It’s a busy time of year, and I find myself unable to spare mental energy to write anything meaningful this week. So I’ve decided to share some of my favorite recent news from the world of science.
But before continuing your read, please spare a moment of thought for the loss of the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, which was for more than half a century the largest single-aperture telescope in the entire world and last week finally underwent the spectacular destruction that was expected after years of intense hurricanes and cuts to funding. You may remember it from Pierce Brosnan’s Golden Eye, or from the 1997 film adaptation of Carl Sagan’s Contact. It looked like something out of science fiction, but it was real, and now it’s gone.
First up:
Humanity retrieves its second ever asteroid sample!
“Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it...”
On December 5th, Japan’s Hayabusa2 landed in Australia, successfully returning a “pristine” chunk of the asteroid dubbed Ryugu. The new sample is significantly larger than the previous sample (also retrieved by Japan): Hayabusa1 brought back just around 1 mg of material. The new space rock weighs in at more than 100 mg! And it is likely to contain both water and carbon-based organic molecules.
"The materials that formed the Earth, its oceans and life were present in the primordial cloud from which our solar system formed. In the early solar system, these materials were in contact and able to chemically interact within the same parent objects," Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials wrote in an overview of Hayabusa2.
"These interactions are retained even today in primitive bodies (C-type asteroids), so returning samples from these bodies for analysis will elucidate the origins and evolution of the solar system and the building blocks of life," they added.
—Japanese Space Capsule Carrying Pristine Asteroid Samples Lands in Australia
Expect scientists to get a lot of research mileage out of this one in the months and years to come!
“The Sistine Chapel of the ancients”!
Hand to hand. Long before...
When we think of rock art, we usually think of the cave paintings of Europe. But a new discovery has uncovered what is now known to be one of the largest pieces of ancient rock art on Earth, was made in a surprising place: the Colombian Amazon! I was shocked to learn that the centuries-old pigments could survive 12,600 years in such a damp and overgrown region of the world, but the 8-mile stretch of art is
...hand to God.
amazingly clear and easy to see. Access to the area for researchers was complicated not only by the jungle itself, but also by the country’s long-lasting civil war. Violent conflict obstructing or destroying archaeological and paleontological sites as well as biodiversity is a problem we have yet to find a solution to (think, to take one of the more glaring examples, of the gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic). Fortunately in this case, the peace forged in 2016 between the Colombian government and the FARC allowed for an archaeological team to make this new finding. And what exactly do these new-to-us drawings depict? Well:
“[T]he collection includes drawings of large mammals, birds, fish, lizards, handprints, and masked figures of dancing humans. The ancient paintings also record interactions between humans and extinct species of giant Ice Age mammals like mastodons.
...
The team has also found realistic drawings of deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, monkeys, turtles, serpents, and porcupines. There are also depictions of creatures resembling a giant sloth, camelids, horses, and three-toe ungulates with trunks.
—Archaeologists Discover Eight Miles of Prehistoric Rock Art, “the Sistine Chapel of the Ancients”
Camelids, horses, and three-toe ungulates—oh my!
But in all seriousness, it’s exciting and somehow reassuring to know that there are still big discoveries out there to be made.
The Resilience of the U.S. space program!
I call shotgun!
After several years of resounding success that has propelled the United States back to the forefront of space, SpaceX launched it’s first full-fledged crew mission for NASA last month. Four astronauts rode to the International Space Station on the Resilience, one of the aerospace company’s Crew Dragon rockets, last month. The fact that SpaceX launches, landings, and relaunchings barely make the figurative front page these days is a testament to the reliability of what just a few short years ago was some truly paradigm-shifting technology. And November’s launch is all the more crucial geopolitically as China continues its forays to the moon. With Resilience, NASA and SpaceX are positioning the United States for a strong and much more economically efficient future in space.
Homo sapiens learning to look
down our collective noses a little less!
Blurbs
I’d like to round out this list with something that isn’t exactly a specific event, or discovery, or invention but more of an addition to an ongoing recalibration. A new book is out, by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, called Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art (Oxford comma added by myself). It offers further evidence that our much maligned ancient cousins were not the “knuckle-dragging troglodytes” they have for so long been made out to be but rather a sophisticated group whose endeavors in this world are worthy of admiration despite having been largely (though not entirely) subsumed evolutionarily. This book looks into their sense of aesthetics, as well as their artistic and material ingenuity. It is not the first reexamination of Neanderthals, but it’s a welcome addition to a growing body of more fair-minded research and literature.
* * * * *
Finally, to end our read today, the winner of this week’s best science headline is Scientific American!
Acknowledging Reality Is an Excellent Way to Function within It
Who’d’ve thunk?
Feel free to share your favorite science stories in the comments!