Month: February 2021

Space News for February 2021.

It’s been a busy month. There have been three, count’em three robotic space probes reaching Mars this month and on top of that there have been several announcements that deal with human space flight, both the Artemis program and commercial space flight. Let’s start with the Mars probes.

Uh! Actually the United Arab Emirates Amal ‘Hope’ space probe is now in orbit around Mars! (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)

Last July three different nations, China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US all launched space probes towards Mars. The reason why all three probes were launched at nearly the same time is that as Earth and the Red Planet orbit around the Sun once every 26 months they come into a position where the energy cost, and therefore the dollar cost of going from Earth to Mars is a minimum. Last July was just such a minimum and because of this fact of orbital dynamics for the last several decades about every two years somebody has been sending a probe, or more than one, to Mars.

China’s Tianwen-1 probe entered Mars orbit just one day after the UAE’s Amal. The Chinese probe still has the most hazardous part of its mission ahead of it as the lander portion, under the canopy, has to descend to the Martian surface. (Credit: SimpleRockets 2)

While the US has sent more probes to Mars than any nation the other two of this year’s probes to the Red Planet are the first for the UAE and China. Things started off with the UAE’s ‘Amal’ orbital probe that was launched last July 19th aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket and is the simplest of the three missions. Amal, the word is Arabic for hope, entered its initial orbit around Mars on February 9th after successfully firing its braking rockets for 27 minutes to slow its speed.

While the Amal probe was built in the UAE it was launched by a Japanese rocket. (Credit: DNA India)

Amal will now spend the next three months testing its instruments and adjusting its orbit to its designed altitude before starting to observe the Red planet. The probe carries three main experiments that are designed to observe the weather on Mars as well as to monitor the leaking of Mar’s atmosphere into space. UAE’s success with Amal makes them only the fifth nation to succeed in reaching Mars with the others being the US, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency (ESA) and India.

The complex Tianwen-1 probe was both built and launched entirely by China clearly showing that the Asian superpower is now in the forefront of space exploration! (Credit: The New York Times)

China became the sixth nation to do so just one day later as their Tianwen-1 mission also successfully entered Mars orbit on February 10th. Of the three missions China’s is the most complex with the probe containing an orbiter module, a lander and even a small rover which is carried on the lander. As with the UAE’s hope, the Tianwen-1 will spend the next few weeks checking out its equipment and adjusting its orbit before beginning its work of studying the Red Planet.

Artists illustration of the Tianwen-1 lander ready to deploy its rover. If successful this would make China only the second nation to place a rover on the Marian surface. (Credit: Business Standard)

Tianwen-1’s first task will be to search for the best possible landing site for the probe’s 240 kg rover. Although a landing site somewhere in the Utopia Planitia region of the Martian surface has been mentioned by Chinese space authorities the exact choice of the landing site will probably not be made until May or June. Once the site has been chosen the Tianwen-1 probe will separate and the lander, carrying the rover, will attempt a soft touchdown on Mars. If successful this landing would make China only the second nation, after the US, to place a spacecraft on the surface of the Red Planet.

The final space probe to reach Mars this year is NASA’s Perseverance rover. As with the US space agency’s other Martian landers, Perseverance did not first go into Martian orbit but instead plunged directly into the Red Planet’s atmosphere in a maneuver that has been referred to as seven minutes of terror.

Perseverance is NASA’s fifth Martian rover with each one increasing in size, complexity and mission capability. (Credit: DOGO News)

 You see right now Mars is so far away that it takes a radio signal traveling at the speed of light about 11.5 minutes to make a round trip to Earth and back. That means that any space probe reaching Mars: Amal and Tianwen-1 as well as Perseverance must accomplish all of their insertion maneuvers on their own, without any instructions from Earth. So during the most critical parts of the missions the scientists back here on Earth can only sit back and pray that everything will go right.

Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so as a space probe gets millions of kilometers from the Earth there is a delay in communications as the radio signals travel back and forth. (Credit: www.qrg.northwestern.edu)

Turned out everything went like clockwork. “Touchdown confirmed,” was the call from the jet Propulsion Labouratory (JPL) at 3:55 PM on the 18th of February as the rover landed successfully at its target, a Martian crater named Jezero. Unlike previous Martian rovers, whose landing sites were selected to be wide open, flat and ‘safe’, Jezero is much rougher, but much more interesting terrain with evidence from orbit indicating that it was once a crater lake fed by two or more rivers. Planetary scientists feel that if Mars ever did possess life Jezero is one of the best places to go looking for it.

Incredible views of Perseverance actually landing on Mars. (Credit: SciTechDaily)

Although Perseverance has already sent back several images of its landing area the engineers at JPL will spend the next 90 days checking out the rover’s systems before beginning the scientific mission in earnest. Also occurring during this check out phase will be the deployment of the small helicopter ‘Ingenuity’ that Perseverance carried with it to the Martian surface. If it is successful Ingenuity will become the first man-made object to fly on another world.

But even while robotic probes to Mars are dominating the space news this month there’s still some important goings on dealing with human spaceflight back here on Earth. The main news concerns NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) that had its final hot fire test cut off prematurely back on the 16th of January, see my post of 30 January 2021. In the weeks since then NASA has analyzed the test abort and decided that the only problem was that the test parameters for the hydraulic pressure in a vector control mechanism had been set too narrowly. So while the test did in fact complete 15 out of 23 objectives NASA has decided to redo the test in the hopes of a better outcome.

The Hot Fire test of the SLS first stage started well enough but then aborted after only one minute. NASA has decided to repeat the test in order to get a more complete data set. (Credit: Space News)

    The test was scheduled to be repeated on the 25th of February but that date has already been delayed due to problems with a fuel valve. Another date has not been announced so the test is not likely to occur before March at the earliest. Assuming the second test is more successful than the first the rocket could then be ready to finally be transported to the Kennedy Space Center sometime in April. All this is yet another three months delay on a program that is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

Which may have a great deal to do with our final item. As a part of its Artemis program to put Americans back on the Moon and to establish a lunar base NASA is determined to also put a space station into orbit around the Moon. Called the Lunar Gateway this station would serve as an outpost for the astronauts on their way to the lunar surface as well as a place to park the lunar lander.

NASA’s full plan for a Lunar Gateway Space Station. Now two modules, the Power And Propulsion Element and the Habitation Module will be launched using Space X’s Falcon Heavy. (Credit: NASAspaceflight.com)

As initially set out by the space agency the construction of the gateway was to be carried out with equipment launched from Earth and sent into lunar orbit by the SLS. However NASA has just selected Space X Corporation to launch the first two sections of Gateway, a decision that was without question due to the enormous costs and unreliability of the SLS. The two sections in question are the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) along with the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module.

 The two modules will now be launched aboard a Space X Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, at a cost to NASA of $318 million dollars, less than half the cost of a single SLS launch. This announcement comes on the heals of last month’s announcement that NASA’s Europa Clipper robotic probe to Jupiter’s moon may also launch on a Falcon Heavy, and latest reporting now says that it almost certainly will. These changes in plan will leave the SLS with only the single remaining task of ferrying astronauts and their Orion capsule back and forth to the moon. All of NASA’s other heavy launch missions for the next decade are being taken over by commercial corporations.

Launch of the first Space X Falcon Heavy. (Credit: Space X)

So it certainly appears that the age of commercial space travel is upon us. NASA, and the space agencies of other nations will continue to carry out the exploration of other worlds. However the task of getting into space, the launching of rockets carrying payloads into orbit will soon belong almost entirely to profit making corporations that are determined to turn space into just another place to earn a dollar.

Physicists are still searching for new heavier elements. They’re up to atomic number 118 and a new labouratory has just started operation that may take us to element number 120.

Remember back in your high school science class how, when your teacher was talking about the periodic table of the elements he told you that Uranium, element number 92, was the heaviest ‘naturally occurring’ element. I bet he then went on to say that all of the elements with a higher atomic number had been artificially created in ‘atom smashers’.

The Periodic Table of the elements all the way up to the latest manufactured, Oganesson, Og number 118. (credit: WUWM)

You may also remember that the atomic number of an atom is simply the number of protons in its nucleus. Uranium has 92 protons so it’s element 92 while carbon on the other hand has 6 protons so it is element number 6. Atoms with the same number of protons have the same chemical properties, which is why we say they are the same chemical element.

A chemically pure disk of the element Uranium. Even heavier than lead Uranium is the heaviest element occurring naturally here on Earth. Because it is radioactive half of our planet’s original supply of Uranium has decayed to other, lighter elements. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The atomic mass of an atom however is the sum of the number of protons plus neutrons in the nucleus. Two atoms can have different numbers of neutrons but still be the same element so long as they have the same number of protons. Atoms with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element. For example carbon 12 has 6 protons, which makes it carbon, along with 6 neutrons while carbon 14 has 6 protons, still carbon, but 8 neutrons. The extra two neutrons make carbon 14 unstable, radioactive, which makes it useful for radiocarbon dating.

An Atom of Carbon 12 has 6 protons, making it element 6, plus 6 neutrons in the nucleus giving it an atomic mass of 12. there are also 6 electrons orbiting around the nucleus whose negative charge balances the charge of the protons making the atom electrically neutral. (Credit: Socratic)

Uranium has no stable isotopes, they are all radioactive. Its most stable isotope is U 238 with 92 protons, 146 neutrons and a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, which means that the Earth today has just about half the amount of U 238 it had when the solar system first formed. Elements with higher atomic numbers have much shorter half-lives, the most stable isotope of Plutonium, element number 94, is P 244 with a half-life of 80 million years. Which is why whatever Plutonium the Earth started with 4.3 billion years ago has all decayed away.

A disk of the artificial element Plutonium. Plutonium is not only radioactive it is also chemically toxic making it doubly dangerous. (Credit: Phys.org)

Scientists have been manufacturing ‘Trans-Uranium’ atoms since just a few years after they realized that atomic nuclei were composed of protons and neutrons. Neptunium, number 93, and Plutonium were both first manufactured in the year 1940 at what is now known as Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory by bombarding atoms of Uranium with neutrons. Over the next 34 years another twelve new elements, right up to Seaborgium, number 106, would be developed at the California labouratory.

Physicist Glenn Seaborg led the Lawrence Berkeley team that first manufactured more than a dozen elements. Element number 106 is named for him! (Credit: National Inventors Hall of Fame)
The 60 inch Cyclotron at Berkeley Labouratories, now Lawrence Berkeley, was used to manufacture some of the first artificial elements. (Credit: Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs)

In the late 1970s a new labouratory, the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) or the Society for Heavy Ion Research in Hessen Germany first began its studies. This team would go on to be the first to manufacture elements 107 to 112 between the years 1980 and 1996. By this time the technique of simply taking the heaviest element yet produced and bombarding it with protons or neutrons was no longer working. You see as the atomic number gets higher the nucleus quickly becomes even more unstable so that the atoms that were produced only lasted for seconds making it virtually impossible to push them up one stage higher before they decayed.

Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI facility outside of Hessen Germany. (Credit: European Space Agency)

Instead a technique known as ‘cold fusion’ was developed. Cold fusion by the way has nothing to do with the erroneously announced ‘cold fusion’ of hydrogen into helium back in the 1980s. The technique of cold fusion involves slamming a middling sized nucleus into a heavy but fairly stable nucleus. One example is slamming a Neon nucleus into Uranium to produce Nobelium, element 102.

An illustration of a ‘cold fusion’ collision between a nucleus of nickle coming from the right with a nucleus of gold on the left. (Credit: Riken.jp)

Cold fusion is a very delicate technique because you have to use just the right amount of energy. Too little and the electrostatic repulsion of the protons in the two nuclei will keep them from ever touching. Too much and the collision will just obliterate both nuclei.

Throughout this entire period there was also a Russian labouratory that was devoted to the study of trans-uranium elements called the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). Despite having played an important role in nuclear research for many years, the technique of cold fusion was developed at JINR for example; the Russians had never succeeded in being the undisputed first to develop a new element. That situation lasted until 1999 when JINR became the first labouratory to demonstrate the existence of element Flerovium, element 114.

For many years the bridesmaid rather than the bride, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) was the Soviet Union’s version of Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory. (Credit: www.jinr.ru)

JINR went to produce the next 4 elements with the latest element yet being number 118 in 2010, the element was named Oganesson after Yuri Oganessian the head researcher at JINR. In the ten years since Oganesson research has hit a brick wall as the cold fusion technique has proven unable to produce enough nuclei, that last long enough to be observed sufficiently enough that a new element can be announced.

Physicists Yuri Oganesson has led the team that discovered that latest elements. His facility will begin a new search for even heavier elements this year. Element number 118, the heaviest manufactured so far, is named for him. (Credit: Wikipedia)

But JINR is currently gearing up for a new attempt. A new atom smasher known as the Superheavy Element Factory (SHEF) has been assembled and once a new supply of the element Californium arrives to be used as a target the testing will commence. The Californium itself has to be manufactured at Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory and with a half-life of only approximately 500 years it is both dangerously radioactive and difficult to produce and handle.

Californium, element 98, is the heaviest element to be manufactured in quantities sufficient to be see with the naked eye. (Credit: Ahval)

The new goal at JINR is actually not element 119 but element 120 because calculations indicate that 120 could be a island of stability, lasting perhaps hundreds, possibly even thousands of times longer than elements that are slightly smaller. This stability arises from the laws of quantum mechanics where certain magic numbers of identical particles can arrange themselves in orbitals that produce a degree of permanence. Testing at the SHEF is slated to commence this spring so it’s possible that we may know if the theory is correct before the year is out.

The predicted ‘Island of Stability’ for heavier elements is centered around 120 protons with 180 neutrons. No one actually knows if there is such a thing, yet! (Credit: Physics Central)

So how far can we go, that’s almost impossible to say. With each step higher it not only becomes harder to produce atoms of new elements but harder still to detect them. Still physicists are clever creatures and they’ve always found a way to surmount whatever difficulty arises.

Of Course there are some downsides to being a physicist. (Credit: Foxtrot- Bill Amend)

There is a theoretical calculation, again based in quantum mechanics, which indicates that element 172 might be an impassible brick wall. Any more protons in a nucleus and they will start grabbing electrons to fuse into neutrons until the number of protons is reduced back down to 172. Of course that obstacle, if real is many years away and there’s still more than 50 elements to be manufactured before we reach it.

So the nuclear physicists will keep on working. If element 120 does turn out to be an island of stability you can bet that it won’t be long before labouratories are using it as springboard to even higher elements. The science of Trans-Uranium elements has not only taught us a great deal about how atoms are composed but at the same time advanced techniques for high-precision, high-sensitivity sensors as well as data collection and analysis. So the periodic table of the elements has grown quite a bit since I first studied it in high school, and I hope that I do live long enough to see a few more elements added to it.

Paleontology News for February 2021.

A lot to talk about today, a couple of topics that I’ve discussed in recent posts have come together in a single story so I think I start there.

The two subjects are bioluminescence; see my post of 8 August 2020, and fossils encased in Burmese amber, see posts of 16 December 2016, 1 June 2019 and 2 September 2020. Well in paleontology if you’re patient, and lucky, spectacular fossils will turn up from time to time including a 99 million year old, exquisitely preserved specimen of a lightning bug encased in amber.

100 million year old Fire Fly encased in amber. (Credit: Phys.org)

  Now insects in general don’t fossilize well, I have none in my collection, and fireflies, fire beetles and glowworms are especially rare since their bodies are softer than those of most beetles. So our knowledge of the evolution of bioluminescence in beetles is largely guesswork. Indeed, the current thinking is that bioluminescence first appeared in the larval stage of beetles as a defensive mechanism. Then, in order to retain the ability as adults the beetles also retained the soft body more typical of a larva.

Evolutionary biologists hypothesize that bioluminescence first developed in the larva of beetles and then was retained in the adult. (Credit: What’s the Bug)

That’s one of the thing’s that makes the specimen from Myanmar, which has been given the name Cretophengodes azari, so valuable. Perfectly preserved in amber the specimen is both clearly an adult, clearly a male and just as clearly possesses the organs necessary for bioluminescence. While it is impossible to say for certain how the animal used its luminous organ the fact that it is a male raises the possibility that the light played a role in mating just as it does for modern species. One more example of how the fossil preservation of soft parts, this time in amber, is answering many of our questions about the past.

It’s all about mating. Evolution had developed numerous techniques just so an animal can find a mate. (Credit: Radim Schreiber)

There are also some types of animals that have a very extensive fossil record but about whom we still have many questions because their hard shells fossilize so much easier than their soft bodies. In other words we know a lot about parts of the animal, and have a lot of questions about other parts.

A beautiful ammonite fossil that you can buy on the internet for only a hundred bucks! (Credit: Wish.com)

A good example of this are the Ammonites, extinct relatives of the modern nautilus. The coiled shells of Ammonites are very common, so common that they are commercially dug up and sold as knick-knacks. Hundreds of species of ammonites have been described based entirely on differences in the shells while paleontologists still argue over the details of the animal inside. Was it like a nautilus, or more like a squid, or maybe a cuttlefish, or something different from them all?

A chambered Nautilus is not an ammonite but obviously they are closely related. How close, well maybe the new fossil from Solnhofen will answer that question. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Such details may seem important only to professionals but remember we are talking about a large group of animals who survived for hundreds of millions of years. The nature of the ammonite animal is very important in the evolutionary history of life.

The Cuttlefish is also a close relative of the ammonites. (Credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium)

So when a fossil of a nearly complete ammonite animal, outside of its shell, is discovered that’s big news. The find comes from the Solnhofen limestone quarry in southern Germany, the same site that has produced those famous fossils of archaeopteryx. The limestone deposits of Solnhofen accumulated at the center of a lagoon some 150 million years ago. Like lagoon’s today the water was very salty, contained little oxygen and was very hot. Little could live there and any creature that died there would not decay but instead be slowly buried in the limestone. Because of this the fossils from Solnhofen retain clear evidence of the soft parts of the animals.

The world famous fossil of archeaopteryx from Solnhofen. The unique preservation of this specimen did much to convince 19th century scientists that evolution was a fact of nature! (Credit: Wikipedia)

Other ammonites have been found at Solnhofen, but always in their shell so that their internal organs are hidden as in life. This specimen however is entirely naked allowing Professor Christian Klug of the University of Zurich and fossil collector Helmut Tischlinger to reconstruct the anatomy of the fossil. In order to discover every detail of the ammonite the researchers even took photographs of the fossil under Ultraviolet light.

The Solnhofen ammonite. It may not look like much to you and me but to a trained expert almost the entire internal anatomy is there to be studied. (Credit: The New York Times)

Nearly the entire anatomy of the animal was there. The paleontologists could distinguish the digestive tract, with fecal matter still in the intestine along with reproductive organs and gills. The only parts that were missing were unfortunately the creature’s tentacles leaving still open the question of whether they resemble those of a nautilus or those of a squid.

How the internal organs in the fossil fit into the shell as reconstructed by Dr. Klug. (Credit: Forbes)

So how did this ammonite come to die outside of it’s shell? We may never know. The likeliest event is that the animal died in its shell but then lost its grip and simply slid out. However Doctor Klug hypothesizes that perhaps a predator pulled the ammonite out of its shell. Then, while munching on the tentacles the attacker lost its grip and the mortally wounded ammonite sank to the bottom. However the ammonite met its fate its survival as a fossil will teach us a great deal about a large and important group of animals.

While it is possible that the ammonite could have been pulled out of its shell by a predator it’s more likely that the animal just died and lost its grip on the shell. (Credit: The New York Times)

While ammonites were one of the most common denizens of the oceans back in the Mesozoic period on land one of the most common types of dinosaurs were the hadrosaurs, those two legged plant eaters often called duckbills because of their long, wide snout. Hadrosaurs were numerous both in terms of the total population of animals; plant eaters always outnumber predators, but also in the number of different species that are known to have existed.

The bones of Hadrosaurus foulkii at the Academy of Naturals in Philadelphia. This was the first dinosaur skeleton complete enough to show that some dinosaurs walked upright. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

For many hadrosaurs the key features that distinguish one species from a closely related one is skull shape and ornamentation. Hadrosaur skulls have been discovered that possess large frills, crowns and bumps. So varied and in some cases bazaar are the shapes of hadrosaur skulls that evolutionary biologists have even suggested that what we are seeing is a seventy million year old version of sexual selection, that hadrosaur skull ornamentation is like a peacock’s tail, having no practical use other than attracting females.

An unadorned Hadrosaurus skull. (Credit: BYU Museum)
A Hadrosaurus skull with a large crest. Probably used both to attract females and impress other males the crest is one way to distinguish one species from another. (Credit: The Natural Historian)

One such hadrosaur species is known as Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus, an animal whose nasal passages start near the animal’s upper lip, extends way up, a meter above their forehead, turns 180º around to come back to just above their eyes. The first skull of P cyrtocristatus was discovered in New Mexico in the year 1923 and dates back to some 75 million years ago.

The face of a Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus. The nasal passages run up and back down the animal’s face and are over two meters in length. (Credit: Sci-News.com)

That first skull sparked a debate about the purpose of P cyrtocristatus’s unusual nose. Ideas ranging from a snorkel to the long nose giving the animal a superb sense of smell have been advanced. The consensus opinion however is that the nose was used for both sexual display and to produce a loud, resonant low pitched roar that could have been heard for kilometers.

Now a new fossilized skull of P cyrtocristatus has been found in New Mexico not far from where the first skull was unearthed. Although most of the body, and even a portion of the skull had eroded away importantly the long nasal crest was preserved in greater detail than ever before seen. Indeed the new skull has already enabled paleontologists to better understand the relationship between P cyrtocristatus and its closest relatives P walkeri in Alberta Canada and P tubicen from younger rocks in New Mexico. The researchers also hope that the new find will enable them to learn more about how the crest developed as the animal grew.

The fossil skull of Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus found in New Mexico. While the lower portion of the skull is gone importantly the tube like crest is almost intact. (Credit: Sci-News)

The three fossils discussed here come from a very wide variety of animals but they all have one thing in common. By preserving a portion of the soft parts of the animal they have revealed some of the mysteries of life’s history here on Earth.

The Circular Economy, is it a pathway to a sustainable future for our planet or is it just another well-intentioned idea that will end up going nowhere?

I’ve written many times in these posts about the threats that we human beings have created to the very planet on which we live. While the biggest problems maybe carbon emissions causing climate change along with the ever growing piles of plastic trash we generate there are nevertheless many others such as Mercury getting into the food supply, agricultural fertilizer runoff into lakes and streams, ocean acidification etc, etc.

Just a few of the many environmental problems facing the world today. Kinda depressin’ ain’t it! (Credit: Vector Stock)

In those posts I’ve also discussed some of the efforts underway by scientists, engineers and sometimes just regular citizens who are trying to find solutions to those problems. However I freely admit that the solutions I’ve discussed so far were designed to address one environmental issue at a time rather than an overall plan for solving all of our problems. That’s the way I was taught and trained, you break a problem down to its component parts and by studying each part separately you can solve the whole problem. This technique is formally known as ‘Cartesian Reductionism’ after Rene’ Descartes the 17th Century French mathematician and philosopher who first described the technique and is often employed by scientists and engineers.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Mathematician, Scientist and Philosopher. (Credit: Sapaviva.com)
The conflict between reductionism and holism has become especially important in the field of medicine. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages so a balance is required. (Credit: ScienceDirect)

The opposite of Cartesian Reductionism is known a Holism, the idea that an organic system is bigger than the sum of its parts and therefore has to be studied in its entirety. Since life on Earth is the biggest organic system we know about maybe we do need to take a more holistic approach to saving the environment and develop overall strategies for living within what the Earth can give us. Today I’d like to discuss one such proposed strategy.

The approach is called ‘The Circular Economy’ but in some respects it’s really just a new term for recycling. However the circular economy is more than just having consumers recycling their plastic or aluminum or other waste. Instead the circular economy is an overall program designed for recycling waste of every kind, industrial as well as consumer.  While this concept has received a good deal of media attention in both Europe and Japan as far as I can tell it is largely unknown in the US.

A diagram of the Circular Economy. The idea is to minimize both the resource input and the disposal output to the circle. (Credit: Kenniskaarten – het Groene Brein)

As an example of what I mean by every kind of waste consider a cheese making company. Now everybody knows that to make cheese you start by separating milk into curds and whey using a coagulant like rennet. The curds go on to become cheese but the whey is generally just tossed out as waste.

The process of cheese making begins with the separation of milk into curds, the more solid part, and whey, the more liquid. The curds become the cheese while the whey is generally tossed out. (Credit: Farm Girl)

Well no more, not if a company called Chemicle succeeds in turning the whey into biodegradable plastic. The small company, which is headquartered in the UK, is investigating techniques for turning whey, which is a complex mixture of organic chemicals, into an alternative for oil in a number of industrial applications. Success would have the twin benefits of both reducing the amount of organic waste we dump into the environment while also reducing our dependence on oil!

The founders of Chemicle the UK company seeking to make biodegradable plastics out of dairy waste. (Credit: Chemicle / R. A. Lawler)

Another small company trying to make a big difference is Traceless, a German company. Traceless has developed a process that is able to convert waste from the agricultural industry into biodegradable cling wrap and other single use packaging products. Again the idea is to kill two birds with one stone by using a material that would otherwise end up in a landfill to manufacture products that we are currently making from petroleum.

Traceless corporation of Hamburg Germany demonstrates how their packaging material, unlike common plastics, biodegrades in just a short period of time. (Credit: Traceless)

In order for companies like Chemicle and Traceless to succeed we also need to coordinate the transfer of one company’s waste to those companies for whom it is a valuable resource. That’s where a company called Excess Materials Exchange will come in. Excess Materials Exchange is a Dutch company that functions as a middlemen, linking those companies trying to get rid of their waste safely with those companies that can use it.

Welcome site for Excess Materials Exchange. I love the slogan ‘A dating site for secondary materials’. (Credit: Medium)

These three companies, and many others are now contestants for an award called the ‘Green Alley Award’ that’s given by the Landbell Group, a German waste management corporation. First awarded in 2014 the € 25,000 award is open to European startup firms who are working to help create the circular economy. The idea of the Green Alley award is to not only provide a bit of cash that any small company can certainly use but to generate some media attention both for the companies involved as well as the entire concept of the circular economy.

The Green Valley Award already boasts a track record of helping small start-ups working to solve the problems of the circular economy. (Credit: Green Alley Award)

Hum! Do you think maybe the US could benefit from an award like the ‘Green Alley Award’?  At least we might learn something about the circular economy.

Movie Review: ‘The Dig’, on Netflix.

Although it was released to a small number of movie theaters in the UK your best chance of seeing ‘The Dig’, the story of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in the UK in 1939, is via the streaming service Netflix. In these days of the Covid-19 pandemic many film production companies are either holding on to their products until things return to normal, such as the next James Bond movie, or skipping the theaters to go directly to TV like Godzilla versus Kong. With the latter generally appearing on a subscription movie service like Netflix.

Poster for ‘The Dig’ on Netflix. (Credit: Netflix)

What long-term effect the pandemic is going to have on the movie industry can only be guessed at present. Movie theater corporations have been badly hurt by the loss of revenue due to the pandemic with Regal theaters declaring bankruptcy while AMC is barely holding on. If theaters in general disappear what will happen to the big, and costly blockbuster movies that Hollywood has come to depend on? It’s a good question as to whether a big budget Avengers movie could even make a profit if it’s only going to be seen in people’s homes? Only time will tell us what the answer will be. But for now we do still have movies to watch and review and this review is about ‘The Dig’.

The story of ‘The Dig’ begins as it did in real life, with landowner Edith Pretty, played by actress Carey Mulligan, on whose large property in Suffolk England are a number of earthen mounds that she suspects are archaeological sites. Local landmarks, the mounds even have a name that dates back centuries, Sutton Hoo, a name that in old English roughly translates as southern farmstead hill.

The site of Sutton Hoo as it is today, restored to about as it was in 1939. The ship burial mound is center top. (Credit: history.furman.edu)

Like many members of the English gentry at that time Edith had read about Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Wondering what may be hidden in her mounds Misses Pretty, Edith was a widow as the story begins, contacts with a local amateur archaeologist named Basil Brown, played by Ralph Fiennes, to excavate the largest of the mounds, one that she has a feeling about.

The real Edith Pretty (l) and as portrayed by actress Kate Mulligan (r). (Credit: The Telegraph)
The real Basil Brown (l) and as portrayed by actor Ralph Fiennes. (Credit: Heritage.suffolk.gov.uk and Yorkshire Evening Post)

What Basil discovers is the remains of a long wooden ship similar to a Viking dragon ship. He realizes that the mound is a ship burial, an entire ancient ship used as a platform, a coffin in a sense, for the burial of a Viking king or powerful noble. Such burials are known both from historical records as well as archaeological sites in Scandinavia. 

Artists impression of a ship burial. Obviously the departed was a person of great consequence and yes we do know of at least one woman who was so interred. (Credit: Pinterest)
Photograph of the excavation at Sutton Hoo. The remaining wood was so decayed that it could not be removed and really it was more of an impression in the soil than anything else. (Credit: Current Archaeology)

When the ship is about a third excavated and the nature of the find becomes news across the country a professional archaeologist named Charles Phillips from the British Museum arrives to take over. That’s one of the themes of ‘The Dig’, British snobbery. Throughout the first half of the movie anytime Brown wishes to talk to Misses Pretty he has to wait outside while the butler goes to get her, he’s hired help after all. And of course anyone with a university degree should be the one giving the orders rather than someone whom is really only a farmer playing at archaeologist.

By this time however Edith has come to trust Basil and since the mounds are on her land a truce is arranged where professional and amateur work together to complete the dig. As artifacts are discovered it soon becomes obvious that the burial is too old to be Viking. It’s Anglo-Saxon, straight out of the deepest part of the Dark Ages. Artifact after artifact is unearthed from the mound as Basil and the team from London occasionally glance nervously skyward where warplanes are roaring overhead.

A gold shoulder clasp from Sutton Hoo. This is just one part of the treasure discovered. (Credit: Wikipedia)

That’s the second theme of ‘The Dig’ because the excavation of Sutton Hoo took place in the late summer of 1939 as Europe was preparing to plunge into the bloodiest war in history. The professionals know that once the war starts, and in the movie no one has any doubt that the war will soon start, they’ll be ordered to stop their work and so the excavation continues with an air of impeding disaster.

Sutton Hoo was the grave of a warlord, as evidenced by his sword. The fact that the burial site was excavated right at the beginning of WW2 is a testament to our violent nature. (Credit: YouTube)

The team does finish in time however and an inquest decides that the treasure belongs to Edith who decides to donate it to the British Museum where she feels that the greatest number of people will be able see it. Indeed, today the Sutton Hoo treasure has an entire room at the British Museum. And to anyone who may not be familiar with Sutton Hoo treasures I heartily recommend checking out the museum’s site. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/sutton-hoo-and-europe

The Sutton Hoo helmet (l) and a modern reconstruction (r) shown at the British Museum. (Credit: Wikipedia)

I’m certain that by now you can tell that I’m giving ‘The Dig’ a big thumb’s up. The acting is impeccable and the cinematography is simply gorgeous. Most of all the story, the story of how the English people regained a large part of their history is both interesting as well as important.

A few last remarks. Although the body had long ago decayed away, it is thought that the person buried in the mound was probably King Rӕdwald of East Anglia or perhaps his son. Regardless of who it was, by being buried in such spectacular fashion he left us a great deal of evidence of the world in which he lived.

A map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as they would have been at the time of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. (Credit: Totally Timelines)

And the treasures of Sutton Hoo spent the war safely buried at an underground station in London. It wasn’t until nine years later that the British Museum first exhibited the treasure, with no mention being made of the role of Basil Brown in the discovery. After all, an amateur could not possibly have made England’s greatest archaeological discovery. But archaeology has a way of correcting for the prejudges of the past and today Basil Brown’s name is prominently displayed right next to that of Edith Pretty in the exhibit of the treasures of ‘The Dig’.

Hoarding behaviour, it’s not just little old ladies storing used twine and aluminum foil. In fact there are many species of animals that hoard things.

Hoarding, also known as caching is the storing and hiding of uneaten food to be consumed later. As a behaviour hoarding is known to be exhibited by a large number of different types of animal although the details of how the hording is conducted can vary greatly depending on the species.

My kind of hoarding, books! (Credit: Twitter)

Many examples of hoarding are well known even to people who have little knowledge or interest in the natural world. Squirrels hiding nuts for the winter and dogs burying a favourite bone are perhaps the best known examples but many other mammals along with several species of bird and even some insects hoard in one form or another.

Squirrels are certainly one of the most familiar hoarders, storing nuts for food during the winter. (Credit: Sky News)

The length of time that the food is stored can vary from just a few hours to half a year or more. Animals who live in temperate regions and who neither migrate nor hibernate will often store food for the winter; again the squirrel is a well-known example. On the other hand when a Leopard makes a kill they will usually carry the body into a tree in order to eat it in safety away from jackals or hyenas. If the leopard cannot finish it’s kill at one meal, and let’s face it even a baby antelope is more than one meal, they will store it in the tree for several days, coming back to eat some whenever they are hungry. For bees however the amount of time that honey is stored depends on the needs of the hive with some of the honey being used immediately to feed larval bees while some will be stored to feed the hive during the winter.

Leopards are capable of carrying a kill that weighs more than they do into a tree where they will consume it slowly over the course of days! (Credit: Twitter)
Perhaps the best organized hoarders of all are the bees who even build containers for the honey they store. (Credit: Fine Art America)

Naturalists recognize two basic strategies used by the animals who hoard, scatter hoarding and larder hoarding. In scatter hoarding the animal will hide small amounts of food in a great many different places. The upside of this strategy is that if someone else, usually a member of the same species who’s been watching, finds one of your hiding places and pilfers it only a small amount of food has been lost. The downside is that the more hiding places you have, the more likely it is that robbers will find a few of them increasing the odds of some loss. Another disadvantage is that with so many hiding places an animal may end up forgetting about a few of them resulting in further loss. That animal’s loss can be the forest’s gain however as forgotten buried acorns or other seeds can sprout to become new trees, a process known as seed dispersal.

The Scrub Jay is an example of a scatter hoarder. The jay can spread it’s seeds over a very wide area which actually helps the plants to propagate. (Credit: BioOne)

The opposite strategy is for the animal to keep its entire hoard of food in just a few, or even just one hiding place, a behavior known as larder hoarding. The benefits of larder hoarding are that the animal is unlikely to forget the location of any of its hoarded food and there are fewer hoards for a robber to accidentally discover. Of course if a robber does discover an animal’s larder it could mean the loss of everything, a real threat to any animal depending on its hoard to survive through a winter. Because of this threat those species that practice larder hoarding also spend a great deal more effort in guarding and defending their cache.

Acorn Woodpeckers are Cache Hoarders. Obviously such a rich hoard needs to be protected. (Credit: FISHBIO)

Naturalists have even observed a few species of animal that gather and hide food before it has ripened sufficiently to eat and then return later when the food has ripened. An example of this is the Central American Tayras, a relative of the weasel, who is known to hide green plantains for several days before retrieving and consuming them.

The Central American Tayra has been observed to gather unripened plantains, hide them and then return to eat them after they have ripened. (Credit: Reddit)

Hoarding is for the most part a selfish behavior with each animal keeping its own hiding places secret even from family members. In fact there are only two species, and very different species at that, who are known to share a communal larder, beavers and acorn woodpeckers. During the summer and fall beavers as a family will gather up a large stockpile of twigs and branches near their lodge that they then consume during the winter. Acorn woodpeckers are also different in that the community makes little attempt to hide their large larder at all.

Beavers place their cache of wood for the winter near the entrance to their lodge. The entire family will cooperate in both the gathering and eating of the stored food. (Credit: Hamilton College)

Most species that hoard also pilfer from their neighbors and other species as well. Food items that are stolen are then often hidden by the thief, a process known as reciprocal pilfering. In an experiment Jeffery pine seeds that had been exposed to a mild dose of radioactivity to make them identifiable, where given to yellow pine chipmunks. When some of the seeds were then pilfered it was discovered that 75% of the time the robber cached the ill-gotten seeds. Obviously hoarding is a complex form of behaviour that requires an animal with a considerable degree of intelligence.

Hoarding as a behavior is one of the reasons that squirrels have acquired so much intelligence, and dexterity! (Credit: Nautilus / Science Connected)

Any homeowner with a birdfeeder or a garden can testify as to what ingenious little devils squirrels are. But at the same time the advantages to be gained from hoarding have helped spur the evolution of intelligence in many animals. And not just animals, we humans are certainly hoarders, and I’m not just talking about the food in my refrigerator.  

Book Review: ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven D. Mettinger.

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain,” wrote Ben Franklin, “except death and taxes.” Putting aside taxes it is undeniable that death is the final end for each and every one of us in this world. Or is it? Many people believe in ghosts and stories abound of ‘undead’ creatures such as vampires and zombies. However generally such beings are believed to have died but not yet left this world.

The Ghost of Barbara Radziwitt by Wojciech Gerson. Despite thousands of ghost stories dating back thousands of years there is no reliable evidence for anyone coming back from the dead! (Credit: Wikipedia)

At the same time the mythologies of many cultures also contain stories about heroes or demigods who have entered the underworld and returned. In Greek legends both Orpheus and Odysseus descend to Hades while alive and manage to return. Other figures in other cultures make similar journeys.

Not all versions of the Orpheus myth are serious, Jacques Offenbach turned the story into a risque operetta for which he invented the dance the Can-Can. (Credit: Twitter)

About a hundred and thirty years ago the anthropologist Sir James Frazier collected and analyzed an enormous amount of mythological material from dozens of different cultures. In 1890 he published the first edition in a series of volumes he entitled “The Golden Bough” detailing the results of his studies. I have a copy of the abridged edition, abridged at 827 pages so the entire work is enormous! Sometimes considered the foundation of the study of comparative religion, ‘The Golden Bough’ has always been a very controversial book.

Cover of the third edition, first volume of Farzier’s ‘Golden Bough’ (Credit: The List)
Frazier got his title from a painting by William Turner that shows an ancient Roman ritual Frazier used as a starting point for his investigations. (Credit: Arnold Arboretum)

Much of the controversy arose due to Frazier’s definition of a class of deities that he called ‘The Dying and Resurrecting Vegetative Gods’. The basic story for each of these gods contained a violent death of the god that led to a descent to the underworld that was then followed by a return to life for the god. This motif, Frazier maintained, was a mythologized version of the yearly cycle of agriculture with the grain being cut down at harvest, then seeds are planted, then buried from which new plants will sprout. Thus the stories explained the yearly course of the seasons and since the stories are all cyclical you can of course start anywhere in the cycle and still get back to where you started.

Actually the evidence about any of these figures is scant and contradictory. (Credit: Elpidio Valdes)

The worship of these gods featured a period of morning for the god’s death at the end of harvest time, whenever harvest time occurred in a particular culture, along with a festival of rejoicing for the god’s resurrection when the first sprouts appeared. Frazier identified quite a few gods that he thought belonged to this group including well-known deities such as Adonis, Osiris and the Norse Balder along with many lesser-known mythological figures. The earliest, and therefore the type specimen for the group was a Sumerian god called Dumuzi who is also known by the name Tammuz given to him in the Hebrew scripture.

The Shepard Dumuzi (r) was the consort of Inanna (l) the Goddess of the Moon. At the end of the story Dumuzi spends half the year in the Underworld and half in the natural world. (Credit: Pinterest)

The whole idea of ‘dying and resurrecting corn gods’ was quite controversial but Frazier went further by linking them directly to the Christian Jesus. So dangerous were Frazier’s ideas that in the years following his death a reaction set in with many scholars criticizing Frazier’s entire category. The critics were aided by the archaeological discovery of the final chapter of the Dumuzi myth at a dig in Iraq, which was translated and first published in 1951. You see the first discovered cuneiform tablets to contain the Dumuzi story were missing the conclusion and to be honest Frazier had merely constructed an ending based on his study of other myths.

When the actual ending was discovered it bore little resemblance to Frazier’s ideas and this, along with other inaccuracies in Frazier’s work led to the category of ‘dying and resurrecting corn gods’ falling into disfavour. Still there was just so much evidence in both myths and rituals that the concept refused to go away.

The Greek demigod Adonis (r) bears many resemblances to Dumuzi. He is the consort of Aphrodite (l), he dies a violent death and is brought back to life by his beloved. (Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art and the artist Titian)

‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven D. Mettinger, Professor of the Hebrew bible at Lund University in Sweden, is a recent attempt to cut through all of the noise and just answer the question, is their even such a class of mythological figures as ‘dying and resurrecting gods’ that can be studied. Unlike Frazier, whose work examined scores of gods from cultures around the World, Professor Mettinger concentrates on just a few mythological figures from the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, primarily Adonis, Dumuzi-Tammuz, Osiris, along with the Semitic gods Baal and Melqart. In this way Professor Mettinger can examine the latest evidence for the myths and rituals concerning each deity. Also unlike Frazier, who at times would leap back and forth with evidence from Babylon to the Norse Eddas to ancient Sanskrit, Professor Mettinger sticks to one subject at a time making it much easier to follow his arguments.

Cover of ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ by Tryggven Mettinger. (Credit: Amazon)

Mettinger also examines the evidence much more critically than Frazier did, at times even discussing the differing translations of critical words found in ancient texts. This makes ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ a more technically demanding book, it is written primarily for experts in the field, but it also provides greater confidence in Professor Mettinger’s conclusions.

‘The Rape of Persephone’ by Charles Antoine Coypel. Persephone is the dying and resurrecting goddess who is carried down to the underworld by Hades and spends half the year with him the other half with her mother Ceres making plants grow! (Credit: Pictorem.com)

I do have a few criticisms of ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’, most notably the lack of a more thorough treatment of Persephone, the best known ‘dying and resurrecting goddess’. While the Greek queen of the underworld is mentioned several times in the book her myth not only deserves more examination but it could help to illuminate the latest understanding of Dumuzi’s fate. At the same time Mettinger also pretty much ignores the completely human characters in mythology who journey to the underworld and return, like Orpheus and Odysseus. In his conclusions Professor Mettinger decides that the category of ‘dying and resurrection gods’ is a valid one, one worthy of study. And if you’re interested in mythology and ancient cultures, in the way that old beliefs have evolved into our current religions then you’ll certainly find ‘The Riddle of Resurrection’ to be worth reading.  

Which species of animal is the best flyer? Here are a few words on behalf of flies.

For thousands of years human beings looked with envy on those living creatures that could take to the air and fly. The advantages that an animal can gain from flying are so numerous that many different kinds of creature have evolved one way or another to take flight.

Being able to fly is such an advantage to a creature that flight has evolved many times in the history of life! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Now the question of who is the best flier depends a lot on what criteria you’re looking at. In terms of long distance fliers there are several species of bird that fly thousands of kilometers without ever touching the surface. (Notice how I said surface there rather than ground. That’s because those extended flights are mostly over water.) But if you want to talk about maneuverability or a quick takeoff you can’t argue against the animals whose very name means aviation, the insect members of the order Diptera, the flies!

The Albatross is the king of long-range flying. There are actually over twenty different species all of whom are capable of flying hundreds of kilometers without touching the surface. (Credit: Britannica Kids)
While there are about 100,000 known species of the order Diptera, the flies, the common housefly Musca domestica is perhaps the best known. (Credit: University of Nebraska)

While many types of insects fly, some, like many species of beetle are rather clumsy, using flight mainly for escape from predators. Others, like bees, use flight as transportation, going from flower to flower or back to the hive in a straight line without any fancy flying.

In the Beetles, order coleoptera, the front wings have evolved into a hard casing that protects the rear wings which are still used for flying short distances. (Credit: The Guardian)
Dragon and Damsel Flies are not true flies because they still possess two pairs of wings. The pairs beat out of synch with the fore wings beating up while the rear wings beat down. (Credit: National Wildlife Federation)

Flies seem to have evolved just to be able to fly. They are capable of performing the most incredible acrobatic feats in mid air while the speed with which they can take off is quicker than the human eye can follow.

The compound eye of a fly is also a miracle of evolution. The thousands of separate light sensors may not give the fly as clear a vision as our eyes do but they give nearly 360 degree vision and are especially sensitive to motion. Another reason it’s so hard to catch a fly. (Credit: Phys.org)

Unlike most flying insects who have four wings, true flies have only two. The name Diptera in fact means two wings. Flies retain their original front pair of wings but the rear wings have evolved into long thin rods with knobs at the end called halteres. Instead of providing lift as a normal wing would it is the halteres that enable the fly to perform their amazing aero-athletics.

In flies the rear wings have evolved into structures called halteres that the fly uses for balance and control in flight. (Credit: Animalogic)

In straight line flight the halteres beat up and down in exactly the opposite motion of the wings. In other words when the wings go up the halteres go down and vice versa, this gives the fly great stability. Then, when the fly wants to change direction it does so by using the moment of inertia of the halteres. Because of their halteres some flies are able to completely reverse course in a single wing beat, less than ten milliseconds.

Flies are more than just a minor nuisance, they are carriers of many diseases and they will often lay their eggs, which develop into maggots, in our food ruining it. (Credit: BBC)

Flies of the family Calyptratae, which includes houseflies and fruitflies, are considered the best of the best. In order to discover how they use their halteres scientists Gwyneth Card and Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology first used high-speed cameras that could record at as much as three thousand frames per second to get baseline measurements of fly performance. They found that by using their halteres members of Calyptratae could take off or change course in as little as a single wing beat, around seven milliseconds.

Fruit Flies destroy billions of dollars of agricultural products every year. (Credit: The Home Depot)

The scientists then removed the halteres from their test subjects and measured the reduction in performance. Without their halteres to provide balance the insects become much clumsier, like a tightrope walker without their pole, sometimes with disastrous result. Not only did takeoff now require an average of four wing beats instead of the previous one, but also one species of fly, known as blow flies became so awkward that their takeoffs usually resulted in a crash. At the same time the fly’s performance while in the air also deteriorated markedly. While it’s true that flies may not be the best long-distance flies, when it comes to maneuverability and a quick take off members of the order Diptera are capable of aerial acrobatics that would make a jet fighter pilot’s head swim. We all know how difficult it is to catch a fly in the air or swat them when they’re on the ground and halteres are one big reason why!