Easing pain at the pump with food waste: New method for making biodiesel fuel

by Jack Levy, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Graphical abstract. Credit: iScience (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104916

With gas prices soaring and food costs pinching family budgets, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at WPI is looking at ways to use food waste to make a renewable and more affordable fuel replacement for oil-based diesel. The work, led by Chemical Engineering Professor Michael Timko, is detailed in a new paper in the journal iScience

"By creating a biodiesel through this method, we've shown that we can bring the price of gas down to $1.10 per gallon, and potentially even lower," said Timko.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, in 2018 in the United States, about 81% of household food—about 20 tons—ended up in landfills or combustion facilities. Food waste is also a major contributor to climate change: once it's placed in landfills, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas.

Timko said, "Converting food waste to diesel also has the potential to offset up to 15.3 million tons of CO2 every year, lowering greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by 2.6%."

The work is part of a multi-year project supported by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and it builds on and refines research previously published in 2018. Timko and his team have now focused on finding a way to make the conversion process easier to scale and bring to the commercial market.

To make the fuel, the researchers employed a process called hydrothermal liquefaction, which uses heat and water to break down the food waste into a liquid. It's a method that has been used widely in converting other materials into biofuel, including algae. However, using food waste removes the need to grow and cultivate algae—an expensive and time-consuming process—while also leading to similar results for the amount of fuel that is extracted. The team also used a catalyst made of a naturally occurring mineral found in bones to get as much as 30% more energy out of the food waste.

Assistant Professor Andrew Teixeira and Ph.D. student Heather LeClerc played key roles in the research as well. LeClerc has spent the past year conducting research in Denmark, as part of a Fulbright scholarship, and is in the middle of a three-year NSF graduate research fellowship.

For this latest work on food waste and biofuel, LeClerc also worked with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod to gain a better understanding of the biocrudes the WPI team was producing, using equipment the Woods Hole researchers normally use to determine how an oil spill is affecting the ocean environment and changing it over time.

The researchers will continue their efforts to refine the fuel even further, and develop ways to use the process to make home heating oil and marine diesel to power ships.

Cutting waste, fossil fuel use, and greenhouse gas emissions by turning unused food into biofuel

More information: Heather O. LeClerc et al, Hydroxyapatite catalyzed hydrothermal liquefaction transforms food waste from an environmental liability to renewable fuel, iScience (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104916

Journal information: iScience 

Provided by Worcester Polytechnic Institute 

You'll soon be able to access Starlink directly with your cellphone from anywhere in the US, and eventually the world

by Andy Tomaswick, Universe Today

Falcon 9 payload fairing with 60 Starlink satellites Credit: Elon Musk

The future of satellite communications is almost upon us. SpaceX has signed a deal with T-Mobile to provide the carrier's customers with text services from its Starlink satellites anywhere in the U.S. starting next year.

It was only a matter of time before SpaceX turned its attention to the cellular industry. The company has recently ramped up its deployment of internet connectivity, allowing everyone from van lifers to remote outposts to be connected to the internet. But cell connectivity is an entirely different thing.

Most people that go to the most remote parts of the world, which amounts to half a million square miles in the U.S. alone, have to lug around expensive satellite phones if they need to reach someone. But T-Mobile and SpaceX have developed a system whereby Starlink can provide services to customers on existing T-Mobile networks, using the phones they already have in their pockets.

That is not the same as providing internet, and the system roll-out will start slowly, with only text messaging being the first of the three major cell services users expect from their carriers to roll out. Voice calls, and eventually data, will follow in the future, with no specified date for when that might be.

Starlink itself has come under plenty of scrutiny lately, as it has continued to infringe upon astronomers' images of the early night sky. The FCC is undergoing a legal battle involving SpaceX, the parent company of the Starlink system, to determine whether or not it should be eligible for an $800 million prize pool promised to the entity that provides internet to rural communities in the U.S.

Even with all the legal frustrations SpaceX has to face, it still has to deal with technical challenges as well. Supporting this new cellular infrastructure will require modifications to its existing Starlink 2.0 satellites, which were announced in June. Launching those satellites will require Starship to be operational, which still doesn't have a timeline other than potentially some time in the next few months.

That will give the company and its new cellular partner plenty of time to flesh out the technical details of their agreement. And even some time to coax other cellular providers into joining their collaboration. T-Mobile's network only reaches the U.S.—to become a genuinely global cell provider, the two companies will have to expand their Coverage Above And Beyond framework to other cell operators. So far, no one has stepped up to the plate, but there are undoubtedly conversations going on behind closed doors.

Ultimately this all leads to the future of seamless internet and cellular connectivity throughout the world, which has been the dream of technologists since the dawn of the internet. SpaceX and T-Mobile have taken another step in that direction. It remains to be seen what others will join them.

SpaceX, T-Mobile try to connect remote areas with satellites

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Provided by Universe Today 

Change with age: As bats mature their immune cells differ

by Susanne Thiele, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung

Graphical abstract. Credit: Cell Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111305

A team of researchers led by Anca Dorhoi at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) and Emmanuel Saliba at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI), has elucidated age-dependent variations in cellular immunity in Rousettus aegyptiacus, known as the Egyptian fruit bat, a natural reservoir for filoviruses such as Marburg Virus.

Using cutting-edge single-cell technologies, they mapped the bat blood with unprecedented resolution. The scientists unveiled that progression to adult age enriches for T lymphocytes and putative regulatory myeloid cells at expenses of B cells. These findings offer deeper insights into the immune system of an important wildlife reservoir species and are now published in Cell Reports.

Bat immunology remains mysterious. Many zoonoses originate from wildlife and several emerging, high-impact viruses are bat-borne. Despite harboring lethal viruses little is known about the bat immune system.

The group of Anca Dorhoi together with colleagues at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) in Greifswald and with the group of Emmanuel Saliba at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg—a site of the Braunschweig Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in cooperation with the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg—now mapped the complexity of circulating leukocytes in the Egyptian fruit bat and report that age imprints on frequencies and phenotypes of immune cells.

Decomposing bat blood cells one-by-one

The teams focused on Rousettus aegyptiacus, a bat with a broad geographical distribution and reservoir for zoonotic viruses which is also employed as experimental model. FLI is one of the few research institutions worldwide having access to bat colonies which offers unique opportunities to study bat immunobiology.

FLI immunologists teamed up with colleagues in Würzburg who are specialized in analyzing the cellular RNA molecules and are equipped with advanced sequencing technologies. Emmanuel Saliba says that they "took advantage of the power of one, we performed single-cell sequencing using RNA molecules as a fingerprint of cellular identities of bat blood and gather the biggest map so far of bat cells."

This strategy permitted identification of elusive leukocytes, such as subsets of NKT-like cells and B cells, which do not overlap with known subsets from classical experimental models. Without high-resolution methods and in absence of experimental immunological tools identification of bat immune cells would have lagged behind. This effort represents the most comprehensive map of bat blood known to date.

Dynamic age-driven immune cell reshaping

The researchers used flow cytometry among other techniques and observed that T lymphocytes and phagocytes such as neutrophils and subsets of mononuclear myeloid cells were enriched in adult bats, while B cells were more abundant in juveniles. Anca Dorhoi concludes that "in Egyptian fruit bats immune cells gain putative regulatory phenotypes upon reaching adulthood and dramatically change their frequencies in blood."

The age-related observations suggest that the immune system may condition the reservoir function and support epidemiological studies to elucidate age-dependent pulses of zoonotic infection. These findings complement evidences for disease tolerance in bats, so far related to humoral immunity. Overall, the research takes a leap forward into bat cellular immunity.

New players in the immune response identified

More information: Virginia Friedrichs et al, Landscape and age dynamics of immune cells in the Egyptian rousette bat, Cell Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111305

Journal information: Cell Reports 

Provided by Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung

Dental evidence challenges origin time of mammals

by King's College London

Brasilodon Quadrangularis Credit:The Anatomical Society/Wiley

New research published in the Journal of Anatomy has used dental evidence to challenge the origin time of mammals.

The study, an international collaboration led by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre, and which included researchers from King's College London and the Natural History Museum, examined the lower jaws in fossils of Brasilodon quadrangularis, a mouse sized animal dated to have lived 225 million years ago. The analysis of the different growth stages showing tooth development in each of the fossils provided evidence that these were the remains of a mammal.

Previously, the earliest accepted record in geological time of mammals is 205 million years ago. This new research suggests a much earlier origin of mammals by 20 million years.

"The evidence from how the dentition was built over developmental time is crucial and definitive to show that Brasilodons were mammals. Our paper raises the level of debate about what defines a mammal and shows that it was a much earlier time of origin in the fossil record than previously known," says Moya Meredith Smith, contributing author and Emeritus Professor of Evolution and Development of Dentoskeletal Anatomy at King's College London.

Mammalian glands, which produce milk and feed the young of mammals today, have not been preserved in any fossils found to date. Therefore, scientists have had to rely on 'hard tissues', mineralized bone and teeth that do fossilize for alternative clues.

Examining the dentitions found in the fossils of Brasilodon quadrangularis from southern Brazil, and dated around 225 million years ago (Late Triassic/Norian), the research team discovered evidence of only one set of replacement teeth. This is a key feature of mammals known as diphyodonty. The first set starts developing during the embryonic stage and a second and last set of teeth develops once the animal is born. By contrast, reptilian dentitions are different, especially in that replacement is "many for one" (polyphyodonty), in which each tooth site has tooth regeneration many times over the lifetime of a reptile to replace damaged ones.

Diphyodonty is a complex and unique phenomenon that, with tooth replacement, also involves profound, time-controlled changes to the skull anatomy, for instance, the closure of the secondary palate (the roof of the mouth) that allows the young to suckle, while breathing at the same time.

"This research is a collaboration between Brazilian and British scientists, who brought together their expertise on skull development, dental anatomy, physiology and histology to interpret the juvenal and adult fossils of the extinct species Brasilodon quadragularis," says Dr. Martha Richter, Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum and senior author on the paper.

Brasilodon existed at the same time as the oldest known dinosaurs and probably lived in burrows like the shrews today. The new research pushes back the origin of diphyodonty in Brasilodon and therefore also mammals, with related biological traits by 20 million years and illuminates the debate about the rise of mammals in deep time.A tiny jaw from Greenland sheds light on the origin of complex teeth

More information: Sergio F. Cabreira et al, Diphyodont tooth replacement of Brasilodon —A Late Triassic eucynodont that challenges the time of origin of mammals, Journal of Anatomy (2022). DOI: 10.1111/joa.13756

Provided by King's College London 

Study finds inland water carbon emissions are being undercounted

by Stephanie Seay, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

ORNL scientists synthesizing research on the complex biogeochemical processes at play

 in inland waters found that carbon emissions are about 13% higher than previously

 estimated. 

Credit: Adam Malin/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Global carbon emissions from inland waters such as lakes, rivers, streams and ponds are being undercounted by about 13% and will likely continue to rise given climate events and land use changes, Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have found.

In their study published in Global Change Biology, the researchers estimate that inland waters pump out 4.4 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere annually, based on new modeling of previous estimates and improved sampling and data from more types of bodies of water, including those that have dried or are shrinking. About 73% of this carbon is emitted as carbon dioxide or methane.

Earth system modelers are paying increased attention to the complex biogeochemical processes at play in inland waters.

"About 70% to 80% of carbon entering inland waters from land doesn't make it to the ocean; it's processed inland first," said ORNL's Rachel Pilla. "This is a missing piece of the puzzle for Earth system models to better predict and prepare us for the future."

High greenhouse gas emissions from Siberian inland waters

More information: Rachel M. Pilla et al, Anthropogenically driven climate and landscape change effects on inland water carbon dynamics: What have we learned and where are we going?, Global Change Biology (2022). DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16324

Journal information: Global Change Biology

Provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory 

Northern Alberta First Nation suing province over cumulative environmental effects


A northern Alberta First Nation has filed what experts say is the province's first lawsuit claiming cumulative effects from industry, agriculture and settlement are so pervasive, they violate the band's treaty rights.


Duncan's First Nation alleges in a lawsuit the province has permitted so much activity and sold off so much Crown land that band members can only live their constitutionally guaranteed way of life with great difficulty. The province has not yet filed a statement of defence and the allegations have not been proven in court.© Town of Peace River

Bob Weber - 

Duncan's First Nation, southwest of Peace River, a town located about 500 kilometres north of Edmonton, alleges the province has permitted so much activity and sold off so much Crown land that band members can only live their constitutionally guaranteed way of life with great difficulty.

"Alberta has engaged in a pattern of conduct that has significantly diminished the (nation's) right to hunt, fish and trap as part of their way of life," says the statement of claim, filed in Edmonton in July.

"Habitats have been fragmented, lands and waters have been degraded, substances have been introduced that cause legitimate fears of contamination, and pollution and lands have been put to uses that are incompatible with the continued meaningful exercise of (the Nation's) treaty rights."

The province has not yet filed a statement of defence and the allegations have not been proven in court.

Alberta requires a cumulative effects assessment in environmental impact studies.

However, critics have long complained those assessments are cursory and given little weight. The band argues Alberta has continually permitted development and settlement on the band's traditional lands project by project, without considering how all those activities add up.

Legal scholars have reached similar conclusions.

"These (cumulative) impacts cannot be resolved through piecemeal measures like individual permitting decisions," reads a 2019 paper in the Alberta Law Review.

Jeff Langlois, a lawyer for the First Nation, said the band has taken part in every regulatory hearing that has affected them, to little effect.

"The cumulative impacts of all these projects have led to significant diminishment," he said.

The band sent a letter to Premier Jason Kenney in May listing its concern.s

"We have repeatedly come up against Alberta's appalling disregard for the challenges faced by our members in the exercise of their rights," it says.

"Our people are now relegated to a small island."

Duncan's First Nation represents about 270 members.

Langlois said the premier did not respond and legal action is the only choice Duncan's has left.

"If they don't sit down with us, we have to take another step."

A provincial spokesperson declined to comment on the case.

Duncan's First Nation is using arguments similar to those used successfully last year by the Blueberry First Nation in British Columbia, said Sean Sutherland, a Calgary lawyer with expertise in environmental and Indigenous law who recently wrote an analysis of the Alberta case.

"(The Blueberry decision) essentially directed changes to the regulatory regime that was in place in the area, which is quite an extraordinary remedy for a court to order," he said.

"This claim is an attempt to bring the Blueberry First Nation type of analysis to Alberta."

Langlois said Duncan's saw Blueberry's success and are trying to emulate it.

"They watched their cousins on the B.C. side of the border from Blueberry put their case forward and get findings from the court."

As a result of that decision from B.C.'s Supreme Court, permit applications in the province's northeast have been largely suspended since last summer. The court prohibited the province from authorizing more activities that breach treaty rights, imposing a six-month period for the parties to work out necessary changes.

That doesn't make Duncan's case a slam dunk, Sutherland said.

The facts on the ground must still be proved. As well, an Alberta court might rule differently on what constitutes loss of treaty rights.

"The standard that the British Columbia court relied on is that there's infringement (on treaty rights) when there's a significant or meaningful diminishment of rights on the basis of cumulative impacts," said Sutherland.

"We don't know if that same legal standard is going to apply in Alberta."

Sutherland said because of the complexity of the allegations, the B.C. case took years to work its way through the courts.

Duncan's First Nation is seeking significant remedies. It wants legal, enforceable guarantees of consultation and research, as well as a permanent injunction blocking Alberta from permitting activities that damage the band's ability to exercise its treaty rights.

While it may be the first band to take such arguments to court, it's not the first to be concerned about the continual chipping away of traditional territory by permits for one development after another.

The Fort McKay Metis made such claims for years until the province agreed to protect a particularly valuable area.

Webb captures a cosmic tarantula

by European Space Agency

In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera 

(NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens 

of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic 

dust. The most active region appears to sparkle with massive young stars, appearing pale

 blue. Scattered among them are still-embedded stars, appearing red, yet to emerge from 

the dusty cocoon of the nebula. NIRCam is able to detect these dust-enshrouded stars 

thanks to its unprecedented resolution at near-infrared wavelengths. To the upper left of 

the cluster of young stars, and the top of the nebula’s cavity, an older star prominently 

displays NIRCam’s distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artifact of the telescope’s structure

. Following the top central spike of this star upward, it almost points to a distinctive bubble

 in the cloud. Young stars still surrounded by dusty material are blowing this bubble, 

beginning to carve out their own cavity. Astronomers used two of Webb’s spectrographs to

 take a closer look at this region and determine the chemical makeup of the star and its 

surrounding gas. This spectral information will tell astronomers about the age of the 

nebula and how many generations of star birth it has seen. Farther from the core region of 

hot young stars, cooler gas takes on a rust color, telling astronomers that the nebula is 

rich with complex hydrocarbons. This dense gas is the material that will form future stars.

 As winds from the massive stars sweep away gas and dust, some of it will pile up and, 

with gravity’s help, form new stars. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Thousands of never-before-seen young stars are spotted in a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus, captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula for the appearance of its dusty filaments in previous telescope images, the nebula has long been a favorite for astronomers studying star formation. In addition to young stars, Webb reveals distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition of the nebula's gas and dust

At only 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, the galaxies nearest to our Milky Way. It is home to the hottest, most massive stars known. Astronomers focused three of Webb's high-resolution infrared instruments on the Tarantula. Viewed with Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the region resembles a burrowing tarantula's home, lined with its silk. The nebula's cavity centered in the NIRCam image has been hollowed out by blistering radiation from a cluster of massive young stars, which sparkle pale blue in the image. Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula resist erosion by these stars' powerful stellar winds, forming pillars that appear to point back toward the cluster. These pillars contain forming protostars, which will eventually emerge from their dusty cocoons and take their turn shaping the nebula.

Credit: European Space Agency

Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) caught one very young star doing just that. Astronomers previously thought this star might be a bit older and already in the process of clearing out a bubble around itself. However, NIRSpec showed that the star was only just beginning to emerge from its pillar and still maintained an insulating cloud of dust around itself. Without Webb's high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this episode of star formation-in-action could not have been revealed.

Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) reveals what is really going on in an 

intriguing region of the Tarantula Nebula. Astronomers focused the powerful instrument 

on what looked like a small bubble feature in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared 

Camera (NIRCam). However, the spectra reveal a very different picture from a young star 

blowing a bubble in its surrounding gas. The signature of atomic hydrogen, shown in blue, 

shows up in the star itself but not immediately surrounding it. Instead, it appears outside 

the “bubble,” which spectra show is actually “filled” with molecular hydrogen (green) and 

complex hydrocarbons (red). This indicates that the bubble is actually the top of a dense 

pillar of dust and gas that is being blasted by radiation from the cluster of massive young 

stars to its lower right (see the full NIRCam image). It does not appear as pillar-like as 

some other structures in the nebula because there is not much color contrast with the 

area surrounding it. The harsh stellar wind from the massive young stars in the nebula is

 breaking apart molecules outside the pillar, but inside they are preserved, forming a

 cushy cocoon for the star. This star is still too young to be clearing out its surroundings by

 blowing bubbles – NIRSpec has captured it just beginning to emerge from the protective

 cloud from which it was formed. Without Webb’s resolution at infrared wavelengths, the 

discovery of this star birth in action would not have been possible. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

The region takes on a different appearance when viewed in the longer infrared wavelengths detected by Webb's Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI). The hot stars fade, and the cooler gas and dust glow. Within the stellar nursery clouds, points of light indicate embedded protostars, still gaining mass. While shorter wavelengths of light are absorbed or scattered by dust grains in the nebula, and therefore never reach Webb to be detected, longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrate that dust, ultimately revealing a previously unseen cosmic environment.

One of the reasons the Tarantula Nebula is interesting to astronomers is that the nebula has a similar type of chemical composition as the gigantic star-forming regions observed at the universe's "cosmic noon," when the cosmos was only a few billion years old and star formation was at its peak. Star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same furious rate as the Tarantula Nebula, and have a different chemical composition. This makes the Tarantula the closest (i.e., easiest to see in detail) example of what was happening in the universe as it reached its brilliant high noon. Webb will provide astronomers the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in the Tarantula Nebula with the telescope's deep observations of distant galaxies from the actual era of cosmic noon.

Despite humanity's thousands of years of stargazing, the star formation process still holds many mysteries—many of them due to our previous inability to get crisp images of what was happening behind the thick clouds of stellar nurseries. Webb has already begun revealing a universe never seen before, and is only getting started on rewriting the stellar creation story.Webb reveals cosmic cliffs, glittering landscape of star birth

Provided by European Space Agency 

NASA's Webb catches Tarantula Nebula

Tue, September 6, 2022 

A stellar nursery nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula has been captured in crisp detail by NASA's Webb telescope, revealing hitherto unseen features that deepen scientific understanding, the agency said Tuesday.

Officially known as 30 Doradus, the region of space is characterized by its dusty filaments that resemble the legs of a hairy spider, and has long been a favorite for astronomers interested in star formation.

Thousands of young stars, distant background galaxies, and the detailed structure of the nebula's gas and dust structures were viewable for the first time thanks to Webb's high resolution infrared instruments.

Webb operates primarily in the infrared spectrum, because light from objects in the distant cosmos has been stretched into this wavelength over the course of the universe's expansion.

The telescope's primary imager, Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), found the cavity in the center of the nebula was hollowed out by radiation carried on stellar winds emanating from a cluster of massive young stars, which appear as pale blue dots.

Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which analyzes light patterns to determine the composition of objects, caught one young star in the act of shedding a cloud of dust from around itself.

The same star was previously thought to be at a later stage of formation, already well on the way to clearing its dusty bubble.

The region was also imaged using the Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI), which uses longer wavelengths of infrared to pierce through dust grains that absorb or scatter shorter wavelengths.

This faded the hot stars and clarified the cooler regions, revealing never-before-seen points of light within the stellar nursery, which indicate protostars that are still gaining mass.

Astronomic interest in the Tarantula Nebula stems from its similar chemical composition to gigantic star-forming regions observed a few billion years after the Big Bang, a period called the "cosmic noon" when star formation peaked.

At just 161,000 light-years away, Tarantula is a readily viewable example of this flourishing period of cosmic creation.

Webb should also provide scientists the opportunity to gaze at distant galaxies from the actual era of cosmic noon, and compare it to observations of Tarantula, to understand similarities and differences.

Operational since July, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, with astronomers confident it will herald a new era of discovery.

ia/mlm

Astronomers capture most detailed images yet of radiation region in Orionʻs 'sword'

by W. M. Keck Observatory

Credit: Habart et al./W. M. Keck Observatory

Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaiʻi Island have captured from Maunakea the most detailed and complete images ever taken of the zone where the famed constellation of Orion gets zapped with ultraviolet (UV) radiation from massive young stars.

This irradiated neutral zone, called a Photo-Dissociation Region (PDR), is located in the Orion Bar within the Orion Nebula, an active star-forming site found in the middle of the "sword" hanging from Orion's "belt." When viewed with the naked eye, the nebula is often mistaken for one of the stars in the constellation; when viewed with a telescope, the photogenic nebula is seen as a glowing gaseous stellar nursery located 1,350 light years from Earth.

"It was thrilling being the first, together with my colleagues of the 'PDRs4All' James Webb Space Telescope team, to see the sharpest images of the Orion Bar ever taken in the near infrared," said Carlos Alvarez, a staff astronomer at Keck Observatory and co-author of the study.

Because the Orion Nebula is the closest massive star formation region to us and may be similar to the environment in which our solar system was born, studying its PDR—the area that's heated by starlight—is an ideal place to find clues as to how stars and planets are created.

"Observing photo-dissociation regions is like looking into our past," said Emilie Habart, an Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale associate professor at Paris-Saclay University and lead author of a paper on this study. "These regions are important because they allow us to understand how young stars influence the gas and dust cloud they are born in, particularly sites where stars, like the sun, form."

The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, and is available in preprint format on arXiv.org.

These pathfinder observations have assisted in the planning of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Early Release Science (ERS) program PDRs4All: Radiative feedback of massive stars (ID1288). The PDRs4All program is described in a Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific paper by Berné, Habart, Peeters et al. (2022).

Left: Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of the Orion Bar. 

Credit: NASA/STScI/Rice Univ./C.O’Dell et al. 

The NIRC2 wide camera Field of View is shown in the yellow square. 

Right: Infrared heat map of the Orion Bar obtained with Keck Observatory’s NIRC2

instrument reveals substructures such as proplyds. 

Credit: Habart et al./W. M. Keck Observatory

Methodology

To probe Orion's PDR, the PDRs4All team used Keck Observatory's second generation Near-Infrared Camera (NIRC2) in combination with the Keck II telescope's adaptive optics system. They successfully imaged the region with such extreme detail, the researchers were able to spatially resolve and distinguish the Orion Bar's different substructures—such as ridges, filaments, globules, and proplyds (externally illuminated photoevaporating disks around young stars)—that formed as starlight blasted and sculpted the nebula's mixture of gas and dust.

"Never before have we been able to observe at a small scale how interstellar matter structures depend on their environments, particularly how planetary systems could form in environments strongly irradiated by massive stars," said Habart. "This may allow us to better understand the heritage of the interstellar medium in planetary systems, namely our origins."

Massive young stars emit large quantities of UV radiation that affect the physics and chemistry of their local environment; how this surge of energy the stars inject into their native cloud impacts and shapes star formation is not yet well known.

The new Keck Observatory images of the Orion Bar will help deepen astronomers' understanding of this process because they reveal in detail where gas in its PDR changes from hot ionized gas, to warm atomic, to cold molecular gas. Mapping this conversion is important because the dense, cold molecular gas is the fuel needed for star formation.

What's next

These new observations from Keck Observatory have informed plans for JWST observations of the Orion Bar, which is among JWST's targets and is expected to be observed in the coming weeks.

"One of the most exciting aspects of this work is seeing Keck play a fundamental role in the JWST era," said Alvarez. "JWST will be able to dive deeper into the Orion Bar and other PDRs, and Keck will be instrumental in validating JWST's early science results. Together, the two telescopes can provide unique insight into the characteristics of the gas and chemical composition of PDRs, which will help us understand the nature of these fascinating star-blasted regions.Hubble finds flame Nebula's searing stars may halt planet formation

More information: High angular resolution near-IR view of the Orion Bar revealed by Keck/NIRC2, arXiv:2206.08245v1 [astro-ph.GA] arxiv.org/pdf/2206.08245.pdf

Journal information: Astronomy & Astrophysic

Provided by W. M. Keck Observatory 

Snap employees have started joking they work at 'Snapazon' now, as massive layoffs, forced attrition and an Amazon-like metrics culture take over

tdotan@insider.com (Tom Dotan,Kali Hays,Rob Price) 


Snap CEO Evan Spiegel demos the company's AR glasses. Snap Inc/Getty Images for Snap Inc© Snap Inc/Getty Images for Snap Inc
Snap morale is at a low point after massive layoffs and a new harsh Amazon-like management style.
Snap's new COO Jerry Hunter worked at Amazon for many years.
Sources said to Insider that managers were told to put 10% of their teams on PIPs.

In the midst of a brutal reorganizationn, Snap employees have been grimly joking the company has been turning itself into "Snapazon."

The reference is both an acknowledgement that Amazon executives have ascended to key roles at the social media company, and that Snap managers are obsessing more over metrics, Amazon-style.

Last week, Snap made its most dramatic cuts ever, laying off about 1,500 employees amid a broad slowdown in its ads business. Employees told Insider the move was "shocking," especially when CEO Evan Spiegel shut down major initiatives like its Pixy drone and its subsidiary Zenly, a social app it had acquired.

Employees have seen the company's austere Amazonification take place in a few different waves. Prior to the layoffs, Snap managers had been told to put 10% of their teams on performance improvement plans, according to company insiders. Now, in a larger restructuring at the company, Snap's engineering chief and longtime Amazon cloud executive Jerry Hunter, is serving as Snap COO—a sign that the company will continue leaning into the Amazon style.

Snap's abrupt layoffs came as a surprise to many inside the company. Earlier in the year, Snap insisted it was only implementing a "slowdown" in hiring and said repeatedly it would still grow headcount this year by 10%, a claim many managers relied on. Workers felt the company was going through changes that it would pull through and were not led to believe their jobs were in peril."I did not expect to be impacted at all," one former staffer said. "They've been stringing people along," another said.