South Africa grants Putin and Brics leaders diplomatic immunity for summit

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, speaks to his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, in 2019. Photograph: Sergei Chirikov/AP

ICC warrant for Russian president’s arrest issued in March over alleged war crimes in Ukraine


Patrick Wintour 

Diplomatic editor

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 30 May 2023

South Africa has issued blanket diplomatic immunity to all leaders attending an August summit, meaning Vladimir Putin might be able to travel to Johannesburg and not fear the country acting on an international criminal court warrant for his arrest.

South African officials insisted the broad offer of immunity, issued in a government gazette, may not trump the ICC arrest warrant. As an ICC member, South Africa would be under pressure, and possibly under a legal requirement, to arrest Putin. The court issued a warrant for his arrest in March over the alleged forcible deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

South Africa is hosting a summit of the Brics group: Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa, in August. A two-day planning meeting of foreign ministers is due to take place this Thursday.

“This is a standard conferment of immunities that we do for all international conferences and summits held in South Africa, irrespective of the level of participation,” the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday. “The immunities are for the conference and not for specific individuals. They are meant to protect the conference and its attendees from the jurisdiction of the host country for the duration of the conference.”

In April, South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, appointed an inter-ministerial committee headed by his deputy president, Paul Mashatile, to look into how the law applied to a visit by the Russian president. The government is looking into the wording of the Rome Statute, the charter that established the ICC, for a loophole that would enable Putin to attend without South Africa having to arrest him.

Article 98 of the ICC Rome Statute states: “The court may not proceed with a request for surrender or assistance which would require the requested State to act inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the State or diplomatic immunity of a person … of a third state, unless the court can first obtain the cooperation of that third State for the waiver of the immunity.” Some say this wording provides South Africa with a chance to invite Putin and not be under any obligation to arrest him.

A similar row occurred in 2005 when the then Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir came to South Africa. He swiftly left the county as it became increasingly likely that the South African high court was about to rule that he had to be arrested.

Russia has stepped up its drive to boost ties with Africa to help offset a chill in relations with the west prompted by its invasion of Ukraine, and plans to hold an Africa-Russia summit in St Petersburg in July.

It is not clear yet if Putin would be willing to save South Africa from the diplomatic dilemma by not attending in person. The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia would take part at the “proper level”. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is already slated to attend the planning meeting.

The Brics group of large emerging economies is increasingly seen as a rival to the G7 group of western industrialised countries.

Asked at a regular news briefing about the possibility of an arrest warrant, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said: “Of course we count as a bare minimum on partner countries in such an important format not being guided by such illegal decisions.”

South Africa has been accused of fence-sitting over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US embassy recently claimed South Africa had sent weapons to Russia. Support for Russia inside the ruling ANC is strong due to the Soviet Union’s role in opposing colonialism.

The government notice about immunity, which was gazetted on Monday, was routine protocol to protect the conference, the foreign ministry said, adding: “These immunities do not override any warrant that may have been issued by any international tribunal against any attendee of the conference.”

ICYMI

Recovery of ancient DNA identifies 20,000-year-old pendant’s owner

An artistic interpretation of the pendant, found at the Denisova Cave in southern Siberia, which belonged to a stone age woman. Photograph: Myrthe Lucas/Reuters

Elk tooth pendant unearthed in Siberia is first prehistoric artefact to be linked to specific person using genetic sleuthing


Reuters

Wed 3 May 2023 

Scientists have used a new method for extracting ancient DNA to identify the owner of a 20,000-year-old pendant fashioned from an elk’s canine tooth.

The method can isolate DNA that was present in skin cells, sweat or other body fluids and was absorbed by certain types of porous material including bones, teeth and tusks when handled by someone thousands of years ago.

Objects used as tools or for personal adornment – pendants, necklaces, bracelets, rings and the like – can offer insight into past behaviour and culture, though our understanding has been limited by an inability to tie a particular object to a particular person.

“I find these objects made in the deep past extremely fascinating since they allow us to open a small window to travel back and have a glance into these people’s lives,” said the molecular biologist Elena Essel of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, the lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The researchers who found the pendant, which was determined to be 19,000-25,000 years old, used gloves and face masks when excavating and handling it, avoiding contamination with modern DNA.

It became the first prehistoric artefact linked by genetic sleuthing to a specific person: a stone age woman closely related to a population of hunter-gatherers known to have lived in a part of Siberia east of the cave site in the foothills of the Altai mountains in Russia.

It is unknown whether the woman made or merely wore the pendant.


New analysis of ancient human protein could unlock secrets of evolution

Essel said in holding such an artefact in her own gloved hands, she felt “transported back in time, imagining the human hands that had created and used it thousands of years ago”.

She added: “As I looked at the object, a flood of questions came to mind. Who was the person who made it? Was this tool passed down from one generation to the next, from a mother to a daughter or from a father to a son? That we can start addressing these questions using genetic tools is still absolutely incredible to me.”

The pendant’s maker drilled a hole in the tooth to allow for some sort of now-lost cordage. The tooth alternatively could have been part of a head band or bracelet.

Our species Homo sapiens first arose more than 300,000 years ago in Africa. The oldest-known objects used as personal adornments date to about 100,000 years ago from the continent, according to the University of Leiden’s Marie Soressi, the study’s senior archeologist.

Denisova Cave was long ago inhabited at different times by the extinct human species called Denisovans, Neanderthals and our species. The cave over the years has yielded remarkable finds, including the first-known remains of Denisovans and various tools and other artefacts.

The nondestructive research technique, used at a “clean room” laboratory in Leipzig, works much like a washing machine. In this case, an artefact is immersed in a liquid that works to release DNA from it much as a washing machine lifts dirt from a blouse.

By linking objects with particular people, the technique could shed light on prehistoric social roles and division of labour between the sexes, or clarify whether or not an object was even made by our species. Some artefacts have been found in places known to have been inhabited, for instance, by Homo sapiens and Neanderthals simultaneously.

Soressi said: “This study opens huge opportunities to better reconstruct the role of individuals in the past according to their sex and ancestry.”

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-pendant-is-20000-years-old.html

FROM THE MUSEUM STORAGE ROOM

Giant flying reptiles revealed to have soared Australia’s skies 107m years ago

Fossils discovered in Victoria 30 years ago are of pterosaurs, the earliest known vertebrates to evolve true flight

Donna Lu 

Science writer
THE GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

Tue 30 May 2023 

The oldest flying reptiles in Australia soared in the skies around 107m years ago, researchers have confirmed after examining fossils.

Palaeontologists have analysed bone specimens belonging to two separate pterosaurs – winged reptiles that were the earliest vertebrates to evolve true flight – which were originally discovered more than 30 years ago.


Fossilised partial skeleton of new flying reptile species found in Queensland

One specimen, a small wing bone, belonged to a juvenile pterosaur – the first ever reported in Australia. The other, a partial pelvic bone, came from a pterosaur with a wingspan exceeding 2 metres. They date to 107m years ago.

The bones were first discovered in the 1980s at Dinosaur Cove near Cape Otway in southern Victoria, by a team led by the Museums Victoria Research Institute’s Dr Tom Rich and Prof Pat Vickers-Rich.

Until now, they had never been described in peer-reviewed scientific research, which has been published in the journal Historical Biology.

The study’s lead author, Adele Pentland of Curtin University, said pterosaurs are known to have existed on every continent, including Antarctica.

Though both prehistoric and reptilian, pterosaurs are distinct from flying dinosaurs.

Pentland is completing a PhD in pterosaurs and in 2019 named a new species of the reptile, Ferrodraco lentoni, which was also the most complete Australian pterosaur found to date.

Pentland was unable to determine what exact species the two Cape Otway pterosaurs specimens are. Unusually, they were found a “high paleolatitude” site.

Prof Pat Vickers-Rich and Dr Tom Rich showing the pterosaur bone specimens they discovered in the 1980s. Photograph: Museums Victoria

“Back when [these pterosaurs] were alive, Australia was part of the big southern continent Gondwana,” Pentland said. “Victoria was much farther south than it is today and was in the polar circle.

“Sedimentary geology is telling us that these animals potentially lived in darkness for weeks, if not months, throughout the year. It would be great to answer in the future … did pterosaurs tough it out in these harsh conditions, were they permanent year-round residents, or could they migrate? We don’t know.”

Four pterosaur species have been described in Australia to date, based on fossils found in central western Queensland.

“In terms of the Australian pterosaur record, we have a bit of catching up to do,” Pentland said. “The first pterosaurs were described in the 18th century, but here in Australia, the first pterosaur bones weren’t published in a scientific journal until 1980.”

Using psychedelics for depression is exciting area, says UK ex-vaccines chief


Kate Bingham, who chaired UK’s Covid vaccine taskforce, tells Hay festival she hopes mind-altering drugs could treat mental illness

Kate Bingham says data about the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs has improved. 

Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

Lucy Knight

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 29 May 2023 

The former chair of the UK’s Covid vaccine taskforce has described the use of psychedelics to treat depression as an “area of real excitement” in a talk at the Hay literary festival in Wales.

Speaking at a panel event alongside the UK government’s former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, Kate Bingham said she was hopeful that the drugs could have a positive impact on mental ill health.

When asked by an audience member whether his 107-year-old grandmother, who has had depression for the last seven years, would benefit from psychedelic drugs or ecstasy, Bingham responded that “there is strong data now showing that different interventions can have effects on depression and mental health”.


The challenge so far when it comes to psychedelics, she said, is that “it’s been quite difficult to disassociate the trip from the actual reset of your mental health”. If such drugs were to be prescribed for depression, it would therefore be difficult to regulate, she added.

“How do you regulate psychedelics so they can be given safely to the over-85s or the young adolescents who are in a really bad way?” asked Bingham, though she added that she thought the research would “come through”.

Vallance said: “I don’t think you can slip your grandmother an ecstasy tablet. We’ve got to test these things.

“One of the really shocking things is how few people are in clinical trials,” he added. The Covid Recovery trial, which Vallance said was “the best study in the world for looking at interventions at its peak”, had about 11% of all Covid patients in UK hospitals on a clinical trial. “That is about 12 times more than you have for most diseases, when you have about 1%.”


Will psychedelic drugs transform mental health treatment? – podcast

“That can’t be right,” he said. Whatever you are testing he added, whether it is the possibility of treating depression with psychedelics or anything else, “the healthcare system needs to be much more geared towards testing these things properly, gaining answers as quickly as possible”.


Earlier this month, a number of psychiatrists and mental health charities wrote to the government calling for a change in legislation regarding psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms.

The campaigners, which included the charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm), think it should be legal for the drug to be used on the NHS and in medical research.

According to research published in April 2022, psilocybin could be helpful for those with treatment-resistant depression. Professor David Nutt, the head of the Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research, said at the time that the findings showed that psilocybin “works differently from conventional antidepressants, making the brain more flexible and fluid, and less entrenched in the negative thinking patterns associated with depression”.


The big idea: should doctors be able to prescribe psychedelics?

However, since psilocybin is both a class A drug and a schedule 1 drug (it is classed as having no therapeutic value) it is difficult for researchers and medical professionals to access it.

The call to reduce restrictions was backed by a cross-party group of MPs and was debated in the House of Commons on 18 May. MPs agreed that “an evidence-based approach is required in order for parliament and the government to pursue the most effective drugs policy in the future” and called on the government “to conduct an authoritative and independent cost-benefit analysis and impact assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and to publish the results of those studies within the next 12 months.”

SEE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for LSD 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PSYCHEDELIC 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PSYCHEDELIC SASKATCHEWAN 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MAGIC MUSHROOMS 

Dangerous lab leaks happen far more often than the public is aware

Biological facilities in the US and around the world suffer breaches, including of potentially pandemic-causing pathogens, but are shrouded in secrecy

Alison Young
Tue 30 May 2023 

At biological research facilities across the United States and around the world, hundreds of safety breaches happen every year at labs experimenting with dangerous pathogens. Scientists and other lab workers are bitten by infected animals, stuck by contaminated needles and splashed with infectious fluids. They are put at risk of exposures when their protective gear malfunctions or critical building biosafety systems fail.

And, like all humans, the people working in laboratories make mistakes and they sometimes cut corners or ignore safety procedures – even when working with pathogens that have the potential to cause a global pandemic.

How did the Covid pandemic begin? We need to investigate all credible hypotheses

Yet the public rarely learns about these incidents, which tend to be shrouded in secrecy by labs and the government officials whose agencies often both fund and oversee the research. My new book, Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk, reveals how these and other kinds of lab accidents have happened with alarming frequency and how the lack of stringent, mandatory and transparent biosafety oversight and incident reporting is putting all of us at risk.

The book provides numerous case studies of near-miss incidents, infections and outbreaks caused by lax safety at some of the world’s top labs and shows the extraordinary efforts that have been taken to downplay the significance of safety breaches and keep accidents secret. This secrecy extends not just to the public at large, but also to the government agencies we all are trusting to head off disaster when things go wrong at these facilities.

For example, when a safety breach occurred in 2019 at a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab experimenting with a dangerous and highly controversial lab-created H5N1 avian influenza virus, the university never told the public – or local and state public health officials. The university made the decision to end the quarantine of a potentially exposed lab worker without consulting Wisconsin public health officials, despite representations going back years that these health departments would be notified of “any potential exposure” during this kind of especially risky research.

In another incident, a pipe burst on a lab waste-holding tank in 2018 at a US army research facility at Fort Detrick, near Washington DC. Workers initially dismissed that any safety breach had occurred. Then army officials belatedly issued public statements that left out key details and created the misleading impression that no dangerous pathogens could have left the base. Yet my reporting has uncovered government documents and even a photo showing the giant tank spewing an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of unsterilized lab wastewater near an open storm drain that feeds into a popular public waterway.

It’s been a shocking revelation for people living in Frederick, Maryland, including some who served on a citizen committee about the public safety of Fort Detrick’s labs. “We didn’t know about the extent of the wastewater breach … or the absolute inadequate paucity of environmental sampling that underlied the army’s assessment of ‘no risk to the community’ until Alison Young’s [reporting],” the committee’s former chairman, Matt Sharkey, a biologist, recently told the local newspaper.

Most of the time when accidents happen, labs get lucky and nobody is sickened. Many pathogens don’t spread easily from person to person, and it’s the people working inside lab facilities who are at greatest risk of infection. But some viruses and bacteria are capable of causing outbreaks if they are unleashed into the surrounding community and beyond. Of greatest concern are pathogens that have the potential to cause pandemics, especially certain types of influenza viruses and coronaviruses.

When will our luck run out?

Regulation of lab safety in the US and around the world is fragmented and often relies heavily on scientific institutions policing themselves. There is no comprehensive tracking of which labs hold collections of the most dangerous viruses, bacteria and toxins. And nobody appears to know how many facilities are manipulating pathogens in ways that make them more dangerous than what is found in nature, a category of controversial and risky experiments sometimes referred to as gain of function research of concern.

The World Health Organization has “no access to such information on who’s doing what in terms of gain of function (GOF) or similar research work that comes with an elevated risk”, Kazunobu Kojima, a WHO biosafety expert, told me.

Concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic may have been caused by a research-related accident in Wuhan, China, have raised public awareness in recent years of how lax safety in biological research can pose a public health threat. Yet this is not a new issue.

For decades, as high-containment biolabs have proliferated around the world, policy makers and scientific experts have discussed with concern the increasing risk of a lab accident causing a catastrophic outbreak. Before Covid and before Washington politics became so toxic, Republicans and Democrats in Congress held multiple bipartisan hearings examining the threats posed by laboratory accidents and they jointly requested studies about biosafety and biosecurity issues from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO).

“Many experts agree that as the number of high-containment laboratories has increased … the overall risk of an accidental or deliberate release of a dangerous pathogen will also increase,” the GAO’s Nancy Kingsbury testified at a hearing in 2014, noting that the GAO had been issuing findings and recommendations about fragmented lab oversight since 2009.

Yet despite the passage of so many years, little has been done to fix the current patchwork oversight that often shields the safety failings of labs – and the government agencies that oversee them – from public accountability. And now, the Covid-19 pandemic has spurred a new global biolab building boom, with even more labs planned or under construction – often in countries where a recent report found government stability and national biorisk management was lacking.

Because of China’s refusal to allow an independent forensic investigation into the natural or lab origin of Covid-19, we may never know the source of the coronavirus that has killed millions of people around the world. But it’s not too late to take actions to address gaps in biosafety and biosecurity oversight and transparency in the US and around the world – and reduce the potential for a lab accident causing a future pandemic.

Alison Young is an investigative reporter and the Curtis B Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Her book Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk was released on 25 April

Covid-resistant bats could be key to fighting the next pandemic

The only mammals that fly are not affected by coronaviruses. Scientists are trying to work out why

Robin McKie

THE GUARDIAN
Sat 20 May 2023 

Widely depicted as evil spirits or blood-sucking demons, bats have had a poor press over the years. No vampire film, from Dracula to Buffy, has been complete without an entrance of one of these harbingers of death.

But these grim portrayals demean the bat. We have much to learn from them, insist researchers who now believe bats could be crucial in helping us cope with future pandemics.

As a result, a global genetics project has been launched to discover how bats avoid the worst impacts of some of the world’s most pernicious viruses, including the agent responsible for Covid-19. “Bats have the potential to teach us a great deal about how to fight off disease,” said researcher Emma Teeling, of University College Dublin, who played a key role in setting up the project, Bat1K.

Bats are remarkable for a multitude of reasons, says Teeling. They are the only mammals that can fly; they live exceptionally long lives for creatures their size; and many of them use sound waves to locate their prey. They also come in a remarkable variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from the bumblebee bat, the size of an insect, to Australian fruit bats which have two-metre wingspans.

Some bats catch fish, other species feed on insects – and three drink blood: the common vampire bat; the hairy-legged vampire bat; and the white-winged vampire bat. “Other species have evolved the longest mammalian tongues so they can stick them down into huge long flowers, to get their nectar,” added Teeling.

However, the reason for scientists’ current bat ardour stems from the discovery that they can host a startling number of potentially lethal viruses – including the coronaviruses that caused the Sars and Mers epidemics as well as the Marburg, Nipah and Hendra viruses – but without suffering any apparent ill effects. “There is a kind of peace treaty between bats and the pathogens they host,” virologist Joshua Hayward, of Burnet Institute in Melbourne, said in Nature recently.

Bats are also thought to be the original source of the Sars-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19. “Horseshoe bats from Asia are considered to be the original reservoir of the virus that evolved to become Sars-CoV-2, which changed most likely in an intermediate species of mammal,” said Teeling. “That animal became infected by a bat, probably in a market, changing the viral progenitor of Sars-CoV-2 into an agent that could spread through humans. The end result was the Covid-19 pandemic.”

As a result, Teeling considers it most likely that Sars-CoV-2 was not created in a lab, given the amount of recent evidence suggesting that most likely happened accidentally during the mixing of animals in the market.

A large number of Kitti’s hog-nosed bats fly around a tree.

 Photograph: Nattawut Intavari/Shutterstock

These discoveries raise a key issue, however. How do bats act as reservoirs for so many viruses that are harmful to other animals, including humans, but are themselves left unaffected? It is a puzzle that scientists are now working to solve. “The answer has got to do with their ability to fly,” said Teeling.


Flight is enormously demanding, requiring the expenditure of massive amounts of energy for any creature that wants to take to the air. Releasing this intense energy within a mammal’s body should then lead to the breakdown of some of its cells. Bits of DNA would be expected to break off and float around its body.

In non-flying mammals, these pieces of genetic material are identified by immune cells and are often treated as signs that an invasion from a disease-causing organism is occurring. A counterattack is launched and this can trigger intense inflammation. In many cases – including those of Covid-19 – this inflammation is often the key cause of serious reactions that can lead to death.

“But bats lack that intense response,” said Teeling. “Over the course of their evolution – which began around 80 million years ago – they have modulated their immune systems so that their responses have dampened down. Inflammation does not occur nearly so often or severely. As a result they can carry all these viruses without suffering dangerous reactions.”

In other words, bats – because they evolved to fly – had to develop immune systems that are far less likely to trigger damaging inflammation. In this way, they are able to deal with viruses without suffering the intense reactions that bedevil other kinds of mammals. Exactly how they do this is not yet clear but it is now the subject of intense scrutiny.

One key approach involves the Bat1K project which was founded by Teeling along with Professor Sonja Vernes, of St Andrews University, with the involvement of other institutions such as the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, in Dresden, and the Sanger Institute near Cambridge.

Its goal is ambitious but straightforward: to create high-quality genomes for all bat species. In this way, it should be possible to unravel the entire DNA instructions – which come in billions of units – that are carried by the 1,450 or so species of bat that have evolved across our planet.

To date, only a handful of bat genomes have been sequenced, though scientists are confident that from these analyses it should soon be possible to unpick the precise ways by which bats avoid succumbing to the viruses they host – with the ultimate goal of using this knowledge to develop medicines that could mimic that behaviour in humans.

“Bats are not responsible for bringing disease to humans,” added Teeling.

“We have encroached on their lives, not the other way round. More importantly, we need to be prepared for the next pandemic and if bats can point out ways to modify our immune responses speedily, that will demonstrate just how important they are to our world.”

South China Sea shipwrecks give clues about historic Silk Road trade routes

Archaeologists begin excavation of two 500-year-old vessels filled with porcelain and timber

Helen Davidson in Taipei
THE GUARDIAN

Wed 24 May 2023 

Two 500-year-old shipwrecks in the South China Sea, filled with Ming-era porcelain and stacked timber, provide significant clues about the maritime Silk Road trade routes, Chinese archaeologists have said.

The two shipwrecks were discovered in October, and cultural and archaeological authorities have now begun a year-long process of deep-sea exploration and excavation, government officials announced.

Marine researchers found the two vessels in the north-west region of the South China Sea, about 1,500 metres below sea level. The officials said the wrecks were “relatively well preserved, with a large number of cultural relics”.

Experts said one of the wrecks dated back to the Ming dynasty’s Hongzhi period, which lasted from 1488 until 1505. It was carrying a cargo of stacked persimmon timber logs and some pottery.

The other wreck dates back to the Zhengde period of 1506 to 1521. The ship was laden with more than 100,000 pieces of porcelain crockery. Photographs show piles of stacked bowls, plates and jars, with intricate designs still visible underneath the sand and mud.

One of the vessels was filled with more than 100,000 pieces of Ming-era porcelain crockery. Photograph: State Administration of Cultural Heritage/Government of Hainan province

The archaeologists said the two ancient ships were travelling in different directions, and the wrecks were found less than 20km (12 miles) apart. They said it was the first time vessels returning and arriving had been found near each other, indicating they were travelling on an important trade route.

“It helps us study the maritime Silk Road’s reciprocal flow,” Tang Wei, the director of the Chinese National Centre for Archaeology, said.

The exact location of the wrecks was not disclosed, but the officials said markers were established on the site.

Chinese archaeological exploration has advanced into deeper waters in recent years, after the 2018 establishment of a deep-water archaeology laboratory by the National Centre for Archaeology and the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering.

Remains of the shipwrecks were captured during a preliminary search. 

Photograph: State Administration of Cultural Heritage/Government of Hainan province

The officials said researchers were taken underwater on Saturday by the submersible Shenhai Yongshi, or Deep Sea Warrior, which can carry people to a depth of 5,000 metres.

There are three phases to the planned research programme, with an estimated 50 dives to be conducted between now and April.

“We first need to figure out the condition of the shipwrecks, and then we can draft plans for archaeological excavation and conservation,” said Song Jianzhong, a researcher at the National Centre for Archaeology.

By mid-June, researchers plan to have assessed the distribution area of both wrecks, put together a widespread data collection and taken archaeological records, extracted some of the relics as specimens, and sampled the surrounding seafloor.

BEFORE CHEMTRAILS

Starwatch: Why ‘night shine’ clouds at edge of space may be product of pollution

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS

Atmospheric methane and industrial pollutants suggested as reasons for lack of noctilucent cloud sightings before 1885


Stuart Clark
THE GUARDIAN

Mon 29 May 2023 

Late spring, early summer marks the beginning of noctilucent cloud season in the northern hemisphere. The name derives from Latin, where noctilucent means “night shine”. These beautiful cloud formations can often be seen during the summer months shining with an electric blue colour against the darkening western sky about 30 minutes after the sun sets.

The origin of the noctilucent clouds remains mysterious. They are the highest known clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, existing at an altitude of about 80km (50 miles), which is virtually the edge of space. They are regarded as being too high and too tenuous to have any effect on the weather at ground level.


A puzzling aspect is that there appears to be no recorded sightings of the noctilucent clouds before 1885. This seems strange considering how obvious they are. Some have suggested that perhaps they form when water freezes around industrial pollutants, which were first released into the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. Others suspect it is because the atmosphere now contains more of the greenhouse gas methane, which promotes the production of water vapour in the upper atmosphere.

In the southern hemisphere, the noctilucent cloud season begins around October.

Supermassive black hole at heart of ancient galaxy ‘far larger than expected’


Discovery of GS-9209, one of the furthest from the Milky Way, adds to evidence that large black holes prevent star formation, astronomers say

Ian Sample Science editor

THE GUARDIAN

Fri 26 May 2023 

A supermassive black hole discovered at the heart of an ancient galaxy is five times larger than expected for the number of stars it contains, astronomers say.

Researchers spotted the immense black hole in a galaxy known as GS-9209 that lies 25bn light-years from Earth, making it one of the most distant to have been observed and recorded.

The team at Edinburgh University used the James Webb space telescope (JWST) to observe the galaxy and reveal fresh details about its composition and history.


James Webb space telescope captures rare image of dying star

Dr Adam Carnall, who led the effort, said the telescope – the most powerful ever built – showed how galaxies were growing “larger and earlier” than astronomers expected in the first billion years of the universe.

“This work gives us our first really detailed look at the properties of these early galaxies, charting in detail the history of GS-9209, which managed to form as many stars as our own Milky Way in just 800m years after the big bang,” he said.

Carnall said the “very massive black hole” at the centre of GS-9209 was a “big surprise” that lent weight to the theory that such enormous black holes are responsible for shutting down star formation in early galaxies.

“The evidence we see for the supermassive black hole was really unexpected,” said Carnall. “This is the kind of detail we’d never have been able to see without JWST.”

A 3D model of the James Webb space telescope. 

Photograph: Alexandr Mitiuc/Alamy

The GS-9209 galaxy was discovered in 2004 by Karina Caputi, a former PhD student at Edinburgh who is now a professor of observational cosmology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.


While GS-9209 has roughly as many stars as our home galaxy, with a combined mass equal to 40bn suns, it is only one-tenth the size of the Milky Way. It is the earliest known example of a galaxy that has stopped forming stars, the researchers said.

Supermassive black holes can shut down star formation because their growth releases huge quantities of high-energy radiation, which can heat up and drive gas out of galaxies. Galaxies need vast clouds of gas and dust to collapse under their own gravity, thereby creating new stars.

“The fact [that the black hole] is so massive means it must have been very active in the past, with lots of gas falling in, which would have shone extremely brightly as a quasar,” Carnall said. “All that energy spewing out from the black hole in the centre of the galaxy would have seriously disrupted the whole galaxy, stopping gas from collapsing to form new stars.”

More details are published in Nature.

US ‘ready to fight in space if we have to’, says military official

Threat posed by ‘provocative’ Russia and China has left US no choice but to prepare for orbital skirmishes

Ian Sample 

Science editor

THE GUARDIAN

Sun 28 May 2023

The US is ready for conflict in outer space, according to a senior military official, after developing anti-satellite technologies to counter the threats posed by “provocative” countries such as Russia and China.

Brig Gen Jesse Morehouse at US Space Command, the arm of the military responsible for space operations, said Russian aggression and China’s vision to become the dominant space power by mid-century, had left the US with “no choice” but to prepare for orbital skirmishes.

“The United States of America is ready to fight tonight in space if we have to,” Morehouse told reporters in a briefing at the US embassy in London. “If someone was to threaten the United States of America, or any of our interests, including those of our allies and partners with whom we have treaties of mutual defence support, we are ready to fight tonight.”

Satellites underpin great swathes of modern life, from banking systems to weather forecasting, and are crucial for military operations through intelligence gathering, communications, navigation and guidance. But an overreliance on satellites means that an attack on a country’s orbital assets could have far-reaching consequences.

Four countries, namely China, the US, India and Russia, have tested anti-satellite capabilities by destroying their own satellites with missiles from the ground. But such demonstrations, which the US unilaterally banned last year, create vast clouds of debris that put other satellites at risk for decades.

When Russia shot down one of its own satellites in 2021, the explosion showered its orbit with more than 1,500 trackable fragments. “When you create that debris cloud and it lingers on orbit for decades, it’s almost like detonating a nuclear weapon in your own back yard,” Morehouse said. “You pay the price too.”

Faced with a new space race, Morehouse said on Thursday the US would continue to develop anti-satellite technologies “not because we want to fight tonight, but because that’s the best way to deter conflict from happening”, adding it would do so “without engaging in irresponsible tests”.

Russia and China are working on spacecraft capable of anti-satellite operations. In 2020, the US accused Russia of launching a projectile from one of two satellites that were trailing a US spy satellite.

Meanwhile, China has launched a satellite with a robotic arm capable of grabbing other satellites, and has developed a way to place explosives in the thruster nozzles of adversary’s satellites. The explosives are designed to go undetected for long periods and when detonated resemble an innocent engine malfunction.

Beyond weapons that grab, crash into or shoot down their targets are other approaches that jam satellite broadcasts, or damage the hardware with lasers, chemical sprays or high-power microwaves.

“We have a variety of capabilities we can bring to bear and we’ll continue to develop capabilities that allow us to maintain a credible deterrence posture,” Morehouse said. “Can you develop a capability that can be used to counter satellites, that works very well, and validate that it works without having to create a debris cloud on orbit every time you do so? Absolutely.”

Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has threatened to target western commercial satellites it considers to be involved in the war. Shortly after the invasion began, Elon Musk agreed to supply Starlink constellation satellites to Ukraine, which rapidly became crucial to the country’s military. But in February, Starlink said it would prevent the satellites from being used to control Ukrainian drones, saying it never intended the technology to be used for “offensive purposes”.

Morehouse said one of the lessons from the conflict was how resilient Starlink proved to be. The communications network comprises thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit which are easily replaced and updated to counter the threats they face. “It makes no sense for Russia to even try to shoot one down because there’s thousands of them and they don’t have thousands of anti-satellite missiles,” he said.

“Clearly the Ukrainians have no organic military space capabilities to attack in any way shape or form,” he added. “But … they’ve been very aggressive in trying to negate those commercial services, which I think is going to be a normal part of warfare in the future. Satellite communications are becoming more and more common across many militaries, and so countering them is something that many nations are interested in.”