ALLITERATION

Foul fumes pose pollinator problems

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

 

IMAGE: 

IMAGE OF A FIELD SITE IN EASTERN WASHINGTON SHOWING PALE EVENING PRIMROSE FLOWERS.

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CREDIT: JEREMY CHAN/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Link to Google Drive folder containing images and videos with caption and credit information: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KMo7RucC9LCg90iQH3obxutfmA79jNQv?usp=sharing

 

Post-embargo link to release: https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/02/08/pollinator-pollution/

 

FROM: James Urton

University of Washington

206-543-2580

jurton@uw.edu 

(Note: researcher contact information at the end)

 

 

Embargoed by Science

For public release at 2 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time (11 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time) on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024

 

 

Foul fumes pose pollinator problems

 

A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has discovered a major cause for a drop in nighttime pollinator activity — and people are largely to blame.

The researchers found that nitrate radicals (NO3) in the air degrade the scent chemicals released by a common wildflower, drastically reducing the scent-based cues that nighttime pollinators rely on to locate the flower. In the atmosphere, NO3 is produced by chemical reactions among other nitrogen oxides, which are themselves released by the combustion of gas and coal from cars, power plants and other sources. The findings, published Feb. 9 in the journal Science, are the first to show how nighttime pollution creates a chain of chemical reactions that degrades scent cues, leaving flowers undetectable by smell. The researchers also determined that pollution likely has worldwide impacts on pollination.

The team — co-led by Jeff Riffell, a UW professor of biology, and Joel Thornton, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences — studied the pale evening primrose (Oenothera pallida). This wildflower grows in arid environments across the western U.S. They chose this species because its white flowers emit a scent that attracts a diverse group of pollinators, including nocturnal moths, which are one of its most important pollinators. 

At field sites in eastern Washington, the researchers collected scent samples from pale evening primrose flowers. Back in the laboratory, they used chemical analysis techniques to identify the dozens of individual chemicals that make up the wildflower’s scent. 

“When you smell a rose, you’re smelling a diverse bouquet composed of different types of chemicals,” said Riffell. “The same is true for almost any flower. Each has its own scent made up of a specific chemical recipe.”

Once they had identified the individual chemicals that make up the wildflower’s scent, the team used a more advanced technique called mass spectrometry to observe how each chemical within the scent reacted to NO3. They found that reacting with NO3 nearly eliminated certain scent chemicals. In particular, the pollutant decimated levels of monoterpene scent compounds, which in separate experiments moths found most attractive.

Moths, which smell through their antennae, have a scent-detection ability that is roughly equivalent to dogs — and several thousand times more sensitive than the human sense of smell. Research suggests that several moth species can detect scents from miles away, according to Riffell. 

Using a wind tunnel and computer-controlled odor-stimulus system, the team investigated how well two moth species — the white-lined sphinx (Hyles lineata) and the tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta) — could locate and fly toward scents. When the researchers introduced the pale evening primrose’s normal scent, both species would readily fly toward the scent source. But when the researchers introduced the scent and NO3 at levels typical for a nighttime urban setting, Manduca’s accuracy dropped by 50% and Hyles — one of the chief nocturnal pollinators of this flower — could not locate the source at all. 

Experiments in a natural setting backed up these findings. In field experiments, the team showed that moths visited a fake flower emitting unaltered scent as often as they visited a real one. But, if they treated the scent first with NO3, moth visitation levels dropped by as much as 70%.

 “The NO3 is really reducing a flower’s ‘reach’ — how far its scent can travel and attract a pollinator before it gets broken down and is undetectable,” said Riffell. 

The team also compared how daytime and nighttime pollution conditions impacted the wildflower’s scent chemicals. Nighttime pollution had a much more destructive effect on the scent’s chemical makeup than daytime pollution. The researchers believe this is largely due to sunlight degrading NO3.

The team used a computer model that simulates both global weather patterns and atmospheric chemistry to locate areas most likely to have significant problems with plant-pollinator communication. The areas identified include western North America, much of Europe, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and southern Africa. 

“Outside of human activity, some regions accumulate more NO3 because of natural sources, geography and atmospheric circulation,” said Thornton, who added that natural sources of NO3 include wildfires and lightning. “But human activity is producing more NO3 everywhere. We wanted to understand how those two sources — natural and human — combine and where levels could be so high that they could interfere with the ability of pollinators to find flowers.”

The researchers hope their study is just the first of many to help uncover the full scope of pollinator failure.

“Our approach could serve as a roadmap for others to investigate how pollutants impact plant-pollinator interactions, and to really get at the underlying mechanisms,” said Thornton. “You need this kind of holistic approach, especially if you want to understand how widespread the breakdown in plant-pollinator interactions is and what the consequences will be.”

The study highlights the dangers of human-fueled pollution and its implications for all pollinators as well as the future of agriculture.

“Pollution from human activity is altering the chemical composition of critical scent cues, and altering it to such an extent that the pollinators can no longer recognize it and respond to it,” said Riffell.

Approximately three-quarters of the more than 240,000 species of flowering plants rely on pollinators, Riffell said. And more than 70 species of pollinators are endangered or threatened. 

Lead author on the paper is Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen who conducted this study as a UW doctoral student in biology. Co-authors are Sriram Parasurama in the UW Department of Biology; Rachel Atlas, a postdoctoral researcher at the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute in France who participated in this study as a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences; Ursula Jongebloed, a UW doctoral students in atmospheric sciences; Ruochong Xu, a doctoral student at Tsinghua University in China; Becky Alexander, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences; and Joseph Langenhan, a professor of chemistry at Seattle University. The research was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Human Frontiers in Science Program, and the University of Washington.

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For more information, contact Riffell at 206-348-0789 or jriffell@uw.edu and Thornton at 206-543-4010 or joelt@uw.edu.

Reference: Chan JK, Parasurama S, Atlas R, Xu R, Jongeblood UA, Alexander B, Langenhan JM, Thornton JA, Riffell JA. “Olfaction in the Anthropocene: NO3 negatively affects floral scent and nocturnal pollination.” Science 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adi0858

A note from Science for journalists: “Advance copies of embargoed papers may be obtained by registered reporters from our press package, SciPak, at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/scipak/. For reporters having difficulties accessing the paper from the press package, please have them contact scipak@aaas.org.”  

Grant numbers:

• Air Force Office of Scientific Research: FA9550-21-1-0101 and FA9550-20-1-0422
• National Science Foundation: 2121935
• National Institutes of Health: R01AI148300
• Human Frontiers in Science Program: RGP0044/2021

Name pronunciation guide:

• Jeff Riffell: Jef RIF-el
• Joel Thornton: Jol THORN-tun

Link to Google Drive folder containing images and videos with caption and credit information: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KMo7RucC9LCg90iQH3obxutfmA79jNQv?usp=sharing

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adi0858 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Olfaction in the Anthropocene: NO3 negatively affects floral scent and nocturnal pollination

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Feb-2024

Image showing a white-lined sphinx pollinating a pale evening primrose flower.

Moth visiting flower in field [VIDEO] | 

CREDIT

Ron Wolf/University of Washington

Image showing a bee (genus Megachile) pollinating a pale evening primrose flower in eastern Washington.

CREDIT

Jeremy Chan/University of Washington

Image showing a tobacco hawkmoth visiting a paper flower that is emitting a pale evening primrose scent.

Visiting a paper flower [VIDEO] | 

CREDIT

Charles Hedgcock/University of Washington

This photo illustration depicts a tobacco hawkmoth navigating to a flower amid air fouled by vehicle exhaust emissions.

CREDIT

Floris Van Breugel/University of Washington

 

An innovative approach to shield against foodborne illness

The project, led by University of Missouri researchers, is supported by a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator Program.

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Like a silent saboteur, foodborne pathogens can sneak up and ruin your next meal. One of the biggest culprits is salmonella, a type of bacteria found in many foods that causes more than 1.3 million cases of foodborne illnesses annually according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite nationwide efforts, salmonella’s infection rates have remained nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. Now, MU is part of an interdisciplinary effort determined to change that after recently receiving a three-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program.

The 19-member team of investigators — with expertise in engineering, poultry and food science, public health and supply chain management — is developing new technology to rapidly detect and mitigate salmonella and other foodborne pathogens throughout the entire poultry supply chain.

Rapid results

One in every 25 packages of chicken found on store shelves is contaminated with salmonella, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Because chicken is a major source of illnesses from salmonella, the researchers decided to begin their efforts by focusing on helping the poultry industry.

The team’s goal is to significantly reduce the risk of foodborne illness in people, said Mahmoud Almasri, lead principal investigator (PI) and an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the MU College of Engineering.

“Real-time data collected from multiple portable sensors will be added to a transformative sensor-enabled decision support system (SENS-D), allowing us to produce results in one hour or less,” Almasri said. “Our rapid results will enable both the supply chain and health partners to make data-driven decisions to enhance food safety, equity and security by providing evidence-based solutions.”

While the current gold standard of testing for foodborne pathogens takes at least 24 hours to produce results, the researchers’ forward-thinking approach could one day revolutionize the poultry industry and influence policy, said Kate Trout, co-PI and an assistant professor of health sciences in the MU College of Health Sciences.

“These pathogens grow very quicky, so a lot can happen to a food product in just 24 hours,” Trout said. “We think our sensors, combined with our decision support system, could change the way that the entire poultry industry and health stakeholders make decisions to ensure a safer food supply for everyone.”

For instance, this research is vital for helping ensure food safety between the packing plant and a store shelf.

“Our project could help increase the understanding of the impact of time and temperature during distribution and transit,” said Tim Safranski, co-PI and a professor of animal sciences in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and a state swine extension specialist with MU Extension.

The team will also use advanced statistical and machine learning techniques to improve risk mitigation.

“One strength of our project is using advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop innovative descriptive, predictive and prescriptive capabilities for a safe, efficient, equitable and resilient food supply chain,” said Haitao Li, co-PI and a professor and chair of supply chain and analytics department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

While the sensors are currently in protype development, the team is already exploring how the new technology might work for detecting other foodborne pathogens besides salmonella.

"We hope our technology can go beyond poultry and be adapted to detect and reduce the risk of other foodborne pathogens to benefit society as a whole,” said Amit Morey, co-PI and an associate professor of poultry science at Auburn University.

When the technology is ready for real-world use, the team will work with MU Extension to help industry partners in Missouri and beyond understand how to use the new tools through various workforce education and training initiatives.

“We know that just developing a new technology and putting it out in the world doesn’t make a large impact unless we teach people in the industry how to use these new AI and detection technologies,” Trout said. “We’re fortunate to have such a strong state extension program to be able to implement that component of the program.”

The team also includes researchers at University of Notre Dame and Lincoln University.

Read more from the National Science Foundation.

Cleaned surfaces may be germ-free, but they’re not bare

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, surfaces in public spaces are cleaned more often. While disinfectant solutions eliminate germs, they don’t leave behind a truly bare surface. They deposit a thin film that doesn’t get wiped up, even after giving the surface a good polish. Researchers reporting in ACS ES&T Air show that residues left by commercial cleaning products contain a wider range of compounds that could impact indoor air quality than previously thought.

Residues on indoor surfaces — like those deposited during cooking or cleaning — may contain compounds that are potentially harmful if absorbed through the skin or if they become airborne and are inhaled. To investigate the impact on indoor air quality, scientists study the gunk that builds up with laboratory models of surfaces. In the models, researchers start with the assumption that a thin film exists on any “clean” surface, but the source and actual makeup of these films is unknown. Because the chemical compositions of commercial cleaning products are different from the products used to prep surfaces in the lab, Rachel O’Brien and colleagues hypothesized that commercial sanitizers could be a missing source for the films. So, they decided to characterize films left behind on recently cleaned surfaces.

Using a surface-indoor solvent extractor, the researchers directly collected films from cleaned surfaces in a controlled lab setting and on regularly washed surfaces in university buildings. This method allowed them to pick up and measure a wide array of compounds, including substances that barely evaporate. In contrast, only semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) are picked up by wiping a surface film with a solvent-damp cloth, the typical method used to analyze films. The team’s analyses of the residue samples by mass spectrometry found that:

• Films from commercial cleaning products were different on the model lab surfaces and university building surfaces and more complex than previously thought.
• While the composition of the films was different, they all contained SVOCs that can become airborne and impact indoor air quality.
• This method confirmed the presence of lower volatility surfactants, the primary components of soaps, in residues thought to be from the cleaning solutions. However, surfactants’ effects on surface films have not yet been defined.

As a result of these findings, the researchers say that more compounds could be deposited on cleaned surfaces than had previously been identified. They add that future indoor film studies should use surfaces prepared with commercial cleaning products to more accurately identify how the residues impact indoor air quality. And given the extent and regularity of cleaning done in public spaces and people’s homes, more research is needed to determine the effects of lower volatility compounds on film growth and behavior.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

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JOURNAL

ACS ES&T Air

DOI

10.1021/acsestair.3c00053 

ARTICLE TITLE

“Contributions of Cleaning Solution Residues to Indoor Organic Surface Films”

 AUSTERITY KILLS

Low pay is driving primary-care doctors from New Jersey, endangering state residents

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

A shortage of primary-care doctors endangersUnited States residents in general and New Jerseyans in particular, according to a report co-authored by Alfred Tallia, chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

“Anyone who has tried to schedule a nonemergency visit understands the problem,” Tallia said. “Existing patients often wait months; others struggle to find a doctor who’s even taking new patients. Lots of people get no care until small problems grow into emergencies.”

“Most of this problem stems from money,” added Tallia. “Primary-care doctors make way less than specialists across the U.S., so we have too few primary-care doctors relative to the number of specialists. Primary-care doctors make even less in New Jersey than in other states, so the ones we train here tend to move elsewhere, and the shortage is worse in New Jersey than in other states.” 

Primary care has been proven to reduce mortality, serious health conditions, population health disparities, and health care costs, Tallia said, yet it remains underfunded, particularly in New Jersey.

According to the report — Primary Care in New Jersey: Findings and Recommendations to Support Advanced Primary Care — slightly less than a third of practicing physicians in the U.S. provide primary care, compared with more than half of physicians in the 38 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The share of U.S. health care spending devoted to primary care declined from 6.5 percent of total health spending in 2002 to 5.4 percent in 2016 to 4.6 percent in 2020, while such spending remains 7.8 percent or more in other OECD countries.

New Jersey, in turn, underspends on primary care compared with other states. New Jersey Medicaid pays primary-care doctors half of what Medicare pays. Commercial insurers — who pay primary-care providers an average of 120 percent of Medicare rates nationwide — pay an average of 93 percent of Medicare rates in New Jersey. Some small New Jersey practices with little leverage to negotiate higher reimbursement with insurance companies receive 75 percent of Medicare rates. In fact, New Jersey ranks 48th out of the 50 states in primary care spend.

Lower pay leads many primary-care doctors who train in New Jersey to leave the state. New Jersey ranks 10th nationally in primary-care residents and fellows but is 32nd nationally in retaining those people after they complete their training.

According to 2023 survey data from the state Board of Medical Examiners, New Jersey has about 5,300 doctors in the primary-care fields of family medicine, general internal medicine and geriatrics. But half of them work full-time.

The report, compiled for the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute by representatives from health care providers and insurers, recommends three major steps to end the shortage and help New Jersey residents gain easy access to primary care that should help them live longer and healthier lives.

The state should:

• Raise Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care to Medicare levels and direct Medicaid Managed Care Organizations to do likewise.
• Use its regulatory power to begin shifting doctor compensation from the historical fee-for-service model and toward an advanced primary-care model, where doctors get money to keep patients well rather than simply treating them when they are sick.
• Better track caregiver numbers and medical expenditures and use the data to track improvements.

Tallia said the effort to move from fee-for-service to advanced primary care echoes a major national report authored by a group that included Rutgers Health Vice Chancellor Shawna Hudson that aims to extend U.S. lives “by bringing our primary care practices into line with those in countries where people are much healthier than they are here.”

“The other recommendations are New Jersey specific, and they can ease the worst of the problems here in New Jersey,” Tallia added. “We’ve seen several other states, including Oregon, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, work to ease major primary care shortages by adjusting rates.”

 SPACE

Researchers discover cosmic dust storms from Type Ia supernova

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

Cosmic dust—like dust on Earth—comprises groupings of molecules that have condensed and stuck together in a grain. But the exact nature of dust creation in the universe has long been a mystery. Now, however, an international team of astronomers from China, the United States, Chile, the United Kingdom, Spain, etc., has made a significant discovery by identifying a previously unknown source of dust in the universe: a Type Ia supernova interacting with gas from its surroundings.  

The study was published in Nature Astronomy on Feb. 9, and was led by Prof. WANG Lingzhi from the South America Center for Astronomy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

Supernovae have been known to play a role in dust formation, and to date, dust formation has only been seen in core-collapse supernovae—the explosion of massive stars. Since core-collapse supernovae do not occur in elliptical galaxies, the nature of dust creation in such galaxies has remained elusive. These galaxies are not organized into a spiral pattern like our Milky Way but are giant swarms of stars. This study shows that thermonuclear Type Ia supernovae, the explosion of white dwarf stars in binary systems with another star, may account for a significant amount of dust in these galaxies. 

The researchers monitored a supernova, SN 2018evt, for over three years using space-based facilities like NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and NEOWISE missions, ground-based facilities like the Las Cumbres Observatory’s global network of telescopes, and other facilities in China, South America, and Australia. They found that the supernova was running into material previously cast off by one or both stars in the binary system before the white dwarf star exploded, and the supernova sent a shock wave into this pre-existing gas.  

During more than a thousand days of monitoring the supernova, the researchers noticed that its light began to dim precipitously in the optical wavelengths that our eyes can see and then started glowing brighter in infrared light. This was a telltale sign that dust was being created in the circumstellar gas after it cooled following the supernova shock wave passing through it. 

"The origins of cosmic dust have long been a mystery. This study marks the first detection of a significant and rapid dust formation process in the thermonuclear supernova interacting with circumstellar gas," said Prof. WANG, first author of the study. 

The study estimated that a large amount of dust must have been created by this one supernova event—an amount equal to more than 1% of the Sun's mass. As the supernova cools, the amount of dust created should increase, perhaps tenfold. While these dust factories are not as numerous or efficient as core-collapse supernovae, there may be enough of these thermonuclear supernovae interacting with their surroundings to be a significant or even dominant source of dust in elliptical galaxies. 

"This study offers insights into the contribution of thermonuclear supernovae to cosmic dust, and more such events may be expected to be found in the era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)," said Prof. WANG Lifan from Texas A&M University, a co-first author of the study. The Webb telescope sees infrared light that is perfect for the detection of dust. 

"The creation of dust is just gas getting cold enough to condense," said Prof. Andy Howell from Las Cumbres Observatory and the University of California Santa Barbara. Howell is the Principal Investigator of the Global Supernova Project whose data was used in the study. "One day that dust will condense into planetesimals and, ultimately, planets. This is creation starting anew in the wake of stellar death. It is exciting to understand another link in the circle of life and death in the universe."

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JOURNAL

Nature Astronomy

DOI

10.1038/s41550-024-02197-9 

ARTICLE TITLE

Newly formed dust within the circumstellar environment of SN Ia-CSM 2018evt

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Feb-2024

Migration solves exoplanet puzzle

Simulations provide a potential explanation for the mysterious gap in the size distribution of super-Earths.

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR ASTRONOMY

 

IMAGE: 

ARTISTIC REPRESENTATION OF AN EXOPLANET WHOSE WATER ICE ON THE SURFACE IS INCREASINGLY VAPORIZING AND FORMING AN ATMOSPHERE DURING ITS APPROACH TO THE CENTRAL STAR OF THE PLANETARY SYSTEM. THIS PROCESS INCREASES THE MEASURED PLANETARY RADIUS COMPARED TO THE VALUE THE PLANET WOULD HAVE AT ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN.

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CREDIT: THOMAS MÜLLER (MPIA)

Ordinarily, planets in evolved planetary systems, such as the Solar System, follow stable orbits around their central star. However, many indications suggest that some planets might depart from their birthplaces during their early evolution by migrating inward or outward. This planetary migration might also explain an observation that has puzzled researchers for several years: the relatively low number of exoplanets with sizes about twice as large as Earth, known as the radius valley or gap. Conversely, there are many exoplanets smaller and larger than this size.

“Six years ago, a reanalysis of data from the Kepler space telescope revealed a shortage of exoplanets with sizes around two Earth radii,” Remo Burn explains, an exoplanet researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg. He is the lead author of the article reporting the findings outlined in this article, now published in Nature Astronomy.

Where does the radius valley come from?

“In fact, we – like other research groups – predicted based on our calculations, even before this observation, that such a gap must exist,” explains co-author Christoph Mordasini, a member of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS. He heads the Division of Space Research and Planetary Sciences at the University of Bern. This prediction originated during his tenure as a scientist at MPIA, which has been jointly researching this field with the University of Bern for many years.

The most commonly suggested mechanism to explain the emergence of such a radius valley is that planets might lose a part of their original atmosphere due to the irradiation from the central star – especially volatile gases like hydrogen and helium. “However, this explanation neglects the influence of planetary migration,” Burn clarifies. It has been established for about 40 years that under certain conditions, planets can move inward and outward through planetary systems over time. How effective this migration is and to what extent it influences the development of planetary systems impacts its contribution to forming the radius valley.

Enigmatic sub-Neptunes

Two different types of exoplanets inhabit the size range surrounding the gap. On one hand, there are rocky planets, which can be more massive than Earth and are hence called super-Earths. On the other hand, astronomers are increasingly discovering so-called sub-Neptunes (also mini-Neptunes) in distant planetary systems, which are, on average, slightly larger than the super-Earths.

“However, we do not have this class of exoplanets in the Solar System,” Burn points out. “That’s why, even today, we’re not exactly sure about their structure and composition.”

Still, astronomers broadly agree that these planets possess significantly more extended atmospheres than rocky planets. Consequently, understanding how these sub-Neptunes’ characteristics contribute to the radius gap has been uncertain. Could the gap even suggest that these two types of worlds form differently?

Wandering ice planets

“Based on simulations we already published in 2020, the latest results indicate and confirm that instead, the evolution of sub-Neptunes after their birth significantly contributes to the observed radius valley,” concludes Julia Venturini from Geneva University. She is a member of the PlanetS collaboration mentioned above and led the 2020 study.

In the icy regions of their birthplaces, where planets receive little warming radiation from the star, the sub-Neptunes should indeed have sizes missing from the observed distribution. As these presumably icy planets migrate closer to the star, the ice thaws, eventually forming a thick water vapour atmosphere.

This process results in a shift in planet radii to larger values. After all, the observations employed to measure planetary radii cannot differentiate whether the determined size is due to the solid part of the planet alone or an additional dense atmosphere.

At the same time, as already suggested in the previous picture, rocky planets ‘shrink’ by losing their atmosphere. Overall, both mechanisms produce a lack of planets with sizes around two Earth radii.

Physical computer models simulating planetary systems

“The theoretical research of the Bern-Heidelberg group has already significantly advanced our understanding of the formation and composition of planetary systems in the past,” explains MPIA Director Thomas Henning. “The current study is, therefore, the result of many years of joint preparatory work and constant improvements to the physical models.”

The latest results stem from calculations of physical models that trace planet formation and subsequent evolution. They encompass processes in the gas and dust disks surrounding young stars that give rise to new planets. These models include the emergence of atmospheres, the mixing of different gases, and radial migration.

 “Central to this study were the properties of water at pressures and temperatures occurring inside planets and their atmospheres,” explains Burn. Understanding how water behaves over a wide range of pressures and temperatures is crucial for simulations. This knowledge has been of sufficient quality only in recent years. It is this component which permits realistic calculation of the sub-Neptunes’ behaviour, hence explaining the manifestation of extensive atmospheres in warmer regions.

“It’s remarkable how, as in this case, physical properties on molecular levels influence large-scale astronomical processes such as the formation of planetary atmospheres,” Henning adds.

“If we were to expand our results to cooler regions, where water is liquid, this might suggest the existence of water worlds with deep oceans,” Mordasini says. “Such planets could potentially host life and would be relatively straightforward targets for searching for biomarkers thanks to their size.”

Further work ahead

However, the current work is just an important milestone. Although the simulated size distribution closely matches the observed one, and the radius gap is in the right place, the details still have some inconsistencies. For instance, too many ice planets end up too close to the central star in the calculations. Nonetheless, researchers do not perceive this circumstance as a disadvantage but hope to learn more about planetary migration in this way.

Observations with telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) or the under-construction Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) could also assist. They would be capable of determining the composition of planets depending on their size, thus providing a test for the simulations described here.

Background information

The MPIA scientists involved in this study are Remo Burn and Thomas Henning.

Other researchers include Christoph Mordasini (University of Bern, Switzerland [Unibe]), Lokesh Mishra (Université de Genève, Switzerland [Unige], and Unibe), Jonas Haldemann (Unibe), Julia Venturini (Unige), and Alexandre Emsenhuber (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany, and Unibe).

The NASA Kepler space telescope searched for planets around other stars between 2009 and 2018 and discovered thousands of new exoplanets during its operation. It utilised the transit method: when a planet’s orbit is inclined in a way that the plane lies within the telescope’s line of sight, planets periodically block part of the star’s light during their orbit. This periodic fluctuation in the star’s brightness enables an indirect detection of the planet and determination of its radius.

Size distribution of observed and simulated exoplanets with radii smaller than five Earth radii

CAPTION

The number of exoplanets decreases between 1.6 and 2.2, producing a pronounced valley in distribution. Instead, there are more planets present with sizes around 1.4 and 2.4 Earth radii. The latest simulations, which for the first time take realistic properties of water into account, indicate that icy planets that migrate into the interior of planetary systems form thick atmospheres of water vapour. It makes them appear larger than they would be at their place of origin. These produce the peak at around 2.4 Earth radii. At the same time, smaller rocky planets lose part of their original gas envelope over time, causing their measured radius to shrink and thus contributing to the accumulation at around 1.4 Earth radii.

CREDIT

R. Burn, C. Mordasini / MPIA

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JOURNAL

Nature Astronomy

DOI

10.1038/s41550-023-02183-7 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A radius valley between migrated steam worlds and evaporated rocky cores

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Feb-2024

Results from South Pole Telescope’s new camera emerge

Gravitational lensing maps from initial data promise even more detail

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: 

THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND — THE UNIVERSE’S OLDEST LIGHT — HAS TRAVERSED VAST DISTANCES BEFORE REACHING US. DURING ITS EXTENDED JOURNEY, GRAVITATIONAL FORCES FROM MASSIVE COSMIC STRUCTURES CAUSED ITS TRAJECTORY TO BEND BEFORE BEING CAPTURED BY THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE.

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CREDIT: (IMAGE BY ZHAODI PAN/ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY.)

Argonne is part of a multi-institutional effort to survey the sky for clues about the origins and nature of our universe.

For more than five years, scientists at the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica have been observing the sky with an upgraded camera. The extended gaze toward the cosmos is picking up remnant light from the universe’s early formation. Now researchers have analyzed an initial batch of data, publishing details in the journal Physical Review D. The results from this limited dataset hint at even more powerful future insights about the nature of our universe.

The telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which is operated by the National Science Foundation, received a new camera known as SPT-3G in 2017. Equipped with 16,000 detectors — 10 times more than its predecessor — the SPT-3G is central to multi-institutional research led in part by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. The goal is to measure faint light known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The CMB is the afterglow of the Big Bang, when the universe burst forth from a single point of energy nearly 14 billion years ago.

“The CMB is a treasure map for cosmologists,” said Zhaodi Pan, the paper’s lead author and a Maria Goeppert Mayer fellow at Argonne. ​“Its minuscule variations in temperature and polarization provide a unique window into the universe’s infancy.

The paper in Physical Review D offers the first CMB gravitational lensing measurements from the SPT-3G. Gravitational lensing happens when the universe’s vast web of matter distorts the CMB as it travels across space. If you were to place the curved base of a wine glass on the page of a book, the glass would warp your view of the words behind it. Similarly, matter in the telescope’s line of sight forms a lens that bends the CMB light and our view of it. Albert Einstein described this warping in the fabric of space-time in his theory of general relativity.

“The CMB is a treasure map for cosmologists. Its minuscule variations in temperature and polarization provide a unique window into the universe’s infancy.” — Zhaodi Pan, Maria Goeppert Mayer fellow at Argonne

Measurements of that distortion hold clues about the early universe and mysteries like dark matter, an invisible component of the cosmos. ​“Dark matter is tricky to detect, because it doesn’t interact with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. Currently, we can only observe it through gravitational interactions,” Pan said.

Scientists have been studying the CMB ever since it was discovered in the 1960s, observing it through telescopes both on the ground and in space. Even though the newest analysis uses only a few months of SPT-3G data from 2018, the measurement of gravitational lensing is already competitive in the field.

“One of the really exciting parts of this study is that the result comes from what’s essentially commissioning data from when we were just beginning observations with the SPT-3G — and the result is already great,” said Amy Bender, a physicist at Argonne and paper co-author. ​“We’ve got five more years of data that we’re working on analyzing now, so this just hints at what’s to come.”

The dry, stable atmosphere and remote location of the South Pole Telescope create as little interference as possible when hunting for CMB patterns. Still, data from the highly sensitive SPT-3G camera contains contamination from the atmosphere, as well as from our own galaxy and extragalactic sources. Analyzing even a few months of data from SPT-3G is an undertaking that lasts years, since researchers need to validate data, filter out noise and interpret measurements. The team used a dedicated cluster, a group of computers, at the Argonne Laboratory Computing Resource Center to run some of the calculations for the research.

“We found that the observed lensing patterns in this study are well explained by general relativity,” Pan said. ​“This suggests that our current understanding of gravity holds true for these large scales. The results also strengthen our existing understanding of how structures of matter formed in our universe.”

SPT-3G lensing maps from additional years of data will also help in probing cosmic inflation, or the idea that the early universe underwent a fast exponential expansion. Cosmic inflation is ​“another cornerstone of cosmology,” Pan noted, and scientists are hunting for signs of early gravitational waves and other direct evidence of this theory. The presence of gravitational lensing introduces interference with inflationary imprints, necessitating the removal of such contamination, which can be calculated using precise lensing measurements.

While some results from the new SPT-3G data will reinforce existing knowledge, others will raise new questions.

“Every time we add more data, we find more things that we don’t understand,” Bender said who holds a joint appointment at the University of Chicago. ​“As you peel back layers of this onion, you learn more and more about your instrument and also about your scientific measurement of the sky.”

So little is known about the universe’s unseen components that any understanding gained is critical, Pan said: ​“The more we learn about the distribution of dark matter, the closer we get to understanding its nature and its role in forming the universe that we live in today.”

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs and the DOE Office of Science’s High Energy Physics program. The scientific analysis was led by Pan, in close collaboration with lead co-authors W. L. Kimmy Wu and Federico Bianchini (SLAC National Lab) and the SPT-3G collaboration. Argonne-affiliated co-authors with Bender and Pan are Lindsey Bleem, Karen Byrum, John Carlstrom, Faustin Carter (Argonne alumnus), Thomas Cecil, Clarence Chang, Junjia Ding (Argonne alumnus), Riccardo Gualtieri (Argonne alumnus), Angelina Harke-Hosemann (Argonne alumnus), Jason Henning (Argonne alumnus), Florian Kéruzoré, Trupti Khaire (Argonne alumnus), Steve Kuhlmann, Valentine Novosad, John Pearson, Chrystian Posada (Argonne alumnus), Gensheng Wang and Volodymyr Yefremenko.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

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JOURNAL

Physical Review D

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevD.108.122005 

ARTICLE TITLE

Measurement of gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background using SPT-3G 2018 data

Finding cannibalized stars

Astronomers using Georgia State’s CHARA Array have detected the faint light of stellar corpses beside predator stars.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

ARTISTIC DEPICTION OF A BE STAR AND ITS DISK (UPPER RIGHT) ORBITED BY A FAINT, HOT, STRIPPED STAR (LOWER LEFT). PAINTING BY WILLIAM POUNDS.

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CREDIT: PAINTING BY WILLIAM POUNDS.

ATLANTA—Scientists working with the powerful telescopes at Georgia State’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array have completed a survey of a group of stars suspected to have devoured most of the gas from orbiting companion stars. These sensitive measurements have directly detected the feeble glow of the cannibalized stars.

The new research, led by Postdoctoral Research Associate Robert Klement, is published in The Astrophysical Journal. The work identifies new orbits of stripped subdwarf stars that circle fast-spinning massive stars, leading to new understanding of the life trajectory of close binary stars.

Working with colleagues at the CHARA Array in Mount Wilson, Calif., Klement aimed the high-powered telescopes at a collection of relatively nearby B-emission line stars, or “Be stars” for short. These are rapidly rotating stars thought to harbor unusual orbiting companions.

The Be stars are probably formed in intense interactions between close pairs of stars. Astronomers find that many stars occur in such pairs, a trend that is especially true among stars more massive than our Sun. Pairs with small separations face a tumultuous destiny, because they grow in size as they age and can reach a dimension similar to their separation.

When this happens, gas from the growing star can cross the gap between the pair, so that the companion can feast upon the transferred gas stream. This cannibalization process will eventually strip the mass donor star of almost all its gas and will leave behind the tiny hot core of its former nuclear-burning center.

Astronomers predicted that the mass transfer stream causes the companion star to spin up and become a very fast rotator. Some of the fastest rotating stars are found as Be stars. Be stars rotate so quickly that some of their gas is flung from their equatorial zones to form an orbiting gas ring.

Until now, this predicted stage in the life of close binary pairs has eluded astronomers because the stars’ separations are too small to see with conventional telescopes and because the stripped stellar corpses are hidden in the glare of their bright companions. However, Georgia State’s CHARA Array telescopes offered the researchers the means to find the stripped stars.

The CHARA Array uses six telescopes spread across the summit of Mount Wilson to act like an enormous single telescope that is 330 meters in diameter. This gives astronomers the ability to separate the light of pairs of stars even with very small angular offsets. Klement also used the MIRC-X and MYSTIC cameras — built at the University of Michigan and Exeter University in the U.K. — which can record the light signal of both very bright and very faint objects close together.

The researchers wanted to determine if the Be stars had been spun up by mass transfer and host orbiting stripped stars.  Klement embarked upon a two-year observing program at CHARA, and his work quickly paid off.  He discovered the faint light of stripped companions in nine of 37 Be stars. He focused on seven of these targets and was able to follow the orbital motion of the stellar corpse around the Be star.

“The orbits are important because they allow us to determine the masses of stellar pairs,” Klement said. “Our mass measurements indicate that stripped stars lost almost everything. In the case of the star HR2142, the stripped star probably went from 10 times the mass of the Sun down to about one solar mass.”

Stripped stars were not detected around every Be star, and researchers believe that in some of these cases, the corpse has transformed into a tiny white dwarf star, too faint to detect even with the CHARA Array.  In other cases, it may be that the interaction was so intense that the stars merged to become one fast-rotating star.

Klement is now extending the search for orbiting stripped stars to Be stars in the southern sky using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile. He is also working with Luqian Wang at the Yunnan Observatories in China in research using the NASA Hubble Space Telescope to detect the faint light of the stripped companions. Because these corpses are hot, they are relatively brighter in the ultraviolet wavelengths that can only be observed with the Hubble Space Telescope.

“This survey of Be stars — and the discovery of nine faint companion stars — truly demonstrates the power of CHARA,” said Alison Peck, a program director in the National Science Foundation’s Astronomical Sciences Division, which supports the CHARA Array. “Using the array's exceptional angular resolution and high dynamic range allows us to answer questions about star formation and evolution that have never been possible to answer before.”

Douglas Gies, director of the CHARA Array, said the research has finally uncovered a key hidden stage in the lives of close stellar pairs.

 “The CHARA Array survey of the Be stars has revealed directly that these stars were created through a wholesale transformation by mass transfer,” Gies said. “We are now seeing, for the first time, the result of the stellar feast that led to the stripped stars.”

For more information about Georgia State University research and its impact, visit research.gsu.edu.

Main image is an artistic depiction of a Be star and its disk (upper right) orbited by a faint, hot, stripped star (lower left). Painting by William Pounds.

The CHARA Array is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST-1636624 and AST-2034336. Institutional support is provided from the GSU College of Arts & Sciences and the GSU Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development.

CHARA Array Measurements 

 

CHARA Array measurements (red ellipses) of the motion of the stripped star (dashed line) that orbits the Be star HR2142 (yellow star) every 81 days. The small black star symbols are the calculated positions of the stripped companion during the time of our observations. The orbit is circular, but appears elliptical because it is tilted with respect to the plane of the sky. The top and right axes show the apparent physical separation in Astronomical Units (AU, the mean Earth–Sun distance) while the bottom and left axes give the angular separation in the angular units of milliarcseconds (mas). For comparison, the full Moon in the sky has an angular diameter of about 2 million milliarcseconds.

CREDIT

Robert Klement

JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The CHARA Array Interferometric Program on the Multiplicity of Classical Be Stars: New Detections and Orbits of Stripped Subdwarf Companions

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Feb-2024