Ever since the last of the Apollo missions to the Moon back in December of 1972, manned space exploration has been completely trapped in Low Earth Orbit (LOE). Over the last almost 50 years our robotic probes have gone on to explore every large body in the Solar System and a lot of smaller bodies. However no human being has gone further than 1000 kilometers from the surface of the Earth.
The Crew of Apollo 17, Eugene Cernan (seated), Ronald Evans (r) and Harrison Schmitt (l) were the last human beings to go further into space than Low Earth Orbit (LOE) way back in 1972. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
There have been a lot of proposals from NASA engineers, with plans pretty much alternating between returning to the Moon to establish a permanent base or else heading straight on to Mars. The most elaborate plan was developed during the George W. Bush administration with the ‘Constellation Program’ a scaled up version of the first Moon landings sometimes called Apollo on steroids. Constellation however was projected to be so expensive, and remember we were fighting a war on terror at that time, that it was quickly cast aside when the Obama administration took office.
Referred to as ‘Apollo on Steroids’ the Constellation Program during the George W. Bush Administration would have had a budget on steroids as well! It got canceled as soon as Obama took office! (Credit: YouTube)
Faced with the cancellation of their main human spaceflight program NASA regrouped and decided to just try and coax enough money out of congress to develop a heavy lift vehicle that could take humans back into deep space. A rocket so powerful that it would rival the Apollo Saturn V and once that was built, tested and flying it could be used for a Moon return or Mars program, whichever they could talk the politicians into. This new ‘Space Launch System’ (SLS) would be cheap to develop, the engineers assured congress, because it would be based on designs from, and actually use hardware from the now cancelled Space Shuttle program.
Much of the engineering for the Space Launch System (SLS), Block 1 (l) and Block 2 (c) is derived from the space shuttle (r). That was supposed to keep development costs low. Didn’t work out that way! (Credit: How Stuff Works)
The new mega-rocket would be designed like this. A core section consisting of tanks for liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen would be an elongated version of the big orange fuel tank used on the space shuttle. At the bottom of the core stage would be four RS-25 shuttle engines to provide 980 thousand kilograms of thrust for eight minutes. NASA actually had 16 of these engines left over at the end of the shuttle program so the first four SLSs will not even be required to have engines built for them. Then, attached to each side of the core section will be two, five section solid fuel boosters based upon the four section solid fuel boosters used for the space shuttle. With so much reuse of equipment and technology it was expected that the SLS would take very little time to develop and could be done at a reasonable cost.
Artists Impression of the SLS as it will appear on pad 39A at Kennedy before its launch. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Congress approved the SLS in 2011 with a planned first launch to occur in 2017 at a total price tag of $18 billion dollars, of which $6 billion would go to the development of a manned capsule named Orion and $2 billion for upgrades to the launch pad. In other words the SLS itself was only supposed to cost $10 billion to develop.
Developed in tandem with the SLS the Orion manned capsule had also had its share of technical problems. (Credit: Ars Techica)
It didn’t work out that way. Because of both engineering difficulties as well as dithering by congress with the appropriations the SLS has been subjected to an ongoing series of delays and cost overruns. Currently the program is four years behind schedule and will end up costing more than $18 billion dollars and we still haven’t had a single flight.
Even worse, thanks to the amazing success of Space X with their reusable Falcon 9 launch vehicle, the entire rational for a super heavy, and very costly SLS has been called into question. The SLS program has so far been saved from the budget ax however thanks to strong support from the senators and congresspersons in whose states the majority of the work is being accomplished.
The first stage of the Space X Falcon 9 launch system has now been successfully landed 81 times with 63 reuses considerably lowering the cost of getting into orbit! (Credit: Space Flight Now)
And we are now at least coming close to seeing the results of all that effort. In January of 2020 the first core stage of an SLS was completed and delivered to NASA’s test range. Again a series of minor problems caused delays so that the whole test program took nearly twice what was scheduled. The final ‘Hot Fire Test’ of the core stage of the SLS was only completed on March 18 of 2021.
The vehicle has since been sent to Kennedy Space Center to begin full assembly with first the side boosters and then an Orion capsule and service module. That first assembly step has now been completed and the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V is presently taking shape in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Kennedy. The first launch of an SLS, officially designated as the ‘Artemis 1’ mission, is scheduled to take place no earlier than (NET) the 4th of November this year. That initial launch will be unmanned but it will send the man capable Orion capsule on a trans-Lunar trajectory.
The massive core stage of the SLS being lifted inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Kennedy for insertion between its two solid fuel boosters. (Credit: Space Flight Now)Assemble completed on the core stage and boosters of the SLS. (Credit: Space Flight Insider)
The first manned launch of the SLS, designated as ‘Artemis 2’ is scheduled to take place NET September 2023. Artemis 2 will carry astronauts back to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years on a mission that will resemble Apollo 8, orbiting but not landing on the Lunar surface. The actual first landing of the Artemis program is scheduled for NET October 2024 with the Artemis 3 mission but considering construction of the Artemis Lunar landing module has not even begun that date can best be described as tentative.
The Artemis 1 mission scheduled for later this year will be unmanned but will return a manned capable spacecraft to Lunar orbit for the first time in 49 years. (Credit: SciTech daily)
And over the next several years there is the potential for more changes, more deviations from NASA’s planned path for the SLS. The space agency still wants to build the Lunar Gateway space station in orbit around the Moon but it is quite possible that most of the modules for Gateway may be launched on commercial rockets rather than the SLS.
NASA still hopes to build its Lunar Gateway Space Station as a part of its Artemis program. (Credit: YouTub)
And Mars? Well that’s so far down the road that the SLS could be totally obsolete by then. In fact, if you want my opinion the odds are that in the end the thirteen launches of the Saturn V will outnumber those of the SLS.
The 13 launches of the Saturn 5 rocket. Will the SLS succeed in eclipsing that number? (Credit: Space Exploration Stack Exchange)
Still, come this fall, cross your fingers, we will get to see a sight that hasn’t been seen for nearly 50 years, the launch of a really big, Moon capable rocket!
In his book ‘On the Origin of Species’ Charles Darwin coined the phase ‘Artificial Selection’ to describe the way we human beings breed those of our domesticated animals who possess those traits that we find desirable and wish to propagate. By selectively breeding our pets and livestock we have succeeded in generating an enormous number of different breeds of dogs, cats, cattle, sheep etc, etc. Botanists have used the same techniques to develop more productive and hardier stains of the plants we eat or the flowers we admire.
Darwin himself made a particular study of pigeon breeding, which is popular in England. He observed how breeders were able to take small variations in body and feather shape and size and by selectively breeding over several generations develop a new variety of pigeon. (Credit: www.mun.ca)
Several times Darwin contrasted this Artificial Selection with his ‘Natural Selection’. Both depend on the random mutation of genes to produce those changes in living creatures that produce new and different traits. But whereas we humans will directly favour those mutations with traits we desire, making certain they live longer and propagate more, in the natural world beneficial mutations give only a slight advantage. For example a Zebra colt with a mutation that enables it to run faster, a huge advantage for a zebra, could die in a drought or flood before it ever gets the chance to mature and pass on that beneficial mutation. This makes natural selection a much slower, more haphazard process than artificial selection.
In the wild a Sea Turtle hatchling that has a mutation allowing it to swim faster and farther than other members of its species could get eaten before it ever reaches the ocean! That’s one reason why natural selection is such a slow process. (Credit: Kirsten Hines)
Right now this planet is going though a large number of very rapid changes caused by the growth of our human population. Climate change, industrial pollution and the loss of habitat are just the three biggest problems that the other living creatures on Earth are having to adapt to. Problem is that they simply can’t adapt fast enough, natural selection is a slow process remember so instead of adapting what’s actually happening is that many species are going extinct. Every year more and more kinds of animals and plants just disappear because they aren’t able to evolve fast enough to keep up with the changes we are causing to the planet.
Once again global warming is a major driver in the changes our planet is facing. Many species may not be able to adapt to these changes quickly enough to survive. (Credit: BBC)
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to use the faster speed of human directed artificial selection to enable species to change fast enough that they could adapt to all the changes around them. That’s the basic idea behind the new program of ‘Assisted Evolution’, to use our knowledge of genetics and selective breeding in order to help species that are in trouble to adapt more quickly to a changing world.
Currently a major effort is underway in both the United States and Australia to use assisted evolution to save each nation’s coral reefs. Over the last 20 years or so nearly half of the Great Barrier Reef and the Reefs around the Florida Keys have seen massive episodes of coral die offs due to increased ocean water temperatures and pollution.
Higher ocean temperatures cause coral to become bleached, a condition they cannot survive for long. Nearly half of the world’s coral reefs have suffered an episode of this condition over the last five years and the trend is likely to continue. (Credit: NBC News)
Scientists in both nations have been studying the various species and varieties of coral, subjecting samples in a labouratory to excessive temperature and pollutant levels in order to discover which can better withstand the higher than normal levels of stress. Those varieties that showed greater adaptability are now being grown in nurseries before being transplanted back onto injured coral reefs in the hopes that they will grow and help repair the damage.
Oceanographers have been studying the varieties of coral to learn which can best handle higher temperatures. Those that can are now being breed in nurseries for later planting in damaged reefs. (Credit: Fast Company)
This type of assisted evolution is known as ‘Stress Conditioning’, forcing individual specimens to endure high, but non-lethal levels of the environmental stress. Those individuals that survive best are then breed in large numbers to be returned to the wild to hopefully increase their species chance of surviving.
Sometimes stress is a good thing, such as when you’re testing a new invention to see how well your design can handle vibration! (Credit: Delserro Engineering Solutions)
Australia is also the site of another effort using stress conditioning. In the centuries since Europeans first settled the land down under the native wildlife has suffered greatly from invasive European predators, feral cats in particular. Several species of marsupials, such as the lesser bilby and the crescent tailed wallaby have gone extinct primarily because of cats.
A bilby may look like a cross between a rabbit and a mouse but they are actually marsupials. The lesser bilby is now extinct and the greater bilby, seen here, is endangered. (Credit: Pinterest)
Because there are now simply too many cats to even try to eradicate them, researchers are attempting a different strategy to save other threatened species, exposing them to cats in controlled settings. Two large paddocks in the Australian Outback have been set up with a few hundred greater bilbies, a relative of the lesser bilby in one and a few hundred burrowing bettongs in the other. Five cats were then introduced into each paddock and allowed to prey on the native marsupials.
The cat proof fence used in Australia to protect bilbies and other endangered animals. In a recent experiment a few cats were introduced into the preserve in order to train the bilbies on how to avoid cats! (Credit: Greensborough Vet)
After several generations of the marsupials, during which time the number of cats was kept controlled; the offspring were placed in another paddock with members of their species that had not had the stress conditioning. Again a few cats were introduced and the ratio of kills for conditioned and naïve prey was measured. The naive marsupials suffered much more than their conditioned kin indicating that the conditioned bilbies and bettongs had become cat savvy a sign of hope that perhaps their species can learn to survive the harm done by invasive cats.
Nietzsche’s saying is very true in the natural world but the killing part happens a lot more often than the strengthening! (Credit: Brainyquote)
Another type of assisted evolution that is being tested in labouratories but not yet used in the wild is known as Assisted Gene Flow (AGF). In AGF the actual DNA of a threatened species is altered by a gene editor like CRISPR in order to change their anatomy to help them adapt to changing conditions. For example an animal whose environment is undergoing increasing drought conditions could be have genetic material from another species inserted into their DNA that enables it to better survive long periods of time with little water.
With CRISPR and other gene editing techniques we may soon have the ability to change species dramatically. If we use such techniques however will we just be turning the natural world into another product of out technology! (Credit: YouTube)
The technique of AGF is more controversial than stress conditioning however, as is the entire science of gene editing in general. The question of how many genes can be altered before you’re no longer saving the original species but a labouratory version of it comes into play. Indeed the whole question of trying to save threatened species by changing them is problematic.
Problem with assisted evolution is that we may end up with the entire world being domesticated and no longer wild! (Credit: How Stuff Works)
Still, every year as more and more species become extinct the possibility of saving some species by helping them adapt to the changes we are causing is at least trying to mitigate the harm we’re doing.
In 1790, as the new United States of America was busy setting up its constitutional form of government, it was by European standards a rather poor, backward, rural based country. The new country did possess a small number of degree granting Colleges / Universities such as Harvard, Yale and William and Mary which like their European models Oxford and Cambridge catered only to the very wealthy and concentrated on a liberal arts education.
Not too long ago you had to be born into a rich family in order to have a chance at getting into a college or university. (Credit: brainstudy.info)
However, because the United States was built out of a number of different, and competitive states it wasn’t long before each state had its own College or University such as the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia in New York, Princeton in New Jersey, and the Universities of North Carolina and Georgia. And as new states joined the union they too established a school of higher education. Ohio University was the first of these new Universities. Many of these new schools were funded by their state legislatures through the act of taking and selling tracks of publicly owned land to raise the money needed. The University of Georgia and North Carolina were the first of these ‘Land-Grant’ public Universities.
One advantage of being a union of separate states is that each state competed with the others in educating their citizens. So each state had to have its own university. Ben Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania. (Credit: AmericaiconsTemple)
Meanwhile by the 1850s the US federal government had acquired huge amounts of undeveloped land. Thanks to the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War the government in Washington owned several times as much land as all of its citizens put together. The idea began to circulate that the best way for the federal government to use some of that land for the benefit of the American people would be to establish land-grant colleges in every state and territory. This movement was led by a professor at Illinois College named Jonathan Baldwin Turner. Spurred on by Turner the Illinois delegation in congress began work on a land-grant bill but because of one of those flukes of politics the final bill was officially sponsored by a congressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill.
With the Louisiana purchase the federal government bought nearly as much land as the original US! More territory was later taken from Mexico so by 1850 the federal government owned a huge amount of land. (Credit: History)
The initial Morrill Land-Grant act passed both houses of congress in 1857 but bowing to pressure from southern states President James Buchanan vetoed the legislation. When Abraham Lincoln became President in 1861 Morrill resubmitted the bill and President Lincoln signed the bill into law on the 2nd of July in 1862.
Vermont congressman Justin Smith Morrill gets credit for the Morrill Land Grant Act. (Credit: Senate.gov)
But it was educator Jonathan Baldwin Turner who originally came up with the idea! (Credit: Wikipedia)
One critical feature of Morrill Land Grant bill was that the Colleges and Universities founded would be intended to teach agriculture and mechanical arts rather than concentrating on a classical, liberal education. In other words practical knowledge would dominate the curriculum, what today we would call engineering. Another critical feature would be that tuition at these publicly funded schools would be subsidized making a college degree available to a much wider section of the American society.
The Morrill act explicitly stated that the colleges and universities founded by it would teach practical subjects like agriculture and engineering rather than the Latin and Greek studies taught at European universities. Iowa State University, seal above, was the first school to take advantage of the Morrill act. (Credit: Iowa State University)
Iowa became the first state to take advantage of the Morrill Act by designating Iowa Agricultural College as Iowa State University. The first school to be created as a Morrill Land Grant school however was Kansas State University, which was officially founded on February 16, 1863 barely 6 months after the bill was signed. Since then every US state, territory and many Native American Tribes have created their own state university system that every year graduates tens of thousands of young Americans preparing them for their future careers.
Land Grant Colleges and Universities soon crisscrossed the US providing a practical education to thousands of young Americans, and yes at that time mainly white boys. Nevertheless the enormous number of trained engineers and scientists played a great role in building American industry and making the US the world’s richest and most powerful nation. (Credit: Slideplayer)
The Morrill Act came at just the right time to act as a spur to the growing American economy. In 1866 the total number of degreed engineers in the US was only around 300, that’s not the number who graduated in 1866 it’s the total number of engineers in the entire country. By 1870 however there were now 21 colleges offering degree programs in engineering and the number of degreed engineers had tripled. By 1911 the US was graduating 3,000 engineers each year, as many as the next two countries Germany and the UK combined.
An engineering class at MIT in 1900. This is more engineers than the US had just fifty years earlier! (Credit: MIT Black History)
So during the last four decades of the 19th century, as the US population grew thanks to immigration and the untapped resources of a continent became available the Land-Grant Universities supplied a steady source of trained engineers to turn those resources into wealth. According to economists the US overtook the UK to become the world’s richest country in 1872, just ten years after the Morrill Act became law, while in terms of per capita income the US overtook the UK in 1902. In less than 50 years the US had become the world’s leader in technology and the result of that leadership was the world’s richest and fastest growing economy.
The US overtook the UK as the world’s richest nation around 1870, just 20 years after the Morrill Land Grant Act. Coincidence, I think not! (Credit: City-Data.com)
There’s a name for this economic / social policy, it’s called ‘Investing in Human Capital’. From 1860 to 1900 the US Federal government ‘gave away’ some 70,000 square kilometers of land for the purpose of educating its citizenry. Instead of investing in ships or guns to make war or acquire colonies the US invested in its most valuable commodity, its people.
The idea of nations investing in their citizens, their most valuable resources, what a concept! (Credit: Slideplayer)
Now the Morrill Act wasn’t without its flaws, for one thing the land given by the federal government was first taken from the Native Americans through a long string of treaty violations. And many of the original Land-Grant schools simply refused admission to any black student. This second problem was somewhat alleviated by a second Morrill Act in 1890 that provided for the establishment of many of the historically black colleges and universities.
The Morrill Land Grant Act even provided funds that helped to found historically black colleges like Howard University. A vain attempt to make the phrase ‘Separate but Equal’ true that nevertheless did educate many blacks who later fought to put and end to ‘Separate but Equal’. (Credit: KPBS)
So what about today? Can a new, modern version of the Morrill Act help to get our country out of its current malaise? Right now we are all so concerned about China overtaking the US that we seem to be unable to do anything to keep ahead.
Currently China is founding a new University of Technical Institute every week! (Credit: daydaynews.cc)
And how is it that China, that was so backward and poor when I was growing up, is soon to become the world’s richest nation? Could it possibly be because China now claims some eight times as many Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) graduates as the US? Over the last 50 years China has invested in its own version of a Morrill Act and is currently building a new University every week! And the result of China’s ‘Investing in Human Capital’ has been the same as it was back in the 1870s, a new economic superpower.
If this trend continues the US could become a third world nation with super-rich, very poor and a shrinking middle class! (Credit: Twitter)
If America is to compete it must have a new Morrill Act of its own. We must guarantee two years of higher, that is college or trade school education to all of our children and we must make the necessary investment so that a four-year degree becomes once again affordable for the children of the middle class.
A good slogan not just for blacks but for all peoples! (Credit: Quote / Counterquote)
The United Negro College Fund has long had a slogan that I’ve always found to be extremely profound. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” It is time for the US to commit to the principle that it will invest in all of its citizens so that no mind goes to waste.
Year after year the evidence that fossil fuel emissions are causing the Earth’s temperature to rise and causing all sorts of environmental problems just continues to accumulate. (And again I don’t care whether you call it global warming or climate change I just want something done about it!) By this time only someone who is either making a great deal of money off of petroleum and natural gas or else is a total fool can doubt that we have to end our reliance on fossil fuels and invest heavily in more sustainable energy sources.
CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere act as a blanket, warming our planet. But all of the fossil fuels we burn are increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses causing the Earth to grow hotter and hotter! (Credit: Medium)
Slowly, bit by bit the tide is turning, more and more people are becoming aware of the grave threat posed by the continued use of fossil fuels. At the same time the alternatives to fossil fuels are becoming more realistic, even attractive from a business point of view.
Young people all over the world are becoming aware of the threat to their future posed by climate change! (Credit: Fox 29 News Philadelphia)
The cost of solar and wind generated electrical power is dropping dramatically. Electric cars have gone from being mere curiosities to a major part of the automobile market with every car manufacturer now boasting about their EVs, see my post of 3 March 2021. And power saving electric products, such as LED lights are gaining favour as consumers are now deliberately trying to reduce their carbon footprint, and save money.
Everyday we’re seeing more and more Electric Vehicles (EVs), and more places to charge them. (Credit: Deseret News)
At the same time political and legal pressure is building to make fighting climate change a major policy in many countries. Climate conscious Joe Biden’s defeat of global warming denier Donald Trump is just the most notable of a number of setbacks for politicians linked to the fossil fuel industry.
And Thank God is all I have to say! (Credit: New York Times)
And lately courtrooms in several nations have proven to be even less friendly to oil companies. Recently a Dutch court at The Hague ordered Shell Oil Company to cut by 45% the emissions of greenhouse gases caused by its products before the year 2030. In years past oil and gas companies had argued in court that they were not responsible for the emissions their customers produced with their products. This argument, know in legal circles as ‘Scope 3’ is now being overturned in case after case because, as the Dutch court put it, climate change due to greenhouse gasses “has serious and irreversible consequences” which threaten the “right to life” of human beings.
Headquartered in the Netherlands, Shell Oil company has been ordered by the Dutch court at the Hague to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses IT’S CUSTOMERS produce!! A landmark decision placing responsibility for global warming on the producers of fossil fuels. (Credit: Friends of the Earth Europe)
Surely however the most unexpected change has come in the boardrooms of the gas and oil companies themselves. A recent resolution that was circulated amongst shareholders in Chevron Corporation calling for the company to drastically cut its own ‘scope 3’ managed to gain 61% support. While the resolution was not binding, and did not specify any definite amount of the cuts no company’s management can ignore 61% of their stockholders.
Perhaps the biggest shock of all however came in the recent board elections at Exxon-Mobile Corporation, the one company that has before now fought hardest against any environment regulation of the oil and gas industry. In the election an environmentally activist hedge fund called ‘Engine No.1’ won at least two, perhaps threes seats on the twelve member board.
Of all the oil companies Exxon-Mobile has fought hardest against any regulations to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. Now they are being attacked from within as climate conscious investors worry about the long term business prospects of global warming. (Credit: CNBC)
Now don’t get the idea that the stockholder’s in Chevron and Exxon-Mobile have suddenly become tree-hugging environmentalists. The truth is that they can see that big oil’s days are numbered and if those companies are to remain profitable they are going to have to stop pumping oil out of the ground and invest in more sustainable energy sources. If you think about it this is a change that should have happened twenty or more years ago since the major petroleum producers were in the best position to develop alternative energy sources like solar and wind.
Why didn’t the oil and gas companies start investing in green energy decades ago? They had the money and they knew what was coming. They could have avoided much of the problems we now face while actually improving their long-term financial prospects. I guess it was just the old “I want money and I want it now!” attitude. (Credit: Vox)
Alright, so let’s assume for the moment that the tide has turned, does that mean that we’ve won, that the burning of fossil fuel’s is going to stop and the problem of global warming will soon be solved. Well the battle certainly isn’t over yet. First of all there are still many in the oil industry who are determined to just keep making money whatever the consequences. And even if publicly traded corporations like Shell and Exxon-Mobile are finally convinced, or compelled to do the right thing what about Russia, which is heavily dependent on oil as a export to keep its economy running. And what about China, which is still dependent on coal burning for much of its energy.
Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil company is perhaps the largest oil company in the world now. Virtually owned by the Saudi Royal family there is little legal pressure that can be put upon it to make it environmentally conscious. (Credit: The Washington Institute)
And even if environmentalists have gained the advantage it may already be too late! After all everyone isn’t going to buy an electric car tomorrow. And even with a commitment from the oil companies to reduce their scope 3 emissions oil and even coal burning power plants are still going to be generating electricity for years to come.
Even if we act quickly and decisively to reduce green house emissions there is already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that this is probably a sign of things to come. (Credit: The Guardian)
But we may not have many years before the worst consequences of climate change come to pass. Back in 2015 in the Paris Climate Agreement the nations of the world promised to take action to prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising more than 1.5º Celsius above pre-industrial levels, that’s the year 1850. Since that time there has been little accomplished and in fact greenhouse gas emissions have continued to steadily climb.
Not a pretty picture! The global rise is temperature since the beginning of the industrial age is unmistakable. And let’s be honest, it’s gonna get worse before it starts to get better! (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
Meanwhile scientists had calculated that the world was on course to reach and surpass that 1.5ºC level by the year 2030. Well, last year in 2020 the average temperature on this planet was 1.2º C above that in 1850 and the latest set of calculations has now given a 40% chance that we will reach that 1.5º C by 2025, just four years from now! So, is the news good or bad? I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Every day more and more people are getting involved in trying to protect our planet from our own worst impulses, but there is so much left to do with so little time left.
I went grocery shopping this morning, got $181 bucks worth of food and I paid with plastic. (Have you ever noticed how many slang words we have for money, bucks for dollars and plastic for a credit card?) When I go to actually pay my credit card bill I will just transfer some money from my checking account. And of course the money I receive from my pension, social security and 401K are all directly deposited into my checking account.
With the convenience of modern banking you never have to see or touch your money in order to spend it all. (Credit: Britannica / Insightful Accountant)
In fact I’m your typical 21st century American, I can receive and spend money in large amounts without ever having to actually touch any of it. It’s all just numbers stored in computer spreadsheets at the grocery store, my credit card company and my bank, and let’s not forget the U.S. Government.
More and more our wealth is just a bunch of number on a spreadsheet. (Credit: FamVestor)
So do we actually need money, cold hard cash anymore? Couldn’t we just do all of our financial transactions on the computer? And is this what these new cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are all about?
So, do we really even need money, actual bills that is, any more? (Credit: Wikipedia)
Yes, but with one big addition. You see cryptocurrencies are also intended to remove government institutions, like the US Federal Reserve, from the system. Cryptocurrencies are at the most basic level just a group of individuals and corporations, including banks, who agree among themselves that they will honour the value of the cryptocurrency held by other members of the group. An old fashioned marketplace where barter is the rule like back in the Middle Ages only made instantaneous and international by the Internet.
Olde fashioned bartering just doesn’t work well for many reasons. Some agreed upon medium of exchange smooths out a lot of the problems. (Credit: NotJUSTANENTREPRENEUR.com)
Of course that’s the way ‘real money’ actually works. The only reason a dollar bill has any value is because everybody says it has, because they have faith in the US government. With a cryptocurrency the members of the group who hold the currency must either have faith in everybody else or faith in a system where everybody monitors everybody else. Ronald Reagan’s old saying of ‘Trust but Verify’ is the key here.
If everybody knows what everybody else has you should be able to trust each other, right? (Credit: Imgflip)
That second option is the secret behind the blockchain, an ever growing list of transactions, each transaction is called a block, that are kept in sequence by means of a timestamp of when the transaction occurred. Since every member of the cryptocurrency group has access to all blockchain records deception by anyone member is impossible, or at least it’s supposed to be.
The elements of a blockchain. If all of these records are kept for each and every transaction you can easily see that it won’t be long before there’s an awful lot of data for each participant to store. (Credit: Euromoney)
The blockchain concept was originally proposed back in 1983 by the cryptographer David Chaum in an article entitled ‘Computer Systems Established, Maintained and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups’. The first working blockchain was organized by what appears to be an anonymous person or group of people using the name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ in 2008. The blockchain established by Nakamoto now is known and traded as ‘Bitcoin’ and has remained the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Starting in 2008 the blockchain for Bitcoin has grown steadily with each and every transaction being added until in 2020 the blockchain had grown to a size of 20 Gigi-bytes (GB).
Bitcoin was the first and is by far the most popular cryptocurrency right now. So if it’s a cryptocurrency why do they have actual coins??? (Credit: CNBC)
If you’re thinking right now that the openness and transparency of cryptocurrency must make it a very honest enterprise, well think again. First of all it’s the computers that trade cryptocurrencies, not people. This allows the person who is telling the computer to trade a cryptocurrency to remain completely anonymous. And even if the exchange of a cryptocurrency is permanently recorded, the reason for the exchange is not. In other words if I give you a bitcoin that transaction will be recorded in the blockchain but what you gave me for my bitcoin is not recorded. For these reasons cryptocurrencies are commonly referred to as being pseudonymous rather than anonymous.
Since it’s only computer who buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies the people who order the transactions can remain hidden! (Credit: Coindesk)
There have in fact been several instances already of cryptocurrencies being used for illegal activities, usually drug trafficking. There are also great concerns about cryptocurrencies being by employed by individuals and states to avoid international sanctions, remember the computers making the transactions are known but not the people controlling the computers.
Cryptocurrencies have already been linked to several instances of illegal drug trafficking. (Credit: Eurojust)
Other criminal activities have also been associated with cryptocurrency and indeed many economists and financial regulators fear that the entire enterprise could be nothing more than a ponzi scheme. Look at it this way, a cryptocurrency is established by a single person or small group who set up a thousand or more separate accounts, an easy thing to do with a computer.
Bitcoin is itself not a fraud but the whole system is so new, so poorly understood by many investors that the potential for fraud is far greater than with more traditional investments. (Credit: The Balance)
Those accounts, all controlled by a single entity remember, carry out thousands of transactions making it look as if the new cryptocurrency is very successful. Other Investors, wanting to get into a good thing then purchase large amounts of the new cryptocurrency. The original entity then just takes all that money and runs leaving the investors with nothing but a worthless cryptocurrency.
For these reasons governments have in general taken a rather jaundiced view of cryptocurrencies. Many have gone so far as to made trading in them illegal. Egypt, Algeria, Nepal and Pakistan among others have outright banned cryptocurrencies while China, Colombia, Iran, Lithuania and others have prevented their financial institutions for dealing in them, an effective if not outright ban. Additionally the major social media platforms such as facebook and twitter have refused to advertise any cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin may be legal in most of the world but that doesn’t mean governments like it, or that it will remain legal! (Credit: SpandmeNot)
In the US and EU cryptocurrencies are currently being tolerated but certainly not welcomed. The rise and fall of the value of Bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency, is now being kept track of in the same fashion as the stock markets. Unlike stocks however, which do provide ownership in an actual company, Bitcoin is really nothing but an agreement among its members so the price tends to fluctuate dramatically. On the other hand the nation of San Salvador has decided to accept Bitcoin as legal tender and you can now use it to purchase tickets for the Oakland Athletics baseball team as well.
Using cryptocurrency to but your baseball tickets. A lot has changed since I was a kid! (Credit: Medium)
So, are these new cryptocurrencies the wave of the future or just another get rich quick scheme? Probably both if you want my opinion. Computers and the Internet have given people across the globe the ability to conduct business transactions to an extent never before possible. The use of some form of international currency for those transactions, based upon a blockchain type of security is probably inevitable.
It’s always a good idea just to careful with your money! (Credit: Buddy Loans)
However, at the same time the ability of crooks and con-artists to misuse cryptocurrencies will undoubtedly grow. Because cryptocurrencies are new, even supposed experts don’t really understand them and that’s just the sort of situation fraudsters love. So if you looking to invest some money in cryptocurrencies my advise is to be careful, and don’t put all of your eggs into the cryptocurrency basket.
From its very conception the goal of the United Nations has been not only to promote peace among the nations of the World but also to improve the lives of all of Earth’s people. The declaration of the rights of all human beings in 10 December 1948 was merely the first step in a continuing effort to make the world a more peaceful place by making it a healthier, fairer, wealthier place for all of us to live.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations. Its unfortunate that so many nations today still treat it as a empty promise. (Credit: Public Domain)
Over the years a number of multi-nation conferences and working groups have been organized to better define those specific goals that need to be attained in order to ‘achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.” On the fifth of December in 2014 the General Assembly of the United Nations accepted from the Secretary General a set of eight Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals were then ratified by all 193 member states on the 25th of September in 2015.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals as adopted by the UN. According to plan there all should be attained by the year 2030. (Credit: National Geographic Society)
The plan agreed upon by the UN was officially designated the 2030 Development Agenda with the stated ambition of achieving the goals by the year 2030. Over the next several years nine additional goals were added to the list bringing the total to seventeen. The goals are interdependent, that is progress in one can support progress in others. Together these SDGs represent a roadmap for improving the lives of people around the world while eliminating many of the causes for violence and conflict.
Goal Number One is for the elimination of extreme poverty. It is estimated that currently some 736 million people live in conditions of extreme poverty, nearly half of these in conflict zones. Progress in eliminating poverty is to be assessed by seven targets and thirteen indicators.
Extreme wealth and abject poverty in the same photograph. Hasn’t that been the norm throughout human history! (Credit: Foreign Policy)
Goal Number Two is for there to be zero hunger in the world. The connection to goal number one is obvious; less poverty clearly implies fewer people who are unable to acquire enough food to eat. Currently one person in nine is considered to be undernourished. Eight targets and 1 indicators have been accepted to measure progress in ending hunger.
And with poverty comes hunger as certain as night follows day! (Credit: Deccan Herald)
Goal Three is Good Health for every human, progress to be measured by 13 targets and 28 indicators. While eliminating poverty and hunger will certainly go a long way in promoting good health, goal three also includes such conditions as access to health care, infant and maternal mortality along with the control of communicable diseases.
Quality healthcare is still a goal in many developed countries and mostly unknown in the third world. (Credit: www.molnlycke.com)
Goal Four is to provide a Quality Education for everyone with progress assessed by 10 targets and 11 indicators. Access to free primary and secondary are considered essential along with affordable vocational and higher education. Another critical factor is the elimination of all forms of discrimination in education with special attention being made for the education of women.
Malala Yousafzai was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her continuing efforts to gain access to quality education for women. (The Abuja Times)
Goal Five, Gender Equality. Worldwide women face more than discrimination in education. Both working conditions and chances for advancement for women are greatly inferior to those for men in many parts of the world. Worst still are the physical dangers women often face including genital mutilation and becoming the victims of honour killings.
In our modern technological world the old gender roles of men doing the heavy work and women doing the cleaning and childcare just doesn’t work. Equality means equality. (Credit: The Leaflet)
Goal Six is to provide Clean Water and Sanitation. The connection to goal three, good health is obvious but its often forgotten in more prosperous countries how much better our lives are thanks to our society’s commitment to cheap, abundant fresh water and decent sanitation. The UN has designated eight targets and eleven indicators to measure improvements in water quality.
Worldwide three quarters of a billion people do not have steady access to clean water! (Credit: Peterson’s)
Goal Seven, Affordable Clean Energy, five targets and six indicators. Adequate supplies of energy are a requirement in our modern world but as we now know energy can be a two-edged sword with fossil fuels continuing to inject both greenhouse gasses and poisonous chemicals into the environment. With this in mind all efforts undertaken for goal seven are geared towards renewable, sustainable energy sources.
In modern world access to adequate energy is not enough, it must be green energy. (Credit: Vox)
Goal Eight is concerned with the availability of Decent Work and Economic Growth as reflected by the attainment of twelve targets. Those targets reflect a commitment to improve the economies of the member states of the UN but to do so in ways that promote more equal pay and better working conditions while doing so in more environmentally friendly and sustainable ways. At the same time efforts will be undertaken as a part of goal eight to eliminate once and for all both slavery and child labour.
Decent working conditions are still a dream for man people in the world today. (Credit: Eco-Business.com)
Goal Nine deals with Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, eight targets with twelve indicators. Development is directed towards sustainable and non-polluting manufacturing. At the same time better access to financial and information support services are seen as key. Perhaps most important is the improvement of infrastructure in those areas of the world where good roads, power, water and communications utilities are lacking.
Just as good roads have improved the lives of people in the developed world so they could improve the lives of people in less developed countries. Infrastructure is an engine of economic growth. (Credit: Bloomberg.com)
Goal Ten seeks to Reduce Inequalities both in wealth and justice. Ten targets will direct the efforts to end discrimination in its many forms. Equal opportunity and pay will be key features of this effort.
As a example of inequality in wealth just see image number three above!!!
Goal Eleven: Sustainable Cities and Communities consisting of ten targets and fifteen indicators. In our modern age the greater majority of human beings live in cities or other high-density communities sections of which often have inferior if not actually unhealthy living conditions. Goal eleven seeks to eliminate ‘shanty towns’ and other ghetto-like areas through sustainable development.
Fairmount Park in my home town of Philadelphia is an excellent example of how access to green spaces can improve the lives of a city’s residents. (Credit: Visit Philadelphia)
Goal Twelve deals with Responsible Consumption and Production. In my post of 17 February 2021 I discussed the new concept of a ‘circular economy’ that emphasizes recycling and eliminating waste in order to end our current practice of dumping everything we no longer want into the environment. Similarly goal twelve contains eleven targets aimed at reducing the negative impact our industry has on our planet.
The circular economy wastes nothing so nothing but energy, green energy is needed to keep it moving. (Credit: Kenniskaarten – het Groene Brein)
Goal Thirteen is concerned with Climate Change and the efforts we must undertake if we are to prevent the worst consequences of global warming. By now the dangers of the greenhouse gasses emitted by fossil fuels are obvious to all but the most obtuse making the five targets contained in goal thirteen critical to the very future of our species.
Global Warming over the last 50 years. What do you think the next 50 will be like? (Credit: Wikipedia)
Goal Fourteen, Life below Water. The emphasis in goal fourteen is not only to curtail the amounts of pollutants being unceremoniously dumped into the waters of the world but to also eliminate overfishing and other practices harmful to life in the oceans. At the same time goal fourteen seeks to promote the sustainable use of Earth’s oceans through such technologies as aquaculture and sea farming. Seven targets shall serve to measure progress.
In order to feed ourselves we are driving many species of fish to near extinction. So, what will our grandchildren eat? (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)
Goal Fifteen deals with Life on Land and our efforts to protect all life on this planet. As such the nine targets of goal fifteen deal with such issues as deforestation and desertification while fighting poaching and trafficking in protected species. At the same time working towards more sustainable use of the land will serve to benefit human as well as animal life.
Imagine killing a magnificent beast like this Rhino, just to get a few kilos of horn to sell. (Credit: DW)
Goal Sixteen promotes Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. Throughout history war has been the greatest threat to human progress not only directly by the murder of countless people but by reducing whole populations to poverty, by the destruction of land and infrastructure bringing the rise of banditry and other crimes. Goal sixteen employs ten targets in the effort to combat violence of every kind by promoting the rule of law through the establishment and strengthening of civil and governmental institutions.
Call me olde fashioned but I still think that, for all of its faults democracy is still the best hope for a peaceful, prosperous, happy world. (Credit: Think Immigration)
Goal Seventeen finally seeks to bring all of the SDGs together in a single Partnership for the Goals. Nineteen targets and twenty-four indicators will help lead to greater international cooperation toward the efforts of all the goals. Sharing knowledge and technology as well as working together on shared concerns will enhance progress and promote a shared sense of accomplishment.
A long list and by now I’m certain that you’re asking yourself, what chance is there that the bureaucrats at the UN will actually complete any of these goals? After all the SDGs were accepted in 2015 and supposed to be completed in 2030 but little, if anything has accomplished. Aren’t all of these goals just a way for the politicians to convince themselves that they’re making the world a better place without them having to actually do anything?
Isn’t the UN just a big bureaucracy and isn’t a bureaucracy just the best way to get nothing accomplished? Maybe, but at least for the first time in history somebody is trying! (Credit: Medium)
Maybe you’d be right to think that way but ask yourself this. When in human history have the nations of the world even said that they wanted to make the entire world a better place, let alone agree on what that better world would look like, let alone try to do anything to get there? In ten thousand years of human history this is the first real plan for bringing peace and prosperity to the entire human race. If you look at it that way, any accomplishment, any, will be a major step forward.
At the beginning of the 20th century physicists were shocked to discover various substances that were emitting particles sub-atomic in size yet possessed energies that per particle were enormous, far greater than could be explained by the chemical reactions that were known at the time. The alpha and beta particles that were found coming from Uranium and other heavy elements defied everything that ‘classical physics’ understood. Remember at this time an atom meant something indivisible, nothing smaller and the concept of nuclear energy had to wait for the concept of a nucleus.
Antoine Henri Becquerel (l) visiting the Curies Pierre (m) and Marie (R). These three scientists would be awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of radioactivity. (Credit: Linda Hall Library)
An even bigger shock came when such particles were found to be shooting through the very air around us. At first scientists thought this radiation had to be coming from substances in the ground. To test that theory in 1912 physicist Victor Hess equipped a balloon with instruments that could detect the particles. He rode the balloon several kilometers into the air expecting that the intensity of the radiation would decrease as the balloon rose. Instead it got stronger. At an altitude of five kilometers Hess found that the intensity was twice as strong as at sea level. The particles were coming from outer space. They were cosmic rays!
Victor Hess preparing to take one of the balloon flights where he proved the radiation was coming to Earth from Outer Space. (Credit: The New York Times)
Ever since then physicists have studied these mysterious particles hoping to learn where they come from and how they were accelerated to such enormous velocities and energies. In 1932 another mystery was added when the first ever anti-particle, an anti-electron was found in cosmic rays by the physicist Carl Anderson. For their work on cosmic rays Hess and Anderson would share the 1936 Nobel Prize in physics.
Physicist Carl Anderson with the first photograph of a cosmic ray Anti-electron. (Credit: Famous Scientists)
After a lot of hard work researchers recognized one thing, the cosmic ray particles they were studying at the Earth’s surface were not the original particles. You see when a particle moving through space at nearly the speed of light enters the Earth’s atmosphere it will quickly strike the nucleus of either an oxygen or nitrogen atom, often smashing that nucleus to bits. Those bits receive energy and momentum from the original particle and so continue downward, sometimes striking other nuclei in a cascading reaction. The bits from the collisions are what physicists see down here at Earth’s surface, only rarely does the original particle reach our instruments. (Actually that’s a good thing, our atmosphere acts as a shield protecting life down here at sea level from most of the radiation.)
The high energy particles we see here at Earth’s surface are actually not the primary cosmic rays but rather the fragments of numerous collisions triggered by the original particle. (Credit: CERN)
So in order to study the primary cosmic ray particles physicists have to get their detectors above the atmosphere and ever since the beginning of the space age they’ve tried to do just that. Early instruments put aboard the Skylab Station and taken into space by the Space Shuttle discovered that there were two distinct types of cosmic rays; one type came from the particles that make up the solar wind. The other type, which are usually more energetic, come from outside our solar system, some perhaps even from outside our galaxy.
The first Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-1) was carried into orbit aboard the space shuttle. (Credit: Symettry Magazine)
The most sophisticated instrument sent into orbit thus far is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS-2) which for the last ten years has been attached to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS). During that time the AMS-2 has detected, measured and recorded over 44 million cosmic ray events every day. More than 160 billion cosmic ray particles have been cataloged by the instrument.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 2 (AMS-2) instrument has been attached to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) for ten years now.
As a cosmic ray particle enters the AMS-2 its velocity is measured by either a Transition Radiation Detector (TRD) for high-energy particles or a Time of Flight Counter (TOF) for low energy particles. Inside the AMS-2 a permanent magnet causes the particle’s path to curve, the degree of curvature giving information about the particle’s mass. Finally a calorimeter measures the particle’s total energy. Using these pieces of data the physicists can both identify the cosmic particle, element and isotope, as well as its total energy.
The AMS-2 is a highly complex and sophisticated instrument that has measure the properties of over 160 billion cosmic ray particles. (Credit: ESA Earth Online)
What the AMS-2 has discovered about the cosmic rays coming from outside our solar system is first of all that they broadly fall into three categories, electrons, atomic nuclei and anti-matter particles; I’ll save the anti-matter for later. Electron intensity at high energy has been shown to be largely suppressed and we have a pretty good idea of why. You see because of their tiny mass, 1/2000th that of a proton, high-energy electrons traveling through interstellar space get pushed around by the magnetic field of the galaxy causing them to lose their energy and they cease to be part of the cosmic rays after only a few hundred light years.
Some of the results from AMS-2 for electrons and positrons (anti-electrons). (Credit: AMS Collaboration)
Protons and atomic nuclei manage to maintain their energies much further, 2000 times further or more. And keeping in mind that a proton is also the nucleus of a hydrogen atom what the measurements made by AMS-2 tell us is that cosmic ray particles are pretty much just normal stellar matter. That is about 80% of cosmic rays by mass are hydrogen nuclei (Protons) about 20% by mass are helium nuclei while all of the remaining elements make up less than 1% by mass. In fact this is just about the proportions we see when we measure the constituency of the matter in our Sun and nearby stars. The majority of cosmic rays are simply the nuclei the normal atoms that have somehow been accelerated to enormous velocities.
The cosmic ray spectrum, flux of particles versus energy as measured by AMS-2 and other experiments. Since we now have good measurements of how much energy these particles have the question is now, where do they get that energy? (Credit: SpringerLink)
Then there are the anti-matter particles and in truth the real purpose, the juicy meat of the AMS-2’s program was to detect and measure as many anti-particles as possible. You see most of the theories about how the big bang happened say that our Universe should consist equally of matter and anti-matter, but there’s virtually no anti-matter here on Earth or in our solar system. What anti-matter there is comes from high-energy collisions, like those from cosmic rays, and the anti-particles don’t last long.
All of our experiments at atom smashers, along with all our theories tell us the there should be as much anti-matter as matter in our Universe. So where is it? (Credit: Science Notes)
Our observations of the Milky Way also rule out any large amounts of anti-matter in our galaxy. In fact most astronomers think it highly unlikely that there are any anti-matter galaxies within at least 100 million light years. So where is all of the anti-matter, are there anti-matter galaxies anywhere in the observable Universe? That’s one of the big questions it was hoped that AMS-2 would help to answer.
And AMS-2 has provided quite a bit of data that has given physicists a lot to think about. The intensity of anti-electrons for one thing is about five times higher than can be accounted for by established theories. This has raised the possibility that the excess anti-electrons are produced by ‘physics beyond the standard model’ such as the decay of ‘dark matter’ particles.
AMS-2 has also found an excess number of anti-protons in the cosmic ray flux and physicists are trying to determine how well their models predict the number and energy spectrum. Remember single anti-particles are regularly produced in cosmic ray collisions. The big news however has to be the ‘preliminary’ detection of eight anti-helium nuclei. Now because of its importance these detections are being carefully scrutinized, any possible kind of contamination eliminated, nevertheless the data has physicists very excited.
The Anti-Proton to Proton ratio in the primary cosmic rays. There are about one anti-proton for every 10,000 protons but the ratio is pretty flat as a function of energy. (Credit: CERN Document Server)
After all, if the discovery of anti-helium is confirmed that would mean that somewhere in the universe there is an anti-star, a star composed entirely of anti-matter, producing anti-helium by the process of fusion, just as our Sun produces helium by fusing hydrogen. Somewhere, a billion light years or more away, there are anti-galaxies with anti-stars and anti-planets, maybe with anti-people living on them.
Is there an entire Universe composed of anti-matter, and how would we ever know? (Credit: American Physical Society)
Or are they the real people and we’re the anti-people?
Oh, you may have noticed that I’ve haven’t discussed the theories physicists have concerning how cosmic ray particles ever get so much energy. I’m saving that for a later post!
We humans tend to think of evolution as the slow but steady upward progress of various species of life into newer, better forms. A more accurate description however would be adaptations to the anatomy and behavior of species so that they can better fit into their local environment. Evolution is after all a response to local conditions not some universal motion along a directed path toward a specific goal. In other words evolution wasn’t aiming at us in any way.
The Ascent of Man is actually not a good example of evolution at work! (Credit: Learn Biology Online)
The diversity of Darwin’s Finches, the way they adapted to a new environment, is a much better description of Natural Selection at work. (Credit: Wikipedia)
If you think about it then you might ask the question, what happens when a species becomes so well adapted to its environment that there are no longer any evolutionary pressures on it? Would such a species simply stop evolving? Well today I’d like to talk about several species, and one symbiotic relationship, that have survived mostly unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. Such creatures are often referred to as ‘Living Fossils’ and by studying them biologists have learned a lot about what evolution does, or doesn’t do.
I’ll start with the creatures with which I am personally familiar, horseshoe crabs. I wrote a post about the annual breeding of horseshoe crabs back in 22nd of May 2019 so today I’ll simply review a few of the most interesting facts about this ancient creature.
Just seeing a horseshoe crab gives one the feeling of being in the presence of a form of life far older than the dinosaurs! (Credit: National Wildlife Federation)
Based upon their fossil record horseshoe crabs first appeared back in the Ordovician period more than 450 million years ago (mya). Although they are members of the phylum arthropoda horseshoes are not true crabs but are actually more closely related to modern spiders and scorpions. Today there are four remaining species of horseshoe crabs who inhabit the near shore ocean environments where they live by crawling along the seabed consuming mostly worms and molluscs they find in the sand.
The genus Xiphosurid, from the lower Ordovician, almost 500 mya, is consider the direct ancestor of the horseshoe crabs. (Credit: ebay)
Once a year, in the spring here on the US east coast, horseshoe crabs leave their shallow ocean homes to come onto land and mate. I have witnessed this annual and very ancient ritual several times and can only hope that the mating of horseshoe crabs goes on for many millions of more years.
Horseshoe Crabs mating along the Delaware Shore. Thousands of these ancient creatures appear every year to continue a line dating back nearly 500 million years. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Of course the biggest threat to horseshoe crabs are human beings. Every year along the eastern seaboard about a million of these creatures are harvested to be used as bait in eel fishing. Another half a million are collected to obtain the animals blood, which is blue in colour because it is based on copper not iron. The blood of horseshoe crabs contain amebocytes, cells similar to our white blood cells and which like them fight disease pathogens. Indeed the amebocytes of horseshoe crabs are so sensitive that we use them as a means to test of the purity of drugs and medicines.
Horseshoe Crab blood, yes it’s blue, being harvested for medical purposes. No adequate study of the mortality rate of this process on the crabs has ever been undertaken! (Credit: Natural History Museum)
The labouratories that obtain horseshoe crab blood maintain that only about 5% of the animals harvested die in the procedure. Many scientists however doubt that assertion pointing out that there have been no studies of what happens to the crabs after they are released back into the ocean.
The biggest threat to the horseshoe crab however has to be just the ongoing development of the shoreline. As more and more houses are built right up to the beach, and as more and more beaches become tourist hot spots there is less and less room for the crabs to come onshore and breed. The question is therefore, how long before horseshoe crabs go from being ‘Living Fossils’ to just fossils?
The real danger to Horseshoe Crabs, and many other forms of aquatic life , is simply our continuing effort to take over. (Credit: Mann & Sons, inc REALTORS)
Another kind of ‘Living Fossil’ are the ancient lobe-finned fishes known as the Coelacanth. Fossil coelacanths are known from the Devonian period through the late Cretaceous with hundreds of species discovered. For over a hundred years however coelacanths were thought to have become extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs. Then in 1938 Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer in South Africa was prowling around a fish market on the coast of the Indian Ocean when she chanced upon a dead coelacanth. Although Courtenay-Latimer could not identify the animal she immediately realized how unusual it was and contacted an ichthyologist named J. L. B. Smith at Rhodes who correctly identified it. No other coelacanths were discovered until after World War II but in the years since two species have been discovered in the depths of the Indian Ocean ranging from the coast of Africa to the Islands of Indonesia.
A live Coelacanth, again just seeing one gives the feeling of ancient life. These ancient fish are related to the first land dwelling vertebrates, in other words our ancestors! (Credit: People.com)
Coelacanths are important in the history of life because of their position as relatives of the lobe-finned fishes that left the waters and became the first land dwelling tetrapods. That means that coelacanths are actually more closely related to us than they are to tuna or salmon or flounder.
For more than 100 years coelacanths were known only from their fossils. Even today fossil coelacanths are more commonly found than live ones! (Credit: Science Fun)
And like the horseshoe crabs who also survived both the Permian extinction and the extinction of the dinosaurs the coelacanths are now under their greatest threat ever, from us. You see back in 1938 a fisherman in the Indian Ocean would only rarely catch a coelacanth because they live in rather deep waters. Today however modern advances in fishing techniques, particularly deep sea trawling, have greatly increased the number of coelacanths being captured by fishermen.
As more advanced fishing techniques are being used more coelacanths are being caught even though the fish is uneatable. How much of a danger this is to the species is unknown but it can’t be a good thing! (Credit: Pinterest)
Scientists aren’t certain just how endangered coelacanths are however because no accurate census of their numbers has ever been taken. Still, there is considerable reason for concern. And the worst part is that the fishermen don’t even want to catch coelacanths, which taste horrible and have been known to actually make some people nauseous. No, coelacanths are merely by-catch, fish that accidentally get caught in nets and die before they can be released back into the ocean. So it is that we may be threatening the survival of creatures whose lineage dates back around 400 million years simply because they get in our way.
My last story today concerns not only two kinds of living fossils but a symbiotic relationship between them that was thought to have gone extinct. Recently however Oceanographers researching invertebrates in Suruga Bay off of Japan’s big island Honshu discovered that the relationship between crinoids and anemones was alive and well after more than 273 million years.
Today living Crinoids, some species are known as ‘sea lilies’ are a rare sight. During the Paleozoic age they were perhaps the dominate for of sea life. (Credit: YouTube)
The anatomy of a crinoid has changed little over hundreds of millions of years. (Credit: Fossils-Facts-and-Finds)
Crinoids themselves are very ancient, dating back like the horseshoe crab to the Ordovician period 450 mya. Related to starfish, crinoids attach themselves to the sea floor by a long stalk and use their multiple arms to collect whatever food particles happen to float past them. This makes the crinoids look something like flowers and has given them their nickname of ‘sea lilies’. Fossils of crinoids are very common in Paleozoic rocks, I have many, but today they are somewhat rare creatures.
A couple of very nice Crinoid fossils. (Credit: Pinterest)
Sea anemones are even more ancient but because they do not fossilize well, no hard parts, we aren’t sure how old they are, 550 million years at least. Anemones are extremely simple creatures, little more than a bag of jelly like tissue with arms that again catch food. The arms of an anemone have very nasty stinging cells that allow the creature to feed on some rather large and active prey.
Sea Anemones are even more ancient than crinoids but because they don’t fossilize well much of their history is still a mystery. (Credit: BBC)A crinoid with anemones attached to its stalk. This association is known from very ancient times but was unknown today until very recently. (Credit: Pinterest)
Well back in the carboniferous period, 300 mya anemones started attaching themselves to the stalk of the crinoids, many fossils from that time clearly display the two animals living together. It is thought that living on a crinoid’s stalk got the anemone higher up in the water column where it could feed better while the crinoid benefited by feeding on some bits of food that escaped the anemone. However beneficial the symbiotic relationship may have been it disappeared about 273 mya, or so the paleontologists thought. And the best thing about crinoids and anemones is that they’re both quite safe from extinction at present, so who knows, their symbiosis may last for another quarter of a billion years. It’s nice to know that some relationships can last.
The tallest tree grows from the tiniest seed, so the saying goes. Most of the familiar plants in our backyards, and on our farms reproduce by producing small, tough packets of life that we call seeds that will hopefully germinate in the soil and grow as a new plant.
The endless variety of plant life on this planet is perhaps best exemplified by the endless variety of seeds! (Credit: Amazon.com)
One of the reasons that seeds are generally so tough is that for many species their seeds are going to have to survive a hard winter before they can germinate and grow starting the next spring. In order to survive through such hard times many seeds have evolved to lie dormant for long periods of time.
Many plants only survive winter or other harsh conditions because of the hardiness of their seeds! (Credit: Prairie Moon Nursery)
How long can seeds remain dormant before they will go bad, before they lose their ability to sprout and grow? Well of course it depends on the species but I have successfully grown string beans from some leftover seeds I’d purchased three years earlier, and who knows how long those seeds had been in their package before I bought them.
It was to answer the question of how long can seeds lie dormant that botanist William J. Beal, Professor at Michigan State University buried twenty bottles, each bottle filled with seeds from 21 different species of plant, fifty seeds per species. That’s over 20,000 seeds total for the experiment.
Botanist William James Beal of Michigan State University. Beal initiated an experiment that is still going strong after 140 years. (Credit: MSU Alumni- Michigan State University)
Professor Beal’s idea was that every five years first he, and later his successors would dig up one of the bottles and plant the seeds contained within. In this way the experiment would show how long a period of time each species of seed could lie dormant and still capable of germination. After Beal’s death the time interval between bottles was lengthened, first to ten years and then twenty years. Two of the retrievals have been delayed by a year, both due to pandemics, first the scheduled 1919 bottle was delayed until 1920 because of the 1919 ‘Spanish Flu’ while the retrieval of the 2020 bottle was similarly delaying because of Covid-19.
To keep the location of the remaining jars a secret the scientists at Michigan State dig up the latest bottle at night! (Credit: The New York Times)
Nevertheless on a chilly night last month in April a team of biologists at Michigan State met in secret and followed an old map to a hidden location on the campus. After a bit of digging the group succeeded in locating their bottle and, treating it like the treasure it is took it back to their labouratory so that they could continue the work that Professor Beal had begun so long ago.
Associate Professor David Lowery holds the latest of Professor Beal’s bottles. (Credit: The New York Times)
Now the modern botanists have much more sophisticated instruments to study the seeds with than Doctor Beal did. So the experiment has evolved from a simple demonstration of what species have managed to survive and germinate into a more involved study of what changes occur to the living material in the seeds over time. Chemical sequencing of the DNA of seeds that fail to sprout may provide information about how DNA degrades over time for instance.
This DNA sequencer is just one of the modern scientific instruments that scientists can now use to study the seeds put down 140 years ago by Professor Beal. (Credit: KWIPPED)
And Professor Beal’s experiment has already found its winner, Verbascum blattaria; a small unobtrusive herb with yellow flowers and splayed leaves continues to germinate nearly half of its seeds. 11 have so far sprouted from this year’s bottle, 142 years after being buried. The seeds of no other species have managed to sprout without extra effort from the botanists but this year they plan on trying something new. Recent research has discovered that many forest plants have seeds that are not only capable of surviving through a fire but are actually triggered in their germination by the smoke of a forest fire. The botanists therefore plan to expose some of the seeds to smoke and see if that succeeds in bringing a few of them back to life.
Verbascum blattaria is a small but pretty little plant with the hardiest seed known to science thanks to Professor Beal’s experiment. (Credit: Wikipedia Commons)It is thought that some seeds are actually encouraged to sprout by the smoke and heat of forest fires. The botanists at MSU hope to try that with some of this bottle’s seeds. (Credit: Arbor Day Foundation)
There are four more bottles left in Professor Beal’s experiment so the botanists at Michigan State can continue their work at least until the year 2100. The researchers however are currently in the midst of planning a larger follow on experiment, more plant species, more seeds per species. They even hope to include some seeds from this year’s V blattaria plants, a fitting tribute to William J. Beal. A scientist who had the foresight to begin an experiment whose completion he would never see.
