A grasshopper-like soft material can jump 200 times above its thickness

This story originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In Odessa, Texas, workers at a startup called SolarCycle unload trucks carrying end-of-life photovoltaic panels freshly picked from commercial solar farms across the United States. They separate the panels from the aluminum frames and electrical boxes, then feed them into machines that detach their glass from the laminated materials that have helped generate electricity from sunlight for about a quarter of a century.

Next, the panels are ground, shredded, and subjected to a patented process that extracts the valuable materials—mostly silver, copper, and crystalline silicon. Those components will be sold, as will the lower-value aluminum and glass, which may even end up in the next generation of solar panels.

This process offers a glimpse of what could happen to an expected surge of retired solar panels that will stream from an industry that represents the fastest-growing source of energy in the US. Today, roughly 90 percent of panels in the US that have lost their efficiency due to age, or that are defective, end up in landfills because that option costs a fraction of recycling them.

But recycling advocates in the US say increased reuse of valuable materials, like silver and copper, would help boost the circular economy, in which waste and pollution are reduced by constantly reusing materials. According to a 2021 report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), recycling PV panels could also cut the risk of landfills leaking toxins into the environment; increase the stability of a supply chain that is largely dependent on imports from Southeast Asia; lower the cost of raw materials to solar and other types of manufacturers; and expand market opportunities for US recyclers.

Of course, reusing degraded but still-functional panels is an even better option. Millions of these panels now end up in developing nations, while others are reused closer to home. For example, SolarCycle is building a power plant for its Texas factory that will use refurbished modules.

The prospect of a future glut of expired panels is prompting efforts by a handful of solar recyclers to address a mismatch between the current buildup of renewable energy capacity by utilities, cities, and private companies—millions of panels are installed globally every year—and a shortage of facilities that can handle this material safely when it reaches the end of its useful life, in about 25 to 30 years.

Solar capacity across all segments in the US is expected to rise by an average of 21 percent a year from 2023 to 2027, according to the latest quarterly report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. The expected increase will be helped by the landmark Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which, among other supports for renewable energy, will provide a 30 percent tax credit for residential solar installations.

The area covered by solar panels that were installed in the US as of 2021 and are due to retire by 2030 would cover about 3,000 American football fields, according to an NREL estimate. “It’s a good bit of waste,” said Taylor Curtis, a legal and regulatory analyst at the lab. But the industry’s recycling rate, at less than 10 percent, lags far behind the upbeat forecasts for the industry’s growth.

Jesse Simons, a cofounder of SolarCycle, which employs about 30 people and began operations last December, said solid waste landfills typically charge $1 to $2 to accept a solar panel, rising to around $5 if the material is deemed hazardous waste. By contrast, his company charges $18 per panel. Clients are willing to pay that rate because they may be unable to find a landfill licensed to accept hazardous waste and assume legal liability for it, and because they want to minimize the environmental impact of their old panels, said Simons, a former Sierra Club executive.

SolarCycle provides its clients with an environmental analysis that shows the benefits of panel recycling. For example, recycling aluminum uses 95 percent less energy than making virgin aluminum, which bears the costs of mining the raw material, bauxite, and then transporting and refining it.

The company estimates that recycling each panel avoids the emissions of 97 pounds of CO2; the figure rises to more than 1.5 tons of CO2 if a panel is reused. Under a proposed US Securities and Exchange Commission rule, publicly held companies will be required to disclose climate-related risks that are likely to have a material impact on their business, including their greenhouse gas emissions.

Stripped from solar panels at the SolarCycle plant, aluminum is sold at a nearby metal yard. Glass is currently sold for just a few cents per panel for reuse in basic products like bottles, but Simons hopes he will eventually have enough of it to sell for a higher price to a manufacturer of new solar panel sheets.

Crystalline silicon, used as a base material in solar cells, is also worth recovering, he said. Although it must be refined for use in future panels, its use avoids the environmental impacts of mining and processing new silicon.

SolarCycle is one of only five companies in the US listed by the SEIA as capable of providing recycling services. The industry remains in its infancy and is still figuring out how to make money from recovering and then selling panel components, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. “Elements of this recycling process can be found in the United States, but it is not yet happening on a large scale,“ the EPA said in an overview of the industry.

In 2016, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) forecast that by the early 2030s, the global quantity of decommissioned PV panels will equal some 4 percent of the number of installed panels. By the 2050s, the volume of solar panel waste will rise to at least 5 million metric tons a year, the agency said. China, the world’s biggest producer of solar energy, is expected to have retired a cumulative total of at least 13.5 million metric tons of panels by 2050, by far the largest quantity among major solar-producing nations and nearly twice the volume the US will retire by that time, according to the IRENA report.

The raw materials technically recoverable from PV panels globally could cumulatively be worth $450 million (in 2016 terms) by 2030, the report found, about equal to the cost of raw materials needed to produce some 60 million new panels, or 18 gigawatts of power-generation capacity. By 2050, the report said, recoverable value could cumulatively exceed $15 billion.

For now, though, solar recyclers face significant economic, technological, and regulatory challenges. Part of the problem, says NREL’s Curtis, is a lack of data on panel recycling rates, which hinders potential policy responses that might provide more incentives for solar-farm operators to recycle end-of-life panels rather than dump them.

Another problem is that the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure—an EPA-approved method used to determine whether a product or material contains hazardous elements that could leach into the environment—is known to be faulty. Consequently, some solar farm owners end up “over-managing” their panels as hazardous without making a formal hazardous-waste determination, Curtis said. They end up paying more to dispose of them in landfills permitted to handle hazardous waste or to recycle them.

The International Energy Agency assessed whether solar panels that contain lead, cadmium, and selenium would impact human health if dumped in either hazardous-waste or municipal landfills and determined the risk was low. Still, the agency said in a 2020 report, its findings did not constitute an endorsement of landfilling: Recycling, it stated, would “further mitigate” environmental concerns.

NREL is currently studying an alternative process for determining whether or not panels are hazardous. “We need to figure that out because it is definitely impacting the liability and the cost to make recycling more competitive,” Curtis said.

Despite these uncertainties, four states recently enacted laws addressing PV module recycling. California, which has the most solar installations, allows panels to be dumped in landfills, but only after they have been verified as non-hazardous by a designated laboratory, which can cost upwards of $1,500. As of July 2022, California had only one recycling plant that accepted solar panels.

In Washington state, a law designed to provide an environmentally sound way to recycle PV panels is due to be implemented in July of 2025; New Jersey officials expect to issue a report on managing PV waste this spring, and North Carolina has directed state environmental officials to study the decommissioning of utility scale solar projects. (North Carolina currently requires solar panels to be disposed of as hazardous waste if they contain heavy metals like silver or—in the case of older panels—hexavalent chromium, lead, cadmium, and arsenic.)

In the European Union, end-of-life photovoltaic panels have, since 2012, been treated as electronic waste under the EU’s waste electrical and electronic equipment directive, known as WEEE. The directive requires all member states to comply with minimum standards, but the actual rate of e-waste recycling varies from nation to nation, said Marius Mordal Bakke, senior analyst for solar supplier research at Rystad Energy, a research firm headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Despite this law, the EU’s PV recycling rate is no better than the US rate—around 10 percent—largely because of the difficulty of extracting valuable materials from panels, Bakke said.

But he predicted that recycling will become more prevalent when the number of end-of-life panels rises to the point where it presents a business opportunity, providing recyclers with valuable materials they can sell. Governments can help speed that transition, he added, by banning the disposal of PV panels in landfills and providing incentives such as tax breaks to anyone who uses solar panels.

“At some point in the future, you are going to see enough panels being decommissioned that you kind of have to start recycling,” Bakke said. “It will become profitable by itself regardless of commodity prices.”

As Millions of Solar Panels Age Out, Recyclers Hope to Cash In

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The vibrating water surface of Doublet Pool in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Jamie Farrell/University of Utah

This Yellowstone hot spring’s rhythmic thump makes it a geo-thermometer

A new study published on Friday in Science Advances suggests the possibility that a critical hallmark of human tool use happened by accident — potentially blurring the line between tool use by early humans and our primate relatives.

The Thai monkeys produced stone artifacts “indistinguishable from what we see at the beginning of the [human] archeological record — what we see as the onset of being human,” said Lydia Luncz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a co-author on the study.

The monkeys — long-tailed macaques — seem to have made their artifacts by accident, not by design. But in many ways, that only makes the finding more disruptive.

Tool use in nonhuman primates is nothing new. Long-tailed macaques — the small, mischievous and social primates often seen in Southeast Asian cities and temple complexes — use stones to break through shells and get at the meat inside.

This use can be surprisingly sophisticated. Macaques foraging on beaches choose out long, narrow and heavy stones — what anthropologists call an ‘axe hammer’ — to pop open oyster shells.

Such narrow stones are perfect for breaking open the brittle shells, while wider rocks risk smashing them into sharp fragments — endangering the incautious monkey who tries to stick its face into the jagged hole.

A long-tailed macaque eats a biscuit on the World Wildlife Day at a forest nearby Lhoknga beach in Indonesia’s Aceh province on March 3, 2023. (CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN/AFP via Getty Images)

The Planck group found the first evidence of macaques adapting this seafood-foraging use of stone tools to another food: nuts.

In particular, the monkeys targeted the hard, oil-rich nuts of African oil palms — introduced as a cash crop across the region.

In an abandoned oil palm plantation on a national park site, the monkeys would create nut-cracking ‘stations’ beneath the feral trees.

There they break open the palm fruit’s oil-rich pit between hand-wielded hammer rocks and a thick, flat stone that functions as an anvil.

Camera traps showed that when the nut-cracking monkeys miss a strike, the two stones bang together.

That collision sometimes strikes a flake off of one of the rocks — something very similar to the toolmaking process archeologists call “knapping.”

Ancient humans used knapping to break apart rocks to create an incredibly flexible set of tools — the earliest forms of which cannot be distinguished from the ones macaques made by accident.

That points to a possibility that could throw a wrench into the established narrative, Luncz said: that “all the conoidal flakes we find in the archaeological record — deemed to be intentionally made — could be unintentional byproducts.”

In many ways, the Science paper lays the groundwork for a more intuitive story of human evolution than the idea that stone flakes — and the human cultural flowering they enabled — sprung forth by deliberate invention.

That narrative requires a lot of additional steps, Luncz said. It presupposes axe-swinging early humans with brains big enough to plan their “extraction” of the perfect flakes from rocks and hand-object movement sophisticated enough to deliver it.

By contrast, the Planck team’s findings suggest another possibility — that the evolution of human tool use could have been more fitful and staggered.

In one possible scenario, ancient humans — like modern macaques — could have first produced stone flakes as a byproduct as they bashed apart bones, nuts or shellfish with rocks.

Then, far later — perhaps alongside some kill where they had used rocks to hammer open bones to get at the marrow within — early humans may have turned to these razor-sharp flakes, which would once have been discarded as trash, to begin cutting up meat.

Or, as Luncz put it: “An accidental stone breakage could have led us down the evolutionary trajectory of making stone tools.”

That idea remains controversial in the field, however.

“You will not believe the fights we had to fight,” Luncz said.  

Even calling the macaque-produced stone flakes “artifacts” was controversial because some scientists felt it implied an overlap between tool use by Homo sapiens and other primates that wasn’t justified.

A long-tailed macaque eats a biscuit on the World Wildlife Day at a forest nearby Lhoknga beach in Indonesia’s Aceh province on March 3, 2023. (CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN/AFP via Getty Images)

‘Artifacts,’ after all, shares its root with ‘art’ and ‘artifice’ — words that suggest intention, planning and humanity.

“People were not happy with monkeys being able to create those artifacts,” she added. “And somewhere in the records of macaque and early hominid tools, there must be a difference. But right now, the diagnostic criteria we’re using can’t find one.”

The Planck study was controversial in part because it brushed against broader, entrenched debates over nothing less than what it means to be human.

In particular, there is a long-standing debate over whether animal social learning can be described using a word as loaded, venerable and human-inflected as “culture.”

Luncz was careful about using that word. But she noted that “nut cracking in primates is socially transmitted — a monkey in isolation doesn’t learn it. It’s our material culture that we use to recreate our history.”

The questions that studies like this explore are central to human identity, Luncz said. “Why are we the way we are? How did we evolve to become this crazy successful monkey that occupies the whole planet?”

“Tool use plays an enormous role in this. We’re so successful at it that we’re destroying our planet — and that all started with a stone tool.”

In a bitter irony, macaques’ very social ingenuity and flexibility — a hallmark of primates — endangers attempts to preserve and learn from them.

As their habitats have been cleared in Asia’s rapid urban and agricultural expansion — with forests cleared for suburbs and cash crops like the ubiquitous oil palm — macaque populations have plummeted.

Last year, the species was listed as “endangered” on the canonical IUCN Red List after a population collapse on a scale “we’ve never seen in the primate world,” Luncz said.

That collapse is mainly invisible: as their habitats have vanished, many macaques have taken refuge in cities and public parks, where they are a familiar and often confrontational presence.

“People aren’t aware that they are an endangered species,” Luncz said. Urban macaques are “always in their face, always there and in the way. They break into houses, steal tourists’ sunglasses and bite children.”

In many Asian cities, a push to conserve these primate relatives is greeted with responses similar to an American or European proposing “to conserve pigeons.”

But as the species’ wild, forest-dwelling populations break down — and their social memory with it — our ability to learn about our own deep origins is also slipping away.

“The chance we have now to compare our history and living primates is a very fast-closing window,” Luncz said. She added that without far more aggressive conservation, we will only have the mute record of ancient archeology to rely on.

Source

Researchers have developed a blood test to determine a person's risk of developing anxiety, while also providing insight into its current severity and best course of treatment.

The test, based on biomarkers strongly associated with the mood disorder, can also predict if a person is likely to get more anxious in the future and how other things, like changes in hormones, might affect their anxiety.

And now that the team, led by researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine, has validated the test, the startup MindX Sciences is already creating the blood tests for physicians to use.

"Many people are suffering from anxiety, which can be very disabling and interfere with daily life," says psychiatric neuroscientist Alexander Niculescu from Indiana University School of Medicine.

"[H]aving something objective like this where we can know what someone's current state is as well as their future risk and what treatment options match their profile is very powerful in helping people."

This recent study made use of techniques that members of the team developed in earlier research, leading to the creation of blood tests for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, and pain.

Testing blood samples is a convenient, objective way to learn about what's going on in our bodies and brains. Diagnoses that rely heavily on self-reporting or observing behaviors can be challenged by difficulties in communication or variations in symptoms. By measuring quantities of a protein, enzyme, hormone, or some other molecule strongly associated with a condition, specialists have one more tool to make an informed decision.

To identify suitable anxiety biomarkers, Niculescu and his colleagues recruited patients at the Indianapolis VA Medical Center and assigned them to one of three groups.

The first group, called the biomarker discovery group, was made up of 58 people (41 males and 17 females) whose anxiety level changed at least once from one visit to the next. This group enabled the team to look for possible biomarkers that might be linked to changes in anxiety.

The top candidate biomarkers found in this 'discovery group' were tested on a second group of volunteers, which was made up of 40 people (32 men and 8 women). This group was called the biomarker validation group. This process of validation was important to make sure that the biomarkers could predict changes in anxiety in a reliable and accurate way.

The validated biomarkers were used in biomarker testing to predict high anxiety states and clinically severe anxiety in a third group. This biomarker testing group consisted of 161 males and 36 females for predicting high anxiety states and 159 males and 36 females for predicting clinically severe anxiety.

Ultimately, using the evidence from all three groups, the researchers found and confirmed 19 blood biomarkers that can be used to predict changes in anxiety.

Anxiety disorders are common, and vastly affect people's quality of life so it's important to try to understand, diagnose, and treat them better.

There are a variety of social and psychological, as well as physiological therapies for anxiety disorders, but it's hard for doctors to find the balance of medications or therapy in the right amounts and at the right times.

"The current approach is to talk to people about how they feel to see if they could be on medications, but some medications can be addictive and create more problems," says Niculescu.

"We wanted to see if our approach to identify blood biomarkers could help us match people to existing medications that will work better and could be a non-addictive choice."

What's more, if doctors can spot specific biomarkers that predict the risk of anxiety disorders in the future, they might be able to start preventing anxiety disorders before they start or come back.

"There are people who have anxiety and it is not properly diagnosed, then they have panic attacks, but think they're having a heart attack and end up in the ER with all sorts of physical symptoms," Niculescu adds.

"If we can know that earlier, then we can hopefully avoid this pain and suffering and treat them earlier with something that matches their profile."

Importantly, the researchers conclude, the fact that not all patients respond to current treatments shows how essential it is to keep doing research to find new and better treatments.

So they hope the new blood biomarker tests can be used to match patients with the right medications, measure how well a treatment is working, and find new uses for old drugs.

"This is something that could be a panel test as part of a patient's regular wellness visits to evaluate their mental health over time and prevent any future distress," Niculescu hopes.

"Prevention is better in the long run."

The research has been published in Molecular Psychiatry.

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Yes, unfortunately, they are. We’re seeing increases in the intensity and the severity, the overall burned area of wildfires and the duration of fire across the fire season. And while fire is a natural part of ecosystems, what’s really driving this change is we’re seeing a lot of changes in our climate. We’re seeing increases in global temperature as well as more extreme weather events, so longer droughts. And so we have these hot and dry conditions, which makes vegetation, forests and grasses more available to burn because they’re drier.

And so with these drier conditions and these drier fuels, we’re likely to see more fires. And this is happening in many locations all across the world. This can be really detrimental to the ecosystem, but also to human health, where we’re seeing people going to the hospital with respiratory issues and smoke can just travel many thousands of miles with these fires.

Changes in our climate, along with other factors, have led to wildfires increasing in intensity, severity, size, and duration. NASA climate and wildfire expert Liz Hoy explains how and why NASA studies these events from the ground, air, and space to better understand the impacts they have on both a local and global scale. Credit: NASA

How can we help? What can we do? One thing that I find really hopeful is that NASA continues to study wildfires around the globe. We have people going out on the land to make measurements. We have airborne campaigns that fly around to better understand wildfires from the air, how it’s impacting smoke, where wildfires are burning. And then, of course, we have satellite imagery, which gives us a global picture of wildfires all around the world all the time.

So are wildfires getting worse? Yes, they are. But there are ways that we can all think about this together. And I think just learning about these issues and being able to share that with other members in our community is a way we can all go forward and think about climate change and wildfires.

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The study, led by Monash University in Australia, found that only 0.001 percent of the world's population was exposed to low levels of air pollution in 2019; globally, 70 percent of days exceeded safe limits.

Air pollution causes around 8 million deaths each year. Tiny particles less than 2.5 micrometers in width (known as PM2.5) can invade the airways and blood vessels, causing strokes, lung cancer, and heart disease.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has set the safety threshold for daily PM2.5 exposure to 15 μg/m3, but between 2000 and 2019, the average level of air pollution across the globe was more than double that limit (32.8 µg/m3).

This study is the first to show the change in daily air pollution exposure globally over several decades. Data were drawn from 5,446 monitoring stations in 65 countries and processed using machine learning and simulations.

Eastern Asia had the worst air pollution over this two-decade period, with an average annual PM2.5 exposure of 50 μg/m3, followed by southern Asia (37.2 μg/m3) and northern Africa (30 μg/m3).

The regions with the lowest PM2.5 air pollution over two decades were Australia and New Zealand (8.5 μg/m³), other regions in Oceania (12.6 μg/m³), and southern America (15.6 μg/m³).

The average annual PM2.5 over two decades (2000-2019). Each dot represents a monitoring station. (Yu et al., Lancet Planetary Health, 2023)

Air pollution decreased in Europe and North America between 2000 and 2019, but increased in southern Asia, Australia and New Zealand, South America, and the Caribbean.

(Yu et al., Lancet Planetary Health, 2023)

Air pollution had a seasonal pattern. In northeast China and north India, using fossil fuels to heat homes created a peak in air pollution during winter. But the opposite pattern was seen on North America's east coast, where PM2.5 peaked in the summer months.

Climate change-related bushfires and dust storms may also have contributed to air pollution in south-eastern Australia in 2019, the researchers said.

"[This study] provides a deep understanding of the current state of outdoor air pollution and its impacts on human health," says Monash University air quality researcher Yuming Guo.

"With this information, policymakers, public health officials, and researchers can better assess the short-term and long-term health effects of air pollution and develop air pollution mitigation strategies."

PM2.5 pollution is created when fossil fuel combustion, car exhausts, wood fires, gas stoves, bushfires, or dust storms produce a toxic cocktail of nitrates, carbon, sulfates, lead, and arsenic that get suspended in the air.

When we breathe in these tiny particles, they pass through the lining of the lungs.

This can trigger inflammation, aggravating asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The toxic particles can pass into the blood vessels, causing them to inflame and restrict, which triggers strokes in some people. They can dislodge fatty plaque build-ups in the blood vessels, creating clots that damage the heart or brain.

This paper was published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

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Japan's H3 rocket fails in debut. The launch of Japan's H3 rocket on Tuesday morning, local time in Tanegashima, failed after the vehicle's second-stage engine did not ignite, Ars reports. In a terse statement on the failure, Japanese space agency JAXA said, "A destruct command has been transmitted to H3 around 10:52 am (Japan Standard Time), because there was no possibility of achieving the mission. We are confirming the situation." JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had spent about $1.5 billion developing the new rocket.

Betting big on the debut ... This really was not a test flight. Lost during the mission was the country's new Advanced Land Observing Satellite-3, which cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars to build. It was a sign of JAXA's confidence in the new rocket and also made the loss more painful. Japan's minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Science, Keiko Nagaoka, said the launch failure was "extremely regrettable." She added that a task force would work with JAXA to "promptly and thoroughly" determine what caused the failure. (submitted by EllPeaTea, tsunam, and Ken the Bin)

Arianespace chief plans on rapid Ariane 6 ramp-up. In a paywalled op-ed published in the French publication Les Echos, Arianespace President Stéphane Israël defended the European launch company after an "unprecedented series of crises" in 2022, including the sudden loss of cooperation with Russia for the Soyuz vehicle, a Vega C launch failure, and further delays in readying the Ariane 6 rocket for launch. But, Israël argued, it would be wrong to criticize Arianespace or the decisions made by the European Space Agency.

That's a lot to ask ... Rather, he argues that better times are coming for the European launch industry, noting in particular that the Ariane 6 vehicle had won a "historic" contract for 18 of Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite launches. To meet this demand, he says, Arianespace plans to be launching a dozen Ariane 6 rockets a year by 2025. This ramp-up is "essential" Israël said. It may indeed be essential, but launching an Ariane 6 rocket a month in 2025, with the booster unlikely to make its debut before early 2024, seems almost like magical thinking.

Why you should care about something called NSSL Phase 3. The US military recently released a rather mundane-sounding document titled "National Security Space Launch Phase 3 DRAFT Request for Proposals #1." That may be a mouthful of jargon, but it's still a rather consequential document. Effectively, its release is the starting gun for the next round of launch contracts for US spy satellites, secure communications satellites, and more, Ars reports.

There is a pile of money at stake ... Up for grabs are launch contracts worth billions of dollars—substantially more than $10 billion—as the military seeks to secure launch deals for the late 2020s and early 2030s. The most notable change in Phase 3 of this funding is that the US military plans to lean more heavily on innovative commercial space systems that bring new capabilities. That would seem to be a boon for companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Blue Origin, and others planning to develop fully reusable launch systems and in-space capabilities. Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, for example, said he was "very happy" with the outcome. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Boeing interested in Phase 3, too? As part of the next round of national security launch contracts discussed above, I expect SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin to bid their large rockets for the most demanding military missions. But according to Aviation Week's Irene Klotz, Boeing is also interested in offering commercial Space Launch System flight services under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 program.

No, wait, they're serious ... "We believe the proven SLS capabilities can be an asset for the ... [NSSL] Phase 3 contract," the company told Klotz. While I applaud Boeing's ambition, it is difficult to see the SLS rocket being seriously considered in an open competition. Its price (probably above $2 billion) will easily be five times, or even 10 times that of the rockets it is competing against, and, with a low flight rate, it is unlikely to answer the military's priorities for schedule and reliability.

China shows off massive tank. China has produced a 10-meter-wide propellant tank as it works toward building a super heavy-lift launch vehicle, Space.com reports. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology announced earlier this month that it had manufactured the huge tank, demonstrating that it had made the breakthroughs required to produce a propellant storage tank strong yet also thin and light enough for use in rocket launches.

A prototype tank ... The new tank was built to specifications for an old design for an expendable version of China's planned Long March 9 rocket. China has since stated it is switching to a new, reusable design with a diameter of 10.6 meters, but the demonstration of techniques such as stir friction welding and materials will be applicable to the new plan. Don't expect the massive rocket to fly any time soon. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

March 11: Terran 1 | Good Luck, Have Fun | Cape Canaveral, Fla. | 18:00 UTC

March 11: Electron | "Stronger Together" | Wallops Flight Facility, Va. | 23:00 UTC

March 12: Proton | Olymp-K 2 | Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan | 22:12 UTC

Rocket Report: Boeing to bid SLS for military launch; Ariane chief says all is well

US defense planners are mulling response options to an adversary attack on privately-owned, military-oriented satellites amid rising concerns of gray zone warfare in space.

This month, The Washington Post reported that the US is developing policy responses to a possible Russian or other adversary state attack on the Starlink satellite constellation.

Starlink, operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, has given Ukraine a decisive edge in the ongoing conflict, providing battlefield communications, artillery fire direction and supporting drone operations.

However, the report mentions that those responses are still being formulated, as several US agencies work to develop a policy framework to set reaction parameters if a satellite owned by a US commercial company comes under attack.

“First, commercial companies are thinking very clearly and carefully about, can we be involved? Should we be involved? What are the implications of being involved? … And on our side, it’s exactly the same thing. Should we depend on commercial services?

Where can we depend on commercial services?” said General David Thompson, US Space Force Vice Chief of Operations.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system has given Ukraine an edge in its war with Russia. Image: Twitter

Thompson’s comments, reported by the Washington Post, reflect the threat mentioned last October by Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Nonproliferation and Arms.

Vorontsov said the growing use of privately-owned satellites to support military operations is “an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of outer-space technologies and has become apparent during the latest developments in Ukraine,” the Washington Post report said. He also warned that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.” 

In response to Vorontsov’s comments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated that any attack on US infrastructure would be met with a response in a time and manner of its choosing.

The partnership between space companies and governments blurs the distinction between commercial and national capabilities. The resulting ambiguity creates confounding situations on how to respond to a state attack against commercial satellites supporting military operations.

The threat aligns with the basic principle of gray zone warfare, which involves coercive action short of military force.

Malcolm Davis points out in a June 2021 article for The Strategist that the key to space-based gray zone operations is to mask aggressive acts behind commercial activities while exploiting the resulting confusion and plausible deniability.

Davis also notes that space-based gray zone operations increase the risk of orbit, given the borderless nature of the space domain, dual-use space technology and the difficulty of responding to events thousands of kilometers above the ground.

Dean Cheng, in a January article for GIS, notes the challenges posed by the growing role of space companies that function as independent strategic players that nonetheless become extensions of state power.

Cheng notes space companies now provide critical capabilities, including high-resolution earth imaging, data relay, and Internet access, that were previously the sole domain of state space programs.  

Cheng notes that Western space companies may coordinate with Western governments in deciding to whom they provide services, while non-Western space companies, such as those established in Asia, Latin America and Africa, may disregard Western sensitivities in choosing and supplying their clients.

Cheng also mentions that, at present, space companies generally lack a unified set of norms and standards, a problem that is intensifying as more players enter the scene. Cheng also says that space companies may ally themselves with specific states or become tools of national power.

Destructive anti-satellite missile tests generate huge amounts of space debris that can endanger other satellites and manned spacecraft. Photo: Atalayar

He mentions that Chinese and Russian space companies are state-owned or heavily integrated into their respective national industrial complexes. He also notes that Chinese, Russian and US space companies are expected to side with their state supporters.

Given that, Cheng says that Western firms may seek protection by siding with Western governments or remaining neutral in cases of conflicting interests.

He also says that space companies founded by emerging players in Asia, Latin America, and Africa will likely reflect their home government’s foreign policy, which may not align with those of more prominent players such as the US, China and Russia.

As space becomes more crowded with private firms, enacting norms for responsible use may become more challenging. In a May 2021 article for Defense One, Patrick Tucker notes that major space players such as China, Russia and the US seem halfhearted or disinterested in pushing for space norms and agreements that may curtail any military advantage and hold them responsible for their actions. 

While Tucker notes that the US is reaching out to “like-minded countries” to create norms for the use of space, it has yet to enter into any legally binding agreements.

Despite the US declaring a self-imposed moratorium on testing destructive anti-satellite missiles of the like China and Russia have under development, the US is pursuing more potent satellite-killing technologies such as ground-based mobile lasers, radiofrequency jammers, microwave weapons and even hunter-killer satellites.

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While gun violence has for years been among the leading causes of death for US children, the COVID-19 pandemic sent it skyrocketing to the top cause while widening racial disparities.

In the years before the pandemic—from 2015 to early 2020—Black children in four major US cities were 27 times more likely to be shot than white children. But, from 2020 to the end of 2021, Black children were 100 times more likely to be shot than white children, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open. The study examined firearm assault data from New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

The study also found that Hispanic children were about 26 times more likely to be shot than white children during the pandemic, up from a relative risk of 8.6-fold prior to the health emergency. And Asian children were about four times more likely to be shot than white children, up from a relative risk of 1.4-fold from before the pandemic.

While the rate of shootings among white children did not change during the pandemic, the health emergency was linked to a two-fold increase in firearm injuries among children overall. That equates to an extra 503.5 gunshot injuries than if the pandemic hadn't occurred, the study authors from Boston University estimated.

Firearm injuries have been on the rise for years prior to the pandemic. But in 2020, they became the top killer of US kids, surpassing car accidents and cancers. The increases have continued into 2021, according to the new analysis.

While the evidence is not clear as to why the pandemic spurred more firearm violence and racial disparity, the authors of the new study hypothesized community context plays a role.

"Our results are broadly consistent with research identifying sharper pandemic-associated violence increases in neighborhoods with less racial and economic privilege," the researchers wrote. "Possible explanations include COVID-19’s exacerbation of inequities in access to health, employment, and educational resources."

Following the school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, last year—which left 21 people dead, including 19 students between the ages of 7 and 10—medical associations renewed calls for common sense and evidence-based strategies to reduce firearm injuries and deaths in children. Those included universal background checks, banning people convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun, licensing laws, restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public, gun safety education, and restrictions on assault weapons.

"As physicians, our mission is to heal and to maintain health. But too often the wounds we see in America today resemble the wounds I've seen in war," Gerald Harmon, president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement at the time. The AMA declared gun violence a public health crisis in 2016.

The American Academy of Pediatrics President Moira Szilagyi also pleaded for more to be done to address the public health crisis. "When will we as a nation stand up for all of these children? What, finally, will it take, for our leaders in government to do something meaningful to protect them?" she wrote in a statement. "The AAP has called on the federal government to increase funding for research into gun violence prevention and for common-sense laws that protect everyone in a community."

The authors of the new study also call for efforts to "target structural racism as a fundamental driver of the US firearm violence epidemic."

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Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn were among the companies behind a landmark liberalization of labor laws in the Indian state of Karnataka last month, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Their successful lobbying for new legislation means two-shift production can take place in India, akin to the two companies’ practices in China, their primary manufacturing base. The law gives the southern state one of the most flexible working regimes in India as the country aims to become an alternative manufacturing base to China.

Karnataka’s move is an attempt to seize the opportunity created by companies that are seeking to end an over reliance on Chinese manufacturing, following months of COVID-19 disruption that has shaken global supply chains.

“India is due to become the next big manufacturing hub,” an Indian government official said, who asked to remain anonymous. “When we compare India with other countries... we have to increase by a big margin our efficiency in terms of increasing the work output.”

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s electronics and IT minister, said last week that Apple phones would be produced at a new 300-acre factory in Karnataka. Foxconn has not confirmed any factory plans.

The state, a center for India’s tech industry, last week passed an amendment to its application of the factories act allowing for 12-hour shifts, up from the previous limit of nine hours. It also eased rules on night-time work for women, who dominate electronics production lines in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam but are under-represented in India’s workforce. The legislation caps maximum working hours at 48 per week but also expands the number of allowable overtime hours to 145 over a three-month period, from a previous 75.

The official said Karnataka had amended its labor law after “a lot of inputs” from Indian industry lobby groups and foreign companies, including Foxconn and Apple. Foxconn and Apple both declined to comment.

“This is something we and the customer have been pursuing,” said a person close to Foxconn, referring to Apple. “It is an adjustment that’s crucial for building efficient manufacturing here at scale.”

The person said that India, which this year is due to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, was a promising market that Foxconn could no longer ignore but that big gaps remained in the investment environment between India and China.

“Being able to run production with two 12-hour shifts around the clock would be a big step to bring us closer to where we need to be,” the person said.

Narendra Modi’s government is trying to promote manufacturing, which still plays a modest role in India’s service-heavy economy, under a “Make in India” push.

Both the central government and Indian states, especially in India’s south, are offering incentives to investors in electronics and other sectors in a bid to lure manufacturers seeking to diversify away from China.

Foxconn, which currently makes iPhones at a plant in Tamil Nadu state, has spoken of expanding its operations in Karnataka and the neighboring state of Telangana but has not spelled out in detail its plans to manufacture for Apple. However, Foxconn’s chair, Young Liu, visited the cities of Hyderabad in Telangana and Bengaluru in Karnataka last week, in one of the clearest signs yet that the Taiwanese electronics group plans to increase its footprint in India.

Apple also has its iPhones assembled in India at plants operated by rival Taiwanese contract manufacturers Pegatron and Wistron.

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Sales of vinyl records have been on the rise for years, but according to the RIAA's 2022 year-end revenue report for the music industry (PDF), record sales hit a new high last year. For the first time since 1987, unit sales of vinyl albums outpaced those of CDs, vindicating all the people who have spent decades of their lives talking about how vinyl "just sounds better."

Although vinyl unit sales only surpassed CDs last year, revenue from vinyl records has been higher than revenue from CDs for a while now. In 2022, vinyl albums earned $1.2 billion, compared to $483 million for CDs. The growth in vinyl was more than enough to offset a drop in CD revenue, helping overall physical media revenue climb 4 percent over 2021 (which was already way up over 2020).

Streaming services still account for the vast majority of all music revenue in the US—84 percent, up from 83 percent in 2021. The RIAA says there was an average of 92 million streaming music subscriptions active in 2022, which, together with digital radio and ad-supported sites like YouTube, generated $13.3 billion. The growth of streaming services and physical media comes at the expense of paid digital downloads, which accounted for a mere 3 percent of all music revenue in 2022.

There have always been people who have asserted that music played on vinyl sounds better than digital music, but that probably doesn't explain vinyl's increasing popularity this long after the advent of CDs, MP3s, and streaming music. A vinyl album is large enough to double as an art piece, and there's something appealing about the tactility of physical objects in an age where media is increasingly ephemeral.

There's also a retro-tech element to vinyl's resurgence. Old 2000s-era digital point-and-shoot cameras are currently popular with high schoolers and college students who grew up with smartphones, and there are enduring communities around modding and restoring old PCs, game consoles, typewriters, and all kinds of other things that have ostensibly been "replaced" by superior alternatives. CDs and iPods are down and out right now, but they're apparently just one viral TikTok trend away from renewed relevance.

If you want to start (or re-start) your own vinyl collection, the format has become popular enough for companies like Audio Technica, Sony, and Victrola to release new turntables with modern amenities like Bluetooth connectivity.

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Silicon Valley Bank was shuttered by US regulators on Friday after a rush of deposit outflows and a failed effort to raise new capital called into question the future of the tech-focused lender.

With about $209 billion in assets, SVB has become the second-largest bank failure in US history after the 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual, and marks a swift fall from grace for a lender that was valued at more than $44 billion less than 18 months ago.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the US regulator that guarantees bank deposits of up to $250,000, said it was closing SVB and that insured depositors would have access to their funds by Monday.

Many of SVB’s clients were venture capital funds as well as tech and healthcare start-ups, and would have account balances well in excess of the maximum amount insured by the FDIC. The regulator said these depositors would receive an initial payment next week and the rest would depend on what happens to SVB’s assets.

The regulator historically has sought to merge failed lenders with a larger and more stable institution. Washington Mutual, for example, was sold to JPMorgan Chase. The FDIC said it would use the sale proceeds of SVB to fund payouts to larger depositors.

The prices on SVB’s bonds plunged on Friday, with its senior debt trading at about 45 cents on the dollar and its junior debt as low as 12.5 cents, suggesting bondholders are braced for heavy losses.

Earlier on Friday, SVB had abandoned its efforts to raise $2.25 billion in new funding to cover losses on its bond portfolio and had begun looking for a buyer to save it, according to people with knowledge of the efforts.

SVB shares were halted during early trading on New York’s Nasdaq exchange, and its woes hit shares in several other US banks that are seen to have similar depositor and funding profiles.

Trading in Pacific West, Western Alliance and First Republic were stopped due to volatility after they all initially fell 40 to 50 percent. Trading was also briefly stopped in Signature Bank after its shares fell nearly 30 percent. Several of those banks sought to reassure the market by putting out statements highlighting their differences from SVB in terms of asset and depositor base.

The banking group’s troubles stem from a decision made at the peak of the tech boom to park $91 billion of its deposits in long-dated securities such as mortgage bonds and US Treasuries, which were deemed safe but are now worth $15 billion less than when SVB purchased them after the Federal Reserve aggressively raised interest rates.

It had planned to sell $1.25 billion of its common stock to investors and an additional $500 million of mandatory convertible preferred shares, which are slightly less dilutive to existing shareholders. That would have helped bridge the roughly $1.8 billion in losses SVB incurred from the sale of about $21 billion of securities initiated to cover customers withdrawing deposits.

On Thursday, SVB and its underwriter Goldman Sachs raced to complete the share offering. While Goldman had secured enough interest in the convertible bond deal by mid-afternoon, the common stock sale was struggling as SVB shares slid, according to one person with knowledge of the efforts. Private equity firm General Atlantic had also committed to provide $500 million in equity if the offering had been completed.

The bank’s shares registered their biggest-ever decline on Thursday, wiping $9.6 billion off its market capitalisation. SVB shares had fallen more than 60 percent in pre-market trading on Friday before the trading halt.

US bank failures have been extremely rare in recent years; the last FDIC insured bank to close was in October 2020, and the last time there were more than 10 was 2014.

The ramifications of SVB’s troubles may be widely felt. The lender is the banking partner for half of US venture-backed tech and life sciences companies, and is a large presence in offering credit lines to the $10tn private capital industry.

Its customers had begun to grow increasingly fearful of the bank’s financial position on Thursday, when some start-ups began pulling their cash. Some venture capital groups acknowledged that they had begun advising some of their portfolio companies to consider withdrawing a portion of their deposits from the lender earlier this week.

“SVB’s 40 years of business relationships supporting Silicon Valley evaporated in 14 hours,” said a senior executive at one multibillion-dollar venture capital fund.

Reporting by Joshua Franklin, Eric Platt, Ortenca Aliaj, Antoine Gara and Brooke Masters in New York and Tabby Kinder and George Hammond in San Francisco. Additional reporting by Stephen Gandel in New York and Robert Smith in London.

© 2023 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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Among the many natural wonders that call Yellowstone National Park home, there’s a bubbling hot spring that researchers have recently discovered has a very special ability. Known as the Doublet Pool, the hydrothermal pool lets out a bold thump every 20 to 30 minutes, vibrating the near-boiling water and the ground around it. 

As per a new study, this regular vibration acts like a “thumping thermometer” that reflects how much energy is heating the pool at the bottom. 

Doublet Pool is found in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone and is about the size of half a tennis court, filled with piping water that runs around 2.4 meters (8 feet) deep. Its notorious pulses are the result of bubbles in the plumbing system that feeds it water, heated by the superhot magma that pulses beneath Yellowstone. 

In other hot springs, this process can create a geyser of hot water and steam erupting from the pool. However, water isn’t able to build pressure in the Doublet Pool, so no such eruption occurs – instead, it simply rings out with a thump.

In this latest research, scientists found that the rate of the thumps varied from year to year, day to day, and even hour to hour. For instance, the interval of silence between thumps was around 30 minutes in November 2016, then just 13 minutes in September 2018, before rising to 20 minutes in November 2021. 

Intrigued, the team sought to understand what was causing this variation. In doing so, they hope to gain some knowledge about the wider hydrothermal fluxes of Yellowstone.

“We knew Doublet Pool thumps every 20-30 minutes, but there was not much previous knowledge on what controls the variation. In fact, I don't think many people actually realize the thumping interval varies. People pay more attention to geysers,” Fan-Chi Lin, study co-author and an associate professor in the department of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, said in a statement.

“By studying Doublet Pool, we are hoping to gain knowledge on the dynamic hydrothermal processes that can potentially be applied to understand what controls geyser eruptions, and also less predictable and more hazardous hydrothermal explosions,” Lin added. 

They think it all boils down to heat transfer. In November 2016, when the silence interval of the pool’s thumps was very short, Ear Spring on the nearby Geyser Hill erupted for the first time since 1957. Following the activity, the water in Doublet Pool increased.

This incident showed how heat under Geyser Hill may have been turned up the heat under Doublet Pool in this instance. In other words, hydrothermal heating at the base of the pool was influencing the rate of thumps.

As a side note, this is a hell of a lot of heat: Lin explains that it would take over 100 household furnaces to burn enough heat up to create a thump from Doublet Pool. 

Just as the pool’s base is significant, heat transfer at the water’s surface also may play a role. By looking at weather conditions and the pool's activity, they found that wind speed over the pools was correlated with the silence interval. Although this process isn’t fully understood, they speculate it’s a bit like blowing on a hot coffee to cool it down. 

“Right now, we are treating the pool as one whole system, which means energy taken away from the surface makes it harder for the system to accumulate enough energy to thump,” Lin explained. “One possibility is that the pool is actively convecting so the cooling near the surface can affect the bottom of the pool in a relatively short time scale.”

The new study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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If you’re trying to build muscle, you’ve probably come across a slew of videos online by influencers and so-called experts discussing all the things you need to do outside of the gym to help your progress. One popular piece of advice is to avoid alcohol entirely if you want to build muscle, with many suggesting that drinking alcohol will prevent you from building muscle.

While this advice may sound a bit extreme, research shows there is some truth to these claims.

For example, one study looked at how eight physically active young men were affected by heavy alcohol intake (the equivalent of drinking around seven beers over a three hour period) after exercise. It found they had reduced muscle protein synthesis – the metabolic process that helps the body build muscle – compared to when no alcohol was consumed.

But while this suggests that binge drinking may hamper your muscle gains, it might not prevent you from gaining muscle altogether. And at the moment, evidence on the impacts of more moderate alcohol intake (one to two beers) on muscle gain is lacking.

However, there is similar research looking at the effects of alcohol in other body organs. For example, research looking at the liver shows that drinking the equivalent of two beers does not negatively impact liver protein synthesis rates – but drinking the equivalent of five beers does.

Similarly, research in rodents has also shown that moderate daily alcohol intake for two weeks did not impair muscle growth in response to overloading (a method used to cause muscle growth in rodents).

This implies that a beer or two is unlikely to impede your ability to build muscle in response to resistance exercise. The research also suggests there may be an alcohol intake threshold which – once you go over it – will negatively affect the body’s muscle growth response to resistance exercise.

However, we currently have no corresponding evidence of this effect in humans due to the ethical problems with asking volunteers to repeatedly consume large amounts of alcohol. This is why the majority of the existing studies on alcohol intake are performed in animals, which provide a model system often used to study muscle growth.

We’re still not entirely sure how alcohol affects the muscle building process. Image credit: Bojan Milinkov/ Shutterstock.com

The exact mechanisms by which alcohol impacts the muscle building process remain to be fully established. But some research has shown heavy alcohol consumption reduces the molecular signals which turn on the muscle-building process.

Specifically, in people who consumed alcohol after a workout, a protein known to help regulate the muscle building process – called mechanistic/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) – did not increase to the same extent as in those who didn’t drink alcohol after their workout.

Alcohol’s effect on the body’s hormones – specifically testosterone – may also impact muscle gains. Testosterone is a hormone that helps increase muscle mass in response to resistance exercise training.

Research shows that moderate doses of alcohol – equivalent to around two beers – can actually increase testosterone levels. The downside, though, is that this increase doesn’t last very long, making it therefore unlikely to significantly contribute to muscle gain.

Research also shows that high levels of alcohol intake can actually reduce testosterone levels. This suggests that there’s a threshold beyond which alcohol impairs the benefits of exercise.

Research has also shown that you can counteract the effect of alcohol on muscle growth to some extent by ingesting between 20g-25g of protein after exercising (the equivalent of approximately three large eggs). This is likely due to the fact that protein intake is one of the main drivers of muscle growth in the body.

Other effects

Drinking alcohol can have many other effects on the body, such as causing weight gain. So what does this mean for a post-workout beer?

Well, the average 70kg person can burn anywhere between 108-216 calories per 30 minutes of weightlifting – depending on the intensity of the exercise. A pint of beer, on the other hand, contains around 200 calories.

So, it’s unlikely your post-workout drink will lead to excessive weight gain. But regularly indulging in heavy alcohol consumption may increase your risk of gaining weight.

If you’re someone who enjoys having a couple drinks throughout the week, it looks like a post-workout drink or two is unlikely to hamper your efforts to gain muscle – though binge drinking could.

Much more research is needed to better understand the impacts of different amounts of alcohol on muscle growth in response to exercise, particularly in other populations – such as women and older adults. So, for now, we continue to reiterate what we’ve said before: everything in moderation.

Colleen Deane, Lecturer in Muscle Cell Biology, University of Southampton and Philip J Atherton, Professor of Clinical, Metabolic & Molecular Physiology, University of Nottingham

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

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a drug that could temporarily raise people’s body temperatures, making them resistant to cold environments. A bioengineer has won a funding grant from DARPA and the Pentagon to explore any drugs that could do this, which will utilize the body’s own machinery of breaking down sugar and creating fat cells. 

The process of generating heat in the body is called thermogenesis, and happens in two main ways. 

“One involves shivering, which all of us have experienced,” Rice University bioengineer Jerzy Szablowski explains in a statement.

“If you are getting ill and you are developing a fever, you begin to shiver, and that shivering raises your body temperature. The problem is that you lose dexterity and it is really unpleasant.” 

“The other type of thermogenesis involves BAT [brown adipose tissue], which is capable of generating heat through a chemical reaction,” he continued.  

“Nonshivering thermogenesis kicks in sooner but is not as efficient, so it cannot generate quite as much heat, at least not in humans.” 

The drug would target the second type, utilizing brown adipose tissue to generate heat immediately. Brown adipose tissue breaks down sugars using a unique enzyme, a process that generates enough heat to keep the body alive until shivering kicks in. 

In contrast to white adipose tissue, which is the main issue in obesity, brown adipose tissue is a lot more useful and only activates in cold temperatures. It begins to burn available resources as an emergency measure, making it a vital survival pathway. If a drug can increase that metabolism, it could help everyone from soldiers, to EMTs responding to emergencies. 

The grant is going to allow the researchers to use modern screening technologies to scan through huge numbers of drug candidates to find a potential match. 

“First, you have to understand the biology of the disease or physiological process, and then find a site to intervene, like a protein or a process in the cell that you can target with a drug,” said Szablowski. 

“This is where this project comes in. The main innovation of this screening method is that it is mechanism-agnostic, meaning that we might not need to fully understand the disease or physiological process before developing mitigation strategies.” 

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Love it or (more likely) loathe it, there’s certainly a routine to boarding a plane. Every day, millions of us line up in snaking queues, separate out our electronics from the rest of our luggage, take off our belts, shoes, and jackets, and desperately try not to make eye contact with the TSA agent who is now busy feeling us up in public. It sucks, but that’s air travel in the 21st century.

One of the many, many rules we abide by to get in the air regards liquids in hand luggage. In countries around the world, there’s a hard limit on how much you can bring, at least in a single container: 100 milliliters (3.4 ounces) or less, submitted through security in a see-through bag ready for inspection.

If you’re one of our younger readers (say, 25 or under) you may not realize it wasn’t always this way – but in fact, the 100ml liquid rule is only less than a couple of decades old. And, to the likely relief of flyers everywhere, it’s already reaching the end of its lifespan.

So, here’s the big question: why did the rule ever exist in the first place? 

Why was the 100ml liquids rule originally brought in?

Liquids in quantities larger than 100ml have been verboten on commercial air travel since 2006 – and like so many flight regulations introduced in the decade following 9/11, it was originally an anti-terrorism measure.

“Intelligence […] suggested that a plot was in existence to blow up transatlantic passenger aircraft, in flight,” said Peter Clarke, then deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, in the wake of the foiled transatlantic aircraft plot of 2006. 

“This was to be achieved by means of concealed explosive devices smuggled onto the aircraft in hand baggage,” he explained.

Specifically, the plan was to involve liquid explosives brought onto planes disguised as soft drinks. Plotters carrying acetone peroxide, also known as TATP or (genuinely) “Mother of Satan”, would board the aircraft, before injecting hydrogen peroxide into the bottles. From there, a trace amount of high explosive, contained inside an AA battery combined with a camera flash as detonator, would create an explosion big enough to blow through the fuselage of all of the seven planes targeted in the attack. 

While it wasn’t the first scheme aiming to bring down a plane in such a way – the Bojinka Plot of 1995 also used liquid explosives, and had it gone ahead would have resulted in the deaths of around 4,000 people including the Pope – it was the first since 9/11, in the newly-paranoid world of the War On Terror.

Luckily, the plan was intercepted before it ever went ahead – but had it been successful, experts reckoned that the “smuggled inside beverage containers” method would have left “little or no forensic evidence showing how they had done it.” Immediately, travelers out of the UK were banned from taking anything other than essential travel items as carry-on luggage, while in the US, virtually all liquids were forbidden. 

Before long, however, both countries had instituted rules that allowed liquids in hand luggage so long as they were stored in bottles no larger than 100ml. Soon, the rest of the world followed suit – and within a few months, this new standard for air travel had spread pretty much around the globe.

Why can I take four 100ml bottles on an airplane but not one 400ml bottle?

As justifiable as this limit on fluids originally was, if you’ve ever found yourself impatiently decanting a second or third tiny bottle of shampoo to store in your hand luggage, you’ve probably wondered the same thing: how come I can bring a bunch of small bottles on board, but not one larger bottle? 

After all – couldn’t some potential terrorist just pack, say, four or five smaller amounts of liquid explosives, then detonate all of them? Surely it’s the total amount of liquid brought on board that matters, rather than the size and number of containers it’s in?

It’s a natural assumption, but, surprisingly, it’s wrong. In fact, former director of the TSA Kip Hawley told the New York Times back in 2007, the size of the bottle is actually more important than the liquid inside.

“With certain explosives you need to have a certain critical diameter in order to achieve an explosion that will cause a certain amount of damage,” he explained. “The size of the container itself is part of the security measure.”

Still, couldn’t a potential attacker simply mix multiple bottles together in a larger container once airborne? Well, in theory, yes, but here’s the thing: liquid explosives are, sort of by definition, pretty unstable substances – and trying to mix them on board or in an airport bathroom might just blow up in your face. Literally.

“[TATP] explosions are known to be about 80 percent as strong as TNT, but the substance is much harder to handle,” explained Laura Finney, a chemistry doctoral student at the University of Nottingham, in The Conversation in 2017. “A firm shock or knock is enough to trigger an explosion, which means it’s quite easy to accidentally blow yourself up in the process of making it.”

Even sitting on the shelf, TATP is dangerous – and explosives experts charged with advising on safety measures after 2006 determined that it would be highly impractical for would-be terrorists to try to combine liquid explosives before or during their flight. 

Rather, they concluded, dealing with the kinds of substances necessary to blow up a plane in quantities of 100ml or less would more likely end with a plotter either screwing up the recipe – or harming themselves rather than other passengers. 

How long will the 100ml liquid rule be around?

As inevitable as it may feel today to fly under the strange collection of rules and arguable civil rights abuses of the TSA, it wasn’t all that long ago that no such restriction existed.

Similarly, they won’t be here forever. In fact, in some places, the 100ml rule for liquids has been bent or broken for a while now.

“Medicines, special foods or breast milk… can already be brought in the cabin in quantities over 100ml,” Genoa Airport press officer Nur El Gawohary pointed out back in 2017. In that north-western Italian city alone, another exception had just been added: pesto sauce for pasta.

“Every year hundreds of pesto jars were seized at security controls and thrown away – a waste of food and an annoyance to our passengers,” explained El Gawohary. “We use the same equipment [to check the pesto] that is used to check [other liquids].”

But that raises an intriguing question, doesn’t it? If airports can scan liquid medicines, or pasta sauce, in quantities larger than 100ml, then why do we need the limit at all? 

In fact, we kind of don’t.

In 2019, the UK government announced the rollout of 3D baggage screening equipment that would, officials said, soon put an end to the 100ml liquids rule. Since then, a handful of airports in Western Europe have already ditched the limit thanks to this new tech. In Shannon airport, western Ireland, scrapping the rule in 2022 “halved the time… passengers spend going through security screening,” per The Times.

Since then, all major airports in Ireland have followed suit – and so, too, has England’s London City and Luton airports, with the promise of all major UK airports doing the same by June 2024. Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, meanwhile, has had the technology since 2021 – though they still recommend obeying the 100ml limit, to make ongoing travel easier through other airports.

So much for Europe, but what about the US? How long before Americans can say goodbye to the 100ml – or, to use the local terminology, 3.4 ounces – liquids rule for air travel?

Well, unfortunately for those traveling out of the land of the free, the answer doesn’t seem to be “soon.” It’s not that the US lacks the technology: nearly 200 of the more than 5,000 airports in the US have already installed the new style of scanners. 

However, according to the TSA, there are currently no plans to remove the existing limits: “While we have [CT scanners] deployed at more checkpoints, we are years away from announcing a change to the current liquids rule,” an agency spokesperson reportedly told Semafor in December 2022.

Nevertheless, as the technology becomes more widespread, and the air travel industry continues to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic slump, experts believe we’ll soon see the 100ml liquids rule relaxed in more and more places.

“From a security point of view, [the new scanners are] able to make very accurate decisions about what the materials are in your bag,” Kevin Riordan, head of checkpoint solutions at Smiths Detection, the company that provides Shannon’s security equipment, told CNN last year. “That’s better security, better decisions.”

But installing these new security measures is “a continuing process,” he added. “It’s different in different global regions. It’ll happen at different speeds.”

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In a bizarre case of wildlife imitating art, an African serval cat rescued from a tree in Ohio tested positive for cocaine, according to the animal rescue group who nursed the strung-out animal back to health. Rest assured, the story has a much happier ending than Cocaine Bear and the wild cat is now living its best life at Cincinnati Zoo. 

Explaining the incident on Facebook, Cincinnati Animal CARE said their Hamilton County Dog Wardens division received reports of an "exotic cat" that was stuck in a tree in the early hours of January 28. They managed to capture the animal and called up their big cat expert to help deal with the situation.

It was first speculated that the cat was a hybrid F1 Savannah, which is legal to own in Ohio – but the expert suggested it was actually a serval, a wild cat native to Africa which is illegal in the state. DNA analysis later confirmed this suspicion. 

They named the cat Amiry. Following a case where a capuchin monkey tested positive for methamphetamine in early 2022, Cincinnati Animal CARE said it’s become standard procedure to test captured exotic animals for drugs. 

To their surprise, Amiry tested positive for exposure to cocaine. 

As their facility was not prepared to deal with the species and this unique situation, the serval was transferred to Cincinnati Zoo where they received some of the best veterinary care available. The cat’s owner was reportedly cooperative and agreed to pay for their treatment until the ownership transfer was completed. 

“We're extremely proud of the work done in this case by the Dog Wardens and Medical Staff and are immensely appreciative to the Cincinnati Zoo for getting Amiry the care he needs,” Cincinnati Animal CARE said on social media.

“And now that Amiry is safe, we remind our community that there will be thousands of dogs, cats, and other animals in need of rescue entering our facility this year who will not receive this level of publicity. Please visit your county animal shelter before going to breeder when searching for your next pet,” they added. 

In other drug-addled animal news, Australian police busted a crystal meth lab in 2016 and discovered a 1.8-meter (6-foot) pet python was living there. The python, who “cannot be named for legal reason”, was acting aggressively and it became apparent it had been exposed to the methamphetamine particles.

It looks like there's plenty of inspiration for the inevitable sequel and Netflix spin-off of Cocaine Bear.

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After almost 50,000 years frozen deep within the Siberian permafrost, a horde of ancient, and still infectious, viruses has been unearthed. Remarkably, and also a little worryingly, these “zombie” viruses were still able to infect living single-celled amoebae after re-emerging from their deep freeze, a new study has found.

Researchers identified and revived 13 new viruses in total, ranging in age from 27,000 to 48,500 years old, which may make some of them the most ancient viruses ever resuscitated. Some were found inside the frozen intestines of a Siberian wolf, and others in a sample of permafrost containing a large amount of mammoth wool.

The viruses, despite having spent millennia frozen like a popsicle (which humans definitely couldn’t survive by the way), were still able to infect cultured amoeba once the team had given them a new lease of life. This, as well as being pretty mind-blowing, is also a potential cause for concern for public health.

“We view these amoeba-infecting viruses as surrogates for all other possible viruses that might be in the permafrost,” Professor Jean-Michel Claverie, one of the paper’s authors, told CNN. 

“We see the traces of many, many, many other viruses,” he added. “So we know they are there. We don’t know for sure that they are still alive. But our reasoning is that if the amoeba viruses are still alive, there is no reason why the other viruses will not be still alive, and capable of infecting their own hosts.”

The melting permafrost has unveiled numerous ancient marvels in recent years, including the world’s oldest DNA and a 3,500-year-old bear. But it also hides some more sinister-sounding surprises, infectious “zombie” viruses being one of them. However, perhaps a more immediate concern, Claverie and co-authors suggest, is that posed by bacteria in thawing permafrost (such as strains that cause anthrax).

As the climate crisis continues to worsen, many more potential microbial threats are likely to be reawakened. While the impact these may have on human health remains to be seen, some have speculated that the source of the next pandemic could lie in melted permafrost and glaciers.

As for the “zombie” virus threat: “How long these viruses could remain infectious once exposed to outdoor conditions (UV light, oxygen, heat), and how likely they will be to encounter and infect a suitable host in the interval, is yet impossible to estimate,” write the authors of the new study. “But the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming […] and [with] more people [populating] the Arctic.”

The study is published in the journal Viruses.

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Safe from extinction, 40,020 different plant species are now housed inside Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) in Wakehurst, Sussex, UK. As of March 1, the MSB has banked more than 2.4 billion individual seeds.

This vitally important conservation project holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest seed bank and contains seeds from 190 countries and territories, representing all seven continents. 

“The importance of the Millennium Seed Bank cannot be overstated. All life depends on plants, yet two in five face extinction. The Millennium Seed Bank has been helping protect plant diversity for over 20 years, keeping it safe for future generations while increasing knowledge of and action for plants today.” Said Dr Elinor Breman, Senior Research Leader at the Millennium Seed Bank in a statement sent to IFLScience. 

This milestone marks an important achievement in the fight against climate change and rapid biodiversity loss that threatens two in five plant species. 

Within the MSB’s impressive collection are seeds from plants that are critically endangered or that have unfortunately already gone extinct in the wild, such as the yellow fatu flower (Abutilon pitcairnense) and the world’s smallest waterlily (Nymphea thermarum). With so many plant species under threat, you may wonder how the team decides which species of flora get priority within the seed bank.

Seeds of Tripteris microcarpa are examined carefully. Image Credit: Andrew Mcrobb RBG Kew

“We work with our partners to prioritize important species for them. In general this tends to be those that are threatened, rare or useful. We have managed global programmes focusing on the wild relatives of our crops, threatened trees and plants at risk in biodiversity hotspots.” Continued Dr Breman. 

Once a new seed arrives at the MSB, the team gets to work drying the samples, cleaning them carefully and checking for pests. A seed's lifespan can be doubled for every one percent reduction in its moisture content, so this drying process is incredibly useful for researchers. 

Every ten years, the seeds are withdrawn from the vault to test their germination abilities and make sure they are still able to become plants in the future. Not all the seeds stay within the bank, however, as the MSB has a list of users that can request seeds for different uses. 

Petri dish with Hyptis suaveolens germination. Image Credit: Pablo Gómez Barreiro © Board of Trustees, RBG Kew

“We also have a seed list where bona fide users can request seeds from our collections – this may be for research, education, display, conservation or restoration. All our collections are accessed under the terms of the Nagoya Protocol,” said Dr Brenman.

Even with this important milestone achieved, the team at the world’s biggest ex-situ conservation project won’t be resting on their laurels – with over 40,000 seeds to look after, there is always work to do, and the project keeps growing. 

“The future for the Millennium Seed Bank looks busy – there is so much to do! We will, of course, keep making new collections. We will also increase the use of the collections and the knowledge generated through them to help with conservation, restoration and responses to global challenges such as food security, climate change and biodiversity loss," added Dr Breman. 

Inside the vault the seeds are carefully monitored. Image Credit: Jim Holden RBG Kew

Now more than ever, projects like this one provide a vital resource in the protection of the world’s plant species from the effects of climate change and habitat loss. The team plan to focus on securing high levels of genetic diversity within their collections. This helps to ensure viable seeds for food-producing plants, wildflowers, trees, and medical plants are all safeguarded for the future. 

Naturalist Sir David Attenborough dubbed the MSB  “an insurance policy against the ultimate apocalypse” and a resource for saving plants “teetering on the edge of extinction” in his Sky Atlantic documentary series Kingdom of Plants. 

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The mild winter months are always busy for Mumbai-based pulmonologist Revathy K, but these past few months have been especially hectic. In November, a sudden drop in ocean temperatures slowed the winds that normally shift the city’s construction dust, debris, and traffic fumes. The Bandra-Worli Sea Link, a bridge that connects the center of the city to its northern suburbs, disappeared behind a curtain of smog as the city’s air quality dropped to “very poor,” briefly overtaking Delhi, the world’s most polluted city.

“A lot of patients were coming in with a wheeze,” K says, something she usually sees in patients who have asthma or smoking-related disorders.

Within the span of a few months, from November through January, Mumbai doctors reported seeing a rise in chronic and persistent coughs, alongside the annual flu season. “These are patients who’ve never had any allergic symptoms in the past but are now coming in with [symptoms resembling] acute bronchitis,” says K (who, like many Indians, uses an initial as her last name.)

India’s air pollution is a rolling disaster that shows no sign of slowing down. A 2022 report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air think tank found that “almost the entire population of India” is exposed to air pollution above the guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

In 2019, air pollution killed an estimated 1.6 million Indians.

As attempts to fix the problem at the source fail, a new kind of inequality is taking hold in Indian cities. Facing potentially deadly air quality outside, wealthier Indians are paying to breathe free, creating a booming market for air purifiers that is forecast to grow 35 percent to $597 million by 2027. But in a country already economically divided along caste, gender, and religious lines, where 63 percent of people pay for health care out-of-pocket and the top 10 percent of the population hold 77 percent of the wealth, paying for breathable air isn’t an option for most.

“We are normalizing a world that hardly values nature and natural rights—basic necessities like clean drinking water, fresh and unpolluted air, space to walk for pedestrians is neither part of urban planning nor [do they] concern our collective conscience,” says Suryakant Waghmore, professor of sociology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Waghmore says air purifiers purify air for the privileged “while the public is left to decay and degrade.”

As a cold spell swept through Mumbai in January and people donned sweaters and balaclavas to keep warm, a dusty haze hung in the air, occasionally caking onto leaves and piling into mounds on street corners. Roads remained choked with traffic, and the city’s poorer residents resorted to dumpster fires, burning scraps of wood, rubber, and plastic to stay warm.

Timothy Dmello, who spends 12 hours a day outdoors as a paid dog walker, says he started to notice the worsening air pollution as he went up and down the Carter Road promenade, a palm-tree-lined stretch flanked by Bollywood celebrities’ apartments looking out onto the Arabian Sea. He says you can’t see the horizon clearly.

Dmello’s wife is on kidney dialysis; he took a job as a dog walker because the flexible hours meant he could spend more time with her and their 14-year-old daughter. At home, dust from outside builds up, while outside he’s exposed to fumes and particulates. Demello says that sometimes breathing is a problem.

He has seen air purifiers in the hospital, but the cost—cheaper models start at 6,000 rupees ($72)—is out of reach. Like most people he knows, he fell ill with a cough and cold this winter and couldn’t work.

Sixty percent of India’s nearly 1.3 billion people live on less than $3.10 a day, below the World Bank’s median poverty line. Not counting farm workers, 18 percent of the country’s population work outdoors.

Exposure to high levels of ambient PM 2.5 (particulate matter under 2.5 micrometers, which gets stuck in people’s lungs) can cause deadly illnesses such as lung cancer, strokes, and heart disease. Deaths linked to PM 2.5 pollution have more than doubled in the past 20 years, claiming 979,900 lives in 2019. What’s more, according to the World Air Quality Report 2022, air pollution costs India $150 billion a year.

In 2019, when 102 cities in India failed to meet the country’s air pollution standards, the government launched a National Clean Air Programme. Less than five years later, the number of failing cities has grown to 132.

National and state governments have tried unsuccessfully to address the air quality crisis. In Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party, which runs the city, tried an “odd-even” scheme in 2016, when the air quality dropped considerably. Private vehicles with registration plates ending in odd numbers could drive on odd dates, and those with even numbers on even dates. Environmentalists say it had minimal impact on air pollution levels. Delhi, as well as nearby Gurugram, which is a major tech hub, have also tried technological solutions. In 2021, the Supreme Court ordered the Delhi government to install two massive, 24-meter-high “smog towers” to filter particulates from the air, while Gurugram has put outdoor air purifiers in place. In February, Mumbai’s civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, announced plans to install 14 outdoor air purifiers across the city.

However, experts believe these measures are a dead end. “Purifiers don’t work,” says Ronak Sutaria, founder of Respirer Living Sciences, an urban data startup that monitors air pollution. “I think there’s broad consensus amongst the research in the scientific community that purifiers do not solve the problem.”

Outdoor purifiers are a last resort when other methods of controlling pollution have failed, according to Pallav Purohit, a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. “It makes sense to use air purifiers only when traditional methods of pollution control are insufficient,” he says. “The shortfall with most outdoor air purification systems is a limited area of coverage, limited efficacy, and high cost.”

Purohit says the purifiers create narrow columns of purified air that only really benefit people who are close to them for an extended period of time.

Following Mumbai’s air quality crisis this winter, critics accused the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board of moving air quality sensors to “cleaner” parts of the city.

Meanwhile, India’s wealthier residents have taken matters into their own hands. Air purifier brands have become a common topic of conversation among middle-class residents. People who can afford to do so move from air-purified homes (where each room often has its own purifier) to air-purified shops and malls, driven in air-purified cars. Brands have enlisted cricket stars and Bollywood celebrities, advertising in English-language newspapers, on social media, and on billboards.

If the combination of advertisements and news coverage is to be believed, breathing air in India’s capital is equivalent to 50 cigarettes a day during Diwali, a Hindu festival where many people burst firecrackers, and 10 cigarettes a day during the winter. For an Indian Independence Day advert, Sharp suggests “Impurities Quit India,” referring to the “Quit India” movement from India’s freedom struggle. News articles meet every spike in poor air quality with air purifier advice: “Delhi air quality turns severe: 5 Air purifiers that will help you breathe clean air,” reads one; “Planning To Buy An Air Purifier Amid Falling AQI? Know the Costs, Other Factors” reads another.

Deekshith Vara Prasad, founder and CEO of Indian-made air purifier AirOK Technologies, says his company’s sales have grown 18 percent since 2018. (AirOK Technologies’ air purifiers are largely used in hospitals and offices.)

Prasad says surging demand has led to substandard products in the market. To work on the air in India’s cities, purifiers need to filter out fine particulate matter, fungus, bacteria, viruses, and toxic gasses like sulfur and nitrous oxides. There are “hundreds” of pollutants, he says. “If I remove two pollutants, I can claim I ‘remove pollutants.’”

The borders of private spaces, like offices and, increasingly, hotels—which sometimes market themselves based on their air purification—are a stark illustration of the unequal access to clean air. Door attendants, valets, bellhops, and security guards working the entrances and exits to these buildings don’t breathe the purified air available to those inside.

Waghmore says this division intersects with India’s social inequalities around status and caste and that air purifiers only consolidate the ideology of “purity” as something that is central to the lives of dominant caste.

Such inequality has severe consequences, as those from disadvantaged castes already face considerable barriers in accessing health care.

Waghmore says the heightened sense of privileged individualism—where the rich have the means to fend for themselves—“has the worst consequences in poor countries, where governments are yet to invest morally and economically in public infrastructure and transport to counter environmental degradation.”

K, who regularly treats those suffering from India’s air pollution inequality, puts it more succinctly. “I don’t think people should live with this,” she say, adding that everyone needs to take demand solutions. “If you don’t get something as basic as fresh air, then what’s the point of living in our country?”

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Space in Earth’s orbit is getting crowded. The number of satellites in orbit in 2018 was just over 2,000 – but the introduction of megaconstellations such as Starlink has increased the number massively. There are currently 9,000 satellites, and by the end of the decade, the number is expected to reach 60,000. That could become a massive problem.

For decades, scientists have been raising alarm bells about the problem of space junk. There are already 100 trillion untracked pieces of satellites circling the planet. They move faster than a bullet, and even a speck of paint can end up damaging stuff in orbit – that’s how the International Space Station got one of its windows chipped.

Scientists have called for a legally binding treaty to ensure that the space around Earth doesn’t become irreversibly harmed by space junk (more than it has already been). The inspiration is to copy the recently approved High Sea treaty, but before the harm is done.

"The issue of plastic pollution, and many of the other challenges facing our ocean, is now attracting global attention. However, there has been limited collaborative action and implementation has been slow,” lead author Dr Imogen Napper, research fellow at the University of Plymouth, said in a statement. “Now we are in a similar situation with the accumulation of space debris. Taking into consideration what we have learnt from the high seas, we can avoid making the same mistakes and work collectively to prevent a tragedy of the commons in space. Without a global agreement we could find ourselves on a similar path.” 

The high seas have experienced overfishing, habitat destruction, deep-sea mining exploration, and plastic pollution. The treaty comes long after the harm is done, and this call about keeping orbits clean is urgent and inspired by that. In fact, the research team includes space scientists, industry leaders, as well as marine biologists and ocean experts.

"To tackle planetary problems, we need to bring together scientists from across disciplines to identify and accelerate solutions,” Heather Koldewey, Zoological Society of London's senior marine technical advisor, explained. “As a marine biologist I never imagined writing a paper on space, but through this collaborative research identified so many parallels with the challenges of tackling environmental issues in the ocean. We just need to get better at the uptake of science into management and policy."

Solutions to the current issues do exist, but they require the political will to hold countries and private enterprises to keep space a safe environment. Overpollution there would be to the detriment of all: Space junk can destroy satellites that we rely on in our daily life from communication to protection.  

"Ancient TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) informs us how we must embrace stewardship because our lives depend on it. I'm excited to work with others in highlighting the links and interconnectedness amongst all things and that marine debris and space debris are both an anthropogenic detriment that is avoidable," Dr Moriba Jah, associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, added.

The study was published in the journal Science. If you are interested in the issue of space junk and possible solution, later this year we will be publishing an in-depth conversation with Dr Jah as part of our podcast The Big Questions. 

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In 1980, a colossal earthquake on the Mount St. Helens volcano triggered the fastest debris avalanche ever recorded, clocking in at 402.3 kilometers (250 miles) per hour, according to Guinness World Records. That’s almost a third of the speed of sound, which travels at 1,234 kilometers (767 miles) per hour. 

The avalanche was just one small part of the infamous volcanic eruption that rocked Washington’s Mount St. Helens in the spring of 1980. To this day, the incident is the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in US history. 

As per the United States Geological Survey, hints of earthquake activity at Mount St. Helens started as a series of small earthquakes on March 16, culminating in its first eruption in over 100 years on March 27. 

A burst of steam and ash blasted a 75 meter (250-foot) wide crater through the volcano's summit ice cap, but the eruption proved to be relatively mild for what was yet to come. Minor eruptions continued hourly for several weeks until April 22, when the first period of activity stopped. 

As May arrived, it became increasingly apparent that a bulge was growing on the mountain's north slope. The bulge was caused by an intrusion of magma below the surface, building up pressure like an angry balloon.

Plinian eruption column from May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens. Image credit: Robert Krimmel/USGS/Public Domain

The worst occurred on the morning of Sunday May 18, 1980, when Mount St. Helens was shaken by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake. Just as this occurred, the volcano's bulge and summit slid away as a huge landslide, creating the largest debris avalanche ever recorded.

As the landslide sliced away Mount St. Helens' northern flank, the volcano’s highly pressurized body of magma was busted open like a champagne cork, causing a powerful explosion of volcanic debris to fling over an area of 600 square kilometers (230 square miles). 

"It completely destroyed an area of 230 square miles in a matter of somewhere between five and nine minutes. It essentially killed every living thing within an area of 230 square miles," explained C Dan Miller from the USGS.

"It destroyed hundreds of acres of virgin forest. It was an incredibly spectacular event," he added. 

In total, it’s estimated that this eruption released somewhere in the ballpark of 100 million billion joules of energy. The eruption had a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 5, which is the highest score to occur in the mainland US since the much smaller 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak in California. 

By the late afternoon of May 18, the eruption had started to relax and it essentially ceased by the next day. Nevertheless, the scale of the damage caused was monumental. 

A total of 57 people lost their lives in the disaster, not to mention the thousands of animals that inhabited the surrounding area. Over $1 billion of property was damaged, while deposited ash was reported in at least 11 US states and five provinces in Canada.

Although volcanoes are notoriously tricky to predict, scientists say it is “extremely likely” that Mt. St. Helens will erupt again. Eruptions here tend to occur every 100 to 300 years, so – with any luck – humanity is in the clear for a few generations. 

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The zodiacal light taken at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile in 2009, facing west just after the Sun had set. Image credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky

Right now, if you look west, the zodiacal light will be framed by two planets that were only last week in conjunction: Venus and Jupiter. The source of zodiacal dust comes from shedding comets influenced by Jupiter's gravity, such as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, visited by the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. Another contributor in the inner Solar System appears to be Mars.

Zodiacal light is also known as false dawn in the Northern Hemisphere, and false dusk in the Southern. It was described by Mesoamerican people as well as by Muslim scholars and the prophet Muhammad long before it appeared in print in the west. Interestingly, zodiacal light is also the research topic of Dr Brian May’s thesis. He took a 36-year-long break before completing it because he became somewhat busy with his band, Queen.

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Stressed? Burned out? Lonely? Dealing with a breakup? Conflict with a co-worker? Feeling down? The blanket recommendation for anyone going through a rough patch these days is to seek professional help, and many struggling Americans are doing just that.

Demand for mental-health services is skyrocketing, and the wait lists for therapists are long. Employers, schools and the Biden administration are taking various steps to increase access to mental-health services.

But what if I told you that talking to a professional about one’s psychological woes might not be the answer to every problem? Or that there might be times when therapy actually does more harm than good?

To be clear, I am a fan of therapy, and as a practicing psychiatrist for almost 20 years, I have witnessed many patients improve in treatment. However, the therapy-is-the-answer model is problematic for several reasons.

First, underlying the blanket recommendations for therapy is the belief that stress of any kind is harmful. This line of thinking fails to recognize the growth that often accompanies challenging experiences. New research from the Youth Development Institute at the University of Georgia found that low to moderate levels of stress can help individuals develop resilience and reduce the risk of developing mental-health disorders such as depression and antisocial behaviors. According to the authors, stressful situations and environments prompt individuals to be resourceful and cognitively flexible, and as a result learn strategies and skills that help them overcome adversity and thrive.

Reflexively referring to therapy anyone who is going through a rough patch presumes fragility and pathologizes perfectly normal experiences of being human. Sadness, worry, discomfort and anxiety are part of life and not necessarily signs of dysfunction. It’s entirely natural to feel overwhelmed—or even bad—at times. It’s evidence that we’re alive and engaged. The idea that we require psychological treatment to cope with every negative emotion or challenge we encounter represents a particularly noxious strain of toxic positivity.

Second, the therapy-is-the-answer model assumes that all therapy is beneficial. In fact, there is evidence that rehashing what is bothering you can actually worsen symptoms of anxiety and depression. Self-reflection, a cornerstone of many therapeutic interventions, is a slippery slope. If not careful, it can amplify self-focus and aggravate rumination—the clinical term for repetitive negative thoughts about what can, did or will go wrong. If therapy becomes an excuse to vent, and sessions are mostly used as an opportunity to air grievances, maladaptive rationalizations and unhealthy narratives may become even more entrenched.

Even after a major life event, inviting people to talk about their feelings isn’t always helpful. For instance, in the wake of a collective traumatic experience, crisis counselors are often summoned to conduct what is known as a psychological debriefing, where trauma-exposed individuals are encouraged to go around the room and talk about their thoughts, feelings and reactions to the incident.

While well intended, there is no evidence that debriefing interventions actually help. In fact, there is reason to believe that a debriefing session may do more harm than good. It’s possible that asking people to talk about their emotional experience too soon may make them feel even worse. It also can be further traumatizing.   

A few years ago, I attended a talk given by a man who was severely burned during the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. He said that when he awoke from a medically induced coma months later, in pain and disfigured, he recalled being angry, upset and deeply sad. A few days later a psychiatrist arrived at his bedside, suggesting they talk about his trauma and asking if he was depressed. What he said next made me cringe. He said psychiatrists need to stop asking people who have been through hell to talk about their trauma and if they are depressed. “Of course we’re f—ing traumatized and depressed,” I recall him saying. How often had I been that psychiatrist, convinced that my clinical interventions were necessary to help someone navigate the unthinkable? The man told us that what he really needed at that time was to be with his friends and family, not a therapist.

Talking is good—but when and with whom should be up to the individual.

A third limitation of the therapy-is-the-answer model is that it doesn’t take into account many other factors that contribute to well-being. When the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health report asked people about stress and what helped them feel strong, regularly spending time outdoors topped the list, followed by spending time on a hobby and exercising regularly. Also cited were getting a good night’s sleep, eating well and spending time with family and friends. Other mood-enhancing boosters were doing something for others, learning something new, doing something creative, meditating and using one’s strengths. Prescription medication and professional help made the list but hovered near the bottom.

The therapy-is-the-answer model also glosses over the social determinants of mental health such as education, the physical environment, safety, employment and social-support networks. More therapy can’t address social issues that erode well-being.

Would the world really be a happier place if every single person had a therapist? I don’t think so. Therapy can be helpful but we’re leaving a lot on the table if that is the only solution we have.

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