Category: Science

Astronomy New for November 2022: Saturn’s Rings and the end of planet Earth. Don’t worry it’s not for a while yet.

Nowadays we’re all used to seeing beautiful images of astronomical objects, whether from Hubble or now James Webb or from some other observatory. To my mind however, nothing beats seeing the planet Saturn with your own eyes through even a small telescope. Somehow looking through a telescope is different; maybe it’s the movement of the air causing a little shimmer that makes it seem different from an image.

A beautiful image of the planet Saturn even showing a ring of Aurora around the south pole. (Credit: Hubble Space Telescope)

 Of course it’s the rings that make Saturn the most beautiful planet to see. They just seem so unreal, fairy like in a sense. And in a telescope they seem to be as solid as the planet they circle, even though in your mind you know that they are actually made up of trillions, hey millions of trillions of small snowballs. Each snowball a separate moon with its own orbit around Saturn.

From here on Earth it looks like Saturn only has a few rings but up close it’s easy to see hundreds if not thousands of small ringlets in this enhanced image taken by Voyager 2. (Credit: NASA Space Place)

Back before the space age it was thought that only Saturn had rings, you couldn’t see any around any other planet using the telescopes of the 1950s or earlier. Some astronomers claimed to see faint rings around Uranus but it wasn’t until 1977 that observations by James Elliot, Jessica Mink and Edward Dunham convinced the astronomical community that Uranus did indeed have rings. Then in 1979 as the Voyager 1 space probe was flying by Jupiter a couple of its images of the giant planet showed a faint ring system, a discovery that Voyager 2 would confirm a few months later. Finally in 1989 Voyager 2 found that the last of the solar systems gas giants, Neptune also had a set of rings. Since all of the solar systems giant planets are now known to have rings astronomers have begun to wonder if there is some connection, do all gas planets, even those in other solar systems, have rings.

After Saturn the planet Uranus has the best set of rings as seen in this Hubble image. (Credit: Universe Today)

Which of course begs the questions, why do any planets have rings? How do rings form, and how long do they last. Since we’ve never actually seen a ring system forming we really only have theories and educated guesses and astronomers have argued for decades over the details.

One thing we do know about planetary rings is that they are not solid but made up of billions and billions of small moonlets. (Credit: Shutterstock)

For a big ring system like Saturn’s the leading theory has always been that one of the planet’s moons got too close and was disintegrated by tidal forces generating the trillions of particles making up the rings. As I said that theory has been around for nearly a hundred years but now a new analysis by a team of astrophysicists at MIT is using data collected by the Cassini spacecraft that studied the Saturn system between 200 and 2017.

Two major models for how Saturn’s rings formed. Either a moon got to close to Saturn and was pulled apart by tidal forces or an object from the Kuiper belt got to close. (Credit: Science)

As you may remember, NASA ended the Cassini mission by taking the space probe closer and closer to the giant planet until it finally burned up in Saturn’s atmosphere. By tracking Cassini’s path as it got closer and closer the researchers were able to actually measure the distribution of Saturn’s mass within its body, in other words how much of Saturn’s mass was deep in the planet’s core, how much near the surface etc.

The Cassini spacecraft studied Saturn and its moons for thirteen before plunging itself into the giant planet’s atmosphere and burning up! (Credit: Jet Propulsion Labouratory)

That distribution, technically known as the ‘moment of inertia’ was the missing piece of the puzzle to carry out hundreds of computer simulations of an ancient moon of Saturn, which has been given the name of ‘Chrysalis’ being torn apart by the planet’s gravity to form the rings. According to the simulations Chrysalis was about the size and mass of Saturn’s remaining moon Iapetus, about 700 km in diameter. What happened to Chrysalis is that roughly 160 million years ago the gravity of Saturn’s big moon Titan sent Chrysalis too close to the planet where it broke up. So our best estimate now is that Saturn’s big, beautiful ring system probably formed during the age of the dinosaurs!

The beginning of the end for Chrysalis? That’s the leading model for where Saturn’s rings came from. (Credit: PBS Learning Media)

The same thing may happen before too long, cosmically speaking with another moon around planet in our solar system. Phobos, the larger, closer moon of Mars is getting ever closer because of tidal forces drawing it towards the planet. It has been estimated that in about 50 million years Phobos will start to break apart giving Mars a ring system of its own.

Phobos, the bigger, and closer moon of Mars. Are those lines stretched across the moon’s surface signs that Phobos is being pulled apart? Astronomers think that may be so! (Credit: NASA)

Before I go I would like to mention several news stories that have been circulating about the eventual fate of our own planet Earth. According to the stories, based on a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, as the Sun uses up its hydrogen fuel its core will shrink and grow hotter until it begins to burn helium as a fuel. As the core gets hotter the outer surface of the Sun will expand turning the Sun into a red giant star like Betelgeuse or Antares. As the Sun’s atmosphere expands it will engulf the planets Mercury and Venus and perhaps even our Earth. the news stories hasten to assure their readers that these events will not occur for another 4-5 billion years.

When a star runs out of its hydrogen fuel it begins to burn helium. That causes the star to puff up and become a red giant star. The familiar stars Betelgeuse and Antares are both red giants. (Credit: Forbes)

Well actually that’s all been known since about the 1950s when astrophysicists combined the data from the Hertzprung-Russell diagram with nuclear research to determine the life cycle of stars. That was when the idea that our Sun was a ‘main sequence’ star with a life span of about 10 billion years and was about half way through that span was developed. After the main sequence our Sun will have just about one billion years as a red giant. The question of whether or not the Sun will expand enough to devour the Earth has been debated now for more than 60 years.

The Hertzprung-Russell diagram of star absolute brightness versus surface temperature. This diagram was instrumental in understanding the life cycle of stars. (Credit: Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing)

What the new study was actually about was what would happen to those planets, Mercury and Venus and maybe Earth, that are engulfed by the Sun as it grows. Once again computer simulations were carried out giving a range of possible fates for those planets but anyway you look at it the planets will certainly be destroyed.

Astronomers think that about 5 billion years from now, as the Sun becomes a red giant, there’s about a 50-50 chance that our Earth will be devoured. In either case our planet won’t be a pleasant place to live anymore! (Credit: Forbes)

But then nothing lasts forever, even planets.

Education in the United States has been suffering for decades and now we are beginning to see how much further damage the Covid-19 epidemic has done.

In several previous posts I have argued that the United States became the world’s richest and most powerful country not because of our many freedoms, nor thanks to our heroic military. No, in my opinion the US owes it’s status as the world’s superpower because of its educational system, because of our nation’s determination that all of its citizens should have free access to primary and secondary schools while at the same time taking an active role in helping its brightest young people to attend college, whatever their families financial situation. For over a hundred years, from about the 1880s into the 2000s the US graduated more high school students and more college and university students than any nation on Earth. See my posts of 23 June 2021 and 12 July 2017.

Dozens of Colleges and Universities here in the US were initially funded by land grants from the Federal Government. This active promotion of education at all levels of government is the primary reason we now enjoy our status as the world’s richest nation. (Credit: Urban to Ag – WordPress.com)

The benefits of having the world’s largest and best public educational system should be obvious but because so many people nowadays are blind to the obvious I’ll take a moment to mention just a few. By educating its large population the US possessed the trained workforce needed to build the wealthiest economy in history. With the largest number of scientists and engineers that economy grew ever more productive as new inventions were developed and old problems were solved. To put it simply the United States of America had the well-educated, well-trained people it needed to get things done and that, more than any other reason, is why the 20th century was the American century. America’s dominance in science and industry was only made possible by America’s dominance in education.

We used to honor education and our educators in this country. Maybe we’d better get back to doing that. (Credit: ebay)

All that began to change about forty years ago during the Reagan administration. Reagan’s emphasis on lower taxes and smaller government did not immediately effect education, at least it wasn’t supposed to. As time went on however and lowering taxes became the only “proper” way to boost the economy shrinking government budgets meant less money for education leading to lower teacher salaries, larger classroom size and poorly maintained, crumbling schools and school facilities.

Reaganomics does not work. All it has done is caused ever growing deficits and debt while causing an enormous decline in education and infrastructure. (Credit: Mar Martinez Blog)

Public schools faced another threat as well as the “private sector” of the economy came to be preferred over the “public sector”. Private, charter schools grew in number as some parents sought to insulate their children from the growing problems at public schools. Charter schools possessed several advantages over taxpayer funded schools. For one thing since they were not legally obliged to accept all students so that any child who became a disciplinary problem was simply expelled and sent back to the public schools. Because of this, over time discipline in many public schools, especially inner city public schools grew worse and worse when compared to their private school rivals. And because of that those parents who cared about their children’s education more and more sent their kids to charter schools, a vicious feedback mechanism that continues to increase the gap between private and public schools even today. 

Charter Schools are ‘For Profit’ institutions. Hence they exist to make money not educate students. When a charter school fails it simply closes its doors leaving its students without a school to attend. (Credit: Weapons of Mass Deception)

Recently even higher education has begun to feel the strain. College enrollment, which reached a peak of 70% of recent high school graduates in 2016, had dropped a full 7% to 63% by just 2020. The causes for this are many but the increasing cost of a college degree along with stories of the crushing debt of student loans on people with bachelor’s degrees has made a growing number of young people question the value of higher education, whether or not a four year degree is really worth the time and money. In fact the state of higher education has declined so much that while back in 2000 the US was second in the world for the proportion of its population between the ages of 25 and 34 with a college degree by 2020 it had fallen to 16th.

The growth in numbers of high school graduates going on to college that occurred during the last half of the 20th century has ended in the 21st, and may even be going down! And that was before Covid! (Credit: Admissionly.com)

So all in all the state of education in this country was pretty bad and getting worse BEFORE the pandemic set in. For the past two years students have been in and out of classrooms, either trying to learn remotely at home on a computer, or at school while social distancing and wearing a mask. The confusion and uncertainty must have surely combined to make learning all that much more difficult.

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of talking about Covid. Unfortunately it’s still out there effected nearly every part of our lives, even education. (Credit: CDC)

Now the results of standardized testing for 9 year olds has shown the effect that Covid-19 has had on education in this country. The National Assessment of Educational Progress tests have been conducted since the 1970s as a means of quantifying the basic ability in math and reading of third graders throughout the country. This year the tests were given to 14,900 nine year old third graders and the results compared to those taken in 2020 immediately before the pandemic.

The worst part of the decline in students test scores is that the students that needed the most help saw the biggest decline. (Credit: John Locke Foundation)

The comparison showed a dramatic difference. For the first time ever math scores declined while reading scores saw their largest drop in over thirty years. Worse, the declines were not evenly spread across all ability levels. In math the top 10% of students saw a decline of only 3 points while the lowest 10% saw a 12 point drop, four times as great. And the decrease had a racial component to it as well. Black and Hispanic students on average saw a full 13 point drop compared to only a 5 point drop for the White counterparts. The declines in reading were similar and together they indicate that two decades of progress in education had been wiped out a little over a year.

Minority students had been making considerable progress, catching up to their white counterparts between the years 1970 and 2017. At least some of that progress has been lost due to the pandemic. (Credit: Education Next)

And for children falling behind in first, second or third grade can lead to continuing problems throughout their school careers. So it is that our nation’s educational system, which has been suffering from neglect for decades, has now been further damaged by the pandemic.

Students who fall behind in elementary school rarely catch up. All to often a human brain is already wasted before they are 10 years old! (Credit: Vox)

I’d like to end this post on a somewhat more hopeful note. On the 24 of August President Biden issued an executive order eliminating $10,000 dollars in student loans for millions of Americans and up to $20,000 dollars for Pell grant recipients. Only time will tell if this is the beginning of renewed emphasis on education in this country, but at least it’s something.

P.S. Just a few days after publishing this post another report was released that details the math and reading abilities of 4th and 8th graders here in the US. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card, has been tracking the advancement of our country’s children since the 1990s and this year’s report showed the biggest decline in math and reading scores ever measured.

According to the report math scores for eighth graders fell in every state, every state, with only 26 percent of students showing proficiency in math, down from 2019’s 34 percent. Fourth graders did little better with 36 percent showing proficiency, down from 41 percent, while there were declines in 41 states. The results for reading were little better with 33 percent of fourth graders and only 31 percent of eighth graders being proficient. Once again the scores for the most vulnerable students saw the biggest drops clearly showing that we are in danger of producing an entire generation of the uneducated at just the time when our nation needs all the brains it can get.   

The Nobel Prizes for 2022 are Announced. This year it’s the award for Physiology that’s the most interesting and unusual.

It’s early October and that means it’s Nobel Prize time, the one time of the year when the media pays at least some attention to science.

TV doesn’t completely ignore Science, there are a few good Science programs like PBS’s Nova. However compared to all of the cop and doctor shows finding anything about Science is like looking for a needle in a haystack. (Credit: PBS)

The prize for physiology or medicine came first this year on the 3rd of October and the award went to arguably the most interesting of all of this year’s recipents. The winner was the Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo who was honoured for his work in sequencing the entire genome of our ancient cousins the Neanderthals and comparing it and the DNA of another extinct close relative the Denisovans to that of modern humans. 

Nobel laureate Svante Paabo with one of his research subjects. (Credit: ABC News)

Dr. Paabo spent more than 20 years assembling bits and pieces of Neanderthal DNA from the best preserved teeth and bones of that extinct species. The task was made more difficult because the minute amounts of ancient DNA that are preserved in fossilized samples can easily be swamped by modern DNA from bacteria or even the paleontologists who unearthed it. In order to carry out his work Paabo first had to develop the clean room facilities and policies that would minimize contamination and even then he had to learn how to separate the ancient DNA from whatever modern DNA that still remained.

Finding ancient DNA is no easy task. Much of it is lost and what little remains can be swamped by the DNA of the scientists unearthing it. (Credit: Nobel Prize)

When Dr. Paabo finally succeeded in assembling the entire Neanderthal genome what he discovered was that the Neanderthals haven’t quite gone extinct. In fact around 50,000 years ago there was a good deal of mixing going on between our ancestors and both the Neanderthals and Denisovans so that today most Europeans and Central Asians have as much as 5% of their genes coming from those ancient relatives.

It’s not quite this straightforward but all of us have inside us the remains of our ancient past. (Credit: Goodreads)

The next day the Physics award was announced and this year’s Nobel went to John Clauser for work carried out in the 1970s at the Lawrence Berkeley Labouratories in California, Alain Aspect, who extended Dr. Clauser’s work during the 1980s at the University of Paris along with Anton Zeilinger of Austria who continued the work of Clauser and Aspect. What the three men studied that won them their Nobel was the strange, almost eerie phenomenon called quantum entanglement, a concept that Einstein rejected as ‘spooky action at a distance’.

This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. From left to right Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger who all contributed to our knowledge of quantum entanglement. (Credit: Nobel Prize)

Quantum entanglement occurs when two or more particles are placed into a system whose characteristics are measured; let’s say a system of two particles with one spin up and the other spin down. If the two particles are then carefully separated, careful being why Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger received a Nobel prize, the particles remain entangled so that if one is measured to be spin up then the other, no matter how far away it may now be, has to be spin down.

Einstein didn’t like the concept but thanks to the work of Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger we now know that quantum entanglement is a real part of our Universe. (Credit: NASA)

Besides being an interesting phenomenon in its own right quantum entanglement also has practical applications in the fields of quantum information and quantum computing. So the work of Doctors Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger may become even more important in the next few decades.

The next revolution in computers may be quantum computers, which operate on principles related to quantum entanglement. (Credit: DUG Technology)

The Nobel prize for Chemistry came next and was announced on the 5th of October. This year’s award went to Carolyn R. Bertozzi of Stanford University in California, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark along with K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute in the USA. The three chemists were awarded the prize for their research into ‘click chemistry’ different techniques that allow molecules to be clicked together like lego blocks in order to build larger molecules.

This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry are, left to right, Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless. This is Dr. Sharpless’ second Nobel a feat only accomplished by five scientists. (Credit: The Washington Post)

It was Doctor Sharpless who coined the term click chemistry in the year 2000 when he and Doctor Meldal independently discovered a chemical reaction called copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition that has allowed a tremendous number of different large molecules to be assembled. Doctor Bertozzi then extended the concept to chemistry performed on biomolecules, often molecules on the outer surface of living cells. These developments have led to new medicines for the treatment of cancer and the sequencing of DNA.

Alkyne-Azide was the original click developed independently by Sharpless and Meldal but in the years since other such techniques have been discovered. (Credit: Research Gate)

The chemistry prize was notable for two other reasons because Dr. Bertozzi is the only woman to be awarded a science Nobel this year, becoming only the eighth woman to do so. Also, Dr. Sharpless’ award makes him the fifth person to receive two Nobels, his first came in 2001 for his work on chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions.

The element Copper is very toxic to living cells so Dr Bertozzi developed a copper free form of click chemistry. (Credit: GeneLink)

Finally on the 10th of October the economics prize given ‘in memory of Alfred Nobel’ was awarded to Ben Bernanke, the former head of the US Federal Reserve along with Douglas Diamond of the University of the University of Chicago and Philip Dybvig of Washington University in St. Louis. The three men were honoured for their work on the role of banks in financial crises.

And the Nobel Prize for economics goes to, left to right, Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for their work on Banks during financial crises. (Credit: Kyodo News)

While the studies carried out by Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig were conducted back in the 1980s the results became very important during the financial crisis that shook the world’s economy in 2008. Ben Bernanke was of course Federal Reserve Chief at that time and so he had the opportunity to put his own research into action.

Ben Bernanke’s position as Chief of the US Federal Reserve during the financial crisis of 2008 gave him the chance to put his theories to good use. (GAO)

Bernanke’s work demonstrated how bank failures during the great depression of the 1930s were not caused by the initial recession but instead drove the recession into a deep depression. Bernanke showed how the loss of information about lenders that occurred when banks failed made it difficult for the economy to recover, lengthening the time of the depression. Diamond and Dybvig meanwhile investigated the role of banks in linking lenders and borrowers in ways that are mutually beneficial to both.

The man and his prize. Alfred Nobel funded the prizes in his honour in his will. (Credit: Famous Scientists)

Alfred Nobel’s intend in establishing his prizes was to encourage new and innovative discoveries that would be valuable to all humanity. The work of this year’s recipients demonstrate how well he succeeded.  

Space News Special: NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a successful first demonstration of a Planetary Defense Shield.

One of Hollywood’s favourite science fiction plots is that of a massive asteroid or comet headed straight for our planet, a threat to our civilization if not to all life on Earth. The recent movie ‘Don’t Look Up’ (See my Post of 5 January 2022) is just one of many such productions. Of course one reason that the plot is popular is that the threat is actually very real; 66 million years ago the dinosaurs were driven to extinction by a space rock some 10 kilometers in diameter colliding with the Earth.

A somewhat more serious take on the end of the world by asteroid was the 1998 film ‘Armageddon’. (Credit: Rotten Tomatoes)

While 66 million years may seem like a long time scientists are now coming to realize that collisions with smaller asteroids are fairly common, and can still be quite destructive. Archaeologists now have evidence that it may have been an asteroid strike that gave birth to the legend of Sodom and Gomorrah (see my post of 6 October 2021) while the demise of the mound builder culture here in North America has also be linked to an asteroid. So the possibility of a large space rock coming down in the middle of a densely populated area and causing a tremendous amount of destruction is very real.

In 1908 a meteor crashed in the Tunguska region of Siberia. Fortunately few people were hurt because the region was so remote but few such unpopulated areas exist anymore so the next such event could cause enormous destruction. (The Conversation)

Before the space age there was really very little that humanity, or indeed any of Earth’s species, could do to protect themselves from an asteroid strike. The dinosaurs certainly had no idea an asteroid was taking aim at them and they surely all died having no idea what it was that was killing them.

They surely had no idea! (Credit: Space.com)

We can do something to protect ourselves however, we have the technology. Our successes in space have given us the ability to not only see a potentially dangerous asteroid before it strikes, hopefully years before it strikes, but we can even send a spacecraft to that asteroid in a effort to prevent that strike from ever happening.

There are literally thousands of Near Earth Objects, space rocks whose orbit around the Sun comes close to our Planet’s. Fortunately space is awfully big so we don’t get hit very often! (Credit: Astronomy Magazine)

So the question becomes, what is the best way to stop an asteroid that’s headed straight at our planet. Well Hollywood producers certainly knows how they’d do it, nuke the bloody thing. Trouble is that blowing up an asteroid doesn’t completely solve the problem, it could even make the things worse. After all when you blow up something there are still a lot of pieces of it left. So blowing up an asteroid headed for Earth just means you now have a lot of smaller asteroids headed for Earth.

We may like to blow things up but that’s probably not the best way to avoid getting hit by an asteroid. (Credit: YouTube)

NASA’s plan for dealing with a potentially dangerous asteroid is far more gentle. For one thing the space agency has organized and funded dozens of astronomers to search for any ‘Earth Crossing Asteroids’ that could become a danger in the years to come. They have found several thousand but so far fortunately none of them will strike our planet within the next fifty or so years. What NASA hopes is that, when a dangerous asteroid is finally found we will have years if not decades of warning. That will be enough time to deal with any dangerous asteroid more efficiently, more effectively and even more cheaply.

NASA’s DART Mission to test a possible technique for protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids. The idea is to crash a small spacecraft into an asteroid to see how much we can alter its trajectory. (Credit: Applied Physics Labouratory, Johns Hopkins University)

The idea is to simply nudge the asteroid, not much, just a little. Given enough time, let’s say exactly one year, a change of just one meter per second in the velocity of an asteroid that is headed straight for Earth is all that is needed to cause that asteroid to miss our planet by more than 30,000 kilometers, a fair safety margin. That’s all, just one meter per second to save the Earth, if done early enough.

We all know the old story. Slow but steady wins the Race. (Credit: VirilityUnemployed)

But can an asteroid be nudged? Are they solid enough bodies to be gently pushed, or are they just piles of rubble that might break up from even a nudge? Will slamming a projectile into the asteroid work or will we have to spread our push out in order to keep the asteroid in one piece?

Those are some of the questions that NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was designed to find out. Launched on the 23 of November in 2021 the Dart spacecraft was targeted at a system of two asteroids, the larger asteroid is named Didymos and is about 780 meters in diameter. Didymos is orbited by a smaller asteroid named Dimorphos, which is roughly 160 meters in diameter.

The DART Spacecraft isn’t going to study Dimorphos but crash into it. Therefore it only carries the instruments it needs to steer it at its target. (Credit: DART)

The plan was for the DART spacecraft to slam into the smaller asteroid Dimorphos at approximately 6 kilometers per second (kps) after which astronomers will measure the change in Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos. You see the reason for choosing the smaller in a two asteroid system as a target is that it has always been easier for astronomers to measure the time an astronomical event takes compared to the distance to an astronomical object.

Human beings learned how to measure time by watching the rhythm of the objects in the sky and even today it is easier to measure time in astronomy than distances. (Credit: www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu)

Think about it, how would you, all by yourself measure the distance to the Moon? But, with only a little effort you could measure the time it takes to go from full Moon to full Moon, at least approximately. Ancient astronomers actually knew pretty accurately the time it took the various planets to orbit the Sun before they knew that the planets really orbited the Sun not the Earth.

Measuring the distance to the Moon requires two different observers plotting the Moon’s position against the stars at the same time from a great distance apart. (Credit: Medium)

Before DART reached Dimorphos astronomers had measured the orbital period of that asteroid around Didymos at 11 hours and 55 minutes. It is expected that the collision with DART will reduce that orbital period to about 11 hours and 45 minutes but again astronomers can take their time and get a very precise measurement of that change. Then, using the well-known laws of orbital dynamics, they’ll be able to calculate exactly how much they’ve succeeded in changing the velocity of Dimorphos.

Kepler’s three laws of Planetary motion are still the basis for any study of astronomy. (Credit: Teachers Pay Teachers)

The DART spacecraft got only one chance at hitting Dimorphos however, if it missed the probe and the asteroid would fly past each other at 6 kps never to meet again. So as you can imagine the atmosphere at the Applied Physics Labouratory of Johns Hopkins University was pretty tense as DART drew ever closer to its target. All the apprehension was unnecessary however for the spacecraft’s autonomous control computer behaved flawlessly. At 07:14 PM on the night of the 26th of September DART smashed into Dimorphos less than 17 meters from the asteroid’s center, a bull’s eye at 10 million kilometers.

Just seconds before the crash DART sent back this picture of Dimorphos. Like many asteroids Dimorphos appears to be nothing more than a pile of rubble. (Credit: CNN)

And DART was taking pictures the whole way in, sending back dramatic images of Dimorphos as the asteroid appeared to grow larger and larger. Not only that but the day before the collision DART had released an smaller Italian cube satellite whose job it was to take pictures of the collision from a few kilometers away. Finally there were several telescopes back here on Earth that also got in the act, taking images of the collision from 10 million kilometers distance.

DART crashing into Dimorphos (top center) as seen by the Italian LICIA cubesat. The larger asteroid Didymos is lower left. (Credit: New Scientist)

So all of the hardware worked, DART smashed right into Dimorphos exactly as planned and NASA got plenty of pictures. In the weeks to come astronomers here on Earth will determine exactly how much the asteroid’s trajectory has changed. Then we’ll know whether or not humanity has at least the beginnings, a breadboard model of a technology that could save us from going extinct the way the dinosaurs did.

Space News for September 2022: Big News for the future of Manned Spaceflight

NASA’s Artemis program continues to have problems getting off the ground while China slowly but surely moves forward with the construction of a space station. I’ll begin with the troubles of Artemis. Indeed, because of the unending problems and schedule changes happening day by day associated with the Space Launch System I’ve had to rewrite this post four times now.

How many novels would get written if the author stopped to rewrite each sentence seven times??? (Credit: TextCortex AI)

Artemis is the name given to NASA’s long, and I do mean long anticipated program for returning human beings to the Moon. I have written several posts about both Artemis and the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that is going to be the main launch vehicle for the entire program. See post of 23 July 2022. In fact the space agency had originally expected that the SLS’s first launch would take place way back in 2016 but an almost unending string of problems has led to delay after delay.

Break down of Block one of the Space Launch System (SLS) which will be the backbone of the Artemis program taking humans back to the Moon. (Credit: NASA Blogs)

It was no surprise therefore when the originally scheduled launch date of August 29th had to be cancelled once again. The SLS was standing on its launch pad, the countdown was underway but during the rocket’s fueling process two small problems were discovered. The first was a leaky vent valve in the inner fuel tank caused by a tiny crack. Even as the first problem was being dealt with another issue came to light as one of the rocket’s four main engines could not be cooled to it proper temperature. In addition the weather at Cape Kennedy was unsuitable for a launch so NASA quickly decided to scrub the lift off.

Mission plan for the Artemis 1 spaceflight. The mission will be unmanned, if it ever gets off the ground! (Credit: NASA)

A second launch date of September 3rd was soon announced even as NASA engineers sought to resolve the two problems while still keeping the SLS at the launch pad. If it were found that major repair efforts were necessary that would require rolling the rocket back into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). Such a rollback is a major process that would add weeks of delay to the mission. With fingers crossed the engineers made their preparations for a launch on the 3rd of September.

Artemis 1 on the launch pad ready to go. Well not quite! (Credit: The Verge)

The problems that plagued the SLS weren’t finished however for as fueling began on the 2nd another leak was found on a quick-disconnect hydrogen intake valve that just couldn’t be fixed while fueling was underway. Once again the launch had to be scrubbed, once again the engineers tired to fix the problem as the rocket stood on the launch pad.

A quick disconnect valve for Hydrogen fueling. Such a thing is a bitch to engineer because hydrogen is the smallest of all atoms so it can easily leak through the tiniest crack. (Credit: Reddit)

Hoping that they had finally fixed the problem of the leaky valve the SLS was subjected to a full fueling test on the 21st of September. You could imagine the sigh of relief at both NASA and Boeing when the huge rocket passed the fueling test without a single hitch. Hoping that ‘third time is the charm’ NASA set a third launch date of the 27th of September.

Not Always. (Credit: Meme Generator)

Now things begin to get a little spooky because starting around the 20th of September a low-pressure storm cell off the northern coast of South America began to intensify and grow. That storm system became hurricane Ian as it moved through the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico and was scheduled to slam into Florida as a major hurricane on, you guessed it, the 26th, the day before Artemis 1 was scheduled to lift off.

Hurricane Ian slamming into Florida. Needless to say NASA wasn’t going to launch a rocket into this! (Credit: NPR)

NASA quickly canceled that launch date; even if Ian gave Cape Kennedy a miss the winds will certainly be too high to permit a lift off. And to protect the $4.1 billion dollar rocket NASA, after several delays decided to roll the SLS back into the VAB.

NASA waiting until the last moment before deciding to roll the SLS back into the VAB to protect it from Hurricane Ian. (Credit: Hindustan Times)

So, with the SLS having to endure another round trip to the VAB the question becomes, how much inspection and possible repair will the rocket have to undergo before NASA will be willing to try, once again, to launch it? One thing for certain is that a launch will not be possible until late October at the earliest. Just another in a continuing series of delays in a program that almost seems to be cursed.

Back during WW2 accidents and problems were blamed on Gremlins. I guess the Artemis program must have more than its fair share of the little stinkers. (Credit: Wikipedia)

On the other hand things are going a bit smoother for the Chinese space agency in its efforts to construct that nation’s first space station. On July 24th the Chinese space agency launched the second module of its planned three-module space station from its Wenchang launch facility on the island of Hainan.

Lauch of the second module in China’s Space Station, named Wentian. (Credit: Global Times)

Christened Wentian the new module will connect with the already orbiting Tianhe module. Tianhe was designed to serve as the main living quarters for the three member permanent crew of the station while Wentian is a multi-purpose module that includes labouratory space and an airlock for Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs). Wentian will also provide some living space during crew transfer periods when there could be as many as six people aboard the station for a day or two.

What China’s space station will look like when completed, perhaps as early as the end of this year. (Credit: Space.com)

The final module, named Mengtian is expected to be launched in October and when it is connected the Tee shaped space station will be completed. At that time Tiangong will be about 20% the size and mass of the International Space Station (ISS) but it will enable China to maintain a permanent manned presence in Earth Orbit.

Though small compared to the International Space Station above, China’s station will still give that nation a permanent presence in Low Earth Orbit (LOE). (Credit: European Space Agency)

And, as happened with the launch of the first station module, the Long march rocket that lifted Wentian into orbit circled the Earth for several days before making an uncontrolled re-entry over the Indian Ocean. The fact the China seems completely unconcerned that their 30 meter tall, 23 ton rocket could land in a populated area is a real problem going forward. The first launch of the Long March resulted in slight damage but fortunately no injuries to a small village in Ivory Coast and sooner or later some real harm will surely occur somewhere.

Re-entry of China’s Long March rocket. Sooner or later a piece of one of these rockets is going to land on top of somebody and do some real damage. (Credit: NewsBytes)

The Tiangong space station is visible on occasion at night over most of the United States, I’ve seen it a dozen times now including with its new Wentian module. Where and when the Chinese station, and the ISS are visible from your location can be found at the website .https://www.n2yo.com/passes/?s=48274#

As our Population continues to grow older the need to understand and treat dementia becomes greater. A new study shows how our lifestyle can have a profound effect on our risk for cognitive impairment.

Dementia is clinically defined as a progressive impairment in thinking, memory and behavior that negatively impacts a person’s ability to carry out the normal functions of life. At the same time dementia can also lead to emotional issues especially a significant decrease in motivation. Although dementia can be caused by traumatic events such as a brain injury or stroke it is most often a gradual affliction that develops slowly over time, hence it is often considered to be a disease of the elderly. The leading cause of gradual dementia is Alzheimer’s disease a neurological disorder where the connections between brain cells actually decay causing a slow decrease in the brain’s ability to function.

We all have occasional mental lapses but when they more frequent, and begin to interfere with our daily life it is a cause of concern. (Credit: Glasgow Memory Clinic)

Other diseases however, such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and even HIV and Mad Cow disease can also cause dementia. The fact that dementia has a large number of different causes, along with its gradual decline in mental ability combine to make both diagnosing and treating dementia extremely difficult.

Talk about scary, in advanced Alzheimer’s the brain it literally falling apart. (Credit: National Institute on Aging – National Institute of Health)

In fact there is no known cure for dementia and those treatments that are available, most commonly drugs known as Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors such as donepezil are used, often have only minor effect. In many cases the only effective measures to help patients of dementia are care-giving interventions to improve the quality of life even as the disease progresses.

All too often the only treatment for dementia is care giver support for the patient. (Credit: Eat This Not That)

Clinically dementia is described as progressing in four stages. The initial stage is known as Pre-dementia, which includes sensory dysfunction, especially the sense of smell, along with mild cognitive problems and changes in emotional behaviour.

Diagnosing Dementia at an early stage is not easy, once again we all have mental lapses. When exactly do they become signs of a serious problem? (Credit: MedicosNotes.com)

 The next stage is known as Early Onset of Dementia where the loss of cognitive ability begins to interfere with normal life. Commonly a patient has difficulty in finding the right words while speaking and planning and executing common tasks becomes more difficult. A common problem at this stage is a patient’s forgetting to take their medicine.

Forgetting to take your medication is a common problem with patients in Early Onset of Dementia. (Credit: Facebook)

Middle Stage of Dementia comes next. Here a patient is beginning to show definite signs of mental decline, to the extent of requiring some care giving help in order to carry out daily functions. Social judgment is also impaired as the patient begins to turn increasingly inward in their mental attitude.

Middle Stages of Dementia are generally the worse because the patient is still aware enough to know what is happening but no longer capable of taking care of themselves. (Credit: Kindly Care)

In the final stage of dementia a patient often requires 24-hour care both to carry out basic personnel functions as well as for their own safety. The patient may now lose the ability to recognize familiar faces and the desire to do anything at all in the real world. Even the knowledge of such basic activities as swallowing can be lost as brain functions diminish making simple tasks like eating and drinking difficult and dangerous.

In end stage Dementia the patient requires 24 hour care. (Credit: Devoted Guardians)

For many years it was thought that the primary risk factors for dementia were age and genetics. In other words older people were at greater risk in general while having a parent or other relative who developed dementia further increased the risk. Now however a new study from the Departments of Psychology and Medicine at the University of Toronto along with the Rotman Research Institute, also in Toronto, have shown clear evidence that lifestyle choices also play a major role in determining whether or not a person develops a cognitive disorder.

There are things that we can do to reduce our risk of Dementia. But the sooner we start the more effective they are! (Credit: Daily Express)

The study investigated eight different factors to see what influence they had to the odds of someone having cognitive impairment. The eight risk factors were, low education (less than a high school diploma), hearing loss, traumatic brain injury, alcohol or substance abuse, high blood pressure, smoking within the last four years, diabetes and finally depression.

Medical studies are often different to conduct because of the need to find large numbers of people to take part. Online studies have helped to solve this problem. (Credit: SOHO Learning Hub)

The study was conducted online with 22,117 participants between the ages of 18 and 89. The study subjects first answered a series of questions about their background after which they were instructed to complete four cognitive tasks. A statistical analysis of the results clearly indicate that possession of even a single risk factor increases the risk of cognitive impairment by about the equivalent of about three years of aging. That is, on average a person with a single risk factor has the cognitive ability of someone three years older than they are.

An unhealthy lifestyle can led to dementia even in young adults! (Credit: Attractions Management)

For those individuals with multiple risk factors the equivalent reduction in cognitive ability is proportional, three years of aging for every risk factor. The study also indicates that the eight factors are all equal in their effect, something that I must admit I rather doubt, I’m still trying to figure out the connection between hearing loss and dementia. Hopefully a further, larger scale study will provide more detailed data about each of the different risk factors. The study does make clear however the importance in personal lifestyle choices in preventing or at least minimizing the extent of dementia.

An Active, healthy life is possible even to an advanced age with proper precautions. Queen Elizabeth lived to 96 and enjoyed life right up to the end! (Credit: Today Show)

With the advances in medicine over the last fifty years the average human life span has increased tremendously, leading to an ever growing population of elderly people. Because of this many in the medical field think that dementia will be the biggest health problem of the 21st century. If that is so many more studies like the one from Toronto will be needed if we’re to make progress in the struggle against dementia.

Paleontology News for September 2022:

There are a lot of interesting studies and discoveries taking place in paleontology. As usual I’ll start in the distant past and go forward in time.

Most of the physics experiments we perform work just as well going backward in time as forward. So why then does the Universe seem to have a definite movement toward the future, not the past? (Credit: Medium)

The Cambrian period in geologic history marks an important turning point in the history of life on Earth because it was during that time 540 to 520 million years ago (MYA) that multicelled organisms first developed hard parts, shells, spines and eventually bones. As I’ve said many times in these posts 99% of the fossils paleontologists find are just the hard parts of the creatures of the past. So fossils are very rare from the time before the Cambrian while they become much more plentiful from that time on.

The Animals of the Cambrian period were the first to possess ‘hard parts’ that fossilized easily. This largely, but not totally, explains the well known ‘Cambrian Explosion’. (Credit: Sam Noble Museum, University of Oklahoma)

Now researchers in the UK think that they have found the earliest known animal to have a hard skeletal structure and they also think that it may be the earliest known predator to boot. The fossil was discovered in an outcrop of rocks in Charnwood Forest near Leicester in central England. The rocks that the specimen was found in date to 560 MYA, so the creature lived in a time just before the start of the Cambrian period.

Charnwood Forrest may look a bit bleak and foreboding but paleontologists and archaeologists love this kind of terrain. (Credit: The Wildlife Trusts)

As described by Frankie Dunn of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History the animal “…clearly has a skeleton, with densely packed tentacles that would have waved around in the water capturing passing food, much like corals and sea anemones do today.” O’k, so the creature wasn’t exactly a predator like a lion or a shark but remember this would be the world’s first predator, the first animal to grab another animal and eat it.

Is this Earth’s first predator. The actual fossil from Charnwood (r) and an artists illustration of what it looked like (l). (Credit: Charnwood Borough Council)

Perhaps the best part of this first predator was the name that the paleontologists gave it, Aurorlumina attenboroughii. The genus name means ‘Dawn Lantern’ and comes from the creature’s resemblance to a blazing torch. Of course the species name is an honour to the great British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, who actually used to go fossil hunting in his youth in the very area where A attenboroughii was discovered.

Sir David Attenborough with the fossil named for him. World renown for his explorations of life in all its diversity Sir David certainly deserves such an honour. (Credit: The Times)

Going forward in time about 200 million years we come to another critical moment in the history of life, the time when the first vertebrate fish began to walk on land. That fish is the ancestor of all the land vertebrates that came after and at present our best guess for the species that achieved that feat is Tiktaalik roseae, a flat headed lobe finned fish about a meter and a half in length who walked upon the bottom of shallow streams and ponds during the late Devonian period some 365 MYA. Looking at T roseae it is clear that, in times of drought, this fish could have lifted itself out if the water and clumsily walked to the next, larger pond or stream. T roseae was discovered at a location on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Province of Nunavut and which lies north of the Artic Circle.

Evolutionary history in the making. Tiktaalik roseae is our best guess at being the first vertebrate animal to leave the water and walk on land. (Credit: New York Times)

Now a new specimen has been discovered at a site only 1.5 km from the location where T roseae was found and critically about 80m below the rock strata that contained Tiktaalik. That means that the new species, which has been given the name Qikiqqtania wakei, is perhaps a million years or so older. Like T roseae, Q wakei has four strong lobe fins that could have been used to ‘walk’ along the bottom. According to lead author and co-discoverer Thomas Stewart of the Biology Department at Pennsylvania State University however a careful examination of the animal’s humerus bone indicates that unlike T roseae, Q wakei was evolving to swim better, not walk on land.

He who hesitates is lost. It seems that while Tiktaalik (r & l) had the courage to move onto land Qikiqqtania (center) decided to turn around head back to deeper water. (Credit: The Independent)

Professor Stewart speculates that like T roseae, Q wakei lived in shallow streams and ponds but unlike its later cousin, which crawled onto the land occasionally, Q wakei turned around and headed back to deeper water. If that is so then Q wakei represents one of the greatest ‘missed opportunities’ in the history of life. It could have conquered the land a million years before its cousin T roseae, it could have become the ancestor of all land vertebrates, all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, even us, but it didn’t. Instead Q wakei took the safe route and returned to a more familiar, more comfortable environment, letting another species be the one that changed the world.

The smoking gun of Qikiqqtania wakei turning back is in its bony fins, which show that the animal was adapting to swimming in deeper waters, not walking on land. (Credit: ZME Science)

Moving ahead about another 100 million years and vertebrates were now flourishing on the land as new species of amphibians and reptiles were evolving and it wouldn’t be long before the first ancestors of the mammals appeared. These early mammals like creatures are known as caseids and now paleontologists from the University of Freiberg and the Dinosaur Museum Altmühltal in Dekendorf, both in Germany, have described a new species of caseid that they feel very much resembles a well know modern descendant.

The ancestors of the mammals were fat bellied lizard like creatures called caseids. (Credit: Deviant Art)

The animal has been named Lalieudorhynchus gandi and it lived about 265 million years ago at the time when all of the continents were joined together into one ‘supercontinent’ called Pangaea in what is today the Lodѐve region of southern France. Based analysis on the fossil bones, which consist of two large ribs, each about 60cm in length along with a femur, 35cm long and a shoulder blade 5 cm long, the paleontologists have reconstructed L gandi as a 4-meter long pudgy lizard with a small head that lived a semi-aquatic life similar to that of a modern Hippo.

Among the largest of its kind Lalieudorhynchus gandi lived like, and even looked a bit like, a modern Hippopotamus. (Credit: Sci.news)

Like a hippo, L gandi was an herbivore, grazing on the aquatic plants that grew in lakes and rivers. When examined under a microscope the animal’s bones were found to have a spongy texture, indicating that L gandi spent much of the time in water where buoyancy would help support its several hundred kilos of mass. As one of the earliest known caseids the paleontologists hope that L gandi will teach us a great deal about this important group of per-mammalian reptiles.

The actual bones recovered from Lalieudorhynchus gandi. Paleontologists can learn a great deal about a creature from just a few fragments of its skeleton. (Credit: Twitter)

So there you have it, three stories that follow a thread through time. From the earliest animal with a skeleton to a relative of the first vertebrates to walk on land to an early mammal like creature the story of life on Earth is a long and fascinating tale.

US Congress passes the largest ever investment in actions to fight Climate Change. Have we finally reached a tipping point where humanity will actually do something to stop the worst effects of Global Warming or is this just too little too late.

After a flurry of last minute negotiations with moderate democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrstin Sinema the United States senate passed legislation that will provide $376 billion dollars for incentives to help develop green energy technologies. While the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) does also include provisions to extend Obamacare rebates and for the first time it allows Medicare to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs with drug manufacturers it is the money to fight climate change that represents the biggest shift in Federal policy.

A lot of progressives are angry at moderate democratic senators Kyrstin Sinema (l) and Joe Manchin (r). But if we can’t find a way to work with our friends what chance do we have of getting anything done! (Credit: CNN)

As I said the bill’s provisions for green technology consists entirely of incentives, rebate money and tax deductions to help offset the cost of private individuals and corporations converting to solar or wind power generation. Rebates are also included in the bill for the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs). The IRA therefore is all carrot, money to make green technology cheaper, but no sticks, taxes or other penalties for continuing to burn fossil fuel.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) contains money to help develop new sustainable energy sources but it doesn’t place any penalties on the continued use of existing coal and oil power plants. (Credit: The Leading Solar Magazine in India)

Of course the bill produced one of the biggest partisan fights ever in an era of extreme partisanship. Every republican in both the senate and the house of representatives voted against the bill claiming that it would actually increase inflation or that it was nothing but a laundry list of democratic pet projects. To be honest however what the republicans really objected to was the tax increase on large corporations that will generate $700 billion in revenue over the next ten years and offset the cost of the programs in the bill.

Solving our environmental issues is going to require money, lots of it and the only way to get that money is by taxing rich people which is the real reason republicans are against it. (Credit: Teen Vogue)

Even some climate change activists were upset at certain provisions in the bill that called for oil and gas drilling on Federal lands and mandating construction of certain oil pipelines, concessions to the petroleum industry that were necessary to gain the support of Manchin and Sinema. So the IRA isn’t perfect and even so it barely managed to squeeze through congress and to President Biden’s desk. Nevertheless it represents the biggest, in terms of money, effort by any government in the world to combat global warming.

It’s as true today as when Voltaire said 250 years ago. The point is to start getting something done, today! (Credit: Bethany United Church)

So, have we actually reached an inflection point, has the evidence for climate change finally grown so overwhelming that there are now enough people concerned about the future of our planet to get something done? Is there now enough political will to make the needed changes to achieve a sustainable society?

In math an inflection point, the point where a curve changers direction, is easy to calculate. In real life, especially in politics, it ain’t that easy! (Credit: Quora)

The weather so far this year has certainly provided further evidence. Excessive heat waves in the northern hemisphere have been occurring non-stop since late spring and even areas of the world not normally associated with high temperatures have been affected. In early July England, Scotland and Wales all set all time record high temperatures, and records in the British Isles go back all the way to the 1860s. On the 16th of July, London, the UK capital saw the temperature exceed 40ºC a number that once would have seemed impossible in a city that far north, London lays at a latitude of 50º, 30′ north, about the same as Newfoundland in North America. And with the heat has come the most severe drought the UK has suffered in decades with both agriculture and river traffic feeling the pain.

England is supposed to be in a temperate zone, not too hot, not too cold. But thanks to global warming there may no longer be such a thing, we’re all living in the tropics! (Credit: Yahoo News)

The rest of Europe has suffered as well, with record high temperatures and severe drought conditions existing from Spain, Portugal and Italy in the south to Germany and the Netherlands in the north. While on the other side of the world Japan and eastern China have also been seeing record setting heat waves. In Japan the government went to the extraordinary measure of asking the 37 million people who live in and around the capital Tokyo to conserve electricity in order to prevent possible power shortages during an unprecedented 40ºC heat wave in late June.

Even though America and Europe are getting the most press coverage Asian nations like China are also experiencing record heat waves. Climate change is no longer a statistical bump, it’s now everywhere. (Credit: MIT News)

All across the world as the heat increases the use of air conditioning rises even faster and the strain on aging power grids is quickly reaching the breaking point. Imagine the disaster that could happen if the Texas power grid collapses during a week of consecutive days at or above 40ºC as happened in July in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. 

On the 7th of September a massive ‘Heat Dome’ over the western US brought California’s power grid to within minutes of large scale blackouts. Only quick thinking by officials along with cooperation from consumers averted the disaster. (Credit: Bloomberg Law)

But its not just heat and drought that are causing disasters this summer. Here in the US the eastern part of the state of Kentucky saw flooding that killed some 40 people and destroyed whole towns. That event was matched by massive flooding around Yellowstone National Park where flood waters forced the park’s closure for a week even while many visitors were trapped inside.

The valleys of eastern Kentucky are used to occasional flooding but the scale and severity of this year’s event are unprecedented. (Credit: UofL News)

Paradoxically drought and flooding actually go together as a couple of months of no rain can make the soil as hard as concrete so that when rain does occur rather than sinking into the ground it all runs down into the valleys and creek beds leading to a surge of water. That’s what happened in Death Valley where an unusually strong rainstorm trapped hundreds of tourists for days by rising floodwaters.

Death Valley in California rarely gets any rain but paradoxically when it does get rain that rain can lead to flooding. (Credit: UnitedKingdom Knews)

This year’s surge of climate change induced, weather related disasters are just the beginning for we are still dumping huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere where they will only cause further increases in the world’s temperature. Now the First Street Foundation, a non-profit think tank that studies climate change has issued their estimate for what the hottest days of summer will be like for the US in the year 2053. Currently there are ten counties in this country that can expect to see one day a year where the heat index, the ‘feels like’ temperature that is a combination of actual temperature and humidity, can reach over 50ºC, an unbearable, life threatening amount of heat. The majority of these counties are of course in the desert southwest but there are a few in the middle section of the country far from the cooling effect of the ocean.

Currently only a few US counties are considered to be in an ‘extreme heat’ zone (l). By 2053 that are of ‘extreme heat’ is expected to grow dramatically. (Credit: News Times)

The peer reviewed analysis by the First Street Foundation predicts that by 2053 the number of counties reaching a heat index of 50ºC will rise to over a thousand, a two orders of magnitude increase. The part of the country that will see the biggest increase in area will be that middle section where a swath of extreme heat will form starting with Texas and Louisiana in the south and extending as far north as Chicago. Over 100 million people will see deadly heat waves for at least part of the year while the big cities of Texas could see temperatures over 40ºC for months on end.

Texas has always been hot, but before long it may simply become unlivable. (Credit: Fox Weather)

Meanwhile another heat zone will form along the east coast  starting in Georgia and South Carolina and reaching my home here in Philadelphia. Every part of the country can expect increased heat as well, with what are today the 7 hottest days of the year extending to become the 18 hottest days in nearly every locality. The effect that this increase will have on other weather conditions, drought or flooding, tornadoes and other severe storms can only be guessed at right now.

And with the increase in heat comes an increase in severe weather like tornadoes. (Credit: Texas A&M Today)

And the First Street Foundation is not the only voice crying out in alarum. A leading Earth Sciences Professor at University College London named Bill McGuire has recently published a new book entitled ‘Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitants Guide’ that outlays his vision for our weather future. According to Professor McGuire severe climate change is inevitable and irreversible. McGuire is quite correct when he states, “And as we head further into 2022, it is already a different world out there. Soon it will be unrecognizable to every one of us.”

Maybe this is a book we should all read. I’ve got my copy on order! (Credit: Amazon.com)

So the question becomes, is the Inflation Reduction Act with its $376 billion to fight climate change nothing but, too little too late. Or has humanity finally faced the fact that climate change is an existential threat that we must deal with and the IRA just the first step in an ever growing effort to save the world.

With a stroke of Joe Biden’s pen the IRA becomes law but it will take more, a lot more and not just from the Federal government, from all of us! (Credit: ABC News)

Only time will tell, and I don’t think we’re going to have to wait until 2053.

Researchers at the University of Houston have discovered a new Semi-Conductor material with characteristics that make it far superior to Silicon. And what makes Semi-Conductors so special anyway?

Historians have named several periods of the past by the material that typified the industry of the time, whether it be the Stone Age or Bronze Age or Iron Age. In keeping with that methodology our present period of history should then be called the Silicon Age. Computers and other electronic devices are everywhere nowadays, you carry your smartphone with you where ever you go but there are dozens of other electronic devices in your home as well. Your oven, washing machine, refrigerator even your car all have integrated circuits in them while of course your TV and computer are virtually nothing but Integrated Circuits made of silicon.

Out world today is built not of stone or steel but of electronics, and that means silicon. (Credit: Electrical Technology)

All of that is due to silicon’s properties as a ‘semi-conductor’ that is silicon is a material that doesn’t conduct electricity as well as a conducting metal, say copper or iron do, but it does conduct electricity better than an insulator like rubber or wood do. With all of the silicon electronics now being manufactured it’s rather surprising therefore to learn that silicon isn’t really all that good of a semi-conductor.

Silicon in its pure state. Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth so its use in electronics is based more on its being a cheap semi-conductor rather than a good semi-conductor. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Silicon’s biggest problem is that while it does conduct electricity fairly well it is very bad at conducting heat away from the electronics. That’s why so many of our electronic devices get so hot, and require extra cooling systems to remove that heat before it reduces both the performance and lifespan of those electronics. Even as a semi-conductor however silicon is simply not as good as its rivals germanium (Ge) or gallium-arsenide (GaAs).

The first transistor, built back in 1947, used Germanium as its semi-conductor because Germanium is just a better semi-conductor. (Credit: Computer History Museum)

The primary factor of how good a semi-conductor material performs is called its carrier mobility, which is measured in units of centimeter-squared per volt second. There are actually two kinds of mobility, one for the electrons themselves called electron mobility and the other is ‘hole’ mobility, the mobility of places where an electron should be but isn’t. In a semiconductor a hole will actually behave like a positively charged electron. While the electron mobility of silicon is fairly good at 1400cm2/V*s, its hole mobility is much lower, only 450 cm2/V*s.

Carrier mobility is the basic property that makes a semi-conductor useful in electronics. Like all semi-conductor materials the carrier mobility in silicon is heavily dependent on temperature. (Credit: Quora)

So why do we use silicon then? As you might guess cost is the major factor, germanium and gallium-arsenide are both considerably more expensive and gallium-arsenide is very toxic to boot, adding further to the cost of using it. Because of these drawbacks materials scientists are always on the lookout for new semi-conductor materials in the hope of finding a replacement for silicon.

Despite being more expensive and dangerous to make Gallium Arsenide continues to be used as in electronics and solar cells simply because it is a much better semi-conductor material. (Credit: Phys.org)

Now researchers at the University of Houston have identified a new semi-conductor material that not only surpasses silicon in performance but may actually approach the theoretical limit to semi-conductor performance. The material is called Cubic Boron-Arsenide (c-BAs for short) and is a crystal grown from the two elements Boron and Arsenic. To date only tiny crystals of c-BAs have been manufactured, and those have contained impurities, but recent measurements of c-BAs have shown that it possesses ten times the thermal conductivity of silicon while at the same time having a carrier mobility in excess of 1600 cm2/Vs for both electrons and holes. Based on their measurements the researchers also think that, if the impurities were removed, carrier mobility could reach as high as 3000 cm2/Vs.

Cubic Boron Arsenide is the newest semi-conductor material being studied right now. So far its properties are better than any other known material. The question is of course cost! (Credit: American Physical Society)

Of course right now c-BAs is even more expensive than Ge or GaAs but to date very little research has been carried out to see if it can be manufactured on an industrial scale. If it can then c-BAs may become the new silicon, pushing the performance of electronics still further while improving their reliability and life span.

The like expectancy of electronics, known as the Mean Time To Failure or MTTF is heavily dependent on temperature. If c-BAs can improve the life span of our electronics that may help offset its greater cost. (Credit: JetCool)

Ok, so what is it about these semiconductors that make them so valuable in electronics. To answer that question we first have to discuss the process of doping of a semiconductor. As I said above, semi-conductors will allow both electrons and electron holes to move through them, but not very well. If a very small amount of another element is mixed in however, about one atom of the other element for every 100 million atoms of silicon, that mobility can be greatly increased. For example adding that tiny amount of phosphorus to silicon increases its conductivity by a factor of 10,000.

Even a small amount of doping can greatly change of the conductivity of a semi-conductor. The ability to so easily control the electrical properties is what makes semi-conductors so useful. (Credit: Halbleiter.org)

This process is called doping and whether the increase is for electrons or holes depends on what material the silicon is doped with. Doping with phosphorus or antimony for example creates N-type silicon increasing the electron mobility. Doping with Boron or indium on the other hand results in P-type silicon with increased hole mobility. When a slice of N-type silicon is placed against a slice of P-type a semiconductor junction is formed where the free electrons can move into the holes but the holes cannot move into the electrons. In such a N-P junction electric current can only flow in one direction, a device known as a diode. Two such junctions, whether NPN or PNP form a transistor that can be switched ON or OFF or used to amplify a signal.

PNP and NPN transistors act as tiny switches, turning ON and OFF millions of times a second. That simple function has made them the most important devices in the world today. (Credit: Electronics Hub)

Semiconductor junctions can also both convert electric current to light, a Light Emitting Diode or LED, or convert light to electric current as in a solar cell. They can also convert heat to electricity or electricity to heat, that last part is easy. With all of its many applications it’s no wonder that materials scientists will continue to search for better, and cheaper semi-conductors.

Recent Mass Shootings in Texas and Indiana provide strong evidence against the argument that ‘The only thing that can stop a Bad man with a Gun is a Good Man with a Gun.’

With all of the mass shootings taking place across the United States nowadays it seems that we’ve all just come to accept the massive amounts of bloodshed as ‘normal human behavior’ against which nothing can be done. In keeping with this philosophy the National Rifle Association (NRA) along with their Republican lawmakers continue to assert the premise that ‘The only thing that can stop a Bad man with a Gun is a Good Man with a Gun.’

The idea of ‘Justice’ being provided by a ‘Good man with a Gun’ is old and maybe someday we’ll recognize that it’s also obsolete. (Credit: Buffalo Bill Center of the West)

But a premise is not an observed fact, and to be considered true a it must stand the test of comparison against actual observations. That means that the premise about good men stopping bad has to be judged by those shooting incidents where the bad man with a gun was stopped by one or more good men with guns. I would like to do just that using the recent mass shootings at Robb elementary school in Uvalde Texas and the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, Indiana. I will argue that these two events represent the two extremes in the reactions of the ‘good man’ to the problem of the ‘bad man’. As such they are what a physicist would call boundary conditions which can be used to give insight into all of the possible outcomes of the ‘good man / bad man’ premise. 

It’s become an unending dirge of mass shooting after mass shooting in this country. This is just a typical weekend in America today. (Credit: ABC News)

In both of these incidents the shooter acted without any immediate provocation or intent to achieve some rational goal. Instead the perpetrators simply carried an arsenal of weapons to a place where a large number of innocent people would be and begin firing with the aim of killing as many people as possible. In neither incident did the assassin have a prior record of violence sufficient enough to prevent them from purchasing their weapons legally, nor for each killer has a motive has been discovered for their heinous acts. For these reasons the shooter in both the Uvalde, Texas and the Greenwood, Indiana mass shootings certainly can be classified as a ‘Bad Man with a Gun’.

The victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde Texas. While they died over a hundred ‘Good Men with Guns’ stood around doing nothing. (Credit: WSVN)

Also, in both Uvalde and Greenwood the bad man with a gun was demonstrably stopped, killed actually by a good man with a gun. In Uvalde the shooter, whom I will not name, was killed when local police stormed the schoolroom where he had barricaded himself. In the Greenwood shooting it was an ordinary citizen, just someone who was himself licensed to carry a firearm, who engaged and killed the mass shooter.  The main difference between the two confrontations is in the competence of, and most importantly the speed with which the good man reacted to the life and death situation at hand.

If the Good Men with Guns just stand around and do nothing they certainly aren’t going to stop any Bad Men. (Credit: Complex)

At Uvalde a laundry list of ‘systemic failures’ along with an unwillingness to act by senior law enforcement officers led to a 77 minute delay, after the shooter had begun his rampage, before the assassin was finally confronted and subdued. During all that time 19 children and two of their teachers lay dead or dying while others who still lived were at the mercy of the shooter. Certainly part of the reason for the delay was the large number of different law enforcement agencies that responded to the active shooter alert. Of the 376 good guys who showed up at Robb Elementary 149 were members of the U.S. Border Patrol while 91 were state police, the vaulted Texas Rangers. It seems as though these state and federal officers thought that local police should take charge because of their superior knowledge of Robb Elementary and the people there.

Managing Chaos requires a particular skill set that obviously nobody at Robb Elementary School possessed. (Credit: Dreamstime.com)

And there were more than enough local police at the scene. 12 Arredondo’s Sheriff’s Deputies along with 25 members of Uvalde’s police force of whom 5 were school police. All in all there were simply too many cops from too many agencies with no one willing to step up and take charge. Confusion as to room keys and whether any of the kids in the room could still be alive added to the chaos but in any case Robb Elementary School in Texas is an excellent example of just how badly a ‘good man with a gun’ can handle a ‘bad man with a gun’. In other words, it is undeniable that in some cases good men cannot be relied upon, some better solution must exist and must be found.

The ‘Keystone Cops’ were a metaphor for bureaucratic incompetence that still works today. (Credit: Gfycat)

The shooting at Greenwood Mall in Greenwood, Indiana is just the opposite. When a shooter opened fire at the Mall’s Food Court with his assault rifle local citizen Elisjsha Dicken was having lunch with his girlfriend. As he heard the gunshots Elisjsha, who is legally permitted to carry a firearm in the state of Indiana, immediately took out his own pistol and calmly fired ten rounds, mortally wounding the shooter. Unfortunately, despite Dicken’s heroic actions the killer still managed to kill three innocent people and wound a fourth before being taken him down.

Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana is no different from a thousand malls across America and unfortunately as the site of a mass shooting it’s become typical of part of our culture as well. (Credit: WNDU)

At Greenwood the good man reacted immediately, stopping the assassin before he could harm anyone else, therefore it can be argued that Elisjsha Dicken represents the best case scenario of the ‘Good Man with a Gun stopping a Bad Man with a Gun’. Three innocent people still got killed however, the best case scenario was still a mass shooting with multiple dead and wounded.

Elisjsha Dicken was the “Good Man’ who reacted quickly and stopped the ‘Bad Man’. Still three innocent people died despite Elisjsha’s best effort. (Credit: CNN)

I have argued above that Uvalde and Greenwood can be considered as approximating the worst and best case of the possible outcomes for the ‘The only thing that can stop a Bad man with a Gun is a Good Man with a Gun’ premise. If that is so it is clear that even the best case scenario is still horrific and every other possibility progressively worse making the premise demonstrably false.

Relying on Good Men with Guns to stop the Bad Men may seem romantic but it still means we have to live in a violent, horrible world. Are we really going to admit that we aren’t intelligent enough to find a better solution. (Credit: Facebook)

Therefore, if we do in fact want to try to reduce the level of gun violence in this country, and yes it is true we cannot even hope to completely stop it, then we must find a new premise to test. Of course everyone already knows what that premise is, ‘The best way to stop a Bad man with a Gun is to NOT LET THEM GET A GUN in the first place’.

So long as guns are a big part of American Culture is it only a matter of time before someone points a gun at you!!!!! (Credit: Southern Arizona Attractions Alliance)

In other words gun control, eliminating military style weapons completely along with high capacity magazines. At the same time we must adopt stricter background checks to keep people with mental problems from acquiring firearms. None of these suggestions have to adversely effect legitimate hunters or those who want to purchase a gun to protect their homes. They will however reduce the current high frequency of murders in this country, not just the mass shootings. Gun violence in the US has grown tremendously over the last thirty years, it’s time to finally do what we all know is the only thing that will actually work.