EVSN - Climate Change Melts Glaciers, Greens the Arctic

It's the 365 days of Astronomy PodGa, coming in 3, 2, 1.

I have to admit, as an undergraduate, I started university thinking I'd go into science policy,

and right now, more than ever before, I'm glad I did.

For two brief years, I wanted to be one of those folks traveling the world,

negotiating space treaties and international collaborations.

I switched to peer science when I realized I really don't enjoy understanding economics,

and learning more economics was not something I wanted to do.

Astronomy and space science it seemed would be a less broad profession.

This week's science is testing that premise,

but given everything going on with Russian rockets, engines, and the ISS,

I'm still glad.

Or now that I chose science.

In today's news, we're going to ignore those science policy issues,

but we will be looking at climate change, and testing my resolve on feeling science

is a more pleasing to understand topic.

This not entirely pleasing science is going to be bracketed between rocket launches,

cool planetary news, and this week's WhatsApp.

So we will start and end on a high note.

All of this and more is going to come at you right now, right here on the Daily Space.

I am your host, Dr. Pamela Gay, and we're here to put science in your brain.

Much teamwork and collaboration goes into making the Daily Space,

from writing, producing, to hosting, to editing, and publishing.

As science communicators, we also collaborate with other people like Fraser Kane from Universe today,

and all the folks we interview or have on as guests.

That spirit of collaboration is important to the research endeavors of the science community.

As we come together in larger groups of people on one project,

or sometimes as nation, sharing mission data.

Two missions orbiting Mars, NASA's Maven and the United Arab Emirates Emirates Mars mission,

or EMM, have recently shared data that led to the detection of patchy proton aurori at Mars.

Previously discovered by Maven back in 2018,

these proton aurori occur when chart particles from the solar wind interact with Mars upper atmosphere.

Maven and Esa's Mars Express observed these aurora as smooth and evenly distributed.

However, these new observations found patchy versions of the aurora,

likely caused by turbulent conditions in the atmosphere.

The results of the analysis were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters,

with lead author Michael Chaifin, who explains, quote,

EMM's observations suggested that the aurora was so widespread and disorganized,

that the plasma environment around Mars must have been truly disturbed

to the point that the solar wind was directly impacting the upper atmosphere,

wherever we observed aurora emissions.

By combining EMM aurora observations with Maven measurements of the aurora plasma environment,

we can confirm this hypothesis and determine that what we were seeing was essentially

a map of where the solar wind was raining down onto the planet, end quote.

Teamwork makes dreamwork and these multi-vanish point measurements

help scientists put data into a wider context, revealing new phenomena and their mechanisms.

Again, collaborations are important,

and an international team of scientists recently announced the discovery of two new planets,

one of which is a potentially habitable super-earth.

The parent star is LP890-0,

which is also catalogued as test object of interest, 4306, and speculus 2.

And this star is a very cold red dwarf.

In fact, it's the second coolest star we found planets orbiting after the famous TRAPPIST-1 system.

The first planet was discovered in data collected by the test-space telescope,

and it's the closer of the two planets orbiting in just 2.7 days.

It's also about 1.3 times the size of the Earth,

and here is where making data accessible becomes important.

Using the speculus telescope here on Earth, researchers were able to confirm

this planet and pin down some of its characteristics,

and they were able to detect that second planet would didn't appear in the test data.

The second planet is about 1.4 times the size of Earth,

and orbits in 8.5 days, blisteringly fast by our solar system standards.

But when you're orbiting an itty bitty little tiny red dwarf,

that particular orbit puts the planet in the star's potentially habitable zone

where liquid water could exist on the surface of the rocky world.

And that gives us another great candidate for observations with JWST

to characterize the planet's atmosphere,

second only to several of the TRAPPIST-1 planets.

This research was published in Astronomy and Astrophysics with Lead Author, Letitia Del Rez.

And just to wrap up the Planetary News with something fun,

a new study published in Science Advances with Lead Author Jezou Kyi

explains how experiments involving polyethylene tariff thalate plastic,

a common polyester family plastic abbreviated as PET,

so that diamond rain could be far more common on exoplanets than thought.

The plastic used contains a mixture of carbon hydrogen and oxygen

that provides a decent approximation of the composition of icy planets

like Neptune and Uranus, add in high-powered optical lasers,

great shockwaves in the PET, and then examine with x-ray diffraction

and you will find nano-diamonds.

This research team also found using this method,

which differed from an earlier experiment,

that they could see just how fast these diamonds grew.

It turns out that the oxygen content made all the difference,

as co-author Dominique Kraus explains, quote,

the effect of the oxygen was to accelerate the splitting of the carbon and hydrogen

and thus encourage the formation of nano-diamonds.

It meant the carbon atoms could combine more easily and form diamonds, end quote.

Diamond rain likely happens at Neptune and Uranus,

and the diamonds there will be much larger than the nano-diamonds created in the lab.

So when you go visiting ice giants, make sure your giant umbrella can handle

that kind of raining diamonds weather.

And now let's change things up and go to Eric Madness to look at some rockets.

Only a couple of rockets have launched since we last presented,

two of them were from China,

Aquagio 1A, and a long March 2D.

Launching payloads we don't know much about, both launches were successful.

The third launch this week was an Ariane 5 carrying the Utilset Connect VHTS satellite

in the GST transfer orbit.

Utilset VHTS, or a very high throughput satellite,

is a huge 6.4 metric ton communication satellite,

so large that it was launched solo on the Ariane 5.

The Ariane 5 usually launches a medium and a small satellite together.

Once an orbit VHTS will have a KAA band capability of 500 gigabits per second

for fixed broadband and in flight internet.

That's fast enough to download the entire contents of my computer,

one terabyte, in 16 seconds.

KAA, or Curious Above, is a standard frequency for satellite communications.

Starlink, and that telescope, among others,

use KAA band for downlink.

This bandwidth is enabled by the most powerful digital processor ever launched,

according to manufacturer TALUS Elenia Space.

The satellite has an expected lifetime of 15 years,

but most last much longer.

The Ariane 5 rocket is nearing its retirement,

with only a handful of payloads left to launch,

including the European Space Agency's Jupiter Ice Immune Explorer,

or Juice, launching next year.

It will explore Ganymede, Colesto, and Europa,

from 2029 to 2035.

NASA's Europa Clipper will join it a year later,

in 2030, to explore just Europa.

NASA's direct mission, which will impact the moon of asteroid Didymos

in two weeks on September 26th,

has caught its first glimpse of the asteroid right on schedule,

or it did, back in July of this year, and just announced now.

This image is a composite of 243 images,

taken by the Didymos for Constance and asteroid camera,

for optical navigation, or Draco.

At the time, DART was 20 million miles from the asteroid.

DART depends on Draco to ensure that it hits dimorphos,

the moon of Didymos.

Through several thruster burns up to two minutes before impact,

dimorphos is also unofficially called Didymod.

I don't know about all of you,

but here in Southern Illinois, this past summer was like nothing

I've previously experienced.

To be fair, I've only lived in Illinois for 16 years,

but from talking to folks whose families built our 200-year-old town.

This area doesn't even have family stories of well back in my day.

We had this one summer that was so hot.

Well, this summer was so hot that gardeners didn't have to worry

about their baby garden plants getting caught in a late freeze.

They had to worry about their seedlings getting caught

in an early scorching heat.

I have to admit, when temperatures reached the 90s Fahrenheit in May,

I forfeited on planting my normal shade crops of beans and lettuce

and let the heartier weeds own the yard.

I'm going to regret this choice in a couple of weeks

when I prepped the gardens for winter.

But summer has been so far out of the norm that kitchen gardens

that would normally have been planted and forgotten

required regular watering and extra care.

What I experienced here in the Great Plains

was echoed in a variety of ways all around our planet

as rivers in the European Union ran dry and heat soared across the world.

As we ended our last season of the show,

we brought you stories of Greenland experiencing rain

instead of snow for the first time in some places.

And now we're here to bring you news of a spike in glacial melt

occurring in Greenland that has never before been seen,

let alone seen in September.

The Washington Post reported September 6th

that over the Labor Day weekend,

Greenland lost about 20 billion tons of ice.

That is 7% of what Greenland loses in a normal year.

And that is water headed into the North Atlantic Ocean

where it will contribute to sea level rise

and lower the salinity of the ocean,

which changes ocean circulation patterns.

The rise caused by those 20 billion tons won't be measurable.

It takes 13 times that much melt

to raise the sea just one millimeter.

But Greenland is just one place

where we are seeing massive glacial melt.

More than one third of Pakistan has been underwater

under the one-two punch of massive rains

and accelerated glacial melt.

In Russia's Northern Comchaka Peninsula,

the 405 glaciers have lost 4.9 billion tons of ice

from 2000 to 2016 due to temperature increases.

While this region can normally expect to receive 1.2 meters of snow a year,

a weather phenomena called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

is expected to reduce snowfall and accelerate this melt.

This work is published in a new paper in the journal Glacialology

and was led by Shango Fukamoto.

This is your reminder that it takes time to do research

and get results through the review process in public.

This paper reflects conditions six years ago

and things are only accelerating.

The Arctic and Antarctic regions are the fastest changing in the world.

Some of this change is now visible out of airplane windows

and in Google Maps.

The Arctic Condra is greening

and the land that has been frozen for centuries

is now both revealing millennia old flora and fauna

and allowing the growth of plants normally seen only in warmer climates.

Well, these places are developing those warmer climates,

so I should probably say they are growing plants normally only seen

in lower latitudes.

This greening is problematic in a number of ways.

The green plants absorb more sunlight than snow or ice,

which reflects sunlight away.

This absorbed heat is re-radied at over time

and is actually leading to conditions that allow white spruce trees

to grow in new and more northern parts of Alaska.

Forests not only absorb heat,

but they also prevent as much snow from building up and cooling the ground.

Our world, one plant at a time, is fundamentally changing.

And it's not just in the northern hemisphere.

The Thweights Glacier in West Antarctica,

a glacier about the size of Florida,

is also melting at rapid rates.

And it can raise the ocean by 10 feet or just over 3 meters

when it melts completely.

In a new study in Nature Geoscience,

researchers find that while this glacier actually existed

during the otherwise warm, cretaceous period,

it is now undergoing rapid retreat.

Satellites haven't caught all the changes

and in studies that looked at the ocean floor,

researchers led by Alistair Graham found that the glacier is retreating

2.1 kilometers a year,

which is twice the expected rate.

So yeah, it's all melting.

And people around the world rely on glacier melt as a major source of fresh water.

This means that not only do we need to worry about oceans rising,

ocean salinity changing and flood damage.

When this is all over, we also have droughts to look forward to

when those glaciers are gone.

Okay, I think we need a palette cleanser because that was a lot.

And I actually have a pretty good palette cleanser for you.

I have a brand new picture from the James Webb Space Telescope

that catches a look at a spider.

Or at least this looks like a spider through a 16-inch amateur telescope

or the telescope folks were using when they named this nebula.

This is just a pretty splotch of color when observed through the JWST.

And I for one really look forward to the science that's going to come out

in a few more months.

All right, it's time to move on to something lighter.

Next up, we take a look with Eric Mattis at What's Up in the Sky.

This week in What's Up is a grab bag of events you can look forward to

for the month of September.

Next week we'll have a review of Lightyear and Disney Plus.

There's that for you to look forward to.

But for now, our solar system and what you can see in it.

This week is all about the moon, ice giants, and Dr. Brian Nate.

First up, Neptune.

Specifically, that it will be at opposition on September 16th.

Opposition is when the Earth is directly between Neptune and the Sun.

So we'll be at its brightest and spend the most time above the horizon.

Now, Neptune is small and relatively dark, so it will be difficult to resolve

unless you have a letter to telescope, say five inches or more.

The next event you should be observing the closed conjunction between Jupiter and the moon.

On September 11th, Jupiter will pass within two degrees of the moon,

one for Nate, be precise.

As we have to say, these closed conjunctions are excellent times to see

these two bodies right next to each other.

Either for high-power observations of both at the same time,

or for interesting, wide-field, aspartography.

I'll have reviews of some interesting ultra-wide angle lenses

from my Canon camera later this season.

Stay tuned for those.

The next event in September is another closed conjunction between a plane

and a moon on September 14th.

The moon will get remarkably close to Uranus.

Close enough that if you were anywhere else but the Americas,

it would completely cover it.

This is properly called an occultation.

That angular separation from the US is eight tenths of a degree.

Uranus is the other ice giant in our solar system.

An ice giant is a gas planet like Jupiter or Saturn

but made mostly from elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

These elements got to the planet in the form of ice, hence the name.

Neptune and Uranus have hydrogen and helium,

but only about 20% of their total mass is these two elements.

They are mostly composed of methane, ammonia, and water

with trace amounts of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur.

The two planets have otherwise similar atmospheres but are different colors.

Neptune is a darker blue than Uranus.

Why is this?

According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

Uranus has a slightly thicker layer of haze in its upper atmosphere,

which makes it later.

If this layer did not exist,

both planets would be a similar color of blue.

Now you know what an ice giant is,

and why Uranus is a different color than Neptune.

On to the rest of September.

Wrapping up the general events for the month of September

is the return of the satiaco light from September 23rd onwards

for about two weeks.

It will be visible as a faint glow in the mornings to the east.

It's often confused for sunrise,

but isn't, since it comes from opposite the sun looking out into the solar system.

For best visibility, find a spot with easy visibility

to the horizon and dark skies.

This light is formed by a cloud of dust orbiting the sun

outside the orbit of Mars.

The dust is mainly sourced from asteroids

impacting each other in the belt and the trails of comets.

The reason the satiaco light's visibility peaks in the spring

is due to its orbit.

The zodiac is the name for the 12 basic constellations

that are lined in the apparent path of the sun over the Earth's orbit.

This is also called the ecliptic.

The angle of the ecliptic changes throughout the year

and the zodiac is best visible when the ecliptic is high in the sky.

This is also when the planets are best visible

since they follow the same apparent line.

I mentioned Dr. Brian May at the beginning of the segment.

What does the guitarist from Queen have to do with space?

Lots, as it turns out.

The band members first met when May was in college

getting a PhD in physics.

The thesis he was working on concerns the zodiacal light.

He left the program to be in Queen.

He picked up the PhD into 2006 and was awarded his degree in 2008.

His work was a genuine contribution to science

since not much had been studied about the zodiacal light

in the 36 years after he started the thesis.

As always, go outside and look up.

And if you cannot go outside for some reason,

you can take a look around our solar system

using NASA's new and approved eyes on the solar system

visualization tool.

The latest update allows you to fall along

with 126 pass-to-prison space missions,

including the addition of Voyager's Grand Torpe.

You can observe the path of celestial objects

between 1949 and 2049.

They've also added Artemis I's trajectory

and all you need is a web browser in an internet connection.

No single use of brackets required.

This has been The Daily Space.

Today's episode was written by Dr. Pamela Gay,

Beth Johnson, Eric Mattis, and Gordon Dois.

Audioengineering is provided by Ali Pellfree

and web content is produced by Beth Johnson.

You can get a complete transcript,

show notes, and see images related to each of our stories

at our website, dailyspace.org.

The Daily Space is a product of the Planetary Science Institute,

a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to exploring our solar system

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As we wrap up today's episode,

we're looking forward to unraveling more stories from the universe.

With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories

and each milestone and space exploration,

we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it.

Until next time, let the stars guide your curiosity.

Thank you.