There’s a brand new Actress who is now the talk of Hollywood. It’s not because of her beauty or acting ability. It’s because she doesn’t really exist, she’s just a creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Pretty young actresses are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, have been for more than a century now. Anyone who dreams of making a career in acting goes to tinsel town in the hopes of being discovered and becoming a big movie star. In many ways Tilly Norwood is just another face in the crowd, she’s had a few screen tests and she’s started a video blog (vblog) where she talks about her life and the career she hopes to have. Just like a lot of other young actresses.

Actress Tilly Norwood enjoying her morning stroll while stopping for a coffee. Sounds just like a lot of people’s lives except that Tilly is just the invention of a computer program that has been taught, you don’t program an AI you teach it, to generate realistic images of a young woman who hopes to become an actress. (Credit: Wikipedia)

 Tilly Norwood is not like other actresses however because she actually doesn’t exist except as several billion bytes of data stored on computer hard drives. You see Tilly Norwood is a creation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a computer program that has been trained to reproduce how real actresses look and behave. Tilly is the invention of a Dutch actress with a Master’s Degree in Physics (There’s a combination for ya!) named Eline Van der Velden whose company Particle6 developed and currently holds all the rights to Tilly.

Actress and Physicist Eline Van der Velden is the creative force behind Tilly Norwood. Her company, Particle6, is hoping to get Tilly some real roles in movies and videos. They also plan to develop other AI generated performers as well. (Credit: Physics World)

So far Tilly has only appeared as an actress in brief sketches, both comedy and drama, and only by herself. Nevertheless her creator (her Dr. Frankenstein?) hopes that Tilly will become the next Scarlett Johansson and her company hopes to develop other ‘hyperreal digital stars’ for TV, movies as well as social media. At the same time Van der Velden insists that Tilly ‘is not a replacement for a human being but a creative work – a piece of art”, something of a contradiction on her part.

One way to distinguish between and AI generated image and an image of a real person is in the eyes. In the eyes of a real person the reflections of any lights have to be the same, that’s just physics. If the reflections are different, as in this case, then the image is computer generated. Of course, knowing this the people who use AI to generate such images are teaching their programs to make the reflections the same. All this turns into an arms race between the scientists trying to find techniques to separate real from fiction and the people trying to make their images seem as real as possible. Also just remember the old adage, if something looks too good to be real, it probably isn’t! (Credit: Instagram)

Very few real actors would agree with Van der Velden. In fact dozens of actors and actresses have criticized the whole project. The fact that Particle6 has recently announced that they are activity seeking an agent for Tilly has only made matters worse with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) calling for a boycott of any agent who takes on an AI creation as a client.

Of course, real actors are no happier about computers taking their jobs than factory workers or cab drivers. The recent strike by Sag-Aftra was partly about the use of AI in Hollywood. (Credit: Rolling Stone)

In response Particle6 points out how in the past animation and CGI opened up new possibilities in entertainment and so they say will AI. The difference is of course that with animation and CGI it is still possible to distinguish the product from reality. As the AI creations continue to get better and better however it’s becoming more and more difficult to be certain just what is reality.

Did animation take jobs away from real actors? The people using AI to generate realistic actors feel that they are simply improving the technology of an art form that has been around for decades. (Credit: D23)

You can understand how real actors feel about the possibility of AI avatars taking their jobs. We are all aware of how automation has replaced millions of blue-collar factor workers and how driverless cars are currently threatening the future of truck drivers, cab drivers and bus drivers. With the latest computer programs that can learn, that’s what an AI is, a program that can be taught how to do a job rather than having to have each step in a process carefully written out for it, a huge number of white-collar jobs are now in jeopardy. One of the big issues that caused the recent strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the Screenwriters Guild was the use of AI by Hollywood Producers.

Over the last 60 years automation has eliminated millions of blue-collar jobs. Is this now going to happen to white-collar jobs as well? (Credit: Asia Sentinel)

The fear of AI in Hollywood includes not only actors but also screenwriters, set designers, cameramen and even directors. Think about it, producers would no longer have to put up with temperamental actors, or actors who are getting a little too old for the part, or who have gained, or lost weight. TV audiences in particular like to see a familiar face each week so why not give them an AI whose face never changes no matter how long their show has been on. Right now there’s the difficulty of how to get an AI actor to be on the screen at the same time as a real actor but that’s a technical problem and will be solved in a few years.

The Geico Gecko, who is just CGI, already interacts with people in a limited fashion. In the same way AI actors will probably get their first ‘roles’ in commercials rather than TV shows or movies. (Credit: The New York Times)

There’s one more thing that gets actors very upset about AI actors. I mentioned above that the Particle6 AI learned how actors and actresses look and behave. Well how did it do that? By looking at hours and hours of real actors and actresses that’s how.  Many in the entertainment field feel that AIs like Tilly are using their performances, stealing their rights and there are certainly going to be lawsuits dealing with the question of just how much of Scarlett Johnasson, or other actresses is there in Tilly and other AIs like her.

This is a screen shot from a YouTube site, I’m not including the name of the site. The site is just dozens of short AI videos of ‘girls’ none of whom actually exist. Now these ‘girls’ are not as sophisticated as Tilly Norwood, all they do in the videos is shake their booty, but they all have biographies and wikis! This is getting a little crazy don’t you think! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

I’m betting that AI will worm its way into Hollywood through advertisements. Think about it, we already have plenty of ads with non-real characters in them like the Geico Gecko or the Liberty Mutual Emu. Producers of local commercials may not be restricted by the same contract rules as Hollywood producers and will undoubtedly be tempted to go fully AI once the technology has proven itself.

Another way of distinguishing an AI generated image is to look carefully at the background. The people who create these images don’t pay as much attention to the background so you can often spot weird things there. What does ‘Refima’ , see inset, mean? (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Then there’s also the question of how society will react to AI creations on our movie, TV and mobile screens. Will the perfect AI faces we can see at any time cause us to retreat further from real interactions with real humans? Hollywood has already given us celebrities whose attractiveness and exciting lives make us pay less attention to the people around us. What will happen when we have AI generated characters who are designed to be perfect!

Is this our future? I hope not! (Credit: Facebook)

It all just goes to show how computers are taking over the jobs that millions of human beings have relied on for generations. We have to start figuring out what kind of world are we going to have when AI has been fully integrated into society. Whether that integration will be for the good of humanity or not, is still very much in question.

The Nobel Prizes for 2025 have been Announced: 

The Nobel prizes for 2025 in the categories of Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry have been announced and this year there’s a common theme running through the science prizes.

Funded in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901. (Credit: Science News Explores)

We’re all familiar with the difference between practical research, that is research that immediately yields benefits to people or that, more importantly, immediately makes money and more fundamental research, the kind of studies that are made simply for the joy of knowing and which are unlikely to ever make any money. Good examples of the practical science would be studying insecticides to help eliminate pests like locusts while pure research would be studying how locusts manage to come together in such huge numbers that they form a destructive swarm. You may have noticed in my example that the pure research may in fact discover facts about locusts that could be applied to reduce the harm they do without resorting to poisons that harm other creatures as well as locusts.

Think about it, without the facts discovered by pure science there’s nothing for the practical scientist or engineer to apply! (Credit: YouTube)

A lot of people take a dim view of fundamental research. After all science is about making all of our lives better isn’t it. Science just for the pure joy of knowing only benefits a few nerds while the rest of us never understand it anyway. Pure science isn’t worth the money it costs they feel. Of course the irony is that without the pure research there wouldn’t be any new ideas, any new discoveries for the ‘practical men of science’ to work with. Well, this year’s Nobel prizes in the sciences celebrate several examples of pure research that in the decades since they were carried out have yielded a great deal of practical benefits.

The ignorant people at Fox News like to joke about 3 million dollars in federal money being wasted on leaning how fast a shrimp can run on a treadmill. Actually, the study was an examination of the entire lifecycle of shrimp which has proven to be immensely valuable to the shrimp industry! The treadmill part of the study cost all of fifty bucks! (Credit: Science)

The first up this year was the Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine which was awarded on the 6th of October to Mary E. Brunlow of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington, Fred Ramsdell of Sonoma Biotherapeutics in San Francisco, California and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Osaka, Japan for their research on how the Immune System works. Specifically the trio examined the phenomenon of ‘peripheral immune tolerance’, that is how the disease fighting T-cells in the immune system of our bodies know to attack foreign cells like bacteria but not to attack our own cells.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi. (Credit: UCLA Newsroom)

It was Dr. Sakaguchi who began the research in 1995. Working with labouratory mice Sakaguchi discovered a previously unknown type of T-cell that regulated the behavior of the more common, disease fighting T-cells that he named ‘regulatory T-cells’. Then in 2001 Doctors Brunkow and Ramsdell discovered a series of gene mutations that could result in dysfunction of the body’s T-cells resulting in autoimmune diseases like eczema or arthritis. Later Sakaguchi was able to demonstrate that the two studies were linked through his regulatory T-cells.

The T-Cells in our body are a major part of our ability to fight diseases. This year’s Nebel Prize in Medicine was awarded for the discovery of, and study of the regulatory type of T-cell. (Credit: Beckman Coulter)

Since that time the research carried out by Sakaguchi, Brunkow and Ramsdell has led to new treatments for autoimmune diseases along with techniques to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs. There are currently over 200 clinical trials underway that are based on the science gained by the trio’s ‘fundamental study’.

As our population ages autoimmune diseases are becoming more and more of a concern. These afflictions occur when our disease fighting T-cells attack the cells of our body. (Credit: NIH Medline Plus Magazine)

On the 7th of October it was Physics turn and this year’s Nobel was awarded to John Clarke of the University of California in Berkeley, Michel H. Devoret of Yale University and John M. Martinis the University of California at Santa Barbara for their work on quantum mechanics and in particular for research that laid the foundation for quantum computers. In research carried out in the 1980s the three scientists examined the way that energy was quantized in an electric circuit. In their work they discovered the ability of electrons to ‘tunnel’ their way through energy barriers that classically they would not be able to cross.

This year’s Physics Nobel went to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis. (Credit: Times of India)

This phenomenon is now a key to many of the microchips that today’s technology relies upon. Everything from digital cameras to mobile phones are dependent on quantum tunneling. What’s more the development of new, more powerful quantum computers is a direct result of the work by doctors Clarke, Devoret and Martinis. Once again fundamental research, studying how energy is quantized in an electric circuit, has resulted in technology worth literally billions of dollars.

In classical physics in order to get over a hill it’s necessary to have enough energy to get to the top of the hill. In quantum physics even if you don’t have enough energy you can tunnel through thanks to the uncertainty principle. Mind you, tunneling may take billions of years! (Credit: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft)

On the 8th of October the final Nobel science prize was awarded for Chemistry to Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University in Japan, Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne and Omar Yaghi at the University of California in Berkeley for their work on Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs). These are materials that are capable of soaking up large amounts of either gasses or liquids like a sponge and then releasing them so that they can be captured.

This year’s Chemistry Prize went to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi. (Credit: NDTV)

You see most chemical reactions take place at surfaces. Think about it, when you put a wooden log on a fire the combustion takes place at the intersection of the wood and the oxygen in the atmosphere, at the log’s surface in other words. MOFs are materials that contain myriad pores and channels throughout them giving them an enormous amount of surface area where chemical reactions can take place.

Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) have large volumes but contain a lot of empty space inside them. This allows the MOFs to absorb a lot of gasses or fluids. (Credit: MDPI)

The discovery of MOFs began way back in the 1970s when Dr. Robson was using wooden balls as models of atoms for his class. In order to construct molecules out of his wooden atoms he drilled holes in them so that he could then use rods to connect them together. As he was drilling the holes he realized that a lot of chemical information was contained in where and how many holes he drilled. In a series of experiments Robson was able to produce copper compounds that contained large cavities creating a large amount of surface area per unit volume.

Remember your High School chemistry class when your teacher showed you have molecules were built using balls connected by rods. Well, that’s what Dr. Robson was doing when he had the idea for MOFs. (Credit: Indigo Instruments)

Doctor Kitagawa extended Robson’s ideas eventually developing materials that could absorb and then release large amounts of methane or nitrogen or even oxygen. One problem with these first MOFs was that they were rather delicate; heating in particular caused their inner surfaces to collapse.

A lot of MOFs are subject to defects and are very fragile substances. (Credit: Nature)

It was Doctor Yaghi who solved this problem with MOF-5, which can be heated to 300º Celsius without degradation. Yaghi has since experimented with his MOF to capture water vapour in the desert of Arizona during the night and then releasing it during the day.

The component parts of MOF-5, shown on the right having captured a gas or liquid molecule. (Credit: Journal of Chemical Reviews)

Again it can be seen how fundamental research back in the 1970s has developed into practical engineering with several companies working on producing MOFs in large quantities to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, reducing the amounts of greenhouse gasses. All of the scientific studies that were awarded the Nobel prize this year share that idea in common, fundamental research that leads in time to practical innovation.

Astronomy News for October 2025: James Webb Telescope and the ‘Little red Dots’ at the beginning of time. 

As I described in several earlier posts, see 6July2024 and 22Febuary2025, one of the prime design goals of NASA’s new James Webb space telescope was to be able to study the early Universe, that is the Universe as it appeared just about one billion years or less after the Big Bang. How does that work, you ask? How can any telescope, even one as advanced as James Webb, see into the past?

By looking at objects billions of light years from Earth the James Webb Space Telescope actually looks billions of years into the past, seeing our Universe as is was billions of years ago. (Credit: European Space Agency)

Well actually all telescopes look into the past. Because the speed of light is finite, about three hundred million meters per second, if you look at the star Sirius for example, at a distance of 8.7 light years you are not seeing Sirius as it is but rather as it was 8.7 years ago because that’s when the light entering your telescope left Sirius. Similarly, if you look at the North Star Polaris, at a distance of about 500 light years you are seeing Polaris as it was 500 years ago. The distance to the Andromeda galaxy is about two and a half million light years so whenever an astronomer looks at Andromeda they are looking two and a half million years into the past.

The famous Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest object you can see with your naked eye, although it doesn’t look this good. At a distance of two and a half million light years it takes the light from Andromeda two and a half million years to reach your eyes. So, when you look at Andromeda you’re looking two and a half million years into the past. (Credit: Astronomy Magazine)

Most galaxies are in fact billions of light years away so astronomers observe them in order to try to understand how the Universe has changed, how the galaxies evolve over billions of years. There’s a catch however, because the entire Universe is expanding, the further away a galaxy is the faster it is moving away from us, and objects that are moving that fast away from us have the light they emit shifted into the infrared due to the Doppler effect.

We’re all actually familiar with the Doppler effect. Whenever an emergency vehicle is moving towards you its siren has a higher pitch than when it is moving away from you. The same thing happens to light so that’s how we know that the Universe is expanding, the light from all but the very closest galaxies is shifted towards the red. (Credit: Science Ready)

Which is why the design of the James Webb space telescope was centered around its ability to see in the far infrared. That’s also why the telescope had to be positioned more then a million kilometers from Earth because our planet also emits a lot of infrared light, enough to blind Webb’s sensitive instruments. Astronomers can also use James Webb to study other objects closer to home like the gas clouds where stars are born but first and foremost the space telescope was intended to study the Universe at around one billion years after the Big Bang.

The famous Pleiades star cluster is a huge gas cloud in our galaxy that has been a stellar nursery forming hundreds of stars over the last couple of million years. By seeing in the infrared Webb can actually see through the gas and dust to actually see stars being born. (Credit: Space)

So what did astronomers and cosmologists, physicists who study the Universe as a whole, expect James Webb to find. They had quite a few theories, basically the idea was that about half a million years after the Big Bang the Universe had cooled enough for atoms, mostly hydrogen and helium, to form and when that happened the whole Universe would grow dark because there were no stars yet to emit any light. The theorists expected that gravity would cause the first stars to form around a half billion years after the Big Bang and based on their calculations those first stars would be really big ones, very bright, very blue in colour. A few hundred million years later those first stars would then be clumping together to form the first galaxies.

Astrophysicists expected that the very first stars to form after the Big Bang would big really big and hot, glowing in the blue portion of the spectrum. (Credit: Forbes)

That’s pretty much what astronomers expected James Webb to see, small, simple galaxies containing a few million or so really bright stars. Instead what they got as they studied the first images from James Webb almost three years ago now were a bunch of ‘Little Red Dots’ (LRDs).

Instead, what James Webb found was a large number of ‘Little Red Dots’. (Credit: ESA/Webb)

Colour means a lot to an astronomer, red stars are actually cool while blue or violet stars are much hotter so the LRDs that Webb imaged were not the big bright stars that astronomers were expecting. At the same time the objects seemed to be too small to be any kind of galaxies. For these reasons, among others the LRDs were initially called ‘Universe Breakers’ because they went against all of our theories about the early universe at that time.

We think of red as being the colour of fire but actually the colour blue is much hotter. (Credit: Commercial LED Lights)

Trying to come up with some kind of model to describe the LRDs astrophysicists first suggested that they were small but well formed galaxies with millions of red stars packed in real tight. The idea of such compact, well organized objects already existing just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang was so outrageous is the reason why astronomers considered them to be Universe Breakers. One thing everybody agreed on was the need for more data; especially we needed the spectrum of a few of these LRDs. The early Universe cosmologists had to wait their turn however, as other programs got their first chance with Webb.

Having to wait your turn, whether at a doctor’s office or elsewhere can be the most boring thing imaginal. (Credit: Medium)

Eventually Webb did return to observing the early Universe and succeeded in obtaining the spectra of some of the LRDs and that better data has caused a shift in thinking about what they could be. The latest model for the LRDs is a black hole that has succeeded in pulling so much material around itself that it looks much like a very large but very cool star.

The latest theory as to what the little red dots could be is that they are a black hole that has gathered a large amount of gas around it. Deep in the center the black hole is feeding, releasing large amounts of energy that causes the entire gas cloud to glow. (Credit: Space)

In a paper from the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics with lead author Anna De Graaff these objects have been named ‘Black Hole Stars’ because even though they get their energy from matter falling into a black hole at their center, their atmospheres closely resemble those of red dwarf stars. The researchers also suggest that the LRDs are in fact the early stages in the development of the Supermassive Black Holes that are now considered to be at the center of every big galaxy.

The first ever image of the supermassive black hole that is at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The image was actually taken in radio waves and converted to a visible image. (Credit: CNN)

If that analysis is true, and there’s still a great deal to be learned about the LRDs, then James Webb has given us the answer to a question that has been bouncing around for the last twenty years or so. Which came first, do galaxies form supermassive black holes in their centers or do supermassive black holes form galaxies around them. If LRDs are baby supermassive black holes then before long Webb should find some of them with proto-galaxies around them.

We still know very little about how the galaxies formed. Hopefully James Webb will give us the data we need to understand how the Universe as it is today developed. (Credit: Wikipedia)

When, and if that happens the astrophysicists will have the data they need to rewrite their theories of how galaxies form. Then we will know more about how our Universe came to look the way it does.

Who was Trofim Lysenko and why are you likely to hear more about Lysenkoism in the years to come? 

The following sketch of the life and career of Trofim Lysenko is necessarily both brief and lacking in detail. A virtual unknown outside of the former Soviet Union, Lysenko has nevertheless become a byword for the abuse of scientific truth for political purposes and the consequences of that abuse to both individuals and the greater population as a whole.

Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko in a portrait dated to 1938. I don’t want to be superficial but there are some people that you can just look at and tell they’re up to no good! (Credit: Wikipedia)

 Born on the 29th of September in 1898 to a peasant family in old Tsarist Russia Trofim Denisovich Lysenko only learned to read and write at the age of 13 when he was given two years of schooling. In Russia at that time that was the most education that someone of his class could hope for. It was expected that Trofim would spend his entire life as a peasant farmer like his father, so he really didn’t need much education.

During the reign of the Tsars the serfs in Russia were virtually slaves having little or no rights and for the most part receiving no education. (Credit: Jacobin)

That changed with the Russian Revolution, to do them justice the Bolsheviks were determined to educate the peasants as a means of modernizing their country, of improving Russia’s economy and eliminating all social classes. Taking part in this educational revolution Lysenko received both what we would call a high school degree and then his bachelor’s degree at the Kiev Agricultural Institute, now the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. For the rest of his career Lysenko would work with the object of improving the yields of the various crops that were grown in the Soviet Union, no easy task thanks to the harsh Russian winter.

The National University of life and Environmental Sciences, now in the Ukraine is typical of the early Soviet Union’s emphasis on educating everyone in the USSR to the best of their ability. (Credit: Smapse Education)

Early in his career Lysenko tried to convert spring wheat to winter wheat in order to increase the growing season, and therefore increase the yearly yield of that important crop. Discounting Mendel’s ideas about genes, Lysenko instead tried to ‘teach the wheat’ to survive better in the winter and assumed that the lessons learned by each plant would be passed on to future generations of the wheat. Although Lysenko claimed great results from his experiments his papers were criticized for sloppy statistical analysis. To this day it is still unclear if Lysenko ever deliberately falsified his evidence but sloppiness and mathematical errors abounded.

Amber waves of grain. Well not in Russia where the growing season is very short and the winters are very harsh. Lysenko dedicated himself to creating a variety of wheat that could flourish in the Russian climate and therefore help feed the people of the Soviet Union. A noble goal but when he failed he turned to persecuting his critics rather than correcting his mistakes. (Credit: Limagrain Cereal Seeds)

Lysenko’s work however brought him to the attention of Joseph Stalin who in the late 1920s was trying to collectivize all of the farms in the Soviet Union. Stalin liked Lysenko because of his peasant background and because Lysenko’s ideas about teaching wheat to change its behaviour fitted in well with Communist dogma. Also, it turned out that Lysenko had considerable rapport with the peasants who were giving Stalin trouble and proved himself to be useful in convincing them to accept collectivization.

Poster of Joseph Stalin greeting Trofim Lysenko. Stalin found the scientist to be politically useful and paid little attention to the botanist’s bad science. (Credit: X)

With Stalin’s support Lysenko’s career was assured no matter how ludicrous his ideas, no matter how sloppy his work, no matter how many other scientists criticized his papers. In fact it wasn’t long before those scientists who criticized Lysenko were being denounced for ‘anti-soviet’, ‘reactionary’, ‘western’ even ‘Trotskyite’ behaviour. Hundreds of biologists were arrested and sent to gulags where many died, some were even executed.

Stalin liked to subject his rivals to show trials accusing them of crimes against the state, meaning against him. Because Lysenko was a friend of Stalin’s his enemies became Stalin’s enemies and often faced the same purges. (Credit: X)

Lysenko’s control of Soviet agriculture became total as far as people were concerned but somehow the crops themselves weren’t impressed. One example of Lysenko’s ideas about increasing crop yields will illustrate just how preposterous they were. Despite hundreds of years of experience by farmers that every plant needed some space in order to fully grow, Lysenko insisted that ‘plants from the same class never compete with one another’ so crops could be planted much closer together thereby increasing the yield each acre of land could provide. Such nonsensical theories were partly the cause of numerous famines in both the Soviet Union as well and in Red China under Mao, who also approved of Lysenko’s theories.

When the communists took over China Mao instituted many of Lysenko’s ‘reforms’. The result was a famine that may have killed as many as 45 million people. (Credit: The New York Times)

So what does the life of Torfim Lysenko have to do with us today? Well in the years since Lysenko’s death the term Lysenkoism has been used to denote the falsification of scientific truth in the service of political orthodoxy and of using political force to silence scientific truth. In that respect I think you’ll agree that Lysenko’s life has a great deal to teach us today.

Politics and Science simply do not mix together well. There are no compromises in science while in politics a good compromise is usually the best path forward. (Credit: X)

Let’s just consider a few of the sillier moments of Trump’s presidency. Remember the clumsy redrawing of the map for hurricane Dorian so that Trump could claim he was right about where the storm might go. Remember his suggestion that we somehow inject disinfectant into our bodies in order to kill the Covid virus. Trump has never had much interest in science and his refusal to ever admit that he is wrong has often brought him into conflict with reality.

It wasn’t just that Trump falsified science it was the crude and ugly way that he did it that displayed his utter contempt for the truth! (Credit: The New York Times)

Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020 seems to have only increased his dislike for the truth. Now in his second term he has repeatedly claimed that crime is rampant in democratically controlled cities despite FBI statistics clearly showing that violent crime is down over the last several years. Trump has even gone so far as to use the Jeffrey Epstein pedophile scandal to attack his political opponents while falsely minimizing his own relationship with the disgraced financier.

During the campaign Trump promised to release all of the Epstein files but now he’s doing everything he can to keep them from being made public. Again showing a complete disregard for the truth. (Credit: The New York Times)

Worst still, Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding for scientific research from both Universities and corporations whose policies he disapproves of, canceling or at least delaying important research. At numerous federal agencies he has canceled or severely cut back on studies dealing with climate change, the environment and vaccines for illnesses.

Trump’s personal Lysenko, at least so far, would have to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr whose attacks against medical science are seriously endangering the health of the American people. (Credit: Yahoo)

As the head of the federal bureaucracy Trump has chosen for his cabinet and other important posts not people with experience or ability but incompetent sycophants who flatter him and obey him without question. Now Trump has decided that the economic statistics complied by various agencies of the government are just wrong, not because of any evidence he has but just because they make him look bad. He has fired the head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics because of a bad jobs report and Trump’s chosen successor has questioned whether those numbers are even needed.

Erika McEntarfer was fired from her post as the head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics because of several poor job reports. In fact the head of the Bureau has very little to do with the actual job of collating the numbers reported by the Bureau. (Credit: ABC News)

Now I don’t mean to imply that Trump is the root cause of all that is wrong in our country today, far from it. The biblical creationists have been denying evolution for over a hundred years now, and using political force to fight it since they have no evidence worthy of the name. The tobacco industry actually conducted tests on their product showing how dangerous tobacco was, and then lied to their customers saying that tobacco was safe so that they could stay in business. The petroleum industry learned from big tobacco and so, even when their own scientists told them global warming was real, they just fired the scientists and then bribed conservative politicians and news networks to deny climate science.

The lies and distortions now being spread by the modern Lysenkos are a threat not just to millions of lives but to the very Planet on which all life depends. (Credit: Live Science)

So you can see that Lysenkoism has been a part of American politics for a long time. Now however we have a President who is more than willing to destroy American science in order to get his own way, in a sense simply because he has been a liar his entire life and liars just hate the truth.

That’s just in his first term. Can he break his own record in his second term? One thing for certain of is that if he doesn’t break his own record he’ll claim he did! (Credit: The Times of India)

Who knows how long this current stage of Lysenkoism will continue in this country. It is worth noting however that when reality finally pushes its way through the lies of Lysenkoism it is usually a big disaster, like the famines that Lysenko himself was responsible for. Will we keep going down this disastrous road until climate change has led to the deaths of millions, until plastic pollution is causing severe illnesses in a large section of our population? With all of the problems we humans will face in the coming decades we won’t survive by simply lying to ourselves that there are no problems.   

Vacationing in Ireland. 

O’k, I know that vacationing in Ireland is hardly science and certainly not science fiction but I just spent two weeks in the emerald isle and I want to talk about it. So There!

The Island of Ireland is still split between two countries, the Republic in the southern 3/4ths while Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom (UK). At least right now that’s not a cause for fighting but it certainly has been over the last 800 years. (Credit: Britannica)

Just so you know, I’m about 3/4ths Irish so I’ve always had an interest in Ireland and Irish culture; I’ve always known it was my heritage. And I’ve been to Ireland once before, just forty years ago so I was curious to see how the country had changed.

If you want to know why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle, well it is just so green! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

One thing that we decided even as we were planning the trip was that this time we were going to visit Northern Ireland, also known as Ulster and which is still a part of the United Kingdom (UK). Back in 1985 Ulster was the scene of ‘The Troubles’ as Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans waged a bloody terrorist war against each other. That violence has now subsided with the implementation of the “Good Friday Accords’ where power is being shared by both sides.

Thanks to the ‘Good Friday Accords’ Ireland is at peace right now but it’s still rather fragile and the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) has already stirred up some problems. (Credit: University of Birmingham)

Another big political change is that the Irish Republic, the southern and western three quarters of the island, is now a part of the European Union (EU) along with 25 other nations like France, Italy and Germany. This union of nations uses a common currency, the Euro, and travel by any citizen of one nation in the union to another is exactly like going from Pennsylvania to New Jersey here in the states.

Ireland is a part of the European Union of nations. Citizens of the EU can travel freely between all nations in the union and use the same currency. Nations within the union cooperate on economic and to some degree foreign affairs. (Credit: Gale Blog)

In fact it turned out that going from the Irish Republic to Northern Ireland, and hence the UK, was exactly the same despite the fact that the UK left the EU in Brexit. So far it appears that everyone realizes that putting a hard border across Ireland once more would be the quickest way to start the troubles all over again.

So much for politics, let’s talk about Ireland and her people. From what I could see there’s a lot more energy in Ireland today than when I was last here in the 1980s. The capital of Dublin in particular is growing rapidly with buildings going up all over the city. Still the Irish are also anxious to protect a great deal of their past, and that means from the Stone Age right up to the Rebellion that got them their independence just over a hundred years ago. The country does seem to have found a good balance between preservation and growth.

Probably the best way to see if a city is growing is the number of canes dotting the city skyline. Everywhere you look in Dublin there are cranes. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
But there are still plenty of narrow streets that seem as if they haven’t changed in a hundred years. Ireland wants, and so far is achieving both growth and preservation. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

The young people of the Republic in particular seem energetic and looking forward to accomplishing great things, although I admit that view might be a bit biased because our hotel was right across from Trinity College and we saw many young people every day. Still, the hope and eagerness among people for what tomorrow brings seems to be a far cry from what I see happening in the US, where our young people see little hope of a life as good as the one their parents had.

We arrived in Dublin on the day that freshmen students at Trinty College had their orientation. Here the new students are lining up to enter the Examination building on their first day. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Our guide on our trip to Ulster was Elisa whose youthful energy and hope was typical of the young people we met. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

One aspect of the energy of the Irish people is the amount of political protest I saw in the streets everywhere. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza were the main topics being discussed but there was also the question of Irish neutrality, Ireland is actually not a member of NATO, along with many other issues. The willingness of the Irish government and media to allow discussion of these topics is again in stark contrast to what is currently happening in the US.

Just a few of the many politically motivated signs we saw in Dublin. A society that allows, indeed participates in such issues is a healthy society! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Another interesting topic in Ireland is actually the public transportation system in the capital, and indeed public services in general. Thanks to the bus and trolley lines it is possible to ride anywhere in Dublin and its suburbs in comfort and travel around the country is possible by a first rate rail service. All these methods of getting around the country are clean and modern as well as getting you to your destination quickly. Like the busses and trolleys everything in Dublin is clean and well taken care of, a tribute not only to the efficient government but to the people of Ireland who put their trash in the right receptacles and are willing to put a little effort into making their country a pleasant place to live.

On all of the main streets in Dublin there are Busses and Trolleys. Public transportation is both quick and well cared for making getting around town without a car a pleasure. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Before I go on let me just take a moment to discuss the Irish weather. In the fall the weather in Ireland is constantly changing, seeming to alternate between rain and sunshine what seems like several times a day. The temperature remains pretty constant around 15ºC as a high down to 10ºC for an overnight low but you can have a clear sky one moment and an hour or two later be getting a light rain, what the Irish call a ‘soft day’. We did in fact get rained on every day we were there and still got to see the Sun every day as well so “Welcome to Ireland” as the people there told us.

Our day on the beach at Malahide was probably the wettest but it rained every day and we had sunshine every day as well! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

O’k, so what did I actually see while I was in Ireland. Well for the most part the trip was about the history of Ireland, both natural and human history. Geologically we visited the Giant’s Causeway, which is pretty much at the northeast tip of the island. I also got to do a little fossil hunting along the beach at a town called Malahide just north of Dublin.

The Giant’s Causeway is one of the most unusual geological formations on Earth. Formed when lava flowing from a volcano over half a billion years ago was instantly cooled by the waters of an ancient ocean the rock formed into tall hexagonal pillars! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Most of the trip however dealt with human history of which Ireland has more than it’s share. Ancient history came in the form of a trip to the Neolithic site of Newgrange along with other Stone Age sites along the Boyne River. More modern history consisted of a morning spent at the Titanic museum in Belfast where the story of the most famous shipwreck in history was recounted at the very place where the Titanic was built.

The ancient mound of Newgrange served as a gravesite for the stone age people of the Boyne valley. Today it is an archaeological site open to the public. You can even go inside to the actual burial chamber in the middle of the mound. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Image taken from the Titanic Museum of the actual location of where the doomed ocean
liner was constructed in Belfast. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Most of the historical sites we visited however were connected with the Easter Uprising in 1916 and the rebellion that followed leading to Irish independence in 1922. We took a walking tour of many of the places in Dublin that played an important part in the Easter Uprising and visited the cemetery where many of the Irish patriots, including Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera, are buried. As a fitting final site we visited Dublin Castle, the seat of English power in Ireland for over 600 years and the place where the formal hand over of power to the Irish Free State took place in 1922.

Th General Post Office in Dublin became headquarters for the rebels during the Easter Uprising in 1916 that led to the Independance of Ireland in 1922. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Bullet holes in one of the Columns of the General Post Office bear witness to the fighting in 1916. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Dublin castle was the center of English power in Ireland for over 800 years and it is also the place where the British government officially turned power over to the Irish people in 1922. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

But really the best part of visiting Ireland was the people, how friendly they were, how much they appeared to enjoy their lives, basically just how happy they all seemed to be. Speaking of the people of Ireland it should be noted that many of the people we met and interacted with during our stay were not ethnically ‘Irish’, certainly more than I saw 40 years ago. Over the last 20 years or so a good many immigrants have come to the Irish Republic seeking a better life for themselves, and there’s no doubt that the republic has benefited from their energy. Now there have been a few small demonstrations by anti-immigrant protestors but so far as we saw the ‘Old Irish’ and the ‘New Irish’ are working together to make a better Ireland.

A Uyghur restaurant in Dublin. Yes, there were many ethnic restaurants throughout the city giving Dublin a very international flavour. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
At the same time there were dozens of good olde Irish pubs to be enjoyed. Again, Dublin has a wonderful mixture of old and new. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Trump, in his speech this week before the UN General Assembly told the world that if other countries didn’t follow his policies, especially about immigration, they were “all going to hell”. Living in the US and having just visited a part of the EU all I can say is that the EU may not have as many billionaires as the US does, but your people are a lot happier and looking forward to the future.

An insult to the US and the world even a little country like Ireland has managed to find better leaders than the US. (Credit: Atlantic Council)

I only wish I could say the same about my country.

Space News for September 2025: China tests two critical parts of their plans for landing on the Moon by 2030, and what are other countries doing in Manned Spaceflight. 

Ever since their first manned mission back in October of 2003 the People’s Republic of China, henceforth just China, has been making steady progress in developing their manned space program. As of the writing of this post they have successfully carried out fifteen manned space missions. They have constructed a space station called Tiangong, which they keep permanently manned by routine crew transfer spaceflights. As a part of maintaining Tiangong they have carried out numerous Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs). All in all they have step by step acquired all of the skills necessary for living and working in Low Earth Orbit (LOE).

China’s Tiangong Space Station. Since it’s first module was launched in 2021 China has carried out numerous space activities there, learning the ropes of how to function long term in space. (Credit: Digital Trends)

China’s space ambition however extends far beyond LOE, in fact for more than a decade now the Chinese Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has been working steadily towards the announced goal of placing a Taikonaut, their designation for our astronaut, on the Moon by the year 2030. In order to accomplish this task the Chinese need to develop three separate pieces of space hardware, A spacecraft capable of carrying taikonauts from LOE to Lunar orbit and then bringing them back to Earth, a lander spacecraft capable of taking taikonauts from Lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and then getting then back into Lunar orbit, and finally a big rocket capable of getting the first two spacecraft to Lunar orbit. Of course this is all familiar from the Apollo program with its Command and Service Modules, its Lunar Module and giant Saturn V rocket.

To land people on the Moon you basically need three different spacecraft. A capsule to carry your astronauts there and back, a lander to take them down to the surface and get them back into orbit, and a really big rocket to get the first two spacecraft to the Moon. This is how the US did it with Apollo. (Credit: NCSU Libraries NC State University)

The first of the needed hardware pieces China already has in its Shenzhou spacecraft that has proven itself to be capable of sustaining three taikonauts for periods as long as three weeks. The only modification needed for Shenzhou to be used for a Lunar mission is for its heat shield to be strengthened to withstand the greater heat generated by coming back from the Moon as opposed to just returning from LOE.

China’s Shenzhou spacecraft has proven itself capable of sustaining three Taikonauts in space for at least two weeks. Just the time needed for a Lunar landing mission. (Credit: China Space Report)

Progress on the remaining two pieces of hardware has again been steady, a word that pretty much sums up China’s space program. In fact two recent tests that have been made public indicate that China is on schedule for their goal of a Lunar landing by 2030. On August 6th CMSA conducted a large-scale test of its Lunar Lander, named the Lanyue, which is Chinese for embrace the Moon. Looking at the image below you can see that the lander module was dangled at the bottom of a large fixture that was itself connected by cabling to scaffolding. This whole setup was in order to replicate the lower gravity of the Lunar surface, only one sixth that of Earth with all of the cabling holding up five sixths of the module’s weight.

The spider in its web. China’s Lanyue lander module ready of its test. The whole structure around the lander is intended to simulate the reduced gravity of the Moon. (Credit: South China Morning Post)

During the tests the rocket engines of the lander were ignited and examined for their performance, as were all of the lander’s systems. The successful completion of this series of tests actually puts the CMSA ahead of NASA whose landers for the Artemis program have not yet reached the testing stage.

The actual testing of Lanyue. No American lander has reached this stage of testing yet. Does this put China ahead in the new race to the Moon? (Credit: China in Space)

Then, on the 15th of August the CMSA carried out a static firing of the seven engine ‘core’ of its planned Long March 10 rocket. While the Long March 10 rocket is not designed to have nearly as much thrust as the old Saturn V that took NASA to the Moon the Chinese plan is to use two Long March 10 rockets, one to transport their taikonauts to Lunar orbit and the other to transport the Lanyue lander to Lunar orbit. Once in orbit the two modules will rendezvous and carry out the actual landing.

The Long March 10 launch vehicle ready for static testing. Not as powerful as the Saturn V, China will use two Long March Rockets, one to get the Shenzhou capsule to Lunar orbit and the other for the Lanyue lander. (Credit: NASASpaceFlight.com

The test, which lasted for about 30 seconds, demonstrates that the seven YF-100K engines can work together to provide the thrust needed along with other valuable data. Again the test of the engines of its planned Moon rocket is another important milestone in China’s path towards a Lunar landing.

Static test in progress. Again, China seems to be steadily progressing in their intention to land on the Moon by 2030. (Credit: Aviation Week)

It is worth noting that while the two tests discussed above were made public much of China’s space program is conducted under heavy security, so the costs and any engineering problems that occur remain secret. The two tests were only announced publicly because they were successful, or at least mostly successful. Any problems that might have occurred during the tests were simply not mentioned in the official news reports.

Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. Russia kept the whole program a complete secret and only announced the launch AFTER it was successful. In case of a failure they never would have said anything! China is still keeping a lot of secrets about its space activities so whatever problems they might be having can only be guessed at! (Credit: NBC News)

In any case, as China proceeds on its path for manned space exploration, what are other nations doing, or planning to do, in manned space exploration. I’ll skip NASA since most of these posts deal with NASA.

The Russians of course began the space age, shocking the world with their space achievements of launching both the first satellite and the first man into space. What plans do the Russians have for future space exploration? Not much I’m afraid.

When the International Space Station (ISS) is de-orbited in 2030 Russia plans on taking their part of the ISS and turn it into a space station on its own like the old MIR station they had. Other than that Russia, the country that started the space age, doesn’t seem to have any plans. (Credit: The Autopian)

Between the state of Russia’s economy and the costs of their war in Ukraine it appears that Russia has no plans at all aside from taking their half of the International Space Station (ISS) when it is decommissioned in 2030 and trying to build it into a new space station, which they will continue to man with their venerable Soyuz spacecraft. Any plans to go beyond LOE are simply pipe dreams.

Russia’s Lunokhod-1 Lunar rover launched in 1970. There was a time when Russia was exploring the solar system but no more. It’s been years since they sent anything beyond LOE. (Credit: en.wikipedia.com)

The European Space Agency (ESA) has been trying for several decades now to decide whether or not to have its own manned space program or simply tag along with NASA to both the ISS and soon the Moon as it seems Canada and Japan are content to do. There are however several European aerospace corporations that are hoping to tempt the ESA into funding a European Manned Capsule. 

The European Space Agency’s concept for a manned spacecraft. Really the Europeans only lack the funding, and hence the political will and they could easily launch their own astronauts. (Credit: BBC News)

A German company named The Exploration Company has developed a cargo-carrying capsule called Nyx. This spacecraft is intended to launch supplies to future space stations but could be modified to carry astronauts. One of the chief selling points of Nyx is that it could be launched into orbit by a number of different rockets.

Another potential European spacecraft is the Nyx capsule from the German firm The Exploration Company. (Credit: European Spacefilght)

To demonstrate their capability the Exploration Company recently launched Nyx aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg air force base. The test didn’t pan out too well however, the capsule did achieve orbit but as it was returning to Earth its parachutes failed to open and the capsule was lost.

If you’re going to send people into space you really need a good method of getting them back. The parachutes on the Nyx capsule test didn’t open and the capsule was lost, a real problem. (Credit: Berkeley Lab News Center)

Meanwhile a Spanish company named PLD has more ambitious plans, hoping to not only develop a manned capsule Lince that would be capable of carrying four or five passengers into orbit but they are also working on a series of launch vehicles given the name Miura. The first of the series, the Miura 5 is scheduled to make its debut orbital flight next year, 2026.

Finally there is India, which has recently begun to establish itself as a player in the exploration of space as a source of national pride. The world’s most populous nation is calling their manned orbital program Gaganyaan, Hindi for ‘Space craft’ and an unmanned test is scheduled for later this year with a manned mission expected in the first quarter of 2027.

The Gaganyaan space capsule, India’s entry into manned spaceflight. Currently scheduled for a first manned mission in 2027 it will make India only the fourth country to put people into space. (Credit: Spacecraft wiki)

That’s about it, whereas space exploration was once completely dominated by the US and Soviet Union there are now quite a few nations who see space as not only as a way to keep up with the Jones’ but also as a way to develop a technology base inside their country for the sake of their economy.

Archaeology News for September 2025. 

Archaeology is, as we all know, the study of the remains left by ancient human societies and cultures. As such it often encounters some of the strange beliefs that we human are plagued by, sometimes in the distant past and even sometimes in the present. In this post I’ll be discussing a couple of archaeological discoveries that tell us something about those strange beliefs that every age and society have had to deal with. As always I will begin with the oldest site first and move forward in time.

Some of the beliefs of the past were not only strange but monstrous, such as the Phoenician god Moloch to whom babies were sacrificed. (Credit: Medical Republic)

Gobekli Tepe had been called the “World’s Oldest Temple” by it’s discoverer Klaus Schmidt when it was first excavated back in the 1990’s. Located outside of Sanliurfa Turkey, less than 40 kilometers from the Syrian border the site was just a mound of earth, known as a tepe in Turkish before archaeologists began work there. What they discovered when they began excavating was a series of circular stone enclosures with stone pillars inside them on which were carved images of both animals and humans.

Arial view of the site of Gobekli Tepe. Only the area in the lower right has been excavated so far, there’s a lot left to be discovered but archaeologists are taking their time not wanting to miss anything. Any areas that are left can be studied by future researchers with newer technology. (Credit: UNESCO World Heritage Center)

The site has been dated to about 12,000 years ago and while the idea of its being a ‘temple’ is now considered to be naïve it probably served as both a meeting place for the ancient nomadic people who lived in southern Anatolia and a place for them to perform various rituals. Anthropologists today feel that the term ‘temple’ refers to a much more organized type of religion than would have existed back in the late Stone Age.

Some of the carvings unearthed at Gobekli Tepe. Whether these symbols were religious in the modern sense is debatable but they certainly were spiritual in intend. (Credit: Phys.org)

The site of Gobekli Tepe is very large and even after some thirty years of excavation only a small portion of the mound has been unearthed and studied. Surveys by ground penetrating radar and other non-destructive technologies have indicated that there is a lot more waiting to be discovered at the site. The archaeologists working at Gobekli Tepe have been working slowly and carefully however, determined to learn everything they can from each cubic meter of soil that they remove.

Today archaeologists work slowly and carefully in order to not miss anything. Also, notice how the person on the left is writing down every move the diggers make! (Credit: The New York Times Web Archive)

You see archaeology is what is known as a destructive science, as each artifact is removed from the ground the chance of learning anything more about how it got to where it was, how its placement relates to other nearby objects is gone. If you didn’t record that information before removing it, that information will never be known.

A reconstruction of late Bronze Age Troy. If there was a Trojan war this is the city the Greeks destroyed. Unfortunately when Heinrich Schlimann began his excavations there he started at top where the Palace is thought to have been and was in such a hurry to get to where he thought his Troy was that he destroyed all remains of the palace. A great loss to archaeology. (Credit: Made in Turkey Tours)

In fact when Heinrich Schlimann first excavated the city of Troy he was so anxious to get to the lowest level, the one he thought was the Troy of the Iliad that he actually destroyed much of what archaeologists now think was the Troy of Helen. Modern archaeologists are determined to never make that kind of mistake again so they proceed slowly and carefully. One other point, our instruments today are much better than the tools that Schlimann had, and we assume the instruments of the future will be better still. That’s why the archaeologists at Pompeii for example have left a portion of the city untouched for future archaeologists to excavate with their improved technology.

Modern Ground Penetrating Radar has allowed archaeologists to survey a site in order to at least get an idea of where the major formations are. What kind of technology archaeologists will use 50 or 100 years from now is unknowable. (Credit: Archaeological Surveys Ltd. )

The problem with all of that is there are many people who want the answers RIGHT NOW and in our age of conspiracy theories that makes places like Gobekli Tepe the source for all kinds of wild ideas. In fact on the Netflix series ‘Ancient Apocalypse’ the host Graham Hancock has proposed that Gobekli Tepe was built by a ‘Lost Civilization’ that was destroyed in an Ice Age cataclysm, hence ‘Ancient Apocalypse’. This sort of wild thinking has been amplified by podcasters such as Joe Rogan who, along with his guests suspect that the work at Gobekli Tepe is being deliberately slowed or hidden in order to conceal ‘the truth’.

Conspiracist Graham Hancock hawking another of his crazy ‘theories’. Yes there was a society here in American before Columbus, they’re called the Native Americans! (Credit: Upcoming Events / San Diego Public Library)

Needless to say there is no evidence of any kind to support these ‘theories’. Like the theories that the Pyramids or Stonehenge were built by aliens, such speculation however appeals to people who can’t be bothered to learn the reality behind these ancient wonders. I’ve always thought it was more wondrous to understand how people thousands of years ago had the imagination to conceive of and the will to then construct the Pyramids, or Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe.

The pyramids of Giza are perhaps the most carefully examined archaeological site on Earth. The idea that there are vast structures underneath them is simply preposterous. Just another crazy ‘theory’ people come up with to sell books!(Credit: Medium)

Another recent archaeological find that illustrates how the beliefs that people held in the past effect the artifacts that modern archaeologists use to understand the lives of those people. Unearthed recently at a Roman era site in Galicia, Spain called A Cibdá de Armea was a very surprising piece of jewelry, a 450 million year old fossil trilobite that had been modified to be worn as a personal amulet. Estimated to have been made in the 1st to 3rd century AD this is the first time that a trilobite fossil has been found in a Roman context but actually the eleventh time that trilobites have been unearthed by archaeologists.

Either a Roman villa or small town the archaeological site of A Cibdá de Armea is currently being excavated. The site has already told us a great deal about the Roman culture outside of Italy in the first Century CE. (Credit: UVigo)

 Fossils in general seem to have fascinated ancient peoples. The large bones of dinosaurs or mammoths were thought to be the bones of giants or mythical beasts. The Roman historian Suetonius actually recorded that the Emperor Augustus kept a collection of fossils and showed them to his friends, arguably the first fossil museum.

The Trilobite fossil discovered at A Cibdá de Armea. The fossil had been modified to be used as some kind of jewelry. (Credit: Facebook)

As I said above this recent find is the 11th fossil trilobite discovered at an archaeological site. A trilobite with a hole drilled through it was used as a pendant in France, 14,000 years ago. In North America they were thought to be ‘petrified water bugs’ by the Ute people and a Chinese text from the 7th century called them ‘stone worms’ and described how to use them in traditional medicine.

Mammoth skulls often have an indentation right in the middle of their forehead. Could this be the origin of the myth of the Cyclops? Today the idea that stories about giant and other monsters being inspired by fossils is being seriously considered. (Credit: Facebook)

So it seems that people have had strange ideas in the past just as they  are still having them today. It’s only when we carefully examine sites like Gobekli Tepe or fossils like trilobites while comparing them to similar sites and fossils that we can have any hope of learning the reality behind our theories.

Book Review: ‘Lost in Time’ by A. G. Riddle. 

About a quarter of the way into ‘Lost in Time’ by author A. G. Riddle I had the feeling that I was going to be disappointed by this novel. The story was shaping up to be a murder mystery with some time travel thrown in to spice things up a bit. I am no fan of ‘who done it’ stories and despite the subplot in the Triassic period I wasn’t too impressed.

I do not like Murder Mysteries, in fact I really think that ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ may be the worst book I’ve ever read. I’ll give away the ending, ‘Who done it?’, ‘Everyone done it!’ (Credit: Barnes and Noble)

Boy was I wrong. About one third of the way into the story and the author begins using time travel to the fullest, mentioning but pretty much ignoring the usual time travel no-no’s of altering the past in any way causing disaster in the present. (See Ray Bradbury’s story ‘The Sound of Thunder’ for the classic take on what happens when a time traveler so much as steps on a butterfly.) Another time travel cliché that Riddle breaks is that you can never have a person meet themself.

Cover art for ‘Lost in Time’ by A. G. Riddle. It starts out like a ‘Who done it?’ with some time travel thrown in but it gets better! (Credit: Amazon.com)

In the near future a company called Absolom has discovered a method to use quantum entanglement to send objects, including people into the past. Now this time travel is a one-way trip so the only practical use for Absolom is to send convicted murderers into the past, the distant, pre-human past. That way the very worst of humanity are removed from society without society having to execute them, they just died in the past the way virtually every creature who has ever lived has done. Governments the world over have taken advantage of this invention which has also caused crime in general to decrease significantly. The people sent into the past cannot alter our future because it turns out they are actually sent to a different universe in the Multiverse.

The Multiverse, an infinite number of different Universes, has become an infinite source of plots for SF novels and stories. (Credit: Big Think)

The trouble starts when the six scientists who developed Absolom have succeeded in creating Absolom 2, a new version that allows objects to be placed in our Universe’s past, and perhaps also allow the recall of those objects. One of the scientists, Dr. Nora Thomas argues against the whole project, reminding her colleagues of the dangers of altering the past.

‘The Sound of Thunder’ is a classic SF story by Ray Bradbury about the danger of trying to alter the past. It’s also where the term ‘Butterfly Effect’ comes from. (Credit: Amazon)

That night another of the scientists, Dr. Sam Anderson visits Nora along with his young daughter Adeline. Nora and Sam have begun a relationship and try to tell Adeline about it but the girl is still traumatized by the death of her mother and storms out of the house followed by her father.

Author of ‘Lost in Time’ A. G. Riddle posing in front of a well-known bit of the past. (Credit: A-Thrill-A-Week)

The next day Nara is found dead in her house, Adeline’s DNA and prints on the murder weapon. To save his daughter Sam confesses to the murder and is sent back to the Triassic period as his sentence. So there we have the murder mystery set up. Can Adeline solve the crime and get her father back from the past before a dinosaur eats him.

While not as well-known as the dinosaurs of the later Jurassic and Cretaceous period it was during the Triassic that dinosaurs first evolved. (Credit: Amazon.com)

Turns out things are a lot more interesting then that. As I said author Riddle uses time travel to make the plot much more interesting, and just plain weirder. The solution to the mystery is certainly the most unique ‘who done it’ I’ve ever heard of.

Here’s my kind of ‘Who done it?’ at least you know with the Three Stooges you’re going to get a few laughs! (Credit: en.wikipedia.org)

I do have a few problems with ‘Lost in Time’ however. First off the scientists who developed Absolom were actually trying to use quantum entanglement to build a kind of ‘Star Trek’ transporter, a device capable of sending objects across the world in an instant. When the objects just keep disappearing the team decides they must be going into the past, how they know this, the evidence for time travel is never explained.

The scientists in ‘Lost in Time’ were trying to invent something like a Star Trek transporter. When all of their test objects simply disappeared they figured it had to be time travel? That’s quite a bit of a leap in logic if you ask me! (Credit: Forbes)

Second, the Constitution to the United States strictly prohibits ‘Cruel and Unusual’ punishments and ya gotta think Absolom is unusual. It’s also cruel because Absolom isn’t too precise about where it drops a person in the past. Remember the Earth is 70% ocean so about 70% of prisoners would quickly drown. Indeed in the story Sam Anderson is dropped in a Triassic Ocean and barely manages to reach a shore.

The history of Europe is full of examples of ‘Cruel and Unusual Punishment’ that our founding fathers were hoping to eliminate. It seems to me that sending a convicted criminal to the Triassic period is certainly unusual if not actually cruel. (Credit: Tennessee Star)

Finally, author Riddle seems to feel that traveling into the past won’t alter our present, if you’re really careful! By the end of the novel people are going back and forth in time quite cavalierly, too cavalierly in my opinion. Just the idea of taking matter from our present and suddenly adding extra matter at some time in the past makes my physicist’s brain ache.

In the movie ‘Spiderman: No Way Home’ the idea of a Multiverse and time travel was used to bring three Spidermen together. It was fun but a little farfetched. (Credit: Daily Express)

Still, ‘Lost in Time’ was a fun read, as I said the solution to ‘who done it’ was quite a twist, the most unique murder reveal I’ve ever read. So I do recommend ‘Lost in Time’, even people like me who don’t care for murder mysteries will enjoy it.

Astronomy News for August 2025: Two Interesting Asteroids have been making the news lately. 

Back a few months ago the asteroid 2024 YR4 made quite a few headlines because the astronomers whose job it is to discover and keep track of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) calculated that there was a very small but not insignificant chance that 2024 YR4 could collide with our planet on the 22nd of December in 2032. (See my post of 8 March 2025.) At an estimated size of between 50 and 100m, 2024 YR4 was a potential ‘city killer’ so it was no wonder that there was some concern when the chance of a collision rose to about 3%.

At more than a kilometer across the Asteroid crater in Arizona clearly shows how much damage a sizable rock from outer space could do. (Credit: Understanding Global Change)

Now 2024 YR4 had only been discovered in 2024, hence the designation 2024 YR4, and after several weeks of measurements of its position and velocity it was announced that better, more precise calculations clearly showed that while 2024 YR4 would come close to Earth on the 22nd of December 2032, it definitely would not collide with our planet.

The orbital path of asteroid 2024 YR4 (Big Ellipse) brings to close to our planet (Blue Circle) on a regular basis. Of course close in outer space can mean millions of kilometers so any collision could be millions of years away. In any case 2024 YR4 will not strike the Earth any time soon. But it could collide with the Moon! (Credit: The Planetary Society)

But it could still strike the Moon. In fact a recent review of the observations made of 2024 YR4 while it was close to our planet has now given a better chance of 2024 YR4 striking the Moon than it ever did of colliding with Earth, 4.3%.

Much of the Lunar surface is covered in impact craters, some billions of years old, some very recent. The Moon is used to being hit by asteroids but what effects will that event have to us here on Earth? (Credit: ScienceABC)

So, what would be the results of 2024 YR4’s striking the Moon? Would there be any danger to us here on Earth? A 50-100m in diameter asteroid slamming into the Moon would cause an explosion as powerful as that of an H-bomb, an estimated 6.5 megatons of explosive power. Such an explosion would create a crater that is estimated to be about a kilometer in diameter and cause as much as 200 million tons of lunar rock to be ejected.

The impact that an asteroid such as 2024 YR4 could cause would be as large as the largest nuclear bombs ever tested. (Credit: Atomic Heritage Foundation)

Now, the collision itself could only be a danger to someone on the Moon; an astronaut in other words and by 2032 there is the possibility that NASA or the Chinese space agency could be sending astronauts to the Moon on a regular basis. Of course if astronomers were certain that the asteroid were going to crash on the Moon you can bet that both space agencies would cancel any lunar missions until they were convinced it was safe.

By 2032 both NASA and the Chinese expect to have landed people on the Moon but you can bet they won’t be sending any missions there if and when 2024 YR4 is going to strike. (Credit: Air Power Asia)

Here on Earth all that we would see is a bright flash of light on the lunar surface lasting several seconds. The calculations right now indicate that 2024 YR4 would strike the visible face of the Moon so it would be a once in a lifetime viewing opportunity for the half of the world where the Moon is up.

If asteroid 2024 YR4 does strike the Moon in 2032 it will be an event visible to half of the people on Earth, a sight unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The problems caused by the collision would come days later. (Credit: YouTube)

The danger comes after the actually strike with all of that Lunar material that got ejected by the collision. A small fraction of that material will actually escape the Moon’s gravity and a fraction of that will come towards Earth. Starting about a week after the collision our night skies will treat us to the most glorious meteor showers in history, and that show could continue for months.

A few days after the collision the Skies of Earth would see the biggest meteor shower in recorded history as millions of fragments of the Moon fell onto our planet. The real danger would be to all of our satellites in orbit, satellites that our modern technological society has become dependent on. (Credit: CNET)

There is little chance of anyone on Earth’s surface being hurt by the meteors, virtually all of the particles will be smaller than a peanut and burn up in the atmosphere. The danger would be to astronauts in Low Earth Orbit (LOE) space stations and to the hundreds of satellites circling our planet.

Any space station in orbit would have to be abandoned because of the danger of a meteor strike. (Credit: WUSF)

That’s the real danger because any collision with even a tiny grain of lunar dust at velocities of 10 kilometers or more per second could do serious damage to a spacecraft. Remember our increasingly technological society has become quite dependent on GPS satellites, communications satellites, weather satellites etc, etc. If 2024 YR4 should strike the Moon the danger to LOE satellites and manned stations could last for years.

The swarm of particles caused by the asteroid collision on the Moon would last for years being a constant danger to satellites as well as any manned spacecraft. (Credit: Dreamstime.com)

So, on the whole I’m hoping that 2024 YR4 misses the Moon entirely. It would make for a spectacular show but the problems it causes could seriously impact space exploration for a long time.

With all of the debris that would be moving through the inner solar system due to the asteroid impact a mission to Mars would be out of the question for who knows how long. (Credit: Science Photo Gallery)

My second asteroid is not going to put on such a show, nor be as much a threat as 2024 YR4 but 3I/Atlas is in many ways more interesting. Discovered on July 1st of 2025, 3I/Atlas is the third interstellar visitor to our solar system to be discovered by astronomers and differs greatly from the first two.

The third interstellar visitor to our solar system that has been discovered by astronomers is designated as 3I/Atlas. While only a speck of light in even the biggest telescopes it is actually at least twice as big as the first two interstellar visitors. (Credit: Gemini Observatory)

You may remember that back in 2017 there was a lot of talk about Oumuamua, the first object to be discovered in our solar system that was definitely from outside, a visitor from interstellar space. There was even suggestions back then that Oumuamua could be an alien spaceship, its shape was more like a spaceship than a normal asteroid’s. (See my post of 11 November 2017 for more information on Oumuamua). Then in 2021 a second interstellar visitor was detected and given the name 2I/Borisov. Both these two objects made one pass through our solar system and then returned to interstellar space, never to be seen again.

The first interstellar visitor, designated as Oumuamua, turned out to be a long, cigar shaped object. This strange shape caused many people to suppose that it was an alien spacecraft of some kind! (Credit: NASA Science)

If you’re wondering how astronomers know that an object they’ve discovered is an interstellar visitor well it’s all a question of velocity. If an object is moving too fast for the Sun’s gravity to force it into a stable orbit then it will quickly leave the solar system, and therefore must have originally come from outside the solar system. Oumuamua was first observed to have a velocity of 26.33 kilometers per second (kps), a little more than solar escape velocity and 2I.Borisov’s velocity was a bit higher at 32.2 kps.

3I/Atlas is moving so fast through our solar system that even the gravity of the Sun will barely deflect its trajectory. Notice how it will not come anywhere close to Earth. (Credit: en.m.wikipedia.org)

3I/Atlas has been clocked at a much faster velocity, 57 kps, nearly twice as fast as the other two. Additionally 3I/Atlas is more than twice the size of our first two interstellar visitors, its size is estimated to be 10-20 kilometers in diameter. Those facts alone would be enough to make astronomers sit up and take notice but when they projected it trajectory backwards they got another nice surprise, 3I/Atlas appears to have come from outside of the local spiral arm, from a much older region of our galaxy.

We can’t really see the Milky Way from inside it but this is what astronomers think it looks like. The arrow bottom center points to our solar system. Based on its trajectory astronomers feel that 3I/Atlas did not come from the spiral arm that our Sun resides in but from a much older part of the galaxy. (Credit: ResearchGate)

Now remember that our Sun and solar system are about 4.5 billion years old but the Universe is much older than that at 13.5 billion years. Most astronomers think that, although it has changed a great deal, our Milky Way galaxy is more than 10 billion years old, so our Sun is less than half the age of our galaxy. Another thing that astronomers know is that the spiral arms of galaxies are regions where stars are being born, and our Sun is in one of these regions. If 3I/Atlas does come from outside our spiral arm it could be twice the age of our Sun, it could be the oldest thing we have ever been able to observe close up.

The spiral arms of galaxies like the Whirlpool shown here are bright because of all of the young stars being born there. If 3I/Atlas does come from outside of a spiral arm it could be twice the age of our solar system. (Credit: e.wikipedia.org)

Unfortunately, 3I/Atlas will come no closer to Earth than the orbit of Mars later this year and, like the first two interstellar objects will then return to the darkness between the stars. In the last eight years we’ve found three interstellar objects but in the future you can expect we will find a lot more. The new Vera C. Rubin telescope in Chile was designed to look for asteroids and has already discovered hundreds. So, astronomers expect that from time to time it will spot a new asteroid from outside our solar system.

Two Stories about advances in Medicine. 

Back in the 1970s there was a popular TV show called ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ about an astronaut named Steve Austin who suffered massive injuries during a training flight but who was ‘rebuilt’ with robotic arms, legs and an eye. The tag lines for the opening of the show were ‘we can rebuild him, we have the technology’ and ‘we can make him better, faster, stronger’. Incidentally, there was a spin off show called ‘The Bionic Woman’ where Steve Austin’s girlfriend also suffered massive injuries and was also made ‘better, faster, stronger.’

Opening Title of ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ a TV show about a man who has had body parts replaced by mechanical parts giving him superhuman abilities. The show helped to bring the idea of ‘Bionic’ to the general public. (Credit: IMDb)

Of course back in the 1970s we didn’t have the technology, the show was just science fiction. In the last 50 years however we have made a lot of progress in prosthetic limbs at medical centers around the world. So it won’t be too long before we actually do have a ‘Bionic Man’, a patient whose missing limbs have been replaced by mechanical ones, limbs that they can control directly with their brain just like real, living ones.

British teenager Tilly Lockley was born without hands, small image. The mechanical ones she has now, while not perfect, are simply amazing! (Credit: Daily Mail)

To date that progress has mostly been made in creating mechanical / robotic limbs that are separate from the patient’s body and which are attached to or removed from the patient whenever required. As you can imagine it would be better for the patient if his bionic limbs were fully integrated with their body, the way Steve Austin’s were in the TV show. There are presently two reasons why this level of integration has not yet been achieved.

Two examples of bionic arms that can be connected to, or separated from a user. Current models are mostly of this type. (Credit: The Borgen Project)

The first reason is engineering, it’s simply not easy to fit all of the motors, actuators, spring mechanisms and etc. needed to make a mechanical arm, and fit it into the volume of a living arm. We’ve made a lot of progress, just a few decades ago bionic arms or legs were massive, bulky things that you wouldn’t want to have permanently attached to you, but today mechanical limbs are much sleeker, although they still don’t look like living ones. A bigger problem is what to do with the battery pack that provides power to the bionic limb. Currently battery packs for mechanical limbs are worn on the back or as a belt. It’s gonna be a long time before we can fit the power source for a bionic limb inside the limb itself.

This is the kinda equipment you need to keep the batteries in a bionic limb powered. As you can imagine it a fair amount of work keeping bionic limbs fully charged. (Credit: eBay)

The second reason is simply the difficulty in getting living tissue to integrate itself with non-living metal or plastic. Considerable progress in this area has been made recently at MIT’s K. Lisa Yang’s Center for Bionics. In a small clinical study patients who have had one of their legs amputated above the knee have had a new bionic knee and leg directly integrated with their remaining leg bones and muscles. Not only are the tissues and mechanical parts attached to each other but the remaining nerves in the leg are used to control the functioning of the bionic leg. This new bone-integrated system has been given the name e-OPRA.

Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr. speaks at the MIT K. Lisa Yang Center of Bionics. (Credit: Steph Stevens Photo)
Images showing some of the techniques involved in integrating a bionic limb directly into a patient’s body at the K Lisa Yang Center. (Credit: MIT News)

Testing of the new limbs clearly showed a considerable improvement in walking and climbing over objects than currently available prosthetics. At the same time the patients involved in the study reported that their new, fully integrated mechanical limb felt more like a part of their own body. The system also has the added benefit of directly loading the weight of the patient’s body onto the mechanical leg. This is similar to the way the body’s skeleton actually works rather than inserting the amputated leg into a socket on a prosthesis, which is less stable and can be very uncomfortable.

Two different styles of artificial leg. The remaining limb is inserted into the cup at the top of the artificial leg but as the patient moves, chafing occurs where the two meet causing great discomfort for many patients. (Credit: IndiaMART)

A great deal of effort around the world is being expended in studies that hopefully will one day bring the science fiction of ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ to the lives of thousands of patients. That makes the study being conducted at MIT a very practical application of medical science. My second story is just the opposite, an esoteric investigation into one of life’s deepest mysteries, why do living creatures sleep?

One of the big mysteries of life, why do we sleep? (Credit: UCLA Health)

All animals sleep, even plants and single celled creatures show signs of metabolic slowdowns that can be compared to sleep so in some sense all living things sleep in some way. Problem is that despite almost a century of study, and many centuries of wonder, we have no real idea of why we need to sleep, what physical reason is there that makes us need to sleep.

The Sleeping Gypsy by Henri Rousseau. Obviously, we are quite defenseless while we are asleep, but every creature does it. Why? (Credit: Etsy)

We certainly do need to sleep; just three or four nights without any sleep will make a person very sick, so sick that death is possible. Many people suffer from insomnia and over time lack of sleep or poor sleep can have a severe impact on their health.

Just a few nights without sleep can cause all sorts of medical problems. So it’s obvious that we really need sleep. (Credit: Verywell Health)

Now a study from Oxford University’s Center for Neural Circuits and Behaviour has for the first time pointed to a precise metabolic process that they assert triggers sleep. The secret lies in the mitochondria, the energy producing ‘organelles’ inside each of the cells of our body where sugars are combined with oxygen to generate the power that our cells need. As a part of this metabolic process the mitochondria produce free electrons that ‘leak’ into the body of the cell. The build up of these free electrons can generate unwanted chemical reactions that can damage the cell, so the cell must have some means of controlling and reducing these free electrons, we call that process sleep.

Mitochondria are organelles inside every cell in our body. They are the power sources of the cells taking the food we eat and converting it to energy for the rest of the cell to use. (Credit: Science Learning Hub)

Working with fruit flies, yes the same fruit flies that you may have played with in high school biology, the researchers at Oxford succeeded in both increasing and decreasing the generation of free electrons and observed how that affected the sleep patterns of the flies. According to the scientists sleep acts as a kind of circuit breaker, switching off the generation of free electrons for a time to restore the balance of the cell’s energy flow. Since all eucaryotic cells contain mitochondria it reasonable to think that this answer to why we need sleep applies to virtually all living things.

Free electrons in a metal allow it to conduct electricity. That’s a good thing in a metal but we don’t want that happening inside the cells of our body! (Credit)ResearchGate)

It will probably be years before this research on sleep can be turned into treatments for sleep disorders but it is a start. That’s the way progress works, some research is practical, yielding results quickly like the study on integrating prosthetics directly into the human body. Other research is to find the deeper truth to life’s mysteries and may not yield benefits for decades, if ever.