Humans have a knack for sharing intimate moments in unlikely places, as membership of the mile-high club demonstrates. So there is a significant chance that the launch of the space tourism sector may be swiftly followed by the first sex in space.

But having researched the issue, my colleagues and I believe that space tourism companies haven’t adequately prepared for the consequences of people joining what we could call the “Kármán line club” (referencing the 100km-high boundary between Earth and the rest of the cosmos).

Talk of space tourism has always been in terms of the distant future. But sub-orbital space tourism – short flights with only a few minutes of spaceflight and weightlessness – already exists. Tickets range from freebies, to costing millions of dollars.

Much longer flights are just around the corner. Companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX have well-established track records of developing spacecraft faster than the public sector. SpaceX’s larger and more capable Starship spacecraft will likely operate routinely in the next few years.

When, not if

Flights have been reserved and passenger lists assembled for private flights that will loop around the Moon. Spacecraft such as Starship will have the capacity for tens of passengers, in a large cabin environment, possibly with private cabins.

Considering that space travel is no longer reserved for professional astronauts, the various motivations of space tourists and upcoming spacecraft developments, we concluded that in-space sex will probably happen within the next ten years.

The real concern is not the sexual interactions themselves, but rather if they lead to human conception in space. Early orbital space tourism flights are expected to last for days to weeks, so only the early stages of human reproduction could happen in space.

Passengers will not be allowed to board if they are already known to be pregnant, although the space tourism industry does not appear to have considered concealed or unknown pregnancies. Sometimes women don’t realise they are pregnant until they go into labour.

From decades of human spaceflight, we already know weightlessness and increased levels of ionising radiation has a profound effect on our bodies. We don’t know how this will affect the physiological processes of reproduction.

Astronauts routinely suffer muscle and bone wastage as their bodies no longer have to resist the forces of gravity. On Earth, gravity influences the distribution of body fluids, such as blood. A lack of gravity can result in increased pressure inside the skull which can make people’s vision blurry and even change the brain’s structure.

Limited experiments on mouse embryos, which include one that used a mini incubator on a satellite, have shown changes in embryo viability after they were exposed to space. Knowledge of the impact on human reproduction is effectively zero, but we can assume that there will be effects.

Therefore, there is an unknown potential for developmental abnormalities in human embryos conceived in space. Additionally, there could be an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy in weightlessness conditions (when the embryo attaches outside the uterus, for example in the fallopian tubes).

Even if space tourists use contraception, we can’t be sure it will be as effective outside planet Earth. There have been no studies on how contraceptives will be affected by space environments.

Taking responsibility

For the space tourism industry, there are commercial risks of litigation, reputational damage and financial loss if people conceive during spaceflight – as well as ethical and reproductive rights issues. Our research found little evidence that the sector is taking steps to mitigate these risks. There is little anecdotal evidence from behind the scenes.

There is also a darker side to consider – the risk of sexual assault in space. Imagine trying to evade the advances of a fellow passenger or staff member during spaceflight. You would be completely trapped.

The space tourism industry and other relevant parties should urgently come together to discuss these issues and formulate a strategy to protect all those involved. A simple solution could be a combination of pre-spaceflight counselling with all space tourists about the risks of human conception in space. Legal waivers absolving the space tourism operators of liability if human conception was still to occur could also be considered.

Space tourism is already happening and it seems likely that sexual interactions between some participants will occur very soon. The question is whether the sector will be prepared for the possible consequences.

David Cullen, Professor of Bioanalytical Technology, Cranfield University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Just over two decades ago, as the new millennium began, it seemed that tracks left by our ancient human ancestors dating back more than about 50,000 years were excessively rare.

Only four sites had been reported in the whole of Africa at that time. Two were from East Africa: Laetoli in Tanzania and Koobi Fora in Kenya; two were from South Africa (Nahoon and Langebaan). In fact the Nahoon site, reported in 1966, was the first hominin tracksite ever to be described.

In 2023 the situation is very different. It appears that people were not looking hard enough or were not looking in the right places. Today the African tally for dated hominin ichnosites (a term that includes both tracks and other traces) older than 50,000 years stands at 14. These can conveniently be divided into an East African cluster (five sites) and a South African cluster from the Cape coast (nine sites). There are a further ten sites elsewhere in the world including the UK and the Arabian Peninsula.

Given that relatively few skeletal hominin remains have been found on the Cape coast, the traces left by our human ancestors as they moved about ancient landscapes are a useful way to complement and enhance our understanding of ancient hominins in Africa.

In a recently published article in Ichnos, the international journal of trace fossils, we provided the ages of seven newly dated hominin ichnosites that we have identified in the past five years on South Africa’s Cape south coast. These sites now form part of the “South African cluster” of nine sites.

We found that the sites ranged in age; the most recent dates back about 71,000 years. The oldest, which dates back 153,000 years, is one of the more remarkable finds recorded in this study: it is the oldest footprint thus far attributed to our species, Homo sapiens.

The new dates corroborate the archaeological record. Along with other evidence from the area and time period, including the development of sophisticated stone tools, art, jewellery and harvesting of shellfish, it confirms that the Cape south coast was an area in which early anatomically modern humans survived, evolved and thrived, before spreading out of Africa to other continents.

Very different sites

There are significant differences between the East African and South African tracksite clusters. The East African sites are much older: Laetoli, the oldest, is 3.66 million years old and the youngest is 0.7 million years old. The tracks were not made by Homo sapiens, but by earlier species such as australopithecines, Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus. For the most part, the surfaces on which the East African tracks occur have had to be laboriously and meticulously excavated and exposed.

The South African sites on the Cape coast, by contrast, are substantially younger. All have been attributed to Homo sapiens. And the tracks tend to be fully exposed when they’re discovered, in rocks known as aeolianites, which are the cemented versions of ancient dunes.

Excavation is therefore not usually considered – and because of the sites’ exposure to the elements and the relatively coarse nature of dune sand, they aren’t usually as well preserved as the East African sites. They are also vulnerable to erosion, so we often have to work fast to record and analyse them before they are destroyed by the ocean and the wind.

While this limits the potential for detailed interpretation, we can have the deposits dated. That’s where optically stimulated luminescence comes in.

An illuminating method

A key challenge when studying the palaeo-record – trackways, fossils, or any other kind of ancient sediment – is determining how old the materials are.

Without this it is difficult to evaluate the wider significance of a find, or to interpret the climatic changes that create the geological record. In the case of the Cape south coast aeolianites, the dating method of choice is often optically stimulated luminescence.

This method of dating shows how long ago a grain of sand was exposed to sunlight; in other words, how long that section of sediment has been buried. Given how the tracks in this study were formed – impressions made on wet sand, followed by burial with new blowing sand – it is a good method as we can be reasonably confident that the dating “clock” started at about the same time the trackway was created.

The Cape south coast is a great place to apply optically stimulated luminescence. Firstly, the sediments are rich in quartz grains, which produce lots of luminescence. Secondly, the abundant sunshine, wide beaches and ready wind transport of sand to form coastal dunes mean any pre-existing luminescence signals are fully removed prior to the burial event of interest, making for reliable age estimates. This method has underpinned much of the dating of previous finds in the area.

The overall date range of our findings for the hominin ichnosites – about 153,000 to 71,000 years in age – is consistent with ages in previously reported studies from similar geological deposits in the region.

The 153,000 year old track was found in the Garden Route National Park, west of the coastal town of Knysna on the Cape south coast. The two previously dated South African sites, Nahoon and Langebaan, have yielded ages of about 124,000 years and 117,000 years respectively.

Increased understanding

The work of our research team, based in the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa, is not done.

We suspect that further hominin ichnosites are waiting to be discovered on the Cape south coast and elsewhere on the coast. The search also needs to be extended to older deposits in the region, ranging in age from 400,000 years to more than 2 million years.

A decade from now, we expect the list of ancient hominin ichnosites to be a lot longer than it is at present – and that scientists will be able to learn a great deal more about our ancient ancestors and the landscapes they occupied.

Charles Helm, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University and Andrew Carr, Senior Lecturer, University of Leicester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If all goes to plan, sometime in November 2024, NASA’s newly announced Artemis II crew – Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen – will cram themselves into their Orion space capsule and begin their final checks for launch.

As they sit perched atop the gargantuan Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, waiting for the inferno beneath them to light, the world will hold its breath.

Should they survive the violence of that ignition and the journey into Earth orbit, an adventure the likes of which we haven’t seen in more than half a century will await them.

The booster stage aboard their ship of exploration will rip them from Earth’s immediate vicinity and inject them onto a trajectory that will carry them to the Moon, hurtling into the void at more than 25,000mph. They will be travelling faster and further than any human since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

NASA has drawn from a deep well of past experience and technologies for this mission; employing the same main engines and solid rocket booster technology that powered the space shuttle.

The space agency has made many improvements, learning the hard-won lessons of past catastrophe. SLS and Orion represent evolution rather than revolution. Nevertheless, there will be nothing routine about this flight.

Risk is everywhere

We know in theory how safe we expect Artemis II to be – all of those probabilities have been calculated carefully. But there is all too often a gulf between expectation and reality.

Life for astronauts aboard the International Space Station is already replete with risk. But for the Artemis II crew there will be additional dangers. In the face of an emergency, space station crews orbiting at an altitude of around 250 miles can usually return to Earth in a matter of hours.

Rescue from deep space, possibly hundreds of thousands of miles away from Earth, is a different prospect – as the crew of Apollo 13 famously demonstrated in 1970.

Radiation is also a substantial hazard. Astronauts operating in low-Earth orbit benefit from Earth’s dense magnetic field, or magnetosphere, which shields them from harmful solar and cosmic radiation. For lunar missions, crews will venture beyond the protection of the magnetosphere, and will be more vulnerable to radiation exposure.

Solar flares in particular, which see short-lived but intense outpourings of highly energetic, charged particles, represent a powerful potential threat. If such an event should occur while Orion is coasting between the Earth and Moon, Artemis astronauts will enter a well-protected area at the base of the spacecraft, and wait there until the solar storm abates.

A new confidence

Despite all this, confidence is high. Apollo crews faced the same risks when space engineering and technology were in their infancy – in capsules that featured no comparable shelter against radiation.

We know from those audacious missions that the “new ocean of space” – as President John F Kennedy once called it – can be sailed successfully and safely. There is every expectation that one day soon the Artemis II crew might do the same.

Artemis II is a pathfinder mission, set to orbit the Moon without landing. It will pave the way for subsequent expeditions, including the first return to the lunar surface since the 1970s, Artemis III, which is slated for 2025. No one knows if these timelines can be adhered to. This is rocket science and the sheer complexity of the endeavour means that schedules can slip.

But what will follow is a comprehensive exploration of the lunar surface by astronaut crews, including a survey of the water ice that’s apparently present in its polar regions. The intent is to do more than get in and out, leaving flags and footprints.

Artemis is about persisting in this environment, in an effort to establish a firmer foothold in the frontier of space. The lunar water ice is a potentially important resource in that regard: it could provide drinking water and – by separating out the hydrogen and oxygen contained in water molecules – the chemical ingredients for rocket propellant.

Artemis II must come first. Despite exhaustive planning, this mission will be something of a leap of faith. After the astronauts leave Earth, all who truly understand the scale of the challenge this crew faces will wait with bated breath until they splash down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. Human spaceflight has always been this way.

Reflecting change

When Jim Lovell, Bill Anders and Frank Borman embarked upon their historic journey to become the first humans to orbit the Moon in 1968, aboard Apollo 8, they left a world ravaged by war, a country facing civil unrest and the shadow of the political assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy. The world has changed a great deal since then – how much it has improved is a matter for historians to debate.

Artemis II represents a feat of exploration and progress in scientific endeavour, and much more besides. Glover will be the first non-white astronaut, Hansen the first non-American and Koch the first female astronaut to depart low-Earth orbit and travel to the Moon. This of course is merely one small step, but the composition of the crew is testament to NASA’s commitment to diversity in this new era.

This aspect is every bit as important as the technical detail. When it comes to journeys into the unknown, NASA has often led the way, showing us what we might be at our best, demonstrating that there might be a place in the future for all of us.

When the crew of Artemis II arrives in lunar orbit, filming the magnificent desolation of the moonscape below, the world will watch in wonder. Those moments will undoubtedly fire the ambitions of a new generation of explorers and scientists, who will see themselves properly reflected in this diverse crew. In that alone, there is something deeply hopeful.

Kevin Fong, Consultant Anaesthetist and Professor of Public Engagement and Innovation, Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Now more than ever, video games are intended to influence users positively. Gamers aren’t held in high esteem for their practical contributions to society. Yet, this perception may shift over time due to a new game genre that enables players with little scientific training to confront some of science’s most pressing issues. 

Video Games as a Scientific Solution

Several contemporary scientific and practical issues are being addressed with video games. Although scientists and gamers are on opposite ends of the spectrum, they share a common goal: to find a solution to a problem within established parameters. Many scientific advancements have been produced with the assistance of these video games, which has surprised many and demonstrated the medium’s vast potential. 

2011 saw the players of the protein folding puzzle game Foldit able to determine the sequence of an enzyme responsible for a monkey version of Aids. Scientists have been pondering this issue for 13 years. In three weeks, the gamers had the problem solved.

In the following year, players of the online astronomy game Planet Hunters discovered a peculiar planet containing four stars in its system; since then, they have uncovered 40 planets with habitable zones undetected by trained astronomers.

For example, genetic research can discover patterns and sequences, even when the data appears jumbled. Analyze the data in the form of a Candy Crush–style pattern-matching game. Instead of just trying to align and score patterns, gamers can be on the lookout for Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and diabetes-causing mutations.

Other Benefits of Video Games

Increases Mental Capacity

The cognitive benefits of gaming are considerable, but the most notable is that it encourages critical thinking. Whether you’re playing Candy Crush, GTA, or online poker, every game has its own unique set of challenges that you must overcome. For example, when playing poker, it is essential to familiarize yourself with the rules, and you can do so at https://www.tightpoker.com/poker-hands/. 

Thinking creatively to do some activities or handle particular difficulties is often necessary. Video games are a great way to hone your problem-solving ability and gain experience making quick, well-informed judgment calls under pressure. 

Builds Different Qualities

Talents such as the capacity to think critically, solve problems, be flexible, and take charge, can be honed through playing video games. Several video games now integrate with various social media platforms, allowing players to meet new people and expand their social circle.

Increase Your Intelligence

Some gamers have reported that the subject matter of video games has spurred their interest in historical studies and led them to read more and do more investigation. You’ll be better able to remember information and make sound decisions, making it much less of a challenge to deal with everyday stresses.

Final Thoughts 

It is rare to come across cases of video games being used to solve scientific problems. To most, this is unlikely to happen. The stereotypical view of video games is that they are for amusement and only scientists are responsible for solving scientific challenges.

However, video games that can be used to solve scientific problems attract some of the world’s brightest minds, many of whom go untapped in the real world. They have no interest in research careers and aren’t inspired by what they perceive as “boring” science. We need to find ways to turn difficult problems into games to access that level of intelligence.

In the early days of independent India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said, “It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty … of a rich country inhabited by starving people.” Would any head of state today voice this view?

A 2013 poll recorded that only 36% of Americans had “a lot” of trust that the information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable. High-profile leaders, especially on the political right, have increasingly chosen to undermine conclusions of scientific consensus. The flash-points tend to be the “troubled technologies” – those that seem to threaten our delicate relationship with nature – climate change, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), genetic therapy and geo-engineering.

The polarisation in these public debates constitutes an implicit threat to the quality of decisions that we must make if we are to ensure the future well-being of our planet and our species. When political colour trumps evidence-based science, we are in trouble.

Could it be that this increasingly dangerous ambivalence towards science in politics is related to our continued misgivings over its cultural role and status? “Science is not with us an object of contemplation,” French historian Jacques Barzun complained in 1964. This is still true. Science does not figure as much a cultural possession in our media and education as does music, theatre or art. Yet history tells us that curiosity about the natural world and our desire to conquer it are as old as any other aspect of human culture.

Ancient middle-eastern “wisdom literature”, the Epicureans’ atomic notions and Plato’s geometric concepts, the developing genre of the De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) throughout the Middle Ages – these tell a long story in which modern science constitutes the current chapter rather than a discontinuous departure.

The perception that science lacks such cultural embedding, however, was highlighted in a recent study of public reaction to nanotechnologies in the European Union. The project identified strong “ancient narratives” at play in discussions ostensibly about technological risk. “Be careful what you wish for”, or “nature is sacred” were the underlying drivers of objection, ineffectually addressed by a scientific weighing of hazard analysis alone. Opponents were just talking past each other, for there was no scaffold of ancient narrative for science itself. We have forgotten what science is for.

To unearth a narrative of purpose beneath science, we cannot avoid drawing on religious heritage for at least anthropological and historical reasons. To restore faith in science, we cannot bypass the understanding of the relationship of faith with science. Here we are not helped by the current oppositional framing of the “science and religion” question, where the discussion seems to be dominated by the loudest voices rather than the most pressing questions.

The language we use can also colour our conclusions. “Science” originates from the Latin scio (I know) claiming very different values than the older name of “natural philosophy” with Greek connotations that substitute knowledge-claims for a “love of wisdom of nature”. Wisdom, like faith, is a word not commonly associated with science, but which might do much for our restorative task if it were. The most powerfully articulated stirrings of desire to comprehend nature are found, after all, in ancient literature on wisdom.

In a new book published this month, Faith and Wisdom in Science, I have tried to draw together the modern need for a cultural underpinning narrative for science that recognises its difficulties and uncertainties, with an exploration of ancient wisdom tradition. It examines, for example, current attempts to comprehend the science of randomness in granular media and chaos in juxtaposition with a scientist’s reading of the achingly beautiful nature poetry in the Book of Job.

It is salutary to be reminded that most Biblical nature literature and many creation stories are more concerned with cosmical loose ends, the chaos of flood and wind, than the neat and formalised account of Genesis, with its developed six-day structure and gracefully liturgical pattern. So rather than oppose theology and science, the book attempts to derive what a theology of science might bring to the cultural question of where science belongs in today’s society.

The conclusion of this exploration surprised me. The strong motif that emerges is the idea of reconciliation of a broken human relationship with nature. Science has the potential to replace ignorance and fear of a world that can harm us and that we also can harm, by a relationship of understanding and care, where the foolishness of thoughtless exploitation is replaced by the wisdom of engagement.

This is neither a “technical fix” nor a “withdrawal from the wild” – two equally unworkable alternatives criticised by French anthropologist Bruno Latour. His hunch is that religious material might point the way to a practical alternative begins to look well-founded. Nor is the story of science interpreted as the healing of a broken relationship confined to the political level – it has personal consequences too for the way human individuals live in a material world.

American author George Steiner once wrote, “Only art can go some way towards making accessible, towards waking into some measure of communicability, the sheer inhuman otherness of matter.” Perhaps science can do that, too. If it can, it would mean that science, far from irreconcilable with religion, is a profoundly religious activity itself.

Tom McLeish, Professor of Physics and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Durham University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

To investigate these questions, Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner launched the Breakthrough Initiatives, a group of pioneering space science programs. Here, we’ll explore the Initiatives’ unique missions and discover their connection to Milner’s Giving Pledge philanthropy and his free online book Eureka Manifesto.

Yuri Milner’s Commitment to Science Philanthropy

The “venture capitalist turned philanthropist,” Milner gained his fortune by founding the internet investment company DST Global. Under his leadership, DST Global has become one of the world’s largest tech investment funds with a portfolio that has included several leading internet platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Airbnb, and Spotify.

Growing up in the 1960s, Milner’s love of cosmologists like Carl Sagan and the compelling idea of life in the Universe led him to study physics to a postgraduate level. He became a theoretical physicist but later decided to pursue a business degree at the Wharton School of Business and a career in the tech industry.

Yuri Milner’s Giving Pledge and the Breakthrough Prize

Milner never lost his passion for science: In 2012, he and his wife Julia joined the Giving Pledge to publicly commit their financial support to scientific enterprises. Created by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, the Giving Pledge inspires wealthy individuals to donate to charitable projects.

The Milners’ Giving Pledge commits them to contributing at least half of their wealth during their combined lifetime to primarily scientific causes. The couple’s first big act saw them partner with leading tech entrepreneurs Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, and Anne Wojcicki to establish the Breakthrough Prize.

The world’s biggest award for science, each year, the Breakthrough Prize honors researchers who have made life-changing discoveries in three prize categories: Fundamental Physics, Mathematics, and the Life Sciences. Winners receive $3 million each, plus international praise and acclaim through the Breakthrough Prize televised awards ceremony and public lecture series.

The Milners subsequently launched the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a global video competition encouraging high school students to engage with complex scientific ideas.

Milner continued to ponder which scientific fields would benefit most from private funding. He returned to an age-old question — are we alone in the Universe? — and found his answer.

The Breakthrough Initiatives’ Pioneering Missions

With support from Stephen Hawking, Milner launched the Breakthrough Initiatives in 2015. A set of astronomical and space engineering programs, the Breakthrough Initiatives further the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and investigate the future of humanity as a space-faring civilization.

The five Breakthrough Initiatives include:

• Breakthrough Listen.
• Breakthrough Watch.
• Breakthrough Starshot.
• Breakthrough Message.
• Breakthrough Discuss.

Breakthrough Listen

Breakthrough Listen is a $100 million astronomical project that uses many of Earth’s most powerful telescopes and state-of-the-art instruments to search for extraterrestrial signals. Since its launch in 2015, Breakthrough Listen has reinvigorated SETI and advanced the capabilities of this scientific field.

The program’s scope and scale far surpass any similar searches for evidence of technological alien civilizations previously undertaken. The initiative will span at least 10 years and includes a survey of over one million stars, the center of the Milky Way, the entire galactic plane, and one hundred of our closest galaxies.

In 2022, Breakthrough Listen announced a new collaboration with the MeerKAT array in South Africa. Using the Southern Hemisphere’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, Listen’s number of target searches has grown 1,000-fold.

So far, Breakthrough Listen has:

• Produced an extensive catalog of one of every kind of astronomical exotica in the observable Universe.
• Observed the interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua for signs of radio emissions.
• Searched laser light emissions from Boyajian’s Star, a star with unusual light fluctuations.
• Intercepted an intriguing signal appearing to originate from the direction of Proxima Centauri (a star in the Alpha Centauri system) and rigorously rule it out as a technosignature.
• Conducted the first targeted search for the Wow! Signal (a famous signal of interest intercepted in 1977 but never observed again) using the U.S. Green Bank Telescope and the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array.

Breakthrough Watch

Breakthrough Watch uses instruments on Earth and in space to find evidence of primitive cellular life on neighboring planets. The multi-million-dollar mission searches for worlds that have a good chance of hosting life by identifying biosignatures, like planets with the presence of oxygen.

An international team of experts in exoplanet detection and imaging runs Breakthrough Watch. The team has also partnered with world-class scientists and engineers to advance the capabilities of Earth’s telescopes. A collaboration between Breakthrough Watch and the European Southern Observatory led to the unveiling of a new infrared-measuring instrument at the Very Large Telescope in Chile in 2019.

Breakthrough Starshot

In 2016, Milner launched Breakthrough Starshot with Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg. The $100 million program is the first serious attempt to design and build an interstellar space probe that could reach Alpha Centauri in a generation.

Alpha Centauri is over four light-years away. With existing technology, it would take humans approximately 6,300 years to make the journey. If Breakthrough Starshot succeeds in creating Starchip — an ultra-fast, light-driven nanocraft — the program could send a fleet of the tiny, interstellar probes into space at 20% of the speed of light.

The mission would reach Alpha Centauri in around 20 years and take 4 years to notify Earth of its arrival. From there, the nanocraft could beam us images of the system’s planets and gather important data, like analysis of magnetic fields.

Starshot faces several technical challenges but has brilliant minds onboard, including interstellar travel expert Philip Lubin, who serves as an advisor to the project. So far, the program has successfully launched and flown several nanocraft precursors called Sprites.

Breakthrough Message

In the form of an international competition, Breakthrough Message encourages debate about how to communicate with possible intelligent extraterrestrials. The competition asks entrants to create a message representing humanity and planet Earth that an advanced alien civilization could read. The prize pool for the winning messages totals $1 million.

For now, Breakthrough Message has no plans to send any transmissions, but the initiative is a great way for the public to engage with the ethics and possibilities of interstellar correspondence.

Breakthrough Discuss

Breakthrough Discuss brings scientists together once a year for a conference that focuses on space exploration and extraterrestrial life.

The 2022 conference theme was “Watch this Space! Innovations for a Low-Cost Future.” Academics and experts gathered online and at the University of California, Santa Cruz to talk about the search for bio and technosignatures. Attendees also discussed innovations in the field of cosmology and how to reduce costs to expand our reach deep into the solar system.

Previous Breakthrough Discuss conferences have centered on topics like Alpha Centauri and the migration of life across the Universe.

Embracing Humanity’s Cosmic Mission

In 2021, Yuri Milner collected some of his ideas about humanity’s place in the Universe in Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilization. Eureka Manifesto shares the philanthropist’s perspective on how our species can unite around a common mission to explore and understand our Universe.

His plan to advance this mission includes investing in fundamental sciences and space exploration. The Breakthrough Initiatives represent Milner’s substantial contributions to science, taking us one giant leap towards the goal of better understanding our place in the cosmos.

About Yuri Milner

An Israeli entrepreneur who founded the successful internet investment firm DST Global, Yuri Milner’s investments focus on two areas:

• Internet technology.
• Science philanthropy.

In 1985, Milner graduated from university with an advanced degree in theoretical physics. After working as a researcher in quantum field theory, he moved to the U.S. to study business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Convinced that the internet represented the future of investment, Milner founded DST Global to prioritize global internet investments.

In 2012, Milner and his wife joined the Giving Pledge and co-founded the Breakthrough Prize to support the brilliant work of scientists and mathematicians.

As discussed above, he went on to establish the Breakthrough Initiatives, a suite of space science projects seeking answers to the Universe’s most profound questions, such as: Are there intelligent civilizations beyond Earth? Are there nearby planets that host primitive cellular life? What are humanity’s prospects for a future off-planet?

Yuri Milner is the author of Eureka Manifesto, a short book about the future of human civilization and space exploration.

Kate Winslet reportedly held her breath for seven minutes and 15 seconds on set for Avatar: The Way of Water. Some of the movie’s scenes were filmed underwater.

It’s a remarkable feat; anyone (including professional freedivers) would acknowledge that a breath hold over seven minutes is extremely difficult. Most professional freedivers must train for years before reaching a number like that — many never achieve it. Winslet apparently trained only for a few weeks.

While Winslet now holds the record for a breath hold on a movie set, let’s put it in wider context. The current world record for breath holding, using a technique that is likely the same one the actor employed, is 24 minutes and 37 seconds. This is held by Budimir Šobat — a professional breath hold diver with whom I have worked closely.

Longest recorded breath holds

I and other researchers have performed extensive physiologic measures on these professional divers to figure out how they can hold their breath for so long. One thing is certain: oxygen is important. In respect to the breath hold of almost 25 minutes by Šobat, it was accomplished by pre-breathing 100 per cent oxygen prior to holding the breath. Keep in mind the ratio of oxygen that we normally breathe in the atmosphere is 21 per cent.

The world record for a non-oxygen-assisted breath hold is 11:35 minutes* by Stéphane Mifsud. For women it is 9:02 minutes, held by Natalia Molchanova. These are people who have trained for many years, and are the top professional apneists (apnea means temporarily stopped breathing).

How did Winslet do it then? And if you were to try this, why is it that you (probably) couldn’t come close to seven minutes, even after a few weeks of training? You would need to do what Winslet likely did, and that is pre-breathe with 100 per cent oxygen before holding your breath. Winslet also most likely hyperventilated (breathed faster and deeper than normal) on the 100 per cent oxygen.

To understand how this can increase the breath hold time, a brief overview of the control of breathing is needed.

What happens when you hold your breath

The most important signal to breathe comes from clusters of specialized cells in your brain and neck called chemoreceptors. These chemoreceptors respond to the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) and, to a lesser extent, the level of oxygen (O2) in your blood (yes, CO2 is more important in this case).

There are also signals from the brain stem itself (central controller) and lungs (pulmonary stretch receptors), but they are generally less important in relation to the topic at hand. Accordingly, the rate and depth of breathing is primarily controlled by these chemoreceptors that maintain the optimal level of blood O2 and CO2.

During a breath hold, the level of blood CO2 rises, and the O2 declines. The initial increase in the urge to breathe — let’s say 30 seconds into the breath hold — primarily comes from the rising CO2. At a particular threshold, the chemoreceptors also respond to the declining O2, at which point the drive to breathe increases dramatically.

Eventually, the urge to breathe intensifies to the point that the diaphragm (the primary respiratory muscle) contracts involuntarily — referred to as an involuntary breathing movement. This is the point at which the untrained breath holder will typically break and begin to breathe again (around three minutes if motivated and oxygen-unassisted).

Pre-breathing oxygen

However, with prior O2 inhalation, the onset of involuntary breathing movements is dramatically delayed. There is no longer any signal from O2 sensing. With about 15 minutes of prior 100 per cent O2 inhalation, a breath hold can be extended to nearly 20 minutes and the blood oxygen will still be higher than normal.

Still, even with 100 per cent O2, CO2 (the primary stimulus for breathing) rises during the breath hold. However, fortunately for the oxygen-assisted breath holder, elevated blood O2 blunts the chemoreceptor response to CO2. The combined effect of an absent O2 response, and a dampened CO2 response, allows someone to hold their breath for much longer.

Another trick is hyperventilating prior to breath holding. This will lower the initial blood CO2 levels. This lengthens the time before CO2 creeps above normal.

It’s important to note that hyperventilation before breath holding without prior 100 per cent O2 is dangerous in freediving because it increases the risk for shallow water blackout.

It’s likely that Winslet’s trainers had a keen understanding of respiratory physiology and that she benefited from that knowledge. Although Winslet’s impressive breath hold is a record on movie sets, it isn’t record-shattering off sets — even for previously untrained people.

Even as far back as 1959, researchers demonstrated in seven untrained volunteers that breathing 100 per cent O2 prior to a breath hold resulted in maximum breath hold durations of six to 14 minutes. So Winslet’s seven-minute breath hold with only a few weeks’ training is definitely possible.

*The International Association for the Development of Apnea (AIDA) is the recognized governing body for the apnea disciplines, which does not recognize apnea with 100 per cent oxygen-assisted breathing. Branko Petrovic holds an oxygen-unassisted breath hold of 11:54 minutes through Guinness World Records, not accredited through AIDA.

Anthony Bain, Associate Professor, Kinesiology, University of Windsor

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“He was a great man,” Professor Rossjohn says. As a boy, he would share his homework with his mother’s father, talk to him, listen to him, and learn from him.

“I spent a lot of time with my grandad, who wrote a book about his experiences as a South Wales coal miner. He emphasised the importance of getting an education. He started to instill in me the need to study.

“My mother and father, Janice and Brinley John, also from South Wales, fully supported and encouraged my education. I always remember looking at my dad’s university textbooks and being amazed by the complexity.”

Professor Rossjohn FRS is just the second Monash academic in the University’s 60-year history to be made a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society, a UK-based science fellowship that’s been recognising exceptional scientists since 1660 – it’s the oldest science academy in the world.

The Royal Society inducts about 60 distinguished scientists a year from around the world. Some previous inductees only require surnames – Einstein, Darwin, Newton, Hodgkin.

Immunity on the molecular level

Professor Rossjohn is based at Monash’s Biomedicine Discovery Institute within the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. He investigates the molecular bases underpinning immunity.

He’s internationally recognised for using structural biology to investigate how T cells can respond to viral infections or cause autoimmunity. Alongside his colleagues, he’s published more than 460 research papers, and is a highly-cited researcher.

He received the news from the Royal Society in early May, and will travel to London in July to deliver a presentation, meet other Fellows, and sign the 350-plus-year-old Royal Society charter book.

“You don’t do science to get awards,” he says. “You do science to investigate the unknown. Then, if you ultimately get recognised by your peers in this manner, that’s overwhelming. So it’s certainly a special moment.”

Professor Rossjohn was influenced by schoolteachers and university supervisors who helped him chart a course in scientific research. He also credits his family’s strong support.

At Llanillitud Fawr Comprehensive School in Wales were Mrs Griffiths and Mrs Thomas, biology and chemistry teachers, respectively.

“They were both brilliant in terms of the passion that they instilled, which helped drive the desire to learn. I became, I think, better and better under their guidance, and started studying and questioning more. They really helped shape me.”

He says Griffiths and Thomas – who he met up with four years ago in Wales – suggested if he did well enough at school, he could go to university for a degree in biochemistry.

In his final years at school, he was finding maths challenging, so went to his father’s books.

“I just remember one summer borrowing one of my dad’s university textbooks on differentiation and integration, and just making myself understand it.”

The path to Bath

After high school he crossed the border into England and did what his teachers had suggested – study biochemistry at the University of Bath.

“I remember the first person I met there during my undergraduate interview was Michael Danson (now Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at Bath), and I was talking to him about biochemical pathways, straight off the bat, even before I had been accepted. He ended up being my tutor all the way through my undergraduate degree, and was one of my PhD co-supervisors.”

Professor Rossjohn spoke with his PhD supervisors recently about being made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

“I simply wanted to thank them for all that they did for me at university,” he says.

He recognises that, outside academic circles, relatively few know much about the Royal Society. He says he would describe it as the “International hall of fame for sport, or Oscars’ lifetime achievement award”, but he’s one of those researchers who doesn’t seek the limelight.

“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together,” he quotes a well-known proverb.

“To be internationally competitive for a sustained period of time, you need to be a team player. I’ve been fortunate to have some great collaborators and researchers within my team, including honours and PhD students, research assistants and post-docs whom I’ve mentored over the past 20 years. In total, members of the lab have been awarded about 40 nationally competitive fellowships.”

Honoured by the Royal Society

The Royal Society citation describes Professor Rossjohn’s science in detail. It says:

“[He] is principally known for his contributions to the understanding of disease and the vertebrate host response, both from the aspect of protective and deleterious immunity. Namely, he has used structural biology to understand how T cell receptors recognise peptides, lipids and metabolites. Specifically, he has unearthed structural mechanisms of Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) polymorphism impacting on viral immunity, drug and food hypersensitivities and T cell-mediated autoimmunity.

“Rossjohn has pioneered our molecular understanding of how T cells bind lipid-based antigens presented by the CD1 family,” it says. “He has elucidated the structural basis of how vitamin B metabolites are presented by the MHC class I related protein, MR1; this revealed an entirely new class of antigen for T cells.”

The scientific focus towards these exact elements of science came near the end of his undergraduate degree when Professor Rossjohn had started to consider a PhD.

“I was fortunate to meet Professor Garry Taylor, a structural biologist recently recruited to Bath University, and I was fascinated by protein molecules rotating on his computer screen. I thought, ‘OK, you can get direct insight into protein structure and function here.’ I think that just naturally appealed to me. Garry was also a really generous person, and we hit it off. But I’ll never develop his interest in organ recitals.”

“You don’t do science to get awards. You do science to investigate the unknown.”

For his PhD, he studied the protein structure of a thermophilic enzyme, during which time, in China at an x-ray crystallography conference, he met Professor Michael Parker, a structural biologist, whose work interested him.

Professor Rossjohn then secured a one-year travelling scholarship from the Royal Society – the same Royal Society that honours him now – to enable him to work in Professor Parker’s lab at St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, in Australia.He had met his wife, Lisa, in 1987 at Bath University. They married in 1994, and embarked on a life in Australia. They have three children – Siân (25), Bevan (22), and Hannah (13).

While at SVIMR, Professor Rossjohn was also supported and influenced by noted researchers Professor Bruce Kemp and Professor Jack Martin, both also Fellows of the Royal Society.

“Bruce gave me a great piece of advice, which is: ‘Momentum in science is so hard to get, but so easy to lose.’ You should not rest on your laurels,” Rossjohn says.

“You capitalise on your breakthrough so you’re not a follower of the field, you’re a leader, and you bring the team with you, always in the pursuit of new knowledge.

“Science is written in chapters, not books. Sometimes these discoveries can take a decade to complete. So you’ve got to be pretty determined to do that.”

The beginnings of a 20-year collaboration

After being awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, Professor Rossjohn started at Monash in 2002, which is when he began looking into the functioning of the immune system and T cells.

He met Professor James McCluskey FAA AO, from the University of Melbourne, and the two began a highly productive 20–plus-year collaboration to look at T cell function in protective and aberrant immunity.

“From acorns, oak trees grow,” he says. “We made some insights with a string of papers on antiviral T cell immunity in the early 2000s.

“We started to build momentum in the research program, and collaborations extended to numerous immunologists, including professors Tony Purcell, Steve Turner, Nicole La Gruta, Andrew Brooks, Katherine Kedzierska, Dale Godfrey and Mariapia Degli-Esposti [from UoM and Monash], David Price and Andrew Sewell [Cardiff], Laurent Gapin [Colorado], and Branch Moody [Harvard].

“Simultaneously, a structural biology program at Monash Clayton was established with the support from Professor Christina Mitchell and Professor Warwick Anderson.

“My colleague, Professor James Whisstock, was instrumental in co-establishing a vibrant structural biology community. It was a lot of fun up in the old biochemistry building, Building 13D.

“Monash provided me with an opportunity to flourish. A little bit of success, a little bit of grant support, and then the momentum kept on building.

“It’s fair to state we ended up becoming quite a powerhouse in structural biology in Australia, with the continuous support from Monash University senior executives, including professors Christina Mitchell, Edwina Cornish, Pauline Nestor, Ian Smith, and John Carroll.”

A breakthrough Nature paper

In 2007, Professor Rossjohn and colleagues published a paper in Nature that showed for the first time how a T cell receptor can interact with a lipid-based molecule when presented by a molecule called CD1d.

“That was quite important and rather … let’s just say, intense. That’s when we started to really make our international mark in the field, and now we sought to make a sustained high-level contribution.

“With grant and fellowship-based funding, including from the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council, we were able to conduct more basic and applied investigations.”

A string of highly influential papers in T cell-mediated immunity, published in Nature, Science, Cell, and many more high-impact international journals, followed.

As an aside, Professor Rossjohn enjoys walking his dogs (Ziggy and Amber), serving his cats (Jett, Simba and Fudge), and runs long-distance after about 10 years doing judo at a reasonable level.

“I’ve always been OK at running, and I decided just to start doing a bit of competitive running as a member of Glenhuntly Athletics Club in more recent times. It’s a good counterbalance from work.”

Artist-in-residence makes science accessible

The Rossjohn Lab has had a unique addition since 2018 – a legally-blind artist-in-residence. Professor Rossjohn says one of his interests – aside from running a long way, and T cell receptors – is making science accessible.

He says he reflected not too long ago and wondered if he would have had the same opportunities in his career if he had a disability. The answer, he concluded, was “most unlikely”.

The artist, Dr Erica Tandori, came on board four years ago to make tactile, artistic displays of immune receptor concepts, an initiative that’s since won the Monash University 2018 Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity and Inclusion Award, been a finalist in the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science Eureka Prize for STEM Inclusion in 2019, and in 2020 a finalist in the “Science Breakthroughs of the Year – Science in the Arts” category at the Falling Walls Conference and Berlin Science Week.

“We take the beauty of the light microscope for granted,” he says. “We can see the marvels of the natural world, and with a high-powered microscope (the synchrotron) we can see atomic details of molecules. And it dawned on me that the microscope is essentially inaccessible to the low-vision and blind community”.

Not long after Dr Tandori arrived, in May 2018 a Sensory Science exhibition was held at the University’s Clayton campus.

“I wanted the exhibition to be on campus, because I wanted the low-vision and blind community to experience being at a university and to learn some science,” Professor Rossjohn says. “We had about 100 people from the community come to the exhibition, and numerous volunteers from the laboratories within the Biomedicine Discovery Institute.

“I’ve been doing science for a very long time,” he says, “and this was probably the most instantly rewarding day ever.”

Maintaining the momentum

Meanwhile, the lab at Monash is continuing its work on the immune system.

“We’re constantly looking at problems related to immune recognition. We spend a lot of time investigating how different molecules can activate the immune system, and how this relates to viral immunity, cancer, and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and celiac disease.

“Support from the biotechnology industry continues to be instrumental in being able to fast-track basic discoveries towards novel immunotherapies.”

The challenges are many and the science difficult, but Professor Rossjohn’s mantra of “momentum” holds firm.

“It’s discovery science,” he says. “You may have a setback, but you don’t take it lying down. You’ve got to fight your corner. That’s why we fight so hard to work at the highest level, and we’re still fighting extremely hard 20 years later, and always will.”

This article was first published on Monash Lens. Read the original article

This particular comet is called the ‘Green Comet’ and for all you science buffs out there, it is the C/2022 E3 (ZTF).

The comet was first discovered by astronomers in March 2022 at the Zwicky Transient Facility in California. Nicknamed ‘the green comet’ owing to its green hue, the ‘green comet’ hails from the Oort cloud – a collection of icy bodies believed to exist in the farthest areas of the solar system.

While the well-known 1P/Halley or Halley’s Comet, is a short-period comet that is visible from Earth every 75–79 years, the ‘green comet’ plays a more longer game, as C/2022 E3 (ZTF) orbits the sun every 50,000 years.

In other words, the last time it passed by Earth was when the Neanderthals and our early ancestors mahy have looked upwards and seen a green trail in a much less polluted sky we presume, without binoculars, we don’t presume.

So why is this thing green again?

As with all things ‘spacey,’ it has something to do with light and the basic elements that make up our world, specifically carbon.

You see, a comet is basically a clump of ices and dust, so it makes sense that it hails from a cloud of icy bodies like the Oort cloud.

The sun is hot and emits ultraviolet radiation as we know, so when a comet approaches the sun, it tends to heat up and the frozen ice can no longer stay solid, turning into gas.

This gas produces a hazy, fuzzy atmosphere known as the ‘coma.’ No, not that coma.

This happens when atmospheric carbon is broken apart and generates a simple but fragile molecule known as dicarbon, or C₂ in chemical notation, basically two elemental carbon atoms bonded together.

When this diatomic carbon is excited by ultraviolet rays, it gives off light, in this case, green light, that has been seen surrounding the ‘green comet.’

Ultraviolet light is quite persistent though and can also cause this diatomic carbon to break down. So this explains that the hue does not extend to the comet tail.

Do I need a telescope to see the ‘green comet’?

Reports suggest C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has already been spotted by some observers to the naked eye after moonset.

The ‘green comet’ may be visible to stargazers who are lucky to encounter a dark night sky, when it makes its closest approach to Earth on Wednesday and Thursday, at which point it will be 26 million miles from our planet.

Having a pair of binoculars or a telescope doesn’t hurt though, as you might catch the ‘green comet’s non-green tail as well with equipment.

For the regular folk, we are looking for a ‘green blob’ towards the north of our skies, at 9:30 pm IST onwards.

One would do well to avail of the various free stargazing apps that could pinpoint the comet’s exact location to make it easier to spot.

Lightning may look beautiful but every year it kills thousands of people, does huge amounts of damage to buildings and infrastructure, and causes power outages.

The only protection we have is lightning rods, which were invented 300 years ago and only protect a small area.

The cost of damage from lightning strikes to buildings is hard to determine globally, but insurance company payouts to cover repairs to homes and businesses were roughly US$2 billion (£1.6 billion) in 2020 in the US. Insurance data from the UK suggests the costs of covering lightning strikes are increasing.

The problem is only likely to get worse as the climate crisis is driving a surge in wildfires worldwide, which increase lightning strikes. A study from 2014 suggested the number of strikes increases by 12% for every degree (celsius) of global warming.

Lighting rods have their uses, but scientists have been looking for a better way to control where lightning strikes, and lasers may be the solution, according to a new study.

How they did it

This latest experiment was performed near a telecommunications tower on the Säntis mountain in Switzerland that is frequently struck by lightning – roughly 100 times a year, although the tower itself is protected by a lightning rod.

The results from the study found the lightning flowed almost in a straight line near the laser pulses, but the lightning strikes were more randomly distributed when the laser was off.

While this study is not the first attempt to direct lightning paths it is the first to show it can be done. The scientists have attributed this to the high power laser they used, and the high altitude. At high altitudes air is less dense. This makes it easier for current to pass through, meaning that future experiments at sea level would require a more powerful laser.

To understand how the scientists used light to change the path of electricity you need to understand what lightning actually is: a flow of charged particles from one location to another. Particles in clouds are mostly electrically neutral when they form but build up both positive and negative charge. The cloud wants to become neutral by exchanging charge with the ground.

The type of lighting most people are familiar with is the jagged strikes of bright light seen between the ground and the clouds, but there are other types. Lightning can travel between clouds. It can also move from clouds upwards towards the upper atmosphere. This can even produce strings of red airglow where the thinner atmosphere warms. This heat energy is then released as light.

As the charge in the cloud builds up it reaches incredibly high voltages (roughly equivalent to 8 million car batteries hooked up together) which rips a path through the air. The electrical current required to split the components of air apart generally is about 300 million volts per square metre.

The pushing force of this enormous voltage in electrically charged (ionised) air allows the charge from the cloud to flow down and discharge into the ground or nearby buildings. This current flow will follow the most electrically conductive path.

This is why lightning rods are sometimes used to protect buildings from lightning. Metal is more electrically conductive than air so if you place a large rod in the ground lightning will have an easier path than going through the air. It can only protect a small area, though.

Many researchers think some lightning storms could be caused by cosmic rays (highly energetic particles from outside the solar system). These particles pass through the atmosphere and interact with air to create an ionised path through their direction of travel. This is a theory that has researchers split on whether it affects the number of total lightning strikes around the world.

The scientists used a powerful laser to try and create ionised paths in a similar way to the cosmic ray theory. Firing rapid (1,000 times a second) energetic pulses with a laser heats the air and ionises it, briefly becoming conductive. The lightning strike will have less resistance along this path and so will be more inclined to flow that way. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ym1fEbm1FUs?wmode=transparent&start=0

If this technology is perfected, it might one day help protect infrastructure such as airports and nuclear power plants. It could even be used in a more advanced form to protect houses using a laser a safe distance away. However, it is unlikely to be rolled out near you anytime soon, if for no other reason than the power costs.

Ian Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.