Space news for March 2021: Special Space Tourist Edition.

Space tourism is actually nothing new. Back in the 1990s the breakup of the old Soviet Union left the Russian space program in a severe budget crisis. At that time the USSR possessed the only operating space station, a collection of modules named Mir, Russian for Peace. So desperate were the Russian space engineers to try to keep Mir functioning that they were forced to look outside of their own country for the necessary funds.

Like the present International Space Station (ISS) Russia’s MIR space station was a collection of modules assembled in orbit. (Credit: Wikipedia)

One of the ways that the Russians considered to get the money they needed was to provide a few rich capitalists with the vacation of a lifetime, a trip into space with a stay on the Mir space station. It took a few years to set up and the first paying customer for the Russian’s was not actually a tourist but rather a journalist named Toyohiro Akiyama. It was Akiyama’s employer, the Tokyo Broadcasting System who paid an estimated $30 million USD for his weeklong stay at Mir in 1990.

Toyohiro Akiyama, a journalist with the Tokyo Broadcasting System was the first paying customer to go into space spending a week at the Mir station. (Credit: The Japan Times)

The first real space tourist was American businessman Dennis Tito. Tito was originally scheduled to fly to Mir but when the decision was made to de-orbit the Russian station in order to concentrate on the construction of the International Space Station (ISS) Tito was able to rearrange his plans to a weeklong stay at the ISS. The reported price was a cool $20 million. Since then six other men, and yes only men so far, have paid the necessary price to ride into space aboard Russia’s Soyuz capsule.

American businessman Dennis Tito paid an estimated $20 million for a week’s vacation aboard the ISS becoming the first space tourist. (Credit: BBC)

The end of NASA’s shuttle program in 2011 however left Soyuz as the only means for real astronauts to get to the ISS. With seats on the Russian spacecraft at a premium the space tourism business was put on hold until NASA’s commercial crew program could get underway and provide a second means of putting a man into orbit.

With the success of Space X’s first two manned missions however the space tourism ‘industry’ is now poised to begin a new phase of growth. Both Space X and Boeing, if it ever works out the problems in its Starliner capsule, have expressed interest in scheduling missions entirely devoted to space tourism whether they be to the ISS or simply into Low Earth Orbit (LOE).

The Space X Crew Dragon has successfully taken six astronauts to the ISS in two missions. As a private, commercial company Space X has indicated it is willing to launch paying customers into space. For the right price. (Credit: Wikipedia)

In fact the first such purely tourist space mission is already tentatively scheduled for sometime late this year. Designated as the Inspiration4 mission the flight is being paid for by the billionaire Jared Isaacman. Isaacman has contracted with Space X to launch him and three guests into space aboard the corporation’s Dragon capsule for a flight that could last as long as five days in orbit. Isaacman intends for the trip to help promote his favourite charity, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital so the remaining seats aboard the capsule will be filled with St. Jude’s in mind. The second astronaut for the trip has already been chosen and is St. Jude’s physician’s assistant Hayley Arceneaux who was herself a cancer patient at St. Jude’s when she was a child.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman likes to fly jet planes for fun. Soon he’ll be taking the Space X Dragon Capsule into orbit! (Credit: The New York Times)
Hayley Arceneaux, a physician’s assistant at St. Jude’s Hospital for Children and a childhood bone cancer survivor herself, will become the first ‘guest’ to be treated to a vacation in outer space! (Credit: The Guardian)

One of the remaining two seats will be chosen from a sweepstakes drawing to benefit St. Jude’s while the final seat will go to a randomly selected customer of Isaacman’s Shift4 corporation, a payment processing company. Notice that I failed to mention any NASA astronaut going along on the trip. That’s because Isaacman, who holds a pilot’s license plans on commanding the mission himself once he’s taken some training from Space X.

 Inspiration4 may be the first but it certainly won’t be the last Space X mission dedicated to paying tourists. In fact Space X has teamed with a company called Axiom Space 1 to begin taking paying customers to the ISS beginning in 2022. And Space X has further ambitions as well, in 2017 the company’s CEO Elon Musk announced that he had made a deal with Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa to send the millionaire and up to eight ‘artists’ on a trip around the Moon using Space X’s Starship rocket. Now that rocket is still under development so no time frame for the trip has been announced.

Elon Musk, CEO of Space X hopes that his Starship vehicle now under development will be able to make atrip around the Moon in just a few years! (Credit: Futurism)

Some other companies have equally ambitious dreams, let’s just call them that for the moment. Both Bigelow Aerospace Corporation and Orion Span Corporation intend to launch modules of their ‘luxury space hotels’ into LOE sometime in the next few years. The idea is that Space X or Boeing or maybe even the Russians will launch the tourists to the ‘hotels’ and then bring them back after a month or so in space. All of these plans depend on the companies involved getting sufficient financial backing so don’t be surprised if there’s a delay of a couple of years or so.

Bigelow Aerospace Corporation hopes to launch their inflatable B330 module into LOE in just the next few years. (Credit: Universe Today)

So if space tourism is about to ‘take off’, excuse the pun, as an industry, who’s regulating it? According to a UN treaty outer space doesn’t belong to anyone so what governmental agencies are going to be responsible for safety, training, launch schedules and hundreds of other mundane bureaucratic tasks?

Well, again according to the UN, the nation from which the space tourist mission will be launched shall have jurisdiction over how those missions shall be regulated and conducted. To that end the Federal Aviation Authority here in the United States has already opened an Office of Commercial Space Transportation. This office has been granted the power by act of congress to license all commercial space flights, including those under NASA’s commercial crew program, with an emphasis on safety for personnel and property.

In today’s world nothing can be done until all of the red tape has been filled out in triplicate! (Credit: SlideServe)

So when will you be able to take a trip into space? Well if you happen to have a spare $20 million or so it looks like you could get your chance sometime in the next five years or so. For the rest of us however it’s probably going to be a rather long time.

Book Review: ‘The Wandering Earth’ by Cixin Liu.

‘The Wandering Earth’ by the Chinese SF author Cixin Liu is the sort of science fiction book that has become something of a rarity nowadays, a collection of short stories. Time was, during the ‘golden era’ of SF that there was a big market for short stories. Magazines like Amazing, Astounding, Weird Tales, World’s Beyond, Cosmos and others bought hundreds of short stories every year. Then, once an author had published a dozen or so stories in those magazines they would arrange to have a collection of their stories published as paperbacks. I have dozens of such collections in my library.

‘Eight Stories from the Rest of the Robots’ by Isaac Asimov is a collection of stories that didn’t make it into his original collection ‘I Robot’. Just one of the many collections of short SF stories in my library. (Credit: www.isfdb.com)

Recently however series of novels, like George R. R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ or even Cixin Liu’s ‘Three Body Problem’ triology have become the norm. There are few magazines left today who can pay enough to make writing short stories worthwhile, let alone a way to make a decent living. Most unknown writers today may write a few short stories to build a resume and get a little notice but as soon as they can they’re writing those series because that’s where the money is!

Writing is a business, like everything else. Today the money is in trilogies or series like Cixin Liu’s ‘The Three Body Problem’ trilogy which I have reviewed in this blog. (Credit: Android Authority)

So when I came across a collection of short stories by Cixin Liu I was quite excited. Having already given very favourable reviews to four of Mister Cixin’s novels in this blog I wanted to see if he could reproduce the same sense of wonder in short form.

The Cover of ‘The Wandering Earth’ by Cixin Liu. (Credit: Amazon.com)

I’m happy to say that ‘The Wandering Earth’ is a great read. The ten stories contained within the collection are each in their own way both thought provoking and entertaining. The first story gives its name to the collection and concerns a future time when the Sun is running out of its nuclear fuel and becoming unstable. In order to survive the human race converts the Earth into a spaceship that heads out toward Proxima Centauri.

While all of the stories do have the Earth as their stage they still pretty well run the gamut of SF stories. There are aliens, both invading and benevolent, as well as stories with only human protagonists. Most of the stories take place in the near future but several are set in more distant times. And just for a bit of fun Mister Cixin even makes himself a character in one story.

Science Fiction author Cixin Liu. (Credit: Los Angeles Times)

One of the things I thing I like best about Cixin’s brand of SF is that he does give you enough information to at least figure out a bit of what’s going on. In the story ‘Devourer’ for example I was able to guess who the attacking aliens were and how humanity would fight back before the big reveal near the end of the story.    

One thing however, before I started writing this review I got out my old copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Reach for Tomorrow’, one of his short story collections, and compared it to ‘The Wandering Earth’. ‘Reach for Tomorrow’ contained 12 stories in 166 pages while ‘The Wandering Earth’ held 10 stories in 447 pages. That means that the average story in ‘The Wandering Earth’ is three times as long as the average one in ‘Reach for Tomorrow’. In fact several of the ‘”stories” in ‘The Wandering Earth’ actually have chapters to them. I suppose it’s just the fashion of the time, novels have become series and even short stories are now long enough to be divided into chapters. Writers today just seem to feel that they have to stretch each and every good idea they have into as many words as they can.

The Cover of my old copy of ‘Reach for Tomorrow’ by Arthur C. Clarke. I may be an old fogie but I like short stories that are short enough that you can read half a dozen of them whenever you have a spare hour r so. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Despite that ‘The Wandering Earth’ has plenty of good ideas so if you’re looking for a collection of SF short stories worth reading ‘The Wandering Earth’ is the best I’ve seen in a long time.

The title short story in ‘The Wandering Earth’ is now a major motion picture in China and now available on Netflix. (Credit: ScreenAnarchy)

P.S. The short story ‘The Wandering Earth’ has been turned into a movie by the Chinese film industry and is apparently available in an English dubbed version on Netflix. I have not seen it yet but the reviews I’ve read rate the effects as very good but dialog and character development as pretty bad. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 70% with 48% audience approval. I’ll have to check it and and I’ll let ya know what I think!

Black holes and Wormholes, what are they, how are they alike and how are they different?

Did you ever stop to think about how you would describe a straight line? Sounds easy, but be honest, you’ll probably end up calling it a line that isn’t curved or something similar. Describing it as what it’s not rather than what it is. Even my American Heritage Dictionary defines straight as extending continuously in the same direction without curving.

The Greek mathematician Euclid used the concept of a straight line as the foundation of his geometry. So much so that a space that allows the existence of a true straight line is now known as a Euclidean space. (Credit: SlidePlayer)

A straight line seems like something so intuitive that we scarcely give it a second thought. In fact the Greek and other classical mathematicians like Pythagoras or Euclid just defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two different points and then extending out to infinity in both directions from there.

So obvious, yet so difficult to put into words was the concept of a straight line that nobody really thought about the problem until Einstein. You see in his Special Theory of Relativity Einstein had developed the concept of space-time that recognized that measurements of both time and space looked different to observers who were traveling at close to the speed of light relative to each other. Then, as he tried to incorporate the force of gravity into his ideas he found that he could describe the path of a particle in a gravitational field as following the straightest possible line in a ‘curved space-time’. The core principle of the general theory of relativity is that gravity bends space and therefore a truly, that is Euclidean straight line can only exist in an empty Universe.

In Special Relativity time is treated as a dimension like the three dimensions of space. For every observer a light cone extends into both the future and the past. Only events that occurred within that cone can definitely be said to occur in the past or future. Everything else is indeterminate! (Credit: Byjus)

In 1915 mathematician Karl Schwarzschild, not Einstein found an analytic solution to Einstein’s general field equations that indicated that a gravitational field could become so strong that it would bend space-time a full 90º. In that case later physicists realized that any object, even a particle of light that got too close would never be able to get back out, it would just continue falling forever into what became known as a black hole. Just to give you an idea of how concentrated the gravitational field of a black hole is you would have to take the entire mass of our Sun, 300,000 times the mass of the Earth and squeeze it down to just about one and a half kilometers in radius for it to form a black hole, and you would have to squeeze the mass of Earth down to less than half a centimetre to make it a black hole. No evidence for the existence of black holes was found during Einstein’s lifetime and he himself was never sure whether they were real or just a theoretical oddity, Schwarzschild died in WW1 just months after making his discovery so he never even considered the problem. It’s really only in the last few decades that enough evidence has accumulated to convince the majority of physicists that black holes are real.

Schwarzschild’s solution for a point mass to the field equations of General Relativity. When the distance to the point mass r equals twice the mass, r=2m, the second term on the right explodes. This point is formally known as a ‘Schwarzschild Singularity’ or more popularly the event horizon of a black hole! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Then in 1935 Einstein and his assistant Nathan Rosen were considering the problem of the fields associated with elementary particles. They were trying to describe elementary particles as something very similar to a black hole when they mathematically derived a formula for a black hole in one ‘space’ connecting up with another black hole in another ‘space’. Formally this is known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge but the concept has popularly become known as a wormhole in space.

Basic geometry of a Einstein Rosen bridge. The two planes represent different regions of ‘normal’ space or perhaps two entirely different Universes? (Credit: SlideShare)
It was actually in one of Einstein’s attempts to remove the ‘Schwarzschild Singularity’ that he and Nathan Rosen discovered wormhole. (Credit: Pinterest)

Wormholes have become known to all Science Fiction fans as a shortcut through space, a path between two distant places in the Universe that is shorter than an Einstein straightest possible line in normal space. A wormhole would therefore be one way to circumvent the cosmic speed limit imposed by the velocity of light. All a space traveler has to do is drop inside a wormhole and come out in some part of space that is thousands, or millions or billions of light years away. Since the distance through the wormhole is shorter than the distance in normal space you’re not actually going faster than light even though you’re getting there faster than a beam of light could.

The whole plot of ‘Star Trek Deep Space 9’ was built around a wormhole near the planet Bajor. (Credit: Pinterest)

Now it took a long time for astronomers to gather enough evidence to support the idea of black holes but that was easy compared to finding evidence for wormholes, at present there is simply none. One of the difficulties is that from the outside, and thousands of light years away, how can you tell the difference between a wormhole and a black hole? In fact it is quite possible that some of the black holes we know about, say the supermassive one at the center of the Milky Way, could actually be wormholes connecting up to other black holes elsewhere in the Universe.

The first ever image made of a black hole. Or is it really just one side of a wormhole? (Credit: NPR)

Now a team of theoretical physicists at Central Astronomical Observatory Pulkovo in Saint Petersburg Russia has published a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Society where they discuss certain characteristics of wormholes that should allow astronomers to distinguish them from black holes. The key difference between the two types of object of course is that while even light can’t come back out of a black hole a wormhole allows two-way traffic. That is, things can go into this end of a wormhole and come out the other while things that go into the other end can come out of this end.

Travel through a wormhole is a dream of science fiction but could it also be a reality? (Credit: Live Science)

 The Russians considered two possibilities; the first was that gas flowing in from both ends could collide in the middle of the wormhole. Those collisions would generate heat and that heat could be detected as a recognizable spectrum of gamma rays. The second possibility was that the gravitational fields of objects on the other side of the wormhole might leak through and effect the motions of objects on this side. In fact it was by observing the motions of stars at the center of our galaxy that the supermassive black hole there was first discovered.

The postulated gamma ray spectrum emitted from a wormhole. (Credit: Piotrovich et al 2020)

Now this paper is about theoretical calculations, astronomers have not yet begun to search for the predicted signs of a wormhole coming from what are presently considered to be black holes. There is a growing interest in black holes throughout the astronomical community however so I’ll bet it won’t be long before somebody starts searching. In fact a quick and cheap way to start the search would be to re-examine existing data already taken of black holes.

Originally called Quasars, Active Galactic Nuclei generated by supermassive black holes have been studied for more than 60 years. Could a re-examination of all that data actually show that they are wormholes? (Credit: Astronomy Magazine)

How long it will take before wormholes are discovered is anybody’s guess at present. However, considering the length of time it took for the existence of black holes to be accepted it could take quite a long time. Still, if wormholes are proven to exist it would be further proof, if any more were needed, that the Universe in which we live is a truly weird and wonderful place.

To sleep, perchance to dream, aye there’s the rub. What does go on inside our brain as we dream? Scientists may soon have some answers as they have now succeeded in communicating with people while they dream.

We all dream though no one really knows why. We do know that most of our dreams occur during the Rapid Eye Movement or REM stage of sleep. REM sleep, which lasts for an hour or two during the middle of a good night’s sleep, is characterized by quick left-right, up-down movements of our eyes even while our eyelids are shut. REM sleep is also the period of sleep where brain activity peaks when measured with an electroencephalogram or EEG.

Daybreak by Maxfield Parrish is pretty much my idea of a nice dream! (Credit: Pixels)

We generally have three to four dreams a night and they can last from as little as just a few seconds to as much a half an hour. The content of our dreams can vary from the fantastical to the ordinary but unfortunately most of our dreams are quickly forgotten once we’ve woken up. One thing the scientists have discovered is that dreams are more likely to be remembered if we are awakened during REM sleep, in other words just as we’re dreaming.

Every night our body and brain goes through several stages of sleep. Nearly all dreaming occurs during REM sleep. (Credit: Verywell Health)

We tend to dream less as we age with older people dreaming only about a fifth of the time they are asleep while babies can dream as much as half the time they sleep. And people who have been blind for most of their lives dream with their other senses.

Typical EEG traces for while we’re awake and in the several stages of sleep. Notice how the REM sleep trace resembles the awake trace. (Credit: Lisa Evelyn – WordPress.com)

A little more than a century ago the psychologist Sigmund Freud developed the idea that our dreams were an expression of our secret desires or repressed fears. In other words if we have the hots for a certain actress we may dream about her or if our boss has been riding us hard then we’ll dream about standing up to him. Freud also asserted that almost everything in a dream was related to sex in some way.

Even Freud had to admit that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar! (Credit: Goodreads)

Few psychological researchers today subscribe entirely to those concepts. Instead dream research has indicated that some dreaming is involved in memory formation, our brain taking the day’s events, stored in the hippocampus, and turning them into long term memories that are stored in the neocortex. At the same time however many dreams appear to be composed of nothing more than random brain activity.

During the day we load up the Hippocampus with short term memories. Then, while we sleep some of those memories are uploaded to the neocortex for longer term storage. (Credit: Brainline.org)

One particular type of dreaming has become the subject of a considerable amount of study in the last few years. This type has been given the name ‘Lucid Dreaming’ and is defined as those dreams where we know that we are dreaming. Not everyone has these dreams but those who do often report being able to control their dreams to some extent. One thing that dream researchers have discovered is that some people can learn to lucid dream and with practice even become better at it.

Lucid dreaming has become so popular that you can even buy books instructing you on how to lucid dream! (Credit: Simon & Schuster)

Now researchers at Northwestern University, in cooperation with colleagues at Osnabrü University in Germany, the Paris Brain Institute, Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Bologna in Italy have succeeded in communicating with sleeping test subjects while they are having lucid dreams. The test subjects for the study consisted of 36 student volunteers across the four Universities, each of whom had experience in lucid dreaming.

Researcher Karen Konkoly watches an EEG monitor connected to a test subject. (Credit: K. Konloly)

The study was carried out simply enough; the test subjects were allowed to go to sleep after being wired up to an EEG. Once the subject had entered REM sleep, as confirmed by both the EEG as well as observing eye movement, they were asked simple questions such as ‘can you speak Spanish’ or to solve easy arithmetic problems like ‘what is eight minus two’. Other tests included having the test subject count the number of times a light was flashed in the labouratory or even whether or not they were being touched by the researcher. The test subjects had all been told before going to sleep to reply to the questions with movements of their eyes and the researchers watched carefully for any response.

The Researchers at Northwestern and in Europe attempted to communicate with their sleeping subjects in several ways and about 50% of the time they got a correct answer! (Credit: Sci-News.com)

Forty-nine percent of the time the test subjects responded with the correct answer clearly showing that communicating with a dreaming individual is possible. When woken up and asked about how they ‘heard’ the questions they’d been asked many test subjects replied that the sound just seemed to come out of the air, as if it were not a part of the dream. Others individuals however experienced the questions as a part of the dream; one even related that they heard the questions over a radio that was in the dream.

According to psychologist Ken Paller from Northwestern, a participant in the study and co-author of the paper. “We found that individuals in REM sleep can interact with an experimenter and engage in real time communication.”

If you think about it, isn’t it the people who dream while they’re wide awake who really change the world! (Credit: Fine Art America)

Now a 47% correct response is not a great success rate, but it is a start, and the psychologists hope that before long they will be able to develop ways of improving on that figure. If a reliable technique for asking people about their dreams, while they’re dreaming can be found it may go a long way to helping us discover how, and why it is that we dream.

War of the Electric Vehicles, Battery (BEVs) versus Fuel Cell (FCEVs).

O’k so its not really much of a war, but there is a lot of pretty heated discussion going on amongst renewable energy engineers over which design of electrical vehicle (EV) has the best chance of replacing the fossil fuel burning, internal combustion engine vehicles now dominating our highways. The two contestants are battery powered electric vehicles (BEVs) and hydrogen fuel cell electrical vehicles (FCEVs). Each type of electrical vehicle has its advantages; each has its problems. So let’s take at look at them.

Electric Cars, here’s one from Toyota, still tend to be a bit small, a bit underpowered and a bit expensive! (Credit: Digital Trends)

BEVs are really just scaled up versions of the little battery powered toy cars we all played with as kids. A bank of chemical batteries supplies the electric current that drives one or more electric motors; in most modern designs each wheel has its own motor. That toy I played with years ago worked until the battery ran out, always too soon as I recall.

Remember playing with one of these? Well a modern Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) is really just a version big enough for passengers. (Credit: Amazon.com)

And that’s the biggest problem with BEVs since modern battery technology has barely improved since I was young. The current state of the art today are the Lithium-ion batteries that hold perhaps twice as much energy as the antiquated lead-acid batteries still being used in gasoline powered cars. It’s true, whereas over the last 50 years computer technology has improved by orders of magnitude chemical battery technology has scarcely improved at all.

General Motors (GM) is hoping to develop an entire series of BEVs based upon a common platform of batteries between two electric motors. (Credit: WardsAuto)

Even though half of the mass of a BEV can consist of its battery pack their low energy density places a severe constraint on the vehicle’s range, which is far less than that of a gasoline powered car. And recharging those batteries is another big problem for BEVs. Whereas it generally takes a minute or two to pump a car’s gas tank full charging the battery pack in a BEV can take hours. These limitations basically restrict BEVs to shorter trips, say back and forth to work during the day while they recharge at night, not long family vacations. In fact many families that have purchased a BEV also own a gasoline powered second car for just such longer trips.

Charging stations for BEVs are becoming more common but the time needed to charge a BEV is so long that almost every parking spot may need to become a charging station! (Credit: Fox Business)

FCEVs on the other hand, generate their electric power by combining a gaseous fuel, usually hydrogen, with oxygen in the fuel cell. During the space race hydrogen fuel cells gained a lot of attention as the way the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules produced their electricity.

A hydrogen fuel cell combines the hydrogen fuel with oxygen in the air to produce electricity with the only exhaust being water vapour. (Credit: Doosan Mobility Innovation)

In terms of energy density, kilowatt hours per kilogram of mass, a hydrogen fuel cell easily beats even the best lithium-ion batteries. This means that FCEVs do not have range restriction that plagues BEVs, current FCEVs can travel as far as a gasoline powered vehicle before needing to be refueled. And with current compressed gas technologies it is possible to refuel a FCEV in about five minutes, a little longer than it takes to pump a tank of gasoline but much less than the hours it takes to charge a lithium-ion battery.

Refueling an FCEV is a lot quicker that charging a BEV but the fuel is much harder to obtain! (Credit: Popular Mechanics.)

The problem for FCEVs is that unlike gasoline there’s no easy source of hydrogen for fuel. Hydrogen is so reactive, that’s what makes it a good fuel, that there is no source free hydrogen on the planet so it has to be manufactured. Usually this is accomplished by using electricity to separate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. And once that is accomplished the hydrogen then has to be either compressed or liquefied in order to be stored in a bottle that will fit into a FCEV. Those operations require energy, quite a lot of energy, which greatly lowers the overall efficiency of FCEVs.

Separating water into hydrogen and oxygen is so easy even a child can do it! But on a industrial scale it’s both difficult and expensive. (Credit: Navigating by Joy)

There is also the fact that while both systems, BEVs and FCEVs claim to be carbon emissions free that’s only true once the vehicle is completely charged / fueled. The electricity used to either charge the batteries of a BEV or to separate and compress hydrogen for a FCEV comes from the present electrical power grid and currently that is mainly produced by burning fossil fuels! Nevertheless, as we install more wind turbines and build more solar arrays the percentage of power generated by fossil fuels will decline and both BEVs and FCEVs will become greener, cleaner technologies.

A comparison of BEVs and FCEVs to standard petrol fueled cars. Of course what’s not mentioned is the damage to the environment caused by burning fossil fuels! (Credit: Euronews)

Currently it is BEV technology that seems to be leading the race for market share with Elon Musk’s Tesla Corporation producing nearly half a million vehicles in 2020. At the same time other, more traditional auto manufacturers like Ford, GM and Toyota are all making a big push for BEVs. GM has gone so far as to assert that they will no longer produce gasoline powered cars after 2030.

Elon Musk introducing the latest Telsa model BEV. Currently Tesla leads in the race to turn electric vehicles into a money making business but they’re now facing a lot of competition. (Credit: Business Insider)

On the other hand the European countries seem to be betting on hydrogen. Last July for example the German government allocated $8.2 billion for the development of hydrogen technology along with an additional $2.3 billion to promote international partnerships involving hydrogen.

One reason for the interest for hydrogen in Europe is that there are many industrial processes that require very high temperatures, steel and concrete production to name two. Currently such processes burn fossil fuels to provide the heat and converting to electricity would be both difficult and inefficient. Burning hydrogen with oxygen however would provide more than enough heat and the only emissions generated would be water vapour.

Making steel requires very high temperatures, something easier to produce by burning hydrogen than with electricity. (Credit: Mining News)

So as you can see the war between battery or fuel cell technology is far from over. Much more research needs carried out if we are going to get the maximum benefit from both techniques and only time will tell which technology comes to dominate. Nevertheless the age of the internal combustion engine is rapidly drawing to a close, the age of the electrical vehicle will soon be upon us.

Space News for February 2021.

It’s been a busy month. There have been three, count’em three robotic space probes reaching Mars this month and on top of that there have been several announcements that deal with human space flight, both the Artemis program and commercial space flight. Let’s start with the Mars probes.

Uh! Actually the United Arab Emirates Amal ‘Hope’ space probe is now in orbit around Mars! (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)

Last July three different nations, China, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US all launched space probes towards Mars. The reason why all three probes were launched at nearly the same time is that as Earth and the Red Planet orbit around the Sun once every 26 months they come into a position where the energy cost, and therefore the dollar cost of going from Earth to Mars is a minimum. Last July was just such a minimum and because of this fact of orbital dynamics for the last several decades about every two years somebody has been sending a probe, or more than one, to Mars.

China’s Tianwen-1 probe entered Mars orbit just one day after the UAE’s Amal. The Chinese probe still has the most hazardous part of its mission ahead of it as the lander portion, under the canopy, has to descend to the Martian surface. (Credit: SimpleRockets 2)

While the US has sent more probes to Mars than any nation the other two of this year’s probes to the Red Planet are the first for the UAE and China. Things started off with the UAE’s ‘Amal’ orbital probe that was launched last July 19th aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket and is the simplest of the three missions. Amal, the word is Arabic for hope, entered its initial orbit around Mars on February 9th after successfully firing its braking rockets for 27 minutes to slow its speed.

While the Amal probe was built in the UAE it was launched by a Japanese rocket. (Credit: DNA India)

Amal will now spend the next three months testing its instruments and adjusting its orbit to its designed altitude before starting to observe the Red planet. The probe carries three main experiments that are designed to observe the weather on Mars as well as to monitor the leaking of Mar’s atmosphere into space. UAE’s success with Amal makes them only the fifth nation to succeed in reaching Mars with the others being the US, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency (ESA) and India.

The complex Tianwen-1 probe was both built and launched entirely by China clearly showing that the Asian superpower is now in the forefront of space exploration! (Credit: The New York Times)

China became the sixth nation to do so just one day later as their Tianwen-1 mission also successfully entered Mars orbit on February 10th. Of the three missions China’s is the most complex with the probe containing an orbiter module, a lander and even a small rover which is carried on the lander. As with the UAE’s hope, the Tianwen-1 will spend the next few weeks checking out its equipment and adjusting its orbit before beginning its work of studying the Red Planet.

Artists illustration of the Tianwen-1 lander ready to deploy its rover. If successful this would make China only the second nation to place a rover on the Marian surface. (Credit: Business Standard)

Tianwen-1’s first task will be to search for the best possible landing site for the probe’s 240 kg rover. Although a landing site somewhere in the Utopia Planitia region of the Martian surface has been mentioned by Chinese space authorities the exact choice of the landing site will probably not be made until May or June. Once the site has been chosen the Tianwen-1 probe will separate and the lander, carrying the rover, will attempt a soft touchdown on Mars. If successful this landing would make China only the second nation, after the US, to place a spacecraft on the surface of the Red Planet.

The final space probe to reach Mars this year is NASA’s Perseverance rover. As with the US space agency’s other Martian landers, Perseverance did not first go into Martian orbit but instead plunged directly into the Red Planet’s atmosphere in a maneuver that has been referred to as seven minutes of terror.

Perseverance is NASA’s fifth Martian rover with each one increasing in size, complexity and mission capability. (Credit: DOGO News)

 You see right now Mars is so far away that it takes a radio signal traveling at the speed of light about 11.5 minutes to make a round trip to Earth and back. That means that any space probe reaching Mars: Amal and Tianwen-1 as well as Perseverance must accomplish all of their insertion maneuvers on their own, without any instructions from Earth. So during the most critical parts of the missions the scientists back here on Earth can only sit back and pray that everything will go right.

Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so as a space probe gets millions of kilometers from the Earth there is a delay in communications as the radio signals travel back and forth. (Credit: www.qrg.northwestern.edu)

Turned out everything went like clockwork. “Touchdown confirmed,” was the call from the jet Propulsion Labouratory (JPL) at 3:55 PM on the 18th of February as the rover landed successfully at its target, a Martian crater named Jezero. Unlike previous Martian rovers, whose landing sites were selected to be wide open, flat and ‘safe’, Jezero is much rougher, but much more interesting terrain with evidence from orbit indicating that it was once a crater lake fed by two or more rivers. Planetary scientists feel that if Mars ever did possess life Jezero is one of the best places to go looking for it.

Incredible views of Perseverance actually landing on Mars. (Credit: SciTechDaily)

Although Perseverance has already sent back several images of its landing area the engineers at JPL will spend the next 90 days checking out the rover’s systems before beginning the scientific mission in earnest. Also occurring during this check out phase will be the deployment of the small helicopter ‘Ingenuity’ that Perseverance carried with it to the Martian surface. If it is successful Ingenuity will become the first man-made object to fly on another world.

But even while robotic probes to Mars are dominating the space news this month there’s still some important goings on dealing with human spaceflight back here on Earth. The main news concerns NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) that had its final hot fire test cut off prematurely back on the 16th of January, see my post of 30 January 2021. In the weeks since then NASA has analyzed the test abort and decided that the only problem was that the test parameters for the hydraulic pressure in a vector control mechanism had been set too narrowly. So while the test did in fact complete 15 out of 23 objectives NASA has decided to redo the test in the hopes of a better outcome.

The Hot Fire test of the SLS first stage started well enough but then aborted after only one minute. NASA has decided to repeat the test in order to get a more complete data set. (Credit: Space News)

    The test was scheduled to be repeated on the 25th of February but that date has already been delayed due to problems with a fuel valve. Another date has not been announced so the test is not likely to occur before March at the earliest. Assuming the second test is more successful than the first the rocket could then be ready to finally be transported to the Kennedy Space Center sometime in April. All this is yet another three months delay on a program that is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

Which may have a great deal to do with our final item. As a part of its Artemis program to put Americans back on the Moon and to establish a lunar base NASA is determined to also put a space station into orbit around the Moon. Called the Lunar Gateway this station would serve as an outpost for the astronauts on their way to the lunar surface as well as a place to park the lunar lander.

NASA’s full plan for a Lunar Gateway Space Station. Now two modules, the Power And Propulsion Element and the Habitation Module will be launched using Space X’s Falcon Heavy. (Credit: NASAspaceflight.com)

As initially set out by the space agency the construction of the gateway was to be carried out with equipment launched from Earth and sent into lunar orbit by the SLS. However NASA has just selected Space X Corporation to launch the first two sections of Gateway, a decision that was without question due to the enormous costs and unreliability of the SLS. The two sections in question are the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) along with the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module.

 The two modules will now be launched aboard a Space X Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, at a cost to NASA of $318 million dollars, less than half the cost of a single SLS launch. This announcement comes on the heals of last month’s announcement that NASA’s Europa Clipper robotic probe to Jupiter’s moon may also launch on a Falcon Heavy, and latest reporting now says that it almost certainly will. These changes in plan will leave the SLS with only the single remaining task of ferrying astronauts and their Orion capsule back and forth to the moon. All of NASA’s other heavy launch missions for the next decade are being taken over by commercial corporations.

Launch of the first Space X Falcon Heavy. (Credit: Space X)

So it certainly appears that the age of commercial space travel is upon us. NASA, and the space agencies of other nations will continue to carry out the exploration of other worlds. However the task of getting into space, the launching of rockets carrying payloads into orbit will soon belong almost entirely to profit making corporations that are determined to turn space into just another place to earn a dollar.

Physicists are still searching for new heavier elements. They’re up to atomic number 118 and a new labouratory has just started operation that may take us to element number 120.

Remember back in your high school science class how, when your teacher was talking about the periodic table of the elements he told you that Uranium, element number 92, was the heaviest ‘naturally occurring’ element. I bet he then went on to say that all of the elements with a higher atomic number had been artificially created in ‘atom smashers’.

The Periodic Table of the elements all the way up to the latest manufactured, Oganesson, Og number 118. (credit: WUWM)

You may also remember that the atomic number of an atom is simply the number of protons in its nucleus. Uranium has 92 protons so it’s element 92 while carbon on the other hand has 6 protons so it is element number 6. Atoms with the same number of protons have the same chemical properties, which is why we say they are the same chemical element.

A chemically pure disk of the element Uranium. Even heavier than lead Uranium is the heaviest element occurring naturally here on Earth. Because it is radioactive half of our planet’s original supply of Uranium has decayed to other, lighter elements. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The atomic mass of an atom however is the sum of the number of protons plus neutrons in the nucleus. Two atoms can have different numbers of neutrons but still be the same element so long as they have the same number of protons. Atoms with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of the same element. For example carbon 12 has 6 protons, which makes it carbon, along with 6 neutrons while carbon 14 has 6 protons, still carbon, but 8 neutrons. The extra two neutrons make carbon 14 unstable, radioactive, which makes it useful for radiocarbon dating.

An Atom of Carbon 12 has 6 protons, making it element 6, plus 6 neutrons in the nucleus giving it an atomic mass of 12. there are also 6 electrons orbiting around the nucleus whose negative charge balances the charge of the protons making the atom electrically neutral. (Credit: Socratic)

Uranium has no stable isotopes, they are all radioactive. Its most stable isotope is U 238 with 92 protons, 146 neutrons and a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, which means that the Earth today has just about half the amount of U 238 it had when the solar system first formed. Elements with higher atomic numbers have much shorter half-lives, the most stable isotope of Plutonium, element number 94, is P 244 with a half-life of 80 million years. Which is why whatever Plutonium the Earth started with 4.3 billion years ago has all decayed away.

A disk of the artificial element Plutonium. Plutonium is not only radioactive it is also chemically toxic making it doubly dangerous. (Credit: Phys.org)

Scientists have been manufacturing ‘Trans-Uranium’ atoms since just a few years after they realized that atomic nuclei were composed of protons and neutrons. Neptunium, number 93, and Plutonium were both first manufactured in the year 1940 at what is now known as Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory by bombarding atoms of Uranium with neutrons. Over the next 34 years another twelve new elements, right up to Seaborgium, number 106, would be developed at the California labouratory.

Physicist Glenn Seaborg led the Lawrence Berkeley team that first manufactured more than a dozen elements. Element number 106 is named for him! (Credit: National Inventors Hall of Fame)
The 60 inch Cyclotron at Berkeley Labouratories, now Lawrence Berkeley, was used to manufacture some of the first artificial elements. (Credit: Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs)

In the late 1970s a new labouratory, the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) or the Society for Heavy Ion Research in Hessen Germany first began its studies. This team would go on to be the first to manufacture elements 107 to 112 between the years 1980 and 1996. By this time the technique of simply taking the heaviest element yet produced and bombarding it with protons or neutrons was no longer working. You see as the atomic number gets higher the nucleus quickly becomes even more unstable so that the atoms that were produced only lasted for seconds making it virtually impossible to push them up one stage higher before they decayed.

Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI facility outside of Hessen Germany. (Credit: European Space Agency)

Instead a technique known as ‘cold fusion’ was developed. Cold fusion by the way has nothing to do with the erroneously announced ‘cold fusion’ of hydrogen into helium back in the 1980s. The technique of cold fusion involves slamming a middling sized nucleus into a heavy but fairly stable nucleus. One example is slamming a Neon nucleus into Uranium to produce Nobelium, element 102.

An illustration of a ‘cold fusion’ collision between a nucleus of nickle coming from the right with a nucleus of gold on the left. (Credit: Riken.jp)

Cold fusion is a very delicate technique because you have to use just the right amount of energy. Too little and the electrostatic repulsion of the protons in the two nuclei will keep them from ever touching. Too much and the collision will just obliterate both nuclei.

Throughout this entire period there was also a Russian labouratory that was devoted to the study of trans-uranium elements called the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). Despite having played an important role in nuclear research for many years, the technique of cold fusion was developed at JINR for example; the Russians had never succeeded in being the undisputed first to develop a new element. That situation lasted until 1999 when JINR became the first labouratory to demonstrate the existence of element Flerovium, element 114.

For many years the bridesmaid rather than the bride, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) was the Soviet Union’s version of Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory. (Credit: www.jinr.ru)

JINR went to produce the next 4 elements with the latest element yet being number 118 in 2010, the element was named Oganesson after Yuri Oganessian the head researcher at JINR. In the ten years since Oganesson research has hit a brick wall as the cold fusion technique has proven unable to produce enough nuclei, that last long enough to be observed sufficiently enough that a new element can be announced.

Physicists Yuri Oganesson has led the team that discovered that latest elements. His facility will begin a new search for even heavier elements this year. Element number 118, the heaviest manufactured so far, is named for him. (Credit: Wikipedia)

But JINR is currently gearing up for a new attempt. A new atom smasher known as the Superheavy Element Factory (SHEF) has been assembled and once a new supply of the element Californium arrives to be used as a target the testing will commence. The Californium itself has to be manufactured at Lawrence Berkeley Labouratory and with a half-life of only approximately 500 years it is both dangerously radioactive and difficult to produce and handle.

Californium, element 98, is the heaviest element to be manufactured in quantities sufficient to be see with the naked eye. (Credit: Ahval)

The new goal at JINR is actually not element 119 but element 120 because calculations indicate that 120 could be a island of stability, lasting perhaps hundreds, possibly even thousands of times longer than elements that are slightly smaller. This stability arises from the laws of quantum mechanics where certain magic numbers of identical particles can arrange themselves in orbitals that produce a degree of permanence. Testing at the SHEF is slated to commence this spring so it’s possible that we may know if the theory is correct before the year is out.

The predicted ‘Island of Stability’ for heavier elements is centered around 120 protons with 180 neutrons. No one actually knows if there is such a thing, yet! (Credit: Physics Central)

So how far can we go, that’s almost impossible to say. With each step higher it not only becomes harder to produce atoms of new elements but harder still to detect them. Still physicists are clever creatures and they’ve always found a way to surmount whatever difficulty arises.

Of Course there are some downsides to being a physicist. (Credit: Foxtrot- Bill Amend)

There is a theoretical calculation, again based in quantum mechanics, which indicates that element 172 might be an impassible brick wall. Any more protons in a nucleus and they will start grabbing electrons to fuse into neutrons until the number of protons is reduced back down to 172. Of course that obstacle, if real is many years away and there’s still more than 50 elements to be manufactured before we reach it.

So the nuclear physicists will keep on working. If element 120 does turn out to be an island of stability you can bet that it won’t be long before labouratories are using it as springboard to even higher elements. The science of Trans-Uranium elements has not only taught us a great deal about how atoms are composed but at the same time advanced techniques for high-precision, high-sensitivity sensors as well as data collection and analysis. So the periodic table of the elements has grown quite a bit since I first studied it in high school, and I hope that I do live long enough to see a few more elements added to it.

Paleontology News for February 2021.

A lot to talk about today, a couple of topics that I’ve discussed in recent posts have come together in a single story so I think I start there.

The two subjects are bioluminescence; see my post of 8 August 2020, and fossils encased in Burmese amber, see posts of 16 December 2016, 1 June 2019 and 2 September 2020. Well in paleontology if you’re patient, and lucky, spectacular fossils will turn up from time to time including a 99 million year old, exquisitely preserved specimen of a lightning bug encased in amber.

100 million year old Fire Fly encased in amber. (Credit: Phys.org)

  Now insects in general don’t fossilize well, I have none in my collection, and fireflies, fire beetles and glowworms are especially rare since their bodies are softer than those of most beetles. So our knowledge of the evolution of bioluminescence in beetles is largely guesswork. Indeed, the current thinking is that bioluminescence first appeared in the larval stage of beetles as a defensive mechanism. Then, in order to retain the ability as adults the beetles also retained the soft body more typical of a larva.

Evolutionary biologists hypothesize that bioluminescence first developed in the larva of beetles and then was retained in the adult. (Credit: What’s the Bug)

That’s one of the thing’s that makes the specimen from Myanmar, which has been given the name Cretophengodes azari, so valuable. Perfectly preserved in amber the specimen is both clearly an adult, clearly a male and just as clearly possesses the organs necessary for bioluminescence. While it is impossible to say for certain how the animal used its luminous organ the fact that it is a male raises the possibility that the light played a role in mating just as it does for modern species. One more example of how the fossil preservation of soft parts, this time in amber, is answering many of our questions about the past.

It’s all about mating. Evolution had developed numerous techniques just so an animal can find a mate. (Credit: Radim Schreiber)

There are also some types of animals that have a very extensive fossil record but about whom we still have many questions because their hard shells fossilize so much easier than their soft bodies. In other words we know a lot about parts of the animal, and have a lot of questions about other parts.

A beautiful ammonite fossil that you can buy on the internet for only a hundred bucks! (Credit: Wish.com)

A good example of this are the Ammonites, extinct relatives of the modern nautilus. The coiled shells of Ammonites are very common, so common that they are commercially dug up and sold as knick-knacks. Hundreds of species of ammonites have been described based entirely on differences in the shells while paleontologists still argue over the details of the animal inside. Was it like a nautilus, or more like a squid, or maybe a cuttlefish, or something different from them all?

A chambered Nautilus is not an ammonite but obviously they are closely related. How close, well maybe the new fossil from Solnhofen will answer that question. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Such details may seem important only to professionals but remember we are talking about a large group of animals who survived for hundreds of millions of years. The nature of the ammonite animal is very important in the evolutionary history of life.

The Cuttlefish is also a close relative of the ammonites. (Credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium)

So when a fossil of a nearly complete ammonite animal, outside of its shell, is discovered that’s big news. The find comes from the Solnhofen limestone quarry in southern Germany, the same site that has produced those famous fossils of archaeopteryx. The limestone deposits of Solnhofen accumulated at the center of a lagoon some 150 million years ago. Like lagoon’s today the water was very salty, contained little oxygen and was very hot. Little could live there and any creature that died there would not decay but instead be slowly buried in the limestone. Because of this the fossils from Solnhofen retain clear evidence of the soft parts of the animals.

The world famous fossil of archeaopteryx from Solnhofen. The unique preservation of this specimen did much to convince 19th century scientists that evolution was a fact of nature! (Credit: Wikipedia)

Other ammonites have been found at Solnhofen, but always in their shell so that their internal organs are hidden as in life. This specimen however is entirely naked allowing Professor Christian Klug of the University of Zurich and fossil collector Helmut Tischlinger to reconstruct the anatomy of the fossil. In order to discover every detail of the ammonite the researchers even took photographs of the fossil under Ultraviolet light.

The Solnhofen ammonite. It may not look like much to you and me but to a trained expert almost the entire internal anatomy is there to be studied. (Credit: The New York Times)

Nearly the entire anatomy of the animal was there. The paleontologists could distinguish the digestive tract, with fecal matter still in the intestine along with reproductive organs and gills. The only parts that were missing were unfortunately the creature’s tentacles leaving still open the question of whether they resemble those of a nautilus or those of a squid.

How the internal organs in the fossil fit into the shell as reconstructed by Dr. Klug. (Credit: Forbes)

So how did this ammonite come to die outside of it’s shell? We may never know. The likeliest event is that the animal died in its shell but then lost its grip and simply slid out. However Doctor Klug hypothesizes that perhaps a predator pulled the ammonite out of its shell. Then, while munching on the tentacles the attacker lost its grip and the mortally wounded ammonite sank to the bottom. However the ammonite met its fate its survival as a fossil will teach us a great deal about a large and important group of animals.

While it is possible that the ammonite could have been pulled out of its shell by a predator it’s more likely that the animal just died and lost its grip on the shell. (Credit: The New York Times)

While ammonites were one of the most common denizens of the oceans back in the Mesozoic period on land one of the most common types of dinosaurs were the hadrosaurs, those two legged plant eaters often called duckbills because of their long, wide snout. Hadrosaurs were numerous both in terms of the total population of animals; plant eaters always outnumber predators, but also in the number of different species that are known to have existed.

The bones of Hadrosaurus foulkii at the Academy of Naturals in Philadelphia. This was the first dinosaur skeleton complete enough to show that some dinosaurs walked upright. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

For many hadrosaurs the key features that distinguish one species from a closely related one is skull shape and ornamentation. Hadrosaur skulls have been discovered that possess large frills, crowns and bumps. So varied and in some cases bazaar are the shapes of hadrosaur skulls that evolutionary biologists have even suggested that what we are seeing is a seventy million year old version of sexual selection, that hadrosaur skull ornamentation is like a peacock’s tail, having no practical use other than attracting females.

An unadorned Hadrosaurus skull. (Credit: BYU Museum)
A Hadrosaurus skull with a large crest. Probably used both to attract females and impress other males the crest is one way to distinguish one species from another. (Credit: The Natural Historian)

One such hadrosaur species is known as Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus, an animal whose nasal passages start near the animal’s upper lip, extends way up, a meter above their forehead, turns 180º around to come back to just above their eyes. The first skull of P cyrtocristatus was discovered in New Mexico in the year 1923 and dates back to some 75 million years ago.

The face of a Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus. The nasal passages run up and back down the animal’s face and are over two meters in length. (Credit: Sci-News.com)

That first skull sparked a debate about the purpose of P cyrtocristatus’s unusual nose. Ideas ranging from a snorkel to the long nose giving the animal a superb sense of smell have been advanced. The consensus opinion however is that the nose was used for both sexual display and to produce a loud, resonant low pitched roar that could have been heard for kilometers.

Now a new fossilized skull of P cyrtocristatus has been found in New Mexico not far from where the first skull was unearthed. Although most of the body, and even a portion of the skull had eroded away importantly the long nasal crest was preserved in greater detail than ever before seen. Indeed the new skull has already enabled paleontologists to better understand the relationship between P cyrtocristatus and its closest relatives P walkeri in Alberta Canada and P tubicen from younger rocks in New Mexico. The researchers also hope that the new find will enable them to learn more about how the crest developed as the animal grew.

The fossil skull of Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus found in New Mexico. While the lower portion of the skull is gone importantly the tube like crest is almost intact. (Credit: Sci-News)

The three fossils discussed here come from a very wide variety of animals but they all have one thing in common. By preserving a portion of the soft parts of the animal they have revealed some of the mysteries of life’s history here on Earth.

The Circular Economy, is it a pathway to a sustainable future for our planet or is it just another well-intentioned idea that will end up going nowhere?

I’ve written many times in these posts about the threats that we human beings have created to the very planet on which we live. While the biggest problems maybe carbon emissions causing climate change along with the ever growing piles of plastic trash we generate there are nevertheless many others such as Mercury getting into the food supply, agricultural fertilizer runoff into lakes and streams, ocean acidification etc, etc.

Just a few of the many environmental problems facing the world today. Kinda depressin’ ain’t it! (Credit: Vector Stock)

In those posts I’ve also discussed some of the efforts underway by scientists, engineers and sometimes just regular citizens who are trying to find solutions to those problems. However I freely admit that the solutions I’ve discussed so far were designed to address one environmental issue at a time rather than an overall plan for solving all of our problems. That’s the way I was taught and trained, you break a problem down to its component parts and by studying each part separately you can solve the whole problem. This technique is formally known as ‘Cartesian Reductionism’ after Rene’ Descartes the 17th Century French mathematician and philosopher who first described the technique and is often employed by scientists and engineers.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) Mathematician, Scientist and Philosopher. (Credit: Sapaviva.com)
The conflict between reductionism and holism has become especially important in the field of medicine. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages so a balance is required. (Credit: ScienceDirect)

The opposite of Cartesian Reductionism is known a Holism, the idea that an organic system is bigger than the sum of its parts and therefore has to be studied in its entirety. Since life on Earth is the biggest organic system we know about maybe we do need to take a more holistic approach to saving the environment and develop overall strategies for living within what the Earth can give us. Today I’d like to discuss one such proposed strategy.

The approach is called ‘The Circular Economy’ but in some respects it’s really just a new term for recycling. However the circular economy is more than just having consumers recycling their plastic or aluminum or other waste. Instead the circular economy is an overall program designed for recycling waste of every kind, industrial as well as consumer.  While this concept has received a good deal of media attention in both Europe and Japan as far as I can tell it is largely unknown in the US.

A diagram of the Circular Economy. The idea is to minimize both the resource input and the disposal output to the circle. (Credit: Kenniskaarten – het Groene Brein)

As an example of what I mean by every kind of waste consider a cheese making company. Now everybody knows that to make cheese you start by separating milk into curds and whey using a coagulant like rennet. The curds go on to become cheese but the whey is generally just tossed out as waste.

The process of cheese making begins with the separation of milk into curds, the more solid part, and whey, the more liquid. The curds become the cheese while the whey is generally tossed out. (Credit: Farm Girl)

Well no more, not if a company called Chemicle succeeds in turning the whey into biodegradable plastic. The small company, which is headquartered in the UK, is investigating techniques for turning whey, which is a complex mixture of organic chemicals, into an alternative for oil in a number of industrial applications. Success would have the twin benefits of both reducing the amount of organic waste we dump into the environment while also reducing our dependence on oil!

The founders of Chemicle the UK company seeking to make biodegradable plastics out of dairy waste. (Credit: Chemicle / R. A. Lawler)

Another small company trying to make a big difference is Traceless, a German company. Traceless has developed a process that is able to convert waste from the agricultural industry into biodegradable cling wrap and other single use packaging products. Again the idea is to kill two birds with one stone by using a material that would otherwise end up in a landfill to manufacture products that we are currently making from petroleum.

Traceless corporation of Hamburg Germany demonstrates how their packaging material, unlike common plastics, biodegrades in just a short period of time. (Credit: Traceless)

In order for companies like Chemicle and Traceless to succeed we also need to coordinate the transfer of one company’s waste to those companies for whom it is a valuable resource. That’s where a company called Excess Materials Exchange will come in. Excess Materials Exchange is a Dutch company that functions as a middlemen, linking those companies trying to get rid of their waste safely with those companies that can use it.

Welcome site for Excess Materials Exchange. I love the slogan ‘A dating site for secondary materials’. (Credit: Medium)

These three companies, and many others are now contestants for an award called the ‘Green Alley Award’ that’s given by the Landbell Group, a German waste management corporation. First awarded in 2014 the € 25,000 award is open to European startup firms who are working to help create the circular economy. The idea of the Green Alley award is to not only provide a bit of cash that any small company can certainly use but to generate some media attention both for the companies involved as well as the entire concept of the circular economy.

The Green Valley Award already boasts a track record of helping small start-ups working to solve the problems of the circular economy. (Credit: Green Alley Award)

Hum! Do you think maybe the US could benefit from an award like the ‘Green Alley Award’?  At least we might learn something about the circular economy.

Movie Review: ‘The Dig’, on Netflix.

Although it was released to a small number of movie theaters in the UK your best chance of seeing ‘The Dig’, the story of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in the UK in 1939, is via the streaming service Netflix. In these days of the Covid-19 pandemic many film production companies are either holding on to their products until things return to normal, such as the next James Bond movie, or skipping the theaters to go directly to TV like Godzilla versus Kong. With the latter generally appearing on a subscription movie service like Netflix.

Poster for ‘The Dig’ on Netflix. (Credit: Netflix)

What long-term effect the pandemic is going to have on the movie industry can only be guessed at present. Movie theater corporations have been badly hurt by the loss of revenue due to the pandemic with Regal theaters declaring bankruptcy while AMC is barely holding on. If theaters in general disappear what will happen to the big, and costly blockbuster movies that Hollywood has come to depend on? It’s a good question as to whether a big budget Avengers movie could even make a profit if it’s only going to be seen in people’s homes? Only time will tell us what the answer will be. But for now we do still have movies to watch and review and this review is about ‘The Dig’.

The story of ‘The Dig’ begins as it did in real life, with landowner Edith Pretty, played by actress Carey Mulligan, on whose large property in Suffolk England are a number of earthen mounds that she suspects are archaeological sites. Local landmarks, the mounds even have a name that dates back centuries, Sutton Hoo, a name that in old English roughly translates as southern farmstead hill.

The site of Sutton Hoo as it is today, restored to about as it was in 1939. The ship burial mound is center top. (Credit: history.furman.edu)

Like many members of the English gentry at that time Edith had read about Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Wondering what may be hidden in her mounds Misses Pretty, Edith was a widow as the story begins, contacts with a local amateur archaeologist named Basil Brown, played by Ralph Fiennes, to excavate the largest of the mounds, one that she has a feeling about.

The real Edith Pretty (l) and as portrayed by actress Kate Mulligan (r). (Credit: The Telegraph)
The real Basil Brown (l) and as portrayed by actor Ralph Fiennes. (Credit: Heritage.suffolk.gov.uk and Yorkshire Evening Post)

What Basil discovers is the remains of a long wooden ship similar to a Viking dragon ship. He realizes that the mound is a ship burial, an entire ancient ship used as a platform, a coffin in a sense, for the burial of a Viking king or powerful noble. Such burials are known both from historical records as well as archaeological sites in Scandinavia. 

Artists impression of a ship burial. Obviously the departed was a person of great consequence and yes we do know of at least one woman who was so interred. (Credit: Pinterest)
Photograph of the excavation at Sutton Hoo. The remaining wood was so decayed that it could not be removed and really it was more of an impression in the soil than anything else. (Credit: Current Archaeology)

When the ship is about a third excavated and the nature of the find becomes news across the country a professional archaeologist named Charles Phillips from the British Museum arrives to take over. That’s one of the themes of ‘The Dig’, British snobbery. Throughout the first half of the movie anytime Brown wishes to talk to Misses Pretty he has to wait outside while the butler goes to get her, he’s hired help after all. And of course anyone with a university degree should be the one giving the orders rather than someone whom is really only a farmer playing at archaeologist.

By this time however Edith has come to trust Basil and since the mounds are on her land a truce is arranged where professional and amateur work together to complete the dig. As artifacts are discovered it soon becomes obvious that the burial is too old to be Viking. It’s Anglo-Saxon, straight out of the deepest part of the Dark Ages. Artifact after artifact is unearthed from the mound as Basil and the team from London occasionally glance nervously skyward where warplanes are roaring overhead.

A gold shoulder clasp from Sutton Hoo. This is just one part of the treasure discovered. (Credit: Wikipedia)

That’s the second theme of ‘The Dig’ because the excavation of Sutton Hoo took place in the late summer of 1939 as Europe was preparing to plunge into the bloodiest war in history. The professionals know that once the war starts, and in the movie no one has any doubt that the war will soon start, they’ll be ordered to stop their work and so the excavation continues with an air of impeding disaster.

Sutton Hoo was the grave of a warlord, as evidenced by his sword. The fact that the burial site was excavated right at the beginning of WW2 is a testament to our violent nature. (Credit: YouTube)

The team does finish in time however and an inquest decides that the treasure belongs to Edith who decides to donate it to the British Museum where she feels that the greatest number of people will be able see it. Indeed, today the Sutton Hoo treasure has an entire room at the British Museum. And to anyone who may not be familiar with Sutton Hoo treasures I heartily recommend checking out the museum’s site. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/sutton-hoo-and-europe

The Sutton Hoo helmet (l) and a modern reconstruction (r) shown at the British Museum. (Credit: Wikipedia)

I’m certain that by now you can tell that I’m giving ‘The Dig’ a big thumb’s up. The acting is impeccable and the cinematography is simply gorgeous. Most of all the story, the story of how the English people regained a large part of their history is both interesting as well as important.

A few last remarks. Although the body had long ago decayed away, it is thought that the person buried in the mound was probably King Rӕdwald of East Anglia or perhaps his son. Regardless of who it was, by being buried in such spectacular fashion he left us a great deal of evidence of the world in which he lived.

A map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as they would have been at the time of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. (Credit: Totally Timelines)

And the treasures of Sutton Hoo spent the war safely buried at an underground station in London. It wasn’t until nine years later that the British Museum first exhibited the treasure, with no mention being made of the role of Basil Brown in the discovery. After all, an amateur could not possibly have made England’s greatest archaeological discovery. But archaeology has a way of correcting for the prejudges of the past and today Basil Brown’s name is prominently displayed right next to that of Edith Pretty in the exhibit of the treasures of ‘The Dig’.