It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Following a heavy airstrike by Israeli warplanes on Hezbollah’s headquarters in the suburbs of Beirut, Reuters, citing a source close to Hezbollah, reported that Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s Secretary-General, is alive.
Israeli media reported that the target of the Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut was Hezbollah’s Secretary-General.
The Israeli army announced on Friday that it had attacked Hezbollah’s main headquarters in southern Lebanon.
Fox News, quoting Israeli sources, confirmed that the target of the Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah’s command center was Hassan Nasrallah.
Al-Arabiya reported that Israel bombed the Dahiyeh area in the southern suburbs of Beirut, with at least ten strikes carried out in the area within minutes.
A Hezbollah official stated that six buildings were completely destroyed in the Israeli airstrike.
Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army spokesperson, said in a televised statement that Hezbollah’s central command is located deep within civilian areas.
Security sources in Lebanon confirmed that the attack targeted an area usually occupied by senior Hezbollah officials.
Reuters reported that this was the heaviest attack in Beirut during the year-long conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, cited security sources reporting that “Hassan Nasrallah is in a safe location.”
This attack coincided with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
Netanyahu referred to Hezbollah as “the essence of global terrorist organizations” and added, “We will continue to weaken Hezbollah until we achieve our goal. We are committed to eliminating the curse of terrorism that affects the entire world.”
Israel attack on Lebanon: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah killed in Beirut strike The IDF has confirmed that they have killed the Hezbollah chief in airstrikes
An image grab taken from Hezbollah's Al Manar TV shows the Lebanese militant group's chief Hassan Nasrallah.Image Credit: AFP
Dubai: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has reportedly confirmed they have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in airstrikes that targeted Southern Suburbs of Beirut last night.
"Hassan Nasrallah is dead," military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani announced on X. Military spokesman Captain David Avraham also confirmed to AFP that the Hezbollah chief had been "eliminated" following strikes Friday on the Lebanese capital.
Contact lost
A source close to Lebanon's Hezbollah group said Saturday contact had been lost since last evening with chief Hassan Nasrallah, after Israel said it had "eliminated" him in a strike on the group's southern Beirut bastion.
"Contact with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been lost since Friday evening," said the source, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. He did not confirm whether Nasrallah had been killed.
Ali Karki also killed
The strikes, carried out late Friday night, also reportedly killed senior Hezbollah commander Ali Karki, alongside other key figures in the group.
The confirmation followed initial reports from Israeli media that Israel’s security services had conclusive proof of Nasrallah’s death during a major assassination operation.
How it happened
The airstrikes targeted Hezbollah’s central military headquarters, located in a heavily fortified underground facility beneath a residential building in the Dahieh district of Beirut, a stronghold of the militant group.
The IDF's statement noted that the attack was based on intelligence from Israel's Mossad and was launched while Hezbollah’s leadership was inside the headquarters coordinating operations.
Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for 32 years, was the principal architect behind the group’s military and terrorist activities, which included attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers, as well as operations abroad.
Nasrallah, a 64-year-old Shiite cleric, took control of Hezbollah in 1992 after his predecessor, Abbas Al Musawi, was assassinated by Israeli forces.
Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah became not only a dominant political party in Lebanon but also an entity with a robust military presence, wielding significant influence across the region.
Nasrallah’s tenure included leading the fight against Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, ultimately forcing Israeli forces to withdraw in 2000 without a peace treaty.
The airstrikes and subsequent confirmation of Nasrallah’s death come amid heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as growing concerns about the potential for broader conflict in the region.
The IDF emphasized that Nasrallah, throughout his leadership, was directly responsible for orchestrating thousands of terrorist acts and the deaths of countless Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Strikes continue
The Israeli military said it struck dozens of Hezbollah targets on Saturday in eastern and southern Lebanon, as the Lebanese armed group fired rockets into northern Israel.
Saturday morning's wave of Israeli strikes followed intense overnight bombardment targeting Hezbollah's southern Beirut stronghold, the site of a massive Israeli attack on Friday that flattened several residential buildings.
"The IAF (air force) conducted extensive strikes on dozens of terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in the area of Beqaa (east) and in different areas of southern Lebanon," the military said in a statement.
Air raid sirens sounded across northern Israel early on Saturday, warning of a barrage of rockets being fired from across the border.
Israel takes on Iran by neutralising Hassan Nasrallah
That the Israelis caught Nasrallah unawares in his Beirut bunker last night shows the level of precise actionable intelligence and deadly targeting
The targeted assassination of Hezbollah’s terrorist in-chief Hassan Nasrallah by Israeli Air Force after neutralising top Radwan force commanders, pager explosions and walkie-talkie explosions within the Iran-backed Shia groups shows deep penetration of Israeli agencies inside the Lebanon-based Islamist group.
Iranian leader Al Khamenei with killed Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and assassinated IRGC head Qassem Suleimani
Sixty-four-year-old Nasrallah was the principal cat’s paw of Ayatollahs of Iran as he ran the brutal Islamic group for the past three decades, taking on the powerful Israelis head-on during the occupation of southern Lebanon and then 2006 land war which ended in a stalemate.
That the Israelis caught Nasrallah unawares in his Beirut bunker last night shows the level of precise actionable intelligence and deadly targeting through laser-guided concrete penetrating bombs by the Israeli Air Force.
Presently, the majority of the population in north and central Israel are hiding in bomb shelters fearing Hezbollah and Iran retaliation post-killing of Nasrallah. Hassan Nasrullah was favourite of Ayatollah Khamenei
Although Iran has been using Shia Houthis, Sunni Hamas, and Shia Kaitab Hezbollah in Iraq, Nasrallah, and his Lebanon-based group is the closest to the Iranian clergy and its strong arm—the QUDS force.
The killing of Nasrallah along with the deaths of senior commanders since the pagers exploded must be a serious setback for Tehran as the son of a vegetable seller was a favourite of Ayatollah Khomeini.
It was Khomeini’s 1979 Iranian revolution that radicalized the Hezbollah cadre and made them into fighters after taking training from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran. Hezbollah supported Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and virtually captured the once-Christian Lebanon.
Nasrallah ran afoul with Israel after Hezbollah launched rocket attacks into the north of Jew nation in support of Hamas post-October 7 massacre. In a span of two months, Israel has severely degraded Hezbollah’s fighting capabilities after killing top commanders like Fuad Shukr and Ibrahim Aqil in targeted strikes.
The losses of top and middle-level Hezbollah commanders will make it very difficult for Iran to appoint the successor of Nasrallah as even his deputy has been taken out by Tel Aviv.
Just like Hamas, Hezbollah is an ideology that cannot die despite its top leader being exterminated. The Israeli borders with Lebanon and Gaza will remain hot and so will be the skies with missiles being fired by Houthis in Yemen. The death of Nasrallah may trigger a strong retaliation from Iran but the missile capabilities of Tehran are limited in range and effectiveness.
After taking out Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Nasrallah in Lebanon, Israel has taken the fight to Iran. The ball is now in Ali Khamenei’s court as his credibility is at stake.
Iran Supreme Leader next? Tehran moves Ayatollah Khamenei to secure spot after IDF says Hezbollah chief killed
After declaring Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah dead, Israeli army chief said, 'Anyone who threatens the citizens of Israel – we will know how to reach them'
Web Desk Updated: September 28, 2024 15:21 IST
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was moved to a secure location after Israel announced the death of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah | AFP
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been moved to safer place within the country and security has been beefed up after Israeli military said Tehran-backed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in the Beirut strike, said a report.
The sources quoted by Reuters said Iran was in constant touch with Hezbollah to decide on its next move.
Iran's move comes after Israeli army chief said the IDF has not emptied its "toolbox" with Nasrallah's assassination. Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi said "the message is simple: Anyone who threatens the citizens of Israel – we will know how to reach them."
Hezbollah leadership was meeting at their undrground headquarters in south Beirut when the Israeli military launched its precision attack.
Hezbollah is yet confirm if Nasrallah has been killed. Earlier, a spokesperson of the group said the Hezbollah chief was fine and not in the targeted location.
Reports also said Nasrallah's daughter Zainab Nasrallah, Hezbollah missile unit commander Muhammad Ali Ismail and his deputy Hossein Ahmed Ismail were also killed in IDF strikes.
Israel had activated three batallions of reserve soldiers amid recent attacks in Lebanon.
ANALYSIS
Strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, the fate of Nasrallah: how to explain Hezbollah’s silence
The party's media continues its coverage of the war as if nothing has happened.
Protesters in Tehran hold up photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah following the Israeli strike on the southern suburbs on Friday, September 27, 2024. Photo credit: ATTA KENARE / AFP
The Israeli army announced on Saturday that it had succeeded in assassinating, in a lethal strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut the day before, the all-powerful secretary-general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. An event whose shockwaves are likely to be felt across the region, as Nasrallah was a key figure in the pro-Iranian axis. He is sometimes even described as the number two in this camp, behind Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
During the night from Friday to Saturday, the southern suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold and densely populated area, was bombarded throughout the night. But on Hezbollah’s side, it’s radio silence. The party's media,such as its al-Manar channel or the al-Ahed website, do not mention Israeli allegations about this assassination or the uncertainty about Hassan Nasrallah's fate.
On the contrary, these two outlets continue their coverage of the war as if nothing had happened. Similarly, the party's official communication channels simply announce the various operations it is conducting against Israel. A resounding silence that raises many questions. What we know
After the violent Israeli strike on Friday against the southern suburbs of Beirut, which, according to Tel Aviv, targeted the party's headquarters, sources close to Hezbollah told Reuters that the organization had lost contact with its leader. At the same time, other party insiders, such as journalist Faisal Abdel Sater, claimed that Hassan Nasrallah was still alive. The next day, the Israelis announced they had evidence of the "success" of their operation, which Hezbollah has not commented on.
The hypotheses
Hezbollah's silence regarding the fate of its secretary-general could simply be due to the fact that the party itself does not know if Hassan Nasrallah has survived the strike or not. This is reminiscent of the assassination by Israel of the chief of staff of the organization, Fouad Chukur, last August. It took a day for his body to be found and his death confirmed. In the meantime, contradictory information was constantly circulating.
Hezbollah has all the more reason to refrain from making statements on the subject since Nasrallah has developed, over his years at the head of the powerful Shiite organization, an almost divine image in the eyes of his most loyal supporters. Announcing uncertainty about his fate, or even his death, could cause panic and mobilization in the streets, especially in Shiite regions that have been continuously bombarded by the Israeli army since Friday evening.
Another hypothesis that circulates, particularly in circles close to the organization, is that Hassan Nasrallah is still alive, and his silence is therefore a tool of "psychological warfare" against Israel. These circles particularly recall the July 2006 war, during which Hassan Nasrallah broke a three-day silence with a speech. He announced, live, a missile strike on an Israeli warship deployed in Lebanese waters. "Watch it burn," he exclaimed, in a speech forever etched in history.
A third hypothesis can be put forward: that the party is completely overwhelmed by events. If the death of its leader is confirmed, the entire command would have been decapitated. Hezbollah is probably awaiting instructions from its Iranian patron before reacting. But on Tehran's side too, there is radio silence.
Nasrallah led Hezbollah through decades of conflict with Israel
Updated / Saturday, 28 Sep 2024
Hassan Nasrallah's most recent speech broadcast on 19 September
Lebanon's Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who Israel said it has killed, led Hezbollah through decades of conflict with Israel, overseeing its transformation into a military force with regional sway and becoming one of the most prominent Arab figures in generations - with Iranian backing.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah has yet to issue any statement on the status of Nasrallah, who led the group for 32 years.
The Israeli military said it had killed Nasrallah in an airstrike on the group's central headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut a day earlier.
The Israeli military "eliminated ... Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation," Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in a statement on X.
Among supporters, Nasrallah was lauded for standing up to Israel and defying the United States.
To enemies, he was head of a terrorist organisation and a proxy for Iran's Shi'ite Islamist theocracy in its tussle for influence in the Middle East.
His regional influence was on display over nearly a year of conflict ignited by the Gaza war, as Hezbollah entered the fray by firing on Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, and Yemeni and Iraqi groups followed suit, operating under the umbrella of "The Axis of Resistance".
"We are facing a great battle," Nasrallah said in an 1 August speech at the funeral of Hezbollah's top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli strike on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut.
Yet when thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens killed, when their communications devices exploded in an apparent Israeli attack last week, that battle began to turn against his group.
Responding to the attacks on Hezbollah's communications network in a 19 September speech, Nasrallah vowed to punish Israel.
"This is a reckoning that will come, its nature, its size, how and where? This is certainly what we will keep to ourselves and in the narrowest circle even within ourselves," he said.
He had not given a broadcast address since then. Hassan Nasrallah speaking in Beirut in 2004
Israel has meanwhile dramatically escalated its attacks, killing several senior Hezbollah commanders in targeted strikes and unleashing a massive bombardment in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon, which has killed hundreds of people.
Recognised even by his enemies as a skilled orator, Nasrallah's speeches were followed by friend and foe alike.
Wearing the black turban of a sayyed, or a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad, Nasrallah used his addresses to rally Hezbollah's base but also to deliver carefully calibrated threats, often wagging his finger as he does so.
He became secretary general of Hezbollah in 1992 aged just 35, the public face of a once shadowy group founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to fight Israeli occupation forces.
Israel killed his predecessor, Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, in a helicopter attack. Nasrallah led Hezbollah when its guerrillas finally drove Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.
'Divine victory'
Conflict with Israel largely defined his leadership. He declared "Divine Victory" in 2006 after Hezbollah waged 34 days of war with Israel, winning the respect of many ordinary Arabs who had grown up watching Israel defeat their armies.
But he became an increasingly divisive figure in Lebanon and the wider Arab world as Hezbollah's area of operations widened to Syria and beyond, reflecting an intensifying conflict between Shi'ite Iran and US-allied Sunni Arab monarchies in the Gulf.
While Nasrallah painted Hezbollah's engagement in Syria - where it fought in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the civil war - as a campaign against jihadists, critics accused the group of becoming part of a regional sectarian conflict.
At home, Nasrallah's critics said Hezbollah's regional adventurism imposed an unbearable price on Lebanon, leading once friendly Gulf Arabs to shun the country - a factor that contributed to its 2019 financial collapse.
In the years following the 2006 war, Nasrallah walked a tightrope over a new conflict with Israel, hoarding Iranian rockets in a carefully measured contest of threat and counter threat.
The Gaza war, ignited by the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, prompted Hezbollah's worst conflict with Israel since 2006, costing the group hundreds of its fighters including top commanders.
After years of entanglements elsewhere, the conflict put renewed focus on Hezbollah's historic struggle with Israel.
"We are here paying the price for our front of support for Gaza, and for the Palestinian people, and our adoption of the Palestinian cause," Nasrallah said in the 1 August speech.
Nasrallah grew up in Beirut's impoverished Karantina district. His family hail from Bazouriyeh, a village in the Lebanon's predominantly Shi'ite south which today forms Hezbollah's political heartland.
He was part of a generation of young Lebanese Shi'ites whose political outlook was shaped by Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Before leading the group, he used to spend nights with frontline guerrillas fighting Israel's occupying army. His teenage son, Hadi, died in battle in 1997, a loss that gave him legitimacy among his core Shi'ite constituency in Lebanon.
Hassan Nasrallah's son Hadi was killed in battle in 1997
Powerful enemies
He had a track record of threatening powerful enemies.
As regional tensions escalated after the eruption of the Gaza war, Nasrallah issued a thinly veiled warning to US warships in the Mediterranean, telling them: "We have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us."
In 2020, Nasrallah vowed that US soldiers would leave the region in coffins after Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq.
He expressed fierce opposition to Saudi Arabia over its armed intervention in Yemen, where, with US and other allied support, Riyadh sought to roll back the Iran-aligned Houthis.
As regional tensions rose in 2019 following an attack on Saudi oil facilities, he said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates should halt the Yemen war to protect themselves.
"Don't bet on a war against Iran because they will destroy you," he said in a message directed at Riyadh. On Nasrallah's watch, Hezbollah has also clashed with adversaries at home in Lebanon.
In 2008, he accused the Lebanese government - backed at the time by the West and Saudi Arabia - of declaring war by moving to ban his group's internal communication network. Nasrallah vowed to "cut off the hand" that tried to dismantle it.
It prompted four days of civil war pitting Hezbollah against Sunni and Druze fighters, and the Shi'ite group to take over half the capital Beirut.
He strongly denied any Hezbollah involvement in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, after a UN-backed tribunal indicted four members of the group.
Nasrallah rejected the tribunal - which in 2020 eventually convicted three of them in absentia over the assassination - as a tool in the hands of Hezbollah's enemies.
Light at the end of the tunnel for night shift workers
Flinders University
The use of circadian-informed lighting, where artificial lighting is synchronised to the natural biological rhythms or a person’s ‘body-clock’, significantly improves quality of sleep and work performance for night shift workers, a major new trial has found.
The Flinders University trial is amongst the first tightly controlled in-laboratory studies to have simultaneously evaluated circadian-lighting effects on markers of body-clock timing, work-shift cognitive performance, and sleep following an abrupt transition to night shift work.
The results of the trial have produced two papers published in the prestigious Oxford University Press SLEEP journal, finding that strategic exposure to light accelerated body-clock adjustment and improved alertness and performance, as well as sleep after a night shift.
“Shift work causes circadian disruption, for which well-timed light exposure, designed to promote alertness and facilitate circadian adjustment, is one of the most potent methods to help retime the body clock.”
In Australia, around 15-16 per cent of Australian workers report being shift workers. For both men and women, rotating shifts with varying schedules each week are the most prevalent type of shift work.
Supported by the Defence Science and Technology Group through the Research Network for Undersea Decision Superiority, the findings will be of particular interest for shift workers in enclosed environments such as submarines where lighting is typically dim.
“Given the complete lack of normal day-night lighting, shift work on submarines maybe be particularly challenging for the body clock to adjust to,” says Dr Scott.
“We wanted to explore the unique challenges posed by night shifts, particularly the disruption to sleep-wake schedules, which can lead to impaired mental and physical performance, poorer sleep and health issues.
“We found that the use of circadian-informed lighting promoted better improved job performance and sleep for those working irregular hours,” says Dr Scott.
19 adults participated in the study, which took place in FHMRI Sleep Health’s laboratory under tightly controlled conditions that simulated night work environments.
Participants were exposed to two different lighting scenarios for a period of eight days to compare how their body clock adjusted and how they performed in a series of tasks.
The circadian-informed lighting, consisted of blue-enriched and dim, blue-depleted conditions designed to help the body clock adjust to night work, whilst the traditional dim, blue-depleted lighting simulated the standard lighting conditions onboard submarines.
The research team then assessed key circadian measures including melatonin levels and core body temperature, along with other outcomes including cognitive performance and sleep.
Importantly, over four consecutive simulated night shifts, the circadian informed lighting shifted participants’ body-clocks around one hour faster per day compared to the standard lighting.
“The overarching benefits of circadian-informed lighting on sleep and alertness are very clear from this study. Our findings suggest that strategic lighting interventions can likely be used to enhance the performance, sleep, safety and well-being of night shift workers exposed to inadequate light during their work shift,” says Ms Guyett.
“The circadian-informed lighting interventions significantly accelerated participants' adjustment to night work, which could have important implications for improving the health and performance of those who regularly work night shifts.”
Notably, after circadian-informed lighting, participants achieved almost one hour more of sleep compared to the standard lighting condition as well as reporting lower levels of sleepiness during their shifts.
To test alertness, participants in both lighting conditions were subjected to the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) test, a behavioural attention measure. Those in circadian-informed lighting conditions made half as many (7.4 lapses) mistakes as those in standard lighting (15.6 lapses).
Senior Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute: Sleep Health researcher Professor Peter Catcheside says: “This study highlights the importance of the circadian system and circadian friendly lighting to help alleviate some of the significant challenges of shift work.
“It adds to what we already know about the use of these interventions to help optimise workspaces for enhanced performance, safety, and well-being in the modern workforce.
“These findings have important implications for submariner lighting conditions, but also mining and other workplace environments where lighting conditions may make it more difficult for shift workers to successfully adjust their body-clocks to the work schedule,” he adds.
Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the Defence Science and Technology Group through the Research Network for Undersea Decision Superiority.
Circadian-informed lighting improves vigilance, sleep, and subjective sleepiness during simulated night-shift work
Article Publication Date
30-Jul-2024
COI Statement
Financial disclosures: HS reports consultancy and/or research support unrelated to this work from Re-Time Pty Ltd, Compumedics Ltd, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Foundation, and Flinders University. In addition to direct support for this project from the Australian Government Department of Defence, Flinders University and REDARC, PC reports grant and equipment support unrelated to this work from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, Flinders Foundation, Garnett Passe and Rodney Williams Foundation, Invicta Medical, and a Flinders University collaboration grant with Compumedics Ltd. DJE reports grants from Bayer, Apnimed, Invicta Medical, Takeda, Eli Lilly, Withings, SomnoMed, Openairway, and has served as a consultant for Bayer and Takeda and on the Scientific Advisory Boards for Invicta Medical, Mosanna and Apnimed outside the submitted work. Nonfinancial disclosures: None to disclose.
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not respo
Housing, healthcare and social services top list of community needs as U.S. population ages
New West Health-Gallup survey finds most Americans see need for greater affordability and access
West Health Institute
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sept. 26, 2024 — Most Americans agree their community is in need of more affordable housing, healthcare and social supports and services to help residents remain living independently as they age, according to a new survey from West Health and Gallup. Sixty-five percent of Americans perceive a need for more affordable housing and 60% say there is a need for more affordable healthcare and social supports and services.
The new West Health-Gallup research comes as the federal government, community leaders and advocates, nonprofits and other stakeholders work to develop a National Plan on Aging, a set of age-friendly practice and policy recommendations for addressing the growing needs of America’s aging population over the next decade, which according to previous research, most Americans (66%) do not believe the country is ready to handle. By 2030, older adults will make up nearly 21% of the population and, for the first time in U.S. history, outnumber people under 18.
“America is facing a profound demographic shift that requires new thinking and smart planning that cuts across multiple sectors from housing and healthcare to transportation and social services,” said Timothy A. Lash, President, West Health, a nonprofit focused on healthcare and aging. “This survey shows Americans sense the need, and now policy makers need to sense the urgency and develop plans that better reflect an older America.”
In addition to medical care and housing, the survey found one in five adults perceive a “major need” for more mental health services (22%), which just 16% say they find “very easy” to access in their communities. While men and women report roughly the same sense of ease of access, women are nearly twice as likely as men to say their community has a major need for mental health services (28% vs. 16%, respectively). Conversely, nearly a third of respondents (32%) say it is very easy to access physical healthcare, and only 16% say more is a major need in their communities.
“These findings demonstrate the American public is well aware of the need to be better prepared as the population ages,” said Dan Witters, senior researcher at Gallup. “Now it’s a question of what policymakers and other stakeholders will do to address the need and the urgency.”
Methodology
The West Health-Gallup Survey was conducted by web June 3 to June 18, 2024, with a 2,180 representative sample of U.S. adults aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia as a part of the Gallup Panel, a probability based panel of about 100,000 adults nationwide.
About Gallup Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students and citizens than any other organization in the world.
###
Fluoride-free batteries: Safeguarding the environment and enhancing performance
Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)
A research team led by Professor Soojin Park and Seoha Nam from the Department of Chemistry at POSTECH, in partnership with Hansol Chemical’s Battery materials R&D center, has developed a new fluorine-free binder and electrolyte designed to advance eco-friendly, high-performance battery technology. Their findings were recently published in “Chemical Engineering Journal”, an international journal in the field of chemistry.
As environmental concerns intensify, the importance of sustainable materials in battery technology is growing. Traditional lithium batteries rely on fluorinated compounds such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) bindersand lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6, LP) salts. However, this "PVDF-LP" system releases highly toxic hydrogen fluoride (HF), which reduces battery performance and lifespan. Furthermore, PVDF is non-biodegradable, and with the European Union (EU) tightening regulations on PFAS, a ban on these substances is expected by 2026.
Researchers from POSTECH and Hansol Chemical have designed a non-fluorinated battery system to comply with upcoming environmental regulations and enhance battery performance. They created a lithium perchlorate (LiClO4, LC)-based electrolyte to replace fluorinated LP electrolytes along with a non-fluorinated aromatic polyamide (APA) binder using Hansol Chemical’s proprietary technology. This innovative “APA-LC” system is entirely free of fluorinated compounds.
The “APA binder” reinforces the bonding between the cathode's active material and the aluminum current collector, preventing electrode corrosion in the electrolyte and significantly extending battery life. Additionally, the “LC system,” enriched with lithium chloride (LiCl) and lithium oxide (Li2O), lowers the energy barrier at the interface to promote ion migration, leading to faster lithium diffusion and superior output performance compared to the existing LP system. Overall, the APA-LC system exhibited greater oxidation stability than the conventional PVDF-LP system and maintained 20% higher capacity retention after 200 cycles at a rapid charge/discharge rate of 1 C, within the 2.8–4.3 V range in a coin cell test.
The research team applied the APA-LC system to produce a high-capacity 1.5 Ah (ampere-hour) pouch cell. The cell maintained excellent discharge capacity and demonstrated strong performance during fast-charging trials. This marks the world's first successful demonstration of a battery system that is entirely scalable and practical, made entirely from non-fluorinated materials, without any fluorinated compounds.
Professor Soojin Park of POSTECH expressed the significance of the research by saying, "We haven’t just replaced fluorinated systems; we’ve proven high-capacity retention and outstanding stability." He continued, "Our solution will advance the sustainability of the battery industry, facilitating the shift to non-fluorinated battery systems while ensuring environmental compliance."
Managing Director Young-Ho Yoon of Hansol Chemical's Secondary Battery Materials Business remarked, “By addressing PFAS regulatory concerns, we’ve secured a foothold in the global cathode binder market, projected to reach KRW 1.7 trillion by 2026.” He added, “Continued research will solidify our position as a leading supplier of eco-friendly secondary battery materials.”
All fluorine-free lithium-ion batteries with high-rate capability
ROSE: A gentle and versatile robotic gripper for efficient crop harvesting
Researchers introduce an innovative soft robotic gripper that can adapt to complex shapes, sizes, and the delicate nature of crops
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Ishikawa, Japan -- Robotic grippers have become essential across many industries, including manufacturing, packaging, and logistics, mainly for pick-and-place tasks. Recently, the demand for robotic grippers has also expanded into agriculture, where they are used for harvesting and packaging tasks. However, conventional robotic grippers struggle with the unique shapes, properties, and delicate nature of different crops. Consequently, there has been an increasing demand for more versatile robots that can adapt to objects with various shapes, sizes, and textures.
Robotic grippers that are made of soft materials have emerged as a potential solution to the above problem. However, current methods for adapting these grippers to complex geometries rely on complex control and planning generated by data-based models. These models require a large amount of data, limiting their general applicability. Additionally, integrating a sensory system into their soft body requires complex designs and sophisticated fabrication methods.
To this end, a team of researchers from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), led by Associate Professor Van Anh Ho, along with Assistant Professor Nguyen Huu Nhan and doctoral course student Nguyen Thanh Khoi, developed an innovative soft robotic gripper named ROtation-based Squeezing grippEr or ROSE.
“ROSE takes inspiration from the blooming states of a rose to generate grasping action. It offers a simpler approach to real-farm harvesting by gently grasping objects using a unique "wrinkling" phenomenon. Unlike conventional grippers, ROSE doesn’t require complex control and planning strategies to adapt to various agricultural products with diverse shapes, sizes, and textures,” explainsProf. Ho. They also employed a simulation model to fully understand and optimize the grasping mechanism of ROSE. This study was published in a special issue, RSS2023, of The International Journal of Robotics Research.
ROSE consists of an isolated cup-shaped chamber formed by two thin, soft elastomer layers, with a separation between the interior and outer layers. Rotating only the inner layer using an external motor produces a deformation in the layers. Specifically, this twisting motion of the inner layer results in a strain mismatch between the outer and inner layers, resulting in the formation of a series of wrinkle-like inward folds, a process termed ‘Wrinkling’.This unique mechanism shrinks the central space in ROSE, which allows it to gently grasp any object present within this central space.
To refine this mechanism, the researchers studied the ‘wrinkling’ process through a finite element method-based simulation model. The simulations revealed a correlation between different geometrical features, including thickness, diameter, and height. Notably, they found that an appropriate distribution of ROSE’s skin thickness, that is, the separation between the layers, has a significant influence on its grasping performance. As a result, the researchers tested two different thickness distribution strategies, namely linear and non-linear distribution, which significantly improved ROSE’s grasping performance compared to a constant thickness. Moreover, the simulations also highlighted the importance of the ratio between the gripper's diameter and height. The simulation results were validated through various experiments, verifying ROSE’s capability to carry out tasks that are difficult for traditional grippers.
Furthermore, the researchers demonstrated the practical applications of ROSE in agriculture by using it to harvest strawberries and mushrooms. ROSE achieved high success rates in picking up these crops in multiple trials, regardless of whether they were stiff or soft. It also succeeded in picking up a clump of mushrooms without breaking any piece, provided the clump size fit within the grasping space.
“ROSE is one of the first grippers to utilize buckling deformation as a gripping method, challenging the conventional mindset that the buckling phenomenon is an undesired feature. Moreover, the practical application of ROSE in agricultural settings is a game-changer for real-farm harvesting. ROSE’s ability to adapt to varying textures and shapes makes it highly effective in these tasks. This not only improves efficiency but can also address the growing labor shortages in agriculture, particularly in regions with aging populations,” highlights Prof. Ho emphasizing the potential of ROSE.
This study marks a significant advancement in robotic grippers. With gentle yet adaptable grasp positions, ROSE might usher in a new era of automated farming.
About Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Founded in 1990 in Ishikawa prefecture, the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) was the first independent national graduate school in Japan. Now, after 30 years of steady progress, JAIST has become one of Japan’s top-ranking universities. JAIST counts with multiple satellite campuses and strives to foster capable leaders with a state-of-the-art education system where diversity is key; about 40% of its alumni are international students. The university has a unique style of graduate education based on a carefully designed coursework-oriented curriculum to ensure that its students have a solid foundation on which to carry out cutting-edge research. JAIST also works closely both with local and overseas communities by promoting industry–academia collaborative research.
About Associate Professor Van Anh Ho from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Dr. Van Anh Ho is an Associate Professor at the Nanomaterials and Devices Research Area, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST). He obtained his M.S. and Doctoral degrees from Ritsumeikan University in 2009 and 2012, respectively. His research interests include tangible devices, manipulation, tactile sensing, and soft Robotics. At JAIST, he leads the Ho laboratory, and has over 80 publications with over 1000 citations. Professor Ho is a member of The Robotics Society of Japan, and has also been honored with many awards including the IEEE Nagoya Section Young Researcher Awards 2019.
Funding information
This work was supported by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) Project 24K00847.
Soft yet secure: Exploring membrane buckling for achieving a versatile grasp with a rotation-driven squeezing gripper
Article Publication Date
23-Sep-2024
SPACE/COSMOLOGY
ESO telescope captures the most detailed infrared map ever of our Milky Way
ESO
Astronomers have published a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects ― the most detailed one ever made. Using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, the team monitored the central regions of our Galaxy over more than 13 years. At 500 terabytes of data, this is the largest observational project ever carried out with an ESO telescope.
“We made so many discoveries, we have changed the view of our Galaxy forever,” says Dante Minniti, an astrophysicist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile who led the overall project.
This record-breaking map comprises 200 000 images taken by ESO’s VISTA ― the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. Located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, the telescope’s main purpose is to map large areas of the sky. The team used VISTA’s infrared camera VIRCAM, which can peer through the dust and gas that permeates our galaxy. It is therefore able to see the radiation from the Milky Way’s most hidden places, opening a unique window onto our galactic surroundings.
This gigantic dataset [1] covers an area of the sky equivalent to 8600 full moons, and contains about 10 times more objects than a previous map released by the same team back in 2012. It includes newborn stars, which are often embedded in dusty cocoons, and globular clusters –– dense groups of millions of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. Observing infrared light means VISTA can also spot very cold objects, which glow at these wavelengths, like brown dwarfs (‘failed’ stars that do not have sustained nuclear fusion) or free-floating planets that don’t orbit a star.
The observations began in 2010 and ended in the first half of 2023, spanning a total of 420 nights. By observing each patch of the sky many times, the team was able to not only determine the locations of these objects, but also track how they move and whether their brightness changes. They charted stars whose luminosity changes periodically that can be used as cosmic rulers for measuring distances [2]. This has given us an accurate 3D view of the inner regions of the Milky Way, which were previously hidden by dust. The researchers also tracked hypervelocity stars — fast-moving stars catapulted from the central region of the Milky Way after a close encounter with the supermassive black hole lurking there.
The new map contains data gathered as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey [3] and its companion project, the VVV eXtended (VVVX) survey. “The project was a monumental effort, made possible because we were surrounded by a great team,” says Roberto Saito, an astrophysicist at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil and lead author of the paper published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics on the completion of the project.
The VVV and VVVX surveys have already led to more than 300 scientific articles. With the surveys now complete, the scientific exploration of the gathered data will continue for decades to come. Meanwhile, ESO’s Paranal Observatory is being prepared for the future: VISTA will be updated with its new instrument 4MOST and ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) will receive its MOONS instrument. Together, they will provide spectra of millions of the objects surveyed here, with countless discoveries to be expected.
Notes
[1] The dataset is too large to release as a single image, but the processed data and objects catalogue can be accessed in the ESO Science Portal.
[2] One way to measure the distance to a star is by comparing how bright it appears as seen from Earth to how intrinsically bright it is; but the latter is often unknown. Certain types of stars change their brightness periodically, and there is a very strong connection between how quickly they do this and how intrinsically luminous they are. Measuring these fluctuations allows astronomers to work out how luminous these stars are, and therefore how far away they lie.
[3] Vía Láctea is the Latin name for the Milky Way.
More information
This research was presented in a paper entitled “The VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea eXtended (VVVX) ESO public survey: Completion of the observations and legacy” published in Astronomy & Astrophysics (https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450584). Data DOI: VVV, VVVX.
The team is composed of R. K. Saito (Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil [UFSC]), M. Hempel (Instituto de Astrofísica, Dep. de Ciencias Físicas, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Andres Bello, Providencia, Chile [ASTROUNAB] and Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany), J. Alonso-García (Centro de Astronomía, Universidad de Antofagasta, Antofagasta, Chile [CITEVA] and Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Providencia, Chile [MAS]), P. W. Lucas (Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom [CAR]), D. Minniti (ASTROUNAB; Vatican Observatory, Vatican City, Vatican City State [VO] and UFSC), S. Alonso (Departamento de Geofísica y Astronomía, CONICET, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Rivadavia, Argentina [UNSJ-CONICET]), L. Baravalle (Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental, Córdoba, Argentina [IATE-CONICET]; Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina [OAC]), J. Borissova (Instituto de Física y Astronomía, Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile [IFA-UV] and MAS), C. Caceres (ASTROUNAB), A. N. Chené (Gemini Observatory, Northern Operations Center, Hilo, USA), N. J. G. Cross (Wide-Field Astronomy Unit, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, United Kingdom), F. Duplancic (UNSJ-CONICET), E. R. Garro (European Southern Observatory, Vitacura, Chile [ESO Chile]), M. Gómez (ASTROUNAB), V. D. Ivanov (European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München [ESO Germany]), R. Kurtev (IFA-UV and MAS), A. Luna (INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Napoli, Italy [INAF- OACN]), D. Majaess (Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Canada), M. G. Navarro (INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy [INAF-OAR]), J. B. Pullen (ASTROUNAB), M. Rejkuba (ESO Germany), J. L. Sanders (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London, United Kingdom), L. C. Smith (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom), P. H. C. Albino (UFSC), M. V. Alonso (IATE-CONICET and OAC), E. B. Amôres (Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, Feira de Santana, Brazil), E. B. R. Angeloni (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab, La Serena, Chile [NOIRLab]), J. I. Arias (Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de La Serena, La Serena, Chile [ULS]), M. Arnaboldi (ESO Germany), B. Barbuy (Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil), A. Bayo (ESO Germany), J. C. Beamin (ASTROUNAB and Fundación Chilena de Astronomía, Santiago, Chile), L. R. Bedin (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy [INAF-OAPd]), A. Bellini (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA [STScI]), R. A. Benjamin (Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, USA), E. Bica (Departamento de Astronomia, Instituto de Física, Porto Alegre, Brazil [IF – UFRGS]), C. J. Bonatto (IF – UFRGS), E. Botan (Instituto de Ciências Naturais, Humanas e Sociais, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, Sinop, Brazil), V. F. Braga (INAF-OAR), D. A. Brown (Vatican Observatory, Tucson, USA), J. B. Cabral (IATE-CONICET and Gerencia De Vinculación Tecnológica, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, Córdoba, Argentina), D. Camargo (Colégio Militar de Porto Alegre, Ministério da Defesa, Exército Brasileiro, Brazil), A. Caratti o Garatti (INAF- OACN), J. A. Carballo-Bello (Instituto de Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá, Arica, Chile [IAI-UTA]), M.Catelan (Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile [Instituto de Astrofísica UC]; MAS and Centro de Astro-Ingeniería, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile [AIUC]), C. Chavero (OAC and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científica y Técnicas, Ciudad Autónoma de buenos Aires, Argentina [CONICET]), M. A. Chijani (ASTROUNAB), J. J. Clariá (OAC and CONICET), G. V. Coldwell (UNSJ-CONICET), C. Contreras Peña (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea and Research Institute of Basic Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea), C. R. Contreras Ramos (Instituto de Astrofísica UC and MAS), J. M. Corral-Santana (ESO Chile), C. C. Cortés (Departamento de Tecnologías Industriales, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, Curicó, Chile), M. Cortés-Contreras (Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica & Instituto de Física de Partículas y del Cosmos de la UCM, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain), P. Cruz (Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain [CAB]), I. V. Daza-Perilla (CONICET; IATE-CONICET and Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina), V. P. Debattista (University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom), B. Dias (ASTROUNAB), L. Donoso (Instituto de Ciencias Astronómicas, de la Tierra y del Espacio, San Juan, Argentina), R. D’Souza (VO), J. P. Emerson (Astronomy Unit, School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom), S. Federle (ESO Chile and ASTROUNAB), V. Fermiano (UFSC), J. Fernandez (UNSJ-CONICET), J. G. Fernández-Trincado (Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Católica del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile [IA-UCN]), T. Ferreira (Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, USA), C. E. Ferreira Lopes (Instituto de Astronomía y Ciencias Planetarias, Universidad de Atacama, Copiapó, Chile [INCT] and MAS), V. Firpo (NOIRLab), C. Flores-Quintana (ASTROUNAB and MAS), L. Fraga (Laboratorio Nacional de Astrofísica, Itajubá, Brazil), D.Froebrich (Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom), D. Galdeano (UNSJ-CONICET), I. Gavignaud (ASTROUNAB), D. Geisler (Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Concepción, Chile [UdeC]; Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigación y Postgrado, Universidad de La Serena, Chile [IMIP-ULS] and ULS), O. E.Gerhard (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany [MPE]), W. Gieren (UdeC), O. A. Gonzalez (UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom), L. V. Gramajo (OAC and CONICET), F. Gran (Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, Nice, France [Lagrange]), P. M. Granitto (Centro Internacional Franco Argentino de Ciencias de la Información y de Sistemas, Rosario, Argentina), M. Griggio (INAF-OAPd; Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy and STScI), Z. Guo (IFA-UV and MAS), S. Gurovich (IATE-CONICET and Western Sydney University, Kingswood, Australia), M. Hilker (ESO Germany), H. R. A. Jones (CAR), R. Kammers (UFSC), M. A. Kuhn (CAR), M. S. N. Kumar (Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal), R. Kundu (Miranda House, University of Delhi, India and Inter University centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India), M. Lares (IATE-CONICET), M. Libralato (INAF-OAPd), E. Lima (Universidade Federal do Pampa, Uruguaiana, Brazil), T. J. Maccarone (Department of Physics & Astronomy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA), P. Marchant Cortés (ULS), E. L. Martin (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias and Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de la Laguna, Spain), N. Masetti (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Bologna, Italy and ASTROUNAB), N. Matsunaga (Department of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan), F. Mauro (IA-UCN), I. McDonald (Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, The University of Manchester, UK [JBCA]), A. Mejías (Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Las Condes, Chile), V. Mesa (IMIP-ULS; Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Chile, Grupo de Astrofísica Extragaláctica-IANIGLA; CONICET, and Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina), F. P. Milla-Castro (ULS), J. H. Minniti (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA), C. Moni Bidin (IA-UCN), K. Montenegro (Clínica Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile), C. Morris (CAR), V. Motta (OAC), F. Navarete (SOAR Telescope/NSF’s NOIRLab, La Serena, Chile), C. Navarro Molina (Centro de Docencia Superior en Ciencias Básicas, Universidad Austral de Chile, Puerto Montt, Chile), F. Nikzat (Instituto de Astrofísica UC and MAS), J. L. NiloCastellón (IMIP-ULS and ULS), C. Obasi (IA-UCN and Centre for Basic Space Science, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria), M. Ortigoza-Urdaneta (Departamento de Matemática, Universidad de Atacama, Copiapó, Chile), T. Palma (OAC), C. Parisi (OAC and IATE-CONICET), K. Pena Ramírez (NSF NOIRLab/Vera C. Rubin Observatory, La Serena, Chile), L. Pereyra (IATE-CONICET), N. Perez (UNSJ-CONICET), I. Petralia (ASTROUNAB), A. Pichel (Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina [IAFE-CONICET]), G. Pignata (IAI-UTA), S. Ramírez Alegría (CITEVA), A. F. Rojas (Instituto de Astrofísica UC, Instituto de Estudios Astrofísicos, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile and CITEVA), D. Rojas (ASTROUNAB), A. Roman-Lopes (ULS), A. C. Rovero (IAFE-CONICET), S. Saroon (ASTROUNAB), E. O. Schmidt (OAC and IATE-CONICET), A. C. Schröder (MPE), M. Schultheis (Lagrange), M. A. Sgró (OAC), E. Solano (CAB), M. Soto (INCT), B. Stecklum (Thüringer Landessternwarte, Tautenburg, Germany), D. Steeghs (Department of Physics, University of Warwick, UK), M. Tamura (Department of Astronomy, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo; Astrobiology Center, Tokyo, Japan, and National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Tokyo, Japan), P. Tissera (Instituto de Astrofísica UC and AIUC), A. A. R. Valcarce (Departamento de Física, Universidad de Tarapacá, Chile), C. A. Valotto (IATE-CONICET and OAC), S. Vasquez (Museo Interactivo de la Astronomía, La Granja, Chile), C. Villalon (IATE-CONICET and OAC), S. Villanova (UdeC), F. Vivanco Cádiz (ASTROUNAB), R. Zelada Bacigalupo (North Optics, La Serena, Chile), A. Zijlstra (JBCA and School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia), and M. Zoccali (Instituto de Astrofísica UC and MAS).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.
Chinese scientists analyze first lunar farside samples collected from the other half of the moon
Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters
A Chinese team of scientists has undertaken a study of lunar samples retrieved by the Chang'E-6 mission. These are the first samples studied from the farside of the Moon. They mark a significant milestone in lunar exploration science and technical exploration capability. The study was published in the journal National Science Review on September 17, 2024.
"As the first lunar sample obtained from the far side of the Moon, the Chang'E-6 sample will provide an unparalleled opportunity for lunar research," said Prof. Chunlai Li, National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This unique sample helps to advance the understanding of several key aspects of lunar science, including the Moon's early evolution; the variability of volcanic activities between the nearside and farside; the impact history of the inner solar system; the record of galactic activity preserved in the lunar weathering layer; the lunar magnetic field and its anomalies and duration; and the composition and structure of the lunar crust and mantle. "These insights are expected to lead to new concepts and theories regarding the origin and evolution of the Moon, and refine its use as an interpretive paradigm for the evolution of the terrestrial planets," said Li.
Adding together the lunar samples gathered from the six Apollo missions, three Luna missions, and the Chang'E-5 mission, scientists have collected a total of 382.9812 kg of lunar samples. These lunar samples have provided scientists with critical information on the formation and evolutionary history of the Moon. "Returned lunar samples are essential to planetary science research, as they provide key laboratory data to link orbital remote sensing observations to actual surface ground truth," said Li. The samples have contributed to the development of hypotheses, such as the Moon's giant impact into early Earth origin, the Lunar Magma Ocean, and the Late Heavy Bombardment. These earlier studies of lunar samples, all of them collected from the lunar nearside, have significantly advanced the discipline of planetary science. From a sampling perspective, the farside has remained unexplored until now.
"Nearside samples alone, without adequate sampling from the entire lunar surface, especially from the farside, cannot fully capture the geologic diversity of the entire Moon. This limitation hampers our understanding of the Moon's origin and evolution," said Li. Scientists gained the much-needed farside lunar samples when the Chang'E-6 mission collected 1935.3 grams of lunar samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin on June 25, 2024.
The samples were gathered from the lunar surface using drilling and scooping techniques. The team analyzed the samples' physical, mineralogical, petrographic, and geochemical properties. Their analysis showed that the collected samples reflect a mixture of "local" basaltic material and "foreign" non-mare material. The rock fragments in the Chang'E-6 samples are mainly basalt, breccia, and agglutinates. The primary constituent minerals of the soils are plagioclase, pyroxene, and ilmenite, with very low olivine abundance. The lunar soil in the Chang'E-6 samples is mostly a mixture of local basalts and non-basaltic ejecta materials.
The lunar surface is divided into three very distinct geochemical provinces based on variations in geochemical characterization and petrologic evolutionary history. These are the Procellarum KREEP Terrane (PKT), the Feldspathic Highland Terrane (FHT), and the South Pole-Aitken Terrane (SPAT).
"These local mare basalts document the volcanic history of lunar farside, while the non-basaltic fragments may offer critical insights into the lunar highland crust, South Pole-Aitken impact melts, and potentially the deep lunar mantle, making these samples highly significant for scientific research," said Li.
The lunar samples collected from the nearside by the Apollo, Luna, and Chang'E-5 missions included samples from the PKT and the FHT. Until now, no samples had been collected from the unique SPAT on the lunar farside. Scientists believe the South Pole-Aitken basin was formed 4.2 to 4.3 billion years ago in the Pre-Nectarian period. It is the largest confirmed impact basin in the Solar System.
The research is funded by the Key Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The research team includes: Chunlai Li, Jianjun Liu, Qin Zhou, Xin Ren, Bin Liu, Dawei Liu, Xingguo Zeng, Wei Zuo, Guangliang Zhang, Hongbo Zhang, Saihong Yang, Xingye Gao, Yan Su, and Weibin Wen, from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing; Hao Hu and Qiong Wang from the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, Beijing; Meng-Fei Yang and Xiangjin Deng from the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering, Beijing; and Ziyuan Ouyang from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and also the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guiyang.
Nature of the lunar farside samples returned by the Chang'E-6 mission
This rocky planet around a white dwarf resembles Earth — 8 billion years from now
Existence of Earth-like planet around dead sun offers hope for our planet's ultimate survival
University of California - Berkeley
The discovery of an Earth-like planet 4,000 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy provides a preview of one possible fate for our planet billions of years in the future, when the sun has turned into a white dwarf, and a blasted and frozen Earth has migrated beyond the orbit of Mars.
This distant planetary system, identified by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers after observations with the Keck 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, looks very similar to expectations for the sun-Earth system: it consists of a white dwarf about half the mass of the sun and an Earth-size companion in an orbit twice as large as Earth’s today.
That is likely to be Earth’s fate. The sun will eventually inflate like a balloon larger than Earth's orbit today, engulfing Mercury and Venus in the process. As the star expands to become a red giant, its decreasing mass will force planets to migrate to more distant orbits, offering Earth a slim opportunity to survive farther from the sun. Eventually, the outer layers of the red giant will be blown away to leave behind a dense white dwarf no larger than a planet, but with the mass of a star. If Earth has survived by then, it will probably end up in an orbit twice its current size.
The discovery, to be published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy, tells scientists about the evolution of main sequence stars, like the sun, through the red giant phase to a white dwarf, and how it affects the planets around them. Some studies suggest that for the sun, this process could begin in about 1 billion years, eventually vaporizing Earth's oceans and doubling Earth's orbital radius — if the expanding star doesn't engulf our planet first.
Eventually, about 8 billion years from now, the sun's outer layers will have dispersed to leave behind a dense, glowing ball — a white dwarf — that is about half the mass of the sun, but smaller in size than Earth.
"We do not currently have a consensus whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun in 6 billion years," said study leader Keming Zhang, a former doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, who is now an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego. "In any case, planet Earth will only be habitable for around another billion years, at which point Earth's oceans would be vaporized by runaway greenhouse effect — long before the risk of getting swallowed by the red giant."
The planetary system provides one example of a planet that did survive, though it is far outside the habitable zone of the dim white dwarf and unlikely to harbor life. It may have had habitable conditions at some point, when its host was still a sun-like star.
"Whether life can survive on Earth through that (red giant) period is unknown. But certainly the most important thing is that Earth isn't swallowed by the sun when it becomes a red giant," said Jessica Lu, associate professor and chair of astronomy at UC Berkeley. “This system that Keming's found is an example of a planet — probably an Earth-like planet originally on a similar orbit to Earth — that survived its host star's red giant phase.”
Microlensing makes star brighten a thousandfold
The far-away planetary system, located near the bulge at the center of our galaxy, came to astronomers' attention in 2020 when it passed in front of a more distant star and magnified that star's light by a factor of 1,000. The gravity of the system acted like a lens to focus and amplify the light from the background star.
The team that discovered this "microlensing event" dubbed it KMT-2020-BLG-0414 because it was detected by the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network in the Southern Hemisphere. The magnification of the background star — also in the Milky Way, but about 25,000 light years from Earth — was still only a pinprick of light. Nevertheless, its variation in intensity over about two months allowed the team to estimate that the system included a star about half the mass of the sun, a planet about the mass of Earth and a very large planet about 17 times the mass of Jupiter — likely a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are failed stars, with a mass just shy of that required to ignite fusion in the core.
The analysis also concluded that the Earth-like planet was between 1 and 2 astronomical units from the star — that is, about twice the distance between the Earth and sun. It was unclear what kind of star the host was because its light was lost in the glare of the magnified background star and a few nearby stars.
To identify the type of star, Zhang and his colleagues, including UC Berkeley astronomers Jessica Lu and Joshua Bloom, looked more closely at the lensing system in 2023 using the Keck II 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, which is outfitted with adaptive optics to eliminate blur from the atmosphere. Because they observed the system three years after the lensing event, the background star that had once been magnified 1,000 times had become faint enough that the lensing star should have been visible if it was a typical main-sequence star like the sun, Lu said.
But Zhang detected nothing in two separate Keck images.
"Our conclusions are based on ruling out the alternative scenarios, since a normal star would have been easily seen," Zhang said. "Because the lens is both dark and low mass, we concluded that it can only be a white dwarf."
"This is a case of where seeing nothing is actually more interesting than seeing something," said Lu, who looks for microlensing events caused by free-floating stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way.
Finding exoplanets through microlensing
The discovery is part of a project by Zhang to more closely study microlensing events that show the presence of a planet, in order to understand what types of stars exoplanets live around.
"There is some luck involved, because you'd expect fewer than one in 10 microlensing stars with planets to be white dwarfs," Zhang said.
The new observations also allowed Zhang and colleagues to resolve an ambiguity regarding the location of the brown dwarf.
“The original analysis showed that the brown dwarf is either in a very wide orbit, like Neptune's, or well within Mercury’s orbit. Giant planets on very small orbits are actually quite common outside the solar system,” Zhang said, referring to a class of planets called hot Jupiters. “But since we now know it is orbiting a stellar remnant, this is unlikely, as it would have been engulfed.”
The modeling ambiguity is caused by so-called microlensing degeneracy, where two distinct lensing configurations can give rise to the same lensing effect. This degeneracy is related to the one Zhang and Bloom discovered in 2022 using an AI method to analyze microlensing simulations. Zhang also applied the same AI technique to rule out alternative models for KMT-2020-BLG-0414 that may have been missed.
"Microlensing has turned into a very interesting way of studying other star systems that can't be observed and detected by the conventional means, i.e. the transit method or the radial velocity method," Bloom said. "There is a whole set of worlds that are now opening up to us through the microlensing channel, and what's exciting is that we're on the precipice of finding exotic configurations like this."
One purpose of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2027, is to measure light curves from microlensing events to find exoplanets, many of which will need follow up using other telescopes to identify the types of stars hosting the exoplanets.
"What is required is careful follow up with the world's best facilities, i.e. adaptive optics and the Keck Observatory, not just a day or a month later, but many, many years into the future, after the lens has moved away from the background star so you can start disambiguating what you're seeing," Bloom said.
Zhang noted that even if Earth gets engulfed during the sun's red giant phase in a billion or so years, humanity may find a refuge in the outer solar system. Several moons of Jupiter, such as Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, and Enceladus around Saturn, appear to have frozen water oceans that will likely thaw as the outer layers of the red giant expand.
"As the sun becomes a red giant, the habitable zone will move to around Jupiter and Saturn's orbit, and many of these moons will become ocean planets," Zhang said. "I think, in that case, humanity could migrate out there."
Other co-authors are Weicheng Zang and Shude Mao of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, who co-authored the first paper about KMT-2020-BLG-0414; former UC Berkeley doctoral student Kareem El-Badry, now an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; Eric Agol of the University of Washington in Seattle; B. Scott Gaudi of The Ohio State University in Columbus; Quinn Konopacky of UC San Diego; Natalie LeBaron of UC Berkeley; and Sean Terry of the University of Maryland in College Park.
Journal
Nature Astronomy
Article Title
An Earth-Mass Planet and a Brown Dwarf in Orbit Around a White Dwarf
Article Publication Date
26-Sep-2024
Research sheds light on large-scale cosmic structures
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
A new study has mapped out the gravitational “basins of attraction” in the local Universe, offering fresh insights into the large-scale cosmic structures that shape the movement of galaxies. Using advanced data from the Cosmicflows-4 compilation of distances and velocities of roughly 56,000 galaxies, the international research team applied cutting-edge algorithms to identify regions where gravity dominates, such as the Sloan Great Wall and the Shapley Supercluster. This research suggests that our Milky Way most probably resides within the larger Shapley basin, shifting our understanding of cosmic flows and the role of massive structures in shaping the Universe's evolution.
A team of international researchers has taken a significant step forward in understanding the vast structure of the Universe, identifying key gravitational regions known as "basins of attraction." The research, led by Dr. Valade during his doctoral work under the supervision of Prof. Yehuda Hoffman from Hebrew University and Prof. Noam Libeskind from AIP Potsdam. The work also involved contributions from Dr. Pomarede from the University of Paris-Saclay, Dr. Pfeifer from AIP Potsdam, and Prof. Tully and Dr. Kourkchi from the University of Hawaii.
Understanding the Structure of the Universe
The study is based on the widely accepted Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) standard model of cosmology, which suggests that the Universe's large-scale structure emerged from quantum fluctuations during the early stages of cosmic inflation. These minute fluctuations in density evolved over time, forming the galaxies and clusters we observe today. As these density perturbations grew, they attracted surrounding matter, creating regions where gravitational potential minima, or "basins of attraction," formed.
Innovative Approach Using Cosmicflows-4 Data
Utilizing the latest data from the Cosmicflows-4 (CF4) compilation the team employed a Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm to reconstruct the large-scale structure of the Universe up to a distance corresponding to roughly a billion light years. This method allowed the researchers to provide a probabilistic assessment of the Universe's gravitational domains, identifying the most significant basins of attraction that govern the movement of galaxies.
Key Findings: Laniakea and Shapley Basins of Attraction
Earlier catalogues had suggested that the Milky Way Galaxy was part of a region called the Laniakea Supercluster. However, the new CF4 data offers a slightly different perspective, indicating that Laniakea might be part of the much larger Shapley basin of attraction, which encompasses an even greater volume of the local Universe.
Among the newly identified regions, the Sloan Great Wall stands out as the largest basin of attraction, with a volume of about half a billion cubic lightyears, more than twice the size of the Shapley basin, which was previously considered the largest. These findings provide an unprecedented look into the gravitational landscape of the local Universe, offering new insights into how galaxies and cosmic structures evolve and interact over time.
A Leap Forward in Cosmological Research
This research offers a deeper understanding of the Universe’s intricate gravitational dynamics and the forces that have shaped its structure. The identification of these basins of attraction is a significant advancement in cosmology, potentially reshaping our understanding of cosmic flows and large-scale structures.
This research is important because it deepens our understanding of the large-scale structure of the Universe and the gravitational forces that shape it. By mapping out the basins of attraction—regions where gravity pulls galaxies and matter—the study reveals how massive cosmic structures influence the movement and formation of galaxies over time. Understanding these dynamics not only helps us better grasp the Universe’s past and its ongoing evolution, but also provides valuable insights into fundamental cosmological questions, such as the distribution of dark matter and the forces driving cosmic expansion. This knowledge has the potential to refine our models of the Universe and guide future astronomical research.
Envelopes of the prominent basins of attractions superimposed on probable centers of convergence of the streamlines. The distribution of the points reflects the uncertainty in the determination of basins of attraction and their centers.
Credit
Daniel Pomarède
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Identification of basins of attraction in the local universe
Article Publication Date
27-Sep-2024
Our cosmic neighborhood may be 10x larger
University of Hawaii at Manoa
A team of international researchers guided by astronomers at University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy is challenging our understanding of the universe with groundbreaking findings that suggest our cosmic neighborhood may be far larger than previously thought. The Cosmicflows team has been studying the movements of 56,000 galaxies, revealing a potential shift in the scale of our galactic basin of attraction.
A decade ago, the team concluded that our galaxy, the Milky Way, resides within a massive basin of attraction called Laniākea, stretching 500 million light-years across. However, new data suggests that this understanding may only scratch the surface. There is now a 60% probability that we are part of an even grander structure, potentially 10 times larger in volume, centered on the Shapley concentration—a region packed with an immense amount of mass and gravitational pull. The findings were recently published in Nature Astronomy.
“Our universe is like a giant web, with galaxies lying along filaments and clustering at nodes where gravitational forces pull them together,” said UH Astronomer R. Brent Tully, one of the study’s lead researchers. “Just as water flows within watersheds, galaxies flow within cosmic basins of attraction. The discovery of these larger basins could fundamentally change our understanding of cosmic structure.”
Vast cosmos
The universe’s origins date back 13 billion years when tiny differences in density began to shape the cosmos, growing under the influence of gravity into the vast structures we see today. But if our galaxy is part of a basin of attraction much larger than Laniākea, which means immense heaven in the Hawaiian language, it would suggest that the initial seeds of cosmic structure grew far beyond current models.
“This discovery presents a challenge: our cosmic surveys may not yet be large enough to map the full extent of these immense basins,” said UH astronomer and co-author Ehsan Kourkchi. “We are still gazing through giant eyes, but even these eyes may not be big enough to capture the full picture of our universe.”
Gravitational forces
The researchers evaluate these large-scale structures by examining their impact on the motions of galaxies. A galaxy between two such structures will be caught in a gravitational tug-of-war in which the balance of the gravitational forces from the surrounding large-scale structures determines the galaxy’s motion. By mapping the velocities of galaxies throughout our local universe, the team is able to define the region of space where each supercluster dominates.
The researchers are set to continue their quest to map the largest structures of the cosmos, driven by the possibility that our place in the universe is part of a far more expansive and interconnected system than ever imagined.
The international team is composed of UH astronomers Tully and Kourkchi, Aurelien Valade, Noam Libeskind and Simon Pfeifer (Leibniz Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam), Daniel Pomarede (University of Paris-Saclay) and Yehuda Hoffman (Hebrew University).
Identification of Basins of Attraction in the Local Universe
Article Publication Date
27-Sep-2024
A new birthplace for asteroid Ryugu
Samples of asteroid Ryugu have once again caused a surprise - and call into question previous ideas about the formation of carbon-rich asteroids.
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
In December 2020 the space probe Hayabusa 2 brought samples of asteroid Ryugu back to Earth. Since then, the few grams of material have been through quite a lot. After initial examinations in Japan, some of the tiny, jet-black grains traveled to research facilities around the world. There they were measured, weighed, chemically analyzed and exposed to infrared, X-ray and synchroton radiation, among other things. At the MPS, researchers examine the ratios of certain metal isotopes in the samples, as in the current study. Scientists refer to isotopes as variants of the same element that differ only in the number of neutrons in the nucleus. Investigations of this kind can help to understand where in the Solar System Ryugu was formed.
Ryugu's journey through the Solar System
Ryugu is a near-Earth asteroid: Its orbit around the Sun crosses that of Earth (without risk of collision). However, researchers assume that, like other near-Earth asteroids, Ryugu is not native to the inner Solar System, but travelled there from the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The actual birthplaces of the asteroid belt population are probably even further away from the Sun, outside the orbit of Jupiter.
Ryugu's “family relations” can help shed light on its origin and further evolution. To what degree does Ryugu resemble the representatives of well-known classes of meteorites? These are fragments of asteroids that have made their way from space to Earth. Investigations in recent years have yielded a surprise: Ryugu fits into the large crowd of carbon-rich meteorites, the carbonaceous chondrites, as expected. However, detailed studies of its composition assign it to a rare group: the so-called CI chondrites. These are also known as Ivuna-type chondrites, named after the Tanzanian location where their best-known representative was found. In addition to the Ivuna chondrite itself, only eight others of these exotic specimens have been discovered to date. As their chemical composition is similar to that of the Sun, they are considered to be particularly pristine material that was formed at the outermost edge of the Solar System. “So far, we had assumed that Ryugu's place of origin is also outside Saturn's orbit,” explains MPS scientist Dr. Timo Hopp, co-author of the current study, who has already led earlier investigations into Ryugu's isotopic composition.
The latest analyses by the Göttingen scientists now paint a different picture. For the first time, the team has investigated the ratios of nickel isotopes in four samples of the asteroid Ryugu and six samples of carbonaceous chondrites. The results confirm the close relationship between Ryugu and the CI chondrites. However, the idea of a common birthplace at the edge of the Solar System is no longer compelling.
A missing ingredient
What had happened? Until now, researchers had understood carbonaceous chondrites as mixtures of three “ingredients” that can even be seen with the naked eye in cross-sections. Embedded in fine-grained rock, round, millimeter-sized inclusions as well as smaller, irregularly shaped inclusions are densely packed together. The irregular inclusions are the first material to have condensed into solid clumps in the hot gas disk that once orbited the Sun. The round silicate-rich chondrules formed later. Until now, researchers have attributed differences in the isotopic composition between CI chondrites and other groups of carbonaceous chondrites to different mixing ratios of these three ingredients. CI chondrites, for example, consist predominantly of fine-grained rock, while their siblings are significantly richer in inclusions. However, as the team describes in the current publication, the results of the nickel measurements do not fit into this scheme.
The researchers' calculations now show that their measurements can only be explained by a fourth ingredient: tiny iron-nickel grains, which must also have accumulated during the formation of the asteroids. In the case of Ryugu and the CI chondrites, this process must have been particularly efficient. “Completely different processes must have been at work in the formation of Ryugu and the CI chondrites on the one hand and the other groups of carbonaceous chondrites on the other,” says Fridolin Spitzer from the MPS, first author of the new study, summarizing the basic idea.
According to the researchers, the first carbonaceous chondrites began to form around two million years after the formation of the Solar System. Attracted by the gravitational force of the still young Sun, dust and the first solid clumps made their way from the outer edge of the gas and dust disk into the inner Solar System, but encountered an obstacle along the way: the newly forming Jupiter. Outside its orbit, the heavier and larger clumps in particular accumulated - and thus grew into carbonaceous chondrites with their many inclusions. Towards the end of this development, after around two million years, another process gained the upper hand: under the influence of the Sun, the original gas gradually evaporated outside Jupiter's orbit leading to the accumulation of primarily dust and iron-nickel grains. This led to the birth of the CI chondrites.
“The results surprised us very much. We had to completely rethink - not only with regard to Ryugu, but also with regard to the entire group of CI chondrites,” says Dr. Christoph Burkhard from the MPS. The CI chondrites no longer appear as distant, somewhat exotic relatives of the other carbonaceous chondrites from the outermost edge of the Solar System, but rather as younger siblings that may have formed in the same region, but through a different process and later. “The current study shows how crucial laboratory investigations can be in deciphering the formation history of our Solar System,” says Prof. Dr. Thorsten Kleine, Director of the Department of Planetary Sciences at the MPS and co-author of the study.
Journal
Science Advances
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
The Ni isotopic composition of Ryugu reveals a common accretion region for carbonaceous condrites,
Article Publication Date
27-Sep-2024
Asteroid Ceres is a former ocean world that slowly formed into a giant, murky icy orb
The asteroid is believed to have a dirty, icy crust according to researchers at Purdue University and NASA
Purdue University
Since the first sighting of the first-discovered and largest asteroid in our solar system was made in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, astronomers and planetary scientists have pondered the make-up of this asteroid/dwarf planet. Its heavily battered and dimpled surface is covered in impact craters. Scientists have long argued that visible craters on the surface meant that Ceres could not be very icy.
Researchers at Purdue University and the NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) now believe Ceres is a very icy object that possibly was once a muddy ocean world. This discovery that Ceres has a dirty ice crust is led by Ian Pamerleau, PhD student, and Mike Sori, assistant professor in Purdue’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences who published their findings in Nature Astronomy. The duo along with Jennifer Scully, research scientist with JPL, used computer simulations of how craters on Ceres deform over billions of years.
“We think that there's lots of water-ice near Ceres surface, and that it gets gradually less icy as you go deeper and deeper,” Sori said. “People used to think that if Ceres was very icy, the craters would deform quickly over time, like glaciers flowing on Earth, or like gooey flowing honey. However, we've shown through our simulations that ice can be much stronger in conditions on Ceres than previously predicted if you mix in just a little bit of solid rock.”
The team’s discovery is contradictory to the previous belief that Ceres was relatively dry. The common assumption was that Ceres was less than 30% ice, but Sori’s team now believes the surface is more like 90% ice.
“Our interpretation of all this is that Ceres used to be an ‘ocean world’ like Europa (one of Jupiter's moons), but with a dirty, muddy ocean,’” Sori said. “As that muddy ocean froze over time, it created an icy crust with a little bit of rocky material trapped in it.”
Pamerleau explained how they used computer simulations to model how relaxation occurs for craters on Ceres over billions of years.
“Even solids will flow over long timescales, and ice flows more readily than rock. Craters have deep bowls which produce high stresses that then relax to a lower stress state, resulting in a shallower bowl via solid state flow," he said. "So the conclusion after NASA’s Dawn mission was that due to the lack of relaxed, shallow craters, the crust could not be that icy. Our computer simulations account for a new way that ice can flow with only a little bit of non-ice impurities mixed in, which would allow for a very ice-rich crust to barely flow even over billions of years. Therefore, we could get an ice-rich Ceres that still matches the observed lack of crater relaxation. We tested different crustal structures in these simulations and found that a gradational crust with a high ice content near the surface that grades down to lower ice with depth was the best way to limit relaxation of Cerean craters.”
Sori is a planetary scientist whose focus is planetary geophysics. His team addresses questions about the planetary interiors, the connections between planetary interiors and surfaces, and those questions might be resolved with spacecraft missions. His work spans many solid bodies in the solar system, from the Moon and Mars to icy objects in the outer solar system.
“Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, and a dwarf planet. I think sometimes people think of small, lumpy things as asteroids (and most of them are!), but Ceres really looks more like a planet,” Sori said. “It is a big sphere, diameter 950 kilometers or so, and has surface features like craters, volcanoes, and landslides.”
On Sept. 27, 2007, NASA launched the Dawn mission. This mission was the first and only spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial destinations — the protoplanet Vesta and Ceres. Although it was launched in 2007, Dawn didn’t reach Ceres until 2015. It orbited the dwarf planet until 2018.
“We used multiple observations made with Dawn data as motivation for finding an ice-rich crust that resisted crater relaxation on Ceres. Different surface features (e.g., pits, domes and landslides, etc.) suggest the near subsurface of Ceres contains a lot of ice,” Pamerleau said. “Spectrographic data also shows that there should be ice beneath the regolith on the dwarf planet and gravity data yields a density value very near that of ice, specifically impure ice. We also took a topographic profile of an actual complex crater on Ceres and used it to construct the geometry for some of our simulations.”
Sori says that because Ceres is the largest asteroid there was suspicion that it could have been any icy object based on some estimates of its mass made from the Earth. those factors made it a great choice for a spacecraft visit.
“To me the exciting part of all this, if we're right, is that we have a frozen ocean world pretty close to Earth. Ceres may be a valuable point of comparison for the ocean-hosting icy moons of the outer solar system, like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus,” Sori said. “Ceres, we think, is therefore the most accessible icy world in the universe. That makes it a great target for future spacecraft missions. Some of the bright features we see at Ceres' surface are the remnants of Ceres' muddy ocean, now mostly or entirely frozen, erupted onto the surface. So we have a place to collect samples from the ocean of an ancient ocean world that is not too difficult to send a spacecraft to.”
This research was supported by a NASA grant (80NSSC22K1062) in the Discovery Data Analysis Program.
About the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University
The Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) combines four of Purdue’s most interdisciplinary programs: Geology and Geophysics, Environmental Sciences, Atmospheric Sciences, and Planetary Sciences. EAPS conducts world-class research; educates undergraduate and graduate students; and provides our college, university, state and country with the information necessary to understand the world and universe around us. Our research is globally recognized; our students are highly valued by graduate schools and employers; and our alumni continue to make significant contributions in academia, industry, and federal and state government.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.
Contributors:
Ian Pamerleau, PhD student with Purdue University’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Mike Sori, assistant professor with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University
Written byCheryl Pierce, lead marketing and public relations specialist for the Purdue University College of Science
An ancient and impure frozen ocean on Ceres implied by its ice-rich crust
A new method combining spatiotemporal decomposition and machine learning for the prediction of sunspot numbers and magnetic synoptic maps
Science China Press
This study is led by Prof. Jiansen He’s team at Peking University and their cooperators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sheds light on the prediction of solar activities. The researchers analyze and discuss the potential laws in the spherical harmonic coefficients of solar synoptic magnetic maps. By combining machine learning, mode decomposition, and harmonic reconstruction methods, they achieve predictions for the sunspot numbers and solar magnetic synoptic maps for Solar Cycle 25.
The global spatiotemporal distribution of the solar magnetic field is a crucial factor in determining solar activity, which is closely connected to human society. The topology and complexity of the solar magnetic field are key to understanding solar eruptions and predicting solar activity levels. The study of the photospheric magnetic field’s evolution has a long history, and predicting solar magnetic activity remains a hot topic in the field. However, understanding the global spatiotemporal distribution of the solar magnetic field and how to predict its evolution remains an unresolved and challenging issue.
They first apply wavelet analysis to the spherical harmonic coefficients of synoptic maps, revealing complex short-period disturbances in the photospheric magnetic field around the solar maximum. Furthermore, the harmonic coefficient almost always reaches its peak simultaneously with sunspot numbers, suggesting a potential link to the Sun’s meridional circulation.
Next, the researchers construct a long short-term memory neural network (LSTM) model to predict sunspot numbers for Solar Cycle 25. According to the model, the peak sunspot number for Solar Cycle 25 is expected to occur around June 2024 within an 8-month window, with a peak intensity of 166.9±22.6. Therefore, Solar Cycle 25 is predicted to be stronger than Solar Cycle 24 but slightly weaker than Solar Cycle 23.
The researchers further apply an integrated method to predict the future 5-order magnetic synoptic maps. Using empirical mode decomposition (EMD), each harmonic coefficient is decomposed into several component series, which are then predicted using LSTM. The predicted low-order synoptic maps are reconstructed finally through spherical harmonics reconstruction. The predicted synoptic maps are validated to be consistent with known polarity laws, and quantitative analysis suggests a certain level of reliability.
Although there are still some deviations between the predicted maps and observations, this study fills a gap in the empirical prediction of the global distribution of solar magnetic fields, and offers valuable insights for the future solar observation programs.
See the article:
Prediction of solar activities: Sunspot numbers and solar magnetic synoptic maps