Science Spies: February 2022

Monday, February 28, 2022

Gas flares tied to premature deaths

Newly published research by Rice University environmental engineers suggests flaring of natural gas from oil and gas fields in the United States, primarily in North Dakota and Texas, contributed to dozens of premature deaths in 2019.

Satellite observations and computer models can link gas flares to air pollution and health, according to Daniel Cohan of Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering and his colleagues, who published their findings in the journal Atmosphere.

Oil and gas producers flare excess gas when infrastructure to bring it to market is unavailable. While flaring reduces the direct venting of the powerful greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, it also produces black carbon particles, also known as soot or particulate matter. These particles, smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, can impair lung function and cause respiratory disease, heart disease and strokes.

The Rice team partnered with researchers from the Clean Air Task Force to produce calculations, based on infrared satellite observations of oil fields where 97% of flaring takes place, showing that the United States emitted nearly 16,000 tons of black carbon in 2019. The researchers used computationally efficient reduced-form models to estimate that 26-53 premature deaths were directly attributable to air quality associated with flares.

"Our research shows that flaring not only wastes a valuable fuel but is deadly, too," said Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who led the study with first-year graduate student Chen Chen. "Particulate matter causes more deaths than all other air pollutants combined, and flares are an important source of it."

Flares aren't the only source of particulate matter in the atmosphere. Particles are also produced whenever fossil fuels are burned, including by vehicles, and by wildfires, cooking meat and other sources.

The researchers' models accounted for the fact that the heat content of the burning fuel varies widely across oil and gas fields and has a strong impact on black carbon emissions.

"For this study, we used 10 different emission factors for flares, and using the reduced-form models made the calculations super-fast," Chen said. "Other studies show a good relationship between full and reduced-form models, so we're confident in our results."

Cohan said black carbon emissions also contribute to climate change by absorbing solar radiation in the atmosphere, influencing the formation of clouds and accelerating snow and ice melt, though all of those consequences were beyond the scope of their study.

The researchers noted there are cost-effective technological alternatives to flaring, including gas-gathering pipelines, small-scale gas utilization and reinjecting excess back into the ground. While the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering regulations to reduce both methane emissions and associated gas flaring, there are currently no federal limits to the widespread practice of flaring, they wrote.

"We initially didn't think about publishing a peer-reviewed paper," Chen said. "We were asked by the Clean Air Task Force to estimate these health impacts to support their advocacy to reduce harmful pollution from oil and gas production. But because the clearly shows dozens of deaths per year due to flaring, we thought a paper would provide regulators with new angles to consider in their efforts to minimize the impacts of oil and gas air pollution."

Co-authors are senior scientist David McCabe and senior analyst Lesley Fleischman of the Clean Air Task Force.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Rice University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

#Environment | https://sciencespies.com/environment/gas-flares-tied-to-premature-deaths/

Researchers See ‘Future of an Entire Species’ in Ultrasound Technique

To bring abalone back from the edge of extinction, scientists need to find improved ways of coaxing the snails into reproducing.

Kristin Aquilino, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, knows that expectations are just disappointments in disguise. Over the last decade, she has led the school’s white abalone captive breeding program, which aims to bring the marine mollusk back from the brink of extinction.

Last June, she and her colleagues drove snails kept in captivity at Davis down the California coast to Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in Los Angeles. Others were dropped off at labs and aquariums around Southern California; all told, this was the largest spawning attempt of white abalone to date. But when she tried to get them in the mood with what she calls a love potion — a mix of seawater with hydrogen peroxide — the snails languished in their tanks occasionally emitting bubbles, but no eggs or sperm. After four hours, Dr. Aquilino called it off. (Simultaneous attempts at the other sites also failed.)

“It sucks,” she said. “There’s a lot of human effort involved, but there’s no way they’ll spawn today.”

After fishermen depleted 99 percent of white abalone from the wild in the 1970s, the sea snails are hanging on by a slimy thread. Despite the urgency of breeding these and other endangered aquatic snails to reintroduce to the wild, propagating more of them in a lab is still a guessing game, Dr. Aquilino says.

Now, a study publishedThursdayin the journal Frontiers in Marine Science offers an improved tool for determining which abalone will be reproductive. The technique, using noninvasive ultrasound, a decades-old medical technology, could raise the prospects of successful captive breeding efforts and ultimately help restore endangered abalone in the wild.

“If we can use this method, it could make a really big difference and we might be able to strategically target animals to induce to spawn,” said David Witting, a fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration who specializes in abalone recovery and was not involved in the study. “We’ll take any more edge we can get. Getting animals to spawn is really the pinch point for the whole process of recovering them.”

For Dr. Aquilino, the method offers a glimmer of hope.

“When I first saw the ultrasound images of my kids, I saw the future of my family,” she said. “When I see the ultrasound images of these abalone, I see the future of an entire species.”

Seven species of abalone — sea snails with colorful, domed shells — have historically called the west coast of North America home. The animals help the ecosystems they live in by maintaining kelp forests, feeding marine mammals and improving the health of reefs.

But over much of the 20th century, divers and fishermen depleted several species of abalone. Aside from the white abalone, black abalone succumbed to a disease called withering syndrome, and pinto abalone in the northern Pacific suffered from overharvesting and habitat degradation. In the wild, abalone are terrible at long-distance relationships: In order to reproduce, they must be within proximity of each other because the snails send their gametes into the water column to get fertilized. By the 1990s, there were so few of the endangered species that scientists realized they needed to intervene.

Reproducing them in captivity, however, is a big challenge. There are no clear cues for when they’re ready to reproduce. Researchers have traditionally inspected the snails visually by prying them off whatever surface they’re suctioned to, then looking for the crevice between their sticky feet and shell to find a bulge, where the animal’s gonad is below the milky skin. Depending on how large the gonad is, the scientists give the animal a score: plump protrusions outrank smaller ones.

Jackson Gross

“That kind of gives you an idea of whether or not the animal may spawn,” said Josh Bouma, the abalone program director of the Restoration Fund in Washington State, who heads the captive breeding program for the endangered pinto abalone.

But visual exams can be vastly inaccurate. The gonad surrounds their stomachs, so if the snail just had a huge meal, the score can be misleading. Researchers could also take a more accurate tissue sample, but it would kill the snail. And handling abalone in any way — including popping them from their aquarium tanks — is enough to stress them out and may kill their mood.

Ultrasound, on the other hand, is noninvasive.

The idea of using ultrasound on these snails first came about in 2019. Jackson Gross, an aquaculture specialist at the University of California, Davis, had used ultrasound on fin fish, such as sturgeon, to study their reproductive habits. He stumbled across a YouTube video of a veterinarian sliding an ultrasound probe along the bottom of a land snail. If it worked for land snails, wouldn’t it work for sea snails like abalone, too?

Sara Boles, a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr. Gross, discovered a way to perform ultrasounds on the abalone without taking them out of their tanks by holding the device up to their sticky feet. This quickly produced clear images of their swollen or flaccid gonads on a laptop appended to the ultrasound probe.

In the new study, Dr. Boles and her colleagues examined over 200 abalone and scored the thickness of their gonads on a scale of 1 to 5 to determine which are likely to spawn. With the ultrasound images, the gonad comes into focus: The stomach appears as a dark, cone-shaped item, and the slightly lighter gonad surrounds it.

For now, these images can provide an easy way to score animals, but Dr. Gross and his colleagues want to verify if gonad thickness also correlates with reproductive success.

Already, Dr. Boles has used the ultrasound to help Dr. Aquilino in her white abalone breeding efforts. Last spring, after Dr. Aquilino had already visually scored the animals, Dr. Boles brought the ultrasound to her lab.

Of the eight white abalone that Dr. Boles rated highest after the ultrasound exam, five spawned; some snails with slightly lower ratings did, too. The method is already helping researchers revise their methods of assessing which abalone are most ready to reproduce.

“It’s another way to help ensure that we have the best of the best,” Dr. Boles said.

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/researchers-see-future-of-an-entire-species-in-ultrasound-technique/

Climate change: A threat to human wellbeing and health of the planet

Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today.

"This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction," said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC. "It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks."

The world faces unavoidable multiple climate hazards over the next two decades with global warming of 1.5°C (2.7°F). Even temporarily exceeding this warming level will result in additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible. Risks for society will increase, including to infrastructure and low-lying coastal settlements.

The Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Working Group II report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability was approved on Sunday, February 27 2022, by 195 member governments of the IPCC, through a virtual approval session that was held over two weeks starting on February 14.

Urgent action required to deal with increasing risks

Increased heatwaves, droughts and floods are already exceeding plants' and animals' tolerance thresholds, driving mass mortalities in species such as trees and corals. These weather extremes are occurring simultaneously, causing cascading impacts that are increasingly difficult to manage. They have exposed millions of people to acute food and water insecurity, especially in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, on Small Islands and in the Arctic.

To avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure, ambitious, accelerated action is required to adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. So far, progress on adaptation is uneven and there are increasing gaps between action taken and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks, the new report finds. These gaps are largest among lower-income populations.

The Working Group II report is the second instalment of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which will be completed this year.

"This report recognizes the interdependence of climate, biodiversity and people and integrates natural, social and economic sciences more strongly than earlier IPCC assessments," said Hoesung Lee. "It emphasizes the urgency of immediate and more ambitious action to address climate risks. Half measures are no longer an option."

Safeguarding and strengthening nature is key to securing a liveable future

There are options to adapt to a changing climate. This report provides new insights into nature's potential not only to reduce climate risks but also to improve people's lives.

"Healthy ecosystems are more resilient to climate change and provide life-critical services such as food and clean water," said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Hans-Otto Pörtner. "By restoring degraded ecosystems and effectively and equitably conserving 30 to 50 per cent of Earth's land, freshwater and ocean habitats, society can benefit from nature's capacity to absorb and store carbon, and we can accelerate progress towards sustainable development, but adequate finance and political support are essential."

Scientists point out that climate change interacts with global trends such as unsustainable use of natural resources, growing urbanization, social inequalities, losses and damages from extreme events and a pandemic, jeopardizing future development.

"Our assessment clearly shows that tackling all these different challenges involves everyone -- governments, the private sector, civil society -- working together to prioritize risk reduction, as well as equity and justice, in decision-making and investment," said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Debra Roberts.

"In this way, different interests, values and world views can be reconciled. By bringing together scientific and technological know-how as well as Indigenous and local knowledge, solutions will be more effective. Failure to achieve climate resilient and sustainable development will result in a sub-optimal future for people and nature."

Cities: Hotspots of impacts and risks, but also a crucial part of the solution

This report provides a detailed assessment of climate change impacts, risks and adaptation in cities, where more than half the world's population lives. People's health, lives and livelihoods, as well as property and critical infrastructure, including energy and transportation systems, are being increasingly adversely affected by hazards from heatwaves, storms, drought and flooding as well as slow-onset changes, including sea level rise.

"Together, growing urbanization and climate change create complex risks, especially for those cities that already experience poorly planned urban growth, high levels of poverty and unemployment, and a lack of basic services," Debra Roberts said.

"But cities also provide opportunities for climate action -- green buildings, reliable supplies of clean water and renewable energy, and sustainable transport systems that connect urban and rural areas can all lead to a more inclusive, fairer society."

There is increasing evidence of adaptation that has caused unintended consequences, for example destroying nature, putting peoples' lives at risk or increasing greenhouse gas emissions. This can be avoided by involving everyone in planning, attention to equity and justice, and drawing on Indigenous and local knowledge.

A narrowing window for action

Climate change is a global challenge that requires local solutions and that's why the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) provides extensive regional information to enable Climate Resilient Development.

The report clearly states Climate Resilient Development is already challenging at current warming levels. It will become more limited if global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F). In some regions it will be impossible if global warming exceeds 2°C (3.6°F). This key finding underlines the urgency for climate action, focusing on equity and justice. Adequate funding, technology transfer, political commitment and partnership lead to more effective climate change adaptation and emissions reductions.

"The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future," said Hans-Otto Pörtner.

More information about the Sixth Assessment Report can be found at: https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/

#Nature | https://sciencespies.com/nature/climate-change-a-threat-to-human-wellbeing-and-health-of-the-planet/

Dust devils' subtle trails across Mars revealed in bold blue

The Martian surface is criss-crossed by little whirlwinds that swirl through its thin atmosphere. Their tracks are revealed in this striking infrared image taken by the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter

Space

23 February 2022

By Gege Li

New Scientist Default Image — ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

Photograph ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

THIS intriguing landscape is one of the latest images of the surface of Mars. It was captured by the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) on board the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). The orbiter is part of the ExoMars programme, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency.

This patch of terrain near the Hooke crater in Mars’s southern highlands resembles “chaotic terrain” – regions of haphazardly clumped rocks seen across the planet – although it hasn’t yet been classified as such.

The wispy blue threads are tracks caused by little whirlwinds known as dust devils that twist through the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere. They occur when warm air rises through cooler air.

In reality, though, these tracks aren’t blue. The colouring of the image appears particularly otherworldly partly because it is an infrared image, but also because multiple filters were combined to be highly sensitive to variation in the surface minerals that dust devils whip up and leave in their wake.

One of the ExoMars programme’s objectives is to look for signs of past and present life on the planet. To this end, aside from snapping photos of Mars, the TGO is also searching for evidence of atmospheric gases such as methane, which can potentially indicate biological activity, and mapping water-rich regions of the planet.

Climate Change's Effects Outpacing Ability to Adapt, I.P.C.C. Warns

Countries aren’t doing nearly enough to protect against the disasters to come as the planet keeps heating up, a major new scientific report concludes.

The dangers of climate change are mounting so rapidly that they could soon overwhelm the ability of both nature and humanity to adapt unless greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced, according to a major new scientific report released on Monday.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, is the most detailed look yet at the threats posed by global warming. It concludes that nations aren’t doing nearly enough to protect cities, farms and coastlines from the hazards that climate change has unleashed so far, such as record droughts and rising seas, let alone from the even greater disasters in store as the planet continues to warm.

Written by 270 researchers from 67 countries, the report is “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” said António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. “With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.”

The perils are already visible across the globe, the report said. In 2019, storms, floods and other extreme weather events displaced more than 13 million people across Asia and Africa. Rising heat and drought are killing crops and trees, putting millions worldwide at increased risk of hunger and malnutrition, while mosquitoes carrying diseases like malaria and dengue are spreading into new areas. Roughly half the world’s population currently faces severe water scarcity at least part of the year.

Few nations are escaping unscathed. Blistering heat waves made worse by global warming have killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, ferocious floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Australia and Siberia.

“One of the most striking conclusions in our report is that we’re seeing adverse impacts that are much more widespread and much more negative than expected,” said Camille Parmesan, an ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin, and one of the researchers who prepared the report.

To date, many nations have been able to partly limit the damage by spending billions of dollars each year on adaptation measures like flood barriers, air-conditioning or early-warning systems for tropical cyclones.

But those efforts are too often “incremental,” the report said. Preparing for future threats, like dwindling freshwater supplies or irreversible ecosystem damage, will require “transformational” changes that involve rethinking how people build homes, grow food, produce energy and protect nature.

Kacper Pempel/Reuters

The report also carries a stark warning: If temperatures keep rising, many parts of the world could soon face limits in how much they can adapt to a changing environment. If nations don’t act quickly to slash fossil fuel emissions and halt global warming, more and more people will suffer unavoidable loss or be forced to flee their homes, creating dislocation on a global scale.

“There has been the assumption that, ‘Well, if we cannot control climate change, we’ll just let it go and adapt to it,’” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, a marine biologist in Germany who helped coordinate the report. But given the expected risks as the planet keeps warming, he said, “this is certainly a very illusionary approach.”

Global temperatures have already increased by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, as humans have pumped heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas for energy, and cutting down forests.

Many leaders, including President Biden, have vowed to limit total global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts increases significantly.

Jesse Winter/Reuters

But achieving that goal would require nations to all but eliminate their fossil-fuel emissions by 2050, and most are far off-track. The world is currently on pace to warm somewhere between 2 degrees and 3 degrees Celsius this century, experts have estimated.

“Unchecked carbon pollution is forcing the world’s most vulnerable on a frog march to destruction — now,” Mr. Guterres said. “This abdication of leadership is criminal.”

If average warming passes 1.5 degrees Celsius, even humanity’s best efforts to adapt could falter, the report warns. The cost of defending coastal communities against rising seas could exceed what many nations can afford. In some regions, including parts of North America, livestock and outdoor workers could face rising levels of heat stress that make farming increasingly difficult, said Rachel Bezner Kerr, an agricultural expert at Cornell University who contributed to the report.

“Beyond 1.5, we’re not going to manage on a lot of fronts,” said Maarten van Aalst, the director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center and another author of the report. “If we don’t implement changes now in terms of how we deal with physical infrastructure, but also how we organize our societies, it’s going to be bad.”

Poor nations are far more exposed to climate risks than rich countries. Between 2010 and 2020, droughts, floods and storms killed 15 times as many people in highly vulnerable countries, including those in Africa and Asia, as in the wealthiest countries, the report said.

That disparity has fueled a contentious debate: what the industrialized nations most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions owe developing countries. Low-income nations want financial help, both to defend against future threats and to compensate for damages they can’t avoid. The issue will be a focus when governments meet for the next United Nations climate summit in Egypt in November.

“Climate change is the ultimate injustice,” said Ani Dasgupta, the president of the World Resources Institute, an environmental group. “People with the fewest resources, those least responsible for the climate crisis, bear the brunt of climate impacts.” He added, “If you don’t live in a hot spot, imagine instead a roof blown away, a village well overwhelmed by salt water, a failed crop, a job lost, a meal skipped — all at once, again and again.”

The report, which was approved by 195 governments, makes clear that risks to humans and nature accelerate with every additional fraction of a degree of warming.

At current levels of warming, for example, humanity’s ability to feed itself is already coming under strain. While the world is still producing more food each year, thanks to improvements in farming and crop technology, climate change has begun slowing the rate of growth, the report said, an ominous trend that puts future food supplies at risk as the world’s population soars past 8 billion people.

If global warming reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius — as is now likely within the next few decades — roughly 8 percent of the world’s farmland could become unsuitable for growing food, the authors wrote. Coral reefs, which buffer coastlines against storms and sustain fisheries for millions of people, will face more frequent bleaching from ocean heat waves and decline by 70 to 90 percent. The number of people around the world exposed to severe coastal flooding could increase by more than one-fifth without new protections.

Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Idrees Mohammed/EPA, via Shutterstock

At 2 degrees Celsius of warming, between 800 million and 3 billion people globally could face chronic water scarcity because of drought, including more than one-third of the population in southern Europe. Crop yields and fish harvests in many places could start declining. An additional 1.4 million children in Africa could face severe malnutrition, stunting their growth.

Climate Change's Effects Outpacing Ability to Adapt, I.P.C.C. Warns

Countries aren’t doing nearly enough to protect against the disasters to come as the planet keeps heating up, a major new scientific report concludes.

Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Jesse Winter/Reuters

“Unchecked carbon pollution is forcing the world’s most vulnerable on a frog march to destruction — now,” Mr. Guterres said. “This abdication of leadership is criminal.”

The report, which was approved by 195 governments, makes clear that risks to humans and nature accelerate with every additional fraction of a degree of warming.

Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Idrees Mohammed/EPA, via Shutterstock

Dual review: The dark side of cloning played straight for laughs

Riley Stearns's dark comedy about a death match between clones has an appealing premise, but it doesn't quite hit the mark

Humans

23 February 2022

By Davide Abbatescianni

Dual

Riley Stearns

Coming in 2022

FROM its very first scene, Dual throws us into a highly disturbing world. The film, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, opens with a man standing on a football pitch in front of an array of weapons. While he hesitates over which one to pick, his opponent takes the opportunity to shoot. It soon transpires that the attacker is a clone of his victim, and that the pair are locked in a fight to the death that is being televised for a bloodthirsty audience.

This intriguing opening scene precedes the introduction of Dual‘s lead character, a young woman called Sarah (Karen Gillan). We learn that she has a penchant for porn and booze, and has somewhat unhealthy relationships with her boyfriend and mother. Then she is hospitalised with severe gastrointestinal bleeding and discovers that she is terminally ill. To soften the blow, her doctor offers her the option of a “replacement”, a hastily produced yet physically perfect genetic copy, which she can train to slot into her life after she is gone. The main selling point is that it will save her loved ones from the pain of losing her. Struggling to process the news, Sarah signs up and sets about training her replacement to take over her life.

But here is the twist: 10 months later, Sarah is still alive and her condition is no longer terminal. Yet her double has replaced her so successfully that even her estranged boyfriend and mother prefer the copy to the original. At this highly improbable point in the story, Dual‘s narrative coherence begins to fall apart.

In the film, the laws surrounding cloning state that there can only be one living version of each person. If the original Sarah isn’t dying, then one of them must die. Sarah assumes this will be the copy, but her loved ones disagree. They cut her out of their lives and start a legal procedure to protect her double.

The law also states that such matters can only be settled via a fight to the death. Oddly, it seems that Sarah wasn’t aware of this risk at the outset, despite these sorts of fights being regularly broadcast on TV. Stranger still, Sarah doesn’t seem to hold a grudge against her boyfriend, meeting him for lunch even after he has sentenced her to a death match.

Things get even weirder when she starts training with a bizarre combat instructor called Trent (Aaron Paul, best known as Breaking Bad‘s Jesse Pinkman). He tasks her with visiting an autopsy and shows her pictures of mutilated bodies to get her used to the sight of gore. Training also involves hip-hop dancing and a bizarre scene where they practice fighting in slow motion.

Dual is meant to be a dark, deadpan comedy, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. The realistic violence shown throughout just isn’t funny, and the eerie score and atmosphere make the film feel more like a thriller. Yet it doesn’t fit well into that genre either. Events unfold in too surreal and nonsensical a fashion to maintain an acceptable level of credibility. The ending feels like a psychological drama, but one that is far too predictable. The lack of stylistic focus is reflected in the actors’ performances, which shift between a puzzling apathy and perplexing moments of overacting.

It seems that director Riley Stearns aims to satirise the society we live in, where people repress their feelings and enjoy the spectacle of violence. Yet this message is delivered clumsily and doesn’t make up for the frustrating viewing experience. All in all, Dual feels like a missed opportunity. Establishing clearer rules for this dystopian world – and sticking to them – would have significantly improved the quality of this effort and done justice to what, on the face of it, is an appealing premise.

The neoliberal think tank that wants to sell the moon

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Humans

23 February 2022

First hands on the moon

Oh, what fun it must be to sit in a tank, and think! It is a thought that strikes Feedback with full vigour as we sit in our stationery cupboard tank – does anyone know how to drive this thing, etc. – surveying the recent paper from UK-based neoliberal think tank the Adam Smith Institute, “Space invaders: Property rights on the moon”.

Feedback isn’t one of those unkind partisans who reflexively associates the word “swivel-eyed” with the output of neoliberal think tanks. Nor are we so unnuanced as to say the paper advocates “privatising the moon”, as some more agitated commentators have. To privatise something, we assume it must be in public ownership first.

No, it primarily addresses the question of what a Lockean-type classical liberal rights-based approach to economic justice demands in terms of adjudicating problems of the individual ownership of land in space. It also argues that the current rules-based international order, based mainly on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, is no longer fit for purpose when various private and national interests are engaged in a new space race and “everyday space tourism is just around the corner”.

That’s a mighty long corner, we’ll warrant. But if we are sceptical of the competitive tendering process to allocate land rights on the moon advocated by the institute, it is only because it also suggests a new international treaty underpinning it. This seems to us far too wet and statist. Several frothy free-enterprise outfits will already give you title to a parcel of the lunar surface for top dollar (3 April 2021).We suggest they could be awarded the contract for administering the scheme through some thrustingly free-and-easy “VIP lane” process.

Statistically thin ice

Russell Waugh writes from the Western Australian version of Perth bedazzled by the scoring system in the figure skating at the Beijing Winter Olympics. “The judges were able to add, and even subtract, points for good or poor execution of many different skills, with no common unit of measurement on any of the different skills (sometimes from a negative minimum point and a positive maximum point), add together all points given by seven or eight different judges, and then produce a final ‘measure’ to two decimal places,” he marvels.

We agree that statisticians would also wonder at the lack of any margin of error on the result. But then, that doesn’t appear to be the dodgiest thing going on at the figure skating this year.

However, we were more exercised by the margin of error on the final medal tally of the Great Britain team. We were pleased when, rather late in the day, that turned out not to be zero.

Carbon wormprint

Anyone who, like Feedback, has ever caught themselves wondering how large carbon emissions actually are should look no further than a communication from the Labour party in Hastings, UK, sent in by Gabriel Carlyle.

It celebrates an initiative of the local council to replace every light bulb in Hastings with low-energy LED bulbs. This will lead to an annual saving in just one town-centre car park of 1 tonne of carbon, “the equivalent of 300,000 worms. Layed [sic] end to end they would reach from Hastings to Eastbourne.”

We make that a distance of about 30 kilometres if the worms are laid out by road. This could be messy for all sorts of reasons. We are left wondering whether, if the worms are less than cooperative and just form a writhing ball in the centre of Hastings, that reduces the carbon savings in any way.

Long in the rings

We have a new benchmark in our occasional series on “how old the internet thinks you can be”. Natalie Roberts reports going to the Open University website to order a poster about plants accompanying the new BBC series The Green Planet and finding that the drop-down menu for date of birth allows options back to 1582.

Good for elderly tree sprites who have piled on the rings, we imagine, although it still excludes the most ancient of yews. Our vague concern, prompted by Natalie, about whether birth dates need to be in the Julian or Gregorian calendar leads us to the revelation that the papal bull advocating calendar reform was issued by Pope Gregory XIII in… 1582. We are now wondering whether this is a coincidence, a learned joke by computer elves at the Open University or has some other origin in the deep history of computer programming.

Quantum cat spin

Charles Warren wonders whether a physics-violating perpetual motion machine formed of a slice of falling buttered toast strapped to a cat’s back (29 January) would violate physics if the cat in question were Schrödinger’s cat.

Yes… no… maybe, Charles. We assume the premise of the cat always landing on its feet applies only to live cats. Introducing a potentially dead cat is possibly a new spin too far.

The usual…

It is only recent events that have made it at all notable that Douglas Jabs is the director of the Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence Synthesis at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. But many of you have now noted it, so we note it while on our way out of the room.

Got a story for Feedback?

You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

#Humans | https://sciencespies.com/humans/the-neoliberal-think-tank-that-wants-to-sell-the-moon/

Sunday, February 27, 2022

NASA’s Lunar Gateway: The plans for a permanent space station that will orbit the Moon

If all goes to plan, sometime in 2022 NASA’s Space Launch System rocket (SLS) will blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its maiden flight. The giant SLS rocket, fully 111.25m tall, is set to launch no earlier than February, but probably not until the summer, and will send an uncrewed capsule on a test mission around the far side of the Moon and back again. Known as Artemis 1, it will truly mark the beginning of humanity’s return to the Moon.

The Artemis 2 mission, currently scheduled for May 2024, will repeat Artemis 1 but this time with a crew of astronauts. In their looping journey around the Moon, they’ll go further into space than any previous astronaut. Then comes the big one: Artemis 3, which will carry the next astronauts to land on the Moon.

In between these tent-pole missions will be a sequence of other launches to ensure the astronauts have everything they need to complete their missions when they reach lunar orbit. Absolutely critical to the long-term success of the Artemis programme is the Gateway lunar space station.

Gateway will be a multi-module space station in orbit around the Moon. It will act as a staging post for visits to the lunar surface, provide an orbital platform from which to conduct remote observations of the Moon and provide laboratories to analyse Moon rocks and conduct other scientific studies. It’s an international effort between the US, 10 European countries, Canada and Japan.

It may sound like science fiction, but it’s very real. And very, very cool…

The science

Rendering of an astronaut climbing down a ladder onto the surface of the Moon

Gateway will act as a temporary home and workspace for astronauts visiting the Moon, much like the International Space Station does for astronauts visiting low Earth orbit. During the initial exploration of the Moon, astronauts will live on Gateway for up to three months, occasionally travelling down to the lunar surface to conduct science or test devices that will allow them to set up a permanent base on the surface.

Two experiments that have already been commissioned for Gateway are a radiation monitor supplied by the European Space Agency (ESA) and a space weather instrument suite. The radiation monitor will help decide how to keep astronauts safe from unhealthy levels of radiation that can be encountered in space. The space weather instrument suite is related to this because it will measure the intensity of particles released by the Sun during outbursts called coronal mass ejections.

A big focus will be on developing the technique of in-situ resource utilisation. This means using resources found on the Moon to manufacture things that the astronauts will need, for example, water, oxygen, rocket fuel and building materials can all be extracted or manufactured from materials found on or just below the lunar surface.

The modules

Although smaller than the International Space Station (ISS), Gateway is too large to be launched on a single rocket. Instead, it will consist of a number of modules that will be placed around the Moon in a series of launches.

At its heart is the Power and Propulsion Element being developed by Maxar Technologies in the US. This module uses solar panels to generate power. It can also convert that power into propulsion using a ‘solar electric propulsion’ unit (or ion engine), to move the station into different orbits.

The Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module is being supplied by Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. This will be the first module in which astronauts can live. It will include docking ports for the Orion spacecraft carrying the astronauts.

Together these two modules form a workable initial station. Although they were initially planned to be launched separately and then docked in space, NASA will now fix the two modules together and fly them on a single launch, scheduled for November 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

This will be the configuration of the Gateway for the Artemis 3 Moon landing mission, but it will soon be joined by modules supplied by ESA. Europe is a major contributor to Gateway and the Artemis missions. Italy, in particular, is a significant partner with a distinguished heritage in space station design and manufacture. Around half the pressurised modules on the ISS were supplied by Thales Alenia Space in Turin.

“That is a great legacy,” says Luigi Pasquali, space activities coordinator of Leonardo, the Italian company that jointly owns Thales Alenia Space. It has allowed the company to win the contracts to provide a number of modules for Gateway.

First will be the European System Providing Refueling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications (ESPRIT). This will consist of two parts, the first will be the station’s lunar communications system. As this is an essential component from day one, it’s being manufactured in advance and will be attached to the HALO module for launch in 2024. The second part of ESPRIT will contain additional fuel tanks, a windowed habitation corridor and docking ports. Currently it’s scheduled for launch in 2027.

In addition, Thales will also contribute the International Habitation Module (I-HAB), which will contain a life support system supplied by Japan. Finally, Canada is producing an 8.5m-long robotic arm, similar to the one the country contributed to the ISS and Space Shuttle programmes.

Read more about lunar exploration:

The Gateway

Lunar Gateway annotated. Text reads: European Service Module (confirmed) Provides fuel, power, communications and life support consumables for Orion. ESA Orion Capsule (confirmed) Capable of carrying up to six astronauts to and from Earth. NASA Crew airlock (proposed) This would be used by the crew to conduct spacewalks around the Gateway. ROSCOSMOS International habitation module I-HAB (confirmed) Provides additional living and working space. ESA JAXA ESPRIT (European System providing Refuelling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications) Refueller (confirmed) A ‘service module’ providing additional fuel tanks and communications. Also contains an airlock for placing science packages outside. ESA ESPRIT Communications (confirmed) Provides communications systems for Gateway. ESA Logistics vehicle (proposed) This would be used to refuel and resupply the space station. NASA Human Lander System (proposed) This would be used to taxi astronauts to and from the lunar surface for missions after Artemis 3. NASA is currently working with five industrial partners on various designs. NASA Robotic Arm (confirmed) Provides the capability to move modules and other equipment around outside the station. CSA Habitation and Logistics Outpost HALO (confirmed) Provides living and working space for a crew of up to four for 30 days. NASA Power and Propulsion Element PPE (confirmed) The core of Gateway. Its solar arrays provide power and a propulsion system to alter Gateway’s orbit. NASA

The spaceships

The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, in NASA’s vehicle assembly building

Of course, having a space station orbiting the Moon is useless if you have no way of getting astronauts to it. That’s where the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle comes in. The crew module is being supplied by NASA via Lockheed Martin in the US, and can house up to six astronauts, but the heart of the spacecraft is the European Service Module (ESM) that sits behind the crew capsule.

It’s being provided by Europe’s Airbus company. “ESM provides everything that the astronauts need to live,” says Siân Cleaver, who is the Airbus industrial manager for the ESM.

The ESM is based on the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), also manufactured by Airbus. ATV was one of the European Space Agency’s contributions to the International Space Station. It carried cargo to and from the facility in low-Earth orbit. To transform it into the ESM and get it to the Moon, however, requires one very obvious difference.

“It’s got a massive main engine on the bottom,” says Cleaver.

The first ESM is already on top of the Space Launch System rocket, in preparation for the Artemis 1 mission in 2022. The second has been shipped to Florida for mating to the crew capsule. This will be the first Orion to carry astronauts, on the Artemis 2 mission. Cleaver and colleagues are working on ESM 3, the one that will take the astronauts to the Gateway station, before their descent to the lunar surface.

“It’s definitely mind-blowing. I feel very lucky. It was always my dream to work in human spaceflight,” Cleaver says.

The astronauts of Artemis 3 will shuttle to the lunar surface inside a SpaceX Starship craft. After that, NASA is beginning to develop a smaller lunar lander for more routine missions to and from the surface.

The spacesuits

NASA engineer Kristine Davis wears the xEMU suit at its 2019 unveiling

To walk on the Moon obviously requires a spacesuit – and these are not simple items of clothing. Spacesuits have constantly evolved to give astronauts the protection and the usability they need. For the Artemis Moon landings, those will have to be taken to a whole new level.

If you think of a spacesuit not as a garment, but as a flexible spacecraft that you wear, then you get closer to the complexity involved in making one. On top of that, it should hinder the astronaut’s movements as little as possible.

NASA is designing the eXploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU. A big issue for mobility in a spacesuit is the pressure of the air inside. When an astronaut bends a limb, it compresses the material and reduces the volume inside the suit, leading to an increase in air pressure that resists the motion of the astronaut.

Using bearings at the joints rather than compressible fabric helps address this issue. Whereas the Apollo spacesuits worn by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their trip to the Moon in 1969 used bearings only in the arms, the xEMU will use them in the arms, waist, hips, thighs and ankle joints. The suits will also let the astronauts vary the air pressure, allowing them to reduce it in order to kneel down.

All in all, the new innovations should provide far more flexibility for the astronauts and a much more comfortable environment in which to work. It should even allow them to walk more normally than the Apollo astronauts, who developed a kind of loping gait because of the low lunar gravity combined with the inflexibility of the spacesuit.

The location

Gateway will orbit the Moon on a large elliptical path that will take it over both the lunar north and south poles. It will require almost seven days to complete an orbit. At its furthest, it will be 70,000km away from the Moon, before closing to within 3,000km.

The orbit offers easier access to land in the lunar polar regions, especially the south pole, which is thought to be rich in ice deposits. It also offers excellent communications possibilities with Earth because it means Gateway spends very little time being eclipsed from Earth’s line of sight.

The future

The first thing that Gateway will do is make it easier to establish a permanent base on the Moon. “Gateway has a strategic role in really being able to develop a large presence on the lunar surface,” says Pasquali.

This is because it will provide a stable, safe base of operation from which to gradually develop the equipment and infrastructure that will bring a lunar base to life.

“I know, it’s really cheesy, but whenever I look at the Moon, I always think about the fact that we’re going there soon. And then I look at the spacecraft in the clean room the next day and I think, ‘Okay, what I’m doing has a real purpose’,” says Cleaver.

And unlike the curtailed exploration of the Moon in the 1970s, this time it’s being undertaken with a long-term purpose in mind. In November 2021, NASA confirmed that beyond the Artemis 3 lunar landing, the agency is developing a sustainable programme that envisages at least 10 further visits to the Moon’s surface.

And beyond that, Mars beckons. This is one reason why the Orion spacecraft is called the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, to indicate that it has uses other than ‘just’ travel to and from the Moon.

And being well outside of the protection of Earth’s magnetic field, the Gateway also allows the effects of deep-space radiation on the health of astronauts to be fully assessed. Knowledge of this is critical for a journey to Mars, where the cruise time in deep space will be at least nine months.

In short, Gateway is essential to all future exploration. Rather than just getting us back to the Moon, history may look back at it as the gateway to the human exploration of the entire Solar System.

Read more about the future of space exploration:

Dr Stuart Clark is an astronomer, science journalist and author of several popular science books, the latest of which is Beneath the night: How the stars have shaped the history of humankind. You can find a version of his book, remade for radio, called Beneath the Night over on BBC sounds. Stuart is also a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and he regularly works with European Space Agency to communicate their work to the general public.

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NASA’s Lunar Gateway: The plans for a permanent space station that will orbit the Moon

The science

The modules

The Gateway

The spaceships

The spacesuits

The location

The future

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Monday, February 28, 2022

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Understand the Latest News on Climate Change

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First hands on the moon

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Statistically thin ice

Carbon wormprint

Long in the rings

Quantum cat spin

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Sunday, February 27, 2022

The science

The modules

The Gateway

The spaceships

The spacesuits

The location

The future

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