Facebook-owner Meta says it is considering steps to curb Russian government misinformation

© Reuters/DADO RUVIC

By Elizabeth Culliford - Thursday

(Reuters) - Facebook-owner Meta has removed hacking campaigns, influence networks and scam operations amid the war in Ukraine, according to a report released on Thursday by the social media company, which also said it was reviewing additional steps to address misinformation from Russian government pages.

"We're constantly reviewing our policies based on the evolving situation on the ground and we are actively now reviewing additional steps to address misinformation and hoaxes coming from Russian government pages," said Meta's president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, on a call with reporters.

Russia has battled big tech companies to control online information flows after its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, which Moscow calls a "special military operation." It has banned Facebook and Instagram, and throttled Twitter by slowing its service. Twitter said this week it will not amplify or recommend Russian government accounts to users.

In its first quarterly adversarial threat report, Meta said government-linked actors from Russia and Belarus had engaged in cyber espionage and covert online influence operations, including an influence operation linked to the Belarusian KGB.

It said there had been other continued attempts from networks it had previously disrupted, including further efforts by the threat actor Ghostwriter to hack the Facebook accounts of dozens of Ukraine military members.

Meta said in the report it had also removed a network of about 200 accounts operated from Russia that coordinated to falsely report people, mostly in Ukraine and Russia, for violations like hate speech or bullying.

The mass reporting was primarily coordinated in a cooking-themed Facebook Group which had about 50 members when Meta took it down in March.

Meta said it had also removed tens of thousands of accounts, pages and groups trying to use the war in Ukraine to scam users and make money by driving people to ad-filled websites or selling them merchandise. It said spammers around the world had used tactics such as streaming live-gaming videos or reposting popular content including other people's videos from Ukraine to pretend they were sharing live updates from the crisis.

Meta detailed other takedowns including the removal of two cyberespionage operations from Iran, an influence campaign in Brazil that posed as environmental activists defending deforestation in the Amazon, and a network in the Philippines that claimed credit for bringing down and defacing news websites.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler)

ZOMBIE CRYPTO

Facebook’s Plans for ‘Zuck Bucks’ Crypto Rise From the Dead
Matt Novak - Thursday
Gizmodo

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is still planning to create a digital currency, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The news comes after Facebook was said to have abandoned its cryptocurrency plans this past February—a project originally called Libra when it was first announced in June of 2019, but rebranded as Diem after facing intense scrutiny from politicians around the globe.

Mark Zuckerberg’s dream to release a digital currency seemed to be nixed after politicians smelled blood in the water and grilled Facebook leadership about their plans. One congressman, Democrat Brad Sherman of California, even told a Facebook executive during hearings in 2019 that a currency being released by the tech giant would be worse than 9/11. Sherman called the hypothetical currency “Zuck Bucks,” a name that’s apparently stuck internally at Facebook.

But Zuckerberg still wants to make his fake money a reality, provided he can find a way to do it without getting heat from governments around the world. The Times writes that staffers at Meta are trying to find the “least regulated way to offer a digital currency,” a tack that shouldn’t surprise anyone coming from a CEO enamored with the phrase “move fast and break things.”

Facebook declined to address whether the new report was true, delivering a vanilla statement about how the company is always striving for yadda yadda yadda.

“We have no updates to share today. We continuously consider new product innovations for people, businesses, and creators. As a company, we are focused on building for the metaverse and that includes what payments and financial services might look like,” a Meta company spokesperson told Gizmodo by email.

Creating currencies has traditionally been the domain of governments, though private companies have dabbled in creating their own exclusive currencies in the past. The most horrendous example from the 19th century was known as company scrip, a kind of privately issued money paid to employees that could only be redeemed at company-owned stores, often in company-owned towns.

Previously, private individuals who tried to create their own currencies were shut down by the U.S. government, like the case of Liberty Dollar in the 2000s, dollars and coins created by libertarians who tried to make a currency backed by gold and silver. But creating your own currency is no longer seen as an inherently fraudulent activity, thanks to the mainstream popularity of Bitcoin and the web3 wave. Facebook wants to capitalize on that in every way possible, especially since executives have bet on the metaverse as the company’s future.

Zuck’s plans for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), first announced in March, are apparently still happening, with Instagram possibly introducing the feature in May, according to the Times. What does that mean in practice? We still don’t know. Non-fungible tokens are little more than a receipt to a hyperlink, despite the popular misconception that they’re something akin to digital trading cards.

But all of that confusion could be the key to Facebook’s potential success with web3. No one knows what it really is, and the cryptocurrency space is filled with plenty of scammers. If Meta can launch its own token and brand it as an innocuous way to pay for trivial things, it could be a launching pad for much larger ambitions. One day you’re spending three Zuck Bucks on a new cartoon avatar and the next thing you know you’ve just bought a car on Facebook Marketplace with the same currency.

Stephane Kasriel, the head of Meta’s finance division, reportedly wrote a memo in January, cited by the Times, that makes it clear the world’s biggest social media company wants to figure out a way to capitalize.

“We’re making changes to our product strategy and road map . . . so we can prioritize on building for the metaverse and on what payments and financial services will look like in this digital world,” Kasriel wrote, according to the Times.

Zuck is clearly intent on making his own money. The only question is whether the third time’s the charm.

Updated with comment from Meta at 10:03 a.m. ET.

The Bitcoin Mining Showdown In New York’s Wine Country

Lindsay Muscato - Thursday

TIME

When I reach Rick Rainey on the phone, he’s barreling down a highway in his Subaru with samples of Riesling in tow. “I’m out here spreading the Finger Lakes love,” he tells me—which means, he’s testing his winery’s wares on potential buyers and acting as de facto ambassador for his rural pocket of New York, known as a wine-country escape with unique glacial lakes (and brutal winters). But the area has also become a flashpoint because, like a growing number of areas across the U.S., it’s contending with an unfamiliar neighbor: Bitcoin.

For people like Rainey, who spends a lot of time thinking about dirt and weather, the company in question, Greenidge Generation Holdings, represents an outside force that hogs energy and water resources to mine cryptocurrency. For one thing, it sucks in and spits out millions of gallons of water each day, as a consequence of its steam-powered turbines. Rainey says: “You come to the winery, you sit down, and I hand you a glass. It’s tangible. It’s very there. The Bitcoin thing—it’s millions of gallons of warm water being dumped back into the lake every day and we all go, ‘For what, again?’”

And he’s not alone. When it comes to understanding Bitcoin, though, it’s clear environmental advocates know what it is, because they’ve had to become experts over the last year in their fight for more oversight of the former power plant-turned-Bitcoin-mining operation.

The intricate details of Bitcoin’s global environmental impact have long been debated, unpacked in online conversations, white papers, and studies. Critics say mining is wildly inefficient, using as much energy as some small countries. Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures wrote last year: “Bitcoiners are forced to defend the costs of this industry while the critics enjoy an apparently conscience-free right to selectively question the energy uses of specific industries.”

But now these abstract, longstanding debates feel, as Rainey says, very there.

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. To sign up, click here.

Concerns are coalescing not just in New York but in Kentucky, West Virginia, Oregon, Texas, and more—questioning how much local economies are really benefiting from crypto mining, especially given the energy and environmental impact tradeoffs. Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, Senate Finance Committee chair, is probing crypto-mining companies to show they’re having the promised positive impact on distressed communities. And on March 29, a coalition of heavy-hitting environmental activists launched a new campaign, Change the Code, Not the Climate, demanding that Bitcoin reduce its environmental footprint.

While powerful crypto players like Ethereum are working to dramatically reduce their energy use, it’s easier said than done for Bitcoin.


The Greenidge Generation power plant in Dresden, N.Y. 

Courtesy Marissa Solomon

And for Yvonne Taylor, vice-president of Seneca Lake Guardian, an organization opposing Greenidge, it’s not just about the broader climate impact—local impacts are front and center, too. “They’re going to be emitting over a million tons of CO2 equivalents into the atmosphere every year, in addition to harmful particulate matter,” she says. In farm country, she says, that’s a huge problem for delicate crops like grapes.

Another major concern includes the intake and discharge of millions of gallons of lake water, as Rainey mentioned. Residents argue that returned lake water is warm enough to cause problems for wildlife, and some have even said that parts now feel like a hot tub. Greenidge, however, fiercely denies these claims. The company says in a statement, “We fully adhere to our existing air and water permits and will continue to do so.”

“One thing the Greenridge story really highlights is the materiality of these technologies,” says Elizabeth Renieris, professor of tech ethics at the University of Notre Dame, “Just as with the conversations around data, AI, and cloud computing before, blockchain and cryptocurrencies often rely on ethereal terms … to obscure the physical and material impacts of the tech, including, in this case, very real environmental and social impacts.”

“I’ve never once said you shouldn’t invest in cryptocurrency,” says Rainey. “Do whatever the hell you want to do. I also have the right to push back. We will do what anyone would do, to protect a backyard. This is a climate on the edge.”

Recently, advocates against Greenidge thought they were facing something of a precipice. They expected a major decision from New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, which could have denied an upcoming air permit renewal or even declared a moratorium on this kind of crypto mining. Instead the Department of Environmental Conservation delayed a decision until later this summer. It’s the second time this permit renewal has been pushed forward.

But it’s a decision that can’t afford to wait, says Taylor, and not just for her area— it’s one to watch for the country at large. She says that New York’s green laws are bolder than most, and the Finger Lakes region, though rural, is also partially wine-country-rich, and has more sway than some other places with crypto plants.

“This is a test case for how other underutilized or decommissioned power plants across the state are going to fall, and frankly, beyond,” Taylor says. “You’ll see dozens revving up and reopening again to guzzle fuel and cause problems in other communities. We’re kind of ground zero.”

Shell raises Russia writedown to as much as $5 billion

By Ron Bousso

LONDON (Reuters) - Shell will write down up to $5 billion following its decision to exit Russia, more than previously disclosed, while soaring oil and gas prices boosted trading activities in the first quarter, the company said on Thursday.

The post-tax impairments of between $4 billion and $5 billion in the first quarter will not impact the company's earnings, Shell said in an update ahead of its earnings announcement on May 5.

Shell, whose market capitalisation is around $210 billion, had previously said the Russia writedowns would reach around $3.4 billion. The increase was due to additional potential impacts around contracts, writedowns of receivables, and credit losses in Russia, a Shell spokesperson said.

Shell shares were down 1.2% at the start of London trading.

The start of 2022 marked one of the most turbulent periods in decades for the oil and gas industry as Western companies including Shell rapidly pulled out of Russia, severing trading ties and winding down joint ventures following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Shell said it will exit all its Russian operations, including a major liquefied natural gas plant in the Sakhalin peninsula in the eastern flank of the country.

Shell did not provide any guidance on the future of its stakes in Russian projects.

Benchmark oil prices soared to an average of more than $100 a barrel in the quarter, their highest since 2014, while European gas prices hit a record high.

The unprecedented volatility in commodity prices in recent months has pushed several traders to the brink as they scrambled to sharply increase downpayments for oil and LNG cargoes.

Shell, the world's largest liquefied natural gas trader, said earnings from LNG trading were expected to be higher in the quarter compared with the previous three months. Earnings from oil trading are set to be "significantly higher" in the quarter.

Cashflow in the quarter would be negatively impacted by "very significant" outflows of around $7 billion as a result of changes in the value of oil and gas inventories.

Shell's fuel sales averaged 4.3 million barrels per day in the quarter, down from 4.45 million bpd in the previous quarter, Shell said. LNG liquefaction volumes were slightly higher on the quarter, averaging 8 million tonnes.

(Reporting by Ron Bousso; Editing by Jason Neely and David Holmes)

Edmonton Journal

Opinion: Edmonton finally undertaking ecological thinking

Raquel Feroe , Kristine Kowalchuk , Rod Olstad , Mary Lou McDonald - 

Edmonton just got a whole lot healthier. On Monday, city council approved two policies that were long overdue: ending the aerial spraying of wetlands around the city (which we’d been spending over half a million dollars a year on, during a global biodiversity crisis) and committing to a 2023 cosmetic pesticide ban (preventing the non-essential use of pesticides).


A Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly feeds on some flower nectar in Edmonton on the first day of summer in 2021.

The former means protecting the birds, dragonflies, and other species that naturally control mosquito populations. Edmonton has apparently had an aerial mosquito spraying program since 1974. Well, Canada and the U.S. have lost nearly one third of birds since 1970, and scientific research points to the collapse in insect numbers as a main cause. The greatest decline has been in “aerial insectivores.” Bank swallows, for example, were once common in Edmonton’s river valley; after a 98-per-cent decline in the last 40 years, however, they are now a threatened species. As every elementary school child knows, we can’t simply remove the base of the food chain.

Most Edmontonians get this. In a 2019 survey , citizens’ top priorities in city “pest” and “weed” management were:

Health of wildlife, including pollinators that might be exposed to pesticides: 93 per cent;

Health of the public that might be exposed to pesticides: 85 per cent;

Health of aquatic ecosystems that might be exposed to pesticides: 85 per cent.

Thankfully, a majority of council listened to citizens and voted for ecological (and economical) thinking. An even greater majority — 12 to one — voted in favour of a cosmetic pesticide ban beginning next year. This will ensure that the landscape alternatives the city is undertaking — including permaculture, naturalization, and urban gardening — will not be undermined by pesticide use. Currently, pesticides sprayed on lawns, golf courses, and university grounds drift in the air, enter the waterways, and accumulate in the soil. What would be the point of planting wildflowers or vegetables if we continued poisoning the birds, bees, and butterflies they are meant to support, and need support from, to be healthy?

Over 180 cities across Canada already have cosmetic pesticide bans — some for over 20 years. They’ve done so to protect human and environmental health. Health Canada registers pesticides based not on “safety” but rather on “acceptable risk,” and is in court now for re-registering glyphosate, deemed a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization. The provinces, meanwhile, only enforce Health Canada’s regulations (and a scathing recent audit showed Alberta’s deficiency in even doing this). So cities have acted.

Edmonton, however, continued to allow pesticides linked to cancer and other diseases, especially in children. A 2017 city audit found that between 2010 and 2016, city pesticide use more than doubled. Despite promises since then, increases have continued — sometimes by outrageous amounts. For example, use of acephate (linked to lower IQ in children) increased 7,016 per cent from 2019 to 2020. The city injects this product into boulevard trees even though the chemical is 10 times more toxic to birds than DDT. What happens if a woodpecker eats an insect from a treated tree?

Pesticide use occurs even in the river valley, despite the fact it is a high-use, ecologically sensitive area, and despite the fact pesticides should not be used next to rivers. Kudos to city council for saying “no more.”

The health emergency we face today is not a need to control inconvenient “pests” or “weeds” but harm from pesticide exposure, disease caused by destruction of nature, and antimicrobial resistance (superbugs). The World Health Organization has now adopted a “One Health” approach to acknowledge that human and environmental health are inseparable — that the best way to protect ourselves is through supporting healthy ecosystems. Going to war against nature leads to far greater problems (including for us) that we urgently need to recognize.

The pathway is clear. Stop spraying, and start protecting nature. Restore wetlands for dragonflies. Allow the bank swallows to rebound. Plant resilient turf on golf courses. Celebrate organic food growing. Such a shift in turn enables new possibilities. In Montreal, citizens are reclaiming back alleys for planting gardens, supporting pollinators and birds, and creating safe places for kids to play.

These are possibilities our city can now embrace. It was a major win that Edmonton is finally joining other cities in undertaking ecological thinking.

Dr. Raquel Feroe and Kristine Kowalchuk are with Pesticide Free Edmonton; Rod Olstad is with the Edmonton Chapter, Council of Canadians; Mary Lou McDonald is with Safe Food Matters.

IMPERIALISTS TAKE WESTERN SAHARA FROM THE POLISARIO 

Morocco, Spain patch up diplomatic feud after Spanish shift on Western Sahara

RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco said on Thursday it will open a new page in its ties with Spain, apparently ending a diplomatic crisis after Madrid supported Rabat on the question of sovereignty over Western Sahara.

During a meeting in Rabat, King Mohammed VI and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez "reiterated their willingness to usher a new phase, based on mutual respect, mutual trust, permanent consultation and frank and loyal cooperation," a statement issued by the Royal Palace said on Thursday.

MASONIC HANDSHAKE

© Reuters/MONCLOA

Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez meets with Moroccan King Mohammed VI at the Royal Palace in Rabat

It also said Sanchez reaffirmed a position he has expressed last month, describing Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara as "the most serious, realistic and credible" basis for solving the conflict.

Last month's Spanish statement showed a shift in the country's policy in favour of Morocco's claim to the territory, a former Spanish colony, where the Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks to establish an independent state

The shift was heavily criticized in Spain where a wide majority of lawmakers, including from the left- and right-wing opposition as well as Unidas Podemos, the junior government partner to Pedro Sanchez's Socialist Party, voted a resolution against the foreign policy change."What is not understandable is this turn from the Socialist Party," Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz, from Unidas Podemos, said after the vote. "I suspect it is related to the prime minister's trip."


© Reuters/MONCLOASpanish Prime Minister Sanchez meets with Moroccan King Mohammed VI at the Royal Palace in Rabat

Spain is Morocco’s main trading partner and the two countries have worked together on issues including migration, anti-terrorism and energy.The diplomatic move though has strained the relationship between Madrid and Morocco's arch-rival in the region, Algeria, which supplies gas to Spain.The relationship between Spain and Morocco had turned glacial last year after Spain admitted Polisario leader Brahim Ghali for medical treatment, without officially telling Rabat.While he was hospitalized, Moroccan authorities appeared to relax border controls with Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in northern Morocco, leading to an influx of at least 8,000 migrants, most of whom were later returned.The Spanish support for the autonomy plan comes after similar positions by the United States, Germany, France, Israel and other countries in Africa and the Arab world.Polisario Front and Algeria reject autonomy and insist on holding an independence referendum.


© Reuters/MONCLOASpanish Prime Minister Sanchez meets with Morocco's Prime Minister Akhannouch in Rabat

The United Nations has urged parties to the conflict to negotiate in a spirit of compromise towards a "mutually acceptable solution".

(Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi in Rabat and Inti Landauro in Madrid; Editing by Alistair Bell)

UN inaction on China abuses 'huge disappointment': Uyghur campaigner


AFP - Thursday

The UN rights chief has miserably failed to address China's "genocide" against the Uyghur minority, a leading campaigner told AFP, demanding that a long-delayed report on abuses be released "immediately".

Uyghur campaigner Rushan Abbas, who is American, decried that Michelle Bachelet had, to date, been so restrained in her criticism of the well-reported rights violations taking place in China's far-western Xinjiang region.

"I am very, very disappointed in her," Abbas told AFP on the sidelines of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, insisting that what is happening "is clearly genocide".

If the UN high commissioner for human rights herself "does not defend the founding principles of the United Nations and fundamental rights... who is going to be out there to defend innocent people like my sister?"

"We have been begging for her to speak up, to do something," said Abbas, who maintains her activism led to China detaining her sister, retired doctor Gulshan Abbas, almost four years ago.

She said she had been very hopeful when Bachelet, a former Chilean president and torture survivor, became the UN rights chief in 2018.

"We thought she was going to remember and defend justice," she said, lamenting that instead Bachelet has been all but "silent".

"There can be no neutrality in genocide."

The US government and lawmakers in a number of other Western countries have also labelled China's treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang "genocide" -- a charge Beijing vehemently denies.

Rights groups say that at least one million mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in "re-education camps" in the region, and face widespread rights abuses, including forced sterilisation and forced labour.

- 'What is she waiting for?' -

Bachelet has issued cautious criticism, but observers suggest she has refrained from more forceful statements as she has strived to negotiate a visit to Xinjiang with "meaningful and unfettered access".

She recently announced that an agreement had finally been reached and she will visit the region in May.

Rights groups welcomed the visit, but voiced concern it might delay further a long-postponed report by Bachelet's office on the rights situation in Xinjiang.

Diplomatic sources say the report has been ready since last August.

"She needs to release that report. She has all the evidence," Abbas insisted, asking: "What is she waiting for? The green light from the Chinese government?"

Abbas insisted publishing the report was more important than the visit, which would certainly be "staged, with coached interviews", and used by Beijing for "propaganda".

"If she doesn't release the report, and if she doesn't have unfettered access, which she will not... this trip will hurt the Uyghur people."

Abbas meanwhile said that if Bachelet does go, she hopes she will ask to meet with her sister, whom she has not heard from since her "abduction" in September 2018.

"At least give us a proof of life," she said. "I don't know where she is, what kind of health situation she has."

- 'Hypocrisy' -

Abbas also slammed the "hypocrisy" of countries and companies continuing to do business with China, pointing to the stark difference in the reaction to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

"All those companies rightfully left Russia so quickly, but they're all doing business in China," she said, suggesting the different approach might be because "these companies are not making enough money in Russia."

"But everybody has double standards when it comes to (China's) genocide," she said, insisting that in the "information era, the 21st century, no one can claim ignorance" about what is happening in Xinjiang.

Abbas hailed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's blistering address to the UN this week, and his call for it to "dissolve" if it could not act to halt atrocities in his country.

"I couldn't agree with him more," she said.

The UN's lack of action "has been a huge disappointment for Uyghurs, and now they are being a huge disappointment for President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people.

"They must act."

nl/rjm/kjm

Earliest-known galaxy offers clues about the primordial universe

By Will Dunham - Thursday

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers have discovered what may be the earliest and most distant galaxy ever observed, one that formed relatively soon after the Big Bang event that marked the origin of the universe and may be populated by the novel first generation of stars.

The galaxy, called HD1, dates from a bit more than 300 million years after the Big Bang that occurred about 13.8 billion years ago, researchers said on Thursday. The observations suggest HD1 formed stars at a staggering rate - perhaps about 100 new stars annually - or instead harbored what would be the earliest-known supermassive black hole, they added.

Because of how long light takes to travel immense distances - 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km) in a year - observing objects such as HD1 amounts to peering back in time. If the data is confirmed by future observations, HD1 would supplant one called GN-z11 as the earliest-known galaxy by about 100 million years. HD1 would be considered the earliest and furthest known astronomical entity.


© Reuters/HARIKANE ET ALTimeline graphic displays the earliest galaxy candidates and the history of the universe

The researchers used data from telescopes in Hawaii and Chile and the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope. They hope to obtain more clarity using the James Webb Space Telescope, due to become operational within months after being launched by NASA in December.

"Observational information on HD1 is limited and other physical properties remain a mystery including its shape, total mass and metallicity," said University of Tokyo astrophysicist Yuichi Harikane, lead author of research detailing the discovery published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Metallicity refers to the proportion of material other than the gases hydrogen and helium that were present in the primordial universe.

"The difficulty is that this is almost the limit of the capabilities of current telescopes in terms of both sensitivity and wavelength," Harikane added.

Galaxies are vast assemblages of stars and interstellar matter bound by gravitational attraction, like the Milky Way in which our solar system resides. The first galaxies, arising 100 million to 150 million years after the Big Bang, were less massive and denser than those existing today, with many fewer stars.

The researchers said HD1, with a mass perhaps 10 billion times greater than our sun, may have been populated with the very first generation of stars. These so-called Population III stars are hypothesized as extremely massive, luminous, hot and short-lived, composed almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium.

"After the Big Bang, some regions in space ended up being denser than others, and this attracted progressively more matter. This effect created large concentrations of gas, some of which collapsed to form stars," said astrophysicist Fabio Pacucci of the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, lead author of a related study

 https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mnrasl/slac035/6564647?redirectedFrom=fulltext in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were absent in the universe's initial stages, forged later inside the earliest stars and then spewed into interstellar space when they exploded at the ends of their life cycles.

HD1 was observed to possess extreme ultraviolet luminosity. Population III stars could emit more UV light than ordinary stars, with HD1 possibly "undergoing a very abrupt starburst," Pacucci said.

An alternative explanation for the UV luminosity could be a supermassive black hole about 100 million times more massive than our sun situated inside HD1, Pacucci added. Many galaxies including the Milky Way hold supermassive black holes at their centers. Until now, the earliest-known one of these was dated to about 700 million years after the Big Bang.

The earliest stars and galaxies paved the way for those existing today.

"The first galaxies ... were a millionth of the mass of the Milky Way and much denser. One way to think of them is as the building blocks in the construction project of present-day galaxies, like our own Milky Way," Harvard University theoretical physicist and study co-author Avi Loeb said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Dark matter could be a cosmic relic from extra dimensions

Robert Lea - 
Live Science


Dark matter, the elusive substance that accounts for the majority of the mass in the universe, may be made up of massive particles called gravitons that first popped into existence in the first moment after the Big Bang. And these hypothetical particles might be cosmic refugees from extra dimensions, a new theory suggests.

The researchers' calculations hint that these particles could have been created in just the right quantities to explain dark matter, which can only be "seen" through its gravitational pull on ordinary matter. "Massive gravitons are produced by collisions of ordinary particles in the early universe. This process was believed to be too rare for the massive gravitons to be dark matter candidates," study co-author Giacomo Cacciapaglia, a physicist at the University of Lyon in France, told Live Science.

But in a new study published in February in the journal Physical Review Letters, Cacciapaglia, along with Korea University physicists Haiying Cai and Seung J. Lee, found that enough of these gravitons would have been made in the early universe to account for all of the dark matter we currently detect in the universe.

The gravitons, if they exist, would have a mass of less than 1 megaelectronvolt (MeV), so no more than twice the mass of an electron, the study found. This mass level is well below the scale at which the Higgs boson generates mass for ordinary matter — which is key for the model to produce enough of them to account for all the dark matter in the universe. (For comparison, the lightest known particle, the neutrino, weighs less than 2 electronvolts, while a proton weighs roughly 940 MeV, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.)

The team found these hypothetical gravitons while hunting for evidence of extra dimensions, which some physicists suspect exist alongside the observed three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension, time.

In the team's theory, when gravity propagates through extra dimensions, it materializes in our universe as massive gravitons.

But these particles would interact only weakly with ordinary matter, and only via the force of gravity. This description is eerily similar to what we know about dark matter, which does not interact with light yet has a gravitational influence felt everywhere in the universe. This gravitational influence, for instance, is what prevents galaxies from flying apart.

"The main advantage of massive gravitons as dark matter particles is that they only interact gravitationally, hence they can escape attempts to detect their presence," Cacciapaglia said.

In contrast, other proposed dark matter candidates — such as weakly interacting massive particles, axions and neutrinos — might also be felt by their very subtle interactions with other forces and fields.

The fact that massive gravitons barely interact via gravity with the other particles and forces in the universe offers another advantage.

"Due to their very weak interactions, they decay so slowly that they remain stable over the lifetime of the universe," Cacciapaglia said, "For the same reason, they are slowly produced during the expansion of the universe and accumulate there until today."

In the past, physicists thought gravitons were unlikely dark matter candidates because the processes that create them are extremely rare. As a result, gravitons would be created at much lower rates than other particles.

But the team found that in the picosecond (trillionth of a second) after the Big Bang, more of these gravitons would have been created than past theories suggested. This enhancement was enough for massive gravitons to completely explain the amount of dark matter we detect in the universe, the study found.

"The enhancement did come as a shock," Cacciapaglia said. "We had to perform many checks to make sure that the result was correct, as it results in a paradigm shift in the way we consider massive gravitons as potential dark matter candidates."

Because massive gravitons form below the energy scale of the Higgs boson, they are freed from uncertainties related to higher energy scales, which current particle physics doesn't describe very well.

The team's theory connects physics studied at particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider with the physics of gravity. This means that powerful particle accelerators like the Future Circular Collider at CERN, which should begin operating in 2035, could hunt for evidence of these potential dark matter particles.

"Probably the best shot we have is at future high-precision particle colliders," Cacciapaglia said. "This is something we are currently investigating."

Originally published on Live Science.

TAU physicist and Israeli artist's sculpture headed for space

The sculpture, called "Impossible Object," is made of water and can only take its intended form in space, as it is designed to only hold its intended form in the absence of gravity.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Published: APRIL 8, 2022

The ‘Impossible Object’ artwork.
(photo credit: DR. YASMINE MEROZ AND LIAT SEGAL)

Tel Aviv University physicist Dr. Yasmine Meroz and artist Liat Segal collaborated to create a sculpture that will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS).

The sculpture, called "Impossible Object," is made of water and can only take its intended form in space, as it is designed to only hold its intended form in the absence of gravity. The sculpture is made of brass pipes and rods that carry water. In zero gravity conditions, the water envelops the brass to form a 3D shape that resembles an endless staircase.

Meroz said the project bridges the gap between science and art: "There is much in common between art and scientific research: both are the result of a thought process in which creativity plays a central role and are motivated by the desire to ask interesting questions. 'Impossible Object' is a research-based artwork, where the medium is basically the physics underpinning water behavior in the absence of gravity. I learned a lot in the process, and I have no doubt it will contribute to research in my laboratory. In this respect, this work expresses the unrealized potential of the synergy between art and scientific research."

Segal said the project was a real cooperative effort with Meroz and that she was thrilled to have had the chance to work with her. "I am very happy about my collaboration with Yasmine, she said. "In this collaboration, we not only shared knowledge and inspiration, but we were also able to bring about a true co-creation, which could not have been realized by each one of us individually. ‘Impossible Object’ is timely, weighing the role of culture and art at an era when humanity is experiencing accelerated scientific and technological developments.


Segal also highlighted the significance of this artwork amid unprecedented advances in science. "Following incredible technological and scientific achievements in space, and as space tourism becomes tangible, it is important to reflect on the place of culture and arts in our lives, on earth and beyond," she said.