From geology to quantum science to a healthy planet...

For your weekend... as I traditionallly do, here's a round-up of recent science news...

First, here's the latest CARTA conference - the Center for Anthropogeny (human origins) at UCSD. This one with talks having to do with the theme of "The Planet Altering Apes."

== Physical Science ==

The observation of the Higgs boson  at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has validated the last missing piece of the standard model (SM) of elementary particle physics.  The mass of the W boson, a mediator of the weak force between elementary particles, should be tightly constrained by the symmetries of the standard model of particle physics.  So… do recent results mean we have a problem here?

“Wireless Sensors: Tiny Battery-Free Devices Float In The Wind Like Dandelion Seeds…” or a lot like the ‘localizer nanochips in Vernor Vinge’s great novel  A Deepness in the Sky.  

A new form of ice discovered, which forms at high-pressures: Shades of Kurt Vonnegut! Here’s ‘ice-ten’ or Ice-X!  Scientists speculate that it could be common on distant, water-rich exoplanets.

Asking the Ultimate Questions, Robert Laurence Kuhn’s recent presentation at the Institute of Art and ideas (IAI-UK), is posted on the Closer To Truth YouTube channel.

== The biologic world ==

States and cities have also begun to decriminalize psilocybin – the core of magic mushrooms - in general or for medicinal purposes, especially treatment of depression. 

The disturbing rise of bird flu; already more than 27 million birds have died or been slaughtered. Will we see a poultry vaccine?

Apparently fish can calculate....stingrays can perform simple addition and subtraction in the low digit range.

Forty to fifty percent of all animal species are actually parasites, including 300,000 different types of worms that parasitize vertebrates.

Interesting question: Why didn't our primitive ancestors get cavities?

== Insights into our planet ==

In Earth’s past, two gargantuan 'super-mountain' ranges may have fueled two of the biggest evolutionary boom times in our planet's history — the first appearance of complex cells roughly 2 billion years ago, and the Cambrian explosion of marine life 541 million years ago.  

Is Earth’s ‘solid’ inner core something like my fictional-hypothetical descriptions in Earth? If the material is ‘superionic,’ then the majority iron atoms might be 'solid' in the crystalline lattice structure, whereas the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules would diffuse through the medium, creating the liquid-like element.  

And in related matters, the top mineral form of the mantle is perovskites… which are still (since I wrote Earth) among the best high pressure/high temperature superconductors. So… is she alive? Way too soon to tell. But the traits (or potentialities) keep piling up!

Moving a bit outward toward Earth's mantle… “Earth is layered like an onion, with a thin outer crust, a thick viscous mantle, a fluid outer core, and a solid inner core. Within the mantle, there are two massive blob-like structures, roughly on opposite sides of the planet. The blobs, more formally referred to as Large Low-Shear-Velocity Provinces (LLSVPs), are each the size of a continent and 100 times taller than Mt. Everest. One is under the African continent, while the other is under the Pacific Ocean.”  Might this explain the unusual solidity of the African continent?

Meanwhile, fast melting Alpine permafrost may contribute to rising global temperatures.

There have been wonderful paleontologic finds at the Tanis site, in the Dakotas, which show many creatures exceptionally well-preserved who seem to have died suddenly the very day that asteroid ended the era of the dinosaurs. I look forward to the show - Dinosaurs: The Final Day with Sir David Attenborough, which was broadcast on BBC One. A version for the U.S. science series Nova on the PBS network will be broadcast later in the year.

And...an allegory of uncertainty

Four quantum physicists are in a car. Heisenberg is driving like he is in The Matrix. Schrödinger is in the front seat waving at the other cars. Einstein and Bohr are in the back arguing when they get pulled over. The officer asks Heisenberg, “do you know how fast you were going?”

“No, but we know exactly where we are,” Heisenberg replies.

The officer looks confused and says, “you were going 120 km/h!”

Heisenberg throws his arms up and cries, “Great! Now we’re lost!”

The officer looks over the car and asks Schrödinger if they have anything in the trunk.

“A cat,” Schrödinger replies.

The officer opens the trunk and yells, “This cat is dead!”

Schrödinger angrily replies, “Well it is now.”

Bohr says, “on the bright side, a moment ago we didn’t have a position, speed, or a cat. Now we have all three!”

Fed up, the officer says, “I just want to know how many of you I need to bring back to the station!”

“Roll dice for it?” Einstein asks.

heh.

Now back to your regularly scheduled 21st Century crises...

True or Phos? Science news that makes you ask: "Please back that up?"

Taking somewhat of a break from politics... and how I wish (with all of you) that we could have just sighed relief and moved on by now. But here, as a breather, is a pile of way-cool science news!

Don't get too excited by the titles: "Room-temperature superconductivity in a carbonaceous sulfur hydride." Of course it's a version of the grail we've sought. But it only happens at incredible pressures.

NASA researchers have detected nuclear fusion in metal loaded with deuterium. And yes, it seems a kind of “cold fusion”… though requiring activation by a gamma ray beam. I’ve never been adamant about this, either way. But it has always seemed worth investingin small projects such as this one. Anything to avoid a future either without fusion power, or dependent on insane white elephant tokamaks.

A new theory of causality may be the stuff of science fiction. It suggests that time travelers can do what they want, and paradoxes are not possible, because (as portrayed in some SciFi tales) the universe will have a causal elasticity so that events will always adjust themselves to avoid any inconsistency.

Does TIME itself come in discrete quantum-sized lumps, or even a Higgs-like particle? Those lumps may be large, maybe someday within reach of our atomic clocks to measure.

In a related vein… exquisite laboratory measurements of nature’s weakest force – gravity - showed that the inverse square law holds even for objects separated by a mere 52 microns (0.002 inches), "establishing that any ‘extra dimensions’ under string theory must be curled up with a radius less than 1/3 the diameter of a human hair.”

I assume you’ve heard of Isaac Arthur? His podcast - Science and Futurism - series about space and space exploration is hugely popular. Sample this one: Becoming an Interplanetary Species.

==  True? Or Phos! Predictions!! ==

See page 160 of The Transparent Society - where I predicted (back in 1997) that cops would wear cams... and the folks they pull over would use them, too. Everything recorded. It seems obvious now. It wasn't, then.

Any new predictions? Well, news comes from Venus, a broiling, high pressure hell, down at the ground level. But my colleague Geoff Landis and others have speculated about a shell-level of the dense atmosphere who temperature and pressure (though not gas mixture) could be pleasant to Earth-type life, encouraging thoughts of balloon beings or steam-punk dirigibles… AND NOW a stunning discovery of spectral signs of Phosphine gas - - a molecule made up of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms - which on Earth is pretty much always (outie of certain factories) a sign of life!

While I'm on a prediction-brag roll (EARTH is on several "10 best predictive novels" lists, including TIME's.) It just occurred to me that in EXISTENCE I forecast what the great resource shortage crisis of the late 2030s would be. Phosphorus. The rarest ingredient of life, a necessary fertilizer. And America's great deposits in Florida are depleting fast, leaving Morocco and Iraq and Iran as the world's richest nations - the next OPEC - in two (or less) decades.

Yes it was brought to mind by the discovery of Phosphine in the Venus atmosphere. Only what's pertinent now is how I depicted my "Michael Crichton character" in EXISTENCE railing against the emergency laws of the 2040s. Laws demanding that citizens conserve phosphorus. 

In my novel Existence, this fictional author pens a book -- PHOS-SCARE CITY -- popular among the MAGAs of that decade -- which fulminates against the requirement that men pee into phos-urinals... or at least into their rose gardens outside... so the precious element doesn't just wash into sewers. Denouncing the laws for sexism(!) he calls it just a 'hoax" aimed at undermining individual freedoms...

... just like today's MAGAs howl against mask wearing in a pandemic... and they earlier screeched against seat belts, or auto mileage standards, or changing our refrigerants to save the planet, or being told to take their stinky tobacco addictions outside. Anyone see a pattern? I sure did!

== Tech Stuff ==

A 2-acre farm packs into a shipping container? Climate-related food shortages? Maybe it's time to purchase a Farm From A Box, which feeds 150 and comes with water-smart irrigation, renewable energy tech, and its own hoes and shovels.

An amazing recent physics experiment appraises what happens when (rarely) a supercooled atom approaches an impassable barrier… and quantum tunnels through it. 

Speaking of cooling… India is building a lot of its solar panels atop irrigation canals, saving land costs, easing evaporation and cooling the panels to increase efficiency. Algae blooms are also lessened And cleaning the panels needn’t waste much water.  

A staple of old sci fi is the nuclear battery that drives your electric stuff for years, never needing recharging. Well guess what. Here it is. Carbon 14 extracted from nuclear waste is a beta emitter, so none of the really bad radioactivity, just electrons, which of course make a batter go. The carbon14 is squished to become a diamond, sealing it tight then surrounded by more diamond and then chipped. If the processing can be made efficient and safe (and that is the one, big "if." then it can also help reduce waste. (Nevada folks are fools to reject Yucca Mountain, which would be a bank vault full of riches.)

== Tech wonders in the air? ==

Might airliners in the future fly ‘in formation’ in order to save fuel?

Paramedics with jetpacks?  A rescue outfit in the UK  providing helicopter emergency services, is testing a jetpack made by Gravity Industries to one day allow paramedics to fly up a mountain to provide first aid. “In a jet pack, what might have taken up to an hour to reach the patient may only take a few minutes, and that could mean the difference between life and death.”

== Simulations! Scary and … attractive? ==

Yipe! Simulation of a Three Gorges Dam collapse. I’m glad they squeaked by the recent heavy rainy season. Now to squeak by our own floods of craziness and viruses…

Robotic, animatronic dolphins?  Uncanny realism! Truly amazing, just $3 million each, in prototype! Less, soon. And did I say uncannily realistic? And what does this do to the tradeoffs to doing a Startide Rising movie?

== Do some on your own! ==

Yes, all this unwanted free time opens some opportunities, like buying and reading fresh copies of favorite sci fi... or exercise or developing hobbies in what I've called the rising "Age of Amateurs." With millions of people trapped at home during the pandemic, citizen science projects are seeing a boom in engagement. While the projects generally have scientific aims, many allow people to also act as amateur sleuths. Some scour satellite images for rural houses across Africa so they can be connected to the electricity grid. Trace Labs runs competitive events in which teams of hackers gather as much information they can to solve missing persons cases, or to put names to the faces of female scientists who appear, uncredited, alongside their male colleagues in historical photographs.

I go into the Age of Amateurs in this PBS interview from a while back, as well as in this YouTube video.

== And yes, politics ==

Fooled ya? Hell yes, there's always some politics. 

In my last blog I offered some ways to corner Republicans - especially the two senators in the January 6 runoff - so they'll be damned if they do or don't. I'll offer more, next time, when we discuss Mitch's nightmares.  I don't expect any of these ideas to even be discussed, any more that the 100+ tactics in Polemical Judo were tried, at all, by anyone... even though some would have made last week's election a blowout. 

But I'll share them with you, at least.  Alack.

Advances in Bio & Tech

What's new in the realms of science and tech?

Peter Denning interviews me about the “resilience” of our critical infrastructure, from the power grid and cell-phones to transportation, food supplies and solar roofs, in the new issue of Communications of the ACM (CACM). I offer a dozen measures - some of them incredibly easy/cheap - that could improve robustness against shocks, by orders of magnitude, preventing us from ever facing a “Postman” situation. 

For those of you who aren’t ACM member-nerds, I’ll post a version some time. And yes, I’m qualified as a physicist, electrical engineer and longtime consultant on these matters with corporations and agencies. But frankly, it’s the science fiction. Of course it is.

Fascinating. Researchers turned in 17000 “lost wallets” in 40 countries, some containing small or large amounts of cash (up to $100) and some none. They found that national/cultural differences counted less than expected, and the subjects proved more honest or assiduous about contacting the purported owner when there was cash than when there wasn’t. Well, one common factor: the receiving party was usually a person “on duty” at a hotel or bank desk or a store clerk or some such.

Ah reality. In The Transparent Society I warned you. Researchers at UC San Diego and Google trained a neural net to take any photo and “adjust the lighting at will — including the direction, temperature, and quality of the light.”

== New Materials/New uses ==

As I portrayed in Existence, we are closer to achieving adaptable contact lenses that can adjust focus and zoom in when you blink.

A new class of materials -  lanthanum superhydrides - displays superconductivity at temperatures of about minus-23 degrees Celsius (minus-9 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a jump of about 50 degrees compared to the previous confirmed record. Crum, you could live at that temperature with a good jacket! Alas, this superconductivity happened under extremely high pressure, so forget the sweater. 

Another crazy material breakthrough is reminiscent of science fiction ’s legendary “slow glass” (Bob Shaw), that would transmit an image across minutes, years or decades of delay. This isn’t quite as “cool.” In fact, it's main use is it’ll warm buildings at night. “When exposed to sunlight, this incorporated molecule absorbs the majority of solar energy emitted by the rays that bathe it, soon releasing the energy as heat once no longer in direct daylight.” (Abundance newsletter.)

And related -- Scientists have constructed a water purification system that utilizes heat waste from solar panels to distill clean water. (Abundance Insider) If the oligarchs will let us, we can save the world for them.

And can a  a $10 magnet be used to double the output of hydrogen from a water-splitting electrolyzer? Could be especially useful in space.

Had this in Existence. This bone conduction device lets you make calls by sticking your finger in your ear.

Canon ran an indiegogo campaign for IVY REC - a clippable, go anywhere, waterproof, ultra-compact point-and-shoot camera that's about the size of a USB flash drive and features a built-in carabiner.  Talk about “Brin’s Camera-Corollary to Moore’s Law.” And it will go on, by orders of magnitude. Seriously. When one of you actually gets one, report back here?

The atomic M.R.I.can distinguish neighboring atoms from one another, and types of atoms based on their magnetic interactions. The new technology could help scientists study how proteins fold and one day be used to design atomic-scale methods of storing information, for quantum computers.

Using terahertz light, researchers have shown that such high-frequency light can control properties like macroscopic supercurrent flowing – superconductivity - and access high-frequency quantum oscillations once thought forbidden by symmetry.

== Bio and Tech advances ==

For a decade I’ve been saying that the microbiome will be an area of medical miracles much more quickly accessible than the genome or proteome. Because the number of types of gut and skin bacteria that need to be evaluated for effects is linear, numbering in the mere tens of thousands. Now see how one variant found in distance runners may come to market soon. FitBiomics aims to mine the biology of the most fit and healthy people in the world and then aim to translate into ...next-generation probiotics," staring with testing Veillonella in human subjects with the ultimate goal of creating an endurance-boosting symbiont.

What we currently call “probiotics” will be deemed random voodoo, as soon as 5 years from now, when personalized gut supplements will pour from labs.

Chimeras, oy!  Wholly Mackeral. Dig this new book: Chimera Research -Methods and Protocols.  

“This volume addresses challenging new questions surrounding stem cell-based chimera research. This book is organized into three parts: Part One provides readers with a summary of different human donor cell types. The chapters in this section discuss ways to evaluate new types of pluripotent stem cells; the derivation of naïve and primed pluripotent stem cells from mouse preimplantation embryos; and the ethical and regulatory complexities of informed consent for the procurement of somatic cells. Part Two discusses methods for generating chimeras. The chapters here look at chick models and human-chick organizer grafts; generating human-pig interspecies chimeras; and techniques for transplanting mouse neural stem cells into a mouse disease model for stroke. Part Three concludes the book with a look at ongoing ethical controversies and new scientific directions. Chapters in this part cover the ethics of crossing the xenobarrier; animal welfare; experimentation with spermatogonial stem cells; and cautious approaches to human-monkey chimera studies to further understand complex human brain disorders. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls."

Taking this even farther into Outer Limits territory: “the idea of biologically humanizing large portions of a monkey’s brain is seriously unnerving.” In April, Chinese researchers announced they had inserted  a human brain gene into monkey embryos, a gene critical for human brain development. “It’s one thing to “humanize” an animal for, say, a pancreas, it’s another thing when you are talking about the brain…"

Only remember all this is aimed at a better understanding of Alzheimers, by far the worst modern disease in the developed world without any at all effective treatment.

An “epi-pen-like” injection uses nanoparticles to reprogram aggressive immune cells — thereby preventing the immune system from overreacting — to reduce inflammation and promote a therapeutic response. The aim: preventing paralysis in the aftermath of trauma to the central nervous system.

Triangle-weaver spiders use their own web the way humans might use a slingshot or a crossbow.

Speaking of spidey strength. The HyQReal robot is about 4-feet long and moves around on four legs. The HyQ’s developers, IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, recently demonstrated the squat quadruped’s strength by having it tow a 7,275 lb passenger plane across a length of asphalt at an airport in Italy.

More incredible space stuff

Today it's the Poway shooting. Each day more evidence that our crisis is not about left-vs.-right, but a mob that's been riled-up against modernity.

And so... we turn to what should be the non-political world of SPACE! Yep, let's focus this weekend on the 99.999999% of everything in the universe that may be within reach of our grandchildren, if only we leave them a positive civilization.

== Cosmology ==

Phil Plait makes the discovery of a relatively nearby and very ancient dwarf galaxy sound like the most exciting thing since Battlestar Galactica got rebooted!

A central black hole (CBH) in a galaxy half a billion light years away has a mass similar to the Milky Way’s CBH, but has recently eaten a star, making it very bright. And a sharp lump near the event horizon appears to be spinning round it at half the speed of light! Another was clocked at 84%!

Reason to believe that clumping dark matter may have led to the formation of many black holes in the earliest universe… and their numbers may be large, today.

News articles miss the point about this newly-chosen, relatively inexpensive NASA mission. Every six months, SPHEREx will survey the entire sky in 96 color bands. That won’t give you a complete, scientific spectrum of any one object. But it will provide a very telling rough spectrum of half a BILLION objects out there. That’s with a “B.” This is not a system to 'learn about universal origins.' It is one dedicated to alerting astronomers: “These 10,000 or so objects are weird. Look at them closer.” Combine this with the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Palomar Observatory that seeks fast-changing sky events and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile, that will deep survey an enormous area of sky, repeating every few nights, and what we’ll get is something I've long said we need - an incredible alert system to say “Huh! lookadat!.”

And see news about the OCO-3 mission below.

== Exploring our solar system ==

Cool and stunning and gorgeous. A SpaceX launch seen from the International Space Station.

Alan Stern and the New Horizons team have a great year ahead, revealing bits from the doughty space probe’s latest marvelous encounter, nine light hours from the sun. This brief image glances backward as the probe leaves the Ultima Thule realm. New Horizons scientists can confirm that the two sections (or "lobes") of Ultima Thule are not spherical after all. The larger lobe, nicknamed "Ultima," more closely resembles a giant pancake and the smaller lobe, nicknamed "Thule," is shaped like a dented walnut. 

Last year's interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua has a lot of scientists abuzz. The head of the Harvard Astronomy department suggests it was likely an artifact, perhaps a jettisoned light-sail. (Eerily like an event in my novel Existence.) Others now calculate that interstellar space may be relatively filled with rocks. "We find that there should be thousands of `Oumuamua-size interstellar objects identifiable by Centaur-like orbits at high inclinations, assuming a number density of `Oumuamua-size interstellar objects of ~10^15 per cubic parsec." That's a fair amount! Perhaps enough to make travel between the stars an obstacle course. See the sci fi flick PASSENGERS.

And...  JPL’s Young-Earth-Ocean-In-A-Glass, combines water, minerals and the molecules ammonia and pyruvate that are usually found near hydrothermal vents, heated to 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius) and decreasing the oxygen content provided them with a laboratory model of the conditions of the "primordial ocean" … “showing that in geological conditions similar to early Earth, and maybe to other planets, we can form amino acids and alpha hydroxy acids from a simple reaction under mild conditions that would have existed on the seafloor…” Kewl time lapse. 

This article on crew behavior during long space missions suggests that onboard software systems appraise word usage and even body language among crew members to track incipient problems. Um, like a crew psychological profile? Will body language appraisal include… lip-reading?

The “Dragonfly” concept for an air-mobile lander on Titan is a major candidate that NASA may choose, this year.

Fascinating evidence that Mars had an extensive ground water circulation system feeding into deep craters for a long time.  

And I'll be examining ever more cool endeavors in June, in DC, as a member of the advisory council of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts program.

And this might be of interest: a deep dive into the ongoing mysteries of quantum physics: A new book released by theoretical physicist Lee Smolin: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum. 

 == Oh, no! OCO is gonna so find truth ==

There is no scientific program that has been more targeted for hate by the Anti-Science Party than OCO or Orbiting Carbon Observatory.  The Bushites sabotaged or canceled or defunded earlier versions, which finally launched over screaming objections from the Denialist Cult and absolutely verified that human civilization is filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gas that is absolutely warming the planet.

OCO-3 is about to be delivered to the ISS where it will pin down the facts even better, despite desperate Trumpist efforts to slash it. 

Why? Why the hate? Or the commands for NASA and NOAA to cancel Earth observation and even forbid use of the very word "Earth"? Do the plutocrats controlling that party truly seek to preserve coal profits in the very short term over their children's health or possibly survival? Are they so stupid they think their Patagonian ranchos offer them actual security, when the world wakes up, enraged?  (We know where the bolt-holes are. And you will never be able to trust your guards.)

Ask your nutty uncle how he justifies this. Science is the human future. And there's nothing more suicidal than the cultish hatred of smart people.