Science

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Here are the winners and losers when it comes to clouds for Monday’s eclipse

Science, solar eclipse, Space / /

Happy hunting —

News you can use in regard to chasing cloud-free skies.

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Cloud cover forecast for 2 pm ET on Monday, April 8.

Enlarge / Cloud cover forecast for 2 pm ET on Monday, April 8.

Tomer Burg

The best opportunity to view a total Solar eclipse in the United States for the next two decades is nearly at hand. Aside from making sure you’re in the path of totality, the biggest question for most eclipse viewers has been, will it be cloudy?

This has posed a challenge to the meteorological community. That’s because clouds are notoriously difficult to forecast for a number of reasons. The first is that they are localized features, sometimes on the order of a few miles or km across, which is smaller than the resolution of global models that provide forecasts five, seven, or more days out.

Weather models also struggle with predicting clouds because they can form anywhere from a few thousand feet (2,000 meters) above the ground to 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), and therefore they require good information about conditions in the atmosphere near the surface all the way into the stratosphere. The problem is that the combination of ground-based observations, weather balloons, data from aircraft, and satellites do not provide the kind of comprehensive atmospheric profile needed at locations around the world for completely accurate cloud forecasting.

Finally, there is the issue of partly cloudy skies and the transience of clouds themselves. Most places, most days, have a mixture of sunshine and cloudy skies. So let’s say the forecast looks pretty good for your location. According to forecasters there is only a 30 percent skycover forecast for Monday afternoon. Sounds great! But if a large cloud moves over the Sun during the few minutes of totality, it won’t matter if the day was mostly sunny.

With that in mind, here’s the forecast at three days out, with some strategies for finding the clear skies on Monday.

The forecast

The cloud forecast has actually been remarkably consistent for the last several days, in general terms. Texas has looked rather poor for visibility, the central region of the United States including bits of Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, and Indiana have looked fairly good, areas along Lake Erie have been iffy, and the northeastern United States has looked optimal.

Our highest confidence area is northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The reason is that high pressure will be firmly in place for these locations on Monday, virtually guaranteeing mostly sunny skies. If you want to be confident of seeing the eclipse in North America, this is the place to be. But there is a catch—isn’t there always? A snowstorm this week, which may persist into Saturday morning, has made travel difficult. Conditions should improve by Sunday, however.

Rising pressures in the central United States will also make for good viewing conditions. The band of totality running from Northern Arkansas through Indiana is not guaranteed to have clear skies, but the odds are favorable for most locations here.

The Lake Erie region, including Cleveland, is probably the biggest wildcard in the national forecast. The atmospheric setup here is fairly complex, with the region just on the edge of high pressure ridging that will help keep skies clear. I’d be cautiously optimistic.

Finally there’s Texas. The forecast overall has been poor since I’ve began tracking it for the last two weeks. (And as I live in Texas, I’ve been following it closely.) The global models with the best predictive value—the European-based ECMWF and US-based GFS—have shown consistently cloudy skies across much of the state on Monday, with a non-zero chance of rain. I do think there will be some breaks in the clouds at the time of the eclipse, perhaps in locations near Dallas or to the west of Austin, and hopefully some of the cloud cover will be thin, high clouds. But whereas the skies at night are big and bright in Texas, the solar eclipse viewing conditions might just bite.

Some strategies for Monday

There are a lot of helpful resources online for tracking cloud cover over the weekend. One of the best hacks is to search the web for the nearest city or town, i.e. “NWS Cleveland, Ohio” and find the “forecaster discussion” section of the National Weather Service website. This will give you a credible local forecaster’s outlook on conditions. Most have been doing a great job of providing eclipse context in twice-daily discussions.

A meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma, Tomer Burg, has set up an excellent website to provide both an overview of the eclipse and a probabilistic outlook for localized conditions. Your best bets are the national blend of models forecast for average cloud cover (direct link), and a city dashboard that provides key information for more than 100 locations about precise eclipse timing and sky cover.

Good luck, Austin!

Enlarge / Good luck, Austin!

Tomer Burg

Finally, if you’re in the path of totality and are expected to have partly to mostly cloudy skies, don’t despair. There’s always a chance the forecast will change, even a few days out. There’s always a chance for a break in the clouds at the right time. There’s always a chance the clouds will be thin and high, with the disk of the Sun shining through.

And finally, if it is thickly overcast, it will still get eerily dark outside in the middle of the day. It will get noticeably colder. Animals will do nighttime things. So it will be special, but unfortunately not special.

Here are the winners and losers when it comes to clouds for Monday’s eclipse Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn

blue origin, Commercial space, ed Dwight, human spaceflight, launch, Polaris dawn, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / /

The wait is over —

“The pacing item in our supply chain is the BE-4.”

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Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Enlarge / Ed Dwight stands in front of an F-104 jet fighter in 1963.

Welcome to Edition 6.38 of the Rocket Report! Ed Dwight was close to joining NASA’s astronaut corps more than 60 years ago. With an aeronautical engineering degree and experience as an Air Force test pilot, Dwight met the qualifications to become an astronaut. He was one of 26 test pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but he wasn’t selected. Now, the man who would have become the first Black astronaut will finally get a chance to fly to space.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

Ed Dwight named to Blue Origin’s next human flight. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, announced Thursday that 90-year-old Ed Dwight, who almost became the first Black astronaut in 1963, will be one of six people to fly to suborbital space on the company’s next New Shepard flight. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain, piloted military fighter jets and graduated test pilot school, following a familiar career track as many of the early astronauts. He was on a short list of astronaut candidates the Air Force provided NASA, but the space agency didn’t include him. It took 20 more years for the first Black American to fly to space. Dwight’s ticket with Blue Origin is sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks to expand access to space for all people. Five paying passengers will join Dwight for the roughly 10-minute up-and-down flight to the edge of space over West Texas. Kudos to Space for Humanity and Blue Origin for making this happen.

Return to flight … This mission, named NS-25, will be the first time Blue Origin flies with human passengers since August 2022. Blue Origin hasn’t announced a launch date yet for NS-25. On an uncrewed launch the following month, an engine failure destroyed a New Shepard booster and grounded Blue Origin’s suborbital rocket program for more than 15 months. New Shepard returned to flight December 19 on another research flight, again without anyone onboard. As the mission name suggests, this will be the 25th flight of a New Shepard rocket and the seventh flight with people. Blue Origin has a history of flying aviation pioneers and celebrities. On the first human flight with New Shepard in 2021, the passengers included company founder Jeff Bezos and famed female aviator Wally Funk. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Revisit Astra’s 2020 rocket explosion. In March 2020, as the world was under the grip of COVID, Astra blew up a rocket in remote Alaska and didn’t want anyone to see it. New video published by TechCrunch shows Astra’s Rocket 3 vehicle exploding on its launch pad. This was one of several setbacks that have brought the startup to its knees. The explosion, which occurred at Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex, was simply reported as an “anomaly” at the time, an industry term for pretty much any issue that deviates from the expected outcome, TechCrunch reports. Satellite imagery of the launch site showed burn scars, suggesting an explosion, but the footage published this week confirms the reality of the event. This was Astra’s first orbital-class rocket, and it blew up during a fueling rehearsal.

A sign of things to come … Astra eventually flew its Rocket 3 small satellite launcher seven times, but only two of the flights actually reached orbit. This prompted Astra to abandon its Rocket 3 program and focus on developing a larger rocket, Rocket 4. But the future of this new rocket is in doubt. Astra’s co-founders are taking the company private after its market value and stock price tanked, and it’s not clear where the company will go from here. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Russia’s plan to “restore” its launch industry. Yuri Borisov, chief of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has outlined a strategy for Russia to regain a dominant position in the global launch market, Ars reports. This will include the development of a partially reusable replacement for the Soyuz rocket called Amur-CNG. The country’s spaceflight enterprise is also working on “ultralight” boosters that will incorporate an element of reusability. In an interview posted on the Roscosmos website, Borisov said he hopes Russia will have a “completely new fleet of space vehicles” by the 2028-2029 timeframe. Russia has previously discussed plans to develop the Amur rocket (the CNG refers to the propellant, liquified methane). The multi-engine vehicle looks somewhat similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in that preliminary designs incorporated landing legs and grid fins to enable a powered first-stage landing.

Reason to doubt … Russia’s launch industry was a global leader a couple of decades ago when prices were cheap relative to Western rockets. But the heavy-lift Proton rocket is nearing retirement after concerns about its reliability, and the still-reliable Soyuz is now excluded from the global market after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the 2000s and 2010s, Russia’s position in the market was supplanted by the European Ariane 5 rocket and then SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Roscosmos originally announced the medium-lift Amur rocket program in 2020 for a maiden flight in 2026. Since then, the rocket has encountered a nearly year-for-year delay in its first test launch. I’ll believe it when I see it. The only new, large rocket Russia has developed in nearly 40 years, the expendable Angara A5, is still launching dummy payloads on test flights a decade after its debut.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin to resume human flights; progress for Polaris Dawn Read More »

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NASA knows what knocked Voyager 1 offline, but it will take a while to fix

jet propulsion laboratory, memory, NASA, Science, Space, Voyager, Voyager 1 / /

Hope returns —

“Engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally.”

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A Voyager space probe in a clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1977.

Enlarge / A Voyager space probe in a clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1977.

Engineers have determined why NASA’s Voyager 1 probe has been transmitting gibberish for nearly five months, raising hopes of recovering humanity’s most distant spacecraft.

Voyager 1, traveling outbound some 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth, started beaming unreadable data down to ground controllers on November 14. For nearly four months, NASA knew Voyager 1 was still alive—it continued to broadcast a steady signal—but could not decipher anything it was saying.

Confirming their hypothesis, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California confirmed a small portion of corrupted memory caused the problem. The faulty memory bank is located in Voyager 1’s Flight Data System (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft. The FDS operates alongside a command-and-control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.

The FDS duties include packaging Voyager 1’s science and engineering data for relay to Earth through the craft’s Telemetry Modulation Unit and radio transmitter. According to NASA, about 3 percent of the FDS memory has been corrupted, preventing the computer from carrying out normal operations.

Optimism growing

Suzanne Dodd, NASA’s project manager for the twin Voyager probes, told Ars in February that this was one of the most serious problems the mission has ever faced. That is saying something because Voyager 1 and 2 are NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft. They launched 16 days apart in 1977, and after flying by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 is flying farther from Earth than any spacecraft in history. Voyager 2 is trailing Voyager 1 by about 2.5 billion miles, although the probes are heading out of the Solar System in different directions.

Normally, engineers would try to diagnose a spacecraft malfunction by analyzing data it sent back to Earth. They couldn’t do that in this case because Voyager 1 has been transmitting data packages manifesting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros. Still, Voyager 1’s ground team identified the FDS as the likely source of the problem.

The Flight Data Subsystem was an innovation in computing when it was developed five decades ago. It was the first computer on a spacecraft to use volatile memory. Most of NASA’s missions operate with redundancy, so each Voyager spacecraft launched with two FDS computers. But the backup FDS on Voyager 1 failed in 1982.

Due to the Voyagers’ age, engineers had to reference paper documents, memos, and blueprints to help understand the spacecraft’s design details. After months of brainstorming and planning, teams at JPL uplinked a command in early March to prompt the spacecraft to send back a readout of the FDS memory.

The command worked, and Voyager.1 responded with a signal different from the code the spacecraft had been transmitting since November. After several weeks of meticulous examination of the new code, engineers pinpointed the locations of the bad memory.

“The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working,” NASA said in an update posted Thursday. “Engineers can’t determine with certainty what caused the issue. Two possibilities are that the chip could have been hit by an energetic particle from space or that it simply may have worn out after 46 years.”

Voyager 1’s distance from Earth complicates the troubleshooting effort. The one-way travel time for a radio signal to reach Voyager 1 from Earth is about 22.5 hours, meaning it takes roughly 45 hours for engineers on the ground to learn how the spacecraft responded to their commands.

NASA also must use its largest communications antennas to contact Voyager 1. These 230-foot-diameter (70-meter) antennas are in high demand by many other NASA spacecraft, so the Voyager team has to compete with other missions to secure time for troubleshooting. This means it will take time to get Voyager 1 back to normal operations.

“Although it may take weeks or months, engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally without the unusable memory hardware, which would enable Voyager 1 to begin returning science and engineering data again,” NASA said.

NASA knows what knocked Voyager 1 offline, but it will take a while to fix Read More »

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$158,000 ALS drug pulled from market after failing in large clinical trial

ALS, Amylyx, clinical trial, fda, health, Science / /

Off the market —

The drug is now unavailable to new patients; its maker to lay off 70% of employees.

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$158,000 ALS drug pulled from market after failing in large clinical trial

Amylyx, the maker of a new drug to treat ALS, is pulling that drug from the market and laying off 70 percent of its workers after a large clinical trial found that the drug did not help patients, according to an announcement from the company Thursday.

The drug, Relyvrio, won approval from the Food and Drug Administration in September 2022 to slow the progression of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). However, the data behind the controversial decision was shaky at best; it was based on a study of just 137 patients that had several weaknesses and questionable statistical significance, and FDA advisors initially voted against approval. Still, given the severity of the neurogenerative disease and lack of effective treatments, the FDA ultimately granted approval under the condition that the company was working on a Phase III clinical trial to solidify its claimed benefits.

Relyvrio—a combination of two existing, generic drugs—went on the market with a list price of $158,000.

Last month, the company announced the top-line results from that 48-week, randomized, placebo-controlled trial involving 664 patients: Relyvrio failed to meet any of the trial’s goals. The drug did not improve patients’ physical functions, which were scored on a standardized ALS-specific test, nor did it improve quality of life, respiratory function, or overall survival. At that time, the co-CEOs of the company said they were “surprised and deeply disappointed” by the result, and the company acknowledged that it was considering voluntarily withdrawing the drug from the market.

In the announcement on Thursday, the company called Relyvrio’s market withdrawal a “difficult moment for the ALS community.” Patients already taking the medication who wish to continue taking it will be able to do so through a free drug program, the company said. It is no longer available to new patients, effective Thursday.

Amylyx is now “restructuring” to focus on two other drug candidates that treat different neurodegenerative disease. The change will include laying off 70 percent of its workforce, which, according to The Washington Post, includes more than 350 employees.

Relyvrio is part of a series of similarly controversial drugs for devastating neurodegenerative diseases that have gained FDA approval despite questionable data. In January, drug maker Biogen announced it was abandoning Aduhelm, a highly contentious Alzheimer’s drug that failed two large trials prior to its heavily criticized approval.

$158,000 ALS drug pulled from market after failing in large clinical trial Read More »

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Tiny cracks in rocks may have concentrated chemicals needed for life

biochemistry, Biology, chemistry, geology, origin of life, Science / /
Cartoon of a geologically active area, showing sub-surface channels in different colors to represent various temperatures.

Enlarge / Active geology could have helped purify key chemicals needed for life.

Christof B. Mast

In some ways, the origin of life is looking much less mystifying than it was a few decades ago. Researchers have figured out how some of the fundamental molecules needed for life can form via reactions that start with extremely simple chemicals that were likely to have been present on the early Earth. (We’ve covered at least one of many examples of this sort of work.)

But that research has led to somewhat subtler but no less challenging questions. While these reactions will form key components of DNA and protein, those are often just one part of a complicated mix of reaction products. And often, to get something truly biologically relevant, they’ll have to react with some other molecules, each of which is part of its own complicated mix of reaction products. By the time these are all brought together, the key molecules may only represent a tiny fraction of the total list of chemicals present.

So, forming a more life-like chemistry still seems like a challenge. But a group of German chemists is now suggesting that the Earth itself provides a solution. Warm fluids moving through tiny fissures in rocks can potentially separate out mixes of chemicals, enriching some individual chemicals by three orders of magnitude.

Feeling the heat (and the solvent)

Even in the lab, it’s relatively rare for chemical reactions to produce just a single product. But there are lots of ways to purify out exactly what you want. Even closely related chemicals will often differ in their solubility in different solvents and in their tendency to stick to various glasses or ceramics, etc. The temperature can also influence all of those. So, chemists can use these properties as tools to fish a specific chemical out of a reaction mixture.

But, as far as the history of life is concerned, chemists are a relatively recent development—they weren’t available to purify important chemicals back before life had gotten started. Which raises the question of how the chemical building blocks of life ever reached the sorts of concentrations needed to do anything interesting.

The key insight behind this new work is that something similar to lab equipment exists naturally on Earth. Many rocks are laced with cracks, channels, and fissures that allow fluid to flow through them. In geologically active areas, that fluid is often warm, creating temperature gradients as it flows away from the heat source. And, as fluid moves through different rock types, the chemical environment changes. The walls of the fissures will have different chemical properties, and different salts may end up dissolved in the fluid.

All of that can provide conditions where some chemicals move more rapidly through the fluid, while others tend to stay where they started. And that has the potential to separate out key chemicals from the reaction mixes that produce the components of life.

But having the potential is very different from clearly working. So, the researchers decided to put the idea to the test.

Tiny cracks in rocks may have concentrated chemicals needed for life Read More »

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Hong Kong monkey encounter lands man in ICU with rare, deadly virus

B virus, CDC, health, Hong Kong, ICU, infection, macaques, Monkey, Science / /

rare but deadly —

The man had recently visited a country park known for its macaque monkeys.

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This photo taken in August 2014 shows macaque monkeys in a country park in Hong Kong.

Enlarge / This photo taken in August 2014 shows macaque monkeys in a country park in Hong Kong.

A 37-year-old man is fighting for his life in an intensive care unit in Hong Kong after being wounded by monkeys during a recent park visit and contracting a rare and deadly virus spread by primates.

The man, who was previously in good health, was wounded by wild macaque monkeys during a visit to Kam Shan Country Park in late February, according to local health officials. The park is well known for its conservation of wild macaques and features an area that locals call “Monkey Hill” and describe as a macaque kingdom.

On March 21, he was admitted to the hospital with a fever and “decreased conscious level,” health officials reported. As of Wednesday, April 3, he was in the ICU listed in critical condition. Officials reported the man’s case Wednesday after testing of his cerebrospinal fluid revealed the presence of B virus.

B virus, also known as herpes B virus or herpesvirus simiae, is a common infection in macaques, usually causing asymptomatic or mild disease. Infections in humans are extremely rare, but when they occur, they usually come from macaque encounters and are often severe and deadly. The infection can start out a lot like the flu, but the virus can move to the brain and spinal cord, causing brain damage, nerve damage, and death. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 70 percent of untreated infections in humans are fatal.

Despite the presence of macaques around Hong Kong, the man’s case is the first known B virus infection documented there. The virus was discovered in 1932, and since then only 50 human infections have been documented as of 2019, the CDC reports. Of those 50 people infected, 21 died. The agency notes that in one case, from 1997, a researcher was infected and died after bodily fluid from an infected monkey splashed into her eye. Still, contracting the virus is rare, even among people exposed to macaques. The CDC reports that there are hundreds of reports of macaque bites and scratches each year in US animal facilities, and infections remain very uncommon.

However low the risk, health officials recommend keeping your distance from wild monkeys and not feeding or touching them. If you are bitten or scratched, wash the wound immediately and seek medical attention.

Hong Kong monkey encounter lands man in ICU with rare, deadly virus Read More »

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It could well be a blockbuster hurricane season, and that’s not a good thing

hurricane season, Science, Space / /

It only takes one —

Although not quite literally, the Atlantic Ocean is on fire right now.

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As of late March, much of the Atlantic Ocean was seeing temperatures far above normal.

Enlarge / As of late March, much of the Atlantic Ocean was seeing temperatures far above normal.

Weathermodels.com

The Atlantic hurricane season does not begin for another eight weeks, but we are deep in the heart of hurricane season prediction season.

On Thursday, the most influential of these forecasts was issued by Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane scientist at Colorado State University. To put a fine point on it, Klotzbach and his team foresee an exceptionally busy season in the Atlantic basin, which encompasses the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico.

“We anticipate that the 2024 Atlantic basin hurricane season will be extremely active,” Klotzbach wrote in his forecast discussion.

The Colorado State forecast calls for 23 named storms, more than 50 percent higher than a typical season of 14.4 named storms; and 11 hurricanes, above a normal total of seven. Additionally, the forecast predicts that the season’s accumulated cyclone energy—a summation of the duration and intensity of storms across the whole basin—will be 70 percent greater than normal. If the forecast is accurate, the year 2024 would rank among the top 10 most active Atlantic hurricane seasons in a century and a half of records.

This forecast is not out of line with other seasonal predictions. Dozens of organizations, from private groups to individual forecasters to media properties, issue these kinds of seasonal predictions. But Colorado State’s is the longest-running and most influential, and its release underscores what is indeed expected to be a very busy season for tropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes.

What’s driving this?

Klotzbach cites two major factors driving the busy year. The primary one is sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central Atlantic, where tropical systems develop. These seas are seeing record warm temperatures for April—indeed, in many places, the Atlantic is already as warm as it typically would be in June. Undoubtedly climate change is a central factor behind this warming.

Warm seas are one precursor to tropical systems, but they are just one condition necessary for a low-pressure system to organize into a tropical depression.

Another is low wind shear, as cross-directional winds can literally shear a storm apart. While it is not possible to forecast wind shear months ahead of a season, the presence of El Niño or La Niña in the Pacific Ocean is a pretty useful indicator.

In this case, there’s more bad news. The present (weak) El Niño in the Pacific is likely to transition into a La Niña by this summer, especially in August or September. That matters because these are typically the most frenetic months for activity, and with a La Niña in place, wind shear is likely to be lower overall in the Atlantic basin.

This is the first of several forecasts Klotzbach will issue for the upcoming season, and although predictions in April typically have lower skill, it is difficult to ignore the signals out there. “While the skill of this prediction is low, our confidence is higher than normal this year for an early April forecast given how hurricane-favorable the large-scale conditions appear to be,” he wrote.

What does this mean?

Most coastal areas along the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf will not be affected by a hurricane in any given year. I live and work in Houston, which is the largest city in the Atlantic basin that regularly sees significant hurricane threats. But even here, in the subtropics, we only see large, direct impacts from a hurricane or tropical storm about every 10 years.

What a busy season does is load the dice. More activity means a greater likelihood that one of those storms will venture closer to where one lives. So the threat of a hurricane is there every year; it’s just that the threat is greater in some years.

There is an old, oft-repeated adage in hurricane forecasting circles: “It only takes one.” This means that even during a slow season if there’s just one hurricane and it hits you, it was a busy hurricane season for you. We experienced this in Houston back in 1983 when the very first named storm of the year, a hurricane named Alicia, made landfall near the city on August 17. There ended up being just four named storms in 1984, but unfortunately for Houston, one of them struck here.

A busy forecast like this doesn’t mean a whole lot for coastal residents. We really need to be prepared every year, knowing our vulnerabilities to a hurricane, knowing when we need to evacuate, where we would go, and what we would need to take.

However, it does have implications for first responders and government organizations tasked with dealing with hurricane aftermath, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Thus, it seems prudent that the recently passed federal budget for fiscal year 2024 tucked $20.3 billion into the agency’s Disaster Relief Fund.

It could well be a blockbuster hurricane season, and that’s not a good thing Read More »

mars-may-not-have-had-liquid-water-long-enough-for-life-to-form

Mars may not have had liquid water long enough for life to form

astronomy, carbon dioxide, Mars, planetary science, Science, water / /

Subliminal —

Lab experiments suggest gullies on Mars might form when carbon dioxide heats up.

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Image of a grey-colored slope with channels cut into it.

Mars has a history of liquid water on its surface, including lakes like the one that used to occupy Jezero Crater, which have long since dried up. Ancient water that carried debris—and melted water ice that presently does the same—were also thought to be the only thing driving the formation of gullies spread throughout the Martian landscape. That view may now change thanks to new results that suggest dry ice can also shape the landscape.

It’s sublime

Previously, scientists were convinced that only liquid water shaped gullies on Mars because that’s what happens on Earth. What was not taken into account was sublimation, or the direct transition of a substance from a solid to a gaseous state. Sublimation is how CO2 ice disappears (sometimes water ice experiences this, too).

Frozen carbon dioxide is everywhere on Mars, including in its gullies. When CO2 ice sublimates on one of these gullies, the resulting gas can push debris further down the slope and continue to shape it.

Led by planetary researcher Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, a team of scientists has found that the sublimation of CO2 ice could have shaped Martian gullies, which might mean the most recent occurrence of liquid water on Mars may have been further back in time than previously thought. That could also mean the window during which life could have emerged and thrived on Mars was possibly smaller.

“Sublimation of CO2 ice, under Martian atmospheric conditions, can fluidize sediment and creates morphologies similar to those observed on Mars,” Roelofs and her colleagues said in a study recently published in Communications Earth & Environment.

Into thin air

Earth and Martian gullies have basically the same morphology. The difference is that we’re certain that liquid water is behind their formation and continuous shaping and re-shaping on Earth. Such activity includes new channels being carved out and more debris being taken to the bottom.

While ancient Mars may have had enough stable liquid water to pull this off, there is not enough on the present surface of Mars to sustain that kind of activity. This is where sublimation comes in. CO2 ice has been observed on the surface of Mars at the same time that material starts flowing.

After examining observations like these, the researchers hypothesized these flows are pushed downward by gas as the frozen carbon dioxide sublimates. Because of the low pressure on Mars, sublimation creates a relatively greater gas flux than it would on Earth—enough power to make fluid motion of material possible.

There are two ways sublimation can be triggered to get these flows moving. When part of a more exposed area of a gully collapses, especially on a steep slope, sediment and other debris that have been warmed by the Sun can fall on CO2 ice in a shadier and cooler area. Heat from the falling material could supply enough energy for the frost to sublimate. Another possibility is that CO2 ice and sediment can break from the gully and fall onto warmer material, which will also trigger sublimation.

Mars in a lab

There is just one problem with these ideas: since humans have not landed on Mars (yet), there are no in situ observations of these phenomena, only images and data beamed back from spacecraft. So, everything is hypothetical. The research team would have to model Martian gullies to watch the action in real time.

To re-create a part of the red planet’s landscape in a lab, Roelofs built a flume in a special environmental chamber that simulated the atmospheric pressure of Mars. It was steep enough for material to move downward and cold enough for CO2 ice to remain stable. But the team also added warmer adjacent slopes to provide heat for sublimation, which would drive movement of debris. They experimented with both scenarios that might happen on Mars: heat coming from beneath the CO2 ice and warm material being poured on top of it. Both produced the kinds of flows that had been hypothesized.

For further evidence that flows driven by sublimation would happen under certain conditions, two further experiments were conducted, one under Earth-like pressures and one without CO2 ice. No flows were produced by either.

“For the first time, these experiments provide direct evidence that CO2 sublimation can fluidize, and sustain, granular flows under Martian atmospheric conditions,” the researchers said in the study.

Because this experiment showed that gullies and systems like them can be shaped by sublimation and not just liquid water, it raises questions about how long Mars had a sufficient supply of liquid water on the surface for any organisms (if they existed at all) to survive. Its period of habitability might have been shorter than it was once thought to be. Does this mean nothing ever lived on Mars? Not necessarily, but Roelofs’ findings could influence how we see planetary habitability in the future.

Communications Earth & Environment, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01298-7

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101 studies flagged as bogus COVID cure pusher sees career unravel

COVID-19, Didier Raoult, health, hydroxychloroquine, research ethics, Science / /

Career-killer —

It’s a past-due reckoning for French microbiologist Didier Raoult, critics say.

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Microbiologist Didier Raoult addresses a press conference on COVID-19 at the IHU medical institute in Marseille on April 20, 2022.

Enlarge / Microbiologist Didier Raoult addresses a press conference on COVID-19 at the IHU medical institute in Marseille on April 20, 2022.

A scientific journal published by Elsevier has reportedly posted a stunning 101 expressions of concern on studies connected to Didier Raoult, a disgraced French microbiologist who gained international prominence amid the pandemic by promoting, with little evidence, that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could treat COVID-19—a claim that has now been firmly debunked.

According to Retraction Watch, the journal New Microbes and New Infections posted 101 expressions of concern on Raoult’s works recently, including a 2023 study that drew sharp criticism. The study involved giving hydroxychloroquine to tens of thousands of COVID-19 patients after data indicated that it wasn’t effective and the French government rescinded permission for its use against COVID-19. An op-ed in the major French newspaper Le Monde described the study as “the largest ‘wild’ therapeutic trial known to date.”

The expressions of concern also come as Raoult saw his tenth study retracted, Retraction Watch noted.

While Raoult’s unfounded claims about hydroxychloroquine drew initial attention to his COVID-19-related work—with critics quickly noting flaws and weaknesses in his studies—his high-profile claims led critics and sleuths to dive deeper into his extensive publication record. There, they claim they found evidence of long-standing and egregious ethics violations, which were recently laid out in an investigative report by Science Magazine.

Essentially, critics claim Raoult and the institute that he led until 2021, the Hospital Institute of Marseille Mediterranean Infection (IHU), conducted hundreds of studies on humans without appropriate ethical approval or oversight or adequate consent from all participants, the Science investigation found. The IHU work spanned a wide variety of research topics, which involved collecting a variety of biological samples from patients, including vaginal swabs, feces, blood, urine, and breast milk.

However, critics noted 248 IHU studies that reused the same ethical approval code, “09-022,” despite being very different studies that included different kinds of sampling. The critics claim that the studies required separate ethical approvals and additional oversight. They also found that at least 17 studies relied on vulnerable populations, including refugees and people living in homeless shelters, raising serious questions about consent. Some of the studies were also conducted in African countries, where evidence of local ethical approval was either absent or incomplete.

Raoult told the magazine that his research groups had the appropriate ethical approval and said that his critics, whom he described as stalkers and cyber harassers, did not understand how French biomedical laws work.

In Elsevier’s expressions of concern and a linked “Publisher’s Note” from November, the publisher said that the concern was over “the articles’ adherence to Elsevier’s publishing ethics policies and the appropriate conduct of research involving human participants.” Elsevier is still investigating the matter but indicated that the expressions of concern are added “if it is deemed that there is a particular need to alert readers to serious concerns while [the] investigation is ongoing.”

Raoult has had nearly 50 studies likewise flagged over ethical concerns in PLOS journals, Retraction Watch noted. The latest of his studies to be retracted was in the journal Scientific Reports, with the editors there also stating it was due to a lack of ethical oversight. “The paper cites approval from an institutional ethics committee in France, but samples used in this study were also sourced from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Niger,” the retraction notice says. “The Authors were not able to provide documentation of approval from ethics committees in these countries or of compliance with local regulations regarding the use of such samples in research.”

Raoult is currently under criminal investigation in France.

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Pentagon calls for tighter integration between military and commercial space

Commercial space, military space, Science, Space, space force / /
Aerial view of the Pentagon on March 31.

Enlarge / Aerial view of the Pentagon on March 31.

Photo by Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images

A strategy document released by the Pentagon this week lays out where the US military can most effectively rely on the commercial space industry and what missions should remain in government hands.

“This marks a new effort to harness the remarkable innovation of the commercial space sector to enhance our resilience and strengthen integrated deterrence as a department,” said John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy.

The Space Force already buys a lot from the commercial space industry. The military doesn’t build or own satellite launch vehicles—those come from commercial companies. While the Space Force operates government-owned reconnaissance and surveillance satellites, it also buys supplementary data and imagery from the commercial industry.

“To protect our men and women in uniform and to ensure the space services they rely on will be available when needed, the department has a responsibility to leverage all tools available, and those tools include commercial solutions,” Plumb said Tuesday. “From launch to space domain awareness to satellite communications and more, the commercial sector’s ability to innovate, to scale production and to rapidly refresh their technology is opening the door to all kinds of possibilities.”

The Pentagon defines the commercial space sector as companies that develop capabilities for sale on the commercial market, where the military is one of many customers. This is separate from the Pentagon’s procurement of government-owned airplanes and satellites from the defense industry.

Ripe for exploitation

Build or buy is an age-old question facing everyone from homeowners to billion-dollar enterprises. When it comes to space, the Pentagon is buying more than ever. The military’s new strategy document outlines 13 mission areas for national security space, and while the commercial space industry is rapidly growing, the Pentagon predominately buys commercial services in only one of those mission areas.

“Out of those 13, the only that’s clearly primarily commercial now is SAML.. which is Space Access, Mobility and Logistics, and space access is launch,” Plumb said. “So SpaceX, Firefly, Rocket Lab, all these different companies doing commercial launch, that’s where the commercial sector clearly can provide services.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off February 14 with satellites for the US military's Missile Defense Agency. Another Falcon 9 awaits launch in the foreground.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off February 14 with satellites for the US military’s Missile Defense Agency. Another Falcon 9 awaits launch in the foreground.

Currently, the military classifies six mission areas as a hybrid of government and commercial capabilities:

  • Cyberspace operations
  • Satellite communications
  • Spacecraft operations,
  • Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
  • Space domain awareness (tracking of space objects)
  • Environmental monitoring.

In the remaining six mission areas, “a preponderance of functions must be performed by the government, while a select few could be performed by the commercial sector,” officials wrote in the commercial space strategy. In these areas, there is not yet a viable commercial market outside of the government, or commercial capabilities don’t match the government’s needs. These areas include:

  • Command and control (including nuclear command, control, and communications)
  • Electromagnetic warfare
  • Nuclear detonation detection
  • Missile warning
  • Position, navigation, and timing (GPS).

A major tenet of the commercial space strategy is for the military to support the development of new commercial space capabilities. This could involve supporting technology demonstrations and funding scientific research. Over time, new technology and new markets could bring more mission areas into the hybrid or commercial lists.

“I think what this strategy hopes to do is say, yes, continue working on bringing commercial entities in,” Plumb said. “This is actually a thing we want you to do, not just a thing you should be experimenting with.”

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Bird flu flare: Cattle in 5 states now positive as Texas egg farm shuts down

bird flu, CDC, Chickens, dairy cows, eggs, health, hens, Highly pathogenic avian influenza, influenza, Science, USDA / /

flare-up —

The risk to the general public remains low, federal officials say.

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Chicken eggs are disposed of at a quarantined farm with bird flu in Israel's northern village of Margaliot on January 3, 2022.

Enlarge / Chicken eggs are disposed of at a quarantined farm with bird flu in Israel’s northern village of Margaliot on January 3, 2022.

The flare-up of highly pathogenic bird flu continues to widen in US livestock after federal officials confirmed last week that the virus has spread to US cows for the first time. The virus has now been detected in dairy cows in at least five states, a single person in Texas exposed to infected cows, and an egg farm in Texas, all spurring yet more intense monitoring and biosecurity vigilance as the situation continues to evolve.

As of Tuesday, seven dairy herds in Texas, two in Kansas, and one each in Idaho, Michigan, and New Mexico had tested positive for the virus. The affected dairy herd in Michigan had recently received cows from one of the infected herds in Texas. It remains unclear if there is cow-to-cow transmission of the flu virus.

The virus—a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza or HPAI—has been devastating wild birds worldwide for the past several years. Throughout the devastating outbreak, the flu virus has spilled over to various species, including big cats in zoos, river otters, bears, dolphins, seals, squirrels, and foxes. While cows were an unexpected addition to the list, federal officials noted last week that affected dairy farms had found dead wild birds on their farms, suggesting that wild birds introduced the virus to the cows, not an intermediate host.

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Protection reported that a person in Texas who had contact with infected dairy cows had tested positive for the HPAI. The person’s only symptom was eye redness. The CDC said the person was treated with an antiviral for flu and was recovering. It is the second case of HPAI found in a person in the US. The first case was in a person in Colorado who was directly exposed to poultry infected with the virus. In that case, the person’s only symptom was fatigue over a few days. The person recovered. The CDC considers the risk of HPAI to the general public to be low.

Low risk

Meanwhile, the virus continues to spread to less-surprising animals: chickens. On Tuesday, Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., the country’s largest producer of fresh eggs, reported that HPAI was detected in one of its facilities in Texas. The facility is located in Parmer County, which sits at the border of Texas and New Mexico. It’s unclear if the egg facility is close to any of the affected dairy herds. Cal-Maine, following the US Department of Agriculture biosecurity protocols, immediately shut down the facility. Approximately 1.6 million hens and 337,000 pullets—young hens—were culled. Cal-Maine said the hens represented about 3.6 percent of the company’s total flock.

Since the outbreak began in wild birds, the virus has led to the deaths of over 82 million commercial and backyard birds in the US, with 48 states affected and over 1,000 outbreaks reported. The infections have spurred increases in egg and poultry prices.

It’s unclear if the virus will have the same effect on milk or beef, but so far, it appears that it will not. In the infected herds, the virus appears to only be affecting a small percentage of animals, particularly older animals, and they generally recover. As the USDA puts it there’s “little to no associated mortality reported.” Milk from sick cows is always diverted from the milk supply, but even if milk contaminated with HPAI were to make it into the supply, the virus would be destroyed in the pasteurization process.

Still, the continued, widespread outbreak and spillovers of HPAI in various species highlight the ever-present risk that influenza viruses could mix together, combining genetic fragments of different strains (genetic reassortment) to create a new strain that could spark outbreaks or even a pandemic in humans. In the current outbreak among dairy cattle, federal researchers were quick to check the genetic sequence of the HPAI, finding that, so far, the strain lacks mutations in key genetic regions that would signal the virus has become more infectious to humans. For now, the USDA and the CDC report that the risk to the public is low.

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The best robot to search for life could look like a snake

astrobiology, astronomy, Biology, Enceladus, planetary science, Robots, Science / /
Image of two humans sitting behind a control console dressed in heavy clothing, while a long tube sits on the ice in front of them.

Enlarge / Trying out the robot on a glacier.

Icy ocean worlds like Europa or Enceladus are some of the most promising locations for finding extra-terrestrial life in the Solar System because they host liquid water. But to determine if there is something lurking in their alien oceans, we need to get past ice cover that can be dozens of kilometers thick. Any robots we send through the ice would have to do most of the job on their own because communication with these moons takes as much as 155 minutes.

Researchers working on NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s technology development project called Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) might have a solution to both those problems. It involves using an AI-guided space snake robot. And they actually built one.

Geysers on Enceladus

The most popular idea to get through the ice sheet on Enceladus or Europa so far has been thermal drilling, a technique used for researching glaciers on Earth. It involves a hot drill that simply melts its way through the ice. “Lots of people work on different thermal drilling approaches, but they all have a challenge of sediment accumulation, which impacts the amount of energy needed to make significant progress through the ice sheet,” says Matthew Glinder, the hardware lead of the EELS project.

So, instead of drilling new holes in ice, the EELS team focuses on using ones that are already there. The Cassini mission discovered geyser-like jets shooting water into space from vents in the ice cover near Enceladus’ south pole. “The concept was you’d have a lander to land near a vent and the robot would move on the surface and down into the vent, search the vent, and through the vent go further down into the ocean”, says Matthew Robinson, the EELS project manager.

The problem was that the best Cassini images of the area where that lander would need to touch down have a resolution of roughly 6 meters per pixel, meaning major obstacles to landing could be undetected. To make things worse, those close-up images were monocular, which meant we could not properly figure out the topography. “Look at Mars. First we sent an orbiter. Then we sent a lander. Then we sent a small robot. And then we sent a big robot. This paradigm of exploration allowed us to get very detailed information about the terrain,” says Rohan Thakker, the EELS autonomy lead. “But it takes between seven to 11 years to get to Enceladus. If we followed the same paradigm, it would take a century,” he adds.

All-terrain snakes

To deal with unknown terrain, the EELS team built a robot that could go through almost anything—a versatile, bio-inspired, snake-like design about 4.4 meters long and 35 centimeters in diameter. It weighs about 100 kilograms (on Earth, at least). It’s made of 10 mostly identical segments. “Each of those segments share a combination of shape actuation and screw actuation that rotates the screws fitted on the exterior of the segments to propel the robot through its environment,” explains Glinder. By using those two types of actuators, the robot can move using what the team calls “skin propulsion,” which relies on the rotation of screws, or using one of various shape-based movements that rely on shape actuators. “Sidewinding is one of those gaits where you are just pressing the robot against the environment,” Glinder says.

The basic design also works on surfaces other than ice.

Enlarge / The basic design also works on surfaces other than ice.

The standard sensor suite is fitted on the head and includes a set of stereo cameras providing a 360-degree viewing angle. There are also inertial measuring units (IMUs) that use gyroscopes to estimate the robot’s position, and lidar sensors. But it also has a sense of touch. “We are going to have torque force sensors in each segment. This way we will have direct torque plus direct force sensing at each joint,” explains Robinson. All this is supposed to let the EELS robot safely climb up and down Enceladus’ vents, hold in place in case of eruptions by pressing itself against the walls, and even navigate by touch alone if cameras and lidar don’t work.

But perhaps the most challenging part of building the EELS robot was its brain.

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