2 February 2025
Hello again science fans!
科学ファンの皆さん、こんにちは！
(The first Japanese immigrants arrived in the Bay Area in 1869. Today about 20,000 Bay Area residents speak Japanese at home.)
SPACE
The OSIRIS-REx Mission collected 120 grams (4 oz) of regolith (broken rock & dust) from the asteroid Bennu in 2020 and returned the sample to Earth in 2023. Just announced: chemists found organic (carbon-based) chemicals in the sample: ammonia, formaldehyde, all 5 of the nucleotide bases of DNA and RNA, and 14 of the 20 amino acids used in proteins of Earthly life. Wow! This suggests that many of the chemical precursors of life are common in the Solar System, that they are not that difficult to be spontaneously synthesized, and they were readily available to early autocatalytic chemical systems of abiogenesis on Earth.
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” Allow me to emulate Henny Penny and once again update you on concerns of the Kessler Syndrome where two Low Earth Orbit – LEO – satellites traveling at 7 km/sec collide creating debris that collides with other LEO satellites creating exponentially more debris until it is unsafe to send anything into space. Each of the Starlink System’s 7,000 satellites maneuvers about once every two weeks to avoid passing too close to something else in orbit. Near term, Starlink plans to have 12,000 satellites in LEO. Amazon’s Project Kuiper plans to put 3,236 satellites in LEO. China is planning on putting 26,000 satellites in LEO. Yikes!
A new set of cameras are live-streaming from the ISS. Watch here. As the ISS passes through night time or “loss of signal”, you might see a replay of daytime scenes. [“Loss of signal!” Obviously they are not using Iridium or StarLink.] Captions at screen bottom indicate ‘where you are.’ BTW, the view is moving by at 7.8 km/sec (4.9 mi/sec). Hmmm. I’m thinking about displaying this on a monitor above my desk.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory began 20 years ago in the Antarctic and now consists of strings of detectors dangling in 86 holes from 1,450 m to 2,450 m (4,757 ft to 8,038 ft) under ice. [¿How does one drill deep holes in ice? You use a hot-water drill.] ¿If you can do this in ice, why not in the Mediterranean? Well underway is the KM3NeT. KM3 = Cubic Kilometer, Ne = Neutrino, T = Telescope
CLIMATE
“We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it – let me use it. We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
“The ocean’s going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years … and you’ll have more oceanfront property, right?”
“The wind doesn’t work. It’s very expensive, kills the birds, destroys everything around it. It’s very, very, very, very bad. It’s the most expensive energy — wind. And then every nine years you have to replace the turbines. You know, they’re made out of steel and they wear out.”
“The United States Ambassador to the United Nations shall immediately submit formal written notification of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement….”
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has directed agency officials to review and remove content related to climate change from its public websites….”
Anyone who has seen a solar liquid salt power plant will never forget the insanely bright tower-top lit by sunlight from thousands of mirrors. It is a fabulous use of sunlight to create electricity. Each individual mirror swivels throughout the day to reflect sunlight onto the tower. Liquid salt is heated in the tower and boils water to drive turbines to generate electricity. Ingenius – but over the years photovoltaics have become cheaper. Ivanpah is closing and similar power plants may never again be built.
RAFFLE
We are offering a 12” wall clock with the first 12 elements of the periodic table. Just send an email before noon Friday to david.almandsmith [at] gmail.com with your guess of an integer between 0 and 1,000. Last time, Lisa guessed closest to the randomly generated 619 to win a Newton’s Cradle.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
DeepSeek, a Chinese A.I., crashed upon the computer scene this week creating waves in the stock market and Silicon Valley. User fees undercut other A.I. systems such as ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Copilot (Microsoft). Understanding DeepSeek’s advantages is above my pay grade and beyond my ken. But here is someone who perhaps can help: Riley Brown. ¿Can the Chinese government access information used with DeepSeek? ¿Does DeepSeek espouse ideas that conform to the Communist Party of China?
Batteries are great for storing electric power, but if you extract that power too quickly, batteries self-destruct. For the rapid discharge and recharge of electrical power, you need a super-capacitor, but they too will overheat if ‘pushed’ too hard depending on the capacitor film material. With 50,000 potential substances to choose from it’s an alchemist’s nightmare. A.I. to the rescue! The A.I. chose 3 materials that it ‘thought’ would excel and one of those proved to be super.
¿What does a sperm cell have that an egg cell recognizes to let it enter? Researchers asked the AlphaFold A.I. to help and it consumed computer resources for weeks before offering answers. [Far faster than the 7.5 million years Deep Thought used to arrive at the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.] The “key” appears to be a specific bundle of 3 proteins.
THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK – My Picks
Storytelling for Hopeful Climate Futures Tues 4pm, Stanford
¿Is Human Hibernation Possible for Space Flight? Wed 7:30pm, San Rafael
A Ruthless Criticism of AI and Capitalism – Thur Noon, (Berkeley of course)
What Teachers Want to Know about Climate Change Livestream Thur 4pm
Unraveling the Mysteries of the Sun’s Atmosphere Fri 8pm, San Mateo
Foothills Family Nature Walk Sat 11am – 12:30pm, Los Altos
Jazz Under the Stars Sat 6 – 8pm, San Mateo
Bay Area Skeptics SkeptiCamp Sun 10am – 5pm, Mountain View
MEDICINE / HEALTH
I believe my roughly 30-year-old children could live healthy lives for hundreds of years. One of the barriers to super-long lives is the diminishing ability of mitochondria in the elderly to supply energy for cell metabolism. Researchers recently published their success in improving one link to thwart the biochemical process of mitochondrial aging. Another set of researchers just announced their findings to potentially improve mitochondrial health in brain cells. These are small steps but more will surely follow.
¿Why are ultra processed foods bad for us? One doctor posits that ultra processed foods are just too yummy to eat with restraint so we simply eat too much of them. There’s more to it than that. ¿Isn’t there?
The following websites and pages of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been removed by the incoming federal administration:
– The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System
– AtlasPlus, which housed HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis and STD information
– A contraception page for health care providers
– A page on ending gender-based violence
– Evidence supporting HPV vaccination across genders, ages 22 – 26 years
– Heart disease death rates by gender, by county, Florida
– Information about transgender and gender diverse people
– Pages related to the HIV prevention drug PrEP
– Health Disparities Among LGBTQ Youth
– Creating Safe Schools for LGBTQ+ Youth
– Safer Food Choices for Pregnant People
Others:
– National Institutes of Health Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office
– Health and Human Services page: Protecting Rights of LGBTQI+ People
PALEONTOLOGY
One of the tenets of paleontology is that dinosaurs came into existence in the southern portion of the Pangea continent – Gondwana – and reached the north of the continent – Laurasia – millions of years later. The fossil of a chicken-sized dinosaur, Ahvaytum bahndooiveche, indicates otherwise. Found in Wyoming, it has been dated to 230 million years ago which means it lived in Laurasia far earlier than thought possible.
Another dinosaur species comes from Mexico. Its ‘hands’ are unusually long so paleontologists gave it the moniker Mexidracon longimanus, meaning ‘long-handed Mexican dragon’. ¿What did it look like? Dunno, but here are two representations:
FUN (?) NERDY VIDEOS
Prolonging Life – The Right Chemistry – Joe Schwarcz – 5 mins
Alien Life Similar Life on Earth? – Sabine Hossenfelder – 5 mins
We Have to Talk about Weed – Kurzgesagt – 11 mins
Homo juluensis – History with Kayleigh – Kayleigh A.N. – 11 mins
Decarbonizing Industry – Just Have a Think – Dave Borlace -12.5 mins
¿Does Life Need a Multiverse? – PBS SpaceTime – Matt O’Dowd – 13 mins
The Copernican Principle – Dr. Becky – Becky Smethurst – 14 mins
Dome Paradox & Newton’s Laws – Up & Atom – Jade Tan-Holmes – 21 mins
On Being Wrong – StarTalk – Neil deGrasse Tyson & Chuck Nice – 23 mins
Kary Mullis and DNA Polymerase – Veritasium – Deriek Muller – 32 mins
Is the Presidency Becoming Too Powerful? – WHYY “Studio 2” – 37 mins
What Whales Tell Us – CNN: The Whole Story – 45 mins
Decoding the Universe: Quantum – PBS NOVA – 54 mins
Last Friday i filled out the annual Depression/Anxiety Scale Questionnaire for my doctor. Afterward i sent this note to her: “I responded that i have been experiencing “worry” in the last 2 weeks. Damn straight! With Trump in office we all should be worried!”
She responded: “Agreed. Maybe they’ll come up with a Trump era version of the Depression/Anxiety Scale. Oh wait, that would be too “woke.”
Reach out to friends and family this month. Especially this month.
Dave Almandsmith
Bay Area Skeptics
“When you worship power, compassion and mercy will look like sins.”
Rev. Benjamin Cremer, Pastor, Church of the Nazarene, Boise ID
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