ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 284

Africa’s majestic baobab trees are mysteriously dying

By Sarah Wild

Africa’s iconic baobab trees are dying, and scientists don’t know why. In a study intended to examine why the trees are so long-living, researchers made the unexpected finding that many of the oldest and largest of the trees have died in the past decade or so.

The African baobab tree (Adansonia digitata L.) is the oldest living flowering plant, or angiosperm, and is found in the continent’s tropical regions. Individual trees — which can contain up to 500 cubic metres of wood — can live for more than 2,000 years. Their wide trunks often have hollow cavities, and their high branches resemble roots sticking up into the air.

The researchers — who published their findings1 in Nature Plants on 11 June — set out to use a newly developed radiocarbon-dating technique to study the age and architecture of the species. Usual tree-ring dating methods are not suitable for baobabs, because their trunks do not necessarily grow annual rings.

The trees’ ages were previously attributed to their size, and in local folklore, baobabs are often described as being old, says study author Adrian Patrut, a radiochemist at Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania.

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Yes, There Are Bacteria on Your Kitchen Towel. No, They Won’t Make You Sick

By Rachael Rettner

Your kitchen towel may harbor a number of different bacteria, a new study finds. But does that mean your towel can actually make you sick?

Although the new finding may sound gross, it doesn’t mean you should ditch your kitchen towel; experts said the bacteria found on the towels in this study aren’t particularly concerning when it comes to foodborne illnesses.

For the study, the researchers gathered 100 kitchen towels from families. The scientists took samples from the towels — which had been used, without being washed, for one month — and cultured, or grew, these samples in lab dishes. The study found that 49 percent of the towels tested positive for bacteria and that the amount of bacteria was higher for towels used by large families or families with children, compared with towels used by smaller families or families without children.

In addition, towels used for multiple purposes — including wiping utensils, drying hands and wiping surfaces — grew more bacteria than towels used for a single purpose, the researchers found. And damp towels grew more bacteria than dry towels, according to the study, which was presented Saturday (June 9) at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Atlanta.

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Indiana GOP votes to keep definition of marriage as ‘between a man and a woman’

By Jacqueline Thomsen

The Indiana Republican Party voted to keep language defining marriage as being “between a man and a woman” in its platform, rejecting language meant to be more inclusive of same-sex couples.

Members at the GOP state party’s convention on Saturday overwhelmingly voted to keep the language first adopted under then-Gov. Mike Pence (R) in 2014, the Times of Northwest Indiana reported.

The Supreme Court in 2015 ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in the U.S.

Party Chairman Kyle Hupfer, who was picked for the job by Gov. Eric Holcomb (R), had proposed changing the language to recognize more families, including “all loving adults” with children.

“We support traditional families with a mother and father, blended families, grandparents, guardians, single parents and all loving adults who successfully raise and nurture children to reach their full potential every day,” the proposal read.

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Atheist Poet and Publisher Shahzahan Bachchu Shot Dead in Bangladesh

By Hemant Mehta

According to disturbing reports out of Bangladesh, atheist poet and publisher Shahzahan Bachchu was shot to death today in the town of Kakaldi.

There were five assailants on two motorcycles, the [Superintendent of Police Jayedul Alam] said.

Shahzahan had gone to meet friends at a pharmacy near his home before iftar, when the assailants came into the area. They blasted a crude bomb outside the pharmacy, creating panic.

They then dragged Shahzahan out and shot him, Jayedul said.

Bachchu had been the publisher at Bishaka Prokashoni (Star Publishers) and a former leader within the Communist Party of Bangladesh. The motive and the attackers are unknown as of this writing. But as we know all too well, a number of public atheists in Bangladesh have been slain over the past few years. There had been a lull in the killings for well over a year, but that ended today.

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The artist who walked on the Moon: Alan Bean

By Richard Taylor

In November 1969, when I was six years old, my father pointed to the Moon and told me that a man was walking on it. I looked up at the silver sphere and wondered what he was doing up there in that remote, crater-riddled land. I later learned that his name was Alan Bean, and that he was the fourth of only 12 humans so far to walk on another world. Even in that select group, he was unique: he was the only one to record what he saw on canvas and in paint. In May, he died at the age of 86.

As my interest in space travel grew, I read about the trajectory that led Bean to his Apollo 12 Moon landing. Earning an aeronautical-engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1955, he soon achieved his childhood dream of becoming a Navy test pilot. His instructor was Pete Conrad, later a fellow member of the Apollo 12 mission and Moon-walker, who became his closest friend. Inspired by the “sights, sounds and smells of high performance flying machines”, as Bean put it, they hatched their plan to ride the biggest flying machine of them all.

Standing 110 metres tall, the Saturn V remains the most powerful rocket ever flown. Four months before the Apollo 12 launch, one of these behemoths had carried Neil Armstrong and his crew to the first Moon landing. But whereas Armstrong took off on a sweltering summer’s day, Bean, Conrad and fellow astronaut Richard Gordon sat on their rocket engulfed by a winter thunderstorm. Thirty-six seconds into their launch, the unthinkable happened. The Saturn V was struck by lightning — twice. “I looked up at the display that had all of the caution lights and there were more on than I’d ever seen in my life,” Bean recalled. Seconds away from aborting the mission, he managed to reboot the affected systems. The astronauts’ nervous laughter could be heard all the way to orbit.

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Glittering Diamond Dust in Space Might Solve a 20-Year-Old Mystery

By Shannon Hall

When astronomers first peered at the cosmos in microwave light, they knew they had stumbled on a window into the universe’s earliest moments. After all, the cosmic microwave background—that hazy afterglow of the big bang released when the universe was a mere 380,000 years old—has allowed scientists to answer fundamental questions about where we came from. But microwave light has also raised an intriguing mystery closer to home. In 1996 astronomers noticed an inexplicable excess of microwaves emanating from our own galaxy. For over 20 years, this so-called anomalous microwave emission has remained an enigma—until today. A new study published in Nature Astronomy suggests spinning nano-diamonds might be the culprit.

Ten years ago, while studying nascent planetary systems forming in whirling disks of gas and dust around young stars, Cardiff University astronomer Jane Greaves noticed a few of those systems seemed to be faintly glowing with microwaves. She initially attributed the glow to flaws in her data but later reconsidered after hearing a colleague’s talk about anomalous microwave emission. Returning to the telescope, she and her collaborators monitored 14 young star systems for mysterious microwave emissions, finally finding three radiating that telltale glow. Those same three systems, it turns out, are also the only three within Greaves’s sample known to host nano-diamonds—pint-size, pyramid-shaped crystals containing only hundreds of carbon atoms, all sheened with an atoms-thin gloss of frozen hydrogen likely accumulated from the interstellar medium. “This really is a clue of nature telling us nano-diamonds are what is responsible” for the anomalous microwaves, she says.

But how can objects so tiny emit microwaves so mighty that they can be glimpsed across hundreds of thousands of light-years? The trick is that our galaxy is a turbulent place, in which tides and winds raised by the motions and activities of stars make any small object—be it a puny dust grain, a hefty molecule or even a wee diamond—jiggle and spin as it is jostled by other particles bumping into it. Should that object possess an asymmetrical electric charge (where one side has slightly more charge than the other), its spin could emit electromagnetic radiation in the form of microwaves. Disks around newborn stars host particularly speedy particles, further amplifying this effect.

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Pennsylvania abuse survivor calls on Pope Francis to intervene

By Stephanie Kirchgaessner

Mark Rozzi can remember the feeling of the tall grass brushing against his bare legs on the day he and a close friend desperately ran out of the rectory in Hyde Park, Pennsylvania.

Rozzi, who was 13 at the time, had just been raped by his priest, the Rev Edward Graff, and remembers thinking in that moment, as he ran through a field, that he would take his terrible new secret to his grave.

When he got home and was peppered with questions by his mother – a Sicilian from Messina who sensed something was wrong – he lied and said Graff had dropped his towel in front of the boys. He did not tell her about the things he came to understand as an adult – that Graff had groomed him for months, by secretly talking to him about sex, plying him with alcohol and showing him pornography. It had all culminated in his vicious rape by Graff in a shower, where Rozzi can still recall staring at the tiles and wondering if he should stay or run.

Rozzi did not, in the end, take his secret to his grave, and nor did hundreds of other victims.

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Mississippi Mayor Delivers Christian Prayer at Local High School Awards Ceremony

By Hemant Mehta

When Long Beach High School in Mississippi held its “22nd Annual Superintendent’s Academic Awards” this spring, the schedule included a speaking slot for Mayor George Bass (below). Specifically, Bass was scheduled to deliver a prayer, which is exactly what he did:

Bass led the assembled group of parents, students and staff in a prayer addressed to “our Father” and concluding, “in Jesus Christ’s name, Amen.”

Why was a Christian prayer scheduled at a public school event? And even in Mississippi, how did every administrator and the mayor himself not realize this was breaking the law?

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. The Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote to the same school last September regarding a football coach who prayed with students and a marching band director who “scheduled recitations of the Lord’s Prayer.” They never heard back.

But FFRF is writing again to put a stop to the mayor’s prayers.

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NASA’s leader wants to privatize the International Space Station. It’s a remarkably terrible idea.

By Konstantin Kakaes

Even by the standards of a business-happy Republican Party, privatizing the International Space Station — the Trump administration’s latest scheme — is a conspicuously terrible idea. Since taking office as NASA’s administrator in April, Jim Bridenstine (previously a member of Congress from Oklahoma with no scientific background) has pushed this scheme, most recently in an interview this week with the Washington Post.

NASA says it will save money by “leveraging private industry capacity, innovation, and competitiveness.” But it’s not just Democrats who are opposed to Bridenstine’s plan. None other than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) held hearings in May and June to voice opposition.

The ISS, as the space station is commonly known, is by far the largest man-made object ever to orbit the Earth. NASA, the Russian space agency, and 13 other countries built and run it jointly. It took 37 space shuttle flights and five Russian rockets to launch its various components. The station’s pressurized interior — the part astronauts live and work in — is about the size of the inside of a 747. Together with its large arrays of solar panels that provide power, the station would cover a football field.

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Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought

By Jeff Tollefson

Siphoning carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere could be more than an expensive last-ditch strategy for averting climate catastrophe. A detailed economic analysis published on 7 June suggests that the geoengineering technology is inching closer to commercial viability.

The study, in Joule, was written by researchers at Carbon Engineering in Calgary, Canada, which has been operating a pilot CO2-extraction plant in British Columbia since 2015. That plant — based on a concept called direct air capture — provided the basis for the economic analysis, which includes cost estimates from commercial vendors of all of the major components. Depending on a variety of design options and economic assumptions, the cost of pulling a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere ranges between US $94 and $232. The last comprehensive analysis of the technology, conducted by the American Physical Society in 2011, estimated that it would cost $600 per tonne.

Carbon Engineering says that it published the paper to advance discussions about the cost and potential of the technology. “We’re really trying to commercialize direct air capture in a serious way, and to do that, you have to have everybody in the supply chain on board,” says David Keith, acting chief scientist at Carbon Engineering and a climate physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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