The harder I work, the luckier I get? What coaches, athletes and fans need to understand about luck in sport

by Steven Rynne and Michael John O'Keeffe, 

The Conversation

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In the world of elite sport, where everything is planned down to the last minute detail, surprisingly few are prepared to acknowledge the inherent role of luck in the outcomes of sporting contests.

It is surprising because luck is a factor that has the potential to affect the outcomes of competition. It can be the difference between a premiership and an early finals exit, or a gold medal and no medal at all.

It is also surprising because the notion of luck is ingrained in so many areas of sport and society—through common actions (fingers crossed, or wearing "lucky socks"), sayings (wishing competitors "good luck"), and religious connections (prayers to various gods of luck or fortune).

Even if athletes, coaches and fans do not want to outwardly acknowledge it, luck is actually part of what makes sport so compelling.

While stronger competitors and teams tend to win, weaker teams or athletes know they still have a chance to snatch victory based on something more than skill alone.

The harder I work, the luckier I get

Presumably, part of the reason that coaches and athletes in particular do not want to outwardly acknowledge the role of luck is that they spend most of their waking hours reducing the possible influence of luck (and increasing the array of things that are perceived as being under their control).

This matches well with the variously-attributed maxim "the harder I work, the luckier I get."

But it's not that simple.

Take injuries for example. Coaches and sport scientists use a variety of training and recovery activities to prepare athletes for the rigors of competition.

But as elite athletes push their bodies to the limits, they are more susceptible to injuries.

The timing and severity of injuries can drastically alter careers and seasons.

A key player getting injured before a crucial match can shift the balance of power—cricket fans will never forget Australian bowler Glenn McGrath rolling his ankle on a stray cricket ball in a pre-game warmup, which affected the outcome of the 2005 Ashes series.

Similarly, avoiding injuries can be seen as fortunate for those who manage to stay fit. Take former NRL champion Cameron Smith, the only player to have surpassed the 400-game milestone.

Life's great lottery: Birth

Despite often having similar training regimes, some athletes in the same sports seem to be more or less lucky than their compatriots.

This can be partly attributed to the luck involved in life's great lottery—birth.

There is great evidence supporting the advantages in sport that come with having lucky genetics.

Think about Simone Biles' height and power, having a lucky birth date (known as the relative age effect), birthplace (the birthplace effect), and other fortunate circumstances (socio-economic status or sibling order).

External unpredictability

Luck also exists beyond the individual and their circumstances.

For example, unpredictability in physical environments, such as rain delaying matches, wind affecting ball trajectories and extreme temperatures impacting player performance.

Athletes and teams often have little control over these conditions, and a result can sometimes come down to a matter of luck—a ball bouncing one way and not the other, or a gust of wind for one player and not their rival.

The postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games is a terrific example of this.

An injured or young competitor who was able to make the 2021 event may have considered the delay a fortunate circumstance. But an older athlete who didn't have the capacity to stretch out their career for an additional year may have been very unlucky.

Getting 'lady luck' on your side

In elite sports, the difference in skill between contestants can be razor thin—it is the best of the best.

The subsequent suggestion is that luck therefore has the potential to play an increasingly important role.

This significant and under-appreciated role of luck poses a number of challenges for coaches.

Because it's almost impossible for an athlete to train to develop luck like they develop a skill or physical attribute, coaches tend to focus on:

Foregrounding process and backgrounding outcome: The importance of outcomes in elite sport is unquestionable.

However, quality coaches emphasize the processes that are most likely to lead to a positive outcome, rather than focusing on the outcome itself.

Even more specifically, the best coaches concentrate their attention (and that of their players) on the things they have most influence over, such as skills, preparation, and decision-making, rather than things they do not (like a coin toss, random bounces and deflections, poorly timed injuries or equipment failures).

Training and recovery: Coaches plan for high level training that accounts for as many performance factors as possible, including biophysical (physical capacities of the athlete) and psychosocial (knowing themselves and working with others).

They also try to fully leverage certain inherent forms of luck such as capitalizing on genetics through talent identification and training.

Avoiding overtraining is another approach that coaches take to reduce the chances of bad luck through injuries.

Train for unpredictability: As well as generally emphasizing quality repetitions for their athletes in training, contemporary coaches also regularly introduce variable practices, scenario-based disruptions, and natural variations in the physical environment.

This not only provides players with opportunities to practice their core skills, it gives them opportunities to practice responding in positive ways to good luck ("seize the moment") and bad luck (refocusing after freak occurrences).

Balancing planning with instinct: Coaches work with their athletes to develop comprehensive game plans and a variety of contingency plans for competition.

However, coaches will also often support their athletes to deviate from these established plans to "roll the dice" when appropriate. This typically involves coaches giving their players license to take calculated risks (such as taking a long-range shot from a difficult angle in soccer) when certain circumstances arise.

There's no escaping luck in sports

While skill and preparation are indispensable, the role of luck in elite sports is undeniable.

From Steven Bradbury's serendipity at the 2002 Winter Olympics to St Kilda's unfavorable bounce at the end of the drawn AFL grand final in 2010, luck has almost certainly impacted all athletes at some stage of their careers.

Luck adds an element of unpredictability, makes sports thrilling and, at times, heartbreakingly capricious.

Provided by The Conversation 

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

New models may help coaches improve throwing athletes' performance

SPACE

Astronomers just detected the biggest black hole jets ever seen – and named them Porphyrion

THE CONVERSATION
Published: September 18, 2024 

The largest known black hole jets, 23 million light years across, have been discovered in the distant universe. This pair of particle beams launched by a supermassive black hole is over a hundred times larger than our galaxy, the Milky Way.

In 2022, we announced the discovery of one of the largest black hole jets in the night sky, launched from a (relatively) nearby galaxy called NGC2663. Using CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) in Western Australia, we confirmed that NGC2663’s jet is one of the largest in the sky. In other words, it appears to be the largest when viewed from Earth.

The new jet, announced in the journal Nature, has been dubbed “Porphyrion” (a giant in Greek mythology) by its discoverers at the California Institute of Technology in the United States. It dwarfs NGC2663’s jet in actual size and is over 20 times larger – a true colossus.

Porphyrion can tell us more about the great ecosystem of matter flowing inside and outside of galaxies. But this jet also has us scratching our heads: how can something 23 million light years across be almost perfectly straight?

Seeing invisible light

Porphyrion was discovered by astronomers using the International LOFAR Telescope, a network of radio sensors centred in the Netherlands, and stretching from Sweden to Bulgaria, and from Ireland to Latvia. Radio telescopes like ASKAP and LOFAR can see light that is invisible to our eyes: radio waves.

What launches the jet in the first place? At the centre of the jet, researchers see a galaxy, and at the centre of the galaxy, they find evidence of a supermassive black hole.

As matter is pulled towards the black hole, various fates await. Some matter is eaten entirely. Some orbits around the black hole, forming a disk. And some of it becomes twisted and tangled in intense magnetic fields, until it is released into two opposing jets, blasting at almost the speed of light.

We’ve seen black hole jets before, even ones that stretch many millions of light years. What’s striking about Porphyrion is that it looks almost perfectly straight. There are plenty of curvy, angled jets out there, including one seen by ASKAP that was dubbed “The Dancing Ghosts”.

Puzzlingly straight

Many processes can add a kink to a jet: an obstacle such as a dense cloud, a change in the orientation of the black hole, strong magnetic fields, intergalactic “wind” as the host galaxy falls into a larger cosmic structure.

Porphyrion, by contrast, seems to have been happily powering its way through the cosmos for about 2 billion years, unperturbed.

This is puzzling for two reasons. First, it isn’t from around here. Its light has travelled for about 7 billion years to arrive on Earth. We’re seeing Porphyrion as it was about 6 billion years after the Big Bang.

As with all astronomical objects, we’re seeing it in the past, when the universe was more dense (remember: the universe is expanding). But a busy environment is the enemy of a straight jet.

This picture taken by LOFAR shows Porphyrion, with the galaxy hosting the supermassive black hole in the centre. The largest blob-like structure near the centre is a separate smaller jet system. The relative size of our Milky Way galaxy is indicated in the lower-right corner. LOFAR Collaboration / Martijn Oei (Caltech)

Second, a jet that maintains consistent power for 2 billion years requires a steady stream of food. But that implies a rich local environment, full of goodies (interstellar gas) ready to eat. This presents a paradox, because – again – a busy environment is the enemy of a straight jet.

As the researchers conclude, “how jets can retain such long-lived coherence is unknown at present”. Maybe Porphyrion got lucky, threading its jet through a quiet alley of intergalactic space.

Maybe there’s something about this jet that helps it maintain its focus. We don’t know. But we can think of ways to find out. Observers will explore the environment of this jet with further observations across the spectrum.

Radio astronomers are using telescopes like ASKAP and LOFAR to find more jets, so we can distinguish the typical from the flukey. Meanwhile, astrophysicists are using supercomputer simulations of jets to figure out what launches them, what can bend them, and under what conditions.

Objects like Porphyrion aren’t mere cosmic oddities. They are integral to the ecosystem of matter that shapes our cosmic environment. Intergalactic matter feeds into galaxies, galaxies make stars, some galaxies even make black holes, black holes create a jet, the jet affects the intergalactic matter, and around we go.

We’re slowly untangling the clues to our place in the cosmos.

Author 

Luke Barnes
Lecturer in Physics, Western Sydney University

Earth May Have Once Had a Saturn-Like Ring, New Study Says

Researchers believe an asteroid broke up while passing by Earth, creating the ring.

Joe Hindy

Sept. 18, 2024 

CNET

The planet Saturn is shown in a digitally improved NASA image.

Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images

Saturn sports some of the coolest bling of any planet in our solar system. Its nine rings, which are mainly comprised of dust, rock and ice, have been the subject of scientific research for years. While Saturn's rings are the best known, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune also have rings. And now, a new study published in the scientific journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters seems to show that Earth itself once had a similar ring.

The new study asserts that Earth's ring formed around 466 million years ago and stuck around for around 40 million years before dissipating. Researchers say that the existence of such a ring would help solve several puzzles from Earth's past and that much of the data they collected supports its existence.

The study starts with a period in history when things were rather tumultuous. Around 466 million years ago, scientists have found evidence that Earth suffered a veritable shower of meteors, and the meteorite impacts caused tsunamis, craters and other mayhem during that period. In particular, 21 high-impact meteorite craters were found to have occurred during that time.

Scientists used models of how Earth's tectonic plates have moved over that time to pinpoint where those impacts initially took place and found that all 21 impacts occurred close to the equator. This is odd, since meteorites can hit anywhere on the Earth's surface and seeing them all occurring around the same latitude on Earth with impacts around the same period would be an exceptional coincidence.

This led the researchers to propose that Earth once had its own ring, and that ring showered debris onto the Earth's surface, which would account for the patterns.

Earth may have destroyed and eaten an asteroid

The researchers believe that Earth's possible ring was generated by an asteroid that got a little too close for comfort. When something small like an asteroid comes too close to something larger, like Earth, it becomes stretched by gravity and falls apart. The theory purports that an asteroid came within Earth's Roche limit -- the distance at which the asteroid would fall apart due to Earth's gravity -- broke apart, and the remnants formed a ring that gradually rained down on Earth for tens of millions of years.

It's not a farfetched theory given that asteroids come pretty close to Earth all the time, and some even stick around for a bit as a second moon.

"So if Earth destroyed and captured a passing asteroid around 466 million years ago, it would explain the anomalous locations of the impact craters, the meteorite debris in sedimentary rocks, craters and tsunamis and the meteorites' relatively brief exposure to space radiation," said Andrew Tomkins, the study's lead researcher.

Tomkins and fellow researchers Erin Martin and Peter Cawood posit that a ring of debris around Earth would solve a few puzzles about Earth's past, including the aforementioned meteorite craters and tsunamis. The team is also exploring the idea that the ring shaded Earth from the sun, contributing to the intense amount of global cooling that caused the Hirnantian Ice Age, which was one of the coldest periods in Earth's history.

New cosmic distance catalog could unlock the mysteries of universe formation

by University of Portsmouth

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

The William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, Spain. Credit: PAUS team

A new catalog providing information on millions of distant galaxies, which determines their distances with unprecedented precision over a field of view and depth never before explored, has been published today.

The catalog is the result of The Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS), an international collaboration led by the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC), dependent on the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), which involves 14 institutions across six countries—including the University of Portsmouth.

Collected over 200 nights between 2015 and 2019 using the PAUCam camera on the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, this catalog is now available on the PAUS website and the CosmoHub web portal.

Covering a vast sky area of 50 square degrees, similar to an area of approximately 250 full moons, the catalog includes data for 1.8 million astronomical objects. These insights will enable astronomers to create more accurate maps to understand how structure forms in the universe and to study dark matter and dark energy.

Enrique Gaztañaga, Director of the PAU Survey and Professor at the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, said, "The PAU Survey offers a groundbreaking approach to creating cosmic maps, made possible through the design and development of a novel instrument and a dedicated survey to collect and analyze data in ways never done before. It has been a privilege to collaborate with such a talented and dependable group."

The accelerated expansion of the universe is attributed to dark energy, which constitutes about 70% of the universe, yet its nature remains a mystery. The PAU Survey offers new insights into this enigma, providing an accurate and comprehensive characterization of millions of galaxies up to distances of more than 10 billion light years.

This catalog is a valuable resource for the astronomical community, aiding in the scientific analysis and calibration of other cosmological surveys.

The PAUCam camera was specially designed to accurately measure galaxy distances, enabling the study of the universe's expansion under the influence of dark matter and dark energy.

The project builds on existing deep images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS), carried out with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, and the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) carried out with the European Southern Observatory's VLT Survey Telescope in Chile. By combining these datasets, PAUS has achieved highly accurate distance and time information for deep space objects.

This catalog represents a significant advancement in cosmic research, with its extensive data offering photometric redshift measurements that determine the distances of galaxies as they appeared billions of years ago.

To achieve these measurements, the PAU camera employs 40 filters across different colors, representing narrow bands in the optical spectrum. This technique involves photographing the same field multiple times through various color filters. As objects move away from us, the light they emit experiences a redshift, shifting towards the red end of the spectrum. In astronomy, redshift is crucial for calculating the distance of an object from Earth.

David Navarro-Gironés, Ph.D. student at ICE-CSIC and first author of the paper, said, "The precision in measuring galaxy distances depends on the number of filters you use, as each filter provides different information about the galaxy.

"The great advantage of PAUS is that it combines information from 40 different filters, allowing for highly accurate distance measurements. This level of precision is crucial for the study of the structure of the universe, which in turn requires data from a large number of galaxies."

The release is detailed in two articles published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: one measuring distances and another one on calibration of the PAUS data.

In the coming months, the team will also present an ongoing study on galaxy clustering and intrinsic galaxy shape alignments, contributing to a deeper understanding of how our universe formed and evolved.

Journal information: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 

Provided by University of Portsmouth Cosmic wrestling match: New model reveals what the color of a galaxy tells about its distance

2nd Kuiper Belt? Our solar system may be much larger than thought

By Keith Cooper 

Space.com 

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Eleven objects found at the extremities of the solar system could mark the location of a 'Kuiper Belt 2.'

An illustration of the Kuiper Belt. (Image credit: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook)

A brand-new group of frozen objects, orbiting the sun out beyond the distant Kuiper Belt, has been spotted by the Subaru telescope, working with NASA's New Horizons mission to find new targets for the spacecraft to investigate.

"If this is confirmed, it would be a major discovery," said Fumi Yoshida, from the University of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences and the Planetary Exploration Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology, in a statement.

Subaru, which is an 8-meter (26-foot) telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, has been working with New Horizons since its 2006 launch toward Pluto, which the spacecraft flew by in 2015. Since then, New Horizons has been blazing a trail through the Kuiper Belt, which is a ring-shaped region of icy cometary bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune at distances between 33 and 55 astronomical units (AU). An astronomical unit is equivalent to Earth's average distance from the sun, which is 149.6 million kilometers (93 million miles).

When Subaru began searching for Kuiper Belt objects in 2004 as potential targets for New Horizons to either visit up close or to watch with its cameras from a distance after encountering Pluto, the telescope was faced with a problem. At the time, Pluto and the area of the outer solar system to which New Horizons was headed was in the constellation of Sagittarius, which has the dense center of the Milky Way as a backdrop, making it hard to pick out Kuiper Belt objects from all the background stars. At the time, Subaru identified just 24 Kuiper Belt objects, all of which were too far away for New Horizons to reach or view with its cameras after leaving Pluto. (Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt object that New Horizons visited on New Years' Day 2019, was found by the Hubble Space Telescope.)

Related: What is the Kuiper Belt?

Now, however, Pluto and that part of the solar system has moved away from the backdrop of the Milky Way into a sparser region of the night sky. With its Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), Subaru has discovered 239 Kuiper Belt objects since 2020. Most of these are regular Kuiper Belt objects, but a smattering seem to be very special indeed.

"The most exciting part of the HSC was the discovery of 11 objects at distances beyond the known Kuiper Belt," said Yoshida.

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This new group of objects isn't a mere extension of the Kuiper Belt. There appears to be a gap between 55 AU and 70 AU where no objects have yet been found, and then a second belt — let's call it "Kuiper Belt 2" — between 70 and 90 AU, which is as far out as 13.5 billion kilometers (8.4 billion miles) from the sun. For comparison, Neptune lies at 30 AU and New Horizons is currently 60 AU from the sun, while NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes are 164.7 and 137.6 AU from the sun, respectively — out in interstellar space.

Related: Solar system planets, order and formation: The ultimate guide





A graph that shows the number of Kuiper Belt objects versus their distance from the sun. The 11 new objects seem to form a second Kuiper Belt, with a gap between 55 and 70 AU. (Image credit: Wesley Fraser)

The architecture of the solar system, including the asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt, was determined by the processes that formed the planets, including how the young Jupiter migrated through the system, scattering smaller bodies far and wide.

"I think the discovery of distant objects and the determination of their orbital distribution are important as a stepping stone to understanding the formation history of the solar system, comparing it with exoplanetary systems, and understanding universal planet formation," said Yoshida.

The discovery of this new population of bodies is not entirely out of the blue. The Student Dust Counter instrument on board New Horizons keeps detecting impacts from dust particles, though the rate of impacts should be decreasing as New Horizons departs the Kuiper Belt. The continued presence of dust suggests that it is being produced by a population of bodies farther out. In addition, New Horizons has witnessed unexplained stellar occultations — when an object passes in front of and briefly blocks the light of a distant star — that could be the product of objects in this newly discovered, more distant 'Kuiper Belt 2.'

Furthermore, observations of protoplanetary disks around other stars, such as those seen by ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, clearly show extended regions and numerous belts and gaps in the region beyond where the Kuiper Belt is in our solar system.

"Our solar system's Kuiper Belt long appeared to be very small in comparison with many other planetary systems, but our results suggest that idea might just have arisen due to an observational bias," said Wes Fraser of the National Research Council of Canada, who led the new findings. "So maybe, if this result is confirmed, our Kuiper Belt isn't all that small and unusual after all compared to those around other stars."

Because the Kuiper Belt had seemed small, one theory had been that the solar nebula that formed our planetary system had also been smaller than normal. The discovery of this Kuiper Belt 2 suggests that was not necessarily the case.

"The primordial solar nebula was much larger than previously thought, and this may have implications for studying the planet formation process in our solar system," said Yoshida.

RELATED STORIES:

— Our solar system map may need an update — the Kuiper belt could be way bigger

— What cosmic object 'Arrokoth' can tell us about our solar system's formation

— Could an 'Earth-like' planet be hiding in our solar system's outer reaches?

Astronomers will continue to use Subaru to track the 11 objects in this new belt to better define their orbits. Given they were found in a small region of space, they probably are only the tip of the iceberg and hint at a much larger population. Their discovery is further evidence that there is still much to be discovered in the extreme depths of the outer solar system, including the possibility of more dwarf planets and even the hypothesized Planet Nine.

"This is a groundbreaking discovery revealing something unexpected, new and exciting in the distant reaches of the solar system," said Alan Stern, who is the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission. "This discovery probably would not have been possible without the world-class capabilities of the Subaru Observatory."

The findings are set to be published in the Planetary Science Journal, and are currently available as a preprint.
.


Keith Cooper
Contributing writer
Keith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor in the United Kingdom, and has a degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of Manchester. He's the author of "The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020) and has written articles on astronomy, space, physics and astrobiology for a multitude of magazines and websites.

 

Artemis I mission data show astronauts sent to the moon aboard Orion will be protected from radiation

Artemis I instruments and radiation environments. Credit: Nature (2024). 

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07927-7

According to a large team of technical and health specialists, astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will be well protected from radiation when the Artemis II mission travels to the moon and back next year.

In their study published in the journal Nature, the group analyzed data collected from sensors inside and outside the Orion spacecraft as it made two moon flybys in 2022. They also studied data from sensors on the spacesuits worn by two dummies that went along for the ride.

NASA plans to send four astronauts to the moon next year as part of the Artemis II mission. The astronauts will be carried to the moon in the Orion spacecraft, where they will conduct a flyby before returning to Earth.

For this new study, the research team studied data from the Artemis I mission, which conducted a similar trip with dummies instead of human astronauts. The purpose of the mission was to establish the viability and safety of sending humans back to the moon, and one of the safety issues under study was exposure to radiation, both from the sun and from extrasolar sources.

To learn more about the amount of radiation striking astronauts traveling to the moon and back, the builders of the Orion spacecraft added radiation sensors to several sites on both its exterior and interior. The spacesuit designers did the same and even gave one of the dummies that traveled to the moon and back a special protective vest.

The researchers analyzed the data from all the sensors to learn more about the amount of radiation exposure future astronauts aboard Orion will experience. They found that the design of the spacecraft more than meets safety levels for future missions.

They also identified ways to minimize exposure. Turning the spacecraft to a certain position as it passes through the Van Allen belt could reduce exposure by approximately 50%.

They also noted that there were large differences in the amount of exposure in different parts of the space capsule. The most protected areas received four times less radiation than the least protected areas. Therefore, the astronauts could be protected during the most severe solar events simply by directing them to the most well-protected parts of the ship.

More information: Stuart P. George et al, Space radiation measurements during the Artemis I lunar mission, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07927-7

Journal information: Nature 

© 2024 Science X NetworkStarship Super Heavy breezes through wind tunnel testing at NASA Ames

An innovative system for seeing into the bowels of a volcano

by CNRS

 SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

(a) 3D view of the volcano obtained by confocal migration of the reflection matrix. The image obtained is blurred by distortions of seismic waves caused by the volcano’s heterogeneities. (b) Matrix imaging of the volcano obtained via adaptive focusing laws compensating for its heterogeneities. The image reveals La Soufrière’s tortuous conduit to a depth of 5 km. Beyond that, a magma storage zone was identified with a complex array of horizontal magma lenses connected to one another. Credit: Elsa Giraudat

A team of researchers from the CNRS and the Paris Institute of Planetary Physics has developed an innovative imaging method that can probe the bowels of a volcano with unparalleled resolution and depth. This new method is based on the deployment of a network of geophones that capture not only the powerful shaking of earthquakes, but also the seismic noise caused by wind, the ocean, and human activity.

Their study was conducted on La Soufrière volcano in Guadeloupe, and provided a 3D view of its internal structure to a depth of 10 kilometers, with a precision on the order of 100 meters. It confirmed the existence, in the depths beneath La Soufrière, of a large magma storage zone structured by a network of interconnected magma pockets.

This imaging tool can be applied to any geophone network and could record volcanic activity much more thoroughly, thereby providing greater anticipation of volcanic eruptions throughout the world.

The study recently appeared in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

More information: Elsa Giraudat et al, Matrix imaging as a tool for high-resolution monitoring of deep volcanic plumbing systems with seismic noise, Communications Earth & Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01659-2

Journal information: Communications Earth & Environment 

Provided by CNRS Crystals hold a secret history of volcanoes—and clues about future eruptions

Tropical cyclone intensity exacerbated by increasing depth of ocean mixed layer, finds study

by Hannah Bird , Phys.org

Simulated sea surface temperature changes and upper ocean currents after 72 hours

since tropical cyclone initiation according to ocean mixed layer depth: 2 m (a), 5 m (b), 

10 m (c), 15 m (d), 20 m (e), 50 m (f) and 100 m (g).

Credit: Zhang et al. 2024.

Tropical cyclones can have severe consequences for both the marine and terrestrial environments, as well as the organisms and communities who inhabit them. In the oceans, there can be alterations in sea surface temperature that disrupt biological processes and hospitable conditions for life, the devastation of surface algae and other primary producers, which impacts complex marine food chains, as well as damaging coral reefs. Meanwhile, on land, the heavy rainfall, strong winds and storm surges can lead to significant damage to property and infrastructure, as well as loss of lives.

These natural phenomena are powered by warm surface waters, as the rising water vapor causes condensation of water droplets, and thus cloud formation and rain. This releases heat, warming the atmosphere further and causing the air to continue to rise, bringing in cooler air towards the base, which we experience as strong winds. Consequently, as tropical cyclones move over land they lose this initial energy source and eventually dissipate.

Therefore, the surface layer of the ocean is particularly important. Recent research published in Frontiers in Marine Science has investigated how the depth of the mixed layer (the deepest layer affected by surface turbulence and separating cooler ocean depths from atmospheric interactions) impacts ocean temperatures, and subsequently tropical cyclone formation.

To do so, Yalan Zhang, of China's National University of Defense Technology, and colleagues used models to simulate different ocean mixed layer depth (2 m, 5 m, 10 m, 15 m, 20 m, 50 m and 100 m) influences on tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific over four days, in both one and three dimensions. The former model type focuses mostly on the influence of depth, while the latter incorporates heat, salinity and water mass movement (for example, upwelling).

Tropical cyclone destructive potential (PDS) increase according to seven experimental ocean mixed layer depths. Credit: Zhang et al. 2024.

The researchers found that ocean mixed layer depth only has a small influence on the track the tropical cyclone takes, with slower translation speeds resulting from shallower ocean mixed layer depth moving the center of the tropical storm. However, they discovered a greater impact on the size and intensity of the event, reaching its peak 72 to 84 hours after initiation.

Importantly, this is only the case up to 15 m water depth, after which the ocean mixed layer depth prior to the tropical cyclone has marginal influence on the destructiveness of the event. The destructive potential increased 325.2% when the ocean mixed layer depth reached 5 m, reducing to 50% at 15 m and below 15% at depths thereafter.

This is because surface winds bring cold water from below the ocean mixed layer depth when it is shallower than 15 m, which decreases the temperature of the upper ocean. In fact, the scientists suggest 75% to 90% of sea surface cooling can be attributed to turbulence from wind-induced vertical shear (the change in wind speed and direction with altitude).

However, as the ocean mixed layer depth increases beyond this threshold point of 15 m, the effect of surface winds on sea surface temperature cooling is reduced, leading to increasing surface temperatures below the tropical cyclones, therefore fueling their development.

Furthermore, the passage of multiple tropical cyclones through the same area can cause the ocean mixed layer depth to deepen, which may reduce their future activity in that region, though the timescales between events to allow this are still being studied.

This research is significant, as global warming is likely to exacerbate tropical cyclone occurrences due to rising sea surface temperatures, so the role of ocean mixed layer depth in modulating these is paramount to understanding these phenomena of the marine realm and allowing populations to mitigate against their devastation in vulnerable regions.

More information: Yalan Zhang et al, Impact of ocean mixed layer depth on tropical cyclone characteristics: a numerical investigation, Frontiers in Marine Science (2024). DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1395492

Journal information: Frontiers in Marine Science 

© 2024 Science X Network

Tropical Atlantic mixing rewrites climate pattern rules

 

The relationship between emotions and economic decision-making differs across countries, multi-national analysis finds

Cross-country variation in the relationship between positive mood and patience (a) or 

positive mood and risk taking (b). 

Credit: Nature Human Behaviour, 2024.

 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01927-3)

When making economic decisions, humans can be driven by various factors, including their goals and emotions. Past studies have hypothesized that emotions play a crucial role in economic decisions, particularly those that involve risk or trade-offs between immediate and future benefits.

Researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and University of Chicago Booth School of Business recently set out to investigate the relationship between emotions and economic choices in greater depth by analyzing a large multi-national dataset.

Their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, unveiled distinct patterns in the extent to which emotions predict economic decisions across several countries worldwide.

"In 2019, we encountered a new dataset that measured how individuals make financial decisions around the globe," Samuel Pertl, co-author of the paper, told Phys.org. "We were fascinated by this dataset, and as we delved deeper, we discovered an additional layer of information that the original research team had not explored: participants' emotional experiences.

"This aspect intrigued us because most prior research on the influence of emotions on decision-making has been conducted in a few highly developed countries, primarily the U.S. With nationally representative samples from 74 countries, we saw an opportunity to test whether the relationship between emotions and economic decision-making replicates and generalizes on a global scale."

Some theorists previously proposed that the link between emotions and economic choices could be universal and thus exhibits similar patterns across different countries. The key objective of the recent study by Pertl and his colleagues was to test this hypothesis, by analyzing data from the Gallup World Poll and Global Preferences Survey, two large-scale surveys spanning a total of 74 countries.

"To examine how emotions influence economic decision-making, we employed two different approaches," explained Pertl. "There are already many existing studies examining how incidental emotions influence individuals' intertemporal or risky decisions. As a first step, we summarized these studies through a meta-analysis, which pools together existing findings and summarizes them into an average relationship."

The meta-analysis carried out by the researchers unveiled that most past studies were conducted with non-representative samples, typically from a few Western countries.

Predictors of cross-country differences in the relationship between positive mood and patience (a and b) or positive mood and risk taking (c and d). Credit: Nature Human Behaviour, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01927-3

This encouraged them to carry out a global analysis, leveraging large multi-national datasets. Collectively, Pertl and his colleagues analyzed the survey responses of 77,242 individuals residing in 74 countries.

"Each respondent was asked about their emotional experiences—specifically, whether they experienced happiness, enjoyment, sadness, worry, anger, stress or pain during most of the previous day, with each emotion measured separately," said Pertl.

"The dataset also captured how individuals made economic decisions, such as choosing between a smaller immediate reward versus a larger future reward (intertemporal decision), or between a certain smaller reward versus an uncertain larger reward (risky decision)."

Using statistical methods, the researchers looked at whether emotions predicted the economic decisions of survey respondents, controlling for various factors, including demographics, language differences and geographical location. To determine whether the link between emotions and economic decision-making was in fact universal, they compared the patterns they observed across different countries.

"I believe the most notable finding from our paper is that there is substantial and systematic cross-country variation in whether and how emotions predict economic decision-making," said Pertl. "For example, it has been proposed that being in a positive mood leads to greater patience (i.e., individuals are more willing to wait for a delayed reward).

"However, our analyses suggest that this relationship is far from universal. We found that while being in a positive mood was associated with greater patience in 53 countries, it was linked to greater impatience in 21 countries."

Interestingly, Pertl and his colleagues also found that the cross-country differences in the relationships between emotions and economic decision-making can be explained. Specifically, they found that emotions were stronger predictors of economic decisions in more economically developed countries (measured using the Human Development Index) and in more individualistic countries (measured using Hofstede's Individualism Index).

"Our findings underscore the need for more diverse samples when studying fundamental questions about decision-making," added Pertl. "While I am now exploring questions in a different research area, my co-authors are still working on several projects related to how emotions influence decision-making."

More information: Samuel M. Pertl et al, A multinational analysis of how emotions relate to economic decisions regarding time or risk, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01927-3

Journal information: Nature Human Behaviour 

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