Saturday, October 14, 2023

New book imagines society based on animal rights

What are Animal Rights For? has been published by University of Leicester politics expert Dr Steve Cooke

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

What would a society based on animal rights look like? A new book by a University of Leicester politics expert explores how our laws and institutions might change if non-human animals had the same rights as humans.

What are Animal Rights For? by Dr Steve Cooke, Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Leicester, explains the nature, function, purpose, and limitations of animal rights, showing why they are needed and what society would look like if they were implemented. It forms part of the ‘What is it For?’ series from Bristol University Press, which seeks to be an agent for positive change, asking tough questions about purpose and fitness for purpose: what has to change for the future to be better? It publishes books from authors who are experts in their field and passionate about communicating to a wide readership.

The book will be launched at an event at Bookhaus in Bristol on 15 November as part of University Press Week 2023, in what will be its first ever non-US event.

The field of animal rights raises big questions about how humans treat the other animals with which we share the planet. These questions are becoming more pressing as livestock farming exerts an ever-greater toll on the planet and the animals themselves, and we learn more about their capacity to think and experience pain.

What are Animal Rights For? charts the intellectual history of animal rights, from as far back as ancient Greeks, through the Victorian era and 1970s and their impact on the modern animal rights movement. New research is examined that shows that animals we used to think incapable of suffering have much more complex mental lives than we realised. It also considers the prevalence of factory farming, with more than 70% of farmed animals raised in factory farms and more than 1100 mega-farms in Britain alone.

The book is aimed at both members of the public and students and scholars with an interest animal ethics.

Dr Steve Cooke from the University’s School of History, Politics and International Relations said: “Whilst the focus is on rights, I also devote space to explaining other ethical frameworks. This includes going beyond the idea of a just society for humans and animals to also consider what a good society would look like, from our personal relationships with our companion animals to the political institutions we would need to develop.

“The key message of the book is that the fact that nonhuman animals are able to suffer and feel like us means that they ought to be granted fundamental rights. These rights should offer legal protections against harms such as being killed or made to suffer. Existing welfare protections don’t go nearly far enough because they permit serious and systematic wrongful harms.

“One important, and perhaps surprising, conclusion is that the protection of nonhuman animal interests justifies much more stringent legal protections than we currently have. Typically, people tend to think that whether people eat meat or use animal products is a matter of choice or preference. However, if nonhuman animals have rights, as the book argues, then how we treat them should not be a matter of individual choice. Rather, their interests ought to receive constitutional protections in the same way as human rights are protected.”

What are Animal Rights For? by Dr Steve Cooke is published by Bristol University Press. It will be launched at an event at Bookhaus 4 Rope Walk, Bristol BS1 6ZJ on 15 November, more information: https://www.bookhausbristol.com/product/what-are-animal-rights-for-launch-with-steve-cooke-wed-15th-nov-6-8pm/

SEE

zines - Beasts of-Burden (azinelibrary.org)

Mohamed Muizzu wins Maldives election in victory for pro-China camp

Incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih concedes defeat shortly before midnight after Muizzu wins 54 percent of the vote.

Mohamed Muizzu has won the presidential election in the Maldives after a second-round run-off against incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, which was seen as a test of the Indian Ocean archipelago’s nascent democracy as well as its ties with China and traditional benefactor India.

Muizzu, 45, leads a party that welcomed an influx of Chinese loans and oversaw a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent when it was last in powerend of list

Incumbent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih conceded defeat shortly before midnight after the Elections Commission of the Maldives said Muizzu had won 54.06 percent of the vote in the run-off contest.

“Congratulations to president-elect Muizzu,” Solih wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Thank you for the beautiful democratic example shown by the people in the elections,” he added.

Solih, 61, will remain as caretaker president until his successor’s inauguration on November 17.

Muizzu, 45, emerged as the surprise frontrunner during the first round of voting on September 8, taking some 46 percent of the ballots cast. Solih – hurt by a low voter turnout and a split within his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) – won 39 percent.

The run-off was seen as having significant implications for the Maldives’s foreign policy, especially in deciding China and India’s battle for influence in the strategically-located country.

Maldives President Ibrahim Solih casts his vote [Dhahau Naseem/Reuters]

“Today’s result is a reflection of the patriotism of our people. A call on all our neighbours and bilateral partners to fully respect our independence and sovereignty,” Mohamed Shareef, a top official from Muizzu’s Progressive Party of Maldives, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

Muizzu, who is currently the mayor of the capital Male, made a brief appearance outside his party’s campaign headquarters to urge supporters not to celebrate until Sunday morning, when campaign restrictions officially come to an end.

Muizzu, a one-time housing minister, played a pivotal role in an earlier government’s development programme, bankrolled in part by financial largesse from China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative.

He told a meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials last year that his party’s return to office would “script a further chapter of strong ties between our two countries”.

The party’s return to power might also mean freedom for former President Abdulla Yameen, Muizzu’s mentor.

Yameen, who lost power in 2018 as he moved the country closer to China and became increasingly autocratic, is serving an 11-year prison term for corruption and money laundering. His supporters say the charges against him are politically motivated.

Watchdog group Transparency Maldives said there had been some incidents of “electoral violence,” without specifying further details.

There were more than 282,000 eligible voters and turnout was 85 percent, slightly higher than the first-round vote.

India, China angle

Solih, who was first elected president in 2018, was battling allegations by Muizzu that he had allowed India an unchecked presence in the country.

Solih has insisted that the Indian military’s presence in the Maldives was only to build a dockyard under an agreement between the two governments and that his country’s sovereignty will not be violated.

Muizzu promised that if he won the presidency, he would remove Indian troops from the Maldives and balance the country’s trade relations, which he claimed were heavily in India’s favour.

Supporters of Muizzu's People's National Congress celebrate on the streets and call for the release of former president Abdulla Yameen. — Muizzu’s supporters call for the release of arrested Maldives’ former president Abdulla Yameen [Mohamed Afrah/AFP]

Ahmed Shaheed, a former foreign minister of the Maldives, described the outcome as a verdict on the government’s failure to meet economic and governance expectations rather than concerns over Indian influence.

“I don’t think India was at all in the people’s minds,” Saheed said.

Solih suffered a setback closer to the election when Mohamed Nasheed, a charismatic former president, broke away from his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and fielded his own candidate in the first round. He decided to remain neutral in the second round.

“Nasheed’s departure took the motherboard away from the MDP,” Shaheed said.

Yameen, leader of the Progressive Party of the Maldives, made the Maldives a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative during his presidency from 2013 to 2018. The initiative is meant to build railroads, ports and highways to expand trade – and China’s influence – across Asia, Africa and Europe.

Nevertheless, Muizzu is unlikely to change the foreign policy of affording an important place to India. Rather, opposition to Chinese projects is likely to lessen, evening power balances out, Shaheed said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Fate of India ties, democracy in balance as Maldives votes in run-off

Voters in the Maldives choose their next president in a run-off election closely watched by China and India.

By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 30 Sep 202330 Sep 2023

Voters in the Maldives are casting their ballots in a presidential run-off that could determine the fate of the Indian Ocean archipelago’s nascent democracy as well as its ties with China and India.

The election on Saturday pits President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who has championed an India-first policy, against the mayor of the capital, Mohamed Muizzu, whose opposition coalition sought closer ties with China and oversaw a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent while in power from 2013-18.end of list

Muizzu emerged as the surprise frontrunner during the first round of voting on September 8, taking some 46 percent of the ballots cast. Solih – hurt by low voter turnout and a split within his Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) – won 39 percent.

But with the incumbent leader ramping up his campaign – including with pledges of handouts and warnings of a return to authoritarianism should his opponent win – the run-off looks too close to call, according to observers.

Polling opened at 8am local time (03:00 GMT) and will close at 5pm (12:00 GMT). Vote counting begins immediately afterwards, and the results will likely be known within hours.

Some 282,804 people in the country of 500,000 people are eligible to vote.

Here’s what you need to know about the Maldives’s high-stakes election.
China-India rivalry

The run-off has significant implications for the Maldives’ foreign policy, as the outcome could be key in deciding China and India’s battle for influence in the strategically located archipelago.

Solih, who won the last election in 2018 amid widespread anger over corruption and human rights abuses under his predecessor, has brought the Maldives closer to India, obtaining more than $1bn in loans for housing and transport projects in the capital, Male.

The Maldives owes a similar amount to China.

Under Solih’s predecessor, Abdulla Yameen, Beijing funded a first-of-its-kind bridge connecting Male to its neighbouring islands, as well as upgrades to the Maldives’s main international airport.

The infrastructure projects have driven the Maldives’ debt to 113 percent of the country’s GDP at the end of 2022, with India and China estimated to hold 26 percent of GDP each.

N Sathiya Moorthy, a political commentator based in the Indian city of Chennai, said for both Beijing and New Delhi, Saturday’s election is “about the predictability of their Maldivian relations under the next presidency”. Solih is by now predictable for both, he said, but Muizzu – who is contesting the election after Yameen was jailed on a corruption conviction last year – spells uncertainty.

This is because Muizzu’s Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM)-led coalition has launched a vitriolic “India Out” campaign seeking to reduce what it calls New Delhi’s outsized influence in the country’s affairs. “India has become the unnamed issue in this second round of polling with anti-India social media posts doing the rounds much more than in the first,” Moorthy said

The Maldives’ main opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzu participates in a rally [Mohamed Sharuhaan/AP]

Fears for democracy

A change in government will not only test the country’s foreign policy, but also its fledgling democracy.

Muizzu’s opponents say the mayor – who was a cabinet member in Yameen’s government – could return the country to the authoritarianism seen under the former president. While in office, Yameen presided over a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent that included the jailing of nearly all opposition leaders, the prosecution of journalists and a huge corruption scandal, in which tens of millions of dollars were stolen from public coffers and used to bribe judges, legislators and members of watchdog institutions. He also turned a blind eye to the growing presence of groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS), even after the killing of a young journalist and a blogger.

“The Maldivian experiment with democratic politics is still very precarious,” said Azim Zahir, a lecturer and research fellow in international relations and politics at the University of Western Australia in Perth. “This very experiment was under serious threat when PPM was in power. The fact that Muizzu was a cabinet minister of that government makes me really nervous for the future of democracy should he win the election.”

Amid the fears, Muizzu has repeatedly pledged not to go after his political opponents.

“I do not support brutality,” the 45-year-old mayor told the Dhauru newspaper last week. “I will not take action against my opponents for disagreeing with me … Everyone will have the opportunity [to carry out political activities].”
Ruling party split

Solih, meanwhile, has dismissed Muizzu’s assurances.

The incumbent has portrayed Saturday’s vote as a contest between democracy and autocracy.

“This election is a choice between peace and stability in the Maldives, or brutality, fear and chaos,” the 61-year-old president told supporters on the eve of the run-off. “If you do not vote [for me], the whole of Maldives may have to mourn and shed tears.”

With much at stake, the president has sought to win the backing of third, fourth and fifth placed candidates in the first round, but to no avail.

The politician who came in third in the first round of voting was Ilyas Labeeb, who won seven percent of the ballots cast. Labeeb was the candidate of the Democrats, a party founded by Parliament Speaker and former President Mohamed Nasheed, who fell out with Solih after losing a bitterly contested presidential primary earlier this year.

Nasheed and the Democrats accuse Solih of failing to fulfil campaign pledges he made in 2018 to ensure justice for the Maldives’s biggest corruption scandal as well as the al-Qaeda-linked killings. They also accuse his government of putting in place a vast system of patronage, using state-owned enterprises to buy out the media and hand out thousands of jobs to ensure political loyalty.

The government denies the claims.

Without the backing of the Democrats, Solih comes to the second round with a “significant disadvantage”, said Ahmed Shaheed, a former Maldives foreign minister and professor of international human rights law at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.

“It is quite striking that [Solih] has not managed to put together a firm coalition. And without an open endorsement from [Nasheed], it is unlikely the Democrats will vote for Solih,” Shaheed said.

“It’s going to be a very tight contest,” he added. “I don’t think anyone is in a position to comfortably declare that the election is theirs.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

State.gov

https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/maldives

Maldives - United States Department of State

U.S.-Maldives Relations ... The United States established diplomatic relations with Maldives in 1966 following its independence from the United Kingdom and has ...

Worldbank.org

https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/maldives/overview

Maldives Overview: Development news, research, data | World ...

The economy is heavily dependent on tourism which has been the main driver of economic growth in Maldives and the dependence on tourism makes the country highly ...

ARACHNOLOGY

Spiders, spiders everywhere? Tarantula mating season starts early amid threats to arachnids

by Susanne Rust, Los Angeles Times

It's tarantula season in the golden hills of the Bay Area: that period every fall when black, hairy males of the species Aphonopelma iodius emerge from their underground burrows in search of a receptive female—a first and final act of carnal exploration before they die.

On a recent weekday evening, a group of Sierra Club members met before sunset at Mount Diablo State Park in Walnut Creek in hopes of witnessing a few of these desperate, single-minded, eight-legged prowlers.

"They said they saw 18 on a hike last week," said Ken Lavin, a naturalist at the state park and former National Park ranger at Muir Woods and Marin Headlands. "I doubt it, though; they probably just kept crossing paths with the same ones. I think we'll be lucky if we see one."

Lavin—who's been leading these tours for roughly 25 years—said male tarantulas are coming out earlier in the season than they used to, and in fewer numbers. By the end of the two-hour hike that evening, three lusty male tarantulas had been spotted.

Historically, the mating season has fallen between late September and early October, but Lavin said it's now starting in August.

He said that may be related to climate change—hypothesizing that insects are more active in higher temperatures—but it might be due to something else. Either way, it's clear things have changed.

Lavin's observations are not unique, said Jason Bond, a spider researcher at UC Davis. He's heard similar reports.

The problem is that "there's just no good baseline data" for biologists and wildlife officials to gauge how climate change is affecting wild spider populations, Bond said.

It's a problem that's plagued researchers in recent years as anecdotal information about population crashes in insect and spider populations have been reported. Unlike birds, mammals or fish—for which there is generally good, long-term data on population and range—insects and spiders have been pretty well ignored.

"There are many species that we've described—that I've worked on—that, if you were using the [International Union for Conservation of Nature] Red List criteria, they'd be designated as threatened or endangered," Bond said, adding that "a number of species ... are now extinct," and exist only in museum collections.

Two of them, he said, were trapdoor spider species in Dana Point and Palm Springs that were wiped out by the construction of golf courses.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has no invertebrates on its Red List, although it is looking to include them in the future—prioritizing certain taxonomic groups including "bumblebees, monarch butterflies, swallowtail butterflies, freshwater crustaceans, dragonflies, velvet worms, giant clams, abalones, sea urchins" and "selected families of spiders, scorpions, and grasshoppers."

The situation is concerning, Bond said, considering how important spiders are for healthy, functioning ecosystems. They not only keep insect populations in check, but they provide sustenance for animals such as birds and mammals.

And, he said, they're really cool.

Some spiders, he said, form aggregations and cooperate in brood care—in which adult spiders care for other spiders' offspring. Others appear to participate in lekking behavior, in which two or more males will perform for a female—duking it out through courtship displays—to gain her favor.

Then there's the portia spider—a kind of jumping spider—which appears to use trial and error when faced with new kinds of prey, and then seems to remember what worked when faced with similar prey.

Asked if spiders have brains, or neuronal circuity more like that of octopuses, Bond laughed, and said that while they have a centralized ganglion up in the front part of the face, "you probably don't want to over-glamorize their intelligence."

They're no octopuses, he said, but that doesn't mean spiders aren't worthy of our awe, respect and protection.

Aside from Australia, California has the world's highest diversity of trapdoor spiders—a type similar in appearance to tarantulas—and they're nearly everywhere that hasn't been paved over, built upon or excavated, Bond said.

"You ever been to the beach and sat on a sand dune?" he asked. "You were probably right next door to one."

Like tarantulas, trapdoor spiders burrow into the ground, where they hang out waiting for prey to approach on the ground above. While tarantulas wait below with their eight eyes pointed skyward, trapdoor spiders build a webbed door and fling it open when the unsuspecting prey walks by.

They're also really good moms, Bond said. "Oftentimes they'll have a brood of spiderlings that are hanging out in the burrow, getting fed by Mom, sometimes for more than a year," he said. He's even found a "couple of larger juveniles, the kind of teenagers that won't leave," in a few cases.

But typically, "once everybody reaches maturity, they'll leave the burrow and wander out; find a place to make their burrow," he said.

And that's in part why they are of particular conservation concern, Bond said, "They don't get very far ... or disperse really great distances."

Many spiders use their webbing to create balloons or parachutes that allow them to float away—sometimes traveling many miles.

Trapdoor spiders and tarantula spiderlings tend to disperse by walking, Bond said, "so if the habitat gets destroyed or messed up, perturbed in some way, they're really limited [in] ... how far they can go."

Genetic analyses bear this out: The difference in the genomes of trapdoor spider species living just a few miles apart is often greater than that between a human and a chimp, he said.

Trapdoor spiders were probably once distributed across the entire Los Angeles Basin, Bond said. "Of course, now they are all extinct."

He said that if they were spider monkeys instead of spiders, that devastation would "have been on the front page of every newspaper."

"It pains me because they are incredibly beautiful animals," he said. "They deserve the same level of protection."

Journal information: ZooKeys

2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

How funnel-web spiders practice safe sex

Dialog beyond spoken words important in teaching-learning situations, even digitally

by Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

virtual learning — Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Even in digital courses, it's not just the spoken word that counts. Aspects such as tone of voice, eye contact and the appreciation experienced are also important, as a study by the University of Würzburg shows.With the pandemic came its big boom: Digital teaching events. Depending on the incidence and the respective regulations, lecturers and students met purely digitally in specially set up Zoom meetings. Alternatively, some of the students sat at a safe distance in the lecture hall, while the rest followed the proceedings on their PCs in their home study.

A team from the Institute of Education at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) used the example of two seminars in the

summer semester of 2023 to investigate how these different settings affect teaching and learning. Regina Egetenmeyer, Professor for Adult and Continuing Education at JMU, and Ramon Flecha, sociologist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Barcelona and at that time Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, were responsible for the study. The researchers have now published the results of their research in the Multidisciplinary Journal of Educational Research.

Dialogic teaching works even in synchronous-hybrid teaching settings

"The study shows that it is highly relevant to think about dialogue in teaching-learning situations beyond spoken words. It is therefore the task of teachers to observe learners and to design appreciative dialogs in teaching-learning settings beyond spoken words," Egetenmeyer summarizes the central result of her study. The two seminars in the summer semester of 2023 showed that this is also possible in events in which some of the students are present on site and some are connected via computer.

In fact, the study shows that dialogic teaching has a positive effect on students even in synchronous-hybrid teaching settings—whereby it is not only the words spoken that matter, but also the tone of voice, eye contact and the appreciation experienced. "The evaluation shows that students see dialogue as very positive for their learning process. In some cases, they even see a transformative potential of dialogue with regard to their personality development," says Egetenmeyer.

Looking at speech acts alone is not enough

"In the recent past, scholars have been intensively studying issues around dialogic teaching in face-to-face as well as online and hybrid sessions," says Professor Ramon Flecha, explaining the background of the study. However, in his view, most analyses of dialogic teaching are reduced to an identification of dialogue with words, with so-called speech acts. Yet, he says, it has long been clear that looking at speech acts alone is not enough to capture a dialogue, because speech acts do not take into account central dimensions of human relationships.

"That's why new theoretical developments are now taking the place of the traditional ones. One of them is the move from speech acts to communicative acts," says Professor Marta Soler of the University of Barcelona, who is co-author of the paper. These are characterized by the fact that communication takes place not only through words, but also through other signs such as looks, voice pitch and body language. Accordingly, it is possible to develop dialogic teaching beyond words. So far, however, there have been no empirical studies based on this theoretical approach. The study now published by the Spanish-German team is thus the first in this field.

Positive verdicts from students

Two seminars of a university master's program at JMU were the focus of the research. Participation in them was possible both in presence and digitally. In the synchronous-hybrid seminars, students were provided with accompanying materials; there they could also give anonymous feedback on the individual events. In parallel, the research team closely monitored all forms of communication related to the seminars and created a documentary analysis of all feedback written by students at the end of each session.

"Our evaluations show that the students consistently rated this form of dialogic teaching, which is based on communicative actions beyond speech acts, positively," says Ane López de Aguileta from the University of Barcelona, who was also a visiting researcher at the University of Würzburg during the summer semester. On the one hand, the seminar participants were extremely satisfied with their own learning success. On the other hand, they were of the opinion that they would be able to use this method to initiate changes in their later professional lives, for example in educational projects.

Based on this study, Egetenmeyer and Flecha now want to investigate other teaching-learning settings at the University of Würzburg with regard to their significance of "Dialogic Teaching beyond Words" in order to expand knowledge of the innovative teaching potential.

More information: Mar Joanpere Foraster et al, Dialogic teaching beyond words, Multidisciplinary Journal of Educational Research (2023). DOI: 10.17583/remie.12867

Provided by Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg Book examines classroom dialog across language and culture

More JWST observations are finding fewer early massive galaxies

by Brian Koberlein, Universe Today

There's a common pattern in science. We develop some new process or tool that allows us to gather all kinds of data we've never had before, the data threatens to overturn all we've assumed about some long-established theory, and then the dust settles. Unfortunately, the early stage of this process generates a lot of sensationalism in the press. Early results from the JWST are a good example of this.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful infrared telescope we've ever built. It is sensitive enough to capture detailed images of some of the earliest galaxies. Those that formed soon after the so-called dark ages of the early universe.

Before JWST we only had galactic observations from a slightly later period, when the galaxies were fully established. Based on those observations and our understanding of the Big Bang, we had a good idea of how quickly galaxies evolve. Or so we thought, because initial observations from JWST seemed to overturn that.

The galaxies JWST found were large, bright, and already had structure to them. So the headlines ranged from claims that the Big Bang and possibly even general relativity had been disproven. But now the dust is starting to settle, and it turns out those revolutionary results weren't quite as unusual as some implied, as a new study shows.

Identifying the most distant galaxies is a bit of a challenge, so there are a few tricks astronomers use to help them out. One of these is to use what is known as a break in a galactic spectrum. For neutral hydrogen, there is only so much energy it can absorb before it becomes ionized. This means that if photons from a galaxy are above this limit, they will ionize hydrogen in the interstellar medium and be scattered so much we don't see it. This is known as the Lyman break.

There's a similar break called the Balmer break. Galactic light that shows these breaks are called double-break galaxies. Since astronomers know the wavelengths of these breaks, they can specifically target galaxies at a certain distance by looking for breaks with the right redshift.

CANUCS observation fields of Abell 370. Credit: JWST/CANUCS

Hubble (top) and Webb (bottom) images of distant galaxies. Credit: Roan Haggar using data from Hubble and JWST

Thefirst JWST results looked for double-break galaxies at redshifts of about z=7, or when the universe was less than a billion years old. And they found all those galaxies that caused such a star. Too many, too bright, and too evolved.

But while the double-break method is great for finding galaxies, you can see where it could introduce a bit of bias into the data. The galaxies need to be bright enough and hot enough to ionize hydrogen, so smaller, dimmer, and cooler galaxies might be left out. This bias is well known, but this new study wanted to get a handle on how severe the bias might be.

The team used data from the CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS), which uses JWST images of galaxy clusters looking for small distant galaxies that are gravitationally lensed to make them appear brighter. Their findings have been published on the pre-print server arXiv.

From this data, they identified 19 double-break galaxies. Since CANUCS galaxies contained more than double-break galaxies, the team could compare the distribution of double-break galaxies to a larger population.

What they found is that double-break selection methods can bias towards larger and brighter galaxies. Particularly in small samples such as theirs, even a single large outlier can give the impression that galaxies are larger and brighter than they statistically are. In other words, we shouldn't bet the farm on our initial results. As we gather more data and get detailed observations of more galaxies, the selective bias can wash out.

JWST observations may still force us to drastically revise our standard cosmological model in time, but this study shows we are still in the early stages. The standard model isn't out of the game yet, and it will take many more observations to see where the dust really settles.

More information: Guillaume Desprez et al, ΛCDM not dead yet: massive high-z Balmer break galaxies are less common than previously reported, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2310.03063

Journal information: arXiv

Provided by Universe Today Growth of 'baby galaxies' witnessed with James Webb Space Telescope

A new theory to explain Abell 3827's hazy and askew gravitationally lensed galaxies

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

A trio of astrophysicists, two from Carnegie Mellon University and the third from Bahamas Advanced Study Institute and Conferences, is proposing a new theory to explain the unique lensing seen with Abell 3827—a galaxy cluster approximately 1.3 billion light-years away. In their paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Joyce Lin, Richard Griffiths and Jenny Wagner, describe their new theory and explain how it might help better understand the nature of dark matter.

Abell 3827 is a designation for a cluster of hundreds of galaxies, as viewed from Earth—just four of the galaxies are clearly prominent. Situated approximately 1.3 billion light-years away, the cluster has represented an opportunity for astrophysicists to study dark matter due to its unique lensing properties.

Prior research has suggested that the visible part of the cluster makes up just 10% of its mass—the rest is believed to be dark matter. Prior research has also found that because of the nature and arrangement of the galaxies in the cluster, it serves as an unusually large gravitational lens. Such lensing has resulted in the formation of what looks like a glowing blue ring around the edges of the cluster.

Abell 3827 was discovered just two years ago by a team studying data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Since that time, astronomers have been debating the number of images that can be seen when looking at it—estimates range from four to eight. The difficulty in pinning down the exact number is due, it is believed, to gravitational distortion of the light emitted by the stars that make up the galaxies, by unseen dark matter.

It has also been noted that some of the distortion is likely related to rotation, which some have claimed is an example of self-interacting dark matter. In this new effort, the research trio is proposing that some of the characteristics of Abell 3827 are due to the morphology of the lensing.

They suggest that the lensing seen with the cluster is due to its three-dimensional characteristics—a major departure from prior theories which describe lensing as thin and flat. In their theory, Abell 3827's lensing is shaped more like a waffle, with different parts having different amounts of thickness—a characteristic that could explain why the cluster appears to look stretched more in some parts than others.

Notably, for their theory to hold water, the galaxies making up the cluster must not all be the same distance from Earth—the research team believes that three of the major four galaxies are all nearly the same distance while the fourth is perhaps tens of millions of light-years closer.

More information: Joyce Lin et al, Much ado about no offset—characterizing the anomalous multiple-image configuration and the model-driven displacement between light and mass in the multiplane strong lens Abell 3827, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad2800 . On arXiv: doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.11779

Journal information: arXiv

Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Hubble watches cosmic light bend

RIP

Canadian-French astrophysicist Hubert Reeves dies aged 91

Astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, seen here in France in 2016, was a passionate defender of the environment — ***Astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, seen here in France in 2016, was a passionate defender of***

Canadian-French astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, who was renowned for his work popularizing space science, died Friday aged 91, his son said in a post on Facebook.

"My whole family joins me in the pain of having to announce that our dear father has gone to join the stars," Benoit Reeves said.

The history of the universe was Reeves' life passion—he famously said that "to look far is to look early," evoking the concept of space-time—and he was also an ardent defender of planet Earth.

Born in Montreal on July 13, 1932, his thirst for knowledge began at a young age.

At night at their home in Quebec, Reeves and his family would go out to admire the sky, where he first learned to recognize constellations using a cardboard sheet.

He excelled in physics and, by age 18, knew he wanted to become an astronomer.

He did a doctorate at Cornell University and became a scientific adviser to NASA in the early 1960s before teaching at the University of Belgium.

He later became director of research at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and adviser to the country's Atomic Energy Commission.

Reeves wrote books and made numerous popular films and documentaries, all underpinned by the fundamental question: does the universe have meaning?

And he became a passionate environmental campaigner, calling for politicians to take action.

We must "prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable," he pleaded at the Elysee Palace in 2014 during an environment conference.

"We are facing a battle ... Who will win? Nobody knows," said the father of four and eight-time grandfather in a poignant speech.

For him, saving the planet was a matter of "the heart."

"Ecology is not just one big problem, but millions of little problems," he told AFP in an interview in 2018. That means people have to "want to tackle them" every day.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment