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)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told COP29 that 'We must protect nature, with men at its core'
- Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Laurent THOMET
Global leaders offered competing views on how to tackle climate change at UN-led talks Wednesday as a new report warned the world must reach carbon neutrality much sooner than planned.
Planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from oil, gas and coal rose to a new record high this year, according to preliminary research from an international network of scientists at the Global Carbon Project.
The report came as leaders gathered in Azerbaijan for COP29 climate talks aimed at reaching a deal on boosting funding to help poorer nations adapt to climate shocks and transition to cleaner energy.
The research found that to keep the Paris agreement’s ambitious goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in sight, the world would now need to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by the late 2030s — instead of 2050.
The warning also follows concerns about the future of the fight against climate change following the election of Donald Trump.
Trump, who has vowed to again pull the United States out of the Paris agreement, named his head of the Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday with a mandate to slash pollution regulations.
Some leaders in Baku defended fossil fuels during two days of speeches while others from countries plagued by climate disasters warned that they were running out of time.
– ‘Slower’ path –
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called for a “realistic global outlook” on Wednesday, saying that world population growth will boost energy consumption demand.
“It is equally a priority that decarbonisation takes into consideration our production and social system’s sustainability,” she said.
“We must protect nature, with man at its core. An approach that is too ideological and not pragmatic on this matter risks taking us off the road to success,” the far-right leader said.
“Currently there is no single alternative to fossil fuel supply.”
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called for a “smart” Green Deal, the European Union’s ambitious climate plan which aims to make the bloc carbon-neutral by 2050.
“We cannot drive ourselves into industrial oblivion,” the conservative leader said.
“We need to ask hard questions about a path that goes very fast, at the expense of our competitiveness, and a path that goes somewhat slower, but allows our industry to adapt and to thrive,” he said.
Their views contrasted with leaders from countries beset by climate catastrophes and rising sea levels.
“Tuvalu sincerely hopes that this COP’s concluding decisions will deliver a clear signal that the world is promptly phasing out fossil fuel,” said the Pacific island’s Prime Minister Feleti Penitala Teo.
“For Tuvalu and similarly placed countries, there is simply no time to waste,” he said.
– Money fight –
As leaders spoke, negotiators released a fresh draft of a deal with a raft of options to raise funding for poorer countries, while leaving unresolved sticking points that have long delayed an agreement.
Most developing countries favour an annual commitment from wealthy countries of at least $1.3 trillion, according to the latest draft of the long-sought climate finance pact.
This figure is more than 10 times the $100 billion annually that a small pool of developed countries — among them the US, the EU and Japan — currently pay.
Some donors are reluctant to promise large new amounts of public money from their budgets at a time when they face economic and political pressure at home.
The prime minister of the hurricane-vulnerable Bahamas, Philip Davis, said small island nations have spent 18 times more on debt repayment than they have received in climate finance.
“The world has found the ability to finance wars, the ability to mobilise against pandemics,” Davis said.
“Yet when it comes to addressing the most profound crisis of our time, the very survival of nations, where is that same ability?”
Nations approve new UN rules on carbon markets at COP29
By AFP November 11, 2024 Carbon credits are generated by activities that reduce or avoid planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions, like planting trees or replacing polluting coal with clean-energy alternatives - Copyright AFP Tony KARUMBA
Governments at the COP29 talks approved Monday new UN standards for international carbon markets in a key step toward allowing countries to trade credits to meet their climate targets.
On the opening day of the UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, nearly 200 nations agreed a number of crucial ground rules for setting a market in motion after nearly a decade of complex discussions.
Other key aspects of the overall framework still need to be negotiated, experts said, but the decision brings closer a long-sought UN-backed market trading in high-quality credits.
“It’s hugely significant,” Erika Lennon, from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), told AFP in Baku, saying it would “open the door” for a fully-fledged market.
Carbon credits are generated by activities that reduce or avoid planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions, like planting trees, protecting carbon sinks or replacing polluting coal with clean-energy alternatives.
One credit equals a tonne of prevented or removed heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, the UN has been crafting rules to allow countries and businesses to exchange credits in a transparent and credible market.
The benchmarks adopted in Baku will allow for the development of rules including calculating how many credits a given project can receive.
Once up and running, a carbon market would allow countries — mainly wealthy polluters — to offset emissions by purchasing credits from nations that have cut greenhouse gases above what they promised.
Purchasing countries could then put carbon credits toward achieving the climate goals promised in their national plans. – ‘Big step closer’ –
“It gets the system a big step closer to actually existing in the real world,” said Gilles Dufrasne from Carbon Market Watch, a think tank.
“But even with this, it doesn’t mean the market actually exists,” he added, saying further safeguards and questions around governance still remain unanswered.
An earlier UN attempt to regulate carbon markets under the Paris accord were rejected in Dubai in 2023 by the European Union and developing nations for being too lax.
Some observers were unhappy that the decision in Baku left unresolved other long-standing and crucial aspects of the broader crediting mechanism, known in UN terms as Article 6.
“It’s not possible to declare victory,” said a European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
There are hopes that a robust and credible UN carbon market could eventually indirectly raise the standards of the scandal-hit voluntary trade in credits.
Corporations wanting to offset their emissions and make claims of carbon neutrality have been major buyers of these credits, which are bought and exchanged but lack common standards.
But the voluntary market has been rocked by scandals in recent years amid accusations that some credits sold did not reduce emissions as promised, or that projects exploited local communities.
And the idea of offsetting as a whole faces deep scepticism from many.
“No matter how much integrity there is in the sort of the carbon markets, if what you are doing is offsetting ongoing fossil fuels with some sort of credit, you’re not actually reducing anything,” said Lennon.
Lame-duck US climate team vows to be ‘effective’ at COP29
By AFP November 12, 2024 US officials vow to be 'effective' participants at COP29 despite the election climate-sceptic Donald Trump - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Laurent THOMET
They may be out of a job when Donald Trump takes office in two months, but US officials kept a busy schedule at UN climate talks, reminding jittery countries that global action had survived his first term.
President Joe Biden’s lame-duck climate envoy, John Podesta, scurried back and forth to meetings and events across the cavernous halls of the COP29 conference in Baku.
Among the slew of pavilions put up by countries to host panel discussions, it was business as usual at the US site, where it is hosting chats throughout the two-week gathering.
The United States is also in the thick of complex negotiations to reach a deal on dramatically increasing financing to help poorer countries adapt to climate change and transition to cleaner energy.
But the return of climate-sceptic Trump, who has vowed to pull the US out of the Paris agreement again, remained a hot topic of conversation.
“There’s no doubt that the lack of federal action on climate change is a big problem, and it’s going to hobble US climate action,” said Rachel Cleetus, a policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“But here at COP29 the Biden administration is still a government, and we expect them here to show leadership, take responsibility and push for ambitious outcomes at this COP in the negotiations in the next two weeks,” she said.
– ‘Effective participant’ –
Podesta, who only took the job earlier this year, kicked off his visit Monday by seeking to reassure countries that work to contain climate change would continue in the US, even if Trump puts the issue on the “back burner”.
On Tuesday, he co-headlined a summit on methane alongside his Chinese counterpart and the COP29 president during which he announced that oil and gas companies would be charged a fee for methane emissions in the US.
For his part, Ali Zaidi, Biden’s climate adviser, said Tuesday that he has been pointing out “what we witnessed between 2017 and 2021” — Trump’s first term.
Trump was unable to roll back former president Barack Obama’s solar and wind tax credits, while multilateral development banks continued to ramp up their capacity on climate finance, he said.
He added that developed countries were still able to meet a target of providing $100 billion in annual climate aid to poorer countries in 2022, a year after Trump left office. (That was two years later than promised, however).
“My big picture view on climate finance is (that) we’ve seen not just the US, but other countries zig and zag over the course of… COPS,” Zaidi said.
“There’s been a benefit in setting ambitious targets far out.”
Ramping up climate finance is at the heart of the negotiations in Baku, with some nations pushing for the aid to be increased tenfold to $1 trillion per year.
“I think we will be an effective participant in a conversation that should conclude successfully over the course of the next two weeks,” Zaidi said.
– ‘Don’t hide behind US election’ –
A veteran negotiator from an African country told AFP that it appears that US negotiators might be making modest demands in the hope that the next administration would not object to the outcome of COP29.
Cleetus said other countries should put pressure on the US during the talks.
“Countries should not hide behind the US election outcome not to do the right thing, because everybody knows what’s needed right now to secure our climate goals,” she said.
Germany’s climate negotiator, Jennifer Morgan, said she saw “strong determination” from countries to work together despite the US election’s outcome.
“The mood here is a very determined mood to move forward in implementing and accelerating the energy transformation that we decided last year (at COP28 in Dubai) and in getting an ambitious and fair climate finance outcome,” she told AFP.
COP29: Is addressing debt the way to achieve climate targets?
DIGITAL JOURNAL COP29 will focus on climate finance for developing countries -
Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
The major climate change conference, taking place in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, has begun – COP29 (29th meeting of the Conference of the Parties). World leaders from around 200 nations are attending this year’s summit to discuss climate change and how to fight it. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organisation has declared 2024 to be the hottest on record.
Many scientists are seeking to persuade the governments of high income countries to raise over a trillion dollars in finance for the developing world to prepare and mitigate climate crisis.
Azerbaijan is a controversial choice for the 29th United Nations event, due to the country being heavily reliant on oil.
“We mustn’t let 1.5 slip out of reach. Even as temperatures rise, the implementation of our agreements must claw them back. Clean energy and infrastructure investment will reach two trillion dollars in 2024. Almost twice that of fossil fuels. The shift to clean-energy and climate-resilience will not be stopped. Our job is to accelerate this and make sure its huge benefits are shared by all countries and all people.”
How successful will COP29 be? For many it is simply a bridging conference until COP30, when greater action against climate change is expected.
As COP29 kicks off, Digital Journal has heard from environmental and economic experts from the University of Oxford.
Sam Fankhauser, Professor of Climate Economics, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment explains that while COP29 is a smaller event that some previous climate conferences it remains essential that advancements are made: “It is important that we make progress on issues such as a new climate finance goal, the rules on global carbon trading and the next round of national commitments to keep global warming well below 2oC. I hope our research can give parties the confidence to sign up to meaningful new commitments and maintain the integrity of the Paris process.”
As to what these actions could be, Injy Johnstone, Research Associate in Net Zero Aligned Offsetting, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, outlines areas that need to be addressed: “During COP29, my focus will be on improving the net zero alignment of carbon markets. This includes active engagement in the Article 6 negotiations, major elements of which are set to be finalised this COP29, as well as mapping gaps and opportunities to scale durable carbon removal to address the growing ‘CDR gap’, including by implementing the Oxford Offsetting Principles.”
As to what could be delivered, Johnstone states: ” My hope at COP29 is that negotiators will see environmental integrity as central to rather than a barrier to establishing the international carbon market under Article 6 and that, ultimately, it sets a new global baseline from which we can go further and faster on climate mitigation.”
Professor Thomas Hale, Professor of Global Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government expresses the view that improved political commitment and governmental action is needed: “I hope COP29 will send countries a clear signal that they need to upgrade their pledges under the Paris Agreement, due next year, and match top-level targets with concrete rules and regulations that drive implementation. A trust-building deal on the new finance goal can give countries confidence to reach their maximum ambition.”
Addressing issues with economics, including climate funding remains important. Here, Dr Brian O’Callaghan, Lead Researcher, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment says: “I’m advocating for a climate finance solution that makes economic sense—one that accounts for needs as well as technical factors like financial discounting.”
In particular, O’Callaghan urges: “Developing countries need a fighting chance to tackle climate change alongside development; their success is the world’s success. In most cases, this requires a target well over $1 trillion per year, clawback mechanisms for missed payments, and a public finance backstop on private finance commitments.”
Further with the economic aspects, Dr Nicola Ranger, Director, Global Finance and Economy Group & Resilient Planet Finance Lab, indicates: “COP29 has been billed as the finance COP. We need to see agreement on a new, ambitious climate finance goal for developing economies to support them to build resilience to climate change and transition toward low-carbon and nature-positive growth paths. The world cannot achieve its climate goals if we do not bring all countries with us.”
Debt remains an obstacle to joined-up economic planning. Ranger hopes: “As part of this, we need to see meaningful steps toward addressing the debt challenge – developing countries face a triple whammy of rising climate impacts, debt, and transition risks which amplify and reinforce each other. If we don’t address this directly and support countries to build both fiscal and climate resilience, the spiralling debt and setbacks to development in the poorest countries will have massive implications for all.”
Previous financial pledges on climate change yet to materialise, PM Shehbaz tells COP29 summit
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif gives a speech during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku on Nov 13, 2024. — Reuters
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif highlighted on Wednesday that financial pledges made at the previous two United Nations’ annual climate summits — COP27 and COP28 — were yet to materialise.
He made the remarks during the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, that is being held in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku. The premier presented Pakistan’s case on the second and final day of the World Leaders Climate Action Summit.
Pakistan is ranked among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries, according to the Global Climate Risk Index. It has faced increasingly frequent and severe weather events, such as unprecedented floods, intense monsoon rains, devastating heat waves, rapid glacial melting and glacial lake outburst floods.
Addressing the summit, PM Shehbaz asserted that COP29 should “make this understanding loud and clear that we will have to fulfil those financial pledges” committed at COP27 and COP28.
“And yet, I think, those huge financial commitments have to be materialised.”
The prime minister said the event was aimed at understanding the “calamities which, unfortunately, some of the countries have already faced and some will if we do not act”.
At COP27 in 2022, which was also attended by PM Shehbaz, countries had adopted a hard-fought final agreement to set up a “loss and damage fund” to help poor countries battered by climate disasters.
At COP28 last year, then-caretaker premier Anwaarul Haq Kakar had called for immediately executing the $100 billion in commitments for climate finance.
According to the UN, around $700 million have been pledged so far for the loss and damage fund, with France, Italy, Germany and the UAE being the biggest contributors.
At COP29 today, PM Shehbaz also spoke about the devastating monsoon floods of 2022, highlighting they had resulted in 1,700 deaths, massive displacement, destruction of houses and crops, and $30m loss to the country’s economy.
He called on the international community “to take measures which are so important at this point in time to have a conducive environment” to combat climate change.
The prime minister stressed that Pakistan was one of the countries that “hardly contribute” to global emissions, yet it was vulnerable to climate change and listed as one of the “10 countries which can, God forbid, face this kind of devastation again”.
“My memories are still fresh,” he said, recalling a meeting with flood affectees in Balochistan, including a boy named Ikramullah who had “lost everything”.
“His entire village was erased from the face of the earth, his home was completely demolished, and his school was also submerged. And we had arranged his education [in] another part of Pakistan,” he said.
PM Shehbaz stated he would not want “other countries to face the plight Pakistan faced back in 2022”.
Describing Pakistan as a “resilient, hard-working and responsible nation”, the premier affirmed his country was “fully committed to being part of the global climate solutions”.
Concluding his speech, the prime minister expressed the hope that under Azerbaijan’s leadership, COP29 can transform into a “finance COP by restoring confidence in the pledging process and scaling up climate finance”.
“I strongly feel that climate finance must be grant-based and not add to the debt burden of vulnerable developing countries,” he said, reiterating his remarks from yesterday on the sidelines of the summit.
“Two years ago, I warned, and I warned at the top of my voice, that the future would never forgive our inaction. Today, I echo the same,” PM Shehbaz asserted. ‘We shouldn’t brave impact of emissions by others’
Referring to the 2015 Paris Agreement, PM Shehbaz said: “Ten years ago in Paris, we had failed to stop the rise in emissions and catastrophic global warming, and those pledges in Paris 10 years ago, which were made have yet to see the light of the day.”
“As the minus-one emitters, we should not brave the impact of emissions realised by others without even the tools to finance resilience,” he emphasised.
“Without climate justice, there can be no real resilience,” the prime minister asserted.
The premier further said Pakistan would “go through a renewable energy revolution”, noting that the country last year presented a “comprehensive National Adaptation Plan”.
He continued: “This year, we have developed our National Carbon Market Framework. But we cannot do it alone. Pakistan needs international support to deliver on its climate ambitions.”
“My government has taken concrete actions to deliver on its commitment of producing 60 per cent of all energy from green sources and shifting 30pc of our vehicles to EVs (electric vehicles) by the end of this decade,” he told the summit.
PM Shehbaz stated that developing countries would need an estimated $6.2 trillion by 2030 to implement less than half of their current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
“The same goes for adaption and loss and damage,” he added, recalling the efforts at COP27 led by then-climate change minister Sherry Rehman. ‘Debt cannot be new normal’
Speaking at a Pakistan-organised conference at COP29 yesterday, PM Shehbaz had said debt cannot become the “acceptable new normal” in climate financing.
He had explained that financing in the form of loans pushes developing nations towards “mounting debt traps”, which he referred to as “death traps”.
Speaking at Glaciers 2025: Actions for Glaciers, the prime minister had also linked humanity’s survival with the health of glaciers, saying Pakistan was ready to work with the world on the matter.
Participating world leaders and delegates pose for a group photo during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku on Nov 12, 2024. — AFP
PM Shehbaz also met with various world leaders on the sidelines of the summit, including UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UK PM Sir Keir Starmer and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as those from South and Central Asia.
Dozens of world leaders convened in Azerbaijan for COP29 but many big names skipped the UN climate talks where the impact of Donald Trump’s election victory was keenly felt.
US President Joe Biden, China’s President Xi Jinping, India’s PM Narendra Modi and France’s President Emmanuel Macron were among the G20 leaders missing the event.
Pakistan witnessed devastating floods during the 2022 monsoon season, induced by climate change, resulting in the loss of at least 1,700 lives.
With 33 million people affected and swathes of agricultural land washed away, the damage incurred losses worth $30 billion, according to government estimates.
In June 2024, a heat wave brought record-high temperatures, severely impacting public health and agriculture.
More to follow
China plays key role in global climate action
By Li Wei and Yao Yuxin | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2024-11-11
The 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) is scheduled to take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from Nov 11 to 22.
During a recent interview with China Daily, Michael Toman, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future and former lead economist on climate change at the World Bank, highlighted that China plays a key role in global climate action.
Toman emphasized that China's emission reduction policies are robust, well-crafted, and are geared towards achieving carbon peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. These actions not only provide critical guidance for global climate efforts but also set a strong example for other countries to follow.
OVER 140,000 people displaced by flooding in Sindh this August are living in unbearable conditions. They sleep in tents, scrape by on one meal a day, and die from waterborne diseases. They fear more hunger as, according to Amnesty International, 500,000 acres of the province’s farmland lies flooded. Most are steeped in crushing debt, having taken fertiliser on credit to sow fields that remain waterlogged. This is the long tail of climate catastrophe.
The fate of our climate-affected compatriots lies in the hands of world leaders gathering today in Baku for COP29, the UN climate change conference. Unfortunately, the mood is despondent. Donald Trump’s re-election as US president has given this COP the air of a non-starter. Trump’s climate denial threatens to rationalise inaction by countless others.
The host’s priorities also raise questions about the sincerity of the COP process. Azerbaijan is hooked on fossil fuels, with oil comprising 90 per cent of its exports. Videos leaked this week show the chief executive of the country’s COP29 team seeking to strike more fossil fuel deals on the summit’s sidelines.
This poor momentum will be further derailed by low turnout by key stakeholders. Leaders from France, Germany, the US, China, India and Brazil aren’t bothering to show up, nor is the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, one of the most climate-vulnerable island nations, describing the summit as a “waste of time”.
What we’ll get in Baku is a reality check.
Thankfully, Pakistan is attending. What we’ll get in Baku is a reality check.
Pakistan last year launched an ambitious National Adaptation Plan but its main climate plan still takes the form of a demand for climate finance. This is not an irrational position given that by World Bank estimates we need investments totalling $348 billion over the next seven years to tackle climate change. COP29 will clarify that we need more than a begging bowl to address this need.
Baku is being termed the ‘Finance COP’ because the key agenda item is determining a ‘new collective quantified goal’ — a new global funding plan for climate action. The ask is material — the UN Standing Committee on Finance estimates $9 trillion are needed for mitigation and adaptation over the next five years.
Agreeing on a climate finance target is one challenge. Then the world must jointly decide who pays, when, how much, and how. Negotiations will be fraught and possibly unproductive, but there are some certainties that Pakistan should plan for. The era of handouts is over. Developed countries will not hand over climate finance without a fight, especially not since over 40pc of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been produced in the past 30 years, and two-thirds of these by developing countries. Developed economies will not contribute more unless developing yet high-emitting countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and India chip in too.
Consequently, climate finance may appear in various guises. It’s no longer just about loss and damage grants or multilateral development bank projects. China, for example, resists official climate commitments under COP agreements, but going by a Centre for Global Development (CGD) analysis, is already a net provider of climate support totalling $34bn between 2013 and 2021, primarily through lending by its state banks.
Diversified climate financing will require recipient countries to beware of climate debt. Most funding will take the form of ‘global investment flows for climate action’ rather than dole-outs. Expect more private sector involvement (in the form of loans), mobilisation promises, and diversions of existing development finance and aid. Learning lessons from CPEC, Pakistan should avoid climate packages that increase the debt burden.
The direction of travel is towards self-sufficiency.
Countries need to revamp their Nationally Determined Contributions (proposing GHG cuts and adaption plans) by February ahead of COP30 in Brazil. Agreements at Baku will also increasingly take the form of co-financing, for example, the ‘buy one get one free’ model proposed by Jonathan Beynon for the CGD which envisages developed countries matching every dollar committed to climate mitigation or adaptation by developing countries.
One thing is certain, the climate finance agreed in Baku this week will go to countries that will put it to good use. So far, that’s not us. As a recent Institute of Strategic Studies brief points out, our political instability, weak governance, lack of bankable projects, and paucity of data to evidence climate needs are all deterrents to climate funding. So are sociopolitical dynamics such as the disinterest in community engagement and tendency to suppress grassroots initiatives, which are seen as the bedrock of climate action. It’ll take more than asking to address our climate challenge.
The writer is a political and integrity risk analyst.
As the world melts around them, climate refugees in Hunza pin hopes on COP29
As world leaders gather for COP29, the Ismail family is among the millions whose plight serves as a stark reminder of the human cost of climate change.
In the remote highlands of northern Pakistan, the Ismail family once lived in harmony with the towering glaciers that crowned their village. They had deep ties to the land —an enduring connection forged through generations of farming, herding, and living in the shadows of the majestic mountains.
In 2022, however, a catastrophic glacier outburst flood (GLOF) ravaged their home, and with it, their way of life. The flood swept through their village, leaving them with nothing but the painful memories of a once-thriving existence.
Ismail, the sole breadwinner of the family, recalls the fateful day as if it were yesterday. “I was in the fields when the earth began to shake. By the time I got back to the house, the water was already at our doorstep. My wife and children were trapped inside. I had no choice but to grab them and run,” he said, his voice breaking with the weight of the loss. The family barely escaped with their lives, but their home, along with their crops, livestock, and belongings, were swept away by the torrent of water and debris.
Ismail’s family consists of seven members: himself, his wife Zahra, their three children — Sana, Bilal, and Rashid — and his elderly parents, Zulfiqar and Shahida. Before the flood, their lives revolved around farming and raising livestock.
“We lost more than just our home; we lost a part of ourselves,” said Zahra, looking out across the barren landscape where their once-flourishing farm stood. “My children don’t play the way they used to. They look at the mountains with fear now, not with wonder.”
Ismail’s elderly parents, Zulfiqar and Shahida, are still in shock. “We never thought something like this could happen to us,” Zulfiqar says, his frail voice trembling. “We’ve lived here all our lives. These glaciers were our protection, our lifeblood. Now, they have turned against us.” Climate refugees
The May 2022 flood displaced over 1,000 families across Hunza and Nagar districts in Gilgit-Baltistan. In Hunza alone, around 500 families were forced to leave their homes, particularly in Hassanabad and nearby villages, as floodwaters swept away homes, infrastructure, and agricultural land, leaving hundreds stranded and in urgent need of assistance.
In Hassanabad, the idea of leaving their ancestral land fills many residents with disbelief. These families have lived on the lush orchard fields, nestled among towering mountains, for over 400 years, cultivating crops and grazing livestock in the high plains. For many, the village is not just home — it’s where their ancestors are buried, and the thought of relocating feels unimaginable. With limited resources and deep emotional ties to the land, most say they simply cannot afford to leave the place that has been their life for generations.
The Ismail family, like many others in the region, has become climate refugees — forced to flee their ancestral land as rising temperatures and melting glaciers increasingly threaten their way of life. With no permanent shelter, they have sought refuge in nearby towns and villages, living in temporary shelters and struggling to find work and rebuild their shattered lives. But even in displacement, they face the ongoing fear of future climate events, as the threat of floods, landslides, and extreme weather events continues to loom large. Hope melting fast
Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to Glofs, with an estimated 800,000 people living within 15 km (9.3 miles) of a glacier. Many residents in the Karakoram Range have built their homes on fertile land along rivers fed by glaciers, unaware of the growing risks posed by the melting ice. These glaciers, once stable, are rapidly retreating due to rising temperatures, increasing the likelihood of catastrophic floods that can sweep away entire communities and their livelihoods.
Amna Batool, a schoolgirl from Hassanabad, vividly recalls the harrowing day in 2022 when part of her town, along with a crucial highway bridge, was swept away by the torrents of meltwater cascading down the Hunza River, a tributary of the Indus.
“The flood didn’t just destroy my home and belongings; it took away all my childhood memories,” she said, her eyes fixed on the pile of rubble where her house once stood. The flooding was triggered by unusually high temperatures that caused a lake to form behind the Shisper Glacier. As the glacier’s meltwater accumulated, the lake grew larger and more unstable. Eventually, the pressure became too great, and the lake breached, unleashing a devastating wave of water and debris down into the steep-sided valley below.
For Batool, the destruction was deeply personal. That fateful day, she was at home with her parents and younger brother when the floodwaters arrived. “We had just finished breakfast when we heard a loud rumbling sound, like a thunderstorm, but it was much closer,” she recalled. “Before we could even understand what was happening, the water came rushing in, tearing through everything in its path.”
Batool’s father, Amjad Ali, who worked as a carpenter, tried desperately to secure the family’s belongings, but the force of the water was too powerful. Her mother, frantic with worry, grabbed her younger brother and led them to higher ground. “We ran as fast as we could, but the water was already swallowing our house,” she said.
The flood took everything. “Not only did we lose our home, but our memories, too. The walls that held my childhood, my father’s tools, my mother’s kitchen — everything was gone,” she said, her eyes lingering on the debris that was once their life. The family, now displaced and struggling, holds on to the hope that one day they can rebuild their lives. All eyes on COP
According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), glaciers in South Asia are on track to lose up to 75pc of their ice by the century’s end due to global warming. As a result of this melting, Pakistan experienced 14 glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) between 2018 and 2021, but that number surged to 75 in 2022, according to data gathered by the UNDP.
Dr Miriam Jackson, senior Cryosphere Specialist at ICIMOD, has discussed at length the alarming shift in the Karakoram region, where glaciers that were once stable or growing are now melting at an accelerated rate. A 2023 ICIMOD report revealed that glacier melt has increased by 65pc over the past decade (2010-2019) compared to the previous one. This is particularly concerning for agriculture, which relies on glacier meltwater, as shrinking glaciers will eventually lead to reduced runoff.
Dr Jackson emphasised that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to slowing glacier melt, urging countries, including Pakistan, to cut emissions and prioritise public transport. She also called for more research on the cryosphere, as the current knowledge of glaciers and snow is limited. She stressed that COP must focus on urgent climate action to meet the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, warning that millions of people, especially in downstream regions, will be affected by changes in water resources, hydropower, and climate-induced migration.
As world leaders gather for the 29th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP29) — and many others skip it altogether — the Ismail family is among the millions whose plight serves as a stark reminder of the human cost of climate change. Their story is one of resilience but also one of profound loss — loss not just of material possessions, but of a way of life that has been passed down through generations.
The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a key international summit where countries discuss and negotiate actions to combat climate change, focusing on goals such as limiting global warming to 1.5°C, reducing emissions, and funding climate adaptation. COP29 is crucial for strengthening global climate commitments, particularly for vulnerable countries like Pakistan, which face severe climate impacts such as floods, melting glaciers, droughts and food insecurity.
Since the Paris Agreement (COP21) in 2015, global climate pledges have aimed to limit warming to 1.5°C and provide $100 billion annually for climate finance. However, progress has been slow.
Despite pledges at COP26 (held in 2021) to phase out coal and reduce methane emissions, many countries are still not meeting their targets. A year on, COP27 (2022) established a loss and damage fund for vulnerable nations, but funding gaps remain.
At COP28 (2023), the focus was on emissions reductions and climate justice, but the lack of binding commitments and slow implementation continues to hinder progress. Overall, while awareness and some actions have increased, global emissions are still rising, and the world remains off track to meet the 1.5°C target.
This year, Pakistan is presenting its case to the international community at COP29 being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11-22. This is a critical opportunity to amplify its voice and underscore that the climate crisis is not a distant threat, but a present-day reality jeopardising the lives and livelihoods of millions. The Ismail family’s suffering, like that of many others displaced by climate disasters, is not just a matter of physical loss but a profound socio-economic upheaval. Expectations from 2029
Pakistan has high expectations for COP29, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attending the conference today (Nov 12). The country’s delegation includes key representatives from the Ministry of Climate Change and the National Disaster Management Authority.
Romina Khurshid Alam, the Prime Minister’s Coordinator on Climate Change and Environmental Coordination (MoCC&EC), stressed the crucial role of COP29 as a platform for Pakistan to showcase its climate actions, challenges, and potential solutions. She stressed the importance of global collaboration to achieve climate diplomacy goals, promote gender equality, and advance smart agriculture initiatives through greater private sector involvement.
Alam also highlighted the urgent need to address climate change in Pakistan, one of the world’s most vulnerable nations. Despite contributing less than 1pc of global carbon emissions, she pointed out, Pakistan is bearing the brunt of severe climate disasters — such as floods and droughts—that have devastated infrastructure and livelihoods.
According to Alam, Pakistan, alongside other vulnerable nations, will strongly urge wealthy, high-emission countries to fulfill their climate finance commitments. This funding is crucial to help developing countries cope with the worsening impacts of climate change and support their transition to a low-carbon future through adaptation and mitigation strategies. More importantly, it will decide whether Ismail’s family — and millions like them — get the assistance they so desperately need to restart their lives.
Thus, finance has taken centre stage at COP29, with the Baku summit already being dubbed the “Finance COP.” This focus is largely due to the spotlight on the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG).
An evolution of the 2015 Paris Agreement, the NCQG is designed to replace the previous target of USD100 billion in annual climate finance from developed to developing countries. This target, established in 2009, was meant to be met by 2020. However, most analyses indicate that the actual funding provided has fallen short, despite contrary claims.
For the Ismail family — and millions of others like them — COP29 isn’t just about seeking aid; they are calling for comprehensive policies and long-term solutions that address the root causes of forced migration and provide displaced families like theirs with the tools they need to rebuild their lives and secure a sustainable future. The socio-economic challenges they face are emblematic of the broader crises affecting millions of climate refugees around the world, making urgent action at the global stage more critical than ever.
Header illustration created with generative AI
Nations to submit boosted climate plans at COP29: What’s at stake?
Nearly 200 countries are supposed to publish updated climate plans by early February, but so far only three have done so.
Nations have begun setting carbon-cutting targets for the decade ahead, and how ambitious these pledges are could make or break global efforts to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
Nearly 200 countries are supposed to publish updated climate plans by early February, but so far only three have done so.
On Wednesday, the UK became the latest, announcing during the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan that it would raise its target to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
All eyes will be on other big polluters like China, India, and the United States, though future US climate action is unclear following Donald Trump’s election. Why do they matter?
The world has agreed to try and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but is nowhere near on track.
Above this threshold, scientists say humanity risks disastrous consequences from volatile weather to major ecological “tipping points” at land and sea.
Last month, the United Nations warned that even if all existing plans are implemented in full, temperatures would rise 2.6°C by the century’s end, a catastrophic outcome.
The UN says the next round of climate plans must show a “quantum leap” in ambition to avert the worst.
The G20 — which accounts for 77 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions — is under particular pressure to step up. Early movers
Just before COP29 opened in Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates announced a 47pc reduction in emissions by 2035 compared with 2019 in its updated climate plan.
Observers said the roadmap failed to account for exported emissions —including those from its sales of crude oil abroad.
Next year’s UN climate host, Brazil, has partly unveiled its plan, increasing its emissions reduction target from a 59pc cut by 2035, from 2005 levels, to a 67pc reduction.
It is expected to unveil a more complete plan during COP29.
Plans from other major emitters, like the European Union and China, are not expected until next year.
And the current US government could soon outline Washington’s new pledge, despite questions over Trump following through once in office.
David Waskow, of the World Resources Institute, said it would help guide American cities, states and businesses wishing to continue climate action under Trump.
“It also sends an important signal internationally, a set of benchmarks for what the US ought to do,” he added. What do countries need to do?
By signing the Paris accord, nearly 200 nations agreed to halt rising temperatures “well below 2°C” and strive for the safer goal of 1.5°C.
But it did not prescribe how to get there.
The deal left it up to countries to voluntarily chart their own plans and targets, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
These include emission reduction targets and measures to achieve them, such as rolling out renewable energy, electrifying transport, and ending deforestation.
There is no set template for countries to follow but richer countries —historically the largest emitters — have a responsibility to pledge the deepest emission cuts.
The plans must be reviewed every five years, with each update supposed to be more ambitious than the last. This time around countries are expected to improve their 2030 targets and outline economy-wide action they will take to 2035. What’s the aim?
An agreement at last year’s COP28 climate summit “encouraged” countries to come forward with plans aligned with halting warming to 1.5°C.
To have a hope of meeting that goal, emissions must be slashed 42pc by 2030 and 57pc by 2035, the UN’s Environment Programme said last month.
Currently, however, emissions are continuing to rise.
Keeping 1.5°C on track would require a collective effort “only ever seen following a global conflict”, it added.
Without pulling together “on a scale and pace never seen before… the 1.5°C goal will soon be dead,” said UNEP executive director Inger Andersen.
The big moment for assessing progress towards the 1.5°C goal comes at a crunch COP30 climate summit in Brazil next year. What about fossil fuels?
Scientists and the International Energy Agency have said that developing new fossil fuel projects is incompatible with halting warming to 1.5°C.
But many fossil fuel-producing countries argue that new oil and gas projects will be needed as the world transitions to net zero emissions.
Countries are under pressure to outline in their updated plans how they intend to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, something all nations agreed on at last year’s COP.
Header image: This picture taken on November 12 shows a wind turbine at the lignite-fired power station operated by German energy giant RWE near Neurath, western Germany.
— AFP
UNFCCC COP29 side event in Baku to highlight the role of Open Science and science-policy communication in biodiversity and climate change
Pensoft Publishers
image:
Pensoft Publishers is set to host an open side event at the UNFCCC’s COP29 on 21 November 2024
Pensoft Publishers is set to host an open side event at the UNFCCC’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. This event will showcase how Open Science and Science Communication shape the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) that can effectively support the implementation of knowledge-based policies and tackle critical biodiversity challenges related to climate change.
The 29th Conference of Parties (COP29) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is to be held from 11 to 22 November 2024, will take forward some of the discussions started at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16). The two multilateral agreements are set to align their efforts towards the creation of a coordinated climate and biodiversity action to address global priorities of the highest importance.
On the 21st of November, at the national pavilion of the Republic of Bulgaria at COP29 (Baku, Azerbaijan), academic publisher and science technology provider Pensoft Publishers will host a side event to shed light on how open-access research and science communication in the field of biodiversity enables the SPI to effectively support the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF).
The topic of the event is highly relevant to the dialogue between climate and biodiversity research and political decision-making. Effective science-policy interface is pivotal for informing evidence-based policies, enabling effective strategies and actions under the biodiversity and climate frameworks.
Side Event: Supporting Climate and Biodiversity Policy Through Open Science and Science Communication
Date: 21 November 2024
Time: 13:30 - 14:30 (GMT+4)
Location: Country pavilion of the Republic of Bulgaria, COP29, Baku, Azerbaijan
This event will demonstrate the importance of open science for achieving efficient evidence-based political decision making, as well as showcase prominent examples of EU-funded projects that shape the SPIs integrating scientific research into policy frameworks to ensure the successful implementation of the KM-GBF.
The event is expected to attract delegates and attendees of the COP29 summit, including policymakers, researchers, and civil society representatives, as it offers a platform for a highly impactful and engaging dialogue.
Find out more information about the upcoming events, the organisers, and research results related to biodiversity policy at the dedicated COP29 webpage.
Interviews with event organisers and panellists can be arranged upon request.
For more information or to schedule interviews, please contact: Alexandra Korcheva a.korcheva@pensoft.net Pensoft Publishers
***
About Pensoft Publishers:
Pensoft is an independent academic publishing company, well known worldwide for its novel cutting-edge publishing tools, workflows and methods for text and data publishing of journals, books and conference materials; as well as its open-access journal portfolio of over 50 peer-reviewed scientific titles, most of them dedicated to the domains of biodiversity and ecology. Through its Research and Technical Development department, the company is involved in various research and technology projects funded by EU programmes such as Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe.
Monday, November 11, 2024
SPACE/COSMOS
THE ORIGINAL SKYNET
UK's oldest satellite veers miles off track on its own leaving scientists confused
UK satellite launched in 1969 moves dep into outer space but nobody knows who moved it or how
By Web Desk| November 11, 2024
An undated image shows Skynet-1A satellite. — X/@Horashi0
In a shocking turn of events for the space industry in the United Kingdom, scientists recently discovered that the country's oldest satellite has veered deep into space, thousands of miles off track.
Skynet-1A, a satellite that was launched into space in 1969 soon after man's first lunar landing, and was originally positioned over East Africa to facilitate British military communications.
However, recently, it was found by scientists to have relocated and hovering above the Americas, far from its expected trajectory over the Indian Ocean, the Daily Express reported.
What scientists found baffling about this was that they had no clear explanation of who moved it or how.
According to the scientists, orbital mechanics suggest that a half-tonne satellite shouldn't drift that far on its own which leads to the conclusion that it was intentionally moved.
Nobody can say who would want or be able to do such a thing. But is the satellite's relocation a good thing or a bad thing?
Space consultant Dr Stuart Eves told the BBC: "It's still relevant because whoever did move Skynet-1A did us few favours.
“It's now in what we call a 'gravity well' at 105° West longitude, wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis.
"Because it's dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it's 'our' satellite, we're still responsible for it.
The satellite was made in the United States and put in space by a US Air Force (USAF) Delta rocket.
Thanks to veterans of the programme that put it in space, the satellite revolutionised UK telecommunications capacity and allowed London to communicate securely with British forces, such as Singapore.
Rachel Hill, a PhD student from University College London, has reviewed documents and believes that plausible explanations exist for how the satellite has arrived at its present location.
She said: "A Skynet team from Oakhanger would go to the USAF satellite facility in Sunnyvale (colloquially known as the Blue Cube) and operate Skynet during 'Oakout'. This was when control was temporarily transferred to the US while Oakhanger was down for essential maintenance. Perhaps the move could have happened then?”
Mining old data from NASA's Voyager 2 solves several Uranus mysteries
by Karen Fox, Molly Wasser and Gretchen McCartney, NASA
The first panel of this artist’s concept depicts how Uranus’s magnetosphere — its protective bubble — was behaving before the flyby of NASA’s Voyager 2. The second panel shows an unusual kind of solar weather was happening during the 1986 flyby, giving scientists a skewed view of the magnetosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986, it provided scientists' first—and, so far, only—close glimpse of this strange, sideways-rotating outer planet. Alongside the discovery of new moons and rings, baffling new mysteries confronted scientists. The energized particles around the planet defied their understanding of how magnetic fields work to trap particle radiation, and Uranus earned a reputation as an outlier in our solar system.
Now, new research analyzing the data collected during that flyby 38 years ago has found that the source of that particular mystery is a cosmic coincidence. It turns out that in the days just before Voyager 2's flyby, the planet had been affected by an unusual kind of space weather that squashed the planet's magnetic field, dramatically compressing Uranus's magnetosphere.
"If Voyager 2 had arrived just a few days earlier, it would have observed a completely different magnetosphere at Uranus," said Jamie Jasinski of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and lead author of the new work published in Nature Astronomy. "The spacecraft saw Uranus in conditions that only occur about 4% of the time."
Magnetospheres serve as protective bubbles around planets (including Earth) with magnetic cores and magnetic fields, shielding them from jets of ionized gas—or plasma—that stream out from the sun in the solar wind. Learning more about how magnetospheres work is important for understanding our own planet, as well as those in seldom-visited corners of our solar system and beyond.
That's why scientists were eager to study Uranus's magnetosphere, and what they saw in the Voyager 2 data in 1986 flummoxed them. Inside the planet's magnetosphere were electron radiation belts with an intensity second only to Jupiter's notoriously brutal radiation belts. But there was apparently no source of energized particles to feed those active belts; in fact, the rest of Uranus's magnetosphere was almost devoid of plasma.
The missing plasma also puzzled scientists because they knew that the five major Uranian moons in the magnetic bubble should have produced water ions, as icy moons around other outer planets do. They concluded that the moons must be inert with no ongoing activity.
NASA’s Voyager 2 captured this image of Uranus while flying by the ice giant in 1986. New research using data from the mission shows a solar wind event took place during the flyby, leading to a mystery about the planet’s magnetosphere that now may be solved. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Solving the mystery
So why was no plasma observed, and what was happening to beef up the radiation belts? The new data analysis points to the solar wind. When plasma from the sun pounded and compressed the magnetosphere, it likely drove plasma out of the system. The solar wind event also would have briefly intensified the dynamics of the magnetosphere, which would have fed the belts by injecting electrons into them.
The findings could be good news for those five major moons of Uranus: Some of them might be geologically active after all. With an explanation for the temporarily missing plasma, researchers say it's plausible that the moons actually may have been spewing ions into the surrounding bubble all along.
Planetary scientists are focusing on bolstering their knowledge about the mysterious Uranus system, which the National Academies' 2023 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey prioritized as a target for a future NASA mission.
JPL's Linda Spilker was among the Voyager 2 mission scientists glued to the images and other data that flowed in during the Uranus flyby in 1986. She remembers the anticipation and excitement of the event, which changed how scientists thought about the Uranian system.
"The flyby was packed with surprises, and we were searching for an explanation of its unusual behavior. The magnetosphere Voyager 2 measured was only a snapshot in time," said Spilker, who has returned to the iconic mission to lead its science team as project scientist. "This new work explains some of the apparent contradictions, and it will change our view of Uranus once again."
Voyager 2, now in interstellar space, is almost 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) from Earth.
'Webb has shown us they are clearly wrong': How astrophysicist Sophie Koudami's research on supermassive black holes is rewriting the history of our universe
How did supermassive black holes get big so fast? Astrophysicist Souphie Koudmani tells us how she and her colleagues are finding out.
An artist's rendering of a black hole (Image credit: Vadim Sadovski via Shutterstock)
A supermassive mystery lurks at the center of the Milky Way. Supermassive black holes are gigantic ruptures in space-time that sit in the middle of many galaxies, periodically sucking in matter before spitting it out at near light speeds to shape how galaxies evolve.
Yet how they came to be so enormous is a prevailing mystery in astrophysics, made even deeper by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Since it came online in 2022, the telescope has found that the cosmic monsters are shockingly abundant and massive in the few million years after the Big Bang — a discovery that defies many of our best models for how black holes grew.
Sophie Koudmani is an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge searching for answers to this problem. Live Science sat down with her at the New Scientist Live event in London to discuss the cosmic monsters, how they could have formed, and how her work using supercomputers to simulate them could rewrite the history of our universe.
Ben Turner: Why are supermassive black holes so important for understanding our universe?
Sophie Koudmani: In the universe, everything is connected and supermassive black holes play a very important role. They generate a huge amount of energy that comes from the region around the black holes. As gas falls in, its gravitational potential energy is converted into radiation. This makes the gas very hot, and as it heats up it starts glowing.
The gas is heated up to millions of degrees, and its radiation then influences the whole galaxy. It stops gas clumping together to form stars, pausing star formation in a way that's important to produce realistic galaxies. The energy [from supermassive black holes] can then travel out even further and influence the large-scale structure of the universe — which is really important for cosmology and understanding cosmic evolution.
BT: So when you talk about the energy flowing outwards, you're referring to relativistic jets, or near-light speed outflows from some black holes, right?
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SK: Yes. There's three kinds of ways that black holes "'speak"' to their host galaxies. One is through relativistic jets, another is by winds given off by the accretion disk [the cloud-like structure of gas, dust and plasma that orbits black holes] — these are not as thin as jets — and then there is radiation. So generally disks give off X-rays and radiation from other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
BT: You touched on this already, but what would galaxies look like if black holes didn't exist?
SK: So what you could get is what is often called "runaway star formation." All of the gas would get very quickly consumed, and you would get balls of stars. This is not what galaxies look like. To get the disk galaxies [we see in our universe] it's really important to have some kind of black hole. You need to get a realistic ratio between gas and stars, without them being eaten up straight away.
Sophie Koudmani. (Image credit: Elodie Guige)
BT: What drew you to studying black holes? What questions do you want to answer about them?
SK: One thing that I really like about supermassive black holes is that they are seemingly simple, but then this incredibly rich physics comes off them. You can actually characterize black holes with just two numbers — their mass and their spin — and that completely tells you what they behave like, it's called the "no hair theorem." From these two numbers you can get all of these different possibilities. For example, some black holes have jets and others don't, some have brightly-glowing accretion disks and others are completely quiet. It's the interaction with the galaxies that brings this out.
So it's a simple object at the center that can be incredibly powerful. It interacts with something that can be quite complex and messy, the galaxy — you get the gas, the dust, the stars, all being held together by dark matter which we don't understand very well. And all of these components interact with each other in ways that are really complex to understand.
BT: It's interesting that you described them as simple, because in relativistic physics they're where all of our equations break down and where we might want to look for theories of quantum gravity. Do they only look simple because our theories of them are?
SK: It depends what you're interested in. If you're interested in what's going on inside the event horizon, then yeah, sure, the singularity is where our theories break down. We don't know exactly about other physical phenomena, like Hawking radiation, that could actually come from inside of the black hole.
If you're worrying about all of this, yes, you have a very difficult job! But if you're thinking about astrophysical black holes, you're interested in the gas flows and radiation around the black hole. As an astrophysicist, you can be quite happy to locate the event horizon, see what it does to the region around it, and be relatively agnostic about what's inside. The location of that horizon itself is uniquely determined by the mass and the spin.
BT: What mysteries has JWST revealed about black holes that we didn't know before?
SK: We didn't know that there would be so many supermassive black holes so early on. They exist in such high numbers [in the early universe] and inside pretty small galaxies, that was surprising.
My PhD was on modeling black holes in small galaxies, it was lucky that I happened to be working on that because it's become very relevant for the early universe. JWST is telling us that black hole activity happened at very early times and in more galaxies than was thought possible. In fact, the activity seems to be more efficient than in the present-day universe.
Two merging black holes. (Image credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Getty Images)
BT: Why might that be?
SK: We all know about cosmic expansion — so the Big Bang happens and the whole universe expands — and this means that in the early times of the universe everything was a bit closer together so gas inflows were stronger, this might have helped to feed black holes.
One problem is that black holes and supernovae kind of compete with one another. Both star formation and black holes consume gas. The black hole blows gas away, so do the supernovae, and supernovae also evacuate the gas from the central region, and then black holes can't grow because the supernovae have kicked out all of the gas. It could be that in the early universe, for one reason or another, this doesn't happen as much, and the black hole just wins out in that process.
In fact, there's a strong hint that the black holes win out [in the early universe]. It almost suggests, because of how massive these black holes are, that black holes assembled faster than their host galaxies.
BT: You also mentioned black hole efficiency. What does that mean, how can black holes have efficiency?
SK: There are various ways. One way is, when they draw in gas, how highly accreting [the speed at which the accretion disk grows] is it? There's a thing called a black hole speed limit called the Eddington Limit. We often measure, as a fraction of that theoretical upper limit, how much the black hole is growing by sucking in gas. For some objects measured by the JWST the efficiency is over 100% — so they are really extremely efficient.
That also means that it's not a hard limit, and there's always some theory and assumptions that went into it, and some of those assumptions might be wrong. In fact, Webb has shown us they are clearly wrong in those scenarios because they manage to break the limit and grow even faster.
BT: And so why does that efficiency decrease as we get into the later stages of the cosmos, the local universe?
SK: So if you have more star formation, there's simply less gas around. So galaxies might get progressively more gas poor, some of it being ejected elsewhere, some turned into stars, and some being consumed by black holes. Very old galaxies are usually dominated by their stars, so-called elliptical galaxies.
BT: How do black holes grow in the first place? There are three key ways, right? Take us through them.
SK: So, the first one is to the first generation of stars. So these would have been much more massive than our sun, around 100 times its mass. When these come to the end of their life and collapse, they collapse into black holes. This could be a good starting point [for supermassive black holes], or it could be a challenging one, as we're starting at 100 [solar masses] and we want to get to 1 million.
A much easier starting point would be huge gas clouds. These collapse directly into black holes, and they start off at something like 100,000 times the mass of the sun, that makes it much easier to get to supermassive black hole [mass scales]. And then there is an in-between scenario called nuclear star clusters, where lots of stars spawn in the center of galaxies and these collapse into black holes.
An artist's impression of the LISA detector, and the gravitational waves it will search for. (Image credit: EADS ASTRUM)
BT: There's also another option out there, hypothesized primordial black holes — possible relics from a time before the Big Bang. It's a very out-there theory, do we see much evidence for it?
SK: It is a very out-there theory. We're getting more constraints on it, and it's certainly not ruled out. I think the exciting thing about this question right now is that nothing is ruled out. The constraints get tighter as we push closer and closer to the times these black holes formed.
BT: How could we finally rule it out? What are those constraints?
SK: Some people are saying that, now that we have found massive black holes so early in the universe, that this means they have to have formed from direct collapse. There are several papers published suggesting that the observations prove this.
But what we are now doing is that we are revising our models of how black holes grew in the early universe to see if there are still other options for other models. Especially if black holes grow efficiently, there's still just enough time for them to grow from a very light seed. So I would say right now, the exciting thing is that none of the models are ruled out.
BT: So how are we looking for answers? We've mentioned the JWST spotting earlier and earlier black holes, are there other pathways we're exploring to find answers?
SK: A really cool way is with gravitational waves. [Detecting them] will allow us to map the supermassive black hole population in a whole different way. Because right now, unless a black hole is very close to us and we can map out these stellar orbits, the only way to spot supermassive black holes is if they're in an active phase.
But when we have gravitational wave instruments that can spot supermassive black hole mergers we will have a second channel that will help us estimate their masses. And that would go back to the early universe because these instruments would be incredibly sensitive. Then we can spot merger signals and find viable mechanisms for their growth.
BT: Your work is on using simulations to spot possible growth pathways. How do they help us to find answers?
SK: It's a constant interplay between observation and simulation. So an observation, for example the early supermassive black holes, gives us something to explain. That then means we might need to adjust models to allow for that kind of growth early on. The simulations then help us know what to look for, and when those observations come back we can adjust our models again.
I work very closely with observers, and I'm part of a large program of the JWST that will take observations next year and do follow ups of these supermassive black holes in their infancy to understand them better.
BT: So finally, what areas of new research into giant black holes are you most excited about?
SK: I'm super excited about the gravitational wave detector LISA that will come online in the 2030s then we'll finally be able measure gravitational waves not just from small black holes but supermassive black holes. You need to be in space to do that.
I'm also quite nerdy when it comes to coding and building models, so I'm also excited about technical development. A really interesting example that's all over the news is, of course, AI.
We're using AI to accelerate our simulations, to make them even more accurate, and to try and bridge all the scales from the huge space of the cosmic web all the way down to event horizons. This is something that's impossible to do even directly right now, because the computational resources of even the biggest, best supercomputers find it too intensive, but we can use AI to develop solutions to that.
Editor's note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
This black hole just did something theoretically impossible
Astronomers trained the instrument on a number of galaxies in deep space, and at the center of one galaxy spotted a young, dwarf black hole triggering enormous outbursts of gas. Cosmic material traveling near a black hole can get pulled around these gravitationally powerful objects, and some of it gets eaten. But black holes are awfully messy eaters, leading to ejections of gas in potent "outflows." Yet this particular black hole, dubbed LID-568, is feeding ravenously on matter at a rate 40 times faster than thought possible.
Scientists found this black hole has exceeded the "Eddington limit," which is basically the maximum brightness an object can achieve and how rapidly it can consume matter. Such a feat could be why astronomers are finding black holes, born early on, that are more massive than such a young object ought to be. (This black hole dwells in a galaxy born around 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang — which is means it's relatively young. The universe is some 13.8 billion years old.) It's possible that black holes may grow massive in a single bout of dramatic feeding. "This black hole is having a feast."
"This extreme case shows that a fast-feeding mechanism above the Eddington limit is one of the possible explanations for why we see these very heavy black holes so early in the Universe," Scharwächter explained. An artist's conception depicting the ravenously feeding black hole at the center of an early dwarf galaxy. Credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / M. Zamani
Black holes are fascinating objects. They're unimaginably dense: If Earth was (hypothetically) crushed into a black hole, it would be under an inch across. This profound density gives black holes phenomenal gravitational power. Famously, even light that falls in (meaning passing a boundary called the "event horizon") cannot escape.
To observe the extremely distant black hole LID-568, scientists employed the Webb telescope's Near InfraRed Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, to observe the faint but powerful light from gas emissions beaming from the black hole. Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter.Sign Me Up By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
The investigation of LID-568, however, has just begun. Astronomers want to know how this black hole broke its Eddington limit, which means more viewing with the Webb telescope.
The Webb telescope's powerful abilities
The Webb telescope — a scientific collaboration between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency — is designed to peer into the deepest cosmos and reveal new insights about the early universe. It's also examining intriguing planets in our galaxy, along with the planets and moons in our solar system.
- Giant mirror: Webb's mirror, which captures light, is over 21 feet across. That's over two-and-a-half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. The telescope is peering at stars and galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. "We're going to see the very first stars and galaxies that ever formed," Jean Creighton, an astronomer and the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable in 2021.
- Infrared view: Unlike Hubble, which largely views light that's visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see far more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves more efficiently slip through cosmic clouds; the light doesn't as often collide with and get scattered by these densely packed particles. Ultimately, Webb's infrared eyesight can penetrate places Hubble can't.
"It lifts the veil," said Creighton.
- Peering into distant exoplanets: The Webb telescope carries specialized equipment called spectrographs that will revolutionize our understanding of these far-off worlds. The instruments can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) exist in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets — be they gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb looks at exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we'll find?
"We might learn things we never thought about," Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, told Mashable in 2021.
Already, astronomers have successfully found intriguing chemical reactions on a planet 700 light-years away, and have started looking at one of the most anticipated places in the cosmos: the rocky, Earth-sized planets of the TRAPPIST solar system.
Data from today's reboost to help inform the design for SpaceX's ISS deorbit vehicle.
(Image credit: NASA/Don Pettit)
The International Space Station is going a just tiny bit faster today, after receiving an orbital boost from SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX's 31st commercial resupply mission lifted off Nov. 4, launching a Dragon cargo vehicle to rendezvous with the International Space Station (ISS), docking to the station's forward-facing port the next day. Today (Nov. 8), for the first time, Dragon performed an orbit-raising maneuver to stabilize the ISS's trajectory in low-Earth orbit.
Such maneuvers are routine for the orbital lab, which requires periodic boosts to maintain its altitude above Earth and prevent its orbital decay into the planet's atmosphere. Historically, this has been accomplished using Russia's Soyuz and Progress vehicles, and other spacecraft, but, for the first time, it has now been performed SpaceX's Dragon. The milestone marks a symbolic beginning of the end for the ISS, as data from the maneuver will be used toward the design of the deorbit vehicle NASA has contracted SpaceX to construct to plunge the decommissioned space station into the Pacific Ocean sometime after 2030.
"NASA and SpaceX monitored operations as the company’s Dragon spacecraft performed its first demonstration of reboost capabilities for the International Space Station at 12:50pm ET today," NASA posted on X.
.@NASA and @SpaceX monitored operations as the company’s Dragon spacecraft performed its first demonstration of reboost capabilities for the International Space Station at 12:50pm ET today. https://t.co/jckgtW5pW8November 8, 2024
Dragon isn't the first U.S.-built spacecraft to lend its fuel to the space station's orbit. NASA tested an ISS orbit reboost using a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo vehicle in 2022. The data from Dragon's reboost, however, will ultimately pave the way for a catastrophic "un-boosting" of the space station's orbit.
The ISS has been in continuous use and occupancy for almost 25 years now. NASA has projected the ISS's viability through the end of this decade. Citing aging technology, increasing maintenance requirements and rising costs, the space agency aims to retire the space station no earlier than 2030, and in July, awarded SpaceX the contract to develop the vehicle tasked with safely plummeting the football field-size spacecraft into the sea.
When the burden of ongoing ISS costs are alleviated from its budget, NASA will count on the availability of new commercially operated space stations to continue its research in low-Earth orbit. The space station's retirement will free up financial room for the space agency to expand endeavors like the Artemis Program and other deep space exploration missions.
Jared Metter, director of flight reliability at SpaceX, expressed optimism during a press conference Monday (Nov. 4), saying today's attitude control maneuver was "a good demonstration" of Dragon's capabilities as the company designs the ISS deorbit vehicle.
Though international tensions were inflamed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S.-Russian partnership as it pertains to the ISS has persisted. Dragon's success, however, does eliminate another U.S. reliance on Russia for operation of the space station, should that partnership dissolve.
Between the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 and the beginning of Dragon's crewed missions, the only way for NASA astronauts to launch to the ISS was aboard Russian spacecraft. SpaceX's Crew Dragon returned the launch of NASA astronauts to American soil in 2020, and has now proven it can maintain the space station's orbit, indefinitely.
While NASA has committed to its ISS partnership through 2030, Russia, as of yet, is only committed through 2028, stating its intent to launch a new Russian space station into polar orbit by 2027.
Mysterious 'Interstellar Tunnel' Found in Our Local Pocket of Space
A 3D model of the solar neighborhood, within the Local Hot Bubble. (Michael Yeung/MPE)
The Solar System's little pocket of the Milky Way is, interestingly enough, exactly that. Our star resides in an unusually hot, low-density compartment in the galaxy's skirts, known as the Local Hot Bubble (LHB).
Why it's not called the Local Hot Pocket is anyone's guess; but, because it's an anomaly, scientists want to know why the region exists.
Now a team of astronomers has mapped the bubble, revealing not just a strange asymmetry in the pocket's shape and temperature gradient, but the presence of a mysterious tunnel pointing towards the constellation Centaurus.
The new data about the shape and heat of the bubble supports a previous interpretation that the LHB was excavated by exploding supernovae that expanded and heated the structure, while the tunnel suggests that it may be connected to another low-density bubble nearby.
The LHB is characterized by its temperature. It's a region thought to be at least 1,000 light-years across, hovering at a temperature of around a million Kelvin. Because the atoms are spread so thin, this high temperature doesn't have a significant heating effect on the matter within, which is probably just as well for us. But it does emit a glow in X-rays, which is how astronomers identified it, years ago.
But characterizing something you're physically inside is a lot easier to say than do. Imagine a fish (if a fish had human-like intelligence) trying to describe the shape of its tank without moving from the center. It's tricky – but with the right tools, it becomes easier.
This brings us to eROSITA, the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics' powerful space-based X-ray telescope. Led by astrophysicist Michael Yeung of the Institute, a team of researchers has made use of eROSITA to probe the LHB in greater detail than ever before.
We know, thanks to previous research efforts, that the LHB was likely the product of supernova explosions going off like a string of firecrackers, some 14.4 million years ago. The Solar System's position in the bubble's center is just a fun cosmic coincidence. But the LHB's shape remained poorly-defined – a sort of blobby, chubby knucklebone-like configuration.
One big advantage of eROSITA is its position. Wisps of our planet's atmosphere reach a surprising distance into space, with a large halo of hydrogen known as the geocorona extending as far as 100 Earth radii – over 600,000 kilometers (more than 370,000 miles) – from the surface. When particles blowing from the Sun interact with the geocorona, they create a diffuse X-ray glow very similar to the glow of the LHB.
eROSITA is aboard a space observatory positioned some 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Sitting in a gravitationally stable position created by Earth's and the Sun's pull, the X-ray observatory is the first of its kind to observe the X-ray sky from completely outside of our glowing geocorona.
The researchers divided up eROSITA observations of the X-ray sky into around 2,000 sections, and painstakingly studied the X-ray light in each to generate a map of the LHB. Their findings revealed that the bubble is expanding perpendicular to the galactic plane, more than in a parallel direction. This is not unexpected, since the vertical directions offer less resistance than the horizontal.
The temperature gradient of the Local Hot Bubble, coded by color. (Michael Yeung/MPE)
The asymmetrical temperature gradient the researchers measured was consistent with the supernova theory for the bubble's creation, with the possibility that stars were exploding in our neighborhood until just a few million years ago.
Their map also refined the known shape of the LHB, allowing for a model to be constructed in three dimensions. The result resembles the outflows of what's known as a bipolar nebula, if a little spikier and bumpier. And there was a hidden surprise.
"What we didn't know was the existence of an interstellar tunnel towards Centaurus, which carves a gap in the cooler interstellar medium," says astrophysicist Michael Freyberg of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. "This region stands out in stark relief."
We don't know, yet, what the tunnel connects to. There are a number of objects in the direction it trails off in, including the Gum nebula, another neighboring bubble, and several molecular clouds.
It could also be a clue that the galaxy consists of a whole connected network of hot bubbles and interstellar tunnels, an idea proposed in 1974, and for which little evidence has yet emerged. We might be on the brink of finding that network now – and this, in turn, could help us learn more about the recent history of our galaxy.
November 7, 2024 A screen broadcasts a CCTV state media news bulletin, showing an image of Mars taken by Chinese Mars rover Zhurong as part of the Tianwen-1 mission, in Beijing, China, May 19, 2021.
REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo
WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - With the assistance of China's Zhurong rover, scientists have gathered fresh evidence that Mars was home to an ocean billions of years ago - a far cry from the dry and desolate world it is today.
Scientists said on Thursday that data obtained by Zhurong, which landed in the northern lowlands of Mars in 2021, and by orbiting spacecraft indicated the presence of geological features indicative of an ancient coastline. The rover analyzed rock on the Martian surface in a location called Utopia Planitia, a large plain in the planet's northern hemisphere.
The researchers said data from China's Tianwen-1 Orbiter, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the robotic six-wheeled rover indicated the existence of a water ocean during a period when Mars might already have become cold and dry and lost much of its atmosphere.
They described surface features such as troughs, sediment channels and mud volcano formations indicative of a coastline, with evidence of both shallow and deeper marine environments.
"We estimate the flooding of the Utopia Planitia on Mars was approximately 3.68 billion years ago. The ocean surface was likely frozen in a geologically short period," said Hong Kong Polytechnic University planetary scientist Bo Wu, lead author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, opens new tab.
The ocean appears to have disappeared by approximately 3.42 billion years ago, the researchers said.
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"The water was heavily silted, forming the layering structure of the deposits," Hong Kong Polytechnic University planetary scientist and study co-author Sergey Krasilnikov added.
Like Earth and our solar system's other planets, Mars formed about 4.5 billion years ago. At the time the ocean apparently existed, it might already have begun its transition away from being a hospitable planet.
"The presence of an ancient ocean on Mars has been proposed and studied for several decades, yet significant uncertainty remains," Wu said. "These findings not only provide further evidence to support the theory of a Martian ocean but also present, for the first time, a discussion on its probable evolutionary scenario."
Water is seen as a key ingredient for life, and the past presence of an ocean raises the prospect that Mars at least at one time was capable of harboring microbial life. "At the beginning of Mars' history, when it probably had a thick, warm atmosphere, microbial life was much more likely," Krasilnikov said.
The solar-powered Zhurong, named after a mythical Chinese god of fire, began its work using six scientific instruments on the Martian surface in May 2021 and went into hibernation in May 2022, likely met with excessive accumulation of sand and dust, according to its mission designer. It exceeded its original mission time span of three months.
Researchers have sought to better understand what happened to all the water that once was present on the Martian surface. Another study, published in August and based on seismic data obtained by NASA's robotic InSight lander, indicated that an immense reservoir of liquid water may reside deep under the surface within fractured igneous rocks.
Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien
Mars Rover Finds Evidence of an Ancient Ocean on The Red Planet
A Chinese rover has found new evidence to support the theory that Mars was once home to a vast ocean, including tracing some ancient coastline where water may once have lapped, a study said Thursday.
The theory that an ocean covered as much as a third of the Red Planet billions of years ago has been a matter of debate between scientists for decades, and one outside researcher expressed some scepticism about the latest findings.
In 2021, China's Zhurong rover landed on a plain in the Martian northern hemisphere's Utopia region, where previous indications of ancient water had been spotted.
It has been probing the red surface ever since, and some new findings from the mission were revealed in the new study in the journal Scientific Reports.
Lead study author Bo Wu of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University told AFP that a variety of features suggesting a past ocean had been spotted around Zhurong's landing area, including "pitted cones, polygonal troughs and etched flows".
Previous research has suggested that the crater-like pitted cones could have come from mud volcanoes, and often formed in areas where there had been water or ice.
Information from the rover, as well as satellite data and analysis back on Earth, also suggested that a shoreline was once near the area, according to the study.
The team of researchers estimated that the ocean was created by flooding nearly 3.7 billion years ago.
Then the ocean froze, etching out a coastline, before disappearing a little over 3.4 billion ago, according to their scenario.
Bo emphasised that the team does "not claim that our findings definitively prove that there was an ocean on Mars".
That level of certainty will likely require a mission to bring back some Martian rocks to Earth for a closer look
Benjamin Cardenas, a scientist who has analysed other evidence of a Martian ocean, told AFP he was "sceptical" of the new study.
He felt the researchers did not take enough into account how much the strong Martian wind had blown around sediment and worn down rocks over the past few billion years.
"We tend to think of Mars as being not very active, like the Moon, but it is active!" said Cardenas of Pennsylvania State University in the United States.
He pointed to past modelling research which suggested that "even the slow Martian erosion rates" would destroy signs of a shoreline over such a long period.
Bo acknowledged that wind might have worn down some rocks, but said the impact of meteors hitting Mars can also "excavate underground rock and sediment to the surface from time to time".
While the overall theory remains contentious, Cardenas said he tended "to think there was an ocean on Mars".
Finding out the truth could help unravel a greater mystery: whether Earth is alone in the Solar System in being capable of hosting life.
"Most scientists think life on Earth sprung up either under the ocean where hot gases and minerals from the subsurface came to the seafloor, or very close to the interface of water and air, in little tidal pools," Cardenas said.
"So, evidence for an ocean makes the planet appear more hospitable."
November 8, 2024 By 3.6 billion years ago, Mars should have become too cold for liquid water, but something kept the rivers flowing.
(Image credit: Peter Buhler/PSI)
A lone researcher may have figured out how Mars was able to support rivers and seas even after the planet had begun to grow cold and its atmosphere thin, and it's all thanks to a cycle of water and carbon dioxide.
We know from geological and mineralogical evidence that, around four billion years ago, Mars was warm and wet enough to have extensive liquid water on its surface, from rivers and lakes to a vast northern sea. This period covers two geological eras: the Noachian, which ran from 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago, and the Hesperian, which endured from 3.7 to about 3 billion years ago. The Noachian is characterized by warmer conditions, but by its latter stages Mars should have been starting to grow cold as it steadily lost its atmosphere to space. Yet there is still evidence of river channels and seas dating back to the late Noachian and into the Hesperian era. Planetary scientists have been mystified as to how Mars could still be wet at this time, and one theory is that the Red Planet experienced an unexplained period of global warming.
Now, though, researcher Peter Buhler of the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona may have solved the problem, thanks to his modeling of the role of carbon dioxide ice settling onto the south polar cap.
The model "describes the origins of major landscape features on Mars — like the biggest lake, the biggest valleys and the biggest esker system — in a self-consistent way," Buhler said in a statement. "And it's only relying on a process that we see today, which is just carbon dioxide collapsing from the atmosphere."
Eskers are long, gravelly ridges left by running water, and their presence near Mars' south pole is a big clue about how events played out on the Red Planet.
Usually, Buhler spends his time modeling the carbon-dioxide cycle on Mars today. During Martian winter, a layer of carbon-dioxide ice settles out on top of the polar caps of water ice. While it is just a thin layer on the north polar cap, the south polar cap has much more, with a permanent layer of carbon dioxide ice 26 feet (8 meters) thick, with more added in winter. This additional carbon dioxide is normally locked away in the Martian dirt, but during what passes as Martian summer it can sublimate into the atmosphere and be transported to the winter pole.
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Buhler wanted to see what effect this process had 3.6 billion years ago, during the early Hesperian when the atmosphere — despite beginning to leak out into space after Mars' magnetic field that had warded off the solar wind shut down — was still much thicker than it is today. He found that a layer of carbon dioxide ice 650 meters (0.4 miles) thick would settle onto Mars' south polar cap each winter.
A Viking 1 image of the southern edge of Argyre Planitia, which is marked by mountains that surround the huge impact basin that was once flooded with water. (Image credit: NASA)
The carbon dioxide did two things. It first acted as an insulator, preventing heat leaking out of the planet's interior from escaping at the south pole. It also added weight and pressure onto the ice cap. Combined, these effects led to temperatures and pressures at the base of the ice cap that allowed the ice there to melt and form a pool of water. Eventually, over many winters, water ice and carbon dioxide ice continued freezing out onto the ice cap while, below, the liquid water built up to such an amount that it began seeping out at the sides of the ice cap.
Once exposed to the cold air, according to the new modeling work, the liquid water would freeze as permafrost. This isn't the end of the story, though. Liquid water would keep on forming behind the ice, looking for ways to escape.
"The only way left for the water to go is through the interface between the ice sheet and the rock underneath it," said Buhler. "That's why on Earth you see rivers come out from underneath glaciers instead of just draining into the ground."
The rivers would still freeze as they popped up above ground, but the volume of water was such that it would keep burrowing under this ice, which eventually formed a frozen ceiling over the rivers many dozens of meters (hundreds of feet) thick. The rivers themselves were only a meter or so deep, but they were long, running for thousands of kilometers away from the south pole.
This is where the eskers come in. They are the remains of these long subglacial rivers, and many have been found extending radially away from the southern polar region.
Even today, we can see the remains of four large river channels flowing into Argyre Planitia, which is a huge impact basin 1,700 kilometers (1,100 miles) wide and 5.2 kilometers (3.2 miles) deep. Over millions of years, the sub-glacial rivers filled Argyre with water to form an ocean as large as the Mediterranean. And, over those millions of years, the meltwater kept on coming, causing Argyre to episodically overflow and flood Mars' northern plains.
"This is the first model that produces enough water to overtop Argyre," said Buhler. "It's also likely that the meltwater, once downstream, sublimated back into the atmosphere before being returned to the south polar cap, perpetuating a pole-to-equator hydrologic cycle that may have played an important role in Mars' enigmatic pulse of late-stage hydrologic activity."
Eventually, Mars grew too cold for even this meltwater process to take place. There was recently a claim of a subsurface lake still existing beneath the south polar ice cap on Mars today, but significant doubt has been cast on this idea.
What's neat about Buhler's model is that it doesn't need to enact any unexplained warming to account for the evidence for water that we see — it's literally the same carbon dioxide cycle that we see on Mars today. Unfortunately, Mars has grown so cold, with so little carbon dioxide available, that the days of widespread liquid water on the Red Planet have been over for billions of years.
NASA’s ‘Ingenuity Helicopter’ found ‘otherworldly’ wreckage on the surface of Mars
NASA’s ‘Ingenuity Helicopter’ completed 72 flights on the surface of Mars During one flight, its camera captured some spacecraft debris in the red sand Looking like the work of aliens, the shattered remains were in fact man-made
But, let’s get back to the helicopter, which – during action – took a series of images, giving us a greater insight into this other world, and in 2022, it captured a remarkable sight.
What it had stumbled across was the wreckage of a spacecraft, laying there in the planet’s sands, slightly reddened by the contact.
The collection of objects may appear to the untrained eye to have been manufactured on another world, but sadly that’s not the case.
NASA/JPL-Caltech What the experts say
Speaking to the New York Times, Ian Clark – an engineer who worked on Perseverance’s parachute system – said: “There’s definitely a sci-fi element to it. It exudes otherworldly, doesn’t it?
“They say a picture’s worth 1,000 words, but it’s also worth an infinite amount of engineering understanding.”
So there you have it, it’s not the work of aliens; the shattered remains are in fact man-made
.
NASA What it actually found
The reality is, if we find spaceship debris on another planet, it’s because we put it there.
What the helicopter actually found was part of the landing equipment used to bring Ingenuity down to the surface of the red planet.
NASA
Mars isn’t the only planet where humans have left their litter; the orbit of Earth is full of debris that we’ve sent up there and no longer need, too.
The Natural History Museum said that around 2,000 active satellites are orbiting Earth.
However, there are around 3,000 more ‘dead’ satellites that we no longer use still floating around up there.
Add to that more debris floating around our planet, which not only poses a danger to spacecraft, but the future hopes of space travel.
3D map reveals our solar system's local bubble has an 'escape tunnel'
Hot spots and tunnels to neighboring "superbubbles" seem to have been created by supernovas and infant star outbursts.
A 3D model of the Milky Way's "local bubble" created using data from eROSITA. (Image credit: Michael Yeung / MPE)
Using data from the eROSITA All-Sky Survey, astronomers have created a 3D map of the low-density bubble of X-ray-emitting, million-degree hot gas that surrounds the solar system.
The investigation has revealed a large-scale temperature gradient within this bubble, called the Local Hot Bubble (LHB), meaning it contains both hot and cold spots. The team suspects that this temperature gradient may have been caused by exploding massive stars detonating in supernovas, causing the bubble to be reheated. This reheating would cause the pocket of low-density gas to expand.
The researchers also found what seems to be an "interstellar tunnel," a channel between stars directed towards the constellation Centaurus. This tunnel may link the solar system's home bubble with a neighboring superbubble and could have been carved out by erupting young stars and powerful and high-speed stellar winds
Scientists have been aware of the LHB concept for at least five decades. This cavity of low-density gas was first suggested to explain background measurements of relatively low-energy, or "soft," X-rays. These photons, with an energy of around 0.2 electronvolts (eV), can't travel very far through interstellar space before being absorbed.
The fact that our immediate solar neighborhood is devoid of large quantities of interstellar dust that could emit these photons suggested the existence of soft X-ray emitting plasma that displaces neutral materials around the solar system in a "Local Hot Bubble." Thus, theories of the LHB were born.
One of the major problems with this theory emerged in 1996, when scientists found that exchanges between the solar wind, a stream of charged particles blown out by the sun, and particles in Earth's "geocorona," the outermost layer of our planet's atmosphere, emit X-ray photons with energies similar to those proposed to originate from the LHB. Understanding the solar system's local bubble
The eROSITA telescope, the primary instrument of the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) mission launched in 2019, is the ideal instrument to tackle this conundrum. At 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, eROSITA is the first X-ray telescope to observe the universe from outside Earth's geocorona, meaning potential X-ray "noise" can be ruled out of observations of photons from the LHB.
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Additionally, eROSITA's All-Sky Survey (eRASS1) collected data during a lull in the sun's 11-year solar cycle when solar winds are weak, called the "solar minimum." This reduced the amount of contamination coming from solar wind exchange.
"In other words, the eRASS1 data released to the public this year provides the cleanest view of the X-ray sky to date, making it the perfect instrument for studying the LHB," team leader Michael Yeung, a researcher at Max Planck Institute of Physics (MPE), said in a statement.
Two versions of eRosita All-Sky Survey Catalogue (eRASS1) data (Right) the X-ray sky over earth (right) X-ray sources. (Image credit: MPE, J. Sanders für das eROSITA-Konsortium)
After dividing the hemisphere of the Milky Way into 2,000 distinct regions, Yeung and colleagues analyzed the light from all these regions. What they discovered was a clear disparity in temperatures in the LHB, with the Galactic North cooler than the Galactic South.
The same team had already established that the hot gas of the LHB is relatively uniform in terms of its density. Comparing this to the gas in cool and dense molecular clouds at the edge of the LHB, the team was able to create a detailed 3D map of the LHB.
This revealed that the LHB is stretched toward the poles of the galactic hemisphere. Hot gas expands in the direction that offers the least resistance, which, in this case, is away from the galactic disk. Thus, this wasn't a huge surprise to the researchers as it is also finding that had been revealed by eROSITA's predecessor, ROSAT, around 3 decades ago.
But, the new 3D map did reveal something hitherto unknown.
"What we didn't know was the existence of an interstellar tunnel towards Centaurus, which carves a gap in the cooler interstellar medium," team member and MPE physicist Michael Freyberg said in the statement. "This region stands out in stark relief thanks to the much-improved sensitivity of eROSITA and a vastly different surveying strategy compared to ROSAT."
The nebula L1527 and its erupting protostar put on a celestial fireworks display, captured by the JWST. Feedback like this could help carve out a network of "tunnels" between stars. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
Excitingly, the team suspects that the Centaurus tunnel in the LHB may just be a part of a network of hot gas tunnels that bore their way between the cool gas of the interstellar medium between stars.
This interstellar medium network would be maintained and sustained by the influence of stars in the form of stellar winds, the supernovas that mark the death of massive stars, and jets blasting out from newly formed stars or "protostars."
These phenomena are collectively referred to as "stellar feedback," and they are believed to sweep across the Milky Way, thereby shaping it.
In addition to the 3D map of the LHB, the team also created a census of supernova wreckage, superbubbles, and dust, which they incorporated into the map to build a 3D interactive model of the solar system's cosmic neighborhood.
This included another previously known interstellar medium tunnel called the Canis Majoris tunnel. This is thought to stretch between the LHB and the Gum nebula or between the LHB and GSH238+00+09, a more distant superbubble.
They also mapped dense molecular clouds at the edge of the LHB that are racing away from us. These clouds could have been built when the LHB was "cleared" and denser material was swept to its extremities. This could also give a hint as to when the sun entered this local low-density bubble.
"Another interesting fact is that the sun must have entered the LHB a few million years ago, a short time compared to the age of the sun [4.6 billion years]," team member and MPE scientist Gabriele Ponti said. "It is purely coincidental that the sun seems to occupy a relatively central position in the LHB as we continuously move through the Milky Way."
You can explore the team's 3D model of our solar neighborhood here.
How can Jupiter have no surface? A dive into a planet so big, it could swallow 1,000 Earths
The planet Jupiter has no solid ground – no surface, like the grass or dirt you tread here on Earth. There’s nothing to walk on, and no place to land a spaceship.
But how can that be? If Jupiter doesn’t have a surface, what does it have? How can it hold together?
While the four inner planets of the solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars – are all made of solid, rocky material, Jupiter is a gas giant with a composition similar to the Sun; it’s a roiling, stormy, wildly turbulent ball of gas. Some places on Jupiter have winds of more than 400 mph (about 640 kilometers per hour), about three times faster than a Category 5 hurricane on Earth.
What They Didn't Teach You in School About Jupiter | Our Solar System's Planets - YouTube
Start from the top of Earth’s atmosphere, go down about 60 miles (roughly 100 kilometers), and the air pressure continuously increases. Ultimately you hit Earth’s surface, either land or water.
Compare that with Jupiter: Start near the top of its mostly hydrogen and helium atmosphere, and like on Earth, the pressure increases the deeper you go. But on Jupiter, the pressure is immense.
As the layers of gas above you push down more and more, it’s like being at the bottom of the ocean – but instead of water, you’re surrounded by gas. The pressure becomes so intense that the human body would implode; you would be squashed.
Go down 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers), and the hot, dense gas begins to behave strangely. Eventually, the gas turns into a form of liquid hydrogen, creating what can be thought of as the largest ocean in the solar system, albeit an ocean without water.
Go down another 20,000 miles (about 32,000 kilometers), and the hydrogen becomes more like flowing liquid metal, a material so exotic that only recently, and with great difficulty, have scientists reproduced it in the laboratory. The atoms in this liquid metallic hydrogen are squeezed so tightly that its electronsare free to roam.
Keep in mind that these layer transitions are gradual, not abrupt; the transition from normal hydrogen gas to liquid hydrogen and then to metallic hydrogen happens slowly and smoothly. At no point is there a sharp boundary, solid material or surface.
An illustration of Jupiter’s interior layers. One bar is approximately equal to the air pressure at sea level on Earth. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI)
Scary to the core
Ultimately, you’d reach the core of Jupiter. This is the central region of Jupiter’s interior, and not to be confused with a surface.
Scientists are still debating the exact nature of the core’s material. The most favored model: It’s not solid, like rock, but more like a hot, dense and possibly metallic mixture of liquid and solid.
But pressure wouldn’t be your only problem. A spacecraft trying to reach Jupiter’s core would be melted by the extreme heat – 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit (20,000 degrees Celsius). That’s three times hotter than the surface of the Sun. Jupiter helps Earth
Jupiter is a weird and forbidding place. But if Jupiter weren’t around, it’s possible human beings might not exist.
That’s because Jupiter acts as a shield for the inner planets of the solar system, including Earth. With its massive gravitational pull, Jupiter has altered the orbit of asteroids and comets for billions of years.
Without Jupiter’s intervention, some of that space debris could have crashed into Earth; if one had been a cataclysmic collision, it could have caused an extinction-level event. Just look at what happened to the dinosaurs.
Maybe Jupiter gave an assist to our existence, but the planet itself is extraordinarily inhospitable to life – at least, life as we know it.
Could something be living in Europa’s water? Scientists won’t know for a while. Because of Jupiter’s distance from Earth, the probe won’t arrive until April 2030.
