Imagine you go to a zoology conference. The first speaker talks about her 3D model of a 12-legged purple spider that lives in the Arctic. There’s no evidence it exists, she admits, but it’s a testable hypothesis, and she argues that a mission should be sent off to search the Arctic for spiders.

The second speaker has a model for a flying earthworm, but it flies only in caves. There’s no evidence for that either, but he petitions to search the world’s caves. The third one has a model for octopuses on Mars. It’s testable, he stresses.

Kudos to zoologists, I’ve never heard of such a conference. But almost every particle physics conference has sessions just like this, except they do it with more maths. It has become common among physicists to invent new particles for which there is no evidence, publish papers about them, write more papers about these particles’ properties, and demand the hypothesis be experimentally tested. Many of these tests have actually been done, and more are being commissioned as we speak. It is wasting time and money.

Since the 1980s, physicists have invented an entire particle zoo, whose inhabitants carry names like preons, sfermions, dyons, magnetic monopoles, simps, wimps, wimpzillas, axions, flaxions, erebons, accelerons, cornucopions , giant magnons, maximons, macros, wisps, fips, branons, skyrmions, chameleons, cuscutons, planckons and sterile neutrinos, to mention just a few. We even had a (luckily short-lived) fad of “unparticles”.

All experiments looking for those particles have come back empty-handed, in particular those that have looked for particles that make up dark matter, a type of matter that supposedly fills the universe and makes itself noticeable by its gravitational pull. However, we do not know that dark matter is indeed made of particles; and even if it is, to explain astrophysical observations one does not need to know details of the particles’ behaviour. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) hasn’t seen any of those particles either, even though, before its launch, many theoretical physicists were confident it would see at least a few.

Talk to particle physicists in private, and many of them will admit they do not actually believe those particles exist. They justify their work by claiming that it is good practice, or that every once in a while one of them accidentally comes up with an idea that is useful for something else. An army of typewriting monkeys may also sometimes produce a useful sentence. But is this a good strategy?

Experimental particle physicists know of the problem, and try to distance themselves from what their colleagues in theory development do. At the same time, they profit from it, because all those hypothetical particles are used in grant proposals to justify experiments. And so the experimentalists keep their mouths shut, too. This leaves people like me, who have left the field – I now work in astrophysics – as the only ones able and willing to criticise the situation.

There are many factors that have contributed to this sad decline of particle physics. Partly the problem is social: most people who work in the field (I used to be one of them) genuinely believe that inventing particles is good procedure because it’s what they have learned, and what all their colleagues are doing.

But I believe the biggest contributor to this trend is a misunderstanding of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, which, to make a long story short, demands that a good scientific idea has to be falsifiable. Particle physicists seem to have misconstrued this to mean that any falsifiable idea is also good science.

In the past, predictions for new particles were correct only when adding them solved a problem with the existing theories. For example, the currently accepted theory of elementary particles – the Standard Model – doesn’t require new particles; it works just fine the way it is. The Higgs boson, on the other hand, was required to solve a problem. The antiparticles that Paul Dirac predicted were likewise necessary to solve a problem, and so were the neutrinos that were predicted by Wolfgang Pauli. The modern new particles don’t solve any problems.

In some cases, the new particles’ task is to make a theory more aesthetically appealing, but in many cases their purpose is to fit statistical anomalies. Each time an anomaly is reported, particle physicists will quickly write hundreds of papers about how new particles allegedly explain the observation. This behaviour is so common they even have a name for it: “ambulance-chasing”, after the anecdotal strategy of lawyers to follow ambulances in the hope of finding new clients.

Ambulance-chasing is a good strategy to further one’s career in particle physics. Most of those papers pass peer review and get published because they are not technically wrong. And since ambulance-chasers cite each other’s papers, they can each rack up hundreds of citations quickly. But it’s a bad strategy for scientific progress. After the anomaly has disappeared, those papers will become irrelevant.

This procedure of inventing particles and then ruling them out has been going on so long that there are thousands of tenured professors with research groups who make a living from this. It has become generally accepted practice in the physics community. No one even questions whether it makes sense. At least not in public.

I believe there are breakthroughs waiting to be made in the foundations of physics; the world needs technological advances more than ever before, and now is not the time to idle around inventing particles, arguing that even a blind chicken sometimes finds a grain. As a former particle physicist, it saddens me to see that the field has become a factory for useless academic papers.

• Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. She is author of Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions and creator of the YouTube Channel Science Without the Gobbledygook.

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The research findings published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, report on the evaluation of a free web-based resource, Menstruation Matters, created by the University and health experts to help provide young people with a greater understanding of menstrual health, specifically around what a normal period is, how to identify menstrual issues and symptoms, and importantly when to see a doctor.

Of the pilot study's 75 participants, almost half (48%) said the resource had changed what they thought was a normal period, and 94% could now identify symptoms of endometriosis.

The web-based resource also provided a variety of evidence-based self-care menstrual management strategies that participants could do at home, including yoga postures, breathing exercise and dietary advice.

Furthermore, the study found that due to using the web-based resource and information presented:

•     85% would keep using at least one of the self-care practices they learned.

•     60% changed the way they managed their menstrual symptoms.

•     43% visited their doctor regarding their menstrual symptoms during the study and of those 84% did so due to the information presented on the resource.

•     54% who visited their doctor received a referral to a gynecologist.

Participants involved in the research were living in Australia, aged between 14 to 25 years, with 20 years the average age, had menstruated for at least 12-months, and had regular periods.

Project lead and first author, Dr. Mike Armour from Western Sydney University's NICM Health Research Institute says the findings reveal gaps in the menstrual health education delivered in school and what information is needed to develop young people's menstrual health literacy.

"From our study, only 40% of the participants reported they had learned about menstrual health in their Health and Physical Education (HPE) classes," says Dr. Armour.

"We know from our past research that most young people in Australia don't find what they learn about menstruation in these school classes helpful, as the classes are mostly about biology and very little on management or what is 'normal' when it comes to periods.

"Because period pain is so common, most people think it's just something you need to put up with. But this can lead to both poor pain and symptom management, or even worse, missing more serious underlying causes for period pain, like endometriosis.

"Menstrual issues such as period pain or heavy bleeding affect more than 90% of women aged under 25 in Australia and can affect attendance rates and concentration in school or higher education or work. Understanding how to manage period symptoms with medication and non-medication strategies like yoga can help reduce pain and in turn help young people be able to perform better at school or university, and able to participate in their normal activities," says Dr. Armour.

The researchers also highlight in the paper participant's increased uptake of self-care measures over the course of the study, especially in breathing/meditation exercises and acupressure.

Exercise has the most significant reduction in pain compared to other self-care measure, such as heat, but uptake was lower than other forms of self-care.

The study also provided participants with a self-screening tool (PIPPA), which if they scored high populated a letter for use with a doctor explaining the score received and relevance.

This letter may have given young people the confidence to present to a doctor and ask for more investigations.

"The feedback from participants has been very positive and the website is now available for everyone to access freely. We are exploring further ways to deliver the information, such as a smartphone app, to ensure that not only young people, but their teachers and parents/guardians, have access to accurate, evidence-based information on menstruation and its management," says Dr. Armour.

The researchers are currently surveying Australian parents, guardians, teachers, and young people to ensure the Menstrual Matters resource has everything needed for those involved in teaching or managing menstruation.

People interested in participating can complete the short online survey, available in English, Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, or Vietnamese, up until December 2022.

The pilot web-based resource, Menstruation Matters, was developed from research conducted in 2018 by the researcher team, which surveyed over 4,000 young women about periods and what they understood.

The project team included researchers from NICM Health Research Institute, the University's School of Health and Science, and the School of Education, as well as experts in period pain, women's health, health promotion and education.

The paper, "Evaluation of a Web-Based Menstrual Health Literacy Resource," is available online.

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"We start with this huge object of all these coupled-together differential equations; then we're using machine learning to turn it into something so small you can count it on your fingers," says study lead author Domenico Di Sante, a visiting research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) in New York City and an assistant professor at the University of Bologna in Italy.

The formidable problem concerns how electrons behave as they move on a gridlike lattice. When two electrons occupy the same lattice site, they interact. This setup, known as the Hubbard model, is an idealization of several important classes of materials and enables scientists to learn how electron behavior gives rise to sought-after phases of matter, such as superconductivity, in which electrons flow through a material without resistance. The model also serves as a testing ground for new methods before they're unleashed on more complex quantum systems.

The Hubbard model is deceptively simple, however. For even a modest number of electrons and cutting-edge computational approaches, the problem requires serious computing power. That's because when electrons interact, their fates can become quantum mechanically entangled: Even once they're far apart on different lattice sites, the two electrons can't be treated individually, so physicists must deal with all the electrons at once rather than one at a time. With more electrons, more entanglements crop up, making the computational challenge exponentially harder.

One way of studying a quantum system is by using what's called a renormalization group. That's a mathematical apparatus physicists use to look at how the behavior of a system—such as the Hubbard model—changes when scientists modify properties such as temperature or look at the properties on different scales. Unfortunately, a renormalization group that keeps track of all possible couplings between electrons and doesn't sacrifice anything can contain tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of individual equations that need to be solved. On top of that, the equations are tricky: Each represents a pair of electrons interacting.

Di Sante and his colleagues wondered if they could use a machine learning tool known as a neural network to make the renormalization group more manageable. The neural network is like a cross between a frantic switchboard operator and survival-of-the-fittest evolution. First, the machine learning program creates connections within the full-size renormalization group. The neural network then tweaks the strengths of those connections until it finds a small set of equations that generates the same solution as the original, jumbo-size renormalization group. The program's output captured the Hubbard model's physics even with just four equations.

"It's essentially a machine that has the power to discover hidden patterns," Di Sante says. "When we saw the result, we said, 'Wow, this is more than what we expected.' We were really able to capture the relevant physics."

Training the machine learning program required a lot of computational muscle, and the program ran for entire weeks. The good news, Di Sante says, is that now that they have their program coached, they can adapt it to work on other problems without having to start from scratch. He and his collaborators are also investigating just what the machine learning is actually "learning" about the system, which could provide additional insights that might otherwise be hard for physicists to decipher.

Ultimately, the biggest open question is how well the new approach works on more complex quantum systems such as materials in which electrons interact at long distances. In addition, there are exciting possibilities for using the technique in other fields that deal with renormalization groups, Di Sante says, such as cosmology and neuroscience.

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Dimorphos is a lump of space rock so far away from Earth that we don’t even know what it looks like — and on Monday, we’re going to smash it with a spacecraft. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be traveling at more than 14,000 miles per hour when it hits the asteroid, in what has to be one of the most metal science experiments of all time.

 

DART is a NASA effort to see if it can change an asteroid’s movement in space. It’s being billed as the world’s first “planetary defense test mission” — a test run to see if we have what it takes to avert a serious asteroid impact on Earth sometime in the future. You know, just in case.

 

To be extremely clear, neither Dimorphos, or its larger companion Didymos, pose any threat to Earth. In fact, we haven’t identified any asteroids that pose an immediate threat to our planet. These two are just good target practice. Dimorphos and Didymos are a binary asteroid system, with Dimorphos being a ‘moonlet’ of Didymos. As the tiny moonlet orbits the bigger asteroid, it passes between the bigger asteroid and Earth. This means that telescopes both on and off-world can monitor the system and see relatively quickly what a crash does to Dimorphos’ speed and trajectory.

 

Soon after the impact, telescopes on every continent on the planet will focus on the system to see the aftermath. Off-world, the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble, and even the asteroid-bound Lucy spacecraft will also train their gaze on the asteroid system, waiting to see what happens when a rock meets a hard spacecraft.

 

Comparative sizes of Didymos and Dimorphos to Earth landmarks

NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

Playing Planetary Defense

The impact is expected to alter the speed of Dimorphos by a fraction of a percent, researchers say, changing the time it takes to complete its orbit by several minutes. That might not seem like much, but for planetary defense scientists, those minutes are monumental. “This demonstration is extremely important to our future here on the Earth” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer, at a press briefing ahead of the mission.

 

This moment in history is unique, Johnson said; it’s the first time that humans have both knowledge about the threat that asteroids pose, and actually have the tech to do something about it. In the event that we ever do detect a giant rock hurtling towards the planet, having a plan or two in place for how to stop said rock is a good thing — and having a few practice runs under our belt could be even better.

 

“DART is demonstrating what we call the kinetic impact technique for changing the speed of the asteroid in space and therefore changing its orbit” Johnson said.

 

There are other options in the planetary defense toolbox, including a ‘gravity tractor,’ a spacecraft that could fly next to an asteroid, gently pulling it to a safer path. There’s also the possibility of firing an ion beam at an asteroid for a long time, pushing it to a different orbit. DART is trying a more direct method first; crashing into it full speed ahead.

 

DART’s view of the Didymos system

NASA JPL DART Navigation Team

Bracing for impact

During its final approach, DART will be driving itself. There will be about 44 people in a control room watching telemetry and data, but starting about four hours before impact, “the spacecraft has to do everything,” said Elena Adams, DART mission systems engineer at John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory during a press conference. It has a smart navigation system on board that is guiding it to the Didymos/Dimorphos system. It spotted Didymos earlier this summer, but it won’t be able to see Dimorphos, the actual target, until about an hour before impact.

 

When it spots Dimorphos, the 163-meter-wide (530 feet) asteroid will only appear as a pixel. That will be enough for the navigation system to begin tracking toward the rock itself, instead of its companion asteroid. Two and a half minutes before impact, the navigation systems that brought the spacecraft to that point will switch off, Adams says. “We’re just going to point the camera, and take the most amazing pictures of this asteroid that we’re going to see for the first time.”

 

It’s not every day that scientists get to crash a $250 million spacecraft, as Adams told The Verge last November, ahead of DART’s launch. Because it’s such a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the team will be documenting the collision in detail.

 

In addition to the observatories in space and on Earth that will be watching, DART’s own camera will be sending back images until the last minute, beaming them back to Earth so that people can watch as the mission reaches its dramatic conclusion.

 

In addition, a small companion spacecraft will be documenting the action in space. The Italian LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids) launched with DART and separated from the larger spacecraft on September 11th. It is following its companion, and will document the experiment’s aftermath, flying by Dimorphos about three minutes after impact. It will also have the chance to see the other side of Dimorphos, which the larger spacecraft will never get to see.

What comes next?

“This mission has two parts. The first part is hitting the asteroid, the next part is actually measuring what happens afterwards,” Adams said. The team expects the asteroid to run faster after the collision, and will be tracking that over time.

 

“It’s just like if you dropped your wristwatch and damaged it. It’s not going to keep necessarily the same time,” said Tom Statler, DART’s program scientist. “You might not notice it right away, but in the weeks and days and weeks to follow you will notice that your watch is running fast — and we will notice that the binary asteroid system is running fast.” Statler said.

 

While Statler and the other researchers have a good idea of what might happen after the crash, one of the big reasons for this test is that we don’t know exactly what will happen when we crash into an asteroid. Information about how the asteroid reacts to an impact could help calibrate future tests, and eventually inform how we might approach a threatening asteroid.

 

“As a scientist I fully hope to be surprised by the results of the experiment.” said Statler. “Although as a planetary defender, I don’t want to be too surprised.”

How to watch NASA’s DART Mission

NASA will begin its coverage of the DART impact at 6PM ET on Monday, September 26th. The collision is expected at 7:14PM ET. People can tune in to live coverage on NASA’s website or YouTube channel, or follow along on Facebook and Twitter.

 

NASA is about to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid

Monday, September 26

The first launch of the week is a Long March 2D rocket launching from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China. It will be carrying ten satellites that will join the Jilin-1 constellation. This network is commercially owned and is used for remote sensing where it’s capable of taking high-resolution images. This mission will take off at 11:50 p.m. UTC, but no live stream is expected.

Tuesday, September 27

The day after, another Long March 2D will carry three Yaogan 35 satellites into orbit. These satellites too will be used for remote sensing activities. Some tasks will be to carry out land surveys, estimate agricultural production, and help prevent disasters. This mission is due for launch at 1:40 p.m. UTC from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center

Friday, September 30

The first launch on Friday is Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket carrying the TechEdSat 15 and Serenity 2 CubeSats into orbit. The TechEdSat 15 mission will see a 3U CubeSat launched equipped with an exo-atmospheric braking device that will be used for de-orbiting. The Serenity 2 CubeSat has been developed by Teachers in Space and will allow for educational experiments to be performed in space at a low cost. This mission will take off from Vandenberg AFB, California between 7:01 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. UTC.

The second and final launch of the day will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida from 9:36 p.m. UTC. United Launch Alliance (ULA) will launch an Atlas V rocket carrying the SES 20 and SES 21 comms satellites for SES. These satellites will provide C-band TV and data services for the United States. You’ll be able to tune into this mission over on the ULA website.

Recap

The first mission we got last week was SpaceX’s Starlink 61 launch, where it bolstered its Starlink constellation.

Next, a Long March 2D carried the third Yunhai-1 satellite to orbit, where it will be used for remote sensing work.

On Wednesday, two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, headed for the ISS.

After they docked, the hatch opened up with the newly arrived astronauts joining the rest of the crew.

On Saturday, ULA launched a Delta IV Heavy carrying a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office.

On the same day, SpaceX launched another Starlink mission.

Finally, earlier today, China launched its Shiyan-14 and Shiyan-15 satellites atop a Kuaizhou-1A rocket. These satellites will perform science experiments.

That’s all we have this week, be sure to check in next time.

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According to experts at the University of California, San Francisco and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, pregnant women in the United States are being exposed to chemicals such as melamine, cyanuric acid, and aromatic amines, which can increase the risk of cancer and harm child development.

Melamine and cyanuric acid were discovered in virtually all research participants’ samples, although the greatest levels were observed among women of color and those who had greater exposure to tobacco. Four aromatic amines, which are commonly used in products containing dyes and pigments, were also discovered in virtually all pregnant participants.

People may come into contact with melamine and aromatic amines through the air they breathe, contaminated food they eat, household dust they inhale, drinking water, or by using objects that contain plastic, dyes, and pigments. 

“These chemicals are of serious concern due to their links to cancer and developmental toxicity, yet they are not routinely monitored in the United States,” said Tracey J. Woodruff, Ph.D., a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive medicine who directs the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, and is the co-senior author of the recent study published in the journal Chemosphere.

Melamine and cyanuric acid, one of its major byproducts, are both high-production chemicals that are manufactured at a rate of more than 100 million pounds annually in the United States alone. When exposure to these chemicals happens together,

they can be more toxic than either one alone. Aromatic amines are present in hair dye, mascara, tattoo ink, paint, tobacco smoke, and diesel exhaust. Melamine is present in dishware, plastics, flooring, kitchen counters, and pesticides. Cyanuric acid is used as a disinfectant, plastic stabilizer, and cleaning solvent in swimming pools.

After baby formula and pet food poisoning incidents in 2004, 2007, and 2008 that led to multiple fatalities as well as kidney stones and urinary tract blockage in some individuals, melamine was shown to be a kidney toxicant. Further animal studies suggested that melamine also reduces brain function. 

For their study, researchers measured 45 chemicals associated with cancer and other risks using new methods to capture chemicals or chemical traces in urine samples from a small but diverse group of 171 women who are part of the National Institutes of Health’s Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. The study period covered 2008 to 2020.

The 171 women came from California, Georgia, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York, and Puerto Rico. About one-third (34%) were white, 40% were Latina, 20% were Black, 4% were Asians, and the remaining 3% were from other or multiple racial groups. Prior studies on melamine were conducted among pregnant women in Asian countries or limited to non-pregnant people in the U.S.

“It’s disconcerting that we continue to find higher levels of many of these harmful chemicals in people of color,” said study co-senior author Jessie Buckley, Ph.D., an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

For example, levels of 3,4-dichloroaniline (a chemical used in the production of dyes and pesticides) were more than 100% higher among Black and Hispanic women compared to white women.

“Our findings raise concerns for the health of pregnant women and fetuses since some of these chemicals are known carcinogens and potential developmental toxicants,” said Giehae Choi, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the first author of the study. “Regulatory action is clearly needed to limit exposure.”

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Many of the most nutritious foods are also the most sustainable

By the time Scotland’s Hunterston B nuclear power station closed in January of this year, its dual reactors had produced enough energy to power 1.8 million British homes for 46 years. It also provided over 500 jobs to people living in one of the country’s most deprived areas. Now, a project borne on the tide of a new era of energy production will take its place.

The new XLCC factory, to be built at Hunterston in 2023, will not generate electricity. Instead, the site’s 900 workers plan to create four high-voltage, direct current (HVDC) electricity cables that will stretch 3,800 km from Britain’s south coast, beneath the sea, to a patch of desert at Guelmim Oued Noun in central Morocco. From there, they’ll provide enough energy to power 7 million British homes and 8 percent of the UK’s total electricity requirement with 10.5 gigawatts of Saharan sun and wind by 2030.

Richard Hardy, project director at Xlinks, which developed the proposal, says people were “taken aback” by its scale. “But when you really step back, it almost becomes obvious that so long as you can get the power back, the project makes sense,” he says.

HVDC technology has existed since 1954, when Sweden connected the Island of Gotland to its mainland grid. HVDC cables experience low energy losses of around 2 percent, making them suitable for transporting electricity over long distances, compared to the 30 percent lost by alternating-current (AC) systems, which most energy grids operate on.

Until a few decades ago, HVDC only worked well when supported by strong, consistent energy-generating sources, like nuclear power plants. They also require converter stations the size of football fields to change the electricity back to AC at a cable’s terminus. The cables and current converter stations meant HVDC cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Installation can take decades. Then, in the 90s, a new system that used insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), or electronic switches, emerged. These allowed operators to mimic the voltage waveform of a strong energy source with that of weak sources, like solar and wind farms. HVDC projects still require enormous budgets, but the IGBTs allow them to use renewable energy sources. Operators were able to connect national grids with remote solar farms, and their popularity boomed.

HVDC systems can solve one of renewable energy’s biggest challenges: consistent supply. Wind farms generate too much energy when the wind blows and too little when it is still. Countries can access energy around the clock by connecting their grids to distant lands with different weather patterns.

The concept of connecting different countries’ grids also presents an economic opportunity. HVDC connectors give people access to the lowest prices. That provides an enormous benefit when regional events, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prompt a rise in energy prices.

That’s one of the reasons the UK, where residential energy prices are now the second highest in Europe, has been among the fastest to adopt HVDC technology. Existing cables connect its grid with Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway. A new project to connect with Germany reached its funding target in July. And the Energy Security Bill now passing through parliament will accelerate the creation of HVDC projects by providing them with official licenses.

HVDC interconnectors have also attracted interest in other countries. The EuroAfrica interconnector aims to connect Greece with Egypt. An Italy-to-Tunisia interconnector is in the works, and Australia is hoping to provide Singapore with renewable energy via another ambitious interconnector called the Sun Cable.

XLCC’s task is noteworthy because no one has ever built such a long submarine power cable before. In fact, the current longest stretches only 720 km between Britain and Norway. The Morocco-to-UK power project requires something over five times longer.

Each 20-km chunk of the cable is produced by stretching copper or aluminum rods into a 69-mm-wide wire. A conveyor then hauls the wire to the top of a 180-meter tower, where an insulator is melted onto it over three hours as it descends to the factory floor. Once further layers of armored plating and bitumen are applied, a single meter weighs 70 kg.

The 20-km chunks must then be joined into a 160-km-long cable. This can be a very difficult task. The joints are the weakest parts of an HVDC cable and must be able to withstand the high temperatures and electromagnetic fields produced by the electricity-conducting core. To ensure every joint is perfect, joiners require specialist training that takes three years.

Despite the cable’s extraordinary length, sourcing the talent to complete the project presents the biggest challenge, according to Alan Mathers, XLCC’s project director. Dirk Van Hertem, professor of energy systems at the University of Leuven, reiterated this point. “This energy transition is requesting a massive amount of skilled labor,” he said. XLCC has developed a special course to be taught to 60 pupils at three North Ayrshire colleges this year to help meet the numbers needed to make the project happen.

Submarine HVDC cables are preferable to overland cables because ships can carry a lot more cable per trip than trucks. XLCC’s methanol-fueled hybrid vessel, which will cost up to £300 million (roughly $338 million), will carry 160 km out to sea at once—a truck could only carry 1 km.

Xlinks is spending £18 billion to build the project, which raises the question of its fiscal value. Van Hertem said the profit margin could be tight if energy prices fall to the levels seen before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Richard Harcy, Xlinks’s project director, argues that the numbers add up. “If you step back slightly and you start thinking about how affordable generation from wind and solar is in Morocco, all of a sudden it sort of makes sense,” he says.

Nevertheless, unexpected damage at any of the cables’ 95 joints could enforce long and expensive periods of downtime. “Things do break,” Van Hertem said. “There are parts that go up to 700 meters deep. If that spot is where your cable is broken, it isn’t going to be too easy. These are thick cables. They don’t bend that well. It is possible. But it’s hard to fix.”

The concept of connecting the plentiful renewable energy sources of North Africa and the Middle East with the high-demand centers of Europe is over a decade old. A group of politicians and entrepreneurs have been promoting the idea through the Desertec Foundation since 2009. But concerns over cost and security hampered adoption. Western leaders have so far been reluctant to rely on what they see as an unstable, and sometimes hostile, region.

The threat of terrorist attacks stokes one fear. Utilities have presented attractive targets to violent extremist organizations over the past 40 years, and annual attacks on these facilities have risen by over 350 times at two points during the past decade, according to the Global Terrorism Index.

But professor Karen Smith Stegen, an expert in the politics of renewable energy at Jacobs University, says concerns about terrorism would be minimized once countries developed diverse networks of interconnectors. Even if the Morocco-UK system failed, the UK could rely on its other HVDC-linked sources of power, like Norway, France, and (soon) Germany. If it was unable to do so, “dormant” fossil fuel-based plants could fire up in as few as six minutes. Even well-funded terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda lack the capabilities to bring an entire network down, Smith Stegen says.

The threat of a partner nation abusing an interconnector for political leverage is, for now, also off the table, because HVDC systems work more like streams than taps. “The issue with electricity is that it’s actually hard to just shut it off,” Smith Stegen says. “The electricity being generated has to go somewhere, unless you have massive storage, which has always been an issue.”

Effective long-term hydrogen storage solutions might change that. Hostile governments could seize the generation sites and store excess energy for later use, according to Smith Stegen. But she believes that politicians would do better to worry about HVDC systems’ vulnerability to cyber-attacks. She referred to the recent blackouts in India caused by China’s infiltration of its grid. “It seems that all this energy and electricity infrastructure is very vulnerable,” she says. “This is what people are learning.”

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(May require free registration to view)

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In recent years, the vagus nerve has become an object of fascination, especially on social media. The vagal nerve fibers, which run from the brain to the abdomen, have been anointed by some influencers as the key to reducing anxiety, regulating the nervous system and helping the body to relax.

TikTok videos with the hashtag “#vagusnerve” have been viewed more than 64 million times and there are nearly 70,000 posts with the hashtag on Instagram. Some of the most popular ones feature simple hacks to “tone” or “reset” the vagus nerve, in which people plunge their faces into ice water baths or lie on their backs with ice packs on their chests. There are also neck and ear massages, eye exercises and deep-breathing techniques.

Now, wellness companies have capitalized on the trend, offering products like “vagus massage oil,” vibrating bracelets and pillow mists, that claim to stimulate the nerve, but that have not been endorsed by the scientific community.

Researchers who study the vagus nerve say that stimulating it with electrodes can potentially help improve mood and alleviate symptoms in those who suffer from treatment-resistant depression, among other ailments. But are there other ways to activate the vagus nerve? Who would benefit most from doing so? And what exactly is the vagus nerve, anyway? Here’s a look at what we know so far.

What is the vagus nerve?

The term “vagus nerve” is actually shorthand for thousands of fibers. They are organized into two bundles that run from the brain stem down through each side of the neck and into the torso, branching outward to touch our internal organs, said Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, a neurosurgeon and president of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell Health’s research center in New York.

Imagine something akin to a tree, whose limbs interact with nearly every organ system in the body. (The word “vagus” means “wandering” in Latin.)
The vagus nerve picks up information about how the organs are functioning and also sends information from the brain stem back to the body, helping to control digestion, heart rate, voice, mood and the immune system.

For those reasons, the vagus nerve — the longest of the 12 cranial nerves — is sometimes referred to as an “information superhighway.”

Dr. Tracey compared it to a trans-Atlantic cable.

“It’s not a mishmash of signals,” he said. “Every signal has a specific job.”

The vagus is the main nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system. Unlike the sympathetic nervous system, which is associated with the body’s “fight or flight” response, the parasympathetic branch helps us rest, digest and calm down.

Scientists first began examining the vagus nerve in the late 1800s to investigate whether stimulating it could be a potential treatment for epilepsy. They later discovered that a side effect of activating the nerve was an improvement in mood. Today, researchers are examining how the nerve can affect psychiatric disorders, among other conditions.

What does the research say?

Evidence indicates that stimulating the vagus nerve can help people with epilepsy, diabetes, treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder — as well as inflammatory autoimmune conditions like Crohn’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis. There is even some preliminary research suggesting that long Covid symptoms could originate, in part, from the virus’s effect on the vagus nerve.

“It can sound sort of magical with all the things it does,” said Eric Porges, an assistant professor in the department of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida who studies the vagus nerve. Our understanding of the vagus nerve “continues to grow in richness and depth,” he said, but there is still much to learn about how it works.

In the early 2000s, researchers started to show that vagus nerve stimulation could help some patients who were severely depressed and had not responded to other treatments.

A wave of studies followed.

By 2005, the Food and Drug Administration had approved implantable pulse-generating devices that sent electrical signals to the vagus nerve, for use in patients with treatment-resistant depression. Similar devices have also been approved for obesity — to help control feelings of hunger and fullness — and for the treatment of epilepsy. The downside of these devices, however, is that the surgery is expensive and it can take months — and sometimes as long as a year — to have an effect.

Researchers are now recruiting patients for the largest clinical trial to date examining to what degree vagus nerve stimulation may help patients with depression who have been unable to find relief with other treatments.

The device may be especially helpful for those with bipolar depression because so few treatments exist for them, said Dr. Scott Aaronson, one of the senior psychiatrists involved in the clinical trial and the chief science officer of the Institute for Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics, a center within the Sheppard Pratt psychiatric hospital that aims to help people who have not improved with conventional treatments and medications.

In general, one of the problems with treating depression “is that we’ve got a lot of medications that pretty much do the same thing,” Dr. Aaronson said.

And when patients do not respond to those medications, “we don’t have a lot of novel stuff.”

Implanted vagus nerve stimulation isn’t currently accessible for most people, however, because insurers have so far declined to pay for the procedure, with the exception of Medicare recipients participating in the latest clinical trial.

Dr. Tracey’s research, which uses internal vagus nerve stimulation to treat inflammation, may also have applications for psychiatric disorders like PTSD, said Dr. Andrew H. Miller, the director of the Behavioral Immunology Program at Emory University, who studies how the brain and the immune system interact, and how those interactions can contribute to stress and depression.

PTSD is characterized by increased measures of inflammation in the blood, he said, which “can influence circuits in the brain that are related to anxiety.”

In one pilot study at Emory, for example, researchers electronically stimulated the neck skin near the vagus in 16 people, eight of whom received vagus nerve stimulation treatment and eight of whom received a sham treatment. The researchers found that the stimulation treatment reduced inflammatory responses to stress and was associated with a decrease in PTSD symptoms, indicating that such stimulation may be useful for some patients, including those with elevated inflammatory biomarkers.

Meanwhile, Dr. Porges and his colleagues at the University of Florida have patented a method to adjust vagus nerve electrical stimulation based on a patient’s physiology. He is now working with the company Evren Technologies, where he is a shareholder, to develop an external medical device that uses this approach for patients with PTSD.

How do you measure vagus nerve activity?

The activity of the vagus nerve is difficult to measure directly, especially given how complex it is. But because some vagus nerve fibers connect with the heart, experts can indirectly measure cardiac vagal tone — or the way in which your nervous system regulates your heart — by looking at your heart rate variability, which are the fluctuations in the amount of time between your heartbeats, on an EKG.

An abnormal vagal tone — one in which there is very little heart rate variability — has been associated with conditions like diabetes, heart failure and hypertension.

A high variability between heart beats may signify an ideal vagal tone.

How can you improve your vagal ‘tone’ at home?

Holding your breath and submerging your face in cold water can trigger the “diving reflex,” a response that slows the heart beat and constricts blood vessels. Some people who have tried it report that it has a calming effect and can even reduce insomnia. Others wrap an ice pack in cloth and place it on their chest to relieve anxiety.

These specific exercises haven’t been sufficiently studied as methods for controlling anxiety or depression, so it is difficult to know if they work, or if they do, how well. Even so, some experts say they’re worth a shot.

“It’s certainly one of the more benign things you can do,” Dr. Aaronson said.

But Dr. Tracey urged caution, adding that it’s difficult to properly assess the risks and benefits without clinical data. “I would not advise anyone to do any intervention without checking with their physician,” he said.

“For wellness, try to maintain high vagus nerve activity through mindfulness, exercise and paced breathing,” Dr. Tracey said. “These are all very good for you.”

Source

A decade ago, biologists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published a landmark paper describing a natural immune system found in bacteria and its potential as a tool for editing the genes of living organisms. A year later, in 2013, Feng Zhang and his colleagues at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported that they’d harnessed that system, known as Crispr, to edit human and animal cells in the lab. The work by both teams led to an explosion of interest in using Crispr to treat genetic diseases, as well as a 2020 Nobel Prize for Doudna and Charpentier.

Many diseases arise from gene mutations, so if Crispr could just snip out or replace an abnormal gene, it could in theory correct the disease. But one of the challenges of turning test tube Crispr discoveries into cures for patients has been figuring out how to get the gene-editing components to the place in the body that needs treatment.

One biotech company, Crispr Therapeutics, has gotten around that issue by editing patients’ cells outside the body. Scientists there have used the tool to treat dozens of people with sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia—two common blood disorders. In those trials, investigators extract patients’ red blood cells, edit them to correct a disease-causing mutation, then infuse them back into the body.

But this “ex vivo” approach has downsides. It’s complex to administer, expensive, and has limited uses. Most diseases occur in cells and tissues that can’t be easily taken out of the body, treated, and put back in. So the next wave of Crispr research is focused on editing “in vivo”—that is, directly inside a patient’s body. Last year, Intellia Therapeutics was the first to demonstrate that this was possible for a disease called transthyretin amyloidosis. And last week, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company showed in-the-body editing in a second disease.

At a conference in Germany, the company announced that its Crispr treatment reduced swelling in six people with a rare disease called hereditary angioedema. In a separate statement, the company said another one of its Crispr treatments reduced a harmful protein by more than 90 percent in 12 people with transthyretin amyloidosis, a potentially fatal genetic disease that can lead to heart failure. Those results build on previous trial data from six patients published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The diseases involve two different genes, and in both cases Crispr was able to safely and successfully edit them. “This shows us that we can have exactly the same kind of results in a totally different gene,” says John Leonard, Intellia’s CEO.

While the two trials are small, and these latest results have not been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal, Yan Zhang, an assistant professor of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan who studies Crispr, says the results are a “major milestone” for gene editing. “Overall, Intellia’s recent positive data show promise for using Crispr therapeutics to edit genes directly inside the human body,” she says.

The Crispr components can’t naturally get into cells on their own, so Intellia uses a delivery system called lipid nanoparticles—essentially tiny fat bubbles—to ferry them to the liver. In Intellia’s trials, patients receive a one-time IV infusion of these Crispr-laden nanoparticles into the veins in their arms. Since blood passes through the liver, lipid nanoparticles can easily travel there from the bloodstream. In the liver, the nanoparticles are taken up by cells called hepatocytes. Once inside these cells, the nanoparticles break down and let Crispr get to work editing out the problematic gene.

In both diseases, a genetic mutation allows an aberrant protein to run amok and cause damage. In hereditary angioedema, Intellia’s Crispr treatment is designed to knock out the KLKB1 gene in liver cells, which reduces the production of kallikrein protein. Too much kallikrein leads to the overproduction of another protein, called bradykinin, which is responsible for recurring, debilitating, and potentially fatal swelling attacks.

According to an Intellia press release, before receiving a Crispr infusion, patients experienced one to seven swelling attacks per month. During a 16-week observational period, the Crispr infusion reduced those attacks by an average of 91 percent.

In transthyretin amyloidosis, mutations in the TTR gene cause the liver to produce abnormal versions of the transthyretin protein. These damaged proteins build up over time, causing serious complications in tissues including the heart, nerves, and digestive system. One type of the disease can lead to heart failure and affects between 200,000 to 500,000 people worldwide. By the time patients are diagnosed with the disease, they’re expected to live just two to six more years.

Intellia’s Crispr treatment is designed to inactivate the TTR gene and reduce the buildup of the disease-causing protein it makes. Vaishali Sanchorawala, director of the Amyloidosis Center at the Boston University School of Medicine, says the reduction that Intellia is reporting is exciting. “This has the potential to completely revolutionize the outcome for these patients who live with this disease,” Sanchorawala says.

One big question is whether the edits will be permanent. In some of the patients, Crispr is showing promise over a year out, says Leonard. But liver cells eventually regenerate, and scientists haven’t followed patients long enough to know whether new cells that split off from the edited ones will also harbor the genetic correction.

“What we know is that when you edit a cell, it will stay edited for its life. There’s no way to undo that. And then if there’s turnover, the question is: Well, where do the new cells come from? In the case of the liver, it comes from other hepatocytes,” says Leonard. “We think once you’ve got it in the upstream cell from which everything else follows, it’s forever.”

Scientists working on in vivo Crispr therapies have zeroed in on the liver as an initial target because many genetic diseases are associated with it. And because fats such as lipids are readily absorbed by the liver, scientists at Intellia and elsewhere have figured out that they can be used to deliver Crispr there.

Two other companies, Beam Therapeutics and Verve Therapeutics, are also using lipid nanoparticles to target the liver with gene editing. In July, Verve began a trial to treat a genetic form of high cholesterol with base editing, a more precise form of Crispr.

But Leonard points out that getting Crispr to other cells and organs is still a conundrum. “Where it’s hard to get to is the brain and the lungs,” says Leonard. “When you think about the years ahead, those are the areas where standard lipid nanoparticle technology might not work and you may need other systems.”

Where Crispr will go next will depend on where researchers can send it.

There’s New Proof Crispr Can Edit Genes Inside Human Bodies

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The Institute of Physics (IOP) is the professional body and learned society for physics in the UK and Ireland. We seek to raise public awareness and understanding of physics and support the development of a diverse and inclusive physics community.

It’s an exciting time for IOP Ireland with the team recently expanding, upcoming news to announce and some thrilling plans for the next year – watch this space!

The team have had a busy year so far. We launched a new physics careers booklet, hosted the annual members’ spring meeting in Cork, had Jon Chase as this year’s Tyndall Lecture guest, attended the School Summit in Mayo, had visits from two of the IOP Council vice-presidents, and just last week we wrapped up a visit from IOP’s new CEO and launched our physics R&D blueprint consultation! Next up is the National Ploughing Championships, which we are really looking forward to!

Woven into the heart of all our activity is the Limit Less campaign. This aims to encourage more young people and those from underrepresented groups to do physics while smashing the stereotypes associated with physics. Young people care about solving the world’s problems, and they deserve the opportunity to do so – physics can help them achieve this!

With many events returning in person, we are looking forward to getting out there and meeting everyone!

Why the National Ploughing Championships?

When showcasing opportunities in physics, we try to go places that aren’t serving an audience who are already engaged in science. We want to reach a wide and varied audience who can experience the unexpected by having conversations about what physics means to them, and hopefully interest them in where physics comes into play for society.

Physics plays a huge part in farming whether it’s flood and drought data gathered by satellites, precision farming using GPS, or ways of tackling the energy crisis and climate change. Physics has a huge part to play in protecting livelihoods and the future of our planet.

We want to spread our Limit Less messaging to combat prejudice and dismantle stereotypes that prevent many young people considering a physics-based career. Physics isn’t just an academic pursuit – it’s a tool to inspire and empower people to change the world. Without these individuals in research, education and industry, the world is denied diverse innovators who can help build a better future for everyone!

At the National Ploughing Championships, staff and volunteers from the IOP will be showcasing a vast range of physics-based careers with our brand-new careers booklet! This features interviews with folks who have shared their personal stories and highlights a variety of jobs; from using physics in hospitals to help save lives, to predicting weather events, and using physics knowledge to write creative poetry. There’s more than meets the eye in physics.

In terms of physics on display, we’ll be demonstrating how hydraulics work with some homemade hydraulic arms. We’ll show spectacular images from Earth-gazing satellites that monitor farmland from hundreds of kilometres above us. And we’ll be absolutely buzzing talking about the physics of bees – including the how they can see the invisible!

Of course we’ll happily take questions about physics too whether they’re about what’s happening here on Earth or in the deepest, darkest parts of the universe.

You don’t have to be Einstein to get into physics

Physics isn’t just for one specific type of person. In media, physicists are often represented as older white men, lone geniuses lacking social skills. When you picture a physicist, who do you think of – someone resembling Albert Einstein or Sheldon Cooper? Have you seen the image results when you search the word ‘physicist’? Physics has an image problem, and we need to change that.

Many people shy away from physics, assuming it surely can’t be for them – sometimes because they don’t see people like themselves doing it or because they’ve been led to believe you need to be ‘an Einstein’ to do it.

We know that some people are put off choosing physics because they think it’s too hard, or boring or not creative. Others are discouraged from choosing physics because of stereotypes around who they are. Too many young people are made to feel that they can’t do physics, or that they just don’t fit in. This is so far from the truth.

IOP’s Limit Less campaign aims to change the perception of who can do physics. Without realising it, you’re probably practising physics in your everyday life – whether you’re making a cup of tea, pushing a shopping trolley or practicing scoring a point in football!

We’re not only keen to chat to young people, but also their supporters. As a family member, teacher, friend or mentor, you have a huge role in influencing your young person’s choices and opinions. Every young person should have the chance to build their future and to change their world for the better. Now, more than ever, we need to support young people to tackle global challenges and make a positive difference.

Doing physics equips young people with an amazing range of skills – skills that can take them further into physics, or in another direction entirely!

Source

New research suggests nightmares may become common several years or even decades before the characteristic memory and thinking problems of dementia set in. The study will be published today (September 21, 2022) in The Lancet journal, eClinicalMedicine.

“We’ve demonstrated for the first time that distressing dreams, or nightmares, can be linked to dementia risk and cognitive decline among healthy adults in the general population,” said Dr. Abidemi Otaiku, of the University of Birmingham’s Center for Human Brain Health.

“This is important because there are very few risk indicators for dementia that can be identified as early as middle age. While more work needs to be done to confirm these links, we believe bad dreams could be a useful way to identify individuals at high risk of developing dementia, and put in place strategies to slow down the onset of disease.”

Dr. Otaiku examined data from three community-based cohorts in the United States for the study. These included more than 600 adult men and women aged between 35 and 64; as well as 2,600 adults aged 79 and older. All the participants were dementia-free at the start of the study and followed up for an average of nine years for the younger group and five years for the older participants.

Data collection for the study began between 2002 and 2012. Participants completed a range of questionnaires, including the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which includes a question on how frequently individuals experienced bad dreams.

This data was analyzed using statistical software to assess whether participants with a higher frequency of nightmares were more likely to go on to experience cognitive decline and be diagnosed with dementia.

According to the research results, middle-aged people (35-64) who experience bad dreams on a weekly basis are four times more likely to experience cognitive decline over the following decade, while older people were twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia.

It’s especially interesting that the study found that the associations were much stronger for men than for women. For instance, older men experiencing nightmares on a weekly basis were five times more likely to develop dementia than older men reporting no bad dreams. However, in women, the increase in risk was only 41 percent.

Next steps for the research will include exploring whether nightmares among young people could be associated with future dementia risk, and whether other dream characteristics, such as how often we remember dreams and how vivid they are, could also be used to identify dementia risk. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), the scientists also plan to investigate the biological basis of bad dreams in both healthy people and people with dementia.

Source: SciTechDaily

https://scitechdaily.com/nightmares-in-middle-age-linked-to-increased-dementia-risk/

Some smokers find that their first cigarette of the day is less enjoyable without a cup of coffee. That may not only be a morning habit, though. According to University of Florida researchers, compounds in roasted coffee beans may help lessen the impact of morning nicotine cravings.

Researchers found two compounds in coffee that directly influence certain high-sensitivity nicotine receptors in the brain in a cell-based study. These brain receptors in smokers can become hypersensitive following a night of nicotine withdrawal.

Although the recently released findings have not yet been tested on humans, they represent a significant advancement in our understanding of how nicotine receptors in the brain are impacted by coffee and cigarettes, according to Roger L. Papke,

Ph.D., a professor of pharmacology at the University of Florida College of Medicine. For most individuals, the feel-good component of coffee is caffeine, although smokers may get another kind of boost.

“Many people like caffeine in the morning but there are other molecules in coffee that may explain why cigarette smokers want their coffee,” Papke said.

The researchers applied a dark-roasted coffee solution to cells that express a specific human nicotine receptor. The researchers came to the conclusion that an organic chemical compound in coffee may help restore the nicotine receptor dysfunction that causes nicotine cravings in smokers.

The findings have led Papke to a broader hypothesis: One of the compounds in brewed coffee, known as n-MP, may help lessen morning cravings for nicotine.

Papke said he was intrigued by the idea that nicotine-dependent smokers associate tobacco use with coffee in the morning and alcohol in the evening. Although alcohol’s effect on nicotine receptors in the brain has been thoroughly researched, the receptors’ interaction with coffee has been studied less.

“Many people look for coffee in the morning because of the caffeine. But was the coffee doing anything else to smokers? We wanted to know if there were other things in coffee that were affecting the brain’s nicotine receptors,” Papke said.

The findings, he said, provide a good foundation for behavioral scientists who could further study nicotine withdrawal in animal models.

Source: SciTechDaily

https://scitechdaily.com/coffee-and-cigarettes-new-study-reveals-an-unexpected-connection/

Judge rules Charter must pay $1.1 billion after murder of cable customer

Webb captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton. Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton, dominates this Webb portrait of Neptune as a very bright point of light sporting diffraction spikes.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

 

Scientists are wasting no time in pointing the powerful new James Webb Space Telescope all over the Universe, as well as into our own backyard. Recently, astronomers took data on the eighth planet from the Sun in our Solar System, Neptune. NASA released the first images of this world on Wednesday.

 

The third-largest planet in our Solar System, Neptune often appears bright blue in images due to the presence of gaseous methane. The Webb telescope, however, observes light in the infrared portion of the spectrum, so its "Near-Infrared Camera" photos show a ghostly white planet. This is because the methane in Neptune's atmosphere absorbs reddish and infrared light.

 

In the new view of Neptune, the exception to this is the planet's high-altitude methane ice clouds, which reflect sunlight before it can be absorbed by the methane. These appear as brilliant, bright features, NASA says.

 

Also prominent in the new image are Neptune's rings, which have not been directly observed since Voyager 2 flew by the planet in 1989. It is difficult to observe these rings from afar because they are close to the planet and obscured by Neptune's brightness. The Webb telescope found both prominent rings as well as bands of dust.

 

"It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared," said Heidi Hammel, a Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for Webb.

 

The Webb telescope also captured seven of the 14 known moons in the Neptune system. Most prominent in this image is Triton, above Neptune, with bright diffraction spikes. This color is due to the highly reflective frozen sheet of nitrogen ice that covers Triton.

 

 

This week NASA also revealed that there is a problem with one of Webb's Mid-Infrared, or MIRI, instrument's four observing modes. A mechanism that supports one of these modes, medium-resolution spectroscopy, has encountered friction during setup. NASA is assessing the problem and developing a path forward. NASA's program scientist for the Webb telescope, Eric Smith, said Wednesday that he does not anticipate this issue will ultimately preclude use of the instrument.

 

New JWST image reveals full glory of Neptune, its moons, and rings