Month: July 2024

Wherever the JWST looks in space, matter and energy interact in spectacular ways. The Webb telescope reveals more details of these interactions than any other telescope because it can see through the dense gas and dust that envelop many objects.

In a new image, the JWST discovers a young protostar that is only 100,000 years old.

The star is named L1527 and despite its young age it is still enclosed in the molecular cloud from which it emerged. This is one of the reasons NASA built the JWST (with support from ESA and CSA). The telescope can see through dust and gas to reveal the earliest stages of star formation.

This image was taken with MIRI, the mid-infrared instrument. The young protostar is at the heart of it all and is still growing, gathering mass from the protoplanetary disk that surrounds it. The disk is the tiny dark horizontal line in the middle of the image.

The protostar is not a main sequence star and so does not undergo fusion like the Sun. There may be a small amount of deuterium fusion in its core, but it generates energy in other ways. As the star's gravitational pull pulls material closer, the material is compressed and heats up. Further energy comes from shock waves created by incoming material colliding with existing gas. This is the energy that makes the star and its surroundings glow in the giant molecular cloud that gave birth to it.

As young protostars gain mass, they generate strong magnetic fields. Combined with the rotation of the star, these fields drive matter away from the star. So as a protostar gains mass, it also pushes some of it back into space in spectacular hourglass-shaped jets that emanate from the star's poles. These jets create visible bow shock waves in the matter around the star, the filament-like structures.

The star's surroundings contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These are organic compounds that are common throughout the universe and may have contributed to the emergence of life. They glow blue in the image, including in the filament-like structures.

The red region in the middle is a thick layer of gas and dust surrounding the young star, illuminated by the star's energy. The white region between the red and the blue is a mix of materials. There are more PAHs here, as well as ionized gases such as neon and other hydrocarbons.

This is not the first time that JWST has studied L1527. In 2022, it observed the protostar with its near-infrared camera (NIRCam).

JWST took this image of L1527 with its near-infrared camera (NIRCam). The upper central region has bubble-like shapes that are the result of stellar “burps” or sporadic ejections. The different colors come from layers of dust. The more dust there is, the less blue light escapes, so the orange/red areas are denser dust than the blue areas. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, and A. Koekemoer (STScI)

This beautiful spectacle of the interaction of matter and energy is fleeting. Over time, the protostar's powerful outflows will clear its surroundings of much of the gas and dust, although it will still have its protoplanetary disk. Eventually, the star will become a main sequence star, easily seen without its veil of gas and dust. At this point, the star's planetary system will begin to take shape.

There are unanswered questions about how protostars form, and one of the main scientific goals of JWST is star formation. For example, astrophysicists do not know exactly how and when fusion is triggered and a protostar becomes a main sequence star.

Although astronomers know that protostars are surrounded by strong magnetic fields, it is not yet known exactly how these fields are formed and what role they play in the collapse and rotation of the stars.

JWST has made some progress on this question. It recently confirmed that jets from young stars are aligned due to the star's rotation and magnetic fields. This is supported by theory but has not yet been confirmed by observations.

There are also uncertainties regarding the formation of binary stars. Do they form in the same way as single stars? Why are so many stars binary stars?

The exact nature of the events that trigger star formation is also unclear. Shock waves from supernovas can trigger the birth of stars, but what about other cases? Is it just a question of density?

The answers to these questions will come gradually. With its ability to see more detail in the young stars and the clouds of swirling gas and dust that surround them, JWST is making progress one frame at a time.

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From the climateREALISM

A recent CBS News article claims that sea level rise caused by climate change could cause large parts of New York City to be underwater by the year 2100. This is false. The best and most relevant data measuring sea level rise in New York's Battery Park area shows a slow but steady rise since 1850 that would be nowhere near enough to put any place in New York City underwater by 2100.

In the article, CBS News quotes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as saying:

“NOAA projects that sea levels in Battery Park City and on the East Side of Manhattan will rise by 2.5 to 6.5 feet by the year 2100.”

CBS interviewed a local resident who said:

“It’s crazy to even imagine,” says Nef Garcia, who lives in Battery Park City.

He's right, it's crazy and here's why.

NOAA's forecast relies heavily on computer climate models that predict a huge acceleration in sea level rise over the next 75 years. In particular, NOAA's Sea Level Rise Viewer, on which the forecast is based, is based on estimates and models from 2007. These estimates are unfortunately out of date, and with the new generation of models now in use, the old estimates used by CBS no longer accurately represent the future, but rather the best current forecasts. The forecasts cited by CBS are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 – IPCC estimate of average surface temperature increase based on the rate of CO2 emissions. Reproduced from Solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., Marquis, M., Averyt, K., Tignor MMB., et al (2007). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Since 2007, research has shown that computer climate models consistently overestimate the climate. The unfortunate thing about these “overestimated models” is that they have been in use for years, cited in other scientific papers, and used in thousands of media reports like this one to claim doomsday scenarios for the future.

So these models are inherently biased, and when you use their results to predict things like sea level rise, you end up with exaggerations rather than reality. This is a dramatic case of garbage in, garbage out.

Speaking of reality, there is actually sea level rise data from the Battery Park area of ​​New York City that is cited in the story. NOAA has presented the data here, see Figure 2 below:

Figure 2 – NOAA chart of sea level rise since 1855 in New York City.

Note the text provided by NOAA at the bottom of the graphic:

The relative sea level trend is 2.92 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.09 mm/year, based on monthly mean sea level data from 1856 to 2023, corresponding to a change of 0.96 feet in 100 years.

Actual data says 0.96 feet (less than a full foot) in 100 years, and of course it will be even less in the 75 years to 2100. Despite the hard data, another division of NOAA, which produced the sea level observer touted by CBS News, says “between 2.5 feet and 6.5 feet by the year 2100.” Clearly someone is wrong, they can't have both right. Sound scientific practice dictates that when data and theory conflict, one questions the theory, not the data, which in this case would mean trusting the actual data, not the projections of computer models.

Also of note are the earlier, inaccurate predictions that New York City would be inundated by rising sea levels. These were made by prominent figures such as James Hansen, Ph.D. of NASA, often called the father of global warming, who had an office just blocks from the tide gauge in Battery Park. In a 2001 interview with Salon.com, he said the following:

During my research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress in 1988. I went with him to the window, looked at Broadway in New York City, and asked, “If what you say about the greenhouse effect is true, will everything look different down there in 20 years?” He looked for a while, then was quiet and said nothing for a few seconds. Then he said, “Well, there will be more traffic.” Of course, I thought he had misunderstood the question. Then he explained, “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And because of the strong wind, the windows across the street will be taped up. And the same birds will no longer be there. The trees on the median will change.” Then he said, “There will be more police cars.” Why? “Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat increases.” (Emphasis, authors)

When WUWT reported the story in 2011 and discussed Hansen's incorrect prediction, it caused quite a stir, and lo and behold, the original reporter came to Hansen's defense by pushing the bar back another 20 years, saying he had misquoted Hansen when in reality it was 40 years, not 20.

According to this claim by Hansen, the West Side Highway will be underwater in 2028. Here is a Google Earth street view of the West Side Highway in 2023, about a mile north of Battery Park. It appears that the sea still has a long way to go before the highway will be submerged in 5 years, as seen in Figure 3 below:

Figure 3 – Google Earth street view of 2023 from the West Side Highway in New York City shows that sea levels there are by no means at risk of flooding.

When it comes to climate change, even the “father of global warming” has been wrong repeatedly.

Bottom line: Overly exaggerated predictions about New York City and sea levels have been around for decades, and none of them have come to pass, nor is there any evidence that they will happen in any realistic time frame. If CBS News had bothered to check the facts, they would have discovered this. Instead, they have chosen to create a horror story citing outdated, faulty computer models predicting future doom, ignoring real data that proves otherwise.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business on and off camera since 1978 as a television meteorologist and currently produces daily radio forecasts. He has developed weather graphics presentation systems for television and specialty weather instruments and has co-authored peer-reviewed articles on climate issues. He runs the world's most visited climate website, the award-winning wattsupwiththat.com.

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Related

Plate tectonics, oceans and continents could be the secret ingredients for complex life on Earth. And if these geological features are rare elsewhere in the universe, that may explain why we have not yet discovered intelligent alien life. New research from American and Swiss geoscientists suggests that these ingredients represent missing variables in the famous Drake equation, developed over half a century ago to estimate the probability of finding advanced civilizations in our galaxy. Incorporating these new variables could completely redefine the probability of discovering intelligent life in the Milky Way.

The impetus for this research, with its galaxy-spanning implications, came from a mystery all our own: Why did life take so long to evolve beyond simple organisms?

“Life has been around on Earth for about 4 billion years, but complex organisms like animals didn't appear until about 600 million years ago, not long after the start of modern plate tectonics,” said Robert Stern of the University of Texas at Dallas. “Plate tectonics really gets the evolutionary machine going, and we think we understand why.”

Stern and his colleague Taras Gerya of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich assume that plate tectonics – the grinding movement of the upper layers of the planet over long geological periods – helped accelerate the transition to complex life.

In Earth's early history, simple organisms formed in the ocean, but humanity – a highly advanced civilization capable of communicating across space – could not have existed if early life had not moved to land. Huge, resource-rich continents were therefore an indispensable prerequisite for the development of what Stern and Gerya call active communicative civilizations (ACCs) like humanity. But that alone was not enough: the continents had to move.

Earth's geological record suggests that plate tectonics accelerated evolution on land through five distinct processes: it increased nutrient supplies, accelerated oxygenation of the atmosphere and ocean, moderated climate, caused a high rate of alternation in the creation and destruction of habitats, and exerted non-catastrophic environmental pressures that forced organisms to adapt.

The end result of all this environmental pollution: us.

If Stern and Gerya are right, plate tectonics was a prerequisite for later innovations such as the bicycle, the smartphone and the Apollo program.

And for other civilizations in the galaxy to develop similar technological marvels, their planets may also need plate tectonics. But as far as we know, it's rare.

Earth is the only planet in our solar system that has plate tectonics. Volcanism exists on a few other worlds, such as Venus, Mars, and Io, but these worlds have a single fixed shell rather than multiple moving plates. Likewise, ocean worlds such as Enceladus and Europa are surrounded by a layer of ice that prevents any hypothetical life from moving onto land.

We don't know for sure whether there are planets with plate tectonics in distant solar systems – the resolution of today's space telescopes isn't good enough for that. But knowing that they might not exist allows for a more accurate version of the Drake equation.

The revised equation proposes two key factors: the fraction of habitable exoplanets with large continents and oceans, and the fraction of those whose plate tectonics last longer than 500 million years.

This version is much more sophisticated than the original Drake equation, which only took into account the proportion of habitable planets on which intelligent life had evolved.

The Drake equation, a mathematical formula for the probability of finding life or advanced civilizations in the universe. Image credit: University of Rochester

“The original formulation assumed that this factor was close to 1 or 100% – that is, evolution on all planets with life would proceed and, given enough time, lead to an intelligent civilization,” Stern said. “In our view, that is not true.”

Indeed. Their calculations reduce the percentage of these planets developing ACCs to just 0.003% at the minimum and 0.2% at the maximum – a far cry from the original 100%.

When you take into account all the other factors in the Drake equation: the number of stars forming each year, the number of stars with planets, the number of habitable planets, the number of habitable planets with life, the number of civilizations on those planets emitting detectable signals, and how long they emit those signals—well, the chances of finding intelligent alien life drop considerably.

The implications of the original Drake equation were that ACCs are common and we should see them everywhere. But when you add plate tectonics into the equation, the result changes and it becomes clear that it is perfectly understandable why we don't see ETs everywhere in the galaxy.

So intelligent extraterrestrial life may be rarer than we thought. And Earth may be more special than we thought. And all thanks to our planet's fragmented, unruly, and ever-changing top layer.

Learn more:

Amanda Siegfried: “Geoscientists explore why we may be alone in the Milky Way.” University of Texas at Dallas.

Robert Stern and Taras Gerya, “The importance of continents, oceans, and plate tectonics for the evolution of complex life: implications for the discovery of extraterrestrial civilizations.” Nature Scientific Reports.

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