Discoveries in science these days come at breakneck speed, so much so it’s difficult
to keep up. Exciting times indeed as our knowledge base of the universe expands,
so here are ten recent scientific discoveries that struck me as unusual and interesting.
Number 10. The Zodiacal Light and Mars
Occasionally, and I’ve seen this myself several times, while watching the night
sky a faint glow can be seen. Often cone shaped and brighter nearer to the sun,
it’s often called the false dawn or zodiacal light. Even fainter, it can sometimes be spotted
stretching across the ecliptic, or plain of the solar system as a band. A related phenomenon is
known as the gegenschein and is due to a similar situation where you see a backscatter of sunlight
from dust directly opposite of the sun as a faint oval glow in the sky. Both of these are phenomena
of dust in the solar system, a sort of pancake shaped disk of diffuse dust that scatters light.
It was always assumed that this dust’s origins were comets and asteroids. But this began to
change with a strange phenomenon picked up by the Juno spacecraft. Juno’s cameras
started picking up tiny bits of debris, and it was soon realized that the spacecraft’s
huge solar panels were being impacted by dust, the same dust responsible for the zodiacal and
related light phenomena. As a result, Juno became a dust detector, something it’s original mission
hadn’t anticipated other than to build the solar panels strong enough to handle such a situation.
It was found that the dust extends from the orbit of Earth to the orbit of Jupiter and along with
other data from other spacecraft seems to point to an origin not of comets and asteroids, but Mars.
Modeling of the orbit of the dust again suggests a Mars link, though it’s not hard to imagine that
comets and asteroids may still be contributing. But the problem is no one knows how dust particles
from an entire planet, Mars, could end up in space in such concentrations and distributions.
Number 9. More Information on the Trappist 1 System
In 2016 a group of planets was found orbiting a red dwarf known as Trappist 1 located only
about 40 light years away. This system, which is significantly older than our solar system,
consists if a system of seven known planets, four of which are within the habitable zone of
the star. Very little else is known, however the launch and commencement of operations
of the James Webb Space Telescope has started delivering preliminary science on these planets.
This observation in particular focuses on Trappist 1b, the closest planet in to the star,
and not within the habitable zone. But was low hanging fruit as far as trying to characterize
its atmosphere. So they searched just before and just after the planet passed behind the
Trappist star in order to see how heat was affecting the planet’s surface. The previous
idea was that despite being in a hot zone, Trappist 1b might have a thick atmosphere
circulating the heat around the planet. This should have returned a dim signal,
but it ended up far brighter than expected. In short, this planet has no atmosphere at all.
The surface of the day side of the planet is a sweltering 230 degrees celsius,
446 Fahrenheit, and likely the planet lost its atmosphere shortly after its formation,
or during a subsequent violent solar flare. This particular planet was not
thought to be a candidate for life in the system, only those further out,
but it was a win in that JWST can characterize the conditions of exoplanets under the right
circumstances. More work is needed for the other members of the system.
Number 8. Quantum Physics and Titan Life
Our solar system is interesting in that surface liquids are rare. Subsurface liquid probably
occurs in a number of solar system objects, but actual surface liquid is almost unique to
Earth. Certainly liquid water is. But there is one other small moon of Saturn that does have liquid,
but there water is basically a rock. It’s Titan, and on its surface we’ve seen hydrocarbon lakes
existing in liquid form at extremely frigid temperatures. This has led to an open question,
could such a place see biotic or prebiotic chemistry happening in those liquids?
At first glance, the answer was probably no. It’s too cold for the chemistry needed
for it to happen, so far as we know. But it has been floated that maybe there is a way
past that, and that some kinds of chemical reactions might occur, albeit very slowly.
One recent discovery is that any such chemistry and resultant life
may actually be able to react not through standard chemistry to a quantum effect.
The problem is that for reactions to occur, energy is needed. The lower the temperature,
the less energy. But if particles could quantum tunnel, which is a known and proven effect,
then some type of chemistry might occur through this alternative means. This opens the way
for thought on the subject of quantum life and quantum chemistry. If it can ever be shown that
this occurs on Titan, then it very likely occurs throughout the universe under those conditions.
Number 7. The Return of the Giant Lacewing
The existence of a species is very situational. Natural selection and evolution provides for
organisms to find niches that they adapt to. But if that niche alters or goes away,
extinction usually comes. Sometimes however that can be misleading,
there have been several incidents where animals once thought to have been extinct
resurfaced. In other cases the niches shift, and so does the population and
that appears to be what happened with an insect known as the giant lacewing.
The giant lacewing wasn’t extinct, it had simply abandoned part of its former range in
North America for reasons unknown starting in the 19th century. That was until 2012 when an insect
specialist spotted something out of place clinging to the exterior wall of a Walmart in Arkansas.
The specimen was collected, taken shopping in the Walmart, preserved and then forgotten about
until recently. Turns out it was a Giant Lacewing outside of it’s current range,
suggesting that it, and other insects, might actually remain in their former habitats
in pockets, microniches as it were. Walmart apparently being one for the giant lacewing.
Number 6. Black Holes and Dark Energy
Few things are as mysterious in the universe as black holes, but one candidate is dark energy,
the mysterious energy that drives the accelerating expansion of the universe. But as it turns out,
the two may be linked. This is strange stuff. Conventional wisdom would tend to be that
gravity should cause the universe to contract, it is afterall, an attractive force. Black holes
take gravity to another level, possessing so much mass that light itself can’t escape them.
As it turns out, studies of old black holes at the centers of galaxies that have stopped accreting
material, and thus should have stopped growing, apparently didn’t. Further they did it at a rate
that can’t be fully accounted for by absorbing material or colliding with other galaxies.
Models showed however that if you factor in the expansion of the universe into this increase,
it fits, meaning that dark energy is somehow hiding inside black
holes and having an effect on the overall expansion of the universe.
This involves one interpretation of General Relativity, where virtual particles popping
in and out of existence create a kind of vacuum energy. This may explain a huge mystery regarding
black holes, what lies at their heart. This has always been theorized to be a singularity,
but actually it may simply be dark energy, and thus there is no need to invoke a singularity,
solving a number of questions in physics. Work on this is very early, and it’s not clear how to
test it, but it might actually be that the dual mysteries of black hole singularities and dark
energy might have had a simpler answer than what was initially thought. Or maybe not, since we’re
dealing with something that in one instance is an attractive force, but in another sense repels.
Number 5. The Impossible Rings of Quaoar
Rings around bodies in the solar system are well represented. In addition to Saturn’s glorious ring
system, they’re also found at Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. Strangely though, the dwarf planet Quaoar
also seems to have a ring system, and more it shouldn’t be where it is. This involves something
called the Roche limit, which is the point where an object orbiting a larger object gets torn
apart, and can form a ring. Outside it, everything coalesces and forms a moon or moonlet. In short,
quaoar should have a moon where it has a ring because it’s well outside the Roche limit.
There are other oddities regarding this mostly water ice ring. It’s irregular, in
that some parts can be as much as 100 kilometers wide, but in others just 5 kilometers wide.
It’s unclear what’s causing all of this, but one option may be the extremely low temperatures of
the outer solar system is somehow preventing the ring from collapsing, or a small moon known to
be orbiting in the system might be preventing it. It’s probably also the case that the Roche limit
is too general and doesn’t really account for factors like the composition of the materials
involved and others. Even still, for now, Quaoar has what we think is an impossible ring.
Number 4. Magnetars are Getting Stranger
Magnetars are a type of isolated neutron star, the collapsed core of a massive star that went
supernova that also sports a very powerful magnetic field, in fact the strongest such
fields known. These things are incredibly dense, packing more mass than the sun has into a sphere
just 20 kilometers across. The material they are made from is degenerate, the atoms are crushed and
it’s been famously said that a teaspoon full would weigh as much as a mountain does here on earth.
But actually describing what this material would be like if you could study it up close
has been problematic because it’s been described as a solid, superfluid, fluid etc., in short no
one really knows how it acts and it may well be dependent on the local conditions. Until perhaps
now. Recent research looking at X-rays emitted by a magnetar found that actually does seem to have
a solid surface, of sorts. The extreme gravity seems to force the material into what is called
a Bingham plastic, the consistency of which lies somewhere between a solid and a fluid. While not
a great analogy, you could envision it as being like very heavy mayonnaise, due mainly to the
presence of the magnetic field. But without a magnetar’s magnetic field this may not happen.
But that’s not the only strangeness regarding magnetic fields and magnetars. Other research
last year was able to track and map to a degree X-ray emitting
hotspots on the surface of another magnetar. And they were dynamic,
with one larger spot coalescing with a smaller spot. In short, the mayonnaise may be moving.
Number 3. Insights into Cave Paintings
One thing that fascinates me and fires my imagination are prehistoric cave paintings.
They provide one of the few windows we have into the world of our early homo sapiens ancestors.
They are a snapshot of that world, telescoping tens of thousands of years to us today. Messages
from our very origins, and in some ways as close to reading the mind of an intelligent alien
civilization since the world in which they lived is very far removed from our modern world, almost
entirely without technology. But one question has always been present, why paint on cave walls?
The answer may be more complicated and spooky than we thought. Evidence found in New Zealand studying
ancient tree trunks embedded in wetlands have provided evidence for the date of the so-called
Laschamp excursion. This was where the magnetic poles of earth switched positions briefly about
42,000 years ago. It’s possible that this may have cause climate changes and an influx of solar and
cosmic radiation that drove humans at the time into caves for protection. More work is needed
on this but other work has shown that we might have been making cave art before this period.
The oldest known cave art has recently been discovered in Indonesia and dates to
44,000 years ago. They depict figurative artwork, no less, in that they show part animal figures
that have no counterpart in nature, presumably showing that the people that made it had a
conception of supernatural beings and some kind of religion. Given that these early paintings show a
high level of artistic complexity, it points strongly that there may have been precursor
art being made that isn’t preserved so far as we’ve found going all the way back to humanity’s
origins in Africa. Oddly these new paintings would have been discovered long before now,
except that they were located 65 feet above the cave floor and no one had noticed until recently.
Number 2. Mars has Weird Oxygen Levels
Mars does some strange things. It’s been known for a while that the atmosphere of Mars sports
a small amount of methane. But, it shouldn’t. Methane gets broken down under those conditions
and it’s so bad that there should never be any measurable amount present, yet there is.
This suggests that there is a mechanism on Mars that’s producing methane. There are two
possibilities, that it’s somehow being produced geologically, or it’s being produced biologically.
Most of Earth’s methane is biological in origin, and with Mars the methane production seems to
bloom, with the curiosity rover detecting sharp rises in methane that come and go very rapidly.
That mystery has deepend. Mars has oxygen, but that’s not surprising, there are many oxygen
containing molecules on Mars ranging from water vapor to carbon dioxide and ultraviolet light
breaks that stuff down. The problem is that you should always see about the same levels,
but actually, we don’t. The oxygen production on Mars varies seasonally. You see it rise in spring
and then it drops towards winter. Worse, it varies year to year, while still following that cycle.
Seasonal gasses aren’t surprising however, all sorts of things seasonally change such
as atmospheric pressure, freezing and thawing of carbon dioxide,
etc. that can alter the chemistry that’s’ going on.
The problem is that Mars season oxygen variation is too extreme to be explained by that. So
there’s something else going on that we haven’t discovered. One thing has to be noted though,
oxygen, like methane, is a biosignature gas. Life is where most of earth’s oxygen comes from.
Number 1. Discrepancies against Einstein
It’s no secret that we have a poor understanding of gravity. We can describe its behavior on small
scales, but on large scales we have to invoke things like dark matter to account for what
we see happening with galaxies. The problem is, we have absolutely no idea what dark matter is,
and we’ve never seen any evidence of it outside its gravitational effects. But there’s also
a minority viewpoint that's growing, that dark matter may not exist, and that our understanding
of some parts of physics may be a bit off. Known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics or MOND,
it’s a hypothesis that modifies Newton’s laws to account for what we see when we observe galaxies.
The interesting thing here is that we may be seeing indicators that MOND may be at least
a step in the right direction on rethinking the question of dark matter and gravity at
large scales. Science is a process of revision, it changes as new information comes to light,
and we might actually be seeing that happen. Astronomers studying star clusters
have found what appears to be an unexpected asymmetry in the arrangement of their stars.
Star clusters show arrangements of stars in two slightly opposing tails, caused by stars moving
and interacting inside the cluster. Under regular Newtonian physics, these tails should be about
equal, but they’re not. The leading tail pointing towards the center of the galaxy has more stars,
which matches the predictions of MOND, which says that this effect should be expected. But much,
much more study of more clusters is needed to nail down whether this effect is really
there and indicating the validity of MOND, mainly because it would require
a major course correction for cosmology. But, it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.
Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier
and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer
and subscribe to my channels for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting,
weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.