Death By Spaghettification! Astronomers Spot a Star Being Consumed by a Black Hole

This could solve the mystery of tidal disruption events or ‘spaghettification.’

 by Rob Lea  October 12, 2020

An international team of researchers has used telescopes from around the world — including instruments operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) — to glimpse a blast of light emitted by a star as it is torn apart by the tidal forces of a supermassive black hole.

The event — technically known as a ‘tidal disruption event’ (TDE) — occurred 215-million light-years from Earth, but despite this intimidating sounding distance, this is the closest to our planet such a flare has ever been captured. This, and the fact the astronomers spotted the event early, means the team was able to study the phenomena in unprecedented detail, in turn uncovering some surprises in this violent and powerful process. 

 

This illustration depicts a star (in the foreground) experiencing spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a supermassive black hole (in the background) during a ‘tidal disruption event’. In a new study, done with the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope, a team of astronomers found that when a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outwards. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)

The astronomers directed the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), based in the Atacama desert, Chile, and other instruments at a blast of light that first occurred last year. They studied the flare, located in AT2019qiz in a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Eridanus, for six months as it grew in luminosity and then faded. Their findings are published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“My research focuses on close encounters between stars and supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies. Gravity very close to a black hole is so strong that a star cannot survive, and instead gets ripped apart into thin streams of gas,” Thomas Wevers, co-author of the study and an ESO Fellow in Santiago, Chile, tells ZME Science. “This process is called a tidal disruption event, or sometimes ‘spaghettification’.

“If not for such tidal disruption events, we would not be able to see these black holes. Hence, they provide a unique opportunity to study the properties of these ‘hidden’ black holes in detail.”Thomas Wevers, ESO Fellow
Catching the Start of the Movie

Wevers, who was part of the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK, as the study was being conducted, explains that it can take several weeks — or even months — to identify these spaghettification events with any certainty. Such an identification also takes all the telescopes and observational power that can be mustered. This can often cause a delay that results in astronomers missing the early stages of the process

.

This image shows the sky around the location of AT2019qiz, at the very centre of the frame. This picture was created from images in the Digitized Sky Survey 2. (ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin)

“It’s like watching a movie but starting 30 minutes in, a lot of information is lost if you can’t watch from the very beginning, and while you might be able to reconstruct roughly what has happened, you can never be completely sure,” the researcher explains. But, that wasn’t the case with this new event.

To stick to the analogy; this time the team had their popcorn and drink and were in their seats before the trailers started rolling.


“In this new event, we were lucky enough to identify and hence observe it very quickly, which has allowed us to see and understand what happens in the early phases in great detail.”Thomas Wevers, ESO Fellow

Spotting spaghettification events is not just difficult due to timing issues, though. Such events are fairly rare, with only 100 candidates identified thus far, and are often obscured by a curtain of dust and debris. When a black hole devours a star, a jet of material is launched outwards that can further obscure the view of astronomers. The prompt viewing of this event allowed that jet to be seen as it progressed.

“The difficulty comes first from picking out these rare events in among all the more common things changing in the night sky: variable stars and supernova explosions,” Matt Nicholl, a lecturer and Royal Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK, and the lead author of the study tells ZME Science. “A second difficulty comes from the events themselves: they were predicted to look about 100 times hotter than the flare that we observed. Our data show that this is because of all the outflowing debris launched from the black hole: this absorbs the heat and cools down as it expands.”

Spaghettification: Delicious and Dangerous

The spaghettification process is one of the most fascinating aspects of black hole physics. It arises from the massive change in gravitational forces experienced by a body as it approaches a black hole.

“A star is essentially a giant ball of hot, self-gravitating gas, which is why it is roughly spherical in shape. When the star approaches the black hole, gravity acts in a preferential direction, so the star gets squeezed in one direction but stretched in the perpendicular direction,” Wevers says. “You can compare it to a balloon: when you squeeze it between your hands, it elongates in the direction parallel to your hands. Because the gravity is so extreme, the result is that the star essentially gets squeezed into a very long and thin spaghetti strand — hence the name spaghettification.”

Death by Spagettification! (ESO/M. Kornmesser/ Robert Lea)

Nicholl continues, explaining what happens next to this stellar spaghetti strand: “Eventually, it wraps all the way around and collides with itself, and that’s when we start to see the light show as the material heats up before either falling into the black hole or being flung back into space.

“The distance at which the star encountered the supermassive black hole was around the same distance between the Earth and Sun — this shows how incredibly strong the gravitational pull of the black hole must be to be able to tear the star apart from that distance.”

“If you picture the Sun being torn into a thin stream and rushing towards us, that’s roughly what the black hole saw!” Matt Nicholl, Royal Astronomical Society research fellow.

Suprises and Future Developments

The observations made by the astronomers have allowed them to study the dynamics of a star undergoing the spaghettification process in detail, something that hasn’t been possible before. And as is to be expected with such a first, the study yielded some surprises for the team.

“The biggest surprise with this event was how rapidly the light brightened and faded,” Nicholl tells ZME. “It took about a month from the encounter for the flare to reach its peak brightness, which is one of the fastest we’ve ever seen.”

The researcher continues to explain that faster events are harder to find, so it suggests that there might be a whole population of short-lived flares that have been escaping astronomers’ attention. “Our research may have solved a major and long-standing mystery of why these events are 100 times colder than expected — in this event, it was the outflowing gas that allowed it to cool down.”

Confirming this idea means that the team must now seek scarce telescope time to investigate more of these events to see if this characteristic is unique to the AT2019qiz flare, or if it is a common feature of such events. “Because we studied only one event, it is still unclear whether our results apply universally to all such tidal disruption events. So we need to repeat our experiment multiple times,” Wevers says. “Unfortunately, we are at the whims of nature and our ability to spot new TDEs. When we do, we will need to confirm the picture we have put forward or perhaps adapt it if we find different behaviour.”

The ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) will play an important role in the identification and study of future ‘spaghettification’ events. (ESO Photo Ambassador Serge Brunier.)

Wevers concludes by highlighting the unique position he, Nicholl, and their team find themselves in by studying such rare and difficult to observe events and the objects that lie behind them. “We aren’t yet in the phase where we think we have mapped all the behaviour that occurs following these cataclysmic events, so while each new TDE helps us to answer outstanding questions, at the same time it also raises new questions.

“We find ourselves continually in a catch-22 like situation, which in this case is a good thing as it propels our research forward!” exclaims Wevers. “I find it pretty amazing that we can study gargantuan black holes, weighing millions or even billions of times the mass of our sun, and which are located hundreds of millions of light-years away, in such detail with our telescopes.”

Original research: Nicholl. M., Wevers. T., Oates. S. R., et al, ‘An outflow powers the optical rise of the nearby, fast-evolving tidal disruption event AT2019qiz,’ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, [2020].

                                             DE DEI SCIENTIA

 

CORNELL ALLIANCE FOR SCIENCE 

How the Alliance is going to vote

BY AFS STAFF

OCTOBER 12, 2020

At the Alliance for Science, we believe that everyone should make their voices heard and participate in democracy. With team members spread throughout the country and others based internationally, those of us who are United States citizens have various plans for voting in the Nov. 3 election. Below, a few of us share our personal voting plan. Have you made yours yet? If not, please visit vote.org to check your registration status and the voting rules that apply to your state.

Alliance Director Sarah Evanega, shown here voting with her children in 2016, will return with them to the polls in 2020.

Sarah Evanega: Voting early, in-person

At my house, voting is a family affair, involving all three of my young kids—even if it means arriving late to school. It’s important to me to instill the significance of voting in each of my children so that they will be active, voting citizens throughout their adult lives. This year, we have an early in-person voting option in Ithaca, New York, where we live. We even have the opportunity to do it on the weekend — so no need to miss school! In New York, the early voting period runs from Saturday, Oct. 24, 2020 to Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. Our plan is to walk the short 3 ½ blocks to the Town of Ithaca Courthouse and participate as in-person voters. We’ll be wearing our masks and will be proud to take part in this important part of our American democracy. Afterwards, we’ll have a picnic in Seneca Falls, NY, which shares the shores of Lake Cayuga with Ithaca and is cited by many as the birthplace of the US women’s suffrage movement. That’s significant to us because 2020 is the centennial anniversary of the formal adoption of the 19th Amendment into the US Constitution. One-hundred years later, may we as a nation continue to fight for the right of all Americans to have easy voting access to ensure that their ballots are cast and counted.

Alliance Deputy Director Vanessa Greenlee turns in her ballot.

Vanessa Greenlee: Dropped off absentee ballot

I registered online for New York State’s absentee option in September, selecting the “potential transmission of Covid-19” dropdown option as rationale. This past weekend, we received our ballots in the mail. I drove to the Tompkins County Board of Elections last week to deliver my ballot.

I chose personal delivery instead of sending via the US Postal Service because of the delays and uncertainties regarding the USPS in the news. I’m happy with my choice. There were two staff members in the elections office when I arrived, both wearing masks. The staff member asked me if I would like to see my cover envelope opened as he checked the ballot envelope for completion of signature and date. Everything checked out, and I saw my ballot placed in the ballot box. And I left with the customary “I voted” sticker to wear.

Joan Conrow: Voting by mail

I usually prefer to vote in person, but I didn’t want to overload the polls before or on Election Day. It’s very easy to vote by absentee ballot in New Mexico, where I live, so I’ll be casting my ballot by mail instead. I’ve also volunteered to be a poll monitor on Nov. 3. There’s some concern that people may try to disrupt voting at the polls. I don’t anticipate that happening in my community, but I agreed to be present and keep an eye on things. I figured my background as a journalist would be useful in providing accurate documentation of anything that seems questionable. It’s the first time I’ve ever done something like that. But I feel like we all have to vote and make sure that others aren’t prevented from exercising their legal right to participate in this very critical aspect of our fragile democracy.

Anna Garber Hammond: Voting early

I came to the United States in 2008, just before the first election of Barack Obama. At that time, I was just a visitor and witnessed the election as a spectator. I remember the energy during that time very well! That experience was new and unreal to me as a brand-new person in a very unfamiliar country and culture.

Four years later I was a green card holder, still unable to vote. Another four years later, I was just becoming a US citizen, so I couldn’t vote in the 2016 election, either. I did, however, attend my first Election Day party with friends and colleagues.

Soon I will be voting for the first time in the US election! I plan to vote early, to avoid crowds on Election Day.

Justin Cremer: Voting absentee from abroad

I’ve voted via absentee ballot since moving abroad in 2010 and will do so again this year. I’m registered to vote in Iowa, where I both grew up and later returned to for a five-year stretch as an adult. The last time I voted in person was the 2008 election. As an Iowan, you get unprecedented access to candidates because of the state’s first-in-the-nation status and I’ll never forget the atmosphere that surrounded the 2008 rallies I attended, nor the night when the caucus results were announced and shocked the world.

Although I miss being in the US (not just at election time, but all the time), I still taking voting very seriously. Luckily, it is very easy and straightforward to vote in Iowa as an overseas citizen. I did have a minor complication this year because my parents moved for the first time in nearly 25 years. Because their home serves as my official US address, I had to file a new ballot request even though I had already received one. The Polk County election officials were super helpful and a new correct ballot (my new US address is in a different statehouse district) quickly arrived via email. Iowa rules allow overseas citizens to vote electronically, so once I have researched the down-ballot and local candidates, I will return my ballot via email.

Nassib Mugwanya: A Ugandan’s perspective

I had not been following the US election that much until recently, when almost every news source I listen to is talking about it. All the political experts and friends I’ve listened to seem to suggest that this is probably one of the most important elections the US has had in recent times. One of my friends who will be graduating next year told me that she is going to vote because she thinks the economy has been greatly disrupted by the pandemic, and she wants a president who would steer it back to normal for her to have a job when she’s done. As an international student from Uganda studying at North Carolina State University, this election is equally important to me, because how America votes has a direct impact on higher education policies — especially for non-citizens. As an international student, you want an administration whose policies would not constantly make you feel like you can be put on the plane to go back home any time in the middle of your studies without completing your program.

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu

The Cornell Alliance for Science seeks to promote access to scientific innovation as a means of enhancing food security, improving environmental sustainability, and raising the quality of life globally.

We are building a global network of science allies who share our commitment to solve complex global hunger issues by leveraging advances in agriculture, including biotechnology.

We train with a purpose, empowering science champions around the world with the tools and skills needed to communicate effectively about science and promote evidence-based decision-making.

We provide accurate information about agricultural biotechnology and share the stories of those who are engaged in its development and implementation through our photographs, videos, blog posts, fact sheets, and other multimedia resources.

Using this three-pronged approach, the Cornell Alliance for Science works to ensure global access to life-improving agricultural innovations that can shrink farming’s footprint, deliver food security, reduce the drudgery of field work that often falls on women and children, provide rural families with sufficient income to educate their children, and inspire young people to pursue a career in agriculture and science

The Global Suppression of Indigenous Fire Management


Indigenous peoples’ techniques to manage and benefit from fire are threatened, even as wildfires burn more frequently and intensely.

Fire lights the hills from a controlled burn off of maize stubble on a farm property at Makikihi in South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand. Getty

By: Livia Gershon
October 12, 2020


With devastating wildfires happening more regularly due to climate change, many Native people in U.S. states like California are pointing out that traditional Native methods for managing fire are often suppressed. As geographer Jayalaxshmi Mistry, biologist Bibiana A. Bilbao, and ecologist Andrea Berardi point out, this is actually a global story. Non-Indigenous governments all over the world have stamped out traditional ways of working with fire. But some people are working to bring them back.

Many Indigenous societies use fires in ways that connect ecological, social, and spiritual purposes. For example, the Mebêngôkre of Mato Grosso, Brazil, use fire in their hunt for tortoises. The event is part of an annual festival associated with courtship, youth initiation, and the education of younger generations. The Pemón in Venezuela organize large cooperative groups for tree cutting and burning. This strengthens social ties and passes along knowledge while accomplishing a difficult task.

Areas controlled by Indigenous peoples tend to suffer less from deforestation and other ecological harms than other comparable land.

“Therefore, savanna and forest ecosystems are being protected within Indigenous lands not because they are being ‘managed’ in a direct and active way, but as the indirect outcome of a healthy social-ecological system,” the authors write.

This kind of relationship with ecosystems is a boon to forests and the climate. Mistry, Bibao, and Berardi write that areas controlled by Indigenous peoples tend to suffer less from deforestation and other ecological harms than other comparable land. That means they emit less greenhouse gases. For example, in the Bolivian Amazon, only 0.5 percent of Indigenous territories were deforested between 2000 and 2010, compared with 3.2 percent in the region overall.

However, Indigenous ways of working with fire have come under attack. In California, for example, the Indigenous use of fire was banned outright—even as many Native people in the U.S. were enlisted as firefighters. In other cases, knowledge about these techniques is being lost. On the savannas of Guyana, some Wapishana and Makushi have adopted anti-fire ideas from state resource management agencies and environmental groups. Meanwhile, private cattle owners have increased burns to clear more grazing land, without necessarily employing traditional knowledge about the use of fire. The result is less patch-burning during the wet season—which can reduce the likelihood of large, uncontrolled fries—and more potentially damaging dry-season burning.

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Mistry, Bibao, and Berardi point to some hopeful examples of increased support for Indigenous fire management. In 2015, officials in Brazil began working with Xerente Indigenous fire experts to plan prescribed burns. In Australia, under a market-based carbon offset, ConocoPhillips is paying for the hiring of Indigenous rangers who collaborate with fire ecologists and traditional Indigenous owners of the land.

However, the authors argue that these programs risk simplifying Indigenous methods into a small set of tools that have an easily measured impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, they write, truly community-based solutions must go hand-in-hand with protecting and reviving Indigenous communities and increasing their control over their own traditional territories.

That’s an idea that’s as relevant for California as it is for anywhere else in the world.

NASA-style caution needed before allowing research to influence policy

by University of Oxford


Behavioural science should undergo rigorous testing and review before it informs public policy such as government responses to COVID-19, according to a paper in Nature Human Behaviour titled "Use caution when applying behavioural science to policy."

Professor Andrew K. Przybylski, director of research at Oxford's Internet Institute, is joint lead author of the paper, which recommends NASA's Technology Readiness levels be used to ensure new ideas are adequately tested before being adopted by governments and politicians.

The NASA system envisages a nine-stage process, beginning with 'basic principles' going through to 'successful mission operations', to ensure safety and efficacy. Such an approach to behavioural science, could have a significant effect on how governments decide advice on household mixing or whether to encourage the use of public transport during a pandemic.

The paper argues social and behavioural science research methods can make it difficult to know if policies will do more good than harm and argues for caution in the way research is communicated during crises. The team also calls for greater diversity and expertise of researchers, and experts in philosophy, ethics, statistics, and data and code management to work together to produce internationally-relevant research.


Explore further 

Keeping governments accountable: The COVID-10 assessment scorecard

More information: Hans IJzerman et al. Use caution when applying behavioural science to policy, Nature Human Behaviour (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-00990-w

Journal information: Nature Human Behaviour

Provided by University of Oxford

Private and public prostate cancer patients are being treated differently

by Medical Journal of Australia (MJA)

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Men seeking prostate cancer treatment within the private health system were more likely to opt for more radical treatment than men in the public system, according to research published online today by the Medical Journal of Australia.

Dr. Luc te Marvelde, a Research Fellow at Cancer Council Victoria, and colleagues analyzed Victorian Cancer Registry data linked to population-based administrative health datasets for 29 325 Victorian men diagnosed with prostate cancer during 2011–2017, looking for the proportions of men in private and public health services receiving radical prostatectomy (with or without curative radiation therapy) or curative external beam radiation therapy alone within 12 months of diagnosis.

They found that even after adjusting for age, tumor classification and comorbidity, men diagnosed in private health services received radical treatment more frequently than men diagnosed in public health services (odds ratio [OR], 1.40); the proportion of private patients who underwent radical prostatectomy was larger than that for public patients (44% v 28%) and the proportion of private patients who received curative external beam radiation therapy alone (excluding brachytherapy) was smaller (9% v 19%).

"Men diagnosed in private health services more frequently underwent radical prostatectomy (OR, 2.28)," te Marvelde and colleagues wrote.

"Radical prostatectomy was more frequent for men diagnosed in private health services for each International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade subset and socio-economic quintile. The difference was greater for men diagnosed after the age of 70 years (private v public: OR, 3.45) than for younger men (OR, 1.96)."

Although the authors offered no hypotheses for why the difference may exist, they acknowledged the need for further research.

"Treatment of people with cancer should be consistent, safe, of high quality and evidence-based, as described in the Cancer Council optimal care pathway for men with prostate cancer," the authors concluded.

"Our findings indicate a notable difference between the Victorian public and private health service sectors in the treatment chosen by men with localized prostate cancer. Men with prostate cancer who have no comorbid conditions, live in areas of higher socio-economic status, and have less aggressive disease more frequently receive their biopsy diagnoses at private health services. Further, after adjusting for the influence of these factors on their subsequent treatment, differences between choices in the private and public systems remained evident, suggesting that other factors have a strong influence on whether men undergo surgery or receive radiation therapy."


Explore furtherAdjuvant radiotherapy no better for localized prostate cancer

More information: Luc te Marvelde et al. Differences in treatment choices for localized prostate cancer diagnosed in private and public health services, Medical Journal of Australia (2020). DOI: 10.5694/mja2.50794

Journal information: Medical Journal of Australia

Provided by Medical Journal of Australia (MJA)

Scientists develop new precise therapeutic leukemia vaccine

MUTANT MICE WITH HUMAN DNA

by Chinese Academy of Sciences

High expression of Eps8 and PD-1/PD-L1 in acute leukemia and construction of microcapsule vaccine loading with new epitope Eps8 and PD-1 antibody Credit: WEI Wei

Exploration of new leukemia antigens and construction of appropriate delivery systems using FDA-approved material are important strategies for developing leukemia vaccines for clinic use.

Researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University have developed a new type of precise therapeutic vaccine against leukemia. It utilizes self-healing polylactic acid microcapsules for co-encapsulating a new epitope peptide and PD-1 antibody.

The study was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on October 12.

Although the possibility of treating leukemia through vaccination has been established, therapeutic performance still falls short of expectations in clinic.

"Our clinical findings revealed the high expression of EPS8 and PD-1/PD-L1 in leukemia patients, which could be respectively used as a new type of leukemia antigen and a checkpoint target for a leukemia vaccine," said Prof. Li Yuhua from Zhujiang Hospital.

In the novel vaccine, epitope peptides and PD-1 antibodies can be simply, mildly and efficiently loaded into polylactic acid microcapsules, facilitated by the unique self-healing feature of the microcapsule.

Potent anti-leukemia activity in the PDX model Credit: WEI Wei

After a single vaccination, the deposition and degradation of microcapsules at the local injection site lead to recruitment of activated antigen-presenting cells and sustained release of both cargos.

"With the synergism of these two aspects, we observed a significant improvement in specific Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte (CTL) activation," said Prof. Wei Wei from IPE.

The researchers also verified the availability of the novel vaccine using various epitope peptides in different models, such as murine leukemia, humanized cell line-derived leukemia xenograft (CDX) and patient-derived leukemia xenograft (PDX) models.

The microcapsule-based formulation demonstrated its superior performance over that of the ISA adjuvant (commercialized adjuvant) in all leukemia therapeutic models, showing the promise of the microcapsule-based vaccine for use against various leukemia antigens in clinic.

"With the advantages of FDA-approved polylactic acid material, convenience in preparing the vaccine formulation, diversity of vaccine components, and excellent therapeutic effect, the microcapsule-based vaccine exhibits great potential for clinical translation," said Prof. Ma Guanghui from IPE.

A peer reviewer from Nature Biomedical Engineering described the study as "comprehensive for a new platform." The reviewer also emphasized that the work is "exciting and convincing."


Explore further 

Researchers develop high-performance cancer vaccine using novel microcapsules

More information: Therapeutic vaccination against leukemia via the sustained release of co-encapsulated anti-PD-1 and a leukemia-associated antigen. Nature Biomedical Engineering (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-020-00624-6
Journal information: Nature Biomedical Engineering


Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences

Rodents of Unusual Size: A new study using Ancient DNA reveals the origins of the remarkable Caribbean giant rodents

PRESS RELEASE
First published 12 October 2020

A new study by scientists from the Natural History Museum and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has found that the incredibly diverse Caribbean caviomorph rodents, which range in size from 0.1kg-200kg, evolved into radically different species across the islands of the western Caribbean following a single colonisation event


The research used ancient DNA techniques to obtain the first genetic data from several extinct species, including the completely extinct Caribbean spiny rats and “giant hutias”, to reconstruct the origins and evolutionary history of this enigmatic group.

Caviomorphs include living South American rodents such as guinea pigs, chinchillas and capybaras. There used to be over 30 species of Caribbean caviomorphs, the largest of which were the size of bears. However, nearly all of these species are now extinct due to human activities – hunting, habitat loss, and the introduction of invasive species to Caribbean islands. This study is the first to compare genetic data from across this largely extinct group of rodents – using data from living Caribbean rodents called hutias, together with data from five extinct Caribbean species ranging from mouse-sized to dog-sized animals – to resolve their evolutionary history and biogeographic origins. Understanding the mechanisms behind how these animals diversified across the Caribbean provides unique new insights into how species adapt and react to new environments.

The Caribbean represents an important system to study evolutionary patterns and processes. Dr Roseina Woods, who worked on this study as part of her PhD at the Natural History Museum, said: 'Islands are brilliant for studying evolution for several reasons. They are often remote, meaning that only a few select groups of organisms reach islands in the first place. Mammals rarely colonise islands, but rodents did make it to the Caribbean, so this archipelago is a perfect place to study colonisation events and island evolution. Our ancient DNA analyses produced the first molecular data for several extinct Caribbean rodent species, allowing us to uncover when and how they arrived in the Caribbean.'

Despite their wide range of ecological niches and diverse morphologies, all of these rodents evolved from a single overwater colonisation event around 18 million years ago. These findings provide an important new example of adaptive radiation, where a single colonising mainland lineage evolves into novel forms across a group of islands. This evolutionary event represents the greatest increase in body size ever recorded in rodents, and possibly the greatest for any mammal lineage. Co-author Dr Selina Brace from the Natural History Museum said: ‘It’s amazing to think that a single colonisation led to such extreme rodent gigantism. These mighty rodents became more than thirty times larger than their mainland relatives.’

Co-author Professor Ian Barnes from the Natural History Museum noted: 'The Caribbean is a fascinating region to study, but its hot, wet environment quickly degrades DNA, making it very difficult to obtain data from ancient bones. Combined with the very rapid changes in shape and size that animals often undergo when they colonise islands, it’s often difficult to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of extinct species from the region.'

Most of the Caribbean’s surviving rodent species are highly threatened with extinction. Co-author Professor Samuel Turvey from the Zoological Society of London said: 'The last few survivors of the Caribbean rodent radiation – the hutias of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the Bahamas - are global priorities for conservation. Their incredible evolutionary history means that we cannot allow these neglected species to become extinct – we need urgent conservation action to protect what’s left of this remarkable group of mammals.’



ENDS

The paper was published in Molecular Biology and Evolution on Monday 12 October 2020.

Notes for editors

Media contact: Tel: +44 (0)779 969 0151 Email: press@nhm.ac.uk


About the Natural History Museum:

The Natural History Museum is both a world-leading science research centre and the most-visited natural history museum in Europe. With a vision of a future in which both people and the planet thrive, it is uniquely positioned to be a powerful champion for balancing humanity’s needs with those of the natural world.

It is custodian of one of the world’s most important scientific collections comprising over 80 million specimens. The scale of this collection enables researchers from all over the world to document how species have and continue to respond to environmental changes - which is vital in helping predict what might happen in the future and informing future policies and plans to help the planet.

The Museum’s 300 scientists continue to represent one of the largest groups in the world studying and enabling research into every aspect of the natural world. Their science is contributing critical data to help the global fight to save the future of the planet from the major threats of climate change and biodiversity loss through to finding solutions such as the sustainable extraction of natural resources.

The Museum uses its enormous global reach and influence to meet its mission to create advocates for the planet - to inform, inspire and empower everyone to make a difference for nature. We welcome over five million visitors each year; our digital output reaches hundreds of thousands of people in over 200 countries each month and our touring exhibitions have been seen by around 30 million people in the last 10 years.

About ZSL

ZSL (Zoological Society of London) is an international conservation charity working to create a world where wildlife thrives. From investigating the health threats facing animals to helping people and wildlife live alongside each other, ZSL is committed to bringing wildlife back from the brink of extinction. Our work is realised through our ground-breaking science, our field conservation around the world and engaging millions of people through our two zoos, ZSL London Zoo and ZSL Whipsnade Zoo. For more information, visit www.zsl.org

A lack of funding - as a result of the current pandemic - has put ZSL’s world-leading expertise in science and conservation in serious jeopardy. ZSL needs urgent support to keep its scientists investigating wildlife diseases such as Covid-19, and its conservationists working in the field to protect the wildlife and ecosystems on which we rely. Find out more at www.zsl.org/donate.

Media trust correlated with COVID-19 prevention behaviors

Whether someone takes proper precautions to fight COVID-19 may be linked to whether they trust right- or left-leaning media outlets, according to a new USC study.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Research News

 

Whether someone wears a mask, practices physical distancing or performs other behaviors to prevent COVID-19 infection may be linked to what media outlets they trust.

In 2020, individuals' behavior in response to the pandemic has closely correlated with the kinds of mass media outlets they trust, according to a study authored by USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology PhD students Erfei Zhao and Qiao Wu. The article was co-authored by University Professor Eileen Crimmins, holder of the AARP Chair in Gerontology, and Associate Professor of Gerontology and Sociology Jennifer Ailshire and appeared online in the journal BMJ Global Health on October 8, 2020.

Zhao, Wu and colleagues analyzed response data from the Understanding America Study's COVID-19 panel on how often more than 4800 participants performed five virus-mitigating behaviors during the coronavirus pandemic: (1) wearing a face mask, (2) washing hands with soap or using hand sanitizer several times per day, (3) canceling or postponing personal or social activities, (4) avoiding eating at restaurants, (5) and avoiding public spaces, gatherings or crowds. In addition, the team also looked at risky health behaviors, including going out to a bar, club or other place where people gather; going to another person's residence; having outside visitors such as friends, neighbors or relatives at one's home; attending a gathering with more than 10 people, such as a party, concert or religious service; or having close contact (within six feet) with someone who doesn't live with the respondent.

Using CNN as an example of a left-leaning news source and Fox News as a news source on the right side of the political spectrum, the study identified the relative amount of trust participants reported in either news source with the risky or positive behaviors they engaged in. Around 29% of respondents said they trusted CNN more than Fox News; roughly half (52%) expressed no preference between the two, and one in five (20%) said they trusted Fox more than CNN.

Risky behaviors were highest among participants who reported more trust in Fox News with an average of 1.25 risky acts in a 7-day period, followed closely by those who reported trusting neither outlet, while CNN viewers reported an average of .94 risky behaviors during the same time period. Positive behaviors were more frequently reported among those who trusted CNN (an average of 3.85 preventive actions in a 7-day window) more than those who trusted Fox News (3.41 positive behaviors on average).

The results imply that behavior sharply differs along media bias lines, indicating that partisan narratives are likely getting in the way of solid health messaging that encourages healthy behavior change.

"In such a highly partisan environment, false information can be easily disseminated. Health messaging, which is one of the few effective ways to slow down the spread of the virus in the absence of a vaccine, is being damaged by politically biased and economically focused narratives," said Zhao and Wu.

###

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health grant P30 AG017265 (Crimmins) for the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health. The UAS COVID National Sample dataset is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, NIH, and Social Security Administration.

CONFRONTING MISINFORMATION

Eight Persistent COVID-19 Myths and Why People Believe Them

From a human-made virus to vaccine conspiracy theories, we rounded up the most insidious false claims about the pandemic

October 12, 2020

Credit: Hanna Barczyk

THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK

AUTHOR

Tanya Lewis is an associate editor at Scientific American who covers health and medicine. Credit: Nick Higgins

○ 1 THE VIRUS WAS ENGINEERED IN A LABORATORY IN CHINA.

Because the pathogen first emerged in Wuhan, China, President Donald Trump and others have claimed, without evidence, that it started in a lab there, and some conspiracy theorists believe it was engineered as a bioweapon.

Why It’s False: U.S. intelligence agencies have categorically denied the possibility that the virus was engineered in a lab, stating that “the Intelligence Community ... concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified.” Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli—who studies bat coronaviruses and whose lab Trump and others have suggested was the source of COVID-19—compared the pathogen’s sequence with those of other coronaviruses her team had sampled from bat caves and found that it did not match any of them. In response to calls for an independent, international investigation into how the virus originated, China has invited researchers from the World Health Organization to discuss the scope of such a mission.

Why People Believe It: People want a scapegoat for the immense suffering and economic fallout caused by COVID-19, and China—a foreign country and a competitor of the U.S.—is an easy target. Accidental lab releases of pathogens do sometimes occur, and although many scientists say this possibility is unlikely, it provides just enough legitimacy to support a narrative in which China intentionally engineered the virus to unleash it on the world.

○ 2 COVID-19 IS NO WORSE THAN THE FLU.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Trump has lied about the disease’s severity, saying it is no more dangerous than seasonal influenza. Trump himself admitted to journalist and author Bob Woodward in recorded interviews in early February and late March that he knew COVID-19 was more deadly than the flu and that he wanted to play down its severity.

Read more from this special report:
Confronting Misinformation

Why It’s False: The precise infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is hard to measure, but epidemiologists suspect that it is far higher than that of the flu—somewhere between 0.5 and 1 percent, compared with 0.1 percent for influenza. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the latter causes roughly 12,000 to 61,000 deaths per year in the U.S. In contrast, COVID-19 had caused 200,000 deaths in the country as of mid-September. Many people also have partial immunity to the flu because of vaccination or prior infection, whereas most of the world has not yet encountered COVID-19. So no, coronavirus is not “just the flu.”

Why People Believe It: Their leaders keep saying it. In addition to his repeated false claims that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu, Trump has also said—falsely—that the numbers of deaths from COVID-19 are exaggerated. In fact, reported deaths from COVID-19 are likely an undercount.

○ 3 YOU DON’T NEED TO WEAR A MASK.

Despite a strong consensus among public health authorities that masks limit transmission of coronavirus, many people (the president included) have refused to wear one. Georgia’s governor Brian Kemp went so far as to sign an executive order banning city governments from implementing mask mandates. He even sued Atlanta’s mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms when she instituted one, although he has since dropped the lawsuit. Nevertheless, as coronavirus cases spiked around the U.S. during the summer, even states that were once staunch holdouts implemented mask orders.

Why It’s False: Masks have long been known to be an effective means of what epidemiologists call source control (preventing a sick patient from spreading a disease to others). A recent analysis published in the Lancet looked at more than 170 studies and found that face masks can prevent COVID-19 infection. It has also been widely established that people can be infected with and spread COVID-19 without ever developing symptoms, which is why everyone should wear a mask to prevent asymptomatic people from spreading the virus.

Why People Believe It: Early guidance on masks from the CDC and the WHO was confusing and inconsistent, suggesting that members of the general public did not need to wear masks unless they had symptoms of an infection. The guidance was in part driven by a shortage of high-quality surgical and N95 masks, which the agencies said should be reserved for health care workers. Even though face coverings are now mandated or recommended in many states, some people refuse to wear one because they consider it emasculating or a violation of their civil liberties.

○ 4 WEALTHY ELITES ARE USING THE VIRUS TO PROFIT FROM VACCINES.

In a book and in the conspiracy theory film Plandemic, Judy Mikovits, who once published a high-profile but eventually retracted study on chronic fatigue syndrome, makes the unsubstantiated claim that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could be using their power to profit from a COVID-19 vaccine. She also asserts without evidence that the virus came from a lab and that wearing masks “activates your own virus.” An excerpt from the film was widely shared by anti-vaxxers and the conspiracy theory group QAnon. The video was viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram before it was taken down.

Why It’s False: There is no evidence that Fauci or Gates has benefited from the pandemic or profited from a vaccine. In fact, Fauci has sounded alarms throughout the pandemic about the risks of the virus, and Gates has a long history of philanthropy geared toward eliminating communicable diseases. Mikovits’s claims about the virus’s origin and the efficacy of masks also have no scientific support.

Why People Believe It: Wealthy or influential figures such as Gates and Fauci are often the target of conspiracy theories. Trump has at times attacked Fauci, a member of his own coronavirus task force, calling him an “alarmist.” Some of the president’s followers may find it more palatable to believe that Fauci is exaggerating the severity of the outbreak than to acknowledge the Trump administration’s failure to contain it.

○ 5 HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE IS AN EFFECTIVE TREATMENT.

When a small study in France suggested the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine might be effective at treating the disease, Trump and others seized on it. The study is now widely criticized, but some people have continued to tout the medication despite growing evidence that it does not benefit COVID-19 patients. In a tweet, Trump called the hydroxychloroquine treatment “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” and he has mentioned it repeatedly in his public coronavirus briefings, continuing to hype the drug. In late July he retweeted a video featuring Stella Immanuel, a Houston, Tex.–based physician (who has made questionable assertions in the past, including that doctors had used alien DNA in treatments and that demons cause certain medical conditions by having sex with people in their dreams), claiming that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19. The video was viewed tens of millions of times before social media companies took it down.

Why It’s False: Several studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine does not protect against COVID-19 in those who are exposed. The Food and Drug Administration initially issued an emergency use authorization for the drug, but the agency later warned against its use because of the risk of heart problems and ultimately revoked its authorization. And in June the National Institutes of Health halted its clinical trial of the medication, stating that although it was not harmful to patients, it did not provide any benefit.

Why People Believe It: Initial reports suggested hydroxychloroquine might be a potentially promising drug, and people are most likely to believe the first things they learn about a topic, a phenomenon called anchoring bias. And because Trump has repeatedly claimed that the drug is effective, his supporters may be more likely to believe reports that confirm their views rather than those that challenge them.

○ 6 INCREASES IN CASES ARE THE RESULT OF INCREASED TESTING.

As coronavirus cases surged in the U.S., Trump frequently claimed that the spikes were merely the result of more people being tested. He has tweeted that “without testing ... we would be showing almost no cases” and has said in interviews that the reason numbers appear to have gone up is that testing has increased.

Why It’s False: If this scenario were true, one would expect the percentage of positive tests to decrease over time. But numerous analyses have shown the opposite. The rate of positive tests rose in many states (such as Arizona, Texas and Florida) that had big outbreaks this past summer, and it decreased in states (such as New York) that controlled their outbreaks. In addition, hospitalizations and deaths increased along with cases, providing more evidence that the national increase in positive tests reflected a true increase in cases.

Why People Believe It: There was a severe shortage of tests in the U.S. early on during the pandemic, and their availability has increased (although actual testing remains far short of what is needed). It is logical to wonder whether more cases are simply being detected—if you look only at total cases and not at the proportion of positive tests or the rates of hospitalization and death.

○ 7 HERD IMMUNITY WILL PROTECT US IF WE LET THE VIRUS SPREAD THROUGH THE POPULATION.

Early on in the pandemic, some speculated that the U.K. and Sweden were planning to let the coronavirus circulate through their populations until they reached herd immunity—the point at which enough people are immune to the virus that it can no longer spread. (Both nations’ governments have denied that this was their official strategy, but the U.K. was late to issue a full lockdown, and Sweden decided against widespread restrictions.)

Why It’s False: There is a fundamental flaw with this approach: experts estimate that roughly 60 to 70 percent of people would need to get COVID-19 for herd immunity to be possible. Given the high mortality rate of the disease, letting it infect that many people could lead to millions of deaths. That tragedy is what happened during the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which at least 50 million people are thought to have perished. The U.K.’s COVID-19 death rate is among the world’s highest. Sweden, for its part, has had significantly more deaths than neighboring countries, and its economy has suffered despite the lack of a shutdown.

Why People Believe It: They want to get back to normal life, and without a widely available COVID-19 vaccine, the only way to achieve herd immunity is to let a substantial number of people get sick. Some have speculated that we may have already achieved herd immunity, but population-based antibody studies have shown that even the hardest-hit regions are far from that threshold.

○ 8 A COVID-19 VACCINE WILL BE UNSAFE.

Worrying reports have emerged that many people may refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine once it is available. Conspiracy theories about potential vaccines have circulated among anti-vaxxer groups and in viral videos. In Plandemic, Mikovits falsely claims that any COVID-19 vaccine will “kill millions” and that other vaccines have done so. Another conspiracy theory makes the ludicrous assertion that Gates has a secret plan to use vaccines to implant trackable microchips in people. Most Americans still support vaccination, but the few voices of opposition have been growing. A recent study observed that although clusters of anti-vaxxers on Facebook are smaller than pro-vaccination groups, they are more heavily interconnected with clusters of undecided people. One Gallup poll found that one in three Americans would not get a COVID-19 vaccine if it were available today and that Republicans were less likely to be vaccinated than Democrats.

Why It’s False: Vaccines save millions of lives every year. Before a vaccine is approved in the U.S., it must generally undergo three phases of clinical testing to show that it is safe and effective in a large number of people. The top COVID-19 vaccine candidates are currently being tested in large-scale trials in tens of thousands of people.

Why People Believe It: There is good reason to be cautious about the safety of any new vaccine or treatment, and the politicization of the fda under the Trump administration has raised legitimate concerns that any vaccine approval will be rushed. Nevertheless, previous safety trials of the top vaccine candidates did not find major adverse effects; larger trials for safety and efficacy are now underway. Nine pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines have pledged to “stand with science” and not release one unless it has been shown to be safe and effective.

CONFRONTING MISINFORMATION

When a Journalist Becomes a Disinformation Agent

Simulation games help newsrooms prepare for covering a chaotic election season


October 12, 2020

AUTHOR

Jen Schwartz is a senior features editor at Scientific American. She writes about how society is adapting (or not) to a rapidly changing world. Credit: Nick Higgins


I am not the editor in chief of a propaganda farm disguised as a far-right breaking news outlet. But one day last February, just before the world shut down, I got to play one.

About 70 journalists, students and digital media types had gathered at the City University of New York to participate in a crisis simulation. The crisis at hand was the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The game was designed to illuminate how we, as reporters and editors, would respond to a cascade of false and misleading information on voting day—and how public discourse might respond to our coverage. The exercise was hosted by First Draft, a research group that trains people to understand and outsmart disinformation.

After a morning workshop on strategies for reporting on conspiracy theories and writing headlines that don’t entrench lies, the organizers split us up into groups of about 10 people, then gave each “newsroom” a mock publication name. Sitting around communal tables, we assigned ourselves the roles of reporters, editors, social media managers and a communications director. From our laptops we logged into a portal to access the game interface. It looked like a typical work desktop: There was an e-mail inbox, an intraoffice messaging system that functioned exactly like Slack, a microblogging platform that worked exactly like Twitter and a social feed that looked exactly like Facebook. The game would send us messages with breaking events, press releases and tips, and the feeds would respond to our coverage. Several First Draft staffers at a table were the “communications desk,” representing any agency, person or company we might need to “call” to answer questions. Other than that, we received no instruction.


My newsroom was mostly made up of students from C.U.N.Y.’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and other local universities. The organizers gave us a few minutes to define our newsrooms’ identities and plan our editorial strategies. The room filled with nervous murmurings of journalists who wanted to fight the bad guys, to beat back misinformation and safeguard election day with earnest, clear-eyed coverage. But I had a different agenda, and I was the one in charge.

Read more from this special report:
Confronting Misinformation

“Sorry, team,” I said. “We’re going rogue.”

Simulations should include extreme scenarios if they are to properly scare people into preparing for the unexpected—into updating protocols and rearranging resources or tripping certain automated processes when things go awry. Yet journalists and scientists tend to resist engaging with the outlandish. We dismiss sensational outcomes, aiming to wrangle expectations back into the realm of reason and precedent. In recent years that strategy has often left us reeling. A Nature article published this past August explained why the U.S. was caught flat-footed in its response to COVID-19: despite the fact that government officials, academics and business leaders have participated in dozens of pandemic simulations over the past two decades, none of the exercises “explored the consequences of a White House sidelining its own public health agency,” wrote journalists Amy Maxmen and Jeff Tollefson.

The success of any scenario game, then, depends on the questions it raises. The game doesn’t need to predict the future, but it does need to pry players away from the status quo, to expand their sense of what is possible. And to stress-test the preparedness of a newsroom on November 3, 2020, things needed to get weird.

Disinformation scholars often warn that focusing on the intent of influence operations or the sophistication of their techniques overestimates their impact. It’s true that many disinformation tactics are not robust in isolation. But the targeted victim is fragile; pervasive anxiety and a deep social divide in America make us vulnerable to attacks from afar and within. And because it’s cheap and easy for bad actors to throw proverbial spaghetti at social feeds, occasionally something sticks, leading to massive amplification by major news organizations. This was my goal as an editor in chief of unreality.


The simulation started off slowly. A tip came in through e-mail: Did we see the rumor circulating on social media that people can vote by text message?

As other newsrooms began writing explainers debunking SMS voting, I assigned a reporter to write a “tweet” that would enhance confusion without outright supporting the lie. After a quick edit, we posted: We’re hearing that it’s possible to vote by text message. Have you tried to vote by SMS? Tell us about your experience! It went up faster than any other content, but the social Web reacted tepidly. A couple of people called us out for spreading a false idea. So we dug in with another post: Text message voting is the way of the future—but Democrats shut it down. Why are elites trying to suppress your vote? Story coming soon!

We continued this pattern of baseless suggestions, targeted at whatever people on the feed seemed to already be worried or skeptical about. Eventually some of the other newsrooms caught on that we might not be working in good faith. At first they treated our manipulations as myths to debunk with fact-laden explainers. But our coverage kept getting dirtier. When an editor from a respectable outlet publicly questioned the integrity of my senior reporter, I threatened to take legal action against anyone who maligned her. “We apologize to no one!” I yelled to my team.

My staff was having fun wreaking havoc. The social platforms in the game were controlled by First Draft organizers (who, I later learned, meted out eight “chapters” of preloaded content), as well as manual input from the simulation participants in real time. We watched the feeds react with more and more outrage to the “news” we published. Our comms director stonewalled our competitors, who kept asking us to take responsibility for our actions, even forming a coalition to call us out.

Then a new tip appeared: someone on social media said there was an active shooter at her polling place. Everyone’s attention shifted. The first newsroom to get a comment from the “local police” posted it immediately: At this time, we are not aware of any active shooting threat or event. We are investigating. While other teams shared the message and went to work reporting, I saw a terrible opening in the statement’s inconclusiveness. “Let’s question the integrity of the cops,” I whispered maniacally to my team.

We sent out a post asking whether the report could be trusted. In a forest of fear, the suggestion that voters were at risk from violence was a lightning bolt. Social media lit up with panic. A celebrity with a huge following asked her fans to stay safe by staying home. My newsroom quietly cheered. We had found an editorial focus, and I instructed everyone to build on it. We “tweeted” a dozen times, occasionally promising an in-depth story that never arrived.

Once we were on a roll, I paused to survey the room. I watched the other teams spending all their energy on facts and framing and to-be-sures, scrambling to publish just one article debunking the misleading ideas we had scattered like dandelion seeds. We didn’t even need to lie outright: maybe there was an active shooter! In the fog of uncertainty, we had exploited a grain of possible truth.

Abruptly, the organizers ended the game. Ninety minutes had somehow passed.

I took stock of myself standing up, leaning forward with my hands pressed to the table, adrenaline rippling through my body. I had spent the previous year researching digital disinformation and producing articles on its history, techniques and impact on society. Intellectually I knew that people and groups wanted to manipulate the information environment for power or money or even just for kicks. But I hadn’t understood how that felt.

I scanned the faces of my “colleagues,” seeing them again as humans rather than foot soldiers, and flinched at the way they looked back at me with concern in their eyes.

Our debrief of the simulation confirmed that my newsroom had sabotaged the media environment on Election Day.“You sent the other newsrooms into a tailspin,” First Draft’s deputy director Aimee Rinehart later told me. She said I was the first person to co-opt the game as a “bad steward of the Internet,” which made me wonder if future simulations should always secretly assign one group the role of wily propagandist.

It took hard alcohol and many hours for my nervous system to settle down. The game had rewarded my gaslighting with amplification, and I had gotten to witness the spread of my power, not just in likes and shares but through immediate “real-world” consequences.

Playing the bad guy showed me how the design of platforms is geared toward controlling minds, not expanding them. I’d known this, but now I felt why journalism couldn’t compete against influence operations on the high-speed battlefield of social media—by taking up the same arms as the outrage machine, we would become them. Instead we could strengthen our own turf by writing “truth sandwich” headlines and service articles that anticipate the public’s need for clarity. Because ultimately the problem wasn’t about truths versus lies or facts versus falsehoods. It was about stability and shared reality versus disorientation and chaos. And in that day’s simulation of the 2020 election, chaos had won by suppressing the vote.