Anyone who is even a casual reader of this blog knows quite well that I am a big fan of dinosaurs. Fossil collecting is one of my favourite pastimes and I’m always on the lookout for any news about extinct species in general and dinosaurs in particular. And that’s not just in order to have something to write about in these posts, I really am very interested in paleontology and especially dinosaurs.
Poster for ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ showing the Jurassic World Team, top, and the Jurassic Park Team, bottom. I’l bet even money this won’t be the conclusion of the Jurassic Ear!
So as you might guess any movie that stars dinosaurs is a must see for me. I happily admit that, as a kid I dragged my dad to see many a really bad movie simply because it had a dinosaur in it. If you’d like an example of this go to the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) and check out a film called “Dinosaurus’ from 1960.
Not Suitable for Children? I was six when I saw it and trust me there weren’t that many thrills, just two claymation dinosaurs. (Credit: IMDb)The big climax was when the claymation T rex fought a steam shovel. Sounds more exciting than it was! (Credit: Michael’s Movieplace)
Of course the difference now is that dinosaur movies back then were low budget “B” movies with actors no one ever heard of while today dinosaur movies are big budget blockbusters with a cast of “A” list stars. The new movie “Jurassic World: Dominion” is the latest example of this trend being the sixth in the “Jurassic Park” series and I for one am quite certain it won’t be the last.
The one that started it all, Poster for 1993’s ‘Jurassic Park’. (Credit: Prescott Park Arts Festival)
The big draw in “Jurassic World: Dominion” is that it takes a look backward to the first movie by uniting the main characters from the first three “Jurassic Park” movies with the main characters from the latter three “Jurassic World” movies. That list includes actor Sam Neil as Dr. Alan Grant, Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler and Jeff Goldbloom as Dr. Ian Malcolm. All three are reprising their roles from 29 years ago while Chris Platt continues his role of Owen Grady along with Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing and Isabella Sermon as Maisie Lockwood.
Along with human actors ‘Jurassic World: Dominion also stars Dinosaurs, maybe too many dinosaurs! (Credit: Variety)
And really that’s the start of the problems with “Jurassic World: Dominion” because the plot is really just intended to bring these two groups together while at the same time having them be threatened by a very long list of dinosaur species. In other words having a plot that simply made any kind of sense was not a primary concern of the scriptwriters. What plot there is concerns an evil CEO of a biotech corporation trying to use dino genetics to control the world’s food supply. Really, calling the villains in “Jurassic World: Dominion” cartoonish is an insult to cartoons. Wile E. Coyote from the old Roadrunner cartoons was a more fleshed out character than any of the bad guys in this movie.
When the characters in a movie become cartoonish the entire film becomes nothing more than a special effects extravaganza where you really don’t care what happens to anybody. (Credit: Vox)
And all of the contrivances that are employed to bring our heroes together strain credulity rather severely. Really, at one point the main characters are spread out in a large nature reserve in Italy where the biotech firm has its labouratories and yet they all somehow manage to just run into each other, ‘oh hi’!! The coincidences in “Jurassic World: Dominion” are just a bit too much.
Security at BioSyn, the evil corporation, can’t be very good if seven non-authorized personnel can go running all over the place. (Credit: Variety)
But of course the real reason to go to a Jurassic Park movie isn’t the plot or even the actors, it’s the dinosaurs and unfortunately even here “Jurassic World: Dominion” falls short. There are just too many different species, it’s as if the producers went through ‘A Field Guide to Dinosaurs’ and said, “we want one of those, one of those, and of course one of those.”
This really is pretty much the script to Jurassic World: Dominion. (Credit: Wikipedia)
In the original “Jurassic Park” movie the main characters were really only threatened by two species, a T rex and three velociraptors. That gave the dinosaurs a chance to actually develop as characters themselves. Not so in “Jurassic World: Dominion”, there are simply so many large, predatory dinosaurs trying to gobble up our heroes that you lose track of how many there are and again the whole thing comes off as cartoonish.
At the end of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion” a T Rex stands triumphant, which is as it should be! (Credit: Cinema Blend)
Still, there are dinosaurs and, just like when I was a kid, I still enjoy seeing dinosaurs, even if they are just CGI. “Jurassic World: Dominion” is supposed to be the last in the “Jurassic Park” series but let’s be honest, if it makes enough money there will be another one, even if they have to re-boot the entire series from scratch.
How many times has Batman been rebooted now? Do you really think they can’t do the same with Jurassic Park? (Credit: www.thebatman.com)
I have written about research into the origins of life on this planet several times now, see posts of 9 March 2019 and 25 September 2021. One of the leading theories of how life began is called the ‘RNA World’ hypothesis, which asserts that before DNA and proteins became the major components of living creatures it was strands of RNA that both carried genetic information and served as catalysts for the chemical reactions needed for life. The big problem with the RNA World concept was that, although RNA can serve as catalysts they are considerable less efficient than the protein enzymes used by all modern living things.
Messenger RNA or mRNA is a hot topic right now, many biologists hope that mRNA may lead to treatments for many different diseases as well as increasing our understanding of how living creatures work in general. (Credit: The Conversation)
Now a new study, published in the journal Nature from biochemists at the Department of Chemistry at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, claims to have solved that problem. The team began by looking at the way the proteins are manufactured in cells today. First a strand of DNA is copied as messenger RNA, mRNA. Then the mRNA moves to a structure within the cell known as a ribosome. As the mRNA moves through the ribosome it grabs amino acids from the surrounding tissue and, based on the information in the mRNA, builds a protein. The structure of the ribosome is therefore key in determining how the mRNA builds the protein, and curiously ribosome are themselves a combination of proteins and RNA strands.
Structure of a typical human cell. The Ribosomes are the sites where mRNA is used to manufacture proteins. (Credit: Pinterest)
The researchers therefore decided to fabricate their own ribosome out of synthetic RNA strands. This RNA only ribosome that the team produced was nevertheless able to synthesize a short pre-protein chain, called a peptide, from pieces of RNA. In this manner the team at Ludwig-Maximilians University have demonstrated a possible pathway for how an RNA based pre-living creature could have shifted from an RNA World to a more efficient RNA-Protein World. The chemists still have to work out how their RNA strands were able to eventually copy themselves into more stable DNA molecules but still the development of a proto-ribosome is a big step toward the goal of understanding how life began.
When two or more amino acids are combined they form a peptide chain. As a peptide chain grows longer it becomes a protein, the basic chemical of life. (Credit: Chemistry Learner)
To keep life going however eventually sex was developed as a method for multi-cellular organisms to replicate. Now we’re all familiar with how human beings reproduce but other types of animals have many different ways of carrying out sex. For example in many species of fish the female lays her eggs on a flat surface and then the male fertilizes those eggs when they are outside of the female’s body.
When most species of fish mate fertilization occurs outside of the body. (Credit: Two Fish Divers)
Paleontologists have lone sought to discover how early multi-cellular animals had sex and one of the earliest animals for which we have good fossil evidence are the trilobites. The exoskeletons of trilobites are very common as fossils because their top shell is reinforced with calcite making it hard enough to survive for hundreds of millions of years. Unfortunately the trilobites appendages, its legs and antenna, did not incorporate calcite so they are rarely preserved, and it would be among those appendages that we would be likely to find clues to the way trilobites mated.
Trilobites are a fairly common fossil and can be very beautiful, like this specimen here. Unfortunately the legs and other appendages underneath the animal were not made of the same hard material as the top shell and so are rarely preserved. (Credit: Digital Atlas of Ancient Life)
One of the few fossil locations where the delicate legs of trilobites are preserved is the famous Burgess Shale of British Columbia in Canada. Hoping to find some evidence of trilobite mating behavior Ph.D. candidate Sarah Losso and her adviser Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard examined every known specimen of the trilobite species Olenoides serratus found at the Burgess Shale that was known to have some of its appendages preserved. The specimen that showed Losso the smoking gun of mating behavior wasn’t very promising at first glance, the trilobite’s head was nearly gone as was almost half of the body. Where those missing parts should have been however there appeared nine legs in an excellent state of preservation.
The famous Burgess Shale site in British Columbia is a World Heritage site so only professional paleontologists can work there, and even they have to get a special permit to do so. (Credit: Trilobites.info)
Seven of those legs were typical trilobite legs used not only for walking but for breathing and chewing as well. That’s right trilobite gills were on their legs and since trilobites had no jaws they used the part of their legs close to the body to ‘chew’ their food.
Trilobite fossil from the Burgess Shale showing the animals legs. The longer appendages are the typical walking legs while the two shorter ones, kinda in the middle are the claspers that the animal used to grab its mate during sex. (Credit: New York Times)
The remaining two legs were different however, being shorter and lacking any gill structures. To Losso they clearly resembled the grasping appendages of modern male horseshoe crabs known as claspers that are used by the male to grab spines on the female’s shell and hang on as she lays her eggs allowing the male to immediately fertilize them. The shells of Olenoides serratus possess exactly the same kind of spines so it is highly likely that the male trilobite could have used his claspers in the same way during sex.
Reconstruction of the underside of Olenoides serratus, left. Note the two pairs of short claspers. Right is an artists impression of how O serratus would have mated. (Credit: SciTechDaily)
Now O serratus is only one of over 20,000 described species of trilobite, many of which do not have prominent spines for the males to grab during mating. Therefore it is probable that other trilobite species used other techniques during sex. Nevertheless the fact that one ancient species, O serratus who lived 520 million years ago, mated in the same fashion as a related species does today is a major discovery.
Did O serratus mate in the same way that Horseshoe Crabs do today? If they did it means that a style of mating has lasted for over half a billion years! (Credit: Seacoast Science Center)
Finally today I would like to mention the unearthing of a specimen of an ancient dog like animal that lived 2 to 28 million years ago and roamed the forests and plains of what is today North America. The fossil was found during work on a construction project at the Otay ranch area of San Diego County in California back in 2019. Encased in two large pieces of sandstone and mudstone was a nearly complete skeleton of a member of a group of species known as Archeocyons, which means ancient dog.
The ancestors of man’s best friend lived some 20 million years ago and probably filled an ecological niche not too different from what wild canines do today. (Credit: The San Diego Union-Tribune)The fossil Archeocyon found outside San Diego is now undergoing cleaning and study at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. (Credit: News Tribune)
In life the animal would have been the size of a gray fox and based upon the shape of its legs it was capable to running long distances much as a modern canine does. However the animal’s teeth were a curious mixture of flesh cutting incisors up front with grinding molars in back indicating that the animal also ate a considerable amount of plant material, unlike modern canines. It is not yet known if the specimen from San Diego represents a new species or not, the fossil bones are going to be examined by an expert in Archeocyons from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Nevertheless a nearly complete skeleton of an ancient canine will certainly tell us a great deal about how man’s best friend evolved.
Back in April NASA began its final testing of Boeing’s long awaited Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that is going to take astronauts back to the Moon and even beyond. That final test, known as the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) was to be performed as the mighty rocket stood on its launch pad. Once the WDR was successfully completed it was hoped that the first, unmanned launch of the SLS could take place at the end of this month.
The Block 1 configuration of the SLS which NASA hopes will be the vehicle that takes American astronauts back to the Moon and one day even beyond. (Credit: NASA Blogs)
Didn’t work out that way, after three attempts at the WDR the space agency called a halt, there were simply too many problems. It was therefore decided that the SLS would be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for repairs. The rollback was carried out on April 26th and the rocket returned to the VAB where it underwent repairs to an upper stage check valve along with a leak in the tail service mast umbilical plate housing. These repairs meant yet another delay in a program that was supposed to take four years but which has now taken eleven.
The Space Launch System (SLS) on its way back to Pad39B at Kennedy Space Center. (Credit: Engadget)
The repairs did go smoothly however and the WDR is now expected to take place on June 19th, and if there are further problems it could be much later. That means that the first actual launch of the SLS will not occur until July at the earliest, the earliest launch window would be July 26 to August 9. Any more delays could threaten the entire the schedule Artemis Program and America’s hopes of getting back to the Moon before 2030.
Mission plan for the Artemis 1 unmanned flight. (Credit: Space Center Houston)
Fortunately for Boeing there has been some better news as well. The aerospace corporation’s Starliner manned capsule, the planned competitor for Space X’s dragon capsule for the task of taking astronauts to Low Earth Orbit (LOE), is preparing for its second attempt at an unmanned test flight to the International Space Station (ISS). Starliner’s first attempt, known as Orbital Test Flight One or OTF-1, was back in 2019 when the capsule was successfully launched and recovered but a software ‘glitch’ prevented the capsule from being able to reach the ISS. Boeing thought that they had fixed all of Starliner’s problems last August and the capsule, sitting atop its Atlas V rocket was preparing to launch when a series of valve problems caused the flight to be canceled, further delays in a another Boeing program that has been plagued with delays.
Launch of the unmanned Starliner Capsule aboard its Atlas 5 rocket. This second OFT of Starliner has been declared a success even though there were a few problems with the spacecraft. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
The second unmanned launch, OTF-2, took place on May 19th as Starliner was successfully lifted into orbit by its Atlas 5 / Centaur launch system. Just twenty-four hours later Starliner docked at the ISS but not without a few problems along the way. Two of the space capsule’s twelve maneuvering thrusters failed due to a drop in chamber pressure during the trip but thanks to built in redundancy the craft still succeeded in reaching the ISS. Starliner then remained docked at the ISS for about one week before the astronauts manning the station prepared it for its return to Earth.
Starliner docking at the International Space Station (ISS). (Credit: CBS News)
Starliner performed its reentry burn on the 25th of May and successfully touched down in New Mexico some 45 minutes later. At a press conference shortly after touchdown the OFT was officially called a success, despite the problems with thrusters. Now the capsule will undergo a through check out but it seems likely that the final, manned test fight of Starliner will take place sometime later this year. If that flight is also successful then starting next year NASA could have two separate vehicles, and two separate corporations providing those vehicles, transporting astronauts to the ISS. That was the original plan for the Commercial Crew Program that was initiated back in 2014.
After a successful mission Starliner landed in the desert of New Mexico. (Credit: Yahoo)
The flip side of the Boeing’s problems in the Commercial Crew Program is the success of Space X and its Falcon 9 reusable rocket along with the Dragon capsule. In a sequence that is now becoming a routine operation the Crew-4 mission carrying four astronauts to the ISS was launched to the ISS on April 26 and was followed by the return of the Crew-3 mission on May 5. Crew-3 had been launched back on 11 November of 2021 so Space X is now sending four astronauts to the ISS on a regular, every six month basis.
The Sixth successful manned mission for Space X was the launch of the CREW 4 astronauts for their 6 month stay aboard the ISS. (Credit: NASA Blogs)
And even while maintaining the official personnel of the ISS Space X also launched the first private, tourist mission to the space station. That flight, organized by Axiom Space Company took three scientists / engineers and a retired astronaut to the ISS for what was supposed to be a one week stay. Because of bad weather in Florida and scheduling conflicts however the Ax-1 mission was forced to remain at the ISS for two weeks. I’m sure the passengers were very upset at having to stay in LOE the extra week.
The launch of the Crew-4 mission means that Space X has now launched 26 astronauts into LOE, more than the nation of China. Thanks in large part to Space X LOE is starting to get a little bit crowded and with more space stations being placed into orbit over the next decade the Falcon 9 / Dragon system is going to be plenty busy.
On April 26th China also launched its fourth manned mission to its ,under NASA Space Flight)construction space station. (Credit:
But speaking of the ISS, political turmoil here on Earth, the war in Ukraine that is, may soon lead to a breakup of the international cooperation that has allowed the station to operate for over twenty years. The space agency Roscosmos has again declared that western sanctions against Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine may force it to pull out completely from the ISS. “The decision has already been made,” Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos told the Rossiya-24 TV network.
The Head of Russia’s Space Agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin has been threatening his country will pull out of the ISS consortium ever since western nations put sanctions on Russia for their invasion of Ukraine.Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Now Russia has not formally informed the other partners in the ISS consortium so Rogozin’s statement may just be more Russian posturing. The head of Roscosmos also promises that Russia will give NASA and the other space agencies a year’s notice, “…in accordance with our obligations.” Still, a year will be scarcely enough time to make the arrangements for the Russians to separate their core modules from the ISS.
Part American, Part Russian with bits and pieces from other nations the ISS is a very delicate piece of equipment that would take a long time just to figure out how to disassemble. (Credit: NASA)
Again, the Russians may just be making empty threats. With their current financial problems it’s hard to see how they could continue to operate their part of the ISS without help from the US and other countries. If Russia does actually go through with dissolving the ISS partnership it may very well result in the end of Russia as a space power.
The war in Ukraine is not going well for Russia and could mean the end of Russia as a great power, maybe even in space! (Credit: POLITICO)
For both Boeing and the Russians the future holds as much threat as promise. Only Space X seems to have what it takes to go forward into the new world of commercial as well as governmental manned space flight.
The concept of a ‘Multiverse’ has been proposed over many centuries by both scientists and philosophers as a means of understanding the almost random nature of reality and dealing with all of the ‘what ifs’ of history. You know what I mean, like, what if Hitler had died in World War I, would there have been a World War II?
Adolf Hitler, in circle, served in the German army throughout WWI, wounded twice he was awarded both Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class and rose to the rank of Corporal. What if he had died during the war, how much would history have changed and are there Universes where that actually did happen. That’s the literary attraction of the Multiverse concept! (Credit: BBC)
In 1952 physicist Erwin Schrödinger suggested the existence of an infinite number of universes as a means of eliminating the conceptual problems that arose in physics from Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the Wave / Particle duality. Those problems famously include Schrödinger’s own thought experiment where a cat is placed in a box with a vial of poison gas. The vial is set to be triggered by the decay of a radioactive atom, an event that according to quantum mechanics occurs on a purely random basis. The question then becomes, is the cat is alive or dead while inside the box?
In Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment a triggering device, upper left, is set off by the decay of a radioactive element, in quantum mechanics a random event with a measurable half life. If triggered the device breaks a vial containing a poison gas killing the Cat. So, after a time equal to the half life, is the cat alive or dead, or both???? (Credit: Facebook)
According to a framework developed by Niels Bohr, and known as the Copenhagen Interpretation the cat is neither dead nor alive until you open the box and observe it. The idea was that, in Bohr’s view, all of the fuzzy quantum states of a particle, even a cat, collapsed into a single state whenever that particle was observed.
According to the Copenhagen Interpretation the wave function of a particle is fuzzy because of wave mechanics. The location of a particle becomes more precise only when we make a measurement of it, collapsing the wavefunction. (Credit: GlamBlog)
In the Multiverse view however the cat is dead in some universes and still alive in other universes. In fact every time a particle, any particle can occupy two or more quantum states then the same number of universes pop into existence. If you think about it, with all of the particles in the universe and all of the quantum states they can occupy every tiny fraction of a second there must be a whole lot of universes in that multiverse!
Are there an infinite number of universes, each just slightly different from all the others, floating like bubbles in a glass of Champaign? That’s the idea behind the multiverse concept. In some universes Schrodinger’s cat is dead, in others it lives, in most it probable never exists. (Credit: Live Science)
That’s why most physicists still think that the idea of a multiverse is an even worse notion than Bohr’s where everything is fuzzy until you observe it. Science Fiction authors however quickly became fascinated by the concept of the multiverse and whether it be parallel universes in the original ‘Star Trek’ or the ‘Conjunction of a Million Spheres’ in Michael Moorcock’s fantasy novels, along with many other stories, the multiverse is now a fixture in SF.
In the fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock each universe in the multiverse has its own champion, all of whom share a certain kind of fate. They are the Eternal Champion. (Credit: World of Books)
The latest version of the multiverse comes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with the movie ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’. Now Doctor Strange, played by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, experienced a bit of the complexities of the Multiverse in the last big Marvel movie ‘Spiderman: No Way Home’ where three Spidermen from different universes, played by the three actors who have played spidey in movies, join together to fight their villains from different universes.
Poster for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness from Marvel / Disney. (Credit: IMDb)
‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, henceforth just ‘Doctor Strange’, begins with the mystic master rescuing a young woman from an extra-dimensional monster. Once the immediate threat is defeated the woman, whose name is America Chavez, played by actress Xochitl Gomez, tells Strange that she is being pursued because of her ability to travel through the Multiverse from one Universe to another. Strange is startled by the woman because he has seen her in his dreams but she replies that those dreams were realities from another universe where another Doctor Strange tried to protect her. As proof of her claims the woman shows Strange the corpse of the Doctor Strange who tried to protect her.
Recognizing that witchcraft is involved in the daemons who are chasing Chavez Strange decide to seek the aid of his fellow Avenger the Scarlet Witch only to realize that it is the Witch herself who is sending the daemons after Chavez. The Scarlet Witch, also known as Wanda Maximoff and played by actress Elizabeth Olsen, wants to use Chavez’s power to travel to a universe where her two sons, lost in the TV show Wandavision, are still alive.
Some of the events in the TV show Wandavision are carried over into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness but you really didn’t have to see Wandavision to figure out what’s going on in Doctor Strange, I didn’t! (Credit: Engadget)
Yes, I know it sounds confusing and it helps if you’ve seen the movie ‘Spiderman: No Way Home’ and TV show ‘Wandavision’ but they really aren’t necessary. You quickly pick up the idea that Wanda has gone bad and it isn’t long before Strange and Chavez are bouncing from one universe to another. In those alternate universes they encounter alternate versions of other Marvel superheroes, all while being chased by the Scarlet Witch who uses an ancient book of evil magic to occupy the versions of herself in those alternate universes.
In the Multiverse of Madness Benedict Cumberbatch plays Doctor Strange, the Good Guy, mostly. Elizabeth Olsen plays the Scarlet Witch who is the Bad Guy, mostly. That’s one reason why Marvel movies are better than the DC ones because the characters, good or bad, aren’t just one or the other but like real people are something of a mixture of both. (Credit: Hindustani Times)
In other words it’s a fun roller-coaster ride where all of the possibilities of the multiverse are rather cleverly displayed. The acting in ‘Doctor Strange’ is typical for a superhero movie, good enough to not detract from the action. And once again the writers at Marvel just seem to be able to give enough humanity to their characters so that, unlike the DC heroes, they do seem like real people, even with their powers.
To me it’s not just Superman’s powers that are hard to accept it’s his too good to be true personality. (Credit: DC Database)
I do have a few small problems with ‘Doctor Strange’, for one thing there are so many cameos by altered Marvel superheroes, along with four different Doctor Stranges and I think it was three different Wandas that it gets a mite confusing after a while, but that’s part of the fun of the multiverse. A bigger problem is that the outcome, for all three of the main characters, is pretty predictable. Finally there’s the whole question of how America is able to go from one universe to another. She doesn’t even know how she does it so we’re given absolutely nothing in terms of an explanation.
In real life a predictable outcome is a good thing. In a story, not so much. The fates of the three main characters in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are pretty predictable even with the entire Multiverse to work with. (Credit: Bryson Brainstorming)
Still ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ is certainly a fun film, another solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that now encompasses the entire Multiverse. So, should we now start calling it the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse?
The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is quiet right now, that is, it is not actively feeding on nearby gas and dust, to say nothing of planets and stars. All of the supermassive black holes in the galaxies close to ours are like that, quiet.
Astronomers are convinced that every large galaxy, this is Andromeda, has a supermassive black hole at their center. So in the early Universe did supermassive black holes form galaxies around them or do galaxies form supermassive black holes inside them? That’s one of the questions the new James Webb Space Telescope was designed to help answer. (Credit: Space.com)
As we look at galaxies further away, the picture changes. The supermassive black holes in distant galaxies are usually surrounded by an ‘accretion disk’ of matter that is slowly falling into the black hole. The energy released by all of that matter falling into the black hole causes the accretion disk to shine as brightly as thousands or even millions of stars. These radiating objects are technically known as ‘Active Galactic Nuclei’ or AGN and are among the brightest objects in the Universe.
Here’s a galaxy with a very active galactic nuclei. The energy released by matter falling into the supermassive black hole at this galaxy’s center is outshining the billions of ordinary stars in the galaxy itself. (Credit: Think Big)
Now remember in astronomy the further away you look from Earth the further back in time the object you’re seeing is. The brightest star Sirius is about ten light years away so the light you see it by took ten years to reach your eye so what you are seeing is Sirius as it looked ten years ago. The same is true of the pole star Polaris, which is about 500 light years away. When you look at Polaris in the night sky you are seeing it as it was 500 years ago.
Every Boy Scout knows that to find Polaris, the pole star you use the front two stars of the Big Dipper. Now Polaris is about 500 light years away so the light we see at night left the star 500 years ago. Therefore today we see Polaris as it was 500 years ago. (Credit: BBC Science Focus Magazine)
So when astronomers see that the supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies are quiet, that is not feeding, while the supermassive black holes in more distant galaxies are more active it’s telling them that over time those black holes consumed all of the matter close to them and only stopped feeding because there’s nothing left nearby for them to eat. In this way astronomers have been able to model the life cycle of supermassive black holes going from actively feeding to quiet as they deplete the matter around them.
The various parts of an AGN. The Supermassive Black Hole pulling matter into itself powers the whole AGN. (Credit: NASA)
This transition from active to quiet takes a very long time, upwards of a billion years or more making supermassive black holes rather stable objects. It came as something of a shock therefore when in late 2017 the AGN at the center of galaxy 1ES 1927+654 suddenly increased in brightness by a factor of nearly 100 in the visible part of the spectrum. As stated by Nicolas Scepi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a member of the team studying 1ES 1927+654, “Normally we would expect black holes to evolve over millions of years.” So unusual was the change in that a large team of astronomers working across the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to X-rays was quickly assembled to investigate 1ES 1927+654 at every wavelength.
Image of the Galaxy 1ES 1927+654 (Credit: Poandpo.com
What the researchers found was that, even as the brightness of 1ES 1927+654 increased by a factor of 100 in both the visible and ultra-violet (UV) portions of the spectrum it decreased by a factor of 1000 in the X-ray spectrum. The observation that the intensity of UV and X-rays went in opposite directions was in itself a surprise, as the strength of X-rays and UV generally go hand in hand.
Some of the data taken of galaxy 1ES 1927+654 during the time when its AGN appears to have flipped its magnetic field. (Credit:
But that unexpected decrease in X-ray output was the clue that Doctor Scepi and his colleagues at the University of Colorado needed to solve the puzzle of 1ES 1927+654. In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society the astro-physicists argue that the magnetic field generated by the charged particles making up the accretion disk around the supermassive black hole flipped its north and south poles causing the change in the AGNs brightness.
Now scientists already know of two astronomical bodies whose magnetic field flips their poles on occasion. The Sun’s magnetic field flips as a part of its eleven year sunspot cycle. The Earth’s magnetic field also cycles back and forth although the cycle is much longer, the best estimates being about every 200,000 years and we are now overdue for such a flip. See my post of February 8th, 2017 concerning evidence that Earth’s field is currently starting just such a flip. Whether or not other stars and planets, Jupiter perhaps, also flip their magnetic fields is the subject of active research among astronomers and astro-physicists.
Earth’s magnetic field is very messy right now with a big piece of the north pole in the south while bits of the south are poking out of the north. Are these signs that the field is getting ready to flip? (Credit: Extreme Tech)
For the accretion disk of an AGN to flip its magnetic field was unexpected however. The theory put forth by Scepi and his colleagues suggests that new matter being pulled into the accretion disk possesses the opposite orientation of the existing magnetic field, weakening and then flipping it. The team’s calculations showed that the result of the flip would be an increase in the visible and UV spectra at the expense of X-rays, exactly what was observed in 1ES 1927+654.
The light our eyes can see is only a small portion of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. When galaxy 1ES 1929+654 grew in brightness in the visible and ultraviolet parts it also lost intensity in the X-ray portion so the total energy output remained pretty constant! (Credit: NOAA)
If one AGN can flip its magnetic field can’t others. The behaviour exhibited by 1ES 1927+654 may actually be fairly common, astronomers simply haven’t been looking for it. But they certainly will be now that they know what to look for. I think before long astronomers will have found few more oddly behaving AGN and they will provide more data to help the theorists refine their models of their magnetic fields.
Imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope project, the same team that obtained the first picture of a black hole, here is the Supermassive Black Hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy known as Sagittarius A. (Credit: CNN)
Even as I was writing this post the Event Horizon Telescope, the same group who gave us the first picture of a black hole back in 2019, see my post of 17th of April 2019, have accomplished the same feat with the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The black hole, known officially as Sagittarius A, is quiet now, its accretion disk is very small. Nevertheless the information gathered from the new image will tell us a great deal as we continue to try to understand the mysteries of Supermassive Black Holes.
I’m lucky enough to have a very vivid imagination. If I just shut my eyes by an act of will I can see, and hear President Kennedy giving his ‘…landing a man on the Moon…” speech. And for an image that I see every day, like Washington on a dollar bill, I don’t even have to close my eyes and I can see George’s face superimposed on everything that’s actually there. Back in Shakespeare’s time the imagination was known as ‘the mind’s eye’ because of the images it can conjure up, hence the quote from Hamlet in this post’s title.
The Mind’s eye is the world of the imagination, where anything, real or unreal can be visualized! (Credit: YouTube)
My imagination can even let me see things that I’ve never actually seen in real life. For instance whenever I’m reading a good novel my imagination goes into overdrive visualizing things that may have never have even existed. Consider Arthur C. Clarke’s novel ‘Earthlight’ for example. I haven’t read that book in at least ten years but I can see the battle sequence in my mind any time I want, that’s the impression it made on my mind’s eye.
In the Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Earthlight a battle takes place on the Moon. Obviously no such battle ever took place so it only existed in Clark’s imagination, and then mine! (Credit: Amazon.com)
As a scientist and engineer having a good imagination is definitely a benefit. I can often visualize what should be the results of an experiment, or a circuit, before I begin any testing and if something isn’t right I know it immediately. And any time I’m doing one of those math ‘word problems’ that everyone hates I can visualize what the problem is really about making it much easier to solve.
Growing up I had a lot of friends who hated word problems but I always loved them. I just never had any problem visualizing what the problem was about! (Credit: Made by Teachers)
Not everyone has such a vivid imagination. For some people trying to conjure up images from their own past life, the face of a deceased parent say, requires a considerable mental effort. There are even a small percentage of people, estimated at 1-3% of the population, who are simply incapable of forming mental images of any kind, people who have no minds eye at all.
When you imagine a rainbow in your mind how vivid are the colours. If you don’t see a rainbow easily you may suffer from aphantasia. (Credit: Cindy deRosier)
Such a condition is medically known as aphantasia and can usually only be detected by long a series of psychological tests, tests that are inherently subjective and can often lead to an ambiguous result. Now however a new study has been published in the journal eLife by researchers at the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia that details a direct, physiological technique for diagnosing aphantasia.
Previous tests for aphantasia were subjective, asking the patient to make judgement calls rather than an objective measurement. (Credit: Avoid Boring People)
The test begins simply enough, the patients are shown a chart with a bright figure set against a gray background and told to stare at the bright figure. Just as in a bright room staring at the bright figure causes the subject’s pupils to respond by contacting somewhat, and the size of the contracted pupil is then measured. The patients are then shown a similar dark figure set against the same gray background. As the subjects stare at the dark figure their pupils will expand, as they would in a dark room. As before the size of the expanded pupil is measured and compared to the earlier contracted pupil size.
The New test begins with the patient staring at a bight block against a gray background. After a minute or so the size of their pupils are measured. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)Second, the patient then stars at a dark block against the same gray background. Again the size of their pupils are measured and the difference between the two measurements is calculated. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Now comes the interesting, even kinda weird part. The patients are now asked to imagine the bright and dark figures they were shown earlier and their pupils should react as before, although maybe not to the same extent. By comparing the second set of results to the first however gives a direct value for the patient’s ability to form a visual image in their mind’s eye.
Finally the patients are asked to imagine the light block and then dark block and the amount by which their pupils react is a measure of the strength of their ‘Mind’s Eye’! (Credit: Study Finds)
If you’re thinking that all this smacks of mind over body, well that’s what I think is so interesting. The very idea of our imagination causing actual changes to our body actually isn’t that hard to believe; after all just thinking about sex can certainly stimulate some organs. Still the notion that our eyes will react by our just visualizing bright or dark objects is really rather eerie.
Like most cute sayings that’s not always true. Nevertheless we can accomplish so much more if we just make up our mind’s to do it. (Credit: Pinterest)
There’s an old expression that ‘the eyes are the window to the soul’. Well what the scientists in Australia have found is a way to use our eyes to measure the strength of our Mind’s Eye.
Are the eyes the window to the soul, probably not but when I see a beautiful pair like these I like to think so! (Credit: Beyond Pink World)
Physicists are always fascinated by symmetries in the world around us. For example there appears to be exactly the same number of positively charged particles as there are negatively charged particles. At the same time there are just as many north magnetic poles as south magnetic poles.
Our hands are of course the best example of symmetry. They look identical but in fact are exact opposites, mirror images of each other. (Credit: Charlie Fox Signs)One of the most fundamental symmetries in the Universe is that all magnets have both a north and a south pole. (Credit: Northeastern University)
Another big symmetry appears when we look at the distribution of galaxies throughout the Universe as a whole. In whatever direction we look there are the same sorts of galaxies in roughly the same density. In terms of space the Universe appears to be very symmetrical.
The Hubble Deep Field Image. In whatever direction we look the Universe is filled with countless galaxies, a symmetric Universe. (Credit: Hubble Space Telescope)
Not so in time. We know that the Universe is expanding; Carl Hubble made that discovery more than 90 years ago now. So in the distant past, billions of years ago, all of those galaxies would have been much closer together than they are today. And going even further back all of the matter in the Universe would have formed one big, dense hot cloud, a big bang. So why should time be different from space.
Starting with the Big Bang itself the Universe has changed over time, evolved. The Universe may be symmetric in space but it definitely not symmetric in time. (Credit: Owlcation)
After all Einstein’s Theory of Relativity tells us that time should really be treated mathematically in the same way as space, a principal know as covariance. And all of the experiments we perform in big atom smashers like the ones at CERN or Fermilab confirm Einstein’s ideas.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the world’s largest and most powerful scientific instrument. Smashing elementary particles together at tremendous energies accelerators like the LHC have taught us much about the way the Universe works. (Credit: Forbes)
Another big lack of symmetry that has physicists confounded is that between matter and anti-matter, those mysterious mirror particles that have the same mass but opposite charge of the matter particles that form everything we know. Another curious fact about anti-particles are that when they come in contact with their ‘normal’ matter counterpart the two annihilate each other becoming photons of light. Matter into energy, just as Einstein said. Again, both our theories and the experiments performed at high-energy physics labs all tell us that anti-particles should be generated just as often as particles, that there should be just as much anti-matter in the Universe as matter.
The first evidence for the existence of anti-matter. The streak in this could chamber is an anti-electron, also known as a positron. (Credit: Twitter)
But there isn’t, certainly not in our Solar System because since the solar wind touches every planet, moon and etc. we’d see the energy from matter anti-matter annihilation if say Jupiter were anti-matter. And that also means that our galaxy can’t contain anti-matter since the interstellar medium touches every star system and again, we don’t see any sign of matter anti-matter annihilation.
Matter and anti-matter don’t get along. Whenever a particle meets its anti-particle the two annihilate each other to produce photons of light, pure energy. (Credit: Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing)
What about different galaxies you ask? Couldn’t some of them be composed of anti-matter? Well maybe, but astronomers have also seen a number of galaxies that are colliding with other galaxies and once more there are no signs of the type of energy release that would indicate matter and anti-matter in contact. That leaves physicists with the question, where is all of the anti-matter?
So physicists are faced with two instances of non-symmetry, in time and in matter / anti-matter. And since physicists are clever people it isn’t surprising that someone thought to use one problem to solve the other. You see back in the 1950s physicist Richard Feynman suggested that the best way to think about anti-particles, his paper was explicitly about anti-electrons, was to consider them as normal electrons going backward in time. That way when an electron, going forward in time, collides with an anti-electron, going backward in time they turn into photons who, according to relativity, do not travel in time, perfect symmetry.
Feynman diagram of electron-positron annihilation. The positron. the anti-electron is the e+ portrayed as going down, that is backward in time. (Credit: Physics Stack Exchange)
So let’s go with that thought, let’s assume that all anti-matter is just normal matter going backward in time. Then what happened to all of the anti-matter that should have been created by the big bang? Well it went backward in time and exists before the big bang. The Universe before the big bang was made up of an amount of anti-matter equal to the matter in the Universe after the big bang. Perfect symmetry.
The anti-matter Universe on the left perfectly balances the matter Universe on the right, restoring symmetry in both time and matter/anti-matter. (Credit: Semantic Scholar)
Time symmetry is restored as well because whatever the Universe looks like at a certain time t after the big bang the Universe looked exactly the same way, on a large scale at least, at the same time t before the big bang. This new model of the Universe uses its anti-matter component as a mirror to fully restore symmetry.
In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum are not twins but rather right and left versions of each other, perfectly symmetric. (Credit: Vanity Fair)
This is the basis of a new paper by physicists Latham Boyle, Kieran Finn and Neill Turok of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo Ontario in Canada along with the University of Manchester in the UK. In doing their calculations the physicists also discovered that their new, symmetric model of the Universe had a couple of other advantages as well. For one thing the period of rapid expansion called inflation immediately after the big bang proposed by Alan Guth back in the 1970s to account for the almost perfect flatness of the Universe is simply not needed. The model proposed by Boyle, Finn and Turok provides a flat Universe full of particles naturally, without the ‘ad hoc’ insertion of inflation.
In order to provide the flat Universe we see today Alan Guth invoked what he described as ‘cosmic inflation’, but no one has been able to determine exactly what caused the inflation. The new matter / anti-matter symmetric Universe doesn’t need inflation to be flat. (Credit: Medium)
Another feature of the model is that it requires a fourth type of neutrino, those mysterious ‘ghost’ particles that very rarely interact with more normal particles. The researchers think that their fourth neutrino species could provide the basis for the missing dark matter, maybe solving yet another problem in astrophysics.
In order to observe any neutrinos physicists have to build enormous chambers whose walls are covered with detectors. Such experiments capture maybe one or two neutrinos a day! (Credit: Nature)
So, how do we go about proving that this new model is the correct one? After all it seems like new models of the Universe are being proposed nearly every week. Well, finding that neutrino would be a good start but physicists have been looking for ‘sterile’ neutrinos for a long time now without success.
The researchers also propose another way. Theories of inflation all predict that the rapid expansion at the beginning of the Universe should have produced large amounts gravitational waves, waves that the scientists at LIGO and Virgo gravity wave observatories may soon be able to detect. But if inflation didn’t happen, if the Universe is symmetric instead, then the search for primordial gravity waves will fail.
It is hoped that soon gravity wave detectors such as Virgo here in Italy may soon be able to detect gravity from the early Universe itself. That data may provide evidence for the Matter / Anti-matter Universe. (Credit: ResearchGate)
Of course it would be so much simpler if we could somehow look back before the big bang to see if there was an anti-matter Universe back then. But that’s impossible! Isn’t it?
Back on August 9th of last year, 2021, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as directed by the Secretary General of the United Nations released two reports concerning first the causes and secondly the impacts that can be expected from Global Warming over the rest of this century, see my post of August 21st 2021. The possible impacts were analyzed for five specific scenarios of human activity ranging from eliminating carbon emissions immediately to we just continue increasing our carbon footprint without any regard for the damage it is doing to our planet.
Front cover of the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change it is advertised as a summary for policymakers. I wonder how many of the world’s ‘policymakers’ will actually read it? (Credit: UNEP)
Those reports, like everything that deals with climate change should have been a straightforward, empirically based assessment of the facts. Of course what did happen was that the report quickly became politicized with many nations insisting that the problem of climate change was not really urgent. In fact just a few months later at the COP26 climate conference held in October nations such as Japan, Australia and Saudi Arabia refused to accept any language calling for a reduction in fossil fuel emissions. The nation of India, the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, went so far as to state that it had no plans to even consider reducing its use of coal, the worst energy source for carbon emissions, until at least the year 2050.
After 50 years of talk the world’s governments still have no concrete plan for reducing the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. (Credit: FutureLearn)
Now, on the 4th of April 2022, a third section of the IPCC report was published that deals with what we can do to solve the climate crisis. And if you listen to the scientists there’s no time to wait. As declared by Geoscientist Andrea Dutton of the University of Wisconsin, “We can’t kick this can down the road any longer.” In fact the scientists working on the IPCC report have identified five clear danger signs that will tell us when the worst outcomes of climate change have begun.
Even a dolt like Homer Simpson knows that kicking the can down the road gets you nowhere! (Credit: The Simpsons)
1. The Amazon rain forest becomes a savanna. The Amazon jungle has been called the planet’s lungs because of its enormous ability to absorb CO2. Both human encroachment and increasing drought in Brazil are slowly turning it into an arid grassland however. Without that absorption of greenhouse gasses by the Amazon the problem of climate change will only get worse.
Bit by bit the amazon rainforest is being stripped away for grazing land for cattle. Known as the world’s lungs its loss will only accelerate climate change. (Credit: Perdue University)
2. Coral Reefs die. Coral is actually a symbiosis between a hydra like polyp and a species of algae, the polyp providing a home for the algae while the algae provides food for the polyp. If the water temperature rises too much however the polyp will often kick the algae out. This condition is known as bleaching and can lead to the death of the coral. Over the last ten years major portions of both the Great Barrier Reef and the Florida Keys have been subjected to periods of bleaching and it may only take a small additional rise in the world’s temperature to kill them off entirely.
Healthy coral (l) and bleached coral (r). As ocean temps warm we are seeing more and more bleaching, threatening one of the world’s most fertile habitats. (Credit: Vox)
3. Ice Sheets melt. Much of the world’s water is held captive in ice sheets and glaciers primarily in Antarctica and Greenland. Rising temperatures have already led to massive amounts of that ice melting, with the resulting rise in sea level. If the melting continues or even accelerates then every inhabited coastal area of the world is threatened.
‘My world is melting!’ And in our world sea levels are rising. It difference is that it’s our fault not his! (Credit: Daily Sabah)
4. Atlantic Circulation stops. The Gulf Stream was first discovered by none other than Ben Franklin back at the end of the 18th century and its effect on the climate of both the east coast of North America and western Europe have been well documented. Over the last few years however studies of the Gulf Stream have suggested that its circulation could be imperiled by rising temperatures, and even a modest reduction in the strength of the Gulf Stream’s flow could have a major impact on the climate of both the US east coast and Europe.
It was Ben Franklin who first recognized the existence of the Gulf Stream. Today we known that every ocean has circulatory patterns that influence the climate of nearby coastal areas. And as global warming effects the ocean currents so will it change the climates of the lands nearby. (Credit: NOAA – Ben Franklin)
5. The disappearance of the great northern forests. Just to the south of the Artic circle and spread across several continents lies the world’s last great forest. Actually composed of several forests stretching from Alaska, across northern Canada, Scandinavia and Russian Siberia like the Amazon these forest absorb a large fraction of the greenhouse gasses we are generating, helping to reduce somewhat the effects of climate change. And as with the Amazon jungle these forest are now under threat. The three main threats are heat, fire and bark beetles. In my post of July 14th 2021 I discussed the huge heat dome that formed over British Columbia last summer and which not only led to dozens of all time Canadian temperature records being smashed but which also triggered large wildfires, like the one that all but destroyed the little town of Lytton.
Like the Amazon the Great Northern Forests remove a huge amount of CO2 from the air. And like the Amazon we are bust destroying them! (Credit: Greenpeace)
And to make matters worse those higher temperatures are just perfect conditions for the spread of bark beetles that are devastating millions of trees. The trees killed by bark beetles then become fuel for further wildfires leading to more release of CO2 and more global warming, a vicious cycle.
This year we even had wildfires in Nebraska, in April! It’s just gettin’ crazy out there folks! (Credit: OpenDemocracy)
So what solutions have the IPCC scientists come up with that will hopefully prevent such massive damage to the Earth’s environment. Needless to say the first thing we must do as a species is reduce CO2 emissions by 43% before 2030, that’s just eight years from now. Right now renewable sources of power, primarily wind and solar, only produce about 10% of the energy we use, the rest is produced by burning oil, gas and coal. So a reduction of 43% in greenhouse gas emissions is going to require a huge effort, with an accompanying huge cost. In fact, instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions current projections predict a 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 by 2030.
There’s no secret to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We know what we have to do. It’s just going to be an enormous and costly effort and we don’t want to do it! (Credit: UCAR Center for Science Education)
But the scientists say even more is required. They say that in order to keep global temperature rise below a 1.5º rise since pre-industrial times, a goal that was agreed by nearly every country on Earth at the Paris climate summit in 2015, we must start to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
We’ve already pretty much reached the 1.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature and it’s beginning to look as if keeping the rise below 2 degrees is a fading hope. (Credit: WWF)
Scientists around the world have developed several different techniques for carbon removal, techniques that could, if adequately funded for a large, industrial implementation scale, really reduce the levels of CO2 in the air. Of course the problem is that phrase, adequately funded because we’re talking tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and who’s going to pay for it. As you might guess there are few volunteers.
Technologies for removing CO2 from the air on an industrial scale have been developed but they are costly and would need to be deployed in huge numbers. Who’s going to pay for that? (Credit: State of the Planet – Columbia University)
So, what’s going to happen this time? Not much it seems. With the war in Ukraine along with inflation and crime and all of the other distractions few people are even paying attention to what is happening across the entire planet.
Did you ever wonder if maybe our leaders start wars like the one in Ukraine as a distraction so they don’t have to do the hard work of solving the real problems of the world? (Credit: YouTube)
Postscript: A conference of government officials from 153 nations has convened and the attendees are congratulating themselves on their pledges to reduce carbon emissions so that the global temperature rise will remain below 2ºC. I know what you’re going to say. Didn’t officials from those same countries pledge to keep the temperature rise below 1.5ºC just seven years ago in Paris?
In a sense it’s our own fault for letting them have the power. (Credit: Make A meme.org)
They sure did, and now they are literally patting themselves on the back for trying to cover up their failure by making new, and equally meaningless pledges. I don’t think we can hope for our ‘leaders’ to do anything to tackle climate change until the planet is actually on fire.
If you think about it the very first living creatures lived by just absorbing the nutrients in the water around them, not interacting at all with the other simple creatures nearby. After a few million years however some of those early life forms must have evolved to feed off of the dead remains of other creatures. And not too long thereafter, in geologic time at least, some creatures evolved to prey on their living fellows, and so the war of all against all (Bellum omnium contra omnes) began.
Who do you think is right? Of course reality lies somewhere in the middle. Still conflict does touch the life of every creature at some point in their existence. (Credit: sfk.sa)
And many if not most of the anatomical design and features of those living things we call animals are intended to optimize their consumption of other organisms, plants in the case of herbivores and other animals in the case of predators. Today’s stories are all about some of the ways that evolution solved the problem of ‘Eat or be Eaten.’ As usual I will begin in the distant past and work my way forward in time.
Many of the anatomical features of living things are intended to either prey on other creatures or to escape being preyed upon. (Credit: The Phrase Finder)
Without doubt the ultimate form of ‘Eat or be Eaten’ would have to be cannibalism, where an animal literally preys upon and eats another member of its own species. In modern human civilization cannibalism is considered to be one of the most evil and horrible acts that a person can commit. It is worth considering however that cannibalism has been observed in more than 1,500 species, including we humans and whether we like it or not there are some pretty good evolutionary reasons for it.
For human beings cannibalism is either used as a last resort to avoid starvation or as a religious ritual to absorb some of the spirit of the dead person, usually either a relative or an enemy. (Credit: The Guardian)
You see by preying upon another member of your species you not only gain a meal but you are also eliminating a competitor for precious resources. For that reason cannibalism is often found in circumstances where food or other resources are scarce. Cannibalism does have its downside however because if you’re not careful you could be eliminating a relative or potential mate or even your own children and thereby reducing your share in the gene pool. And of course any species that practices cannibalism too much runs the risk of literally eating itself into extinction.
We modern, civilized people all think that cannibalism is simply the the most depraved kind of behaviour. So why do we find the character of Hannibal the cannibal so fascinating? (Credit: Solon.com)
But just how long has cannibalism been a behavioral strategy used by living creatures? Think about it, solid evidence for cannibalism isn’t exactly easy to find in the fossil record. Now a paper published in the journal Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology has announced that indications of cannibalism can be found at a 514 million year old Cambrian period fossil site on an island off the South Australian coast at a place called Emu Bay.
The fossil site is on Kangaroo Island in Emu Bay. Looks like a real fun place to me! (Credit: ResearchGate)
Emu Bay is one of those rare fossil sites where the preservation of specimens is so pristine that things like injuries and fecal material, called coprolites when fossilized, are easy to identify and analyze. The specimens that were found at Emu bay consisted primarily of two large species of trilobites Redlichia takooensis and Redlichia rex and many of the specimens were that were found had injuries that had healed. Now both trilobite species were large animals for that time, as much as 25 centimeters in length, so anything preying on them had to be at least as big as they were. That’s why the researchers, from the University of New England in Australia, believe that the cause of the injuries could have been another member of the same species.
Look at all those Trilobites!!! Just one of the fossils collected at the Emu Bay site. (Credit: Facebook)
A specimen of Redlichia rex showing evidence of two separate attacks. Since R rex is the largest animal found at Emu bay what could have caused these injuries except another R rex? (Credit: Everything Dinosaur Blog)
Additional proof came from an analysis of the coprolites that were found, most of which were more than 10% the length of the trilobites themselves. Careful examination of the feces showed that they contained bits and pieces of shell material like the shells of the trilobites. More indication that the trilobites would, at least on occasion, chow down on their own kind. Between the injuries and the shell fragments in the coprolites the paleontologists feel they have a compelling case for the existence of cannibalism more than half a billion years ago.
Sorry but when I saw this picture I just had to include it! (Credit: Facebook)
For vertebrate animals like we humans the need to feed efficiently led millions of years ago to the development of that structure that we all associate with eating, the jaw. The first jawed vertebrates appeared in the fossil record more than 400 million years ago as bones that had been used to support the gills of the first fish moved toward the mouth. Before long jaws had evolved into a wide variety of sizes and shapes that depended on both the type of food an animal ate and the method it used to feed.
Jawless fishes, like this Lamprey, still exist even though more efficient jaws evolved hundreds of millions of years ago! (Credit: National Park Service)
(By the way the jawbones of modern vertebrates as they develop after fertilization follows the same developmental path that evolution did 400 million years ago during the Devonian period, this includes you. That is, about 5 weeks after fertilization you had gills, just like every other fish, and the four bones that developed to hold those gills in place then became your jawbone and the bones of your inner ear. The gills then simply disappear once the bones have formed since you no longer need them.)
All vertebrate animals, from fish to we humans, develop gills early on in their lives. (Credit: Quora)
Now a new study has been published in the journal Science Advances that examines the variety of jaws that evolved so quickly back in the Devonian period. What the researchers at the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences found was that, despite all of the different sizes and shapes of jaws that evolved 400 million years ago there were two factors that predominated, speed and strength, and these two factors often opposed one another.
Right from the start the evolution of jaws was a compromise between strength and speed. (Credit: TurnedNews.com
Think about it, a predator certainly needs a quick jaw in order to seize its prey before it can get away but if the jaw becomes too quick it can also become weak and brittle and a broken jaw is a virtual death sentence for any animal. So there has to be an evolutionary trade off between speed and strength in order for a predator to be able to successfully grab its dinner without any chance of it injuring itself.
In some ways the evolution of fish has been a story of the evolution of jaws. (Credit: Paleocast / Paleontology Podcasts)
A similar argument can be made for a herbivore, the animal needs a quick jaw to be able be bite off as much food as it can as quickly as it can, because remember plant material usually has a lower energy content. Then the plant eater usually has to grind their food in order to get all possible nourishment out of it, and that requires a good strong jaw.
The jaw of a Hadrosaur dinosaur, like that of a modern Elephant, was built for grinding and mashing of tough vegetable material. (Credit: Flickr)
The researchers used data about jaw size and shape from all of the known early jawed fishes and developed a computer model to compare each for speed and strength. They also included a few theoretical jaw shapes in their analysis. The results of the model clearly showed just how quickly the optimum blend of quickness and strength evolved.
Part comparative anatomy and part computer modeling the paper from the University of Bristol is typical of how modern scientific research is conducted. (Credit: Science Advances)
Now the jaw of a predator is certainly an offensive weapon and in order to protect themselves from predators many herbivores evolve some kind of defensive armour. One of the best known examples of such defensive body evolution is the family of dinosaurs known as the stegosaurs, with Stegosaurus itself having the characteristic two rows of bony plates along its back and long, sharp spikes on it tail that make it a tough meal for any hungry theropod.
The Stegosaurus may be one of the best know of all dinosaurs but it is actually only one of a family of ancient dinos. (Credit: Reductress)
Stegosaurs date from the middle Jurassic period to the early Cretaceous period, 160 million to 100 million years ago but their early evolution is unclear. Now a new specimen from the Chongqing region of China may hold some answers. Dated to about 168 million years ago the animal, which has been named Bashanosaurus primitvus, is the oldest stegosaur from Asia, and perhaps the oldest ever found anywhere.
An artists impression of Bashanosaurus primitvus, the oldest known stegosaur from Asia. (Credit: Sci-News.com)
In fact the animal was given the species name primitvus because of the peculiar, primitive set of characteristics it possesses. Smaller than other known stegosaurs, with thicker more narrow plates along its back B primitvus also had spines sticking out to the side of its shoulders. These features make B primitvus look quite different from other stegosaurs but at the same time it looks quite similar to other types of armoured dinosaurs like the first ankylosaurs that evolved about 20 million years earlier.
Ankylosaurs were another family of armoured dinosaurs. Bashanosaurus appears to have characteristics of both indicating a link between the two families. (Credit: ZME Science)
The paleontologists from the Chinese Bureau of Geological and Mineral Resource Exploration and Development along with the Natural History Museum of London who discovered and described Bashanosaurus hope that the fossil will shed light on the evolution of the stegosaurs. In any case the fact that armoured dinosaurs evolved so quickly, and diversified so rapidly is just the flip side of jaws and claws in the eternal struggle to ‘Eat or be Eaten’.
It’s on the launch pad, years late and billions of dollars over budget but the Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket since the venerable Saturn 5 that took astronauts to the moon is finally at Pad 39B at Cape Kennedy, ready for lunch. Well almost ready because the engineers and scientists at both NASA and prime contractor Boeing still have a long list of tests and safety checks to perform before the actual first flight in the space agency’s Artemis program begins. The biggest test, known as the Wet Dress Rehearsal or WDR, is now scheduled for the 1-3 of April.
NASA made a big deal out of the rollout of the SLS to its launch pad, even streaming the entire event. The rocket still has problems however and will soon be taken back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs. (Credit: Forbes)
The rollout of the massive SLS with its Orion, man capable capsule took place on March 17th as the door of the Vehicle Assembly Building opened and the SLS began its long, slow journey to the launch site. The current schedule is for launch to take place no earlier than sometime in May. That first flight will be unmanned, with the second Artemis mission, and the first mission that will actually take astronauts back to orbiting the Moon, coming no sooner than 2024.
The Orion Capsule on top of the SLS. NASA plans to use Orion to take astronauts back to the Moon and even beyond but without the SLS its going nowhere fast. (Credit: EarthSky)
Update: The SLS was on its launch pad but after failing to complete the WDR three times NASA has decided to return the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs. Just another in a long series of delays and problems for the Artemis program that is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
The rollback of the SLS itself been delayed by weather, just more delays. The current schedule is for a rollback on 26April. (Credit: Spaceflight Insider)
And even as NASA begins the Artemis program to take human beings back to the Moon the space agency is making plans to also return to a destination much further away, the outer planets of Uranus and Neptune. The only space probe to have visited those cold, dark worlds was Voyager 2, which flew past them in the late 1980s. At the time the data sent back by Voyager taught us more about the two outermost planets in our Solar System than we’d learned in more than a hundred years of observing them by Earth bound telescopes. In the years since Voyager however astronomers have come up with thousands of questions about conditions on Uranus and Neptune that they’d love to see answered.
Currently the Voyage 2 probe is the only spacecraft to visit the planet Uranus. Now NASA has made the decision to return to this icy world in the next decade. (Credit: Drew Ex Machina)
So plans are now being discussed for a joint NASA-ESA mission to the outer planets. Details are sketchy at the moment, even so far as to which planet will be visited, or maybe both. The best upcoming launch window for Uranus is 2030-2034 while that for Neptune is 2029-2030 so the particulars for the mission along with the basic space probe design will probably have to be finalized in the next year or so. One thing that has been decided is that the main probe will carry with it a smaller ‘entry probe’ like the Huygens probe that landed on Titan after being carried to Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft.
Conceptual design for the proposed Uranus probe. The spacecraft will include a separate probe to be dropped into the atmosphere of Uranus. (Credit: Spaceflight Now)
The journey to Uranus or Neptune will be a long one, anywhere from 11 to 15 years depending on the specifics of both the probe and the mission. Because the journey will take so long, and will take the probe so far away from the Sun, using solar arrays to power the spacecraft will be impossible, sunlight simply isn’t strong enough that far from the Sun. So therefore the Uranus / Neptune probe will have to get it’s power from radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) just as both Voyagers along with Cassini and the Galileo probe to Jupiter did.
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) have powered many space probes but they have also been used here on Earth to power instruments in very isolated areas. (Credit: Bellona.org)
Sounds like an exciting mission, wouldn’t it be nice if they could find the money to send identical probes to each planet!
The planet Neptune hasn’t had a visitor for a long time either. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could send a probe to both of them! (Credit: NASA)
A sad note before I sign off. Eugene Parker died on March 15th at the age of 94. The highly regarded NASA astrophysicist is best remembered for his 1957 prediction of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that are constantly being emitted from the Sun’s atmosphere. That prediction was confirmed just five years later when the Mariner 2 space probe was constantly bombarded during its journey to Venus by just the sort of radiation that Parker had predicted.
In many ways the life of Eugene Parker was a mission to touch the Sun. That’s why it’s so appropriate for NASA’s solar probe to be named for him. (Credit: SciTechDaily)
Eugene Parker is also remembered as the namesake of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe which since its launch in 2018 has now approached closer to the Sun than any other man made object. The Parker probe was the first, and thus far only space probe to be named for a living scientist. A fitting tribute to a man who advanced our knowledge of the Sun so much.
