before and after the ‘anomaly’. (Credit: America Space)
Of course Space X immediately began an investigation into the ‘anomaly’ that quickly led to a faulty valve as being the cause. Since then there have been six months of engineering effort on the Dragon capsule so that this week a redesigned Dragon capsule has arrived at Cape Canaveral ready to conduct the in flight abort testing. That test is now being scheduled for sometime after the 23rd of November.
The redesigned Space X Dragon capsule being readied for its in flight abort test. (Credit: The New York Times)
So
perhaps Space X is back on track to begin launching astronauts into orbit.
Meanwhile Boeing has successfully completed its in flight abort testing and is
preparing for an unmanned flight of its Starliner capsule after which it will
be certified to begin manned missions.
For a time it appeared as if Boeing had little chance of beating Space X in their commercial space race but the recent problems of the Dragon capsule have given the Starliner the opportunity to catch up. With the completion of its in flight abort test Boeing is now ready to attempt its remaining to tests, the pad abort and OFT which have been given tentative dates of the 2nd of November and the 17th of December. Assuming Starliner passes both these tests a manned mission to the ISS could come in early 2020.
It is hoped that Boeing’s Starliner will make its first, unmanned test launch before the end of the year. (Credit: YouTube)
So it seems as if the race between Space X and Boeing to launch the first commercial space manned space flight could go down to the wire. And both those two companies might be hearing footsteps behind them because there’s a third company preparing to begin commercial space launches as well. Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser isn’t an updated space capsule like the Dragon and Starliner; instead it’s an updated version of the space shuttle.
A mock up of the completed Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser space plane. (Credit: Geekwire)
The main body of the Dream Chaser, which was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corporation, has arrived at Sierra Nevada’s main plant for completion. Officials at Sierra Nevada are confident that the Dream Chaser will make it maiden, unmanned resupply mission to the ISS sometime in 2021.
The Dream Chaser main body has been delivered to Sierra Nevada Corp for integration into the completed spacecraft. (Credit: Parabolic Arc)
The
main body that was delivered measures some 10 meters long by 5 wide and 2 high
and can carry 6,000 kilos of supplies. The main body is composed of the most
advanced high-temperature composite material. Once the first Dream Chaser is
ready a Vulcan Centaur rocket will launch it on its maiden flight.
Despite many delays and frustrations the time is
now approaching when American astronauts will once again launch into space from
American soil. It can’t come soon enough for me.
I’ve written several posts about the rapid advances that have been made recently in the field of robotic prosthesis for people who have either lost a limb or the use of their limbs. See posts of 14Aug2019, 23Feb2019, 17Feb2018 and 29Apl2017. I must admit however that the latest breakthrough has me simply stunned; a man who had lost all control of his four limbs has been able to walk again using a robotic exo-skeleton controlled by only his thoughts, and a highly advanced computer interface.
A Quadriplegic man has succeeded in walking using an exo-skeleton controlled by his thoughts. (Credit: The Independent)
The
research is taking place in France at Clinatec, the University of Grenoble’s
Center for Biomedical Research. The test subject, a 28-year-old man named
Thibault, is paralyzed from the shoulder down due to a severing of his spinal
column in a 12-meter fall from a balcony.
In order to read his thoughts a sensory device was implanted in each hemisphere of his skull between the skin and his brain. The two sensory discs were each 5 cm in diameter and contained 64 separate sensors. The electronic ‘brain waves’ generated by the sensorimotor cortex of the brain are captured by these sensors and fed into a computer. The computer then uses an algorithm to translate the brain impulses into commands for movements of the mechanical exo-skeleton.
Electronic sensors were implanted in Thibault’s skull, one for each hemisphere. (Credit: Clinatec Endowment Fund / AFP)
Needless to say it’s not really all that simple. In fact it took two years of trial and error in order for both Thibault to learn how to frame his thoughts correctly and to teach the computer algorithm to correctly translate those thoughts into the desired motion commands. Much of this practice was actually carried out in virtual reality with Thibault and the computer moving computer generated images of limbs.
A computer algorithm translated Thibault’s brain waves into commands for the Exo-Skeleton. (Credit: Clinatec Endowment Fund)
For Simplicity and safety the testing and training of controlling the exo-skeleton was performed in virtual reality. (Credit: SHRM)
Once the researchers were confident enough they placed Thibault into the actual 65 kg exo-skeleton and studied him while he successfully walked a total of 145 meters. Since the researchers expected balance to be an issue the exo-skeleton was connected to a ceiling mounted harness that provided stability but all of the movements of the exo-skeleton were controlled by Thibault’s thoughts.
According
to Professor Stephan Chabardes, author of the study and a neurosurgeon at the
University’s hospital, “Our findings could move us a step closer to
helping tetraplegic patients to drive computers using brain signals alone,
perhaps starting with driving wheelchairs using brain activity instead of
joysticks and progressing to developing an exo-skeleton for increased
mobility.”
Research is continuing, the scientists hope that soon Thibault will be able to walk in the exo-skeleton without the ceiling harness in the next phase of the program. Also, three other patients have been recruited for further trials. Although the system is certainly not ready for general use the researchers hope that in time improvements will allow the exo-skeleton to become commercially available.
Before long the development of exo-skeletons may soon rival those imagined in Sci-Fi movies. (Credit: DudeWantThat)
The
development of the Grenoble exo-skeleton is another step in the direction of a
Human Machine Interface (HMI) that will allow humans to both control and receive
information from advanced mechanical and computer systems. Someday a fully
functioning HMI might blur the line ourselves and our creations.
It seems more and more as if Science Fiction is becoming dominated by the writing and publishing of series, trilogies in particular, as opposed to stand-alone novels. One of the latest of these series is by new author Brandon Q. Morris and concerns an expedition to the planet Saturn in order to investigate the possibility of life on its moon Enceladus.
Saturn’s Icy Moon Enceladus has jets of water streaming out of its south polar region. This means there must be some large body of liquid water beneath the ice covering. Could that liquid water support life??? (Credit: Spaceflight Insider)
One problem that arises with these series is that it can be quite easy to pick up the second or third story in the series and start reading without realizing that you’re starting in the middle of the story. I did that when I bought ‘The Titan Probe’. Two pages in and I recognized my error, put the book down and ordered ‘The Enceladus Mission’. Because of that mistake on my part however this book review will be a two for one, reviewing both “The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’.
Cover of ‘The Enceladus Mission’ by Brandon Q. Morris (Credit: Amazon.com)
Cover of ‘The Titan Probe’ by Brandon Q. Morris (Credit: Amazon.com)
‘The Enceladus Probe’ begins as the unmanned space probe ELF discovers clear evidence not just of organic compounds around Saturn’s moon but “the digestive byproducts of your space rat.” In other words the probe has found unmistakable evidence of life. The acronym ELF by the way stands for Enceladus Life Finder and is an actual proposed NASA mission to that moon of Saturn.
Brandon Morris uses a lot of acronyms in both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’ and for the most part I think that’s a good thing. This style of hard sci-fi has benefited from the success of Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’ and appears to be growing more popular, witness the current movie ‘Ad Astra’.
Saturn’s moon Titan possesses a thicker atmosphere than Earth’s but if there is life on Titan it would be very different than life on Earth. (Credit: NASA)
In hard sci-fi novels hardware that already exists, is currently under development or at least is based on known science is employed as much as possible in illustrating the story. Personally I hope this trend toward hard sci-fi will continue. Of course it is possible to overdo the techno jargon, I mean is it really better to talk about an EMU, which means Extravehicular Mobility Unit, instead of just saying spacesuit!
Getting
back to the story, now that there is clear evidence of life on Enceladus the
nations of the world combine their resources to put together a manned mission
to “catch the little critter itself.” So begins the voyage of the
ILSE spacecraft, ILSE standing for International Life Search Expedition no
less.
The idea of the world’s space nations getting together is another common theme of hard sci-fi novels. In ‘The Martian’ for example a Chinese rocket is needed to resupply the Hermes spaceship as it goes to rescue Mark Watney who’s stranded on Mars. I guess the authors of these stories like to imagine how much more we could achieve in space if only we worked together.
The moral of the original ‘Star Trek’ Series was that by working together humanity could go on to explore the Universe! (Credit: Paramount)
Also
like ‘The Martian’ in both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and “The Titan Probe’
the crew of the ILSE face several technical problems with equipment during
their mission that require all of their ingenuity and determination to
overcome. Once again this is a plot device that can be overused but Brandon
Morris does a good job of making each predicament seem different from the
others.
One plot device that was lacking in ‘The Martian’ but which Morris includes in both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’ is intelligent aliens. Now back in the ‘golden age’ of sci-fi, the days of H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury, Martians and Venusians were more common than interstellar aliens. But when the early space probes of the 1960s found Mars to be a cold desert and Venus to be an acidic furnace the aliens in sci-fi stories became exclusively interstellar. I have to say that it was nice to see a story with intelligent aliens who are native to our solar system for a change.
Back before we knew that Mars was a cold dry desert even Bugs Bunny got to meet a Martian! (Credit: Warner Brothers)
So
there you have a good idea of the sort of story you’ll find in both ‘The
Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’. If you’re a fan of hard sci-fi, if
you liked ‘The Martian’ I think that you’ll enjoy both novels. By the way there
is a third installment in the voyage of the ILSE, ‘The Io Encounter’ which I
just received. I’ll tell you about it later.
It’s
that time of year again. The Nobel Committee has announced its choices for the
award that recognizes achievements in the fields of Physics, Chemistry and
Medicine (Physiology). Since my degree is in physics I think I’ll start with
the winners for Physics.
This years winners are being recognized for their work in revealing some of the details about the structure of this Universe in which we live. Three scientists, James Peebles along with Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz will share this year’s prize of 9 million Swedish krona or $910,000 dollars.
James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in Astrophysics. (Credit: Bloomberg)
Two of the physicists, Professor Michel Mayor of the University of Geneva along with Didier Queloz, who teaches at both the University of Geneva and Cambridge University were honoured for their discovery in 1995 of the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun like star. Today we know about the existence of thousands of exoplanets but it was Mayor and Queloz who used a technique called the Radial Velocity Method to discover an exoplanet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi, in the constellation of Pegasus.
Looking at the illustration below of a star and its planet both orbiting around their mutual center of gravity we see how the star is sometimes moving toward us and sometimes away from us. This tiny tug back and forth due to the gravity of the planet can be seen in a blue shift in the star’s light as it moves toward us and a red shift as it moves away. It was by detecting a repeating pattern of blue and red shifts in the light of the star 51 Pegasi having a period of 4.2 days that allowed Mayor and Queloz to announce their discovery.
An Illustration of the Radial Velocity Method for discovering exo-planets. (Credit: Johnan Jarnestad/ Swedish Academy of Science)
The
work of James Peebles of Princeton University, the Albert Einstein Professor of
Physics no less, deals with a topic a bit bigger and older than a mere planet,
the birth of the Universe itself. You see Peebles, working back in the 1970s,
was one of the leading scientists who put the Big Bang Theory on a solid
theoretical basis.
Doctor Peebles work dealt with probing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) for clues about not only the conditions that prevailed in the Universe at the time of the Big Bang but also in the Universe as it is today. The cosmic Microwave Background is the tiny amount of heat left over from the Big Band that permeates the entire Universe and is almost, almost the same temperature everywhere and in every direction.
The Cosmic Microwave Background as seen by the Planck Satellite. The tiny differences in temperature seen here were predicted by James Peebles. (Credit: Universe Review.ca)
It
was Doctor Peebles who first predicted that tiny fluctuations in the CMB had to
be there. If the CMB was perfectly smooth he reasoned, then the Universe today
would also be perfectly smooth, instead of possessing all of the galaxies and
stars we see. In other words those tiny variations in temperature 13.8 billion
years ago were the seeds from which the structure of today’s Universe grew.
Further analysis of those variations also allowed Peebles to calculate the percentage of the energy of the Universe that today is composed of ordinary matter, the atoms and elementary particles we are familiar with, dark matter and even dark energy which are the subject of so much current research. When you consider how much of our knowledge of the early Universe is due to the work of James Peebles it’s no wonder he has finally received the Nobel Prize.
Since you’re reading this post right now there’s a good chance that you’re using either a smartphone, smartpad, or laptop computer. If so you might want to take a moment to thank the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. You see the research for which M. Stanley Whittingham, John B Goodenough and Akira Yoshino will share their 7 million krona is the development of the Lithium-Ion batteries that today power our mobile world.
John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino received this years Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (Credit: Swedish Royal Academy of Science)
The development took quite a long time and there were more than a few problems along the way to overcome. It began in the 1970s when Stanley Whittingham discovered an energy rich material called titanium disulphide that he used as the cathode, the negative terminal in a battery with a metallic lithium anode as the positive terminal. Whittingham used lithium because of the metal’s ability to release large numbers of electrons.
Lithium Ion Batteries are a fixture in our modern world. (Credit: B&H)
The problem with these early lithium batteries was that each time the battery was recharged there was an internal buildup of chemicals at each terminal. This buildup would continue until the two terminals actually touched each other inside the battery causing a short circuit that released all of the battery’s energy in seconds. The result of that short would be either a fire or even an explosion. Despite this danger lithium batteries were so powerful that they quickly found some limited applications.
The Charge and Discharge mechanisms of a Lithium Battery. (Credit: ResearchGate)
Then
in 1980 John B. Goodenough made lithium batteries even more powerful by
replacing the disulphide terminal with one composed of cobalt oxide that nearly
doubled the energy storage capability. Nevertheless the danger inherent in the
lithium battery still kept them from widespread use.
It wasn’t until 1985 that Akira Yoshino succeeded in replacing the metallic lithium with Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LiCoO2) alleviating the buildup of chemicals and making the new lithium ion battery safe enough for widespread use. Thanks to the efforts of these three dedicated scientists the development of the modern lithium ion battery is a case study in how engineering research is carried out, one step at a time. Certainly an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Also announced this week was the Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Doctors William G. Kaelin of Harvard University, Gregg L. Semenza of Johns Hopkins University along with Peter J. Ratcliffe of the Francis Crick Institute and Oxford University. The trio was recognized for their work in understanding how cells adjust their metabolism to match the availability of oxygen.
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to William G. Kaelin, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza. (Credit: Swedish Royal Academy of Science)
We
are all aware of just how necessary oxygen is for life; the cells of our body
will quickly begin to die without that gas. However cells can reduce the amount
of oxygen they require whenever oxygen levels become lower. Our bodies
experience such reduced oxygen levels during many activities such as swimming
or other exercise, or while at high altitude.
More importantly however many people experience low oxygen levels for long periods of time due to lung or heart disease or anemia. In fact the knowledge gained by Doctors Kaelin, Semenza and Ratcliffe is already being put to use to develop drugs that will help patients with those aliments to make better use of the oxygen in their systems and live healthier lives.
For patients suffering with Heart or Lung problems a lack of oxygen is a serious threat. (Credit: Healthline)
The discovery may also be important in the treatment of cancer. You see it has long been known that cancer cells signal other cells in our body to build new blood vessels to them that increases their flow of oxygen enabling the tumors to grow even faster. It is possible that this research may lead to techniques that prevent this increased blood flow thereby slowing the growth of cancerous tumors.
The work of these three Nobel laureates gives our medical science another tool to both fight disease and to understand how living creatures work. Each year the Nobel Prizes are awarded to recognize the best, the most significant discoveries in science. It’s important to remember however that there are many smaller, but still significant advances. All of these discoveries combine to add to our ever increasing knowledge of the natural world.
There was a small but very unusual science news story out this week that you might have missed. It concerns the discovery of eight new species of nematode roundworms at Mono Lake in the eastern Sierra Mountains of California. That sure sounds exciting doesn’t it?
Mono Lake in California is one of the most hostile environments on the surface of the Earth. (Credit: Mono Lake)
Well
you see Mono Lake is one of the most extreme environments for living things on
the surface of the entire planet. Not only is the water in Mono Lake three
times as salty as in the ocean but the water is also laced with the poisonous
element arsenic while its pH of 10 makes it very alkaline. Few living things
can survive the toxic conditions present at Mono Lake so the discovery of eight
new species there is quite important.
The most surprising news however concerns one of those eight species, a yet to be formally named member of the genus Auanema that possesses three sexes!!! You heard that right; the newly discovered Auanema sp. has boys, girls and hermaphrodites.
The as yet unnamed species of round worm from Mono Lake has three sexes! (Credit: Science Alert)
Hermaphrodites you may recall are individuals who possess both male and female sexual organs and who are capable of both bearing offspring and impregnating other members of their species. There are many species that are hermaphroditic in nature just as there are many species with sexed individuals but a species that possesses both sexed and hermaphroditic individuals is very rare. Another oddity about the sex life of Auanema sp. is the fact that it carries its young inside itself in a manner similar to a kangaroo.
The three sexed species also carries its young inside its body in a way reminiscent of a kangaroo. (Credit: ScienceDirect.com)
The
study of life at Mono Lake was conducted by lead author Paul Sternberg of the
California Institute of Technology along with researchers Pei-Yin Shih and
James Siho Lee and was published in the journal Current Biology. I’m certain
that we’ll be hearing more from Drs. Sternberg, Shih and Lee about the strange
and extreme life forms at Mono Lake.
The
strange sex life of Auanema sp. however begs the question; just how many
different ways are there for having sex? This question has become more
important recently not only in scientific circles but in the domain of
politics. In our society today the question of how we should treat those
individuals whose sex lives do not fit into preconceived norms is very
contentious. Is it possible that we could learn something about our own sexual behavior
by studying the diversity of sex in nature?
To begin my dictionary defines sex as: The property or quality by which organisms are classified according to their reproductive functions. So in our quest to study the diversity of sex we are going to have to look at some of the many ways living creatures reproduce.
In sexual reproduction the egg cell, defined as female, is large and contains a lot of nutrients while the sperm cell, defined as male, is small but very mobile. The sperm cell must find the egg cell in order to fertilize it. (Credit: Stock.Adobe.com)
Let’s begin with the simplest of all living things, the single celled organisms that we learned about back in high school. The structure of such creatures is so simple that they are not capable of possessing differences between individuals that could be identified as making them either male or female. Instead these creatures reproduce asexually, that is without any sexual contact from another member of their species. Whenever a single celled creature has absorbed enough nutrients to reproduce it will begin the process of cell division that produces, not an adult and child but two identical daughter cells. In asexual reproduction the daughter cells both receive only the genetic information of their single parent.
A single celled organism reproduces without sex through the process of Mitosis. (Credit: DifferenceBetween.com)
It is that mixing of the genetic information from two parents that is the advantage of engaging in sex after all. Sex allows new, beneficial mutations to quickly spread throughout a population. Sex increases the variation of characteristics within a species; variations that natural selection can work with in order to better adapt a species to its environment.
As we know, it is in the multi-celled organisms, creatures with groups of cells dedicated to perform certain tasks, in other words organs, that we find differences between individuals that are related to that individual’s function in reproduction. And due to their greater complexity it is among the multi-celled organisms that we find the greater range of sexual behaviors.
We’ve already mentioned hermaphrodites, creatures with both male and female sex organs and who are capable of both being fertilized by and fertilizing another member of their species. Many species of worms, molluscs and flowering plants are hermaphrodites.
Two hermaphroditic snails mating. Each is using its penis to fertilize the other! (Credit: Wikipedia)
Even among species with individuals that can be clearly differentiated into female and male sexual behavior can vary greatly. In the insect order hymenoptera, ants, bees and wasps, an unfertilized female can lay an egg that will develop into a fully functioning male, an actual example of a virgin birth. That male can then have sex with his own mother, fertilizing her so that all of her offspring from then on are female!
In honeybees the male drones are produced from unfertilized eggs! They then fertilize the queen to produce female, but sterile workers! (Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica)
Now
if you’re thinking that such unusual sexual behaviors are confined to the
lower, i.e. invertebrate animals well think again. There are many species of
vertebrates, especially fish who exhibit a different type of hermaphroditism
known as sequential hermaphroditism. As you might guess from the name a
sequential hermaphrodite is an individual who is born as one sex but who may
during the course of their life change their sex.
Examples of sex changes in both directions are well recognized. One is the popular clown fish (genus Amphiprion) that exists in groups with a single large breeding female and a smaller breeding male along with some non-breeding members. If the breeding female should die the breeding male will become female and one of the non-breeding members will become the new breeding male.
The familiar and popular clown fish is a sequential hermaphrodite. It can change its sex from male to female! (Credit: Live Science)
Another familiar reef fish, the cleaner wrasse (family Labridae) behaves in almost the exact opposite fashion. The single male in a group will dominate all of the females while the largest female dominates all the others and so on down the list until the smallest wrasse gets picked on by everybody. Again if the dominant male should die the top female will change sex and become a male.
The Cleaner Wrasse on the other hand can change from being a girl to a boy! (Credit: LiveAquaria)
Have
you noticed how the sex of an individual in these species is determined by
their social status? To confirm this interpretation there are reef fish of the
species Lythrypnus dalli where the sex of an individual can go back and forth
depending on whether it is dominant, male or submissive, female.
Even mammals have a variety of sexual behaviors; the difference between marsupials who carry their young in a pouch and mammals with a womb is well known. There are also many species where a dominant male gathers a harem to himself while smaller males are out of luck. Then there are some mammals who only mate at certain times of the year while others engage in sex year round.
Even among the mammals there is a verity of reproductive techniques. (Credit: Allposter.com)
By
now I hope you’ve realized that the stereotypical male-female, boy meets girl
style of reproduction is not carved in stone, it is not a universal archetype
of how things must be. Sex is all about mixing genes so that new, better
adapted traits can be spread through a population more quickly giving natural
selection a better chance to improve a species. Evolution doesn’t really care
how that mixing takes place so there is a great diversity of sexual behaviors
across the natural world.
If you’re interested in astronomy you may have sometime heard the planet Venus being described as Earth’s twin, although nowadays it’s more often called Earth’s evil twin. Twin, because Venus is nearly the same size as the Earth and is the same sort of rocky planet with an atmosphere as our home world is. Not only that but because Venus is the closest planet to Earth in its orbit around the Sun conditions on its surface should be close to those here on our planet.
Venus as seen through a telescope shows only a think layer of clouds. (Credit: Sky and Telescope)
Indeed, not so long ago Venus was imagined to be a somewhat more tropical version of the Earth. Covered by a thick layer of clouds it was thought that the planet’s entire surface was probably one huge rain forest inhabited by creatures appropriate to a jungle environment.
In the science fiction of the 1950s Venus was a world inhabited by alien, and dangerous creatures. (Credit: Wikipedia)
The data sent back by the first space probes to Venus shattered that dream. The average surface temperature on the planet was found to be over 400ºC, the atmosphere is some 90 times that of Earth’s and is composed of 96.5 carbon dioxide with absolutely no trace of water vapour. It’s the carbon dioxide that’s led to the extreme temperatures of course; we’ll all familiar with how CO2 is a greenhouse gas after all. And so Earth’s twin quickly became known as our evil twin.
This is what the surface of Venus looked like to the Soviet Venera lander. (Credit: Roscosmos)
This
reality begs the question then, if Venus is so similar to Earth in some ways,
how can it be so different in others?
A new study by Michael Way and Anthony Del Genio of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies attempts to answer that question. In a paper they have delivered at the European Planetary Science Conference, Division of Planetary Science or the EPSC-DPS joint meeting for 2019 the two scientists have outlined the results of their simulations of surface conditions on Venus using long-term climatological models.
Based upon those simulations Way and Del Genio assert that for billions of year Venus may in fact have resembled that watery, tropical world imagined in Sci-Fi novels. By their calculations it may have been as little as 700 million years ago that a runaway greenhouse disaster began that turned Venus into the uninhabitable boiler we see today.
Based on their research Doctors Way and Del Genio believe that Venus could have been inhabited as little as 700 million years ago. (Credit: Wordless Tech)
So what was it that triggered the runaway greenhouse effect? Where did all of that CO2 come from? Well here on Earth we have an enormous amount of carbon that’s trapped inside the planet’s crust, not only as coal and other fossil fuels but also in the form of various minerals such as calcium carbonate, also known as calcite. Way and Del Genio speculate that a massive volcanic event could have released huge amounts of carbon into the air initiating the runaway greenhouse.
Here on Earth volcanic eruptions release hugh amounts of carbon dioxide. Could this be what happened to Venus (Credit: CNN.com)
Just such a volcanic event is known to have occurred here on Earth some 250 million years ago and is known as the Siberian Traps event which is thought to have caused the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period. The carbon released by the Siberian Traps was later re-absorbed back into the ground but on Venus something must be preventing that re-absorption.
250 MYA the massive volcanic eruptions that formed the Siberian Traps may have also caused the extinction of 95% of all living species here on Earth. (Credit: Gracebluered.com)
At
the moment we can only speculate about what factor or process is preventing
that re-absorption. Way and Del Genio are calling for newer, more advanced
space probes to re-examine Venus in order to better understand what is going on
there. We need more data if we’re ever going to understand what transformed
Venus from a world that could have possessed life into the hellscape it is now.
And perhaps more importantly, how can we make certain it never happens to our
Earth!
In his first interview with the press promoting his new movie ‘Ad Astra’ director James Grey described it as a combination of ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. I’m quite certain that’s exactly how he sold his concept to the studio heads that funded ‘Ad Astra’. Not a bad idea when you consider that both movies are considered to be classics. The problem is that in that in ‘Ad Astra’ the combining is clumsily executed and quite frankly, unimaginative.
Poster for the Film ‘Ad Astra’ (Credit: Connect Savanna)
Let’s begin with ‘Apocalypse Now’ which was itself a adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novella ‘Heart of Darkness’ to fit the War in Vietnam. In ‘Apocalypse Now’ a U.S. Army Captain named Willard is sent into the deep jungle along the Vietnam / Cambodian border to make contact with a Colonel Kurtz. According to the Army Kurtz has gone rogue, fighting the Vietnamese Communists with native troops his own way, in other words just slaughtering them without regard for the rules of war.
In Apocalypse Now Marlon Brando played an eerie Colonel Kurtz, a man driven mad by the horrors of war. (Credit: Electric Palace)
Once Captain Willard finds Kurtz his orders are to terminate Kurtz’s command, ‘Terminate with extreme prejudice’, in other words the Captain has been ordered to assassinate the Colonel. The majority of the movie however concerns Willard’s journey to Kurtz’s location and is composed of a series of scenes depicting the insanity of war but which have no real connection to the actual plot.
The plot of ‘Ad Astra’ is quite similar. At the beginning we learn about an astronaut named Clifford McBride (Played by actor Tommy Lee Jones). McBride is the commander of the Leto Mission to the outer Solar System in a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The Leto mission we are told was assumed lost some 12 years ago.
In Ad Astra Tommy Lee Jones plays Clifford McBride who has been driven mad by Space. (Credit: USA Today)
We
also learn that McBride murdered the other members of the Leto’s crew and is
actually still alive around the planet Neptune where he is now using his
spaceship’s anti-matter to cause power surges that are threatening all life in
the solar system. I suppose by now you’ve guessed that McBride is the Kurtz
character.
The Captain Willard character in ‘Ad Astra’ is named Roy McBride (Played by Brad Pitt). Now if you happened to notice that the two main characters have the same last name you’re right, they’re father and son which adds a lot of psycho-drama to the movie without making it any more interesting. As in ‘Apocalypse Now’ Roy McBride’s journey to his father is punctuated with such meaningless scenes as an attack by Moon pirates and a Mayday from another spaceship. So much for the resemblance to ‘Apocalypse Now’.
Brad Pitt plays Roy McBride who is journeying through the solar system to stop his father from destroying all life. (Credit: Polygon)
As far as I’m concerned the resemblance to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ consists mainly in the production values, that is the sets and special effects which look pretty good. Not as good as 2001’s or The Martian’s, but pretty good. It’s apparent that someone has paid a lot of attention to such things as the spacesuits, the look of the spaceship’s and the scenery such as the Moon, Mars and finally Neptune.
While the production values of Ad Astra are good they can’t make up for an awkward script. (Credit: Fox News)
The
problem is that the attention to detail only extends as far as the look of the
movie. You remember I mentioned that the senior McBride is doing something with
anti-matter around Neptune that is causing ‘power surges’ back here on Earth.
Well that’s about all you ever learn about those surges, you never even get to
find out if the older McBride is causing them deliberatly or not.
There are in fact a large number of physically unrealistic events in ‘Ad Astra’ the most egregious of which is when the younger McBride uses a special laser on Mars to send a message to his father around Neptune. Now Neptune at its closest is more than four light hours from Mars so a round trip message has to take nearly nine hours minimum. Well that Martian laser must be real special because the reply comes back in about two minutes. Such a cavalier attitude toward the laws of physics and science in general is not a good thing for a movie that is trying to promote itself as hard Sci-fi.
2001: A Space Odyssey still holds place of honour as the best hard sci-fi movie! (Credit: MGM)
In the end the two McBride’s finally meet and we discover that the search for alien intelligence has driven the old man mad. He’s lost all of his humanity in the emptiness of space.
The real plot of Ad Astra is simply mankind becoming lost in the vastness of space. (Credit: IMDb)
I
think that’s the moral the creators of ‘Ad Astra’ were trying to portray. If
you want to find intelligence you should look right here on good old Earth.
