Study finds "thriving gap" between students who attend high school remotely vs. in person

Data from the pandemic show high school students studying remotely suffered socially, emotionally, and academically

AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION

Research News

 

Washington/Philadelphia, July 14, 2021--New research finds that high school students who attended school remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered socially, emotionally, and academically compared with those who attended in person.

The study was published today in Educational Researcher (ER) by researchers Angela L. Duckworth, Tim Kautz, Amy Defnet, Emma Satlof-Bedrick, Sean Talamas, Benjamin Lira, and Laurence Steinberg. ER is a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

"Many news stories have reported on individual stories of teenagers who have suffered from anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges during the pandemic," said lead author Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and CEO of Character Lab. "This study gives some of the first empirical evidence of how learning remotely has affected adolescent well-being."

The study found a social, emotional, and academic "thriving gap" between students who had been attending school in person and their counterparts who had been attending remotely. The greater suffering of students attending school remotely held up when controlling for how students were faring on the same dimensions prior to the pandemic. Though not enormous in magnitude, the thriving gap was consistent across gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status--and even small effects are noteworthy when they impact millions of individuals.

On a 100-point scale, in-person students were rated higher than remote students on levels of social well-being (77.2 versus 74.8), emotional well-being (57.4 versus 55.7), and academic well-being (78.4 versus 77.3).

"Notably, the thriving gap was larger among students in 10th through 12th grades than it was among ninth graders," said Steinberg, a professor at Temple University.

"As policymakers gear up for national tutoring and remediation programs--which we agree are urgent priorities--we must recognize that our nation's students are not just lagging as performers, they are suffering as people," Duckworth said. "Meeting their intrinsic psychological needs--for social connection, for positive emotion, and authentic intellectual engagement--is a challenge that cannot wait."

As part of an ongoing research partnership with Orange County Public Schools, a large and demographically diverse public school district in Florida, the study authors had already administered the Character Lab Student Thriving Index--a confidential survey assessing students' current social, emotional, and academic experience--to over 6,500 students in February of 2020, just before the pandemic shut down schools.

Several months later, families in this district were offered the option of remote versus in-person classes for the 2020-21 school year. Two thirds of the students in the sample ended up attending school remotely, and one third attended school in person. Regardless of whether they were learning from home or attending classes at school, the same students completed the Student Thriving Index again in October 2020.

To capture social well-being, the survey included questions about fitting in at school, whether there was an adult in their school to whom they could turn for support or advice, and whether in their school there was an adult who always wanted them to do their best. For emotional well-being, teens responded on how often they were feeling happy, relaxed, and sad, as well as how they were feeling overall about their life. And for academic well-being, the survey asked how interesting teens found their classes, how important they found it to do well in their classes, and how confident they were that they could succeed in their classes if they tried.

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Study citation:
Duckworth, A. L., Kautz, T., Defnet, A., Satlof-Bedrick, E., Talamas, S., Lira, B., & Steinberg, L. (2021). Students attending school remotely suffer socially, emotionally, and academically. Educational Researcher. Prepublished July 14, 2021. doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211031551.

About AERA
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find AERA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About Character Lab
Character Lab's mission is to advance scientific insights that help kids thrive. Character Lab connects researchers with schools while promoting teacher and student voice throughout the process, with the ultimate goal of identifying conditions that lead to social, emotional, academic, and physical well-being for all young people.

 

Unlike other global crises, COVID-19 pandemic did not spark more smoking in its initial stage

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

Research News

Unlike other population-level stressful events such as natural disasters, COVID-19 has not resulted in a net increase in smoking, according to a new study from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Project, at the University of Waterloo.

The researchers also found that although nearly half of smokers reported that COVID-19 made them think about quitting, the vast majority of smokers did not change their smoking habits during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Led by Shannon Gravely, research assistant professor with the ITC Project, the study surveyed 6,870 smokers and vapers in four high-income countries--Australia, Canada, England, and the United States--during the first global wave of COVID-19 between April and June 2020. The team examined the association between COVID-19 and thoughts about quitting smoking, changes in smoking, and factors related to positive changes such as attempting to quit or reducing smoking.

Only 1.1 per cent of smokers in the four countries attempted to quit and 14.2 per cent reduced smoking, but this was offset by the 14.6 per cent who increased smoking, with 70.2 per cent reported no change.

"It is important to note that population-level stressful events, such as 9/11 and natural disasters, have often led to increased smoking," said Geoffrey Fong, professor of psychology at Waterloo and principal investigator of the ITC Project. "So, our findings that there was no net increase in smoking in response to COVID-19 may actually represent a positive result for public health."

The study found that those who thought about quitting smoking because of COVID-19 were predominantly females, ethnic minorities, those with financial stress, current vapers, less dependent smokers, those with greater concern about personal susceptibility of infection, and those who believe COVID-19 is more severe for smokers.

According to Fong, who was a co-author of the study, this latter finding may be the key to why the COVID-19 pandemic has not led to significant increases in smoking, compared to past tragedies.

"Unlike other population stressors such as earthquakes, which are unrelated to smoking, COVID-19 severity is indeed linked to smoking," Fong said. "Public health officials have mentioned the link as yet another reason for smokers to quit, and over 80 per cent of smokers across the four countries believed that smoking made COVID-19 more severe. And this led to the lack of an increase in smoking, unlike what we have seen after other tragedies."

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The study, Smokers' cognitive and behavioural reactions during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings from the 2020 ITC Four Country Smoking and Vaping Survey, was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE. The authors were Gravely, Fong, Lorraine V. Craig, K. Michael Cummings, Janine Ouimet, Ruth Loewen, Nadia Martin, Janet Chung-Hall, Pete Driezen, Sara C. Hitchman, Ann McNeill, Andrew Hyland, Anne C. K. Quah, Richard J. O'Connor, Ron Borland, Mary E. Thompson, and Christian Boudreau.

The study was funded by Health Canada's Substance Use and Addictions Program.

Hard to swallow: Coral cells seen engulfing algae for first time

New research into the crucial partnership between coral and algae may one day help prevent coral bleaching.

OKINAWA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (OIST) GRADUATE UNIVERSITY

VIDEO: DINOFLAGELLATES ARE SINGLE-CELLED ALGAE THAT ARE ESSENTIAL FOR KEEPING CORALS HEALTHY. WHEN DINOFLAGELLATES ARE ADDED TO CORAL CELL IN A PETRI DISH, THE CORAL CELLS QUICKLY ENGULF THE ALGAE. AT... view more 

CREDIT: OIST

• For the first time, scientists have seen stony coral cells engulf dinoflagellates - single-celled, photosynthetic algae that are crucial for keeping coral alive
  
• The researchers used a cell line called IVB5, which contains endoderm-like cells cultured from the stony coral, Acropora tenuis
  
• Around 40% of coral cells incorporated the algae in around 30 minutes and remained healthy for one month
  
• The research is a step towards understanding the partnership between coral and dinoflagellates and could shed light on how coral bleaching occurs

In a world-first, scientists in Japan have observed individual stony coral cells engulfing single-celled, photosynthetic algae.

The microscopic algae, known as dinoflagellates, were engulfed by cells cultured from the stony coral, Acropora tenuis, the scientists reported in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

"Dinoflagellates are crucial for keeping coral healthy and alive," said Professor Noriyuki Satoh, senior author of the study and head of the Marine Genomics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University. "Coral cells take up the algae and provide them with shelter and the building blocks for photosynthesis. In return, the algae provide the corals with nutrients that they synthesize."

However, in recent decades, this essential relationship has been placed under strain. Driven by pollution, acidification and rising ocean temperatures, stressed coral cells are expelling the microscopic and colorful algae in mass bleaching events, resulting in huge swathes of dead, white reefs.

Stony coral from the Acroporidae family - the most common type of coral found within tropical and subtropical reefs - are particularly susceptible to these bleaching events. These fast-growing corals lay down calcium carbonate skeletons and therefore play a key role in building coral reefs.

"For coral reef conservation, it's vital for us to fully understand the partnership between stony coral and the algae that live inside these animals, at the level of a single cell," explained co-first Professor Kaz Kawamura from Kochi University. "But until recently, this was very hard to achieve."

Coral cells are notoriously difficult to culture, so previously scientists had to rely on experimental systems of other closely related marine creatures, like sea anemones, to study the mechanism of how the dinoflagellates enter and leave cells.

It wasn't until April 2021 that the research team made a major leap forward, reporting in Marine Biotechnology that they had successfully cultured different cell lines from larvae of the stony coral, Acropora tenuis, in petri dishes.

For this study, the scientists focused on one coral cell line called IVB5. Many of the cells in this line have similar properties to endodermal cells, in terms of their form, behavior and gene activity. Importantly, in whole coral organisms, it is the endodermal cells that engulf the algae.

The scientists added the dinoflagellate, Breviolum minutum, to a petri dish containing the IVB5 coral cells.

Around 40% of the coral cells in the culture quickly formed long, finger-like projections that reached out to contact the dinoflagellates. The algae were then "swallowed" up, in a process taking around 30 minutes.

CAPTION

As marine heatwaves become more commonplace, coral reefs are expelling their microscopic and colorful algae and bleaching white. Scott Reef, Australia, April 2016.

CREDIT

Kochi University: Professor Emeritus Kazuo Kawamura, Associate Professor Satoko Sekida

"It was amazing to see - it was almost a dream!" said Prof. Satoh.

Over the following couple of days, the algae inside the cell were either broken down into fragments or were successfully enclosed into membrane-bound sacs, called vacuoles, within the cells. For the researchers, this hints at how the relationship possibly started millennia ago.

"It may be that originally, the ancestors of coral engulfed these algae and broke them down for food. But then over time, they evolved to use the algae for photosynthesis instead," co-first author, Dr. Satoko Sekida from Kochi University suggested.

The researchers are now using electron microscopes to gain more detailed images of how the coral cells engulf the dinoflagellates. They are also working on genetic experiments to pinpoint which coral genes are involved.

At this stage, the coral cells containing the algae live for around a month before dying. In the near future, the team hope to achieve a stable culture where both the coral cells and dinoflagellates can reproduce together.

"This would be very exciting as then we can ask new questions, like how the corals react when placed under stress," said Prof. Satoh. "This could give us a more complete understanding of how bleaching occurs, and how we can mitigate it."

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How does the world use emojis?

New study finds universals expressions across countries and continents

👹👺😄😢

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Research News

 

Before Millennials were over laugh-cry emojis, they were the most used emojis across the world, according to researchers at USC. The emoji was more popular than smiley faces say researchers who categorized millions of tweets across 30 countries and evaluated over 1700 emojis. Their study, "An empirical study of emoji usage on Twitter in linguistic and national contexts" was published in Online Social Networks and Media.

Mayank Kejriwal, a research assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and a research lead at the USC Information Sciences Institute who is the lead author on the paper, says approximately 100 emojis are used most often.

The most important take away? Emojis represent the human condition and that we are more alike than different. Universal emotions dominated, says Kejriwal. Less popular are the tribalism and differences demonstrated by showing flags.

While the term emoji comes from Japanese language, greatest use of emojis on Twitter came from the English-speaking world, Spanish speaking nations and Arabic speakers.

The countries most likely to use emojis outside the US? The Philippines, Brazil and India. Most prominent emoji out of the Middle East? Representations of love--the heart.

Across the world, coastal cities tend to use emojis more than inland areas.

Contextually, in Brazil, tweets about family were mostly likely accompanied by hearts, in the US, there were few tweets about family that were accompanied by emojis.

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The full study is available at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468696421000318

Nuclear-powered spacecrafts? NASA taps Blue Origin, GE to try it

NASA and the US Department of Energy awarded three $5m contracts to produce reactor-design concepts that could be used to ferry people and cargo to Mars someday.

Nuclear propulsion systems are more efficient than standard chemical-based rockets, meaning they hold promise for trekking faster for more ambitious missions that go deeper into space, according to United States space agency NASA [File: John Raoux/AP Photo]

By Ryan Beene

Bloomberg
13 Jul 2021

Nuclear energy has lost favor in much of the world, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to outer space.

The U.S. government is drawing on the expertise of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space venture, General Electric Hitachi Nuclear Energy and other companies to develop nuclear-powered spacecraft that can travel faster and farther — to Mars and beyond.

NASA and the Energy Department awarded three $5 million contracts to produce reactor-design concepts that could be used to ferry people and cargo to Mars or propel scientific missions to the outer reaches of the solar system, the space agency said in a statement Tuesday.

Defense contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. and Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc., as well as drone maker General Atomics and BWX Technologies Inc., which makes nuclear components and fuel, are among the companies involved in the effort.

“These design contracts are an important step towards tangible reactor hardware that could one day propel new missions and exciting discoveries,” Jim Reuter, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in the statement.

Nuclear propulsion systems are more efficient than standard chemical-based rockets, meaning they hold promise for traveling faster for more ambitious missions, deeper into space, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Meanwhile, nuclear energy now produces about 10% of the world’s electricity, down from a peak of 18% in the mid-1990s.

It could take several years to develop the technology for space travel, which faces significant hurdles. While nuclear power plants have been used for decades in submarines and aircraft carriers, placing one on an explosive rocket poses significant risks.

The nuclear space effort comes amid a resurgence in extra-planetary activity, with the U.S. government exploring Mars and planning the first manned mission to the moon in decades.

Meanwhile, companies backed by celebrity billionaires are racing to commercialize space tourism.

Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. on Sunday completed a suborbital test flight with founder Richard Branson aboard.

Amazon.com Inc. founder Bezos plans to fly to space next week on a rocket made by Blue Origin.

General Electric Co. made many of the 1970s- and 1980s-era reactors that derive energy from boiling water and that remain at the heart of the U.S. nuclear portfolio.

More recently, the company has specialized in smaller reactors that don’t need the same infrastructure, through its joint venture with Hitachi Ltd. Development and interest in bigger nuclear power has slowed in recent years due to cost overruns and backlash following the Fukushima, Japan, meltdown in 2011.
SOURCE: BLOOMBERG

 VELIKOVSKY WAS RIGHT

Physicists describe sun's electric field

by University of Iowa

University of Iowa physicists have gained new insights about the sun's electric field. The researchers measured electrons streaming from the sun, a main constituent of the solar wind, to determine the boundary in energy between electrons that escape the sun's clutches and those that don't. Credit: Jasper Halekas lab, University of Iowa

As the Parker Solar Probe ventures closer to the sun, we are learning new things about our home star.

In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report the first definitive measurements of the sun's electric field, and how the electric field interacts with the solar wind, the fast-flowing current of charged particles that can affect activities on Earth, from satellites to telecommunications.

The physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the sun's electric field, a feat made possible by the fact that the Parker Solar Probe jetted within 0.1 astronomical units (AU), or a mere 9 million miles, from the sun—closer than any spacecraft has approached. From the electrons' distribution, the physicists were able to discern the size, breadth, and scope of the sun's electric field more clearly than had been done before.

"The key point I would make is you can't make these measurements far away from the sun. You can only make them when you get close," says Jasper Halekas, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa and the study's corresponding author. "It's like trying to understand a waterfall by looking at the river a mile downstream. The measurements we made at 0.1 AU, we're actually in the waterfall. The solar wind is still accelerating at that point. It's really just an awesome environment to be in."

The sun's electric field arises from the interaction of protons and electrons generated when hydrogen atoms are stripped apart in the intense heat generated by fusion deep within the sun. In this environment, electrons, with masses 1,800 times less than that of protons, are blown outward, less constrained by gravity than their weightier proton siblings. But the protons, with their positive charge, exert some control, reining in some electrons due to the familiar attraction forces of oppositely charged particles.

"Electrons are trying to escape, but protons are trying to pull them back. And that is the electric field," says Halekas, a co-investigator for the Solar Wind Electrons, Alphas, and Protons instrument aboard the Parker Solar Probe, the NASA-led mission that launched in August 2018. "If there were no electric field, all the electrons would rush away and be gone. But the electric field keeps it all together as one homogenous flow."

Now, imagine the sun's electric field as an immense bowl and the electrons as marbles rolling up the sides at differing speeds. Some of the electrons, or marbles in this metaphor, are zippy enough to cross over the lip of the bowl, while others don't accelerate enough and eventually roll back toward the bowl's base.

"We are measuring the ones that come back and not the ones that don't come back," Halekas says. "There's basically a boundary in energy there between the ones that escape the bowl and the ones that don't, which can be measured. Since we're close enough to the sun, we can make accurate measurements of electrons' distribution before collisions occur further out that distort the boundary and obscure the imprint of the electric field."

From those measurements the physicists can learn more about the solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour jet of plasma from the sun that washes over the Earth and other planets in the solar system. What they found is the sun's electric field exertsr on how much of the acceleration is provided by the sun's electric field," Halekas says. "It looks like it's a small part of the total. It's not the main thing that gives the solar wind its kick. That then points to other mechanisms that might be giving the solar wind most of its kick."

The paper, "The sunward electron deficit: A telltale sign of the sun's electric potential," was published online July 14 in The Astrophysical Journal.

Physicists describe sun's electric field

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

Research News

 

IMAGE: UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PHYSICISTS HAVE GAINED NEW INSIGHTS ABOUT THE SUN'S ELECTRIC FIELD. THE RESEARCHERS MEASURED ELECTRONS STREAMING FROM THE SUN, A MAIN CONSTITUENT OF THE SOLAR WIND, TO DETERMINE... view more 

CREDIT: JASPER HALEKAS LAB, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

As the Parker Solar Probe ventures closer to the sun, we are learning new things about our home star.

In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report the first definitive measurements of the sun's electric field, and how the electric field interacts with the solar wind, the fast-flowing current of charged particles that can affect activities on Earth, from satellites to telecommunications.

The physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the sun's electric field, a feat made possible by the fact that the Parker Solar Probe jetted within 0.1 astronomical units (AU), or a mere 9 million miles, from the sun--closer than any spacecraft has approached. From the electrons' distribution, the physicists were able to discern the size, breadth, and scope of the sun's electric field more clearly than had been done before.

"The key point I would make is you can't make these measurements far away from the sun. You can only make them when you get close," says Jasper Halekas, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa and the study's corresponding author. "It's like trying to understand a waterfall by looking at the river a mile downstream. The measurements we made at 0.1 AU, we're actually in the waterfall. The solar wind is still accelerating at that point. It's really just an awesome environment to be in."

The sun's electric field arises from the interaction of protons and electrons generated when hydrogen atoms are stripped apart in the intense heat generated by fusion deep within the sun. In this environment, electrons, with masses 1,800 times less than that of protons, are blown outward, less constrained by gravity than their weightier proton siblings. But the protons, with their positive charge, exert some control, reining in some electrons due to the familiar attraction forces of oppositely charged particles.

"Electrons are trying to escape, but protons are trying to pull them back. And that is the electric field," says Halekas, a co-investigator for the Solar Wind Electrons, Alphas, and Protons instrument aboard the Parker Solar Probe, the NASA-led mission that launched in August 2018. "If there were no electric field, all the electrons would rush away and be gone. But the electric field keeps it all together as one homogenous flow."

Now, imagine the sun's electric field as an immense bowl and the electrons as marbles rolling up the sides at differing speeds. Some of the electrons, or marbles in this metaphor, are zippy enough to cross over the lip of the bowl, while others don't accelerate enough and eventually roll back toward the bowl's base.

"We are measuring the ones that come back and not the ones that don't come back," Halekas says. "There's basically a boundary in energy there between the ones that escape the bowl and the ones that don't, which can be measured. Since we're close enough to the sun, we can make accurate measurements of electrons' distribution before collisions occur further out that distort the boundary and obscure the imprint of the electric field."

From those measurements the physicists can learn more about the solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour jet of plasma from the sun that washes over the Earth and other planets in the solar system. What they found is the sun's electric field exerts some influence over the solar wind, but less than had been thought.

"We can now put a number on how much of the acceleration is provided by the sun's electric field," Halekas says. "It looks like it's a small part of the total. It's not the main thing that gives the solar wind its kick. That then points to other mechanisms that might be giving the solar wind most of its kick."

The paper, "The sunward electron deficit: A telltale sign of the sun's electric potential," was published online July 14 in The Astrophysical Journal.

###

Contributing authors include Laura Bercic, from University College London; Phyllis Whittlesey, Davin Larson, Marc Pulupa, and Stuart Bale, from the University of California, Berkeley; Matthieu Berthomier, from the University of Paris-Saclay; Justin Kasper, of the University of Michigan and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; Anthony Case and Michael Stevens, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; and Robert MacDowall, of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA funded the research.

Elon Musk Is Correct, I Am Specifically Attacking Space Itself and Not Just His Mars Colonization Project

Elon Musk is defending space against "those who attack space." Here are some counterpoints.


Tom McKay



Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has big plans to abandon our endangered species and colonize Mars, under the theory that a planet whose conditions are inimically hostile to human life will make us less endangered. Fair enough.

To this end, SpaceX is developing the Starship, a prototype rocket that could one day ferry colonists from our doomed world to the Red Planet and is currently slated for its first orbital flight as soon as the next few months. Not everyone is particularly on board with Musk’s Mars ambitions, citing everything from the colonial perspective that seems inherent to the idea to whether any sort of large-scale settlement of the planet is even possible, at least in the foreseeable future.

Musk has some thoughts on this. In a strange, poem-like tweet on Monday, the billionaire wrote that perhaps these critics just don’t see that “space represents hope for so many people.”

In Musk’s telling, these undefined critics are attacking the ephemeral concept of space (referring, presumably, to the interstellar void of the cosmos rather than the spatial dimensions that comprise our reality). In this, he is broadly wrong, as critics of Musk mostly fall into two camps: those attacking the systemic inequality that allows him to amass billions for his planetary escape pod while children starve elsewhere, and those attacking his erratic personality in the hopes Tesla stock will fall.

However, he is not completely wrong. I am attacking space. I will not rest until space knows exactly what kind of piece of shit it is. Give me an army, my compatriots, and I would invade space and raze it to the ground.

Why do I hate space so? Let me count the ways:

It is very cold.

If you die in space, over a very long period of time all of the matter inside you slowly breaks apart and spreads out real far, becoming more space. Space thinks it is better than us.
Weightlessness is briefly cool until you spill or vomit anything whatsoever, which you will, constantly.
Also, the food sucks.

Space is all the matter that couldn’t get its shit together after the Big Bang.

While backwards time travel seems to be impossible, superluminal space travel does allow for forwards time travel, which means it’s possible a future Elon Musk could return from space on a periodic basis to torment your children, and your children’s children, and your grandchildren’s children, and so forth.

 This is space’s fault.

In the above scenario, Musk could also get into politics and it’s not clear what that means for term limits.

My colleague Whitney Kimball points out that from a grammatical perspective, hate is a verb, and space is a non-entity and therefore cannot be a direct object, thus it is incorrect to say you hate space. While this argument seems ludicrous to me, considering it at all was in and of itself extremely annoying.
Star Trek: Enterprise was set in space.

My dad said he was just going out for cigarettes and would be back in a few minutes, but it turns out he was secretly the captain of the Event Horizon, which went into space and never came back.

You can’t actually go into space. You bring a tiny, rocket-powered can or impermeable suit filled with parts of Earth with you, and stay inside it, or you die.

Space is a construct of our limited perception. In reality, space is made of tiny little fundamental particles called spacinos, which are sentient, predatory, and hate us. Read more about this theory on my blog.

It contains the Moon, which I also hate.

In conclusion, space has social, economic, and political effects. Its chief export is deadly meteorites and high-energy gamma-ray bursts. 

Fuck space.



Tom McKay
Tom covers tech, politics, online extremism, and oddities for Gizmodo. His work has appeared on Mic, Yahoo News, AOL, HuffPo, Business Insider, Snoop Dogg's Merry Jane, Wonkette and The Daily Banter.

A strange meteorite unlocks clues about the origins of our solar system

Scientists studied an unusual meteorite to learn about the burst of UV light that shone on our future planets

By MATTHEW ROZSA
PUBLISHED JULY 8, 2021

Meteorite in orbit (Getty Images)

Most scientists dream of having a "Eureka!" moment — that precious instant when you realize you have discovered something new, wonderful and significant.

In movies, we imagine it occurring with a swell of epic music and perhaps some well-timed lightning strikes. As Professor Ryan C. Ogliore of Washington University in St. Louis tells it, however, the team of scientists he was on had a more anticlimactic build-up to their breakthrough.

"The first thing you think is, 'Oh, there's something we're doing wrong,'" Ogliore explained. "So we change things around and look at it again. If the weird thing is still there, then you think you have something good."

To be thorough, Ogliore and his team tested the anomalies they were studying in a number of different ways, but over and over again their research yielded the same hopeful conclusion.

"That when I was really confident that this was the right answer," Ogliore recalled.
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Their finding? Ogliore — working alongside his colleagues Lionel G. Vacher (who led the team), Clive Jones, Nan Liu and David A. Fike — had studied an ancient meteorite and learned that a long-dead massive star played an instrumental role in the creation of our solar system. It's a discovery they say could be used to someday find the building blocks of life in other solar systems.

Some background: After NASA's 2011 Genesis mission brought back solar wind samples, scientists discovered that oxygen isotopes on the Sun differ from those found on Earth. The most likely explanation was that the cosmic material, which would later form into our planets, was pounded by a burst of ultraviolet light.

But where did that light come from? Scientists have been at a loss to explain their findings — until now.

Vacher, Ogliore and their team of researchers found the answer in Acfer 094, a piece of an ancient asteroid found as a meteorite in Algeria more than 30 years ago. In addition to being one of the oldest meteorites ever discovered, it is also the only meteorite that contains cosmic symplectite — or very heavy oxygen isotopes.

Ogliore then came up with the idea of measuring sulfur isotopes in the cosmic symplectite to study the ancient ultraviolet radiation that accompanied the birth of our universe.

Their breakthrough, as published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, was the discovery that the light did not match the UV spectrum that would have come from our young sun — meaning the light had to have come from a nearby star.

"We conclude that the Sun's stellar neighbors, likely O and B stars in a massive-star-forming region, affected the composition of the Solar System's primordial building blocks," the authors wrote in the study. They concluded by pointing out that the isotope anomalies are not consistent with the type of ultraviolet irradiation of the gaseous hydrogen sulfide produced by the young Sun. It is, however, consistent with irradiation of hydrogen sulfide from nearby massive stars.
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That is why they believe that "a plausible scenario for the Sun's birth environment" is that it happened in "a large stellar cluster with at least one massive star (type O or B) in its vicinity."

As Ogliore explained to Salon, this is a very big deal.

"I think the goal of what I do and what scientists like me do is to understand the formation of the solar system," Ogliore observed. "We know that formation of planetary systems like our own is not rare in the galaxy. I think understanding the formation of our solar system gives us an understanding of this general property. That's super important because there is probably life out there too, in those other planetary systems."

MATTHEW ROZSA

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.

NASA uncovers hidden system of mysteriously draining lakes under Antarctica

The lakes grow and shrink beneath the ice.

By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor 
\

Changes in the ice surface of the Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica reveal the rapid draining of a lake deep below in 2019. (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory)

Scientists have discovered two new lakes buried deep beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

These hidden gems of frigid water are part of a vast network of ever-changing lakes hidden beneath 1.2 to 2.5 miles (2 to 4 kilometers) of ice on the southernmost continent. These lakes fill and drain over and over again in largely mysterious cycles that may influence how fast the ice sheet moves and how and where meltwater reaches the Southern Ocean. This flow, in turn, can change the currents in the Southern Ocean and potentially affect ocean circulation worldwide.

"It's not just the ice sheet we're talking about," study leader Matthew Siegfried, a geophysicist at the Colorado School of Mines, said in a statement. "We're really talking about a water system that is connected to the whole Earth system."

Related: Photos of Antarctica: The ice-covered bottom of the world

Hidden water

The lakes sit at the bottom of the ice sheet, where the ice meets the rocky Antarctic continent. Unlike in Greenland, where meltwater flows from the ice surface through crevasses and holes called moulins, Antarctica's lakes form from beneath the ice, probably as a result of pressure, friction and perhaps geothermal heat.

This water system was largely invisible until the advent of NASA's ICESat mission in 2003. The ICESat satellite used lasers to precisely measure the elevation of Antarctic ice. In 2007, Scripps Institution of Oceanography glaciologist Helen Amanda Fricker connected the elevation changes measured by ICESat to the dynamics of the lakes deep beneath the ice surface. As the lakes drain and fill, the ice above rises and falls, offering hints as to what's happening below.


Fricker's breakthrough opened up the possibility of tracking the lake system over time. ICESat, however, collected data for only six years. Its European Space Agency equivalent, CryoSat-2, collected similar data starting in 2010 but over a broader area and with less precision. In September 2018, NASA launched a new satellite, ICESat-2, which collects the highest-precision data yet.

"ICESat-2 is like putting on your glasses after using ICESat: The data are such high precision that we can really start to map out the lake boundaries on the surface," Siegfried said.

A dynamic system

In the new study, Siegfried and Fricker combined data from ICESat, CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2 to trace changes in the subglacial lake system from October 2003 to July 2020. They focused on three areas with good satellite coverage and known active lakes: the boundary between the Mercer and Whillans ice streams in West Antarctica; the lower MacAyeal Ice Stream, also in West Antarctica; and the upper Academy Glacier in East Antarctica.

At the Mercer and Whillans boundary, the researchers found two new lakes, which they dubbed the Lower Conway Subglacial Lake and the Lower Mercer Subglacial Lake. They also found that what was thought to be one lake under the MacAyeal ice stream was actually two.

Over time, these lakes experienced major change. The lakes beneath the Mercer and Whillans ice stream boundary are currently undergoing their third period of drainage in 17 years. Meanwhile, all of the lakes beneath the MacAyeal ice stream have followed their own patterns of draining and filling. The lowermost lake went through four fill-drain events during the study period, each taking only about a year to complete. The second lake drained between 2014 and 2015 and is currently filling up again, while the third lake drained just slightly between 2016 and 2017. Meanwhile, the lakes beneath Academy Glacier drained between 2009 and 2018.

All of these changes are puzzle pieces in scientists' understanding of the speed and direction of Antarctica's ice sheet flow. Already, researchers are finding the links between the under-ice lakes and the ocean: In January, a study co-authored by Fricker found that the drainage of one lake on the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica flushed as much as 198 billion gallons (750 billion liters) into the ocean in only three days, Live Science reported at the time.

The new study was published July 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Originally published on Live Science

 

Galactic gamma ray bursts predicted last year show up on schedule

by Robert Sanders, University of California - Berkeley

An artist’s depiction of a hiccup in the magnetic field of a magnetar — a highly magnetized neutron star — that produces a powerful gamma ray burst visible from across the galaxy. UC Berkeley physicists have found an unusual pattern to these bursts that could help pin down the precise mechanism triggering the hiccups and generating the soft gamma bursts. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith, USRA/GESTAR

Magnetars are bizarre objects—massive, spinning neutron stars with magnetic fields among the most powerful known, capable of shooting off brief bursts of radio waves so bright they're visible across the universe.

A team of astrophysicists has now found another peculiarity of magnetars: They can emit bursts of low energy gamma rays in a pattern never before seen in any other astronomical object.

It's unclear why this should be, but magnetars themselves are poorly understood, with dozens of theories about how they produce radio and gamma ray bursts. The recognition of this unusual pattern of gamma ray activity could help theorists figure out the mechanisms involved.

"Magnetars, which are connected with fast radio bursts and soft gamma repeaters, have something periodic going on, on top of randomness," said astrophysicist Bruce Grossan, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). "This is another mystery on top of the mystery of how the bursts are produced."

The researchers—Grossan and theoretical physicist and cosmologist Eric Linder from SSL and the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics and postdoctoral fellow Mikhail Denissenya from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan—discovered the pattern last year in bursts from a soft gamma repeater, SGR1935+2154, that is a magnetar, a prolific source of soft or lower energy gamma ray bursts and the only known source of fast radio bursts within our Milky Way galaxy. They found that the object emits bursts randomly, but only within regular four-month windows of time, each active window separated by three months of inactivity.

On March 19, the team uploaded a preprint claiming "periodic windowed behavior" in soft gamma bursts from SGR1935+2154 and predicted that these bursts would start up again after June 1—following a three month hiatus—and could occur throughout a four-month window ending Oct. 7.

On June 24, three weeks into the window of activity, the first new burst from SGR1935+2154 was observed after the predicted three month gap, and nearly a dozen more bursts have been observed since, including one on July 6, the day the paper was published online in the journal Physical Review D.

"These new bursts within this window means that our prediction is dead on," said Grossan, who studies high energy astronomical transients. "Probably more important is that no bursts were detected between the windows since we first published our preprint."

Linder likens the non-detection of bursts in three-month windows to a key clue—the "curious incident" that a guard dog did not bark in the nighttime—that allowed Sherlock Holmes to solve a murder in the short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze".

"Missing or occasional data is a nightmare for any scientist," noted Denissenya, the first author of the paper and a member of the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory at Nazarbayev University that was founded several years ago by Grossan, Linder and UC Berkeley cosmologist and Nobel laureate George Smoot. "In our case, it was crucial to realize that missing bursts or no bursts at all carry information."

The confirmation of their prediction startled and thrilled the researchers, who think this may be a novel example of a phenomenon—periodic windowed behavior—that could characterize emissions from other astronomical objects.

Since 2014, a magnetar in our galaxy (SGR1935+2154) has been emitting bursts of soft gamma rays (black stars). UC Berkeley scientists concluded that they occurred only within certain windows of time (green stripes) but were somehow blocked during intervening windows (red). They used this pattern to predict renewed bursts starting after June 1, 2021 (stripes outlined in blue at right), and since June 24, more than a dozen have been detected (blue stars): right on schedule. Credit: Mikhail Denissenya

Mining data from 27-year-old satellite

Within the last year, researchers suggested that the emission of fast radio bursts—which typically last a few thousandths of a second—from distant galaxies might be clustered in a periodic windowed pattern. But the data were intermittent, and the statistical and computational tools to firmly establish such a claim with sparse data were not well developed.

Grossan convinced Linder to explore whether advanced techniques and tools could be used to demonstrate that periodically windowed—but random, as well, within an activity window—behavior was present in the soft gamma ray burst data of the SGR1935+2154 magnetar. The Konus instrument aboard the WIND spacecraft, launched in 1994, has recorded soft gamma ray bursts from that object—which also exhibits fast radio bursts—since 2014 and likely never missed a bright one.

Linder, a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, had used advanced statistical techniques to study the clustering in space of galaxies in the universe, and he and Denissenya adapted these techniques to analyze the clustering of bursts in time. Their analysis, the first to use such techniques for repeated events, showed an unusual windowed periodicity distinct from the very precise repetition produced by bodies rotating or in orbit, which most astronomers think of when they think of periodic behavior.

"So far, we have observed bursts over 10 windowed periods since 2014, and the probability is 3 in 10,000 that while we think it is periodic windowed, it is actually random," he said, meaning there's a 99.97% chance they're right. He noted that a Monte Carlo simulation indicated that the chance they're seeing a pattern that isn't really there is likely well under 1 in a billion.

The recent observation of five bursts within their predicted window, seen by WIND and other spacecraft monitoring gamma ray bursts, adds to their confidence. However, a single future burst observed outside the window would disprove the whole theory, or cause them to redo their analysis completely.

"The most intriguing and fun part for me was to make predictions that could be tested in the sky. We then ran simulations against real and random patterns and found it really did tell us about the bursts," Denissenya said.

As for what causes this pattern, Grossan and Linder can only guess. Soft gamma ray bursts from magnetars are thought to involve starquakes, perhaps triggered by interactions between the neutron star's crust and its intense magnetic field. Magnetars rotate once every few seconds, and if the rotation is accompanied by a precession—a wobble in the rotation—that might make the source of burst emission point to Earth only within a certain window. Another possibility, Grossan said, is that a dense, rotating cloud of obscuring material surrounds the magnetar but has a hole that only periodically allows bursts to come out and reach Earth.

"At this stage of our knowledge of these sources, we can't really say which it is," Grossan said. "This is a rich phenomenon that will likely be studied for some time."

Linder agrees and points out that the advances were made by the cross-pollination of techniques from high energy astrophysics observations and theoretical cosmology.

"UC Berkeley is a great place where diverse scientists can come together," he said. "They will continue to watch and learn and even 'listen' with their instruments for more dogs in the night."

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Explore further

X-ray and radio bursts detected from magnetar 1E 1547.0–5408

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More information: Mikhail Denissenya et al, Distinguishing time clustering of astrophysical bursts, Physical Review D (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.104.023007

Journal information: Physical Review D 

Provided by University of California - Berkeley