The Overnight News Digest is a nightly series chronicling the eschaton and the effort to build back better from it. Saturday’s focus is on science.
BBC News
Humans waging 'suicidal war' on nature - UN chief Antonio Guterres
"Our planet is broken," the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, has warned. Humanity is waging what he describes as a "suicidal" war on the natural world.
"Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury," he told a BBC special event on the environment.
Mr Guterres wants to put tackling climate change at the heart of the UN's global mission.
In a speech entitled State of the Planet, he announced that its "central objective" next year will be to build a global coalition around the need to reduce emissions to net zero.
Scientific American
Major Companies Call on Biden to Act on Climate Change
Some major companies are angling to line up with the Biden administration on climate next year, as lawmakers and lobbyists gird for renewed policy fights in Washington.
A big slice of corporate America—including utilities, banks and auto manufacturers—signed onto a statement yesterday calling on President-elect Joe Biden to work with Congress on “ambitious, durable, bipartisan climate solutions.”
While the statement doesn’t offer support for a specific policy, its signatories represent a cross section of the U.S. economy, including Amazon.com Inc., Bank of America Corp., BP PLC, Walmart Inc., DSM and Exelon Corp.
“To achieve a net-zero economy, the United States must establish durable national policies that harness market forces, mobilize investment and innovation, and provide the certainty needed to plan for the long term,” they wrote.
Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
[…] As the global climate continues to warm, many questions remain about the periglacial environment. Among them: as water infiltration increases, will permafrost thaw more rapidly? And, if so, what long-frozen organisms might “wake up”?
Permafrost … layers may still contain ancient frozen microbes, Pleistocene megafauna and even buried smallpox victims. As the permafrost thaws with increasing rapidity, scientists’ emerging challenge is to discover and identify the microbes, bacteria and viruses that may be stirring.
Some of these microbes are known to scientists. Methanogenic Archaea, for example metabolize soil carbon to release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Other permafrost microbes (methanotrophs) consume methane. The balance between these microbes plays a critical role in determining future climate warming.
Others are known but have unpredictable behavior after release. New evidence of genes moving between thawing ecosystems indicates a restructuring at multiple levels. In the Arctic Ocean, planktonic Chloroflexi bacteria recently acquired genes used for degrading carbon from land-based Actinobacteria species. As melt-swollen Arctic rivers carried sediments from thawing permafrost to the sea, the genes for processing permafrost carbon were also transported.
Gizmodo
Astronomers Confirm Mystery Object as NASA’s Lost Rocket Booster From the 1960s
An incoming object spotted by astronomers this past August has been confirmed as the upper stage of a Centaur rocket, which NASA launched in 1966 during an ill-fated mission to the Moon. It’s a neat achievement, but the confirmation took some doing.
After months of speculation, a team led by Vishnu Reddy, an associate professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, has confirmed object 2020 SO as being the upper stage of a Centaur rocket booster, as NASA reports. […]
“As humanity expands into space, we’re going to see a lot of objects that are artificial in heliocentric orbits [orbiting the Sun],” he said. “It’s essential that we know what’s coming our way, whether it’s artificial or natural.” To which he added: “This whole process shows that it’s possible to identify something that was launched 54 years ago.”
A Daring Giraffe Rescue Is Underway in Kenya
Conservationists, government officials, and local community members are banding together to pull off a rescue of eight giraffes stranded on a shrinking island in Kenya. In order to save these animals, they created a giraffe-safe barge to get them across to safe land. They made the first successful rescue of a giraffe named Asiwa today, with more planned in the coming days and weeks.
The population of giraffes in Africa has been declining over the past few decades, due to habitat loss and poaching. But some subspecies of the majestically tall creatures are in more imminent danger than others. One of the most threatened populations is the Rothschild’s giraffe. As little as 1,600 of these giraffes are estimated to still be living in the wild, with up to 800 living in Kenya.
In 2011, some Rothschild’s giraffes were relocated to Longicharo Island in Lake Baringo. At the time, the island’s landmass was larger and connected to the mainland, making it a peninsula. But recent intense flooding around the lake has threatened both the nearby wildlife and local villages. That includes eight giraffes that became stuck on the island.
Nature
Reversal of biological clock restores vision in old mice
Researchers have restored vision in old mice and in mice with damaged retinal nerves by resetting some of the thousands of chemical marks that accumulate on DNA as cells age. The work, published on 2 December in Nature, suggests a new approach to reversing age-related decline, by reprogramming some cells to a ‘younger’ state in which they are better able to repair or replace damaged tissue.
“It is a major landmark,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a developmental biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, who was not involved in the study. “These results clearly show that tissue regeneration in mammals can be enhanced.”
But researchers also caution that the work has so far has been carried out only in mice, and it remains to be seen whether the approach will translate to people, or to other tissues and organs that are ravaged by time.
Gut-wrenching footage documents Arecibo telescope’s collapse
The iconic radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has collapsed, leaving astronomers and the Puerto Rican scientific community to mourn its demise.
Engineers had warned that the 900-tonne platform suspended above the telescope’s 305-metre-wide dish could fall at any moment, given that one of the main cables supporting it had snapped in early November. Last month, the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the observatory, had announced it would shut down the telescope permanently, citing safety concerns over its instability, and damage too extensive to repair.
The final collapse happened just before 8 a.m. local time on 1 December. No one was injured.
Reuters
Divers discover Nazi WW2 enigma machine in Baltic Sea
German divers searching the Baltic Sea for discarded fishing nets have stumbled upon a rare Enigma cipher machine used by the Nazi military during World War Two which they believe was thrown overboard from a scuttled submarine.
Thinking they had discovered a typewriter entangled in a net on the seabed of Gelting Bay, underwater archaeologist Florian Huber quickly realised the historical significance of the find.
“I’ve made many exciting and strange discoveries in the past 20 years. But I never dreamt that we would one day find one of the legendary Enigma machines,” said Huber.
Thai researchers unearth rare whale skeleton
Thai researchers have unearthed a rare partially fossilised skeleton belonging to a Bryde’s whale believed to be around 5,000 years old at an inland site west of Bangkok.
The 12.5-metre (41 ft) long skeleton was found by a cyclist, who spotted part of a vertebrae coming out of the ground, in early November. Excavation has been going on since then.
“This whale skeleton is thought to be the only one in Asia,” said Pannipa Saetian, a geologist in the Fossil Protection division of the Department of Mineral Resources.
Phys.org
Researchers observe what could be the first hints of dark bosons
Extremely light and weakly interacting particles may play a crucial role in cosmology and in the ongoing search for dark matter. Unfortunately, however, these particles have so far proved very difficult to detect using existing high-energy colliders. Researchers worldwide have thus been trying to develop alternative technologies and methods that could enable the detection of these particles.
Over the past few years, collaborations between particle and atomic physicists working at different institutes worldwide have led to the development of a new technique that could be used to detect interactions between very light bosons and neutrons or electrons. Light bosons, in fact, should change the energy levels of electrons in atoms and ions, a change that could be detectable using the technique proposed by these teams of researchers.
Using this method, two different research groups (one at Aarhus University in Denmark and the other at Massachusetts Institute of Technology) recently performed experiments aimed at gathering hints of the existence of dark bosons, elusive particles that are among the most promising dark matter candidates or mediators to a dark sector.
China turns on nuclear-powered 'artificial sun'
China successfully powered up its "artificial sun" nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, state media reported Friday, marking a great advance in the country's nuclear power research capabilities.
The HL-2M Tokamak reactor is China's largest and most advanced nuclear fusion experimental research device, and scientists hope that the device can potentially unlock a powerful clean energy source. […]
‘"The development of nuclear fusion energy is not only a way to solve China's strategic energy needs, but also has great significance for the future sustainable development of China's energy and national economy," said the People's Daily.
Science
CRISPR and another genetic strategy fix cell defects in two common blood disorders
It is a double milestone: new evidence that cures are possible for many people born with sickle cell disease and another serious blood disorder, beta-thalassemia, and a first for the genome editor CRISPR.
In today’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and tomorrow at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting, teams report that two strategies for directly fixing malfunctioning blood cells have dramatically improved the health of a handful of people with these genetic diseases. One relies on CRISPR, marking the first inherited disease treated with the powerful tool created just 8 years ago. And both treatments are among a wave of genetic strategies poised to widely expand who can be freed of the two conditions. The only current cure, a bone marrow transplant, is risky, and appropriately matched donors are often scarce.
The novel genetic treatments still need longer folllow up, have the same safety issues as bone marrow transplants for now, and may also be extraordinarily expensive, but there is hope those risks can be eliminated and the costs pared down.
There’s an ecosystem beneath your feet—and it needs protection, new report says
Reach down and scoop up some soil. Cupped in your hands may be 5000 different kinds of creatures—and as many individual cells as there are humans on the globe. That random handful might hold microscopic fungi, decomposing plant matter, a whisker-size nematode munching on the fungi, and a predatory, pinhead-size mite about to pounce on the nematode. One bacterium may fend off another with a potent antibiotic. It’s a whole world of often overlooked biodiversity.
Today, on the eve of World Soil Day, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has released its first ever global assessment of the biodiversity in this underground world. Some 300 experts have pooled their knowledge and data to describe the diversity of these organisms, the roles they play in both natural and agricultural environments, and the threats they face.
“The organisms below ground are arguably just as important, if not more important, than what’s above ground,” says Noah Fierer, a soil ecologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who did not contribute to the report.
The Seattle Times
Chemical in tire dust killing coho salmon returning to Puget Sound, new research shows
First they circle. Then they gasp at the surface of the water. Soon they can’t swim. Then they die.
For decades now, scientists have known something was killing beautiful, adult coho salmon as soon as they hit Seattle’s urban waters, ready to spawn. They had escaped the orcas, the fishermen, traveled thousands of miles, only to be mysteriously killed as soon as they finally reached home.
In a breakthrough paper published in the Dec. 3 issue of Science, a team of researchers revealed the culprit behind the deaths of coho in an estimated 40% of the Puget Sound area — a killer so lethal it takes out 40 to 90% of returning coho to some urban streams before they spawn. It is a killer hidden in plain sight.
Tires. More specifically, a single chemical, 6PPD-quinone, derived from a preservative that helps tires last longer.
Santa Cruz Sentinel
In face of climate change, butterfly populations continue to plummet
Pacific Grove this time of the year usually draws thousands of visitors in search of clusters of western monarch butterflies. The city is among several locations along the Central Coast, including Santa Cruz’s Natural Bridges State Beach and Lighthouse Field, known as great places to view the spectacular display.
But as insect populations plummet worldwide, there are few if any monarchs to see in “Butterfly Town, U.S.A.” this year. Their disappearance from winter habitats is part of a larger vanishing act of all western butterfly species that is altering California’s landscape in unknowable ways.
“This is nothing but a tragedy — not just for Pacific Grove but for us as a society,” said Bill Peake, the city’s mayor.
Scientists say butterfly populations throughout the western U.S. have been dropping dramatically over the last two decades — a consequence of habitat degradation, pesticide use and intense wildfires linked to climate change
Mongabay
Humanity’s construction footprint in the seas amounts to 32,000 square kilometers
From underwater tunnels to bridges to communication cables snaking across the ocean floor, structures made by humans are encroaching on marine life at an ever-growing pace. Our physical footprint of marine construction covers an area of 32,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles) on the seafloor globally, according to a recent study in Nature Sustainability.
The area spanned by these and other structures, such as artificial islands for coastal residents and vast aquaculture farms near shore, already is larger than the entirety of Belgium. And it’s only projected to get bigger over the next decade, conclude the scientists, who project the area to expand by another 7,300 square kilometers by 2028.
The study marks the first time that the impact of marine structures on our global seascape has been quantified. Researchers from the University of Sydney, Australia, collaborated with an international team to synthesize the available global data on marine structures and used it to come up with a conservative estimate of sprawl size.
The glaciers of the Greenland Ice Sheet are running away
The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass, and there may be no way to stop it, scientists have concluded. Even if large amounts of snowfall return to the ice sheet, it will continue to shrink, according to new research published in Communications Earth and Environment.
The problem appears to lie with Greenland’s glaciers, which deliver ice from inland areas to the sea. “They’re conveyor belts of ice,” said glaciologist Michalea King of The Ohio State University, first author of the study. “If you look at an aerial image of a glacier, it looks like a long finger of ice that extends off of an ice sheet.”
These glaciers act like dams that control how much ice flows into the ocean, said Michael Wood, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who was not involved in the study. “What’s happened is that a lot of those dams have burst,” Wood told Mongabay. The new study, he said, shows this process “is fully or mostly responsible for the extra ice flooding into the ocean.”
The Atlantic
The Voyagers Found a Small Surprise in Interstellar Space
The missions that humankind has sent farthest into space, a pair of NASA spacecraft called the Voyagers, are billions of miles from Earth. The last time one of them took a picture of its surroundings was in 1990, after flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus on its way to interstellar space, the mysterious expanse between stars. This far beyond the planets, there’s not much to see.
But there are some things to feel, in the sense that a spacefaring machine can feel something. Even this far out, the sun can still make its presence known.
A team of scientists has detected sudden bursts of cosmic rays around the Voyagers. The bursts, they report, are caused by shock waves emanating from solar eruptions that spew particles out at a million miles an hour. The shock waves take more than a year to reach the Voyagers, but when they do, they excite cosmic-ray electrons nearby. Scientists have observed similar phenomena closer to home, around Earth and our planetary neighbors, but never in interstellar space.
The U.S. Has Passed the Hospital Breaking Point
Since the beginning of the pandemic, public-health experts have warned of one particular nightmare. It is possible, they said, for the number of coronavirus patients to exceed the capacity of hospitals in a state or city to take care of them. Faced with a surge of severely ill people, doctors and nurses will have to put beds in hallways, spend less time with patients, and become more strict about whom they admit into the hospital at all. The quality of care will fall; Americans who need hospital beds for any other reason—a heart attack, a broken leg—will struggle to find space. Many people will unnecessarily suffer and die. […]
A month ago, in early November, hospitalizations passed 60,000—and kept climbing, quickly. On Wednesday, the country tore past a nauseating virus record. For the first time since the pandemic began, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, nearly double the record highs seen during the spring and summer surges.
The pandemic nightmare scenario—the buckling of hospital and health-care systems nationwide—has arrived. Several lines of evidence are now sending us the same message: Hospitals are becoming overwhelmed, causing them to restrict whom they admit and leading more Americans to die needlessly.
Science Daily
Not just lizards: Alligators can regrow their tails too, new study reveals
An interdisciplinary team of scientists using advanced imaging technology have answered the question of whether alligators share any of the same regenerative capabilities as much smaller reptiles. Many kinds of small reptiles, such as lizards, are known to regrow their tails. However, with a potential body length of 14 feet, little was known about whether alligators could possibly regrow their massive tails.
A team of researchers from Arizona State University and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries have uncovered that young alligators have the ability to regrow their tails up to three-quarters of a foot -- about 18% of their total body length. They speculate that regrowing their tails gives the alligators a functional advantage in their murky aquatic habitats.
The team combined advanced imaging techniques with demonstrated methods of studying anatomy and tissue organization to examine the structure of these regrown tails. They found that these new tails were complex structures, with a central skeleton composed of cartilage surrounded by connective tissue that was interlaced with blood vessels and nerves. Their findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Two distinctly different liquid states of water
Using X-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to follow the transformation between two distinct different liquid states of water, both being made of H2O molecules. At around -63 Centigrade the two liquids exist at different pressure regimes with a density difference of 20%. By rapidly varying the pressure before the sample could freeze, it was possible to observe one liquid changing into the other in real time. Their findings are published in the journal Science.
Water, both common and necessary for life on Earth, behaves very strangely in comparison with other substances. How water's properties such as density, specific heat, viscosity and compressibility respond to changes in pressure and temperature is completely opposite to other liquids that we know. Consequently, water is often called "anomalous." If water would have behaved as a "normal liquid" we would not exist, since marine life could not have developed. However, it is still an open question: what causes these anomalies?
NASA
Noise and Light Pollution From Humans Alter Bird Reproduction
Human-produced noise and light pollution are troublesome to our avian neighbors, according to new research from a team at California Polytechnic State University, published November 11 in Nature.
Using NASA satellite data, the researchers got a bird’s-eye view of how noise and light negatively affected bird reproduction in North America. The team also discovered that these factors might interact with or even mask birds’ responses to the effects of climate change.
Bird populations have declined by about 30 percent in the last few decades. Scientists and land managers seeking to understand what caused the decline and reverse the trend had largely overlooked the effects of noise and light pollution, until recent studies suggested that these stressors could harm certain types of birds.
Astronauts Harvest First Radish Crop on International Space Station
On Nov. 30, 2020, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvested radish plants growing in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) aboard the International Space Station. She meticulously collected and wrapped in foil each of the 20 radish plants, placing them in cold storage for the return trip to Earth in 2021 on SpaceX’s 22nd Commercial Resupply Services mission.
The plant experiment, called Plant Habitat-02 (PH-02), is the first time NASA has grown radishes on the orbiting laboratory. NASA selected radishes because they are well understood by scientists and reach maturity in just 27 days. These model plants are also nutritious and edible, and are genetically similar to Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant related to cabbage that researchers frequently study in microgravity.
“Radishes are a different kind of crop compared to leafy greens that astronauts previously grew on the space station, or dwarf wheat which was the first crop grown in the APH,” said Nicole Dufour, NASA APH program manager at Kennedy Space Center.
The Washington Post
Jupiter and Saturn will come close enough to form first ‘double planet’ visible in nearly 800 years
In the complex dance of the cosmos, two celestial bodies are about to partner up.
Jupiter and Saturn often look far apart — two separate specks puncturing different parts of the night sky. But later this month, the two largest planets in the solar system will come so close to each other that they may appear to be overlapping, according to NASA, creating a kind of “double planet” that has not been visible since the Middle Ages.
The once-in-a-lifetime sight is the product of an astronomical event known as a “conjunction,” in which two objects line up with each other in the sky. When it involves Jupiter and Saturn catching up to each other, it’s sometimes called a “great conjunction.”
Danish mayfly, a prolific but short-lived insect species, named Insect of the Year by entomology group
What has been around for 355 million years but disappears within days of maturity?
A group of European entomologists wants the answer to become a household name. They’ve named the Danish mayfly, a prolific but short-lived insect species, their 2021 Insect of the Year.
The honor was bestowed by the German Society for General and Applied Entomology, a multinational organization that settles on a single insect species to elevate every year. They have plenty to choose from — about 1 million species have been identified thus far, and researchers think that number could represent as few as 20 percent of the actual breadth of the insect world.
The Guardian
Japan’s Hayabusa2 capsule returns to Earth carrying asteroid samples
A capsule that contains samples from a distant asteroid, which was released 220,000km (137,500 miles) away from Earth by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft earlier on Saturday, has landed safely in South Australia.
Hayabusa2 left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300m kilometers away, a year ago. After it released the capsule, it moved away from Earth to capture images of the capsule descending toward the planet as it set off on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.
About two hours later, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) said it had successfully rerouted Hayabusa2 for its new mission, as beaming staff exchanged fist and elbow touches at the agency’s command centre in Sagamihara, near Tokyo.
US plans to protect thousands of miles of coral reefs in Pacific and Caribbean
In a long-awaited move from the Trump administration, the US has proposed critical habitat protections for twelve coral species in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean. The rules would protect over 6,000 sq miles (nearly 16,000 sq km) of critical coral habitat.
The rules cite climate change as the most severe threat to all 12 coral species across their range. Impacts of the climate crisis include ocean acidification, which hinders the ability of corals to grow, and ocean warming, which causes corals to expel the algae living in their tissues in a phenomenon known as coral bleaching. Fishing and land-based pollution have also contributed to the species’ decline.
“The critical habitat protections are fantastic for these corals,” said Miyoko Sakashita, Oceans Director for the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “Habitat protections are one of the key things that corals need to safeguard their survival.”
Ars Technica
New analysis: Extreme flows in US streams are rising
Climate change involves direct consequences on the cycling of water through our environment. The warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, making intense rainstorms dump even more water than they used to. On the flip side, warmer air can suck even more moisture out of the ground through evaporation, worsening droughts. These things should obviously result in changes for streams. But the amount of water in streams varies wildly under normal conditions, and it can also be affected by more than just weather. Finding trends in that data has proven difficult.
A new study led by Evan Dethier at Dartmouth College set out to group streams into physically meaningful categories, to see if consistent patterns emerge once apples are separated from oranges. That analysis does reveal some trends—both in extremes of high flow and low flow.
NASA is about to have double Dragons at its space station
NASA and SpaceX are making final preparations for a cargo mission that will carry nearly three metric tons of supplies to the International Space Station.
This "CRS-21" mission is the 21st cargo supply mission that SpaceX will launch for NASA overall. But it is the first under a new supply contract that runs through 2024, and this will be the first to use an upgraded "Cargo Dragon 2" vehicle to ferry food, water, science experiments, and other materials to the orbiting laboratory.
The new cargo vehicle is a modified version of the Crew Dragon spacecraft that has flown humans to the space station twice this year, in May and November. The cargo variant lacks seats and cockpit controls, a life support system, and the Super Draco thrusters that are used as an emergency escape system if a problem occurs during launch.