Comments Off on ‘Oumuamua: Comet, asteroid or other?
Discovered in October last year, the interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 (more widely known as ‘Oumuamua) was initially thought to be a comet, only then to be categorised as an asteroid.
It made history when it was reclassified yet again as a ‘class I’ or an ‘interstellar object’ – the first object confirmed to have entered our Solar System from beyond.
‘Oumuamua was confirmed as an interstellar object because of the eccentricity of its orbit – ‘eccentricity’ in this context being a mathematical term, rather than the synonym for ‘strange’ (although it is rather weird!) Eccentricity describes how close an orbit is to a circular shape. Zero is perfectly circular, while values greater than zero but less than 1 describe an imperfectly circular orbit – like one that mimics an ellipse or an oval. The greater the eccentricity, the more bulged and imperfect the ellipse becomes. At an eccentricity of 1, the shape fails to close up entirely. Rather, the orbit becomes a parabola. The gravity of the orbited object – such as the Sun or a planet – can pull in the orbiting object, but as it is moving too fast to be trapped, it will then simply slingshot away. ‘Oumuamua’s orbit is like this – it’s so far from a closed loop that it can’t possibly have come from the Solar System.
However, based on the recent scientific findings of Micheli et al. presented in Nature, ‘Oumuamua is actually physically still a comet. Originally, as it lacked a coma – a cloud of gas which is formed when the comet is warmed by the sun and the ice on the surface sublimates – there were doubts surrounding this conclusion. However, the paper argues otherwise. Rather than directly investigating its composition, the scientists instead observed ‘Oumuamua’s motion. Objects within our solar system are accelerated by the gravitational force exerted by the Sun. But, it was found that if the attraction of the Sun was subtracted from the observed acceleration, there was still some ‘leftover’ – meaning that the source of some of the acceleration is coming from elsewhere. Their best explanation for this: ‘Oumuamua releases gas that acts as a propellant. If it releases gas, even if there’s not enough for a visible coma, then it is a comet.
What will ‘Oumuamua be classified as next?! Unfortunately, the window to observe it is just about gone – it’s hurtling away from our Solar System.
Like many issues in contemporary science, fighting Australia’s ever-increasing bushfires is as much a scientific issue as it is a social and political one. We know that the First Australians used fire and back burning for millennia as a way of managing their land. What could both history and design teach us about our attitudes towards natural disasters? And could we use it to fight Australia’s bushfires?
When listening to emergency dispatch tapes from large fires, you often hear people reporting houses that have been set alight before the fire front has even reached their neighbourhood! Generally, such houses don’t burn because a wall of fire has raced through the community. They burn because of something else: the embers.
The embers accumulate in crevices around dry wood shingles in the roof and set fire to the houses from above. Highly-flammable iron-bark wooden roofs were particularly common in 1950s rural Australia, and were responsible for much of the damage caused by bushfires in the 1970s.
While the idea that ‘wooden roofs catch on fire easily’ may not sound like a huge revelation, it actually helps us reanalyse our wildfire problem as a design issue rather than an inevitable natural disaster. Our homes and communities are designed to burn.
Australia’s firefighting services have long been prevalent. Victoria’s Country Fire Authority was established in 1945 and the NSW Rural Fire Service has been around since 1896. Collectively the two organisations employ around 95,000 people and have an annual budget of $850 million – providing us with high tech planes, helicopters, and kitted fire crews designed to fight fires better than ever before. And for a while, these mechanisms seemed to work. Fires were put out, lives and buildings were saved. But the better we got at fighting fires, the stronger they became.
By preventing fires, you also encourage tree regrowth and the accumulation of undergrowth and dead vegetation, making bushland denser. This means that when bushland does catch on fire, there’s more material to burn; fires burn bigger and hotter than ever before.
In the late 1990s, a researcher from the US Forest Service, Dr Jack Cohen, conducted a series of full forest fire experiments – sectioning off blocks of boreal forest in Canada and setting it alight to observe its behaviour. What he found in his experiments was that while an entire forest could be on fire, a building standing 10 metres away from it could be left unscathed if designed effectively.
Most ember fires can be stopped with some simple design solutions. For one, replacing your wood roof is an obvious answer. Smaller-scale, more nuanced ones include ensuring your garage door has a tight, concrete seal to prevent embers from entering the house and removing flammable items and undergrowth within 30 meters of your house. These design improvements mean that we can let more bushfires burn natural, and finally break free from the vicious cycle of fire suppression that leads to the largest infernos.
But there are many barriers to implementing these solutions. For one, it’s expensive to structurally alter your house, like replacing your roof. You may not even have 30 metres of land around your house to clear, and if you’re a renter, you probably don’t even have the authority to make any changes at all!
Although design changes will lessen the effect of bushfires, we also still heavily rely on our fire services. The NSW RFS ethos is to “[protect] infrastructure and environmental, economic, cultural, agricultural and community assets from damage arising from fires”. After all, when there is a fire, people demand an immediate and heavy response. We, the public, expect to see dramatic shots of helicopters flying over raging fires, dropping water over thousands of hectares of burnt bushland.
Because of climate change, the fire season is only getting longer. But instead of resigning to fatalism that ‘nothing else can be done’, we instead need to recognise that indeed, there is plenty to do. We need to ensure that our policies reflect the efforts we are making to effectively prevent bushfires. To do so, our attitudes towards managing our own properties, and the expectations we hold towards our governments and fires services need to change.
What do we define as life? Scientists commonly attribute two key characteristics to it: one is having a self-replicating system and the other is the ability to persist over time.
The idea of creating life, similar to the creation of Frankenstein, always seemed out of reach. However, through recent scientific breakthroughs, it now appears to be a possibility for the near future.
In 2010, Dr Craig Venter and his team of geneticists accomplished a major feat, creating a new, synthetic version of life. After generating a very short genome, consisting of 485 genes, and transferring it into a ‘synthetic cell’, they then proceeded to watch it grow and replicate – this process being the basic definition of what it means to be alive. The research, which was published in Science, cost around 54 million Australian dollars and involved 15 years of hard work. Venter mentions that this research can lead to ‘an era limited only by our imagination’. In the future, we may witness the production of new chemicals and foods, as well as improved vaccines.
Following this discovery, in 2014, chemical biologist Floyd Romesberg demonstrated that is possible to expand the genetic alphabet of natural DNA beyond its current four letters: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). He did this by creating a strain of E. coli bacteria that contained two natural letters, ‘X’ and ‘Y’. What is most remarkable about the artificial X-Y pair is that they can co-exist alongside natural DNA pairs. They also function similarly to natural pairs, as they can retrieve information and produce proteins – the material we use for making new cells. This synthetic form of E. coli can thus produce new proteins, which is extremely useful for the synthesis of new drugs. After his findings, Romesberg even established a company called Synthhorx Inc, which works on developing protein-based treatments!
This research has sparked many ethical concerns. Julian Savulescu, a professor at the University of Oxford, emphasised that although studies like these may have positive implications (for example, introducing new ways to reduce pollution), they also can generate powerful weapons. Additionally, Dr David King, director at the watchdog Human Genetics Alert, worries about the consequences of scientist gaining greater control over natural processes.
Even though the concept of artificially creating life may be intimidating at first, it can have many beneficial impacts in the future, if used ethically. It is extraordinary that scientists have been able to synthesise life thus far, and we can’t wait to see where it will take science in the future.
We shouldn’t exist. More so, nothing should: you, me, the trees, Earth, your dog, our Solar System, and the entire expanding universe. Why? Because the Standard Model of Particle Physics – a description of all the particles and interactions that form the world around us – says so.
Matter cannot come out of nothing; for every particle of matter that is created, an equal and opposite antiparticle is also formed to maintain a balance in the universe. What should happen then, theoretically, is that the particle and antiparticle will attract, collide and annihilate each other to leave nothing but the energy from which they were first formed.
This is what should have happened in the Big Bang. But, something occurred in those first few moments of our universe that led to an imbalance of matter and antimatter, leaving only matter behind which then formed our world. Physics: 0, World: 1.
The answer to the question of how we exist lies in finding the remaining antimatter which should have ended the universe before it began. Why did the antimatter disappear and where did it go?
Here’s what we do know:
In the early universe, there was a small imbalance between matter and antimatter, with a surplus in the former. For every 10 billion antimatter particles, there were 10 billion and one matter particles. Once the 10 billion matter/antimatter pairs annihilated, only the trace amounts of lone matter particles remained.
What we don’t know is how the asymmetry formed. Why was there a lack of antimatter particles?
Here are some current theories:
1. There was never an even amount to begin with. This theory predicts that in the high energy environment generated by the Big Bang, incredibly heavy antiparticles of matter were formed and decayed in a tiny fraction of a second. These particles – the antimatter counterparts of the heavy neutrino and the beauty quark – are predicted to decay in an unusual way, which would tip the scales towards a surplus of matter.
How can we know if this is correct?
Firstly, we would need to recreate the incredibly high energy conditions which were present in the early seconds of the universe. This is the exact work that particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, are built for. Then, we’d need to force particles to collide at velocities close to the speed of light, which is over 10 million times faster than your car at top speed! After the collision, these particles will split into their most basic components, and possibly even form new particles which we’ve never observed before. It is hoped that this process will shed some light on the behaviour of the antiparticle of the heavy neutrino and the beauty quark, and explain how the cosmos came to be.
2. It’s hiding. This theory suggests that in those first few seconds after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter escaped from each other as the universe cooled, like the way in which similar individual atoms align when a hot magnet undergoes cooling. However, for this theory to work, there would have to exist a mirror section of our universe containing an anti-cosmos filled with stars, galaxies and maybe even life.
How can we know if this is correct?
Annihilation in the border between our cosmos and an anti-cosmos would produce an immense concentration of light particles. As this is yet to be observed, we are left with the conclusion that if this anti-cosmos does exist, it does so in an unexplored region of the universe. Our universe is unimaginably vast, and we still know so little due to our observational limit being a 13.9 light year radius from our own position. However, there are other ways of finding concrete evidence of an anti-cosmos.
One of these ways would be the discovery of anti-helium or other heavier anti-atoms. As these atoms would be formed by nuclear fusion in stars, anti-atoms would prove the existence of anti-stars. The mission to find such atoms would be conducted with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer – an experiment module mounted on the International Space Station. If anti-atoms indeed existed and avoided annihilation on their journey towards our world, this piece of equipment would find them.
Evidence for either of these hypotheses would have colossal implications on our understanding of the laws of physics, and could even serve to rewrite the Standard Model. Whether there was an imbalance of certain particles generated during the birth of the universe, or an anti-cosmos lurks at the edges of all we can see and observe, there can be no dispute that the mystery of antimatter is one of the greatest enigmas of our time.
When everything we know about science so far tells us that our very existence should be impossible, will either of these theories bring us any closer to understanding the vast complexities of the world around us?
Only time will tell.
The World Trade Organisation. The World Bank. The World Meteorological Organisation. The World Health Organisation. Many international organisations are operating in the world today, each seeking to unite national efforts and to advocate for relevant critical issues. But, considering the minefield of problems in space exploration and the growing need for collaboration – should there be a World Space Organisation as well?
The idea of creating a World Space Organisation – or rather, a World Space Agency (WSA) – is not a new one. The idea is as old as the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which was established in 1962.
But what about UNOOSA? Isn’t it a ‘world space agency’?
UNOOSA is responsible for promoting international cooperation in space, implementing space law and preparing publications, reports and presentations regarding space technology and space law. UNOOSA also maintains the official registry of all objects launched into outer space and even manages a 24-hour hotline for satellite imagery requests during disasters. But, what UNOOSA isn’t, is a centralised global agency which pools countries’ resources to foster tighter collaborations between nations. And this is where the need for a World Space Agency arises.
The Need for A World Space Agency
As of 2017, 72 different government space agencies exist. And this number is only growing, with Australia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and a coalition of South American countries also declaring the establishment of their own national space agencies over the next few years. The remaining 123 countries in the world without a national space agency are predominantly located in developing regions.
It’s not just unjust that wealthy governments and corporations have a monopoly on the ‘final frontier’ – it’s also against the mission of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to ensure that ”the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and that space shall be free for exploration and use by all the States.” There’s a nuance, however, between ”equal share” and ”equal access”.
The creation of a World Space Agency would act as a catalyst for joint international efforts into space exploration, rational management of resources and the strengthening of cooperation between states. It would also allow funds, technology, labour and finances to be centrally managed in an independent fashion to benefit all countries – not just those with existing government space agencies.
Collaborations between both countries and industries are what will help us accomplish the next milestone in human space exploration: Mars. President Obama thinks that this task will be achieved by the mid-2030s, while Elon Musk has plans for SpaceX to do it by 2024.
International collaborations are already prevalent in the world. For example, look at the International Space Station – its construction and operation involves NASA working with 15 other countries, including Russia, Canada, Japan, Brazil and members of the European Space Agency. Therefore, the tasks of a World Space Agency should first be confined to those that cannot be undertaken through other forms of international cooperation.
While UNOOSA is responsible for monitoring the application of space law, especially law regarding registration, recovery liability, satellites with nuclear power sources and debris, a World Space Agency could thus encourage the sharing of space technologies with developing countries, the training of specialists, and wide circulation of data gathered from remote sensing satellites, which can be important for geological, meteorological and agricultural planning of developing economies.
However, the greatest potential for a World Space Agency is in igniting new interest in space exploration. It would captivate a generation. As said by Stephen Hawking at the 2017 Starmus Festival in Norway, “to leave Earth demands a concerted global approach, everyone should join in… we need to rekindle the excitement of the early days of space travel in the 60s.”
The Barriers to a World Space Agency
While the benefits of a World Space Agency may seem clear, we need to be pragmatic. Given current economic and political structures, and our dislike of ineffective, large, additional levels of bureaucracy (just look at Brexit), a World Space Agency will probably not be a reality for several years…if not decades.
Regional cooperation on space exploration will more likely precede world space exploration. Much like the European Space Agency, the African Union and the Union of South America Nations are seeking to develop continental space agencies of their own. With New Zealand’s space agency being established in 2017, and Australia’s in 2018… who knows? Perhaps our space agencies will team up and Scott Ludlam and Barnaby Joyce will be our first astronauts?
With this in mind, Australia and New Zealand are more economically developed countries. The key steps to laying the foundations for a World Space Agency will be considering the needs of developing countries so that they can partake in such a project.
Comments Off on Diversity in Tertiary Science Education
Is science truly a meritocracy? A system in which the best ideas and thinkers rise to the top, like Brainiac sea-foam? Or do people from underrepresented minority groups – such as disabled females – face substantial systemic barriers that make their journey a bit like playing Fortnite in Battle Royale mode?
Research over the last decade tells us that diversity improves science. Most Australian universities have a defined list of policies, priorities and actions available to all staff and students that promote diversity. Indeed, many even develop initiatives that specifically target, recruit and enrol these students. On paper, it seems that diversity is encouraged, lauded and well-supported by both government and institutional policy and infrastructure. However, how well do these initiatives translate into the student experience?
A 2017 survey of underrepresented minority (URM) students say: not well. Appearances can be deceiving when it comes to gauging actual student experience – a bit like opening a $200 bottle of Bollinger only to discover that the wine is corked. Well, our initiatives are corked. So where is the disconnect? Why do diversity initiatives fail to reach the students they were designed to recruit and assist? For starters, the disconnect is not often academic in nature. The less tangible elements of the student experience –those not documented in university Subject Experience Surveys for example –are the ones that predominantly hinder women and other minorities in their academic journeys.
So, let’s look at diversity. The term merely describes differences within a group. Inclusion, in comparison, is about how these members are treated and how they feel. Emphasizing diversity without institutional, cultural inclusion merely increases the number of diverse scientists. It does not foster equity within the scientific or academic community.
The Australian Human Rights Commission is definitive in its assessment that ‘there are not enough services available to students with a disability to match the requirements’. Despite this, according to Universities Australia, there has been as 94% increase in enrolments by students with a disability over the last decade. As you would expect, there are reams of policy documents addressing both initiatives and codes of practice for universities. The Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 says that active measures must be taken to identify and remove barriers to learning that are reasonable and that do not impose unjustifiable hardship on the organisation. The Students with Disabilities Code of Practise for Australian Tertiary Institutions insists that (under section B1-6) ‘they (disabled students) will be treated with dignity and respect’, and further (under section H2e) that staff are ‘able to respond appropriately to the requirements of students with disabilities and call on timely specialist advice as required’.
Here’s how it translates into reality. A young woman with congenital distal spinal muscular atrophy is studying her undergraduate science degree at one of Australia’s most well-known regional universities. Due to her condition, she is reliant on her wheelchair, and hence she chooses to complete most of the program via distance education. However, Australian Qualifications Framework requirements mean that she must fulfil specific requirements for laboratory hours and face-to-face teaching hours via compulsory residential school sessions. Again, in line with the research, she does not face academic challenges – she is a multiple-time recipient of the Dean’s List academic recognition.
Her challenges are instead practical. The ageing laboratory facilities were not designed for wheelchair accessibility. This leaves her stuck out the front, unable to participate in experiments. Despite booking her accommodation at 9.01am on the day reservations become available, she arrives to discover that the one suitable accessible room out of all the university residences has been allocated to someone else…an ambulatory someone else at that. She is now in a room that doesn’t fit her wheelchair hoist, and in which she cannot shower for the four days that she is required to attend classes. She has little option for recourse. Residential schools often run over weekends, and as a result, there is no one around to fulfil the (H2e) codes of practice. In these circumstances, she is expected to both fully participate in class activities and complete a stressful mid-session examination without the basic human dignity of being able to shower or toilet safely.
Now, this university talks the talk. They value equity diversity. They are about ‘creating a fair and inclusive environment in which students and staff from all backgrounds can flourish’. They have contacted the student in question and have determined to rectify their residential accessibility allocation policy…at some point. But, ask the student how ‘flourishy’ she feels right now. Go on. What are the chances that she’ll be inclined to subject herself to more of the same at a postgraduate level? How can she be expected to ‘bloom’ when her environment is not nurtured? The absence of practical inclusion strategies – for example, having access to more than one appropriately equipped residential room – means that in this case, some of the best ideas, the best thinkers, have very little chance of competing or rising to the top in this supposed ‘meritocracy’ of science. She is playing the same game as her cohort, but in Battle Royale mode. Until diversity initiatives come hand-in-hand with institutional practical inclusion strategies, ‘valuing diversity’ is nothing more than politically correct point-scoring.
Comments Off on Breast Exams: It’s time to get checked
In the words of the immortal Shakira, “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble”. She was hoping that they wouldn’t be confused with mountains, but I’m just hoping that it’s going to make the task at hand a little easier.
I embarked on the exercise of reviewing three apps designed to help you carry out a breast-check. Over 3000 people are expected to die from breast cancer in Australia this year, and it is projected to be the most commonly diagnosed cancer of 2018 – 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed! Stats also say that up to 90% of lumps are found by sufferers themselves, so it is now more critical than ever to understand your breasts inside and out. The Cancer Council recommends that all age groups should be carrying out regular self-checks, so regardless of your age, it is vital that you become familiar with your breasts and be on the lookout for any changes.
Personally, with most campaigns being directed towards my mum’s age group rather than mine, I felt completely clueless as to how a breast exam is conducted. Discovering apps to guide me through this process seemed like the perfect solution, so I’m going to share my experiences and reviews to encourage you to get checked yourself!
The Contestants
I found three apps to pit against one another, stripped them down and got as comfy with them as possible (as comfy as can be conducting a breast check in the Canberra winter!).
1. Breast Check
Breast Check has pictures and focused questions that guide you through a self-conducted breast examination. It shows you how to check your breasts and what to look for, and it also has links to videos that visually help you through the process. It allows you to log your checks and record any changes or concerns that you note, so that you can revisit them in the future. This was one of my favourite features from the three apps and really set Breast Check apart. The app allows you to create a personal plan by linking your breast check to an activity in your own routine, such as going for a run. Furthermore, you can set reminders and decide how often you’d like to check, ranging from weekly to every few months. I would have personally appreciated more specific advice on how frequently a breast examination should be conducted, however, in another section of the app it does recommend checking your breasts at different points in your cycle, to be more attuned to any to changes.
2. Check Yourself
As a side note that has nothing to do with the quality of content, Check Yourself was slightly buggy and crashed once or twice during operation. Bearing in mind that the weather was very nippy and that I was keen to rug up again as soon as possible, this was slightly frustrating. Having said that, the instructions are more detailed than Breast Check, and I felt more confident following them. The instructions are accompanied by animated gifs, which are also great direction. It provides body-positive messages and mentions the need to carry out breast checks even as a teen or young person. The tone of the information it offers is a slightly lighter than the other apps – which may or may not appeal to you – but I did find it to be the most informative out of the three. Like the other apps, it also allows you to set reminders for when to check, but unlike Breast Check, it provides advice on the time in your cycle that is best to do so (about a week after your period ends). It also stresses that it is important to check at the same time each month, which I found particularly useful.
3. Brexa
First up, some of the services that Brexa offers are only available in India (where the app was developed). Naturally, this is disappointing, and it would be fantastic if these services were eventually available in other regions. The app solely uses videos to guide you through a breast check, as opposed to the other two, which offer at least the option of written instruction. Personally, I preferred the option of text, as I could then navigate the process at my own pace. In addition to scheduling reminders for self-checks, Brexa allows you to plan a yearly reminder to book a mammogram, which is vital if you’re over 40. The app can also be used to schedule mammogram appointments, and if a problem arises, appointments with qualified specialist doctors near you can be arranged. However, these functionalities are unfortunately not available in Australia. Furthermore, it includes a feature that calculates your breast cancer risk, but this is only effective for those over 35. Naturally, I cast aside all my hydrating moisturisers and allowed myself to age over a decade to test this out. It asks a few questions and gives you a risk percentage at the end. Overall, I’d say this app can be quite useful – however, it’s most practical for those living in India, aged 40 and over, who have full access to its functionalities. If I’m ignoring the features that I can’t use, I found it to be the weakest of the three.
Overall impressions
All the apps left me feeling far more educated and confident about conducting a self-check, so regardless of which app you choose, I would highly recommend any of them. Nevertheless, Brexa was simultaneously my favourite app and the least useful of the three. It has a lot of great functionalities but these weren’t applicable to my age group or available in my region. If it does suit your region or age group, I’d highly recommend it. Breast Check and Check Yourself I would place about on par – they’re very similar. Breast Check had the great addition of being able to log notes on your checks, but Check Yourself was more informative and slightly easier to follow. I did observe that they were all quite ‘pink’ and gender normative, so I’d love to see app makers pushing for greater diversity in the future. The takeaway message that I hope you’ll walk away with is that breast checks are super important – important enough to strip off on a frosty Canberra night. Regardless of whatever method or app you use, it’s time to get checked.
Initially intended for a 90-day mission, which included investigating for evidence of water on Mars, the Opportunity rover landed on the Red Planet in 2004 and has since operated for fourteen years. However, it looks like this service record may soon come to an end.
On May 30, a dust storm began – a common occurrence on Mars, except this one encompassed the entire planet within a month. Opportunity relies on solar panels for power, so, with the sky dark, it entered hibernation mode on June 10 to conserve energy. Comparatively, the more modern Curiosity rover, powered by heat from an on-board radioactive sample, was unaffected.
For the rover’s operators at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), this was not immediately a cause for concern. The rover is designed to ‘awaken’ at regular intervals to accept commands. During these times, the science team at JPL use NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) to listen for signals from the rover that indicate it is still operational. Additionally, three times a week they send a command outside of the usual window to elicit a ‘beep’ from the rover, in case it’s awake at an unexpected time. This is called ‘active listening’.
However, despite giving off regular pings, Opportunity has not responded. The storm reached its peak in June and has since cleared significantly, so the rover’s continued silence has raised concerns that it has been permanently rendered inoperable by the dust and cold.
In light of this, on August 30, JPL Opportunity project manager John Callas announced a timeline. Once the tau level – a measure of atmospheric opacity in the Martian sky – dropped below 1.5 (it reached 10.8 at the storm’s peak), Opportunity would be given 45 days of active listening. If no response was heard, JPL would then be forced to declare the rover dead.
Although Callas’s statement is realistic, some would argue that it is fatalistic. Reportedly, Opportunity team members were not consulted about the deadline or given prior notice of the August 30 announcement. Many team members felt that cutting active listening after 45 days would be giving up on Opportunity too soon. Former Opportunity director Mike Seibert remarked, “it just seems like it’s an easier thing to say we’re done than putting the extra effort into soldiering on…”
Indeed, over the fourteen years, JPL has already seen Opportunity endure far more challenges than anticipated. The rover has lasted more than 55 times its expected lifetime; designed to travel about 1000 metres, it has logged 45 kilometres and become the furthest-travelled vehicle on any moon or planet besides Earth. Its unplanned longevity is owed to an unexpected Martian phenomenon, discovered only after the rover arrived on Mars. Every Martian year, the planet experiences a windy season lasting about two Earth months. Strong gusts of wind, called ‘cleaning events’ or ‘dust devils,’ can clean accumulated dust off the rover’s solar panels. If not for these devils, Opportunity would have lost power long ago.
This year, the windy season is expected to come in November and last until January. But, if the tau level drops soon, the 45-day deadline will not be enough time to last the whole season.
It appears that the Opportunity team believes that the short deadline is due to economic concerns. Opportunity science team collaborator Tanya Harrison commented, “in the grand scheme of things, [dust devil season] is not that long from now… you’re not going to suddenly be saving tens of millions of dollars by cutting the mission short.” However, Callas seems to think the windy season will not help. His announcement emphasises that it is unlikely that dust build-up on the solar panels is the sole reason for Opportunity’s silence – even if the wind can clean the dust, the rover has also likely suffered permanent damage that will prevent it from rebooting. But, Callas is not blind to the emotional impact on his team: “It’s just like a loved one that’s missing in action… you still hold out hope, and we are. We’ll still listen. But we have to be realistic, too…”
The experience is particularly acute for the team because they have been through it before. Spirit, the sister rover to Opportunity and part of the same Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission, fell silent in March 2010. Like Opportunity, it’s inability to be solar-powered led to Spirit’s untimely fate. In May 2009, it became stuck in a position where it could not face the sun. The rover could not run its heaters, and when the Martian winter came, the cold left it inoperable.
According to Seibert, Spirit’s chances were far worse than Opportunity’s are now, yet Spirit was given much more time – it was May 2011 before attempts to re-establish contact were halted and the rover was declared dead. “We did everything we could have done,” he said.
This time, the stakes are higher. Regarding Spirit‘s loss, Seibert said: “It was just losing half of the spacecraft, but there was still plenty to do”. Now, if Opportunity remains silent, the MER mission comes to a close. The team is understandably anxious for this not to happen anytime soon.
However, even if it the operation must conclude, Opportunity’s life has had no shortage of extraordinary discoveries. In its first few weeks on Mars, it uncovered small, highly spherical pieces of the mineral hematite in the soil. The discovery of hematite was critical, as it is the mineral form of rust which usually forms in water. However, it was likely formed in highly acidic water that would be difficult for life to survive in. In 2011, Opportunity also detected smectite, a clay mineral, in the Endeavour Crater. Like hematite, smectite forms in water – specifically water with a neutral pH – thereby providing much stronger evidence for the possibility of life on Mars.
Perhaps in fifty years, when Mars seems as close as the moon does now, we will look back at Opportunity’s discoveries and be amazed that they were made by a robot controlled from fifty million kilometres away.
Comments Off on How Science Is Being Used Against You
You may not want to waste energy or burn fossil fuels, but you’ll soon discover that the deck is stacked against you. Everything is designed to use more and more fuel. Take your car for example. You may think that switching to biofuel or even driving an electric car is doing the environment a favour. But every operation performed during a simple drive to work burns unnecessary petrol.
For starters, stopping at a stop sign uses more fuel, as you must re-accelerate your car from a standstill. Think about how this effect is multiplied over thousands of vehicles that are stuck in peak hour traffic, twice a day. Cars also tend to be the most fuel efficient at the ‘sweet spot’ speed of 80-95 kph. Anything over that and you’ll begin to use more fuel, as your car encounters greater wind resistance when travelling at higher speeds. In fact, you’d consume 15% more fuel by driving at 100kph instead of 90 kph.
While I wish I could point the finger and blame some policy-maker for engineering an evil system designed to waste as much fuel as possible, the reality is that this is the result of decades of sheer negligence. As fuel is still relatively cheap, it’s much easier to cut corners on making thoughtful, eco-friendly designs, and to just burn more fuel instead. Fuel is the expendable in our economy right now.
There are also other (rather clever) ways to get us to consume more fuel beside what’s in our cars. You don’t need to be a psychology major to know that us humans don’t like petrol stations. They’re usually loud, filthy and have that intoxicating scent of unleaded petrol to them. Not to mention, there’s nothing nice about having to fork out a whole heap of cash to pay large petroleum corporates every time you fill up. There’s loads of research to back this up. A 1994 study by researchers at the University of Denver showed that people have negative feelings toward petrol stations and positive attitudes toward ATM machines. Go figure – who doesn’t enjoy being handed bundles of 20 and 50 dollar notes that seem to appear out of thin air?
To make us feel comfortable spending more money at the petrol station, petrol pumps have been specifically designed to look like ATM machines – diffusing the anger we feel toward petrol stations and creating a more positive relationship like we would have with an ATM machine. No matter how hard we try to change our personal consumption preferences, or how far technology advances, the world around us is designed to slow our fight against change.
There was a recent survey conducted by the ABC which asked readers how far they would go to adjust their behaviours in response to our increasing population. Some said they wouldn’t have kids, others claimed that they’d be willing to relocate from the city to the country if their friends did the same. On the other hand, some weren’t prepared to compromise their current living standards.
As much as I dislike the idea of having to dictate human behaviour – for example, how many kids people should have, where they should live and what kind of car they should drive – the notion that we should solely rely on the advancement of science and future technologies to solve our issues is nothing but a cop-out. Science doesn’t progress linearly, and it doesn’t always improve our living conditions. A simple example of this is given by a 2015 report from Microsoft, which showed that our new digital lifestyle is impacting our ability to focus. Human attention span has shortened from twelve seconds to eight seconds since the turn of the millennium.
Technology can also be lost. While being interviewed, when asked why he sets such ambitious targets for his companies, Elon Musk commented that technology may not always be an “upward slope”. Just like the Egyptians ‘lost’ the knowledge and technology to build the pyramids and read hieroglyphics, and Romans the ability to build aqueducts and indoor plumbing, we too could lose the technological advancements that we have made in recent years.
The key message I want you to take away from this article is that changing your personal behaviours will not have the dramatic impact that you think. No matter how many of us go vegan, sell our cars to use public transport or take shorter showers, there will still be wastage of the earth’s natural resources in virtually every aspect of human life. Since we can’t rely upon science to solve these issues, we need to call upon smart policy.
We’ve seen this work before. Innovative urban planning, like redesigning the public transport systems in Dakar, Senegal and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, can reduce GHG emissions, increase economic productivity, encourage women to work and reduce social inequalities.
Looking at this issue in an Australian context: sure, people could make the difficult decision to move from cities to regional areas, but a national high-speed rail network would allow people to maintain their city lifestyles and jobs without having to live there. You could also shower as infrequently as you want, but unless the government insists on utilising renewable energy and recycled water – technologies we already have – there’s not much point making an effort. We all want to see improvements made in the world, but the power to implement these changes is above us. It’s out of the hands of science too. It’s up to our policymakers to lead the change we want to see.
Oil is incredibly energy-rich.
One barrel of oil equals 6.1 Gigajoules. One way to conceptualise this amount of energy is to imagine how many hours of human labour it represents. Since labour varies significantly in physical demands, this measurement is subject to variance, but 6.1 Gigajoules is equivalent to 2,078 – 14,544 human hours of work. The average US citizen uses 60 barrels of oil a day, which is roughly equivalent to 60-450 years of human labour.
60-450 years of energy – used in a single day!
Oil is basically magic.
Many ideas about human progress assume that as one natural resource becomes scarce, we can substitute it for another. This idea, known as ‘Prometheanism’, was popularised by political theorist John Dryzek. Missing in Dryzek’s analysis is an acknowledgement that oil is not just one of many natural resources – it’s particularly special. One way to appreciate this is to recognise that oil is basically millions of years of solar energy that has been trapped and fossilised, lying conveniently under the surface for us to discover and use.
We are fortunate to have oil. More than we realise.
The idea that oil is fossilised sunlight (stored energy) demonstrates its uniqueness. Consider all the countless plants, animals, and even entire ecosystems that have once soaked up solar energy. All this biota represents evolutionary processes spanning millions of years: a progression of heightened complexity, energy production and consumption. From single-celled organisms, to plants, to animals – as life evolved and advanced, it too extracted, accumulated and condensed increasingly greater levels of solar energy. Eventually, the biota decomposed and was compressed, and after countless years of geological processes, became oil.
In a sense, oil represents the total progress of a past ‘civilisation’, summed up by its ability to store solar energy and then leave that energy behind. In video game terms, the numerical amount of energy left behind by the last big attempt is like the ‘high score’ you get at the end of the game after you die. However, we also have a huge advantage going into the next game, as some of the progress from the last attempt was saved in the form of trapped energy.
Energy and human development.
Energy and development go hand in hand. There are strong arguments that oil (and the high-quality energy it provides) was chiefly responsible for the last century’s unprecedented population growth and development. Graham Zabel, writing for Resilience.org, describes how history often attributes this development to specific factors, such as medicine, public health, sanitation, agriculture, trade, and transportation. However, people often discount how each was ‘aided and influenced by the availability of cheap, high-quality energy’.
Even more fundamentally, the link between development and energy can be seen in evolutionary biology, such as in our own cells. The evolution of simple eukaryotic cells to their prokaryotic counterparts – the basis of complex life – is ultimately the story of the mitochondria, which allowed eukaryotic cells to command far higher levels of energy (some 200,000 times more). In a sense, nature selects for increased energy and complexity.
Cheaters with an inflated sense of skill.
Imagine that life is a game of chess. Now imagine that the previous ‘dinosaur’ civilisation – the one that became oil – had to play the game as we know it: usual rules, no advantages or special consideration. They played hard and eventually lost.
Now it’s our turn, but because the dinosaurs did well, we have an advantage. Thanks to all the stored energy in the form of oil, we can remove three pieces from the opponent’s board. If you know something about chess, you will understand that this upper hand changes the game completely. Naturally, you would press this advantage as quickly and ruthlessly as possible to consolidate and lock in your head start.
That’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re winning the game and kicking ass. But here’s the thing: unless we discover alternatives to oil, we are going to lose this advantage someday. This doesn’t seem to concern people very much though, perhaps because many of us have faith in our ability to ‘figure something out’. Some of us put this faith in technological innovation, while others trust human ingenuity more generally. Typical among these narratives, however, is an overinflated sense of progression, driven by a dishonest account of our history. Yes, we have been winning games and kicking ass – but we had a considerable advantage, remember?
From this perspective, we have what I’d call a ‘cheater’s sense of skill’. All that progress we’ve made – that we look to as inspiration for meeting the next great challenge – is founded on a unique and finite resource that has given us a head start. Should oil production plateau and energy supplies drop precipitously enough, then we will be playing chess for real once again, like ‘Team Dinosaur’ had to. Perhaps, given this risk, we should be a little humbler about just how clever we, in ‘Team Monkey’, actually are.
I will leave you with this…
You’re not golden and I’m getting tired
Act like you own the place when really, you’ve only just arrived
I caught first glimmers in hides and skins
Look who’s all grown up, black swanning about the solar winds
You’re gonna lose it all and find yourself on your knees
So get a grip and you might flow reverse the great slow bleed
I’ve tried patience but you always want a war
This house won’t tolerate any more