NASA administrators reach for the stars while navigating budgets, politics on Earth

By Wendy Whitman Cobb, Air University

12/6/22024

THE CONVERSATION

Bill Nelson has served as NASA Administrator since 2021.

 File Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo

Leaders of NASA sit in an awkward position. While they are the head of a widely recognized organization, they're often not the most famous individual in the agency. More people probably know the names of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronauts currently "stranded" on the International Space Station, than Bill Nelson, the current NASA administrator.

Astronauts might be the people most closely associated with NASA, but administrators are arguably more integral to getting programs off the ground.

As a space policy expert, I've seen the impact that individual NASA leaders can have on NASA's success. They play a vital role in deciding what NASA does and how it does it, and they also help build political support for space exploration.

The role of the NASA administrator

NASA is an independent government bureaucracy, meaning that it does not fall under one of the cabinet departments -- like the Department of State. As such, the leader of NASA is an administrator rather than a secretary.

Although the name differs, a NASA administrator has similar duties and responsibilities as a cabinet secretary. They help make decisions about which major programs and policies should be pursued and how they're carried out. NASA administrators work with partners in industry, including the commercial space industry. They also represent NASA while presenting to Congress and during diplomatic relations with other countries.

NASA administrators are also accountable to elected officials. Administrators are appointed by the president but must be confirmed by the Senate. Congress has a great deal to say about the budget that NASA gets each year. They also must authorize major programs, like the Artemis program, which aims to return the United States and its partners to the Moon.

Although major decisions like these are often out of their hands, NASA administrators still have a lot of influence behind the scenes. James Webb, NASA's second administrator, who held the office between 1961 and 1968, is often credited as being integral in maintaining political support for the Apollo program.

Dan Goldin, the longest-serving NASA administrator, helped save the International Space Station from cancellation in the early 1990s by convincing the Clinton administration to invite Russia's participation.

As administrator in the early 2000s, Mike Griffin helped jump-start the commercial space industry by instituting the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. This program provided funding to companies who would first send cargo to the International Space Station, and then later, astronauts.

However, not all administrators are as productive as Webb, Goldin or Griffin. Richard Truly was fired from the post by George H.W. Bush in 1992 after disagreeing with the administration's 1989 proposal to return the United States to the Moon.

Charles Bolden found controversy when he told Al-Jazeera that President Barack Obama instructed him to make outreach to Muslim countries one of NASA's priorities.

Both Truly and Bolden were astronauts before becoming administrator. But that doesn't mean that former astronauts are somehow worse in the position than people coming from other backgrounds. NASA administrators have historically had a wide variety of backgrounds, including scientists, engineers and even former members of Congress.

The current NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, is both a former senator and a former astronaut, having gone to space on the shuttle Columbia in January 1986.

Major questions ahead

No matter the administrator, the coming years will bring big decisions for whoever is next.

With the recent announcement that the around-the-moon mission of Artemis II is delayed until spring of 2026, NASA still has much work to do in its Artemis program. Major issues remain to be addressed with the crew vehicle, including problems with the capsule's heat shield and electronic systems.

Further, the success of commercial space companies like SpaceX means there will be more pressure on NASA to find ways to reduce costs by leveraging the services of commercial companies.

More broadly, many other countries are looking to how the United States is operating in space. Aside from what some see as a new space race with China, questions about space debris, space traffic management and space resources will involve cooperation with other countries and will require administrator involvement.

Finally, the NASA administrator will have to contend with a recurring issue: fewer resources. Historically, NASA has been appropriated less money than necessary to carry out all the things it has been charged to do.

This situation leads to hard decisions about what kinds of missions to support. Space science and robotic exploration typically lose out to things like human spaceflight.

Even though the next administrator will need to make hard decisions, the next few years will be full of excitement as the United States and others pursue increasingly ambitious goals.

Wendy Whitman Cobb is a professor of strategy and security studies at Air University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

SPACE/COSMOS

NASA’s stuck astronauts hit 6 months in space. Just 2 more to go


 NASA astronauts Suni Williams, left, and Butch Wilmore stand together for a photo enroute to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 Wednesday, June 5, 2024, in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for their liftoff on the Boeing Starliner capsule to the international space station. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara, File)

 In this photo provided by NASA, Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore, left, and Suni Williams pose for a portrait inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 13, 2024. (NASA via AP, File)

This image made from a NASA live stream shows NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore during a press conference from the International Space Station on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (NASA via AP, File)

 In this image released by NASA, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, both Expedition 71 Flight Engineers, make pizza aboard the International Space Station’s galley located inside the Unity module on Sept. 9, 2024. Items are attached to the galley using tape and velcro to keep them from flying away in the microgravity environment. (NASA via AP, File)

BY MARCIA DUNN
 December 5, 2024


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Known across the globe as the stuck astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams hit the six-month mark in space Thursday with two more to go.

The pair rocketed into orbit on June 5, the first to ride Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on what was supposed to be a weeklong test flight. They arrived at the International Space Station the next day, only after overcoming a cascade of thruster failures and helium leaks. NASA deemed the capsule too risky for a return flight, so it will be February before their long and trying mission comes to a close.

While NASA managers bristle at calling them stuck or stranded, the two retired Navy captains shrug off the description of their plight. They insist they’re fine and accepting of their fate. Wilmore views it as a detour of sorts: “We’re just on a different path.”

“I like everything about being up here,” Williams told students Wednesday from an elementary school named for her in Needham, Massachusetts, her hometown. “Just living in space is super fun.”

Both astronauts have lived up there before so they quickly became full-fledged members of the crew, helping with science experiments and chores like fixing a broken toilet, vacuuming the air vents and watering the plants. Williams took over as station commander in September.

RELATED STORIES

NASA astronaut in hospital after returning from extended stay in space

NASA astronauts won't say which one of them got sick after almost 8 months in space

Billionaire who performed the first private spacewalk is Trump's pick to lead NASA

“Mindset does go a long way,” Wilmore said in response to a question from Nashville first-graders in October. He’s from Mount Juliet, Tennessee. “I don’t look at these situations in life as being downers.”

Boeing flew its Starliner capsule home empty in September, and NASA moved Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX flight not due back until late February. Two other astronauts were bumped to make room and to keep to a six-month schedule for crew rotations.

Like other station crews, Wilmore and Williams trained for spacewalks and any unexpected situations that might arise.

“When the crews go up, they know they could be there for up to a year,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio found that out the hard way when the Russian Space Agency had to rush up a replacement capsule for him and two cosmonauts in 2023, pushing their six-month mission to just past a year.

Boeing said this week that input from Wilmore and Williams has been “invaluable” in the ongoing inquiry of what went wrong. The company said in a statement that it is preparing for Starliner’s next flight but declined comment on when it might launch again.

NASA also has high praise for the pair.

“Whether it was luck or whether it was selection, they were great folks to have for this mission,” NASA’s chief health and medical officer, Dr. JD Polk, said during an interview with The Associated Press.

On top of everything else, Williams, 59, has had to deal with “rumors,” as she calls them, of serious weight loss. She insists her weight is the same as it was on launch day, which Polk confirms.

During Wednesday’s student chat, Williams said she didn’t have much of an appetite when she first arrived in space. But now she’s “super hungry” and eating three meals a day plus snacks, while logging the required two hours of daily exercise.

Williams, a distance runner, uses the space station treadmill to support races in her home state. She competed in Cape Cod’s 7-mile Falmouth Road Race in August. She ran the 2007 Boston Marathon up there as well.

She has a New England Patriots shirt with her for game days, as well as a Red Sox spring training shirt.

“Hopefully I’ll be home before that happens -- but you never know,” she said in November. Husband Michael Williams, a retired federal marshal and former Navy aviator, is caring for their dogs back home in Houston.

As for Wilmore, 61, he’s missing his younger daughter’s senior year in high school and his older daughter’s theater productions in college.

“We can’t deny that being unexpectedly separated, especially during the holidays when the entire family gets together, brings increased yearnings to share the time and events together,” his wife, Deanna Wilmore, told the AP in a text this week. Her husband “has it worse than us” since he’s confined to the space station and can only connect via video for short periods.

“We are certainly looking forward to February!!” she wrote.

NASA project NEOWISE ends after cataloging objects around Earth for over a decade

By Toshi Hirabayashi, Georgia Institute of Technology & Yaeji Kim, University of Maryland
THE CONVERSATION

The NASA project NEOWISE, which has given astronomers a detailed view of near-Earth objects -- some of which could strike the Earth -- ended its mission and burned on reentering the atmosphere after over a decade.

On a clear night, the sky is full of bright objects -- from stars, large planets and galaxies to tiny asteroids flying near Earth. These asteroids are commonly known as near-Earth objects, and they come in a wide variety of sizes. Some are tens of kilometers across or larger, while others are only tens of meters or smaller.

On occasion, near-Earth objects smash into Earth at a high speed -- roughly 10 miles per second (16 kilometers per second) or faster. That's about 15 times as fast as a rifle's muzzle speed. An impact at that speed can easily damage the planet's surface and anything on it.

Impacts from large near-Earth objects are generally rare over a typical human lifetime. But they're more frequent on a geological timescale of millions to billions of years. The best example may be a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid that crashed into Earth, killed the dinosaurs and created Chicxulub crater about 65 million years ago.

Smaller impacts are very common on Earth, as there are more small near-Earth objects. An international community effort called planetary defense protects humans from these space intruders by cataloging and monitoring as many near-Earth objects as possible, including those closely approaching Earth. Researchers call the near-Earth objects that could collide with the surface potentially hazardous objects.

NASA began its NEOWISE mission in December 2013. This mission's primary focus was to use the space telescope from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to closely detect and characterize near-Earth objects such as asteroids and comets.

NEOWISE contributed to planetary defense efforts with its research to catalog near-Earth objects. Over the past decade, it helped planetary defenders like us and our colleagues study near-Earth objects.

Detecting near-Earth objects

NEOWISE was a game-changing mission, as it revolutionized how to survey near-Earth objects.

The NEOWISE mission continued to use the spacecraft from NASA's WISE mission, which ran from late 2009 to 2011 and conducted an all-sky infrared survey to detect not only near-Earth objects but also distant objects such as galaxies.

The spacecraft orbited Earth from north to south, passing over the poles, and it was in a Sun-synchronous orbit, where it could see the Sun in the same direction over time. This position allowed it to scan all of the sky efficiently.

The spacecraft could survey astronomical and planetary objects by detecting the signatures they emitted in the mid-infrared range.

Humans' eyes can sense visible light, which is electromagnetic radiation between 400 and 700 nanometers. When we look at stars in the sky with the naked eye, we see their visible light components.

However, mid-infrared light contains waves between 3 and 30 micrometers and is invisible to human eyes.

When heated, an object stores that heat as thermal energy. Unless the object is thermally insulated, it releases that energy continuously as electromagnetic energy, in the mid-infrared range.

This process, known as thermal emission, happens to near-Earth objects after the Sun heats them up. The smaller an asteroid, the fainter its thermal emission. The NEOWISE spacecraft could sense thermal emissions from near-Earth objects at a high level of sensitivity -- meaning it could detect small asteroids.

But asteroids aren't the only objects that emit heat. The spacecraft's sensors could pick up heat emissions from other sources too -- including the spacecraft itself.

To make sure heat from the spacecraft wasn't hindering the search, the WISE/NEOWISE spacecraft was designed so that it could actively cool itself using then-state-of-the-art solid hydrogen cryogenic cooling systems.

Operation phases

Since the spacecraft's equipment needed to be very sensitive to detect faraway objects for WISE, it used solid hydrogen, which is extremely cold, to cool itself down and avoid any noise that could mess with the instruments' sensitivity. Eventually the coolant ran out, but not until WISE had successfully completed its science goals.

During the cryogenic phase when it was actively cooling itself, the spacecraft operated at a temperature of about -447 degrees Fahrenheit (-266 degrees Celsius), slightly higher than the universe's temperature, which is about -454 degrees Fahrenheit (-270 degrees Celsius).

The cryogenic phase lasted from 2009 to 2011, until the spacecraft went into hibernation in 2011.

Following the hibernation period, NASA decided to reactivate the WISE spacecraft under the NEOWISE mission, with a more specialized focus on detecting near-Earth objects, which was still feasible even without the cryogenic cooling.

During this reactivation phase, the detectors didn't need to be quite as sensitive, nor the spacecraft kept as cold as it was during the cryogenic cooling phase, since near-Earth objects are closer than WISE's faraway targets.

The consequence of losing the active cooling was that two long-wave detectors out of the four on board became so hot that they could no longer function, limiting the craft's capability.

Nevertheless, NEOWISE used its two operational detectors to continuously monitor both previously and newly detected near-Earth objects in detail.

NEOWISE's legacy

As of February, NEOWISE had taken more than 1.5 million infrared measurements of about 44,000 different objects in the solar system. These included about 1,600 discoveries of near-Earth objects. NEOWISE also provided detailed size estimates for more than 1,800 near-Earth objects.

Despite the mission's contributions to science and planetary defense, it was decommissioned in August. The spacecraft eventually started to fall toward Earth's surface, until it reentered Earth's atmosphere and burned up on Nov. 1.

NEOWISE's contributions to hunting near-Earth objects gave scientists much deeper insights into the asteroids around Earth. It also gave scientists a better idea of what challenges they'll need to overcome to detect faint objects.

So, did NEOWISE find all the near-Earth objects? The answer is no. Most scientists still believe that there are far more near-Earth objects out there that still need to be identified, particularly smaller ones.

To carry on NEOWISE's legacy, NASA is planning a mission called NEO Surveyor. NEO Surveyor will be a next-generation space telescope that can study small near-Earth asteroids in more detail, mainly to contribute to NASA's planetary defense efforts. It will identify hundreds of thousands of near-Earth objects that are as small as about 33 feet (10 meters) across. The spacecraft's launch is scheduled for 2027.

Toshi Hirabayashi is an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Yaeji Kim is a postdoctoral associate in astronomy at University of Maryland.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nasa delays astronaut flight around the Moon

 it's hard to predict what this combination of Isaacman, Musk and Trump might mean for Nasa as we know it."

Pallab Ghosh
BBC Science Correspondent

•@pallabg.bsky.social and @BBCPallab

Frank Michaux/NASA
Left to Right: Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Their mission around the Moon is now delayed until April 2026

US space agency Nasa has announced a further delay to its plans to send astronauts back to the Moon.

The agency's chief, Bill Nelson, said the second mission in the Artemis programme was now due for launch in April 2026.

The plan had been to send astronauts around the Moon but not land in September 2025. The date had already slipped once before, from November of this year.

That will mean that a Moon landing will not take place until at least 2027, a year later than originally planned.

The delay is needed to fix an issue with the capsule's heat shield, which returned from the previous test flight excessively charred and eroded, with cracks and some fragments broken off.

Mr Nelson told a news conference that "the safety of our astronauts is our North Star".

"We do not fly until we are ready. We need to do the next test flight, and we need to do it right. And that's how the Artemis programme proceeds."

Nasa/Leif Heimbold
The Orion Crew module's heat shield was excessively damaged after its test flight in 2022

Mr Nelson said that engineers had got to the root of the problem and believed that it could be fixed by changing the trajectory of the capsule's re-entry – but it would take time to carry out a thorough assessment.

Nasa is in a race with the Chinese space agency, which has its own plans to send astronauts to the Moon. Mr Nelson said he was confident that the Artemis programme would reach the lunar surface first, but he called on Nasa's commercial and international partners to "double down to meet and improve this schedule".

"We plan to launch Artemis 3 in mid-2027. That will be well ahead of the Chinese government's announced intention that they have already publicly stated is 2030."

NASA
Nasa's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft have been criticised for being expensive and slow to develop


The added delay, however, will increase the pressure on government-run Nasa – whose rocket system for sending astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS), has been criticised as being expensive and slow to develop.

This is in stark contrast to Elon Musk's private sector firm, SpaceX, which is surging ahead in its efforts to build its own, eventually much cheaper and reusable Starship rocket.

The nomination of Jared Isaacman by President-elect Donald Trump to take over from Mr Nelson as Nasa's head has added to growing concerns that big changes are in store for Nasa's Moon programme.

Mr Isaacman is a billionaire and close collaborator with Mr Musk, who has paid for two private sector missions which have taken him to space. His entrepreneurial approach might prove a shock to Nasa's system, according to Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist at the Open University.

"SLS is an old-school rocket. It is not reusable like Starship, hence very expensive, and it has taken a long time to get it operational. And slow and expensive is a precarious position to be in when the incoming president, we expect, is looking to save costs.

"Isaacman is going to bring a new pair of eyes over how Nasa operates. And it's hard to predict what this combination of Isaacman, Musk and Trump might mean for Nasa as we know it."

European Vega-C rocket launches after two-year gap

Europe's Vega-C rocket has successfully returned to space after failing on its first commercial mission two years ago.

Vega-C is carrying the Sentinel-1C satellite for the EU's Copernicus observation programImage: RONAN LIETAR/AFP

Europe's new Vega-C rocket was successfully launched from French Guiana on Thursday. It was the first launch of the troubled rocket since a failed flight two years ago.

After days of delays, the rocket carrying the Sentinel-1C satellite for the European Union's Copernicus Earth observation programme blasted off into space.

"Piloting is calm and the parameters on board are normal," said Jean-Frederic Alasa, Range Operations Manager, in the Guiana Space Center's control room a few minutes into the mission.

Sentinel-1C is expected to expand the use of radar imagery to monitor the Earth's environment. With 12 families of Sentinel satellites, Copernicus is the world's largest Earth observation system, according to its developers, and holds the largest repository of radar data.

What is Vega-C?

The Vega-C is an evolution of the Vega rocket, which carried lightweight satellites into space from 2012 until this autumn.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the new rocket can carry about 800 kilograms more payload, is cheaper and can put satellites into orbits at different altitudes. In total, the Vega C can transport more than two tonnes of payload.

In December 2022, Vega rockets were grounded after the latest model failed two and a half minutes into its second mission and first commercial flight due to a motor anomaly, destroying two Earth-imaging satellites.

The rocket was grounded for two years while the nozzle of the Zefiro 40 rocket motor that caused the failure was redesigned.

A gold rush in space — the business of space trave   42:34

Europe's prospects in space

The new rocket is expected to play a key role in Europe's access to space after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced the bloc to stop using Russian Soyuz vehicles.

Previously, Europe relied on earlier versions of Vega for light payloads, Soyuz for medium payloads, and Ariane for heavy payloads.

Four-year delays to Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket have exacerbated the problem, forcing the continent to turn to rivals such as Elon Musk's SpaceX.

However, the heavy-lift Ariane 6 made a successful maiden flight in July, providing some relief to Europe's space efforts.

Four launches with Vega-C are planned for next year, followed by five more in 2026, according to ESA.

dh/kb (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

India launches European 'artificial eclipse' satellites

Agence France-Presse
December 5, 2024 


The Proba-3 mission will emulate a solar eclipse to find out more about the Sun's mysterious outer atmosphere (Proba-2 minisatellite/ESA/AFP)

India on Thursday successfully launched into space a pair of European satellites that will create artificial solar eclipses to help scientists catch a rare glimpse of the Sun's mysterious atmosphere.

Scientists broke into rapturous applause at the Sriharikota launch site as the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief announced the spacecraft had been ejected as planned.

"The spacecraft has been placed in the right orbit," ISRO chief S. Somanath said.

The launch, originally scheduled for Wednesday but delayed by a technical fault, was for the European Space Agency's "Project for On-Board Autonomy 3" (Proba-3) mission, part of a series of "in-orbit missions to test out new technologies".

The mission, at a cost of 200 million euros ($211 million), creates artificial total solar eclipses by positioning two satellites 150 meters (500 feet) apart from each other.

The shadow cast by one satellite allows the other to observe solar phenomena while blocking out the light from the Sun itself.

"For six hours at a time, it will be able to see the Sun's faint atmosphere, the corona, in the hard-to-observe region between the Sun's edge and 1.4 million kilometers from its surface," the European Space Agency said in a pre-launch analysis.

The project will help scientists answer key questions, including why the corona is so much hotter than the Sun itself, and how the Sun's energy output changes over time.

India has emerged as a reliable and low-cost option for putting commercial spacecraft and the satellites of other countries into space.

Experts say New Delhi can keep costs low by copying and adapting existing technology, and thanks to an abundance of highly skilled engineers who earn a fraction of their foreign counterparts' wages.

The world's most populous country has flexed its spacefaring ambitions in the last decade with its space program growing considerably in size and momentum, matching the achievements of established powers at a much cheaper price tag.

In August 2023, it became just the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the Moon after Russia, the United States and China.


Prime Minister Narendra Modi also announced plans last year to send a man to the Moon by 2040.

© Agence France-Presse

How quantum black holes explain why we don’t see the end of space and time

The Conversation
December 5, 2024 

Black Hole (Vadim Sadovski/Shutterstock)

Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity, is famously incomplete. As proven by physics Nobel laureate Roger Penrose, when matter collapses under its own gravitational pull, the result is a “singularity” – a point of infinite density or curvature.

At a singularity, space, time and matter are crushed and stretched into nonexistence. The laws of physics as we know them suffer a complete breakdown. If we could observe singularities, our physical theories couldn’t be used to predict the future from the past. In other words, science would become an impossibility.

Penrose also realised nature may hold a remedy for this fate – black holes. A defining feature of a black hole is its event horizon, a one-way membrane in space-time. Objects – including light – that cross the event horizon can never leave due to the black hole’s incredibly strong gravitational pull.

In all the known mathematical descriptions of black holes, singularities are present in their core. Penrose postulated that all the singularities of gravitational collapse are “clothed” by the event horizons of black holes – meaning we could never observe one. With the singularity inside the event horizon, physics in the rest of the universe is business as usual.

This conjecture of Penrose, that there are no “naked” singularities, is called cosmic censorship. After half a century, it remains unproven and one of the most important open problems in mathematical physics. At the same time, finding examples of instances where the conjecture doesn’t hold up has proven equally difficult.

In recent work, published in Physical Review Letters, we showed that quantum mechanics, which rules the microcosmos of particles and atoms, supports cosmic censorship.

Black holes

Black holes are influenced by quantum mechanics to some extent, but such influence is normally ignored by physicists. For example, Penrose excluded these effects in his work, as did the theory that enabled scientists to measure ripples in space-time called gravitational waves from black holes.

When they are included, scientists call the black holes “quantum black holes”. These have long provided a further mystery, as we don’t know how Penrose’s conjecture works in the quantum realm.


A model where both matter and space-time obey quantum mechanics is often considered the fundamental description of nature. This could be a “theory of everything” or a theory of “quantum gravity”. Despite tremendous effort, an experimentally verified theory of quantum gravity remains elusive.

It is widely expected that any viable theory of quantum gravity should resolve the singularities present in the classical theory – potentially showing they are simply an artifact of an incomplete description. So it’s reasonable to expect quantum effects should not make the problem of whether we could ever observe a singularity worse.

That’s because Penrose’s singularity theorem makes certain assumptions about the nature of matter, namely that the matter in the universe always has positive energy. However, such assumptions can be violated quantum mechanically – we know that negative energy can exist in the quantum realm in small amounts (called the Casimir effect).


Without a fully fledged theory of quantum gravity, it is difficult to address these questions. But progress can be made by considering “semi-classical” or “partially-quantum” gravity, where space-time obeys general relativity but matter is described with quantum mechanics.

Though the defining equations of semi-classical gravity are known, solving them is another story entirely. Compared to the classical case, our understanding of quantum black holes is much less complete.

From what we do know of quantum black holes, they also develop singularities. But we expect a suitable generalization of classical cosmic censorship, namely, quantum cosmic censorship, should exist in semi-classical gravity.

Developing quantum cosmic censorship

So far, there is not an established formulation of quantum cosmic censorship, though there are some clues. In some cases, a naked singularity can become modified by quantum effects to shroud the singularities; they become quantum dressed. That’s because quantum mechanics plays a role in the event horizon.


First ever image of black hole. Event Horizon Telescope/Wiki Commons, CC BY-SA

The first such example was presented by physicists Roberto Emparan, Alessandro Fabbri and Nemanja Kaloper in 2002. Now, all known constructions of quantum black holes share this feature, suggesting a more rigorous formulation of quantum cosmic censorship exists.

Intimately linked to cosmic censorship is the Penrose inequality. This is a mathematical relationship that, assuming cosmic censorship, says the mass or energy of of space-time is related to the area of black hole horizons contained within it. Consequently, a violation of the Penrose inequality would strongly suggest a violation of cosmic censorship.


A quantum Penrose inequality could therefore be used to rigorously formulate quantum cosmic censorship. One team of researchers proposed such an inequality in 2019. While promising, their proposal is very difficult to test for quantum black holes in regimes where quantum effects are strong.

In our work, we discovered a quantum Penrose inequality that applies to all known examples of quantum black holes, even in the presence of strong quantum effects.

The quantum Penrose inequality limits the energy of space-time in terms of the total entropy – a statistical measure of a system’s disorder – of the black holes and quantum matter contained within it. This addition of quantum matter entropy ensures the quantum inequality is true even when the classical version breaks down (on quantum scales).

That the total energy of this system cannot be lower than the total entropy is also natural from the standpoint of thermodynamics. To prevent a violation of the second law of thermodynamics – that the total entropy never decreases.


When quantum matter is introduced, its entropy is added to the black hole’s, obeying a generalized second law. In other words, Penrose inequality can also be understood as bounds on entropy – exceed this bound, and the space-time develops naked singularities.

On logical grounds, it was not obvious that all known quantum black holes would satisfy the same, universal inequality, but we showed they do.

Our result is not a proof of a quantum Penrose inequality. But that such a result holds in the quantum domain as well as the classical one strengthens it. While space and time may end at singularities, quantum mechanics screen this fate from us.


Andrew Svesko, Research Associate of Theoretical Physics, King's College London; Antonia Micol Frassino, Research fellow, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati; Juan F. Pedraza, Research Fellow at Instituto Fisica Teorica UAM/CSIC, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and Robie Hennigar, Willmore Fellow of Mathematical Physics, Durham University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Oregon approves largest solar project in United States

GIANT BIRD FRYER

Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Officials in Oregon have given the final green light to the largest proposed solar project in the United States.

The Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council gave its approval to the 1,200 MW Sunstone Solar project, which will be owned and operated by Pine Gate Renewables.
Advertisement

The clean energy project will be located in Morrow County, Ore., with a population of around 12,000 people and support its wheat agricultural economy.

"Oregon's energy facility permitting process is one of the most rigorous in the entire country," Pine Gate Renewables CEO Ben Catt said in a statement Friday.

"The recent unanimous permit approval is a testament to the way our team worked with stakeholders to provide a win-win for Oregon and the Morrow County community."

Procurement on the project is expected to start next year with construction set to begin in 2026.

"The fight against the climate crisis depends on a variety of successful energy solutions like Pine Gate Renewables' solar power and energy storage project in Eastern Oregon," Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said in the same statement.

"This is just another example of the important federal investments I fought for in the Inflation Reduction Act, and I will continue to advocate for tech-neutral solutions in our tax code that promote innovation and efficiency in Oregon and across the nation."

The company already operates 17 other solar facilities in Oregon.

Size of Stegosaurus readily apparent in new NYC display to open this weekend


"Apex," a 150 million-year-old Stegosaurus that is the most complete and well-preserved specimen of its size ever discovered, is seen on display for a media preview at Sotheby's in New York City on Wednesday. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 5 (UPI) -- The 150 million-year-old fossil remains of a Stegosaurus dinosaur named "Apex" will be displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City starting Sunday.

The dinosaur's remains are considered by many to be the largest and most complete examples of the Stegosaurus ever discovered and are displayed in the museum's Kenneth C. Griffin Exploration Atrium.





The fossil measures 11.5 feet high and 27 feet in length and is mounted in a defensive pose with its spiked tail raised high.

It was discovered in the Morrison Formation near Dinosaur, Colo., in 2022 and contains more than 254 of its original 320 bone elements.

The missing bones were recreated using 3D printing and sculpted pieces to create a complete display of the dinosaur.

The museum chose the atrium to display it so that visitors can walk around the dinosaur's skeleton and appreciate its size.

Researchers with the museum's Paleontology Division will study the fossil to learn more about its growth, life history and variations compared to similar specimens at other natural history institutions.

The fossil is on loan from billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who purchased it in 2024 at auction from Sotheby's for $44.6 million.

The Stegosaurus is the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold at auction.

Although it is named Apex, the Stegosaurus was a plant-eater that lived between 145 million and 152 million years ago and is found in the United States, according to the U.K. Natural History Museum in London.

The armored dinosaur used its spiked tail to defend against predators and had distinctive vertical bony plates along its back that were embedded into its skin but not attached to its skeleton.

Scientists are unsure what the purpose might be for the bony plates, with some suggesting they discouraged predators, enabled recognition of other Stegosaurus dinosaurs or helped regulate its body temperature.

Analysis predicts big drop in U.S. global health ranking

"The rapid decline of the U.S. in global rankings from 2022 to 2050 rings the alarm for immediate action"

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News


Americans are falling farther behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to health and life expectancy, a new study shows. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

Americans are falling farther behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to health and life expectancy, a new study shows.

Life expectancy in the United States is expected to increase to 79.9 years in 2035 and 80.4 years by 2050, up from 78.3 years in 2022, researchers reported.

That sounds good, but it's actually a modest increase that will lower the nation's global ranking from 49th in 2022 to 66th in 2050 among 204 countries around the world, they found.

"The rapid decline of the U.S. in global rankings from 2022 to 2050 rings the alarm for immediate action," said co-senior study author Dr. Stein Emil Vollset, an affiliate professor with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"The U.S. must change course and find new and better health strategies and policies that slow down the decline in future health outcomes," Vollset added in a university news release.

The United States is also expected to rank progressively lower than other nations in the average number of years a person can expect to live in good health, researchers reported Thursday in the Lancet journal.

The U.S. ranking in healthy life expectancy will drop from 80th in 2022 to 108th by 2050, results showed.

The comparative health of U.S. women is expected to fare worse than that of men.

Female life expectancy in the U.S. is forecast to drop to 74th in 2050, down from 19th in 1990, while male life expectancy will decrease to 65th in 2050 from 35th in 1990, the study found.

The major drivers of poor health in America include obesity, high blood sugar and high blood pressure, researchers noted.

If those risk factors were eliminated by 2050, 12.4 million deaths could be averted, researchers forecast.

"In spite of modest increases in life expectancy overall, our models forecast health improvements slowing down due to rising rates of obesity, which is a serious risk factor to many chronic diseases and forecasted to leap to levels never before seen," said co-senior study author Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

"The rise in obesity and overweight rates in the U.S., with IHME forecasting over 260 million people affected by 2050, signals a public health crisis of unimaginable scale," Murray added.

Drug-related deaths also are eating into American health.

The United States recorded an 878% increase in the death rate from drug use disorders between 1990 and 2021, rising from 2 deaths to 19.5 deaths per 100,000, researchers noted.

And that rate is expected to climb another 34% by 2050, up to 26.7 deaths per 100,000 -- the highest drug-related mortality rate in the world, more than twice that of the second-highest country, Canada.

"The stark contrast that's forecasted in the next 30 years comes after a concerted effort by federal, state and local government agencies and health systems launched after the opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency in 2017," said lead researcher Ali Mokdad, a professor with IHME.

"The opioid epidemic is far from over, and greater effectiveness and continued expansion of programs to prevent and treat drug use are still needed," Mokdad added.

These trends harm not only individual Americans, but the nation as a whole, researchers said.

"Poor health harms the economy because the nation suffers from a reduced workforce, lower productivity and higher health care costs for companies and their employees," Murray said. "That leads to a lower GDP and a chance for peer countries with a stronger economy to overtake the U.S., creating a ripple effect around the world financially and geopolitically."

Expanding health care access is the most straightforward way to improve America's standing, as such coverage allows doctors to catch and treat disease more effectively, researchers said.

"All Americans must have access to high-quality health care through universal health coverage to prevent illness, stay healthy and be protected from financial hardship, regardless of their income," Mokdad said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about U.S. life expectancy.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Study: 1 in 20 pregnant U.S. women experience emotional, physical abuse

By Ernie Mundell, HealthDay News


New research shows that 1 in 20 American women suffer physical, sexual or emotional abuse during pregnancy. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

Pregnancy can be a trying time for women at best, but new research shows that 1 in every 20 pregnant American women also suffer physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

Abuse can take a toll on the mental and physical health of the mom-to-be and her baby, because it's strongly linked to "delayed prenatal care, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]," the research team wrote.

The new study also showed that abuse experienced in pregnancy can raise risks for maternal substance abuse, premature delivery and low birth weight.

The research was led by Megan Steele-Baser, of the Division of Violence Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Her team looked at 2016-2022 data on self-reported levels of physical or sexual violence and emotional abuse for pregnant women living in Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin.

Women were also asked about the state of their health and health care during the pregnancy.

The data showed that more than 1 in every 20 of the women (5.4%) had some experience of abuse from an intimate partner during their pregnancy.

Emotional abuse (denigrating comments, yelling and other abuse) was most common, with 5.2% of women citing these experiences, while 1.5% of women suffered physical violence from a partner and 1% cited sexual violence.

All of this could seriously impact pregnancy outcomes.

For example, experiencing emotional abuse was linked to a near-tripling of the risk for depression during pregnancy, and it greatly raised the odds that a mom-to-be would smoke or use alcohol or marijuana.

Physical violence inflicted on a pregnant women upped her chances of depression nearly three-fold, and it raised her chances for gestational high blood pressure by 30% and preterm birth by 50%, the research showed.

Sometimes, outcomes can be fatal: According to Steele-Baser and colleagues, 40% of homicides affecting pregnant women coincide with intimate partner violence.

The researchers also noted that suicide, drug overdose and other forms of fatalities linked to mental health issues remain the leading cause of death for pregnant women. All may be linked to depression, which can easily arise in the context of abuse by an intimate partner.

According to Steele-Baser's team, more can and must be done to prevent these tragedies.

"Addressing multiple intimate partner violence types through comprehensive prevention efforts is critical to supporting maternal ad infant health," they wrote.

The new findings were published Thursday in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

More information

Find out more about signs of depression in pregnancy at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Advertisement






Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

 South Koreans on resort island Jeju march in call for President Yoon's resignation

The crowd waved flags, carried signs and chanted "Yoon Suk-yeol, step down. Arrest Yoon Suk-yeol."

 A woman holds up a sign during a demonstration calling for the resignation and arrest of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday night in Jeju City, Jeju Island, South Korea. Photo by Darryl Coote/UPI

JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Hundreds of South Koreans on the southern resort island of Jeju converged on City Hall on Friday night to demand that embattled South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol resign and be arrested over his failed attempt earlier this week to institute martial law.

Organized by local unions and non-governmental organizers, the protest began at 7 p.m. local time with speeches, followed by a march of an estimated 1,000 people through Jeju's downtown core, an area populated by restaurants and bars and a hot spot for university students.

The crowd waved flags, carried signs and chanted "Yoon Suk-yeol, step down. Arrest Yoon Suk-yeol."

"Protests are happening everywhere, because he is not the president of Seoul, he's the president of all Koreans," Kim Jeong-hee, one of the protest organizers from a local union, told UPI.

Like many South Koreans, those who took to the streets Friday night on Jeju were enraged by their president's late Tuesday declaration of martial law. Although it was rescinded by lawmakers after only a few hours, its declaration opened old wounds, unearthed buried trauma and ignited new fears.

The last time martial law was declared was in 1979, after the country's decades-long dictator, President Park Chung-hee, was assassinated. That event led to the rise of another military dictatorship under President Chun Doo-hwan, which lasted until democracy finally came to the southern half of the peninsula in 1987.

However, the the first declaration of martial law in South Korea occurred in October 1948, just two months after the country's founding, to suppress a rebellion in Suncheon and Yeosu ignited by soldiers who refused to be sent to Jeju to quell ongoing protests.

A month later, President Syngman Rhee again declared martial law, this time on Jeju. Under this order, and in the name of squelching a communist-led uprising, tens of thousands of islanders were slaughtered in what is now known as the Jeju Massacre, or the Jeju 4.3 Incident in Korean.

Kim Jung-hyun, 22, a Jeju native attending university in Seoul was among those marching in downtown Jeju Friday night. She told UPI that she was scared when she heard martial law had been declared.

"I couldn't believe this was happening in the 21st century. I feel like I am in North Korea," she said, adding that it is because of Jeju's history that so many people were voicing their anger.

Yoon's martial law declaration not only revived old fears on the island, but for some too young to remember the horrors of South Korea's previous regimes, it posed a threat they were struggling to understand.

As the protest was ending, Byun Ji-yun, a 17-year-old Jeju high school student, came up to UPI and demanded to be heard.

She said she should be studying for her final exams next week, but she and her friends had to join the protest, for what was at stake was nothing less than their future.

"I'm learning about Korean history and I never thought that would happen again," she said.

Byun said she was initially frightened after the declaration was made, but soon felt compelled to demonstrate against Yoon.

"It is my future," she said. "I have to live in this country for maybe 60, maybe 70 years. This situation is about my future."

The Democratic Party-led opposition has filed an impeachment vote against Yoon, which will be voted on Saturday evening.

Protest organizer Kim Jeong-hee stated that marches will continue nightly on Jeju until Yoon is impeached or resigns.

"Even if it doesn't work tomorrow, we will keep going until the president resigns," she said.

"Even though we are a small island, we are fighting to protect democracy."

Jeju Island is home to fewer than 700,000 people. The demonstrations here since Yoon's martial law are the largest the island has seen since Jeju residents came out on Dec. 3, 2016, in protest of then-President Park Geun-hye, who would be impeached on Dec. 9 of that year, according to local newspaper Jeju Sori.

South Korea's president a 'great danger' to citizens, his own party says

Copyright AP Photo

By Tamsin Paternoster

Published on 06/12/2024 - 

Yoon Suk-yeol appears to be losing his last remaining support after declaring a short-lived martial law order that shocked the country.

Members of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's own People Power Party (PPP) said the leader posed a "significant risk" to South Korean citizens and called for his powers to be frozen during a party meeting on Friday.

Yoon was likely to engage in "extreme actions, like reattempting to impose martial law, which could potentially put the Republic of Korea and its citizens in great danger,” PPP's leader, Han Dong-hun, said.

“It’s my judgment that an immediate suspension of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s official duties is necessary to protect the Republic of Korea and its people,” Han added.

Han's comments spell trouble for Yoon, who is on the verge of losing power as opposition parties push for a parliamentary vote on his impeachment on Saturday.

Yoon briefly imposed a martial law order on South Korea this week, citing the need to "eliminate anti-state forces." As he announced martial law, he accused the country's opposition, the liberal Democratic Party, of sympathising with North Korea.

He reversed course only six hours later after 190 lawmakers forcibly entered the shuttered parliament to vote down the decree.

Opposition parties have called Yoon's martial law order “unconstitutional, illegal rebellion or coup.” They will need the support of two-thirds of the parliament to pass an impeachment motion and remove Yoon from power.

Related

• South Korea's president faces impeachment after shock martial law order
• South Korea martial law: Why it happened and what comes next

Elsewhere, Han said he received intelligence that Yoon had ordered one of the country's top intelligence commanders to arrest other politicians during the brief period he imposed a martial law order on the country.

His account was questioned by South Korea's spy agency director, Cho Tae-yong, who insisted that such an order would come to him and that he didn't receive any orders from Yoon to detain politicians.

Yoon under pressure

In addition to facing increasing cross-party support for his impeachment, Yoon's Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun is under investigation for his role in Yoon's decision.

Opposition parties claim it was Kim who recommended Yoon take the step, and he has been replaced in the interim by Vice Defence Minister Kim Seon-ho — who has promised the ministry would be co-operating with prosecutors in an additional investigation into the military's role in Yoon's martial law order.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Seoul since Wednesday, calling for Yoon to resign.

Members of one of the country's biggest umbrella labour groups, the Korean Metal Worker's Union, have begun hourly strikes against Yoon, pledging to start indefinite strikes should the leader remain in power.

Events this week in Seoul have drawn international attention, with US President Joe Biden commenting he was "seriously concerned" about Yoon's martial law order and welcoming its removal.

Lawmakers began impeachment proceedings against Yoon just hours after the martial law order was lifted. They have set Saturday as the date parliament should vote to remove the president.

Opposition parties will need support from 200 members of the National Assembly's 300. They currently have 192 seats combined, with the PPP having 108 lawmakers.

Old boys’ club? S Korea plotters’ high

 school links in spotlight

ByAFP
December 6, 2024

South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law but it was swiftly overturned by parliament - 

Copyright AFP ANTHONY WALLACE

SHIM Kyu-Seok

Key figures in South Korea’s failed martial law bid share one key connection: they are all graduates of a prestigious, all-boys school in Seoul.

The coincidence has sparked wild online speculation and even forced the school — a respectable but not academically famous, fee-paying establishment — to issue a public rebuke of its infamous alumnus.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Tuesday declaration of South Korea’s first martial law in decades was swiftly overturned by parliament, and the conservative former prosecutor now faces impeachment and possible jail time.

South Koreans have been quick to point out that 63-year-old Yoon, his former defence minister, interior minister and head of the military’s intelligence all graduated from the Choongam High School.

There’s as yet no evidence that the connection played a role in their disastrous bid to shut down South Korea’s parliament.

But that hasn’t stopped many online from pointing fingers — leading the school’s superintendent Yoon Myung-hwa to quickly discredit her school’s infamous alumni.

She declared Yoon and ex-defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, 65, as “Choongam’s most embarrassing alumni a million times over”.

“They destroyed the reputation of the nation, as well as our school,” she wrote on Facebook.

– Class as usual –

Classes were on as usual at Choongam — a normal looking high-school in a peaceful leafy northwestern district of Seoul — on Friday, though administrators were clearly tense about the unwanted attention the school was getting.

The school is being bombarded by criticism from outsiders, with even bus drivers becoming the targets of bitter rants by citizens angry at current events.

Students have even been given special permission not to wear their school uniforms, local media reported, to prevent them from being targeted by angry members of the public.

When AFP toured the school Friday, students — who were not wearing uniforms — seemed confused to see reporters walking through their building, as they continued with lessons.

Superintendent Yoon told AFP the school was “distressed” to find itself associated with this week’s dark chapter in South Korean democracy.

“We at Choongam educate our students as democratic citizens, to value and treasure democracy,” she said.

“The acts perpetrated by those people are faults of the individual that do not reflect our ideals,” she added.

“As a school we feel uneasy and distressed about how our education is being faulted for these acts.”

– ‘Choongam clique’ –

Local media have run sensational stories decrying the group of schoolboy chums purportedly behind the dramatic events of Tuesday night, when heavily-armed soldiers were helicoptered into the parliament building with orders to “drag out” lawmakers.

Aided by determined staffers who blocked doors with office furniture to keep the soldiers out, enough MPs managed to gather to vote down the martial law declaration.

“The 12.3 martial law: behind the scenes lay the ‘Choongam clique'” wrote the magazine, Sisa Journal. “Was this a ‘Choongam clique’ coup?” asked the Segye Ilbo.

Interior minister Lee Sang-min denied the high school connection playing a role, saying there had been “no exclusive meeting between Choongam colleagues.”

But school networks occupy important roles in South Korean elite society — often seen as one of three key factors, alongside blood ties and regional background, that determine success.

And many pointed to parallels with another group of school graduates whose connection last pulled South Korea into martial law — former president Chun Doo-hwan’s “Hanahoe” army clique.

Chun’s circle of comrades from the Korea Military Academy, South Korea’s West Point, were instrumental in the 1979 coup — and bloody crackdowns — that followed the assassination of President Park Chung-hee.

The autocratic Chun later filled key posts with fellow alumni — even anointing fellow graduate Roh Tae-woo as his successor.

An online post three months before Yoon’s martial law declaration suggesting the so-called “Choongam connection” could try and exercise emergency powers has since gone viral.

“I don’t know if its coincidence or not, but there appears to been an almost premodern, one-dimensional connection between the orchestrators of this unconstitutional act,” Lee Joon-han, a politics professor at Incheon University, told AFP.

“Yoon is known to have a very narrow personnel pool based largely on his personal ties,” Lee said.

“This is a recipe for creating an army of yes-men,” he explained.

“There were few stop brakes in between that could have prevented this disaster.”

South Korean ruling party demands Yoon step down


By AFP
December 5, 2024

Protesters take part in a candlelight rally calling for the ouster of South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol 

- Copyright AFP Philip FONG

Hailey Jo and Kang Jin-kyu

South Korea’s ruling party chief demanded Friday that President Yoon Suk Yeol stand down over his martial law attempt, warning he posed a great danger to the country.

The stunning comments from Han Dong-hoon, the head of Yoon’s People Power Party, almost guarantees enough lawmakers will vote to impeach the president on Saturday.

Han’s comments were a U-turn from Thursday, when he said he would block the impeachment, and another party leader insisted all 108 members of the PPP would unite to support Yoon in Saturday’s vote.

But Han said Friday that Yoon’s refusal to acknowledge he had done anything wrong in declaring martial law on Tuesday night had prompted his change of position.

“Considering the newly emerging facts, I believe that a swift suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s duties is necessary to safeguard the Republic of Korea and its people,” Han said.

Han said Yoon had not taken any personnel actions against military officials who had “illegally intervened”.

“Furthermore, he does not acknowledge that this illegal martial law is wrong,” he said.

“Therefore, if President Yoon continues to hold the office of the presidency, there is a significant risk that extreme actions similar to the current state of emergency could be repeated, which could put the Republic of Korea and its citizens in great danger.”

Yoon suspended civilian rule late Tuesday and deployed troops and helicopters to parliament only for lawmakers to vote down the measure and force him into a U-turn in a night of protests and drama.

Seoul’s allies were alarmed — Washington said it found out via television — and the opposition quickly filed an impeachment motion saying Yoon “gravely violated the constitution and the law”. A vote is set for Saturday at around 7:00 pm (1000 GMT).

The opposition holds a large majority in the 300-member legislature and requires only a handful of defections from the PPP to secure the two-thirds majority needed for impeachment.

According to a poll issued Thursday by Realmeter, 73.6 percent of respondents supported the impeachment.

Thousands of protesters continued to rally in central Seoul and near the parliament on Thursday evening demanding the president step down.

If the impeachment motion passes, Yoon will be suspended pending a verdict by the Constitutional Court. If the judges give the nod, Yoon will be impeached and new elections must take place within 60 days.



– Bad memories –



Yoon, who has lurched from crisis to crisis since taking office in 2022, has not been seen in public since his televised address in the early hours of Wednesday.

On Thursday, his office said that Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun had resigned, but other key allies, including Interior Minister Lee Sang-min, remain in office.

Prosecutors have also banned Kim from leaving the country, Yonhap news agency reported.

Lawmakers on Thursday grilled senior figures, including army chief of staff General Park An-su, who acted as Yoon’s martial law commander.

Park said he was kept in the dark until after the president had announced the imposition of martial law on live television late Tuesday.

It was the first such declaration in more than four decades in South Korea and brought back painful memories of its autocratic past.

The move was to “safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements plundering people’s freedom and happiness,” Yoon said.

Security forces sealed the National Assembly, helicopters landed on the roof and almost 300 soldiers tried to lock down the building.

But as parliamentary staffers blocked the soldiers with sofas and fire extinguishers. Enough MPs got inside and voted down Yoon’s move.

Lawmakers formally presented the impeachment motion in the early hours of Thursday, saying Yoon’s decision to impose martial law was intended to “evade imminent investigations… into alleged illegal acts involving himself and his family”.

“This is an unforgivable crime — one that cannot, should not and will not be pardoned,” MP Kim Seung-won said.