BOB SIEDERER
29 July 2024
Hello again Science fans!
It is mid-summer already. Time for vacation trips with the family, fun outdoors, BBQs, heat, wildfires, and this year, the run up to a very important election. So far, it has been anything but dull. It is also time for fewer science events around the Bay, although the quality of those on the schedule remains high.
Last Sunday was the hottest day on the planet since records have been kept, according to the European climate service Copernicus. That was followed by a second record breaking day on Monday. Not good. We have to be careful not to take a particular incident as proof, or lack of proof, for global climate change however. Weather is what happens today, climate is what happens in a particular spot on Earth over time. The fact that yesterday was delightfully cool here doesn’t lessen the importance of these two records.
The number of wildfire events has more than doubled over the past 20 years worldwide. Here in California, we have evidence of wildfires close to home. The Park Fire near Chico had burned around 350,000 acres as of late Saturday. Paradise, the town devistated by fire in 2018, is under evacuation warnings again. Late this week, much of the town of Jasper, Alberta, Canada was destroyed by wildfire. Jasper is the gateway to one of Canada’s most popular National Parks, and is a charming little town. Or it was.
Our government should be doing anything possible to mitigate the dangers to the climate, if for no other reason than to protect our health and economy. Yet several Supreme Court decisions have lessened the power of the Environmental Protection Agency. It is difficult to reconcile those two things in my mind. Another court decision regarding government regulation of so-called ephemeral streams flies in the face of science and logic.
But we can’t expect any different when a total of 123 members of the House and Senate deny climate change caused by human activity. The climate isn’t just a US problem, or a North America problem. It is a world wide issue.
Some of our problems are caused by acts made with the best of intentions. Many invasive species were introduced to solve a problem. Instead, they created new ones. There are so many variables affecting Nature that it is difficult to fully predict what happens if one of those variables gets tweaked. A case in point would be the Everglades. I lived in Florida before moving to the Bay Area and saw this first hand, especially the changes brought about by the melaluca trees, originally imported from Australia to help dry out swamp land for development.
Most of the rest of the news I have for you this week comes from space.
Believe it or not, the James Webb Space Telescope just celebrated its 2 year anniversary of operation. It was July, 2022 when the first images from the telescope were received here on Earth, and space science hasn’t been the same since. Here are 10 revolutionary discoveries from JWST in just these first two years.
Just this week, astronomers announced that JWST had directly imaged an exoplanet 12 light years from Earth, one of the coldest exoplanets observed to date. It is part of a 3 star system. Astronomer Phil Plait has more about this.
We’ve written before about JWST “breaking” astronomy by discovering galaxies that shouldn’t exist based on their supposed age and our understanding of how long ago the big bang happened. But is it really breaking astronomy?
Our neighbor Mars is in the news this week. The Perseverance rover may have found signs of ancient life on Mars with the discovery of a type of rock that often contains fossilized microbes when found here on Earth. More research is needed, but this would be a spectacular find. And Curiosity rover cracked open an unremarkable rock on Mars, only to find elemental sulfur, one of the building blocks of life.
In preparation for sending humans to Mars, NASA created a simulation and put four scientists inside for 378 days, isolated from the rest of the world. Here’s what that was like for Anca Selariu, a navy microbiologist. Could you spend a year isolated like this?
The last article I’ll pass along is about AI. It is kinda funny in that it involves a generation “Z” social media “influencer”, but also highlights a serious issue with using AI, and perhaps larger social issues with the whole influencer phenomenon.
My picks for this week include:
- Wonderfest: Black Holes, and the Tech to Find Them, Tuesday, 7/20/24 in Novato
- Vintage Computer Festival, Friday, 8/2/24, and Saturday 8/3/24 in Mountain View
- Nike Missle Site Veteran Open House, Saturday, 8/3/24 in Mill Valley
Have a great week in Science!
Bob
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