Throughput: Poop Pill Edition
Photo by Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0
[ThTh1] So what has JWST been up to lately? Not much. Just teaming up with the Chandra X-ray telescope to produce some spectacular mult-wavelength view of the universe.
Clockwise from Upper Left: NGC 346, NGC 1672, M16, M74. Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/SAO, XMM: ESA/XMM-Newton; IR: JWST: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI, Spitzer: NASA/JPL/CalTech; Optical: Hubble: NASA/ESA/STScI, ESO; Image Processing: L. Frattare, J. Major, N. Wolk, and K. Arcand
X-rays are the second most energetic form of light after gamma rays. They are produced by high-energy phenomena like black holes slurping up matter or gas heated to extreme temperatures by explosions. Infrared are the second least energetic after radio waves. But there are a lot of phenomena that are best understood by combining images from multiple wavelengths — optical, ultraviolet, radio, infrared. In this case, it’s just the X-ray and IR. But what it reveals is spectacular.
Starting in the upper left, you have NGC 346, a cluster of young stars. Chandra reveals the purple glow of past supernova explosion while JWST highlights the dust flowing through the cluster.
On the upper right, you have NGC 1672, a barred spiral galaxy. Chandra finds black holes and neutron stars and the remnants of past stellar explosions. JWST, on the other hand, finds the cold dust that will soon form new stars. You are seeing the extreme — stellar birth and death; gas at millions of degrees and gas at tens of degrees — in one image.
The bottom right is our friend the Eagle Nebula, where new stars are emerging from their dust cocoons. We’ve seen the image before, but Chandra shows the youngest hottest stars. Only stars that are in the extremes of temperature give off X-rays.
And finally in the lower right, you see the hypnotic face-on spiral M 74. As with NGC 1672, Chandra shows young hot stars, black holes, neutron stars and hot gas. JWST reveals the dust and cool stars.
This is just one of the ways the fleet of space telescopes operated by NASA and other space agencies act as force-multipliers on each other. Each does what others can not; each has its unique niche. But, combined, they give us a view of the universe over every wavelength and into (almost) every phenomenon.
[ThTh2] The FDA has approved the first “poop pill” that would transplant bacteria from on person’s digestive system into another. Hopefully, this is just the beginning. I am convinced that gut bacteria play a huge role in our overall health. In fact, one of our doctors persuaded me that gut bacteria are a big part of the obesity epidemic and fecal transplants like this could help a lot of people lose weight.
[ThTh3] My wife is quoted in this article about telomeres.
[ThTh4] This is really cool: a combination of brain and spine implants can bypass spinal injuries and give people full control of their bodies again.
[ThTh5] A company is moving ahead with plans to build small modular nuclear reactors. If this works, they could start producing them within a few years.
[ThTh6] Did life on Earth begin in outer space? We still don’t understand a lot about primeval Earth. But some recent analysis of asteroids lends some credence to the idea that life did indeed begin elsewhere. Or, at least, not just on Earth.
[ThTh7] This week in exoplanets: Vulcan and Kamino. Maybe.
[ThTh8] Every time we look, we find more moons of our outer planets. Saturn’s tally may not be as high as 145. And we’re learning more about them. Uranus’s moon may have subsurface water. And Enceladus is blasting geysers of water into space.
There was a trick that was explained to me at some point in the middle of the lockdown:
Let’s say that there is some bacteria out there that is freakin’ everywhere. Like, you will find it in the woods, you’ll find it at the beach, and you’ll find it in the grocery store. Don’t freak out! It’s everywhere.
As such, you will probably ingest some at some point during the day.
Some of this bacteria will make it through your stomach and your intestines.
It will be carried out by whatever cargo ships are traveling through your own personal Suez Canal.
Then, when scientists find that this bacteria is also travelling on your Ever Given, newspaper reporters will call this ubiquitous bacteria “Fecal Bacteria”.
“Fecal Bacteria found in the woods! Found at the beach! FOUND IN SUPERMARKETS!!!”
They’re hijacking your disgust impulse.
And I have been vaguely irritated ever since.Report
Nitpick: The paragraph that begins “And finally in the lower right…” is about the lower-left image.
ThTh5: The article referenced is about siting small modular reactors. SMRs are pretty much by definition built in a factory and transported to the final site. Not to understate the importance of siting — it may be the most important single factor for getting SMRs actually deployed. This study suggests that closed coal mining sites in Virginia tick off most of the boxes for an acceptable site. So do lots of other locations. Whether any of them can get local support is an open question. The biggest hurdle right now is finding financiers who are willing to risk the cost of nuclear. Vogtle 3 and 4 are coming on line, seven years late and $15B over budget and will produce the most expensive electricity in Georgia. The only SMR design currently approved is NuScale’s, with promises that it will produce power at a wholesale price of $59/MWh. The initial site will be at the INL and the DoE has put up a considerable amount of funding. The rest is coming from a group of small utilities (UAMPS). The couple of large utilities that were approached about participating in that project ran their own numbers, said the price will be closer to $100/MWh, and declined. For comparison, in a recent RFP, Xcel Energy got firm bids for wind power at $19/MWh.Report