scientificamerican--2020-10-30--Coronavirus News Roundup: October 24-October 30

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter , “ Smart , useful , science stuff about COVID-19.
” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox , sign up here : This 10/28/20 story in El País , by Mariano Zafra and Javier Salas , features excellent visuals that illustrate the airborne risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection for a set number of people in indoor settings for several hours under various additive conditions , including : a ) no protective measures , b ) people consistently wear masks , c ) masks are worn , the premises are ventilated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the setting .
The settings include a living room , a bar or restaurant , and a school classroom .
The illustrations rely on calculations yielded by a tool developed by atmospheric chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez of the University of Colorado Boulder , and colleagues .
A lot of us are facing difficult decisions these days about traveling and gathering for holidays .
“ Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others ” from SARS-CoV-2 , according to the introduction to a helpful interactive on travel safety published at The Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of five questions on topics such as lodging , mode of travel or travel companions , the interactive returns a summary of the associated virus-transmission risk , travel safety tips , testing advice , and preventive measures you can or should take , such as quarantining , mask-wearing , hand-washing , social distancing , and advance discussions .
Clever headline on this 10/23/20 Kaiser Health News story : “ Travel on Thanksgiving ?
Pass the COVID.
” The piece by Anna Almendrala rounds up lots of helpful advice : 1 ) ideally , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t widen your social circles for the holiday , the story states ; 2 ) if you travel locally to dine with others , interact only with people in your household , aka self-quarantine , for two weeks before the event to minimize risk ( this is only feasible for people who do not work outside the home and people without children attending school in-person ; your housemates must also self-quarantine for this to be effective ) ; 3 ) California ’ s Department of Public Health issued these “ harm-reduction ” guidelines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; 4 ) if you fly , “ get tested before the flight for peace of mind , buy tickets on a plane that is leaving middle seats empty , use highly protective N95 masks and possibly face shields , and blast the individual airplane vents directly onto each family member to disrupt potential virus particles .
And , of course , wash your hands frequently.
” For the Washington Post , Natalie B. Compton stayed at a budget , mid-range , and upscale hotels to assess their SARS-CoV-2 prevention measures ( 10/13/20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re as safe at a budget hotel as you are at a mid-range hotel , but there is no safety advantage to staying in an expensive “ luxury ” hotel .
Relevant measures at a Holiday Inn Express included automatic doors to the main entrance , social distancing stickers on the lobby floor , plexiglass panels to separate guests and desk workers , and to-go breakfast bags .
At a Hyatt , Compton found a hand sanitizer dispenser in the lobby , plexiglass dividers at the check-in desk , contact-less check-in , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gym available by appointment .
If you haven ’ t yet devised or purchased a portable air cleaner for your home , school , or workplace , here ’ s an advice essay on the topic , by freelance writer Laura Daily for The Washington Post ( 10/19/20 ) .
Two well-respected public health researchers who focus on indoor air both recommend placing portable air cleaners with HEPA ( high-efficiency particulate air ) filters in school classrooms , Daily writes .
Know the area of the room where you wish to install a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s specifications to ensure that it can handle the job .
The piece links to a site created by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and University of Colorado , Boulder that can be used to select an appropriate air filter for a room of specific dimensions .
Air cleaners at home are likely worth considering only if you live with someone whose job or school puts them in contact with others , the piece suggests .
Air purifiers do not eliminate the risk of indoor transmission , so continue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and distance if guests visit , the story describes the experts as advising .
At Wired , Gregory Barber revisits the weak , indirect evidence that touching recently infected surfaces and then our face is a significant way that SARS-CoV-2 spreads ( 10/20/20 ) .
Nearly all cases of transmission now have been linked to “ shared air , ” although transmission from surfaces ( known in infectious disease research as “ fomites ” ) can not be entirely ruled out , he reports .
Early evidence on the persistence of the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fomite freakout ” this spring , according to a Princeton University mathematical biologist who is quoted in the story and coauthored the early surface-persistence research .
Yes , SARS-CoV-2 can persist on some hard surfaces for hours or days , but these data say nothing about one ’ s personal risk for infection , the dose of viral particles transferred , the likelihood of particles entering your airway and infecting you , and other real-life ( not laboratory ) conditions like humidity , temperature , and light levels , the story states .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and people at high-risk for COVID-19 “ may want to take extra precautions , ” Barber writes .
At this point , many people and organizations remain needlessly fixated on obsessively wiping down school , church , library , public transit and household surfaces , the story suggests .
“ Worrying about the small stuff exhausts people from focusing on things that do matter , ” Barber writes .
A 10/14/20 guide to forming a pandemic pod with close friends and/or families to help make the U.S. winter more bearable offers the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pod only with people who share your level of risk tolerance and exposure control practices ; 2 ) keep the size of your pod as small as five to 10 people ; 3 ) create a pact of rules and standards , possibly in writing , for all pod members ; and 4 ) make a response plan ahead of time in case a pod member tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 .
By Allyson Chiu at The Washington Post .
Check out this thought-provoking examination by Sam Bloch at The Counter of claims that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to COVID-19 ( 10/15/20 ) .
It ’ s a complicated issue .
Sure , a less healthy diet is linked to obesity , diabetes , heart disease , and high blood pressure , and those risk factors put one at higher risk for severe COVID-19 .
However , that does not explain why the incidence of COVID-19 is higher in the U.S. than it is in other countries with similar obesity rates , suggests a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill nutrition researcher .
And the risk of dying from COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , irrespective of obesity , points out a Harvard School of Public Health policy researcher .
Assertions that people choose healthy or unhealthy diets are on shaky ground , in part because healthier foods ( fruits , vegetables , lean meats ) cost more than calorie-dense , nutrient-poor foods such as soda pop and corn-derived snacks .
Plus : “ If people were becoming irresponsible , you ’ d expect to see it in areas other than food , ” the director of the World Food Policy Center at Duke University is quoted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ look at other health-related behaviors—like , do people brush and floss , do they wear seatbelts , or do they get preventive medical exams—over time , the rates of those things has improved or stayed the same.
” An inexpensive , over-the-counter drug often used as a treatment against parasitic worms is in high demand in Perú , Bolivia , Guatemala and other parts of Latin America as an unproven preventative for COVID-19 , reports freelance science journalist Emiliano Rodríguez Mega for Nature ( 10/20/20 ) .
Little evidence suggests that the drug @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the story states .
Now , the popularity of the drug makes it difficult for COVID-19 researchers to find potential study subjects who have not already taken it , Rodríguez Mega reports .
The drug has been linked to tremors , convulsions , lethargy , and disorientation , as well as brain damage and comas in people with a certain genetic mutation , Rodríguez Mega writes .
A global health researcher at Cayetano Heredia University in Perú is quoted as saying : “ What we ’ re having is a populist treatment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers continue to try to recruit patients for small-scale or ongoing studies of the drug ’ s possible effectiveness against COVID-19 , the story states .
Science magazine 's Dance Your PhD competition is on , now with an additional COVID-19 category .
The submission deadline is 1/29/21 ( Science , 10/26/20 ) .

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here:
This 10/28/20 story in El País, by Mariano Zafra and Javier Salas, features excellent visuals that illustrate the airborne risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection for a set number of people in indoor settings for several hours under various additive conditions, including: a) no protective measures, b) people consistently wear masks, c) masks are worn, the premises are ventilated, and people spend fewer hours in the setting. The settings include a living room, a bar or restaurant, and a school classroom. The illustrations rely on calculations yielded by a tool developed by atmospheric chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez of the University of Colorado Boulder, and colleagues.
A lot of us are facing difficult decisions these days about traveling and gathering for holidays. “Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others” from SARS-CoV-2, according to the introduction to a helpful interactive on travel safety published at The Washington Post (10/5/20). For each of five questions on topics such as lodging, mode of travel or travel companions, the interactive returns a summary of the associated virus-transmission risk, travel safety tips, testing advice, and preventive measures you can or should take, such as quarantining, mask-wearing, hand-washing, social distancing, and advance discussions.
Clever headline on this 10/23/20 Kaiser Health News story: “Travel on Thanksgiving? Pass the COVID.” The piece by Anna Almendrala rounds up lots of helpful advice: 1) ideally, don’t travel and don’t widen your social circles for the holiday, the story states; 2) if you travel locally to dine with others, interact only with people in your household, aka self-quarantine, for two weeks before the event to minimize risk (this is only feasible for people who do not work outside the home and people without children attending school in-person; your housemates must also self-quarantine for this to be effective); 3) California’s Department of Public Health issued these “harm-reduction” guidelines for people who do attend holiday gatherings; 4) if you fly, “get tested before the flight for peace of mind, buy tickets on a plane that is leaving middle seats empty, use highly protective N95 masks and possibly face shields, and blast the individual airplane vents directly onto each family member to disrupt potential virus particles. And, of course, wash your hands frequently.”
For the Washington Post, Natalie B. Compton stayed at a budget, mid-range, and upscale hotels to assess their SARS-CoV-2 prevention measures (10/13/20). The story suggests that you’re as safe at a budget hotel as you are at a mid-range hotel, but there is no safety advantage to staying in an expensive “luxury” hotel. Relevant measures at a Holiday Inn Express included automatic doors to the main entrance, social distancing stickers on the lobby floor, plexiglass panels to separate guests and desk workers, and to-go breakfast bags. At a Hyatt, Compton found a hand sanitizer dispenser in the lobby, plexiglass dividers at the check-in desk, contact-less check-in, extra disinfection of rooms, and a gym available by appointment.
If you haven’t yet devised or purchased a portable air cleaner for your home, school, or workplace, here’s an advice essay on the topic, by freelance writer Laura Daily for The Washington Post (10/19/20). Two well-respected public health researchers who focus on indoor air both recommend placing portable air cleaners with HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filters in school classrooms, Daily writes. Know the area of the room where you wish to install a filter, and then check the device’s specifications to ensure that it can handle the job. The piece links to a site created by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and University of Colorado, Boulder that can be used to select an appropriate air filter for a room of specific dimensions. Air cleaners at home are likely worth considering only if you live with someone whose job or school puts them in contact with others, the piece suggests. Air purifiers do not eliminate the risk of indoor transmission, so continue to wear a mask, wash hands and distance if guests visit, the story describes the experts as advising.
At Wired, Gregory Barber revisits the weak, indirect evidence that touching recently infected surfaces and then our face is a significant way that SARS-CoV-2 spreads (10/20/20). Nearly all cases of transmission now have been linked to “shared air,” although transmission from surfaces (known in infectious disease research as “fomites”) cannot be entirely ruled out, he reports. Early evidence on the persistence of the virus on surfaces led to “the great fomite freakout” this spring, according to a Princeton University mathematical biologist who is quoted in the story and coauthored the early surface-persistence research. Yes, SARS-CoV-2 can persist on some hard surfaces for hours or days, but these data say nothing about one’s personal risk for infection, the dose of viral particles transferred, the likelihood of particles entering your airway and infecting you, and other real-life (not laboratory) conditions like humidity, temperature, and light levels, the story states. Hospitals should still wipe down high-touch objects, and people at high-risk for COVID-19 “may want to take extra precautions,” Barber writes. At this point, many people and organizations remain needlessly fixated on obsessively wiping down school, church, library, public transit and household surfaces, the story suggests. “Worrying about the small stuff exhausts people from focusing on things that do matter,” Barber writes.
A 10/14/20 guide to forming a pandemic pod with close friends and/or families to help make the U.S. winter more bearable offers the following advice: 1) form a pod only with people who share your level of risk tolerance and exposure control practices; 2) keep the size of your pod as small as five to 10 people; 3) create a pact of rules and standards, possibly in writing, for all pod members; and 4) make a response plan ahead of time in case a pod member tests positive for SARS-CoV-2. By Allyson Chiu at The Washington Post.
Check out this thought-provoking examination by Sam Bloch at The Counter of claims that individuals with unhealthy diets are more vulnerable to COVID-19 (10/15/20). It’s a complicated issue. Sure, a less healthy diet is linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure, and those risk factors put one at higher risk for severe COVID-19. However, that does not explain why the incidence of COVID-19 is higher in the U.S. than it is in other countries with similar obesity rates, suggests a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill nutrition researcher. And the risk of dying from COVID-19 is higher among black and Latino populations, irrespective of obesity, points out a Harvard School of Public Health policy researcher. Assertions that people choose healthy or unhealthy diets are on shaky ground, in part because healthier foods (fruits, vegetables, lean meats) cost more than calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods such as soda pop and corn-derived snacks. Plus: “If people were becoming irresponsible, you’d expect to see it in areas other than food,” the director of the World Food Policy Center at Duke University is quoted as saying. “But if you look at other health-related behaviors—like, do people brush and floss, do they wear seatbelts, or do they get preventive medical exams—over time, the rates of those things has improved or stayed the same.”
An inexpensive, over-the-counter drug often used as a treatment against parasitic worms is in high demand in Perú, Bolivia, Guatemala and other parts of Latin America as an unproven preventative for COVID-19, reports freelance science journalist Emiliano Rodríguez Mega for Nature (10/20/20). Little evidence suggests that the drug, called ivermectin, is effective, the story states. Now, the popularity of the drug makes it difficult for COVID-19 researchers to find potential study subjects who have not already taken it, Rodríguez Mega reports. The drug has been linked to tremors, convulsions, lethargy, and disorientation, as well as brain damage and comas in people with a certain genetic mutation, Rodríguez Mega writes. A global health researcher at Cayetano Heredia University in Perú is quoted as saying: “What we’re having is a populist treatment, instead of an evidence-based treatment.” Some researchers continue to try to recruit patients for small-scale or ongoing studies of the drug’s possible effectiveness against COVID-19, the story states.
Science magazine's Dance Your PhD competition is on, now with an additional COVID-19 category. The submission deadline is 1/29/21 (Science, 10/26/20).


scientificamerican--2020-11-03--The International Space Station Is Doomed to Die by Fire

What goes up must come down—including , sadly enough , the International Space Station .
For precisely 20 years now , the massive orbiting laboratory has constantly been home to humans , the lucky handful of Earthlings who at any given time venture into the topsy-turvy world of microgravity .
But like the rest of us , the International Space Station is aging .
And it can ’ t stay in orbit on its own indefinitely—it needs a regular boost or fuel injection from visiting spacecraft .
If those boosts stop or something else goes wrong , sooner or later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Basically , any cargo ship that comes to the space station , or indeed any ferry ship , usually has surplus propellant to a certain degree , ” Jonathan McDowell , an astronomer at Harvard who specializes in tracking objects in and falling out of orbit , told Space.com .
“ They have to have propellant to do the rendezvous , and then they can sometimes have extra to do a reboost.
” For now , those flights will continue through at least 2024 .
And because of the station ’ s international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States , Russia , Canada , Japan and the participating nations of the European Space Agency—the decision to retire it will always be based on both engineering and politics .
“ While ISS is currently approved to operate through at least December 2024 by the international partner governments , from a technical standpoint , we have cleared ISS to fly until the end of 2028 , ” NASA officials wrote in a statement to Space.com .
“ Additionally , our analysis has not identified any issues that would preclude us from extending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day , the station ’ s time will come .
The facility is aging and at constant risk of impacts from space debris and micrometeorites .
If humans don ’ t retire it , eventually the hazards of space will .
The eventual fate of the space station has always been a specter for NASA and Roscosmos , Russia ’ s federal space agency , but as time has passed , it has loomed larger on the minds of space experts .
“ ‘ Oh , we ’ ll bring it down eventually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; ‘ We commit to deorbiting it.
’ But my sense is that they didn ’ t actually think through the details until about five years ago , ” McDowell said .
“ Until then it was like , ‘ La la la , it ’ s in orbit , we ’ re still building it , we ’ re not going to worry about how to get rid of it.
’ Which maybe isn ’ t quite the way you should do things.
” One major voice in changing that has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a group that evaluates the safety measures NASA is taking in spaceflight .
The panel has been raising concerns for at least a decade about how the space station will end , spurred by the then-upcoming retirement of NASA ’ s space shuttle vehicles , which could have been used to deorbit the International Space Station .
The group is still citing the issue regularly in its analyses of NASA policies .
“ The panel continues to track the open work status on the planned deorbit strategy for ISS and the fine-tuning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ station program document , ” David West , a member of the panel , said during the group ’ s quarterly meeting , which was held virtually on Oct. 1 .
“ We will continue to monitor the progress of getting agreement on the strategy by all parties.
” Scenarios for both a scheduled space station deorbit and a response if something goes very wrong are in the works , NASA confirmed , but are not yet public .
“ NASA is actively working with the entire International Space Station partnership on plans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of its lifetime , ” NASA officials wrote in a statement to Space.com .
Planning the space station began in the 1980s , and while today the concept of a massive orbiting laboratory is unremarkable , at the time it was unprecedented .
“ No one had any idea how to build something like this when we started out on the ISS , ” Christian Maender , director of in-space manufacturing and research for Houston-based company Axiom , which is planning on building its own space station by jumping off the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ We built the largest peacetime engineering project ever , and by building pieces of an overall spacecraft that never actually saw each other or touched each other until they got to orbit.
” All told , space station construction required 42 separate launches .
The facility would weigh over 900,000 lbs .
( 420,000 kilograms ) on Earth , is nearly the length of a football field and boasts as much livable volume as a six-bedroom house , according to NASA .
The station ’ s demise didn ’ t go completely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Just a few years earlier , in 1979 , NASA ’ s Skylab station fell out of orbit .
The agency had planned to guide the facility down to a controlled destruction in Earth ’ s atmosphere using an early flight of the space shuttle .
But that vehicle was delayed , leaving the 80-ton Skylab stranded even as solar activity picked up , warmed and expanded Earth ’ s atmosphere , and thereby accelerated the facility ’ s doom .
As a result , the spacecraft fell on its own , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for NASA to target the pieces over remote areas or slow the spacecraft ’ s descent enough to reduce the size of those pieces .
Instead , chunks of the station scattered across Australia , the largest of them a massive oxygen tank .
The incident was a turning point in how people think about how large objects leave orbit .
“ In the early days of the space age , no one worried about it .
Big thing falling out of the sky , no big whoop , ” McDowell said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk-averse over the years.
” And the longer spaceflight continues , the more experts worry about abandoned orbital debris , particularly the largest of it .
The risk if the space station does fall to Earth on its own is significant , McDowell argued .
At about 400 tons , the space station is by far the heaviest human-made object ever to circle Earth .
The larger an object is , the less likely the atmosphere is to be able to fully burn it up .
And because of the space station ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s vulnerable to spinning out of control , at which point rescue options would be limited , McDowell said .
No matter what led to an uncontrolled entry , the results would not be pretty , he said , although not nuclear-catastrophe-level grim .
It would be more like a plane crash , although with debris spread over a much broader area .
“ Worst , worst case , I guess it ’ s a 9/11 , right ?
, ” McDowell said .
“ Because it ’ s at worst case a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a populated area .
And that ’ s bad .
But it ’ s not asteroid-hit bad.
” So how to control the space station ’ s reentry ?
A group of engineers from NASA and Roscosmos presented a paper evaluating some disposal options at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress .
Their work is based on deorbit procedures conducted on the Russian space station Mir in 2001 ; the International Space Station is about three times heavier .
But the gist of the plan mirrors how the space station retains its altitude @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Russian Progress cargo vehicle will either conduct a burn while docked to the station or transfer fuel into the main service module ’ s thrusters to fuel the station ’ s own burn ; either way , the station climbs .
In a controlled deorbit , Progress vehicles would do the same thing but in the reverse direction , lowering the station ’ s lowest altitude .
Depending on the precise array of spacecraft at hand , the service-module thrusters could also be used .
These carefully timed burns would maneuver the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its orbit , making the re-entry more predictable and allowing managers to target the debris to the vast , sparsely populated southern Pacific Ocean .
The rest is up to the destructive power of Earth ’ s atmosphere .
The strategy , unsurprisingly , has its risks .
If something knocks a burn off schedule , well , there goes the predictability .
The 2017 paper lays out options both for a scheduled deorbit and in response to a potential catastrophe on the space station .
If something suddenly goes unfixably wrong on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the facility will have just two weeks to decide how to proceed , the group wrote .
The International Space Station ’ s successor may face a much smoother retirement—although still a fiery one .
Texas-based Axiom Space is planning to launch new station modules beginning next year and , as commercial interest in accessing orbit grows and the ISS ages , eventually split off from the International Space Station to form its own freeflying orbital facility .
But Axiom has learned from the space station ’ s complicated fate and has already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The company is planning its modules to be more truly modular than those on the space station , with the capability to easily remove and replace segments anyway , giving the company flexibility in its future .
The arrangement also means that each module can control its own fate .
“ Each module is going to be designed with its own guidance , navigation and control , its own thruster capabilities , ” Maender said .
“ So they can fly essentially on their own , and then when they need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Earth ’ s atmosphere on their own.
” Copyright 2020 Space.com , a Future company .
All rights reserved .
This material may not be published , broadcast , rewritten or redistributed .

What goes up must come down—including, sadly enough, the International Space Station.
For precisely 20 years now, the massive orbiting laboratory has constantly been home to humans, the lucky handful of Earthlings who at any given time venture into the topsy-turvy world of microgravity. But like the rest of us, the International Space Station is aging. And it can’t stay in orbit on its own indefinitely—it needs a regular boost or fuel injection from visiting spacecraft. If those boosts stop or something else goes wrong, sooner or later, the lab will fall.
“Basically, any cargo ship that comes to the space station, or indeed any ferry ship, usually has surplus propellant to a certain degree,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at Harvard who specializes in tracking objects in and falling out of orbit, told Space.com. “They have to have propellant to do the rendezvous, and then they can sometimes have extra to do a reboost.”
For now, those flights will continue through at least 2024. And because of the station’s international nature—it’s a partnership among the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the participating nations of the European Space Agency—the decision to retire it will always be based on both engineering and politics.
“While ISS is currently approved to operate through at least December 2024 by the international partner governments, from a technical standpoint, we have cleared ISS to fly until the end of 2028,” NASA officials wrote in a statement to Space.com. “Additionally, our analysis has not identified any issues that would preclude us from extending beyond 2028 if needed.”
But some day, the station’s time will come. The facility is aging and at constant risk of impacts from space debris and micrometeorites. If humans don’t retire it, eventually the hazards of space will.
The eventual fate of the space station has always been a specter for NASA and Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space agency, but as time has passed, it has loomed larger on the minds of space experts.
“‘Oh, we’ll bring it down eventually,’ the idea has always been; ‘We commit to deorbiting it.’ But my sense is that they didn’t actually think through the details until about five years ago,” McDowell said. “Until then it was like, ‘La la la, it’s in orbit, we’re still building it, we’re not going to worry about how to get rid of it.’ Which maybe isn’t quite the way you should do things.”
One major voice in changing that has been NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, a group that evaluates the safety measures NASA is taking in spaceflight. The panel has been raising concerns for at least a decade about how the space station will end, spurred by the then-upcoming retirement of NASA’s space shuttle vehicles, which could have been used to deorbit the International Space Station.
The group is still citing the issue regularly in its analyses of NASA policies.
“The panel continues to track the open work status on the planned deorbit strategy for ISS and the fine-tuning of some wording in the related space station program document,” David West, a member of the panel, said during the group’s quarterly meeting, which was held virtually on Oct. 1. “We will continue to monitor the progress of getting agreement on the strategy by all parties.”
Scenarios for both a scheduled space station deorbit and a response if something goes very wrong are in the works, NASA confirmed, but are not yet public. “NASA is actively working with the entire International Space Station partnership on plans to safely deorbit the space station at the end of its lifetime,” NASA officials wrote in a statement to Space.com.
Decades in the making
Planning the space station began in the 1980s, and while today the concept of a massive orbiting laboratory is unremarkable, at the time it was unprecedented.
“No one had any idea how to build something like this when we started out on the ISS,” Christian Maender, director of in-space manufacturing and research for Houston-based company Axiom, which is planning on building its own space station by jumping off the International Space Station, told Space.com. “We built the largest peacetime engineering project ever, and by building pieces of an overall spacecraft that never actually saw each other or touched each other until they got to orbit.”
All told, space station construction required 42 separate launches. The facility would weigh over 900,000 lbs. (420,000 kilograms) on Earth, is nearly the length of a football field and boasts as much livable volume as a six-bedroom house, according to NASA.
It’s big.
The station’s demise didn’t go completely unconsidered as the facility was being designed. Just a few years earlier, in 1979, NASA’s Skylab station fell out of orbit. The agency had planned to guide the facility down to a controlled destruction in Earth’s atmosphere using an early flight of the space shuttle. But that vehicle was delayed, leaving the 80-ton Skylab stranded even as solar activity picked up, warmed and expanded Earth’s atmosphere, and thereby accelerated the facility’s doom.
As a result, the spacecraft fell on its own, out of control, leaving no way for NASA to target the pieces over remote areas or slow the spacecraft’s descent enough to reduce the size of those pieces. Instead, chunks of the station scattered across Australia, the largest of them a massive oxygen tank. The incident was a turning point in how people think about how large objects leave orbit.
“In the early days of the space age, no one worried about it. Big thing falling out of the sky, no big whoop,” McDowell said. “People have gotten more and more risk-averse over the years.” And the longer spaceflight continues, the more experts worry about abandoned orbital debris, particularly the largest of it.
The risk if the space station does fall to Earth on its own is significant, McDowell argued. At about 400 tons, the space station is by far the heaviest human-made object ever to circle Earth. The larger an object is, the less likely the atmosphere is to be able to fully burn it up. And because of the space station’s outstretched solar arrays, it’s vulnerable to spinning out of control, at which point rescue options would be limited, McDowell said.
No matter what led to an uncontrolled entry, the results would not be pretty, he said, although not nuclear-catastrophe-level grim. It would be more like a plane crash, although with debris spread over a much broader area. “Worst, worst case, I guess it’s a 9/11, right?,” McDowell said. “Because it’s at worst case a plane crashing, part of which is in a populated area. And that’s bad. But it’s not asteroid-hit bad.”
How to destroy a space station (safely!)
So how to control the space station’s reentry?
A group of engineers from NASA and Roscosmos presented a paper evaluating some disposal options at the 2017 International Astronautical Congress. Their work is based on deorbit procedures conducted on the Russian space station Mir in 2001; the International Space Station is about three times heavier.
But the gist of the plan mirrors how the space station retains its altitude during normal operations. Most commonly, a Russian Progress cargo vehicle will either conduct a burn while docked to the station or transfer fuel into the main service module’s thrusters to fuel the station’s own burn; either way, the station climbs.
In a controlled deorbit, Progress vehicles would do the same thing but in the reverse direction, lowering the station’s lowest altitude. Depending on the precise array of spacecraft at hand, the service-module thrusters could also be used.
These carefully timed burns would maneuver the station lower at only one point in its orbit, making the re-entry more predictable and allowing managers to target the debris to the vast, sparsely populated southern Pacific Ocean. The rest is up to the destructive power of Earth’s atmosphere. The strategy, unsurprisingly, has its risks. If something knocks a burn off schedule, well, there goes the predictability.
The 2017 paper lays out options both for a scheduled deorbit and in response to a potential catastrophe on the space station. If something suddenly goes unfixably wrong on the orbiting laboratory, the organizations behind the facility will have just two weeks to decide how to proceed, the group wrote.
A different path forward
The International Space Station’s successor may face a much smoother retirement—although still a fiery one.
Texas-based Axiom Space is planning to launch new station modules beginning next year and, as commercial interest in accessing orbit grows and the ISS ages, eventually split off from the International Space Station to form its own freeflying orbital facility.
But Axiom has learned from the space station’s complicated fate and has already wrestled with how its facility will end. The company is planning its modules to be more truly modular than those on the space station, with the capability to easily remove and replace segments anyway, giving the company flexibility in its future.
The arrangement also means that each module can control its own fate. “Each module is going to be designed with its own guidance, navigation and control, its own thruster capabilities,” Maender said. “So they can fly essentially on their own, and then when they need to, they can separate and return through Earth’s atmosphere on their own.”
Copyright 2020 Space.com, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


scientificamerican--2020-11-03--Change Species Names to Honor Indigenous Peoples, Not Colonizers, Researchers Say

Len Gillman was hiking among kauri trees with his wife in the forest-clad Waitakere Ranges near his home in West Auckland , New Zealand , when he remembered something that had bothered him since he was a student in the 1980s : Why was the scientific name for these giant conifers Agathis australis when they have been called “ kauri ” for centuries by New Zealand ’ s Indigenous Māori ?
“ It just struck me as a very colonial thing to do : to move into a place and essentially rename everything that already had names—names that embodied Indigenous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for their sense of place and belonging , ” says Gillman , who is a professor of biogeography and head of science at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand .
Scientists in the country are increasingly naming new species in consultation with local iwi ( Māori tribes ) .
But Gillman wants to go further .
In a comment paper published in late October in Communications Biology , he and Shane Wright of the University of Auckland argue that taxonomic protocols should allow scientific names worldwide to be changed to reflect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Since the 18th century , biologists have used the so-called binomial nomenclature system devised by the Swedish “ father of taxonomy ” Carl Linnaeus , whose format gives every species a unique two-part name consisting of a broader genus category , followed by an individual species name .
“ The binomial itself is a great thing , ” Wright says .
“ It really opened up our understanding of diversity in the world.
” Yet that does not mean the system can not be improved and modernized , he adds .
Many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the surnames of people who are , in many cases , Wright notes , “ long dead and long forgotten ” —expedition sponsors , minor naturalists or individuals to whom the taxonomist owed a favor .
Many of these names are now not only meaningless to most people but can also be confusing , Wright says .
New Zealand , for instance , has at least 19 plant species , two birds and two fungi with the species epithet colensoi , named to honor 19th-century British missionary and naturalist William Colenso .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Other bionomials use Indigenous names and words incorrectly or confusingly .
And some incorporate racial slurs or other potentially offensive language .
For example , although it is derived from a mountain range , the species name of Vosea whitemanensis ( a gray-and-olive honeyeater endemic to the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea ) now appears rather questionable .
In cases where an organism has been given multiple scientific names , taxonomists have traditionally prized “ priority ” —meaning the earliest properly published name is the “ correct ” one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out , Indigenous name usage has long outlasted multiple taxonomic reclassifications .
Persimmons have been called pessamin by Native Americans for at least hundreds of years .
“ If you ’ re talking about priority , that ’ s priority !
” Wright says .
Perhaps the scientific name for the common persimmon , Diospyros virginiana , should be Diospyros pessamin instead , he adds .
Then there is the conifer Prumnopitys taxifolia , which most New Zealanders know as mataī .
Its Latin species name means “ yewlike leaves , ” which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not particularly helpful for New Zealand students of botany : many , Māori or not , would be far more familiar with a mataī than a yew .
Wright , who is Māori , would like to see the term changed to Prumnopitys mataī .
“ Mataī is a word that comes out of central Oceania , referring to the idea of prominence or leadership , ” he says .
“ I don ’ t know who named it all those centuries ago , but when you see the mature tree—this huge presence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a name that really fits .
’ ” In Wright and Gillman ’ s vision , the process of reassigning such names would be Indigenous-led .
They advocate for a system in which Indigenous groups could get together and submit a widely held Indigenous term to replace either the species or genus name of a plant or animal .
“ It ’ s a really interesting idea , ” says Sandra Knapp , a botanist at London ’ s Natural History Museum and the president of the Linnean Society .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually , some disruption is worth doing.
” At least for the world of plant taxonomy , she says , she can envision a way of updating naming protocols so Indigenous groups can put forward proposals about particular species .
Knapp adds , however , that there would be some complex and potentially sensitive implications to consider .
“ It ’ s easier to think about doing this in New Zealand , ” she says .
“ But it would be much harder in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Agreement would be crucial in such situations , Gillman says .
“ Names would only change if there was a consensus of Indigenous people that covered the whole range of the species , ” he adds .
Concerns about the idea have emerged from the international body that regulates animal names .
“ The overarching goal that we ’ re working toward is stability in the scientific names of animals , ” says Thomas Pape , president of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ( ICZN ) and a zoologist at the Natural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really need to have one name , a standard international reference , for a given whale , a given orchid , a given monkey.
” He says the ICZN favors using Indigenous or local terms as common names—and as part of the scientific names of newly identified species .
But Pape contends that the threshold for changing an existing scientific name should be high .
Scientific names already sometimes change as scientists refine their concepts of what a species fundamentally is , and as new data shed light on the relationships between them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name “ because we find one that we like better ” would add to the proliferation and make it harder for researchers trying to find all the published information about a given species .
Gillman and Wright are not surprised that there is resistance to their proposal .
“ The first time you present an idea like that , there is going to be an aspect of shock and awe , just because people are so comfortable with the way things are , ” Wright says .
“ But even if the conversation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ needs to start .
”

Len Gillman was hiking among kauri trees with his wife in the forest-clad Waitakere Ranges near his home in West Auckland, New Zealand, when he remembered something that had bothered him since he was a student in the 1980s: Why was the scientific name for these giant conifers Agathis australis when they have been called “kauri” for centuries by New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori?
“It just struck me as a very colonial thing to do: to move into a place and essentially rename everything that already had names—names that embodied Indigenous people’s knowledge and were important for their sense of place and belonging,” says Gillman, who is a professor of biogeography at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.*
Scientists in the country are increasingly naming new species in consultation with local iwi (Māori tribes). But Gillman wants to go further. In a comment paper published in late October in Communications Biology, he and Shane Wright of the University of Auckland argue that taxonomic protocols should allow scientific names worldwide to be changed to reflect long-held Indigenous names for plants and animals.
Since the 18th century, biologists have used the so-called binomial nomenclature system devised by the Swedish “father of taxonomy” Carl Linnaeus, whose format gives every species a unique two-part name consisting of a broader genus category, followed by an individual species name. “The binomial itself is a great thing,” Wright says. “It really opened up our understanding of diversity in the world.” Yet that does not mean the system cannot be improved and modernized, he adds. Many species and generic labels are derived from the surnames of people who are, in many cases, Wright notes, “long dead and long forgotten”—expedition sponsors, minor naturalists or individuals to whom the taxonomist owed a favor.
Many of these names are now not only meaningless to most people but can also be confusing, Wright says. New Zealand, for instance, has at least 19 plant species, two birds and two fungi with the species epithet colensoi, named to honor 19th-century British missionary and naturalist William Colenso.
Some species are named after objectively awful people. Other bionomials use Indigenous names and words incorrectly or confusingly. And some incorporate racial slurs or other potentially offensive language. For example, although it is derived from a mountain range, the species name of Vosea whitemanensis (a gray-and-olive honeyeater endemic to the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea) now appears rather questionable.
In cases where an organism has been given multiple scientific names, taxonomists have traditionally prized “priority”—meaning the earliest properly published name is the “correct” one. In many cases, Wright points out, Indigenous name usage has long outlasted multiple taxonomic reclassifications. Persimmons have been called pessamin by Native Americans for at least hundreds of years. “If you’re talking about priority, that’s priority!” Wright says. Perhaps the scientific name for the common persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, should be Diospyros pessamin instead, he adds.
Then there is the conifer Prumnopitys taxifolia, which most New Zealanders know as mataī. Its Latin species name means “yewlike leaves,” which is itself a Eurocentric description that is not particularly helpful for New Zealand students of botany: many, Māori or not, would be far more familiar with a mataī than a yew.
Wright, who is Māori, would like to see the term changed to Prumnopitys mataī. “Mataī is a word that comes out of central Oceania, referring to the idea of prominence or leadership,” he says. “I don’t know who named it all those centuries ago, but when you see the mature tree—this huge presence in the forest—you think, ‘That’s a name that really fits. ’”
In Wright and Gillman’s vision, the process of reassigning such names would be Indigenous-led. They advocate for a system in which Indigenous groups could get together and submit a widely held Indigenous term to replace either the species or genus name of a plant or animal.
“It’s a really interesting idea,” says Sandra Knapp, a botanist at London’s Natural History Museum and the president of the Linnean Society. “It would be a disruption, but actually, some disruption is worth doing.” At least for the world of plant taxonomy, she says, she can envision a way of updating naming protocols so Indigenous groups can put forward proposals about particular species. Knapp adds, however, that there would be some complex and potentially sensitive implications to consider. “It’s easier to think about doing this in New Zealand,” she says. “But it would be much harder in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where there are hundreds of languages.” Agreement would be crucial in such situations, Gillman says. “Names would only change if there was a consensus of Indigenous people that covered the whole range of the species,” he adds.
Concerns about the idea have emerged from the international body that regulates animal names. “The overarching goal that we’re working toward is stability in the scientific names of animals,” says Thomas Pape, president of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) and a zoologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. “We really need to have one name, a standard international reference, for a given whale, a given orchid, a given monkey.” He says the ICZN favors using Indigenous or local terms as common names—and as part of the scientific names of newly identified species. But Pape contends that the threshold for changing an existing scientific name should be high. Scientific names already sometimes change as scientists refine their concepts of what a species fundamentally is, and as new data shed light on the relationships between them. Pape argues that altering a scientific name “because we find one that we like better” would add to the proliferation and make it harder for researchers trying to find all the published information about a given species.
Gillman and Wright are not surprised that there is resistance to their proposal. “The first time you present an idea like that, there is going to be an aspect of shock and awe, just because people are so comfortable with the way things are,” Wright says. “But even if the conversation lasts a couple of decades, it needs to start.”
*Editor’s Note (11/3/20): This sentence has been updated to reflect Len Gillman’s current position at the Auckland University of Technology.


scientificamerican--2020-11-05--In the Early Americas, Female Hunters Pursued Big Game, Study Suggests

In 1878 Sweden , a 10th-century Viking warrior was discovered in a grave packed with weapons , hinting at high military status .
The assumption for the next century was that this individual was male .
Questions about the warrior ’ s sex arose in 1970s , and DNA analysis conclusively upended the belief in 2017 , showing that the grave ’ s occupant was female .
The sex determination took so long largely because modern assumptions about gender roles–in this case , that all high-status warriors are men–got in the way of the science .
Across the Atlantic in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are revealing a similar pattern : applying modern assumptions about gender roles can lead to misconceptions .
In findings published on November 4 in Science Advances , Randall Haas , an anthropologist at the University of California , Davis , and his colleagues describe a 9,000-year-old burial site for a young female interred with big-game-hunting tools .
When the researchers analyzed this site with 17 others in the American continents , they found what they call “ parity ” between male and female individuals with hunting roles .
The results bury a too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men were hunters and women were “ gatherers.
” Pamela Geller , an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Miami , who was not involved in the study , says the findings “ substantiate what feminist scholars have been saying for several decades ” about early female roles as hunters .
The newly identified female hunter was found in one of two Andean burial sites that Haas and his colleagues excavated near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru .
One contained the remains of a man who was aged 25 to 30 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few hunting-associated items .
The other remains were of a teenager who “ was clearly ceremoniously laid to rest with a set of tools that had a lot of utility , ” Haas says .
As with the Viking warrior , the researchers initially assumed the second grave contained a male because of the careful interment with costly tools associated with hunting large animals such as deer and vicuña .
A close look at the scant bone samples from the second grave suggested that the person ’ s sex was female , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which are present in a sex-based pattern , confirmed it .
That recognition led the team to analyze information from all known burial sites in the Americas for individuals whose sex had been determined and where hunting tools were present .
Among 18 sites meeting these criteria , 15 contained 16 remains identified as male , and 10 had 11 remains identified as female .
The scientists ran models with this information to estimate how likely an individual was to be female , given a range of female participation in hunting from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that with the rate of female skeletons associated with hunting tools , females and males were equally likely to be hunters .
The implication was that equal-opportunity hunting roles might have been common among early humans in the Americas .
The blending of hunting roles regardless of sex is not especially surprising , says Kathleen Sterling , an associate professor of anthropology at Binghamton University , State University of New York , who was not involved in the study .
Individual skill and strength likely did not matter as much as the number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ efforts to drive animals off a cliff or into a trap .
Regardless of the sex of the skeletons , this work does not address how these cultures defined or assigned gender , says Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson , a senior researcher at the department of archaeology and ancient history at Uppsala University in Sweden .
She was not involved in the new paper but was first author of the 2017 study on the Viking warrior DNA .
Today ’ s humans can determine biological sex with modern analyses , she says , but modern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how early humans did .
“ We must remember that it is our understanding that we ’ re processing , not theirs , ” when considering gender roles in early human societies , she says .
Researchers have “ at some level ” projected sex onto behavior in inaccurate ways for early humans in the Americas , Haas says .
What is important is challenging these assumptions with actual observation , he says , because “ through that process , we arrive closer to the truth .
”

In 1878 in Sweden, a 10th-century Viking warrior was discovered in a grave packed with weapons, hinting at high military status. The assumption for the next century was that this individual was male. Questions about the warrior’s sex arose in 1970s, and DNA analysis conclusively upended the belief in 2017, showing that the grave’s occupant was female. The sex determination took so long largely because modern assumptions about gender roles—in this case, that all high-status warriors are men–got in the way of the science.
Across the Atlantic in the Americas, early human burial sites are revealing a similar pattern: applying modern assumptions about gender roles can lead to misconceptions. In findings published on November 4 in Science Advances, Randall Haas, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues describe a 9,000-year-old burial site for a young female individual interred with big-game-hunting tools. When the researchers analyzed this site with 17 others in the American continents, they found what they call “parity” between male and female individuals with hunting roles. The results bury a too broad generalization about early people: that men were hunters and women were “gatherers.”
Pamela Geller, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, who was not involved in the study, says the findings “substantiate what feminist scholars have been saying for several decades” about early female roles as hunters.
The newly identified female hunter was found in one of two Andean burial sites that Haas and his colleagues excavated near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru. One contained the remains of a man who was aged 25 to 30 years at death and interred with a few hunting-associated items. The other remains were of a teenager who “was clearly ceremoniously laid to rest with a set of tools that had a lot of utility,” Haas says. As with the Viking warrior, the researchers initially assumed the second grave contained a male individual because of the careful interment with costly tools associated with hunting large animals such as deer and vicuña.
A close look at the scant bone samples from the second grave suggested that the person’s sex was female, however. Analysis of proteins from the teeth, which are present in a sex-based pattern, confirmed it.
That recognition led the team to analyze information from all known burial sites in the Americas for individuals whose sex had been determined and where hunting tools were present. Among 18 sites meeting these criteria, 15 contained 16 remains identified as male, and 10 had 11 remains identified as female.
The scientists ran models with this information to estimate how likely an individual was to be female, given a range of female participation in hunting from 0 to 100 percent. They found that with the rate of female skeletons associated with hunting tools, female and male individuals were equally likely to be hunters. The implication was that equal-opportunity hunting roles might have been common among early humans in the Americas.
The blending of hunting roles regardless of sex is not especially surprising, says Kathleen Sterling, an associate professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, State University of New York, who was not involved in the study. Individual skill and strength likely did not matter as much as the number of participants, for example, in efforts to drive animals off a cliff or into a trap.
Regardless of the sex of the skeletons, this work does not address how these cultures defined or assigned gender, says Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, a senior researcher at the department of archaeology and ancient history at Uppsala University in Sweden. She was not involved in the new paper but was first author of the 2017 study on the Viking warrior DNA. Today’s humans can determine biological sex with modern analyses, she says, but modern eyes may see gender very differently from how early humans did. “We must remember that it is our understanding that we’re processing, not theirs,” when considering gender roles in early human societies, she says.
Researchers have “at some level” projected sex onto behavior in inaccurate ways for early humans in the Americas, Haas says. What is important is challenging these assumptions with actual observation, he says, because “through that process, we arrive closer to the truth.”


scientificamerican--2020-11-05--Science Sound(E)scapes: Amazon Frog Choruses at Night

Today , part two of our three-part sound escape series to the Amazon rainforest .
In this episode , we 're going into the dark .
Make sure to catch the first episode on the mysterious pink river dolphin after you listen to this one .
Again joining us is Tim Weaver , a professor of emergent digital practices and a multimedia and sound artist at the University of Denver .
Tim has traveled to the Amazon for years to collect what he calls the acoustic plenitude that ’ s there .
But before we listen to that plenitude , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a strange name , the “ Sharawadji Effect.
” Tim , what is that exactly ?
TW : The Sharawadji Effect is actually an approximation of the psychoacoustics that are happening .
JD : Psychoacoustics -- that is the branch of psychology concerned with the perception of sound and its physiological effects .
Thanks Oxford dictionary .
TW : I liken it to acoustic hallucination .
What I 've experienced is like , here you ’ re in the Amazon basin where all the drainage is going from the Andes down there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the ancestors are speaking to you is what I ’ ve experienced , but it may be composed of this incredible array of night choruses that are going on and it can happen in the day as well , so it 's like this polyphonic of mixtures emits new voices and it 's it 's pretty profound .
JD : Tim encountered one of those Sharawadji Effect moments on the sound escape he 's taking us on today , and it came courtesy of a riot of ribbits .
TW : In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of amphibians , and frogs of course are one of those and the night is an amazing time to be wandering around provided you step on the wrong species .
So this is a path of roaming through the main story of a primary forest of multiple frog species that are voicing .
The frogs -- some of them are gigantic , they 're the size of a football , and some of them are the size of a thumb .
And they make an incredible diversity of calls to make up the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these were recorded within an ambisonic mic so it ’ s recording in three-dimensional sound , but we 're bringing it back in the stereo .
JD : Maybe this is a good time for us to just close our eyes and enter the Amazon at night .
JD : Thank you , Tim , for sharing your work with us on the 60 second science podcast .
TW : Yes I think that ’ s there ’ s more incredible communication going on on the planet besides our own din of craziness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is solace out there that we should listen to and also an incredible array of and diversity of organisms that also need listening and communication space .
JD : And thank you to all of our listeners for taking this trip with us .
Make sure to join us for the next and final episode of this Amazon sound escape coming soon to the podcast .
A little hint : in the next episode will get high .
[ The above text is a transcript of this podcast . ]

Full Transcript
This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Jeff DelViscio.
Today: part two of our three-part sound escape series to the Amazon rain forest. In this episode, we’re going into the dark. Make sure to catch the first episode on the mysterious pink river dolphin after you listen to this one.
Again joining us is Tim Weaver, a professor of emergent digital practices and a multimedia and sound artist at the University of Denver. Tim has traveled to the Amazon for years to collect what he calls the acoustic plenitude that’s there. But before we listen to that plenitude, let’s talk about a phenomenon with a strange name: the “Sharawadji effect.” Tim, what is that exactly?
“The Sharawadji effect is actually an approximation of the psychoacoustics that are happening.”
Psychoacoustics—that is the branch of psychology concerned with the perception of sound and its physiological effects. Thanks, Oxford dictionary.
“I liken it to acoustic hallucination. What I’ve experienced is like: here you’re in the Amazon basin, where all the drainage is going from the Andes down there, and it’s like the voices of the ancestors are speaking to you is what I’ve experienced. But it may be composed of this incredible array of night choruses that are going on, and it can happen in the day as well. So it’s like this polyphonic of mixtures emits new voices, and it’s pretty profound.”
Tim encountered one of those Sharawadji effect moments on the sound escape he’s taking us on today, and it came courtesy of a riot of ribbits.
“In the Amazon, there is an amazing diversity of amphibians. And frogs, of course, are one of those. And the night is an amazing time to be wandering around, provided you don’t step on the wrong species. So this is a path of roaming through the main story of a primary forest of multiple frog species that are voicing. The frogs—some of them are gigantic, they’re the size of a football, and some of them are the size of a thumb. And they make an incredible diversity of calls to make up the night chorus of the rain forest. And these were recorded within an ambisonic mic, so it’s recording in three-dimensional sound, but we're bringing it back in the stereo.”
Maybe this is a good time for us to just close our eyes and enter the Amazon at night.
[CLIP: Amazonian frog chorus sounds]
Thank you, Tim, for sharing your work with us on the 60-Second Science podcast.
“Yes, I think that’s there’s more incredible communication going on on the planet besides our own din of craziness that’s going on, so there is solace out there that we should listen to and also an incredible array of and diversity of organisms that also need listening and communication space.”
And thank you to all of our listeners for taking this trip with us. Make sure to join us for the next and final episode of this Amazon sound escape, coming soon to the podcast. A little hint: in the next episode, we’ll get high.
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]


scientificamerican--2020-11-05--Will the Universe Remember Us after We're Gone?

I ’ m a compulsive journal-scribbler .
This habit , which goes back to my teens , has proved useful to my career .
All my articles and books start as journal entries .
But my motivation is not merely professional .
If I don ’ t record my thoughts , I won ’ t remember them , and they won ’ t matter .
So I fear .
This feeling has grown as I ’ ve aged .
Compounding my concern is the possibility—no , probability—that one day humanity and all its residues will vanish .
Our works of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , music and , yes , journalism will slip back into the void whence they came .
Everything we have thought and done will be for naught .
If nothing about us endures , if nothing is remembered , we might as well never have existed .
No wonder so many of us , even in this age of scientific materialism , still believe in God .
An immortal , omniscient being watches over each and every one of us , and not just celebrities like Einstein and Beyonce .
He/she/it/they also surely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like a cosmic backup device with infinite storage capacity .
Supposedly .
If this divine entity does not exist , and someday all traces of us disappear forever , in what sense do our lives matter ?
Scientists are not immune to such anxieties .
Existential angst , I suspect , accounts for physicists ’ belief in conservation of information .
I first heard about this proposition years ago , but I ’ ve only given it serious consideration over the last few months , which I ’ ve spent trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ main texts are The Theoretical Minimum books on classical and quantum mechanics by Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind ( with two co-authors ) .
Susskind imparts “ what you need to know to start doing physics.
” One thing we definitely need to know , according to Susskind , is that “ information is never lost.
” This law , Susskind asserts , “ underlies everything else.
” Conservation of information is more fundamental , he says , than Newton ’ s first law ( motion is conserved ) ; the first law of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and what is sometimes called the zeroth law of thermodynamics ( if systems A and B are in equilibrium with C , then A and B are in equilibrium with each other ) .
Hence Susskind calls conservation of information the “ minus-first law.
” The minus-first law encompasses the principle of determinism , which holds that if you know the current state of a system , you know all of its past and future .
The French polymath Simon-Pierre LaPlace famously spelled out the implications of determinism over 200 years ago : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment would know all forces that set nature in motion , and all positions of all items of which nature is composed , if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis , it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom ; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
” This omniscient “ intellect ” has come to be known as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that quantum mechanics , although not deterministic in the same way as classical mechanics , still conforms to the minus-first law .
In a 2008 interview he said the minus-first law “ underpins everything , including classical physics , thermodynamics , quantum mechanics , energy conservation , that physicists have believed for hundreds of years.
” In the 1980s Stephen Hawking challenged the minus-first law , claiming that black holes destroy information .
Hawking ’ s hypothesis “ touched off a crisis in physics , a clash of basic principles like no other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said in 2008 .
He rebutted Hawking in papers and a popular book , The Black Hole War : My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics .
All the information sucked into a black hole , Susskind argues , is preserved in its outer membrane , or “ event horizon , ” where space and time undergo bizarre distortions .
In a review of Black Hole War , journalist George Johnson bravely takes a stab at explaining Susskind ’ s thesis : “ A description of everything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether a book or an entire civilization , is recorded on the surface of its horizon and radiated back like imagery on a giant drive-in movie screen.
” Susskind , as you might guess from Johnson ’ s review , is fond of theories that can not be empirically tested and hence potentially falsified .
In his 2005 book The Cosmic Landscape , Susskind contends that our universe is just a hillock in an infinite landscape of universes .
This proposal is pure speculation , and hence arguably unscientific , because we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ existence of other universes .
Perhaps Susskind and other physicists don ’ t want us lay folk to take ideas like the multiverse or minus-first law too seriously .
Maybe these are just metaphors , poetic fancies , like the Holy Ghost in Catholicism .
But physicists seem to pride themselves on saying what they mean .
So , I ’ m going to take Susskind at his word when he declares that “ information is never lost.
” Let me tease out the implications of that remarkable statement .
First , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of information doesn ’ t make any sense in the absence of something to be informed , that is , a mind .
Information requires—it presupposes—consciousness .
So , if information is conserved , so is consciousness .
If consciousness exists now , it must always exist .
Or so the minus-first law implies .
In fact , many scientists and philosophers have proposed that consciousness is as fundamental as matter , or even more fundamental .
I ’ ve lumped these speculations together under the label neo-geocentrism , because they resurrect the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revolves around us .
Neo-geocentric theories represent attempts to sneak a consoling religious assumption—this universe is all about us—back into science , and so does conservation of information .
If I had to rank laws of physics , I ’ d go with the second law of thermodynamics , which holds that disorder , or entropy , always increases .
Our expanding cosmos is headed toward heat death , a state of terminal boringness , in which nothing ever happens .
The second law of thermodynamics , evidence for which I see whenever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the news , trumps the minus-first law .
Actually , I ’ m suspicious of all “ laws ” of physics , which strike me as manifestations of scientific hubris .
Scientists take an assumption that applies under certain very tightly controlled conditions , usually with lots of qualifications , and transform it into a cosmic principle that applies to all things at all times in all places .
But I ’ m especially skeptical of the minus-first law .
Never mind Hawking ’ s conjecture that black holes destroy information .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ processes .
Three years ago , strokes severely damaged my father ’ s memory , making it hard for him to recognize me and my siblings .
Last June he died , at the age of 96 , and my stepmother had his body cremated .
My father persists , sort of , in the fragmentary , fading recollections of those who loved him .
Polymath Douglas Hofstadter coined the heartbreaking phrase “ soular coronas ” to describe our memories of those eclipsed by death .
But one day we ’ ll die @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the universe will bear the imprint of my father ’ s life forever .
Long after our sun and even the entire Milky Way have flickered out , aliens with the godlike powers of LaPlace ’ s demon could in principle ( that handy , all-purpose hedge ) reconstruct the lives of my father and every other person who has ever lived .
That ’ s a nice thought ( which inspired the 1996 book The Physics of Immortality by physicist Frank Tipler . )
But I don ’ t buy conservation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or heaven—or a god who cherishes us .
These propositions , scientific and religious , represent understandable but finally unpersuasive attempts at consolation .
My contemplation of the inevitable loss of everyone and everything I love unsettles me .
But I ’ d rather face death squarely than take refuge in false assurances from priests or physicists .
In The Black Hole War , Susskind strikes a rare ( for him ) note of humility : “ Very likely we are still confused beginners with very wrong mental pictures , and ultimate reality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I found this quote in a blog post by physicist Peter Woit . )
On this point , Susskind and I agree .
Meanwhile , as my end looms , I keep frantically filling up notebooks .
Can Mysticism Help Us Solve the Mind-Body Problem ?
Why information ca n't be the basis of reality See also “ Strange Loops All the Way Down , ” a chapter in my free online book Mind-Body Problems .

I’m a compulsive journal-scribbler. This habit, which goes back to my teens, has proved useful to my career. All my articles and books start as journal entries. But my motivation is not merely professional. If I don’t record my thoughts, I won’t remember them, and they won’t matter. So I fear. This feeling has grown as I’ve aged.
Compounding my concern is the possibility—no, probability—that one day humanity and all its residues will vanish. Our works of science, mathematics, philosophy, art, music and, yes, journalism will slip back into the void whence they came. Everything we have thought and done will be for naught. If nothing about us endures, if nothing is remembered, we might as well never have existed.
No wonder so many of us, even in this age of scientific materialism, still believe in God. An immortal, omniscient being watches over each and every one of us, and not just celebrities like Einstein and Beyonce. He/she/it/they also surely remembers us after we’re gone, like a cosmic backup device with infinite storage capacity. Supposedly. If this divine entity does not exist, and someday all traces of us disappear forever, in what sense do our lives matter?
Scientists are not immune to such anxieties. Existential angst, I suspect, accounts for physicists’ belief in conservation of information. I first heard about this proposition years ago, but I’ve only given it serious consideration over the last few months, which I’ve spent trying to learn quantum mechanics.
Two of my main texts are The Theoretical Minimum books on classical and quantum mechanics by Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind (with two co-authors). Susskind imparts “what you need to know to start doing physics.” One thing we definitely need to know, according to Susskind, is that “information is never lost.” This law, Susskind asserts, “underlies everything else.”
Conservation of information is more fundamental, he says, than Newton’s first law (motion is conserved); the first law of thermodynamics (energy is conserved); and what is sometimes called the zeroth law of thermodynamics (if systems A and B are in equilibrium with C, then A and B are in equilibrium with each other). Hence Susskind calls conservation of information the “minus-first law.”
The minus-first law encompasses the principle of determinism, which holds that if you know the current state of a system, you know all of its past and future. The French polymath Simon-Pierre LaPlace famously spelled out the implications of determinism over 200 years ago:
“An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.”
This omniscient “intellect” has come to be known as LaPlace’s demon. Susskind insists that quantum mechanics, although not deterministic in the same way as classical mechanics, still conforms to the minus-first law. In a 2008 interview he said the minus-first law “underpins everything, including classical physics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, energy conservation, that physicists have believed for hundreds of years.”
In the 1980s Stephen Hawking challenged the minus-first law, claiming that black holes destroy information. Hawking’s hypothesis “touched off a crisis in physics, a clash of basic principles like no other since Einstein was young,” Susskind said in 2008. He rebutted Hawking in papers and a popular book, The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics.
All the information sucked into a black hole, Susskind argues, is preserved in its outer membrane, or “event horizon,” where space and time undergo bizarre distortions. In a review of Black Hole War, journalist George Johnson bravely takes a stab at explaining Susskind’s thesis: “A description of everything that falls into a black hole, whether a book or an entire civilization, is recorded on the surface of its horizon and radiated back like imagery on a giant drive-in movie screen.”
Susskind, as you might guess from Johnson’s review, is fond of theories that cannot be empirically tested and hence potentially falsified. In his 2005 book The Cosmic Landscape, Susskind contends that our universe is just a hillock in an infinite landscape of universes. This proposal is pure speculation, and hence arguably unscientific, because we have no way to prove or disprove the existence of other universes.
Perhaps Susskind and other physicists don’t want us lay folk to take ideas like the multiverse or minus-first law too seriously. Maybe these are just metaphors, poetic fancies, like the Holy Ghost in Catholicism. But physicists seem to pride themselves on saying what they mean. So, I’m going to take Susskind at his word when he declares that “information is never lost.”
Let me tease out the implications of that remarkable statement. First, as I have argued previously, the concept of information doesn’t make any sense in the absence of something to be informed, that is, a mind. Information requires—it presupposes—consciousness. So, if information is conserved, so is consciousness. If consciousness exists now, it must always exist. Or so the minus-first law implies.
In fact, many scientists and philosophers have proposed that consciousness is as fundamental as matter, or even more fundamental. I’ve lumped these speculations together under the label neo-geocentrism, because they resurrect the ancient, narcissistic notion that the universe revolves around us. Neo-geocentric theories represent attempts to sneak a consoling religious assumption—this universe is all about us—back into science, and so does conservation of information.
If I had to rank laws of physics, I’d go with the second law of thermodynamics, which holds that disorder, or entropy, always increases. Our expanding cosmos is headed toward heat death, a state of terminal boringness, in which nothing ever happens. The second law of thermodynamics, evidence for which I see whenever I look in the mirror or read the news, trumps the minus-first law.
Actually, I’m suspicious of all “laws” of physics, which strike me as manifestations of scientific hubris. Scientists take an assumption that applies under certain very tightly controlled conditions, usually with lots of qualifications, and transform it into a cosmic principle that applies to all things at all times in all places. But I’m especially skeptical of the minus-first law.
Never mind Hawking’s conjecture that black holes destroy information. I’m worried about far more mundane processes. Three years ago, strokes severely damaged my father’s memory, making it hard for him to recognize me and my siblings. Last June he died, at the age of 96, and my stepmother had his body cremated. My father persists, sort of, in the fragmentary, fading recollections of those who loved him. Polymath Douglas Hofstadter coined the heartbreaking phrase “soular coronas” to describe our memories of those eclipsed by death. But one day we’ll die too.
The minus-first law implies that the universe will bear the imprint of my father’s life forever. Long after our sun and even the entire Milky Way have flickered out, aliens with the godlike powers of LaPlace’s demon could in principle (that handy, all-purpose hedge) reconstruct the lives of my father and every other person who has ever lived.
That’s a nice thought (which inspired the 1996 book The Physics of Immortality by physicist Frank Tipler.) But I don’t buy conservation of information any more than I buy reincarnation or heaven—or a god who cherishes us. These propositions, scientific and religious, represent understandable but finally unpersuasive attempts at consolation. My contemplation of the inevitable loss of everyone and everything I love unsettles me. But I’d rather face death squarely than take refuge in false assurances from priests or physicists.
In The Black Hole War, Susskind strikes a rare (for him) note of humility: “Very likely we are still confused beginners with very wrong mental pictures, and ultimate reality remains far beyond our grasp.” (I found this quote in a blog post by physicist Peter Woit.) On this point, Susskind and I agree.
Meanwhile, as my end looms, I keep frantically filling up notebooks.
Further Reading:
The Twilight of Science's High Priests
The Delusion of Scientific Omniscience
Multiverse Theories Are Bad for Science
Can Mysticism Help Us Solve the Mind-Body Problem?
The Rise of Neo-Geocentrism
Why information can't be the basis of reality
Quantum Escapism
My Quantum Experiment
See also “Strange Loops All the Way Down,” a chapter in my free online book Mind-Body Problems.


scientificamerican--2020-11-05--Suborbital Scientists Prepare to Storm the Heavens

Although the stereotypical scientist stays in the lab , most researchers spend at least some time studying their subject out in the field .
Geologists visit volcanoes , botanists retreat to rain forests , and oceanographers swim the seas .
But in the absence of accessible rides to space , astrophysicists and planetary scientists have been forced to watch their experiments leave Earth without them .
That is about to change as the rise of commercial launch providers such as SpaceX , Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic creates new opportunities for scientists hoping to do their work in space .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ are sufficient to leave the bulk of Earth ’ s atmosphere and to experience long periods of microgravity-simulating free fall yet not powerful enough to orbit Earth .
Last month NASA selected planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute ( SwRI ) to conduct an experiment , funded by the agency , onboard a commercial spacecraft ’ s suborbital flight .
Stern ’ s launch date remains uncertain .
But he anticipates flying on Virgin Galactic ’ s SpaceShipTwo by 2022 .
Far from merely being a form of wish fulfillment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sending scientists to space alongside their experiments can have practical benefits , too—such as reducing costs .
For example , automating the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System ( SWUIS ) experiment he will operate on his journey would be “ significantly more expensive ” than simply flying a human operator , Stern says .
Directly involving scientists can also yield better results by allowing for faster and more flexible responses to any contingencies , good or bad , that may occur during an experiment .
“ Throughout the history of science , the people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discoveries and greater knowledge , ” says Steven Collicott , a researcher at Purdue University and head of the Suborbital Applications Research Group , whose members are industry experts committed to enhancing the opportunities and experience of suborbital flight .
“ There ’ s a long history of serendipitous discoveries.
” When a scientist designs and works with an experiment , “ she understands immediately if something ’ s not working right , ” says Dan Durda , also at SwRI .
“ Catching that in real time is an incredibly important part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Putting a scientist in the driver ’ s seat also provides the opportunities for maximizing the scientific research .
“ If you fly with your experiment , you ’ re there to observe what ’ s happening right now and , boom , you can immediately change your experiment ’ s parameters so you augment your scientific return , ” says Julie Brisset , a researcher at the University of Central Florida , who has accompanied experiments on pseudo spaceflights—that is , on airplanes that offer brief bursts of microgravity conditions by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s early days , agency officials envisioned regularly sending researchers to space .
And in 1972 they dispatched geologist Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17 ’ s lunar voyage , making him the only professional scientist ever to visit the moon .
The agency ’ s space shuttle was heralded as a workhorse for spacefaring researchers .
Extremely high costs and lower than expected flight rates , however , significantly reduced the program ’ s scientific returns .
Today astronauts operate a bevy of experiments onboard the International Space Station ( ISS ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and remain , few and far between , inevitably stranding worthy science on the ground .
Additionally , although researchers can telecommunicate with people operating an experiment in orbit , the process is “ very cumbersome ” and “ very rigid , ” Brisset says , speaking from her personal experience of remotely shepherding several astronaut-tended ISS science payloads .
On balance , she and other say , the scientists themselves would make better in-person caretakers of their experiments , given their more in-depth knowledge .
In the 1990s Stern and his colleagues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ SWUIS onboard the space shuttle , where , operated by astronauts , it captured images of Venus and Comet Hale-Bopp .
Other versions of the instrument have flown on fighter planes .
So when NASA ’ s Space Technology Mission Directorate issued its first call for scientist-supervised suborbital flight experiments at the beginning of this year , a modified version of SWUIS seemed like a good fit .
During his flight , Stern will point the instrument out three of SpaceShipTwo ’ s windows to calibrate how sunlight passing through rocket exhaust or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ astronomical measurements .
Although basic , the results could be a boon for researchers planning future observations .
“ We ’ re taking proven gear that has flown in space before and turning it to a new application , ” Stern says .
At the same time , Stern will track his vital signs throughout the entire flight with a wearable sensor rig called BHEERSS ( Biomedical Harness Evaluation of Experimenter Reactions to Suborbital Spaceflight ) , which has been tested on high-altitude airplane flights .
The BHEERSS data from Stern ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ colleagues say , could offer useful new data about how a normal , nonastronaut human body functions in space .
Although including scientists in space comes with its own rewards , getting there has been arduous .
For more than a decade , Stern , Durda , Collicott and others have worked to boost awareness of—and policies for—putting researchers in flight .
A potential breakthrough came in the summer of 2013 , when NASA ’ s then deputy administrator Lori Garver announced that the agency would be open to flying researchers on suborbital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out that fall , when Garver left NASA , says Tommy Sanford , executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation , a group of companies and organizations dedicated to opening up access to space for more people .
The momentum would not pick up again until after space-loving former congressional representative Jim Bridenstine became NASA ’ s administrator in 2018 .
According to Sanford , NASA ’ s early 2020 call for human-tended research proposals was “ a big step forward.
” It laid out the agency ’ s requirements for acceptable projects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spacecraft carrying scientists with NASA-funded experiments must first conduct at least 14 flights without more than one launch or reentry incident .
More importantly , the call showed NASA was finally getting serious about the science potential of crewed suborbital spaceflight .
“ You got ta be sending the right signals to the research and science community to invest their time and effort , ” Sandford says .
Brisset agrees that the announcement portends a dawning era of spacefaring scientists , but she remains cautious .
The status of all this has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while now , ” she says .
Stern is bullish on the prospects for his near-future journey .
Virgin Galactic recently moved its ship to Spaceport America in New Mexico , where it can make its first flight .
In 2019 the company launched its chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses into space .
Blue Origin has safely flown its New Shepard vehicle 13 times , carrying more than 100 payloads into space .
Sanford cautions , however , that even with one more flight , New Shepard ’ s track record may not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certain details of the agency ’ s qualification process .
But overall , the plethora of launches is a good sign .
“ The number of test flights and frequency of them all signal that [ private companies ] are getting close , ” he says .
Before long , Durda expects , researchers will be spending more time in space than the thrill-seeking “ space tourists ” traditionally seen as suborbital spaceflight ’ s target demographic .
Whereas extreme adventurers might make a single trip ( or a handful if they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wind up booking hundreds of suborbital flights per vehicle , he says .
“ The giggle factor is gone , and people are taking it seriously , ” Durda says .
Brisset agrees that many scientists are prepared for space .
“ The community has been ready for a while , ” she says .
Stern expects to be the first of many researchers undertaking suborbital trips .
“ There ’ s a huge pent-up demand , ” he says .
He anticipates that if NASA puts out another call for human-tended experiments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers will apply .
To reach that point , Stern says that vehicles need to be flying routinely .
“ We need to get to flight rates more like once a week , ” he says .
Once routine operations are underway , Stern hopes to see more and more astronomers and planetary scientists taking flight with their experiments .
“ I think that ’ s the wave of the future , ” he says .

Although the stereotypical scientist stays in the lab, most researchers spend at least some time studying their subject out in the field. Geologists visit volcanoes, botanists retreat to rain forests, and oceanographers swim the seas. But in the absence of accessible rides to space, astrophysicists and planetary scientists have been forced to watch their experiments leave Earth without them.
That is about to change as the rise of commercial launch providers such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic creates new opportunities for scientists hoping to do their work in space. Most of these opportunities involve suborbital flights—which are sufficient to leave the bulk of Earth’s atmosphere and to experience long periods of microgravity-simulating free fall yet not powerful enough to orbit Earth. Last month NASA selected planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to conduct an experiment, funded by the agency, onboard a commercial spacecraft’s suborbital flight. Stern’s launch date remains uncertain. But he anticipates flying on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo by 2022.
Far from merely being a form of wish fulfillment for starry-eyed researchers, Stern says, sending scientists to space alongside their experiments can have practical benefits, too—such as reducing costs. For example, automating the Southwest Ultraviolet Imaging System (SWUIS) experiment he will operate on his journey would be “significantly more expensive” than simply flying a human operator, Stern says.
Directly involving scientists can also yield better results by allowing for faster and more flexible responses to any contingencies, good or bad, that may occur during an experiment. “Throughout the history of science, the people being involved with the experiments leads to discoveries and greater knowledge,” says Steven Collicott, a researcher at Purdue University and head of the Suborbital Applications Research Group, whose members are industry experts committed to enhancing the opportunities and experience of suborbital flight. “There’s a long history of serendipitous discoveries.”
When a scientist designs and works with an experiment, “she understands immediately if something’s not working right,” says Dan Durda, also at SwRI. “Catching that in real time is an incredibly important part of the way the scientific process works.”
Putting a scientist in the driver’s seat also provides the opportunities for maximizing the scientific research. “If you fly with your experiment, you’re there to observe what’s happening right now and, boom, you can immediately change your experiment’s parameters so you augment your scientific return,” says Julie Brisset, a researcher at the University of Central Florida, who has accompanied experiments on pseudo spaceflights—that is, on airplanes that offer brief bursts of microgravity conditions by flying in parabolic trajectories.
Science in Space
In NASA’s early days, agency officials envisioned regularly sending researchers to space. And in 1972 they dispatched geologist Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17’s lunar voyage, making him the only professional scientist ever to visit the moon. The agency’s space shuttle was heralded as a workhorse for spacefaring researchers. Extremely high costs and lower than expected flight rates, however, significantly reduced the program’s scientific returns.
Today astronauts operate a bevy of experiments onboard the International Space Station (ISS), but flight opportunities have been, and remain, few and far between, inevitably stranding worthy science on the ground. Additionally, although researchers can telecommunicate with people operating an experiment in orbit, the process is “very cumbersome” and “very rigid,” Brisset says, speaking from her personal experience of remotely shepherding several astronaut-tended ISS science payloads. On balance, she and other say, the scientists themselves would make better in-person caretakers of their experiments, given their more in-depth knowledge.
In the 1990s Stern and his colleagues developed and flew an early version of SWUIS onboard the space shuttle, where, operated by astronauts, it captured images of Venus and Comet Hale-Bopp. Other versions of the instrument have flown on fighter planes. So when NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate issued its first call for scientist-supervised suborbital flight experiments at the beginning of this year, a modified version of SWUIS seemed like a good fit. During his flight, Stern will point the instrument out three of SpaceShipTwo’s windows to calibrate how sunlight passing through rocket exhaust or reflecting off the fuselage could impact delicate astronomical measurements. Although basic, the results could be a boon for researchers planning future observations. “We’re taking proven gear that has flown in space before and turning it to a new application,” Stern says.
At the same time, Stern will track his vital signs throughout the entire flight with a wearable sensor rig called BHEERSS (Biomedical Harness Evaluation of Experimenter Reactions to Suborbital Spaceflight), which has been tested on high-altitude airplane flights. The BHEERSS data from Stern’s suborbital trip, he and his SwRI colleagues say, could offer useful new data about how a normal, nonastronaut human body functions in space.
Wave of the Future
Although including scientists in space comes with its own rewards, getting there has been arduous. For more than a decade, Stern, Durda, Collicott and others have worked to boost awareness of—and policies for—putting researchers in flight. A potential breakthrough came in the summer of 2013, when NASA’s then deputy administrator Lori Garver announced that the agency would be open to flying researchers on suborbital sorties. But that promising spark fizzled out that fall, when Garver left NASA, says Tommy Sanford, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a group of companies and organizations dedicated to opening up access to space for more people. The momentum would not pick up again until after space-loving former congressional representative Jim Bridenstine became NASA’s administrator in 2018.
According to Sanford, NASA’s early 2020 call for human-tended research proposals was “a big step forward.” It laid out the agency’s requirements for acceptable projects in this category, mandating that any spacecraft carrying scientists with NASA-funded experiments must first conduct at least 14 flights without more than one launch or reentry incident. More importantly, the call showed NASA was finally getting serious about the science potential of crewed suborbital spaceflight. “You gotta be sending the right signals to the research and science community to invest their time and effort,” Sandford says.
Brisset agrees that the announcement portends a dawning era of spacefaring scientists, but she remains cautious. The status of all this has been “two years from now for a while now,” she says.
Stern is bullish on the prospects for his near-future journey. Virgin Galactic recently moved its ship to Spaceport America in New Mexico, where it can make its first flight. In 2019 the company launched its chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses into space. Blue Origin has safely flown its New Shepard vehicle 13 times, carrying more than 100 payloads into space. Sanford cautions, however, that even with one more flight, New Shepard’s track record may not meet NASA’s muster because of certain details of the agency’s qualification process. But overall, the plethora of launches is a good sign. “The number of test flights and frequency of them all signal that [private companies] are getting close,” he says.
Before long, Durda expects, researchers will be spending more time in space than the thrill-seeking “space tourists” traditionally seen as suborbital spaceflight’s target demographic. Whereas extreme adventurers might make a single trip (or a handful if they are wealthy), organizations and industries could wind up booking hundreds of suborbital flights per vehicle, he says. “The giggle factor is gone, and people are taking it seriously,” Durda says.
Brisset agrees that many scientists are prepared for space. “The community has been ready for a while,” she says.
Stern expects to be the first of many researchers undertaking suborbital trips. “There’s a huge pent-up demand,” he says. He anticipates that if NASA puts out another call for human-tended experiments next year, a larger number of researchers will apply.
To reach that point, Stern says that vehicles need to be flying routinely. “We need to get to flight rates more like once a week,” he says. Once routine operations are underway, Stern hopes to see more and more astronomers and planetary scientists taking flight with their experiments. “I think that’s the wave of the future,” he says.