Sunday, October 29, 2023

James Webb telescope spots ultra-rare cosmic explosion that could reveal the origin of the universe’s heaviest elements

A kilonova explosion from a neutron-star merger and the original host galaxy of those dead stars, as seen by JWST. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Levan (IMAPP, Warw), A. Pagan (STScI))

Using an incredibly bright gamma-ray as a guide, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected the heavy element tellurium around the site of a stellar-corpse collision. The discovery brings scientists a step closer to understanding where the universe's heaviest elements come from.

While scientists know that elements lighter than iron are forged in the hearts of massive stars, even the most massive stellar bodies aren't capable of generating hot and dense enough conditions at their cores to forge heavier elements such as gold, platinum or tellurium.

Neutron stars are created when stars can no longer perform nuclear fusion and collapse under their own gravity, creating matter so dense that a teaspoon of it would weigh 10 million tons (9 million metric tons). When neutron stars collide, this incredibly dense matter is sprayed into their immediate environment. This matter is rich in free neutrons, which can be captured by atoms, creating unstable atoms that eventually decay into elements with high numbers of protons and neutrons — the heavier elements in the periodic table. The decay of these elements also releases an explosion of electromagnetic radiation that astronomers see as a bright blast known as a kilonova.

"In the hunt for the heaviest elements, kilonovas are the main suspect," Darach Watson, an associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute's Cosmic Dawn Center in Denmark, told Live Science.

However, the "smoking gun" evidence of this process has yet to be seen, partially because kilonovas are extremely rare. This discovery made with JWST brings researchers a tantalizing step closer to that evidence.

"In the one previous good set of data we have for a kilonova, we have discovered strontium and evidence for yttrium," Watson said. "But these are relatively light, with around 85 to 90 protons and neutrons."

Watson, who co-authored a paper detailing the findings published Oct. 25 in the journal Nature, explained that tellurium, with 128 protons and neutrons, gets scientists much closer to really heavy elements and pinpointing neutron-star mergers as the sites of heavy-element production.

"We would like to find elements closer to the heaviest elements, such as uranium, which has about 235 protons and neutrons," Watson said. "There is a very long way from around 90 to around 240.

Kilonova hunting

The kilonova and its likely host galaxy labeled in the new JWST observations. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Levan (IMAPP, Warw), A. Pagan (STScI))

To take this important step and to make its first detection of a single element around a neutron star merger, JWST used the gamma-ray burst GRB 230307A, which was first detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in March 2023. The emission was around 1,000 times brighter than the gamma-ray bursts that Fermi usually spots, lasted 200 seconds and seemed to be coming from a neutron-star collision, which was unusual because these events usually create much shorter-duration gamma-ray bursts.

Using an array of ground- and space-based telescopes, scientists detected the rough source of GRB 230307A in the sky. Observing the source in gamma-ray, X-ray, optical, infrared, and radio wave frequencies of light showed that the source was characteristic of a kilonova explosion.

During the later period of the explosion, as the kilonova light moved into the infrared, it became unobservable from Earth but an excellent target for JWST's highly-sensitive infrared detectors.

In addition to spotting the telltale emissions of tellurium, JWST pinpointed a spiral galaxy 120,000 light-years from the kilonova where the dead stars likely originated. The team suspects the neutron stars involved in the merger that created the kilonova were ejected from this galaxy as a binary pair and traveled a distance equal to the width of the Milky Way together, before finally spiraling together and merging.

Watson believes the detection of this heavy element around the neutron star merger wouldn't have been possible without JWST, the most powerful telescope humanity has ever put into space.

"Nothing else even gets close to the JWST!" he said. "The sensitivity of JWST is just amazing, and at these wavelengths, it is completely unparalleled. I mean, we knew in principle what it could do, but I think everybody was unprepared for this."

The sun viewed through a green filter with a massive flash of light erupting from its surface

NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft captured this image of an enormous X-class solar flare as it erupted from the sun on October 28, 2003. The monstrous solar storm is one of the largest in recorded history. (Image credit: NASA/SOHO)

What it is: A solar flare exploding on the sun's surface

When it was taken: Oct. 28, 2003

Where it is: The sun, around 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth

Why it's so special: During the spooky season of 2003, the sun spit out an unusually powerful series of solar flares, known as the "Halloween solar storms." The most powerful of these flares (pictured above) exploded from the sun's surface on Oct. 28 and launched a high-speed burst of electrically charged particles, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), that smashed into Earth the next day.

The monstrous eruption was an X-class flare — the most powerful class the sun is capable of producing — with an estimated magnitude of 45, which remains the most powerful in modern databases, according to NASA. (The flare was too powerful to be accurately detected by scientific equipment at the time, so its magnitude was calculated afterward.)

The plume of plasma erupted from a sunspot wider than 13 Earths, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The resulting CME temporarily knocked out half of the satellites orbiting Earth at the time and forced astronauts on the International Space Station to take cover from the radiation.

On Earth, the resulting geomagnetic storm raged for three days, creating temporary radio blackouts across large parts of the globe and even causing permanent damage to electrical infrastructure in some places. Auroras were also clearly visible as far south as California, Texas and Florida, according to NOAA.

Experts say the superpowered storm could have been the largest since the Carrington Event in 1859, which, excluding inexplicably powerful ancient Miyake events, is the most powerful known solar storm in human history.

If a solar storm as large as the 2003 behemoth hit Earth today, the repercussions could be much more terrifying because there are thousands more satellites in orbit and we are much more reliant on them than we were back then.

All indications suggest that the sun's upcoming period of peak activity, the solar maximum, will be the strongest in decades.

Environmental Concerns Could Drive Asteroid Mining

Asteroid mining concept. Credit: NASA/Denise Watt

POSTED ONOCTOBER 29, 2023

BY CAROLYN COLLINS PETERSEN

UNIVERSE TODAY

Asteroid mining is one of those topics that sounds like it’s straight out of science fiction. But, in recent years, with the growth of lower-cost launch options, mining space rocks could become downright economical. As an added plus, getting important resources from asteroids could help drive the switchover to clean environmental practices and technologies right here on Earth.

In a recent exploratory paper, a group of academic researchers at Colorado School of Mines led by Dr. Maxwell Fleming joined an International Monetary Fund member Martin Stuermer to explore the topic. Their work looks at a variety of factors, including those lower launch costs, and asks the question “What if these costs continue to decline, making mining from asteroids or the Moon feasible?”

They analyzed the most relevant factors and used a Ramsay growth model to look at cost savings and investment dynamics involved with a transition from Earth-based to space mining. That model outlines a steady economic growth rate in terms of labor, capital, and technology. For space-based mining, labor is an open question, since such activities probably would be mostly robotic. Investment capital probably isn’t a problem, but the development of such technology has challenges.

Modern coal mining in Germany. Courtesy Eickhoff Gruppe, CC BY-SA 3.0

After examining the costs of mining here on Earth—both economic and environmental—the answer is fairly simple. They write, “We find that a transition of mining from Earth to Space could potentially allow for continued growth of metal use on Earth while limiting environmental and social costs. At the same time, such a transition could require an upper limit on the environmental and social costs on Earth to incentivize investment into R&D for space mining.”

Mining on Earth and Asteroids

Earth-based mining is an old and familiar concept. In the “olden days”, it was fairly cheap to get ores out of the ground. Miners dug ore and sent it to market. In more modern times, most mining uses automation in addition to some human labor. These days, the cost of extracting minerals has increased 60 times over the past century. It’s also incredibly environmentally damaging.

Many minerals today are important to the clean energy technologies needed for more efficient transportation, communication, and other facets of modern living. A complete clean energy transition leans heavily on the availability of copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, silver, and others. Increased mining costs and depletion of these resources have an effect on the clean energy transition. And, of course, there are always the environmental effects of such mining.

The Challenges of Space Mining

With that in mind, people are looking toward space-based resources. That means asteroids and possibly the Moon. Asteroids are a particularly tasty target. They’re just floating around out there, and appear to be rich in many ores. Of course, there are challenges to getting those ores. First, miners have to get to the asteroids. Or, we need to build robotic mining operations that work on asteroids in the harsh environment of space. Then, all that ore has to be transported back to Earth for refining and eventual incorporation into our clean technologies. That could, in the long run, stimulate economic growth back here on the home planet.

Leaving aside questions of “Who benefits?” and “Should we worry about the environmental damage to asteroids and near-Earth space?”, mining asteroids does present an interesting and profitable challenge.’ just floating around out there, and they appear to be rich in many ores. Of course, there are challenges to getting those ores. First, miners have to get to the asteroids. Or, we need to build robotic mining operations that work on asteroids in the harsh environment of space. Then, all that ore has to be transported back to Earth for refining and eventual incorporation into our clean technologies. That could, in the long run, stimulate economic growth back here on the home planet. Leaving aside questions of “Who benefits?” and “Should we worry about the environmental damage to asteroids and near-Earth space?”, mining asteroids does present an interesting and profitable challenge.

The Challenges of Space Mining

One potential sticking point is basically “How do we know which asteroids are rich in ores?” While planetary scientists know a fair amount about these leftovers of Solar System creation, a lot remains unknown. For example, based on asteroid samples, scientists know that the abundance of some minerals in asteroids is higher than here on Earth. Cobalt, Nickel, and iridium, for example, are more abundant on asteroids. But, how much are we talking about? That’s unknown because scientists don’t have good data on any “reserves” existing on these objects. Of course, as NASA and others send more probes to asteroids, that knowledge base will change. Eventually, companies interested in mining will be able to develop more concrete plans based on feasibility studies and missions (such as OSIRIS-REx) sent by space agencies.

Artist concept of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it readies itself to touch the surface of asteroid Bennu. This mission is an early precursor to possible asteroid mining.

Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

Another potential barrier is the development of the actual mining technologies. There are issues of usability, safety, and cost. Any equipment will have to work consistently in a low-gravity, near-vacuum environment. It’s one thing to send a small test robot to poke at an asteroid, and that does give some initial ideas about mining equipment. But, extensive mining to solve some of the environmental challenges here on Earth will require a full-scale operation. Once those challenges are met, the authors of the paper expect that the space environment will hardly be affected. Also, they state that costs to transport ores back to Earth (or Earth orbit) will benefit from utilizing the gravity well. A number of challenges on the technology side need solutions.
What Do We Gain?

The authors of the study employed a growth model to chart a possible plausible future for space mining. They came up with the following conclusions. First, eventually, there could well be a shift from mining Earth resources to exploiting asteroid resources. This will be influenced by the amount of environmental damage done here on the home planet. Second, there will need to be a pretty substantial investment in R&D for mining asteroids. Third, costs should drop as companies deploy more technology for mining. Fourth, in the short term, as ores are depleted on Earth, costs could rise, which could slow down a clean energy transition. But, if massive amounts of ores from space become available, eventually costs drop. That could signal a speed-up of the transition.

There’s an important factor that will affect future mining in space: who owns the asteroids? While the goal of the paper was to examine an economic model for space mining, the political and social aspects also need to be examined. Property rights in space have to be clarified, particularly in light of the Outer Space Treaty. Some countries and companies are very interested in exploiting resources and the Treaty may or may not stop them from doing so. In addition, questions about the market, public-private partnerships, taxation, and other aspects of doing business also come into play.

The authors end their exploration of the topic by asking, “How can the government help “buy down” the risk to encourage private investment? What public–private partnerships provide all parties with a fair distribution of potential gains?” The answers remain for future investors to determine.

For More Information
Mining in Space Could Spur Sustainable Growth

NAS Report: Origins, Worlds, and Life A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032

By Keith Cowing Press Release NAS October 25, 2023

The next decade of planetary science and astrobiology holds tremendous promise. New research will expand our understanding of our solar system’s origins, how planets form and evolve, under what conditions life can survive, and where to find potentially habitable environments in our solar system and beyond.

Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032 highlights key science questions, identifies priority missions, and presents a comprehensive research strategy that includes both planetary defense and human exploration. This report also recommends ways to support the profession as well as the technologies and infrastructure needed to carry out the science.

Contributor(s): National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; Space Studies Board; Committee on the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey

Download/buy Report

Astrobiology

Biden will pay the price

Opinion by Mohamed Amin
October 29, 2023
https://www.egyptindependent.com/

Leah Millis/Reuters

It is certain that US President Biden will bear the brunt of the Gaza war alone, whether in terms of his political capital, history, or future.

That is the least of it. The harsher consequences could be terrorist attacks in the US itself or on US embassies around the world. I recall here when former US President Barack Obama said that the situation in Gaza could lead to a hardening of the Palestinian position for generations to come.

This is a fact. What will the Israelis and Americans do with the children who witnessed the destruction in their areas and the deaths of their families?

Was this perception the reason for the “apparent” change in the US position towards Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip?

Observers have questions about this change.

Does it reflect an actual shift or just a change in rhetoric in response to the public condemnation and demonstrations that hit some areas in the US and paralyzed traffic and major subway stations?

Certainly, the international demonstrations around the world, and the internal demonstrations in the US for many days and with high intensity were the main reason – in addition to the situation in Gaza itself and the failure to implement the ground attack so far, and perhaps the capture of high-ranking officers, which all changed the US position.

There is also no objection that international and Arab pressures had an impact!

All of this led to a change in the US position on the ground. Add to that the threat of using the Oil Weapon again, especially with the onset of winter, and the rise in the number of deaths.

One of Biden’s mistakes was repeating the phrase that Israel has the right to defend itself after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation!

I believe that positions will change further as more officers and soldiers fall into captivity, the difficulty of releasing the prisoners held by the (Palestinian) factions.

The clear growing anger of Arab countries, European allies, and some Americans inside, may have pushed Biden’s team to call for a humanitarian halt to Israel’s attacks and focus on delivering assistance to the Palestinians!

Arabs are credited with their movements to put a humanitarian truce into a UN resolution, and they were all a voice that could be counted on, but I still do not know a clear reason for why Iraq and Tunisia abstained from voting on the resolution?

True, Iraqi sources said incomprehensible things, but what is Tunisia’s excuse when it stands up to protest all night and then its delegate abstains from voting? Does anyone just settle for demonstrating? Do these people imagine that they are demonstrating in public, and voting in closed rooms? Do they not know that the street knows at the same moment due to the development of communication tools? Do they think we are still in the sixties?!

Finally, did Biden realize that many of his supporters may abandon him in the next elections if the humanitarian situation deteriorates seriously? And that what is happening in Gaza may come with a backlash?!

Did Obama’s statements about escalating the situation and its impact on America for generations fly past Biden, who may not pay the price alone?!

HYDROGEN H2

They went hunting for fossil fuels. What they found could help save the world

By Laura Paddison, CNN
October 29, 2023

CNN — When two scientists went looking for fossil fuels beneath the ground of northeastern France, they did not expect to discover something which could supercharge the effort to tackle the climate crisis.

Jacques Pironon and Phillipe De Donato, both directors of research at France’s National Centre of Scientific Research, were assessing the amount of methane in the subsoils of the Lorraine mining basin using a “world first” specialized probe, able to analyze gases dissolved in the water of rock formations deep underground

A couple of hundred meters down, the probe found low concentrations of hydrogen. “This was not a real surprise for us,” Pironon told CNN; it’s common to find small amounts near the surface of a borehole. But as the probe went deeper, the concentration ticked up. At 1,100 meters down it was 14 percent, at 1,250 meters it was 20 percent.

This was surprising, Pironon said. It indicated the presence of a large reservoir of hydrogen beneath. They ran calculations and estimated the deposit could contain between 6 million and 250 million metric tons of hydrogen.

That could make it one of the largest deposits of “white hydrogen” ever discovered, Pironon said. The find has helped fuel an already feverish interest in the gas.

White hydrogen – also referred to as “natural,” “gold” or “geologic” hydrogen – is naturally produced or present in the Earth’s crust and has become something of a climate holy grail

Hydrogen produces only water when burned, making it very attractive as a potential clean energy source for industries like aviation, shipping and steel-making that need so much energy it’s almost impossible to meet through renewables such as solar and wind.

But while hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it generally exists combined with other molecules. Currently, commercial hydrogen is produced in an energy-intensive process almost entirely powered by fossil fuels.

A rainbow of colors is used as a shorthand for the different types of hydrogen. “Gray” is made from methane gas and “brown” from coal. “Blue” hydrogen is the same as gray, but the planet-heating pollution produced is captured before it goes into the atmosphere.

The most promising from a climate perspective is “green” hydrogen, made using renewable energy to split water. Yet production remains small scale and expensive.

That’s why interest in white hydrogen, a potentially abundant, untapped source of clean-burning energy, has ratcheted up over the last few years.

‘We haven’t been looking in the right places’

“If you had asked me four years ago what I thought about natural hydrogen, I would have told you ‘oh, it doesn’t exist,’” said Geoffrey Ellis, a geochemist with the US Geological Survey. “Hydrogen’s out there, we know it’s around,” he said, but scientists thought big accumulations weren’t possible.

Then he found out about Mali. Arguably, the catalyst for the current interest in white hydrogen can be traced to this West African country.

In 1987, in the village of Bourakébougou, a driller was left with burns after a water well unexpectedly exploded as he leaned over the edge of it while smoking a cigarette.

The well was swiftly plugged and abandoned until 2011, when it was unplugged by an oil and gas company and reportedly found to be producing a gas that was 98 percent hydrogen. The hydrogen was used to power the village, and more than a decade later, it is still producing.

When a study came out about the well in 2018, it caught the attention of the science community, including Ellis. His initial reaction was that there had to be something wrong with the research, “because we just know that this can’t happen.”

Then the pandemic hit and he had time on his hands to start digging. The more he read, the more he realized “we just haven’t been looking for it, we haven’t been looking in the right places.”

The recent discoveries are exciting for Ellis, who has been working as a petroleum geochemist since the 1980s. He witnessed the rapid growth of the shale gas industry in the US, which revolutionized the energy market. “Now,” he said, “here we are in what I think is probably a second revolution.”

White hydrogen is “very promising,” agreed Isabelle Moretti, a scientific researcher at the University of Pau et des Pays de l’Adour and the University of Sorbonne and a white hydrogen expert.

“Now the question is no longer about the resource… but where to find large economic reserves,” she told CNN.

A slew of startups

Dozens of processes generate white hydrogen but there is still some uncertainty about how large natural deposits form.

Geologists have tended to focus on “serpentinization,” where water reacts with iron-rich rocks to produce hydrogen, and “radiolysis,” a radiation-driven breakdown of water molecules.

White hydrogen deposits have been found throughout the world, including in the US, eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, Oman, as well as France and Mali.

Some have been discovered by accident, others by hunting for clues like features in the landscapes sometimes referred to as “fairy circles” – shallow, elliptical depressions that can leak hydrogen.

Ellis estimates globally there could be tens of billions of tons of white hydrogen. This would be vastly more than the 100 million tons a year of hydrogen that is currently produced and the 500 million tons predicted to be produced annually by 2050, he said.

“Most of this is almost certainly going to be in very small accumulations or very far offshore, or just too deep to actually be economic to produce,” he said. But if just 1 percent can be found and produced, it would provide 500 million tons of hydrogen for 200 years, he added.

It’s a tantalizing prospect for a slew of startups.

Australia-based Gold Hydrogen is currently drilling in the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. It targeted that spot after scouring the state’s archives and discovering that back in the 1920s, a number of boreholes had been drilled there which had very high concentrations of hydrogen. The prospectors, only interested in fossil fuels, abandoned them.

“We’re very excited by what we’re seeing,” said managing director Neil McDonald. There is more testing and drilling to do but the company could get into early production possibly in late 2024, he told CNN.

Some startups are seeing eye-popping investments. Koloma, a Denver-based white hydrogen start-up, has secured $91 million from investors, including the Bill Gates-founded investment firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures – although the company remains tight-lipped about exactly where in the US it is drilling and when it is aiming for commercialization.

Another Denver-based company, Natural Hydrogen Energy, founded by geochemist Viacheslav Zgonnik, has completed an exploratory hydrogen borehole in Nebraska in 2019 and has plans for new wells. The world is “very close to the first commercial projects,” Zgonnik told CNN.

“Natural hydrogen is a solution which will allow us to get get to speed” on climate action, he said.

Aerial view of drilling operations by Natural Hydrogen Energy in Kansas.
Natural Hydrogen Energy LLC

From hype to reality

The challenge for these businesses and for scientists will be translating hypothetical promise into a commercial reality.

“There could be a period of decades where there’s a lot of trial and error and false starts,” Ellis said. But speed is vital. “If it’s going to take us 200 years to develop the resource, that’s not really going to be of much use.”

But many of the startups are bullish. Some predict years, not decades, to commercialization. “We have all necessary technology we need, with some slight modifications,” Zgonnik said.

Challenges remain. In some countries, regulations are an obstacle. Costs also need to be worked out. According to calculations based on the Mali well, white hydrogen could cost around $1 a kilogram to produce – compared to around $6 a kilogram for green hydrogen. But white hydrogen could quickly become more expensive if large deposits require deeper drilling.

Back in the Lorraine basin, Pironon and De Donato’s next steps are to drill down to 3,000 meters to get a clearer idea of exactly how much white hydrogen there is.

There’s a long way to go, but it would be ironic if this region – once one of western Europe’s key coal producers – became an epicenter of a new white hydrogen industry.

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Sunday, October 29, 2023

Historic space photo: A monstrous 'Halloween storm' explodes from the sun

NAS Report: Origins, Worlds, and Life A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032

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