Kate Rauner's Blog, page 5

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Ever Change Your Mind? Admit a Mistake? Congratulations!

I begin with the most hated episode of my favorite podcast: Such a topic is an emotional one, and I’ll state right here at the top that this is where my biggest failing was in that episode: Rather than de-escalating and making a calm and even-handed presentation, my tone was inflammatory throughout. I was emotional […]

Intriguing Science with a Great Name #biology #extinction

It’s a great concept with a great name: resurrection biology. No one will bring back extinct species, not exactly. Related species can be adapted to reoccupy, and perhaps recreate, their ecological niches.

Resurrection biology seeks to de-extinct animals and plants that have been lost, a bit like the fictional dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, by using ancient DNA and related living species.

Biotechnology and genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences announced in January that it wants to bring back the dodo — an odd-looking flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean until the late 17th century — and reintroduce it to its once native habitat. CNN

More recently-lost animals may be reclaimed: woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and passenger pigeons. The goal, re-wilding, wouldn’t be to simply give us oddities for entertainment, but to develop animal populations capable of remaking ecosystems. This is geo-engineering for environments in decline to benefit humans as well as wildlife.

As for the dodo, DNA exists in museum specimens. Nothing was intentionally preserved for a genetics project, but enough samples may have survived to make a new dodo possible.

Nicobar pigeon, possible contributor to a new dodo. Due to hunting and habitat loss, it is a near-threatened species.

The company plans to compare the genomes of the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire, an extinct bird closely related to the dodo, to identify how they differ. Then it will edit PGCs [certain stem cells] of a Nicobar pigeon so it expresses the physical traits of a dodo.

The edited cells will then be inserted into the embryos of a sterile chicken and rooster. With the introduction of the edited PGCs, the chicken and rooster will be capable of reproducing, and, in theory, their offspring will resemble the dodo thanks to the hybridized pigeon DNA in their reproductive systems. CNN

This won’t be a dodo, but placed in an environment similar to the originals, it will hopefully figure out how to live like a dodo. Over time, maybe evolve into what a dodo would become if it had adapted to the modern world. Genetics may be the easy part.

Museum specimen of a dodo

The task seems even harder for socially complex animals. A reconstructed woolly mammoth baby will have none of the species’ original culture. If elephants are used in the project, someone will have to decide if experimenting on them is ethical. And, to recreate a Pleistocene grassland for a mammoth herd to live on will require a vast area set aside as a wilderness or preserve. More than one charismatic species will be needed on the landscape. The science may progress faster than the politics of such a venture.

Whatever the gee-whiz excitement of resurrection biology, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that saving the plants and animals that still exist is a better use of resources. The 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act reminds us that, despite all the complications, that can be done. But human sensibilities must be considered, and public support found. Gee-whiz could be the key.

How to practice for contacting aliens? Whales! #UFOs #whale

You’ve heard of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,) but do you know how they practice for encountering alien signals? Right here on Earth? Whales!

Conversing with an Alaskan Humpback Whale… ‘We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback “language,” said lead author Dr. Brenda McCowan of U.C. Davis. “Humpback whales are extremely intelligent, have complex social systems, make tools – nets out of bubbles to catch fish -, and communicate extensively with both songs and social calls,” said coauthor Dr. Fred Sharpe. seti.org

The Whale-SETI team played underwater recordings of what they thought, based on past work, was a humpback greeting. A whale named Twain circled the team’s boat and replied.

The humans involved in this exchange hope to use the mathematics of information theory to quantify communicative complexity to whale-speak and develop filters to apply to any extraterrestrial signals they may someday receive.

Seems to me, talking to whales is exciting enough, even without aliens.

Thanks to the SETI Institute, a non-profit, multi-disciplinary research and education organization who lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe, and share that knowledge with the world. Click here to learn more about SETI.

Would you like a copy of SETI’s free PDF ebook on Mars? Click here. It’s a nice summary and there are excellent pictures. The form asks for a “company” and I entered “self” to get my copy. The link should automatically download the PDF. If you have any trouble, try a different browser.

I’ve wondered if we might someday communicate with alien whales. What if human settlers travel to an exoplanet…

Interstellar journey to a new world. An unexpected indigenous culture. Two reluctant leaders desperate to save their people.

Trey Jackson is burdened with guilt over his lover’s death four decades ago. The old pilot languishes among settlers who fear exploring the planet they colonized. Recruited by a teen into a secret study of the planet’s whales, Jackson has a chance for salvation… until one of the creatures drags away their research raft and leaves them shipwrecked on the aliens’ shore.

Among the aliens, mystic Zahra keeps a vicious chieftain drugged to thwart his deadly marauding. As her herbs lose their power, she steers the violent lord away from her childhood home to attack other helpless clans.

Now marooned, Jackson seeks Zahra’s help and triggers a dangerous chain of events. Their mutual first-contact veers toward tragedy. Could one lonely old man be the hero they need?

Chronicle of an Alien World is an action-packed science fiction adventure. If you like relatable heroes, fascinating scenarios, and heartbreaking moral quandaries, you’ll love Kate Rauner’s thought-provoking tale.

Read Chronicle of an Alien World and cross faraway fron t iers today. Click here now.

Tracking Down Nazi Uranium #history

Reconstruction of the Nazis nuclear reactor – without real uranium cubes.

Sounds like fictional super-villains, but during World War II, Nazis ran a secret laboratory in a cave beneath a castle in Germany. There, Werner Heisenberg (yeah, the still-famous physicist, whose life in Nazis Germany and post-war rehabilitation is complicated) worked to give Hitler a nuclear weapon, and thankfully, failed.

Allied forces recovered 659 uranium cubes from a field near the lab. A field!? The end of the war was chaotic. “Allied forces shipped the uranium cubes found at the site first to Paris and later to the U.S. But 400 or so remained unaccounted for, and today, the fate of the “vast majority” of the cubes remains unknown.” [Physics Today]

The birth of The Bomb and America’s use against Japan are controversial. Perhaps they always will be and always should. Dropping “atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki… killed an estimated 200,000 people and caused lingering injuries and radiation poisoning that plagued more than 650,000 survivors for decades to follow.” [Smithsonian]

But, to focus on those Nazi cubes… There is one cube stored at America’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with a lost provenance.

No researcher has ever confirmed this particular cube’s history. But thanks to advanced nuclear forensics techniques, scientists at the Richland laboratory are closer than ever to figuring out the truth… [and] researchers Jon Schwantes and Brittany Robertson are relying on radiochrometric dating. [Smithsonian]

Radiochrometric dating is new to me. The technique estimates the age of an object by assessing which decay products of uranium it contains. I wonder if anyone knows the starting purity of the Nazis cubes and how that impacts the results? But there are other clues.

As part of her PhD research, Robertson is attempting to match “signatures of rare-Earth elements” in the PNNL cube with samples from uranium mines, notes Vice. If the signatures correspond, she may be able to determine where the Nazis sourced their materials. Top candidates include mines in the Czech Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which were both accessible to the Nazis during the war.

“This cube, potentially coming from Nazi Germany’s nuclear program for the purpose of trying to produce plutonium for their weapons program, is now being used at PNNL for training purposes … in an attempt to make the world a safer place… So it’s an interesting history.” [Smithsonian]

Indeed, an interesting confluence of fraught history and neat scientific forensics. Now I know about both.

Schwantes and Robertson presented their findings at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society. My thanks to Smithsonian and Wikipedia for their articles.

Archeology of a Working Town – Ancient Roman Edition #history

In high school, I thought history was boring. List of generals and battles, which kingdom a ship sailed under when it discovered (as far as Europeans were concerned) this or that island. But since then, I’ve discovered there’s a lot more to history. And this latest study from archeology is fascinating.

The popular press doesn’t provide details of why this ancient Roman town remained essentially undisturbed for so long, but I get a picture in my mind. Archeologists of the last century had a touch of Indiana Jones in them. They focused on fancy stuff like pottery imported for the wealthy. Little of that at this central Italy site, and locals cutting hay on the land were probably content to be ignored for generations, so Interamna Lirenas slumbered, undisturbed…

Until modern technologies and modern interests discovered that this site was once a thriving river port of ancient Rome – one that lived on after the Empire into the 3rd century AD. (What made the site a great location in one era made it a dangerous place to live in another. “Inhabitants probably deserted the town amid growing insecurity but before the Lombard invasion of the late 6th century AD, because they knew they were on a direct route which marauding armies were bound to use. ” cam.ac.uk )

“A geophysical survey has allowed researchers to build a highly detailed image of the town’s layout, with an impressive list of urban features.” [Popular Mechanics] That led to a careful excavation. This was a wonderful location where two rivers and a Roman road converged, home to a bustling town since the time of Julius Ceasar, when, in 46 BC, he awarded his patronage. That was a rare honor.

Interamna Lirenas had no American-style zoning. The homes of people of all economic situations lived together, and there were public facilities for them too. As my own nation deals with an escalating crisis in affordable housing, we might take notice.

A rare roofed theatre, markets, warehouses, a river port and other startling discoveries made by a Cambridge-led team of archaeologists challenge major assumptions about the decline of Roman Italy.

New findings from Interamna Lirenas, traditionally written off as a failed backwater in Central Italy, change our understanding of Roman history, its excavators believe. cam.ac.uk

Hopefully, this discovery compensates for the loss of a nice hay field. Thanks to the article in Popular Mechanics that led me to this Cambridge web page where you’ll find interesting pictures along with more details on the excavation. Also, congratulations to Alessandro Launaro, the study’s author and Interamna Lirenas Project lead at the University of Cambridge’s Classics Faculty.

Historical Jesus #merrychristmas #history #archeology

Christmas is an unusual holiday, simultaneously religious and secular. Between parties, I get contemplative about the religious tradition that co-exists with solstice celebrations. At times, I think about Jesus.

Jesus-in-art, when shown preaching, looks like a wealthy Roman. That’s the Jesus modern Americans mostly envision, and it can’t be historically accurate. The real-life Jesus was a poor man of Judea. Does the difference matter?

Perhaps. Human beings express their identity through their bodies, and that includes clothes.

Screen shot of ancient Judaean sandals found in dry caves by the Dead Sea

Our bodies are not simple shells. As the sociologist Chris Shilling argues, they are “both personal resources and social symbols that ‘give off’ messages about identity”… Jesus aligned himself with the poor and this would have been obvious from how he looked… There is no neat physical description of Jesus in the Gospels or in ancient Christian literature. But there are incidental details from the Bible. The Conversation

Jesus-the-man lived in a particular time and place. We know a lot about his people. Based on archeology, his skin was olive, and his hair and beard were black. He was short by comparison to modern Americans, and stocky. His peers would have found it odd if he was not married by the time he began preaching.

As to clothing, the ancient scholar Celsus (mid second century) described a shabby Jesus. Origen, a Christian writer of the time, did not dispute that description.

I take this information from Joan Taylor, Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London. Her conclusions are not universally accepted, especially her view (based on John 19:23-24) that Jesus wore a thin tunic that children would have worn, or for adults, worn only under a sturdier outer garment. There’s no way I’ll be viewing the ancient Greek (or other languages) to make my own translations, so I leave that to academia.

I’ll accept Taylor’s view that Jesus wore a fringed shawl similar to what Jewish men today don for religious purposes. What else would a preacher wear in Jesus’ Judea? Such a garment never seems to appear on Jesus-in-art. (Art is not my area of expertise. If you know of such an image, please leave a link in the comments.) Why would it? Jesus-in-art comes to Americans via ancient Rome and medieval Europe, where no one would recognize the tallit.

So, to return to my question, does it matter? I suppose that depends on whether you’re interested in the historical Jesus. You may be more concerned with The Church and its many spin-offs.

Perhaps Jesus-the-man matters less than the social and cultural ideas constructed around him over centuries. We built our communities on such foundations, and those are the places where we find friendship and validation. Besides, to live according to the teachings of Jesus as they survive in the Gospels would be very hard indeed. Who can claim success?

Wherever you are and however you believe, may you enjoy the holidays with your friends and family – the community you built a life upon.

Science in Economics – experiment in fighting global poverty

Science isn’t just for space rockets. I ran across an experiment in awarding money to poor people that uses a control group. Ah, science! Of course, humans are difficult to study in the wild, but this seems like good data.

It’s an unprecedented – and massive – experiment: Since 2017 the U.S.-based charity GiveDirectly… Their findings cover the first two years of the effort and compare the outcomes for about 5,000 people who got monthly payments to nearly 12,000 others in a control group who got no money. But, just as significantly, the researchers also compared the recipients to people in two other categories: nearly 9,000 who received the monthly income for just two years, without the promise of another decade of payments afterward; and another roughly 9,000 people who got that same two years’ worth of income but in a lump-sum payment. NPR

The experiment is continuing, and here are some of the results so far:

1] People who got the money in a lump sum vastly outperformed people who were promised the same amount for just two years but received it in monthly installments.
2] Lump sums are so useful that even those receiving monthly installments created their own version. Here’s that human factor at work. Recipients of monthly stipends created their own savings clubs. Each month, the members put $10 into the communal pot and a different person takes it home. Bingo. A lump sum.
3] Poor people generally use the money productively rather than wasting it on alcohol, cigarettes or other vices. It makes me wonder if this worry is merely an excuse.

Long-term results are not in yet, but you can read more by clicking on this NPR article.

I have no connection to Give Directly, and I’m no expert on non-profits. I did look at Charity Navigator, and Give Directly gets high marks there. But if you’re interested in moving the experiment along via a donation, do your own evaluation. There’s contact information at Charity Navigator.

Sometimes, your gut reaction is all you have to evaluate an undertaking, but when there’s data, so much the better. Give Directly seems to be trying to to do well with their doing good. The idea of a charity that doesn’t come with paternalistic strings attached seems like a welcome find during this season. Happy Holidays.

Humanity Left the Moon 50 Years Ago – until #NASA returns, blast into space with #scifibooks

Apollo 17

Apollo 17 lifted off from the Moon on this day in 1972, NASA’s final crewed mission, and the only time a geologist set foot on the lunar surface. Most people alive today only know the journey from history books.

The mission broke several records for crewed spaceflight, including the longest crewed lunar landing mission (12 days, 14 hours), greatest distance from a spacecraft during an extravehicular activity of any type (7.6 kilometers or 4.7 miles), longest total duration of lunar-surface extravehicular activities (22 hours, 4 minutes), largest lunar-sample return (approximately 115 kg or 254 lb), longest time in lunar orbit (6 days, 4 hours), and greatest number of lunar orbits (75) Wikipedia

While worthy of remembrance and celebration, those trail-blazing records seem quaint compared to NASA current plans. And not just NASA. Many countries and private companies are targeting the Moon for long-term occupation and development. When will boots hit the regolith again? Soon… soon.

Until then, we can only travel to the Moon in our imagination. Join newly minted space pilot Winnie Bravo in my science fiction trilogy. Available in kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and (especially good for gifts) paperbacks and hard cover editions. Let’s hope real-life astronauts don’t encounter villainous scoundrels or mysterious probes!

Winnie Bravo is brash, reckless, and more than a little annoying as she sets out to prove herself. Capturing a stealth probe that’s destroying satellites seems the perfect way to demonstrate her talents, but the mysterious craft escapes. Now, someone at her corporation’s lunar base is willing to kill to stop her.

Can she track down the lunar spies before they strike again? Click now and head into orbit today.

Good luck NASA and everyone else in the space industry. I can’t wait to see what you accomplish!

A Telescope to Boggle Your Mind #astronomy #physics

Telescopes use mirrors and lenses. I have an 8 inch reflector with several eyepieces that I can pick up and carry outside. The focal length (the major determining factor of a telescope’s magnifying power) is roughly four feet.

Now, can you imagine a telescope with a focal length of 650 AU?

AU. That’s Astronautical Units – the distance from the Sun to Earth. It averages about 93 million miles. So 650 AU would put your eyepiece over 60 billion miles away. If you sent a message telling an eyepiece at the focal point to move a squinch farther out, it would take your instructions almost four days to reach the target.

This sounds like science fiction, but the concept is already a tool in astronomy: Gravitational lensing. This occurs because the Sun’s mass creates ripples and dents in the fabric of spacetime. Light has to follow along those lines, and that can create a magnifying effect. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope detects how light bends around massive galaxy clusters in space to reveal fainter, farther away galaxies behind them.

Wait, you say. The James Webb is a mere one million miles away. You’re right, but scientists are looking into the future.

In a new paper, Slava Turyshev computes all the detailed math needed to show that it is actually possible to harness our sun’s gravity in this way [to] help us beam light messages into the stars for interstellar communication or investigate the surfaces of distant exoplanets. Plans are underway at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Popular Science

A laser positioned at the sun’s gravitational focus could send messages to other stars! Way better than radio! Unfortunately, that pesky limit to the speed of light applies to the entire project. Using the effect for communications to distant worlds means a message sent to a star four light-years away would take four years to get there, and another four for the reply to reach us. Assuming anyone responds.

But exoplanets could be within our grasp.

Turyshev’s mission would be the next big step towards confirming life on other worlds, hopefully launching around 2035. [The] telescope will then actually map the surface of an exoplanet in detail. Turyshev claims it would be able to see a planet blown up to 700 by 700 pixels—a huge improvement on direct imaging’s current 2 or 3 pixels. “If there is a swamp on that exoplanet, emitting methane, we’ll know that’s what is positioned on this continent on this island, for example,” he explains. Popular Science

Hopeful launch dates seldom hold, but this is a breathtaking idea. I hope I live long enough to spy on alien worlds. Today, I can only imagine what exoplanets hold, and share my world with you. Click here for Chronicle of an Alien World.