Science – Page 4

After Trump killed a report on nature, researchers push ahead with release

biodiversity, climate change, Donald Trump, environmental justice, nature loss, Policy, Science / Kris Guyer / February 10, 2025

But one word in the federal register notice describing key principles of the nature report—”inclusive”—may have triggered Trump’s decision to end it. Christopher Schell, a lead author of a chapter called “Nature and Equity in the US,” told The Times that his chapter’s focus on environmental justice may have made the project an easy target for Trump.

On day one of his administration, Trump issued executive orders rescinding Biden-era priorities and ending several environmental justice and equity initiatives in government. According to an analysis from two experts at Harvard’s energy and environmental law program, Carrie Jenks and Sara Dewey, Trump claimed, “without explanation,” that the Biden initiatives violate “longstanding Federal civil-rights laws” and “threaten the safety of American men, women, and children.”

Now “federal agencies no longer have a mandate, unless required under separate rules, to consider how their actions will disproportionately harm low-income communities, communities of color, and other vulnerable populations,” the Harvard researchers warned.

Trump contradictions in environmental orders

Grist reported on the scramble to salvage a wide range of Trump-purged climate data like the National Nature Assessment that could help protect vulnerable communities by remaining in the public sphere. That report noted that climate data access was similarly lost during Trump’s prior administration, when “as much as 20 percent of the EPA’s website became inaccessible to the public” and the government’s “use of the term ‘climate change’ decreased by more than a third.”

But even if some members of the public remain jaded from Trump’s prior administration, researchers working on the nature report told The Times that their biggest concern in moving forward with the report is that the general public views government studies as more authoritative than independent studies. The fear is that even if the report is eventually published, its impact could be watered down without the government’s involvement or endorsement.

After Trump killed a report on nature, researchers push ahead with release Read More »

Return of the California Condor

California Condor, conservation, Science, syndication / Rejus Almole / February 8, 2025

North America’s largest bird disappeared from the wild in the late 1980s.

The spring morning is cool and bright in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park in Baja California, Mexico, as a bird takes to the skies. Its 9.8-foot wingspan casts a looming silhouette against the sunlight; the sound of its flight is like that of a light aircraft cutting through the wind. In this forest thick with trees up to 600 years old lives the southernmost population of the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the only one outside the United States. Dozens of the scavenging birds have been reintroduced here, to live and breed once again in the wild.

Their return has been captained for more than 20 years by biologist Juan Vargas Velasco and his partner María Catalina Porras Peña, a couple who long ago moved away from the comforts of the city to endure extreme winters living in a tent or small trailer, to manage the lives of the 48 condors known to fly over Mexican territory. Together—she as coordinator of the California Condor Conservation Program, and he as field manager—they are the guardians of a project whose origins go back to condor recovery efforts that began in the 1980s in the United States, when populations were decimated, mainly from eating the meat of animals shot by hunters’ lead bullets.

In Mexico, the species disappeared even earlier, in the late 1930s. Its historic return—the first captive-bred condors were released into Mexican territory in 2002—is the result of close binational collaboration among zoos and other institutions in the United States and Mexico.

Beyond the number on the wing that identifies each individual, Porras Peña knows perfectly the history and behavior of the condors under her care. She recognizes them without needing binoculars and speaks of them as one would speak of the lives of friends.

She captures her knowledge in an Excel log: a database including information such as origin, ID tag, name, sex, age, date of birth, date of arrival, first release, and number in the Studbook (an international registry used to track the ancestry and offspring of each individual of a species through a unique number). Also noted is wildlife status, happily marked for most birds with a single word: “Free.” Names such as Galan, Nera, Pai Pai, La Querida, Celestino, and El Patriota stand out in the record.

The California condor, North America’s largest bird, has taken flight again. It’s a feat made possible by well-established collaborations between the US and Mexico, economic investment, the dedication of many people, and, above all, the scientific understanding of the species—from the decoding of its genome and knowledge of its diseases and reproductive habits to the use of technologies that can closely follow each individual bird.

But many challenges remain for the California condor, which 10,000 years ago dominated the skies over the Pacific coast of the Americas, from southern Canada to northern Mexico. Researchers need to assemble wild populations that are capable of breeding without human assistance, and with the confidence that more birds are hatched than die. It is a tough battle against extinction, waged day in and day out by teams in California, Arizona, and Utah in the United States, and Mexico City and Baja California in Mexico.

A shift in approach to conservation

The US California Condor Recovery Program, initiated in the 1970s, represented an enormous change in the strategy of species conservation. After unsuccessful habitat preservation attempts, and as a last-ditch attempt to try to save the scavenger bird from extinction, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Fish and Game Commission advocated for a decision as bold as it was controversial: to capture the last condors alive in the wild and commit to breeding them in captivity.

Some two dozen condors sacrificed their freedom in order to save their lineage. On April 19, 1987, the last condor was captured, marking a critical moment for the species: On that day, the California condor became officially extinct in the wild.

At the same time, a captive breeding program was launched, offering a ray of hope for a species that, beyond its own magnificence, plays an important role in the health of ecosystems—efficiently eliminating the remains of dead animals, thus preventing the proliferation of diseases and environmental pollution.

This is what is defined as a refaunation project, says Rodolfo Dirzo, a Stanford University biologist. It’s the flip side to the term defaunation that he and his colleagues coined in a 2014 article in Science to refer to the global extinction or significant losses of an animal species. Defaunation today is widespread: Although animal diversity is the highest in the planet’s history, modern vertebrate extinction rates are up to 100—even 1,000—times higher than in the past (excepting cataclysmic events causing mass extinctions, such as the meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs), Dirzo and colleagues explain in an article in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics.

Refaunation, Dirzo says, involves reintroducing individuals of a species into areas where they once lived but no longer do. He believes that both the term and the practice should be more common: “Just as we are very accustomed to the term and practice of reforestation, we should do the same with refaunation,” he says.

The map shows the regions where the California condor is currently found: northern Arizona, southern Utah, and California in the United States and Baja California in Mexico. Credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service

The California Condor Recovery Program produced its first results in a short time. In 1988, just one year after the collection of the last wild condors, researchers at the San Diego Zoo announced the first captive birth of a California condor chick.

The technique of double or triple clutching followed, to greater success. Condors are monogamous and usually have a single brood every two years, explains Fernando Gual, who until October 2024 was director general of zoos and wildlife conservation in Mexico City. But if for some reason they lose an egg at the beginning of the breeding season—either because it breaks or falls out of the nest, which is usually on a cliff—the pair produces a second egg. If this one is also lost or damaged, they may lay a third. The researchers learned that if they removed the first egg and incubated it under carefully controlled conditions, the condor pair would lay a second egg, which was also removed for care, leaving a third egg for the pair to incubate and rear naturally.

This innovation was followed by the development of artificial incubation techniques to increase egg survival, as well as puppet rearing, using replicas of adult condors to feed and care for the chicks born in captivity. That way, the birds would not imprint on humans, reducing the difficulties the birds might face when integrating into the wild population.

Xewe (female) and Chocuyens (male) were the first condors to triumphantly return to the wild. The year was 1992, and the pair returned to freedom accompanied by a pair of Andean condors, natural inhabitants of the Andes Mountains in South America. Andean condors live from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego and have a wingspan about 12 inches larger than that of California condors. Their mission here was to help to consolidate a social group and aid the birds in adapting to the habitat. The event took place at the Sespe Condor Sanctuary in the Los Padres National Forest in California. In a tiny, tentative way, the California condor had returned.

By the end of the 1990s, there were other breeding centers, such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Oregon Zoo, the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Then, in 1999, the first collaboration agreements were established between the United States and Mexico for the reintroduction of the California condor in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park. The number of existing California condors increased from just over two dozen in 1983 to more than 100 in 1995, some of which had been returned to the wild in the United States. By 2000, there were 172 condors and by 2011, 396.

By 2023, the global population of California condors reached 561 individuals, 344 of them living in the wild.

Genetics: Key ally in the reintroduction of the condor

In a laboratory at the San Diego Zoo in Escondido, California, a freezer full of carefully organized containers with colored labels is testament to the painstaking scientific work that supports the California Condor Recovery Program. Cynthia Steiner, a Venezuela-born biologist, explains that the DNA of every individual California condor is preserved there. This includes samples of birds who have died and those that are living, some 1,200 condors in total.

This California condor was hatched in 2004 as part of a breeding program and released in Arizona in 2006. In the 1980s, just 27 of the birds remained in existence. A recovery program has boosted the species’ numbers to more than 500, with several hundred living once more in the wild. Credit: Mark Newman via Getty Images

“If science wasn’t behind the reintroduction and recovery program it would have been very complicated, not only to understand what the most important hazards are that are affecting condor reproduction and survival, but also to do the management at the breeding centers and in the wild,” says Steiner, who is associate director of the Genetic Conservation Biology Laboratory at the Beckman Center for Conservation Research.

As she and colleagues outlined in an article in the Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, genomic information from animals at risk of extinction can shed light on many aspects of wildlife biology relevant to conservation. The DNA can reveal the demographic history of populations, identify genetic variants that affect the ability of populations to adapt to changing environments, demonstrate the effects of inbreeding and hybridization, and uncover the genetic basis of susceptibility to disease.

Genetic analysis of the California condor, for example, has led to the identification of inherited diseases such as chondrodystrophy—a disorder that causes abnormal skeletal development and often leads to the death of embryos before eggs can hatch. This finding served to identify carriers of the disease gene and thus avoid pairings that could produce affected offspring.

Genetic research has also made it possible to accurately sex these birds—males are indistinguishable from females to the naked eye—and to determine how individuals are related, in order to select breeding pairs that minimize the risk of inbreeding and ensure that the new condor population has as much genetic variability as possible.

Genetics has also allowed the program to determine the paternity of birds and has led to the discovery that the California condor is able to reproduce asexually using parthenogenesis, in which an embryo develops without fertilization by sperm. “It was an incredible surprise,” says Steiner, recalling how the team initially thought it was a laboratory error. They later confirmed that two chicks had, indeed, developed and hatched without any paternal genetic contribution, even though the females were housed with fertile males. It was the first record of this phenomenon in a bird species.

The complete decoding of the California condor genome, published in 2021, also revealed valuable information about the bird’s evolutionary history and prehistoric abundance. Millions of years ago, it was a species with an effective population of some 10,000 to 100,000 individuals. Its decline began about 40,000 years ago during the last ice age, and was later exacerbated by human activities. Despite this, Steiner says, the species retains a genetic variability similar to birds that are not endangered.

A problem with lead

Despite these great efforts and a renewed understanding of the species, threats to the condor remain.

In the 1980s, when efforts to monitor the last condors in the wild intensified, a revealing event took place: After 15 of them died, four were necropsied, and the cause of death of three of them was shown to be lead poisoning.

Although these Cathartiformes—from the Greek kathartes, meaning “those that clean”—are not usually prey for hunters, their scavenging nature makes them indirect victims of hunter bullets, which kill them not by their impact, but by their composition. Feeding on the flesh of dead animals, condors ingest fragments of lead ammunition that remain embedded in the carcasses.

Once inside the body, lead—which builds up over time—acts as a neurotoxin that affects the nervous, digestive, and reproductive systems. Among the most devastating effects is paralysis of the crop, the organ where condors store food before digesting it; this prevents them from feeding and causes starvation. Lead also interferes with the production of red blood cells, causing anemia and progressively weakening the bird, and damages the nervous system, causing convulsions, blindness, and death.

Efforts in the United States to mitigate the threat of lead to the condors have been extensive. Since the 1970s, several strategies have been implemented, such as provision of lead-free food for condors, campaigns to educate hunters about the impact of lead bullet use on wildlife, and programs showing conservation-area visitors how important birds are to the ecosystem. Government regulations have also played a role, like the Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act of 2007, which mandates the use of lead-free ammunition for big-game hunting within the condor’s range in California. However, these efforts have not been sufficient.

According to the 2023 State of the California Condor Population report, between 1992 and 2023, 137 condors died from lead poisoning—48 percent of the deaths with a known cause recorded in that period. The only population partially spared is in Baja California, where hunting is much less common. Only 7.7 percent of the deaths there are attributable to lead, according to Porras Peña’s records.

Will the condors become self-sufficient again?

The 1996 California Condor Recovery Plan notes that a self-sustaining condor population must be large enough to withstand variations in factors such as climate, food availability, and predators, and permit gene flow among the various clans or groups. The document establishes the objective of changing the status of the California condor from “endangered” to “threatened” under the US Endangered Species Act. To achieve this, there must be two reintroduced populations and one captive population, each with at least 150 individuals, including a minimum of 15 breeding pairs to ensure a positive growth rate—meaning that more condors are born than die.

Closeups of two California Condors. Credit: Mark Newman/Getty

Today, released California condor populations are distributed in several regions: Arizona and Utah are home to 90 birds in the wild, while California has 206. In Baja California, 48 condors fly in the wild. According to the calculations of Nacho Vilchis, associate director of recovery ecology at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, it will take 10 to 15 years to have a clearer picture of how long it will take for the reintroduction program to be a complete success—to make condor populations self-sustaining.

So far, the reality is that all populations depend on human intervention to survive. It is a task carried out by biologists, technicians and conservationists, who face steep cliffs, rough terrain, and other obstacles to closely monitor the progress of the released birds and, above all, the development of chicks born in the wild.

Juan Vargas Velasco tells epic stories of how he has rappelled down steep cliffs in San Pedro Mártir National Park, facing attacks from the nest’s parent defenders in order to examine the chicks. “There is a perception that when you release a condor it is already a success, but for there to be real success, you have to monitor them constantly,” he says. “We follow them with GPS, with VHF telemetry, to make sure that the animals are adapting, that they find water and food. To release animals without monitoring is to leave them to their fate.”

The costs of managing the species in the field are not small. For example, the GPS transmitters needed to track the condors in their natural habitat cost $4,000, and subscription to the satellite system costs $80 per month per bird, Vilchis says. Other costs associated with the project, he adds, involve the construction of pre-release aviaries, laboratory analyses to monitor the birds’ health, and the provision of supplementary food in the initial stages of reintroduction. A key to ensuring the survival of the California condor is to secure funding for the species’ recovery program, notes the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s five-year report.

Each of the California Condor Recovery Program’s breeding and release sites in the United States operates as a nongovernmental organization that raises funds to finance the program. On the other side of the border, the program receives logistical support and equipment from US organizations, as well as funding from the philanthropic program “I’m Back BC Condor,” which helps to support the birds in the wild through private donations.

From Chapultepec to the San Pedro Mártir Mountain Range

A California condor hatchling peeks timidly through the protective mesh of the aviary at the Chapultepec Zoo, as one of its parents spreads its vast wings and flies over the enclosure. This space in the heart of Mexico City, one of the largest and most populated metropolises in the world, is part of the condor reintroduction effort in Mexico, a program that has been key to the recovery of the population in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir in Baja California.

In 2002, the first condors released in Mexico came from the Los Angeles Zoo. In 2007, the Chapultepec Zoo received its first two male condors, with the goal of implementing an outreach and environmental education program while the team learned to handle the birds. After an assessment in 2014, it was confirmed that the zoo met the requirements for reproduction, permitting the arrival of two females. Breeding pairs were successfully formed, and, in 2016, the first hatchlings were born.

Today, Chapultepec Zoo not only houses a breeding center but also has built its own “frozen zoo,” formally known as the Genomic Resource Bank, which stores sperm, ovarian tissue, and DNA samples from nearly 100 wild animal species, many of them endangered. “More than a zoo, it’s a library,” says Blanca Valladares, head of the Conservation Genomics Laboratory within the Mexico City Conservation Centers.

Collaboration between Mexican institutions, such as the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas and the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, has been key in the development of the project in Baja California. What began in the United States has expanded across borders, creating a binational effort in which Mexico has taken an increasingly prominent role. This cooperative approach reflects the very nature of the species, which does not recognize borders in its historical habitat.

The hatchling in the aviary is preparing for its trip to Baja California. Over the next few months, it will be transported through air and over land, under the care of dozens of people, to the pre-release aviary in San Pedro Mártir, where it will spend a period of adaptation before being released. Baja California has been recognized by specialists as one of the best places for the recovery of the species, thanks to its pristine forest, a human population a tenth the size of California’s (4 million versus 40 million), and a low level of lead and diseases. Porras Peña says that the condor population in the region seems to have reached a point of stability: It remained stable for seven years without the need to release new condors bred in captivity.

Despite titanic efforts, strict protocols, and painstaking care at every stage of reintroduction, things don’t always go smoothly. In 2022, a puma attacked a pre-release aviary in the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir, where four condors, two from San Diego and two from Mexico City, were being prepared for release. The puma found a weak spot in the mesh and, with its claws, managed to reach the two condors from the United States. Porras Peña sadly describes the desperate efforts the team made to save the life of one of the injured birds, but in the end, it died. It was a devastating blow for the team, who saw years of work lost in an instant.

The incident is an ironic lesson from nature: While for decades condors were decimated as a consequence of human activity, today a natural predator snatches in seconds what has taken tireless efforts to recover—a brutal reminder that even if we rebuild a species by dint of science and sacrifice, nature will always have the last word.

Article translated by Debbie Ponchner.

This story originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

Knowable Magazine explores the real-world significance of scholarly work through a journalistic lens.

Return of the California Condor Read More »

Rocket Report: Another hiccup with SpaceX upper stage; Japan’s H3 starts strong

ArianeGroup, Arianespace, blue origin, Commercial space, falcon 9, h3 rocket, Japan, launch, military space, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship, vast / Kris Guyer / February 8, 2025

Vast’s schedule for deploying a mini-space station in low-Earth orbit was always ambitious.

A stack of 21 Starlink Internet satellites arrives in orbit Tuesday following launch on a Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.30 of the Rocket Report! The US government relies on SpaceX for a lot of missions. These include launching national security satellites, putting astronauts on the Moon, and global broadband communications. But there are hurdles—technical and, increasingly, political—on the road ahead. To put it generously, Elon Musk, without whom much of what SpaceX does wouldn’t be possible, is one of the most divisive figures in American life today.

Now, a Democratic lawmaker in Congress has introduced a bill that would end federal contracts for special government employees (like Musk), citing conflict-of-interest concerns. The bill will go nowhere with Republicans in control of Congress, but it is enough to make me pause and think. When the Trump era passes and a new administration takes the White House, how will they view Musk? Will there be an appetite to reduce the government’s reliance on SpaceX? To answer this question, you must first ask if the government will even have a choice. What if, as is the case in many areas today, there’s no viable replacement for the services offered by SpaceX?

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Blue Origin flight focuses on lunar research. For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has put its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship through a couple of minutes’ worth of Moon-level gravity, GeekWire reports. The uncrewed mission, known as NS-29, sent 30 research payloads on a 10-minute trip from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. For this trip, the crew capsule was spun up to 11 revolutions per minute, as opposed to the typical half-revolution per minute. The resulting centrifugal force was equivalent to one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, which is what would be felt on the Moon.

Gee, that’s cool … The experiments aboard Blue Origin’s space capsule examined how to process lunar soil to extract resources and how to manufacture solar cells on the Moon for Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist project. Another investigated how moondust gets electrically charged and levitated when exposed to ultraviolet light. These types of experiments in partial gravity can be done on parabolic airplane flights, but those only provide a few seconds of the right conditions to simulate the Moon’s gravity. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Orbex announces two-launch deal with D-Orbit. UK-based rocket builder Orbex announced Monday that it has signed a two-launch deal with Italian in-orbit logistics provider D-Orbit, European Spaceflight reports. The deal includes capacity aboard two launches on Orbex’s Prime rocket over the next three years. D-Orbit aggregates small payloads on rideshare missions (primarily on SpaceX rockets so far) and has an orbital transfer vehicle for ferrying satellites to different altitudes after separation from a launch vehicle. Orbex’s Prime rocket is sized for the small satellite industry, and the company aims to debut it later this year.

Thanks to fresh funding? … Orbex has provided only sparse updates on its progress toward launching the Prime rocket. What we do know is that Orbex suspended plans to develop a spaceport in Scotland to focus its resources on the Prime rocket itself. Despite little evidence of any significant accomplishments, Orbex last month secured a $25 million investment from the UK government. The timing of the launch agreement with D-Orbit begs the question of whether the UK government’s backing helped seal the deal. As Andrew Parsonson of European Spaceflight writes: “Is this a clear indication of how important strong institutional backing is for the growth of privately developed launch systems in Europe?” (submitted by EllPeaTea)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s and Stephen Clark’s reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox.

Sign Me Up!

Falcon 9’s upper stage misfires again. The second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket remained in orbit following a launch Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The rocket successfully deployed a new batch of Starlink Internet satellites but was supposed to reignite its engine for a braking maneuver to head for a destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. While airspace warning notices from the FAA showed a reentry zone over the eastern Pacific Ocean, publicly available US military tracking continued to show the upper stage in orbit this week. Sources also told Ars that SpaceX delayed two Falcon 9 launches this week by a day to allow time for engineers to evaluate the problem.

3 in 6 months … This is the third time since last July that the Falcon 9’s upper stage has encountered a problem in flight. On one occasion, the upper stage failed to reach its targeted orbit, leading to the destruction of 20 Starlink satellites. Then, an upper stage misfired during a deorbit burn after an otherwise successful launch in September, causing debris to fall outside of the pre-approved danger area. After both events, the FAA briefly grounded the Falcon 9 rocket while SpaceX conducted an investigation. This time, an FAA spokesperson said the agency won’t require an investigation. “All flight events occurred within the scope of SpaceX’s licensed activities,” the spokesperson told Ars.

Vast tests hardware for commercial space station. Vast Space has started testing a qualification model of its first commercial space station but has pushed back the launch of that station into 2026, Space News reports. In an announcement Thursday, Vast said it completed a proof test of the primary structure of a test version of its Haven-1 space station habitat at a facility in Mojave, California. During the testing, Vast pumped up the pressure inside the structure to 1.8 times its normal level and conducted a leak test. “On the first try we passed that critical test,” Max Haot, chief executive of Vast, told Space News.

Not this year … It’s encouraging to see Vast making tangible progress in developing its commercial space station. The privately held company is one of several seeking to develop a commercial outpost in low-Earth orbit to replace the International Space Station after its scheduled retirement in 2030. NASA is providing funding to two industrial teams led by Blue Origin and Voyager Space, which are working on different space station concepts. But so far, Vast’s work has been funded primarily through private capital. The launch of the Haven-1 outpost, which Vast previously said could happen this year, is now scheduled no earlier than May 2026. The spacecraft will launch in one piece on a Falcon 9 rocket, and the first astronaut crew to visit Haven-1 could launch a month later. Haven-1 is a pathfinder for a larger commercial station called Haven-2, which Vast intends to propose to NASA. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

H3 deploys Japanese navigation satellite. Japan successfully launched a flagship H3 rocket Sunday and put into orbit a Quasi-Zenith Satellite (QZS), aiming to improve the accuracy of global positioning data for various applications, Kyodo News reports. After separation from the H3 rocket, the Michibiki 6 satellite will climb into geostationary orbit, where it will supplement navigation signals from GPS satellites to provide more accurate positioning data to users in Japan and surrounding regions, particularly in mountainous terrain and amid high-rise buildings in large cities. The new satellite joins a network of four QZS spacecraft launched by Japan beginning in 2010. Two more Quasi-Zenith Satellites are under construction, and Japan’s government is expected to begin development of an additional four regional navigation satellites this year.

A good start … After a failed inaugural flight in 2023, Japan’s new H3 rocket has reeled off four consecutive successful launches in less than a year. This may not sound like a lot, but the H3 has achieved its first four successful flights faster than any other rocket since 2000. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket completed its first four successful flights in a little more than two years, and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V logged its fourth flight in a similar timeframe. More than 14 months elapsed between the first and fourth successful flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket. The H3 is an expendable rocket with no roadmap to reusability, so its service life and commercial potential are likely limited. But the rocket is shaping up to provide reliable access to space for Japan’s space agency and military, while some of its peers in Europe and the United States struggle to ramp up to a steady launch cadence. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Europe really doesn’t like relying on Elon Musk. Europe’s space industry has struggled to keep up with SpaceX for a decade. The writing was on the wall when SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster for the first time. Now, European officials are wary of becoming too reliant on SpaceX, and there’s broad agreement on the continent that Europe should have the capability to launch its own satellites. In this way, access to space is a strategic imperative for Europe. The problem is, Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket is just not competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and there’s no concrete plan to counter SpaceX’s dominance.

So here’s another terrible idea … Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace contractor with a 50 percent stake in the Ariane 6 program, has enlisted Goldman Sachs for advice on how to forge a new European space and satellite company to better compete with SpaceX. France-based Thales and the Italian company Leonardo are part of the talks, with Bank of America also advising on the initiative. The idea that some bankers from Goldman and Bank of America will go into the guts of some of Europe’s largest institutional space companies and emerge with a lean, competitive entity seems far-fetched, to put it mildly, Ars reports.

The FAA still has some bite. We’re now three weeks removed from the most recent test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which ended with the failure of the vehicle’s upper stage in the final moments of its launch sequence. The accident rained debris over the Atlantic Ocean and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Unsurprisingly, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship and ordered an investigation into the accident on the day after the launch. This decision came three days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who counts Musk as one of his top allies. So far, the FAA hasn’t budged on its requirement for an investigation, an agency spokesperson told Ars.

Debris field … In the hours and days after the failed Starship launch, residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos shared images of debris scattered across the islands and washing up onshore. The good news is there were no injuries or reports of significant damage from the wreckage, but the FAA confirmed one report of minor damage to a vehicle located in South Caicos. It’s rare for debris from US rockets to fall over land during a launch. This would typically only happen if a launch failed at certain parts of the flight. Before now, there has been no public record of any claims of third-party property damage in the era of commercial spaceflight.

DOD eager to reap the benefits of Starship. A Defense Department unit is examining how SpaceX’s Starship vehicle could be used to support a broader architecture of in-space refueling, Space News reports. A senior adviser at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) said SpaceX approached the agency about how Starship’s refueling architecture could be used by the wider space industry. The plan for Starship is to transfer cryogenic propellants between tankers, depots, and ships heading to the Moon, Mars, or other deep-space destinations.

Few details available … US military officials have expressed interest in orbital refueling to support in-space mobility, where ground controllers have the freedom to maneuver national security satellites between different orbits without worrying about running out of propellant. For several years, Space Force commanders and Pentagon officials have touted the importance of in-space mobility, or dynamic space operations, in a new era of orbital warfare. However, there are reports that the Space Force has considered zeroing out a budget line item for space mobility in its upcoming fiscal year 2026 budget request.

A small step toward a fully reusable European rocket. The French space agency CNES has issued a call for proposals to develop a reusable upper stage for a heavy-lift rocket, European Spaceflight reports. This project is named DEMESURE (DEMonstration Étage SUpérieur REutilisable / Reusable Upper Stage Demonstration), and it marks one of Europe’s first steps in developing a fully reusable rocket. That’s all good, but there’s a sense of tentativeness in this announcement. The current call for proposals will only cover the earliest phases of development, such as a requirements evaluation, cost estimation review, and a feasibility meeting. A future call will deal with the design and fabrication of a “reduced scale” upper stage, followed by a demonstration phase with a test flight, recovery, and reuse of the vehicle. CNES’s vision is to field a fully reusable rocket as a successor to the single-use Ariane 6.

Toes in the water … If you’re looking for reasons to be skeptical about Project DEMESURE, look no further than the Themis program, which aims to demonstrate the recovery and reuse of a booster stage akin to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Themis originated in a partnership between CNES and European industry in 2019, then ESA took over the project in 2020. Five years later, the Themis demonstrator still hasn’t flown. After some initial low-altitude hops, Themis is supposed to launch on a high-altitude test flight and maneuver through the entire flight profile of a reusable booster, from liftoff to a vertical propulsive landing. As we’ve seen with SpaceX, recovering an orbital-class upper stage is a lot harder than landing the booster. An optimistic view of this announcement is that anything worth doing requires taking a first step, and that’s what CNES has done here. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Feb. 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-9 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 18: 52 UTC

Feb. 8: Electron | IoT 4 You and Me | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 20: 43 UTC

Feb. 10: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00: 03 UTC

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Rocket Report: Another hiccup with SpaceX upper stage; Japan’s H3 starts strong Read More »

National Institutes of Health radically cuts support to universities

grants, NIH, research funding, Science / Mike M. / February 7, 2025

Grants paid by the federal government have two components. One covers the direct costs of performing the research, paying for salaries, equipment, and consumables like chemicals or enzymes. But the government also pays what are called indirect costs. These go to the universities and research institutes, covering the costs of providing and maintaining the lab space, heat and electricity, administrative and HR functions, and more.

These indirect costs are negotiated with each research institution and average close to 30 percent of the amount awarded for the research. Some institutions see indirect rates as high as half the value of the grant.

On Friday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that negotiated rates were ending. Every existing grant, and all those funded in the future, will see the indirect cost rate set to just 15 percent. With no warning and no time to adjust to the change in policy, this will prove catastrophic for the budget of nearly every biomedical research institution.

Cut in half or more

The new policy is described in a supplemental guidance document that modifies the 2024 grant policy statement. The document cites federal regulations that allow the NIH to use a different indirect cost rate from that negotiated with research institutions for “either a class of Federal awards or a single Federal award,” but it has to justify the decision. So, much of the document describes the indirect costs paid by charitable foundations, which tend to be much lower than the rate paid by the NIH.

The new rate of indirect cost reimbursement will be applied to any newly funded grants and retroactively to all existing grants starting with the issuance of this notice. The retroactive nature of this decision may end up being challenged due to the wording of the regulations cited earlier, which also state that “The Federal agency must include, in the notice of funding opportunity, the policies relating to indirect cost rate.” However, even going forward, this will likely severely curtail biomedical research in the US.

National Institutes of Health radically cuts support to universities Read More »

White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation

budget, National Science Foundation, Science / Tim Belzer / February 6, 2025

The president proposes, and Congress disposes

There are important caveats to this proposal. The Trump administration has probably not even settled upon the numbers that will go into its draft budget, which then goes through the passback process in which there are additional changes. And then, of course, the budget request is just a starting point for negotiations with the US Congress, which sets budget levels.

Even so, such cuts could prove disastrous for the US science community.

“This kind of cut would kill American science and boost China and other nations into global science leadership positions,” Neal Lane, who led the National Science Foundation in the 1990s during Bill Clinton’s presidency, told Ars. “The National Science Foundation budget is not large, of the order 0.1 percent of federal spending, and several other agencies support excellence research. But NSF is the only agency charged to promote progress in science.”

The National Science Foundation was established by Congress in 1950 to fund basic research that would ultimately advance national health and prosperity, and secure the national defense. Its major purpose is to evaluate proposals and distribute funding for basic scientific research. Alongside the National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy, it has been an engine of basic discovery that has led to the technological superiority of the United States government and its industries.

Some fields, including astronomy, non-health-related biology, and Antarctic research, are all almost entirely underwritten by the National Science Foundation. The primary areas of its funding can be found here.

White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation Read More »

The UK got rid of coal—where’s it going next?

Energy, energy policy, renewable energy, Science, Sustainability / Kris Guyer / February 6, 2025

Clean, but not fully green

The UK has transitioned to a lower-emission grid. Now comes the hard part.

With the closure of its last coal-fired power plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, on September 30, 2024, the United Kingdom has taken a significant step toward its net-zero goals. It’s no small feat to end the 142-year era of coal-powered electricity in the country that pioneered the Industrial Revolution. Yet the UK’s journey away from coal has been remarkably swift, with coal generation plummeting from 40 percent of the electricity mix in 2012 to just two percent in 2019, and finally to zero in 2024.

As of 2023, approximately half of UK electricity generation comes from zero-carbon sources, with natural gas serving as a transitional fuel. The UK aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 42 percent to 48 percent by 2027 and achieve net-zero by 2050. The government set a firm target to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2040, emphasizing offshore wind and solar energy as the keys.

What will things look like in the intervening years, which will lead us from today to net-zero? Everyone’s scenario, even when based in serious science, boils down to a guessing game. Yet some things are more certain than others, the most important of these factors being the ones that are on solid footing beneath all of the guesswork.

Long-term goals

The closure of all UK coal-fired power stations in 2024 marked a crucial milestone in the nation’s decarbonization efforts. Coal was once the dominant source of electricity generation, but its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions made it a primary target for phase-out. The closure of these facilities has significantly reduced the UK’s carbon footprint and paved the way for cleaner energy sources.

With transition from coal, natural gas is set to play a crucial role as a “transition fuel.” The government’s “British Energy Security Strategy” argued that gas must continue to be an important part of the energy mix. It positioned gas as the “glue” that holds the electricity system together during the transition. Even the new Starmer government recognizes that, as the country progresses towards net-zero by 2050, the country may still use about a quarter of the gas it currently consumes.

Natural gas emits approximately half as much carbon dioxide as coal when combusted, making it a cleaner alternative during the shift to renewable energy sources. In 2022, natural gas accounted for around 40 percent of the UK’s electricity generation, while coal contributed less than two percent. This transition phase is deemed by the government to be essential as the country ramps up the capacity of renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar power, to fill gaps left by the reduction of fossil fuels. The government aims to phase out natural gas that’s not coupled with carbon capture by 2035, but in the interim, it serves as a crucial bridge, ensuring energy security while reducing overall emissions.

But its role is definitely intended to be temporary; the UK’s long-term energy goal is to reduce reliance on all fossil fuels (starting with imported supplies), pushing for a rapid transition to cleaner, domestic sources of energy.

The government’s program has five primary targets:

Fully decarbonizing the power system (2035)
Ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars (2035)
Achieving “Jet Zero” – net-zero UK aviation emissions (2050)
Creating 30,000 hectares of new woodland per year (2025)
Generating 50 percent of its total electricity from renewable sources by 2030

Offshore wind energy has emerged as this strategy’s key component, with significant investments being made in new wind farms. Favorable North Sea wind conditions have immense potential. In recent years, a surge in offshore wind investment has translated into several large-scale developments in advanced planning stages or now under construction.

The government has set a target to increase offshore wind capacity to 50 GW by 2030, up from around 10 GW currently. This initiative is supported by substantial financial commitments from both the public and private sectors. Recent investment announcements underscore the UK’s commitment to this goal and the North Sea’s central role in it. In 2023, the government announced plans to invest $25 billion (20 billion British pounds) in carbon capture and offshore wind projects in the North Sea over the next two decades. This investment is expected to create up to 50,000 jobs and help position the UK as a leader in clean energy technologies.

This was part of investments totaling over $166 million (133 million pounds) to support the development of new offshore wind farms, which are expected to create thousands of jobs and stimulate local economies.

In 2024, further investments were announced to support the expansion of offshore wind capacity. The government committed to holding annual auctions for new offshore wind projects to meet its goal of quadrupling offshore wind capacity by 2030. These investments are part of a broader strategy to leverage the UK’s expertise in offshore industries and transition the North Sea from an oil and gas hub to a clean-energy powerhouse.

Offshore wind

As the UK progresses toward its net-zero target, it faces both challenges and opportunities. While significant progress has been made in decarbonizing the power sector, the national government’s Climate Change Committee has noted that emissions reductions need to accelerate in other sectors, particularly agriculture, land use, and waste. However, with continued investment in renewable energy and supportive policies, the UK is positioning itself to become a leader in the global transition to a low-carbon economy.

Looking ahead, 2025 promises to be a landmark year for the UK’s green energy sector, with further investment announcements and projects in the pipeline.

The Crown Estate, which manages the seabed around England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, has made significant strides in facilitating new leases for offshore wind development. In 2023, the Crown Estate Scotland announced the successful auction of seabed leases for new offshore wind projects, totaling a capacity of 5 gigawatts. And in 2024, the government plans to hold its next major leasing round, which could see the deployment of an additional 7 GW of offshore wind capacity.

The UK government also approved plans for the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm when completed. Located off the coast of Yorkshire, this massive project will ultimately generate enough electricity to power millions of homes. Dogger is a joint venture linking SSE Renewables, Equinor, and Vattenfall.

This is in line with the government’s broader strategy to enhance energy independence and resilience, particularly in light of the geopolitical uncertainties affecting global energy markets. The UK’s commitment to renewable energy is not merely an environmental imperative; it is also an economic opportunity. By harnessing the vast potential of the North Sea, the UK aims not only to meet its net-zero targets but also to drive economic growth and job creation in the green energy sector, ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.

Recognizing wind’s importance, the UK government launched a 2024 consultation on plans to develop a new floating wind energy sector.

The transition to a greener economy is projected to create up to 400,000 jobs by 2030 across various sectors, including manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of renewable energy technologies.

Its growing offshore wind industry is expected to attract billions in investment, solidifying the UK’s position as a leader in the global green energy market. The government’s commitment to offshore wind development, underscored by substantial investments in 2023 and anticipated announcements for 2024, signals a robust path forward.

Moving away from gas

Still, the path ahead remains challenging, requiring a multifaceted approach that balances economic growth, energy security, and environmental sustainability.

With the transition from coal, natural gas is now poised to play the central role as a bridge fuel. While natural gas emits fewer greenhouse gases than coal, it is still a fossil fuel and contributes to carbon emissions. However, in the short term, natural gas can help maintain energy security and provide a reliable source of electricity during periods of low renewable energy output. Additionally, natural gas can be used to produce hydrogen, potentially coupled with carbon capture, enabling a clean energy carrier that can be integrated into the existing energy infrastructure.

To support the country’s core clean energy goals, the government is implementing specific initiatives, although the pace has been quite uneven. The UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is being strengthened to incentivize industrial decarbonization. The government has also committed to investing in key green industries alongside offshore wind: carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS), and nuclear energy.

Combined, these should allow the UK to limit its use of natural gas and capture the emissions associated with any remaining fossil fuel use.

While both countries are relying heavily on wind power, the UK’s energy-generation transformations are different from Germany’s. While both governments push to make some progress on the path to net-zero carbon emissions, their approaches and timelines differ markedly.

Energiewende, Germany’s energy transition, is characterized by what some critics consider to be overly ambitious goals for achieving net greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. Those critics think that the words don’t come close to matching the required levels of either government or private sector financial commitment. Together with the Bundestag, the chancellor has set interim targets to reduce emissions by 65 percent by 2030 and 88 percent by 2040 (both compared to 1990 levels). Germany’s energy mix is heavily reliant on renewables, with a goal of sourcing 80 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030—and achieving 100 percent by 2035.

However, Germany has faced challenges due to continued reliance on coal and natural gas, which made it difficult to reach its emissions goals.

The UK, however, appears to be ahead in terms of immediate reductions in coal use and the integration of renewables into its energy mix. Germany’s path is more complex, as it balances its energy transition with energy security concerns, particularly in light of how Russia’s war affects gas supplies.

The UK got rid of coal—where’s it going next? Read More »

Parrots struggle when told to do something other than mimic their peers

animal behavior, Behavioral science, Biology, parrots, Science / Paul Patrick / February 6, 2025

There have been many studies on the capability of non-human animals to mimic transitive actions—actions that have a purpose. Hardly any studies have shown that animals are also capable of intransitive actions. Even though intransitive actions have no particular purpose, imitating these non-conscious movements is still thought to help with socialization and strengthen bonds for both animals and humans.

Zoologist Esha Haldar and colleagues from the Comparative Cognition Research group worked with blue-throated macaws, which are critically endangered, at the Loro Parque Fundación in Tenerife. They trained the macaws to perform two intransitive actions, then set up a conflict: Two neighboring macaws were asked to do different actions.

What Haldar and her team found was that individual birds were more likely to perform the same intransitive action as a bird next to them, no matter what they’d been asked to do. This could mean that macaws possess mirror neurons, the same neurons that, in humans, fire when we are watching intransitive movements and cause us to imitate them (at least if these neurons function the way some think they do).

But it wasn’t on purpose

Parrots are already known for their mimicry of transitive actions, such as grabbing an object. Because they are highly social creatures with brains that are large relative to the size of their bodies, they made excellent subjects for a study that gauged how susceptible they were to copying intransitive actions.

Mirroring of intransitive actions, also called automatic imitation, can be measured with what’s called a stimulus-response-compatibility (SRC) test. These tests measure the response time between seeing an intransitive movement (the visual stimulus) and mimicking it (the action). A faster response time indicates a stronger reaction to the stimulus. They also measure the accuracy with which they reproduce the stimulus.

Until now, there have only been three studies that showed non-human animals are capable of copying intransitive actions, but the intransitive actions in these studies were all by-products of transitive actions. Only one of these focused on a parrot species. Haldar and her team would be the first to test directly for animal mimicry of intransitive actions.

Parrots struggle when told to do something other than mimic their peers Read More »

Don’t panic, but an asteroid has a 1.9% chance of hitting Earth in 2032

asteroids, NASA, near earth object, planetary science, Science, solar system, Space / Mike M. / February 6, 2025

More data will likely reduce the chance of an impact to zero. If not, we have options.

Discovery images of asteroid 2024 YR4. Credit: ATLAS

Something in the sky captured the attention of astronomers in the final days of 2024. A telescope in Chile scanning the night sky detected a faint point of light, and it didn’t correspond to any of the thousands of known stars, comets, and asteroids in astronomers’ all-sky catalog.

The detection on December 27 came from one of a network of telescopes managed by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a NASA-funded project to provide warning of asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

Within a few days, scientists gathered enough information on the asteroid—officially designated 2024 YR4—to determine that its orbit will bring it quite close to Earth in 2028, and then again in 2032. Astronomers ruled out any chance of an impact with Earth in 2028, but there’s a small chance the asteroid might hit our planet on December 22, 2032.

How small? The probability has fluctuated in recent days, but as of Thursday, NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimated a 1.9 percent chance of an impact with Earth in 2032. The European Space Agency (ESA) put the probability at 1.8 percent. So as of now, NASA believes there’s a 1-in-53 chance of 2024 YR4 striking Earth. That’s about twice as likely as the lifetime risk of dying in a motor vehicle crash, according to the National Safety Council.

These numbers are slightly higher than the probabilities published last month, when ESA estimated a 1.2 percent chance of an impact. In a matter of weeks or months, the number will likely drop to zero.

No surprise here, according to ESA.

“It is important to remember that an asteroid’s impact probability often rises at first before quickly dropping to zero after additional observations,” ESA said in a press release. The agency released a short explainer video, embedded below, showing how an asteroid’s cone of uncertainty shrinks as scientists get a better idea of its trajectory.

Refining the risk

Scientists estimate that 2024 YR4 is between 130 to 300 feet (40 and 90 meters) wide, large enough to cause localized devastation near the impact site. The asteroid responsible for the Tunguska event of 1908, which leveled some 500 square miles (1,287 square kilometers) of forest in remote Siberia, was probably about the same size. The meteor that broke apart in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was about 20 meters wide.

Astronomers use the Torino scale for measuring the risk of potential asteroid impacts. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is now rated at Level 3 on this scale, meaning it merits close attention from astronomers, the public, and government officials. This is the second time an asteroid has reached this level since the scale’s adoption in 1999. The other case happened in 2004, when asteroid Apophis briefly reached a Level 4 rating until further observations of the asteroid eliminated any chance of an impact with the Earth in 2029.

In the unlikely event that it impacts the Earth, an asteroid the size of 2024 YR4 could cause blast damage as far as 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the location of the impact or airburst if the object breaks apart in the atmosphere, according to the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), established in the aftermath of the Chelyabinsk event.

The asteroid warning network is affiliated with the United Nations. Officials activate the IAWN when an asteroid bigger than 10 meters has a greater than 1 percent chance of striking Earth within the next 20 years. The risk of 2024 YR4 meets this threshold.

The red points on this image show the possible locations of asteroid 2024 YR4 on December 22, 2032, as projected by a Monte Carlo simulation. As this image shows, most of the simulations project the asteroid missing the Earth. Credit: ESA/Planetary Defense Office

Determining the asteroid’s exact size will be difficult. Scientists would need deep space radar observations, thermal infrared observations, or imagery from a spacecraft that could closely approach the asteroid, according to the IAWN. The asteroid won’t come close enough to Earth for deep space radar observations until shortly before its closest approach in 2032.

Astronomers need numerous observations to precisely plot an asteroid’s motion through the Solar System. Over time, these observations will reduce uncertainty and narrow the corridor the asteroid will follow as it comes near Earth.

Scientists already know a little about asteroid 2024 YR4’s orbit, which follows an elliptical path around the Sun. The orbit brings the asteroid inside of Earth’s orbit at its closest point to the Sun and then into the outer part of the asteroid belt when it is farthest from the Sun.

But there’s a complication in astronomers’ attempts to nail down the asteroid’s path. The object is currently moving away from Earth in almost a straight line. This makes it difficult to accurately determine its orbit by studying how its trajectory curves over time, according to ESA.

It also means observers will need to use larger telescopes to see the asteroid before it becomes too distant to see it from Earth in April. By the end of this year’s observing window, the asteroid warning network says the impact probability could increase to a couple tens of percent, or it could more likely drop back below the notification threshold (1 percent impact probability).

“It is possible that asteroid 2024 YR4 will fade from view before we are able to entirely rule out any chance of impact in 2032,” ESA said. “In this case, the asteroid will likely remain on ESA’s risk list until it becomes observable again in 2028.”

Planetary defenders

This means that public officials might need to start planning what to do later this year.

For the first time, an international board called the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group met this week to discuss what we can do to respond to the risk of an asteroid impact. This group, known as SMPAG, coordinates planning among representatives from the world’s space agencies, including NASA, ESA, China, and Russia.

The group decided on Monday to give astronomers a few more months to refine their estimates of the asteroid’s orbit before taking action. They will meet again in late April or early May or earlier if the impact risk increases significantly. If there’s still a greater than 1 percent probability of 2024 YR4 hitting the Earth, the group will issue a recommendation for further action to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

So what are the options? If the data in a few months still shows that the asteroid poses a hazard to Earth, it will be time for the world’s space agencies to consider a deflection mission. NASA demonstrated its ability to alter the orbit of an asteroid in 2022 with a first-of-its-kind experiment in space. The mission, called DART, put a small spacecraft on a collision course with an asteroid two to four times larger than 2024 YR4.

The kinetic energy from the spacecraft’s death dive into the asteroid was enough to slightly nudge the object off its natural orbit around a nearby larger asteroid. This proved that an asteroid deflection mission could work if scientists have enough time to design and build it, an undertaking that took about five years for DART.

Italy’s LICIACube spacecraft snapped this image of asteroids Didymos (lower left) and Dimorphos (upper right) a few minutes after the impact of DART on September 26, 2022. Credit: ASI/NASA

A deflection mission is most effective well ahead of an asteroid’s potential encounter with the Earth, so it’s important not to wait until the last minute.

Fans of Hollywood movies know there’s a nuclear option for dealing with an asteroid coming toward us. The drawback of using a nuclear warhead is that it could shatter one large asteroid into many smaller objects, although recent research suggests a more distant nuclear explosion could produce enough X-ray radiation to push an asteroid off a collision course.

Waiting for additional observations in 2028 would leave little time to develop a deflection mission. Therefore, in the unlikely event that the risk of an impact rises over the next few months, it will be time for officials to start seriously considering the possibility of an intervention.

Even without a deflection, there’s plenty of time for government officials to do something here on Earth. It should be possible for authorities to evacuate any populations that might be affected by the asteroid.

The asteroid could devastate an area the size of a large city, but any impact is most likely to happen in a remote region or in the ocean. The risk corridor for 2024 YR4 extends from the eastern Pacific Ocean to northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia.

There’s an old joke that dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t have a space program. Whatever happens in 2032, we’re not at risk of extinction. However, occasions like this are exactly why most Americans think we should have a space program. A 2019 poll showed that 68 percent of Americans considered it very or extremely important for the space program to monitor asteroids, comets, or other objects from space that could strike the planet.

In contrast, about a quarter of those polled placed such importance on returning astronauts to the Moon or sending people to Mars. The cost of monitoring and deflecting asteroids is modest compared to the expensive undertakings of human missions to the Moon and Mars.

From taxpayers’ point of view, it seems this part of NASA offers the greatest bang for their buck.

Don’t panic, but an asteroid has a 1.9% chance of hitting Earth in 2032 Read More »

Quantum teleportation used to distribute a calculation

Computer science, Physics, quantum computing, quantum mechanics, Science, teleportation / Tim Belzer / February 5, 2025

The researchers showed that this setup allowed them to teleport with a specific gate operation (controlled-Z), which can serve as the basis for any other two-qubit gate operation—any operation you might want to do can be done by using a specific combination of these gates. After performing multiple rounds of these gates, the team found that the typical fidelity was in the area of 70 percent. But they also found that errors typically had nothing to do with the teleportation process and were the product of local operations at one of the two ends of the network. They suspect that using commercial hardware, which has far lower error rates, would improve things dramatically.

Finally, they performed a version of Grover’s algorithm, which can, with a single query, identify a single item from an arbitrarily large unordered list. The “arbitrary” aspect is set by the number of available qubits; in this case, having only two qubits, the list maxed out at four items. Still, it worked, again with a fidelity of about 70 percent.

While the work was done with trapped ions, almost every type of qubit in development can be controlled with photons, so the general approach is hardware-agnostic. And, given the sophistication of our optical hardware, it should be possible to link multiple chips at various distances, all using hardware that doesn’t require the best vacuum or the lowest temperatures we can generate.

That said, the error rate of the teleportation steps may still be a problem, even if it was lower than the basic hardware rate in these experiments. The fidelity there was 97 percent, which is lower than the hardware error rates of most qubits and high enough that we couldn’t execute too many of these before the probability of errors gets unacceptably high.

Still, our current hardware error rates started out far worse than they are today; successive rounds of improvements between generations of hardware have been the rule. Given that this is the first demonstration of teleported gates, we may have to wait before we can see if the error rates there follow a similar path downward.

Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08404-x (About DOIs).

Quantum teleportation used to distribute a calculation Read More »

Gecko feet inspire anti-slip shoe soles

biomimicry, chemistry, friction, geckos, polymers, Science / Kris Guyer / February 4, 2025

Just add zirconia nanoparticles…

diagram of wet ice's quasi slippery layer and design of anti-slip shoe soles inspired by gecko and toad foot pads — Credit: V. Richhariya et al., 2025

It’s the “hydrophilic capillary-enhanced adhesion”of gecko feet that most interested the authors of this latest paper. Per the World Health Organization, 684,000 people die and another 38 million are injured every year in slips and falls, with correspondingly higher health care costs. Most antislip products (crampons, chains, studs, cleats), tread designs, or materials (fiberglass, carbon fiber, rubber) are generally only effective for specific purposes or short periods of time. And they often don’t perform as well on wet ice, which has a nanoscale quasi-liquid layer (QLL) that makes it even more slippery.

So Vipin Richhariya of the University of Minho in Portugal and co-authors turned to gecko toe pads (as well as those of toads) for a better solution. To get similar properties in their silicone rubber polymers, they added zirconia nanoparticles, which attract water molecules. The polymers were rolled into a thin film and hardened, and then a laser etched groove patterns onto the surface—essentially creating micro cavities that exposed the zirconia nanoparticles, thus enhancing the material’s hydrophilic effects.

Infrared spectroscopy and simulated friction tests revealed that the composites containing 3 percent and 5 percent zirconia nanoparticles were the most slip-resistant. “This optimized composite has the potential to change the dynamics of slip-and-fall accidents, providing a nature-inspired solution to prevent one of the most common causes of accidents worldwide,” the authors concluded. The material could also be used for electronic skin, artificial skin, or wound healing.

DOI: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2025. 10.1021/acsami.4c14496 (About DOIs).

Gecko feet inspire anti-slip shoe soles Read More »

Bonobos recognize when humans are ignorant, try to help

Behavioral science, Biology, cooperation, Neuroscience, Science, theory of mind / Mike M. / February 3, 2025

A lot of human society requires what’s called a “theory of mind”—the ability to infer the mental state of another person and adjust our actions based on what we expect they know and are thinking. We don’t always get this right—it’s easy to get confused about what someone else might be thinking—but we still rely on it to navigate through everything from complicated social situations to avoid bumping into people on the street.

There’s some mixed evidence that other animals have a limited theory of mind, but there are alternate interpretations for most of it. So two researchers at Johns Hopkins, Luke Townrow and Christopher Krupenye, came up with a way of testing whether some of our closest living relatives, the bonobos, could infer the state of mind of a human they were cooperating with. The work clearly showed that the bonobos could tell when their human partner was ignorant.

Now you see it…

The experimental approach is quite simple, and involves a setup familiar to street hustlers: a set of three cups, with a treat placed under one of them. Except in this case, there’s no sleight-of-hand in that the chimp can watch as one experimenter places the treat under a cup, and all of the cups remain stationary throughout the experiment.

To get the treat, however, requires the cooperation of a second human experimenter. That person has to identify the right cup, then give the treat under it to the bonobo. In some experiments, this human can watch the treat being hidden through a transparent partition, and so knows exactly where it is. In others, however, the partition is solid, leaving the human with no idea of which cup might be hiding the food.

This setup means that the bonobo will always know where the food is and will also know whether the human could potentially have the same knowledge.

The bonobos were first familiarized with the setup and got to experience their human partner taking the treat out from under the cup and giving it to them. Once they were familiar with the process, they watched the food being hidden without any partner present, which demonstrated they rarely took any food-directed actions without a good reason to do so. In contrast, when their human partner was present, they were about eight times more likely to point to the cup with the food under it.

Bonobos recognize when humans are ignorant, try to help Read More »

Let us spray: River dolphins launch pee streams into air

animal behavior, animal communication, animals, Biology, dolphins, Science / Tim Belzer / February 3, 2025

According to Amazonian folklore, the area’s male river dolphins are shapeshifters (encantade), transforming at night into handsome young men who seduce and impregnate human women. The legend’s origins may lie in the fact that dolphins have rather human-like genitalia. A group of Canadian biologists didn’t spot any suspicious shapeshifting behavior over the four years they spent monitoring a dolphin population in central Brazil, but they did document 36 cases of another human-like behavior: what appears to be some sort of cetacean pissing contest.

Specifically, the male dolphins rolled over onto their backs, displayed their male members, and launched a stream of urine as high as 3 feet into the air. This usually occurred when other males were around, who seemed fascinated in turn by the arching streams of pee, even chasing after them with their snouts. It’s possibly a form of chemical sensory communication and not merely a need to relieve themselves, according to the biologists, who described their findings in a paper published in the journal Behavioral Processes. As co-author Claryana Araújo-Wang of CetAsia Research Group in Ontario, Canada, told New Scientist, “We were really shocked, as it was something we had never seen before.”

Spraying urine is a common behavior in many animal species, used to mark territory, defend against predators, communicate with other members of one’s species, or as a means of mate selection since it has been suggested that the chemicals in the urine carry useful information about physical health or social dominance.

Let us spray: River dolphins launch pee streams into air Read More »