This week the UK's conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper published an interesting perspective from their world economy editor.

"Saudi and OPEC officials self-evidently do not believe their own claim that world oil demand will keep growing briskly for another generation as if electric vehicles had never been invented, and there was no such thing as the Paris Accord." OPEC had to slash output last October in order to shore up prices. It had to cut again in April. The Saudis then stunned traders with a unilateral cut of one million barrels a day (b/d) in June. All told, the OPEC-Russia cartel has had to take 2m b/d of production off the table at a high point in the economic cycle, after China's post-Covid reopening and at a time when the US economy has been running hot with a fiscal expansion roughly equal to Roosevelt's world war budget.

That 2m b/d figure happens to be more or less the amount of crude currently being displaced by EV sales worldwide, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Yet the mood was all defiance and plucky insouciance at the 24th World Petroleum Congress in Calgary this month... This skips over the awkward detail that EVs are already on track to reach 60pc of total car sales in the world's biggest car market within two years (not a misprint). The cartel is being hit from two sides. Petrol and diesel cars are becoming more efficient, gradually displacing 1.4bn vintage models disappearing into the scrap yard. BP says that alone will cut up to a tenth global oil demand by 2040. With a lag, EVs are now starting to take a material bite, with an S-curve trajectory likely to go parabolic this decade.

China's EVs sales hit 38pc this summer, even though subsidies have mostly been scrapped. This is far ahead of schedule under Beijing's New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan. China's Chebai think tank says the emerging consensus is that EV sales will hit 17m or 60pc of total Chinese share by 2025, rising to 90pc by 2030, assuming that the grid can keep up... Vietnam is a few years behind but with similar ambitions. Its EV start-up, VinFast Auto, became the world's third most valuable carmaker after it launched on Nasdaq last month, briefly worth as much as the German car industry before the share price came back down to earth...

OPEC's central premise has long been that the rise of a billion-strong middle class in emerging Asia will more than offset declining oil use in the OECD bloc. That notion is 'withering under scrutiny'... The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global oil demand will peak at 105.5m b/d in 2028 and then flatten for a few years before going into decline... The IEA pulls its punches. The Rocky Mountain Institute argues in its latest report — End of the ICE Age — that half of global car sales could be EVs by 2026, reaching 86pc later this decade.
The article closes by citing "the breathtaking pace of global electrification. The decline of oil in car and bus transport may be closer than almost anybody imagined. OPEC as we know it may be on the cusp of a death spiral."

The New York Times reports that a "squadron of young scientists and an army of volunteers" are "waging an all-out war on a creature that threatens the health of more people than any other on earth: the mosquito." They are testing new insecticides and ingenious new ways to deliver them. They are peering in windows at night, watching for the mosquitoes that home in on sleeping people. They are collecting blood — from babies, from moto-taxi drivers, from goat herders and from their goats — to track the parasites the mosquitoes carry. But Eric Ochomo, the entomologist leading this effort on the front lines of global public health, stood recently in the swampy grass, laptop in hand, and acknowledged a grim reality: "It seems as though the mosquitoes are winning."

Less than a decade ago, it was the humans who appeared to have gained the clear edge in the fight — more than a century old — against the mosquito. But over the past few years, that progress has not only stalled, it has reversed. The insecticides used since the 1970s, to spray in houses and on bed nets to protect sleeping children, have become far less effective; mosquitoes have evolved to survive them. After declining to a historic low in 2015, malaria cases and deaths are rising... This past summer, the United States saw its first locally transmitted cases of malaria in 20 years, with nine cases reported, in Texas, Florida and Maryland. "The situation has become challenging in new ways in places that have historically had these mosquitoes, and also at the same time other places are going to face new threats because of climate and environmental factors," Ochomo said...

Malaria has killed more people than any other disease over the course of human history. Until this century, the battle against the parasite was badly one-sided. Then, between 2000 and 2015, malaria cases dropped by one-third worldwide, and mortality decreased by nearly half, because of widespread use of insecticides inside homes, insecticide-coated bed nets and better treatments. Clinical trials showed promise for malaria vaccines that might protect the children who make up the bulk of malaria deaths. That success lured new investment and talk of wiping the disease out altogether.

But malaria deaths, which fell to a historic low of about 575,000 in 2019, rose significantly over the next two years and stood at 620,000 in 2021, the last year for which there is global data.
Thanks to antdude (Slashdot reader #79,039) for sharing the article.

Mike Wall writes via Space.com: OSIRIS-REx's asteroid-sample canister just creaked open for the first time in more than seven years. Scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston lifted the canister's outer lid on Tuesday (Sept. 26), two days after OSIRIS-REx's return capsule landed in the desert of northern Utah. "Scientists gasped as the lid was lifted," NASA's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division, which is based at JSC, wrote Tuesday in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The operation revealed "dark powder and sand-sized particles on the inside of the lid and base," they added.

That powder once resided on the surface of an asteroid named Bennu, the focus of the OSIRIS-REx mission. OSIRIS-REx launched toward the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) Bennu in September 2016, arrived in December 2018 and snagged a hefty sample from the space rock in October 2020 using its Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM. The asteroid material landed in Utah inside OSIRIS-REx's return capsule on Sunday (Sept. 24), then made its way to Houston by plane on Monday (Sept. 25). It will be stored and curated at JSC, where the team will oversee its distribution to scientists around the world.

Researchers will study the sample for decades to come, seeking insights about the the solar system's formation and early evolution, as well as the role that carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu may have played in seeding Earth with the building blocks of life. But that work isn't ready to begin; the ARES team hasn't even accessed the main asteroid sample yet. Doing so requires disassembly of the TAGSAM apparatus, an intricate operation that will take considerable time.

Last month, India became the first country to put a spacecraft near the lunar south pole -- breaking China's record for the southernmost lunar landing. Now, the so-called father of China's lunar exploration program, Ouyang Ziyuan, said claims about the accomplishment are overstated. Time reports: Ziyuan [...] told the Chinese-language Science Times newspaper that the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, at 69 degrees south latitude, was nowhere close to the pole, defined as between 88.5 and 90 degrees. On Earth, 69 degrees south would be within the Antarctic Circle, but the lunar version of the circle is much closer to the pole.

"It's wrong!" he said of claims for an Indian polar landing. "The landing site of Chandrayaan-3 is not at the lunar south pole, not in the lunar south pole region, nor is it near the lunar south pole region." The Chandrayaan-3 was 619 kilometers (385 miles) distant from the polar region, Ouyang said.

Astronomers have captured the first direct evidence of a black hole spinning, providing new insights into the universe's most enigmatic objects. From a report: The observations focus on the supermassive black hole at the centre of the neighbouring Messier 87 galaxy, whose shadow was imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope. Like many supermassive black holes, M87 features powerful jets that are launched from the poles at close to the speed of light into intergalactic space. Scientists have predicted that the rotation of a black hole powers these cosmic jets, but until now direct evidence was elusive.

"After the success of black hole imaging in this galaxy with the Event Horizon Telescope, whether this black hole is spinning or not has been a central concern among scientists," said Dr Kazuhiro Hada, of the national astronomical observatory of Japan and co-author. "Now anticipation has turned into certainty. This monster black hole is indeed spinning." M87 is located 55m light years from the Earth and harbours a black hole 6.5bn times more massive than the Sun. Just beyond the black hole is an accretion disk of gas and dust, swirling on the precipice of the cosmic sinkhole. Some of this material is destined to fall into the black hole, disappearing for ever. But a fraction will be ejected out from the poles of the black hole at more than 99.99% of the speed of light. The paper: Precessing jet nozzle connecting to a spinning black hole in M87 (Nature).

Jude Karabus writes via The Register: NASA has confirmed it will ask American companies to duke it out for the opportunity to deorbit the International Space Station -- quietly releasing a request for proposals last week. The specs, which appeared on U.S. government e-procurement portal SAM.gov, are for a vehicle the agency has dubbed the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), which will be focused on the space station's final deorbit activity. According to NASA, it will be a "new spacecraft design or modification to an existing spacecraft" that must function on its first flight (yep, important that), as well as have "sufficient redundancy and anomaly recovery capability to continue the critical deorbit burn."

NASA is getting in well ahead of the 2030 deadline, by which time the agency is hoping to have "seamlessly transitioned" to commercially owned and operated platforms in low Earth orbit (LEO). The vehicle will take years to develop, test, and certify. The request for proposals (RFP) is a confirmation that the agency is going to go with the second option it floated in March, saying a private contractor would cut costs down from a predicted $1 billion.

Many readers shared this report: Antimatter just lost a little more pizazz. Physicists know that for every fundamental particle in nature there is an antiparticle -- an evil twin of identical mass but endowed with equal and opposite characteristics like charge and spin. When these twins meet, they obliterate each other, releasing a flash of energy on contact. In science fiction, antiparticles provide the power for warp drives. Some physicists have speculated that antiparticles are being repelled by gravity or even traveling backward in time.

A new experiment at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, brings some of that speculation back down to Earth. In a gravitational field, it turns out, antiparticles fall just like the rest of us. "The bottom line is that there's no free lunch, and we're not going to be able to levitate using antimatter," said Joel Fajans of the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Fajans was part of an international team known as ALPHA, the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus collaboration, which is based at CERN and led by Jeffrey Hangst, a particle physicist at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Dr. Fajans and his colleagues assembled about 100 hundred anti-atoms of hydrogen and suspended them in a magnetic field. When the field was slowly ramped down, the anti-hydrogen atoms drifted down like maple leaves in October and at the same rate of downward acceleration, or g force, as regular atoms: about 32 feet per second per second. They published their result on Wednesday in the journal Nature. Few physicists were surprised by the result. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, all forms of matter and energy respond equally to gravity.

According to Universe Today, China may utilize lunar caves as potential habitats for astronauts on the Moon, offering defense against hazards like radiation, meteorites, and temperature variations. From the report: Different teams of scientists from different countries and agencies have studied the idea of using lava tubes as shelter. At a recent conference in China, Zhang Chongfeng from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology presented a study into the underground world of lava tubes. Chinese researchers did fieldwork in Chinese lava tubes to understand how to use them on the Moon. According to Zhang, there's enough similarity between lunar and Earthly lava tubes for one to be an analogue of the other. It starts with their two types of entrances, vertical and sloped. Both worlds have both types.

Most of what we've found on the Moon are vertical-opening tubes, but that may be because of our overhead view. The openings are called skylights, where the ceiling has collapsed and left a debris accumulation on the floor of the tube directly below it. Entering through these requires either flight or some type of vertical lift equipment. Sloped entrances make entry and exit much easier. It's possible that rovers could simply drive into them, though some debris would probably need to be cleared. According to Zhang, this is the preferred entrance that makes exploration easier. China is prioritizing lunar lava tubes at Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) and Mare Fecunditatis (Sea of Fecundity) for exploration.

China is planning a robotic system that can explore caves like the one in Mare Tranquillitatis. The primary probe will have either wheels or feet and will be built to adapt to challenging terrain and to overcome obstacles. It'll also have a scientific payload. Auxiliary vehicles can separate from the main probe to perform more reconnaissance and help with communications and "energy support." They could be diversified so the mission can meet different challenges. They might include multi-legged crawling probes, rolling probes, and even bouncing probes. These auxiliary vehicles would also have science instruments to study the lunar dust, radiation, and the presence of water ice in the tubes. China is also planning a flight-capable robot that could find its way through lava tubes autonomously using microwave and laser radars. "China's future plan, after successful exploration, is a crewed base," the report adds. "It would be a long-term underground research base in one of the lunar lava tubes, with a support center for energy and communication at the tube's entrance. The terrain would be landscaped, and the base would include both residential and research facilities inside the tube."

"[R]egardless of when they start, China seems committed to the idea. Ding Lieyun, a top scientist at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, told the China Science Daily that 'Eventually, building habitation beyond the Earth is essential not only for all humanity's quest for space exploration but also for China's strategic needs as a space power.'"

OSIRIS-REx weighs 4,650 pounds (or 2,110 kg). On September 8th of 2016, NASA first launched the spacecraft on its 3.8-billion mile mission to land on an asteroid and retrieve a sample.

That sample has just returned.

Throughout Sunday morning, NASA tweeted historic updates from the sample's landing site in Utah. "We've spotted the #OSIRISREx capsule on the ground," they announced about 80 minutes ago (including a 23-second video clip). "The parachute has separated, and the helicopters are arriving at the site. We're ready to recover that sample!"

UPI notes that the capsule "reached temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit during reentry, so protective masks and gloves are required to handle it," describing its payload as "a 250-gram dust sample."

15 minutes later NASA shared footage of "the first persons to come into contact with this hardware since it was on the other side of the solar system." A recovery team approached the capsule to perform an environmental safety sweep confirming there were no hazardous gas.

"The impossible became possible," NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. The Guardian reports he confirmed the capsule "brought something extraordinary — the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth.

"It's going to help scientists investigate planet formation, it's going to improve our understanding of the asteroids that could possibly impact the earth and it will deepen our understanding of the origin of our solar system and its formation."

"This mission proves that NASA does big things, things that have inspired us, things that unite us...

"The mission continues with incredible science and analysis to come. But I want to thank you all, for everybody that made this Osiris-Rex mission possible."

Professor Neil Bowles of the University of Oxford, one of the scientists who will study the sample, told the Guardian that he was excited to see the sample heading to the clean room at Johnson Space Center. "So much new science to come!"

And that 4,650-pound spacecraft is still hurtling through space. 20 minutes after delivering its sample, the craft " fired its engines to divert past Earth toward its new mission to asteroid Apophis," NASA reports. The name of its new mission? OSIRIS-APEX. Roughly 1,000 feet wide, Apophis will come within 20,000 miles of Earth — less than one-tenth the distance between Earth and the Moon — in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to enter orbit of Apophis soon after the asteroid's close approach of Earth to see how the encounter affected the asteroid's orbit, spin rate, and surface.

In 2020 Serbian scientists were gifted China's "Fire-Eye" labs, remembers the Washington Post. The sophisticated portable labs "excelled not only at cracking the genetic code for viruses, but also for humans, with machines that can decipher genetic instructions contained within the cells of every person on Earth, according to its Chinese inventors."

Although some of them were temporary, "scores" of the portable labs "were donated or sold to foreign countries during the pandemic," reports the Washington Post. But it adds that now those same labs "are attracting the attention of Western intelligence agencies amid growing unease about China's intentions." Some analysts perceive China's largesse as part of a global attempt to tap into new sources of highly valuable human DNA data in countries around the world. That collection effort, underway for more than a decade, has included the acquisition of U.S. genetics companies as well as sophisticated hacking operations, U.S. and Western intelligence officials say. But more recently, it received an unexpected boost from the coronavirus pandemic, which created opportunities for Chinese companies and institutes to distribute gene-sequencing machines and build partnerships for genetic research in places where Beijing previously had little or no access, the officials said. Amid the pandemic, Fire-Eye labs would proliferate quickly, spreading to four continents and more than 20 countries, from Canada and Latvia to Saudi Arabia, and from Ethiopia and South Africa to Australia. Several, like the one in Belgrade, now function as permanent genetic-testing centers...

BGI Group, the Shenzhen-based company that makes Fire-Eye labs, said it has no access to genetic information collected by the lab it helped create in Serbia. But U.S. officials note that BGI was picked by Beijing to build and operate the China National GeneBank, a vast and growing government-owned repository that now includes genetic data drawn from millions of people around the world. The Pentagon last year officially listed BGI as one of several "Chinese military companies" operating in the United States, and a 2021 U.S. intelligence assessment linked the company to the Beijing-directed global effort to obtain even more human DNA, including from the United States. The U.S. government also has blacklisted Chinese subsidiaries of BGI for allegedly helping analyze genetic material gathered inside China to assist government crackdowns on the country's ethnic and religious minorities...

Beijing's drive to sweep up DNA from across the planet has occasionally stirred controversy, particularly after a 2021 Reuters series about aspects of the project. Chinese academics and military scientists have also attracted attention by debating the feasibility of creating biological weapons that might someday target populations based on their genes. Genetic-based weapons are regarded by experts as a distant prospect, at best, and some of the discussion appears to have been prompted by official paranoia about whether the United States and other countries are exploring such weapons.

U.S. intelligence officials believe China's global effort is mostly about beating the West economically, not militarily. There is no public evidence that Chinese companies have used foreign DNA for reasons other than scientific research. China has announced plans to become the world's leader in biotechnology by 2035, and it regards genetic information — sometimes called "the new gold" — as a crucial ingredient in a scientific revolution that could produce thousands of new drugs and cures...

U.S. intelligence officials said in interviews that they have limited insight into how BGI handles DNA information acquired overseas, including whether genetic data from the Fire-Eye labs ultimately end up in the computers of China's military or intelligence services... Chinese law makes clear that any information collected using BGI's machines can be accessed by the Chinese government. A national intelligence law enacted in 2017 stipulates that Chinese firms and citizens are legally bound to share proprietary information acquired in foreign countries whenever requested.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article

NASA, in a press release: Jupiter's moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon. Astronomers using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa.

Analysis indicates that this carbon likely originated in the subsurface ocean and was not delivered by meteorites or other external sources. Moreover, it was deposited on a geologically recent timescale. This discovery has important implications for the potential habitability of Europa's ocean. "On Earth, life likes chemical diversity -- the more diversity, the better. We're carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa's ocean will help us determine whether it's hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life," said Geronimo Villanueva of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of one of two independent papers describing the findings. "We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa's surface came from the ocean. That's not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element," added Samantha Trumbo of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, lead author of the second paper analyzing these data. NASA plans to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will perform dozens of close flybys of Europa to further investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life, in October 2024.

SpaceX just extended its Falcon 9 rocket-reuse record. Space.com reports: The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Tuesday at 11:38 p.m. EDT (0338 GMT Sept. 20), carrying 22 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO). The rocket's first stage came back to Earth 8.5 minutes after launch, landing on a SpaceX drone ship stationed at sea. It was the 17th liftoff and landing for this Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description.

Those figures are unprecedented; the previous mark was 16, held by two different Falcon 9 boosters. The 22 Starlink satellites, meanwhile, deployed from the Falcon 9's upper stage 62.5 minutes after launch as planned. Tuesday night's liftoff extended another record as well: It was SpaceX's 65th orbital mission of the year. The company's previous mark, 61, was set in 2022. You can watch a recorded video of the launch here.

After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns. Gizmodo reports: The U.S. Air Force denied a request from Varda Space Industries to land its in-space manufacturing capsule at a Utah training area, while the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not grant the company permission to reenter Earth's atmosphere, leaving its spacecraft hanging as the company scrambles to find a solution, TechCrunch first reported. A spokesperson from the FAA told TechCrunch in an emailed statement that the company's request was not granted at this time "due to the overall safety, risk and impact analysis."

Gizmodo reached out to Varda Space to ask which regulatory requirements have not been met, but the company responded with a two-word email that ominously read, "no comment." The California-startup did provide an update on its spacecraft through X (formerly Twitter). "We're pleased to report that our spacecraft is healthy across all systems. It was originally designed for a full year on orbit if needed," Varda Space wrote on X. "We look forward to continuing to collaborate w/ our gov partners to bring our capsule back to Earth as soon as possible." Varda Space Industries launched its first test mission on June 12, "successfully sending a 200-pound (90-kilogram) capsule designed to carry drug research into Earth's orbit," reported CNN. "The experiment, conducted in microgravity by simple onboard machines, aims to test whether it would be possible to manufacture pharmaceuticals in space remotely."

The sea-ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level, satellite data shows, a worrying new benchmark for a region that once seemed resistant to global warming. BBC: "It's so far outside anything we've seen, it's almost mind-blowing," says Walter Meier, who monitors sea-ice with the National Snow and Ice Data Center. An unstable Antarctica could have far-reaching consequences, polar experts warn. Antarctica's huge ice expanse regulates the planet's temperature, as the white surface reflects the Sun's energy back into the atmosphere and also cools the water beneath and near it.

Without its ice cooling the planet, Antarctica could transform from Earth's refrigerator to a radiator, experts say. The ice that floats on the Antarctic Ocean's surface now measures less than 17 million sq km - that is 1.5 million sq km of sea-ice less than the September average, and well below previous winter record lows. That's an area of missing ice about five times the size of the British Isles. Dr Meier is not optimistic that the sea-ice will recover to a significant degree.

Scientists are still trying to identify all the factors that led to this year's low sea-ice - but studying trends in Antarctica has historically been challenging. In a year when several global heat and ocean temperature records have broken, some scientists insist the low sea-ice is the measure to pay attention to. "We can see how much more vulnerable it is," says Dr Robbie Mallett, of the University of Manitoba, who is based on the Antarctic peninsula. Already braving isolation, extreme cold and powerful winds, this year's thin sea-ice has made his team's work even more difficult. "There is a risk that it breaks off and drifts out to sea with us on it," Dr Mallett says.

In late August the blog of Harvard professor Avi Loeb declared he had "Wonderful news! For the first time in history, scientists analyzed materials from a meter-size object that originated from outside the solar system."

In July Loeb retrieved parts of a meteor that landed in the waters off of Papua, New Guinea in 2014. A local New York newscast describes the find as "metallic marbles, less than a millimeter in diameter," while Loeb called them "beautiful spheres that were colored — blue, brown or gold."

Now USA Today reports: Early analysis shows that some spherules from the meteor path contain "extremely high abundances" of an unheard-of composition of heavy elements. Researchers on the team say the composition of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium, labeled as a "BeLaU" composition, does not match terrestrial alloys natural to Earth or fallout from nuclear explosions. Additionally, the composition is not found in magma oceans of Earth, nor the moon, Mars or other natural bodies in the solar system.

Other elements are thought to have been lost by evaporation during IM1's passage through the Earth's atmosphere, researchers said, leading them to theorize that the spherules could originate in a magma ocean on an exoplanet with an iron core outside the solar system.
Long-time Slashdot reader Okian Warrior writes that "Technical details can be found here, and a readable accounting of the analysis and results can be found on Avi Loeb's blog." Loeb writes that the exact composition of those spheres are now being studied at three separate laboratories, including one at Harvard.

In July the New York Times published reactions to Loeb's claim that "It's most likely a technological gadget with artificial intelligence." "People are sick of hearing about Avi Loeb's wild claims," said Steve Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University. "It's polluting good science — conflating the good science we do with this ridiculous sensationalism and sucking all the oxygen out of the room." Dr. Desch added that several of his colleagues were now refusing to engage with Dr. Loeb's work in peer review, the process by which scholars evaluate one another's research to ensure that only high-quality studies are published... "What the public is seeing in Loeb is not how science works. And they shouldn't go away thinking that."
Last week Salon also had a few questions for Loeb: In your book, you called Carl Sagan's adage that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" a "logical fallacy." How and why do you think that statement is somewhat flawed or a logical fallacy?

It's used as an excuse for people who don't want to deal with an exciting possibility. They don't seek the evidence and they argue, "Well, we don't have any evidence...."

If or when we encounter extraterrestrial life, do you think we'll find it or it will find us? Why?

I think we will find it near us because most stars [formed] billions of years before the sun, so it's more likely that some other civilizations preceded us because their star, if it's like the sun, already went through what we in the future might go through. We just need to be humble and modest, not assume that we are unique and special — that Albert Einstein was the smartest scientist who ever lived since the Big Bang — and engage in the search.

That's what I'm trying to do, and the pushback is really strange under these circumstances because the people who argue against it have very strong opinions. But if you look at the history of science, they were very often wrong: the people [who] thought that the earth was the center of the universe, for example.
From Loeb's blog post: During my routine jog at sunrise on the deck of Silver Star, I was asked: "Are you running away from something or towards something?" My answer was: "Both. I am running away from colleagues who have strong opinions without seeking evidence, and I am running towards a higher intelligence in interstellar space."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Human actions have pushed the world into the danger zone on several key indicators of planetary health, threatening to trigger dramatic changes in conditions on Earth, according to a new analysis from 29 scientists in eight countries. The scientists analyzed nine interlinked "planetary boundaries," which they define as thresholds the world needs to stay within to ensure a stable, livable planet. These include climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and land use, and the impact of synthetic chemicals and aerosols. Human activities have breached safe levels for six of these boundaries and are pushing the world outside a "safe operating space" for humanity, according to the report, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The nine boundaries, first set out in a 2009 paper, aim to establish a set of defined "limits" on changes humans are making to the planet -- from pumping out planet-heating pollution to clearing forests for farming. Beyond these limits, the theory goes, the risk of destabilizing conditions on Earth increases dramatically. The limits are designed to be conservative, to enable society to solve the problems before reaching a "very high risk zone," said Katherine Richardson, a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author on the report. She pointed to the unprecedented summer of extreme weather the world has just experienced at 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming. "We didn't think it was going to be like this at 1 degree [Celsius]" she said. "No human has experienced the conditions that we're experiencing right now," she added.

Of the three boundaries that scientists found are still within a safe space, two of them -- ocean acidification and the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere -- are moving in the wrong direction. There is some good news, however. The ozone layer was on the wrong side of the boundary in the 1990s, Richardson said. But thanks to international cooperation to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, it is on track to recover completely. Crossing planetary boundaries does not mean the world has reached a disastrous tipping point. Hitting one does not mean "falling off a cliff," Richardson said. But it is a clear warning signal. The significance of the planetary boundaries model is that it doesn't analyze climate and biodiversity in isolation, the report authors said. Instead, it looks at the interaction of both, as well as a host of other ways humans are affecting the planet. Breaching one boundary is likely to have knock-on effects for others.

One year ago NASA crashed its DART spacecraft into the asteroid "Dimorphos" (which orbits around a much larger asteroid named "Didymos"). The BBC calls the mission "part of an experiment to change the space rock's direction and test Earth's defences against asteroids in the future.

"However, a teacher and his class studying the rock have now discovered that since the collision, it has moved in a strange and unexpected way." [U]sing their school telescope, a team of children and their teacher Jonathan Swift at Thacher School in California have found that more than a month after the collision, Dimorphos' orbit continuously slowed after impact... which is unusual and unexpected. As reported in the New Scientist, the team presented their findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

After discovering the unusual behaviour of Dimorphos, it's likely that Nasa will have to factor in the high school's findings, if they ever launch another asteroid redirection mission in the future... One explanation for the asteroid's orbit continuing to change so long after the Dart collision is that material thrown up by the impact, including rocks several metres across, eventually fell back onto the surface of the asteroid, changing its orbit even more. The European Space Agency is launching a mission called Hera, which will arrive at Dimorphos in 2026 and could reveal more details as to what happened to the asteroid following the impact.

CNN reports: The first experiment to produce oxygen on another planet has come to an end on Mars after exceeding NASA's initial goals and demonstrating capabilities that could help future astronauts explore the red planet. The microwave-size device called MOXIE, or Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, is on the Perseverance rover.

The experiment kicked off more than two years ago, a few months after the rover landed on Mars. Since then, MOXIE has generated 122 grams of oxygen, equal to what a small dog breathes in 10 hours, according to NASA. The instrument works by converting some of Mars' plentiful carbon dioxide into oxygen. During the peak of its efficiency, MOXIE produced 12 grams of oxygen an hour at 98% purity or better, which is twice as much as NASA's goals for the instrument. On August 7, MOXIE operated for the 16th and final time, having completed all its requirements...

Bigger and better versions of something such as MOXIE in the future could supply life support systems with breathable air and convert and store oxygen needed for rocket fuel used to launch on a return trip to Earth.
In a statement NASA applauded the performance of the MIT-created experiment. "When the first astronauts land on Mars, they may have the descendants of a microwave-oven-size device to thank for the air they breathe and the rocket propellant that gets them home...

"Rather than bringing large quantities of oxygen with them to Mars, future astronauts could live off the land, using materials they find on the planet's surface to survive."

The Washington Post reports: Japan launched a lunar mission Thursday, overcoming multiple failures and delays to become the fifth country to head to the moon — just weeks after India — in a global race to better understand Earth's closest neighbor... It is scheduled to enter the moon's orbit in three to four months and land early next year.

The rocket is carrying two space missions: a new X-ray telescope to help scientists better understand the origins of the universe and a lightweight high-precision moon lander that will serve as the basis for future moon landing technology. The telescope separated at 8:56 a.m., and the moon lander separated at 9:29 a.m...

Japan has made several attempts to reach the moon, including its Omotenashi project to land an ultrasmall probe. In November, Japan abandoned the project after failing to restore communications with the spacecraft. Earlier this year, Tokyo-based space company ispace also pulled the plug on the first Japanese private-sector attempt to land on the moon.
Japan's high-precision lander hopes to land within 328 feet (100 meters) of its target — which the article says it "much closer than conventional lunar landers, which usually have an accuracy of several kilometers."

SpaceX's Starship rocket is fully stacked and ready to launch again. According to Elon Musk, the company is just waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to approve the launch license. Ars Technica reports: That caveat is a big one because the Federal Aviation Administration is still reviewing paperwork and data from SpaceX about the first launch attempt of Starship in April 2023. That flight ended after about 90 seconds due to engine problems and other issues with the booster. The FAA has been reviewing data from that accident, including the environmental implications at the launch site and the delayed activation of the rocket's flight termination system. Following this accident, SpaceX prepared and submitted a "mishap investigation report" to the FAA. After reviewing the report, the FAA will identify corrective actions that the company must make ahead of its second test flight to ensure the safety of people, property, and wildlife near the South Texas launch site, which is surrounded by wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico. [...]

During the upcoming test flight, Starship will carry no payloads but will instead seek to demonstrate the performance of the booster's 33 Raptor rocket engines, stage separation, and ignition of Starship's six engines. Under a nominal flight, Starship will complete nearly three-quarters of an orbit around Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, north of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The launch date is pending regulatory approval, but it is not expected to occur before the middle of September.