Science – Page 7 – Scienceandsf -A Blog Published by Robert A. Lawler

Book Review: ‘One Nation, Under God’ by Kevin M. Kruse

Perhaps the biggest, and certainly the divisive issue being debated in America right now is the question of just what kind of country the United States is, a secular democracy or a Christian nation. This question has been at the heart of our identity as a people since before we ever became a nation. It is an unquestioned fact that many of the colonists who came to this country before it was a country did so in order to be able to practice their religion their way. They hoped that in the ‘New World’ they could escape the religious wars and persecutions that had plagued Europe for centuries.

The Pilgrims landing on Plymouth rock is an iconic image in American history but it should be remembered that not all of the Mayflower’s passengers were Pilgrims hoping to follow their own religion. (Credit: UPI)

Well aware of how much blood had been spilled in Europe in the name of God the founding fathers went to considerable lengths to avoid any kind of favouritism toward one religion or another. This was a tricky little dance for them to accomplish because virtually all of the men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were nominally Christians, many rather fervent in their beliefs.

Some of our founding fathers, like Thomas Jefferson (l) were rather skeptical of the ‘magical’ aspects of the bible. Others, like the Reverend John Witherspoon (r), were more conventional in their faith. Despite their differences however they managed to work together to find the compromises that allowed our nation to come into being. (Credit: Wikipedia)

So it was that the Constitution never mentions God in any way while the Declaration limits itself to the vague terms ‘the creator’ and ‘divine providence’. In Thomas Jefferson’s words in the United States there was to be ‘a wall of separation’ between church and state. The key element of this wall was the very first amendment to the Constitution which demanded that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Freedom of religion is the first right guaranteed to all Americans.

Not one of the hundreds of religions in the world today have any real evidence to back up their claims to ‘divine truth’. If only we could accept that maybe we could learn to accept each other. (Credit: Research Features)

For most of our nation’s history that little dance worked pretty well, even while most Americans belonged to one Protestant denomination or another, exactly which was a private affair not a public one. There was a bit of trouble during the middle of the 19th century in incorporating the Catholics into American society and then later in accepting the Jews. For the most part however Americans let other Americans practice whatever religion they wished, at least they did so better than in other countries.

Less than 100 years ago religious hatred was still the cause of millions of people being murdered. (Credit: The National WWII Museum)

That’s all changed today as religion has become one of the most important political issues in the United States as evangelical Christians seek to impose their views and morals on a nation that is slowly growing more secular. As justification for their desire to impose their morality on others they maintain that the United States has always been a Christian nation and that all they seek to do is bring back ‘that old time religion’.

The way we like to think about that ‘Old Time Religion’. It was never really like that. (Credit: Etsy)

The development of the religious right and the myths it created for itself is the thesis for ‘One Nation Under God’, a new book by Princeton University Professor of History Kevin M. Kruse. Unlike some other historians who maintain that the mixing of religion and conservative politics began during the Eisenhower administration professor Kruse goes farther back to reveal how ‘Corporate America Invented Christian American’, to use the book’s subtitle.

Princeton University Historian Kevin M. Kruse, author of ‘One Nation Under God’. (Credit: The Daily Princetonian)

Cover art for ‘One Nation under God’ by Kevin Kruse. (Credit: Amazon)

In ‘One Nation Under God’ Professor Kruse details how the social programs of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the taxes needed to pay for them, caused rich plutocrats and their corporations to finance and nurture the beginnings of conservative Christianity. These wealthy, powerful men looked upon FDR’s social safety net as the beginnings of a Communist takeover of the USA and since Communism was anti-god they hoped to use God to fight FDR. As Kruse details the argument that these Christian Libertarian organizations promoted was one of ‘Freedom under God’, as being a part of this nation’s identity from the very beginning.

The policies and programs of Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ were considered by many of the rich in this country to be nothing short of ‘Godless Communism’ and therefore they sought to use religion to fight them. (Credit: Redbubble)

So it was that Wall Street tycoons sought out sympathetic clergymen in the hope of organizing resistance to FDR’s social programs. Chief among these men of the cloth was Billy Graham whose influence is felt throughout the book. At the same time ‘One Nation Under God’ also outlines the way that Hollywood executives and stars were enlisted to help the cause.

Charismatic preacher Billy Graham is a central character in ‘One Nation under God’ because of the way he influenced millions of people as well as numerous politicians. (Credit: The New York Times)

Just as important to the ’cause’ of promoting religion in America were movie stars and producers. Here’s Cecil B Demille on the set of his first version of ‘The 10 Commandments’. (Credit: CBS News)

Still, the movement failed to stop the New Deal and it wasn’t until after World War 2 had ended, and with the election of Dwight Eisenhower as President that the religious right began to have any influence. As a part of his attempts to unite the country against the threat of the Soviet Union Eisenhower sought to bring God into the political life of the country. It was in fact during the Eisenhower administration that ‘In God we Trust’ was formally stamped onto every denomination of our money, that ‘Under God’ was inserted by law into the formerly secular pledge of allegiance and ‘One Nation Under God’ became the official motto of the United States.

It was only during Eisenhower’s time as President that ‘In God We Trust’ became the official motto of the United States. Ike’s folksiness, like a kindly grandfather, reminded people of the ‘Old Time Religion’ and helped him push religious ornamentation onto American politics. (Credit: International Currancy)

Eisenhower was not a complete victory for conservatives however because even as he brought God into government, he kept the New Deal. Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, regulations controlling the food industry, the banking industry and other industries remained to vex the rich, as did the high taxes needed to pay for them. Billy Graham may have been overjoyed with Eisenhower’s policies, but General Motors was left feeling unfulfilled.

Pushed through by President Eisenhower, the Interstate Highway System was the largest government program since FDR’s New Deal. While Eisenhower was fully committed to capitalism he still understood that they are some problems only the government can solve. (Credit: SFGATE)

Much the same thing happened during the Presidency of Eisenhower’s Vice-President Richard Nixon. The Nixon administration was even more overtly religious than Eisenhower’s but again there was no push to eliminate the social safety net, which thanks to Lyndon Johnson now included Medicare. Nixon even went to far as to increase the power of government by establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, which quickly became one the conservative movement’s most hated boogiemen.

Another big government program started by a ‘conservative’ president was Nixon’s Environmental Protection Agency. (Credit: The New Republic)

It’s with the Nixon years that Professor Kruse ends ‘One Nation Under God’ and that’s my real problem with the book. You see it was only during the Reagan administration that the religious right finally succeeded in putting someone in the White House who would both champion God, and lower taxes on the rich. But Reagan as president is only briefly mentioned in the epilogue, as are the two Bushes and Clinton. The entire subject of ‘Culture Wars’ that are currently ripping the country apart is only mentioned twice.

Pat Buchanan at the 1992 Republican Convention informs the world of the ‘Culture Wars’ in America. (Credit: YouTube)

It’s almost seems as if Professor Kruse needs another whole book to finish his story and I hope he does so. The union of Religion and Capitalism is arguably the most contentious issue in America today and while Professor Kruse has done an excellent job of illustrating the first half of the story we need to hear the complete tale.

The problem with ‘One Nation under God’ is that it ends too soon. It doesn’t complete the story of how we ever managed to get here! (Credit: CNN)

‘One Nation Under God’ is a very important book, and a well written one as well. I heartily recommend it to anyone who is trying to understand how our country got to where it is today. I only hope that in a few years I’ll be able to recommend volume 2 as well!

Space News for May 2023: Space X’s Starship rocket has its first test, the Voyager space probes will continue to operate until at least 2026 while the European Space Agency’s JUICE space probe had a little problem.

Did you watch it, the first test launch of Space X’s huge Starship launch system that is? Several YouTube channels streamed the entire flight, after all this was the first full test launch of the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built. The test was certainly exciting, but then failed tests are usually more exciting than successful ones.

The first test launch of the most powerful rocket ever built looked good, for a while. (Credit: Engadget)

As I watched that first test on April 20th, it seemed for a while as if everything was going pretty well but then, about a minute into the flight the announcer declared that 28 of Starship’s 33 first stage engines were still firing. That of course made me wonder what had happened to the other five engines. Then, about a minute later it became obvious that the rocket was beginning to tumble out of control and a little more than three minutes into the flight the engineers were forced to self destruct Starship in order to prevent it flying completely out of control and doing any damage to something on the ground.

The beginning of the end for Starship. Those failed engines began forcing the rocket off course and eventually ground control ordered a self destruct. (Credit: Reuters)

That didn’t prevent all of the damage at the launch site however. Those five engines that failed first must have exploded right at ignition, based upon all of the debris that was hurled as much as 20 meters away from the launch pad. The pad itself sustained the most damage including a large crater directly beneath it. So extensive is the damage to Starship’s launch facilities that it will take several months to repair them before another Starship test launch can take place. On the other hand, Space X certainly doesn’t want to attempt another launch before they’ve figured out what went wrong on the first one, and that may take longer than repairing the damage that occurred.

There were obvious signs of damage to the launch pad after Starship’s launch. Damage that will take time to repair before another test launch. (Credit: France 24)

Now every engineer knows that failures happen, especially on first tests. I’ve certainly had my share. Space X CEO Elon Musk knows that and did not expect 100% success. Before the test flight he declared that if the giant rocket only ascended past the launch tower he would consider it a partial success. Designing and developing a huge rocket like Starship takes a lot of time and effort and testing, it’s only a matter of time before they get it right.

The road to success is built on trial and failure, every engineer knows that! (Credit: Security Sales & Integration)

Much worse is when you’ve done all the design and testing and something goes wrong with the completed product, especially when that product is on its way to the planet Jupiter and there’s absolutely no way to send someone to repair it. That could have been the fate of the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) JUICE space probe. I discussed the JUICE mission back in February, see my post of 25 February 2023 , as a mission to explore three of Jupiter’s large, Galilean moons in order to determine if there are oceans of liquid water beneath their icy surfaces. The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer or JUICE spaceprobe was launched on April 14th from the ESA’s launch facility in Kourou in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. JUICE’s launch was successful, and within hours the probe was on its way to Jupiter and talking to ground control.

Launch od the European Space Agancy’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. (Credit: CNN)

As the probe began to deploy its solar panels and instruments however a problem arose with the antenna for JUICE’s Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME), the instrument that it was hoped would peer beneath the icy surface of the moons to confirm the existence of those oceans. Based on images sent back by the spacecraft the antenna had only unfurled to about one third of its full 16 meter length.

This image takes me back. Testing in an anechoic chamber of the antennas of the JUICE space probe. (Credit: SatNow)

The theory was that a release pin had gotten stuck preventing the antenna from completely deploying. The engineers at the ESA hoped that by using the probe’s course correction engines they may to able to shake the pin loose but they took their time to study the problem. Since JUICE would not reach Jupiter until 2031 the engineers knew that they had plenty of time to consider the problem and come up with a clever trick to fix the antenna.

The JUICE-RIME antenna stuck about halfway. Fortunately the engineers at ESA managed to shake it loose and it’s now ready to go. (Credit: Spacenews)

Turns out they knew what they were doing. After several attempts to fix the problem, each attempt showing a little improvement, the problem was solved when the engineers fired a ‘Non-Explosive Actuator’. The antenna immediately unfurled to it’s proper length.

The Rime antenna unfurling after engineers fixed it problem. (Credit: ESA)

On the other hand sometimes equipment and systems can be so well designed and built that they far exceed their original design goals. Arguably the two best examples of such extraordinary engineering are the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes.

The Voyager space probes have been exploring our Solar System, and now our Galaxy for over 45 years. They just keep going and going. (Credit: NASA)

First launched back in 1977, the Voyager spacecraft were designed to conduct flybys of the four gas giant planets in the outer solar system; Voyager 2 is still the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune. Once their original missions were completed however the two probes just kept working, sending back to Earth measurements of conditions in the outer solar system.

Real time data sent back from the Voyager 1 probe, still teaching us about the Universe after 45 years in space. (Credit: NASA)

And they are still working, forty-five years after launch both Voyager spacecraft have now entered interstellar space and are still sending back data, the first in situ observations we have of conditions between the stars. Still, nothing lasts forever and slowly but surely the energy provided to each Voyager by its three Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) is decreasing. Someday the two Voyager probes will no longer have enough energy to radio their observations back to us and they will be lost forever. At launch the RTGs supplied each Voyager with 70 watts of power but the 88 year half life of the radioactive Plutonium has caused that output to decrease by around 30%.

A radioisotope thermoelectric generator or RTG. Radioactivity produces heat and heat can be converted to electricity. These units have provided the power the Voyagers need to keep working after 45 years. (Credit: Wikipedia)

In order to keep each spacecraft functioning for this long the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Labouratory (JPL) have been turning off all unnecessary equipment such as the cameras and heaters to save power. The power loss on Voyager 2 had become so great that it was thought that by the end of the year one of the probe’s five remaining instruments would have to be shut off, with the loss of all that priceless data.

When we lose power we can resort to candles. Voyager doesn’t have that option. (Credit: KSAT 12)

Fortunately those engineers at JPL are some of the best in the world and they came up with a clever idea. The Voyager power system contains a device known as a voltage regulator that’s intended to eliminate spikes and surges in the power coming from the RTGs. With the drop in power from the RTGs there’s now much less danger of that happening and if they shut off the regulator they’d save enough power to keep Voyager 2 running as is with five remaining instruments until at least 2026, almost exactly 50 years after its launch.

The Jet Propulsion Labouratory in California, home to many of the space probes that have explored our Solar System. (Credit: NASA

The Voyager spacecraft have discovered so much, taught us so much about our solar system and now the galaxy beyond and thanks to the engineers at JPL they can continue to do so, more than 30 years longer than anyone ever expected them to.

Two stories about Particle Physics, and the Particles in one may Surprise You.

A freshman physics class in any college or university will for the most part deal with the movement and behavior of particles, that is objects with easily measurable and long lasting quantities like size, shape, mass, position etc, etc. As someone who grew up in a baseball family I freely admit that whenever I encounter the word ‘particle’ the first thought in my brain is something very like a baseball.

I’ll be the first to admit it, growing up in baseball family and becoming a physicist I do tend to think of elementary particles as little tiny baseballs! (Credit: The Conversation)

In that freshman physics class the students will learn about such other particle quantities as velocity, acceleration, and momentum while discussing collisions between particles, the forces between particles and so on. In other words freshman physics talks a lot about particles.

Collisions are rather complicated problems that really follow a few simple rules so they are a big topic in most freshman physics classes. (Credit: HyperPhysics Concepts)

Higher level physics is pretty much the same. Experimental physics is usually conducted at High Energy Particle Accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (A Hadron is a kind of sub-atomic particle) or deep underground where ‘Ghost Particles’ called Neutrinos are captured in huge vats of water. Today I’ll be discussing some recent studies in particle physics, the first concerning those ghost particles the neutrinos while the second concerns objects you might consider it strange to call particles, human beings.

For over 100 years now physicists have been studying collisions between elementary particles in order to learn more about them. (Credit: ResearchGate)

Neutrinos have fascinated physicists ever since Wolfgang Pauli first predicted their existence in order to ‘balance the books’ in beta radiation decay. Originally thought to be a single kind of particle with no electric charge and either no or very little rest mass (Neutrino = little neutral one in Italian) they have only gotten stranger as we’ve learned more about them. We now know that there are at least three distinct types, or generations of neutrino, the electron, muon and tau each named for the type of electron like particle they are generated with. Unlike other generations however, up, charm and top quarks for example, the three types of neutrino can oscillate from one type into the other into the other. This implies that neutrinos must have some rest mass, perhaps one millionth that of an electron.

Neutrinos make up three of the twelve different types of Fermions, that is particles that follow the rule of ‘No two identical particles in the same quantum state’. (Credit: PhysicsMasterClasses.org)

Like other Fermions each type of neutrino also has an anti-particle, or does it? You see in general anti-particles have the exact same mass but the opposite electric charge of their species of particle. However, since neutrinos have no electric charge there is a real possibility that neutrinos may be their own anti-particle and that would certainly be new physics.

First ever evidence for the existence of anti-matter, a photograph of a ‘positive’ electron by Carl Anderson. (Credit: Phys.org)

Now neutrinos are very difficult to study, they only rarely, very rarely interact with other kinds of particles. It’s estimated that the neutrinos generated in the Sun by fusion could go through a light year of solid lead and half would still come out the other side. Physicists who study neutrinos usually need sources of trillions of the particles in order to catch just a few.

In order to study neutrinos physicists have to build large detectors like this one at the Sudbury neutrino observatory. (Credit: Atlas Obscura)

Experimentalists decided that their best chance for determining if neutrinos were their own anti-particle was to use a very rare type of radioactive decay called a double beta decay that occurs in the isotope 76 of the element germanium, atomic number 32. Double beta decay happens when the nucleus emits two electrons and two anti-neutrinos at the same time while jumping up two spots in the periodic table to selenium, atomic number 34.

Double beta decay should happen as pictured on the left with two electrons and two neutrinos being emitted. But if the neutrino is its own anti-particle then the decay on the right is possible with only two electrons being emitted. (Credit: Quantum Diaries)

If the neutrino is its own antiparticle however then the two anti-neutrinos could annihilate each other and only two electrons would come out, electrons, the easiest particle to detect and measure. So what the experimentalists would have to do is measure the mass / energy of the germanium nucleus before the decay, and the mass / energy of the selenium nucleus after the decay and if the two electrons got all of the energy difference then there were no neutrinos and the neutrino is its own anti-particle.

Without any neutrinos conservation of energy would require that all of the energy has to go into the emitted electrons and that is something we can measure, barely. (Credit: Nitty Gritty Science)

Easier said than done. The experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) was carried out using 30 kg of germanium that had been enriched to 88% isotope 76, in nature isotope 76 makes up 7.75% of all germanium. The germanium was then surrounded by detectors to both find and measure the energy of any electrons that were emitted. In order to reduce as much as possible interference from other radioactive decays the experiment was conducted a kilometer and a half beneath the Earth’s surface at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, an old abandoned gold mine. After ten years of operation the collaboration of scientists that runs the experiment has just released its results, no neutrinoless double beta decays were observed by the experiment which sets new limits on the possibility that a neutrino could be its own anti-particle.

Part of the Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. (Credit: Sciencesprings)

Of course just because you haven’t found something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, it could mean you just haven’t looked hard enough. So the physicists who ran the experiment are now planning a new experiment that will employ 1,000 kg of germanium in their search to learn more about the ‘Ghost Particle’.

Here’s a book I read as a teenager that really helped spur my interest in Physics. Even today physicists are fascinated by the neutrino. (Credit: AbeBooks)

Human beings are not generally thought of as ‘particles’ but in many ways can be treated as such. After all we each have a definite size and shape as well as mass so there are many circumstances where the involuntary motion of a person is exactly like any particle. That’s why we can use ‘crash test dummies’ as substitutes for real people in automobile safety testing because during the conditions of a crash the humans inside the car are really just particles.

If you think about it, crash test dummies are designed to replicate the ‘particle’ aspects of human beings while eliminating everything else. (Credit: CNBC)

There are even times when the voluntary motions of humans can be studied as particles and something of the laws governing that behavior learned. One well known example of this is when two groups of people, traveling in opposite directions have to move through each other, such as when two groups of pedestrians are trying to cross to opposite sides of the same street using the same crosswalk and have to go through each other.

In many ways large numbers of human beings each going there own way are very much like an ensemble of particles interacting with each other. (Credit: NAIOP Blog)

What has been observed in such circumstances is that the two groups will break up into a series of ‘lanes’ that will interleave with the lanes of the opposing group. These lanes then move past each other in what is technically known as two component flow. This type of phenomenon in general has been given the name ‘active matter’ and has been observed in many different kinds of animals from flocks of birds to schools of fish.

Thanks to modern computers even very complicated problems, like the crowd pictured here, can be analyzed and order found in all of the apparent chaos. (Credit: Science News)

Scientists have found that in order to form a school, fish only have to obey a few simple rules. (Credit: HuffPost)

While the development of lanes in groups of people moving in opposite directions has been studied for several decades no rigorous mathematical model of the behavior had been published. Until now, for a new paper in the journal Science by mathematicians at the University of Bath in the UK has presented a kinetic description of lane nucleation, in other words equations describing how lanes form and behave. The model was in fact based upon Albert Einstein’s description of ‘Brownian Motion’ of pollen grains in a solution.

As described by Albert Einstein, Brownian Motion was the first direct evidence for the existence of atoms. (Credit: Toppr)

The mathematicians have even teamed up with experimentalists at the Department of Human Motor Behavior at the Academy of Physical Education in Katowice in Poland to test their model. One of the experiments was set up in King’s Cross Station in London where groups of volunteers moved through different gates and obstacles. The movement of the volunteers was video recorded and in every case order arose out of chaos allowing the recordings to be compared to the model’s predictions.

The milling crowds at King’s Cross Station in London proved to be the perfect experiment for studying the ‘particle nature’ of human traffic. (Credit: iStock)

So it seems that the idea of a particle, so useful in physics, can also be applied to the study of living creatures, even we humans.

Industrial Chemicals continue to pollute the environment unabated, they are poisoning the water, the plants and animals and now two new Studies show how they are even getting into us as well.

In the last few centuries the science of chemistry has produced an uncounted number of miracle substances and materials that have played a major role in making modern civilization possible. Unfortunately many of those substances do not break down chemically once they have completed the job they were developed for. When we just throw them away they don’t just disappear but rather collect in the world around us until they become a nuisance or worse, a lethal hazard.

We live in a toss away culture. Once we no longer have any use for a thing we just toss it and so long as we can’t see it it no longer exists! (Credit: Shouse Law)

This dilemma first became an issue in the late 1950s and early 1960s when environmental scientists found that the insecticide Dichorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was building up in the streams and rivers causing enormous harm to fish and other wildlife. The manufacturers of DTT argued back. They declared that by killing disease carrying insects DDT had saved the lives of GIs fighting the Japanese in the jungles and islands of the Pacific in World War 2. Also after the war DDT had helped to eliminate malaria as a disease in the states along the Gulf coast. DDT had helped to make a large part of the US a healthier place to live.

The chemical formula and structure of DDT. It looks almost pretty. (Credit: Stockholm Convention)

All of that was perfectly true; DDT was a miracle, but a miracle that didn’t go away after it had served its purpose. When DDT was actually discovered in human mother’s milk even the manufacturers had to give up. Today the use of DDT is generally banned in the US although there are still some countries in the world where DDT continues to be used, if not always legally.

DDT was once thought to be so safe that it was sprayed in places where people gathered for fun in order to eliminate mosquitoes that could spread disease. (Credit: Los Angeles Times)

However the politicians and the general public never learned the lesson of DDT, that miracle chemicals can become a real problem if we don’t properly dispose or recycle them. Instead it was the manufacturers who learned to never admit that their miracles could ever become a problem. So today we have the petroleum industry that at first denied that was is such a thing as global warming and now trying to convince us that they are the solution.

It was the tobacco industry that first learned how to fight back against all those do-gooders trying to make the world a better place. There was just too much money to be made poisoning stupid people for the industry to just admit to the truth. (Credit: Truth Initiative)

Now two new studies have taken a frightening look at how potentially dangerous ‘miracle’ substances that we just toss into the environment after we no longer want them, are coming back and literally getting inside us. The studies deal with plastics and the so-called ‘forever chemicals’ that we use to coat our non-stick cookware, along with hundreds of other uses. Substances that we really have little knowledge about what their long term effect in our bodies will be.

In many ways Teflon is a miracle of modern science. Once again however the problem is it doesn’t go away once we’re done with. And long term exposure isn’t healthy. (Credit: Science notes)

Let’s start with the plastics. One of the big reasons that plastics are so much a part of our modern economy is that they are so stable. Plastics are really nothing more than very long chains of carbon and hydrogen, two elements that like each other so much that they simply do not break down chemically. That’s why plastics have become such a big trash problem; all of the plastics that we throw away just build up in dumps or rivers or the ocean.

When a small chemical substance, a monomer, can be linked into long chains it forms a polymer, the basis of much of our modern world. (Credit: Jagran Josh)

While it’s true that plastics don’t break down chemically they can break down mechanically into smaller and smaller pieces. Your plastic soda bottle can, over the course of 30-50 years can become millions of tiny plastic micro-particles and nano-particles. And if you’re thinking that 30-50 years is a long time from now, remember all those 2-liter bottles you threw away back in the 1970s and 80s! A recent study estimated that there could be as much as 24.4 trillion pieces of micro-plastics in just the oceans.

Although plastics do not break down chemically they will get broken up mechanically into tiny ‘micro-particles’ that are now everywhere, including our food and water. (Credit: The Washington Post)

Those tiny plastic particles are now pretty much everywhere, they’re in the oceans, they’re in the soil, in fact they are so small that they’ve even gotten into the air. Plastic particles have been found in fresh snow falling in Greenland, thousands of kilometers from any trash dump. Tiny plastic particles are literally everywhere on the surface of the Earth.

Driven by the wind, plastic micro-particles are now even being found in the ice in Greenland. (Credit: Phys.org)

And they are in living creatures as well. Here’s how it works, whether it be ocean algae or grass in a field or vegetables in your garden the water and nutrients absorbed by plants now contains plastic micro and nano particles that are absorbed at the same time. As those plants are eaten, by fish or cows or you, the particles now get absorbed and concentrated. Think about it, a plant may have only a few plastic particles in it , but an animal eats a lot of plants so it ends up absorbing a few particles from each plant and winds up with a lot more particles. As you go higher up the food chain the concentration gets higher and since we humans are at the top the concentration will be highest in us.

It’s even being ironically called the new food chain. Plastics break out into micro-particles that get into living creatures and eventually the very food we eat, so it gets into us! (Credit: Dreamstime.com)

Now a new study from the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit collection of environmental scientists, has discovered that sewage sludge, the byproduct that remains after urban wastewater has been treated at sewage plants around the world, is heavily contaminated with plastic micro-particles. Now that sewage sludge is rich in nutrients and commonly used as organic fertilizer on over 80,000 sq. kilometers of farmland here in the US, and as much again in Europe. Even as the sludge fertilizes the soil it is also spreading tiny pieces of plastic, a contamination that, since plastics don’t break down chemically, just increases in concentration even while being absorbed by the plants grown on the land. Plastics that will eventually get into our bodies.

The sewage that we humans produce is actually good fertilizer, it contains all sorts of organic materials and valuable minerals. So it’s often spread over crop fields as fertilizer. (Credit: In These Times)

What long term harm those plastic micro-particles will do in the human body is unknown at present, studies on the effects of plastic in living creatures have only begun. As the years go by however, and the amount of plastic in us grows it certainly can’t be beneficial.

Nowadays however that sewage also contains plastic micro-particles and other, even more dangerous ‘forever chemicals’ (PFAS). Slowly but surely those substances are getting into us! (Credit: ecoRI News)

Of course there are other, more harmful chemicals that also are getting absorbed into our bodies. A case in point are the so-called ‘forever chemicals’ technically known as polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. Once again PFAS are extremely useful chemicals designed to be impervious to both water and heat and are commonly used in non-stick cookware, fire suppressant foam, fire resistant textiles and food packaging. However research has also clearly shown that PFAS are dangerous chemicals linked to health issues like liver disease, reduced immune responses and of course several types of cancer.

Forever chemicals are used in hundreds of different products we use everyday. We keep making more and more of these substances and since they never break down the concentration in the environment just increases and increases. (Credit: Drinking water quality)

The problem is again that once we no longer want our used cookware or clothing we simply throw the PFAS laden objects into the trash. The PFAS then wind up in a trash dump or landfill where they simply increase in concentration while at the same time leaking into the local groundwater, eventually contaminating streams and rivers throughout the country.

Far too many of our streams and rivers now look like this. Much of our drinking water comes from sources that are little better. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Now a new study published in the journal Environmental Research has analyzed tests for PFAS in over 500 wild caught freshwater fish from streams and lakes across the country. The results of the tests showed a median level of PFAS in the fish of 9,500 nanogrammes per kilogram. This is an amount 278 times greater than that permitted in farm raised, commercially sold fish. In fact the study concluded that the amount of PFAS a person would be exposed to by eating one wild caught freshwater fish was equal to drinking PFAS contaminated water for a month.

I like to fish, and I like to eat fish. So signs like this are not what I want to see but it’s the reality in far to many places today. (Credit: Michigan Radio)

So any freshwater fishermen out there, and I’m one of you, really need to be cautious about eating the fish you catch. Unless you’re certain that the location you’re fishing in is really clean, you’d better stick to catch and release. Not so much for the fish’s health as for yours.

Nice catch kid, but I wouldn’t eat it if I were you! (Credit: Livingston Daily)

Just two more examples of how our habit of just throwing away anything and everything we no longer have a use for is turning the entire planet into one big sewer.

Mathematicians have discovered a single geometric shape that tiles but when doing so does not generate a repeating pattern. I wonder what kind of art M. C. Escher could have created with such a figure.

We’re all familiar with the way that certain geometric figures, the square being the simplest, can be fitted together so there are no gaps or overlaps, the pieces all fit together perfectly. This geometric property is known as tiling because throughout history we humans have tiled floors and walls both for construction and to produce works of art.

A Simple but still interesting Tile. Hundreds of such patterns can be easily generated by squares, rectangles, triangles etc. (Credit: Freepik)

As I said there are some geometric figures that can be tiled like squares, rectangles, triangles, and hexagons. At the same time there are geometric shapes that will not produce a perfectly fitted tile, like stars, five or six sided, and octagons. There are also tiled patters that can be formed using two different geometric figures like a diamond and a parallelogram (see figure below). In mathematical terms such figures or combinations of figures are said to ‘admit’ tiling.

A couple of examples of geometric shapes that do not admit tiling. (Credit: Math and Multimedia)

A tiling pattern formed from two geometric figures can quickly become quite complex. (Credit: Pinterest)

You may have noticed that all of the figures I mentioned above are straight lined shapes rather than curved figures like a circle or a teardrop. While it is true that it is easier to find straight lined shapes that tile there are many known curved shapes that tile as well.

Here’s a simple but still very interesting tile pattern made from a single curved figure. (Credit: VectorStock)

Mathematicians have explored the properties of tiled patterns ever since the days of the ancient Greeks, if not even earlier. One of the most important features of the tiling of geometric figures is that they almost always repeat themselves over and over again in identical patterns. For some of the more elaborate geometric shapes, and especially for combinations of two or more figures the repeating section may be quite large, nevertheless the greater majority of tiled figures repeat themselves over and over again.

Despite it’s complexity the repeating pattern of this tile is easily apparent. (Credit: repper.app)

Those few combinations that do not repeat themselves have been given the special name of Penrose tiles after a small class of which was discovered back in the 1970s. Since then mathematicians have searched in vain for an elusive ‘Einstein’ tile, a single geometric figure that would tile perfectly but without creating a repeating pattern. (By the way the name Einstein does not refer to physicist Albert Einstein but rather to the meaning of the German word einstein, ‘one stone’.

The recently discovered ‘einstein’ tile. Despite being a single geometric figure that admits tiling it nevertheless generates no repeating pattern. (Credit:Science News)

Now a group of mathematicians from a quartet of Universities, Yorkshire, Cambridge, Waterloo and Arkansas, have found that elusive one stone, a thirteen sided irregular figure that they have christened ‘the hat’. As can be seen in the figure ‘the hat’ obviously does not develop a simple repeating pattern. In order to officially declare their result to be an einstein however the researchers had to prove that there would never be a repeating pattern by using what is known as a geometric incommensurability argument.

Many artists have made self-portraits but this one by M. C. Escher is just the best in my opinion. (Credit: National Gallery of Art)

The mathematicians who discovered ‘the hat’ expect that the most likely use of their figure will be in the arts and I’m certain it won’t take long before some artist takes up the challenge. Which brought to my mind what artistic creations the celebrated graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher, better known as M. C. Escher, might have done with ‘the hat’. Escher became famous both for turning tiled geometric figures into living animals, but also by then using those ‘living tiles’ in a larger work of art that contained less abstract elements as well.

Escher would often start by designing a tiling pattern that consisted of living creatures, in this case little reptiles. (Credit: Instructables)

Then use that pattern as a part of a larger, non-tiled work that are just breath taking in their imagination. (Credit: Wikipedia)

M.C. Escher lived from 1898 to 1972 in the Netherlands producing woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints rather than paintings or sculptures like most of his contemporaries. Most of Escher’s works were greatly inspired by mathematical ideas, including artistic explorations of infinity, reflection and even hyperbolic geometry. During much of his life Escher was mostly ignored by the arts community, even today many artists regard him more as an uninspired workman rather than a true artist. In scientific circles however, Escher’s ideas and inventiveness slowly gained him a large following, one that continues to grow to this day.

Escher often used the ability of 2 dimensional drawings to show physical phenomenon that are impossible in the real world. Follow the water in this image! (Credit: NHPR)

Escher worked during the period of time when Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were revolutionizing out views of reality. No wonder that his works are loved by Physicists and Mathematicians. (Credit: Swann Auction Galleries)

Escher produced literally dozens of ‘living tiles’ using birds, fishes and even human beings as the tiled shape. Arguably the most famous of his tiled efforts is ‘Reptiles’, see figure above, which contains a page with a tiled pattern of lizards but at one end live lizards are coming out of the page, walking around a bit before sinking back into the flat reptile pattern.

Swans turning into fish is one of Escher’s simpler examples of tiling of one animal into another. (Credit: Museum of Fine Arts Houston)

Throughout his work Escher was fascinated by repeated patterns of one, two or even three geometric figures, many of which he would turn into living creatures. I’m certain that Escher would have been thrilled by the challenge of working with ‘the hat’, a figure that tiles but never repeats.

Space News for April 2023: Analyzing the results from NASA’s DART mission and how the discovery of a new asteroid may mean that we have to use those results sooner than we thought!

You may recall back last September when NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into an asteroid as a first test of a planetary defense system, see my post of 8 October 2022. The DART mission, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, was designed to see if it was possible to alter the trajectory of an asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth as a way of preventing that impact.

The Dart spacecraft was intentionally send to crash into the small asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits around the larger asteroid Didymos. By carefully measuring the orbital period of Dimorphos astronomers can calculate the change in the asteroid’s velocity that the collision caused. (Credit: DART – NASA)

The target for the DART spacecraft was the asteroid Dimorphos, a 160m wide space rock that orbits around a larger, 750m asteroid named Didymos. By slamming into Dimorphos at 6km per second it was hoped that the 600kg DART spacecraft would change the time it takes the smaller asteroid to orbit around the bigger one. In astronomy it’s just easier to measure the time it takes something to happen rather than positions or distances.

Long before we could measure the distance to the Moon astronomers knew how long it took the Moon to orbit the Earth simply by keeping track of the Moon’s Phases. In astronomy it’s just easier to measure time than distance. (Credit: MoonConnection.com)

Dimorphos’ orbital period around Didymos before the collision with DART had been measured at approximately 11 hours and 55 minutes. After the collision astronomers back here on Earth took their time to accurately measure the new period. Once the new orbital period had been determined the laws of orbital dynamics could be used to calculate how much the asteroid’s velocity had been changed.

Once astronomers have measured the orbital period P, they can then use orbital mechanics, this is Kepler’s third law, to calculate other quantities like the average distance r between the two bodies. (Credit: burro.astr.cwru.edu)

It wouldn’t have to be by much either for the test to be successful because if you can change an asteroid’s trajectory by only one meter per second a year before it hits the Earth then that asteroid would miss our planet by more than 25,000 km. That’s why NASA’s plan for protecting Earth is to locate any potentially dangerous asteroids and if any are headed our way to gently alter their trajectory years before they get here. That’s considered to be a safer and less costly way to protect the Earth than Hollywood’s usual technique of blowing them up with nuclear weapons.

In the movie ‘Meteor’ the US and USSR send a bunch of H-bombs to blow up an asteroid that’s headed for Earth. NASA hopes to develop a bit more gentle technique. (Credit: Amazon.com)

So the DART spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos and the collision was so brilliant that several telescopes back here on Earth were able to photograph it. Not only was the impact itself impressive but the force of the collision ejected a large amount of material from the surface of Dimorphos generating a tail behind the asteroid similar in appearance to a comet’s. Since then astronomers have been observing Dimorphos in order to learn just how successful the DART mission was.

Image of the actual DART collision. The big asteroid Didymos is lower left while Dimorphos is upper right and obviously erupting in some fashion. (Credit: New York Times)

Now the results are in and it is clear that DART did better than anyone had expected. In a series of five papers in the journal Nature astronomers and aerospace engineers presented a detailed account how the DART collision changed the Didymos-Dimorphos system. NASA had hoped that the collision would reduce Dimorphos’ orbital period by seven minutes, from 11 hours 55 minutes down to 11 hours 48 minutes but instead the orbital period dropped by 33 minutes, more than four times what was predicted. The scientists are convinced that it was the large amount of ejected material knocked off the asteroid that generated the larger than anticipated result. Based on ground observations it is estimated that as much as 0.5% of Dimorphos’ entire mass may have been exploded into space, and remember for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction.

The trail of ejected material from Dimorphos. The amount of material ejected by the DART collision is estimated to be as much as half a percent of Dimorphos’ total mass. (Credit: El Pais in English)

So the DART mission clearly showed that the idea of protecting Earth from an asteroid impact by nudging it slightly years before the asteroid reaches us is a good one. More than that however DART gave scientists and engineers a good baseline for determining exactly how to go about giving an asteroid that nudge.

Possible future mission to visit an Asteroid, or perhaps push one out of our way? (Credit: Forbes)

And we may have to make use of that knowledge before long because NASA has recently announced that the space agency has discovered a small asteroid that might, emphasis on might, collide with Earth on Saint Valentine’s day in the year 2046, 23 years from now. The new asteroid has been given the name 2023 DW and is about 47m in size so it’s considerably smaller that Dimorphos. Still if an asteroid that size were to strike a heavily populated area it could cause a lot of damage. Right now the Jet Propulsion Labouratory (JPL) estimates that 2023 DW has about a 1 in 560 chance of striking our planet while the European Space Agency puts the odds at 1 in 625. You can be certain that astronomers are keeping a close eye on 2023 DW and so over the next year or so those estimates are likely to change. If asteroid 2023 DW continues to be a threat who knows, it may very well become the first target of a real attempt to use the lessons from DART to protect our planet from an asteroid impact.

New Studies indicate that Sea Level Rise due to Climate Change over the next 100 years could be far worse than previously expected. Meanwhile the big Oil companies continue to make record profits.

Over the last several years various aspects of Climate Change have been getting a bit more attention in the news than previously. Both the continuing drought in the Western North America, East Africa and Europe as well as the abnormally severe storms, hurricanes, tornadoes along with massive floods throughout the world have been making so many headlines that global warming can no longer be completely ignored.

So far this year has been unprecedented in the number and destruction of Tornadoes here in the US. How anyone can continue to doubt the reality of Climate Change is beyond my understanding. (Credit: American Museum of Natural History)

Now all of that news coverage is a good thing but all of those stories about changing weather patterns have obscured another piece of the climate change problem, sea level rise. Sea level rise may not get the headlines, basically because we haven’t begun to see the worst effects of it yet, but millimeter by millimeter it just keeps it just keeps on building, a measured 20cm rise worldwide over the last 100 years. Already some of its effects have been noticed in low laying parts of the world like the Mississippi delta or islands like the Seychelles. At the same time the entire US gulf and Atlantic coasts have been subjected to an ever growing number of ‘King Tides’, periodic flooding of land areas even when there has been no rain for days. In the city of Miami seawater has been known to come bursting out of sewers while the Sun is shining brightly.

While Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Droughts get the most press coverage, King Tides caused by the slow but constant rise in sea level are becoming a regular nuisance in many coastal cities. (Credit: Science / How Stuff Works)

Now two news studies, each looking at the long term consequences of sea level rise from opposite directions have concluded that the problem will become much worse, much quicker than expected. The first study, published in the journal Nature Communications by an international team of scientists details the results of a series of model based computer simulations.

The ice in Greenland is melting faster than ever and now there is evidence that the ice is melting from the bottom up indicating that the whole ice cap could become unstable! (Credit: CNN)

Those results predict that not only will the melting of the ice caps on both Greenland and Antarctica continue, but that the melting will accelerate, causing a much greater rise in sea level by the end of the century. In fact the models show that, if global temperature rise should exceed 1.8ºC above pre-industrial levels the melting of the ice caps would reach irreversible, catastrophic amounts with a sea level rise by the year 2100 estimated at one meter above today’s level.

It was all smiles as the nations of the world agree to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees back in 2015. It seems however that nobody realized that meant that had to do something other than just smile! (Credit: State of the Planet – Columbia University)

Now remember, ever since the Paris climate accords of 2015 both scientists and politicians have been pushing for a limit of 1.5ºC rise in global temperature, and pretty much failing to do anything substantial to actually stop the world from going past that goal. Indeed, the latest estimates have the global temperature rise going above 1.5ºC sometime in the next five years. And once we’re past 1.5ºC can 1.8ºC be far behind. So the amount of water being dumped into the oceans by melting ice caps is going to increase rapidly, threatening the low laying areas of every nation on Earth.

Worst case scenario for sea level rise here in the US. Even without this extreme case many of our largest cities will become unlivable due to constant floodings and storm damage. (Credit: Forbes)

The second paper concerns those low laying areas and concludes that we have been greatly underestimating the amount of global land area that will be lost due to sea level rise. The study, published in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Earth’s Future, utilizes data from NASA’s ICESat-2 LiDAR satellite, which was launched back in 2018, to determine the elevation above sea level of land areas throughout the globe.

Well they finally did it, NASA put a LASER in space. Don’t worry this one is intended to measure land elevations not blast cities to rubble. (Credit: ICESat-2 -NASA)

Previous measurements of land elevations were carried out by airplanes using radar, but those measurements were inaccurate, primarily because radar cannot penetrate beneath vegetation to the true ground surface. The ICESat-2 satellite uses the much more precise Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) that is better able to determine the true elevation of land areas.

Elevation maps showing the hight above sea level of land areas are a common tool in geography but if sea level continues to rise we are going to need to redo all of them! (Credit: SERC)

What the researchers found was the elevation of much of the world’s low laying land areas was being overestimated. Not by much, only a meter or two for the most part, but when coupled with a one meter rise in sea level it means that just about twice as much of the world is going to sink beneath the ocean by the year 2100 than was previously thought.

Salt Marshes are among the richest and most important ecological environments in the world. A 1 meter rise in sea level would result in most of the world’s salt marshes simply disappearing. (Credit: The Pew Charitable Trusts)

That means that millions more people will see their homes swept away by floods. Whole nations like Bangladesh may simply cease to exist while seacoasts around the world will be inundated. Rich cities like Miami and Boston may be able to afford to build dikes to preserve them, but what about poorer cities like Mumbai and Bangkok? What about the numerous small coastal towns in New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida and Texas?

One of the most densely populated counties in the world Bangladesh is also probably the most threatened by sea level rise. (Credit: UCAR Center for Science Education)

So it may not be long before you start hearing more and more stories on the news about widespread flooding across the globe. It’ll happen slowly, millimeter by millimeter as the sea rises, but it’s going to happen.

By building a large interconnected system of dykes the people of the Netherlands succeeded in building a country that is mostly below sea level. However that task took centuries to complete and Holland isn’t that big a country. Imagine the cost of doing that for the whole world! (Credit: Quora)

Now, if you find the latest estimates on sea level rise and the flooding of the world’s coastlines associated with it to be a bit depressing then here’s some news that I’m certain will cheer you up. The major oil companies have recently all announced that they made record profits during last year 2022. So even as the planet burns up you can still have a safe investment for your 401K that will be paying dividends in the post-apocalyptic hellscape to come.

Is this what the future holds for New York and other coastal cities? (Credit: Rolling Stone)

For the record, Exxon-Mobile posted a profit in 2022 of $55.7 Billion, that’s profit, not sales, while Shell announced $39.9 Billion in profit. The other oil giants saw similar levels of profit, Chevron $35.5 Billion, BP $27.7 while France’s Total Energies announced $36.6 Billion. All of these numbers were records for each company and came while the world was recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and tittering on the brink of a recession.

Even as people all over the world complained about the sharp rise in the price of gas the oil companies were quite happy. (Credit: Bloomberg.com)

Of course the oil giants insist that they did nothing wrong, it was the pandemic’s fault really. You see during all of the Covid lockdowns the demand for oil and natural gas dropped so they all had to cut way back on production. Then last year, as life throughout the world began to return to normal the demand for oil and natural gas shot up. Add to that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia is the world’s third largest oil producer and second largest producer of natural gas, and the price for a barrel of oil went through the roof. There was nothing the oil companies could do; the law of supply and demand literally forced them to make ungodly amounts of money.

How much is Russian oil paying for Russia’s war in Ukraine? How many wars so far this millennia have been fueled by oil? (Credit: Fair Observer)

All of which is just more evidence of how hard it is going to be to get the human race to stop polluting the world with fossil fuels. There are simply too many people making too much money from oil and natural gas, I won’t even mention coal, for them to be simply outlawed. The question therefore becomes how much of the world’s land mass has to be flooded, how severe do storms have to become, how many people have to suffer in droughts or wildfires before we finally do something? And will it be too late by then?

Space News for March 2023: The International Space Station is becoming a busy place as three manned missions make news and NASA is planning the development and testing of a Nuclear Rocket Engine.

When the International Space Station (ISS) was first assembled in Earth orbit more than twenty years ago now the astronauts that made up its crew traveled there using either the American Space Shuttle of the Russian Soyuz manned spacecraft. After the Shuttle was retired there was a time when the only way to get to the ISS was aboard a Russian Soyuz. During that period NASA was busy working on its Commercial Crew Program where two private corporations, Space X and Boeing, would develop their own man capable spacecraft and NASA would pay them to take astronauts to and from the ISS.

The International Space Station (ISS) under construction with the space shuttle Endeavor docked on the left. (Credit: NASA)

One of these corporations, Space X has succeeded admirably. The first ever manned launch of a private space capsule took place on the 30th of May in 2020 and took two astronauts to the ISS for a three month stay; see my post of 3 June 2020. Since then Space X has carried out another six manned space missions. Five of those missions were a part of NASA’s commercial crew program but one was the first ever completely private space mission, see my post of 2 October 2021.

A night time launch is always spectacular! The launch of the Crew 6 mission on its way to the ISS. (Credit: Spectrum News 13)

Now Space X has launched its eighth manned mission, the sixth commercial crew mission to the ISS for a regular crew transfer. Liftoff took place on the 2nd of March with arrival at the ISS the next day. The astronauts aboard the Crew 6 mission are Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg of NASA along with Sultan Al Neyadi of Dubai and a Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaer.

Crew 6 Dragon capsule docking at the ISS. (Credit: Space Launch Now)

As with all of the ISS crew missions the four astronauts who took off aboard a Space X Dragon capsule are scheduled for a six month stay on the space station. Just a week after the crew 6 astronauts arrived at the ISS the crew five team, who have served aboard the ISS since October of 2022, returned to Earth aboard their Dragon capsule, splashing down in the waters off of Florida. The engineers at Space X have performed their tasks so well that another Space X mission to the ISS has now become rather routine.

Crew 5’s splashdown was also at night. (Credit: NASA)

Not so for Boeing and its Starliner man capable capsule. After years of delays the capsule finally launched on its first, unmanned test flight back on the 20th of December in 2019 only to have so many software problems that the capsule could not complete its mission to rendezvous with the ISS. After more than a year of corrections a second, successful unmanned test flight was conducted in May of 2022, see my post of 11 June 2022.

On its second unmanned test flight the Starliner capsule did succeed in reaching the ISS and docked with the station. (Credit: Mashable)

Now Boeing is preparing for the final, manned test flight of Starliner. Currently scheduled for mid to late April the final test flight will carry astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS for a six day stay. Total mission length will be eight days. If successful NASA could finally have two completely different space launch systems for taking its astronauts to and from the ISS.

Scheduled for a launch in April, the Crew of the first manned launch of the Starliner capsule are (L-R) astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Eugene Wilmore. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Meanwhile the Russians have been having a series of problems with their venerated Soyuz space capsule. First flown back in 1967 the initial flight of the Soyuz capsule was a disaster as the cabin lost pressure during re-entry killing Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. After those early problems however the Soyuz spacecraft has become a reliable, if not exactly comfortable means for getting into Earth orbit.

Gas leaking out of the Soyuz capsule can be seen in the photograph. The current Russian crew at the ISS was supposed to use this craft to return to Earth. Obviously an alternate means of getting home is necessary. (Credit: Fox 9)

Until now, because the Soyuz capsule that took the current Russian crew to the ISS has sprung an air leak and is now incapable of returning those cosmonauts to Earth. Not only that but a recent Soyuz derived Progress cargo ship also developed a pressure leak soon after arriving at the ISS.

Based on their Soyuz manned capsule the Russians developed an unmanned cargo ship Progress to supply the ISS. The most recent Progress send to the ISS developed a leak similar to the one in the Soyuz capsule. Is there a connection? (Credit: Wikipedia)

This puts Russia in something of a quandary, how do they get their astronauts back down to Earth without a usable spacecraft, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has decided that the leaking Soyuz module could be used in an emergency but would rather not use it at all if possible.

The Soyuz Rescue capsule arriving at the ISS. The current schedule is for this capsule to return the current Russian crew to Earth in September. Assuming this capsule doesn’t spring a leak! (Credit: NASA Spaceflight)

In the end what the Russians did was to launch another Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS to bring the cosmonauts home. That unmanned capsule was launched on the 23rd of February and reached the ISS on the 25th. The Russian crew, with their American colleague, are now scheduled to return to Earth in September.

However, should this third Soyuz type craft also experience problems the only viable backup plan would be for the Russians to pay Space X to send one of their Dragon capsules to the ISS as a rescue vessel. With all of the tension between Russia and the US happening now such a last resort would be a very costly embarrassment to the Russians, so I think Roscosmos will leave their cosmonauts stranded in space for a while if it becomes necessary.

Being stranded in Space is no fun as Mark Watney in ‘The Martian’ can tell you! (Credit: Outside Magazine)

One last little item before I leave. Back in the early days of the space age NASA carried out a very serious program to study the possibility of using nuclear rockets as a propulsion system for spacecraft. The program was called Project NERVA and did in fact develop several nuclear rocket engines that were successfully static tested on the ground. However, because of the danger posed by both the radioactive exhaust as well as the possibility of an explosion during launch spreading radioactive material over a wide area the program was canceled in 1972.

Basic design of a Nuclear Thermal Rocket. (Credit: NASA)

The idea behind a nuclear rocket engine is simple. Instead of using chemical combustion to heat the rocket’s exhaust the heat of a nuclear fission pile can be used to heat almost anything, even something as simple as water. Calculations, backed up by the tests carried out in project NERVA, have shown that such a nuclear rocket can provide 3 or more times as much ‘push’ as even the best chemical rockets. Which is why NASA was so interested in the concept.

Actual test of a Nuclear Thermal Rocket back in the early 1970s. (Credit: AutoEvolution)

Now NASA is teaming with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to revive the nuclear rocket engine. DARPA carries out research for the Department of Defense and as such is a natural partner for the development of a nuclear rocket. The initial schedule is for a test flight of a nuclear rocket is 2027.

Yea, I know, it’s the Pentagon but they have supported some really important technology over the years! (Credit: Internet of Business)

There will be some changes to NASA’s original idea for project NERVA however. For one thing we have a lot fewer explosions happening during the launch of a rocket so the danger of nuclear material being spread over half of Florida is much less. At the same time the nuclear rocket itself will not be used to lift a payload into orbit. Rather the nuclear rocket will only be used for deep space exploration outside of Earth orbit. That way no radioactive exhaust will be dumped into the atmosphere.

Proposed design for a Mars spacecraft. Two Nuclear Thermal Rockets are to the left while an Orion space capsule is docked with the crew habitat module to the right. (Credit: IEEE Spectrum)

The plan is of course to use a nuclear rocket to power the first manned missions to Mars, the space agency’s long desired goal. So hopefully, in about ten years or so, a spaceship assembled in orbit will ignite its nuclear rocket engine and begin a long journey to the red planet, mankind’s first trip to another planet.

With all the stars in the Universe there should be at least a few Civilizations out there whose radio emissions we could have detected by now but we haven’t. Why? Is there a Great Filter that eliminates all but a very few alien Intelligences and are we approaching it?

For as long as people have looked up at the sky and wondered, we’ve thought about whether there is anybody living up there? A thousand years ago or more we thought that the gods lived in the heavens but today we look, and listen with our radio telescopes to see if we can find any sign of alien intelligences out there.

Is anybody there? With hundreds of billions of stars, anyone of which could have an Earth type planet, how can there not be other intelligences in the Milky Way? So where are they? (Credit: Unsplash)

After all there are simply so many stars in just our own galaxy the Milk Way, the latest estimate by astronomers is about 200 Billion! So even if only a very, very, VERY few stars have planets with civilizations on them there should be at least a hand full of other intelligent, technological species out there.

In the movies Alien Intelligences are always coming to Earth. Not so in reality. (Credit: Walmart)

In 1961 the astronomer Frank Drake even thought up an equation to ‘estimate’ the number of civilizations ‘N’ there should be in the Milky Way. The equation starts with the number of stars in the galaxy, 200 billion and then multiplies that by a number of different factors:

Astronomer Frank Drake and his equation. (Credit: Wikipedia)

P=The fraction of stars that have planets. Recent observations by the Kepler space telescope and other planet finding searches put this at least at 10% and perhaps as high as 50%.

During its life the Kepler Space Telescope showed us that there are at least thousands, more likely millions or billions of planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way. (Credit: NASA)

G=The fraction of planets that are in the so-called ‘Goldilocks Zone’ where liquid water can exist. Here on Earth wherever there is liquid water there is life so biologists think that liquid water is essential to life. At present we have very little data about the value of G but based on our own solar system it’s around 20%.

The ‘Goldilocks Zone’ is where a planet is just the right distance from its star for liquid water to exist. Not to close and hot, not too far and cold, just right! (Credit: NASA)

L=The fraction of planets with liquid water where some form of primitive life does arise. Biologists have no idea what the value of this could be; some say it is probably as small as a few percent while others argue it could be as large as 90%.

At what point does complex chemistry become life? We’re still trying to figure that one out. So how hard is it for simple life to form on other planets? (Credit: CK-12 Foundation)

I=The fraction of planets with some form of life where an intelligent, technically advanced species eventually evolves. The value of this fraction, your guess is as good as anybody’s.

What would a city built by alien intelligence look like? (Credit: Newsweek)

So the Drake equation looks like this:

N=200Billion * P * G * L * I

And again, even if F, G, P, and I are all quite small when multiplied by 200 billion there should still be a dozen or so intelligent species in the Milky Way. Which again begs the question, why haven’t we found any yet?

Oh, my mistake, I forgot one last factor. You see when Drake thought up his equation he also considered the average lifetime of an intelligent, technological species, the factor ‘T’. After all, even if we don’t like to think about it species do go extinct. The trilobites all went extinct, the dinosaurs went extinct, so did the wholly mammoths. If an intelligent species lived on another planet 100 million years ago but has since gone extinct then we certainly wouldn’t be receiving radio signals from them today!

In the movie ‘Forbidden Planet’ the alien Krell destroyed themselves a million years ago, but their machines still existed. (Credit: YouTube)

Recently a diverse group of thinkers, including space engineers, political scientists and just some smart people have taken a good look at that last factor and wondered, what if T is really small? What if being an intelligent, technological species is actually a short road to extinction? Remember out of the 4.5 billion years that Earth has existed our civilization has only been here for 10,000 years, a mere flicker of time. We have no real evidence that intelligent species survive any longer than non-intelligent ones do. Maybe they actually don’t survive very long at all.

Every species has its own particular niche, its own way of making a living in its environment. We have yet to see if Intelligence is actually a good long term niche or not! (Credit: Eco-Intelligence)

Evolutionary biologists talk about ‘survival strategies’, having a bony, internal skeleton would be one example. That certainly is a good survival strategy, there are thousands of vertebrate species on Earth and they’ve been around for at least 450 million years. What about flying as a survival strategy, again there are tens of thousands of flying insects, birds, bats and there used to be flying reptiles as well.

So is intelligence a good survival strategy? You would think so at first sight. After all we now dominate this planet as no other single species ever has. We are so dominate that we’re even killing off thousands of other species, destroying whole ecosystems while we covert the planet to suit our pleasures of today and pay no attention to what the world is going to be like tomorrow.

Just a few of the thousands of species we humans have driven to extinction. And will we be the cause of our own extinction? (Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica)

By now I guess you see where I’m going with this. Do intelligent species actually destroy themselves by developing technologies they haven’t got the wisdom to properly use? The researchers, led by Jet Propulsion Labouratory engineer Jonathan H. Jiang, have christened this idea ‘The Great Filter’ that filters out, eliminates those species that allow their own technology to destroy them.

Notice for a seminar by Jonathan Jiang at JPL. Sounds like fun to me! (Credit: YouTube)

This idea isn’t completely new; back in the 1960s a lot of people were afraid that a nuclear war would destroy humanity. In the original Star Trek series Captain Kirk several times described the threat of nuclear war in the 20th century as “Our weapons outgrew our wisdom”. That line would be an early version of the Great Filter concept.

Will this be humanity’s final, most enduring symbol? (Credit: Fair Observer)

And the researchers do include a nuclear war as one of the possible ways that an intelligent species could destroy itself. The paper, which has been published on Cornell University’s Arxiv pre-print site, see link below, https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2210/2210.10582.pdf, goes further however, including other man-made threats to ourselves like climate change and pollutants such as plastics and cancer causing forever chemicals.

Or will we simply poison ourselves. (Credit: Greenpeace)

Now the researchers also included one possible extinction cause that I’m going to have to argue against. In science fiction the idea of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that supplants humanity is familiar from such movie series as The Terminator and The Matrix, and with the continuing development of cybernetics it is a definite possibility. However any such scenario would only represent one intelligence being replaced by another, perhaps better adapted intelligence. Such an event, whether here on Earth or on another planet would not cause the extinction of intelligence on that planet. Therefore I don’t think that AI should be included in the Great Filter.

If artificial intelligence does supplant us does that actually count as the extinction of intelligence? (Credit: Quora)

With that one exception I find the paper’s analysis to be depressingly logical. The threats we are causing by our own selfishness and stupidity are real and growing. That’s why the Doomsday Clock maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently been reset to a mere 100 seconds before midnight. There simply isn’t much time left for us to acquire the good judgment we need to solve all the problems we have created for ourselves. The wisdom we need to safely pass through the Great Filter.

So the big question is, does humanity have the wisdom it needs to survive? (Credit: Quora)

That dilemma could, indeed probably is true for all intelligent species anywhere in the cosmos. As we sit warm and comfortable here on Earth it’s easy to ignore the fact that the Universe is actually a very hostile place for life. And maybe it is even more hostile to intelligence.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) space probe for an April launch. By the time it arrives at the Sun’s largest planet it will have been joined by NASA’s Europa Clipper and together they will survey the mini-solar system that are the moons of Jupiter.

At a factory in France belonging to the aerospace corporation Airbus a 6,200 kg spacecraft has completed its assembly and testing and is now being packed up for shipment to its launch facility. The space probe is the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer or JUICE, which is scheduled to liftoff aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the ESA’s Kourou launch complex in French Guiana this April.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft and the worlds it will explore. (Credit: NASA)

The JUICE spaceprobe is Europe’s first robotic mission to the outer solar system. Indeed it will be the first non-NASA spacecraft to go beyond the orbit of Mars. Because of the immense distances and energy needed to reach the Sun’s outer worlds JUICE’s journey to Jupiter will take eight years and require several gravity boosting flybys of both Venus and the Earth.

The Pioneer 10 space probe was the first man made object to reach the outer Solar System, and it then continued on the leave the Solar System. So far only the United States has succeeded in reaching as far as Jupiter. (Credit: NASA)

The mission of JUICE is to make multiple flybys of three of Jupiter’s big moons, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, all of which are known to be covered by enormous sheets of ice beneath which it is thought there could be oceans of liquid water. Water that could be the habitat of living creatures.

Of Jupiter’s four big ‘Galilean’ moons the three on the right are covered with ice and are the targets of the JUICE space probe. Io, on the left, is the exact opposite being very hot and covered with volcanoes! (Credit: BIRA-IASB)

To carry out its mission JUICE carries 10 instruments including a Laser altimeter for making a 3D maps of the surfaces of the moons and an ice penetrating radar to discover if there really are oceans beneath those icy surfaces. And as the space probe travels back and forth between Jupiter’s moons it will use magnetometers and radiation detectors to study the complex magnet fields generated by the largest planet in the solar system and how that field effects, and is effected by its moons. Power for all these instruments is provided by a huge 100 square meter solar panel. Such a large array is needed because Jupiter is so far from the Sun that the sunlight out there only 1/25th as powerful as it is here on Earth.

The JUICE space probe undergoing testing at Airbus. (Credit: The Guardian)

After a period of three and a half years studying the three moons JUICE will enter into orbit around Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, for further study. Eventually the spacecraft’s orbit will decay and JUICE will crash onto the surface of Ganymede.

Bigger than the Planet Mercury Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System. Beneath that icy coating astronomers think there is a liquid ocean containing more water than there is here on Earth. And could there be life as well? (Credit: Earth Sky)

As it carries out it’s mission of discovery JUICE will not be alone. Scheduled for launch in October of 2024 NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will actually reach its target of the moon Europa a month or two before JUICE arrives at Jupiter. Since the Europa Clipper is still undergoing its final testing and isn’t scheduled for launch until late next year I’ll hold off on a lengthily description of that space probe.

NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe will leave Earth after the ESA’s JUICE but will arrive at its destination of Europa first! (Credit: NASA)

What I will do however is take a few minutes to discuss why both the ESA and NASA are so interested in Jupiter’s icy moons and it all has to do with the search for liquid water elsewhere in the solar system. You see, here on Earth wherever you can find liquid water there you will find life and perhaps the simplest definition for life is complex chemicals dissolved in packets of water. The space agencies therefore feel that their best chance for finding life elsewhere in our solar system is to find liquid water.

As seen in this image from Hubble, Europa is completely covered in ice but scientists are certain that there is an ocean beneath that ice. In the past few decades NASA has followed a plan of ‘Follow the Water’ in its search for life off the Earth. (Credit: Hubble Space Telescope)

Now Jupiter’s icy moons certainly have water in the form of ice, we can see that in pictures taken as far back as the Voyager probes. At that distance from the Sun however the question is, where’s the heat coming from that’s needed to create the theorized oceans beneath the ice.

The same forces that cause the Volcanoes on Io should be generating hot ‘thermal vents’ on Europa. Given both water and energy the possibility of life is very good! (Credit: MarineBio.net)

The answer lies in the tidal forces generated by massive Jupiter and it’s four big moons. As each moon orbits around Jupiter it’s pulled and squeezed not only by Jupiter’s strong gravity but by the three other moons as well. That pulling and squeezing causes friction deep inside each moon and fiction generates heat, lots of it.

Here on Earth the Tides cause the oceans to rise and fall twice every day. This actually does generate a tiny amount of heat. The Tidal forces, and so the heat, generated by enormous Jupiter and its four big moons are much larger. (Credit: Lumen Learning)

We know that is true from our observations of Jupiter’s innermost moon Io, which is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. The heat generated by tidal forces inside Io must be tremendous and so we estimate that the heat inside Europa and maybe Ganymede should be enough to have melted some of their ice, producing oceans that could easily contain more water than all the oceans here on Earth. And once again, where there’s water, there’s a good chance for life.

The moon closest to Jupiter, Io feels the full force of Jupiter’s tides making it the most volcanic body in the Solar System. (Credit: NASA)

We now know that Mars once had oceans, and if JUICE and Europa Clipper do find oceans on Jupiter’s moons how long will it be before we do finally find life out there?