The 2020 hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin is the most active in history with 30 named storms, breaking the previous record of 2005 (28). 6 storms were major storms including iota and set a record for the most recent major hurricane.
The Gulf and Central America were badly affected and were reminiscent of the period from 1988 to 1900 (see).
Despite the busy Atlantic, the Pacific was calm and the hemisphere as a whole had a quieter than the normal season (80% of the normal season).
The ACE of 179.8 ranks 13th behind 2017 and 2005 and the peak year 1933.
An active season was expected – several factors indicated this. LA NINA AND LOW SCISSORS IN THE ATLANTIC
We have a La Nina.
Gerry Bell showed how La Ninas creates fewer storms in the east Pacific and less shear in the east, which favors more Atlantic storms.
Mild eastern shear is observed in the main developing region and the Caribbean, consistent with continued suppression of La Nina Pacific.
2017 was a no-shear year with a much higher ACE (7th place with
224.9 compared to 179.8 in 2020). Strong western shear was observed from 2014 to 2016.
The pressure anomalies reflect the low pressure and storm marks under the 40N crest.
WARM ATLANTIC MODE OF THE AMO
The Atlantic is warm.
Unsurprisingly, the warm Atlantic creates more storms.
In the above figure, the red columns represent the seasonal AMO and the black lines the number of storms with Atlantic names
LOW SOLAR AND COLD HIGH ATMOSPHERE
Hodges and Elsner (FSU) found that low insolation resulted in a colder atmosphere, which encouraged more instability and possibly stronger storms.
In fact, review the 100MB temperature anomalies in the Atlantic Basin including the Caribbean since July.
So we had the “perfect storm” in the Atlantic basin with a La Nina that resulted in low vertical shear. The AMO’s warm mode provided more thermal energy and little solar energy, resulting in a colder atmosphere and greater instability. Despite the large number of storms and 6 majors, the ACE index is still lagging behind years like 2017 and 2005 and 10 others.
NOT unprecedented
Not every meteorologist believes that 2020 holds the record for most of the storms mentioned. With advances in technology, forecasters can identify smaller subtropical storms that may have gone unnoticed in the past.
“Now, if you want to make a fair comparison between storms and past storms, you have to be really careful about how you interpret the raw number,” said Christopher Landsea, director of tropical analysis and forecasting at the National Hurricane Center. said according to the New York Times. “There was a lot of hype about the record number of storms and yes, it was a busy year. There were terrible effects. But is that really a record? The answer is no. “
ACE supports that. And the decadal trend towards hurricanes and major hurricanes has subsided.
Weatherbell’s Hurricane Chief Guru Joe Bastardi commented on the season.
Summary of the tropical season of the N Hemisphere
Yes, most of the aforementioned storms in the Atlantic. Weatherbell undercut the total number of names
Yes, year with the highest impact on the US coast (no surprise as we did a big deal from April)
ACE at 180 in our ACE range from March! 13th highest on recordBTW another miserable year from the Euro models. We released this ACE in March. At the time, the euro was forecasting 80% of the average
This is where it gets interesting: ACE / Storm was 6 in the DEAD LAST ranking in last place up to ACE / Storm. How bad was it? THE AVERAGE ACE / STORM for the other 21 seasons was 12! The next year that year was another mega-year in 2005, but that was a respectable 9
The obvious conclusion is twofold,
Some of them should not have been named or would not have been named in previous years. Well, if you don’t want to accept that, it means more storms but weaker. It’s absolutely amazing to see that the ace / storm is HALF the average of all the other samples. But it gets worse as far as the hype goes:
Totally ignoring the lack of activity in the Pacific Basin and around the world.
I keep hearing this globally and globally that, which of course only applies if you ignore the fact that the number one area for ACE (Pacific) was so far below the normal West Pacific, 52%, the East Pacific 56%.
The total ACE between the two is usually 426. This year it was 226 so far. So the basin that is 4 times the normal value of the Atlantic is only 50% of its normal value! For the northern hemisphere was 80% of normal. So also with the hyperatlantic season.
GLOBAL we were below average.
So there is no question that the Western Hemisphere Impact is huge record business and should be talked about. However, if you want perspective and a bigger picture there are many reasons to counter the idea that this is an example of some type of atmospheric apocalypse but you have to look and when you do you will see it on the other Side of the coin has a lot to tell.
Of course, the coin tossed today when it comes to advancing ideas always seems to be going in one direction.
Welcome back to our Fermi Paradox series, where we take a look at possible resolutions to Enrico Fermi’s famous question, “Where Is Everybody?” Today, we examine the possibility that the reason for the Great Silence is that many planets out there are just too watery!
In 1950, Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with some of his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had worked five years prior as part of the Manhattan Project. According to various accounts, the conversation turned to aliens and the recent spate of UFOs. Into this, Fermi issued a statement that would go down in the annals of history: “Where is everybody?“
This became the basis of the Fermi Paradox, which refers to the disparity between high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and the apparent lack of evidence. Since Fermi’s time, there have been several proposed resolutions to his question, which include the possibility that Oceans Worlds (and not rocky planets) might be the best candidates for finding life.
The term “Ocean World” (not to be confused with “Waterworld“) refers to astronomical bodies that have icy surfaces and interior oceans. Within the outer Solar System, there are multiple moons that fit this description, including Jupiter’s moons Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Saturn’s moons Enceladus, Titan, Dione, Mimas, Neptune’s Triton, and maybe even Pluto, Ceres, and some of the larger Kuiper Belt Objects.
Astronomers hypothesize that chloride salts bubble up from the icy moon’s global liquid ocean and reach the frozen surface where they are bombarded with sulfur from volcanoes on Jupiter’s largest moon, Io. Credit: Keck Observatory.
Copernican vs. Anthropic
Related to this hypothesis is the ongoing debate between proponents of the Copernican Principle and the Anthropic Principle. The former states that if something is randomly-sampled, it is likely to be representative of the majority rather than being rare or unique. In the realm of astronomy and cosmology (where it is called the Cosmological Principle), it argues that Earth-like planets (and terrestrial life) are common in our Universe.
The Anthropic Principle essentially argues the opposite of the Cosmological Principle and holds that observations made of the Universe are entirely dependent on its laws being conducive to life. As David Brin would describe it in the context of the Fermi debate:
“The philosophical counter to the principle of mediocrity is the ‘Anthropic Principle,’ which proposes that it is possible, even in a great and diverse Universe, for an observer to witness a special place and time, especially if the special attribute is required for there to be an observer in the first place… Uniqueness advocates see nothing wrong with the proposal that the intelligent life we see on Earth is rare.”
In Rock or in Ice?
One of the main questions that keeps coming up during the whole Fermi debate is “are we looking in the right places?” When it comes right down to it, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is plagued by a frame of reference problem. To put it succinctly, the only planet we know that is capable of supporting life (as we know it) is Earth and the only technologically-advanced species that we know of is ourselves.
Material from Europa’s ocean that ends up on the surface will be bombarded by radiation, possibly destroying any biosignatures, or chemical signs that could imply the presence of life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ergo, when searching for potentially-habitable exoplanets, astronomers are confined to looking for “Earth-like” planets (which is something of a loaded term). What that boils down to is terrestrial planets (rocky) that have dense atmospheres and are warm enough to have flowing water on their surfaces. Certain biosignatures such as oxygen gas, carbon dioxide, methane, and other chemicals we associate with life are looked for as well.
However, there is a growing chorus within the scientific community that holds this view to be both limited and limiting. To illustrate, there’s the search for life that is going on right now in the Solar System, which is almost entirely focused on Mars. But past the Frost Line, the theoretical boundary in the Solar System beyond which volatiles can exist in solid form, there are icy moons that might harbor life in their interiors.
Origin
In 1979, the Voyager 1 and 2 missions passed through the Jovian system and took detailed photos of Europa’s surface. These photos are what led scientists to consider the possibility that this icy moon might have an interior ocean. Since then, the evidence for this has mounted considerably and, combined with data indicating the presence of surface plumes, has bolstered the case for there being life inside.
The discovery of similar conditions on other Jovian moons, several of Saturn’s moons, and other icy bodies that orbit gas giants or in the Kuiper Belt have led many in the scientific community to speculate that these bodies could be the most promising place to look for life beyond Earth. In recent years, this argument has been extended by astronomers and astrobiologists to the interstellar realm.
Europa During Voyager 2 Closest Approach. Credit: NASA/JPL
One such person is Dr. Lynnae C. Quick, a NASA planetary scientist and a member of the Dawn, Europa Clipper, and Dragonfly science teams. She is also a member of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute‘s (SSERVI) Toolbox for Research and Exploration (TREX) science team, NASA’s Roadmaps to Ocean Worlds (ROW), and the Outer Planets Assessment Group‘s (OPAG) Steering Committee.
As she explained in a recent NASA press release (dated June 18th):
“Plumes of water erupt from Europa and Enceladus, so we can tell that these bodies have subsurface oceans beneath their ice shells, and they have energy that drives the plumes, which are two requirements for life as we know it. So if we’re thinking about these places as being possibly habitable, maybe bigger versions of them in other planetary systems are habitable too.”
“If we see that a planet’s density is lower than Earth’s, that’s an indication that there might be more water there and not as much rock and iron. But if a planet’s surface temperature is less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius), where water is frozen, then we have an icy ocean world, and the densities for those planets are even lower.”
The goals of the ROW group were spelled out during a presentation titled “Exploration Pathways for Europa after initial In-Situ Analyses for Biosignatures,” which was made on Feb. 27th, 2017, at the NASA-hosted “Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop.” They include searching for biosignatures on Europa, analysis of near-subsurface material and depth estimates of its ocean, and characterizing surface/subsurface properties.
Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Credits: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SETI Institute
As Kevin Peter Hand – the Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – explained during the course of the presentation, these three goals are intertwined:
“Were biosignatures to be found in the surface material, direct access to, and exploration of, Europa’s ocean and liquid water environments would be a high priority goal for the astrobiological investigation of our Solar System. Europa’s ocean would harbor the potential for the study of an extant ecosystem, likely representing a second, independent origin of life in our own solar system. Subsequent exploration would require robotic vehicles and instrumentation capable of accessing the habitable liquid water regions in Europa to enable the study of the ecosystem and organisms.”
Similar arguments were made by Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb, two researchers from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at Harvard University. In a 2018 study, titled “Subsurface Exolife,” the two challenged traditional notions of habitability using the icy moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and other gas giants as examples.
As Prof. Loeb summarized this case for Universe Today via email back in Dec. of 2017, stating:
“The conventional notion of planetary habitability is the habitable zone (HZ), namely the concept that the “planet” must be situated at the right distance from the star such that it may be capable of having liquid water on its surface. However, this definition assumes that life is: (a) surface-based, (b) on a planet orbiting a star, and (c) based on liquid water (as the solvent) and carbon compounds. In contrast, our work relaxes assumptions (a) and (b), although we still retain (c).”
Scientists recently determined that a certain strain of Earth bacteria could thrive under conditions found on Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Possible Resolution?
Alan Stern, the Associate Vice President of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Principle Investigator of the NASA New Horizons mission, suggested that this could even a possible resolution to the Fermi Paradox. During the Habitable Worlds 2017 Workshop hosted by NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), he conducted a presentation titled “An Answer to Fermi’s Paradox In the Prevalence of Ocean Worlds?”
Central to Stern’s presentation was the hypothesis that the great majority of planets in our galaxy that have given rise to life and civilizations are interior ocean worlds. Due to their icy crusts, these civilizations would be unable to communicate with other planets using methods we might recognize (like radio transmitters). But seeing as how these civilians would be aquatic, it’s unlikely they would rely on technologies similar to our own.
These arguments are reminiscent of what Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University argued in his 2007 paper, “Paleontological Tests: Human-like Intelligence is not a Convergent Feature of Evolution.” In this paper, Lineweaver drew upon his many years of teaching about the Drake Equation to make the case for non-convergent evolution, stating that intermediate stages do not necessarily produce “inevitable” outcomes.
Citing conversations he had with Drake, Carl Sagan, and Simon Conway-Morris, he asserted that this is a common assumption in SETI research:
“What Drake, Sagan, and Conway-Morris have done is interpret correlated parallel moves in evolution as if they were unconstrained by shared evolution but highly constrained by a universal selection pressure towards intelligence that could be extrapolated to extraterrestrials.”
Artist’s impression of a habitable exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star. The habitability of the planets of red dwarf stars is conjectural (Credit ESO/M. Kornmesser public domain)
Similarly, Lineweaver showed how creatures with high Encephalization Quotients (E.Q.) – the ratio of brain weight to an exponent of body weight – will not inevitably develop technology or attempt to engage in interstellar communications:
“The most intelligent protostome is probably the octopus. After 600 million years of independent evolution and despite their big brains, octopi do not seem to be on the verge of building radio telescopes. The dolphinoidea evolved a large E.Q. between ~60 million years ago and ~20 million years ago (Marino et al 2004). Thus, dolphins have had ~20 million years to build a radio telescope and have not done so.
This strongly suggests that high E.Q. may be a necessary, but is not a sufficient condition for the construction of radio telescopes. Thus, even if there were a universal trend toward high E.Q., the link between high E.Q. and the ability to build a radio telescope is not clear. If you live underwater and have no hands, no matter how high your E.Q., you may not be able to build, or be interested in building, a radio telescope.”
This argument certainly applies as far as the Ocean Worlds Hypothesis is concerned. In the end, it could be that intelligent life is not rare at all, but that it’s simply unable to communicate with us.
Artist’s conception of a cryovolcanic eruption on Europa. Credit: Justice Blaine Wainwright
Implications and Criticism
The immediate and obvious implication of this hypothesis are that all of our current SETI efforts (which rely on searching for radio transmission in the cosmos) will not succeed. If life is statistically more likely to emerge on icy bodies with interior oceans at their core-mantle boundary, then finding evidence of this life will require a much more active approach.
In the coming years, NASA plans to send an orbiter to Europa (the Europa Clipper mission) which will analyze the moon’s surface in the hopes of learning more about its composition, monitor plume activity, and look for biosignatures. The data obtained by this mission will also inform possible future missions to the surface, such as NASA’s proposed Europa Lander.
This mission would examine the surface of Europa for biomarkers, most likely from a spot adjacent to an active plume. There have even been multiple proposals made over the past few decades for a robotic submarine that would investigate Europa’s interior ocean. Similar proposals have been made for exploring Enceladus and other Ocean Worlds.
In all cases, this presents serious ethical considerations. Whereas it is natural to want to get a closer look at Ocean Worlds in our Solar System to determine if there is life within them, the prospect of sending missions to explore them directly would threaten any life there. Such is the paradox of planetary protections, where the search for life entails the risk of contaminating and endangering it.
In terms of drawbacks, the Ocean Worlds hypothesis raises the all-important Copernican Principle (aka. Cosmological Principle). If most life in the Universe is to be found inside icy planets and moons, then planet Earth, terrestrial life, and humanity are atypical and are in a unique and advantageous position to observe the cosmos – which is consistent with the Anthropic Principle.
What’s more, it implies an imperative or even a duty for humanity to seek out life if it wants to make contact. Otherwise, the Fermi Paradox will endure because other life forms are unable to contact us. But if in so doing, we run the risk of contaminating and destroying any life we find, are we not better off letting it endure? All good questions, and one which help to frame the ethical questions that searching for extraterrestrial life raises.
These questions absolutely must be addressed before humanity starts sending robotic missions to Europa and other “Ocean Worlds.” If these are the only places we’re likely to find extraterrestial life in our Solar System or the Universe at large, perhaps it would be best to explore them from orbit or just leave them alone entirely. Luckily for us, it will be many years before a Europa submarine (or similar missions) would even be on the table.
Also, a number of next-generation telescopes will become operational this decade (like the James Webb and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope) that will gather a great deal more information on potentially-habitable exoplanets. So in addition to having time to discuss the ethical considerations thoroughly, we will also be able to place tighter constraints one where life could be found in the coming years.
In the meantime, be sure to check out this cool infographic about the Ocean Worlds in our Solar System, courtesy of NASA JPL Infographics:
Diagram of the Ocean Worlds in our Solar System. Credit: Kim Orr/solarsystem.nasa.gov
We have written many interesting articles about the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) here at Universe Today.
Here’s Where Are The Aliens? How The ‘Great Filter’ Could Affect Tech Advances In Space, Why Finding Alien Life Would Be Bad. The Great Filter, How Could We Find Aliens? The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and Fraser and John Michael Godier Debate the Fermi Paradox.
Want to calculate the number of extraterrestrial species in our galaxy? Head on over to the Alien Civilization Calculator!
And be sure to check out the rest of our Beyond Fermi’s Paradox series:
Astronomy Cast has some interesting episodes on the subject. Here’s Episode 24: The Fermi Paradox: Where Are All the Aliens?, Episode 110: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Episode 168: Enrico Fermi, Episode 273: Solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
Sources:
Brin, G.D. “The Great Silence – the Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, No.3 (1983)
Lineweaver, C. “Paleontological Tests: Human-like Intelligence is not a Convergent Feature of Evolution.” From Fossils to Astrobiology (2007)
Stern, A. S. “An Answer to Fermi’s Paradox In the Prevalence of Ocean Worlds?” American Astronomical Society, Division of Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting (2017)
Zeng, L. (et al.) “Growth Model Interpretation of Planet Size Distribution.” Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society (2019)
Nisr, C. (et al.) “Large H2O solubility in dense silica and its implications for the interiors of water-rich planets.” Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society (2020)
Quick, L. (et al.) “Forecasting Rates of Volcanic Activity on Terrestrial Exoplanets and Implications for Cryovolcanic Activity on Extrasolar Ocean Worlds.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 132, No. 1014 (2020)
Fauci drops his mask. Maybe he thought there were no cameras watching
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently, smallpox, polio, malaria, typhoid, scarlet fever and the Black Death were the weak products of the world before the pandemic, before global warming made things worse.
How climate change ushers in a new era of pandemic
A warming world expands the spectrum of deadly diseases and risks an explosion of new zoonotic pathogens such as bats, mosquitoes and ticks
BY JEFF GOODELL DECEMBER 7, 2020 7:00 AM ET
Jennifer Jones spent most of her summer at home, like so many of us, to avoid the plague. Jones, 45, lives in Tavernier, a parish in the Florida Keys south of Key Largo, and spent a lot of time in her yard playing around with plants. At some point a mosquito landed on her. This is not uncommon in Florida, and Jones doesn’t particularly remember that mosquito bite. But there was no garden mosquito in the garden. It was Aedes aegypti, an exquisitely designed killing machine that is one of the deadliest animals in human history. After a count, Half of the people who have ever lived have been killed by mosquito-borne pathogens. Aedes aegypti, who first came to North America on slave ships in the 17th century, can carry a whole arsenal of dangerous diseases, from yellow fever to Zika.
…
The Covid-19 pandemic is often compared to the 1918 influenza, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide. But it may be seen more closely as a preview of what’s to come. “We have entered a pandemic era,” wrote Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases in a recent article co-authored with NIAID colleague David Morens. The paper cites HIV / AIDS, which has killed at least 37 million people to date, as well as “unprecedented pandemic explosions” over the past decade. It’s a deadly list, starting with H1N1 swine flu in 2009, Chikungunya in 2014, and Zika in 2015. Ebola fever has been burning across much of Africa for six years. In addition, seven different coronaviruses are known that can infect humans. SARS-CoV was transmitted from an animal host, likely a civet, in 2002–03 and caused a near-pandemic before disappearing. The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS) jumped from camels to people in 2012, but never found a way to spread efficiently among people and quickly died out. Now we have SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
The reasons for this new era of pandemics are complex, but as Fauci and Morens point out, One of the main drivers is the climate crisis, which is shaking up the natural world and rewriting disease algorithms on the planet. The thawing of permafrost in the Arctic releases pathogens that have not seen daylight for tens of thousands of years. The vibrio bacterium that causes cholera, a diarrheal disease that hit cities like London and New York in the 19th century and still kills tens of thousands each year, thrives in warmer water. Vibrio vulnificus, an even more deadly strain of the same bacteria, while rare, has been increasingly detected in bays and estuaries on the east coast, particularly near Chesapeake Bay. Vibrio vulnificus can cause severe stomach pain when you eat shellfish (in rare cases this can be fatal). However, if the bacterium gets into a cut or wound, it becomes a carnivorous horror, killing one in five people who come in contact with it.
I really wish the greens would stop lying the lie that mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases need a warm climate to thrive.
In the depths of the Little Ice Age, malaria was an endemic killer in Northern Europe. It didn’t matter that the northern summers of the Little Ice Age were short and that the climate was freezing for most of the year. All the malaria mosquitoes needed was a few weeks of warm enough weather in summer to breed and infest the far north with deadly pathogens.
Mosquitoes are still a problem in the far north. Anyone who thinks mosquitoes are in short supply in the Arctic due to the cold climate should try a visit in late spring / early summer. Some of the fertile mosquito clouds that thrive in cold climates can carry malaria and other dangerous pathogens.
As for the impact of global warming on Covid-19, there is strong evidence that Covid-19 prefers cold, dry winter weather. According to the University of Sydney, high humidity pulls Covid-19 virions out of the air, which drastically reduces the risk of transmission.
… Professor Ward said that there are biological reasons why moisture plays a role in airborne virus transmission.
“When the humidity is lower, the air is drier and the aerosols get smaller,” he said. “When you sneeze and cough, these smaller infectious aerosols can float longer in the air. That increases exposure to other people. When the air is humid and the aerosols are larger and heavier, they will fall and hit surfaces faster. “…
If we want to get rid of Covid-19 and reduce our risk of exposure to all airborne respiratory virus infections, including those yet to be discovered. We need more hot, humid weather.
Author’s Note: This article was written in collaboration with Vincent Kofman, a co-author of the reviewed paper and a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Amino acids are one of the most important building blocks of life as we know it. In the core they contain an amino and an acid group, through which they can combine with other amino acids. This linking process can form long chains, which makes them form proteins. In humans, 20 different amino acids all make up proteins, and the difference between them lies in the molecular side chain between the amino and acid groups. The different groups create links in the chain and fold them into highly specific shapes so that the proteins can perform highly specific tasks ranging from metabolism to muscle movement and cell duplication.
Given that their presence is a necessary, if not necessarily sufficient, condition for the development of life, scientists have spent many decades exploring where they first formed. With an article published in Nature Astronomy last month, they took a step closer to that understanding by discovering that it is possible to form glycine, the simplest amino acid, in the star nurseries of interstellar clouds.
The evolution of glycine in such an inhospitable environment had previously been theorized. In particular, glycine was observed in samples from comet Wild 2, which had returned from the Stardust mission, as well as in observations of the comet from comet 67P / Churymov-Gerasimenko. Since comets formed together with the solar system from the same original starting material, they are a window into this solar system in earlier years. Glycine was seen in these windows, so scientists speculated that it could have formed in the basic material shared by both comets and the solar system itself.
Amino acids in interstellar space. Credit AGU Youtube Channel
A team led by Sergio Ioppolo from Queen Mary University set out to form glycine in the conditions of the interstellar gas clouds in which stars, planets and comets are born. Their work reflected another famous chemistry experiment that was looking for the molecules needed for the origins of life – the Miller-Urey experiment. In this work, scientists attempted to restore conditions believed to have existed on early Earth by throwing together a “primordial soup” of chemicals and adding lightning to the mixture. Under these conditions, Miller and Urey found a pile of organic molecules that could be the precursors of the first sparks of life.
Dr. Ioppolo and his team tried to answer the same question, but examined very carefully how these essential molecules of life are formed. They built an ultra-high vacuum chamber and lowered the temperature to 10 to 20 degrees Kelvin to mimic the conditions in dark interstellar gas clouds. They then placed chemicals known to be present in these interstellar clouds, such as carbon monoxide, ammonia, and methane. Then they exposed the frozen chemicals to unbound atoms, which triggered chemistry similar to what they did under dark cloud conditions. Like magnets clicking together, the atoms broke the existing chemicals apart, allowing their components to recombine in a unique way.
Discussion of interstellar clouds and dark nebulae by JPL scientists. Photo credit: ScienceMagazine Youtube Channel
The chemical conditions in dark clouds are very different from those here on Earth. The density of the particles is a million times lower and the temperatures are so low that almost everything freezes solid. Under these conditions, molecules form atom by atom, and like Lego bricks, certain molecules can be built from scratch. By re-establishing these conditions in the laboratory, scientists can find out which chemical reactions are likely to take place and which molecules are likely to form.
The work of Dr. Ioppolo and his team did just that, showing that glycine can form under the conditions that occur in these dark corners of space. Similar to the sun, most of the material in dark clouds consists of helium and hydrogen. Hydrogen can exist as an H2 molecule and as an unbound atom.
Formation of glycine from the atoms and molecules in the interstellar gas clouds. Photo credit: Ioppolo et al.
The unbound atom is highly reactive and initiates chemistry with almost everything it encounters. It combines with other atoms and builds molecules like CH4 (methane), NH3 (ammonia). In the intermediate stages of this hydrogen bombardment, the precursor chemicals CH3 and NH2 can react to form CH3NH2, methylamine. Methylamine is a precursor to glycine and was found in abundance in Comet 67P. This finding most likely leads directly to the finding of glycine abundance in the same comet.
Youtube video with details about glycine. Photo credit: Unacademy NEET Youtube Channel
Hydrogen can not only produce methane or ammonia, it can also react with CO2, which is also abundant in the layers of ice in the dark clouds. If this is the case, the carbon atom can form a different bond. Sometimes this extra bond with methylamine forms, resulting in glycine. In the experiments described in the most recent publication, the peculiarities of these reactions were examined and the frequency of the glycine formed in these reactions was calculated. The calculation shows that the amount of glycine formed is sufficient to enrich planets such as early Earth with prebiotic molecules and to facilitate the emergence of life.
After the chemical proof of concept is demonstrated, scientists can draw on the numerous implications this work has for both existing theories and future studies. The paper shows that it is possible that the building blocks of life result from natural processes that take place prior to star formation and that enrich the raw materials of the planets with the essential building blocks of life. Although these molecules may not survive the harsh events of planet formation, the fact that they may be present in the raw materials of stars and planets suggests that their abundance is widespread throughout the universe.
Discussions about amino acids in space. Photo credit: SciShow Youtube Channel
Although only glycine was found in the experiments described in the publication, the detection of the formation of the amino acid backbone also opens the way for the formation of other amino acids. Previous research has shown that the central carbon atom that carries the group that gives amino acids their function is most likely targeting reactions that take place in the same ice in which they are formed. This indicates that the other biologically relevant amino acids can also form under the same conditions.
The study also leads to some other interesting questions. If the glycine is there, how can we detect it directly? Under the right circumstances, telescopes can detect glycine when it is heated and gasified. As new stars heat the surrounding material, the original ice is melted and the constituents can be detected using ground-based observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. A deep look into these star kindergartens revealed a complex chemistry and taught us a lot about the formation of stars and planets.
This photo of the ALMA antennas on the Chajnantor plateau in Chile, more than 5000 meters above sea level, was taken a few days before the start of the ALMA Early Science and shows only a group of the 66 dishes. ALMA observes the sky in sub-millimeter light, a part of the spectrum that is invisible to the human eye and lies between infrared and radio waves. Photo credits: ALMA (ESO / NAOJ / NRAO) / W. Garnier (ALMA)
Naturally, if the building blocks of life are in the raw materials of stars and planets, what is the probability that life is in other places in the Milky Way? If our solar system alone contains a handful of planets and moons on which life could be possible, we can only imagine how many planets and stars there are that could house life. In the appropriate context, this better understanding of the formation of the building blocks of life has some amazing implications for the potential abundance of life across the galaxy.
Learn more: Nature – A non-energetic mechanism for glycine formation in the interstellar medium Queen Mary University of London – the building blocks of life can form long before stars Sci News – Amino Acids Can Form Long Before Stars and Planets: Study C & EN – Interstellar glycine search intensified PhysicsWorld – amino acid detected in space
Mission statement: Artist’s impression of an environment in which the experimenters wanted to create glycine. Photo credit: Professor Harold Linnartz
IMAGE: A SEISMIC STATION ON THE AUTOR INSTALLED GRASSLAND ICE SHEET. The snow accumulation in one year is ~ 1.5 m, and the solar panels are buried in the snow. SNOW DISTANCE… show more CREDIT: GENTI TOYOKUNI
A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a current of hot stones known as the mantle cloud that rises from the core-mantle boundary below central Greenland and melts the ice from below.
The results of their two-part study were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
“Knowledge of the Greenland cloud will improve our understanding of volcanic activity in these regions and the problematic problem of global sea level rise caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,” said Dr. Genti Toyokuni, co-author of the studies.
The North Atlantic region is full of geothermal activity. Iceland and Jan Mayen contain active volcanoes with their own mantle clouds, while Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean – is a geothermal area. However, the origin of these activities and their interlinking are largely unexplored.
The research team discovered that the Greenlandic cloud rose from the core-mantle boundary to the mantle transition zone below Greenland. The cloud also has two branches in the lower mantle that flow into other springs in the region and provide heat to the active regions in Iceland and Jan Mayen and the geothermal area in Svalbard.
Their results were based on measurements of the 3D seismic velocity structure of the crust and the entire mantle under these regions. To get the measurements, they used seismic topography. Numerous seismic wave arrival times have been inverted to obtain 3D images of the underground structure. The method works in a similar way to a CT scan of the human body.
Toyokuni was able to use seismographs that he had installed on the Greenland ice sheet as part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network. The project, launched in 2009, envisages collaboration between researchers from 11 countries. The joint team between the USA and Japan is mainly responsible for the construction and maintenance of the three seismic stations on the ice sheet.
Looking ahead, Toyokuni hopes to study the thermal process more closely. “This study gave the bigger picture, so if you examine the feathers at a more local level, you will get more information.”
In 2013, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Gaia mission in space, a next-generation observatory that will collect data on the positions, distances and proper movements of stars over the next five years. The resulting data will be used to create the largest 3D space catalog ever, with a total of 1 billion stars, planets, comets, asteroids, quasars and other celestial objects.
Since the mission began, ESA has released three early releases of Gaia data, each of which has resulted in new research and more detailed maps of our galaxy. Based on the third version of mission data, known as Early Data Release 3 (Gaia EDR3), astronomers have created a map of the entire sky that includes updated data on celestial objects and manages to capture the overall brightness and color of stars in our galaxy.
The EDR3 was published on December 3, 2020 and contains data on the position and brightness of more than 1.8 billion stars, the parallax and proper motion of almost 1.5 billion stars, and the color of more than 1.5 billion stars. It also contains data on more than 1.6 million extra-galactic light sources, including stars, globular clusters, and more distant galaxies.
Density map of the galaxy based on EDR3 with no additional color. Photo credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / A. Moitinho and M. Barros
New cards
Compared to the previous version (Gaia DR2), which was released in April 2018, this means an increase of more than 100 million sources. In addition, the latest version included improvements in general accuracy and precision measurements. With this updated data, astronomers were able to create a map that shows not only the brightness but also the density of our galaxy.
While the lighter regions correspond to denser concentrations of bright stars, the darker regions are parts of the sky in which there are fewer and weaker stars. All over the galactic plane are dark spots created by foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust that absorb light from more distant stars. The bright horizontal structure corresponds to the flattened disk of the Milky Way (also known as the plane of the galaxy) viewed from the edge.
Many of them are clouds that hide star nurseries, diffuse nebulae in the interstellar medium in which new stars are born. Across the galactic plane there are regions of dark spots that correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust that absorb light from stars further away. And of course there is the bright “bulge” in the middle, the dense concentration of stars and gas that represents the galactic center.
Then there are the many spherical and open clusters that appear as bright spots on the picture, some of which are galaxies beyond our own. The two bright objects at the bottom right of the image are the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the two dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way (and are expected to merge with it in a few billion years). .
The color of the stars was reproduced by combining the total amount of light collected by Gaia with all of the blue and red light recorded from each patch of the sky. This is another improvement that the EDR3 offers, namely the presence of color information for around 1.5 billion sources (200 million more than DR2).
Galactic collisions
Another breakthrough from this latest data release was the way astronomers were able to track populations of older and younger stars all the way to the galactic anti-center (the extreme edge of the galaxy). This enabled astronomers to see how previous mergers affected the structure of the Milky Way disk and create computer models that predicted how they would get larger over time.
The data showed that in the outer regions of the disk there is a slow moving component of stars above the plane moving down and a fast moving component below the plane moving up. This pattern took astronomers completely by surprise, and in the recent past has reinforced the case for a near-collision between the Milky Way and Sagittarius’ dwarf galaxy.
This dwarf galaxy, which contains tens of millions of stars, is located about 70,000 light-years from Earth and orbits the Milky Way around its poles. This satellite galaxy is currently being cannibalized by the Milky Way, a process that has brought it close to our galaxy a number of times in the past. With each pass, the gravitational influence of this galaxy was sufficient to disturb some stars in the disk of our galaxy.
Gaia’s star movement for the next 400,000 years. Photo credits: ESA / Gaia / DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO./A. Brown, S. Jordan, T. Roegiers, X. Luria, E. Masana, T. Prusti, and A. Moitinho
The ESA’s data processing and analysis consortium (DPAC), a Europe-wide team of experts and software developers, has already detected a subtle ripple in the Milky Way. They attributed this to earlier collisions between Sagittarius and the Milky Way between 300 and 900 million years ago. These latest data support this based on the movement of stars in the galaxy’s disk.
Teresa Antoja, Marie-Curie-Sk? Odowska Fellow at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona, worked with DPAC colleagues on this analysis. “The movement patterns in the disk stars are different from what we previously believed in,” she said recently in an ESA press release. “It could be a good candidate for all of these disorders, as some simulations by other authors show.”
The movement of the stars
In addition, researchers from the University of Helsinki created an animation showing the correct motions of 40,000 randomly selected stars over the next 1.6 million years. As it progresses, the stars seem to move from the left side of the galaxy and gather to the right, which is due to the movement of the solar system. Similarly, the apparent movements of quasars helped constrain the absolute motion of the solar system.
“The knowledge Gaia has acquired will affect the precision of satellite navigation in the future,” said Professor Markku Poutanen of the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI). “The satellite positions and the Earth’s orientation in space are determined in a frame of reference that is linked to the directions of the quasars. The precision and the state of the art of the reference frame are decisive for the precision in navigation. “
As Prof. Karri Muinonen from Helsinki University and a research professor at FGI explained:
“In the animation, short and long paths describe changes in the star positions with 80,000 years. The former mainly relate to distant stars, while the latter are exclusively related to the nearby stars. From time to time short distances become long and long distances become short. This is also related to the changing distances of the stars. “
“This shows the average movement of the solar system in relation to the surrounding stars. From a Finnish point of view, it is fascinating that the movement documented by Gaia coincides with the pioneering research into the movement of the solar system of Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander (1799-1875) at the Helsinki Observatory in the 19th century. “
Argelander was a member of the Helsinki University Observatory, known at the time as the Imperial Alexander University. While was the first astronomer to calculate the movement and direction of the solar system around the center of the Milky Way. These observations were made while Argelander was at the Turku Observatory from 1827 to 1831, along with the exact positions of 560 stars.
Additional research conducted by DPAC has measured how the solar system’s motion accelerates over time. Using the observed movement of extremely distant galaxies, they estimated that the solar system was accelerating at a rate of 0.23 nm / s2 (relative to the rest of the universe), an increase of about 115 km per year.
Star count
The EDR3 data also made it possible to conduct a new census of stars known as the Gaia Catalog of Nearby Stars, which contains 331,312 objects (an estimated 92% of stars) within 326 light years of the solar system. This is the first census since the Gliese catalog of nearby stars was created in 1957. It initially contained only 915 objects, which were updated to 3,803 objects in 1991 and were limited to a distance of 82 light years.
In other words, the New Gaia census shows 100 times the number of objects four times the distance. It also provides location, motion and brightness measurements that are orders of magnitude more accurate than the Gliese catalog. How Muinonen described the data mining process:
“We are responsible for the daily calculation of the orbits for asteroids discovered by Gaia. Ground-based follow-up observations are organized based on these calculations. Before the data is published, we take part in the validation of Gaia observations of asteroid positions, brightnesses and spectra.
“Our research with Gaia data focuses on asteroid orbits, periods of rotation and polar orientations, masses, shapes, and surface structure and composition properties. When calculating the collision probabilities for near-Earth asteroids, the accuracy of reference frames plays a central role. “
As Timo Prusti, the Gaia project scientist, added:
“Gaia EDR3 is the result of an enormous effort by everyone involved in the Gaia mission. It is an extraordinarily large data set, and I look forward to the many discoveries that astronomers from around the world will make with this resource. And we’re not done yet; More great data will follow as Gaia continues to take measurements from orbit. “
These and other new discoveries are just the latest breakthroughs in data that Gaia has collected over the past seven years. EDR3 is the first of a two-part version, which will be followed by the publication of full data version 3 (DR3). Due to the pandemic, the date has been postponed, but it is currently expected to take place in the first half of 2022.
On October 1, at a meeting of ESA’s Science Program Committee (SPC), the Gaia mission was extended again – this time to December 31, 2022. Until the mid-term review and confirmation by the SPC, the mission can even use all the data it provides , it is clear that ESA wants to keep this mission going!
Further reading: ESA, ESA (2), University of Helsinki
The President of China Xi Jinping arrives in London on October 19, 2015. From the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (state visit to China) [CC BY 2.0 or OGL]via Wikimedia Commons
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
It looks like President Trump was right when China lies about Covid cases. China has grossly underestimated the scale of the Covid outbreak in mainland China, according to leaked documents revealed by CNN.
The Wuhan files
Leaked documents reveal China’s mistreatment of the early stages of Covid-19
Exclusive to Nick Paton Walsh, CNN
Updated 0839 GMT (1639 HKT) December 1, 2020
London – A frontline group of medics, likely exhausted, stand huddled in a video conference while China’s most powerful man raises a hand in greeting. It’s February 10 in Beijing, and President Xi Jinping, who has not been seen in public for weeks, is speaking to hospital staff in Wuhan City to contain the spread of an as yet officially unnamed novel coronavirus 1,200 kilometers from the epicenter Xi expressed condolences to those who died in the outbreak. He urged greater public communication as concerns emerged around the world about the potential threat posed by the new disease. On the same day, Chinese authorities reported 2,478 new confirmed cases – bringing the global total to more than 40,000, with fewer than 400 cases occurring outside of mainland China. However, CNN can now show how official documents circulated internally show that this was only part of the picture. The main findings from CNN
In a report labeled “Internal document, please keep confidential,” local health officials in Hubei Province, where the virus was first discovered, listed a total of 5,918 newly discovered cases on February 10, more than double the official public number confirmed cases cases that break the total into a variety of subcategories. That larger number was never fully disclosed at the time, as China’s accounting system appeared to downplay the severity of the outbreak in the turmoil of the first few weeks of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party is desperately trying to divert attention from its catastrophic mismanagement of the Covid outbreak. their persecution of whistleblowers, their ruthless disregard for other nations, and their authoritarian cover-ups.
Now they are trying to claim Australia is the source of the Wuhan Covid-19 outbreak.
China claims the coronavirus may have started in AUSTRALIA and traveled to Wuhan’s wet market via frozen steak exports – and is attacking the US alliance with insulting new cartoons
Beijing officials and media are pushing the theory that the coronavirus did not start in China
An article in the state-controlled Global Times said it was imported on frozen food
Article said countries including Australia exported food to the Wuhan Wet Market
Western scientists say the theory is “highly speculative” and unlikely to be true
By CHARLIE MOORE, POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
RELEASED: 11:31 AEDT, December 7, 2020 | UPDATED: 2:02 p.m. AEDT, December 7, 2020
Beijing has claimed the coronavirus may have surfaced outside of China and traveled to a wet market in Wuhan via frozen food exports from countries like Australia.
An article in Sunday’s government-controlled newspaper Global Times said the idea that the virus was imported into the Huanan wet market last year “cannot be ruled out” – although it has been admitted that there is no evidence to support it gives.
Beijing has been pushing the theory since October when experts tracking an outbreak in Qingdao city found live coronavirus samples on packets of imported frozen cod.
Western scientists say the theory is “highly speculative” and believe it is much more likely that the disease was first transmitted from animals to humans in the Wuhan area.
China’s increasingly absurd pursuit of blame and continued failure to address its internal Covid problems show they have learned nothing and done nothing to correct the flaws in their system of government that caused this disaster.
This is not the first time the Communist disease outbreak cover-ups have resulted in unnecessary deaths in China. In 2003, China confessed to covering up a major SARS outbreak. SARS is a close relative of Covid-19.
China admits SARS cover-up
April 21, 2003 – 10:00 a.m.
Beijing: The Chinese leadership has taken dramatic steps to end a cover-up on the SARS epidemic, revealing 14 new deaths and hundreds of cases, sacking two senior officials, and canceling the May 1 holiday when the global death toll hit 204 rise.
The move followed international criticism of China’s treatment for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
It also came when Hong Kong announced seven new deaths from the disease.
Singapore has taken the drastic step, with 14 registered SARS deaths, ordering 2,400 people to be quarantined at home for 10 days for possible exposure to a SARS patient in a market.
In a statement on Sunday, the Chinese Ministry of Health said there were 346 confirmed cases and 402 suspected cases in Beijing alone, and that 18 people had died of SARS in the capital.
The number of cases in Beijing is nine times higher than the previous official figure of 44 cases and four deaths. The nationwide death toll from SARS rose to 79, with 1,814 confirmed cases.
Shortly after the statement, state media reported that Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong had been removed from senior positions in the Communist Party, a formal move that will almost certainly result in them being fired from their government posts.
The basic problem, in my opinion, is that communists are not good at conveying bad news to the boss. From the Soviet Chernobyl disaster to SARS in 2003 and Covid-19, we have consistently found a complete failure in rational action and a paralysis of decision-making in the face of unexpected events, until the problem is so serious that it can no longer be hidden . Without free press to smooth the flow of information, it often takes far too long for seriously bad news to get to the real decision-makers. When the information gets through, the decision makers act in their own interest, often with a ruthless disregard for the safety of other nations.
This structural communist incompetence of China, with its endemic aversion to bad news, even to its own superiors, and its serial track record of hiding outbreaks rather than trying to contain them, is, in my opinion, a lingering threat to both their own people and themselves Rest of the world.
The next time the ChiComs cover up an outbreak of disease, and there will be a next time, the disease that eventually emerges could be far worse than Covid-19 or SARS.
The Stingray Nebula is the youngest known planetary nebula. Astronomers have witnessed its formation for half a century, and now they have noticed something strange: it is fading.
“It’s very, very dramatic and very strange,” said Martín A. Guerrero of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, Spain, one of the co-authors of a new study on the stingray nebula. “What we are observing is the development of a fog in real time. In a few years we will see variations in the fog. We have never seen this with the clarity that we get with this view. “
Between 1996 and 2016, successive Hubble images of the Stingray Nebula showed it to become fainter, darker, and less noticeable. It is a shadow of its former self and is getting weaker by the day. For example, due to the presence of ionized oxygen, brightness decreased by an unprecedented factor of 1,000 in the twenty years between observations.
What’s happening?
The stingray nebula in 1996 (left) and 2016 (right). Photo credit: NASA, ESA, B. Balick (University of Washington), M. Guerrero (Institute for Astrofísica de Andalusia) and G. Ramos-Larios (University of Guadalajara)
The astronomer Karl Gordon Henize was the first to categorize the central star of the Stingray Nebula, known as SAO 244567, as a bright blue giant in 1967. Just four years later, astronomers discovered that the late-stage star was surrounded by a faint nebula that they quickly identified as the beginnings of a planetary nebula. The stingray has the official name Hen 3-1357 and is a type of nebula that is formed by a star as it nears the end of its life and begins to expel its outer layers into the surrounding system.
Starting in 1971, the temperature of SAO 244567 skyrocketed and rose from 40,000 to 108,000 degrees Fahrenheit around the turn of the millennium. And then it reversed course, cooling and darkening in the process.
As the intensity of the central star decreased, the amount of radiation that hit the nebula fell. As if the lights in your room were dimmed to make it more moody, the Stingray mist slowly turned off.
Astronomers suspect the sudden rise in temperature was due to a flash of helium, a critical condition in a giant star in which a shell of unburned helium melts in just one day, releasing a tremendous amount of pent-up energy. But because the stars are so big, it can take years for the changes to become noticeable on the surface.
But now that the star is back to normal, the stingray’s brilliance is fading. Presumably, this happens all over the universe all the time, but this time astronomers were fortunate enough to see the process in action.
