Miracle or mirage? Atmospheric rivers end California drought year with heavy snow and rain

DECEMBER 30, 2022, by Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-miracle-mirage-atmospheric-rivers-california.html

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

After the driest start to any year on record, California will end 2022 with snow-capped mountains, soaked roadways and—in some places—flood warnings.

The soggy end to an otherwise bone-dry year came as something of a surprise. Only weeks earlier, officials sounded the alarm about a rare third appearance of La Niña—a climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that is often associated with dry conditions in the state. On Thursday, skiers in Mammoth enjoyed some of the deepest snow in the nation, while in Los Angeles, a steady drizzle signaled stronger storms to come.

Officials said the parade of atmospheric rivers dousing the state will probably continue in the days ahead, providing a glimmer of optimism after a year marked by water restrictions, drying wells and perilous lows on the Colorado River. But though California's wet season has defied expectations so far, the pattern must persist to truly undo several years of significant rain deficits.

"The moisture that we're getting now is a big help, but we need more—a lot more—to really put a major dent in the drought," said Richard Heim, a meteorologist with the National Centers for Environmental Information and one of the authors of the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Still, the damp December has come as a welcome change. While the drought monitor shows nearly 81% of the state under severe, extreme or exceptional drought, that's a notable improvement from three months ago, when about 94% of the state was classified in the three worst categories. Heim said next Thursday's update should show even more gains.

"When we're dealing with drought in the West, in some regards we have to take it slow in showing improvement because reservoirs take forever to refill and you really need a good mountain snowpack," he said. "And we don't know if we have a good mountain snowpack for the snow season until somewhere around April 1."

State climatologist Mike Anderson of the Department of Water Resources said the storms could signal the decay of La Niña, which arrived as anticipated but started to weaken around the winter solstice on Dec. 21, when Earth stopped tilting away from the sun in the Northern Hemisphere. Around the same time, regional high-pressure systems weakened, which allowed some of the storms to push through, he said.

"We're kind of seeing things that are more in tune with what we would expect climatologically, and lot of it has to do with that high pressure yielding in its strength," Anderson said. "In previous winters, it hung in there strong and prevented storms from making their way into California."

The late December storms have also delivered some improvements when it comes to the state's snowpack and reservoirs. California's snow water equivalent, or the amount of water contained in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, was at 156% of normal for the date on Thursday.

The state's two largest reservoirs also saw gains, with storage in Lake Shasta at 1.47 million acre-feet, up from 1.4 million at the start of December, and Lake Oroville at 1.12 million acre-feet, up from 965,000 at the start of December, Anderson said.

But he cautioned that more moisture is needed. Though high for the date, the snow water equivalent is still only 51% of its April 1 average, meaning that if no more rain and snow were to fall, the wet season would end with about half of what's needed. Similarly, though Shasta and Oroville have improved, both remain well below normal for the time of year.

"It just has to sustain itself, because we still have two more of the wettest months of the year to go, and we really need them to be wet as well, where this year they were record dry," Anderson said.

But though the storms have brought welcome moisture, they have also created instances of havoc across the state. Winter hazards, including snow, ice and fog, have already prompted some road closures in portions of Central and Northern California, and travel could be "near impossible" in some places through the weekend, the National Weather Service said.

Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist with the weather service in Sacramento, said the atmospheric rivers are coming from the tropics, not the Arctic, so they are warm systems that could bring rain instead of snow to elevations as high as 7,000 feet. Flood watches and warnings have been issued in several areas, including Lake Tahoe, Hanford and Sacramento, where several inches of rain are expected to fall.

Officials in the region are particularly concerned about flooding in communities along the Cosumnes, Mokelumne and Sacramento rivers, as well as potential urban flooding in areas with poor drainage and low-lying areas and roadways, she said.

"There will be small towns and homes and roads and farms that could be impacted, but it will be a bit more localized to just those few river points, and not all of the river systems in Northern California," she said.

Despite the potential hazards, the storms are undoubtedly beneficial for the parched state. The latest outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center now shows an equal chance of above- or below-average precipitation in Northern California in January, but it's not a guarantee.

Heim recalled that 2021 saw a similarly wet December, which was then followed by California's driest-ever January through March on record in 2022. He feared a similar pattern could play out next year.

"A few months of really wet weather, well, it's not going to make much of a dent in these deficits that have accumulated over the years and are reflected in the low reservoirs," Heim said. He added that Lake Mead, the largest reservoir on the Colorado River, has more than 20 years of precipitation deficits to make up for.

But such dire conditions seemed a world away from the scene at Mammoth Mountain on Thursday, where officials were bracing for up to 5 feet of snow on top of the 2 to 3 feet received earlier this week.

"This has been an incredible start to the season here at Mammoth," Lauren Burke, the resort's spokesperson, told The Times. "It is a true winter wonderland up here."

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Archaeology News: 2,000-Year Old Statues of Greek Gods Uncovered in Ancient City of Aizanoi in Turkey

 

2,000-Year Old Statues of Greek Gods Uncovered in Ancient City of Aizanoi in Turkey

By Shanti Escalante-De Mattei, Art News, December 29, 2022

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/greek-gods-archaeology-statues-aizanoi-phrygia-1234652197/

One of the discoveries. Kütahya Dumlupınar University Press and Public Relations Consultancy Twitter (@dpubasin)

  Archaeologists from Kütahya Dumlupınar University have unearthed several statues and heads of statues depicting Greek gods in the ancient city of Azanoi in central Turkey, according to a statement released by the university last week.

Stone heads of Eros, Dionysus, Herakles, and others were uncovered, as well as a full statue of an unidentified hero of Azanoi, of which there are many. The statue measures at over two meters, or just over six and half feet, and is missing a few chunks from its pedestal and foot.

“I hope that we will find this missing piece of the statue in the works we will do in 2023,” said Dr. Gökhan Coşkun, who is leading the excavations, in the statement.    

Image Credit : Kütahya Dumlupınar University

  Coşkun said that he had also hoped that the head of Herakles that the team had found would match a statue of the body of Herakles that had been discovered last year, but alas, it was not a fit. The researchers are on the lookout for the missing pieces to two different statues. There is an abundance of materials still being uncovered, making the prospect of locating these pieces quite possible.

“We reach new works every day,” Dr. Gökhan Coşkun continued.

The complete statue that was found at the Azanoi excavation. (@dpubasin)

Archaeologists from Kütahya Dumlupınar University took over the excavation of Azanoi in 2021 and, since then, have uncovered numerous treasures, such as fragments of statues depicting Aphrodite, Herakles, and Dionysus. They also began excavating the ruins of an ancient bridge. Before the archaeologists from Kütahya Dumlupınar University took over the dig, archaeologists with Pamukkale University had carried out the previous excavations in the region.

Image Credit : Kütahya Dumlupınar University

Though the city of Azanoi, and Phrygia, the kingdom to which it belonged, may be unfamiliar, it was the seat of power of many a legendary king, such as Midas, Mygdon, who battled the Amazons, and Gordias. The Phyrgians participated in the Trojan War and Phrygian music is seen as the originator of Greek music. This cross-pollination with Greek culture is the reason why so many temples and statues to the Greek pantheon are present in the region, despite Phrygians having a different language and their own ancient gods.

 Heads of statues belonging to 'Eros', 'Dionysus' and 'Heracles' were found in the city of Aizanoi. 

Azanoi would eventually become an important trade city in the Roman empire, located near the Aegean Sea in modern day Turkey, and it possessed one of the first stock exchange markets of the world. Today, the city is being considered for a UNESCO designation.  

Statue heads found in ancient city of Aizanoi

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Only 30% of FDA Regulatory Actions Are Backed by Research

By BMJ NOVEMBER 7, 2022

https://scitechdaily.com/only-30-of-fda-regulatory-actions-are-backed-by-research/

The study indicates that either the FDA is basing its regulatory decisions on information that has not been made publically accessible or that when possible safety signals are identified, more thorough safety evaluations may be required.

Experts say that for the public to have confidence in medicines, regulators must be completely open about drug safety.

According to a study that was recently published in The BMJ, less than one-third of the regulatory decisions made by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are supported by published research findings or public assessments.

According to the researchers, their results, which are based on an examination of drug safety signals identified by the FDA from 2008 to 2019, show that the FDA is either taking regulatory measures on information that has not been made public or that more comprehensive safety evaluations may be required when possible safety signals are identified.

Monitoring a medicine’s safety after it is made accessible to patients (known as post-marketing pharmacovigilance) is critical for monitoring drug safety.

Each year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives over two million reports of adverse events via its Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS). The FDA evaluates all potential safety signals to decide whether or not regulatory action is necessary.

The FDA Amendments Act of 2007 mandated that the FDA publish quarterly reports on safety signals from FAERS, giving people the opportunity to examine at them and learn more about this pharmacovigilance system.

A team of US researchers, therefore, decided to analyze safety signals identified within the FAERS database. They asked how often these signals resulted in regulatory actions and whether they were corroborated by additional research.

They found that from 2008 to 2019, 603 potential safety signals identified from the FAERS were reported by the FDA, of which about 70% were resolved, and nearly 80% led to regulatory action, most often changes to drug labeling.

In a separate in-depth analysis of 82 potential safety signals reported in 2014-15, at least one relevant study was found in the literature for about 75% of the signals but most of these studies were case reports or case series.

However, less than a third (30%) of regulatory actions were corroborated by at least one relevant published research study, and none of the regulatory actions were corroborated by a public assessment, reported by the Sentinel Initiative.

These are observational findings, and the researchers acknowledge some important limitations. For example, they did not evaluate regulatory actions taken in other countries in response to these safety signals, which might have informed the FDA’s actions, nor could they consider unpublished studies or other data accessible to the agency but not publicly available.

Nevertheless, they say these findings “highlight the continued need for rigorous post-market safety studies to strengthen the quality of evidence available at the time of regulatory action, as well as the importance of ongoing efforts to leverage real-world data sources to evaluate and resolve signals identified from the FAERS and support FDA regulatory decisions.

In a linked editorial, experts argue that regulators should publish all evidence underlying their responses to drug safety signals to reduce harm and ensure public trust in medicines.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the tension underlying regulatory decisions and the public’s right to know about serious risks associated with medical interventions, they write. This same tension exists more broadly in medicine safety.

“Safety signals are an important step, but radical transparency about available evidence and the basis for regulatory judgments is needed to reduce the harm caused by medicines, as is adequate follow-up to ensure safer use,” they conclude.

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According to researchers, the favorable results obtained from studies on pigs warrant further investigation in human subjects.

By OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY DECEMBER 29, 2022

https://scitechdaily.com/could-eating-tomatoes-improve-your-gut-health/

The researchers discovered that young pigs that ate a diet high in tomatoes for two weeks had an increase in the diversity of their gut microbes and a shift in their gut bacteria towards a more favorable profile.

According to researchers, a diet heavy in tomatoes for two weeks led to an increase in the diversity of gut microbes and a change in gut bacteria towards a more favorable profile in young pigs.

Based on these findings from a short-term intervention, the research team plans to conduct similar studies in humans to explore the potential health-related connections between consuming tomatoes and changes to the human gut microbiome.

“It’s possible that tomatoes impart benefits through their modulation of the gut microbiome,” said senior author Jessica Cooperstone, assistant professor of horticulture and crop science and food science and technology at The Ohio State University.

“Overall dietary patterns have been associated with differences in microbiome composition, but food-specific effects haven’t been studied very much,” Cooperstone said. “Ultimately we’d like to identify in humans what the role is of these particular microorganisms and how they might be contributing to potential health outcomes.”

The research was recently published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.

The tomatoes used in the study were developed by Ohio State plant breeder, tomato geneticist, and co-author David Francis, and are the type typically found in canned tomato products.

Ten recently weaned control pigs were fed a standard diet and 10 pigs were fed the standard diet fine-tuned so that 10% of the food consisted of a freeze-dried powder made from the tomatoes.

Fiber, sugar, protein, fat, and calories were identical for both diets. The control and study pig populations lived separately, and researchers running the study minimized their time spent with the pigs – a series of precautions designed to ensure that any microbiome changes seen with the study diet could be attributed to chemical compounds in the tomatoes.

Microbial communities in the pigs’ guts were detected in fecal samples taken before the study began and then seven and 14 days after the diet was introduced.

The team used a technique called shotgun metagenomics to sequence all microbial DNA present in the samples. Results showed two main changes in the microbiomes of pigs fed the tomato-heavy diet – the diversity of microbe species in their guts increased, and the concentrations of two types of bacteria common in the mammal microbiome shifted to a more favorable profile.

This higher ratio of the phyla Bacteroidota (formerly known as Bacteriodetes) compared to Bacillota (formerly known as Firmicutes) present in the microbiome has been found to be linked with positive health outcomes, while other studies have linked this ratio in reverse, of higher Bacillota compared to Bacteroidota, to obesity.

Tomatoes account for about 22% of vegetable intake in Western diets, and previous research has associated the consumption of tomatoes with reduced risk for the development of various conditions that include cardiovascular disease and some cancers.

But tomatoes’ impact on the gut microbiome is still a mystery, and Cooperstone said these findings in pigs – whose gastrointestinal tract is more similar than rodents’ to the human GI system – suggest it’s an avenue worth exploring.

“This was our first investigation as to how tomato consumption might affect the microbiome, and we’ve characterized which microbes are present, and how their relative abundance has changed with this tomato intervention,” she said.

“To really understand the mechanisms, we need to do more of this kind of work in the long term in humans. We also want to understand the complex interplay – how does consuming these foods change the composition of what microbes are present, and functionally, what does that do?

“A better understanding could lead to more evidence-based dietary recommendations for long-term health.”

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Archaeology News: Were dinosaurs already on the way out when asteroid hit? No, says new study

 

Were dinosaurs already on the way out when asteroid hit? No, says new study

The findings also have implications for the present, to save today's species that are not doing as well as dinosaurs reportedly were at the end of their lives.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF, DECEMBER 26, 2022 

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-725884

Artistic reconstruction of Mbiresaurus raathi (foreground) with the rest of the Zimbabwean animal assemblage in the background, including two rhynchosaurs (front right), an aetosaur (left), and a herrerasaurid dinosaur chasing a cynodont (back right).

(photo credit: ANDREY ATUCHIN)

Dinosaurs became extinct in an apocalypse 66 million years ago when a massive 10-kilometer-long asteroid struck Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, triggering the extinction of the famous reptiles. 

A debate has since ensued over dinosaurs' overall state at the time of the fateful collision. Was the species already in decline, and the asteroid just sped up extinction? Or were they thriving in the late Cretaceous period, only to be tragically ended by the poor timing of the colossal space rock?

New research led by the University of Edinburgh, which analyzed fossil records, provides evidence that dinosaurs were indeed in their prime, not decline, at the time of extinction. The findings were published on December 7 in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Science Advances.

Revisiting evolution theories: Dinosaurs were on way out before meteor hit

The research team examined more than 1,600 fossil specimens, representing virtually every type of animal that was eating and being eaten during that stretch of time, from fish, salamanders and frogs to crocodilians, dinosaurs and mammals, dating from the 18 million years before the asteroid struck — the last years of the Cretaceous period — to the first 4 million years of the Paleogene period.

Analyzing the numbers of remains discovered, the researchers concluded that dinosaurs had a thriving and stable place in the ecological web at the time of their deaths, with no suggestion in the fossil record that their food sources were shrinking.

 

An artist's reconstruction of the Cretaceous Period meat-eating dinosaur Meraxes gigas. (credit: Carlos Papolio/Handout via REUTERS)

Predicting biodiversity loss happening in our time

"If we're able to discern what kind of factors determined survivorship of freshwater fauna in the past, we might want to use that information to predict the consequences of freshwater biodiversity loss happening in our time."

Jorge García-Girón

The findings also have implications for the present, to save today's species that are not doing as well as dinosaurs reportedly were at the end of their lives, according to the study's lead author Jorge García-Girón.

"If we're able to discern what kind of factors determined survivorship of freshwater fauna in the past, we might want to use that information to predict the consequences of freshwater biodiversity loss happening in our time," he said. 

Dinosaur Extinction Started 10 Million Years Before The Asteroid Hit

Something Was Killing Dinosaurs Before Asteroid Impact

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We've Never Found Anything Like The Solar System. Is It a Freak in Space?

SPACE 29 December 2022, By MICHELLE STARR
https://www.sciencealert.com/weve-never-found-anything-like-the-solar-system-is-it-a-freak-in-space


(NASA)

Since the landmark discovery in 1992 of two planets orbiting a star outside of our Solar System, thousands of new worlds have been added to a rapidly growing list of 'exoplanets' in the Milky Way galaxy.

We've learnt many things from this vast catalogue of alien worlds orbiting alien stars. But one small detail stands out like a sore thumb. We've found nothing else out there like our own Solar System.

This has led some to conclude that our home star and its brood could be outliers in some way – perhaps the only planetary system of its kind.

By extension, this could mean life itself is an outlier; that the conditions that formed Earth and its veneer of self-replicating chemistry are difficult to replicate.

If you're just looking at the numbers, the outlook is grim. By a large margin, the most numerous exoplanets we've identified to date are of a type not known to be conducive to life: giants and subgiants, of the gas and maybe ice variety.

Most exoplanets we've seen so far orbit their stars very closely, practically hugging them; so close that their sizzling temperatures would be much higher than the known habitability range.

Artist's impression of an ultra-hot Jupiter transiting its star. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)


It's possible that as we continue searching, the statistics will balance out and we'll see more places that remind us of our own backyard. But the issue is much more complex than just looking at numbers. Exoplanet science is limited by the capabilities of our technology. More than that, our impression of the true variety of alien worlds risks being limited by our own imagination.

What's really out there in the Milky Way galaxy, and beyond, may be very different from what we actually see.
Expectations, and how to thwart them

Exoplanet science has a history of subverting expectations, right from the very beginning.

"If you go back to that world I grew up in when I was a kid, we only knew of one planetary system," planetary scientist Jonti Horner of the University of Southern Queensland tells ScienceAlert.

"And so that was this kind of implicit assumption, and sometimes the explicit assumption, that all planetary systems would be like this. You know, you'd have rocky planets near the star that were quite small, you'd have gas giants a long way from the star that were quite big. And that's how planetary systems would be."

For this reason, it took scientists a while to identify an exoplanet orbiting a main sequence star, like our Sun. Assuming other solar systems were like ours, the tell-tale signs of heavyweight planets tugging on their stars would take years to observe, just as it takes our own gas giants years to complete an orbit.

Based on such lengthy periods of a single measurement, it didn't seem worth the trouble to sift through a relatively short history of observations for many stars to conclusively sift out a fellow main-sequence solar system.

When they finally did look, the exoplanet they found was nothing like what they were expecting: a gas giant half the mass (and twice the size) of Jupiter orbiting so close to its host star, its year equals 4.2 days, and its atmosphere scorches at temperatures of around 1,000 degrees Celsius (1800 degrees Fahrenheit).

Since then, we've learnt these 'Hot Jupiter' type planets aren't oddities at all. If anything, they seem relatively common.

We know now that there's a lot more variety out there in the galaxy than what we see in our home system. However, it's important not to assume that what we can currently detect is all that the Milky Way has to offer. If there's anything out there like our own Solar System, it's very possibly beyond our detection capabilities.

"Things like the Solar System are very hard for us to find, they're a bit beyond us technologically at the minute," Horner says.

"The terrestrial planets would be very unlikely to be picked up from any of the surveys we've done so far. You're very unlikely to be able to find a Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars around a star like the Sun."

How to find a planet

Let's be perfectly clear: the methods we use to detect exoplanets are incredibly clever. There are currently two that are the workhorses of the exoplanet detection toolkit: the transit method, and the radial velocity method.

In both cases, you need a telescope sensitive to very minute changes in the light of a star. The signals each are looking for, however, couldn't be more different.

For the transit method you'll need a telescope that can keep a star fixed in its view for a sustained period of time. That's why instruments such as NASA's space-based Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is such a powerhouse, capable of locking onto a segment of the sky for over 27 days without being interrupted by Earth's rotation..

The aim for these kinds of telescopes is to spot the signal of a transit – when an exoplanet passes between us and its host star, like a tiny cloud blotting out a few rays of sunshine. These dips in light are tiny, as you can imagine. And one blip is insufficient to confidently infer the presence of an exoplanet; there are many things that can dim a star's light, many of which are one-off events. Multiple transits, especially ones that exhibit regular periodicity, are the gold standard.

Therefore, larger exoplanets that are on short orbital periods, closer to their stars than Mercury is to the Sun (some much, much closer, on orbits of less than one Earth week), are favored in the data..

The radial velocity method detects the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of the exoplanet as it swings around in its orbit. A planetary system, you see, doesn't really orbit a star, so much as dance in a coordinated shuffle. The star and the planets orbit a mutual center of gravity, known as the barycenter. For the Solar System, that's a point very, very close to the surface of the Sun, or just outside it, primarily due to the influence of Jupiter, which is more than twice the mass of all the rest of the planets combined.

Unlike a transit's blink-and-you-miss-it event, the shift in the star's position is an ongoing change that doesn't require constant monitoring to notice. We can detect the motion of distant stars orbiting their barycenters because that motion changes their light due to something called the Doppler effect.

As the star moves towards us, the waves of light coming in our direction are squished slightly, towards the bluer end of the spectrum; as it moves away, the waves stretch towards the redder end. A regular 'wobble' in the star's light suggests the presence of an orbital companion.

Again, the data tends to favor larger planets that exert a stronger gravitational influence, on shorter, closer orbits to their star.

Aside from these two prominent methods, it's possible on occasion to directly image an exoplanet as it orbits its star. Though an extremely difficult thing to do, it may become more common in the JWST era.

According to astronomer Daniel Bayliss of the University of Warwick in the UK, this approach would uncover an almost opposite class of exoplanet to the short-orbit variety. In order to see an exoplanet without it being swamped by the glare of its parent star, the two bodies need to have a very wide separation. This means the direct imaging approach favors planets on relatively long orbits.

However, larger exoplanets would still be spotted more easily through this method, for obvious reasons.

"Each of the discovery methods has its own biases," Bayliss explains.

Earth with its year-long loop around the Sun sits between the orbital extremes favored by different detection techniques, he adds, so "to find planets with a one year orbit is still very, very difficult."

What's out there?

By far, the most numerous group of exoplanets is a class that isn't even represented in the Solar System. That's the mini-Neptune – gas-enveloped exoplanets that are smaller than Neptune and larger than Earth in size.

Illustration of the mini-Neptune TOI 560.01, orbiting its solitary star. 

(W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko)

Most of the confirmed exoplanets are on much shorter orbits than Earth; in fact, more than half have orbits of less than 20 days.

Most of the exoplanets we've found orbit solitary stars, much like our Sun. Fewer than 10 percent are in multi-star systems. Yet most of the stars in the Milky Way are members of a multi-star systems, with estimates as high as 80 percent seen in a partnership orbiting at least one other star.

Think about that for a moment, though. Does that mean that exoplanets are more common around single stars – or that exoplanets are harder to detect around multiple stars? The presence of more than one source of light can distort or obscure the very similar (but much smaller) signals we're trying to detect from exoplanets, but it might also be reasoned that multi-star systems complicate planet formation in some way.

And this brings us back home again, back to our Solar System. As odd as home seems in the context of everything we've found, it might not be uncommon at all.

"I think it is fair enough to say that there's actually some very common types of planets that are missing from our Solar System," says Bayliss.

"Super Earths that look a little bit like Earth but have double the radius, we don't have anything like that. We don't have these mini-Neptunes. So I think it is fair enough to say that there are some very common planets that we don't see in our own Solar System.

"Now, whether that makes our Solar System rare or not, I think I wouldn't go that far. Because there could be a lot of other stars that have a Solar System-type set of planets that we just don't see yet."

This artist's illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)

On the brink of discovery

The first exoplanets were discovered just 30 years ago orbiting a pulsar, a star completely unlike our own. Since then, the technology has improved out of sight. Now that scientists know what to look for, they can devise better and better ways to find them around a greater diversity of stars.

And, as the technology advances, so too will our ability to find smaller and smaller worlds.

This means that exoplanet science could be on the brink of discovering thousands of worlds hidden from our current view. As Horner points out, in astronomy, there are way more small things than big things.

Red dwarf stars are a perfect example. They're the most common type of star in the Milky Way – and they're tiny, up to about half the mass of the Sun. They're so small and dim that we can't see them with the naked eye, yet they account for up to 75 percent of all stars in the galaxy.

Right now, when it comes to statistically understanding exoplanets, we're operating with incomplete information, because there are types of worlds we just can't see.

That is bound to change.

"I just have this nagging feeling that if you come back in 20 years time, you'll look at those statements that mini-Neptunes are the most common kind of planets with about as much skepticism as you'd look back at statements from the early 1990s that said you'd only get rocky planets next to the star," Horner tells ScienceAlert.

"Now, I could well be proved wrong. This is how science works. But my thinking is that when we get to the point that we can discover things that are Earth-sized and smaller, we'll find that there are more things that are Earth-sized and smaller than there are things that are Neptune-sized."

And maybe we'll find that our oddball little planetary system, in all its quirks and wonders, isn't so alone in the cosmos after all.

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The earliest humans swam 100,000 years ago, but swimming remains a privileged pastime

DECEMBER 27, 2022, by Jane Messer, The Conversation

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-earliest-humans-swam-years-privileged.html

A painting of swimmers in the Cave of the Swimmers, Wadi Sura, Western Desert, Egypt. 

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

One of my life's aims is to swim in as many lakes, rivers, pools and oceans as I possibly can, to use my liberty and swimming skills as freely as I can. I love the feeling of being in a large, fresh body of water, its soft immersive, vast or deep buoyancy.

I've swum in a freshwater lagoon near Acapulco in Mexico, with the guide reassuring us there were no crocodiles in the water that day. I've swum in a busy London indoor pool noisy with swimmers thrashing about and in Australia's only women's pool. I've swum in the Weisser See lake on the outskirts of Berlin, the same lake that my grandmother swam in, before fleeing Germany. At Jaffa's Alma/al-Manshiyah Beach, in Tel Aviv, I've looked up from the sea to the Mahmoudiya Mosque's minaret.

I've marveled at finding myself in waters so far from home. It turns out that my ability to swim makes me part of an elite.

Karen Eva Carr opens Shifting Currents with the startling information that today worldwide—for all Earth's many rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, seas and oceans, to say nothing of built pools, canals and theme parks—the majority of people can't swim. People might bathe and wash their clothes in rivers and lakes, or undertake ritual ablutions in bathhouses, but the vast majority must keep their feet on the ground.

Yet the earliest humans from over 100,000 years ago taught themselves how to swim, for food and for pleasure. There is a long history of human swimming for utility and leisure, amply recorded in pictures from the earliest cave drawings and folk narratives.

This year the OECD reported that only one in four people in low-income countries can swim. Low to middle-income countries report more non-swimmers than swimmers, and a majority of those not able to swim are girls and women.

Access to natural waterways has decreased world-wide through the privatization of foreshores and beaches, and the building of dams, roads, ports, the development of wetlands, and larger cities.

It takes time to learn to swim, is especially difficult as an adult to learn, and do-or-die—it's impossible to fake.

It hasn't always been the case that worldwide most people could not swim, though as Carr's world history shows, swimming abilities have shifted over time, along with weather patterns and across geographies. People have migrated, conquered, traded, competed and shared stories that celebrated entering the water or warned of its dangers and need for sacred respect.

Neanderthals swam

The earliest humans swam. Neanderthals living in Italy about 100,000 years ago swam confidently. Their ear bones show they suffered from swimmer's ear from diving 3–4 meters to retrieve clamshells they then shaped into tools.

During the last major Ice Age of 23,000 years ago, when glaciers reached south to England, northern Germany, Poland and northern Russia, swimming, if it had been present, was abandoned. Over the next tens of thousands of years, people didn't swim.

Across the continent of Eurasia, people turned to farming wheat and millet for bread, and began to eat less fish, a food that is rich in vitamin D. In order to absorb more sunlight, and produce sufficient vitamin D necessary to good health, these populations developed genetically lighter skin. Some of these lighter skinned white people then migrated south and their descendants, the Greeks, Romans, Scythians and Iranians continued to be non-swimmers right through to the end of the Bronze Age, even in places that had remained warm during the Ice Age.

Thousands more years passed, and then rock paintings at Tassili n' Ajjer in southern Algeria show depictions of people moving in a horizontal posture with their arms outstretched. Quite possibly they are swimming.

By 8000 BCE, in the Cave of Swimmers in western Egypt, small red figures swim.

Another 5000 years pass, and Egyptian hieroglyphic texts and imagery are replete with representations of swimming. Egyptian kings swam, as did poor Egyptians. Many Egyptian girls and women swam, and quite possibly Cleopatra swam. Mark Antony could swim.

Swimming was common throughout the continent of Africa, and stories about swimming for fun and pleasure along with hunting and foraging, are found in many traditional tales. In the Ethiopian story of "Two Jealous wives", the twin babies thrown into the river are quickly rescued by swimmers. A humorous West African tale tells of a stingy woman who eagerly jumps into the river to swim after a stray bean.

An ancient Egyptian kohl spoon in the shape of a swimmer. 

Credit: The Louvre/Wikimedia Commons

Overarm is the oldest swimming stroke depicted. In Egyptian, Hittite, and early Greek and Roman images people are shown swimming, alternating their arms and sometimes using a flutter kick with straight legs, the same stroke we're routinely taught in Australia. Greek and Roman swimmers are not shown putting their faces in the water, and breaststroke is absent from ancient imagery and stories.

Only in Plato's Phaedrus is there a mention of backstroke, suggesting that a man "swimming on his back against the current" is behaving foolishly. Sidestroke is used when swimmers need to push canoes or carry something aloft through the water.

Assyrians created possibly the earliest flotation devices, habitually using a mussuk made from goat skin to help them stay afloat in the fast-moving rivers of eastern Syria and norther Iraq.

In ancient Eurasia swimming was linked to multiple and opposing myths about racial superiority. When associated with a darker skin color, populations who swam were especially dehumanized. By the first century BCE for instance, North Chinese writers were racialising swimming, associating Southern Chinese peoples' familiarity with ocean swimming and eating of fish to their darker skin color.

North China was part of the northern Eurasian non-swimming "zone," and for these northern-hemisphere non-swimmers, water was sacred, dangerous, sometimes magical, and not to be polluted by human bodies.

The Greek historian Herodotus remarked that Persians took great care to "never urinate or spit into a river, nor even wash their hands in one; nor let other people do it; instead, they greatly revere rivers. "

Cultural difference expressed through swimming is present throughout the historical narratives as one people observes another and mark themselves as different, depending on how well, or not, the other culture swims. It is also often a marker of class. Wealthier Greek and Roman women sometimes took up swimming. Augustus' great-granddaughter, Agripper the Younger, was a strong swimmer. When she was stabbed during an assassination attempt on her son, she escaped by swimming across a lake, her attackers unable to follow.

Not all cultures swam in the ancient world. Across Europe and northern Asia, in Mesopotamia (Syria, Iraq and Kuwait) and Southwest Asia, people did not swim, were afraid of the water, and the real and imagined creatures of the seas and lakes. Carr's history explores the reasons for this non-swimming through a wealth of archaeological, text-based and pictorial sources.

Sexuality and slavery

Carr shows that it's not only warm weather that decides whether a community will swim or not, but other cultural and political factors. She describes her history as also a study of whiteness and white culture. The part that swimming plays in world history is not neutral.

Swimming was often associated with sexuality and promiscuity. Ovid, for instance, frequently evokes swimming as an erotic prelude to rape in the Metamorphoses. A medieval tale from Central Asia tells of Alexander the Great and a companion hiding behind a rock to spy on women swimming naked. In many tales and images, the sight of women and girls swimming semi-clothed or naked is linked to shame and titillation.

Swimming is closely bound up in the history of patriarchy. Trial by water for suspected witches and the ducking of women and girls as punishment, was practiced in Europe for centuries—even up until the 1700s when wealthier Europeans and European-Americans were learning how to swim.

Slavery's connection to swimming cultures emerges with Muslim slave traders, who associated Central African nakedness with promiscuity and likened the ability to swim to animal behavior. Across the continents of Africa and the Americas, later medieval and later European explorers also invoked people's swimming skills as a justification for their enslavement.

Nevertheless, slave-holders expected the African and Native American slaves to swim in the course of their work. Slaves dived to clean ships, served as lifeguards for white swimmers, swam when tracking escaped slaves, and salvaged lost goods from shipwrecks. Enslaved Native Americans worked as pearl divers in the Americas.

Amidst this economic and educational history of inequity worldwide, swimming could be described as the pastime of the elite, and certainly Carr believes it has become so.

Carr's fascinating history is very well structured, with chapters clearly titled for readers who might want to dip into certain epochs or themes. It is weakest in the modern-day analyzes, drawing too-ready conclusions about contemporary situations. (For instance, Carr's analysis of the reasons for the 2005 Cronulla Riots doesn't mention the Howard government's anti-migration stance or Islamophobia post-9/11.)

Australian First Nations and Pacifika histories are also only sketched in. Nevertheless, this ambitious work achieves its aims of being a fascinating and highly informative world history, written for the lay reader with an interest in this rich topic, and beautifully illustrated with mono and color images, an index and chronology.

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US ARCTIC OUTBREAK FELLS HUNDREDS OF RECORDS, DEATH TOLL HITS 72 (AND RISING); RARE SNOW HITS MEXICO CITY; HISTORIC ACCUMULATIONS IN JAPAN KILL AT LEAST 20; + FLURRIES COAT THE AZORES

DECEMBER 28, 2022 CAP ALLON

https://electroverse.co/cold-kills-72-rare-snow-hits-mexico-historic-totals-in-japan-kill-20-azores/

US ARCTIC OUTBREAK FELLS HUNDREDS OF RECORDS, DEATH TOLL HITS 72 (AND RISING)

A record-setting Arctic Outbreak has forced the AGW Party to publish damage limitation stories in the hope of convincing an increasingly confused public that global warming means more extreme freezes, and that it always did…

The official death toll has now climbed above 70 –and is expected to continue climbing– after 2 million homes endured one of the worst winter storms on record without power, and thousands upon thousands of Christmas travelers became stranded.

At least 28 Americans perished in Buffalo alone.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown called this freeze the worst of most residents’ lifetimes: “All of the numbers have not caught up at this time,” he said, referring to the death toll. “We know that the [Erie] county number is larger.”

Military police have been brought in to help manage Buffalo’s traffic after “the blizzard of the century” hit the region — this is how State Governor Kathy Hochul described it, but such rhetoric is becoming increasingly common in recent times: a “historic” snowvember battered the region last month, which Hochul called, “one for the record books … one to tell your grandkids about.”

The original global warming hypothesis called for linearly and evenly rising temperatures and less snowfall — but this isn’t what we’re seeing, not by a long shot. Rather than scrap their failed theory, however, the agenda-driving ‘climate arm’ of the globalists (the IPCC) merely shift the goalposts, and then proceed to gaslight all those that notice.

“Catastrophic warming is making the Arctic (but not the Antarctic) heat faster,” is the Marxists claim, “which is disturbing the jet stream via a process that doesn’t make any scientific sense — and that is why Americans are freezing to death in their cars and in their own beds in 2022 despite decades of this CO2-induced disastrous broiling — so you best pay your carbon tax and reduce your living standards because, you know, the planet hates you.”

“It is [like] going to a war zone, and the vehicles along the sides of the roads are shocking,” commented Hochul on this most-recent freeze, explaining that emergency personnel were going from car to car searching for survivors, often finding frozen bodies inside and even in nearby snow banks, too, as desperate drivers sought refuge on foot.

As well as New York, cold-related deaths have also been reported in Vermont, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Colorado.

But stories of lucky escapes are also coming in.

A Maryland man was on his way to visit relatives with his two daughters when their SUV became trapped in Buffalo.

After spending hours with the engine running he made the desperate choice to risk the freezing, howling storm in order to find shelter. He carried his six-year-old daughter on his back while his 16-year-old clutched their Pomeranian puppy and followed her father’s footprints through the snow drifts.

“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” the man recalled thinking, adding that he broke down and cried when he finally walked his family through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life,” he said.

Global warming update, 2022.

Looting has also been commonplace.

“This isn’t people stealing food and medicine and diapers,” said Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gragmalia. “They’re destroying stores. They’re stealing televisions, couches, whatever else they can get their hands on. They’re opportunists.”

The owner of a small family-run shop in East Buffalo said looters broke into his general store on Christmas Day.

“They took everything. People took toys, electronics and speakers,” he said, estimating that up to $50,000 worth of equipment was stolen. The man said he called the police, “but they told me they were too busy rescuing the elderly”.

With regards to the records, they have been falling at an astonishing rate, with daily, monthly and even all-time low temperature benchmarks falling — amounting to the hundreds.

The story has been the same north the border, too, with the recent -53.4C (-64.1F) logged at Rabbit Kettle being confirmed as Canada’s coldest December temperature in recorded history.

But it was central provinces that bore the brunt of this week’s snow. Ontario’s Prince Edward County, along Lake Ontario, declared a state of emergency and had to take snow plows off the streets because they getting stuck.

RARE SNOW HITS MEXICO CITY

The exceptional freeze plunged south of the border, too, into Mexico.

The low solar activity-induced ‘meridional’ jet stream flow (nothing to do with CO2) even delivered rare snow to Mexico City — for only the third time on record (the previous two occasions being January 12, 1967 and March 5, 1940).


HISTORIC ACCUMULATIONS IN JAPAN KILL AT LEAST 20

Widespread and historic snowfall –totaling more than 10-feet in some parts– has blanketed swathes of Japan, killing at least 20 and injuring more than 100, with thousands more without power.

Among the dead was a woman found buried under a heavy pile of snowfall. This is the leading causes of deaths, according to local officials — people being buried underneath thick piles of snow sliding off rooftops.

Many parts of the country have reported three times their average snowfall for the season already.

The accumulations are proving unrelenting, and come hot-on-the-heels of last week’s all-time record-breaking totals:

Hijiori, Japan Loses Power After 2.3m (7.6ft) Of Snow Hits; Severe Weather Warnings Encompass All Of Iceland; + N. Hemisphere Snow Extent Continues To Climb Far-Above Average, With Much More Forecast

FLURRIES COAT THE AZORES

“Snow at Pico Mountain is a rare thing,” so says Renato Goulart, a well-known and experienced tour guide on the Azores–an archipelago in the mid-Atlantic, an autonomous region of Portugal.

The Mountain looks like a snow cone in the middle of the ocean — an odd site:

Azores, What Else!
@AzoresWhatElse

Photo by @carlosdocarmoiso Serra de Santa Bárbara com a montanha do Pico coberta de neve, hoje de manhã. Já não vou a tempo, mas desejo a todos umas festas felizes, e um excelente ano novo de 2023! 🌲🎄🌨☃️❄️🏔 #snow #mountains #liveauthentic #winter #visitportugal #nikon … https://t.co/grcYR8C56e

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